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More "Skinny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... God, how we fool ourselves! I pretend I'm 'spiritual.' I pretend my legs are graceful. They aren't. They're skinny. Old-maidish. I hate it! I hate that impertinent young woman! A selfish cat, taking his love for granted. . . . No, she's adorable. . . . I don't think she ought to be so friendly with ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... heart! I'd no more think of teaching Jerry filth than I would my own sister. But by the Lord Harry, he's an inquisitive cuss. He's learning that life isn't all beer and skittles, has felt the skinny talons of poverty on his elbow and has heard a truck-driver swear in the approved New York manner. That in itself was a liberal education. The worst of it was that the chap happened ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... by a knock on the door and a skinny young Terran with sergeant's chevrons on his shorts stuck his head through from the other room and said, "Major Chapelle's on the voice radio, sir. He's calling from battalion headquarters ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... apart, the two were good friends, although they were suitors for the same lady, and this was doubtless due to the fact that the lady favoured the robust Robichon no more than she favoured the skinny Quinquart. She flirted with them equally, she approved them equally—and at last, when each of them had plagued her beyond endurance, she promised in a pet that she would marry the one that was the better actor. ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... All three met my wishes, but there were many difficulties, dodges, manoeuvres to get either of them. Nursemaid moving about with the child in all sorts of places, came in for the most cock. She was small-boned, skinny, and her face had the expression that people have when they have just taken medicine. Under other circumstances I should never have noticed her, but the extreme smallness of her cunt was a novelty. I thought at first ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... whole time of a male servant would be required for errands of different kinds. Not unfrequently was the half of a day lost in the attempt to get a dozen eggs from the little scattered farms, or a skinny fowl, or such a rare delicacy as a cabbage. Sometimes Thursday came back from the town peevish and angry at his lost labor, having found the bread too hard or too musty, and mutton unprocurable; as to the beef which came occasionally from Glasgow, it was usually tainted, except in winter-time, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... up a skinny little fish. "They are no worse off than we poor mortals after all. We must each fulfill our ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... girl furiously, and sprang at him panther-like so that he fell back again in confusion, stumbled and collapsed upon a divan, with upraised, warding arms. "You Greek rat! you skinny Greek rat! Be careful what you think to say to me—to ME! to ME! Olaf van Noord—the poor, white-faced corpse-man! He is only one of Said's mummies! Be careful what you think to say to me... ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... her some scithers an pins, boh, os ill luck wad ha' it, ey refused. 'Yo had better do it, John,' hoo said, 'or yo'll rue it efore to-morrow neet.' Ey laughed at her, an trudged on, boh when I looked back, an seed her shakin' her skinny hond at me, ey repented and thowt ey would go back, an gi' her the choice o' my wares. Boh my pride wur too strong, an ey walked on to Barley an Ogden, an slept at Bess's o th' Booth, an woke this mornin' stout and strong, fully persuaded th' owd witch's threat would come to nowt. Alack-a-day! ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... once to one of his cronies, a certain Lord Eldershaw, "in these days I hate the sight of her, with her skinny throat and face. What's a woman for, after she looks like that? If she were not hanging about my neck I could marry some fine strapping girl who would give me an heir before ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... again, "unwind your gashly great tail from about my legs, and your skinny fingers from off my throat, or I'll—I'll kill you!" and with the same he whipped his big clasp-knife ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... all the poor lady could give her family. What was she to do? Mr Gunning had took himself off to Castle Coote, his beggarly place in the country, where he could dice and drink in peace with the neighboring squireens, and live off claret and the skinny fowls that pecked about the avenue; and she had the weight of the children on ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... I can do it, but I don't like to strain the seams by reaching round, and I didn't want to trail this dress down the cellar stairs to get Eunice to fasten it up." Aunt Maria bewailed the weather in a deprecating fashion while Maria was fastening the collar at the back of her skinny neck. "I never want to find fault with the weather," said she, "because, of course, the weather is regulated by Something higher than we are, and it must be for our best good, but I do hate to wear this dress out in such a storm, and I don't ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... beloved; thou didst see The horse that broke from many, it did hold: Two hours shall pass away, and it will be All withered up and dry, wrinkled and old, Big-veined, and skinny to extremity." Calmly upon him looked the maiden bold; The stag-hounds rose, and gazed on him, and then, With a low whine, laid themselves ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... "but then business is like a cloud, and the meetings and greetings of friends is a sort of silver lining, you know. What would the world be without friends—the society of those who take an abiding interest? Believe me, Mr. Holcroft," she continued, bringing her long, skinny finger impressively down on the table, "you have lived alone so long that you are unable to see the crying needs of your own constitution. As a Christian man, you ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... to save 'is life—though 'e's got three or four mean, lyin' pryin' brats of 'is own runnin' wild about the place as might jest as well 'ave never been born. And as for Francis Anthony, the 'igh pontiff o' Riversford, wi's big altar-cloak embrided for 'im by all the poor skinny spinsters wot ain't never 'ad no chance to marry—'e'd see all the children blowed to bits under the walls of Jericho to the sound o' the trumpets afore 'e'd touch 'em! Talk o' saints!—I'm not very good at unnerstannin' that kind o' folk, not seein' myself 'owever a ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... do the children become familiar with library regulations, but more judicious and intelligent in the selection of books. At first they choose a book because it has an attractive cover, large print, "lots of talk" (conversation), or because it is small and soon read. "I tell you, them skinny books are the daisies," said one, while the opinion of another was, "These ain't so bad if they'd only put more pictures in to tell what they're about." Later they select a book because the title tells of interesting subject matter, ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... seen a sheriff's posse riding twenty strong and bunched like bird-shot when it leaves the muzzle of the gun. Indeed, I am very sure she would not. Killings such as her father heard of with his lips drawn tight and the cords standing out on the sides of his skinny neck she would have considered the grim tragedies they were, without once thinking of the "picture value" of ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... cried the other angrily. "Any one can see you're fairly green with envy, eighty-nine! You'd give a whole lot to be able to flirt with the boys, but, as Jim Denton says, you are too pale and skinny!" ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... the proper words, M. Vigneron felt a chill come over him when his son shrugged his skinny shoulders with an air of philosophical disdain and answered: "Oh, no! I shall ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... with which Captain Reud rubbed his skinny, yellow hands, when he ordered additional sentries, and a boat to row guard round the ship from sunset to sunrise, weather permitting, to prevent desertion, gave me a strong impression of the malignity of his disposition. Certainly, the officers, from the first lieutenant downwards, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... finger-posts—"foreshadowing without forestalling." It has often been said that Macbeth approaches the nearest of all Shakespeare's tragedies to the antique model: and in nothing is the resemblance clearer than in the employment of the Witches to point their skinny fingers into the fated future. In Romeo and Juliet, inward foreboding takes the place of outward prophecy. I have quoted above Romeo's prevision of "Some consequence yet hanging in the stars"; and beside it ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... witches lived. There stood a great crop of thistles, all nodding and nodding in the breeze, while the down floated and glistened like gossamer through the air in the moonbeams. The Princess began to pluck and gather it as fast as she could, but she saw long skinny arms outstretched toward her, and, among the thistles, she saw a host of wicked faces all looking at her. Her heart stood still then and she grew icy cold, but never a sound did she utter, only plucked and gathered until her bag was full; and when she got home at break of day she set to ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... it," laughed Martha, leaning over the wheel so as to press his fingers in her warm palm. "There ain't no doubt 'bout that skinny fright being 'Miss,' and there ain't no doubt 'bout her stayin' so. Ann Gossaway she is, and Ann Gossaway she'll die. Is she took bad?" she continued, a merry, questioning look lighting up her kindly face, her lips ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... if she were alive, and had been washed and neat, and going somewhere to do some one good, Leon never would have dreamed of such a thing as training the Shropshire to bunt her. She was so long and skinny, always wore a ragged shawl over her head, a floppy old dress that the wind whipped out behind, and when she came to the creek, she sat astride the foot log, and hunched along with her hands; that ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... them not sharing the glee. This one was a little chap whose parents had sent him up North from Georgia to his relatives, the parents being too poor after the war to maintain their family. He was a skinny little fellow, always shivering and snuffling, and ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... countless swarms thou hast devour'd, And thousands at each hour thou gobblest up, This, less than this, might gorge thee to the full! But, ah! rapacious still, thou gap'st for more: Like one, whole days defrauded of his meals, On whom lank Hunger lays her skinny hand, 650 And whets to keenest eagerness his cravings: As if diseases, massacres, and poison, Famine, and war, were not thy caterers. But know that thou must render up thy dead, And with high interest ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... half-idiotic expression; and yet there was an uneasy twinkle in the eye, as of boundless terror and suspicion. She lifted up her fettered wrist to shade her face; and as she did so, disclosed a line of fearful scars upon her skinny arm. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... Adams, trudged behind his burro toward the buildings that shimmered in the heat, humming to himself now and then or addressing some remark to the beast. When he reached the outskirts of Denver he realized something was amiss. He stood and gazed at the quiet scene. Nothing moved except some skinny packrats and a few sparrows foraging for grain among the ...
— And All the Earth a Grave • Carroll M. Capps (AKA C.C. MacApp)
... leaped to her feet and pointed a sharp skinny finger toward the tepee, her eyes flashed, and the cracked voice rang ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... to Congress, and, with his prospects, throws himself away on a skinny little old-maid school-teacher in the backwoods, one that he's been making love to for years, they might say almost anything. Why can't he hand her over to Joe Lane? ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... boat which came down the river after midnight. This boat was dilapidated and leaky but it was a vision of beauty compared to its occupants. These were none other than Slats Corbett, imperial head of Barrel Alley, and his official staff, consisting of Skinny Mattenburg and Spider McCurren. Such nocturnal excursions ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... to reckon up the repairs, counting with his fleshless thumb on his skinny fingers, when he was interrupted by a curious succession of sounds which began with whining, and ended with ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... sight, let her have her way, not dreaming that such a skinny spectre could move so enormous a weight. But Thamar bound the mouth of her sack with a cord, and to the great surprise of the Egyptian, lifted it on her back. Avarice lent to that broken-down frame unexpected strength of muscles; all the nerves ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... Ruthvel had just come in, and, as his story goes, was about to begin his arduous day by giving a dressing-down to his chief clerk. Some of you might have known him—an obliging little Portuguese half-caste with a miserably skinny neck, and always on the hop to get something from the shipmasters in the way of eatables—a piece of salt pork, a bag of biscuits, a few potatoes, or what not. One voyage, I recollect, I tipped him a live sheep out of the remnant of my sea-stock: not that I wanted him to do anything for me—he ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... say what the robbers looked like?" insisted Jimmy. "He must have known whether they were short or tall or fat or skinny." ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... white alkali crust which thinly covers the desert floor, crumbles and breaks. Gaunt cacti stretch their skinny branches across the trail, which winds among foothills and ravines, and the horned toads and the lizards, the only visible beings of the animal world here, play in and out of their labyrinths as we pass. We are upon the Great Plateau. All is vast, reposeful, boundless. The sun rises and sets as ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... woman dat a witch come to a house one night an' took her skin off an' went through de key hole. Somebody foun' de skin an' sprinkled salt on it an' when de witch come out she could'nt git in de skin an' she started saying: 'Skinny, Skinny, don't ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... in the fore-rigging, and they had rare sport while he squealed under the sting of the knotted rope's end. On one night the watch on deck saw a figure dart forward and spring on the rail; the contumacious boy had stripped himself, and he was barely saved from throwing his skinny, lacerated carcass into the sea. Shortly after this the youngest apprentice went below, and found the ill-used lad standing on a locker, and gibbering fearfully. ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... dine—not on my usual fare; Not near the sacred mount with skinny nine; Not in the park upon a dish of air: But on true eatables, ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... kept my mouth shut and stayed away from the rascals," said the goat. "I knew that the soldiers would not care for a skinny old beast like me, for to the eye of a stranger I seem good for nothing. Had they known I could talk, and that my head contained more wisdom than a hundred of their own noddles, I might ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... terrible, stood beside the Chief, and the bushes in the distance were quite still. The bushes trembled no longer. It was Benjamin who found it hard not to tremble now, as he saw thirteen sharp arrows taken from their quivers by thirteen skinny brown hands, and their notches held taut to thirteen bow-strings, all ready to shoot. Yet still the Friends sat on, without stirring, in ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... do not appear to thrive so well upon this dietary. They are as tall as the boys, taller if anything considering the ages, but thin and skinny, angular and bony. At seven or eight years old the girl's labour begins. Before that she has been set to mind the baby, or watch the pot, and to scour about the hedges for sticks for the fire. Now she has not only to mind the baby, but to nurse it; she carries it about with her in her arms; and ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... indeed! I lay horrified, for there she sat calm and immovable, with her hands clasped over her skinny knees, just as I had seen her in the snow, with her long scraggy neck outstretched, her hooked nose, her ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... with the horror that the place inspires, when Goblin clutches me by the wrist, and lays, not her skinny finger, but the handle of a key, upon her lip. She invites me, with a jerk, to follow her. I do so. She leads me out into a room adjoining—a rugged room, with a funnel-shaped, contracting roof, open at the top, to the bright day. I ask her what ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... Through the pores of this skin food is absorbed, and in these food-absorbing pores is foreshadowed the mouth. Division of labour has set in, and groups of cells specialise in the performance of functions. Thus, a cell group forms the skinny covering of the cluster, another cell group the mouth. And likewise, internally, the stomach, a sac for the reception and digestion of food, takes shape; and the juices of the body begin to circulate with greater ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... into a song he had heard his mother sing to his sister, when he was checked by the sight of a long skinny mongrel like a hairy worm, that lay cowering and shivering beside a heap of ashes put down for the dust-cart—such a dry hopeless heap that the famished little dog did not care to search it: some little warmth in it, I presume, had kept him near ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... He was a descendant of Pocahontas, of which fact he often boasted, and was noted for his keen retorts, reckless wit, and skill in debate. His tall, slender, and cadaverous form, his shrill and piping voice, and his long, skinny fingers—pointing toward the object of his invective—made him a conspicuous speaker. For thirty years, says Benton, he was the "political meteor" ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... vagrants' queen, placing her yellow and skinny hand on a weapon, perhaps, among her rags, resolutely moved toward the spy. He expected to be interrogated, for an attack was unlikely from a lone old woman; but he ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... on the matter of social rebuffs, did not appear to be inclined to accept the hint. He shifted his legs, thrusting one of them forward in a lounging attitude, and dug in his trousers pockets with his long, skinny hands. ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... of that famous passage, and though she limped more than ever as she reeled to an imaginary shrine in the corner, and though the black wig was slightly askew by now, and the black velvet hung with bunchy awkwardness about her skinny little body, there was nothing of mirth in Sid Hahn's face as he gazed. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... my sight!" roared GAMBETTA to a sergent de ville, and pointing his long, skinny fore-finger full ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... Count Bragard, his name is Monsieur Pet-airs." From time to time Monsieur Pet-airs remarked something delicately and pettishly in a gentle and weak voice. His adam's-apple, at such moments, jumped about in a longish slack wrinkled skinny neck which was like the neck of a turkey. To this turkey the approach of Thanksgiving inspired dread. From time to time M. Pet-airs looked about him sidewise as if he expected to see a hatchet. His hands were claws, kind, awkward and ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... say ma'am! Hossy and me has come a good ways to-day, and seen 'most all kinds. Are you acquainted any with a woman name of Weazle, down the ro'd about four mile from here? Ain't? Well, she's a case, I tell you. Long skinny kind of woman, looks like she'd bleed sour milk—skim—if she scratched her finger. She made up her mind I was goin' to cheat her, and she warn't goin' to be cheated, not she. Quite a circus ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... from her bosom a crystal, and placed the point against Hypatia's breast. A cold shiver ran through her.... The witch waved her hands mysteriously round her head, muttering from time to time, 'Down! down, proud spirit!' and then placed the tips of her skinny fingers on the victim's forehead. Gradually her eyelids became heavy; again and again she tried to raise them, and dropped them again before those fixed glaring eyes...., and in another moment she ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... thin like her father, skinny and angular like him. She was thirty-three years of age, always dressed in black stuff, shy and retiring in manner, with a head too small in proportion to her height and narrowed on either side until the nose seemed to jut forth in protest ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... She squared her skinny elbows as she spoke, as though prepared to bar his entrance; but he looked at her in ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... herself for one of these racecourse hats. You know these big things that have a half-mile track around the outside. While I do not wish to injure the poor dear, still I will say that she certainly looks one of these long-handled Jap umbrellas. You know she is such a skinny thing! Honest, this new hip style they are boosting this season just saved her life. She was getting saddle galls from carrying so many naturals. I wouldn't say this unless I absolutely knew, and of course I have seen her early in the morning when ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... of my own love affair. That surprises you? You smile to think that old John Hanson, lately a commander of the Special Patrol Service, now retired, should have had a love affair? Well, 'twas many years ago, before these eyes lost their fire, and before these brown, skinny hands wearied as ...
— Priestess of the Flame • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... truth, Peter," said Hartog, smiling at my sorry appearance, "I have small wonder the cannibals did not make a meal off one so skinny." And, indeed, the hard life I had led on the island had reduced me to a bag of bones. But when I had washed and trimmed my hair and after I had clothed myself from my own sea-chest Hartog declared me fit to become, once ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... expedition of 1849. Her mother fled, and dropped her baby in the long grass, where it was found by an English sailor, who carried it to the boats and gave it to one of the women captives to bring to me—a poor little, skinny thing, with long yellow hair, like a fairy changeling. I got a wet nurse for her and fed her with baby food, but she got thinner and more elfish-looking. One day her nurse was standing by while the other children were eating their dinner, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... violence and in its enframement appeared the grandmother, a very old woman, tall and lean of form, with bare, sinewy arms like knotted cords that she raised above her head and shook with frantic gestures. Her gray, scanty locks had escaped from her cap and were floating about her skinny face, and such was her fury that the words she shouted choked her utterance and came ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... dwarft, Rosie," exclaimed Farmer White, with a brave laugh. "You must be five foot seven or eight, but you ain't skinny like she is. She'd ought to weigh about a hunderd and sixty, for her height, and I'll bet she don't weigh more'n a hunderd ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... ape, huh? Sure! Dat's de way she looked at me, aw right. Hairy ape! So dat's me, huh? [Bursting into rage—as if she were still in front of him.] Yuh skinny tart! Yuh white-faced bum, yuh! I'll show yuh who's a ape! [Turning to the others, bewilderment seizing him again.] Say, youse guys. I was bawlin' him out for pullin' de whistle on us. You heard me. And den I seen youse lookin' at somep'n and I tought he'd sneaked down ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... are these So wither'd and so wild in their attire That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth, And yet are on't?—Live you? Or are you aught That man may question? You seem to understand me, By each at once her chappy fingers laying Upon her skinny lips:—you should be women, And yet your beards forbid me to interpret ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... nearly fainted. This enigmatic, sexless figure was green; through her violet eyelids the eyes were terrible in their cold blue; pimples surrounded her mouth; horribly emaciated, skeleton arms bared to the elbows issued from ragged tattered sleeves and trembled feverishly; and the skinny legs shivered in shoes that were ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... poor old things made mountains out of molehills. Anyhow, in two days everybody, including the wise hens themselves, had forgotten all about it. Later on, that winter, the mice had seven young ones—seven such skinny, thread-limbed, beady-eyed little beasts that no ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... educational, things that he had understood and fought against for years. He inquired after Mrs. Elliot, and a boy tittered. It seemed that she "did not know," that she lived in a remote suburb, taking care of a skinny baby. "I shall call some time or other," said Robert. "Do," said Mr. Elliot, smiling. And next time he saw his wife he congratulated her on her ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... easy. I'm sure the gumshoe when it comes to pipin' a man off so's I got his photograph in my eye. He was a little cuss an' dressed to kill, with gloves on, an' all that. He was skinny an' pale ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... fairly clever cartoon of Johnny in an airplane, ascending to the star Venus. She made it appear that Johnny's hair stood straight on end and his eyes goggled with fear, and she made Venus a long-nosed, skinny, old-maid face with a wide, welcoming simper. Up in a corner she placed the moon, with one eye ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... notion of their method by supposing them to have taken their places in an order somewhat independent of chronology and a little different from their arrangement behind his brother. Immediately at his back, with a controlling hand (a trifle skinny) upon him, may stand his great-grandmother, while his father may be many removes arear. Or the place of power may be held by some fine old Asian gentleman who flourished before the confusion of tongues on the plain of Shinar; or by some cave-dweller who polished the bone of life ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... untied his little three-legged pot from where it hung from one of the wattles of the roof. This pot was half full of mealies already cooked, and which he simply meant to warm for his supper. The remainder of his week's ration of meat (the skinny ribs of a goat that had died of debility down near his master's homestead) was also hanging from the roof, but with a sigh he determined to reserve that delicacy for the morrow, remembering that two days would elapse before a fresh ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... raised herself upon one elbow; her face, flushed and framed in her gray and tangled hair, was working with anger; and her eyes were almost lurid as she sent fierce glances at one after another of the men about her. She pointed a skinny finger at the door, and each man as she cast her look upon him went out ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... teeth, and frantically beating heart, Quamina forces her skinny arms into the hole, murmuring prayers as she gropes and fumbles, then staggers back with a low moan, and flees from the unholy spot. The devil has been! ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... Hauksbee appeared on the horizon; and where she existed was fair chance of trouble. At Simla her bye-name was the "Stormy Petrel." She had won that title five times to my own certain knowledge. She was a little, brown, thin, almost skinny, woman, with big, rolling, violet-blue eyes, and the sweetest manners in the world. You had only to mention her name at afternoon teas for every woman in the room to rise up, and call her—well—NOT blessed. She was ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... The clear notes swooped and curved and darted, Rising like gulls. Then, with a finger skinny, He rubbed the bow with rosin, said, "Your pardon Signor! — Maestro Nicolo Paganini They used to call me! Tchk! — The cold grips hard on A poor musician's fingers!" — ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... which is the great object of attraction to all of them. They had been annoyed during the greater part of this day by a tribe of ragged beggars, whose importunity was really disgusting. The men were in general old, flat-headed, and pot-bellied. The women skinny and flap-eared. To these garrulous ladies and gentlemen they were obliged to talk and laugh, shake hands, crack fingers, bend their bodies, bow their heads, and place their hands with great solemnity on their heads and breasts. They had not indeed a moment's relaxation from this excessive ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... birthday they had married her to an old man, and at sixteen she had met and loved a fire-hearted young vaquero. The old husband had twisted his skinny fingers around her arm and dragged her before the Alcalde, who had ordered her beautiful black braids cut close to her neck, and sentenced her to sweep the streets. Carlos, the tempter of that childish unhappy heart, was flung into prison. Such were law and justice in ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... from skinny cow In the boiler then you'll throw; Onion sliced and turnip top, Crumb of bread and ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... duenna,—he called again, and again, but to no purpose. The pious old dame was deeply engaged in her orisons, and her mind occupied with other affairs than appertain to this sinful world. She appeared at last, her eyes half closed, her lips moving fast in the fervour of her devotions, and her long skinny fingers employed in a manner equally devout, as with the most exemplary industry, and solemn sedateness, she let fall in measured intervals, one by one, the large black ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... were studying moral invisibility in a hundred different ways, for insect life is the most highly specialized of all. It was the lobster-moth-to-be that spoke first. He bent his head backwards until it touched his tail, folded the knee-joints of his skinny legs, and began— ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... one year it fell out dat de craps wuz burnt up. A dry drouth had done de work, an' ef you'd 'a' struck a match anywhar in dat settlement, de whole county would 'a' blazed up. Ol' man Hongriness des natchally tuck of his cloze an' went paradin' 'bout eve'ywhar, an' de creeturs got bony an' skinny. Ol' Brer B'ar done better dan any un um, kaze all he hatter do wuz go ter sleep an' live off'n his own fat; an' Brer Rabbit an' his ol' 'oman had put some calamus root by, an' saved up some sugar-cane dat dey fin' lyin' 'roun' loose, an' dey ...
— Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit • Joel Chandler Harris
... in this loud triumphant strain till he had quite done; then put out a brown skinny finger, and poked him lightly in the ribs, and said quite quietly, and oh, so ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... that skinny old money-chaser tried to throttle me," he continued. "Falk lay off that island only because we needed water. Ay, we all knew we needed it—Falk and all of us. But them murderin' natives was after our ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... her wicked old eyes settled hungrily on the region round about Trottle's waistcoat-pocket, and she began to chuckle like her son, holding out one of her skinny hands, and tapping cheerfully in the palm with the knuckles of the other. Agravating Benjamin, seeing what she was about, roused up a little, chuckled and tapped in imitation of her, got an idea of his own into his muddled head all of ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... you?" Karpin demanded. The M&R man had been right. Ab Karpin was a dead ringer for all those other prospectors I'd seen back at Atronics City. Short and skinny and grizzled and ageless. He could have been forty, and he could have been ninety, but he was probably somewhere the other side of fifty. His hair was black and limp and thinning, ruffled in little wisps across his wrinkled pate. His forehead and cheeks were lined like a plowed field, and ...
— The Risk Profession • Donald Edwin Westlake
... capacious pockets was soon filled with the finest cambric handkerchiefs, all of which she first took the precaution to open and hold up to the light, rejecting those which were not of the finest texture. The silk stockings were the next articles that were coveted; they were unfolded one by one, and her skinny arm passed up, that the feet might be extended by her shrivelled hands, to ascertain whether they were darned or not—if so, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... bed, in which I was still lying, wondering what this strange visit could mean; and there he stood gazing at me for a minute, at least, without uttering a syllable. Suddenly, however, he protruded a spare skinny hand from the cloak in which it had hitherto been enveloped, and pointed with a short staff, tipped with metal, in the direction of my face, as it he were commencing an exorcism. He appeared to be about to speak, but his words, if he intended any, were stifled in their birth ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... aren't like wrens; I go to them every day. See!" and he took up in his hand a creature that could just be seen to be intended for a bird, though the long skinny neck was bare, and the tiny quills of the young wings only showed a little grey sprouting feather, as did the breast some primrose-coloured down. Miss Fosbrook had to part with some favourite cockney notions of the beauty of infant birds, and on the other hand to gain a vivid ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the males, or more largely developed in them than in the females, or again equally developed in both sexes. The little lizards of the genus Draco, which glide through the air on their rib- supported parachutes, and which in the beauty of their colours baffle description, are furnished with skinny appendages to the throat "like the wattles of gallinaceous birds." These become erected when the animal is excited. They occur in both sexes, but are best developed when the male arrives at maturity, at which age the middle appendage is sometimes ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... incident which occurred during the siege that reduced his capital to the direst extremities. The ghastly aspect of a famished woman who throws herself in his way with a wild, impassioned, wailing cry of "Help, my lord, O king!" touches him; and he asks, "What aileth thee?" Stretching out a skinny arm to one pale and haggard as herself, she replies, with hollow voice, "This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... rather meager sport in running down and spearing the skinny little wild pigs, but after it was done the party returned to the city, as the experienced hunters knew there would be no ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... too much for the Opossum on the branch; he scuttled up the tree to reach his mate, who sprang forward from her perch into the air. Dot saw her spring with her legs all spread out, so that the skinny flaps were like furry wings. By this means she was able to break her fall, and softly alighting on the earth, a moment after, she had scrambled up another tree, followed by her mate. From tree to tree, from branch to branch, they fled or pursued ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... without the hump. Some were as thin as skeletons, with huge heads; some were hulking miniatures of Brute. One steatopygean girl was so bulky in legs and hindquarters that she could waddle only a few inches with each step, yet her head and upper torso were skinny and fragile. ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... sir," said Jorce, with a wave of his skinny hand. "My friend, Count Ferruci, was in my house ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... want you, my buck, or they would have been after you," the trader used to reply, being harder, perhaps when he was younger. Besides, he honestly thought the cadaverous brat, all legs, like a growing colt, and skinny arms, was better off here in the free woodland life which he himself considered no hardship, and affected long after necessity or interest had dictated his environment. The little lad was safe in the care of the powerful chief Colannah Gigagei ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... a long speech for the silent dweller on the mesa, and there was more of anger in his usually calm eyes than Samson had never seen there, as he rose and extended his skinny hands ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... made use of her skinny limbs to good effect, impelled by a fear that had become terror. The altar was resplendent in silk and velvet, fashioned for an altar very different from this; but in place of the vessels usually associated with so sacred a piece of furniture, the Altar of the Grove was embellished with a ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Miss Greeby only understood such scraps of it as was hastily translated to her by a wild-eyed girl to whom she had given a shilling. Gentilla, less like a sober pew-opener, and more resembling the Hecate of some witch-gathering, screamed objurgations at the pitch of her crocked voice, and waved her skinny arms to emphasize her words, ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... gestures while he talked. It had been purely subconscious; Casey had expected the exact location of the mine in words, and perhaps with a crudely accurate map of Jim's making. But now he remembered Jim's words, certain motions made by the skinny hands, and from them ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... you hump-backed; and if you did not, everything would have to be buttoned round the roots of them. You could not do it yourself, and even on Wynnie I don't think I could bear to touch the things—I don't mean the feathers, but the skinny, folding-up ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... a hooked nose and pointed chin. Grey wisps of hair straggled out from beneath her poke bonnet. Her eyes were like two snakes, and when she opened her mouth to speak she showed her long pointed iron teeth. She was dressed in a black cloak, from which protruded her long skinny arms and claw-like hands. She carried a broom-stick, and behind her slunk her cat, all draggled with the wet, and mewing frightfully. She sat down on the ...
— More Tales in the Land of Nursery Rhyme • Ada M. Marzials
... forty-five, and even fifty. Her exact age at this moment was forty-two, and as Mr. Prosper was only fifty there was no discrepancy in the marriage. He would have been young-looking for his age, but for an air of ancient dandyism which had grown upon him. He was somewhat dry, too, and skinny, with high cheekbones and large dull eyes. But he was clean, and grave, and orderly,—a man promising well to a lady on the lookout for a husband. Miss Thoroughbung was fat, fair, and forty to the letter, and she had a just measure of her own good looks, of which she was not ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... I'll be bound he'd say and wear anything to gull us, but I'm sure he's no Pottawattamie. I never seen a Pottawattamie of that build. They are tall, thin, skinny, bony fellows—while this chap was square, stoat, broad-shouldered, and full ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... alone with his grandfather. The old man, sunk beneath his pile of cushions, his brown skinny hand clenching and unclenching above the rugs, was muttering to himself. In Peter himself, as he stood there by the fire, looking down on the old man, there was tremendous pity. He had never felt so tenderly towards his ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... could not control, he actually saw the bear looking straight at him! That settled it, and he just knew that the savage beast had already picked him out as a tender morsel. Oh! why was he so unlucky as to be born to plumpness? If only he could be more like the skinny Giraffe, or Step-hen, perhaps this awful beast would have passed ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... scrawny, skinny personage; but by good fortune, for she didn't wish to offend him, she kept her face straight and did not ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... has!" Mrs. Bean leaned further out, her eyes distended with awful curiosity, her fat lips dropping apart. She was not a pleasant object, the hidden observer thought; but she was no worse than the skinny cabbage-stalk which now stretched itself far out ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... Let me look at those herbs. I wonder if you've got what I want,' said the old woman as she thrust a pair of hideous brown hands into the herb basket, and began turning over all the neatly packed herbs with her skinny fingers, often holding them up to her nose and sniffing ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... at Dempster's," she says, "such goins-on as there is." But I says, "There's things to put up wi' in ivery place, an' you may change, an' change, an' not better yourself when all's said an' done." Lors! why, Liza told me herself as Mrs. Phipps was as skinny as skinny i' the kitchen, for all they keep so much company; and as for follyers, she's as cross as a turkey-cock if she finds 'em out. There's nothin' o' that sort i' the missis. How pretty she come an' spoke to Job ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... to it and lifted the picture down from its nail. He looked at it for a moment, staring into the cracked and roughened paint, then hung it deliberately back on its nail again, but with its face to the wall. As he did this his bare, skinny legs were trembling so on the chair that, at every moment, he threatened to topple over. He climbed down at last, put the chair back in its place, and then once more ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... trifling, charming; in ous, as porous; in less, as, careless, harmless; in ed, as wretched; in id, as candid; in al, as mortal; in ent, as recent, fervent; in ain, as certain; in ive, as missive; in dy, as woody; in fy, as puffy; in ky, as rocky, except lucky; in my, as roomy; in ny, as skinny; in py, as ropy, except ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... I set off for foreign parts, very thin, with very lean skinny legs. We had a good and pleasant journey. Here in Berlin we have taken a comfortable room in the best hotel. I am enjoying being here, and it is a long time since I have eaten so well, with such appetite. The bread here ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... could reply, or I could say anything more, the door that led to the landing was opened softly and slyly, and Miss Jillgall peeped in. Eunice instantly left me, and ran to the meddling old maid. They whispered to each other. Miss Jillgall's skinny arm encircled my sister's ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... during the siege that reduced his capital to the direst extremities. The ghastly aspect of a famished woman who throws herself in his way with a wild, impassioned, wailing cry of "Help, my lord, O king!" touches him; and he asks, "What aileth thee?" Stretching out a skinny arm to one pale and haggard as herself, she replies, with hollow voice, "This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... a long, skinny building that stands on one leg like a stork and blinks down disdainfully from its thousand windows on ordinary ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... said Alec to himself; and watched and waited. There was no wind below. The leaves of the black poplar, so ready to tremble, hung motionless; and not a bat came startling on its unheard skinny wing. But ere long a writhing began in the clouds overhead, and they were twisted and torn about the moon. Then came a blinding flash, and a roar of thunder, followed by a bellowing, as if the air were a great dram, on which Titanic ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... wonders of the coral-reef beneath his eyes made Mark forget his troubles for a time, but he was recalled to his position by his sensations of hunger, a whine from Bruff, and an inquiring chatter from the monkey, who changed his position and sat up on one of the thwarts looking very skinny and miserable, his face wrinkled and puckered, and the appealing inquiring look in his ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... always struck me. Yet for most of them I could not feel any thing of that intense scorn with which John Randolph of Roanoke more than thirty years ago branded the Northern 'doughface' in Congress, when pointing his skinny finger at his sneaking victim, he exclaimed: 'Mr. Speaker, I envy neither the head nor the heart of the Northern man who rises here to defend slavery on principle.' I remembered the prodigiously demoralizing ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... lover watching the beautiful and virtuous object of his adoration as she descends an infamous street late in the evening, and enters one of the houses through a damp, moist, and fetid passage, feebly lighted by a trembling lamp, beneath which are seen the hideous face and skinny fingers of an old woman, as fitly placed as the witches in the blasted heath in 'Macbeth.' In this case, however, Balzac is in one of his wildest moods, and the hideous mysteries of a huge capital become the pretext for a piece of rather ludicrous melodrama. ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... with his skinny hand, 'There was a ship,' quoth he. Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!' ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... remarked to her daughter, "in a little place like this where one knows all the people, and exactly what they're like, to make things all the same size. Fancy me trying to get into a blouse that would fit that skinny Miss Tibbits! A little common sense is what's needed in this sewing society, and, Marjory, my dear, I'm going to do my best ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... right. That was the trouble with him. He was too much all right. He didn't have any life in him, any go. He wanted to marry me, though. But somehow I couldn't see it. That shows I didn't love him. He was narrow-chested and skinny, and his hands were always cold and fishy. But my! he could dress—just like he came out of a bandbox. He said he was going to drown himself, and all kinds of things, but I broke with ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... to cramps and chills has no business in the water, but if you start to go in swimming, go in all over. Don't be one of those chappies who prance along the beach, shivering and showing their skinny shapes, and then dabble their feet in the surf, pour a little sand in their hair, and ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... has somehow stood out bigger than the gesture—it is chiefly in calm afterthought that men have remembered the form of dramatic expression. When Sir Henry Irving made his famous exit as "Shylock" the last thing the audience saw was his pallid, avaricious hand extended skinny and claw-like against the background. At the time, every one was overwhelmed by the tremendous typical quality of this gesture; now, we have time to think of its art, and discuss its ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... opened on the nineteenth century, what nobler image can the universe produce than the figure of Falsehood in stolen robes? It is cunning and brazen and hollow-hearted, and it realizes his souls ideal, and he falls and kisses its feet, and clings to its skinny knees, swearing fealty ...
— Clocks - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... and, unless I am much mistaken, Diego passed many uneasy hours before he persuaded her to return to Mexico. Then old Don Jose Briones' beautiful young wife was found dead in her bed one morning, and the old women who dressed the body swore that there were marks of hard skinny fingers on her throat. Estenega had made no secret of his admiration of her. At different times girls of the people had left Monterey suddenly, and vague rumors had floated down from the North that they had been seen in the ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... on her sharply: for it was a woman, stretching out one skinny hand and gathering her ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... left alone with his grandfather. The old man, sunk beneath his pile of cushions, his brown skinny hand clenching and unclenching above the rugs, was muttering to himself. In Peter himself, as he stood there by the fire, looking down on the old man, there was tremendous pity. He had never felt so tenderly towards his ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... than in the females, or again equally developed in both sexes. The little lizards of the genus Draco, which glide through the air on their rib- supported parachutes, and which in the beauty of their colours baffle description, are furnished with skinny appendages to the throat "like the wattles of gallinaceous birds." These become erected when the animal is excited. They occur in both sexes, but are best developed when the male arrives at maturity, at which age the middle ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... loathsome or stimulating, rehandling and heightening whatever could touch the imagination with fear, horror, and mysterious attraction. The Witches, that is to say, are not goddesses, or fates, or, in any way whatever, supernatural beings. They are old women, poor and ragged, skinny and hideous, full of vulgar spite, occupied in killing their neighbours' swine or revenging themselves on sailors' wives who have refused them chestnuts. If Banquo considers their beards a proof that they are not women, that only shows his ignorance: Sir Hugh Evans ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... gazing round me, with the horror that the place inspires, when Goblin clutches me by the wrist, and lays, not her skinny finger, but the handle of a key, upon her lip. She invites me, with a jerk, to follow her. I do so. She leads me out into a room adjoining—a rugged room, with a funnel- shaped, contracting roof, open at the top, to the bright ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... to one of the other men. I didn't hear very clearly, but it sounded as though he said: 'We've got to get Moore out and turn him over to Masters.' Bill Moore is one of my computermen—tall, skinny fellow." ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance
... th' likes iv ye an' me to a cinder.' But whin Abdul, be damid, as th' potes call him, made th' mistake iv pokin' his head out iv th' palace 'twas diff'rent. 'Well, who d'ye think I see to-day but th' Sultan. I tell ye I did. What is he like? He ain't much to look at—a skinny little man, Osman, that ye cud sthrangle between ye'er thumb an' forefinger. He had a bad cold an' was sneezin'. He wore a hand-me-down coat. He has a wen on th' back iv his neck an' he's crosseyed. Here's a pitcher iv him.' 'What, that little runt? ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... figure, arrayed in sombre black,—his pale, cadaverous visage, spotted with pimples and blue blotches of close-shaven beard,—his spectral glance of admiration through those detestable blue spectacles. She imagined that she felt the clammy touch of his long, skinny fingers, and cold, flabby palm. She reflected upon the probability, nay, the certainty, that she must marry this man, for whom she felt such an invincible repugnance, and in a frenzy of dismay and terror she screamed aloud and started up as if to fly. Then, recollecting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... her by a wild-eyed girl to whom she had given a shilling. Gentilla, less like a sober pew-opener, and more resembling the Hecate of some witch-gathering, screamed objurgations at the pitch of her crocked voice, and waved her skinny arms to emphasize her words, in a most ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... out, most likely, in ten minutes or so. I guessed you were after one of our showroom young ladies. We get some real swells down here sometimes—motor cars of their own. The typists ain't much, as a rule. It's a skinny ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... motioned them to go back. In an instant the whole cavalcade was in confusion. The horses reared and plunged, the men shouted and demanded who was there, and all the while the weird figure, whose tattered garments fluttered fantastically in the wind, waved her skinny arms wildly, and ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... general calamity. But there was also dancing in the ballroom. The boat turned south and shot down a canal bordered by trunkless shade trees, which had been one of the principal streets of Kaskaskia. At the instant of turning, however, Father Baby could be seen as he whirled, though his skinny head and gray capote need not have added their evidence to the exact sound of his foot which came so distinctly across the water. His little shop, his goods, his secret stocking-leg of coin,—for Father Baby was his own banker,—were ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... and, taking the brown man's skinny throat in his great hand, flung him reeling back to the partition, which shook with his weight. Then he burst into a laugh as the being who had just been threatening him with a terrible and mysterious death changed into a little weak old man, coughing ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... the repairs, counting with his fleshless thumb on his skinny fingers, when he was interrupted by a curious succession of sounds which began with whining, and ended with scratching ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... yellow light in it, and a Greek nose. Her mouth was very small; her nostrils were mere tiny slits; and so lazy was she that she seldom more than half opened her eyes. Both girls were well over fourteen, and very fully developed: compared with them, Laura was like nothing so much as a skinny young colt. ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... a ferret. He advanced to the foot of the bed, in which I was still lying, wondering what this strange visit could mean; and there he stood gazing at me for a minute, at least, without uttering a syllable. Suddenly, however, he protruded a spare skinny hand from the cloak in which it had hitherto been enveloped, and pointed with a short staff, tipped with metal, in the direction of my face, as it he were commencing an exorcism. He appeared to be about to speak, but his words, if he intended any, were ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... dog," is good. The impostor beggar was in sunshine, and which he turned to his purpose: he could cope with the world's broad glare. This is no impostor; and the atmosphere he breathes is suited to his fortunes. The rejecting hand, with its shadow of the dry skinny fingers, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... surrounded by Roman soldiers. Bending his tall form at the doorway, the general entered, followed by two soldiers leading between them the old woman, whose skinny fingers were tightly clutching the ...
— Stories from English History • Hilda T. Skae
... it was—feeble beyond expression, and ugly with the ugliness of savagery. She wriggled and screwed up her skinny features with inane ferocity. A motherless wallaby would have submitted to human solace and ministrations with daintier mien; but the whole household thrilled with excitement. Could the spluttering spark of life be made to glow? That was the all-absorbing topic for days. Gradually ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... his elbow and began to chatter away, pointing out with one skinny claw every object of interest, evidently believing, as no doubt all its inhabitants did, that there was no city in the world like the great capital ...
— The Little Lame Prince - Rewritten for Young Readers by Margaret Waters • Dinah Maria Mulock
... me at all, but roughly hurried the soldier at his task of fire-lighting, and ordered the other to fetch a pair of stools and a jar of water. Meanwhile I stood near, watching, and stretched out my skinny hands to the grateful heat as soon as the fire was lighted. I had a boy's delight in noting how the draught pumped the fire into violence, shaking the stove till it puffed and roared. I was so filled, that moment, with the domestic spirit ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... John Hanson, lately a commander of the Special Patrol Service, now retired, should have had a love affair? Well, 'twas many years ago, before these eyes lost their fire, and before these brown, skinny hands wearied as quickly as they ...
— Priestess of the Flame • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... ragged—tore like a maniac over the polished floor, making for the group at the table, waving one skinny arm. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... blinked round her. Her fallen lip gave her a half-idiotic expression; and yet there was an uneasy twinkle in the eye, as of boundless terror and suspicion. She lifted up her fettered wrist to shade her face; and as she did so, disclosed a line of fearful scars upon her skinny arm. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... and the meetings and greetings of friends is a sort of silver lining, you know. What would the world be without friends—the society of those who take an abiding interest? Believe me, Mr. Holcroft," she continued, bringing her long, skinny finger impressively down on the table, "you have lived alone so long that you are unable to see the crying needs of your own constitution. As a Christian man, you require ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... thing it would be, Sir,' said Mrs. King, looking much cheered; 'for I misdoubt me sometimes if he'll ever be strong enough to gain his bread that way—at least, not to be a good workman. There! he's not nigh so tall as Harold; and so slight and skinny as he is, going about all bent and slouching, even before his illness! Why, he says what made him stay so long in the Union was that he looked so small and young, that none of the farmers at Upperscote would take him from it; and so ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... health, Sara, I'm kicking about. You're getting as pale and skinny as a goop; and for a month already you've been coughing, and never a single evening home to stick your feet in hot water and a mustard ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... old governante, Kamalia, having counted us on her four skinny fingers, proceeded to fulfil that sacred rite, never omitted in the east, of presenting refreshments; without the heartless and niggardly-ceremony of appealing to the guests, as is wont in Europe, to learn whether they will take them or not, looking on those ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... beside us, and so did Polly, who was a Dyak baby brought to me after the pirate expedition of 1849. Her mother fled, and dropped her baby in the long grass, where it was found by an English sailor, who carried it to the boats and gave it to one of the women captives to bring to me—a poor little, skinny thing, with long yellow hair, like a fairy changeling. I got a wet nurse for her and fed her with baby food, but she got thinner and more elfish-looking. One day her nurse was standing by while the other children were eating their dinner, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... before the door and stretched his skinny hands to the sun. About his shoulders he had a ragged coat which had once been red, but was now a coat of many colors. It was so hot that I took shelter in the shadow of the doorway, but the chilly old man was shivering. I had brought him a great piece of cake ...
— The Story Of The Little Mamsell • Charlotte Niese
... the detachment of Chahars sent from the east. We decided to await the arrival of this detachment, as their coming could change the whole course of events. In a few days they came, two hundred warlike Chahar brigands under the command of a former Chinese hunghutze. He was a tall, skinny man with hands that reached almost to his knees, a face blackened by wind and sun and mutilated with two long scars down over his forehead and cheek, the making of one of which had also closed one of his hawklike eyes, topped off with a shaggy ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... with a skinny hand. "There was a ship," quoth he. "Hold off! unhand me, gray-beard loon!" Eftsoons[30-1] his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... once complete. "He was tall, and so meagre as to make him seem above even the six feet that he actually stood in his stockings. On his head, which was thinly covered with lank, sandy hair, he wore a cap made of fox-skin. His face was skinny, and thin almost to emaciation; but yet it bore no signs of disease; on the contrary, it had every indication of the most robust and enduring health. The cold and the exposure had, together, given it a color of uniform ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... and she would probably never have seen a sheriff's posse riding twenty strong and bunched like bird-shot when it leaves the muzzle of the gun. Indeed, I am very sure she would not. Killings such as her father heard of with his lips drawn tight and the cords standing out on the sides of his skinny neck she would have considered the grim tragedies they were, without once thinking of the ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... tiny beak-mouth, that looks as if it would never open, Like some iron door; To lift the upper hawk-beak from the lower base And reach your skinny little neck And take your first bite at some dim bit of herbage, Alone, small insect, Tiny bright-eye, ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence
... friend's horse, held also a pistol at the coachman's head, muttering lurid threats of what he would do if the coachman drove on. The dismounted man was half inside the coach where two women shrank from him, and thence his blusterous voice proceeded, "Now, my blowens, hand over, or I'll rummage you. A skinny purse? Come, now, you've more than that. What's under your legs, fatty? Stand up, I say. Ay, hand out the jewel-box. Now, my tackle, what ha' you got aboard? What's under that pretty tucker?" He threw the ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... of hair straggled out from beneath her poke bonnet. Her eyes were like two snakes, and when she opened her mouth to speak she showed her long pointed iron teeth. She was dressed in a black cloak, from which protruded her long skinny arms and claw-like hands. She carried a broom-stick, and behind her slunk her cat, all draggled with the wet, and mewing frightfully. She sat down on ...
— More Tales in the Land of Nursery Rhyme • Ada M. Marzials
... like wrens; I go to them every day. See!" and he took up in his hand a creature that could just be seen to be intended for a bird, though the long skinny neck was bare, and the tiny quills of the young wings only showed a little grey sprouting feather, as did the breast some primrose-coloured down. Miss Fosbrook had to part with some favourite cockney notions of the beauty of infant birds, and on the other ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Myra through the winding, rocky passages to her room, at the door of which Madre Dolores was waiting. The old woman cackled with laughter at sight of them, and rubbed her skinny hands together delightedly. ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... was the price agreed upon; here it is," he said, taking out a thick bundle of notes that occupied the whole inside of the poor, limp pocket-book; and as the old woman stretched out a skinny claw for them and began to slowly count them, he turned his gaze away, on to the upturned face of the girl watching him with ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... a long and skinny hand and arm were protruded, Nora's own arm was forcibly taken possession of, and she was dragged, against her will, into the underwood. Her first impulse was to cry out; but being as brave a girl as ever walked, ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... invocation, the Ancient Mariner rose before me! He stood in the doorway of my office, and held me with his glittering eye. He lifted his skinny hand to his long gray beard, and then gravely tipped his oiled hat. "The reader for ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... manikin with a touching and droll devotion, and, when they know him to be a confirmed scamp, they admire his cleverness, and try to find out which way the little rogue's interest lies, so that they may follow him. So it comes about that we have amidst us a school of skinny dwarfs whose leaders are paid better than the greatest statesmen in Europe. The commonest jockey-boy in this company of manikins can usually earn more than the average scholar or professional man, and the whole set receive a good deal more of ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... with horrid rolling of its blue-gleaming eyes, into a grinning smile. Alas, it was the Apple-woman of the Black Gate! The pointed teeth gnashed together in the loose jaws, and in their chattering through the skinny lips there was a growl of: "Thou fool, fool, fool!—Wait, wait!—Why didst run!—Fool!" Horror-struck, the student Anselmus flew back; he clutched at the door-post, but his hand caught the bell-rope and pulled it, and in piercing discords ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... have stated at what precise moment he had sat down between them; but every one felt that if the dead did ever come and sit at the table of the living, they could not cut a more ghastly figure. The friends of Firmin Richard and Armand Moncharmin thought that this lean and skinny guest was an acquaintance of Debienne's or Poligny's, while Debienne's and Poligny's friends believed that the cadaverous individual belonged to Firmin Richard and ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... elected representative in 1799. He was a descendant of Pocahontas, of which fact he often boasted, and was noted for his keen retorts, reckless wit, and skill in debate. His tall, slender, and cadaverous form, his shrill and piping voice, and his long, skinny fingers—pointing toward the object of his invective—made him a conspicuous speaker. For thirty years, says Benton, he was ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... wears wound over her corsage, would assuredly overweight the frail Fidelia Oldaker; the tiara of emeralds and diamonds was never meant for a brow less majestic; nor would the stomacher of lustrous grey pearls and glinting diamonds ever have clasped becomingly a figure that was svelte—or "skinny," as the great lady herself is frank enough to term all persons even remotely ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... go playing such loose, skinny things," he would say, "when here are such perfect shapes all ready ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... cries not an echo replies, Even sympathy dies—and thy helper is none. We see thee how stripp'd of each bloom that equipp'd Thy flourish, till nipp'd the winter thy rose; Till the spoiler made bare the scalp of the hair, And the ivory[128] tare from its sockets' repose. Thy skinny, thy cold, thy visageless mould, Its disgust is untold, and its surface is dim; What a signal of wrack is the wrinkle's dull track, And the bend of the back, and the limp of the limb! Thou leper of fear—thou niggard of cheer— Where glory is dear, shall thy welcome be found? ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... the old man, passing one skinny brown hand gently up and down over the other. 'That is well. There's no hurry. Don't make up your mind too fast. Don't jump at conclusions. It's intellectual dishonesty to do that. Wait till you have convinced yourself. ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... grotesque advice, and all those curious phenomena that come from the activities of the abnormal mind, appeared and astounded the visionaries as they went about their daily work. The boy Grant used to sit, a wide-eyed, freckled, sun-browned little creature, running his skinny little hands through his red hair, and wondering about the unsolvable problems of life ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... think of a future state and our reason quarrels always with our longings. We all want—in heaven—to meet Voltaire with his very thin legs. But we cannot believe that those skinny shanks are to be immortal. We shall miss the snuff and the grease on Sam Johnson's collar. If an angel comes up neat and smiling and says "Permit me to introduce myself —I am the great lexicographer," we shall say "Tell that to some other angel. The ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... Just when you have concocted an absurdly implausible tale about a man outside, the door opens, and a tall, severe-looking woman enters, carrying what at first sight appears to be a particularly skinny bolster, with the feathers all at one end. Instinct, however, tells you that this is the baby, and you rise with a miserable attempt at appearing eager. When the first gush of feminine enthusiasm with which the object in question is received has died out, ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... known it to be in the happiest homes. Nothing, as I remember, smote me with more grief and pity (all the more poignant because perplexingly entangled with an inclination to smile) than to hear a gaunt and ragged mother priding herself on the pretty ways of her ragged and skinny infant, just as a young matron might, when she invites her lady-friends to admire her plump, white-robed darling in the nursery. Indeed, no womanly characteristic seemed to have altogether perished out of these poor souls. It was the very same creature ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... very long apartment, full forty feet; and while Fanny bustled down it, Miss Maitland extended a skinny finger, like one of Macbeth's witches, and directed Vizard's eye to the receding figure so pointedly that he put up his spyglass the better ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... only of them not sharing the glee. This one was a little chap whose parents had sent him up North from Georgia to his relatives, the parents being too poor after the war to maintain their family. He was a skinny little fellow, always shivering and snuffling, ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... jingle, then the wardrobe door must have been flung open, for a streak of light struck through a crack in the wood of the back. Creeping close and peeping through, I could see an awful sight. Lady Carwitchet in a flannel wrapper, minus hair, teeth, complexion, pointing a skinny forefinger that quivered with rage at her son, who was out of the range of ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... sick of the old man's voice. He was at least glad he didn't have to look at the old man now. His bald head, his skinny bobbing neck, his simpering watery blue eyes. But he still had to suffer that immutable babbling, that idiotic cheerfulness ... and knowing all the time the old man was crazy, that he ...
— To Each His Star • Bryce Walton
... of attraction to all of them. They had been annoyed during the greater part of this day by a tribe of ragged beggars, whose importunity was really disgusting. The men were in general old, flat-headed, and pot-bellied. The women skinny and flap-eared. To these garrulous ladies and gentlemen they were obliged to talk and laugh, shake hands, crack fingers, bend their bodies, bow their heads, and place their hands with great solemnity on their heads and ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... at the edge of the cliff so far above them. "Shucks," he said, with conviction, "ain't nobody up there 'cept old Interpreter, an' that dummy, Billy Rand. I know 'cause Skinny Davis an' Chuck Wilson, they told me. They was up—old Interpreter, he can't do nothin' to nobody—he ain't got ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... a grave young lady of ten years, who might, I thought, be quite a beauty in a few more years, but was at the moment rather angular—all shoulders and elbows. Peter Cope, Jr. and Hilary Matlack were skinny kids, too. The three were of an age and were all tall ...
— Junior Achievement • William Lee
... brought home!" said his old foster-mother; and her strange-looking eagle-eyes sparkled, while she wriggled and twisted her skinny neck more quickly and strangely than ever. "You have brought good luck with you, Rudy. I must give you ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... forward, stood on his hind legs and offered a skinny, furry paw. She did not move. She ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... know these big things that have a half-mile track around the outside. While I do not wish to injure the poor dear, still I will say that she certainly looks one of these long-handled Jap umbrellas. You know she is such a skinny thing! Honest, this new hip style they are boosting this season just saved her life. She was getting saddle galls from carrying so many naturals. I wouldn't say this unless I absolutely knew, and of course I have seen her early in the ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... striving for years to realize? He did not find the ideal incongruous with his lingering sense of romance. He could take a humorous view of anything but his profession. That was sacred. Everything did he devote to it, from his soul to his skinny legs and arms. So that, when Bakkus had finished, and leaned back to admire his work, Andrew drew a deep breath, and his eyes shone as if he had received an inspiration from on High. He saw ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... assurance, Peg Sliderskew gathered up the chosen suit, and folding her skinny arms upon the bundle, stood, mouthing, and grinning, and blinking her watery eyes, like an uncouth figure in ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... this way on purpose, He didn't treat me fair," she rebelliously flamed out. "What good can it do God to have me skinny and white, with ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... a comic light. But when Rozsi leaned across him, the glow of her round cheek, her curving lip, the inscrutable grey gleam of her eyes, sent a thrill of longing through him. He was obliged to stand by while they parleyed with a gipsy, whose matted locks and skinny hands inspired him with a not unwarranted disgust. "Folly!" he muttered, as Rozsi held out her palm. The old woman mumbled, and shot a malignant look at him. Rozsi drew back her hand, and crossed herself. 'Folly!' Swithin ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... furiously, and sprang at him panther-like so that he fell back again in confusion, stumbled and collapsed upon a divan, with upraised, warding arms. "You Greek rat! you skinny Greek rat! Be careful what you think to say to me—to ME! to ME! Olaf van Noord—the poor, white-faced corpse-man! He is only one of Said's mummies! Be careful what you think to say to me... Oh! be careful—be ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... clear notes swooped and curved and darted, Rising like gulls. Then, with a finger skinny, He rubbed the bow with rosin, said, "Your pardon Signor! — Maestro Nicolo Paganini They used to call me! Tchk! — The cold grips hard on A poor musician's fingers!" ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... their legs for the purpose of walking, but it was necessary for them to move quickly from branch to branch. And so they changed a part of their skin into a sort of parachute, which stretched between the sides of their bodies and the small toes of their fore-feet, and gradually they covered this skinny parachute with feathers and made their tails into a steering gear and flew from tree to tree ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... sir," said Miss Snubbleston, with tears in her eyes, and exhibiting her ci-devant shoulder-of-mutton sleeves, which, but half an hour before as stiff and stately as starch could make them, were now hanging loose and flabby about her skinny arms. ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... "'n Reddy'll catch. Skinny you play 'first,' and Marmaduke out in the field. You kin go to sleep, too, for all I care—for you can't catch anything even if you had a peach ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... to help out the sow-belly, we get quarter rations of fresh beef from the carcass of a Tennessee steer that the quartermaster manages to lay hands on somehow. But it's awful poor beef, lean, slimy, skinny and stringy. The boys say that one can throw a piece up against a tree, and it will just stick there and quiver and twitch for all the world like one of those blue-bellied lizards at home will do when you knock him off a fence rail ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... Sure! Dat's de way she looked at me, aw right. Hairy ape! So dat's me, huh? [Bursting into rage—as if she were still in front of him.] Yuh skinny tart! Yuh white-faced bum, yuh! I'll show yuh who's a ape! [Turning to the others, bewilderment seizing him again.] Say, youse guys. I was bawlin' him out for pullin' de whistle on us. You heard me. And den I seen youse lookin' at somep'n and I tought he'd ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... were drawn lines, shading off and blurring into each other, sometimes starting from the mist, and then sinking back into it again. Among all these lines there were stiff, crabbed, and cramped designs, as though they were drawn with a set-square—patterns with sharp corners, like the elbow of a skinny woman. There were patterns in curves floating and curling like the smoke of a cigar. But they were all enveloped in the gray light. Did the sun never shine in France? Christophe had only had rain and fog since his arrival, and was inclined to believe ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... "plumb up thet 'ar' hill ter the right o' the high-road." She was set down, the column moved on, and—Streight's well planned expedition miscarried. But no one wasted a thought on the forlorn woman and the sallow baby whose skinny faces were so long within ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... contemplation of the quaint wood-cut representing the arrival of this lady at Brockhurst. Clothed in a bottle-green bodice—very generously decolletee, her head adorned by a portentous erection of coronet and feathers, a sanguine dab of colour on her cheek, she craned a skinny neck out of the window of the family coach. Apparently she was engaged in directing the movements of persons—presumably footmen—clad in canary-coloured coats and armed with long staves. With these last, they treated a female figure in blue ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... man of about forty, with a grey pointed beard, skinny and lean, but handsome and very fresh-looking for his age. Having come to see Olenin he was evidently afraid of being taken for an ordinary Cossack, and wanted to let Olenin feel his importance from ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... on what principle, I never could understand, was not murdered. This was a capital oversight of the professional men in the seventeenth century; because in every light he was a fine subject for murder, except, indeed, that he was lean and skinny; for I can prove that he had money, and (what is very funny,) he had no right to make the least resistance; for, according to himself, irresistible power creates the very highest species of right, so that it is rebellion of the blackest die to refuse to ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Bob cheerfully. "Skinny cowboys are always in demand, Betty. They do more work. Well, what do you know about that!" He broke off his speech abruptly and stared at the table directly ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... wanting?—Lord, yer honour, if ye can understand that Misther Strhides, that's yon, ye'll be a wise man. He calls hisself a 'son of the poor'atin's,' and poor 'ating it must have been, in the counthry of his faders, to have produced so lane and skinny a baste as that same. The orders was as partic'lar as tongue of man could utter, and what good will it all do?—Ye're not to fire, says serjeant Joyce, till ye all hear the wor-r-d; and the divil of a wor-r- ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... with a sudden excitement. I passed by and bought nothing. But after five days his face has caught up with me. A sallow, drawn face, burning eyes, bloodless lips and skinny hands that fumbled among the wares on his board. He was young. Heroic sentences come to me. "Jim's Store—" Good hokum, effective advertising. And a strange pathos, a pathos that my beggar with one leg and ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... very civil to her great-aunt Lilias, and had allowed both her uncles to take her up in their arms; but she retreated upon Angela, planted an elbow on the well-known lap, turned her back, and put a skinny little finger in her mouth by way of answer to Susan's advances, advances which had hardly ever before been repelled even by the most ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... There's nothing makes anybody as homesick as being hungry. Supper was skinny that night, I remember, and I was hungry too, only I went to sleep and forgot all about it. Come on, Doll, let's go ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... world-civilization: first the nomad and hunter, then the herder, next and last the husband-man. He had passed the mid-mark of his life. His mustache was gray. He had four friends—his horse, his pistol, a teamster in the Indian Territory Panhandle named Skinny, and me. ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... and he saw that she persisted in leaving him on the outside of the gate till the usual hour for opening it, he lost all patience. Before the portress could shut the wicket, close to which she was standing, he thrust his hand and arm through it, and grasped her by her skinny throat. The lay sister set up a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... idea that he looked well in knickerbockers. It was not my place to try to dissuade him, but there was no doubt that they did not suit him. Nature, in bestowing upon him a massive head and a jutting chin, had forgotten to finish him off at the other end. Vincent Jopp's legs were skinny. ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... horses' hoofs the white alkali crust which thinly covers the desert floor, crumbles and breaks. Gaunt cacti stretch their skinny branches across the trail, which winds among foothills and ravines, and the horned toads and the lizards, the only visible beings of the animal world here, play in and out of their labyrinths as we pass. We are upon the Great ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... owing to the duskiness of the chamber, and the antique dresses which they still wore, the tall mirror is said to have reflected the figures of the three old, gray, withered grand-sires, ridiculously contending for the skinny ugliness of a ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... the deserted streets to the churchyard. There, on one of the broadest tombstones she saw sitting a circle of lamias. These hideous wretches took off their ragged garments, as if they were going to bathe; then with their skinny fingers they clawed open the fresh graves, and with fiendish greed they snatched up the corpses and ate the flesh. Eliza was obliged to pass close by them and they fastened their evil glances upon her; but she prayed silently, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... rolling together upon the floor, with the table upon the top of them. The Captain had one of his great, skinny yellow hands upon the Marshal's throat, and already his face was lead-coloured, and his eyes were starting from their sockets. As to Tremeau, he was beside himself, with foam upon the corners of ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bursting out with propaganda and pamphlets on Bolshevism from Europe. In his hand he holds a pamphlet that has a message for the returning doughboys. The agitator's hair and whiskers bristle with hatred and envy. His yellow teeth look hideous between his snarling lips. And he points a long skinny finger for the doughboy to see his message, which is, "Down with America, it's all Wrong." So much for the man who came from Europe ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... walk into a trap. "Get busy, Skinny!" Twelve against two. "Sail into the soldier loafers!" Hal Overton's blood is up. Bunny's eyes are closed. A ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... burlesque of that famous passage, and though she limped more than ever as she reeled to an imaginary shrine in the corner, and though the black wig was slightly askew by now, and the black velvet hung with bunchy awkwardness about her skinny little body, there was nothing of mirth in Sid Hahn's face as he gazed. He ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... went in to the invalid. He lay in the same position, his skinny hands crossed upon his breast, and his shaggy brows were drawn so low that the eyes were buried in profound shadow. They took positions in a loose semi-circle, all pointing towards the sick man, and it reminded Byrne with ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... as red as a salamander's. Its arms were long and muscular, and its bony hands were armed with eleven fingers each, upon which were nails or claws shaped like fish hooks and keen as razors. This boogaboo had skinny wings like a huge bat, and at the end of its rat-like tail was a sting more deadly than the ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... yellowed by lying by in a cupboard, and exhibiting to the eye a shirt-frill of lace that had been an heirloom, fastened with a bluish cameo set as a pin; he wore short black-silk breeches which revealed the skinny legs on which he boldly stood. Cesar showed him, triumphantly, the four rooms constructed by the architect out of the first floors of the ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... of beef from skinny cow In the boiler then you'll throw; Onion sliced and turnip top, Crumb of ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... good thing it would be, Sir,' said Mrs. King, looking much cheered; 'for I misdoubt me sometimes if he'll ever be strong enough to gain his bread that way—at least, not to be a good workman. There! he's not nigh so tall as Harold; and so slight and skinny as he is, going about all bent and slouching, even before his illness! Why, he says what made him stay so long in the Union was that he looked so small and young, that none of the farmers at Upperscote ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the wheat country into the arid zone, which was found to be not nearly so arid as we thought. The Black Angus and the White-Faced Herefords followed, and where once were only scattering droves of skinny pintos, now were to be seen shaggy-legged ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... a curtsey. 'Down in Warwickshire. The morning among the trees. When you wouldn't give me nothing. But the gentleman, he give me something! Oh, bless him, bless him!' mumbled the old woman, holding up her skinny hand, and grinning ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... his eyes, yawned, scratched, then pattered over to the window to see what all the noise was about. In his night-shirt he looked like a skinny bird with folded wings of white, as he leaned forward and stuck his head out into the morning air. Upon the strip of back-lawn below, the swallows, who had been chattering so loudly overhead, stood in an active group. Clutching ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... from his knees when I had concluded the examination of the dead man's skinny, ill-nourished body. "What's ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... might o' been a grain warmer about hit," growled the other, seating himself where he could watch her. "If I'd been Young Matt er that skinny Ollie Stewart, you'd a' ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... son and his wife, once such a stately pair, now reduced to two pale spectres; there were troops of grandchildren, once round-cheeked as the carved angels on the altar of the village chapel, now hollow-eyed and skinny, with their blanched faces upturned imploringly to the parents who were scarcely conscious of their presence there. Hunger had extinguished youth, strength, beauty, and had almost uprooted love. Not only had it destroyed their bodies, but it had even corrupted ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... looking straight at him! That settled it, and he just knew that the savage beast had already picked him out as a tender morsel. Oh! why was he so unlucky as to be born to plumpness? If only he could be more like the skinny Giraffe, or Step-hen, perhaps this awful beast would have passed ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... him run on in this loud triumphant strain till he had quite done; then put out a brown skinny finger, and poked him lightly in the ribs, and said quite quietly, and oh, so ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... other Redskins, equally terrible, stood beside the Chief, and the bushes in the distance were quite still. The bushes trembled no longer. It was Benjamin who found it hard not to tremble now, as he saw thirteen sharp arrows taken from their quivers by thirteen skinny brown hands, and their notches held taut to thirteen bow-strings, all ready to shoot. Yet still the Friends sat on, without stirring, ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... women minutely and beautifully wrought; others, larger in size, were Biblical subjects; some were weird and fantastical; one, for example, showed a foreshortened figure lying before an erection, upon which a skinny bird stood with outstretched wings, flanked by ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... for them to talk. It remains to be seen if it isn't an excuse for being skinny with ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... was lean to the point of being skinny, his eyes were clear, and what little flesh he had was healthy flesh. Though he was lonesome and hungry for action and for sight of Billy Louise, his mind had not grown morbid. He learned more ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... when she peered at some one as though she could not see. She should, long ago, have worn spectacles, but from some strange half-conscious vanity had always refused to do so. Every year her sight grew worse. She was wearing now a dress of black silk, very badly made, cut to display her long skinny neck and bony shoulders. She wore her clothes as though she struggled between a disdain for such vanities and a desire to appear attractive. Her manner of twisting her eyelids and wrinkling her nose gave her a peevish expression, but, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... Jarwin was not quite himself yet, and Cuffy, after his first ebullition, sat looking in surprise at the invalid, as he strove to turn on his side, and reach out his heavy hand and skinny arm towards a few scraps of the last meal he had cooked before being struck down. Cuffy, after eating the portion of that meal that suited his taste, had left the remnants there as being unworthy of notice, and catered for ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... laughed Martha, leaning over the wheel so as to press his fingers in her warm palm. "There ain't no doubt 'bout that skinny fright being 'Miss,' and there ain't no doubt 'bout her stayin' so. Ann Gossaway she is, and Ann Gossaway she'll die. Is she took bad?" she continued, a merry, questioning look lighting up her kindly face, her lips ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... like any Gorgio, and placed her among twelve Gentile women. The man who had been robbed was to point out who among them had stolen his money. When she came into the room, he went at once to her, and said, 'I know her by her long skinny fingers and handsome face.' She was imprisoned for two years, but the Gorgio never recovered ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... when he was called, seventy when they benched him, and I'm sure he's a judge thirty years! But he's the sharpest chap of the whole twelve, and no end of a boy afther the girls. If you only saw him walking in his robes—I'm sure he's not three feet high! That next, with the skinny neck, he's Crampton—he's one of Father Mathews lads, an out and out teetotaller, and he looks it; he's a desperate cross fellow, sometimes! The other one, you can't see, he's Perrin. There, he's leaning ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... yellow caravan was drawn up on one side, and with the screen of trees served as an effective background to the scene. The skinny piebald horses had been unloosed from its shafts, freed of their harness, and, with rude fetters on their legs, turned adrift to seek their supper among the coarse grass and springy heather spreading so bountifully around them upon ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... but I give mine oats and bran it is a mistake for boys to keep rabbits because first they give them too much and burst them and then they give them too little and starve them which is not wright and makes the rabbit skinny to eat if a boy feeds rabbits well he can get his mother to give him half-a-crown a peace to make pies of them which is very agreeable so I therefore on this ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... won't mind me leaving you, will you? It's near closing-up time, and I've got to be the boss. Benny, he sticks close to the pianner as it gits late. I reckon he feels his licker. Ain't he a dandy with them skinny fingers o' his?" ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... lip gave her a half-idiotic expression; and yet there was an uneasy twinkle in the eye, as of boundless terror and suspicion. She lifted up her fettered wrist to shade her face; and as she did so, disclosed a line of fearful scars upon her skinny arm. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... Luck turned to greet her and to present Jean to her, and was pleased when he saw from their eyes that they liked each other at first sight. He introduced the Happy Family and Applehead to her and to her husband, Lite Avery, and her father. He pulled a skinny individual forward and announced that this was Pete Lowry, one of the Great Western's crack cameramen; and another chubby, smooth-cheeked young man he presented as Tommy Johnson, scenic artist and ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... circled, expectant, ink-black against the immense radiance beyond. Grey, deepening to black, were flat roofs, cornices, minarets and massed foliage, and the flitting shadows, with lifted tails, that careered along the house-tops; or perched on some jutting angle, skinny elbows crooked, absorbed in the pursuit of fleas. For sunset is the monkey's hour, and the eerie jibbering of these imps of darkness struck a bizarre note in the hush that shrouded ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... wither'd, and so wild in their attire, That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth, And yet are on't?—Live you? or are you aught That man may question? You seem to understand me, By each at once her chappy finger laying Upon her skinny lips:—you should be women, And yet your beards forbid me to interpret That you ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... loose, the meat red, and the fat inclining to yellow. Cow beef, on the contrary, has a closer grain and whiter fat, but the meat is scarcely as red as that of ox beef. Inferior beef, which is meat obtained from ill-fed animals, or from those which had become too old for food, may be known by a hard, skinny fat, a dark red lean, and, in old animals, a line of horny texture running through the meat of the ribs. When meat rises up quickly, after being pressed by the finger, it may be considered as being the flesh of an animal which was in its ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... Hypatia's breast. A cold shiver ran through her.... The witch waved her hands mysteriously round her head, muttering from time to time, 'Down! down, proud spirit!' and then placed the tips of her skinny fingers on the victim's forehead. Gradually her eyelids became heavy; again and again she tried to raise them, and dropped them again before those fixed glaring eyes...., and in another moment she ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... rapidly. He sold just enough cattle to keep himself and his wife alive; he was bent on making one big haul, you see. So when his doggies got to the right age and condition for the market, he'd trade them off, one fat doggie for two or three skinny yearlings. But finally he had a really big herd together, and shipped it off to the market on a year when the price ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... young lady of ten years, who might, I thought, be quite a beauty in a few more years, but was at the moment rather angular—all shoulders and elbows. Peter Cope, Jr. and Hilary Matlack were skinny kids, too. The three were of an age and ...
— Junior Achievement • William Lee
... grocery from Inverary, and the rest from Glasgow, so that we soon discovered that the whole time of a male servant would be required for errands of different kinds. Not unfrequently was the half of a day lost in the attempt to get a dozen eggs from the little scattered farms, or a skinny fowl, or such a rare delicacy as a cabbage. Sometimes Thursday came back from the town peevish and angry at his lost labor, having found the bread too hard or too musty, and mutton unprocurable; as to the beef which came occasionally from Glasgow, it was usually tainted, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Toby was a very useful servitor to the cure; he was always on the alert; fat did not check his rapid movements, and from the time the Angelus rang in the morning to Vespers in the evening, his long skinny legs were constantly going. He drew the water, peeled and washed the onions, blacked the shoes—and how cure's shoes do shine!—rang the chapel-bell, gathered the acorns for the pig, intoned the Amen when his master said mass, swept and weeded the garden, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... to; while the German will get quite dejected over the everlasting plain boiled cabbage and potatoes he is offered week after week in his English boarding-house. At home, he says, he is used to mountains of fat asparagus all the spring, and he thinks slightly of your skinny green ones or of the wooden stuff you import and pay less for because it is "foreign." He likes potatoes cooked in twenty various ways, and when mashed he is of opinion that they should not be black or lumpy. He wants a dozen different vegetables ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... no stockings. Nothing but sandals. I could hardly get my eyes off her feet at first. Very few of our justly famous sex can afford to brave the public gaze without their stockings on. Vernabelle could ill afford it. She was skinny, if you know what I mean, lots of tendons and so forth, though I learned later that Vernabelle called it being willowy. She had slaty-gray eyes and a pale, dramatic face with long teeth and a dignified and powerful-looking nose. She was kind of hungry-looking ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... as much as you ought to, Jim," remarked the girl, shaking her head as she looked at the animal. "You're dreadfully skinny." ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... It is a long, skinny building that stands on one leg like a stork and blinks down disdainfully from its thousand windows on ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... this century a skinny old woman known as Aunt Woodward lived by herself in a log cabin at Minot Corner, Maine, enjoying the awe of the people in that secluded burg. They moved around but little at night, on her account, and one poor girl was in mortal fear lest by mysterious arts she should be ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... herself upon one elbow; her face, flushed and framed in her gray and tangled hair, was working with anger; and her eyes were almost lurid as she sent fierce glances at one after another of the men about her. She pointed a skinny finger at the door, and each man as she cast her look upon him went out without ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... tell them about Hell. It had no secrets for him. The Old Testament has no reference to a future existence, but the poor Jew has no more been able to live without the hope of Hell than the poor Christian. When the wicked man has waxed fat and kicked the righteous skinny man, shall the two lie down in the same dust and the game be over? Perish the thought! One of the Hells was that in which the sinner was condemned to do over and over again the sins he ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... by a wild, indescribable ecstasy, whose startling expression waa borrowed, one would think, as much from the light of insanity as from that of returning consciousness. He sucked in his thin cheeks, smacked his parched, skinny lips, and with difficulty called for drink. Having swallowed a little water, he looked round him with ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... carefully covered on the mouth with leather, from which dangled an iron bell. The old creature jingled the bell, entered our hut, squatted on his hams, looked first at one, then at the other—inquired what the missing things were like, grunted, moved his skinny arm round his head, as if desirous of catching air from all four sides of the hut, then dashed the accumulated air on the head of his horn, smelt it to see if all was going right, jingled the bell again close to his ear, and grunted his satisfaction; ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... coarse black hair like a horse's tail, drugged and stained to look like tow. And then your bodies are as false as your heads and your cheeks, and your hearts I trow. Look at your padded bosoms, and your wooden heeled chopines to raise your little stunted limbs up and deceive the world. Skinny dwarfs ye are, cushioned and stultified into great fat giants. Aha, mesdames, well is it said of you, grande—di legni: grosse—di straci: rosse—di bettito: ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... him much," Mrs. Egg panted, "but he looks skinny in his pictures. Well, I got to get home. There's a gentleman coming over from Ashland to ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... queen, placing her yellow and skinny hand on a weapon, perhaps, among her rags, resolutely moved toward the spy. He expected to be interrogated, for an attack was unlikely from a lone old woman; but he grasped his ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... hiding her face in Lois's skinny hand, until Sam Polston came in, when she grew quiet and shy. The poor deformed girl lay watching them, as they talked. Very pretty Jenny looked, with her blue eyes and damp pink cheeks; and it was a manly, grave love in Sam's face, when it turned to her. A different ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... soon filled with the finest cambric handkerchiefs, all of which she first took the precaution to open and hold up to the light, rejecting those which were not of the finest texture. The silk stockings were the next articles that were coveted; they were unfolded one by one, and her skinny arm passed up, that the feet might be extended by her shrivelled hands, to ascertain whether they were darned or not—if so, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... starting from the mist, and then sinking back into it again. Among all these lines there were stiff, crabbed, and cramped designs, as though they were drawn with a set-square—patterns with sharp corners, like the elbow of a skinny woman. There were patterns in curves floating and curling like the smoke of a cigar. But they were all enveloped in the gray light. Did the sun never shine in France? Christophe had only had rain and fog ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... been eaten by the tune spring came on, and most often father and son knew what it was like to go hungry. Whenever the weather was fit, they put off in their boat but often rowed back empty-handed or with one skinny flat-fish in the bottom. This did not affect their outlook. They never complained; they bore their burden of distress, heavy as it was, with the same even temper as they showed in the face of good fortune on the rare occasions it smiled on them; in this, as in everything else, they were ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... after the pirate expedition of 1849. Her mother fled, and dropped her baby in the long grass, where it was found by an English sailor, who carried it to the boats and gave it to one of the women captives to bring to me—a poor little, skinny thing, with long yellow hair, like a fairy changeling. I got a wet nurse for her and fed her with baby food, but she got thinner and more elfish-looking. One day her nurse was standing by while the other children were eating their dinner, and Polly stretched ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... And that was all the poor lady could give her family. What was she to do? Mr Gunning had took himself off to Castle Coote, his beggarly place in the country, where he could dice and drink in peace with the neighboring squireens, and live off claret and the skinny fowls that pecked about the avenue; and she had the weight of the children on her ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... you skinny monkey!" shouted Dreer. "All you're good for is to make rotten noises on that beastly fiddle of yours! Want ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the use of bothering about a crumb and a half a-piece? I never saw such a skinny spread in all ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... practically holding his breath, as if he was waiting for somebody special to show up, so absorbed in his watching that he didn't know I was there until I spoke. He reminded me a little of a ventriloquist's dummy with his skinny, knob-kneed body, thin face and round, still eyes. Only there wasn't anything comical about him the way there is about a dummy. Maybe that's why I spoke, because he looked so ...
— To Remember Charlie By • Roger Dee
... menu-cards. Consequently Father was worried about his bill all the time he was encouraging his guests to forget their uncomfortably decorative surroundings and talk like regular people. But when he saw how skinny were the sandwiches and how reticent the cinnamon toast he was cheered. He calculated that the whole bill couldn't, in decency, be more than ninety cents for the ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... under its marble slab. Of course, before a grown-up the crocodile would pretend to be dead and stuffed, but ... the little boy knew better. It occurred gleefully to him, too, that the plump French damsel might prove more satisfactory as a repast to a hungry saurian than a skinny little boy with thin legs. In the cheerful nursery, with its fragrant peat fire (we called it "turf"), the terrors of the evening were quickly forgotten, only to be renewed with tenfold activity next evening, as the moment for making the ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... why, or on what principle, I never could understand, was not murdered. This was a capital oversight of the professional men in the seventeenth century; because in every light he was a fine subject for murder, except, indeed, that he was lean and skinny; for I can prove that he had money, and (what is very funny,) he had no right to make the least resistance; for, according to himself, irresistible power creates the very highest species of right, so that it is rebellion of the blackest die to refuse to be murdered, when a competent force ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... first lesson she drew a fairly clever cartoon of Johnny in an airplane, ascending to the star Venus. She made it appear that Johnny's hair stood straight on end and his eyes goggled with fear, and she made Venus a long-nosed, skinny, old-maid face with a wide, welcoming simper. Up in a corner she placed the moon, with one eye ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... impenetrable as death, relentless, awful, appalling the soul, and freezing the marrow in the bones, it came near the earth. The figure of the gray old man grew mystically to gigantic and unearthly size, his vast old hands stretched forth their skinny palms to receive the great curtain as it descended between the moonlight and the sleeping earth. His eyes were as stars, his hoary head rose majestically to an incalculable height; still the thick, all-wrapping mist came down, falling on horse ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... to a slumber which was more torpor than sleep. Her yellow, old-ivory face was faintly tinged with color; her thin lips were relaxed, and seemed a trifle fuller, so that Mary thought she looked better in sickness than in health; but the limp arm lying on the patchwork quilt seemed to be more skinny than thin, and the hand was more waxen ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... him with his skinny hand, 'There was a ship,' quoth he. 'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!' Eftsoons ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... a gray monkey, small, infinitely aged and withered of aspect. His paws and forearms were black with half-dry ink. Here and there, all over his fuzzy gray body, ink-blobs were spattered. In one skinny paw he still clutched the splintered ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... indignity. May the Great Darkness encompass thee, may thine enemies break and crush thee, and may Zomara, the One of Power, smite and devour thee," and as she uttered these words she held up her long skinny arms to the hideous golden crocodile suspended over her, muttering some mystic sentences ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... shipboard, while the Germans on the Rhine are positively luxurious, and while we know that a steam-boiler offers every convenience for petits plats, the real old English steam-boats of the General Steam Navigation Company never vary from huge joints and skinny chickens, ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... from that. Of nearly 10,000 lodgers, one-half were under thirty years old and in good health—fat, in fact. The doctors reported them "well nourished." Among 100 whom I watched taking their compulsory bath, one night, only two were skinny; the others were stout, well-fed men, abundantly able to do a man's work. They all insisted that they were willing, too; but the moment inquiries began with a view of setting such to work as really wanted it, and sending the rest to the island as ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... may not believe it, white man, but Lemuel made fifty-three cents in tips on the last trip from New York to Chicago. You can understand the man who gave him the Columbian antique; but Lemuel believes there can be no future too warm for that skinny man who gave him the three pennies! He thinks the gentleman might at least have come across with a Subway ticket. It is all ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... gasped, almost overturning her wheel as she sprang to hug him in her skinny arms. He had a painful sense that she had shrunk back almost to childish dimensions. Her hands seemed trembling as much with decay as with emotion. She hastened to produce from the well-known cupboard ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... to their feet. Behind them stood a tall girl with a sun-tanned face and straight grey eyes—eyes that bore marks of tears, of which Norah for once was unashamed. Her brown curls were tied back with a broad black ribbon. She was very slender—"skinny," Norah would have said—but, despite that she was at what is known as "the awkward age," no movement of Norah Linton's was ever awkward. She moved with something of the unconcerned grace of a deer. In her blue serge coat and skirt ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... this speech, calculated to make a more favorable impression upon Sybil than his previous conduct had inspired her with; and, having ascertained from Luke to what his speech referred, she extended her hand to him, yet not without a shudder, as it was enclosed in his skinny grasp. It was like the fingers of Venus in ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... little three-legged pot from where it hung from one of the wattles of the roof. This pot was half full of mealies already cooked, and which he simply meant to warm for his supper. The remainder of his week's ration of meat (the skinny ribs of a goat that had died of debility down near his master's homestead) was also hanging from the roof, but with a sigh he determined to reserve that delicacy for the morrow, remembering that two days would elapse before a fresh supply was ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... from his stupor by our voices, or by the warmth of the fire, the stranger opened his eyes and looked about him wildly. He clawed at the air with skinny fingers, and tried to speak. I had a little rum with me, and I poured it between his lips. This brought a tinge of color to his cheeks and a brightness to his glazing eyes, but he was too ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... could I wheedle the votes at the vestry, I'd have a share of those good sav'ry things; Enchained by turkey, in love with the pastry. And floating in Champagne, while Bow bells ring. Those who are cautious are skinny and fretful, Hunger, alas! naught but ill-humour brings; I'd be an Alderman, rich with a net full, Rolling in Guildhall, whilst old Bow ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various
... came up, skinny, red hair, sharp-pointed nose. His name was Al Devis, and he was Joe Kivelson's engineer's helper. He wanted to know about the tread-snail shooting, so I had to go over it again. I hadn't anything to add to what Tom had told them already, ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... Chaplain's got a banjo, an' a skinny mule 'e rides, An' the stuff 'e says an' sings us, Lord, it makes us split our sides! With 'is black coat-tails a-bobbin' to Ta-ra-ra Boom-der-ay! 'E's the proper kind o' padre ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... said John eagerly. "You're little and skinny and ought to be able to get in there ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... stopped by the strange appearance of three figures, like women, except that they had beards, and their withered skins and wild attire made them look not like any earthly creatures. Macbeth first addressed them, when they, seemingly offended, laid each one her choppy finger upon her skinny lips, in token of silence: and the first of them saluted Macbeth with the title of thane of Glamis. The general was not a little startled to find himself known by such creatures; but how much more, when the second of them followed up that salute by giving him the title of thane ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... my arm, with his long, skinny, trembling fingers, I saw that his hands and feet were all chapped and bleeding. Neither shoe nor stocking did he possess; his only garments were a ragged shirt and trousers; and—and, and in horrible mockery of his own misery, a grand new flowered satin vest, which to-morrow was to figure in some ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... day; all the boys were wild with fun, one only of them not sharing the glee. This one was a little chap whose parents had sent him up North from Georgia to his relatives, the parents being too poor after the war to maintain their family. He was a skinny little fellow, always shivering and snuffling, and his ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... gatepost whenever I tried to bend it—the worst of all was our little Eliza, who never could come to a size herself, though she had the wine from the Sacrament at Easter and Allhallowmas, only to be small and skinny, sharp, and clever crookedly. Not that her body was out of the straight (being too small for that perhaps), but that her wit was full of corners, jagged, and strange, and uncomfortable. You never could tell what she might say next; and I like not that kind ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... skin outward. The fourth priest stood with the breast and the throat. The breast was in his right hand, and the throat in his left, and its side bones between his fingers. The fifth priest stood with the two sides, the right side in his right hand, and the left side in his left hand, and the skinny side outward. The sixth priest stood with the intestines placed in a pan, and the legs over them. The seventh priest stood with the fine flour. The eighth priest stood with the pancakes. The ninth priest stood with the wine. They then proceeded and deposited the members on the lower half of ...
— Hebrew Literature
... knives, and eat the little pieces, and glad to get them. Now and then, to help out the sow-belly, we get quarter rations of fresh beef from the carcass of a Tennessee steer that the quartermaster manages to lay hands on somehow. But it's awful poor beef, lean, slimy, skinny and stringy. The boys say that one can throw a piece up against a tree, and it will just stick there and quiver and twitch for all the world like one of those blue-bellied lizards at home will do when you knock him off a fence rail ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... absorbed, and in these food-absorbing pores is foreshadowed the mouth. Division of labour has set in, and groups of cells specialise in the performance of functions. Thus, a cell group forms the skinny covering of the cluster, another cell group the mouth. And likewise, internally, the stomach, a sac for the reception and digestion of food, takes shape; and the juices of the body begin to circulate with greater definiteness, breaking channels in their passage ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... observed Bob cheerfully. "Skinny cowboys are always in demand, Betty. They do more work. Well, what do you know about that!" He broke off his speech abruptly and stared at the table directly ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... as you know," said Mrs. Albi, "we went into Jersey. For two months we all pick the berries. Enough we earn to put-it food into our mouth. And the keeds! They go white and skinny, and they come home, like you see it, brown and fat." Her voice rose and she waved the baby dramatically. "Not so good the houses, I would not lie to you. But we make like we have the peekaneeka. By ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... and years ago, some one trapped a buzzard, and before freeing it clamped about its skinny neck a copper band with a cowbell pendent from it. Since then the bird so ornamented has been seen a hundred times—and heard oftener—over an area as wide as half the continent. It has been reported, now in Kentucky, now in ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... human sweat was overpowering in the little ante-room. Some of the men had hearts and anchors and ships and dancing-girls tattooed in blue on their chests and arms. Some were skinny and others too fat. Very few looked fit. I remarked upon the shyness they suffered in walking ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... said that, he fell over on the ground and like to killed his self laughing. He counted out the right money to my father and said, 'Henry, you better watch that little skinny-eyed ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... "I want you to go with them. Take an old hunter in the King's stable, an old bony, skinny animal that is past all work, and put an old straw saddle on him, and dress yourself in the most ragged dress you can get, and join the two men on the road, and say that you are going with them. They will be heartily ashamed of you, ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... was all right. That was the trouble with him. He was too much all right. He didn't have any life in him, any go. He wanted to marry me, though. But somehow I couldn't see it. That shows I didn't love him. He was narrow-chested and skinny, and his hands were always cold and fishy. But my! he could dress—just like he came out of a bandbox. He said he was going to drown himself, and all kinds of things, but I broke with ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... "town cuss"? He had this subject for cogitation, while, in a stifling room, he was regaled with hard cider and apple-jack by no more fascinating Hebe than old Mrs. Slade, with her withered sallow skin, her excited, anxious eye, her fluttered, tremulous, skinny fingers, her hysteric cap with its maddeningly flying strings, and her wonderfully swift venerable scamper in and out ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... nevertheless, telling himself he wasn't afraid of the ration-cops who were always suspecting him of underconsumption because he was the tall skinny type and never got fat like most people, but that he ate what the cooker had given him because his father had been unemployed for a long time during the depression seventy-five years before, so he'd never been able to bring himself to throw ...
— Waste Not, Want • Dave Dryfoos
... use, and would, besides, make you hump-backed; and if you did not, everything would have to be buttoned round the roots of them. You could not do it yourself, and even on Wynnie I don't think I could bear to touch the things—I don't mean the feathers, but the skinny, folding-up bits ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... man. He fitted the Chinese yoke to his skinny shoulders, and took up his burden. The load was heavy, the yoke bruised his bones, therefore he was moved to complain: "The idea of me totin' water for the very guys that stole my uncle's money! It's ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... "Ay, and that skinny old money-chaser tried to throttle me," he continued. "Falk lay off that island only because we needed water. Ay, we all knew we needed it—Falk and all of us. But them murderin' natives was after our heart's blood whenever we goes ashore, just because Chips and Kipping drills a few bullet-holes ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... though he had a human form. For he was immense to measure, like a giant, fat, bloated, and brutal to behold. His great yellow eyes stuck from his head like pine-knots, his mouth went almost from ear to ear, and he had broad, skinny feet ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... name is Monsieur Pet-airs." From time to time Monsieur Pet-airs remarked something delicately and pettishly in a gentle and weak voice. His adam's-apple, at such moments, jumped about in a longish slack wrinkled skinny neck which was like the neck of a turkey. To this turkey the approach of Thanksgiving inspired dread. From time to time M. Pet-airs looked about him sidewise as if he expected to see a hatchet. His hands were claws, kind, awkward and nervous. They twitched. The bony and wrinkled ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... observed, "Your farmers leave some barley for the women to glean, I see. The poor folks here might have a fowl in their pot, as the good French king used to wish for all his people. The French eat a good many fowls—skinny fowls, you know." ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Skinny paused. There was a hard glint in his eyes. "Bull Coxine!" He spat the name out as though it had left a ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... with the progress of our own world-civilization: first the nomad and hunter, then the herder, next and last the husband-man. He had passed the mid-mark of his life. His mustache was gray. He had four friends—his horse, his pistol, a teamster in the Indian Territory Panhandle named Skinny, and me. ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... to Virtue? This suggestion commended itself highly to her sense of humor. With a hoarse chuckle she was about to close the window when a portion of the shadow that lay alongside the chimney showed signs of life, and, rising on four long and skinny legs, became a cat—a lean, black cat, which crept meekly toward the window, its phosphorescent eyes gleaming, its lank jaws parted in a vain effort to mew. Startled, old Marg drew back for an instant; then, glancing from the animal to the pavement ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... thrust out two skinny claws to grab the piece of silver which our friend had thrown down to her. Her fierce dark eyes and beak-like nose, with the gaunt bones over which the yellow parchment-like skin was stretched tightly, gave her a fear-inspiring aspect, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... believe in her malevolent intentions, the moral effect upon him was slight. But since the affair of the candlestick and the altered clock, Birotteau would doubt no longer that he was under an eye of hatred turned fully upon him. From that moment he fell into despair, seeing everywhere the skinny, clawlike fingers of Mademoiselle Gamard ready to hook into his heart. The old maid, happy in a sentiment as fruitful of emotions as that of vengeance, enjoyed circling and swooping above the vicar ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... right. Give it." The skinny brown paw reached down for the weapon. All interest had apparently departed for the gatekeeper with the return of his knife. Barry ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... in the faint light, and there, still hooked above the guard, was a single severed finger, a long and skinny finger, to which the point of the sword Silence had played surgeon, and on it a gold ring. "This may be useful," thought Foy, as he slipped handle and finger into the pocket ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... helpless creature. She stood uncertainly before us, her skinny hands playing tremblingly with the buttons of her dress, and ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... these parts," Renwick went on, "and no mischief maker. This story interests me. I should like to know——" He paused again as the old man leaned forward toward him, and laid his skinny forefinger ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... that, after a while, I and others preferred doing without it. Such was then the amount of "luxuries" we had to depend on during our long captivity,—coarse, vitreous-looking, badly-baked bread; the ever-returning dish of skinny, tough mutton, the veteran cock, smoked butter, and bitter coffee. Tea, sugar, wine, fish, vegetables, &c., were not, either for love or money, to be obtained anywhere. The coarseness and uniformity of our food, however, was as nothing compared with our dread of being starved to death; for even ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... door must have been flung open, for a streak of light struck through a crack in the wood of the back. Creeping close and peeping through, I could see an awful sight. Lady Carwitchet in a flannel wrapper, minus hair, teeth, complexion, pointing a skinny forefinger that quivered with rage at her son, who was out of ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... A wretch like poor Nancy, So teazed day and night By a Dean and a Knight. To punish my sins, Sir Arthur begins, And gives me a wipe, With Skinny and Snipe:[2], His malice is plain, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... on the wall, swinging his skinny legs when those who had stood talking of the event had walked together down the street. Polly and Sprite had lagged behind to talk with Rose until a maid had called to Polly that Mrs. Sherwood wished them to ...
— Princess Polly's Gay Winter • Amy Brooks
... honour, if ye can understand that Misther Strhides, that's yon, ye'll be a wise man. He calls hisself a 'son of the poor'atin's,' and poor 'ating it must have been, in the counthry of his faders, to have produced so lane and skinny a baste as that same. The orders was as partic'lar as tongue of man could utter, and what good will it all do?—Ye're not to fire, says serjeant Joyce, till ye all hear the wor-r-d; and the divil of a wor-r- d did they wait for; but blaze away did they, jist becaase a knot of savages ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... circling about you and be forced to confess, "I have not found rest!" You may retire from business and say, "I will spend my declining years in peace," but as the sun goes down the bats come out and flap the black skinny wings of the sins of other days in your affrighted face. If you are a student you may drop your books like Dr. Faust and hurry to the country, but the imp of restlessness will dog your steps and snare your pathway and you will carry home with you ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... the manufacturer, laying, like the Ancient Mariner, a brown skinny hand of restraint upon Robert's arm—'na, na, never heed her. Ye maunna speyk to ilka lass 'at ye ken.—Poor thing! she's been doin' something wrang, to gang slinkin' aboot i' the gloamin' like a baukie (bat), wi' her plaid ower her heid. Dinna ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... individuality, we shall get the best notion of their method by supposing them to have taken their places in an order somewhat independent of chronology and a little different from their arrangement behind his brother. Immediately at his back, with a controlling hand (a trifle skinny) upon him, may stand his great-grandmother, while his father may be many removes arear. Or the place of power may be held by some fine old Asian gentleman who flourished before the confusion of tongues ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... point that Polly's question was heard,—Polly, who had rushed back with the winkles and put the dish into her mother's hand and caught Orlando as if she had been separated from him hours instead of minutes. And Orlando in turn put his skinny little arms about her neck. Whatever might be wrong with his inside, the malady had not reached his heart, which beat only for Polly, his great dark eyes, hollow with suffering, fixing themselves on her face with a sort ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... But whin Abdul, be damid, as th' potes call him, made th' mistake iv pokin' his head out iv th' palace 'twas diff'rent. 'Well, who d'ye think I see to-day but th' Sultan. I tell ye I did. What is he like? He ain't much to look at—a skinny little man, Osman, that ye cud sthrangle between ye'er thumb an' forefinger. He had a bad cold an' was sneezin'. He wore a hand-me-down coat. He has a wen on th' back iv his neck an' he's crosseyed. Here's a pitcher iv him.' 'What, that little ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... verses: parse, analyse, resolve into component parts! And now, will you maintain that it is good for Tommy, tear-stained, ink-bespattered little brat, to be given AEsop's Fables, Ovid's Metamorphoses to treat in like manner? Would it not be just as sensible to insist upon his practising his skinny little arms with ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... sport in running down and spearing the skinny little wild pigs, but after it was done the party returned to the city, as the experienced hunters knew there would be no ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... something which the Professor and I took to be an introduction, and he put a skinny hand ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... cadaverous visage, spotted with pimples and blue blotches of close-shaven beard,—his spectral glance of admiration through those detestable blue spectacles. She imagined that she felt the clammy touch of his long, skinny fingers, and cold, flabby palm. She reflected upon the probability, nay, the certainty, that she must marry this man, for whom she felt such an invincible repugnance, and in a frenzy of dismay and terror she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Burrell, exerting every power of his mind to the contest, was the first to move. He stepped towards the Jew, extending his hand in token of amity. Ben Israel touched it not, but raised his arm, pointing his skinny and shrivelled finger towards Burrell, until it came on a level with his countenance; then, by a desperate exertion, the cracked, strained voice forced a passage through his parched throat, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
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