"Lank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dance ends, Andrew Smith points with his fiddle-bow to a figure seen approaching from the background, a tall, lank, kindly-faced boy, dressed like the others but with ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... nothin' to be away from home a week, mother. And just think how happy I am." But there were more tears; and Jasper stormed at a dog and shook the wagon wheel to satisfy himself that it was sound. The driver, as lank a lout as ever slept in a stable, sat upon a board seat, stuffing his greedy mouth with ginger cake. He took up the lines and clucked to the horses, but it was discovered that something more remained to be said and he ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... the street in front of the High Card Saloon, his lank body trembling with surprise, indecision, and indignation; his face alight with the fire of outraged dignity. Three long paces from him stood Sheriff Webster, indifferently ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... the boy, a lad of twelve. His eyes appeared starting from his head. A second boy joined him, and he was trembling so violently that he could not speak at all. All he could do was to point at the lank figure of the old town marshal, some ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... vast numbers of human bones have often been discovered, and human bodies in a state of preservation are sometimes exhumed. On one of these the hair was yellow or sandy, and it is well known that an unvarying characteristic of the present red race is the lank black hair. A splendid robe of a kind of linen, made apparently from nettle fibers, and interwoven with the beautiful feathers of the wild turkey, encircled this long-buried mummy. The number and the magnitude of the mounds bear evidence that the concurrent labors ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... friend, Sir John Piano-forte, had kept that to himself, and not made it public at the trial of the song-seller in Dublin. I tell you why: it is a liberal thing for Longman to do, and honourable for you to obtain; but it will set all the 'hungry and dinnerless, lank-jawed judges' upon the fortunate author. But they be d——d!—the 'Jeffrey and the Moore together are confident against the world in ink!' By the way, if poor C * * e—who is a man of wonderful talent, and in distress[86], ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... with mask sanctimonious, [3] Their rigs prove to judge that their phiz is erroneous. [4] Twig lank-jaws, the miser, that skin-flint old elf, From his long meagre phiz, who'd think he'd the pelf. Tol de ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... ax on the frosty morning air, wielded by the powerful arm of some hardy chopper. Looking along shore Paul discovered the wood cutter just about the same instant that worthy discovered him. The tall, lank West Virginian eyed the strange looking creature far a second, dropped the ax and started in a lope for his cabin. Suspecting that the curious landsman was going after his rifle, as it is customary for them to ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... friends saw the germs of the statesman in the lank, homely, crack-voiced hobbledehoy. Their praise emboldened him to stand forward as the spokesman at schoolhouse meetings, lectures, log-rollings, huskings auctions, fairs, and so on—the folk-meets of our people. One watching him in 1830 said foresightedly: "Lincoln has ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... the lank sexton, now fifty or upwards, had passed an hour or two with some village cronies, over a solemn pot of purl, in the kitchen of that cosy hostelry, the night before. He generally turned in there at about seven o'clock, and heard the news. This ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... ye, pard, I know'd when it touch'd the first black hide, Me an' the mustang would hev a show Fur a breezy bit of an' evenin' ride! One! it flow'd over a homely pine Thet riz from a cranny, lean an' lank, A cleft of the mountain;—reckinin' two, It slapp'd onto an' ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... matter! You and I were both prisoners—" Hurry could recall that circumstance now—"you and I were both prisoners and yet Judith never stirred an inch to do us any sarvice! She is bewitched with this lank-looking Deerslayer, and he, and she, and you, and all of us, had best look to it. I am not a man to put up with such a wrong quietly, and I say, all the parties had best look to it! Let's up kedge, old fellow, and move nearer to this p'int, and see ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... presented a perfect picture of woe and misery—half-frozen and famished—pale, haggard, shivering, with our beards unshaven, and our hair hanging lank and wet over our faces, our lips blue, our eyes bloodshot, our clothes dripping with moisture. Our condition was bad enough to excite the compassion ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... was a man of middle age, thin to emaciation and having lank, dark hair. His face was ghastly white, and he lay with his head thrown back and with his arms hanging out upon either side of the bunk, so that his listless hands rested upon the carpet. It was a tragic face; a high, intellectual brow and ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... A large, lank, muley or polled cow used to annoy me in this way when I was a dweller in a certain pastoral city. I more than half suspected she was turned in by some one; so one day I watched. Presently I heard the gate-latch rattle; the gate swung open, and in walked the ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... was a dead white man, his hair, lank and white, hung round his shoulders, his beard was slimy and soft as a white hare's, face and hands cold, dead white, and his features ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... remained—projected and lifted in the air, a-sniff to catch the fleeting scent of an enemy. Fancy could readily paint the ugly head of the lank body behind it. But Henry Ware was not deceived for an instant. The muzzle of the rifle that had been thrust forward, was raised now, and ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... not marked, where the full cheek should be, Incipient lines of lank flaccidity, Lymphatic pallor where the pink should glow, And where the throb of transport, pulses low? - Most tragical of shapes from Pole to Line, O wondering child, unwitting Time's design, Why should Art add to Nature's ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... last of his cellar and his young family into it and died. Since that day Kings had come and gone in it, big, bonny creatures, liked and sighed over, and the house was shabby now, cracked and peeling for the want of paint, the walks grass-grown, the lawn frowzy, lank and stringy curtains at the dim windows. There were only three bottles of the historic cellar left now, precious, cob-webbed; there was only one of the blacks, an ancient, crabbed crone of the second generation, with a witch's hand at cookery and a witch's temper. And there were only James ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... traders. And I'm sure you wouldn't even one of our shepherd-lads with a man that minds a loom. The brave fellows, travelling the mountain-tops in the fiercest storms to fold the sheep, or seek some stray or weakly lamb, are very different from the lank, white-faced mannikins all finger-ends for a bit of machinery; aren't they, Ducie? And I would far rather see Steve counting his flocks on the fells than his spinning-jennys in a mill. Father was troubled about the railway coming to Ambleside, and ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... closet, that he leaped like a frog, and fell on all fours at the opposite corner of the hearth. His grandmother, the black woman, put him behind her, and looked steadily at their tyrant. She sat on the floor like an Indian; and she was by no means a soft, full-blooded African. High cheek-bones and lank coarse hair betrayed the half-breed. Untamed and reticent, without the drollery of the black race, she had even a Pottawatomie name, Watch-e-kee, which French usage ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the lank wet grass and soft spongy soil, he found himself suddenly confronted with a great barrier of fallen rocks; as though, at some period of its existence, the north end of the island had tapered to a gigantic peak which, in the fulness of its time, ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... last tram. The lank brown horses knew it and shook their bells to the clear night in admonition. The conductor talked with the driver, both nodding often in the green light of the lamp. On the empty seats of the tram ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... not mistaken. At the well-curb was a lank, bony girl, who might have been Laura's age, or perhaps a couple of years older. She was dreadfully thin. As she hauled on the chain which brought the brimming bucket to the top of the well, she betrayed more red elbow ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... a tall, lank fellow, past middle age, with a crop of stiff, red-brown hair, beginning midway of his forehead, so near to an equally shaggy and heavy splotch of eyebrows as to leave scarce a ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... the penance the more the sin, The more he whopped him the more he drank; Till his hair fell out and his cheeks fell in, And his corpulent figure grew long and lank. ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... the other end of the table, had really more to do with it than the rest, though he was both slighter in physical presence and more inconsiderate in his dress. His lank limbs were clad, I might also say clutched, in very tight grey sleeves and pantaloons; he had a long, sallow, aquiline face which seemed somehow all the more saturnine because his lantern jaws were imprisoned in his collar and ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... were Puritan coffee-houses where no oath was heard, and where lank-haired men discussed election and reprobation through their noses; Jew coffee-houses, where dark-eyed money changers from Venice and Amsterdam greeted each other; and Popish coffee-houses, where, as good Protestants ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... been the original breed of these animals, the present representatives of the race are neither particularly good-looking or useful. They are lank and lean, with large heads and high shoulders, narrow, spiny backs sloping downwards to the short hind legs; hams they have none. They are thickly covered with bristles, and are mostly black, brown, and grizzled in colour. The mass of them are not large, but the patriarchal boars attain a great size, ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... understand how any woman could so far oppose what must have been her natural instinct as to live and work in such a slatternly place. It wasnt just her kitchen which was disordered and dirty; her person too was slovenly and possibly unclean. The lank gray hair swishing about her ears was dark, perhaps from vigor, but more likely from frugality with soap and water. Her massive, heavychinned face was untouched by makeup and suggested an equal innocence of ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... feet. He came a little nearer to Maraton. He stood looking down at him with folded arms—a lank, gaunt figure, the angular lines of his body and limbs accentuated by his black clothes ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... expressing his opinion to his brother clergyman. So she sent for Mr. Crawley. In appearance he was the very opposite to Mark Robarts. He was a lean, slim, meagre man, with shoulders slightly curved, and pale, lank, long locks of ragged hair; his forehead was high, but his face was narrow; his small grey eyes were deeply sunken in his head, his nose was well-formed, his lips thin, and his mouth expressive. Nobody could look at him without seeing that there was a purpose and a meaning in his countenance. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... set the candlestick on the mantel-shelf, and threw some pine-knots on the fire, which immediately broke into a blaze, and showed him to be a lank, narrow-chested man, past sixty, with sparse, steel-gray hair, and small, deep-set eyes, perfectly round, like a fish's, and of no particular color. His chief personal characteristics seemed to be too much ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... look, the picture shows How lank and lean Augustus grows! Yet, though he feels so weak and ill, The naughty fellow cries out still "Not any soup for me, I say: O take the nasty soup away! I won't ...
— Struwwelpeter: Merry Tales and Funny Pictures • Heinrich Hoffman
... man in brown. The other cyclist in brown had a machine of dazzling newness, and a punctured pneumatic lay across his knees. He was a man of thirty or more, with a whitish face, an aquiline nose, a lank, flaxen moustache, and very fair hair, and he scowled at the job before him. At the sight of him Mr. Hoopdriver pulled himself together, and rode by with the air of one born to the wheel. "A splendid morning," said Mr. ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... most of the snow seemed to blow over it. In the snuggest corner of the cove stood a stout double log cabin and, in the open space around, great fires were roaring and sending up lofty flames, a welcome sight to the stiff and cold horsemen. Fully twenty mountaineers, long and lank like Reed, were gathered around them, and were ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... forty years old, of middle height, with lank limbs, and an exceedingly spare frame; he is wrapped in a long, blood-red pelisse, lined with black fur; his complexion, fair by nature is bronzed by the wandering life he has led from childhood; his hair, of that dead yellow peculiar to certain races of the Polar countries, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... McHurdie, a bride of five years and obviously proud of it, hurried by, and Mrs. John Barclay drove down the street in her phaeton; Oscar Fernald, with a pencil behind his ear, came out of his office licking an envelope and loped into the post-office and out like a dog looking for his bone; and then a lank figure sauntered down the street, stopping here and there to talk with a passerby, stepping into a stairway to light a cigar, and betimes leaning languidly against an awning post in the sun and overhauling farmers passing down Main Street in ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... of both the French and British armies. Portions of their attire had probably been worn at the siege of Louisburg, and the coats of most recent cut might have been rent and tattered by sword, ball or bayonet as long ago as Wolfe's victory. One of these worthies—a tall, lank figure brandishing a rusty sword of immense longitude—purported to be no less a personage than General George Washington, and the other principal officers of the American army, such as Gates, Lee, Putnam, Schuyler, Ward and ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his master asserted, "Jemmy, you are drunk!" Jemmy very quietly answered, "Indeed, sir, I wish I wur." At another mansion, notorious for scanty fare, a gentleman was inquiring of the gardener about a dog which some time ago he had given to the laird. The gardener showed him a lank greyhound, on which the gentleman said, "No, no; the dog I gave your master was a mastiff, not a greyhound;" to which the gardener quietly answered, "Indeed, ony dog micht sune become a greyhound by ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... was conscious of a blush. There was silence for a moment, and then Washington—now a lank, dreamy-eyed stripling between twenty-two and ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... he saw that the old woman to whom he had confided the child was the person who had called him so hurriedly but a few moments before. Her tottering body, clothed in bear-skins, was bent forward over a large triangular shield of polished brass, on which she leant her lank, shrivelled arms. Her head shook with a tremulous, palsied action; a leer, half smile, half grimace, distended her withered lips and lightened her sunken eyes. Sinister, cringing, repulsive; her face livid with the reflection from the weapon that was her support, and her figure ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... the river whose erratic course we continued to follow. Passed through groves of hazel overrun by wild vines, but both grapes and nuts as yet green. The plateaus become gradually larger and almost continuous, and the hills separated and diminished in size, those on the right being covered with the lank deodar, while those on the left possessed only a bright green mantle of grass, far away in front they altogether ended, and the open sky above the valley was alone visible. And now an unusual occurrence presented itself. We were following the stream upwards towards ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... Among their number were good people and bad, clever and silly.... One of them, a certain Avdey Ivanovitch Lutchkov, staff captain, had a reputation as a duellist. Lutchkov was a short and not thick-set man; he had a small, yellowish, dry face, lank, black hair, unnoticeable features, and dark, little eyes. He had early been left an orphan, and had grown up among privations and hardships. For weeks together he would be quiet enough,... and then all at once—as though he were possessed by some devil—he would let no one ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... then existing in regard to dress, showed at any rate his pretensions to nobility. This proud cavalier was followed by one servant only, who carried a capacious wallet, not over-well replenished with provision, as was apparent from its long lank shape and attenuated proportions. His master's cloak was slung on the other shoulder; and his belt displayed some implements that appeared alike formidable as means of offence ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... prepared, Of the bold for battle; stepped out the valiant Men and comrades, bore their banners, Went forth to fight straight on their way The heroes 'neath helmets from the holy city At the dawn itself; shields made a din, Loudly resounded. Thereat laughed the lank Wolf in the wood, and the raven wan, Fowl greedy for slaughter: both of them knew That for them the warriors thought to provide Their fill on the fated; and flew on their track The dewy-winged eagle eager for prey, The dusky-coated sang his war-song, The crooked-beaked. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of his beard, as if it were an ivy-bush. 'Jealousy,' said he. He gave it an ingenious twist in the air, and informed me that he was carousing. He made it shaggy with his fingers - and it was Despair; lank - and it was avarice: tossed it all kinds of ways - and it was rage. The beard ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... offered to us. A sure-footed mule, and indifferent side-saddle, had been procured for Miss M'Dermot, and was attended by a wild-looking Bearnese boy, or gossoon, as her brother called him, a creature like a grasshopper, all legs and arms, with a scared countenance, and long lank black hair hanging in irregular ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... giving her the blessings, of marriage, came in curtsying humbly with a tea-tray. Everybody understood the relation perfectly; but not even the pious shrugged their shoulders or seemed to care. One day, a lank Virginian, wintering South in the same hotel with myself, began pitching into me on the subject of "Northern amalgamators." I called to me a pretty little boy with the faintest tinge of umber in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... edge of the cliff, perched a single-roomed cabin of logs representing home. This was the "Little Yankee" claim, owners William Hicks and "Stutter" Brown. The two partners were sitting silent and idle, a single rifle lying between them on the dump. Hicks was tall, lank, seamed of face, with twinkling gray eyes, a goat's beard dangling at his chin to the constant motion of his nervous jaws; and Brown, twenty years his junior, was a young, sandy-haired giant, limited of speech, of movement, of thought, with freckled cheeks and a downy little moustache ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... gray and massive, was more than a foot long, and gave him a patriarchal aspect. His pants were stuffed in the legs of his long boots, and he wore a kind of hunting frock, which reached nearly to his knees. He was lean and lank, but, annealed in the hardships of backwoods life, he was wiry and sinewy. He was about fifty years old, though his gray hair and beard alone appeared to betray his age. He was from the south; a fine specimen of the real Kentucky hunter—"half horse ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... Guendolen, 830 Commended her fair innocence to the flood That stay'd her flight with his cross-flowing course, The water Nymphs that in the bottom plaid, Held up their pearled wrists and took her in, Bearing her straight to aged Nereus Hall, Who piteous of her woes, rear'd her lank head, And gave her to his daughters to imbathe In nectar'd lavers strew'd with Asphodil, And through the porch and inlet of each sense Dropt in Ambrosial Oils till she reviv'd, 840 And underwent a quick immortal change Made Goddess of the River; still she retains Her maid'n ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... they presented,—the German, erect, well-poised, plainly a soldier in spite of his ill-fitting clothes; the American, lank and stomachless, yet taller than the other in spite of his bent shoulders. His tawny beard was guiltless of care. Of all his slack body only his eyes showed alertness as they looked sidewise from ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... the shoulders, the air of discouragement—suddenly there flashed across Billie's mind a different picture, the picture of a tall lank man with stooped shoulders and dark, deep-set eyes, looking at ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... turned. He gazed back at this unusual vision of a beautiful, well-gowned woman in the heart of the forests. He grinned ironically, this great, rough-bearded creature, in hard cord clothing, and with his well-worn fur cap pressed low over his lank hair that reached ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... Pressaeus brings, Betwixt the fortunes of contending kings; Lank, harmless frog! with forces hardly grown, He darts the reed in combats not his own, Which, faintly tinkling on Troxartas' shield, Hangs at the point and drops upon ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... watched the caretaker up to bed. She came upstairs, clinging to the balusters for support, a tired, worn-looking, elderly woman, with a lank, frail body, and a care-lined, miserable face. How ridiculous were Julia's suspicions! She not only did not lock her door to-night, but left it ajar. At intervals I peeped through mine to see if her light was extinguished; she had not—so poorly dressed ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... Budge Street? He took his place in the line of competing children. Far away in the grassy distance were two men holding a stretched string. On one side of him was a tubby boy with a freckled face and an amorphous nose on which the perspiration beaded; on the other a lank, consumptive creature, in Eton collar and red tie and a sprig of sweet William in his buttonhole, a very superior person. Neither of them desired his propinquity. They tried to hustle him from the line. But Paul, born Ishmael, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... panes, then swung to the right, where the darky bowed him into a big, handsomely furnished room flooded with the morning sun. A tall, gray man, faultlessly dressed in a gray frock suit and wearing white spats, turned from the breezy, open window to inspect him; the lean, well groomed, rather lank type of gentleman suggesting a retired colonel of cavalry; unmistakably well bred from the ends of his drooping gray mustache to the last ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... half starved. Punch and his bells would attract crowds, but my good pencils attracted nobody. I imitated Punch and his bells, and now I have two hundred depots in Paris. I dine at the best cafes, drink the best wine, live on the best of everything, while my defamers get poor and lank, as they deserve to be. Who are my defamers? Envious swindlers! Men who try to ape me, but are too stupid and too dishonest to succeed. They endeavor to attract notice as mountebanks, and then foist upon the public worthless trash, and hope thus to succeed. ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... fit pathetic relief of his impending doom: this was already stamped upon his wasted face, and his gay eyes had the death-look. His large, loose mouth was drawn, for all its laughter at the fact which he owned; his profile, which burlesqued. an eagle's, was the profile of a drooping eagle; his lank length of limb trembled away with him when we parted. I did not see him again; I scarcely heard of him till I heard of his death, and this sad image remains with me of the humorist who first gave the world a taste of the humor which ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... they roused thee at dawn from thy straw-piled lair, To tread with those echoless unshod feet Yon weltering flats in the noontide heat, Where no palmtree proffers a kindly shade And the eye never rests on a cool grass blade; And lank is thy flank, and thy frequent cough Oh! it goes to my ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... and tight-fitting, long-skirted coat may so magnify the meagre physical endowments of a tall, slender girl that she attains the lank and longish look of a bottle ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... most deliberately opened by an ancient, sour-visaged, long-waisted female, who ushered them into an apartment, the coup d'oeil of which struck a chill to Mary's heart. It was a good-sized room, with a bare sufficiency of small-legged dining-tables, and lank haircloth chairs, ranged in high order round the walls. Although the season was advanced, and the air piercing cold, the grate stood smiling in all the charms of polished steel; and the mistress of the mansion was seated by the side of it in an arm-chair, still in its summer position. ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... given him unrest. She heard him singing as he passed on to his work. Across the river the bride was singing also, and there seemed to be a song in even the sound of the merry axes among the cottonwoods, where her neighboring settler and his two lank sons were chopping and hewing the logs for their cabin. But there was no song in her own heart, ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... hill, is exposed to the full glare of the sun. Tall Cointet was really scarcely above middle height; he looked much taller than he actually was by reason of the thinness, which told of overwork and a brain in continual ferment. His lank, sleek gray hair, cut in somewhat ecclesiastical fashion; the black trousers, black stockings, black waistcoat, and long puce-colored greatcoat (styled a levite in the south), all completed ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... once, his peaked head With a few lank and greasy hairs was spread; His visage blue, in length was like your own Seen in the convex of a table-spoon. His mouth, or rather gash athwart his face, To stop at either ear had just the grace, A hideous rift: his teeth were all ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... McTurk's lank frame stiffened in every muscle and his eyelids dropped half over his eyes. That last was ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... ear. We've the advantage. But why it was an advantage to fight from the right rather than from the left Joseph was too excited to inquire, for the cocks had just been put into the ring or pit, and Joseph recognised the tall lank bird that the Heeler had taken out of his basket in the orchard. He's fighting to-day with long spurs, he was told. But why does he fight the other bird—a yearling? he heard the woman ask; and he saw a black cock crouch to meet the red in deadly fight. Must one die? he asked, but the cockers ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... been five years old at the time, vividly do I remember that our front room used, on those occasions, to be filled to overflow, with kneeling fanatics, old Ford in the centre of the room, and a couple of lank-haired hypocrites, one on each side of the reprobate, praying till the perspiration streamed down their foreheads, to pray the devil out of him. The ohs! and the groanings of the audience were terrible; and the whole ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... violins in their hands, and others stood behind harps as tall as themselves. Upon the violins Tantaine noticed there were chalk marks at various distances. In the middle of the room was a man, tall and erect as a dart, with flat, ugly features and lank, greasy hair hanging down on his shoulders. He, too, had a violin, and was evidently giving the children a lesson. Tantaine at once guessed ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... with pride at being a Plummer. This kind of courage was the Plummer kind. The child's lank little figure seemed to grow taller and straighter. She held up her head splendidly and exulted. She felt like going up on the minister's housetop and proclaiming: "She's my aunt Olivia! She's mine! She's mine—I'm a Plummer, too! All o' you listen, ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... we beg For a devouring despot, lank of leg, Of prying eye, and frog-transfixing beak; Though singly we seem weak, United we are strong to smite or scoff. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... but not generous, Philistine to the backbone, blindly devoted to his daughter, and contemptuous of all the myriad mysteries of civilisation that he doesn't understand. I don't know why I should be authorised to imagine him personally long and lank, with possibly a tobacco habit of some sort. His natural history, upon no better authority, is that of a hard-headed farmer, who found out that farming could never be more than a livelihood, and came ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... what he saw was a lank, grey beggarman; half his sword bared behind his haunch, his two shoes full of cold road-a-wayish water sousing about him, the tips of his two ears out through his old hat, his two shoulders out through his scant tattered cloak, and ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... plainly—its repulsive gray sides so lank that they seemed almost to meet, its red, hungry tongue lolling from its ugly mouth, its cruel white fangs, and its malevolent, gleaming eyes. His hatred for the creature became an obsession, for it appeared again presently, persistently following, ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... instant wonderingly, at his master with the child in his arms, and at the throng pressing curiously after them, but the next moment he recovered from his amazement and, admitting the bishop, politely but firmly shut out the eager throng that would have entered with him. A lank, rough-haired dog attempted to slink in at the bishop's heels, but the servant gave him a kick that made him draw back with a yelp of pain, and he took refuge under the steps where he remained all night, restless and miserable, his quick ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... was behind his counter. His store was a small one, containing a mixture of books, stationery, and fancy rubbish. Adjoining it was Henry's home—a decent cottage, vine-embowered and cosy. Henry was lank and soporific, and not inclined ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... sadly, shook his head, and said no more. For a moment they halted, where the path broadened on a market-place, part shade, part luminous with golden dust. A squad of lank boys, kicking miraculously with flat upturned soles, kept a wicker ball shining in the air, as true and lively as a plaything on a fountain-jet. Beyond, their tiny juniors, girls and boys knee-high, and fat tumbling ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... justice to every creature brought upon the stage of this dramatic work,—I could not stifle this distinction in favour of Don Quixote's horse;—in all other points, the parson's horse, I say, was just such another, for he was as lean, and as lank, and as sorry a jade, as Humility herself ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... him better than a stormy visit from his hostess in this temper. The young scapegrace would close his novel, and set down his glass of sherry and water (it sometimes smelt very like brandy, I'm afraid). To hear her rant, one would have supposed, who had not seen him, that her lank-haired, grimly partner, was the prettiest youth in the county of Dublin, and that all the comely lasses in Chapelizod and the country round were sighing and setting caps at him; and Devereux, who had a vein of ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the man he had just left was standing by a column, in motionless abstraction, looking over the distant garden. But the kindly, humorous face was almost tragic with an intensity of weariness! Every line of those strong, rustic features was relaxed under a burden which even the long, lank, angular figure—overgrown and unfinished as his own West—seemed to be distorted in its efforts to adjust itself to; while the dark, deep-set eyes were abstracted with the vague prescience of the prophet and the martyr. Shocked ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... rural was the new entry. A lank, disconcerted, hesitating young man it was, flaxen-haired, gaping of mouth, awkward, stricken to misery by the lights and company. His clothing was butternut, with bright blue tie, showing four inches of bony wrist and white-socked ankle. He upset a chair, sat in another ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... him darkly, for a moment, in silence. He was dripping with rain; his hat, unremoved, shaded lank black locks over a white face; his nostrils were wide with wrath; the "dry cigar" wagged ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... remote period of my fresh rescue from the gutter, an executant appeared something superhuman. I stared at him with stupid open mouth. He played what I afterwards learned was one of Brahms's Hungarian dances. His lank figure and long hair worked in unison with the music which filled the room with a wild tumult of movement. I had not heard anything like it in my life. It set every nerve of me dancing. I suppose Paragot found his interest in me because I was such an impressionable youngster. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... face that he could not relate to the other faces. He caught but a flash of it, for his pacings had carried him to the farthest point of his beat, and it was in turning back to the hotel that he saw, in a group of typical countenances—the lank and weary, the round and surprised, the lantern-jawed and mild—this other face that was so many more things at once, and things so different. It was that of a young man, pale too, and half-extinguished by the heat, or worry, or both, ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... Columbus called Indians, certainly resemble Asiatics in some physical features, such as the reddish-brown complexion, the hair, uniformly black and lank, the high cheek-bones, and short stature of many tribes. On the other hand, the large, aquiline nose, the straight eyes, never oblique, and the tall stature of some tribes are European traits. It seems safe to conclude that the American aborigines, whatever their origin, became thoroughly fused ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... She wore a lank cotton wrapper, and a crescent of gray hair escaped to one temple from beneath the handkerchief she had worn upon her head for the night and still retained; but she did everything possible to make her ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... be described in a whole stanza of names, may be found clustering in knots, or lounging under the awnings of their different coffee-houses; while new detachments of fresh-men are seen continually landing, with lank staring quarantine faces, and elbowed in every direction by the busy Marseillois, whose curiosity is too much deadened by continual importations, to be excited by the newest or strangest costume. In short, the memorable political masquerade ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... I feared that little Rosenheim would smite the lank annoyer dead in his tracks. 'For heaven's sake be careful!' I cried. 'The man is drunk or crazy or he may even be right; the paint on this picture isn't two days old.' 'Correct,' declared the stranger. 'I finished ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... been mentioned that Ithuel would not consent to trust himself near the Proserpine without disguising his person. Raoul being well provided with all the materials for a masquerade, this had been effected by putting a black curling wig over his own lank, sandy hair, coloring his whiskers and eyebrows, and trusting the remainder to the transformation which might be produced by the dress, or rather undress, of a Neapolitan waterman. The greatest obstacle ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... little negro mounted upon an elephant, just such another blot rampant. He has not stuffings sufficient for the reproach of a scribbler, but it hangs about him like an old wife's skin when the flesh hath forsaken her, lank and loose. He defames a good title as well as most of our modern noblemen; those wens of greatness, the body politic's most peccant humours blistered into lords. He hath so raw-boned a being that however you render ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... man stretched upon the hill slope. The head, which is Petrarch's house, rests upon the summit. The carelessly tossed arms lie abroad from this in one direction, and the legs in the opposite quarter. It is a very lank and shambling figure, without elegance or much proportion, and the attitude is the last wantonness of loafing. We followed our lout up the right leg, which is a gentle and easy ascent in the general likeness of a street. World-old stone cottages crouch on either ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... their spirits were depressed. The smoke of ages was on the walls and roof, and the tables and benches at one side had a sadly dilapidated appearance. The master was an Indian of lightish hue, his long, lank hair already turning grey with age, and perhaps with care. Several Indian women were moving about round a fire at the farther end of the room, preparing a meal for a somewhat numerous company assembled there. ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... hobo gave a limber twist of his lank body that inclined him closer to Johnny. "Say, if it's any of my business, how much did Abe Smith tax yuh for that linen?" His tone was languid, tinged with ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... of large dimensions, lined with tiles, and provided with a gutter or trench to conduct the water drawn to the different watering-places. There we found a caravan from Damascus, with a number of horses and mules in the charge of several lank moukri, who were bound for Cairo. This herd, together with the tall drivers, with their fine swarthy features, and the background of gigantic palms, made up a strikingly harmonious and characteristic ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... life.' In fact (he writes), 'Nash does not only possess the merit of learning how to observe the ridiculous side of human nature, and of portraying in a full light picturesque figures—now worthy of Teniers and now of Callot—some fat and greasy, others lean and lank; he possesses a thing very rare with the picturesque school, the faculty of being moved. He seems to have foreseen the immense field of study which was to be opened later to the novelist. A distant ancestor of Fielding, as Lilly and Sidney appear to us to be distant ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... flare of a tallow-dip, came to me a yawning sergeant of this same regiment to tell me that, as my foster father was to be shot at sunrise, therefore, he desired to see me. And I remember how he yawned and yawned, this lank and bony sergeant, showing within his mouth his ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... to induce Tecumseh to lay aside his arms. This he again refused, saying, in reply, that his tomahawk was also his pipe, and that he might wish to use it in that capacity before their business was closed. At this moment, a tall, lank-sided Pennsylvanian, who was standing among the spectators, and who, perhaps, had no love for the shining tomahawk of the self-willed chief, cautiously approached, and handed him an old, long stemmed, dirty looking earthen pipe, intimating, that if Tecumseh ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... the tares grow together inseparably, and must either be spared together or rooted up together. To know whether a man was really godly was impossible. But it was easy to know whether he had a plain dress, lank hair, no starch in his linen, no gay furniture in his house; whether he talked through his nose, and showed the whites of his eyes; whether he named his children Assurance, Tribulation, Mahershalal-hash-baz; whether he avoided ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... man," Edith returned, laughingly, "how terribly you would be disappointed could you be suddenly restored to sight and behold the long, lank, bony creature I know as Edith Hastings— low forehead, turned-up nose, coarse, black hair, all falling out, black eyes, yellowish black skin, not a particle of red in it—the fever took that away and has not brought it back. Positively, Richard, I'm growing horridly ugly. Even my hair, which ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... through her back-hair in an agitated and expectant manner. But it was not the lank figure of the book-peddler, her betrothed, that darkened the door. It was a forlorn woman, dripping with rain, with two small boys clinging to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... picturesqueness to the final proceedings. The sextet included a full-blooded Cherokee; a consumptive ex-dentist out of Kansas, who from killing nerves in teeth had progressed to killing men in cold premeditation; a lank West Virginia mountaineer whose family name was the name of a clan prominent in one of the long-drawn-out hill-feuds of his native State; a plain bad man, whose chief claim to distinction was that he hailed originally from the ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... elected to the chair of Logic, Rhetoric, and History, and Dr. John H. Agnew, Dickinson College, '23, who assumed the Professorship in the classics left vacant by the death of Dr. Whiting. Both had a prominent share in University affairs for a few years. Professor Whedon was a Methodist clergyman, lank and angular in form and feature with a "considerable sprinkling of vinegar at times in his ways of expressing himself," but, according to our oldest living graduate, "his commanding presence, imperative logic and sesquipedalia ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... his knees before a fireplace touching a match to a pile of birch, and as the inflammable bark spurted into flame and the small logs began to crackle he rose to his feet and faced Philip. Both were soaked to the skin. Jean's hair hung lank and wet about his face, and his hollow cheeks were cadaverous. In spite of the hour and the place, Philip ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... made a Turneresque effect, ambling along, a blaze of colours, quite as self-satisfied in their finery as if 'the rainbow had been entail settled on them and their heirs male.' Quite probably their broad, flat noses, and their long, lank hair, their faces fixed immovably, as if they were carved in nandubay, contrasted strangely with their finery. But there were none to judge — no one to make remarks; most likely all was conscience and tender heart, and not their bitterest enemy ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... inscription under his feet which said, "Don Sancho de Azpeitia," which no doubt must have been his name; and at the feet of Rocinante was another that said, "Don Quixote." Rocinante was marvellously portrayed, so long and thin, so lank and lean, with so much backbone and so far gone in consumption, that he showed plainly with what judgment and propriety the name of Rocinante had been bestowed upon him. Near him was Sancho Panza holding the halter of his ass, at whose feet was another label that said, "Sancho ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of habit. When he got home, drenched to the skin, his clothes hanging lank about him, and a ghastly dew besmearing his hat, his only thought was of his health, of which he took studious care. So, after changing his clothes and encasing himself in a warm dressing-gown, he proceeded to prepare a sudorific in the shape of ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... built a shed. There was a fire in it, now, smouldering, as though whoever made it feared its red light would be seen by the distant pickets. Coming up to it, she stood in the door-way. Douglas Palmer lay on a heap of blankets on the ground: she could not see his face, for a lank, slothful figure was stooping over him, chafing his head. It was Gaunt. Dode went in, and knelt down beside the wounded man,—quietly: it seemed to her natural and right she should be there. Palmer's eyes were shut, his breathing heavy, uncertain; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... and gaunter women, laboring among their sprouting vegetables, turned sun-dazzled eyes to watch us as we clattered by; where ragged children, climbing on the stockades, called out to us in little, shrill voices; where feeding cattle lifted sober heads to stare; where lank, yellow dogs rushed out barking and snapping till a cut of the whip sent them ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... with more than the Western man's usual indifference to dress; with sad, dull eyes, and an untrimmed beard that hung in points and tags, and thinly hid the corners of a large mouth. He took her hand laxly in his, and bowing over her from his lank height listened to her report of his wife's state, while he held his little girl on his left arm, and the child fondly pressed her cheek against his bearded face, to which he had quietly lifted her as soon as he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... are the indigenous breed of the island, the body lank, the ears erect, ferocious in their disposition, and with very little attachment to their masters. Such is the account given of them by ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... finished... It was about the feeling that I had when I stood on the steps of my hotel every morning before starting out to fetch Florence back from the bath. Natty, precise, well-brushed, conscious of being rather small amongst the long English, the lank Americans, the rotund Germans, and the obese Russian Jewesses, I should stand there, tapping a cigarette on the outside of my case, surveying for a moment the world in the sunlight. But a day was to come when I was never to do it again ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... first faint streaks that deck the sky at morn, the fresh breath of coming day caught the keen scent of the bloody prowlers, and they began to skulk off. The drover gave the retreating cowards a farewell shot from his pistols, tumbled a lank, grey demon over, and the wolf howl soon died off in ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... descend the stairs, taking off his hat, as if to join the girl whom in thought he had wronged for an instant. "Nelson Smith" followed, smiling at Annesley over the elder man's high, narrow head sparsely covered with lank ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... singers, but by the whole assembly at the loudest pitch of their voices, unaccompanied by any musical instrument, the words being given out, two lines at a time, by the clerk. There is something in the sonorous quavering of the harsh voices, in the lank and hollow faces of the men, and the sour solemnity of the women, which bespeaks this a strong-hold of intolerant zeal and ignorant enthusiasm. The preacher enters the pulpit. He is a coarse, hard-faced man ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... the brows are considerably elevated by the large size of the frontal sinuses; the ears are large and gradually tapered to a point from their broad bases, and they have the ordinary fissure towards their posteal base; the head is broad; the teeth large and strong; the body long and lank, the limbs elevated and very powerful; the brush extends to half-way between the mid-flexure (os calcis) of the hind limbs and their pads, and is as full as that ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... a voice in the crowd, when, to relieve public suspense, Lawyer Perkins—a long, lank man, with stringy black hair—announced the verdict ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... as he sits by the bed, for they are downcast, but we can see that he has a long, nearly straight nose, and lips tightly pressed together. His hair is parted and hangs down on each side of his head, stiff and lank now, owing to the wet, but in happier days it must have hung in little curls round his neck, just below his ears. He is a tall man, with a big strong-looking body. In spite of the coarse clothes he wears, there is a strange ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... went—long, lank, uncouth, with yellow-stained fingers and hatchet-shaped, gray face—a strange figure but yet a power. Bellamy remained. For a while he seemed doubtful how to pass the time. He stood in front of the window, watching the dispersal of the crowds and ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Blandford was at the heels of the awkward horseman, who wheeled clumsily at his approach and revealed the lank ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... was a ragged, lank, starved-looking man, whose appearance was on this occasion rendered ludicrous by the feathers sticking all over him, and by an expression of dejection which would draw down the corners of his miserable mouth and roll up his piteous eyes, notwithstanding ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... behind the table, his head up, his eyes hard, his thin mouth closed like a trap and his long, dead black hair hanging on each side of his lank face over the huge, malformed ears. The man stood thus, unmoving, silent, with his twisted ironical smile, while my father put the girl into a chair ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... now numbered a full sevenscore of men; seven companies each with its stout lieutenant serving under Robin Hood. And still they relieved the purses of the rich, and aided the poor, and feasted upon King's deer until the lank Sheriff of Nottingham was ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... hag of the mist, an awful being who is supposed to reside in the mountain fog, through which her supernatural shriek is frequently heard. She is believed to be the very personification of ugliness, with torn and dishevelled hair, long black teeth, lank and withered arms and claws, and a most cadaverous appearance; to this some add, wings of a leathery ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... sniping?" called out a lank individual as he came over the bridge at "S-P-7" one morning ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... military manner, by conveying a couple of his fingers (covered with a broken black glove) to his hat, and then removing that ornament altogether. The Captain was inclined to be bald, but he brought a quantity of lank iron-grey hair over his pate, and had a couple of whisps of the same falling down on each side of his face. Much whisky had spoiled what complexion Mr. Costigan may have possessed in his youth. His once handsome face had now a copper tinge. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... boat-steerers, Sam Ringold, who stood six feet four in his shoes, and was proportionably broad, was chosen to act the part of Neptune, and the cooper's mate, who was as wide as he was high, that of his wife. The armourer took the part of the barber, and the carpenter's mate, who was lank ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... trying to escape from two lassoes. In front of the largest store were a number of mustangs all standing free, with bridles thrown over their heads and trailing on the ground. The loungers leaning against the railing and about the doors were lank brown men very like Naab's sons. Some wore sheepskin "chaps," some blue overalls; all wore boots and spurs, wide soft hats, and in their belts, far to the back, ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... raggery! Thus to scrape a nation's dishes, And fatten on a few good wishes! Or, on some venial treason bent, Frame thyself a government, For thy crest a brirnless hat, Poverty's aristocrat! Nonne habeam te tristem, Planet of the human system? Comet lank and melancholic —Orbit shocking parabolic— Seen for a little in the sky Of the world of sympathy— Seldom failing when predicted, Coming most when most restricted, Dragging a nebulous tail with thee Of hypothetic vagrancy— Of vagrants large, and vagrants small, Vagrants scarce ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald |
