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More "Supple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... face possesses the crowning charm of expression, whose slightest movement reveals the supple symmetry of her figure—less lovely because she is blessed with a good appetite, and is not ashamed to acknowledge it? With a grace all her own, Cecilia dived under the bed, and produced a basket of jam tarts, a basket of fruit and sweetmeats, a basket of sparkling ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... dunno. Sure it's agin nathur and raison. There's meself gettin' as grey as a badger, and noways that supple as I was. But me father's a terrible cliver man. You'd niver get the better of an argufyment wid him, for he wouldn't listen to a word you'd be sayin'. So you see the way of it was, the two of us is workin' this great while on Mr. Blake's lan', ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... the lime-threads, but for special provisions, would be liable to dry up, to shrivel into stiff and lifeless filaments. But the very opposite happens. At the most scorching times of the day, they continue supple, elastic and more and ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... educated for her great and important function—educated physically, intellectually, morally. Let us forecast her future. She will be well clad in clothes that allow of lithe and even development of the body; she will be taught to run, to play games, to dance, to swim; she will be supple and healthy, finely moulded and knit in limb and organ, beautiful in face and features, splendid and graceful in the native curves of her lissom figure. No cramping conventions will be allowed to cage ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... dazzlingly fair, the perfect transparent rosette lily of a red-haired beauty; the head, with hair elaborately curled and plaited close to it, and adorned with pearls, sits like that of the antique Arethusa on a long, supple, swan-like neck. A curious, at first rather conventional, artificial-looking sort of beauty, voluptuous yet cold, which, the more it is contemplated, the more it troubles and haunts the mind. Round the lady's neck is a gold chain ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... of any man who is to write is intellectual. Designedly or not, he has so far set himself up for a leader in the minds of men; and he must see that his own mind is kept supple, charitable, and bright. Everything but prejudice should find a voice through him; he should see the good in all things; where he has even a fear that he does not wholly understand, there he should be wholly silent; and he should recognise from the first that he ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had the longer reach, was gifted by the gods with a supple strength no whit less than the bearish power of the timber boss. With ten blows struck, with both men rocking dizzily, it was patently Steve Packard's fight. But a dull, dogged persistence was in Joe Woods's eyes as again he shook ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... presence of mind, Polly instantly pulled Noddy up on a mound of ground just above the reptile, and caught hold of a long supple branch of wood. In another instant she was whipping the snake until it could not tell from which direction the blows were descending—right, left, front or back! In a moment of indecision, the snake remained quiet and in that second Polly brought down her ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... a thousand lawless raids, in a few minutes you will be but a great load of carrion. It cannot be otherwise." Then I swung my lasso and sent it whistling over his head. But not so fast; he was yet far from being subdued, and, before the supple coils had fallen on his neck he seized the noose and, with one fierce chop, cut through its hard thick strands, and dropped it in ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... then, as by magic, the loveliest of smiles transfigured the dull, blank features; her round shoulders, pendulous arms, slouching pose, melted into superb symmetry, quickening with grace and youth as she straightened up and faced him, erect, supple, laughing, adorable. ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... Elliston, Esq. One of Harlow's best portraits: the likeness is admirable, and the tone well accords with Elliston's unguent, supple expression. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... King and Queene: with supple Hams And an ill-boading looke I vow'd to doo't; Yet, lest some choake-peare[205] of State-policy Shoo'd stop my throat and spoyle my drinking-pipe, See (like his cloake) I hung at the Kings elbow Till I had got his ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... the average of his tribe. His muscular limbs showed a strength and athletic training that would be the envy of any Yale man or West Pointer. His back was as straight as the proverbial ramrod and as supple as the leaf of the cocoanut palm. His eyes were brown, and fairly danced with good nature and intelligence. They were frank, too, an unusual thing with a native. All in all, he was a perfect model of ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... the elder Beaufort would realise the expectations in which his nephew had been reared. Philip's younger brother had been much with the old gentleman, and appeared to be in high favour: this brother was a man in every respect the opposite to Philip—sober, supple, decorous, ambitious, with a face of smiles and ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... skins, which were used for making hats, as well as capes and coats, the following furs and skins were formerly, or are still, exported from Canada. "Buffalo" robes—the carefully rubbed-down hides of the bison, rendered, by shaving and rubbing, so thin and supple that they could be easily folded; reindeer and musk-ox skins treated in the same way; marten or sable skins; mink (a kind of polecat); ermine (the white winter dress of the stoat); the fishing ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... water full an hour before sunrise. Cheery voices and hearty faces greet you, and there seems to be no maimed, or sick, or poor. From the simple fact that you are on the river, there is a brotherhood with every sailor. The mode is supple as the water, not like the stiff fashion of the land. Ships and shipmen soon become the "people." The other folks on shore are, to be sure, pretty numerous, but then they are ashore. Undoubtedly they are useful to provide for us who ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... opposite her. The difference was not caused by hard work or the lack of it; Rachel had worked hard all her life. It was a difference inherent in temperament. The Spencers, no matter what they did, or how hard they labored, all had plump, smooth, white hands, with firm, supple fingers; the Chiswicks, even those who toiled not, neither did they spin, had hard, knotted, twisted ones. Moreover, the contrast went deeper than externals, and twined itself with the innermost fibers of life, ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... clay, wax, butter, dough, pudding; alumina, argil; cushion, pillow, feather bed, down, padding, wadding; foam. mollification; softening &c v.. V. render soft &c adj.; soften, mollify, mellow, relax, temper; mash, knead, squash. bend, yield, relent, relax, give. plasticize'. Adj. soft, tender, supple; pliant, pliable; flexible, flexile; lithe, lithesome; lissom, limber, plastic; ductile; tractile^, tractable; malleable, extensile, sequacious^, inelastic; aluminous^; remollient^. yielding &c v.; flabby, limp, flimsy. doughy, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... his primitive race. How many people have jaws like a bull-dog, or heads like goats, rabbits, foxes, horses, or oxen. Paul is a squirrel turned into a man. He has its bright, quick eyes, its old hair, pointed nose, its small, fine, supple, active body, and a certain mysterious resemblance in his general bearing: in fact, a similarity of movements, of gestures, and of bearing which might almost be ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... their red bark and large glossy leaves tilted every way, reflected the sunshine in throbbing spangles like those one so often sees on the rippled surface of a glacier lake. But the Silver Pines were now the most impressively beautiful of all. Colossal spires two hundred feet in height waved like supple golden-rods chanting and bowing low as if in worship; while the whole mass of their long, tremulous foliage was kindled into one continuous blaze of white sun-fire. The force of the gale was such that the most steadfast monarch ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... was within its grasp, Dixon rose lithely to his feet. The protecting hood had brought a quick and complete recovery from the devastating effects of the green moon's rays. His muscles were again supple, and his brain ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... nearly the equal of the full grown tiger. The head was large, the body thick yet supple, the limbs robust. In color it was of a rich yellow, with black rings, in which stood black dots, marking ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... amazing new glory of a lover had enveloped him, he had a distinct delight in watching the myriad charming phases of her kind manner, half-sisterly, half-motherly, toward the grave-faced young man. It was all a part of the delicious change which these past few days had wrought in her, this warm and supple softness of mien, of eye and ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... that. You've a splendid figure—tall, supple, strong; you're like a Nez Perce girl I knew once.... You're a beautiful thing. ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... name was on every one's lips. From out the crowd stepped a slender faun of a youth, slim and supple as a reed. The gaily-colored breech-cloth wound about his loins supported his bolo and small knives, and in his tightly knotted long hair, glistened a creese. With silent dignity he awaited his orders. No curiosity manifested ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... He was supple and swift and flushed; his eyes (which he believed to be cynical) were candidly eager. But he was not over-gentle. He waved his hand at poor dumpy Verona and drawled: "Yes, I guess we're pretty ridiculous and disgusticulus, and I rather guess our ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... "Olives are not to be despised; oil to the limbs makes them supple; to the stomach it gives gladness. Oil, moreover, bringeth money when sold. But a daughter is the plague of a man's life. First, one has to keep away lovers; and next to find a husband; and when all ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... started, in a hired chaise, by way of Dunstable. The mere mention of the name Amersham Place made every one supple and smiling. It was plainly a great house, and my uncle lived there in style. The fame of it rose as we approached, like a chain of mountains; at Bedford they touched their caps, but in Dunstable they crawled upon their bellies. I thought the landlady would have kissed me; such a flutter of cordiality, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to the court-house, and then send him to the penitentiary, the house of correction, or some other abominable place, even if it were no worse than a tinker's shop. He was absolutely terrified at the prospect. After all his high hopes, and all his confidence in his supple limbs, the judges, the lawyers, and the constables might fetter his muscles so that he could not get away—so that he could not even run away to sea, which was his ultimate intention, whenever he could make up his ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... rest till the next man goes in! The tired arms lie with every sinew slack On the mown grass. Unbent the supple back, And elbows apt to make the leather spin Up the slow bat and round the unwary shin,— In knavish hands a most unkindly knack; But no guile shelters under the boy's black Crisp hair, frank eyes, and honest English skin. Two ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that other needle? No, you need not look for it; I must find it myself. I have to be careful where I leave my things, so that I can put my hand on them the moment I want them. Oh, here it is," picking it up with his long supple fingers, and rolling it securely ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... soul was more clearly revealed,—the veil of the temple rent wellnigh in twain,—she could read the justification of all her old worship. One of Jack's hands lay outside the sheets,—those strong, supple fingers, once so cunning in workmanship, so frank in friendship, now thinner and whiter than her own. After looking at it for some time, Lizzie gently grasped it. Jack slowly opened his eyes. Lizzie's heart began to throb; it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... knew the youth. He was a handsome, ruddy young fellow of about six and twenty, with a little spiral moustache twisted upwards in betyar fashion, flowing curly locks gathered up into a top-knot, black flashing eyes, and a bold expressive mouth, slight of build, but muscular and supple. His dress was rustic, but simple almost to affectation; you would not have found a seal on his white bulging shirt, search as you might, and he wore his cap, with a tuft of meadow-sweet in it, ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... believe the evidence of our senses, yet there stood the cunning scamp before us, with his long limbs and lank body, as supple as ever, and grinning with delight at ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... Were it not for the look we have mentioned, and which was perhaps not habitual, his appearance might have been called prepossessing. In his figure there was the grace, in his step the elasticity which come from just proportions and muscular strength. In his hand he carried a supple switch-stick, slight and innocuous to appearance, but weighted at the handle after the fashion of a life-preserver. The tone of his voice was not displeasing to the ear, though there might be something artificial in the swell ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dainty white crepe de chine frock made her look anything but a theatrical star. Grace, however, had for once departed from her favorite blue and wore a white chiffon gown whose exquisitely simple lines made the most of her slender, supple figure. The charm of early sixteen radiated from her youthful person, and she looked no older than when she had led the freshman basketball team on to victory ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... meant to cheat; yet he did cheat. Yet, even if he lied, lies help truth to live; and he must live himself; and God may have made fools for him to live on;" and many other are the twists of his defence. The poem is as lifelike in its insight into the mind of a supple cheat as it is a brilliant bit of literature; but Browning leaves the matter unconcluded, as he would not have done, I hold, had he been writing poetry. Prince Hohenstiel's defence of expediency in politics is ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... himself came in, he, too, in white gown, ready for the operation. He looked so strange; to her nervous vision, supernatural, a being from other worlds, holding the destiny of this one in those strong, supple, incisive fingers. "I don't suppose you'll enjoy this much," he said, "but you'd better get used to them. Karl may need you to do some of this for him, and you wouldn't like it ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... the woods, but not far from one another and in a parallel direction, so that they could see each other. Among the ferns between the pine trees could be seen fluttering the vari-colored skirt and yellow kerchief of Kasya. The slender, supple maiden seemed to float amid the berry-laden bushes, mosses and ferns. You would say it was some fairy wila or rusalka of the woods; every moment she stooped and stood erect again, and so, further and further, passing the pine trees, she entered deeper into the ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... by striking the ground with my forehead, according to the custom of the country; but if there is a company of a hundred despots, I am exposed to repeating this ceremony a hundred times a day, which in the long run is very annoying if one's hocks are not supple. If I have a farm in the neighbourhood of one of our lords, I am crushed; if I plead against a relation of the relations of one of our lords, I am ruined. What is to be done? I fear that in this world one is reduced to being either hammer or anvil; lucky the man who escapes ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... he to be the founder of a Literary and Historical Society. Lord Dalhousie—who was a really excellent man—although a blundering governor in Lower Canada, where he had such men as Neilson, Stuart, Papineau and even the supple Vallieres to thwart him—and anxious to benefit the colony as much as he could at once took the hint. He founded it in Quebec, and became its patron. It was founded for the purpose of investigating points of history, immediately ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... —Oh, that cursed, nimble, supple serpent and lurking-witch! Where art thou gone? But in my face do I feel through thy hand, two ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... beautiful body so," whispered Chunda Lal, "that is straight and supple as the willow branch. O, Miska"—his voice trembled emotionally and he that had been but a moment since so fierce stood abashed before her—"for you I become as the meanest and the lowest; for ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... Russia had become a supple implement in the hands of the German Kaiser, the sovereign who for nearly twenty years had been striving toward one goal by a hundred ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... Book Department—which is to ordinary English bookshops like a liner to a houseboat—that I first realised how intense is the interest which America takes in foreign contemporary literature. In England the translation has a certain vogue —Mrs. Garnett's supple and faithful renderings of Turgenev, Tolstoi, Dostoievski, and Tchekov have, for example, a great following—but we do not adventure much beyond the French and the Russians; whereas I learn that English versions ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... upon his richly caparisoned steed, pinching at his long, blue-shaven chin with supple fingers, his heavy brows drawn low, of a sudden his narrowed lids widened and his eyes gleamed bright and black as they beheld my Beltane standing in the ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... ripped open the letter with a hairpin and curled her supple figure in a roomy curve of the divan. Her hair, unloosened, fell in a thick, black cascade down ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... was all Svenson needed. He was putting up the fight of his life. It was a beautiful demonstration of Scandinavian defense methods—one man unarmed against five with knives and clubs! His huge arms were working like flails. His powerful, supple body bent and heaved this way and that with powerful sweeps as he met the incessant attack. As fast as they came at him he sent them ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... said Too-che, moving slim and supple as a panther to sit protectively beside the little cradle of bent ash bows lashed together with strips of hide. "He talks like a man grown, and ...
— The Sun King • Gaston Derreaux
... visiting us, we could not recognise any of those we saw on the southern water. One of the natives was a very amusing little fellow, rather less than five feet high, having a very peculiar and comical countenance and antics that would have eclipsed Liston in his best days, and as supple in the movements of his joints as any clown on the stage. He imitated every movement we made, and burlesqued them to a very high degree, causing great laughter to his companions and us. He seems to be the buffoon of the tribe. The other natives delighted in making sport of him, ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... until February 1916 that they went abroad. After three months of intensive training they were hardened, supple, and skillful. But their military education was not yet complete. Commanders of armies know that raw or semi-raw troops are worse than useless in modern warfare. Soldiers in these days must know their ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... Praxiteles might have so expressed the Genius of Eternal Repose; but no Greek sculptor would have given that huge girth to the thorax, or have exaggerated the mighty hand with such delight in sinewy force. These qualities, peculiar to Buonarroti's sense of form, do not detract from the languid pose and supple rhythm of the figure, which flows down, a sinuous line of beauty, through the slightly swelling flanks, along the finely moulded thighs, to loveliest feet emerging from the marble. It is impossible, while gazing on this statue, not to hear a strain of intellectual music. ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... were a dozen armed men. They wore the same beaked helmets, the supple encasing breast- and back-plates, but their leggings were gray. They, too, carried curved swords, but the weapons were still latched to their belts and they made no move to draw them in spite of the very patent hostility of ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... approach of her distinguished visitor by an advance rendered as obvious as possible by the rustling sweep of the parted curtains and an unwonted emphasis of tread, which avoided the rugs and sought the tesselated floor for this purpose, the supple figure stood erect and in an attitude of questioning deference awaited whatever demonstration might follow this apparently not ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... Man at his birth is supple and weak; at his death, firm and strong. (So it is with) all things. Trees and plants, in their early growth, are soft and brittle; at their death, ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... Ortega y Gasset, to the sober sentences of the Rector of the University of Salamanca, Miguel de Unamuno, writing with a restraint which is anything but traditionally Castilian, and to the journalistic impressionism of Ramiro de Maeztu, supple and cosmopolitan from long residence abroad. The poets now jettisoned the rotundities of the romantic and emotional schools of Zorrilla and Salvador Rueda, and substituted instead the precise, pictorial line of Ruben Dario, Juan Ramon Jimenez, ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... bewildering beauty. These willows never attain to the dignity of trees; they have no rigid trunks; they remain humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft outline, swaying on slender stems that answer to the least pressure of the wind; supple as grasses, and so continually shifting that they somehow give the impression that the entire plain is moving and alive. For the wind sends waves rising and falling over the whole surface, waves of leaves instead of waves of water, green swells like the sea, too, until the branches ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... performance would have been too divine for a mortal." Her beauty was so marked, so singular, that wherever she appeared—at the ball, the theatre—it caused a sensation; all turned to look at her and admire in subdued astonishment. Her form was said to be marvellously elegant and supple, her neck of an exquisite perfection, her mouth "deliciously small and pink, her teeth veritable pearls set in coral, her arms splendidly moulded, her eyes full of sweetness and admiration, her nose most attractive in its regularity, her physiognomy candid and spiritual, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... hand be not a European one, then may it come, bronzed, keen, and supple from the tropic calm! The birds of the ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... classed him amongst the best of the native Princes who go to England for their training, and on that very account, would have feared the more for his future. Shere Ali was now just twenty-four, he was tall, spare of body and wonderfully supple of limbs, and but for a fulness of the lower lip, which was characteristic of his family, would have been reckoned ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... gradually obtained the chairs in the universities, and took the lead in the murder of their fellow creatures through the inquisition. What a temptation to brawling mendicants, too lazy to earn a living, authorized to beg, and the supple tools of political leaders; and all this by a mysterious society, under the guise and pretence of the Christian religion! Laic tools for ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... none of his frinds and relations to lamint iver him, or wake him, but his poor heartbroken mother—Och hone! och hone! that I should ever live to see this day. Get up, my fine bhoy—get up wid ye! Why do you lie there?—owlder folk nor you are abroad in the sunshine.—Get up, and show them how supple you are!" ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... He remained motionless for a moment, then, with nervous haste threw off his shirt, and trousers. Marshal Stone, chancing to look that way, was astonished to see his companion naked, poised at the water's edge. He had time to note with admiration the splendid figure, still supple and strongly muscled despite the four-score years. Then Uncle Dick leaped, and dived. It was long seconds before he reappeared, only to dive again. He paid no attention to the marshal's remonstrances. Only when he was convinced of the ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... attributed to his release in 1672, three years before Barlow became a bishop, has been dispelled by the recently discovered warrant. The dates and circumstances are now found to tally. The warrant for Bunyan's apprehension bears date March 4, 1675. On the 14th of the following May the supple and time-serving Barlow, after long and eager waiting for a mitre, was elected to the see of Lincoln vacated by the death of Bishop Fuller, and consecrated on the 27th of June. Barlow, a man of very dubious churchmanship, who had succeeded in keeping ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... and sightless, the other yellow like a fox's; but the fellow was straight, supple, and clean-timbered as a fresh-hewn mast. With a "huh-huh," he gabbled ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... I love this figure's supple swinging In rhythm of its bridal song, Of strength and life-joy daily singing With youthful yearnings deep and long. I love this foot so lightly bearing The glory of sure victory Through youth's domain of merry daring To meet first-love ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... at all decent about it, she would have forgiven me at once; but, ah me! I never saw her move so quickly as when she went out the back door and broke off a supple green apple switch. After making most vigorous use of it she sent me to my room, with the remark, 'It fortunately comes natural ...
— Harper's Young People, July 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... such a frankness in his urgency, such amiable kindliness, that Mrs. Pasmer could not feel that it was pushing. She looked at her daughter, but she stood as passive in the transaction as the elder Mavering. She was taller than her mother, and as she waited, her supple figure described that fine lateral curve which one sees in some Louis Quinze portraits; this effect was enhanced by the fashion of her dress of pale sage green, with a wide stripe or sash of white dropping down the front, from her delicate ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... health. In cases of chronic and acute diseases, in their severest forms, we have changed the secretions, renewed structure, and restored health; have elongated shortened limbs, relaxed rigid muscles, made cicatrized joints supple; restored carious bones to healthy conditions, renewed that which is termed the lost substance of the lungs; and restored healthy organizations where disease was organic instead ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and as black as if they had been painted on the ivory of that tempting neck. A plum-colored merino dress, with a plain back and tight sleeves, skillfully made by herself, covered a bust so dainty and supple, that the young girl never wore a corset—for economy's sake. An ease and unusual freedom in the smallest action of the shoulders and body, resembling the facile, undulating motions of a cat, evinced this peculiarity. Imagine a gown fitting tightly to a form rounded and ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... went back to the house, and after a moment or two Frank Halton struggled to a sitting posture, and slipped out on to the grass. He was of medium height and rather slender in build, but the supple ease and grace of his movements gave the impression of great physical strength: even his descent from the hammock was not an awkward performance. His face and hands were of very dark complexion, either from constant exposure to wind and sun, or, as his black ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... or awkward or stiff; especially those produced by the English. Owing to one or the other of these defects, those representations were not true to nature. Now we have, in an English poem, a number of human beings, drawn from the original, whose movements are supple, whose types are as varied as in real life, depicted exactly as they were in their sentiments and in their dress, so that it seems we see them, and when we part the connection is not broken. The acquaintances made at ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... again. They must not only be born again but they must be born again each one of them of a new father and of a new mother and of a different line of ancestry for many generations before their minds could become supple enough to learn anew. The only thing to do with them was to humour them and make the best of them till they died—and be thankful ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... life fresh and vigorous. It grows rapidly. The shoots are long and straight. The wood is smooth and fair and supple. The leaves are usually large. It is good to see the young trees acquire size ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... strength, of Achilles; but Achilles adds to vigor of arm incomparable swiftness of foot. The mastiff is stout, brave, trusty, intelligent, but the hound outruns him; and this greyhound of modern oratory, deep-chested, light-limbed, supple, elastic, elegant, powerful, must be accredited with his own special superiorities. Or taking a cue from the tales of chivalry, we might say that he is the Sir Launcelot of the platform, in all but Sir Launcelot's sin; and woe to the knight against whom in full ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... was a student and his tastes were delicate, still he did not frown upon our rude sports, provided they were not low or brutal. "They make the body erect and supple and give strength and elasticity to the muscles. The body should be cultivated as well as the mind. What we want is a sound mind in ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... Contes de la Bcasse and Bel Ami were published were somewhat astonished at his appearance. He was solidly built, rather short and had a resolute, determined air, rather unpolished and without those distinguishing marks of intellect and social position. But his hands were delicate and supple, and beautiful shadows ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... which indeed is a fine quality when natural but not when affected. Sound bodies, with a healthy condition of blood, and strong by exercise, receive their beauty from the very things from which they receive their strength. They are fresh-colored, active, and supple, neither too much nor too little in flesh. Paint and polish them with feminine cosmetics, and admiration ceases; the very pains taken to make them appear more beautiful add to the dislike we conceive for them. Yet a magnificent, and suitable, dress adds authority to ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... is so soft, as it were made on purpose to take hearts, and handle them without hurting! These taper fingers too, and even joints so supple, that methinks I mould them as they pass through mine: nay, in my conscience, though it be nonsense to say it, your hand ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... supple, limber, lithesome, lithe, flexile, malleable; irresolute, yielding, facile, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... again my arm encircled those soft yielding shoulders; the warm agitated bosom was touching mine; my hands held, and felt within it, the smooth muscles of the white arm—a vision of the whole indefinably supple form swam giddily before me in a suffocating proximity, till I pressed my hands on my eyes, and the thought came involuntarily,—Is ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... whom he had to deal, and then assumed them. He practised this art mainly upon personages of exalted station, for his scheme was to govern the world by acquiring dominion over its anointed rulers. A smooth and supple slave in appearance, but, in reality, while his power lasted, the despot of his masters, he exercised boundless control by enacting their parts with such fidelity that they were themselves deceived. It is impossible not ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... had dressed and dined, he soaked his hands in hot water to make them supple, and played Beethoven till far into ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... I learnt when I was with old Nat Fire-eater. And I'm stiffer in the joints and weightier in the heft than I was in those days when I slept in the fields, and fasted more than ever Holy Church meant. But, heigh ho! I ought to be supple enough after the practice of these three days. Moreover, if it could loose a fool's tongue to have a king and queen for interpreters, I had them—for there were our Harry and Moll catching at every gibe as fast as my brain could hatch it, and rendering it into French as best thy might, carping and ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... over to one of the grand-stand seats, as he spoke, and sat down, leaning on the rail with an easy movement of his supple figure. That was the first characteristic strangers usually noted in him: an exquisite Hellenic grace of strength and faultless proportion. He was a man's beauty, as distinguished from a beauty-man; other men were given to admiring him extravagantly ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... a moment longer." Kathleen's slender, supple fingers played with a piece of toast. "You need not bother to conceal the newspapers, Dad," as Whitney surreptitiously tucked the Herald and the Post behind his back. "I read them up in ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... Indians in what is almost the very centre of South America. If any traveller or ethnologist knows of a tribe elsewhere that plays a similar game, I wish he would let me know. To play it demands great activity, vigor, skill, and endurance. Looking at the strong, supple bodies of the players, and at the number of children roundabout, it seemed as if the tribe must be in vigorous health; yet the Parecis have decreased in numbers, for measles and smallpox ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... Stineli meanwhile quietly replaced every thing in the cupboard; for she knew well enough, without being told, how such work should be done. Then she seated herself by Silvio's bedside, and made shadow pictures on the wall with her supple fingers; and Silvio laughed aloud, and called the names,—"A hare! A beast with horns! A ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... the roses of her spring hat was ravishing. The aunt had never been pretty; and, moreover, her bloom had gone, but she was well dressed, and her thin figure was full of grace. She sat in her chair with delicate erectness, the folds of her gray gown was disposed over her supple length of limb with charming effect. She also had a sort of eager, almost appealing amiability. It was ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... into possession of a whole block in the portion of the city known as "New Town." His prosperity did not, however, lessen his activity; he forgot that he was getting old, for his limbs were yet supple and his eyes perfectly clear. He measured off his lumber and drove nails with the strength and accuracy of a young man; yet, as death lurks in every passing breeze, feeling well is no evidence of sound health ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... the Indians, the French voyageur on the St. Lawrence had several marked advantages over his English and Dutch neighbors. By temperament he was better adapted than they to be a pioneer of trade. No race was more supple than his own in conforming its ways to the varied demands of place and time. When he was among the Indians, the Frenchman tried to act like one of them, and he soon developed in all the arts of forest life a skill which rivaled that of ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... Rome, seize upon the fugitive, and drag him before some heartless and perfidious "Judge," for authority to send him back to Colosse? Did he hurry his victim away from the presence of the fat and supple magistrate, to be driven under chains and the lash to the field of unrequited toil, whence he had escaped? Had the apostle been like some teachers in the American churches, he might, as a professor ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... riding across the moor behind them. She was mounted on one of the Orme horses, was habited by Redfern, who had done justice to her superb and supple figure, and the sunlight which poured from between the clouds fully revealed the statuesque ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... turned and fled, scudding with an unthinkable swift beating of her white feet and fraying of her white garments, towards the church. Like a hound the young man was after her, leaping the steps and swinging past her father, his supple haunches working like those of a hound that bears down on ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... a material fungus without Mind to help him? Is a stiff joint or a contracted muscle as much a result of law as the supple and 161:1 elastic condition of the healthy limb, and ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... it. The fact is that the tastes are never so tolerant, so liberal, so generous, so supple as they are at that time of life when they begin, according to your notion, to stiffen, to harden, to contract. We have in this very period formed a new taste—or taken a new lease of an old one—for reading history, which had been dormant all through our first and second youth. We ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... he condescended. "Measured by our standard he must needs seem puny—as, indeed, what king of them all, Christian or Pagan, would not?" His manner so far had been in agreement with his supple companion, but suddenly a change came over his temper, and he turned on Hildebrand a frown so coldly menacing that the favorite ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... is by my own experience, and by that of several amongst you, as well as by many who are now no more, and with whom I was acquainted. Believe me, gentlemen! to pretend to the favours of fortune it is only necessary to render one's self useful, and to be supple and obsequious to those who are in possession of credit and authority; to be handsome in one's person; to adulate the powerful; to smile, while you suffer from them every kind of ridicule and contempt whenever they shall do you the honour to amuse themselves with you; never to be frightened ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... their chain, did not stir; those who were dead, being prevented from falling, formed an obstruction with their corpses; and the great bronze line widened and contracted in turn, as supple as a serpent, and as impregnable as a wall. The Barbarians would come to re-form behind it, pant for a minute, and then set off again with the fragments of their weapons ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... very bad, almost deprived me of the hopes of his life; but by rest and constant sucking and licking it, which was the only remedy we had to apply, except green leaves chewed, that I laid to it by his direction, to supple and cool it, he soon began to be able to ride upon the muletto, and sometimes ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... life was in it, All its mystery and magic, All the lightness of the birch tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the larch's supple sinews, And it floated on the river Like a yellow leaf ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... altitudes. With the aid of a balancing-rod he walked the rope blindfolded; with baskets on his feet; sometimes he wheeled persons over in a wheelbarrow. He was a man of about thirty, short, but wonderfully muscled and extremely supple. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... face? She swung impatiently from the rail. She hated abstruse problems, and not the least of these was that which would confront her when she returned to America. She began to promenade the deck, still cluttered with luggage over which the Lascar stewards were moiling. Many a glance followed the supple pleasing figure of the girl as she passed round and round the deck. Other promenaders stepped aside or permitted her to pass between. The resolute uplift of the chin, and the staring dark eyes which saw but inner visions, impressed them with ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... top of his speed. To stand still, or to go cautiously in pursuit, is to allow the salmon to run out with an enormous length of line; the line is submerged—technically speaking, drowned—in the water, the strain of the supple rod is removed from the fish, who finds the hook loose in his mouth, and rubs it off against the bottom of the river. Thus speed of foot, in water or over rocks, is a necessary quality in the angler; at least in the northern angler. By the banks of the Usk a contemplative man who likes ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... and tames with fear and danger A bright beast of a fiery kin, Only to mar, only to change her Sleek supple ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... rejecting animals for slaughter is their general condition. This means that they should be of the proper weight,—that is, not emaciated, but with a proper amount of fat,—that the flesh should be firm and elastic and the skin supple. Nor should they be either too young or too old. A prominent example of the first error is in the sale of calves under three weeks old, known as "bob-veal," and while some sanitarians will not object to eating calves under three weeks old, the consensus of opinion is ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... birth and education, Greek also in subtle thought and philosophic insight, in oratorical power and supple statesmanship. Though born almost within the shadow of the mighty temple of Serapis at Alexandria, he shows few signs of Coptic influence. Deep as is his feeling of the mystery of revelation, he has no love of mystery for its own sake, nothing of the Egyptian ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... and flexing of her long, supple body the Violet picked up the business-like copy of the Violet manuscript which Mr. Adolph Meyers had sent her instead of the beribboned, purple "Renunciation of Rosalind," and began to read the first page when the telephone beside her bed rang with a soft tinkle. ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... burned to the right when at a distance of about a hundred yards. This was a great disappointment, so the major, rather than be balked altogether, tried a long shot and broke the animal's fore-leg. Then, running after him at a pace which even the supple natives could not equal, he got close up and sent a ball into his head, which stunned him; but it took four additional shots to ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Russian Gipsies in the language of fiction in his "Interpreter" as follows:—"The morning sun smiles upon a motley troop journeying towards the Danube. Two or three lithe, supple urchins, bounding and dancing along with half-naked bodies, and bright black eyes shining through knotted elf-locks, form the advanced guard. Half-a-dozen donkeys seem to carry the whole property of the ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... she was conscious of the theatricalities from which she had emerged, of the man so close beside her, still waiting for her play-acting word of decision. It was only then, too, that she fully understood the adroitness, the smooth and supple alertness, of her ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... the sleek and shining young bitch whose beauty had aroused so much enthusiasm in the minds of all judges who had seen her at Shaws. An uninformed outsider would scarcely have recognized her as the satin-coated beauty whose supple grace had so impressed Finn a few months back, in the walled inclosure above ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... England on his way to Versailles," and governed it in the interest of the Dutch Coalition. Queen Anne and the first Georges reigned but did not govern; and in the early eighteenth century power fell to men of supple intelligence and complacent conviction—to Marlborough and little Sidney Godolphin, to Harley and St. John and Sunderland, and at last to Robert Walpole, the very personification of the shrewd curiosity, the easy-going morals, the ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... of a Dutch china figure. On her left nostril was a little mole, another on the right side of her chin, where curled a few hairs so much like the color of the skin that they could hardly be seen. She was tall, with a well-developed chest and supple waist. Her clear voice sometimes sounded too shrill, but her merry laugh made everyone around her feel happy. She had a way of frequently putting both hands to her forehead, as though to ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... in an agony. Her foolish words set wasps about his head. "For the love of Allah, let Iskender anger no man, but be supple, politic, and so respected. Now that he is cast off by your Brutestants, there is nothing for it but he must become a dragoman. The Englishman of whom I spoke is but a step. He has need of all men's favour, and must court ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... and wearisome trial, And cares oppressed the constant earl; His lifelong companions were pain and sorrow, And winter-cold weeping: his ways were oft hard, 5 After Nithhad had struck the strong man low, Cut the supple sinew-bands of the sorrowful earl. That has passed ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... is darkness, save the sheen Glazed on it by the moon. Within she lies Her supple shape relaxed, in dreamful rest, And folds contentment babelike to her breast, Whose beauteous heaving, even and serene, Beats mortal time to ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... this out some day, got up sprucely with a new toga, all in white, with your birthday ring on at last, perched up on a high seat, after gargling your supple throat by a liquid process of tuning, with a languishing roll of your wanton eye. At this you may see great brawny sons of Rome all in a quiver, losing all decency of gesture and command of voice, as the strains glide into their very bones, and the marrow ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... in France, even while two dull Bourbon kings were stupidly trying to turn back the hands on the dial of time, and while an Orleans, with more supple neck, was posing as a popular sovereign. During all this tiresome interlude the real fact was developing. A Republican sentiment which had existed vaguely in the air was materializing, consolidating, into a more and more tangible reality in the minds ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... foot on a bronze bar of the fender as if to warm it, took off her gloves, and drew over her head the gold chain from which her bejeweled scent-bottle hung. It gave me a quite indescribable pleasure to watch the feline grace of every movement; the supple grace a cat displays as it adjusts its toilette in the sun. She looked at herself in the mirror and said aloud ill-humoredly—'I did not look well this evening, my complexion is going with alarming rapidity; perhaps I ought to keep earlier hours, and give up this life of dissipation. Does Justine ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... a distance from the fire, for it was blazing merrily, but her face was flushed by its radiant heat, its lurid blaze made a fine background for the supple, swaying beauty of her slim young body. She raised her arms high, high above her head, with that same genuineness of gesture, graceful and appealing, which he had seen in all her movements from the first and then clasped them ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... had to deal, and then assumed them. He practised this art mainly upon personages of exalted station, for his scheme was to govern the world by acquiring dominion over its anointed rulers. A smooth and supple slave in appearance, but, in reality, while his power lasted, the despot of his masters, he exercised boundless control by enacting their parts with such fidelity that they were themselves deceived. It is impossible not to admire the facility with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... save by one little dog that had just expired at the side of her bed, for its body was warm and supple." ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... as watchful and warlike as herself, and many times as strong. Blows were struck and returned, keen and sudden as lightning. The 'hammer of the Scots,' wielded by the English kings, had smitten, and under its blows the race had been welded together and wrought to a temper like steel, supple upon occasion to bend, but elastic and unbreakable, and with ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... work-driven life Meggy Higgins had wanted a horse, a beautiful, sleek animal with supple limbs and shining coat like the one that she was riding now—Betty's Nigger. Many have desired a fortune, some political fame, others social position, but Meggy merely desired a horse. And even this had been denied her because her father had been dazzled by the lure of gold, a fortune ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... an Indian climate, and the persecution of claimants to her hand. She was golden and white, like an autumnal birch-tree—yellow hair, with warm-toned streaks in it, shading a fabulously fair skin. Then, too, she was tall, of a nervous build, supple and proud in motion, a brilliant horsewoman, and a most distinguished sitter in an easy drawing-room chair, which is, let me impress upon you, no mean quality. After riding out for hours with a sweet ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fortunate enough to see him as he passed up by the side of William, as tall as the Duke, and no less erect—of far slighter bulk, but with a strength almost equal, to a practised eye, in his compacter symmetry and more supple grace,—from those who saw him thus, an admiring murmur rose; for no men in the world so valued and cultivated personal advantages ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dance from Brandon; and was able to teach it also, though I lacked practice to make my step perfect. The princess had needed no practice, but had danced beautifully from the first, her strong young limbs and supple body taking as naturally to anything requiring grace of movement as a cygnet ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... characteristic inconquerable shyness, as he advanced to Miss Forbis, plainly unconscious of any presence save hers, Trixie's observant green eyes saw him bend his towering head, and sweep his right arm out and down with slow Oriental stateliness, bringing back the supple hand to touch breast, lips and brow. Whether or not he had raised the hem of Katharine's skirt to his lips and kissed it, Lady Wastwood could not definitely determine. She was left with the impression that ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... Assemblies, and outward callings of men, planting our faith one while in the old Convocation House, and another while in the Chapel at Westminster; when all the faith that shall be there canonized is not sufficient, without plain convincement and the charity of patient instruction, to supple the least bruise of conscience, to edify the meanest Christian who desires to walk in the spirit and not in the letter of human trust, for all the number of voices that can there be made—no, though Harry the Seventh himself there, with ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... moved on as he spoke, and the Doctor moved with him, for his arm was still clasped by the stranger's strong supple fingers. But ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... and build and partially bald-headed; what little hair he has is very grey; he has keen eyes; his eyesight is very good; he has never had to wear glasses. He is as supple as one half his age; it is readily demonstrated as he runs, jumps and yells while attending the games of his favorite pastimes, baseball and football. Wherever the Edward Waters College football team goes, there "Parson" wants to go also. Whenever the crowd at a game hears ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... is foul! With naked arms, white breast, and ebon locks, And big black eyes that dart the humid flame Which sets the heart ablaze; and red moist lips, And checks as spotless as the falling flake Ere it has touched the earth, and supple form Wherein is knit each grace of womanhood In its perfection! and with wanton looks That speak the burning language of desire, It seems to woo its loathsome follower,— Yet ever from his foul embraces ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... officially, by suspending my report of Oct. 18th, 1837, on the debt claims against the Indians, finally assumed powers in relation to them, directly subversive of the principles of the treaty of March 28th, 1836, which had been negotiated by me, and referred them for revision to a more supple agent of his wishes at New York, who had been one of the efficient actors in the "goods offer" at Green ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... he cried exultantly. He reached out his fingers—and then something shot from the car, something lithe and supple, something that gripped the little man by the throat and hurled him ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... which she wore only once a week, walked along erect, with her squeezed-in waist, her broad shoulders and prominent hips, swinging herself a little. She wore a hat trimmed with flowers, made by a milliner at Yvetot, and displayed the back of her full, round, supple neck, reddened by the sun and air, on which fluttered little ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... dog and a mongrel boy and rendering himself responsible for their destinies, Paragot must now saddle himself with a young woman. Had she been a beautiful gipsy, holding fascinating allurements in lustrous eyes and pomegranate lips, and witchery in a supple figure, the act would have been a commonplace of human weakness. But in the case of poor Blanquette, squat and coarse, her heavy features only redeemed from ugliness by youth, honesty and clean teeth, the eternal attraction ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... hard, with all the strength of her lithe and supple body. Above his cheek-bone a red streak leaped out where the sharp ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... the way to manage him. I felt my advantage at once. His supple nature was one which yielded to roughness far more readily than to entreaty. He flushed with shame, and his eyes filled with tears. But MacCoy saw my advantage also, and was determined that I ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rather ruefully, Hermia thought, and took her place upon the mat, where, under Luigi's direction, she went through the exercises which were to keep her young limbs supple for the approaching performances. It was the familiar thing—the slow bending of the back until the palms of the hands touched the ground, in which position the child walked backward and forward, the contortions of the ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... journey up that corkscrew footpath, inch-deep in running water, that led to the ordinary levels of life. Desmond kept his post by Lenox's head and shoulders, sheltering him still with the discarded coat, and clinging to the track's edge with supple, stockinged feet. But there was no preventing jars and jolts arising from broken ground, and the difficulty of carrying a litter at an almost impossible angle. Half-way up they caught sight of Dr O'Malley,—a ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... slight gesture of indifference and moved away slowly and listlessly, as though fatigued by the mere effort of speech. Miss Leigh noted this with some concern, watching her as she went, and admiring the supple grace of her small figure, the well-shaped little head so proudly poised on the slim throat, and the burnished sheen ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... a grip o' the rod, my lad," said the forester; and, catching the long supple wand from the boy's hand, he stood thinking for a few moments winding in a few yards of ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... prophet or a seer, and when Kahauiti rose to his full height, six feet and a half, he was as majestic as a man in diadem and royal robes. He had a giant form, like one of Buonarroti's ancients, muscular and supple, graceful and erect. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... man rose again. He was a little above medium height, with dark crisp hair and a sallow complexion. His figure and features gave the impression of metallic virility: they were at once hard, supple, clean-cut, and finely moulded. His mouth was a little full, and his jaw perhaps a trifle heavy, but the deep thoughtful eyes gave a balance to his face which saved it from ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... there with golden gleams where the sunshine fell upon it. Her face, browned somewhat, was yet very white on the forehead, and the cheeks had the crimson flush of health. She wore a dress of homemade linsey dyed red, and its close fit suggested the curves of her supple, splendid young figure. She walked with strong elastic step toward the spring that gushed from a hillside, and which after a short course fell ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... her vaguely uneasy. Was it a cat he resembled, crouching there in front of her? No, there was nothing domestic about him though she had a feeling that he could purr when he was pleased. Yes, there was undoubtedly something feline about him, a supple grace, a noiselessness, a guile, that made her aware of the necessity for caution in her dealings with him. This was a man of many subtleties—she knew it instinctively—a man of tigerish temperament, harmless as a kitten in sunshine, merciless as a fiend in storm. Yes, he was certainly ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... vast wilderness has given them athletic, supple bodies, which they handle to a nicety when fighting. Although the Moros build stone forts and mount them with old-fashioned cannon; although their arsenals are fairly well supplied with Remingtons and Mausers, their warriors generally prefer to fight with bolos. These weapons never ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... I let her suffer so, that I did not break down the partition with my hands and strike that supple gentleman dead at her feet in atonement for the anguish he was causing her. But I had a mind to see how far he would drive this game ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... north, south, and finally up into the sky. Seeing nobody, the silly expression left his otherwise interesting face; a graver, gentler light grew in his eyes. And he put one arm around her supple waist. ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... the wind fluttered a gust of whirling leaves beside him, he leaped aside and stood with high head, staring, transformed in the instant into a creature of fire and wire-strung nerves. The rider gave to the side- spring with supple grace and then sent the ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... Nyssia was of a perfection rare even in Greece and antique Asia. The great toe, a little apart like the thumb of a bird, the other toes, slightly long, and all ranged in charming symmetry, the nails well shaped and brilliant as agates, the ankles well rounded and supple, the heel slightly tinted with a rosy hue—nothing was wanting to the perfection of the little member. The leg attached to this foot, and which gleamed like polished marble under the lamp-light, was irreproachable ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... full beard, and is draped from head to foot in the garb of an Eastern monarch. But the sculptors of a later period represent him as a youth of singular beauty, though of somewhat effeminate appearance; the expression of the countenance is gentle and winning; the limbs are supple and gracefully moulded; and the hair, which is adorned by a wreath of vine or ivy leaves, falls over the shoulders in long curls. In one hand he bears the Thyrsus, and in the other a drinking-cup with two handles, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... undoubtedly have classed him amongst the best of the native Princes who go to England for their training, and on that very account, would have feared the more for his future. Shere Ali was now just twenty-four, he was tall, spare of body and wonderfully supple of limbs, and but for a fulness of the lower lip, which was characteristic of his family, would have been reckoned more ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... with an expression of careless defiance in her face, and reappeared in five minutes in the dress of a Mexican peasant girl attired for a fete. The dress suited her admirably. She was rather above the middle height, her figure lithe and supple with exceptionally graceful curves; her head was admirably poised on her neck. Her hair was very dark, and her complexion Spanish rather than French. Her father was from Marseilles and ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... them, they remained curved like talons, and I believed I had lost their use, and even reckoned they would snap off and so set up a mortification, till by much diligent rubbing I grew sensible of a small glow which, increasing, ended in rendering the joints supple. ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... dissipated by little and little, the Salts disengaging from the Sulphurs, manifest themselves, the Acid appears, which is the fruitful Source of Chronick Diseases. The Ligaments, the Tendons, and the Cartilages have scarce any of the Unctuosity left, which render'd them so supple and so pliant in Youth. The Skin grows wrinkled as well within as without; in a word, all the solid ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... watched him. For two or three minutes he looked at the picture in silence, and she thought his expression had become slightly hostile. His audacious and rather thick lips were set together firmly, almost too firmly. His splendid figure supple, athletic and harmonious, looked almost rigid. She wondered what he was feeling, whether he disliked the portrait of the judge of the Criminal Court at which he was looking. Finally ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... grove and the mountain stream That gathers to the valley far below, The black-winged junks on the dim sea reach, adream, The pale blue firmament o'er banks of snow. And her, more fair, more supple smooth than jade, Gleaming among the dark red woods I follow: Now lingering, now as a bird afraid Of pirate wings she seeks the haven hollow. Vague, and beyond the daylight of recall, Into the cloudland past my spirit flies, As though before the ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... if I were to marry a man that loot himsel' be thrashed by Tommy Potts, a great supple wi' a back nae stiffer than a willy brand? . . . When one comes to close quarters wi' him ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... slender—there is a supple grace about her even now—she has shapely feet and hands. She is a brunette of the most pronounced type, with a skin like creamy velvet, just touched on either ripe cheek with a peach-like glow, and with lips like cherries. You know without seeing her laugh, that she has very white ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... tell! She went to the well— The time was as close to eve as to dawn— To Chickamy Chick, So supple and slick, The clock said "Tick!" But when she came back ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... the middle height, slender, supple, rosy-lipped, and coquettish to distraction. Her pretty mouth dimpled round with smiles at every word it uttered. Her very eyes laughed. Her hair, which was more adorned than concealed by a tiny muslin cap that clung by some unseen ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... this Chair, Sir (as I conceive it), relies on the courage of the young. As Literature is an Art and therefore not to be pondered only, but practised, so ours is a living language and therefore to be kept alive, supple, active in all honourable use. The orator can yet sway men, the poet ravish them, the dramatist fill their lungs with salutary laughter or purge their emotions by pity or terror. The historian 'superinduces upon events the charm of order.' The novelist—well, even the novelist has his ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... distinguished officers by his tall, straight figure and quick movements, was the Chevalier La Corne St. Luc, supple as an Indian, and almost as dark, from exposure to the weather and incessant campaigning. He was fresh from the blood and desolation of Acadia, where France, indeed, lost her ancient colony, but St. Luc reaped a full sheaf of glory at Grand Pre, in the Bay ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... stunned; but I have often maintained, that it is better he should retain his own manner. Pliability of address I conceive to be inconsistent with that majestick power of mind which he possesses, and which produces such noble effects. A lofty oak will not bend like a supple willow. ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... somewhere within the noise of a chair pushed back, and a door farther down the passage opened outwards, disclosing Laura Filbert with her hand upon the handle. She made a supple, graceful picture. "Good-evening, Mr. Lindsay," she said as he advanced. "Won't you come in?" She clung to the handle until he had passed into the room, then she closed the door after him. "I was expecting you," she said. "Mr. ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... making circular wooden discs by slicing the trunk of a pine-tree across. When darkness had fallen, they kindled the bonfire, and then, as it blazed up, they lighted the discs at it, and, after swinging them to and fro at the end of a stout and supple hazel-wand, they hurled them one after the other, whizzing and flaming, into the air, where they described great arcs of fire, to fall at length, like shooting-stars, at the foot of the mountain.[411] In many parts of Alsace and Lorraine the midsummer fires ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... obeyed as if she were the mistress herself. And handsome clothes with constant change of fine underclothing, not to mention meat and drink—hardly anything of what she was accustomed to call work, her hands had already become quite soft and supple. And she felt that she was beginning to be attached to the two little ones whom ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... mind, Polly instantly pulled Noddy up on a mound of ground just above the reptile, and caught hold of a long supple branch of wood. In another instant she was whipping the snake until it could not tell from which direction the blows were descending—right, left, front or back! In a moment of indecision, the snake remained quiet and in that second Polly brought ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... wandering like a white Greek maid Leaf-dappled through the dancing shade, Where many a green-veined leaf imprints Breast and limb with emerald tints, That softly net her silken shape But let the splendour still escape, While rosy ghosts of roses flow Over the supple rose ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... his coat and began to roll his sleeves back, leaving bare that magnificent forearm of his, supple and dexterous. Imitating him we were ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... basest spirits that ever intrigued its way into eminent place and power. The abbe was of low origin and despicable exterior, totally destitute of morals, and perfidious in the extreme; but with a supple, insinuating address, and an accommodating spirit, tolerant of all kinds of profligacy in others. Conscious of his own inherent baseness, he sought to secure an influence over his pupil, by corrupting his principles and fostering his vices; he debased him, to keep himself from ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... fallen in love with a few weeks ago), fastening it here and there with diamond pins. "Madame will be late if we are not careful," the Frenchwoman said. "Everything takes so long to-night." She laid on the floor at Beverley's feet a cloud of silver gauze, supple as chiffon. It was the new dress and Madame must step into it to avoid ruffling her hair. Beverley obeyed, and when her arms had slid into the odd little jewelled sleeves, she let Leontine draw her gently in front of ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a retainer," said the barrister; but if I don't deserve double fees from both Miss Bertram and you when I conclude my examination of Dirk Hatteraick tomorrow—Gad, I will so supple him!—You shall see, Colonel, and you, my saucy misses, though you ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... hath deserued worthily of his Countrey, and his assent is not by such easie degrees as those, who hauing beene supple and courteous to the People, Bonnetted, without any further deed, to haue them at all into their estimation, and report: but hee hath so planted his Honors in their Eyes, and his actions in their Hearts, that for their Tongues to be silent, and ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... if the angles and joints had disappeared from their bodies. They were become gliding lengths of muscle as swift, as loathsome in their supple dartings and coilings as any snake lashing across the expanses of primeval jungle. Lost in what they did, unconscious of the nightmare, demoniac legion before which they danced, they had eyes only for the empty, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... entered. The garish motor-coat was discarded now, and her supple figure was seen to best advantage in one of those dark silken gowns which she affected, and which had a seeming of the ultra-fashionable because they defied fashion. She held in her hand an orchid, its structure that of an odontoglossum, but of a delicate green colour heavily splashed with ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... Mrs. Falkner and one of the visitors; but all the while, though never absent-minded or answering at random, his eyes were following, with a soothing and restful sense of enjoyment, every movement of Lilith's form—a very embodiment of grace and supple ease, he pronounced it. The movement of the game suited her as it suited but few. She never seemed to grow hot, or flurried, or dishevelled, as so many of the fair are wont to do while engaged in that popular pastime. Every movement was one of unstudied, unconscious ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... open the letter with a hairpin and curled her supple figure in a roomy curve of the divan. Her hair, unloosened, fell in a thick, black cascade down ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... So mother and son were constantly together. He had early become a great comfort and help to her, God blessing her in this vital respect, though her lot seemed hard in other ways. Thus, while he had the heart and courage of a man, he also had the quick, supple hand and gentle bearing of a woman, when occasion required. As proof of his skill, a tempting meal from the simplest materials was placed smoking on the table, and the little girls were soon chatting contentedly over their breakfast. In the ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... arm of St. Oswald, which had kept fresh for over five centuries. A supple nerve which protruded Hugh had sliced off and put in this wonderful ring. This, though he had offered it to the high altar at Lincoln, he would have left to the Charterhouse; but Adam reminded him of the fact, so instead thereof he ordered a golden box full of the relics he gave them to ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... studied to their depths the masters of color. I have analyzed and lifted, layer by layer, the colors of Titian, king of light. Like him, great sovereign of art, I have sketched my figure in light clear tones of supple yet solid color; for shadow is but an accident,—remember that, young man. Then I worked backward, as it were; and by means of half-tints, and glazings whose transparency I kept diminishing little by little, I was able to cast strong shadows deepening ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... nearer drew the dreaded hour in which I felt that I must leave Canaples. On the last day of April I essayed a fencing bout with Andrea, and so strong and supple did I prove myself that I was forced to realise that the time was come. On the morrow ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... the Italian servant was to be left at Myrtle Forge; he was now assisting the servants in strapping a box behind the chaise that was to carry Mr. Winscombe and David to the city. Howat pictured the long, supple hands of the Italian hooking Mrs. Winscombe into her clothes, and a sudden, hot revulsion clouded his brain. When the carriage had gone, and he stood in the contracted space of the counting room, before a long, narrow forge book open on a high desk, he was still conscious of a strong repulsion. ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... alliance; he "borrowed England on his way to Versailles," and governed it in the interest of the Dutch Coalition. Queen Anne and the first Georges reigned but did not govern; and in the early eighteenth century power fell to men of supple intelligence and complacent conviction—to Marlborough and little Sidney Godolphin, to Harley and St. John and Sunderland, and at last to Robert Walpole, the very personification of the shrewd curiosity, the easy-going morals, the material ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... little white ball, driven by the quick, sure strokes of the players. There was no sound save the bounding of the ball against the racquets, and the thud of rubber soles on the hard ground. Then—a sudden twirl of a supple wrist, and— ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... were made; horns, which were made into spoons, drinking vessels, etc." The Rev. John Heckewelder, in speaking of the skill of the Delawares of Ohio, in dressing and curing buffalo hides, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, says that they cured them so that they became quite soft and supple, and so that they would last for ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... that projected above her temples. Altogether, she was not unlike a gigantic black-and-tan moth, a resemblance heightened by the aforementioned antennae, albeit lessened by the baby she always carried on some portion of her wiry frame. She was the toughest, most supple, and most versatile creature I ever saw, of any color or clime. The baby was disposed decorously across her knees on this occasion, and she was one of the five auditors who had brought along their own crickets or chairs. She had confiscated ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... have been sadly hindered with all this rain. They put off two cricket-matches this week. They're not playing football yet, or else the weather wouldn't matter so much. They say the wet weather keeps their joints supple. It's the dry weather and frost that's so hard to play in. Ted's always one for a lot of sport, specially football. Such a mess as he comes home sometimes. 'You must clean your own clothes,' I always says to him. We have a joke at him, that when he wins one of these competitions ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... and looked into her aunt's eyes with tender solicitude. The hands were suddenly snatched away, and Aunt Rachel dropped into a seat, and without preface began to cry. Ruth knelt beside her, twining a firm arm and supple hand about her waist, and drawing down her head softly until its gray curls were pressed against her own ripe cheek. Not a word was spoken, and in five minutes the old maid's tears ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... body and tied a rope to the chain of the handcuffs. This done, they passed the rope through a hole in the top of a high post behind me, and by tugging at it, strained my arms upward in a way that, had I been less supple, would certainly have broken them. When all their strength combined could not stretch me another inch without tearing my body to pieces, they made the rope fast, and I remained half suspended, and feeling as if all the bones of my limbs were getting pulled out of their ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... tall as Bull, or taller, and nearly as bulky. But about Bull Hunter there was a suggestion of ponderous unwieldiness, and there was none of that suggestion about Hal Dunbar. He was lithe and straight as a poplar, and as supple in his movements. The poise of his head and the alertness of his body and something of lightness in his whole posture told of the trained athlete. Providence had given the man a marvelous body, and he had improved it ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... end of his pistol so regularly that there ceased to be any contest in it. I never did get the sleeve trick; but then, I never succeeded in fooling the merest infant with any of my attempts at legerdemain. Johnny could flip that little derringer out with a twist of his supple wrist as neatly as a snake darts its forked tongue. For ten minutes at a time he practised it, over and over, ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... mass. It also chose its opportunity. It was as though a gigantic insect of iron was endowed with the will of a demon. Now and then this colossal grass-hopper would strike the low ceiling of the gun-deck, then falling back on its four wheels, like a tiger on all fours, rush upon the man. He—supple, agile, adroit—writhed like a serpent before these lightning movements. He avoided encounters; but the blows from which he escaped fell with destructive force upon the vessel. A piece of broken chain remained attached to the carronade. This bit of chain had twisted ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... quickly gather, pathic companions boon; Artfully stretch forth your limbs and on with the dance and play! Twinkling feet and supple thighs and agile buttocks in tune, Hands well skilled in raising passions, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... things are found, cities degrade us by magnifying trifles. The countryman finds the town a chop-house, a barber's shop. He has lost the lines of grandeur of the horizon, hills and plains, and, with them, sobriety and elevation. He has come among a supple, glib-tongued tribe, who live for show, servile to public opinion. Life is dragged down to a fracas of pitiful cares and disasters. You say the gods ought to respect a life whose objects are their own; but in cities they have betrayed you to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... on the floor; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have more significance to the touch. He took the body by the shoulders and turned it on its back. It was strangely light and supple, and the limbs, as if they had been broken, fell into the oddest postures. The face was robbed of all expression; but it was as pale as wax, and shockingly smeared with blood about one temple. That was, for Markheim, the one displeasing circumstance. It carried him back, upon the instant, to a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hewed out of a great cypress log. In the end of each an Indian stood erect plying a long pole which sent their clumsy looking crafts forward at surprising speed. Magnificent savages they were, not one less than six feet tall, framed like athletes, and lithe and supple ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... viciously at where the figure must be, and perhaps a comical desire of vengeance stimulated her curiosity. She now glided through the fissure like a cautious panther from her den; and noiseless and supple as a serpent began to wind slowly round the tree. She soon came to a great protuberance in the tree, and twining and peering round it with diamond eye, she saw a very young, very handsome gentleman, stealing on tiptoe to the nearest flower-bed. Then she saw him take ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... of lesions the two characteristics are (a) the readiness with which oozing of blood occurs; and (b) the sense of rigidity, or fixation, of the involved area as palpated with the esophagoscope, in contrast to the normally supple esophageal wall. Esophageal dilatation above a malignant lesion is rarely great, because the stenosis is seldom severely obstructive until late in the course ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... up and down the room, her head a little bent, and that slim, supple figure of hers swaying gently as she walked. She stopped suddenly, and looked up ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... straightway when he had drunk the dark blood, yea, and he wept aloud, and shed big tears as he stretched forth his hands in his longing to reach me. But it might not be, for he had now no steadfast strength nor power at all in moving, such as was aforetime in his supple limbs. ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... complexion was the clearest, whose hair the prettiest colour, and whose figure the best. You can imagine that among these figures sanctified to God there were fine ones, stout ones, lank ones, thin ones, plump ones, supple ones, shrunken ones, and figures of all kinds. Then they would quarrel amongst themselves as to who took the least to make a girdle, and she who spanned the least was pleased without knowing why. At times they would relate their dreams and what they had seen in them. Often ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... round. Poor little martyr, she had been forbidden them by the doctor, because of a cough.... But she took them all the same, merely for the sake of taking them, with a graceful movement, her bare arm outstretched, her wrist making a supple curve, like a swan's neck, as she dipped her pretty hand into ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... butter, dough, pudding; alumina, argil; cushion, pillow, feather bed, down, padding, wadding; foam. mollification; softening &c v.. V. render soft &c adj.; soften, mollify, mellow, relax, temper; mash, knead, squash. bend, yield, relent, relax, give. plasticize'. Adj. soft, tender, supple; pliant, pliable; flexible, flexile; lithe, lithesome; lissom, limber, plastic; ductile; tractile^, tractable; malleable, extensile, sequacious^, inelastic; aluminous^; remollient^. yielding &c v.; flabby, limp, flimsy. doughy, spongy, penetrable, foamy, cushiony^. flaccid, flocculent, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... maladministration, his folly, his dissolute manners, and his love of the lowest company, had disgusted all classes of his subjects, soldiers, traders, civil functionaries, the proud and ostentatious Mahommedans, the timid, supple, and parsimonious Hindoos. A formidable confederacy was formed against him, in which were included Roydullub, the minister of finance, Meer Jaffier, the principal commander of the troops, and Jugget Seit, the richest banker in India. The plot was confided ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... such that no English nobleman could long reside in France as envoy, and retain any patriotic or honourable sentiment. Sunderland came forth from the bad school in which he had been brought up, cunning, supple, shameless, free from all prejudices, and destitute of all principles. He was, by hereditary connection, a Cavalier: but with the Cavaliers he had nothing in common. They were zealous for monarchy, and condemned ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in her coat-pockets, bent her supple body forward across the table, bringing her eager face nearer to the stranger's. "Did you ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... great power over Marie Louise, and she might have been successful had she taken, more precautions. Talleyrand said of her that she had the head of a Cromwell on the body of a pretty woman. Endowed by nature with a marked character, great intelligence, far-reaching ideas, a supple and crafty mind, with a grace and amiability that made her very charming, she lacked nothing but the power of hiding her love of rule; and when she missed her aim, it was because she had been too eager. The moment she saw the Austrian Princess, she imagined that ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... encircled those soft yielding shoulders; the warm agitated bosom was touching mine; my hands held, and felt within it, the smooth muscles of the white arm—a vision of the whole indefinably supple form swam giddily before me in a suffocating proximity, till I pressed my hands on my eyes, and the thought came ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... her by describing the calm and simple delights of a country life in the springtime, and, slipping his arm round her supple ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... calm, high-bred type of face. Anne's dainty white crepe de chine frock made her look anything but a theatrical star. Grace, however, had for once departed from her favorite blue and wore a white chiffon gown whose exquisitely simple lines made the most of her slender, supple figure. The charm of early sixteen radiated from her youthful person, and she looked no older than when she had led the freshman basketball team on to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... nodded his head, rubbing his eyeglasses briskly, while Sofya looked at her, her large eyes wide open and the forgotten cigarette burning to ashes. She sat half turned from the piano, supple and shapely, at times touching the keys lightly with the slender fingers of her right hand. The pensive chord blended delicately with the speech of the mother, as she quickly invested her new feelings and thoughts ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... who was none other than Black Bruin, was holding up a section between his paws, while with his supple red tongue he licked out the contents. Although the bees were swarming about him in a black cloud and doing their best to punish the thief, he paid little attention to them but licked ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... account of the public, and the public never bothered about them. Their art was out of touch with the people, music which was only fed from music. Now, Christophe was under the impression, rightly or wrongly, that there was no music that had a greater need of outside support than French music. That supple climbing plant needed a prop: it could not do without literature, but did not find in it enough of the breath of life. French music was breathless, bloodless, will-less. It was like a woman languishing for her lover. But, like a Byzantine Empress, slender ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... posturing With her long, supple narghile at lip, Showing the glorious fashion of her hip, One foot upon ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... animation took place on the earth itself; but it became united with the body, and enabled it to grow. Of course a certain limit was set to that growth. Through the separation of the moon, the human body had for a time become supple; but the more it continued to grow on the earth, the more the solidifying forces got the upper hand. At length the share borne by the soul in the organization of the body grew less and less, and the body disintegrated when the soul ascended to psycho-spiritual modes of ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... whose form, physically inferior, crouched before that baneful, blazing glance, while his head, mentally brave, reared itself, as if to redeem the cowardice of the frame to which it belonged. So the attitude of the serpent: the body pliant, yielding, supple; but the crest thrown aloft, erect, and threatening. As for Zonla, she was frozen in the attitude of motion;—a dancing nymph in colored marble; agility ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... not disturb her. There was no more meaning in it than in the expression of a marble statue, far less than in that of a painted portrait. Yet the man was alive and in the full strength of his magnificent youth, supple, active, fierce by nature, able to have killed her with his hands in the struggle of a moment. Yet she knew that without a word from her he could neither turn his head nor move in ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... days in France. Anne of Austria, then in her maturity, was governed by Mazarin, the most artful of ministers, an Italian to the very heart's core, with a love of amassing wealth engrafted in his supple nature that amounted to a monomania. The whole aim of his life was gain. Though gaming was at its height, Mazarin never played for amusement; he played to enrich himself; and when he played, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... perfection of grace. Her figure was lithe and supple as a boy's. There was a suggestion of fire and strength and agility about her that made one think of a panther as she postured there against a background of barbaric color. The grace of her movements, the exquisite blending of the colors on ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... affections, scientific curiosity, charitable instincts, and religious faith. Its wholly mechanical processes, too rigid and too limited, cannot urge on enterprises which demand of whoever undertakes them delicate and safe handling, supple manipulation, appreciation of circumstances, ready adaptation of means to ends, constant contrivance, the initiative, and perfect independence. On this account the State is a poor head of a family, a poor commercial ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... it had been the instrument of uncommon strength and wielded an authority that none could stand against. Her fancy wandered over the scenes it had known; when it had felled trees in the wild forest, and those fingers, then supple and slight, had played the fife to the struggling men of the Revolution; how its activity had outdone the activity of all other hands in clearing and cultivating those very fields where her feet loved to run; how in its pride of strength it had handled the scythe and the sickle and ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... again to the ship, while he still saw the furrows free of the earthborn men. And all round his comrades heartened him with their shouts. And in the helmet he drew from the river's stream and quenched his thirst with the water. Then he bent his knees till they grew supple, and filled his mighty heart with courage, raging like a boar, when it sharpens its teeth against the hunters, while from its wrathful mouth plenteous foam drips to the ground. By now the earthborn men were springing up over all the field; and the plot of Ares, the death-dealer, ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... was all plowed up with the digging of their heels, and their breathing grew labored like the ox in the furrow. But Little John suffered the most, for he had become unused to such stiff labor, and his joints were not as supple as they had been before he went ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... across the table. "A thin, wiry, sallow-faced man; black-haired, black-eyed, supple as an eel, cunning as a cat; a scholar and travelled gentleman, who might easily be a cut-throat; one who professes the old faith, and swears ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... the supple Mr Simkins, "how can you be so hard? for my share, I must needs own I think the poor lady's to be pitied; for it must have been but a melancholy sight to her, to see her spouse cut off so in the flower of his ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... also using her eyes, but in a very different fashion. She had now taken off her straw hat; the curly crop of a brown mane gave the brilliant face an added accent of vigor. The chien de race was the dominant note now in the muscular, supple body, the keen-edged nostrils, and the intent gaze of the liquid eyes. These latter were fixed with the fixity of a savage on Charm. She was giving, in a sweet sibilant murmur, the man seated next her—Monsieur d'Agreste, the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... Lord Comyn, my father, wished me to serve awhile. And so I have taken two cruises, delivered some score of commands, and scarce know a supple jack from a can of flip. Cursed if I see the fun of it in these piping times o' peace, so I have given it up, Richard. For Charles says this Falkland business with Spain will blow out ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... abominable, and if the king would listen to me such savage edicts should not long remain unrepealed." "That may do very well," replied M. de Maupeou, "some time hence, but not just now; ere our penal code can be revised we must have magistrates more supple than those who now dispute our slightest innovation; and if, by the grace of God, we can manage to make a clear house of them, why we may confidently anticipate the noblest results." By these and ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... again! 'Tis twice within the week The supple-waisted, pretty-ankled knave Has crossed my garden at this self-same hour, Trolling a canzonetta with an air As if he owned the villa. Why, the fop! He might have doffed his bonnet as he passed. I'll teach ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... Paris after Jena and which came back after Waterloo. The solid building was the palace of iron-grey old King William; and when the clock-work sentinels went through their salute, I got my first sight of that famous Prussian discipline, against which before the summer was through supple France was to crush its teeth all to fragments, like a viper that has incautiously bitten at ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... will contain two outstanding Irish names: Daniel Henry Deniehy, who died in 1865, was called by Bulwer Lytton "the Australian Macaulay" on account of his brilliant writings as critic and reviewer in the press of Victoria. Gerald Henry Supple, another Dublin man, is also remembered for his contributions to the Age and the Argus of Melbourne. In India one of the first—if not the first—English newspapers was founded by a Limerick man, named Charles Johnstone, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... patience to gluing the tiniest fibres of the sea plants. Some were bright pink, suggesting in formation and colour the little red fishing boats. Others were gold with their slender little flowers rising in clusters. The long supple green algaes, swelling along their stems into little round beads, like beads of jade, looked as though they wore some Chinese costume. As the album grew it gave promise of ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... by a lamp suspended from one of its pillars. In a corner sat Nathan; serious, dignified, scraping out a monotonous but rhythmic minor strain to which two young negroes from the lower quarters—famous dancers—were keeping time in marvelous shuffling and pigeon-wings; twisting their supple joints into astonishing contortions and the sweat rolling from their black visages. A crowd of darkies stood at a respectful distance an appreciative and encouraging audience. And seated on the broad rail of the veranda ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... what a business it is, that getting up! Your shoulders are cramped and your back is stiff; and as for your legs underneath you, you wonder if they will really ever get supple and strong again. First you lift your head from your breast and try moving your neck about, and sniff at the walls of your den. Then you unfold your arms, and—ooch!—how they crack, first one and then the other! At last you ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... underwood, and off; not even rising erect to her feet, but on all fours, and silently as a snake. For although the hillside is so thickly overgrown with thorny scrub that a pointer would with difficulty quarter it, the supple old savage worms her way through, without making any more noise than would a badger just got out of the barrel, and away from the dogs ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... both in word and deed I hate poverty equally with pain I have a great aversion from a novelty "I have done nothing to-day"—"What? have you not lived?" I have lived longer by this one day than I should have done I have no mind to die, but I have no objection to be dead I have not a wit supple enough to evade a sudden question I have nothing of my own that satisfies my judgment I honour those most to whom I show the least honour I lay no great stress upon my opinions; or of others I look upon death carelessly when ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... of more than usual merit. They had practised greatly since. Iberville was the taller of the two, Gering the stouter. Iberville's eye was slow, calculating, penetrating; Gering's was swift, strangely vigilant. Iberville's hand was large, compact, and supple; Gering's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and fro in these docks, each his own way, jostling and yelling to each other, were men of all nations, and the confusion was of tongues as well as of work. At one minute I found myself standing next to a live Chinaman in a pigtail, who was staring as hard as I at some swarthy supple-bodied sailors with eager faces, and scant clothing wrapped tightly round them, chatting to each other in a language as strange to the Chinaman as to me, their large lustrous eyes returning our curiosity with interest, and contrasting strangely with the tea-caddy countenance of my elbow ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... large, is equal to one of our free and enlightened citizens. He's the chap that has both speed, wind and bottom; he's clear grit—ginger to the backbone, you may depend. It's generally allowed there ain't the beat of them to be found anywhere. Spry as a fox, supple as an eel, and cute as a weasel. Though I say it that shouldn't say it, they fairly take the shine off creation—they are ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... been true. He was a huge fellow, as tall as Bull, or taller, and nearly as bulky. But about Bull Hunter there was a suggestion of ponderous unwieldiness, and there was none of that suggestion about Hal Dunbar. He was lithe and straight as a poplar, and as supple in his movements. The poise of his head and the alertness of his body and something of lightness in his whole posture told of the trained athlete. Providence had given the man a marvelous body, and he had improved it to the uttermost. To crown all, there ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... impatiently from the rail. She hated abstruse problems, and not the least of these was that which would confront her when she returned to America. She began to promenade the deck, still cluttered with luggage over which the Lascar stewards were moiling. Many a glance followed the supple pleasing figure of the girl as she passed round and round the deck. Other promenaders stepped aside or permitted her to pass between. The resolute uplift of the chin, and the staring dark eyes which saw but inner visions, impressed them with the fact that it would ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... engrossed in her story, was unconsciously acting out the thrilling scene of her dialogue with the Indian, even imitating his voice and gestures. And Kemper and I listened and watched her breathlessly, fascinated by her lithe and supple grace as well as by the astounding story she was so frankly unfolding with the consummate artlessness ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... trusted to gather and play across them on the shelves. These forces are the self-propelling and self-healing forces of the creative mood. The creative mood protects the books, and it protects all who come near the books. It protects from the inside. It toughens and makes supple. Parents who cannot trust a boy to face the weather in a library ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... with confident smiles, long limbed, with leisurely and supple movements, smart in their heavy tweeds or riding breeches that suggested habits of strenuous exertion. When they removed their hats, one saw their close-clipped heads bending forward confidentially toward the fair faces: and their eyes slowly followed the eyes of the women who ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... Philemon." By what process? Did the apostle, a prisoner at Rome, seize upon the fugitive, and drag him before some heartless and perfidious "Judge," for authority to send him back to Colosse? Did he hurry his victim away from the presence of the fat and supple magistrate, to be driven under chains and the lash to the field of unrequited toil, whence he had escaped? Had the apostle been like some teachers in the American churches, he might, as a professor of sacred literature in one of our ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... night, which was the last night before the fight, Montgomery's three backers assembled in the gymnasium and inspected their man as he went through some light exercises to keep his muscles supple. He was certainly in splendid condition, his skin shining with health, and his eyes with energy and confidence. The three ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... face; To Grandeur with his wise grimace; To upstart Wealth's averted eye; To supple Office, low and high; To crowded halls, to court and street; To frozen hearts and hasting feet; To those who go, and those who come; Good-bye, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... him, and being incommoded by passers-by in the crowded thoroughfare, Miles turned sharply into a by-street, and would have easily made his escape—being uncommonly swift of foot—had he not been observed by an active little man of supple frame and presumptuous tendencies. Unlike the mass of mankind around him—who stared and wondered—the active little man took in the situation at a glance, joined in the pursuit, kept well up, thus forming a sort of connecting-link between the fugitive and pursuers, and even ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... woman, but already stiff and misshapen by toil and the lack of that saving salt of pride, the stimulation of joy, which keeps us erect and supple. Her broad back was bent; her hands as they shifted the infant tenderly were knotted and work-worn. Mavity Bence was a widow, living at home with her father, Gideon Himes; she had one child left, a daughter; but the clothing for which she had sent was an ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... Webster defended himself was a manly one, and it is noticeable how years of fencing had improved the temper of his weapons. He was keener in his thrusts, more dexterous and supple, and comported himself in these disputes as a man entirely confident of his position. It is not vanity which upholds a man working silently year after year at a task ridiculed by his neighbors and denounced by his enemies. Webster had something better to sustain him than an idle self-conceit. ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... placed in a small chamber and water was poured on to heated stones until it was filled with hot steam, and Malchus began to think that he was going to be boiled alive. After being kept for an hour in this vapour bath, he was annointed with oil, and was rubbed until every limb was supple, he was then placed on a couch and covered with soft skins, and in a few more minutes was ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... in the saddle, then dropped him a courtesy as good as he had sent, and answered, "Fair sir, I ride 'cross country on my own business." And she gathered up the bridle in her supple little hand. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... his clear colour and proud bearing, perhaps also from his masterful energy, of tremendous force and strength, his body was in truth but a poor machine, his great corpulence making him clumsy and scant of breath. He must have known, as he eyed his supple antagonist, what the end would be. ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... thin streak of gold above the forehead, and all the loose hairs glittering golden. A short clipped mustache saved him from looking too feminine, yet did not hide his expressive mouth. He had white hands, as soft and supple as a woman's, a mellow voice, and a winning tongue. This dangerous young gentleman was gazing softly on Zoe Vizard and purring in her ear; and she was conscious of his gaze without looking at him, and was sipping ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... woman than anybody; but Sophy could not follow her far beyond her own old rocking-chair. As for her father, she had made him afraid of her, not for his sake, but for her own. Sometimes she would seem to be fond of him, and the parent's heart would yearn within him as she twined her supple arms about him; and then some look she gave him, some half-articulated expression, would turn his cheek pale and almost make him shiver, and he would say kindly, "Now go, Elsie, dear," and smile upon her as ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... was nearly the equal of the full grown tiger. The head was large, the body thick yet supple, the limbs robust. In color it was of a rich yellow, with black rings, in which stood black dots, ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... their beautiful freedom of motion, for that wondrous grace and charm. Did you ever think what a complexity of muscles, bones, joints, tendons and other arrangements, enter into the formation of the knees, hoofs, legs of a horse; what a piece of mechanism the strong, supple creature is? ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... runner; he wished to out-distance the artist, and ran with all his might. As he turned around he saw the artist catching up with Katiousha, but with her supple limbs she gained on him and ran to the left. In front of them was a patch of lilac bushes, behind which no one ran, but Katiousha, turning toward Nekhludoff, motioned him with her head to join her there. He understood her, and ran behind the ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... stove, singled out two or three sticks that suited him, and then he laid them across the top of the stove and rested the barrel of the shotgun upon them. After all was complete, he stepped back against the door and squinted, gauging the elevation. It was to his satisfaction. With supple wrist and quick movements he uncoiled the small cotton rope he had brought with him and took two turns around the trigger of the shotgun. The rest of the rope he passed around a rod in the foot of the ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... stood where she was and watched him. For two or three minutes he looked at the picture in silence, and she thought his expression had become slightly hostile. His audacious and rather thick lips were set together firmly, almost too firmly. His splendid figure supple, athletic and harmonious, looked almost rigid. She wondered what he was feeling, whether he disliked the portrait of the judge of the Criminal Court at which he was looking. Finally ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... in his urgency, such amiable kindliness, that Mrs. Pasmer could not feel that it was pushing. She looked at her daughter, but she stood as passive in the transaction as the elder Mavering. She was taller than her mother, and as she waited, her supple figure described that fine lateral curve which one sees in some Louis Quinze portraits; this effect was enhanced by the fashion of her dress of pale sage green, with a wide stripe or sash of white dropping down the front, from her delicate waist. The same simple combination ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... statesman, indeed, but his interest was in the grand alliance; he "borrowed England on his way to Versailles," and governed it in the interest of the Dutch Coalition. Queen Anne and the first Georges reigned but did not govern; and in the early eighteenth century power fell to men of supple intelligence and complacent conviction—to Marlborough and little Sidney Godolphin, to Harley and St. John and Sunderland, and at last to Robert Walpole, the very personification of the shrewd curiosity, the easy-going morals, the material ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... Pitt, with a certain freshness and force which {28} the younger Pitt did not always exhibit. Bolingbroke's English prose style is hardly surpassed by that of any other author, either before his time or since. It is supple, strong, and luminous; not redundant, but not bare; ornamented where ornament is suitable and even useful, but nowhere decorated with the purple rags of unnecessary and artificial brilliancy. Such a man, so gifted, must in any case have held a high place among his contemporaries, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... grey tweed skirt was obviously the handiwork of an accomplished tailor. Her grey stockings and suede shoes were immaculate and showed a care for her appearance which pleased him. Her swing, too, revealed a grace, the grace of long arms and a supple body, at which previously he had only guessed. The sunshine seemed to have brought out a copper tinge from her ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... probably matches Tausig's in technic and tone. Paderewski, who has broadened and developed amazingly during ten years, has many of Henselt's traits—and I am sure he never heard the elder pianist. But he belongs to that group: tonal euphony, supple technic, a caressing manner, and a perfect control of self. Remember, I am speaking of the Henselt who played for a few friends, not the frightened, semi-limp pianist who emerged at long intervals before the public. Paderewski is thrice as poetic as Henselt—who in the matter ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... muttered, looking out of the window. "It may not be flowing exactly with milk and honey, but its sinews are supple and its blood is red. For absolute vitality, I'd back the Cafe l'Athenee against the Carlton any ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... her youthful grace of movement. Her tall figure, so round with the charms of womanhood, yet so supple, so full of natural, unfettered grace, made her a delight to the eye. Her beauty was unquestioned. But the change in her expression was marked. Her ripe young lips were firmer, harder even. There was, too, a slight down drooping at ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... nervously on the toes of those behind, edging out of reach of his restless, dancing hoofs. For it seemed impossible that the woman in the saddle should be really his master. And yet she sat upright and unconcerned. In its black, close-fitting habit, her supple body looked a living, vital part of the splendid beast. She was his brain, stronger than his savage instinct, and every threatening move of his great limbs was dictated to him without a sound, almost without a gesture. A touch of a slender, patent-leather boot set him prancing, an imperceptible ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... the expectations in which his nephew had been reared. Philip's younger brother had been much with the old gentleman, and appeared to be in high favour: this brother was a man in every respect the opposite to Philip—sober, supple, decorous, ambitious, with a face of smiles and a ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... gauntlets—of rough cowhide they were. The Argonauts feared that Polydeuces' hands might have been made numb with pulling at the oar, and some of them went to him, and took his hands and rubbed them to make them supple; others took from off his shoulders his beautifully ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... he spoke, and the Doctor moved with him, for his arm was still clasped by the stranger's strong supple fingers. But outside the archway ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... one, goes farther in influencing his thoughts and actions than whole tomes of ethical culture science. You know perhaps how the Arabs conquered the best half of the world with an epigram, a word. And Khalid loves a fine-sounding, easy-flowing word; a word of supple joints, so to speak; a word that you can twist and roll out, flexible as a bamboo switch, resilient as a fine steel rapier. But once Shakib, after reading one of Khalid's first attempts, gets up in the night when his friend is asleep, takes ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... for health; and they all pitied him greatly, and he had their good wishes, if that would do, but money was a thing they unfortunately had not any of them at this time to spare. I had my journey for my pains, and I, not used to walking, nor supple as formerly, was greatly tired, but had the satisfaction of telling my master, when I got to the Lodge, all the civil things said by ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... the poor hunchback, whose form, physically inferior, crouched before that baneful, blazing glance, while his head, mentally brave, reared itself, as if to redeem the cowardice of the frame to which it belonged. So the attitude of the serpent: the body pliant, yielding, supple; but the crest thrown aloft, erect, and threatening. As for Zonela, she was frozen in the attitude of motion;—a dancing nymph in colored marble; agility ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... prevented disease and preserved health. In cases of chronic and acute diseases, in their severest forms, we have changed the secretions, renewed structure, and restored health; have elongated shortened limbs, relaxed rigid muscles, made cicatrized joints supple; restored carious bones to healthy conditions, renewed that which is termed the lost substance of the lungs; and restored healthy organizations where disease was organic instead ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... eleven years old, and as she stood in her simple white dress in the glow of the lamplight, even the unaesthetic mind of Mr. Frere was struck by her extreme beauty. Her bright blue eyes were as bright and as blue as ever. Her little figure was as upright and as supple as a willow rod; and her innocent, delicate face was framed in a nimbus of that fine golden hair—dry and electrical, each separate thread shining with a lustre of its own—with which the dreaming painters of the middle ages endowed and glorified ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... start when he took his place in his shirt-sleeves beside her. He used some conventional phrases which she scarcely answered, and then nothing was heard but the sounds of the sickle and the corn. She worked steadily for some time, and he looked up at her at intervals with her round bare arms and supple waist and firm-set foot and tight red stocking. Two butterflies tumbling in the air played around her sun bonnet and a lady-clock ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... ill-report, and hatred; nay, he had even diligently gone to work, and lost his own self-love and self-respect in the service of his darling idol. He was at once, for lucre's sake, the mean, cringing fawner, and the pitiless, iron despot; to the rich he could play supple parasite, while the poor man only knew him as an unrelenting persecutor; with the good, and they were chiefly of the fairer, softer sex, he walked in meekness, the spiritual hypocrite; the while, it was his boast to over-reach ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Prince]; for her I would suffer and do everything short of stooping to an act of baseness. If, Madame, you have not found in me virtues which will assure you of this, at least trust my faults! My character is not supple. The one thing which makes my frankness endurable is, that it renders me incapable of conduct for which I should have to blush. Believe, then, Madame, that I can preserve my friendship for your friend, without falling, as you suspect, into the baseness of paying ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... guardians of thy mind; These fetched thee home thy bride, and all the way Advised thy servant what to do and say; These taught him at the well, and thither brought The chaste and lovely object of thy thought. But here was ne'er a compliment, not one Spruce, supple cringe, or studied look put on. All was plain, modest truth: nor did she come In rolls and curls, mincing and stately dumb; But in a virgin's native blush and fears, Fresh as those roses which the day-spring wears. O sweet, divine ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... in a melancholy tone. "Malaga (that's her stage name) is strong, active, and supple. Why do I prefer her to all other women in the world?—well, I can't tell you. When I look at her, with her black hair tied with a blue satin ribbon, floating on her bare and olive-colored shoulders, and when she is dressed ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... Structure was not the proper word for it at all; for it seemed to have grown from the nature around, with a little aid of human hands to guide it. Branches of sea-willow radiant with spring, and supple sprays of tamarisk recovering from the winter, were lightly inwoven and arched together, with the soft compliance of reed and rush from the marsh close by, and the stout assistance of hazel rods from the westward cliff. The ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... in the eyes; then, as by magic, the loveliest of smiles transfigured the dull, blank features; her round shoulders, pendulous arms, slouching pose, melted into superb symmetry, quickening with grace and youth as she straightened up and faced him, erect, supple, ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... blaze And light up each bud in the crown with its rays. We shall have out that carriage, so costly and grand, Fit to carry the one Royal Prince in this land; And a crowd bearing torches shall light up the way, Till along Supple's lane be as brillant as day And to guard and escort him our brave volunteers With their swords and their bayonets, which ought to be spears, Shall wait at the landing for him, and the band With the noise and the music they have at command, Shall be heard in the distance ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... black eyes, which were round and large as those of a Persian cat. Despite the man's exceeding thinness, he conveyed a certain suggestion of strength. At that moment he had a handkerchief between his fingers, and Gurdon could see that his wrists were supple and pliable as if they had been made of india rubber. Gurdon had heard that sort of hands before described as conjurer's hands. As he looked at them he half expected to see the handkerchief disappear and an orange ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... danger—the two hands that tightest grasp Each other—the two cords that soonest knit A fast and stubborn tie; your true love knot Is nothing to it. Faugh! the supple touch Of pliant interest, or the dust of time, Or the pin-point of temper, loose or rot Or snap love's silken band. Fear and old hate, They are sure weavers—they work for the storm, The whirlwind, and the rocking surge; their ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... fastening it here and there with diamond pins. "Madame will be late if we are not careful," the Frenchwoman said. "Everything takes so long to-night." She laid on the floor at Beverley's feet a cloud of silver gauze, supple as chiffon. It was the new dress and Madame must step into it to avoid ruffling her hair. Beverley obeyed, and when her arms had slid into the odd little jewelled sleeves, she let Leontine draw her gently in front ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... is supple enough to accompany me into all the recesses of ruined walls, over mountains and chasms, then I shall venture farther and introduce thee to the recesses ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... her shapely hand and supple, rounded wrist as she stroked the pony's neck. Swiftly she turned from the horse and faced him. "What, Collie?" There was laughter in her eyes, a laughter that challenged more than his serious mood. Her lips were smiling. ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... different fashion. She had now taken off her straw hat; the curly crop of a brown mane gave the brilliant face an added accent of vigor. The chien de race was the dominant note now in the muscular, supple body, the keen-edged nostrils, and the intent gaze of the liquid eyes. These latter were fixed with the fixity of a savage on Charm. She was giving, in a sweet sibilant murmur, the man seated next her—Monsieur d'Agreste, the man who refused to ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... and no other, or it is the outer husk and shell of Riderhood and no other, that is borne into Miss Abbey's first-floor bedroom. Supple to twist and turn as the Rogue has ever been, he is sufficiently rigid now; and not without much shuffling of attendant feet, and tilting of his bier this way and that way, and peril even of his sliding off it ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... is the very picture of her, and NOT IN MINIATURE. I could not help analyzing my own sensations during the time I was with her, and thought more of them than I did of her. Why was I at all flattered, at all more amused, at all more supple to this young princess, than to her who is only the same sort of person set in the shade of circumstances and of years? It is that youth, and the approach of power, and the latent views of self-interest, sway the heart and dazzle the understanding. ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... could never break me of. It was still worse at the fencing-school, where, after three months' practice, I made but very little progress, and could never attempt fencing with any but my master. My wrist was not supple enough, nor my arm sufficiently firm to retain the foil, whenever he chose to make it fly out of my hand. Add to this, I had a mortal aversion both to the art itself and to the person who undertook to teach it to me, nor should I ever have imagined, that anyone could have been so proud ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... over municipal corruptions, or private intemperance, or successful fraud, or immoral politics, or unjust wars, or the cheating of Indians, or the robbery of frontier nations, or leaving your principles at home to follow on the high seas or in Europe a supple complaisance to tyrants,—it is hypocrisy, and the truth is not in you; and no love of religious music, or of dreams of Swedenborg, or praise of John Wesley, or of Jeremy Taylor, can save you from the Satan which ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... how sweetly pretty, how amiable and adorable; and such eyes, dark and lustrous!—full of witchcraft, burning and humid as an April sun after a shower. Some there are, also, of pensive blue, pregnant with promises, soft and almond-shaped, like the divine eyes of the Italian Cenci. Supple as the young and slender branches of willow, are these divinities, fresh as new opened tulips, and brisk and gay as the golden-speckled trout in the sparkling current. In their charms is found a terrestrial paradise, a compound of delicious qualities which intoxicate ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... had engaged him in half smiling, low-voiced conversation; and Palla looked at her golden-green eyes and warm, rich colouring, cooled by a skin of snow. Tiger-golden, the rousse ensemble; the supple movement of limb and body fascinated her; but most of all the lovely, slanting eyes with their glint of beryl ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... fern-like fronds, toying with the breeze, comes crashing to the ground, it is ten or twelve feet long, and consists of a great backbone, as thick at the base as a man's leg, with a close-set row of swords on either side, about a yard in length. They are hard and tough, but supple yet and of a shiny green colour; but they will turn ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... hidden under the black bonnet and the veil thrown back over it. She was dressed in black and the close-fitting gown showed off with unconscious vanity the lines of a perfectly moulded and perfectly supple figure. But it was especially her eyes which attracted John's sudden attention at that first glance, her violet eyes, tender, sad, almost pathetic, seeming to ask sympathy and marvellously able to ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... proposal, chairs were brought and placed just inside the door-way, where the light of the saloon lamps shown athwart the countenance of my self-constituted physician. He was a young man, and looked younger than his years; slightly built, though possessing a supple, well-knit frame, with hands of an elegant shape, fine texture, and great expression. You saw at a glance that he had a poet's head, and a poet's sensitiveness of face; but it was only after observation ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... man a material fungus without Mind to help him? Is a stiff joint or a contracted muscle as much a result of law as the supple and 161:1 elastic condition of the healthy limb, and is God ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... piercing and mild, under the lids of a young man; his mustache, fine but slightly grizzled, waved over lips of a pure and delicate model, as if they had never been curled by mortal passions; a form straight and supple; an irreproachable but thin hand—this was what remained of the illustrious gentleman whom so many illustrious mouths had praised under the name of Athos. He was engaged in correcting the pages of a manuscript book, entirely filled ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the assistance the republic owed to indigent citizens. All these reports passed into decrees, agreeably to the wishes of the democrats. Barrere, whose habitual speeches in the convention were calculated to disguise his servitude from himself, was one of the most supple instruments of the committee; he belonged to the regime of terror, neither from cruelty nor from fanaticism. His manners were gentle, his private life blameless, and he possessed great moderation of mind. But he was timid; ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... into any combat, till he has been armed as a knight. When a nayre becomes seven years old, he is set to learn the use of all kinds of weapons, their masters first pulling and twisting their joints to make them supple, and then teaching them to fence and handle their arms adroitly. Their principal weapons are swords and targets; and these teachers, who are graduates in the use of the weapons, are called Panycaes, who are much esteemed among the nayres, and all their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... thoughts traveled backward and he beheld a band of wild horses driven past him in review by a troup of Mexican vaqueros, and the beautiful chestnut stallion emerge from the cloud of dust on their rim and tossing his great white mane in the breeze, neigh loudly and defiantly as he swept by lithe and supple of limb. ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... undeniable touch!" said he. "I feel a foil as quick and supple as my own. He got home upon me very prettily that time. So his name ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... slender, barbarically arrayed in the holiday garb of a Seminole chief. The firelight danced upon the beaten band of silver about her brilliant turban and the beads upon her sash, upon red-beaded deerskin leggings delicately thonged from the supple waist to the small and moccasined foot, upon a tunic elaborately banded in red and a belt of buckskin from which hung a hunting knife, a ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... symbol of life. He called it Earthbound. An old man is bowed beneath the sorrow of the world. Under the weight of burdens that seemingly they cannot escape, a younger man and his faithful mate stagger with bent forms. Between them is a little child. Instead of a body supple and straight and instinct with freedom and vigor, the child's body yields to the weight of heredity and environment, whose crushing ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... you shall have-a death-bed of fire and ashes. And see, my good Count, how willingly these honest men, whom you hired, with your damnable money, to destroy my father—see how willingly they work to prepare your funeral pile! What a supple and pliant thing, O Count, is human baseness. It has but one defect—it may be turned upon ourselves! And then, O my dear Count, it shocks us and hurts our feelings. But say your prayers, Count, say your prayers. ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... an abiding sentiment in France, even while two dull Bourbon kings were stupidly trying to turn back the hands on the dial of time, and while an Orleans, with more supple neck, was posing as a popular sovereign. During all this tiresome interlude the real fact was developing. A Republican sentiment which had existed vaguely in the air was materializing, consolidating, into a more and more tangible reality ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... mouth?—her mouth, oh, heaven, he could not fix her mouth! The distracted young man tossed upon his pillow and went elsewhere. Distinctly he could remember her little feet with those silver buckles, quite different from any other feet. And she held herself slim and supple. Held herself? Why, good heavens! she was tall, and he had been thinking of her as short! This was appalling! He might meet her and pass her by. He might ... ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... phrases and keen observations in his pages, and lines that are exactly, and at the same time poetically, descriptive. He is the only writer I know of who has noticed the fact that the roots of trees do not look supple and muscular like their boughs, but have a stiffened, congealed look, as of ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... listening to their chatter throughout a protracted mealtime, after seeing, as he could not fail to do, how he counted to them for absolutely nothing at all, Scott Brenton had his hours when he too doubted the fact of his own humanity. An active brain and an almost automatic body trained to supple service: these by themselves, he realized, do not go far towards making a human thing of life. Contacts are necessary for that, not total isolation; and contact was the one thing denied him. Now and then he had his hours of wishing ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... had resorted to the wood, but soon tiring of playing the part of modest nymph with her friends, she wandered off to more solitary places. Her head, generally so erect, was bowed under the weight of depression or preoccupation; her flexible, supple figure moved from side to side like the body of a bedouin; those dark African eyes, the most precious ornament of the noble city of Lancia, were fixed upon the ground, and the very deep line on her forehead testified to the fixed, gloomy drift ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... three of bone and muscle, is a magnificent animal. The gods forgot little of their old-time cunning in the making of him, in the forging of his shoulders, massive as a bull's withers, in the shaping of his limbs, sturdy as pillars of granite and supple as willows, in the setting of his well-poised head, his heavy jaw, (p. 055) and muscled neck. But the gods seem to have grown weary of a momentous masterpiece when they came to the man's eyes, and Goliath wears glasses. For all ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... not only with natural wisdom, but with candour and logical honesty. But if the subject of debate be something in the air, an abstraction, an excuse for talk, a logical Aunt Sally, then may the male debater instantly abandon hope; he may employ reason, adduce facts, be supple, be smiling, be angry, all shall avail him nothing; what the woman said first, that (unless she has forgotten it) she will repeat at the end. Hence, at the very junctures when a talk between men grows brighter and quicker and begins to promise to bear fruit, talk between the sexes ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... coarse country wench, almost decay'd, Trudges to town, and first turns chambermaid; Awkward and supple, each devoir to pay, She flatters her good lady twice a-day; Thought wondrous honest, though of mean degree, And strangely liked for her simplicity: In a translated suit, then tries the town, With borrow'd pins, and patches not her own: But just endured the winter she began, ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... putting embarrassing questions, received it with—"M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator." Laplace, who, though the most supple of politicians, was as stiff as a martyr on every point of his philosophy or religion (e. g., even under Charles X he never concealed his dislike of the priests), drew himself up and answered {2} bluntly, "Je n'avais pas besoin de cette ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... confident tenderness. Then he did not hurry himself. He measured his distance, and swung the hammer from on high with all his might and at regular intervals. He had the classic style, accurate, evenly balanced, and supple. Fifine, in his hands, did not cut capers, like at a dance-hall, but made steady, certain progress; she rose and fell in cadence, like a lady of quality ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... of the ship's crew came to help us dress in these heavy and impervious clothes, made of rubber without seam and constructed expressly to resist considerable pressure. One might have taken this diving apparatus for a suit of armor, both supple and resisting. It formed trousers and waistcoat; the trousers were finished off with thick boots, weighted with heavy leaden soles. The texture of the waistcoat was held together by bands of copper, ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... will be enough. Bumble and his wife; Charley Bates and the Artful Dodger; the cowardly charity-boy, Noah Claypole, whose Such agony, please, sir, puts the whole of a school-life into one phrase; the so-called merry old Jew, supple and black-hearted Fagin; and Bill Sikes, the bolder-faced bulky-legged ruffian, with his white hat and white shaggy dog,—who does not know them all, even to the least points of dress, look, and walk, and all the small peculiarities that express great points of character? I have omitted ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... in the city, within closed doors, I saw a young slave-girl dancing. She was about fifteen years old, thin and supple; she danced like a reed in the wind; but her eyes were weary as death, and her white body was marked with bruises. She stumbled, and the men laughed at her. She fell, and her mistress beat her, crying out that she would fain be rid of such a heavy-footed ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... farewell to Manuel with pitiable whispered words. They kissed. For an instant Manuel stood motionless. He queerly moved his mouth, as though it were stiff and he were trying to make it more supple. Thereafter Manuel, very sick and desperate looking, did what was requisite. So Niafer went away with Grandfather Death, ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... of bunting in the wind; her manner expressed the repose and confidence which come from a large experience. Experience, however, had not quenched her youth; it had simply made her sympathetic and supple. She was in a word a woman of strong impulses kept in admirable order. This commended itself to Isabel ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... camp was opened, the colleges, military schools, and high schools of the country poured out a stream of young men whose minds had been trained in the classroom and whose bodies had been made supple and virile on the athletic field. They came with intelligence, energy, and enthusiasm and, under a course of intensive training, rapidly took on the added discipline and capacities necessary to equip ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... enough, that you seek to increase my misery? Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it. Remember, thou hast made me more powerful than thyself; my height is superior to thine, my joints more supple. But I will not be tempted to set myself in opposition to thee. I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me. Oh, Frankenstein, be not equitable to every other and trample upon me alone, to whom ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... the long blade then, she makes with it various passes in the air, very supple and dexterous, and would have me fight ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... nonplussed contemporary audiences and critics, and caused Martinenche to regard the play as an "ironique divertissement," intended to demonstrate that "Galds' art was supple and objective enough to set forth an idea apparently at variance with the general inspiration of his theater." Such an explanation would be in harmony with Galds' favorite custom of balancing one argument against another, but perhaps Brbara may be interpreted in the light of Los condenados, ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... dressing, put on a riding-habit, which revealed the lines of her supple figure, and a wide-brimmed felt hat, which encircled her lovely face and auburn hair, and sat down to her writing-desk, at which she wrote to her uncle, M. d'Aigleroche, a farewell letter to be delivered to him that evening. It was ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... handsomest man in all England—indeed, in all the world, I thought. He was tall and slight, with wavy hair, light brown, almost golden, in the sunlight. His eyes were gray, a lovely shade, though those who hated him swore 'twas green. A clever supple swordsman, and to the fore in all the rough games that men delight in. His face was very winsome, yet often swept by varying moods. I have seen it hard and stern, and again alight with the keenest appreciation of one of my Lord Kenneth's witticisms. And, too, I have seen it tender, ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... back into the room Mackay ran for her, and locking her in the same embrace—even a tighter one than Swann's—he fell into the strange steps that had so shocked Lane. Moreover, he was manifestly a skilful dancer, and showed the thin, lithe, supple body of one trained down by this or some other ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... orchard sprite; Eve, with her body white, Supple and smooth to her Slim finger tips; Wondering, listening, Listening, wondering, Eve with a berry Half-way ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... from whom came low, inspiriting words; then, facing the batter, Keene, he eyed him in cool speculation, and swung into supple action. ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... Gray Oaks stables were many good hunters, but none better than Pasha. Cream-white he was, from the tip of his splendid, yard-long tail to his pink-lipped muzzle. His coat was as silk plush, his neck as supple as a swan's, and out of his big, bright eyes there looked such intelligence that one half expected him to speak. His lines were all long, graceful curves, and when he danced daintily on his slender legs one could see the muscles flex under the ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... here subjoin the description of one of these canoes. They choose for the purpose branches of a white and supple wood, such as poplar; which are to form the ribs or curves, and are fastened on the outside with three poles, one at bottom and two on the sides, to form the keel; to these curves two other stouter poles are afterwards made fast, to form the gunnels; then they ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... a curtness at which Weston could not take offense. "He can put in the evening that way if it's necessary. It will supple him, and I guess he needs it. I have a rig ready. You're ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... liable, when the hour of danger threatened, to be called out, in marching- order, to the field of battle. But by this time the pistols were in the hands of the two infatuated young men, Mr Bloatsheet, as fierce as a hussar dragoon, and Magneezhy as supple in the knees as if he was all on oiled hinges; so the next consideration was to get well out of the way, the lookers-on running nearly as great a chance of being shot as the principals, they not being accustomed, like me for instance, to the use ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... strong? Through strength of love—the inward fire that makes great the soul, while consuming the dross of false values and foolish estimates—from the merry heart that could laugh through any failure, and most of all from the beautiful hand, supple and workful, and gentle and forceful, that ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... acquaintance of a girl-musician named Soek Panjoebang. He found her enticing tones of quavering sweetness from the gamelan, an instrument well-loved in Old Bali. Soek Panjoebang had the delicate features and transparent skin of Sumatra, the supple long limbs of Arabia and in a pair of wide and golden eyes a heritage from somewhere in Celtic Europe. Murphy bought her a goblet of frozen shavings, each a different perfume, while he himself drank white rice-beer. ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... counting-house. There, cool, bland, fawning, and weaving in his close and dark mind various speculations of guilt and craft, he sat among his bills and gold, like the very gnome and personification of that Mammon of gain to which he was the most supple though ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lithe, her head poised superbly. Every pulse within him was mysteriously stirred, and his breath came in gasps. Yes, he must set her in his life. It would be bleak and barren without. To kiss the rosy lips when he listed, to pillow the fair head on his shoulder, to encircle the supple figure, so full of vitality, in his arms—yes, that would be ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... little timid, but soon she dared to raise her eyes and look at him in turn. Assuredly a handsome fellow; comely of body, revealing so much of supple strength; comely of face in well-cut feature and fearless eye ... To herself she said with some surprise that she had not thought him thus—more forward perhaps, talking freely and rather positively-but ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... have to act quickly, but he had already proven himself capable of that, and it might be that the Comanche would be looking for something of the kind, and was supple enough to secure the drop on him. His people were accustomed to border warfare and had graduated in all the subtlety of the ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... the soul of my mother, who is your own sister," continued Philippe, "to make your Rabouilleuse as supple as my glove, and the same as she was before that scoundrel, who is unworthy to have served in the Imperial Guard, ever came to quarter ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... performing their duty as firemen with that ease and celerity which are so desirable. To obviate this evil he instituted the gymnastic exercises, which, by bringing all the muscles of the body into action, and by increasing the development of the frame generally, rendered the men lithe and supple, and in every way more fitted for the performance of duties in which their lives frequently depended on their promptitude ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... in a style that has made them immortal one of the most terrible and crucial moments of Roman history. The deadly struggle for the throne demonstrated finally the real nature of the Principate—based not on constitutional fictions but on armed force—and the supple inefficiency of the senatorial class. The revolt on the Rhine foreshadowed the debacle of the fifth century. Tacitus was peculiarly well qualified to write the history of this period. He had been the eye-witness of some of the most terrible scenes: he was acquainted ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... its folds with the rhythm of your step, becomes mysterious, like the sea—floating, as it were, with life itself.... Only that fleeting sparkle from your eyes as you roll them upward... Or when you are lying down, and you stretch your foot out—so supple, that the tension on your arch makes your instep seem higher... And then your everlasting vivacity: when you laugh, the air seems to float with tiny fairies ... I love you, Kristrun, only you, you, you. [Kristrun ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... Miss Hilton? She'll have been sadly hindered with all this rain. They put off two cricket-matches this week. They're not playing football yet, or else the weather wouldn't matter so much. They say the wet weather keeps their joints supple. It's the dry weather and frost that's so hard to play in. Ted's always one for a lot of sport, specially football. Such a mess as he comes home sometimes. 'You must clean your own clothes,' I always says to him. We have ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... in his eye, watched the smart ankle, the neat leg, the supple waist, and the coquettish broad hat of Mme. Rosemilly as they fled away before him. And this flight fired his ardor, urging him on to the sudden determination which comes to hesitating and timid natures. The warm air, fragrant with seacoast odors—gorse, clover and thyme, mingling with the salt ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... the Parisian faubourgs lives and develops, makes connections, "grows supple" in suffering, in the presence of social realities and of human things, a thoughtful witness. He thinks himself heedless; and he is not. He looks and is on the verge of laughter; he is on the verge of something else also. Whoever you may be, if your name is Prejudice, Abuse, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... such a Prospero for Masques; that there was a true 'Phil-harmonus' there, with so clear an inspiration of scientific statesmanship. They did not know that they had in that servant of the crown, so supple, so 'patient—patient as the midnight sleep,' patient 'as the ostler that for the poorest piece will bear the knave by the volume'—such a born aspirant for rule; one who had always his eye on the throne, one who had always in mind their usurpation of it. They did not ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... the beauties of the hand are many. Touch has its ecstasies. The hands of people of strong individuality and sensitiveness are wonderfully mobile. In a glance of their finger-tips they express many shades of thought. Now and again I touch a fine, graceful, supple-wristed hand which spells with the same beauty and distinction that you must see in the handwriting of some highly cultivated people. I wish you could see how prettily little children spell in my hand. ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... Strang out on trail to get a moose. Linday kept at his heels, watching him, studying him. He was slender, a cat in the strength of his muscles, and he walked as Linday had seen no man walk, effortlessly, with all his body, seeming to lift the legs with supple muscles clear to the shoulders. But it was without heaviness, so easy that it invested him with a peculiar grace, so easy that to the eye the speed was deceptive. It was the killing pace of which Tom Daw had complained. ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... a deference that seemed surprising. He did not look like a man who would be supple to an employer, or obsequious to any ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... to the bridge where she relieved the duty officer and began taking readings for the jump-setting. She looked out of place among the machines, a sturdy but supple figure in a simple, one-piece shipsuit. Yet there was no denying the efficiency with which ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... rectitude; and the relations between Charles and Lewis were such that no English nobleman could long reside in France as envoy, and retain any patriotic or honourable sentiment. Sunderland came forth from the bad school in which he had been brought up, cunning, supple, shameless, free from all prejudices, and destitute of all principles. He was, by hereditary connection, a Cavalier: but with the Cavaliers he had nothing in common. They were zealous for monarchy, and condemned in theory all resistance. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was in the rich and fantastic habit of a Hungarian captain that the handsome young Medici was now painted by Titian at Bologna, the result being a portrait unique of its kind even in his life-work. The sombre glow of the supple, youthful flesh, the red-brown of the rich velvet habit which defines the perfect shape of Ippolito, the red of the fantastic plumed head-dress worn by him with such sovereign ease, make up a deep harmony, warm, yet not in the technical sense hot, and of indescribable effect. ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... left Mademoiselle alone. It was the Bouvard water-colour, but living and moving. Her lithe, slender body seemed light as air. Every gesture, every pose, was full of a grave dignity. In the dark theatre there was complete silence. All eyes were centred on the supple, graceful form of the dancer. Music, life, and colour were in harmony. Gradually the full orchestra took up the strain again—Mademoiselle, panting, flung herself into the ready arms of Augustin, and the stillness was broken by the thunder ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... soft Georgian, posturing With her long, supple narghile at lip, Showing the glorious fashion of her hip, One foot upon the ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... the middle of the room. He was paler than usual, and kept his eyes on the floor; but his bearing was good, and he affected a resolute air which he rarely displayed in the presence of his father. The Count remained silent for some time; he gazed with a cold eye on the supple and delicate body of his son, the exquisite elegance of his form, his fine and delicate features, framed in the slightly darkened gold of his hair. Never had the beauty of his child filled the heart of his father with keener bitterness. As for Gilbert, he had ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... Europe that she seems for the moment to be impregnable to a foe of our stature. There is but one hope for us—the uniting of the Balkan forces to turn a masterly front to North and West as well as to South and East. Is that a task for old hands to undertake? No; the hands must be young and supple; and the brain subtle, as well as the heart be strong, of whomsoever would dare such an accomplishment. Should I accept the crown, it would only postpone the doing of that which must ultimately be done. What avail would it be if, when ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... ribbon starred with the blue corn-flower, the supple textile baptised in its soft waters is transformed by the hand of man into cloudy lace, into snowy linen, into fabrics of filmy lightness for my lady's wear, La Lys, name significant and fraught with poetry for us—giving life to the germ ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... results were small. Other industries were shut to her. The world is as full of women as men. They have to eat, drink, and be clothed, and, until other opportunities are obtained, their supplies are infinitely smaller than those offered to men. Why should women, whose supple fingers can set type—why should not they be type-setters? The printers joined together in bands and swore by all the gods they knew that women should not be printers. They joined together in a body and printed in a book that they would not work for any man who employed women as printers. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... sentences of the Rector of the University of Salamanca, Miguel de Unamuno, writing with a restraint which is anything but traditionally Castilian, and to the journalistic impressionism of Ramiro de Maeztu, supple and cosmopolitan from long residence abroad. The poets now jettisoned the rotundities of the romantic and emotional schools of Zorrilla and Salvador Rueda, and substituted instead the precise, pictorial line of Ruben Dario, Juan Ramon Jimenez, and the brothers Machado, while the socialistic and ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... means so great as might be imagined, and many fine players drive their best balls with stiff clubs. It must always be remembered that when the stroke is not made perfectly there is a much greater tendency to slice with a supple shaft than with a stiff one, and the disadvantages of the former are especially pronounced on a windy day. It is all a matter of preference and predilection, and when these are absent the best thing to do is to strike the happy medium and select a shaft that is fairly supple ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... one and every one is owner of the library who can read the same through all the varieties of tongues and subjects and styles, and in whom they enter with ease, and take residence and force toward paternity and maternity, and make supple and powerful and rich and large. These American states, strong and healthy and accomplished, shall receive no pleasure from violations of natural models, and must not permit them. In paintings or mouldings or carvings in mineral or wood, or in the illustrations of books ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... grievous youth is inwardlye possest of a supple spirit, he can brooke impugnying, but tis adverse to my spirit if ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... wild Albanian kirtled to his knee, With shawl-girt head and ornamented gun, And gold-embroidered garments, fair to see: The crimson-scarfed men of Macedon; The Delhi with his cap of terror on, And crooked glaive; the lively, supple Greek; And swarthy Nubia's mutilated son; The bearded Turk, that rarely deigns to speak, Master of all around, ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... the strength of her lithe and supple body. Above his cheek-bone a red streak leaped out where the sharp knuckles had ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... from nocturnal sweat and sanguine stain They cleanse their bodies in the neighb'ring main: Then in the polished bath, refresh'd from toil, Their joints they supple with dissolving oil, In due repast indulge the genial hour, And first to Pallas the libations pour: They sit, rejoicing in her aid divine, And the crown'd goblet foams with floods ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... having risen to go, then, like the wily and supple diplomat you are, you come to the real ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... knob and watched the great discs begin to whir softly around under their glass dome. At the familiar sound her hunger for the coming comfort mounted fiercely, and she seized the long, supple, silk-wrapped cords and pressed the bulbs to either temple. A slight shock ran through her blood and with the realization of her folly came the knowledge that she could not take down her hands. The whirring grew, doubled, multiplied in volume; the room seemed to sway and ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... Albert Moore, an unbending upholder of the sufficiency in art of whatever is nobly decorative, was a devoted student of the severer graces of Hellenic art, and married in his works spontaneous and supple gesture with forms of chaste sobriety, clothing them in delicately harmonious tones, of which the studied arrangement announced to the first glance the refined idiosyncrasy of his artistic ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Wiley, see him as he paces the lawn, his supple back writhed just a little towards my lady deferentially, his head just a little on one side, lending her an ear. By the gait of him he is looking another way. Yes; for now my lady turns, he turns too, and they halt front to front; his ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... dint of hard work, and carefully nursing his connection, he contrived to make a living; and that was all. Literary work is not well paid as a rule. There is fair pay to be had on the staff of the best daily papers, but that kind of work requires a special aptitude. It requires, in particular, a supple and indifferent mind, ready to take its cue from other people, with the art of representing things from day to day not exactly as they are, but as an editor or paymaster wants them to appear. If we suffered our journalists to sign their articles, they would probably ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... production and includes some of the loveliest women Tintoretto ever painted. We see too plainly the planning, the device of concentrating interest on the idol by turning figures and pointing fingers, but nothing can be imagined more supple and queenly than the woman in blue, and the way the light falls on her head and perfectly foreshortened arm shows to what excellence Tintoretto had attained. The "Presentation" is a riper work. The drawing of the flight ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... his birth is supple and weak; at his death, firm and strong. (So it is with) all things. Trees and plants, in their early growth, are soft and brittle; at their death, ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... shoulder-muscles rise and brace themselves at the thought, all the strength and violence of his young manhood, with its firm sinews and supple joints, told him that it was his willing and active servant and would do his pleasure. He wanted to smash the jaw bone that had formed these lies, and he wanted the world to know he had done so. Yet that was not enough, he wanted to throttle ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... fie," cried the supple Mr Simkins, "how can you be so hard? for my share, I must needs own I think the poor lady's to be pitied; for it must have been but a melancholy sight to her, to see her spouse cut off so in the flower of his youth, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... end to them. Week after week, month after month, they came stringing-in from seven-syllabled localities on all points of the compass; some with sunburnt wives, and graduated sets of supple-jointed keen-sighted children—the latter, I grieve to admit, distinctly affirming that disquieting theory which assumes evolution of immigrating races toward the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... he tried to detect the real character of a creature supple and hard as a steel spring; but he had seen her pass through so many phases, that he could not make up his mind about her. The tones of her voice, too, were ringing in his ears; her gestures, the little movements of her head, ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... ill clad was her strong young figure; her face showed the strain of years of effort; her eyes had the fire of experience in suffering; and she stood, a supple girl of heightened beauty while the hunter, sure of his welcome, walked up to her, and, as both her hands held the awkward bushel basket, ventured to tickle her under ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... him over, but there was nothing critical in his glance. Pride and love filled his eyes as they ran over his son's face and figure. And small wonder! The youth was good to look upon. A shade under six feet he stood, straight and slim, strength and supple grace in every move of his body. His face was beautiful with the beauty of features, clean cut and strong, but more with the beauty of a clear, candid soul. He seemed to radiate an atmosphere of cheery good nature ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... God found the Jew when he came to look upon him to save him—"As for thy nativity," says God, "in the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to supple thee; thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all. None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field, to the loathing of thy person, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... voice of mirth.—The shrill-tongued shrew, Meek as the turtle-dove, forgets her chiding. Here are the wise, the generous, and the brave; The just, the good, the worthless, the profane; The downright clown, and perfectly well-bred; The fool, the churl, the scoundrel, and the mean; The supple statesman, and the patriot stern; The wrecks of nations, and the spoils of time, With all the lumber of six thousand years. 540 Poor man!—how happy once in thy first state! When yet but warm from thy great Maker's hand, He stamp'd thee with his image, and, well pleased, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... barbarically arrayed in the holiday garb of a Seminole chief. The firelight danced upon the beaten band of silver about her brilliant turban and the beads upon her sash, upon red-beaded deerskin leggings delicately thonged from the supple waist to the small and moccasined foot, upon a tunic elaborately banded in red and a belt of buckskin from which hung a hunting knife, a revolver and an ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... critically over the strong young body, with its long, supple, sinewy lines. "Yes," she nodded. "I ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... And rove about thee, guardians of thy mind; These fetched thee home thy bride, and all the way Advised thy servant what to do and say; These taught him at the well, and thither brought The chaste and lovely object of thy thought. But here was ne'er a compliment, not one Spruce, supple cringe, or studied look put on. All was plain, modest truth: nor did she come In rolls and curls, mincing and stately dumb; But in a virgin's native blush and fears, Fresh as those roses which the day-spring wears. O sweet, divine simplicity! O grace Beyond a curled lock or painted face! A pitcher ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... seen,—having trampled upon those of their servants who had manifested any symptom of independence, or who considered the orders of the Directors as a rule of their conduct,—having brought every Englishman under his yoke, and made them supple and fit instruments for all his designs,—then gave it to be understood that such alone were fit persons to be employed in important affairs of state. Consider, my Lords, the effect of this upon the whole service. Not ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... with wonderful freshness—scarlet roses, golden roses—and in such masses and so scattered about the nude figure as to give it a character of purity and modesty. The flesh tints are warm, the figure is supple in effect, and the whole is a happy picturing of the sleep and dream of a lovely young woman who has thrown herself down in the ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... the grace of youth, when it had been the instrument of uncommon strength and wielded an authority that none could stand against. Her fancy wandered over the scenes it had known; when it had felled trees in the wild forest, and those fingers, then supple and slight, had played the fife to the struggling men of the Revolution; how its activity had outdone the activity of all other hands in clearing and cultivating those very fields where her feet loved to run; how in its pride of strength it had ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... shirt, and trousers. Marshal Stone, chancing to look that way, was astonished to see his companion naked, poised at the water's edge. He had time to note with admiration the splendid figure, still supple and strongly muscled despite the four-score years. Then Uncle Dick leaped, and dived. It was long seconds before he reappeared, only to dive again. He paid no attention to the marshal's remonstrances. Only when he was convinced of the uselessness ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... four apprentices or pupils in that time learning to become figuli, but the one whom Raffaelle liked the most (and Pacifica too) was one Luca Torelli, of a village above in the mountains,—a youth with a noble, dark, pensive beauty of his own, and a fearless gait, and a supple, tall, slender figure that would have looked well in the light coat of mail and silken doublet of a man-at-arms. In sooth, the spirit of Messer Luca was more made for war and its risks and glories than for the wheel and the brush of the bottega; but he ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... a supple riding-switch in his hands, at which his fingers strained and twisted continually, as though somewhere in the inner man there burned a fierce impatience. But his dark face was as immovable as though it had been carved in bronze. A tropical sun had made him even ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... riding-habit—not shrivelled, for she sat too straight, but as though the cotton jacket had been made for a larger woman. If she seemed tired, and if a stranger might have guessed that her head ached until the chestnut curls were too heavy for it, she was still supple. And, as she whipped the pony into an unwilling trot and old mission-named Joanna broke into a jog behind, revolt—no longer impatience, or discontent, or sorrow, but reckless rebellion—rode ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... made her look anything but a theatrical star. Grace, however, had for once departed from her favorite blue and wore a white chiffon gown whose exquisitely simple lines made the most of her slender, supple figure. The charm of early sixteen radiated from her youthful person, and she looked no older than when she had led the freshman basketball team on to victory in Oakdale ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... this time his duties had been ably performed by Colour-Sergeant C. Guilfoyle, now Sergeant-Major, 2nd Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Lieutenants Marsh and Weldon also joined here, as Lieutenant Supple had done a few days before. The two former had followed the regiment up the line to Mafeking, and thence across the Western Transvaal in a cape-cart, following very nearly in our tracks. They had an adventuresome journey, and were delighted to reach us at last. Captain Clarke, R.M.L.I., ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... shrouded from the penetration of London fogs by clean sheeting. It was only white and as simple as she knew how to order it, but Mademoiselle had taken her to a young French person who knew exactly what she was doing in all cases, and because the girl had the supple lines of a wood nymph and the eyes of young antelope she had evolved that which expressed her as a petal expresses its rose. Robin locked her door and took the dress down and found the silk stockings and slippers which belonged to it. She put them all on standing before her long mirror and having ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... poised erect in the great calm of the public performer. Then slowly he began to revolve the log under his feet. The lofty gaze, the folded arms, the straight supple waist budged not by a hair's breadth; only the feet stepped forward, at first deliberately, then faster and faster, until the rolling log threw a blue spray a foot into the air. Then suddenly slap! slap! the heavy caulks stamped a reversal. The log came instantaneously ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... he was a student and his tastes were delicate, still he did not frown upon our rude sports, provided they were not low or brutal. "They make the body erect and supple and give strength and elasticity to the muscles. The body should be cultivated as well as the mind. What we want is a sound ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... large business desk with prosaic standard equipment which stood on the carpet on the other side of the pool. They moved rapidly past the pool, Quillan still hauling at her arm. Trigger kept staring at the pillars they passed. Long-limbed, supple and languid, they floated in their crystal cages, in tinted, shifting lights, eyes closed, hair ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... that of an animal in terror and agony. It was so tremendous that it broke Jean's hold. Greaves let out a strangled yell that cleared, swelling wildly, with a hideous mortal note. He wrestled free. The big knife came out. Supple and swift, he got to his, knees. He had his gun out when Jean reached him again. Like a bear Jean enveloped him. Greaves shot, but he could not raise the gun, nor twist it far enough. Then Jean, letting go with his right arm, swung ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... you might have seen the three of us—myself, sunburnt, young, and vigorous after our open-air tramp; Summerlee, solemn but still critical, behind his eternal pipe; Lord John, as keen as a razor-edge, with his supple, alert figure leaning upon his rifle, and his eager eyes fixed eagerly upon the speaker. Behind us were grouped the two swarthy half-breeds and the little knot of Indians, while in front and above us ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... imagination, memory, and understanding: their proneness to distraction, and the itching curiosity of the mind, must be curbed, and their repugnance to attend to spiritual things corrected by habits of recollection, holy meditation, and prayer. Above all, the will must be rendered supple and pliant by frequent self-denial, which must reach and keep in subjection all its most trifling sallies and inclinations. If any of these, how insignificant soever they may seem, are not restrained and vanquished, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... William played again. His fingers, now grown more supple, brought out clearer, firmer tones. As he played, silence fell on these people. The magic of music sobered every face; the women looked older and more careworn, the men slouched sullenly in their chairs or ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... grand alliance; he "borrowed England on his way to Versailles," and governed it in the interest of the Dutch Coalition. Queen Anne and the first Georges reigned but did not govern; and in the early eighteenth century power fell to men of supple intelligence and complacent conviction—to Marlborough and little Sidney Godolphin, to Harley and St. John and Sunderland, and at last to Robert Walpole, the very personification of the shrewd curiosity, the easy-going morals, the material ambitions ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... indeed, in his arms, but his very roughness was a proof of the intensity of his love. For an instant she lay palpitating against him, and as long as he lives he will remember the first exquisite touch of her firm but supple figure and the marvellous communion of her lips. A current from the great store that was in her, pent up and all unknown, ran through him, and then she had struggled out of his arms and fled, leaving him standing ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... beside the carriage, wondering how I was going to get in, I felt an arm slip under my neck and another slide gently under my knees, and Buckhurst lifted me. Beneath the loose, gray coat-sleeves his bent arms were rigid as steel; his supple frame straightened; he moved a step forward and laid ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... keep me from thee, O beloved; But I shall shake his gates in my despair, Until they open wide to let me pass; I'll take my life up like a mighty rock, And so beat breaches in the walls of Time; I'll cast existence from me like a wrestler's robes, And with my supple, naked soul throw Fate; I'll snap the shackles whose Promethean links Bind down my soul unto this narrow earth.— Dost hear my voice dim floating to thee now, Along the waves that ripple at my feet? Thus do I come to thee, Eurydice, Through waving ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... an original and half-foreign quaintness could be called so. There was a desperate attempt visible to combine an American shawl with the habits of a mantilla, and it was always slipping from one shoulder, that was so supple and vivacious as to betray the deficiencies of an education in stays. There was a cluster of black curls around her low forehead, fitting her so closely as to seem to be a part of the seal-skin ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... boy and rendering himself responsible for their destinies, Paragot must now saddle himself with a young woman. Had she been a beautiful gipsy, holding fascinating allurements in lustrous eyes and pomegranate lips, and witchery in a supple figure, the act would have been a commonplace of human weakness. But in the case of poor Blanquette, squat and coarse, her heavy features only redeemed from ugliness by youth, honesty and clean teeth, the eternal ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... movements, clear and near, Are in thy living grace. Supple and tender, as a deer Art thou, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... the public never bothered about them. Their art was out of touch with the people, music which was only fed from music. Now, Christophe was under the impression, rightly or wrongly, that there was no music that had a greater need of outside support than French music. That supple climbing plant needed a prop: it could not do without literature, but did not find in it enough of the breath of life. French music was breathless, bloodless, will-less. It was like a woman languishing for her ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... why the Italian is attractive, supple, and beautiful, because he worships the Godhead in the flesh. We envy him, we feel pale and insignificant beside him. Yet at the same time we feel superior to him, as if he were ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... longer reach, was gifted by the gods with a supple strength no whit less than the bearish power of the timber boss. With ten blows struck, with both men rocking dizzily, it was patently Steve Packard's fight. But a dull, dogged persistence was in Joe Woods's eyes as again he shook his ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... after Bascomb had flung off one glove and struck at Frank with his bare fist, the smaller and more supple lad had sailed in and shown that he could put pounds into his blows, for he had driven Bascomb back and knocked ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... sir, that we now know who committed the murder in Hietzing. Johann Knoll is innocent of anything more than the theft confessed by himself. He took the purse and watch from the senseless form of the just murdered man. The body was warm and still supple and the tramp supposed the victim to be merely intoxicated. His story was in every respect ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... she shines amid the starry sky, * Robing in tresses blackest ink outvie. The morning-breezes give her boughs fair drink, * And like a branch she sways with supple ply: She smiles in passing us. O thou that art * Fairest in yellow robed, or cramoisie, Thou playest with my wit in love, as though * Sparrow in hand ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... inflexible, and English letters more colourless and slack, there was another dialect in the sister country, and a different school of poetry tracing its descent, through King James I., from Chaucer. The dialect alone accounts for much; for it was then written colloquially, which kept it fresh and supple; and, although not shaped for heroic flights, it was a direct and vivid medium for all that had to do with social life. Hence, whenever Scotch poets left their laborious imitations of bad English verses, and fell back on their own dialect, their style ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rich brown hair, at the white-and-rose of her skin, at the delicate blue veins in her forehead, at her fine white hands, clasped loosely together in her lap, at the flowing lines of her figure, with its supple grace and strength; and behind her, surrounding her, accessory to her, he was conscious of the golden August world, in the golden August weather—of the green park, and the pure sunshine, and the sweet, still air, of the blue lake, and the blue sky, and the mountains ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... attenuated by the maternal influence. One found in him the first phase of that evolution of temperaments which ultimately brings about the amelioration or deterioration of a race. Although he was still a peasant, his skin was less coarse, his face less heavy, his intellect more capacious and more supple. In him the defects of his father and his mother had advantageously reacted upon each other. If Adelaide's nature, rendered exquisitely sensitive by her rebellious nerves, had combated and lessened Rougon's full-bodied ponderosity, the latter had successfully prevented ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... opponent may be surmised; what the American thought of the Spaniard need not be left to conjecture. In the pages of his diary Adams painted the portrait of his adversary as he saw him—"cold, calculating, wily, always commanding his temper, proud because he is a Spaniard but supple and cunning, accommodating the tone of his pretensions precisely to the degree of endurance of his opponents, bold and overbearing to the utmost extent to which it is tolerated, careless of what he asserts or how grossly it is proved ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... themselves now and then in hers,—a face hitherto obscured by the malady of grief, as the canvas of the great master is encrusted by time. Her hands seemed whiter; her shoulders took on an exquisite fulness; her graceful, animated movements gave to her supple ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... be opened!" Sir John said gently, he had done no otherwise than he had been desired; which however the lord chamberlain, in part, denied, (cautious and civil!) "and I was not so unmannerly as to contest against," (supple, but uneasy!) This affair ended miserably for the poor Dutchmen. Those new republicans were then regarded with the most jealous contempt by all the ambassadors, and were just venturing on their first dancing-steps, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Richard was murdered at his prayers, yet withal he got his deserts, for he hatched a worse wrong than ever Galors did. The child was chained by the middle, and came to me chained riding a white palfrey. In green and white she came, and round her middle was a chain, long and supple, and a monk on horse-back held the end thereof. She came to me to the hearth at the length of her chain, and held me in her dear arms, and kissed me, cheeks and forehead. Down I sat on my stool and she on the knees of me, and she hid her face on my leanness ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... gold-embroidered drapery encumber her supple limbs; but her skirts are of the scantiest, (what Miss Flora MacFlimsey would call skimped,) and pitifully mean as to quality. By no means have the imperial looms of Benares contributed to her professional costume a veil ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... lifting of her long, supple figure. Grant watching, wondered why he had never before realized that the sensuous charm of her beauty was irresistible. "Where were my eyes?" he asked himself. "She's beyond any of the women I've wasted so ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... she was not fine in texture, but hardy as a man. She could endure immense fatigue without yielding to it. Her supple form had the strength of steel. There was a gleam in her hazel eyes that showed her to be brimful of an almost fierce vitality. Young as she was, she was the mistress of a thousand arts, and she exhaled a sort of atmosphere that turned ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... figures emerged from the darkness into the circle of light, and with swift, supple steps gained the camp-fire before any of the travelers had time to move. They were Indians, and the brandishing of their tomahawks proclaimed ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... while the unlucky huntsmen were under our roof, to give them festive welcome. Fred drew out his fiddle; the Doctor gathered his strength and shook as lively a shoe on the sanded floor of the best room as one will hear the clang of in many a day. Clumsy joints grew supple; heavy boots made the splinters fly; a fellow-townsman, like ourselves on a vacation tour, jigged with the inimitable grace of a trained dancer. How few of our muscles are aware of the joy of full development! From the wall of the best room the ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... less for it; it added something of charm and mystery to the classical lines of her face. Sanin was especially struck that day by the exquisite beauty of her hands; when she smoothed and put back her dark, glossy tresses he could not take his eyes off her long supple fingers, held slightly apart from one another like the hand ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... when I was with old Nat Fire-eater. And I'm stiffer in the joints and weightier in the heft than I was in those days when I slept in the fields, and fasted more than ever Holy Church meant. But, heigh ho! I ought to be supple enough after the practice of these three days. Moreover, if it could loose a fool's tongue to have a king and queen for interpreters, I had them—for there were our Harry and Moll catching at every gibe as fast as my ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... him to portray a Gretchen. All his pictures were Phryne,—Phryne in triumph, in ruin, in a palace, in a poor-house, on a bed of roses, on a hospital mattress; Phryne laughing with a belt of jewels about her supple waist; Phryne lying with the stones of the dead-house under her naked limbs,—but always Phryne. Phryne, who living had death in her smile; Phryne, who lifeless had blank despair on her face; Phryne, a thing that lived ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... and he did not move from his position in the ship. But the ship had crossed the great gulf, and was speeding through the galaxy now. He was near the end. At a reckless speed, he sat motionless before the controls, save for slight movements of supple fingers that directed the ship at a mad pace about some gigantic sun and its family of planets. Suns flashed, grew to discs, and were left behind ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... a European one, then may it come, bronzed, keen, and supple from the tropic calm! The birds of the ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... tall, with a great braid of shining chestnut hair, showing ruddy burnished tints where the sunlight struck it, hanging over her shoulder. The plain dark dress she wore emphasized the grace and strength of her supple form. Her face was oval and pale, with straight black brows and a finely cut crimson mouth—a face whose beauty bore the indefinable stamp of race and breeding mingled with a wild sweetness, as of a flower ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... burst out; the air grew filled with them: larvae so bloodless and so hideous that I can in no way describe them except to remind the reader of the swarming life which the solar microscope brings before his eyes in a drop of water,—things transparent, supple, agile, chasing each other, devouring each other; forms like naught ever beheld by the naked eye. As the shapes were without symmetry, so their movements were without order. In their very vagrancies there was no sport; they came round me and round, thicker and faster and swifter, swarming over ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... life. And yet she had evidently nothing of the fluttered, flapping quality of a morsel of bunting in the wind; her manner expressed the repose and confidence which come from a large experience. Experience, however, had not quenched her youth; it had simply made her sympathetic and supple. She was in a word a woman of strong impulses kept in admirable order. This commended itself to Isabel as an ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... perfectly serious about the production of an opera, Tracy furnishing verse to Emilia's music. He wrote with extraordinary rapidity, but clung to graphic phrases, that were not always supple enough for nuptials with modulated notes. Then Emilia had to hit his sense of humour by giving the words as they came in the run of the song. "You make me crow, or I croak," ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to eat and need never go hungry. On no account may the women sit at the loom till their legs grow cramped, otherwise their husbands will likewise be stiff in their joints and unable to rise up quickly or to run away from the foe. So in order to keep their husbands' joints supple the women often vary their labours at the loom by walking up and down the verandah. Further, they may not cover up their faces, or the men would not to be able to find their way through the tall grass or jungle. Again, the women may not sew with a ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... cliff of the Dryads be silent, and the springs welling from the rock, and the many-mingled bleating of the ewes; for Pan himself makes music on his melodious pipe, running his supple lip over the jointed reeds; and around him stand up to dance with glad feet the water-nymphs and ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... the pins through her hat before the oval mirror which had been one of her acquisitions. As she drew on the gloves she turned her supple body to make sure of the satisfactory hang of her skirt. Her good spirits had returned, and she hummed softly as Phil surveyed her. She seemed less indifferent to-day to Phil's admiration. Phil's spirits rose slowly; it was difficult to mourn in ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... sunshine in throbbing spangles like those one so often sees on the rippled surface of a glacier lake. But the Silver Pines were now the most impressively beautiful of all. Colossal spires two hundred feet in height waved like supple golden-rods chanting and bowing low as if in worship; while the whole mass of their long, tremulous foliage was kindled into one continuous blaze of white sun-fire. The force of the gale was such that the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... the expense of the Great Monarch. After his stay in England we have his Brutus (1730), an attack on kingcraft, and his Zaire (1732), a Parisian Othello, both based on Shakespeare. From this time onward he plunges into a supple and dexterous, if sometimes rather disingenuous, strife with a superior power. Throughout, the poet and man of taste struggles against the philosophic freethinker: he loves the surface impressions, perhaps the reflective illusions; "his sentiments are ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... slumber; that on her face and the light print dress fell the golden rays of the morning sun filtering through the young leaves; her hair was tied in a loose knot, and the flowing morning dress showed the outline of her shoulders and supple waist, and in its very carelessness had a certain freshness, which enhanced a thousandfold her charm. It did not escape my notice how much smaller than usual she looked among the tall elm trees of the avenue,—almost a child; in ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... and then is the moment when the angler must follow the fish at the top of his speed. To stand still, or to go cautiously in pursuit, is to allow the salmon to run out with an enormous length of line; the line is submerged—technically speaking, drowned—in the water, the strain of the supple rod is removed from the fish, who finds the hook loose in his mouth, and rubs it off against the bottom of the river. Thus speed of foot, in water or over rocks, is a necessary quality in the angler; ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... standing there in the long nightgown that made her so straight and tall, with arms raised, holding up the thick mass of her hair, her body bent a little backwards from the waist, showing it for the slender and supple thing it was, seeing herself so incredibly feminine and so alive, she defied any one to tell the difference. If any difference there were it was not in her body, neither was it in her face. That was the face which had looked at ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... of the hand are many. Touch has its ecstasies. The hands of people of strong individuality and sensitiveness are wonderfully mobile. In a glance of their finger-tips they express many shades of thought. Now and again I touch a fine, graceful, supple-wristed hand which spells with the same beauty and distinction that you must see in the handwriting of some highly cultivated people. I wish you could see how prettily little children spell in my hand. They are ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... thought Diana; "what must I seem to him?" And truly her print gown was of homely quality and country wear; she did not take into the account a fine figure, which health and exercise had made free and supple in all its movements, and which the quiet poise of her character made graceful, whether in motion or rest. For grace is no gift of a dancing-master or result of the schools. It is the growth of the mind, more than of the body; the natural and almost necessary symbolization in outward ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... sprightly dame of more than seventy years, very thin, but straight and supple, and with hair still jet black. Her eyes were gray-green or green-gray, as the light happened to strike them; her cheeks were hollow, and a long sharp chin slanted up to meet a long sharp nose. Ordinarily, as the Knight had hinted, she was no doubt an unholy terror, ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... sure-footed as any mountaineer. His clothes were old, so neither rock nor sea could do them much harm; his feet were bare. He was short but very broad, and his muscles were strong and supple. When he came to the foot of the rock he stood a moment, hunting for the deepest pool at its base, then, loosing his hold, he dove ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... austere rectitude; and the relations between Charles and Lewis were such that no English nobleman could long reside in France as envoy, and retain any patriotic or honourable sentiment. Sunderland came forth from the bad school in which he had been brought up, cunning, supple, shameless, free from all prejudices, and destitute of all principles. He was, by hereditary connection, a Cavalier: but with the Cavaliers he had nothing in common. They were zealous for monarchy, and condemned in theory all resistance. Yet they had sturdy English ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... faculties were poisoned in the bud; for before she came to Paris she had already been prepared, by a corrupt, supple abbe, for the part she was to play; and, young as she was, became so firmly attached to the aggrandizement of her house, that, though plunged deep in pleasure, she never omitted sending immense ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... assemblies, and outward callings of men; planting our faith one while in the old Convocation house, and another while in the Chapel at Westminster; when all the faith and religion that shall be there canonized is not sufficient without plain convincement, and the charity of patient instruction to supple the least bruise of conscience, to edify the meanest Christian, who desires to walk in the Spirit, and not in the letter of human trust, for all the number of voices that can be there made; no, though Harry VII himself there, with all ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... give any weight to the doctrine that virtue is something rigid and unyielding as iron. In point of fact it is in regard to friendship, as in so many other things, so supple and sensitive that it expands, so to speak, at a friend's good fortune, contracts at his misfortunes. We conclude then that mental pain which we must often encounter on a friend's account is not of sufficient ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... corner, replied by an imploring look, which had just the opposite effect of argument. It instantly disarmed the old boy; he grinned superior, and spared his supple antagonist three sarcasms that were all on the tip of his tongue. He was rewarded for his clemency by a little piece of advice, delivered by his niece with a sort of hesitating and penitent air he did not understand one bit, eyes down upon the cloth all ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... Zephyrine swung passionately into the arena. With a bound she stood erect, one foot upon each of her supple, plunging Arabs; and at once I knew that my fate was sealed, my chapter closed, and the Bride of the Desert was the one bride for me. Black was her raiment, great silver stars shone through it, caught in the dusky twilight of ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... such a height the air was so pure and rarefied that Christophe could hardly breathe. There he met artists who claimed the absolute and limitless liberty of dreams,—men of unbridled subjectivity, like Flaubert, despising "the poor beasts who believe in the reality of things":—thinkers, who, with supple and many-sided minds, emulating the endless flow of moving things, went on "ceaselessly trickling and flowing," staying nowhere, nowhere coming in contact with stubborn earth or rock, and "depicted not the essence of life, but the passage," as Montaigne ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... coming down a distant canyon trail. He looked like a giant in the twilight. With long swinging strides he threw himself impetuously down the mountainside. Great power was in every movement. He was magnificent! He seemed as large as a horse, and had that grand supple strength given ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... with pride, and pleased herself with making it stern, but not to the effect she looked for, for the sternness itself pleased. While yet a child her little right hand would control the bit of the charger, and she wielded the sword and spear, and hardened her limbs with wrestling, and made them supple for the race; and then as she grew up, she tracked the footsteps of the bear and lion, and followed the trumpet to the wars; and in those and in the depths of the forest she seemed a wild creature to mankind, and a ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... brunette skin, through which the crimson blood flamed in cheek and lip. Eyes, now black, now gray, changing, flashing, witching eyes: gray in quiet moments, darkening with mirth or sadness, anger or pain; hair black and silky, rippling to the rounded, supple waist in glossy waves. Not so tall as Madeline, and rounded ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... actions than whole tomes of ethical culture science. You know perhaps how the Arabs conquered the best half of the world with an epigram, a word. And Khalid loves a fine-sounding, easy-flowing word; a word of supple joints, so to speak; a word that you can twist and roll out, flexible as a bamboo switch, resilient as a fine steel rapier. But once Shakib, after reading one of Khalid's first attempts, gets up in the night when his friend is asleep, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... easy, beetle; don't start off so proudly, or trust at first too greatly to your powers; wait till you have sweated, till the beating of your wings shall make your limb joints supple. Above all things, don't let off some foul smell, I adjure you; else I would rather have you stop in ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... a jewel! always supple o' foot. Phil, call to them to bring out the horse bastes, while I swallow my ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... not even rising erect to her feet, but on all fours, and silently as a snake. For although the hillside is so thickly overgrown with thorny scrub that a pointer would with difficulty quarter it, the supple old savage worms her way through, without making any more noise than would a badger just got out of the barrel, and away from the dogs that have ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... an angle or thin curve. Like Diana, she was long limbed, so that she seemed taller than she really was. The sweep of neck and shoulder was exquisite, and her simple dress was admirably adapted to display the lines of her supple form. As she walked down the studio, setting her feet firmly and carrying her head with fine poise, Grant Herman felt the ghost of an old passion ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... other consequences. It led to an increased freedom of movement of the thigh on the hip joint, to muscular arrangements for balancing the body on the leg, to making the backbone a supple yet stable curved pillar, to a strongly developed collar-bone which is only found well-formed when the fore-limb is used for more than support, and to a power of "opposing" the thumb and the big toe to the other digits of the hand and foot—an obvious advantage for branch-gripping. ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... dragged into the Lodge to join in this function, and presently found himself meeting Lady Farquhar, a pleasant plump lady who did not at all conform to the usual stage conception of her part. Her smile was warm for this supple blue-eyed engaging Westerner, but the latter did not need to be told that behind her friendliness the instinct of the chaperone was alert. The one swift glance she had thrown at Miss Dwight told him ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... heaving bosom, shook her little white fist viciously at where the figure must be, and perhaps a comical desire of vengeance stimulated her curiosity. She now glided through the fissure like a cautious panther from her den; and noiseless and supple as a serpent began to wind slowly round the tree. She soon came to a great protuberance in the tree, and twining and peering round it with diamond eye, she saw a very young, very handsome gentleman, stealing on tiptoe to the nearest flower-bed. Then she saw him take ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... Princes, the supple courtier and the fawning favourite have greater influence than the profound statesman and subtle Minister; and the determinations of Cabinets are, therefore, frequently prepared in drawing-rooms, and discussed in the closet. The politician and the counsellor are frequently ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... perfectly-shaped head showed through the thin black veil that fell over the white starched coif. The small, high-instepped foot could not be hidden in walking; the make of the thick shoe might not disguise its form. The delicate whiteness and smooth, supple beauty of her hands, larger than the hands of ordinary women, their owner being of more heroic build, as of ampler mind and keener intellect, betrayed her to be a woman not yet old, though there were some deep lines and many fine ones on the attentive face that bent over the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... for further usefulness he had come into possession of a whole block in the portion of the city known as "New Town." His prosperity did not, however, lessen his activity; he forgot that he was getting old, for his limbs were yet supple and his eyes perfectly clear. He measured off his lumber and drove nails with the strength and accuracy of a young man; yet, as death lurks in every passing breeze, feeling well is no evidence of sound health or assurance of long ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... Neal, after the schoolmaster's last visit, absolutely thunder-struck all who knew him. The clothes, which he had rashly taken in to fit his shrivelled limbs, were once more let out. The tailor expanded with a new spirit; his joints ceased to be supple, as in the days of his valor; his eye became less fiery, but more brilliant. From being martial, he got desperately gallant; but, somehow, he could not afford to act the hero and lover both at the same time. This, perhaps, would be too ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... was builded In the valley, by the river, In the bosom of the forest; And the forest life was in it, All its mystery and its magic, All the lightness of the birch tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the larch's supple sinews; And it floated on the river Like a yellow leaf in autumn, ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... the ears short and erect, and the pupils elliptical, corresponding with its leaping, predaceous habits; if it had the characteristic brush instead of a long taper tail, its figure would bear a considerable resemblance to that of the fox. The female is much smaller, but more active and supple in its movements than the male. They prey upon kangaroos, opossums, bandicoots, and other native animals; hunting by night, their exquisite sense of smell enables them to steal cautiously upon these defenceless animals, in the thick covers of the low grassy flats and scrubs, or to run them ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... belt of silk. It glided with the noiseless haste of a thing in flight. Quite naturally, even in the dazed moment of awakening I closed my hand upon it. It was soft in my grasp, yet resilient; solid, yet supple. If I may speak irrationally, it felt as if it must be fragrant. It was a strange visitor to my experience, yet I recognized its identity unerringly as a blind man gaining sight might identify a flower or a bird. In brief, it was—it only could be ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... found in ordinary speech or even oral narration. What Anderson employs here is a stylized version of the American language, sometimes rising to quite formal rhetorical patterns and sometimes sinking to a self-conscious mannerism. But at its best, Anderson's prose style in Winesburg, Ohio is a supple instrument, yielding that "low fine music" which he admired so much in the ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... were forced to take a roundabout trail over the prairie; the cattle, moreover, could be driven only at a slow pace; but even twenty-odd miles a day was more than a Maine backwoodsman enjoyed as initiation in horsemanship. Dow was mounted on an excellent trained horse, and being young and supple was able to do his share in spite of his discomfort. But the mare that had been allotted to Sewall happened also to be a tenderfoot, and they did not play a conspicuous role in the ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... woman Braithwaite was of a sinister strength; but I had little dreamt how strong she really was. First it was her arms that wound themselves about my neck, long, sinuous, and supple as the tentacles of some vile monster; then, as I struggled, her thumbs were on my windpipe like pads of steel. Tighter she pressed, and tighter yet. My eyeballs started; my tongue lolled; I heard my brand drop, and through a mist I saw it picked up instantly. It crashed upon my skull ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... Australian journalism is written it will contain two outstanding Irish names: Daniel Henry Deniehy, who died in 1865, was called by Bulwer Lytton "the Australian Macaulay" on account of his brilliant writings as critic and reviewer in the press of Victoria. Gerald Henry Supple, another Dublin man, is also remembered for his contributions to the Age and the Argus of Melbourne. In India one of the first—if not the first—English newspapers was founded by a Limerick man, named Charles Johnstone, who had previously ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... of coming out to the Hemlock Farm for a day's holiday, and went directly to her own room as though she were at home. When she stepped presently out on the porch, where the gentlemen had gone to smoke, a soft black silk showing every line of her supple figure, glimpses of the rounded arms revealed with every movement of the loose sleeves, one or two thick green leaves in her light hair—ugly, quiet, friendly—they all felt more at home than they had done before. There was a pitcher of punch by the captain's elbow: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... was just a school girl and very beautiful; with dark brown eyes; skin the color of a walnut; and a form, bred of the grace of her much walking race. She had walked the innumerable trails of her native land from babyhood and the rhythmic swing of her supple body would have made any race, save that of ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... Trampling and rolling in dust his excellent friend the precursor. Peace be with all! but afar be ambition to follow the Roman, Led by the German, uncomb'd, and jigging in dactyl and spondee, Lumbering shapeless jackboots which nothing can polish or supple. Much as old metres delight me, 'tis only where first they were nurtured, In their own clime, their own speech: than pamper them here I would rather Tie up my Pegasus tight to the scanty-fed ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... each supple-shanked lad, 'Most as much as—Statistics. To trudge it For them makes my bosom as glad As—Big Surplus, and Popular Budget; And so I should like to secure them a run, Combining snug ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... and dignity, the attributes appropriate to greatness. Quite properly also its formulas were more fixed than those of any other style. The Ionic order, the feminine of which the Doric may be considered the corresponding masculine, was employed for smaller temples; like a woman it was more supple and adaptable than the Doric, its proportions were more slender and graceful, its lines more flowing, and its ornament more delicate and profuse. A freer and more elaborate style than either of these, infinitely various, seeming to obey no law save that of beauty, was ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... crowned the hummocks; and here and there great laurels lifted their pyramids of glossy, dark-green foliage. Our passage was frequently obstructed by fallen logs, mossed over with the growth of years; and tangles of vine, tough-stemmed and supple, flung themselves from tree to tree across our path, resisting our advance. All through the forest's higher corridors howled the riotous wind; but along the tunneled ways we traveled it was ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... many close-fitting phrases and keen observations in his pages, and lines that are exactly, and at the same time poetically, descriptive. He is the only writer I know of who has noticed the fact that the roots of trees do not look supple and muscular like their boughs, but have a stiffened, congealed look, as ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... baneful, blazing glance, while his head, mentally brave, reared itself, as if to redeem the cowardice of the frame to which it belonged. So the attitude of the serpent: the body pliant, yielding, supple; but the crest thrown aloft, erect, and threatening. As for Zonla, she was frozen in the attitude of motion;—a dancing nymph in colored marble; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... mingled intimacy and novelty which go to make conversation. And in five minutes Mademoiselle Le Breton was leading it as usual. A brilliant French book had recently appeared dealing with certain points of the Egyptian question in a manner so interesting, supple, and apparently impartial that the attention of Europe had been won. Its author had been formerly a prominent official of the French Foreign Office, and was now somewhat out of favor with his countrymen. Julie put some questions about him ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... every paddle-dip, every twist and turn of the supple canoes, revealed some new caprice of the river's moods. In places the current would be shallow and the canoes would lag. Then the paddlers must catch the veer of the flow or they would presently be out waist-deep shoving cargo and craft off sand bars. Again, as at Grand Rapids, ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... a single comprehensive glance that was polite without being cordial. Her neck, he noticed, was extraordinarily supple in spite of its proportions, for it turned so easily to follow him, and the head it carried bowed so ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... to rest, but first he rubbed his limbs with the fat of seals, for he was still sore with the beating of the waters, and they must needs be supple on the morrow if he would keep his eye. Then he slept sound, and rose strong and well, and going to the stream behind the stead, bathed, and anointed his limbs afresh. But Ospakar did not sleep well, because of the ale that he had drunk. ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... round and coolly asked him to explain himself, he took courage, as he thought of her reputed wealth, and expressed his wishes this second time pretty plainly. To his surprise, the reply she made was in a series of smart strokes across his shoulders, administered through the medium of a supple hazel-switch. ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... me of a Turk lying amid houris. The gnawing, creeping sensualities of his phrase—his one phrase—how descriptive it is of the form and whiteness of a shoulder, the supple fulness of the arm's muscle, the brightness of eyes increased by kohl! Scent is burning on silver dishes, and through the fumes appear the subdued colours of embroidered stuffs and the inscrutable traceries of bronze lamps. Or, maybe, the scene passes on a terrace ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... kneeleth down. "Wilt thou have my son, cony?" saith father. "Yea, dear heart," saith she. "'Tis my counterpart, mark you," saith father. "Better than nothing at all," saith she. Benevolent father, supple-kneed son, convenient lady. Here is agreement. And thus it ends.' Again he laughed outright at the steel-blue face of the sky, then jumped in a flash from his seat to the throat of Bertran. Bertran tumbled backwards with a strangled cry, and Richard ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... called out, in marching- order, to the field of battle. But by this time the pistols were in the hands of the two infatuated young men, Mr Bloatsheet, as fierce as a hussar dragoon, and Magneezhy as supple in the knees as if he was all on oiled hinges; so the next consideration was to get well out of the way, the lookers-on running nearly as great a chance of being shot as the principals, they not being accustomed, like me for ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... and sinewy, but slender, for these Venetians are rarely massive in their strength. Each limb is equally developed by the exercise of rowing upright, bending all the muscles to their stroke. Their bodies are elastically supple, with free sway from the hips and a mercurial poise upon the ankle. Stefano showed these qualities almost in exaggeration. The type in him was refined to its artistic perfection. Moreover, he was rarely in ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... his dissolute manners, and his love of the lowest company, had disgusted all classes of his subjects, soldiers, traders, civil functionaries, the proud and ostentatious Mahommedans, the timid, supple, and parsimonious Hindoos. A formidable confederacy was formed against him, in which were included Roydullub, the minister of finance, Meer Jaffier, the principal commander of the troops, and Jugget Seit, the richest banker in India. The plot ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... vies with the topeng in popularity, but the latter ranks as classic and lyrical drama. A graceful girl in pink, with floating scarf, and gleaming kris in her spangled sash, exhibits wonderful skill in the supple play of wrist and fingers, through the process known as devitalization, a form of drill which gives to the arm a plastic power of detached movement, fascinating but uncanny. The dusky garden is filled with a native crowd, moved alternately to tears and laughter by exploits ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... difficult to realize she was his own daughter, this dashing stranger sitting here, playing idly with a knife and caressing him with her voice and her eyes. The blue evening gown she was wearing to-night (doubtless not yet paid for) made her figure even more supple and lithe, set off her splendid bosom, her slender neck, her creamy skin. Her hair, worn low over her temples, was brown with just a tinge of red. Her eyes were black, with gleaming lights; her lips were warm and rich, alive. He did not approve of her lips. ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... and which came back after Waterloo. The solid building was the palace of iron-grey old King William; and when the clock-work sentinels went through their salute, I got my first sight of that famous Prussian discipline, against which before the summer was through supple France was to crush its teeth all to fragments, like a viper that has ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... accounts, A loose one in the hard grip of his hand, A curse in his God-bless-you: then my eyes Pursued him down the street, and far away, Among the honest shoulders of the crowd, Read rascal in the motions of his back, And scoundrel in the supple-sliding knee.' ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... she was called up, along with some children considerably younger than herself, to read and spell. The master stood before them, armed with a long, thick strap of horse-hide, prepared by steeping in brine, black and supple with constant use, and cut into fingers at one end, which had been hardened in ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... a cat though it was, the cowpony found the steep pass with its loose rubble hard going. Melissy took the climb much easier. In the way she sped through the mesquit, evading the clutch of the cholla by supple dips to right and left, there was a kind of ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... an ill cause; but the dauntless utterances of men who would rather perish than fail to keep faith with God and with their forefathers is a victory for mankind, and is everlasting. How poor and vain in comparison with this stern and sincere eloquence seem the supple time-service and euphemism of vulgar politicians of whose cunning and fruitless spiderwebs the latter years have been so prolific. It is worth while to do right from high motives, and to care for no gain that is not gained worthily. The men of Massachusetts who lived a hundred years before ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... transformed. He appeared to have suddenly thawed. He was no longer the awkward, sickly youth, whose every movement was paralyzed by timidity, and whose words froze on his tongue; his slender frame had become supple, his blue eyes enlarged and illuminated; his delicate features expressed refinement, tenderness, and passion. The young girl was moved and won by so much emotion, the first that Julien had ever manifested toward her. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... answer arguments, not only with natural wisdom, but with candour and logical honesty. But if the subject of debate be something in the air, an abstraction, an excuse for talk, a logical Aunt Sally, then may the male debater instantly abandon hope; he may employ reason, adduce facts, be supple, be smiling, be angry, all shall avail him nothing; what the woman said first, that (unless she has forgotten it) she will repeat at the end. Hence, at the very junctures when a talk between men grows brighter and quicker and begins to promise to bear fruit, talk between the sexes is menaced ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... marred his delicate fingers, yet could he not once stir the string. Then called he to the attendants to bring fat and unctuous matter, which melting at the fire, he dipped the bow therein, thinking to supple it and make it more pliable; but not with all the helps of art could he succeed in making it to move. After him Liodes, and Amphinomus, and Polybus, and Eurynomus, and Polyctorides essayed their strength, but not any one of them, or of the rest of those aspiring suitors, had any better luck; yet ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... and play across them on the shelves. These forces are the self-propelling and self-healing forces of the creative mood. The creative mood protects the books, and it protects all who come near the books. It protects from the inside. It toughens and makes supple. Parents who cannot trust a boy to face the weather in a library should ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... assortment of native weapons from various countries—assegais, spears, boomerangs, throwing sticks, sjamboks and South Sea Island clubs and shields. A special nail held Jim's own stockwhip, to which Norah always attended after he had gone away, lest the supple thong should become harsh through disuse. Then there were weapons of peace—hockey sticks, rackets, cricket-bats—the latter an assortment of all Jim had used, from the tiny one he had begun with at the age of eight to the full sized beauty that had split honourably in an inter-State school ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... the bottom of it. He never meant to cheat; yet he did cheat. Yet, even if he lied, lies help truth to live; and he must live himself; and God may have made fools for him to live on;" and many other are the twists of his defence. The poem is as lifelike in its insight into the mind of a supple cheat as it is a brilliant bit of literature; but Browning leaves the matter unconcluded, as he would not have done, I hold, had he been writing poetry. Prince Hohenstiel's defence of expediency in politics is made by Browning to seem ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... ingenuous face, seemed to me very intelligent; they were of a dreamy sea-blue. Long hair, which would have been called red even in England, fell in long meshes upon his broad shoulders. The movements of this native were lithe and supple; but he made little use of his arms in speaking, like a man who knew nothing or cared nothing about the language of gestures. His whole appearance bespoke perfect calmness and self-possession, not indolence but tranquillity. It was felt at ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... avail unless he exceeds mere defence and adds his quota of runs to the score of his side. To excel in this requires, in addition to a scientific knowledge of the game, cool presence of mind, a quick eye, a supple wrist, a strong arm, a swift foot and a healthy pair of lungs. Thus the nobler attributes of the man, mental and physical, are brought into play. As the Master in Tom Brown's School-days remarks: "The discipline and reliance on one another which cricket ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... that baneful, blazing glance, while his head, mentally brave, reared itself, as if to redeem the cowardice of the frame to which it belonged. So the attitude of the serpent: the body pliant, yielding, supple; but the crest thrown aloft, erect, and threatening. As for Zonela, she was frozen in the attitude of motion;—a dancing nymph in colored marble; agility ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... me, sire?" Her supple arms coiled themselves round his neck. Then she held him for an instant at arm's length to feast her eyes upon his face, and then drew him once more towards her. "You will not leave me, dear sire. It is so long since you have ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... thick-set man with a hooky nose, and with bright, long-sighted brown eyes and strong, sensitive hands, wrists tempered and supple as a rapier, and a tongue ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... thought the cat, 'and bring it to them to show what I can do, perhaps I shall gain their favor.' Then she put away all the fine airs and graces Mrs. Velvetpaw had taught her, and became the sly, supple, watchful creature nature had made her. By a hole in the granary she crouched and waited with unwearied patience one, two, almost three, hours. Then she gave a sudden spring, there was one sharp little shriek from the victim, a snap of pussy's jaws, and her ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... brown, and his hair was jet black; He was supple in body, and straight in the back, Learnt his lessons without any trouble at all; And was lively, intelligent, ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... all forbid them to "behave like that." Not in the least. She almost encouraged them. She laughed and arched her eyes and flirted. But her backbone became only the stronger and firmer. Soft and supple as she was, her backbone never yielded for an instant. It could not. She had to confess that she liked the young doctors. They were alert, their faces were clean and bright-looking. She liked the sort of intimacy with them, when they kissed her and wrestled with her in the ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... home he tried to detect the real character of a creature supple and hard as a steel spring; but he had seen her pass through so many phases, that he could not make up his mind about her. The tones of her voice, too, were ringing in his ears; her gestures, the ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... straight and strong—that would mean Alastair? Maybe you would rather find you had got hold of a withered old stump with a lot of earth at the root—a decrepit old man with plenty of money in the bank? Or maybe you are wishing for one that is slim and supple and not so tall—for one ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... back and scanned the faces of his interviewers, faces that would have been oddly humanoid were it not for the elongated snouts and pointed, sharp-toothed jaws. The average Tepoktan was slightly under Kinton's height of five-feet-ten, with a long, supple trunk. Under the robes their scholars affected, the shortness of their two bowed legs was not obvious; but the sight of the short, thick arms carried high before their chests still left Kinton with a ...
— Exile • Horace Brown Fyfe
... here is a stylized version of the American language, sometimes rising to quite formal rhetorical patterns and sometimes sinking to a self-conscious mannerism. But at its best, Anderson's prose style in Winesburg, Ohio is a supple instrument, yielding that "low fine music" which he admired so much in ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... of bone and muscle, is a magnificent animal. The gods forgot little of their old-time cunning in the making of him, in the forging of his shoulders, massive as a bull's withers, in the shaping of his limbs, sturdy as pillars of granite and supple as willows, in the setting of his well-poised head, his heavy jaw, (p. 055) and muscled neck. But the gods seem to have grown weary of a momentous masterpiece when they came to the man's eyes, and Goliath ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... impending misfortunes, that two men of stable temperament and lucid perception were in authority at Candahar. General Nott was a grand old Indian officer, in whom there was no guile, but a good deal of temper. He was not supple, and he had the habit of speaking his mind with great directness, a propensity which accounted, perhaps, for the repeated supersessions he had undergone. A clearheaded, shrewd man, he was disgusted with very ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... Java, doves, pigeons, lories, and humming birds, the metallic lustre of whose plumage flashes in the light like the sheen of steel. One or two tigers—in a cage, of course—invite our curiosity. I was not, however, prepared to make quite so close an acquaintance with these lovely supple creatures, as one of the marines of our party, who, having indulged too freely in malt, possibly mistook the animals for cats, the result being he got so damaged about the bows as to be rendered unfit for divisions the following ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... acting strangely of late, Kennon thought as he rolled over in his bed and watched her standing before the full-length mirror on the bathroom door. She pivoted slowly before the glass, eying herself critically, raising her arms over her head, holding them at her sides, flexing her supple spine and tightening muscles that moved like silken cords beneath ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... her exquisite figure and the supple grace which she displayed when she moved toward Dirk were evidence, however, of the Latin blood which ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... He held a supple riding-switch in his hands, at which his fingers strained and twisted continually, as though somewhere in the inner man there burned a fierce impatience. But his dark face was as immovable as though it had been carved in bronze. A tropical sun had made him ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... more charming than ever, and more provoking. He darted upon her as a storm falls upon the reeds that border a lake. She bent with adorable weakness beneath the breath of the storm, and twenty times was almost carried away by its strength, but twenty times she arose, supple and, bowing to the wind. After all these shocks one would have said that a light breeze had barely touched her charming stem; she smiled as if ready to be plucked by a bold hand. Then her unhappy aggressor, desperate, enraged, and three parts mad, fled so as not to kill ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... if you talk of trade"—he tapped his snuff-box—"I will match you, Glenfernie! If there's wrong, pay it back! Hold to your principles! But do it cannily. Smile when there's smart, and get your own again by being supple. In the end you'll demand—and get—a higher interest. Prosper at your enemy's cost, and take repayment for your hurt ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... under the load, and of course his family must suffer with him. On his exertions as a hunter their existence depends; in order to be able to follow that rough employment with success, he must keep his limbs as supple as he can, he must avoid hard labor as much as possible, that his joints may not become stiffened, and that he may preserve the necessary strength and agility of body to enable him to pursue the chase, and bear the unavoidable hardships ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... then moved forward—the man in front bearing the light, the two bony women next, supporting between them the small and supple one. Thus they ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... sisterhood were all seated at table—the servitors, marshalled by the supple purveyor, made their appearance, bearing the expected banquet in large covered dishes. A hasty grace was muttered, and then every eye was turned to the covers. The abbess had ordered the sturgeon to be ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... least considered in a large, well-kept garden, or as a polished walking stick, as the legs of a fancy table of uncertain equilibrium or as a tobacco box ably worked by Chinese or Japanese fingers, in the free forest becomes a colossal inhabitant. Its canes, at first tender and supple, grow to such a size, and so strong as to be used for water conduits. It is a vigorous and invasive plant that covers the surrounding ground with new shoots whilst in under its long roots spread out and suck up all the vital nutriment to be found ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... Sir John said gently, he had done no otherwise than he had been desired; which however the lord chamberlain, in part, denied, (cautious and civil!) "and I was not so unmannerly as to contest against," (supple, but uneasy!) This affair ended miserably for the poor Dutchmen. Those new republicans were then regarded with the most jealous contempt by all the ambassadors, and were just venturing on their first dancing-steps, to move among crowned heads. The Dutch now resolved not to be present; ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... holds a legal title to it having bought and paid for it. Any one and every one is owner of the library who can read the same through all the varieties of tongues and subjects and styles, and in whom they enter with ease and take residence and force toward paternity and maternity, and make supple and powerful and rich and large.... These American states strong and healthy and accomplished shall receive no pleasure from violations of natural models and must not permit them. In paintings or mouldings ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... hand. Chonita stood in the door-way. She was quite beautiful enough to plant thorns where she listed. Her tall supple figure was clothed in white, and over her gold hair—lurid and brilliant, but without a tinge of red—she wore a white lace mantilla. Her straight narrow brows and heavy lashes were black; but her skin was more ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... arms backward from under my body and tied a rope to the chain of the handcuffs. This done, they passed the rope through a hole in the top of a high post behind me, and by tugging at it, strained my arms upward in a way that, had I been less supple, would certainly have broken them. When all their strength combined could not stretch me another inch without tearing my body to pieces, they made the rope fast, and I remained half suspended, and feeling as if all the bones of my limbs were ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... first time the faintest trace of a smile touched her lips. She turned, settled the pillows to her liking, and stretched out her supple figure on the sofa ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... let it slip from her, giving to my sight the face and form of that beauteous girl who had stood to fan Cleopatra in the chariot. For she was very fair and pleasant to look upon, and her Grecian robes clung sweetly about her supple limbs and budding form. Her wayward hair, flowing in a hundred little curls, was bound in with a golden fillet, and on her feet were sandals fastened with studs of gold. Her cheeks blushed like a flower, and her dark soft eyes ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... she sat coatless, torn from David's sheltering embrace. They had given her elfish reminders of how soft, how pink, how perfumed was that woman's tender flesh. Then as she looked the blue eyes glazed with agony, the supple body grew rigid with cold, and down, down, through miles of water, sank the ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... fond of pets, and are said to have much skill in taming birds and animals. Doubtless their low voices and gentle, supple movements never shock the timid sensitiveness of brutes. Besides this, Malay children yield a very ready obedience to their elders, and are encouraged to invite the confidence of birds and beasts, rather than to torment them. They catch birds by means of bird-lime made ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... sigh— The dusky son of evening placed whilcome Found with the Gnu an ever-vernal home, And wiser than Athenas' wisest schools,[12] Nor led by zealots, nor scholastic rules, Gazed at the stars that stud yon tender blue, And hoped, and deemed the cheat of death untrue; Yet, supple sophist to a plastic mind,[13] Saw gods in woods, and spirits in the wind, Heard in the tones that stirred the waves within, The mingled voice of Hadna and Odin, Doomed the fleeced tenant of the wild to bleed ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... elegance of that face and form gave grace to his lassitude. Boleslas, in the vigorous and supple maturity of his thirty-four years, realized one of those types of manly beauty so perfect that they resist the strongest tests. The excesses of emotion, as those of libertinism, seem only to invest the man with a new prestige; ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... find a gigantic, barefooted negro standing before him. The slave was middle-aged; his kinky hair was growing gray; but he was of superb proportions, and the muscles which showed through the rents in his cotton garments were as smooth and supple as those of a stripling. His black face was puckered with grief, as ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... been eighteen. Her long, slim figure, in its clinging riding habit, betrayed, despite roundness and supple grace, a certain immaturity. Her hands and feet were long and slender. Her sun-tanned cheek and neck were soft and rounded. Her mouth was delicately chiseled and the lips were pink as the heart of a Bridesmaid ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... minute, Dr. Parkman himself came in, he, too, in white gown, ready for the operation. He looked so strange; to her nervous vision, supernatural, a being from other worlds, holding the destiny of this one in those strong, supple, incisive fingers. "I don't suppose you'll enjoy this much," he said, "but you'd better get used to them. Karl may need you to do some of this for him, and you wouldn't like it not to ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... said Caesar, "that is how it struck me too. Tall, supple, dolichocephalic... It seems to me one can try to put something through ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... changed. The defiance vanished, leaving her as if by magic supple again, subtle, suppliant, conjuring back to memory the nights when she had danced and sung. The fire departed from her eyes and they became wet jewels of humility with soft love lights ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... but in a very different fashion. She had now taken off her straw hat; the curly crop of a brown mane gave the brilliant face an added accent of vigor. The chien de race was the dominant note now in the muscular, supple body, the keen-edged nostrils, and the intent gaze of the liquid eyes. These latter were fixed with the fixity of a savage on Charm. She was giving, in a sweet sibilant murmur, the man seated next her—Monsieur d'Agreste, the man who refused to bear his ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... love pursuit and are easily reconciled to capture. Why else do they deck themselves out in finery, perfume themselves, bejewel themselves, flaunt their charms (including decollete charms and alluring bathing suit charms) in every possible way? I do this myself—why? I have a supple figure and I dance without corsets, or rather with only a band to hold up my stockings. I wear low cut evening gowns, the most captivating I can afford. I love to flirt. I could not live without admiration, and other women are the same. They all have ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... package of manuscript from the envelope; the long supple fingers were busy among the leaves, and he bent his head to see the numbered pages. At last, having arranged them in order, he leaned back again in his chair, holding the papers tenderly in his hand. There was nothing of the poseur in Callender; his childlike ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... was a large-boned, muscular man, nearly six feet high. The sleeve rolled up above the elbow showed an arm that was likely to win the prize for feats of strength; yet the long, supple hand, with its broad finger tips, looked ready for works of skill. In his tall stalwartness Adam Bede was a Saxon, and justified his name. The face was large and roughly hewn, and when in repose had no other beauty than such as belongs ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... be not a European one, then may it come, bronzed, keen, and supple from the tropic calm! The birds of the ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... forbearing and conciliating reflections. She was quite happy in it; for Christina was one of those wise women, who do not look into their ideals and hopes too closely. Her face reflecting them was beautiful and benign; and her shoulders, and hands, her supple waist and limbs, continued the symphonies of her soft, deep, loving eyes and her smiling mouth. Every now and then she burst into song; and then her thrilling voice, so sweet and fresh, had tones in it that only birds and good women full of love may compass. ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... the larger historical facts: in truth the style is the same—a general and unhesitating sacrifice of accuracy and reality to picturesque effect and party prejudices. He treats historical personages as the painter does his layman—a supple figure which he models into what he thinks the most striking attitude, and dresses up with the gaudiest colours and ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... and as Kenelm took his ground, there was a supple ease in his posture which at once brought out into clearer evidence the nervous strength of his build, and, contrasted with Tom's bulk of chest, made the latter look ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... enhanced the furious tension of my nerves. Surprise, the joy of revenge, and, perhaps, a somewhat perverse jealousy inflamed my desires. The elastic firmness of her flesh and the supple violence of the movements wherewith she enveloped me demanded, promised, and deserved the most ardent caresses. We became aware, during that wonderful night, of voluptuousness the abyss of ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... strength of character. His pleasant, clean-shaven, slightly sunburnt face bore an expression of animation with a certain humorous anxiety natural in a man who was generally a good deal in debt and always a little in love. Further he had the advantage of a tall, strong yet supple figure, with a natural grace of movement and much personal charm. Harry knew he was good-looking and did not undervalue the fact, but regarded it solely as an asset, not as a private satisfaction. He regarded everything as an asset. He was no fop, although he wore a single eye-glass rather as a ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... lives at Farmington, Perhaps you've seen her there; Her eyes delight in laughing light, Let gods describe her hair; Her figure—well, grave Juno ne'er Had half the supple grace Of Gertrude fair of Farmington— Perhaps you know ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... doubled, on the floor; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have more significance to the touch. He took the body by the shoulders and turned it on its back. It was strangely light and supple, and the limbs, as if they had been broken, fell into the oddest postures. The face was robbed of all expression; but it was as pale as wax, and shockingly smeared with blood about one temple. That was, for Markheim, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... do confess a retainer," said the barrister; but if I don't deserve double fees from both Miss Bertram and you when I conclude my examination of Dirk Hatteraick tomorrow—Gad, I will so supple him!—You shall see, Colonel, and you, my saucy misses, though you may not see, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... the trout. Jack was dragged into the Lodge to join in this function, and presently found himself meeting Lady Farquhar, a pleasant plump lady who did not at all conform to the usual stage conception of her part. Her smile was warm for this supple blue-eyed engaging Westerner, but the latter did not need to be told that behind her friendliness the instinct of the chaperone was alert. The one swift glance she had thrown at Miss Dwight told him ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... childish pout, looks as if it could bite or suck like a leech. The complexion is dazzlingly fair, the perfect transparent rosette lily of a red-haired beauty; the head, with hair elaborately curled and plaited close to it, and adorned with pearls, sits like that of the antique Arethusa on a long, supple, swan-like neck. A curious, at first rather conventional, artificial-looking sort of beauty, voluptuous yet cold, which, the more it is contemplated, the more it troubles and haunts the mind. Round the lady's neck is a gold chain with little gold lozenges at intervals, on which ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... of embroidery silk from a multi-coloured tangled ball. He would go into the bush after them while other people were resting, and particularly after the sort which, when split, is bright yellow, and very supple and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... whole month and have not yet wearied of it for a moment. Each day brings a new, wonderful experience; and each day I feel a real part of the great wonderful scheme of things. Indeed, I am becoming a part of nature. I have grown so straight and tall, and so beautifully thin and supple that I can dart in and out of the stream without bumping myself against the rocks, can climb steep hills, and let the winds blow me where they will. I should not be at all surprised to awaken some morning and find that I had become one of the tall ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... their bow and moved to pass on he hurriedly raised his hat and his good horse dropped into a swift, supple walk. The bridle hand started as if to draw in, but almost at the same instant the animal sprang again into a gait which showed the spur had touched her, and was quickly ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... quivered all over as if about to spring up from his chair, but he did not actually rise. It was just a supple, snake-like play of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... are of all possible shades, rendered with wonderful freshness—scarlet roses, golden roses—and in such masses and so scattered about the nude figure as to give it a character of purity and modesty. The flesh tints are warm, the figure is supple in effect, and the whole is a happy picturing of the sleep and dream of a lovely young woman who has thrown herself down in the ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... weak and numb, and he was sure he was going to be paralyzed. Careful observation showed that the right side was fully developed, the color of the right hand normal and the same as that of the left, and that the right arm, foot and leg were unusually supple and moveable. During the sitting I saw him deliberately kick my chair three (3) times with the side of his right foot, while attracting my attention to the scraping noises of the slate he was holding ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... heels may be concluded by drawing attention to the advisability of always maintaining the horn of the wall in as soft and supple a condition as is natural by the ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... what kept him so silent, and what was the cause of the little line of anxiety which furrowed his brow. Clad in a loose diaphanous robe of white, with a simple band of silver clasping it round her supple form, her rich hair caught carelessly back with a knot of scarlet passion-flowers, she looked a creature too fair for earth, a being all divine; and the Prince presently turning his glances towards her, evidently ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... he forced a smile. Then the frown returned; he flung one arm around her supple waist and gathered both her hands into his, holding ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... of Australian journalism is written it will contain two outstanding Irish names: Daniel Henry Deniehy, who died in 1865, was called by Bulwer Lytton "the Australian Macaulay" on account of his brilliant writings as critic and reviewer in the press of Victoria. Gerald Henry Supple, another Dublin man, is also remembered for his contributions to the Age and the Argus of Melbourne. In India one of the first—if not the first—English newspapers was founded by a Limerick man, named Charles Johnstone, who had previously ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... His tulip lips, and those pure pearls that hold the places of his teeth; By his noble form, which rises featly turned in even swell To where upon his jutting chest two young pomegranates seem to dwell By his supple moving hips, his taper waist, the silky skin, By all he robbed Perfection of, and holds enchained his form within; By his tongue of steadfastness, his nature true, and excellent, By the greatness of his rank, his noble ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... gives herself a little concentric and harmonious twist, which makes her supple or dangerous slenderness writhe under the stuff, as a snake does under the green gauze of trembling grass. Is it to an angel or a devil that she owes the graceful undulation which plays under her long black silk cape, ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... with her subtle, tigerish glide, swiftly, startlingly, and with the dart of a cobra her hand gripped his which held the dagger. Her warm body again pressed closely to him, her red lips, parted still, almost touched his cheek; her hair smothered him with its fragrance; and while his senses swam her supple muscles tensed to living steel wire, her grip tightened and twisted at his wrist, and the dagger was wrenched from his fingers. Then leaping back, laughing mockingly now, Dolores slipped the dagger into ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... splendid sea, There should you awake and sing, With every supple sweet from the head to the feet Modelled like a wood-dove's wing,— O, to awake, to shake away the night, And find you happy there, On the other side of death, with the sea-wind blowing round you, And the scent of the thyme ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... indignation, Harlan was too confused just then to grasp the fact that his tormentor was craftily handing him over to the Presson womenfolk, bound, branded, and supple—unless he proposed to merit his ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... is employed of the same shape and plan as the common round wire mouse-trap, which has an opening surrounded with wires pointing inward. This is made of reeds and supple wands, and food is placed ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... up, and, passing over the body of the lad, stepped with its supple gait into the bows. I took my chance of shouting to William, but the lad never stirred. Again and again I yelled down at him, and I saw the splendid, horrible beast in the bows gazing at me, and still the lad remained lifeless. He was upon his face, with his arms ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... woman; tall, supple, erect; with a positive splendor of health and color. Her dress was that of the Fife fisher-girl; a blue flannel jacket, a very short white and yellow petticoat, and a white cap drawn over her hair, and tied down with a lilac kerchief knotted under the chin. This kerchief ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... going abroad," Joan was saying while her long, supple fingers wove the stems of daisies into an intricate pattern. "And to go to that little Italian town where mother was married! Nan, I'm going to know all about ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... profoundly to curtsying ladies, or to take snuff with some portly Councilor or less stately Burgess who, coming from the Capitol, chanced to overtake them. When he paused his storekeeper paused also, but, having no notice taken of him beyond a glance to discern his quality, needed neither a supple back ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... such amiable kindliness, that Mrs. Pasmer could not feel that it was pushing. She looked at her daughter, but she stood as passive in the transaction as the elder Mavering. She was taller than her mother, and as she waited, her supple figure described that fine lateral curve which one sees in some Louis Quinze portraits; this effect was enhanced by the fashion of her dress of pale sage green, with a wide stripe or sash of white dropping down the front, from her delicate waist. The same simple combination of colours was carried ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... critical moment, when only a supple policy, united with a vigorous arm, could have maintained the tranquillity of the Empire, its evil genius gave it a Rodolph for Emperor. At a more peaceful period the Germanic Union would have managed its own interests, and Rodolph, like so many others of his ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... full of money, rash, incautious, and utterly ignorant of play. But such a sharper is most dangerous, when he hunts in couple with a female. I have known a French count and his wife, who found means to lay the most wary under contribution. He was smooth, supple, officious, and attentive: she was young, handsome, unprincipled, and artful. If the Englishman marked for prey was found upon his guard against the designs of the husband, then madam plied him on the side of gallantry. ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... perfectly aware of the deliberate and insolent indiscretion of her reply. Every line of her supple figure accented the listless, disdainful intention. As he remained motionless she turned, bent gracefully and laid her palms flat on the surface of the water, then looked idly over her shoulder ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... the hand that held the fountain-pen; it was a slender, sensitive-looking member with well-kept nails, and Diana always appreciated nice hands. The man's head was bent over his work, so that she could only obtain a foreshortened glimpse of his face, but he possessed a supple length of limb that even the heavy travelling-rug tucked around his knees failed to disguise, and there was a certain soigne air of rightness about the way he wore his clothes ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... and only by, one little tribe of Indians in what is almost the very centre of South America. If any traveller or ethnologist knows of a tribe elsewhere that plays a similar game, I wish he would let me know. To play it demands great activity, vigor, skill, and endurance. Looking at the strong, supple bodies of the players, and at the number of children roundabout, it seemed as if the tribe must be in vigorous health; yet the Parecis have decreased in numbers, for measles and smallpox have been ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... except for a faint rustling as if the pillow were being turned over. At the same instant something long and supple, like a thick, silky rope, slid down from above. He could see it in the dim light as it fell and brushed his hand protruding, palm uppermost, over the edge of the bunk. Quite mechanically he shut his fingers on the thing, to prevent its dropping to the floor, and, to his amazement, ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... forwards repeatedly in the bath till clean. Three waters are to be used, the two after the first lather being of the same heat, and of pure clean water. This leaves the clothes delightfully soft and supple, and their wearing qualities suggest nothing ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... a still deeper colour as she held fast the mischievous favourite, while the good mother untwisted the flax from its little claws and supple limbs, while it winked, twisted its head about sentimentally, purred, and altogether wore an air ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the lists, the next at the other; and so well inured, from their very infancy, to the weight of mail were these redoubted champions, that the very wrestlers on the village green, nay, the naked gladiators of old, might have envied their lithe agility and supple quickness. ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... been told the high caste youth trembled in the ecstasy of his religion, amazed at the enlightenment thrown upon his own enigmatical life, uplifted at the task before him. Yea! he trembled in the ecstasy of his religion, forgetting that love and passion and life ran just as riotously in his supple perfect body. ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... when he took his place in his shirt-sleeves beside her. He used some conventional phrases which she scarcely answered, and then nothing was heard but the sounds of the sickle and the corn. She worked steadily for some time, and he looked up at her at intervals with her round bare arms and supple waist and firm-set foot and tight red stocking. Two butterflies tumbling in the air played around her sun bonnet and a ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... fingers, slipping across my palm like a belt of silk. It glided with the noiseless haste of a thing in flight. Quite naturally, even in the dazed moment of awakening I closed my hand upon it. It was soft in my grasp, yet resilient; solid, yet supple. If I may speak irrationally, it felt as if it must be fragrant. It was a strange visitor to my experience, yet I recognized its identity unerringly as a blind man gaining sight might identify a flower or a bird. In brief, it was—it only could be ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... his head in his hands for a few minutes, reflected profoundly. In the meantime, a tall, loosely-made man entered the room; his spare, thin face, steady look, and hooked nose, as he entered Colbert's cabinet, with a modest assurance of manner, revealed a character at once supple and decided,—supple towards the master who could throw him the prey, firm towards the dogs who might possibly be disposed to dispute its possession. M. Vanel carried a voluminous bundle of papers under his arm, and placed it on the desk on which Colbert was leaning ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... on her wrist and closed, the fingers like bands of iron. Joyce screamed wildly, her nerve swept away in a reaction of terror. She fought like a wildcat, twisting and writhing with all her supple strength to break the grip on ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... exultantly. He reached out his fingers—and then something shot from the car, something lithe and supple, something that gripped the little man by the throat and hurled him back ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... cold, supple Gascon—that is the stuff success is made of! Believe me, we had best make our bow ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... other was still young. He was tall and sinewy, but slender, for these Venetians are rarely massive in their strength. Each limb is equally developed by the exercise of rowing upright, bending all the muscles to their stroke. Their bodies are elastically supple, with free sway from the hips and a mercurial poise upon the ankle. Stefano showed these qualities almost in exaggeration. The type in him was refined to its artistic perfection. Moreover, he was rarely in repose, but moved with a singular brusque grace. ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... wonderfully short time he had adapted himself to the new conditions of life. He quickly learned to read Braille. So marvelous indeed was his sense of touch that he was still able to maintain his interest in botany. The mere passing of his long supple fingers over a flower was sufficient means for its identification, though occasionally he would use his lips. I have found several letters of his among my father's correspondence. In no case was there anything to show that he was afflicted with blindness ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... loveliest of smiles transfigured the dull, blank features; her round shoulders, pendulous arms, slouching pose, melted into superb symmetry, quickening with grace and youth as she straightened up and faced him, erect, supple, ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... enthusiasm over the precociousness of their first-born. He was not, for the time, remarkable, and parents of the day were less prone than now to spoiling children. Ab's layette had been of beech leaves, his bed had been of beech leaves, and a beech twig, supple and stinging, had already been applied to him when he misbehaved himself. As he grew older his acquaintance with it would be more familiar. Strict disciplinarians in their way, though affectionate enough after their own fashion, were the parents ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... their rooms on purpose to avoid his surprisals, and think the best commodity in them his prospect. He is like a rejected acquaintance, hunts those that care not for his company, and he knows it well enough, and yet will not keep away. The sole place to supple him is the buttery, where he takes grievous use upon your name,[76] and he is one much wrought with good beer and rhetoric. He is a man of most unfortunate voyages, and no gallant walks the ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... Peyrade, "and the matter itself would be of small importance if Mademoiselle Brigitte had not taken this attitude of your godmother, whom she has always found supple to her will, as a personal insult to herself. Very painful explanations, approaching at last to violence, have taken place. Thuillier, placed between the hammer and the anvil, has been unable to stop the affair; on the contrary, he has, without intending it, made matters worse, till they have ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... who were brought up by the women, were, like the boys, taught to wrestle, run, and swim, and to take part in gymnastics of all kinds, until they too became very strong and supple, and could stand ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... anywhere, as graceful and winning a creature as the sun that day shone on,—slender limbs, not too heavy flanks, round body, and aristocratic head, with small ears, and luminous, intelligent, affectionate eyes. How alert, supple, free, she was! What untaught grace in every movement! What a charming pose when she lifted her head, and turned it to regard her child! You would have had a companion picture if you had seen, as I saw that morning, a baby kicking about among the dry pine-needles ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... inclined ever so little sideways and her finger was on her lips as though she wished to still the very hush of night, to which impression the inclination of her supple body lent its grace. The moonlight shone full upon her countenance. A little white face it was, with wide clear eyes and a sensitive, proud mouth that now half parted like a child's. Here eyebrows arched from her straight nose in the peculiarly graceful curve that falls just short of pride ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... is nothing in it. The fact is that the tastes are never so tolerant, so liberal, so generous, so supple as they are at that time of life when they begin, according to your notion, to stiffen, to harden, to contract. We have in this very period formed a new taste—or taken a new lease of an old one—for reading history, which ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... yet vigorous was the sage, And well had proved himself with sword and spear; And said, he found himself in gray old age, Such as in green and supple youth whilere. They own his claim, and for an embassage Forthwith a courier find, then bid him steer For Africa, where camped the Christians lie, And Count ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... Sport-Manager, such a Prospero for Masques; that there was a true 'Phil-harmonus' there, with so clear an inspiration of scientific statesmanship. They did not know that they had in that servant of the crown, so supple, so 'patient—patient as the midnight sleep,' patient 'as the ostler that for the poorest piece will bear the knave by the volume'—such a born aspirant for rule; one who had always his eye on the throne, one who had always in mind their usurpation of it. They did not know that ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... as keen as her father's, and now they flashed like his. She had a hand twisted in the horse's long mane, and as, lithe and supple, she slipped a knee across his broad back she shook a little gantleted fist at ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... half-unbound hair, does not, indeed, equal the sovereign loveliness of the Dresden Venus or the disquieting charm of the Giovanelli Zingarella (properly Hypsipyle). Its beauty is all on the surface, while theirs stimulates the imagination of the beholder. The body with its strong, supple beauty, its unforced harmony of line and movement, with its golden glow of flesh, set off in the true Giorgionesque fashion by the warm white of the slender, diaphanous drapery, by the splendid crimson mantle with the changing hues and high lights, is, however, the most perfect ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... swiftly and haughtily up and down upon the terrace of Clifford Hall, and he could not help admiring the haughty magnificence of her walk. The reason soon appeared. She was in a passion. She was always tall, but now she seemed lofty, and to combine the supple panther with the erect peacock in her ireful march. Such a fine woman as Julia really awes a man with her carriage at such a time. The poor soul thinks he sees before him the indignation of the just; when very likely it is only what in ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... men in the force, certainly none in the officers' mess, could put him on his back; and he was lithe, supple as a leopard; and in combat cool, his mind working like the mind of a chess player: but he realised that the arms about him were the arms of a gorilla, the chest against which he was being crushed was the chest of a trained ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... prostration vile, Too much to one, but double how endur'd, 780 To one and to his image now proclaim'd? But what if better counsels might erect Our minds and teach us to cast off this Yoke? Will ye submit your necks, and chuse to bend The supple knee? ye will not, if I trust To know ye right, or if ye know your selves Natives and Sons of Heav'n possest before By none, and if not equal all, yet free, Equally free; for Orders and Degrees Jarr not with liberty, but well consist. 790 Who can ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... soaked the skins for several days in fresh water till they could pull off the hair very easily; they then rubbed the wet leather with their hands till it was nearly dry, when they spread some melted reindeer fat over it, and again rubbed it well. By this process the leather became soft, pliant, and supple—proper for answering every purpose they wanted it for. Those skins which they designed for furs they only soaked one day, to prepare them for being wrought, and then proceeded in the manner before-mentioned, except only that they did not remove the hair. Thus they soon provided themselves ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... skin marks were situated, dispute whose complexion was the clearest, whose hair the prettiest colour, and whose figure the best. You can imagine that among these figures sanctified to God there were fine ones, stout ones, lank ones, thin ones, plump ones, supple ones, shrunken ones, and figures of all kinds. Then they would quarrel amongst themselves as to who took the least to make a girdle, and she who spanned the least was pleased without knowing why. At times they would relate their dreams and what they had seen in them. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... bewitched. They conducted themselves as those supposed to suffer under maladies created by such influence were accustomed to do. They stiffened their necks so hard at one time that the joints could not be moved; at another time their necks were so flexible and supple that it seemed the bone was dissolved. They had violent convulsions, in which their jaws snapped with the force of a spring-trap set for vermin. Their limbs were curiously contorted, and to those who had a taste for the marvellous, seemed ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... three sticks that suited him, and then he laid them across the top of the stove and rested the barrel of the shotgun upon them. After all was complete, he stepped back against the door and squinted, gauging the elevation. It was to his satisfaction. With supple wrist and quick movements he uncoiled the small cotton rope he had brought with him and took two turns around the trigger of the shotgun. The rest of the rope he passed around a rod in the foot of the bed, which gave a direct back pull on the trigger, and thence he carried it over the upper hinge ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... entering into their mothers' wombs and being born again. They must not only be born again but they must be born again each one of them of a new father and of a new mother and of a different line of ancestry for many generations before their minds could become supple enough to learn anew. The only thing to do with them was to humour them and make the best of them till they died—and be thankful when ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... she had indicated. She stood where she was and watched him. For two or three minutes he looked at the picture in silence, and she thought his expression had become slightly hostile. His audacious and rather thick lips were set together firmly, almost too firmly. His splendid figure supple, athletic and harmonious, looked almost rigid. She wondered what he was feeling, whether he disliked the portrait of the judge of the Criminal Court at which he was looking. ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... strong light pouring in through high grated windows; the pillars of many-coloured marbles, the frescoed roof; the country people massed together in the public place, with faces that were like paintings of Mantegna or Masaccio; the slender supple form of the accused drooping like a bruised lily between the upright figures of two carabineers; the judge leaning down over his high desk in black robes and black square cap, like some Venetian lawgiver of Veronese or of Titian; and beyond, through an open casement, the silvery, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... murmuring streams; by these Creatures that lived and moved, and walked or flew; Birds on the branches warbling; all things smiled; With fragrance and with joy my heart o'erflowed. Myself I then perused, and limb by limb Surveyed, and sometimes went, and sometimes ran With supple joints, as lively vigor led; But who I was or where, or from what cause, Knew not."—Paradise Lost, Book viii. The who, the where (in any extended sense, that is, as regarded the external relations of his own country), ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... could remonstrate or detach myself from her, she had twisted herself about, in a peculiarly supple and child-like manner that she had, and had ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... she had become perceptibly stouter, and her figure, which had been very supple and slight, had ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... Mlle. Frahender devoted infinite patience to gluing the tiniest fibres of the sea plants. Some were bright pink, suggesting in formation and colour the little red fishing boats. Others were gold with their slender little flowers rising in clusters. The long supple green algaes, swelling along their stems into little round beads, like beads of jade, looked as though they wore some Chinese costume. As the album grew it gave promise of ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... freshness, and the grace of youth, when it had been, the instrument of uncommon strength, and wielded an authority that none could stand against. Her fancy wandered over the scenes it had known; when it had felled trees in the wild forest; and those fingers, then supple and slight, had played the fife to the struggling men of the Revolution; how its activity had outdone the activity of all other hands in clearing and cultivating those very fields where her feet loved ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... thirst and hunger have also made their marks upon him; but not as with those of Occidental race. It may be that his bronze skin does not show so plainly the pallor of suffering; but, at all events, he still looks lithe and life-like, supple and sinewy, as if he could yet take a spell at the oar, and keep alive as long as skin and bone held together. If all are destined to die in that open boat, he will certainly be the last. He with the hollow eyes looks as if he would be ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... dreaded hour in which I felt that I must leave Canaples. On the last day of April I essayed a fencing bout with Andrea, and so strong and supple did I prove myself that I was forced to realise that the time was come. On ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... age pressed full upon him, and he could not move nor lift his limbs, this seemed to her in her heart the best counsel: she laid him in a room and put to the shining doors. There he babbles endlessly, and no more has strength at all, such as once he had in his supple limbs. ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... caught—"Facitis descensus—sed revocare gradum!" True, his hands were at liberty, but his legs were so long that, being thus fixed, they kept the hands from the rescue; and as Dr. Riccabocca's form was by no means supple, and the twin parts of the wood stuck together with that firmness of adhesion which things newly painted possess, so, after some vain twists and contortions, in which he succeeded at length (not without a stretch of the sinews that made them crack again) in finding the clasp and breaking ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... the great empty room, magnificent m her tiger-skin, the Krag gripped in her supple hand, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... earth, and the incisors smaller and more pointed, the canines heavier and longer. There was a point to his chin, heavy-angled and thick-boned as it was, it was not an earthman's chin. His neck was long, more supple and active, he kept moving his head in an unnatural watchfulness like a wild animal's. I wondered what other differences, small in themselves, but adding up to complete strangeness of aspect, ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... short, in the deep shadow of a clump of chestnut-trees. Something moved, behind the very tree he was looking at. A figure came lightly out into the open; a woman's figure, slight and supple, clad in shadowy white. A dryad? No! the girl he had seen in the summer-house. He knew the face, as it shone upturned in the moonlight; knew the firm mouth and chin, the blue eyes, the look of careless power; seen once ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... known to survive their reputation Humble out of pride I am very glad to find the way beaten before me by others I find myself here fettered by the laws of ceremony I have no mind to die, but I have no objection to be dead I have not a wit supple enough to evade a sudden question I have nothing of my own that satisfies my judgment I would be rich of myself, and not by borrowing Ill luck is good for something Imitating other men's natures, thou layest aside thy own Immoderate either seeking or evading glory or reputation Impunity pass ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... Agave and her demented crew. They were tearing him to pieces, their fingers were at his throat. Then he was in the East, a defenceless traveller in the tropical desert, surrounded by Thugs. He pointed to one particular spot where he saw his insidious foe—he described the dusky supple figure, the sinuous limbs, gliding serpent-like towards him, the oiled body, the dagger in the uplifted hand. An illustration in Sir Charles Bell's classic treatise had flashed into his brain. So, from memory to memory, with a frightful fertility of fancy, his unresting brain hurried ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... to whoop it up a lot more'n I've ever done before. You'll see some hopping to beat the band, too. I've managed to cover a good deal of territory up to now but, say, I aspire to do still better. I'm rubbing snake oil on my joints right along so as to make 'em more supple. Why, I'd bathe in it if I thought that would make me better able to do my part toward corraling that ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
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