"Lank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... text-books that still lay on the desks around him, only extracted from him a half scornful smile as he coolly regarded them. The fearlessness of ignorance is often as unassailable as the most experienced valor, and the awe-inspiring invaders were at first embarrassed and then humanly angry. A lank figure to the right made a forward movement of impotent rage, but was checked by the evident leader ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... soft shadows of the summer night a boy moved from the remuda toward the camp-fire. He was a lean, sandy-haired young fellow, his figure still lank and unfilled. In another year his shoulders would be broader, his frame would take on twenty pounds. As he sat down on the wagon tongue at the edge of the firelit circle the stringiness of his ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... that when Mr. Johnson was first introduced to her mother his appearance was very forbidding; he was then lean and lank, so that his immense structure of bones was hideously striking to the eye, and the scars of the scrofula were deeply visible. He also wore his hair, which was straight and stiff, and separated behind; and he often had, seemingly, convulsive starts and odd gesticulations, which tended to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... (said I,) are you going to turn Captain Macheath?' There was something as pleasantly ludicrous in this scene as can be imagined. The contrast between Macheath, Polly, and Lucy—and Dr. Samuel Johnson, blind, peevish Mrs. Williams, and lean, lank, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... the tale runs, the Governor looked——He certainly did establish a precedent at that dinner. Mockers say that Judge Pat McCarran ran a close second, because his Excellency is lean and lank, while Judge McCarran would make two of him one way, and almost half of him the other, and because what happened to Governor Boyle had also happened to Judge McCarran that ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... by the high carts, on two solid wheels, and drawn by four or six oxen, hauling the cut cane. But the villages they passed, single streets of unrelieved squalor in a dusty waste, they decided were immeasurably depressing. No one who could avoid it walked; lank men in broad straw hats and coat-like shirts rode meagre horses with the sheaths of long formidable blades slapping their miserable hides. Groups of fantastically saddled horses drooped their heads tied in the vicinity of a hands-breadth of shade by general stores. "I could burst into tears," Savina ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... support his bent figure, and his speech was often interrupted by the little dry cough which came from the tuberculosis that was burning him. But his eyes sparkled with passion behind his glasses, and little by little his voice rose in piercing accents and he drew his lank figure erect and began to gesticulate vehemently. He reminded the Chamber that some two months previously, at the time of the first denunciations published by the "Voix du Peuple," he had asked leave ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... wanted us to hire out to help them round up several hundred wild horses. We had never before rode on a horse ranch and we wished to be full fledged so we consented. We had a lively time. The Kid was lighter and more supple than I; and got out of it some easier than I. I had picked out a rangey lank bronco; he would quit the earth and climb the sky like a flying machine; and drop down and strike the rocks with his legs stiff as a post. He would then spin like a top several hundred times play razor back and sun-fish, His head and tail would touch one instant between his legs; and the next instant ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... lank sexton, now fifty or upwards, had passed an hour or two with some village cronies, over a solemn pot of purl, in the kitchen of that cosy hostelry, the night before. He generally turned in there at about seven o'clock, and heard the news. This ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... patting the ugliest head I ever saw in my life. For Piter—otherwise Jupiter—was a brindled bull-dog with an enormous head, protruding lower jaw, pinched-in nose, and grinning teeth. The sides of his head seemed swollen, and his chest broad, his body lank and lean, ending in a shabby ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... the original simplicity of nature, they were all naked, and even a woman who was among them was entirely destitute of clothing. Most of them were young, seemingly not above thirty years of age, of a good stature, with very thick black lank hair, mostly cut short above their ears, though some had it down to their shoulders, tied up with a string about their head like women's tresses. Their countenances were mild and agreeable and their features good; but their foreheads ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... over the quarter-mile of beach which lay between the two little surf-lashed promontories of Kennington Cove. But Wolfe's brigade made straight for shore. The French held their fire until the leading boats were well within short musket-shot. Then they began so furiously that Wolfe, whose tall, lank figure was most conspicuous as he stood up in the stern-sheets, waved his cane to make the boats ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... been Casey's experience that a man who protested the loudest that he was broke would, if held rigidly to the no-credit rule, find the money to pay for what he must have. In his heart he believed that Smith had money dangling somewhere in close proximity to his lank person. ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... gown was wrinkled, as though worn for a period of time by one suddenly and sorely stricken in the midst of health. The bride's once well-coifed hair hung in lank disarray about a face that was the color of prime old sage cheese—yellow, with a fleck of green here and there—and in her wan and rolling eye was the hunted look of one who hears something unpleasant stirring a long way off and fears it is coming ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... me leading wherever I choose. These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why are they? Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands my blood? Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank? Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... fer ye, Smiles," was the ready answer, and her lank, slouching husband nodded a silent assent, as ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... only possess the merit of learning how to observe the ridiculous side of human nature, and of portraying in a full light picturesque figures—now worthy of Teniers and now of Callot—some fat and greasy, others lean and lank; he possesses a thing very rare with the picturesque school, the faculty of being moved. He seems to have foreseen the immense field of study which was to be opened later to the novelist. A distant ancestor of Fielding, as Lilly and Sidney appear to us to be distant ancestors of Richardson, ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... deer and a lake and an enchanted forest of sombre trees. On the highest ground in this forest is the clump of firs in which the famous herons build. The most interesting time to visit the heronry is in the breeding season, for then one sees the lank birds continually homing from the Amberley Wild Brooks with fishes in their bills and long legs streaming behind. The noise is tremendous, beyond all rookeries. Mr. Knox's Ornithological Rambles, from which I have already quoted freely, has ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... excellent illustration of this soon after tying up at the landing. A tall, lank, ungainly officer, with a face so distinctively homely as to instantly attract my attention, led his company of men up the river bank, and ordered them to transport the pile of commissary stores from where they had been promiscuously ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... summer, and talked Texas, of course. One day a long, lank, lingering eternity of a gawk sidled up to me, as though he feared ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... at the lower pulpit, in which sat Mr Rebble, one of the ushers, a lank, pale-faced, haggard man, with a dotting of freckles, light eyebrows, and pale red hair which stood up straight like ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... thought he had never in all his life before seen such a jolly fellowship. His heart was blithe as he reined his curveting palfrey by the master-player's side, and watched the sunlight dance and sparkle along the dashing line from dagger-hilts and jeweled clasps, and the mist-lank plumes curl crisp again in the ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... the grave, pacific air, Where never mountain zephyr blew: The marshy levels lank and bare, Which Pan, which Ceres never knew: The Naiads, with obscene attire, Urging in vain their urns to flow; While round them chant the croaking choir, And haply soothe some lover's prudent woe, Or prompt some restive bard and ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... tide. Long eagle-plumes his arching neck invest, 220 Steal round his arms, and clasp his sharpen'd breast; Dark brinded hairs in bristling ranks, behind, Rise o'er his back, and rustle in the wind, Clothe his lank sides, his shrivel'd limbs surround, And human hands with talons print the ground. 225 Silent in shining troops the Courtier-throng Pursue their monarch as he crawls along; E'en Beauty pleads in vain with smiles and tears, Nor Flattery's self ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... looked to Christopher's wound, and had put aside his coat and shirt: "He is sore hurt, but meseemeth not deadly. Nay, belike he may live as long as thou, or longer, whereas thou wilt ever be shoving thy red head and lank body wheresoever ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... man of middle height, red and coarse of countenance and large of nose, who stood fully armed in the centre of the chamber. His head was uncovered, and on the table at his side stood the morion he had doffed. He looked up as they entered, and for a few seconds rested his glance sourly upon the lank, bold-eyed prisoner, ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... closer to the trail, and in a moment caught sight of a tall, lank, ungainly mule coming ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... with a complexion that denoted his Saxon origin. Very thin brows, retrousse nose, and a light gray eye in which might be traced an expression half simple, half cunning, completed the picture of this personage, whose lank body was encased in an old American uniform of faded blue, so scanty in its proportions that the wrists of the wearer wholly exposed themselves beneath the short, narrow sleeves, while the skirts only "shadowed not ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... His lank body and cadaverous face were constructed on principles not generally accredited to nature as it applies to men. When erect, his body swayed as if it were a stubborn reed determined to maintain its ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... direction. He plodded leisurely along until within a few feet of the wicket, when he quietly drew rein and gazed for a moment in silence upon the unconscious girl. He was a tall, gaunt man, with stooping shoulders, angular features, lank, black hair and a sinister expression, in which cunning and malice combined. He finally urged his horse a step nearer, and as softly as his rough voice would admit, he bade: "Good ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... the lad went on, "was a lank old man, with a beard that used t' put me in mind of a dead shrub on a cliff. Old, an' tall, an' skinny he was; an' the flesh of his face was sort o' wet an' whitish, as if it had no feelin'. They wasn't a thing in the way o' wind ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... It was he who told, in greatest detail, to Tim the story of Brother Matthias Pennel and of the trials of the saintly Flora Martin. When he had recounted her adventures to the very instant she caught the gleam of the tiger's eyes, he calmly swung one lank leg over the knee of the other, slid down in his seat so he could hook his head on the hard back, and said, cheerily, "Now, Mr. Warden, go on reading and ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... seriousness of the hour was for a moment lost upon the baron when he saw the lank figure twisting and turning before him, making faces and attempting to be polite. "Who are you?" inquired he, with all the ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... fight that ensued he shot his rival. Another man of L Troop who also showed marked gallantry was Elliot Cowdin. The men of the plains and mountains were trained by life-long habit to look on life and death with iron philosophy. As I passed by a couple of tall, lank, Oklahoma cow-punchers, I heard one say, "Well, some of the boys got it in the neck!" to which the other answered with the grim plains proverb of the South: ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... islands from beneath, And snorting through the angry spray, 70 As the frail vessel perisheth In the whirls of their unwieldy play; Look down! Look down! Upon the seaweed, slimy and dark, That waves its arms so lank and brown, Beckoning for thee! Look down beneath thy wave-worn bark Into the cold depth of the sea! Look down! Look down! Thus, on Life's lonely sea, 80 Heareth the marinere Voices sad, from far and near, Ever singing full of fear, Ever ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... never read a novel in his life. His education came from the newspapers and from his contact with men and things. After he read a book he would write out an analysis of it. What a grand sight to see this long, lank, backwoods student, lying before the fire in a log cabin without floor or windows, after everybody else was abed, devouring books he had borrowed but could not afford ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... if their spirits were depressed. The smoke of ages was on the walls and roof, and the tables and benches at one side had a sadly dilapidated appearance. The master was an Indian of lightish hue, his long, lank hair already turning grey with age, and perhaps with care. Several Indian women were moving about round a fire at the farther end of the room, preparing a meal for a somewhat numerous company assembled there. The women about the house were all dressed in loose garments of dark coarse ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... some hours in silence with his long, thin back curved over a chemical vessel in which he was brewing a particularly malodorous product. His head was sunk upon his breast, and he looked from my point of view like a strange, lank bird, with dull grey ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... youth, lank and wild, "my father has collected for you many beautiful things, such as gum and rubber and the teeth of elephants. Now he would have brought these and laid them at your lovely feet, but the roads ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... engaged, that they were alike insensible of the roughness and discomforts of the road, though often obliged to force their way through brushwood and coppice, which poured down on them all the liquid pearls with which they were loaded, till the mantles they were wrapped in hung lank by their sides, and clung to their shoulders heavily charged with moisture. They stopped when they had attained a station under the coppice, and shrouded by it, from which they could see all that passed ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... only knew as a weaver and a poacher; a lank, long-armed man, much bent from crouching in ditches whence he watched his snares. To the young he was a romantic figure, because they saw him frequently in the fields with his call-birds tempting siskins, yellow yites, and linties to twigs which he had previously ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... Who, like a foul and ugly witch, doth limp So tediously away. The poor condemned English, Like sacrifices, by their watchful fires Sit patiently and inly ruminate The morning's danger; and their gesture sad, Investing lank-lean cheeks and war-worn coats, Presented them unto the gazing moon So many horrid ghosts. O now, who will behold The royal captain of this ruin'd band Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent, Let him cry, "Praise ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... and, as he angrily caught his gun and turned toward the sluice, the letters shone again in phosphorescence on the tree. There was the sound of a pick in the gravel now, and, crawling stealthily towards the sluice, he saw, at work there, Tom Bowers—dead, lank, his head and face covered with white hair, his eyes glowing from black sockets. Half unconsciously Jim brought his rifle to his shoulder and fired. A yell followed the report, then the dead man came running at him like the wind, with pick ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... hour of the next noon, mountaineers with long rifles across their shoulders were moving through the camp. The glen opened into a valley, which, blocked on the east by Pine Mountain, was thus shut in on every side by wooded heights. Here the marksmen gathered. All were mountaineers, lank, bearded, men, coatless for the most part, and dressed in brown home-made jeans, slouched, formless hats, and high, coarse boots. Sun and wind had tanned their faces to sympathy, in color, with their ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... in the observation, this is certain, that business did not prosper: it has been surmised that Jonathan's tall, lank, lean figure injured his custom, as people are but too much inclined to judge of the goodness of the ale by the rubicund face and rotundity of the landlord, and therefore inferred that there could be no good beer where mine host was the ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... Washington baffed, humiliated, panic-struck. Where are the vaunts, and the proud boasts with which you went forth? Where are your banners, and your bands of music, and your ropes to bring back your prisoners? Well, there isn't a band playing—and there isn't a flag but clings ashamed and lank to ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... its shrunk limbs distorted and fleshless, and its lank body covered with filthy rags; its head, of enormous size, was entirely devoid of hair; and the unnatural shape as well as the prodigious dimensions of that bald cranium, betokened beastly idiocy. Its features, ghastly and terrible to look upon, ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... who had outpaced the others crept up to him—lank, lean men of not more than thirty years of age. They had stabbing spears in their hands, such as are used at close quarters, and these of course they did not throw. One of them gained a little ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... smiling up into the dark face above her, she looked what she was; a girl in the flush of early womanhood, a prairie girl, wild as the flowers which grow hidden in the lank grass of the plains, as wayward as the breezes which sweep them from every ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... The lank and shirt-sleeved figure of MR BLY, with a pail of water and cloths, has entered, and stands near ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... quickened the minute it was disturbed. So I moored myself on the railing about three yards from Freedham. This could easily be managed, Freedham being one of those boys who were always alone. For a little I pretended to watch the game and then stole a furtive, sideways glance at his lank profile. I had immediate cause to wish I had done nothing of the sort, for he turned his unholy eyes on mine and so disconcerted me that I swung my face back upon the cricket field and affected complete indifference. ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... there in all his glory, and the Field-Marshal as lank and cadaverous as ever; and besides ourselves there was Whipcord with the straw in his mouth, and one or two other fellows belonging to our host's particular set. The supper was quite as elaborate and a good deal more noisy than ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... in her manner of walking the charm of her direct, young courage. Free of limb, as yet unconscious of sex, she had the look of a splendid boy. The descending sun was in her sparkling hair, on the lank, undulating grace ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... poor to house In frosty nights their starving cows, While not a blade of grass or hay Appears from Michaelmas to May, Must let their cattle range in vain For food along the barren plain: Meagre and lank with fasting grown, And nothing left but skin and bone; Exposed to want, and wind, and weather, They just keep life and soul together, Till summer showers and evening's dew Again the verdant glebe renew; And, as the vegetables rise, The famish'd ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... the same loose lank lad as before, with a smile almost too sad to be a smile, and a laugh in which there was little hilarity. His pleasures were no doubt deep and high, but seldom, even to Kirsty, manifested ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... short man having lank black hair and a smile of sly contentment perpetually adorning his round face, rose hurriedly from the chair upon which he had been seated. Another man who was in the room rose also, as if galvanized by the glare of the fierce ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... he again paused, dismounted, and sought his way into one of the small booths occupied by scriveners in the neighbourhood. A young man, with lank smooth hair combed straight to his ears, and then cropped short, rose, with a cringing reverence, pulled off a slouched hat, which he would upon no signal replace on his head, and answered with much demonstration of reverence, to the goldsmith's question ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... frenzied passion, He is lean and lank and crusty; Naught he cares for dress or fashion And ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... of some lazy sneakin' greenhorn who never did a stoke of work in his life! Here are WE, with no foolishness, no airs nor graces, and yet men who would do credit to twice that amount of luck—and seem born to it, too—and we're set aside for some long, lank, pen-wiping scrub who just knows enough to sit down on his office stool and hold on ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... presently, to the last peer of that line. The estate is two thousand a year, and so compact as to have but seventeen houses upon it. We walked up a brave old avenue to the church, with ships sailing on our left hand the whole way. Before the altar lies a lank brass knight, hight William Fienis, chevalier, who obiit c.c.c.c.v. that is in 1405. By the altar is a beautiful tomb, all in our trefoil taste, varied into a thousand little canopies and patterns, and two knights reposing on their backs. These were Thomas, Lord Dacre, and his only ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... of Murray in the stern of the rear boat. He watched it out of sight. The figure had made no movement. There had been no looking back. Then the old man, with a shake of the head, betook himself back through the avenue of lank trees to the Mission. He ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... now to take a more leisurely view of the Indians whom we had rescued. They were small men, wiry, active, and well-built, with lank black hair tied up in a bunch behind their heads with a leathern thong, and leathern also were their loin-clothes. Their faces were hairless, well formed, and good-humored. The lobes of their ears, hanging ragged and bloody, showed that they had been pierced for some ornaments which their ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... stockily built man of middle age, and obviously, from his mahogany colored skin and lank black hair, a Mexican. He was dressed in a tattered shirt with a serape thrown about the neck to keep off the blazing rays of the sun. His feet were encased in a kind of moccasins over which spurs were strapped. Evidently, then, he had been mounted at some time—presumably ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... forgot to say that Eloise is a name I have bestowed upon the young lady who is visiting the Whites, in exchange for the compliment of her having given my name to her dog. He is a lank, sneaking greyhound which never leaves her side, and was called merely Senor, when she brought him to Mexico. Now she has added Tremonti to his title. She herself is baptized Eliza. She is a pretty, kittenish little thing, deathly afraid of cock-roaches and caterpillars, devoted ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... level lot;—I tell ye, pard, I know'd when it touch'd the first black hide, Me an' the mustang would hev a show Fur a breezy bit of an' evenin' ride! One! it flow'd over a homely pine Thet riz from a cranny, lean an' lank, A cleft of the mountain;—reckinin' two, It slapp'd onto an' old steer's ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... so, and Kennedy regarded Bruce with a solemn, weighty stare. He was a lank, lantern-jawed, frock-coated gentleman of thirty-five, with an upward rolling forelock and an Adam's-apple that throbbed in his throat like a petrified pulse. He was climbing the political ladder, and he was carefully schooling himself ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... had spent at least as many thousands of pounds; and still matters were at a stand when, one day, Mr. Tomlinson reported a boat under our quarter demanding speech with us. I went to the side and saw a tall lank-haired man, in a suit of white duck, standing in the stern-sheets with ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... his hips, he roared without restraint while they stood before him lank and straight, as unexpected as though they had been shot up with a snap through a trapdoor in the ground. Only four-and-twenty months ago the masters of Europe, they had already the air of antique ghosts, they seemed less substantial ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... passively, like dumb brutes, to resist starvation, and human character isn't strong enough for such a strain. The public houses thrive, and the pawnshops are full. But the children haven't enough to eat. They are growing up lank, white, prematurely aged, the spectres to dance us ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Ozias Crann's lank, angular frame; his narrow, bony face; his nose, long yet not large, sharp, pinched; his light grey eyes, set very closely together; his straggling reddish beard, all were fitting concomitants to accent the degree of caustic contempt he expressed. "Oh, to be sure!" he drawled. ...
— A Chilhowee Lily - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... took a seat, scowled around him, and became silent. He was a tall, lank old gentleman, clad in rusty black clothes, with a pointed collar sticking up on both sides of his fringe of grey whisker and a voluminous black neckcloth folded several times round his neck, and by the expression of his countenance was inclined to look on life severely. "Nobody been in yet?" ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... bent, and much bleached, faded and wrinkled. His eyes seemed both enormous in size and sunk almost to his occiput, by reason of being seen through the thickest of glasses. His lank, grayish hair, of no particular color, but resembling autumnal roadside grasses, hung thinly from a high and asymmetrical head, and straggled dejectedly down into a wisp of beard on chin and lip—a beard which any absent-minded man might well ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... the mastiff breed, regularly trained to hunting fugitive negroes, rushed out upon me. I had only a small riding whip with me, having left my fire-arms with a friend at Fort Andrews, and much dreaded laceration. Their noise soon brought out a ferocious, lank-visaged-looking man, about forty years of age, who immediately called off the dogs; but before I had time to make the inquiry that brought me there, he began in about ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... his bed of blankets in the sand, close beside a flat mass of water-washed sandstone, Jolly Roger lay half asleep. Peter was wide awake. His eyes gleamed brightly and watchfully. His lank and bony body was tense and alert. He did not whine or snap his jaws, though he heard the Indian dogs occasionally doing so. The comradeship of a fugitive, ever on the watch for his fellow men, had made him silent and velvet-footed, and had sharpened his ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... different as possible, painfully thin—scarcely more than mere skin and bones—a living skeleton with a large hooked nose, set in a long, narrow face, a huge mustache turned up at the ends, and flashing, black eyes. His excessively tall, lank figure was so emaciated that it was like a caricature of a man. The swaggering air suitable to his part had become habitual with him, and he walked always with immense strides, head well thrown ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... it's most delightfully absurd and amusing," said she, watching the group nearest her. This consisted of a very short and rotund man with hair a la Paderewski and a frilled evening shirt, a thin man of incredible stature and lank black locks, and a pretty young girl in a tunic, a tam o' shanter, enormous green hairpins, and tiny patent-leather shoes decorated with three inch heels. To her the lank man, who wore a red velvet ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... platform outside the door, and Saunders appeared, sidling deprecatingly into the room. He pulled off his black, slouched hat and tucked it under his arm, smoothed his lank, black hair, ran his palm down over his lank, unshaven face with a smoothing gesture, and sidled over ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... man—the man inside the cab— cast off his stiff placidity and behaved like an animal. I don't mean it in an offensive sense. What he did was to give way to an instinctive panic. Like some wild creature scared by the first touch of a net falling on its back, old de Barral began to struggle, lank and angular, against the empty air—as much of it as there was in the cab—with staring eyes and gasping mouth from which his daughter shrank as far as she could in ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... sheets, The barkes of Trees thou brows'd. On the Alpes, It is reported thou did'st eate strange flesh, Which some did dye to looke on: And all this (It wounds thine Honor that I speake it now) Was borne so like a Soldiour, that thy cheeke So much as lank'd not ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... still. He saw before him the tall thin figure of a half-breed. He had black lank hair which hung loosely down almost on to his shoulders. His face was the color of mud, and he was possessed of a pair of keen gray eyes and a thin-hooked nose. His face wore a lofty look of command, and was stamped by an expression of the unmost resolution. He spoke easily and showed ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... marked, where the full cheek should be, Incipient lines of lank flaccidity, Lymphatic pallor where the pink should glow, And where the throb of transport, pulses low? - Most tragical of shapes from Pole to Line, O wondering child, unwitting Time's design, Why should Art ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... And finally she married Lank Burpee, and did considerable well it wuz spozed. Her property, put with what little he had, made 'em a comfortable home and they had two pretty children, a boy and a girl. But when the little girl wuz a baby he took to drinkin', neglected his bizness, ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... but altogether imaginary. The habit of living in this peaceful manner soon united me tenderly to my cousin Bernard; my affection was more ardent than that I had felt for my brother, nor has time ever been able to efface it. He was a tall, lank, weakly boy, with a mind as mild as his body was feeble, and who did not wrong the good opinion they were disposed to entertain for the son of my guardian. Our studies, amusements, and tasks, were the same; we were alone; each wanted ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... least he had the clothes of one. As he approached, he appeared to be a lean, lank, narrow-shouldered, yellow-faced, yellow-haired creature, such as you might expect to find on Cape Cod or thereabouts. Hollow-chested as he was, he had a yell in him which was quite surprising. From the time that he sighted the three horsemen he kept up a steady screech until he was ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... away lived a doctor,—or an individual who wore that title,—on whom, in emergencies, the scattered settlers were wont to call. This queer Aesculapian specimen was remarkably tall and lank, always went with his pants tucked in the tops of his thumping cowhide boots, and wore a red woollen shirt, the soiled and limpsy neck-band of which, coming nearly to his ears, served instead of a collar. He dwelt ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... your side, Then give me back the chest deep-breathed and wide, The low brow clustered with its locks of black, The flow of talk, the ready laugh, give back, The woes blabbed o'er our wine, when Cinara chose To teaze me, cruel flirt—ah, happy woes! Through a small hole a field-mouse, lank and thin, Had squeezed his way into a barley bin, And, having fed to fatness on the grain, Tried to get out, but tried and squeezed in vain. "Friend," cried a weasel, loitering thereabout, "Lean you went in, and lean you ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... his hips, he roared without restraint, while they stood before him lank and straight, as though they had been shot up with a snap through a trap door in the ground. Only four-and-twenty months ago the masters of Europe, they had already the air of antique ghosts, they seemed less ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... German, erect, well-poised, plainly a soldier in spite of his ill-fitting clothes; the American, lank and stomachless, yet taller than the other in spite of his bent shoulders. His tawny beard was guiltless of care. Of all his slack body only his eyes showed alertness as they looked sidewise from under ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... against Sophia. This lay in throwing Melusina Schulemberg into the arms of the Electoral Prince. Melusina, who was years afterwards to be created Duchess of Kendal, had not yet attained to that completeness of lank, bony hideousness that was later to distinguish her in England. But even in youth she could boast of little attraction. Prince George, however, was easily attracted. A dull, undignified libertine, addicted to over-eating, ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... him meditatively, and now stood with drooping head in the shade. The man himself wore a dark uniform, white with dust. His hair was dusty and rather lank. He was not a very ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... we could only have kept the band of hogs out. They would get in after the green feed and break the ditches, causing the water to wash the soil away. That band of hogs began to torment me as much as the mules had done. They were so hungry you could not keep them out. I didn't blame them, poor, lank, starved creatures, for getting in and getting something to eat. I would have done ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... what the state of Jasper amounted to. He moved, acted, weary-eyed, keen-faced, lank and restless, with brusque movements and fierce gestures; he talked incessantly in a frenzied and fatigued voice, but within himself he knew that nothing would ever give him back the brig, just as nothing can ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... envious; like the girl among a family of boys I knew, who were all of them starved in their infancy by a miserly father, that gave them barely a bit of Graves to eat and not a drop of Pempton to drink; and on the afternoon of his funeral, I found them in the drawing-room, four lank fellows, heels up, walking on their hands, from long practice; and the girl informed me, that her brothers were able so to send the little blood they had in their bodies to their brains, and always felt quite cheerful for it, happy, and empowered to deal with the problems ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... lightly, having been baulked in that amiable design of frequently dining with him, by the machinations of the sleepless dustman. He had been constrained to depute Mr Venus to keep their dusty friend, Boffin, under inspection, while he himself turned lank ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... front of the room and went on talking to a lank spinster about ruchings, but Mr. Wrenn felt that he had known her long and as intimately as it was possible to know so ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... can," he would reply, "but a bankrupt marquess can't. I've got to marry that jade. Pah! She's as lank as a hop-pole and as yellow as a guinea. But what's a marquess to do, Noll? They say she could tie up the neck and armholes of her shift and fill it with diamonds. Damn her! I wish Brocton would snap her up, but he can't. He'll never be more than an ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... blaze of lightning illuminated the landscape as far as the eye could see. Ahead of us a flying shape, hair lank and glistening in the downpour, followed a faint path skirting that green tongue of morass which we ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... CHOKE (General), a lank North American gentleman, "one of the most remarkable men in the country." He was editor of The Watertoast Gazette, and a member of "The Eden Land Corporation." It was general Choke who induced Martin Chuzzlewit to stake his all in ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Billy started and whirled around. In the rush of incoming passengers, they had been looking for some one smaller, more childish than this tall girl who stood before them. She was not at all pretty. Her brown hair was too straight and lank and light, and her grey eyes had a trick of narrowing themselves to a line; but her expression was frank and open, and she wore her simple grey suit with an air which spoke volumes for her past training. Across her arm hung a bright golf cape with a tag end of grey fur sticking out ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... Mr. Martin to be a man evidently well fitted for the job, in appearance tall, rather lank, energetic and gentlemanly. We visited off and on, nearly all day. He believed, from what I told him, that I and my friends were financially interested through Manahan. He explained his position as representing Mr. Trenholm, Secretary of the Confederate ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... villains was such as to lend an aspect of picturesqueness to the final proceedings. The sextet included a full-blooded Cherokee; a consumptive ex-dentist out of Kansas, who from killing nerves in teeth had progressed to killing men in cold premeditation; a lank West Virginia mountaineer whose family name was the name of a clan prominent in one of the long-drawn-out hill-feuds of his native State; a plain bad man, whose chief claim to distinction was that he hailed originally from ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... all the basement cleaned except the one cow-stall that was filled to the ceiling with litter; and Winnie had washed the windows. Then John Jones's lank figure darkened the doorway, and he cried, "Hello, neighbor, what ye ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... plainly—its repulsive gray sides so lank that they seemed almost to meet, its red, hungry tongue lolling from its ugly mouth, its cruel white fangs, and its malevolent, gleaming eyes. His hatred for the creature became an obsession, for it appeared again presently, ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... thin, lank frame, with face almost beardless, pale cadaverous cheeks, and eyes sunken in their sockets, and there rolling wildly, is one of those nondescripts who may be English, Irish, Scotch, or American. His dress betokens him to be a seaman, ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... induce Tecumseh to lay aside his arms. This he again refused, saying, in reply, that his tomahawk was also his pipe, and that he might wish to use it in that capacity before their business was closed. At this moment, a tall, lank-sided Pennsylvanian, who was standing among the spectators, and who, perhaps, had no love for the shining tomahawk of the self-willed chief, cautiously approached, and handed him an old, long stemmed, dirty looking earthen pipe, intimating, that if Tecumseh would deliver up the ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... like big boys, and when this wish had been gratified there awoke in me, as happens in life, a more lofty ambition still, that to wear a frock coat. In the fulness of time an old frock coat of my father's was altered to fit me. I looked thin and lank in it, but the dress was honourable. Then it occurred to me that everybody would see I was wearing a frock coat for the first time. I did not dare to go out into the streets with it on, but went out of my way round the ramparts for ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... spring, after his fifteenth birthday, Charles Browne bade farewell to the "Skowhegan Clarion;" and we next hear of him in the office of the "Carpet-Bag," edited by B.P. Shillaber ("Mrs. Partington"). Lean, lank, but strangely appreciative, young Browne used to "set up" articles from the pens of Charles G. Halpine ("Miles O'Reilly") and John G. Saxe, the poet. Here he wrote his first contribution in a disguised ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... figures around him, danced and flung up their legs till the rags dropped from some of them, and they still danced on. A flare of naphtha, burning with a rushing noise, threw a light on one point of the circle, and Lucian watched a lank girl of fifteen as she came round and round to the flash. She was quite drunk, and had kicked her petticoats away, and the crowd howled laughter and applause at her. Her black hair poured down and leapt on her scarlet ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... to me about the case, I reminded them that Aholah and Aholibah were damned for doting upon paintings on the wall, painted in vermilion, which in plain English is Scarlett!" A covenanting gleam shot into his frosty eyes, and the old fighting Scotch blood showed for a second in his lank cheek. He was a godly man, and when he saw confusion in the ranks of the Philistines, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... left school he went to Oxford. His life there was as lonely as it had been at school. The dirty, untidy, ink-stained, and chemical-stained little boy grew up into a tall, lank, slovenly-dressed man, who kept entirely to himself, not because he cherished any dislike or disdain for his fellow-creatures, but because he seemed to be entirely absorbed in his own thoughts and isolated from the world by ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... must have been stooping down, for his tall, lank form had been quite concealed till he stepped forward from behind the low wall on to the flagged path leading to ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... named after his uncle, Peter Skimbley, who owned a farm near Watertown. The widow's hopeful was now a lank, pale-faced youth of eighteen, whose most imposing features were his big hands and a long nose that ended in a sharp point. The shop had ruined him for manual labor, for he sat hunched up by the stove in winter, and in summer hung around Cotting's store and listened to the gossip of the loungers. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... with Uncle Henry Lidderdale at Slowbridge, he was large for his age, or at any rate he was so loosely jointed as to appear large; a swart complexion, prominent cheek-bones, and straight lank hair gave him a melancholic aspect, the impression of which remained with the observer until he heard the boy laugh in a paroxysm of merriment that left his dark blue eyes dancing long after the outrageous noise had died down. If Mark had occasion to relate some episode that appealed to him, his ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... light. Ah! the sight was horrible: the limbs once so round and lovely shrivelling up into nothings; the eyes—those eyes that shone like heaven—being quenched into black dust; the lustrous golden hair now lank and discolored. The last throe came. I beheld that final struggle of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... himself had not grown out of recognition. A lank figure of a man, red-cheeked, white-bearded, slouch-hatted, and in his shirt-sleeves, stepped forward and held out a ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... her father, who, other things being equal, you might have mistaken for Zuloaga's "Uncle." The lank hair, the sad eyes, the wan face, the dressing-gown, there he sat. Only the palette was absent. Instead was an arm in a sling. There was another difference. Beyond, in lieu of capricious manolas, was a piano and, above it, a portrait with which ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... light-brown glossy hair, which seemed to fill them with unbounded astonishment and admiration; as well it might, for they had never before seen any other hair except the coarse curly wool on their own pates, and the long lank hair of the trader, which happened to be ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... old, of middle height, with lank limbs, and an exceedingly spare frame; he is wrapped in a long, blood-red pelisse, lined with black fur; his complexion, fair by nature is bronzed by the wandering life he has led from childhood; his hair, of that dead ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... admitted none of such kind in the epigrams of Martial which we have subjoined to this treatise, and a good many epigrams that we have run across we have put aside, such as Buchanan's in which he depicts the unattractive and unpleasant picture of a lank old man: ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... every way a marked contrast to the "chief." He was a tall thin sallow-complexioned man, with straight black hair, thick eyebrows, and thin feeble-looking whiskers, the latter very lank and ragged, as he seemed never to trim them. His eyes were believed to be black, but no one seemed to be at all certain about this, as he would never look any man long enough in the face to allow the question to be decided. His glances were of a shifting stealthy description, ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... boot- jack, and his sentimental eyes glaring obstinately into the pit. He was prodigiously good, in bed, with an immense collar to his shirt, and his little hands outside the coverlet. So was Dr. Antommarchi, represented by a puppet with long lank hair, like Mawworm's, who, in consequence of some derangement of his wires, hovered about the couch like a vulture, and gave medical opinions in the air. He was almost as good as Low, though the latter was great at all times—a decided brute ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... crowd filled the street below, and had halted right under the editor's window. In the midst thereof was seen the tall, lank figure of a man, whose extraordinary appearance enchained the attention of the multitude, and excited afresh their shouts and derisive laughter. And, in fact, nothing could be more striking or fantastic than this man. Notwithstanding the cool ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... The titles of his various books are inviting and informing, as Seaweed and What We Seed. He wrote several parodies on sensational novels of his time. Griffith Gaunt, he made fun of as "Liffith Lank"; St. Elmo, as "St. Twelmo." A Wicked Woman was another absurd tale. But I like best a large volume, "John Paul's Book, moral and instructive, travels, tales, poetry, and like fabrications, with several portraits ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... mountain,' answered the other; 'I saw him there this morning, with no panel or furniture upon him of any kind, and so lank that it was grievous to behold him. I would have driven him before me and brought him to you, but he is already become so shy that when I went near him he took to his heels and fled to a distance from me. Now, if you like it we will both go seek him; but first let me put ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... longer a shadow of uncertainty. "Margaret was dead!" and the lank Tim was ordered to drive faster, or the excited woman, perched on one of her traveling-trunks, would be obliged to foot it! A few vigorous strokes of the whip set the sorrel horse into a canter, and as the night was dark, and the road wound round among the trees, it is not at all surprising ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... lassoes. In front of the largest store were a number of mustangs all standing free, with bridles thrown over their heads and trailing on the ground. The loungers leaning against the railing and about the doors were lank brown men very like Naab's sons. Some wore sheepskin "chaps," some blue overalls; all wore boots and spurs, wide soft hats, and in their belts, far to the ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... raggery! Thus to scrape a nation's dishes, And fatten on a few good wishes! Or, on some venial treason bent, Frame thyself a government, For thy crest a brirnless hat, Poverty's aristocrat! Nonne habeam te tristem, Planet of the human system? Comet lank and melancholic —Orbit shocking parabolic— Seen for a little in the sky Of the world of sympathy— Seldom failing when predicted, Coming most when most restricted, Dragging a nebulous tail with thee Of hypothetic ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... attractiveness. It is a tale of the good old times when New York had still some New York feeling left; when her old historic names still carried weight and found universal respect, and her old families still ruled society with a despotic sway; and especially before the whole state had been overrun by the lank, angular, loose-jointed, slouching, shrewd, money-worshiping sons of the Puritans, whose restless activity had triumphed over the slow and steady respectability of the original settlers. The scene of this story, so far as it is laid on land, is mainly in the ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... several men who must have been lawyers, and with whom Mr. Beckwith was exchanging amenities behind the railing, were arranging their books and papers; some of the people were leaving, and others talking in groups about the room. The Honourable Dave whispered to the judge, a tall, lank, cadaverous gentleman with iron-grey hair, who nodded. Honora was led forward. The Honourable Dave, standing very close to the judge and some distance from her, read in a low voice something that she could not catch—supposedly the petition. It was all quite as vague to Honora ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... described Jackson as he first saw him in his seat in the House: "A tall, lank, uncouth looking individual, with long locks of hair hanging over his brows and face, while a queue hung down his back tied in an eelskin. The dress of this individual was singular, his manners and deportment that of a backwoodsman." Bartlett's ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... dared lay one small finger between father's eyebrows, just to see if there would be room. His eyes were as close together as his thin beak of a nose would permit, and his ears were long and narrow and set flat against his head. He was tall and he was lank and he was honest to his last bristling hair. He did not swear—though he could wither one with vituperative epithets—and he did not smoke and he did not drink—er—save a wee nip of Scotch "whusky" to break up a cold, which frequently threatened his hardy frame. He was harshly ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... work in the house on Tenth Street, hanging paper on the second floor, and the lank detective looked at Billy solemnly as the story of the Griscom affair was ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... a tall, muscular man of about forty years of age, with a full dark-brown beard, and long lank hair falling over his shoulders. The visible parts of his dress consisted of three articles—a dingy-brown robe of coarse material buttoned closely at the neck and descending to the ground, a wideawake hat, and a pair of large, heavy boots. As to the esoteric parts of his attire, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... the record in his diary of those lank and busy days. The Saturday of his first week at school ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... tall and lank, with an unfinished look about him, as if Nature in some sudden freak had seized an incomplete skeleton from a museum and hastily covered it with parchment. He dressed in rusty black, wore dingy cotton gloves, carried a large white umbrella, and surveyed the world through the medium ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... are reckon'd no less than ten several sorts, preferring the domestic, or sative for the fuller growth) is likewise of both sexes, whereof the male growing lower, with a rounder shape, hath its wood more knotty and rude than the female; it's lank, longer, narrow and pointed; bears a black, thick, large cone, including the kernel within an hard shell, cover'd under a thick scale: The nuts of this tree (not much inferior to the almond) are used among other ingredients, in beatilla-pies, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... days for the milk-journal advertisement to work. On the afternoon of August tenth, a lank, husky-voiced teamster called at the office of the Ad-Visor and was passed in ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... bandanna knotted about the head, with its wing-like ends flying in the wind; but shirts are a rarity in working hours and their absence shows a breadth of shoulder and depth of chest remarkable, when contrasted with the length and lank power in the nether limbs. They are a perfectly careless and jovial race, with wants confined to the only luxuries they know—plenty to eat, a short pipe and a plug of "nigger-head," with occasional drinks, of any kind and quantity that fall to their lot. ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... in Nature's Paradise, that "both the leaves, seeds, and roots, are much used in drinks and broths for those that are grown fat, to abate their unwieldinesse, and make them more gaunt and lank." The ancient Greek name of the herb, Marathron, from maraino, to grow thin, probably embodied the same notion. "In warm climates," said Matthiolus, "the stems are cut, and there exudes a resinous liquid, which is collected under the name ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... Lank Bildad, as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever and anon, as the old craft deep dived into the green seas, and sent the shivering frost all over her, and the winds howled, and the cordage rang, his steady notes ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... about 250 horse. These were certainly VERY irregular. Each man was horsed and armed according to his individual notion of a trooper's requirements. There were lank, half-starved horses; round short horses; very small ponies; horses that were all legs; others that were all heads; horses that had been groomed; horses that had never gone through that operation. The saddles ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... stared for an instant wonderingly, at his master with the child in his arms, and at the throng pressing curiously after them, but the next moment he recovered from his amazement and, admitting the bishop, politely but firmly shut out the eager throng that would have entered with him. A lank, rough-haired dog attempted to slink in at the bishop's heels, but the servant gave him a kick that made him draw back with a yelp of pain, and he took refuge under the steps where he remained all night, restless and miserable, his quick ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... faith. You are right, Monsieur le prophete! A hundred thousand thanks! Farewell!" And staring about him, and stretching his lank neck as high as he could, he strode away with his scars, and white waistcoat and gaiters, and ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... hour of rapid walking proved the squaw's words. The lank tree-trunks, down aisles of which they had been passing, became lost in a wealth of dense undergrowth. It was here that the woman paused for her bearings. But her fault was brief, and in a few moments she picked up the opening of a distinct but winding pathway. The windings, ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... tell, as I was informed; but there he was, having come into the house at the door, with a bundle in his hand, and a portmanty on his shoulder, like a traveller out of some vehicle of conveyance. Mrs Drammer, the landlady, did not like his looks; for he had toozy black whiskers, was lank and wan, and moreover deformed beyond human nature, as she said, with a parrot nose, and had no cravat, but only a bit black riband drawn through two button- holes, fastening his ill-coloured sark neck, which gave him altogether something of ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... morbid pleasure in his visitor's expression. This man, who had visited him that afternoon with a note of introduction from an old friend, interested him from the very contrast of their dispositions. The lank black hair and deep grey eyes, the haggard expression and nervous manner, the fitful yet keen interest of his visitor were a novel change from the phlegmatic deliberations of the ordinary scientific worker with whom the Bacteriologist chiefly associated. It was perhaps natural, with a hearer ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... not think so," he replied, going back in his mind to the recollection of a thin-legged little girl with lank hair. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... spun herself lank and thin With trying to take her neighbors in; Grasshopper had traveled so far and so fast That he found he must give up at last; And the maiden Ant had bustled about The village till she was ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... something sinister that forbade such an even existence for the smoothest tempered cat. There were too many of them for companionship and perhaps too few for the humour of the thing to strike them: in and out the chilly shades they stalked gloomily, hither and thither like lank and unquiet ghosts of starved cats. They were of all colours—gay orange-tawny, tortoise shell with the becoming white patch over one eye, delicate tints of grey and fawn and lavender, brindle, glossy sable; and yet the ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker |
