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Lean   Listen
adjective
Lean  adj.  (compar. leaner; superl. leanest)  
1.
Wanting flesh; destitute of or deficient in fat; slim; not plump; slender; meager; thin; lank; as, a lean body; a lean cattle.
2.
Wanting fullness, richness, sufficiency, or productiveness; deficient in quality or contents; slender; scant; barren; bare; mean; used literally and figuratively; as, the lean harvest; a lean purse; a lean discourse; lean wages. "No lean wardrobe." "Their lean and flashy songs." "What the land is, whether it be fat or lean." "Out of my lean and low ability I'll lend you something."
3.
(Typog.) Of a character which prevents the compositor from earning the usual wages; opposed to fat; as, lean copy, matter, or type.
Synonyms: slender; spare; thin; meager; lank; skinny; gaunt.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Lean" Quotes from Famous Books



... table in a little tank, and exhibited, alive, to the guests, when their soup is served, that its freshness, ten minutes afterwards, may be put beyond suspicion. The fish has the appearance of a small, lean sturgeon; but its flesh resembles the melting pulp of a fruit rather than the fibre of its watery brethren. It sinks into juice upon the tongue, like a perfectly ripe peach. In this quality no other fish in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... three broad. Three persons could not sit in it side by side. These canoes are so crank, and they require, from their instability, a cargo so equally distributed, that when you want to rise for an instant, you must warn the rowers to lean to the opposite side. Without this precaution the water would necessarily enter the side pressed down. It is difficult to form an idea of the inconveniences that are suffered ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... rose and came forward effusively; Mrs. Whalen, plump, dark, voluble; Sally, lean, swarthy, vindictive; Flossie, pudgy, powdered, over-dressed. They eyed me hungrily. I felt that they were searching my features ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... know," he reiterated. "I will just set you down at your own door and go away. Come, Lady Carfax!" His dark eyes gazed straight into her own, determined, dominating. The high cheek-bones and long, lean jaw looked as ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... gray and long, with the eagle-look that knows far spaces; deep-set eyes under straight black brows, drawn low. His lashes are black, too, but his short crinkly hair is brown. He has a good square forehead, and a high nose like an Indian's. He is tall, and has one of those lean, lanky loose-jointed figures that crack tennis-players and polo men have. I like him at once, and I think he likes me, for his eyes light up; and just for an instant there's a feeling as if we looked through clear windows into each other's souls. It ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... occurs when there is excessive sensibility of the ovaries and uterine nerves, which sympathetically respond, especially to cutaneous, biliary, and sexual irritation, and when ovarian or uterine irritation is communicated to distant nerve-centres. In the first class, usually comprising lean persons of an encephalic temperament, whatever disorders the functions of the general system, instantaneously reflects upon the ovaries and uterine nerves, and the menstrual function Is correspondingly disturbed, and, instead of being painless, the flow becomes ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... see this mule before the door, together with a very lean jackass, then you may be certain I am there ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various

... Captain turned. Hoskins was just coming out of the after alleyway with an oxygen bottle in his hand, and had frozen in his tracks at the sharp sound Ives had made. Johnny had whipped around as if the grunt had been a lion's roar. His back was to the bulkhead, his lean, long frame tensed for fight or flight. It was indescribable, Ives' grunt, and it was the only sound which could have had such an effect on such a variety ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn

... clear pupils, out of that lean adventurous face, gleamed back at him, the distant flash of a heliograph, as it were, height to height, flashing 'Courage!' He shuddered, and shut his eyes. 'But I would really rather,' he aided in a quiet childlike way, 'I ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... had not spared the rod, and had even complained of Congress for mitigating the severity of military punishments. It may be that the "Whiskey Insurrection," which he suppressed with prompt and drastic energy, led him for the first time to lean a little to the Hamiltonian side. At any rate he was induced, though reluctantly and only under strong pressure, to introduce into a Message to Congress a passage reflecting on the Democratic Societies which were springing up everywhere and gaining daily in power; and in return found himself attacked, ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... Albrecht Durer's drawing of Praying Hands? Look at a photograph of it, please. Is it not wonderful? We cannot describe all the feeling those hands suggest. If you had passed them on the street, you would not have noticed them, unless to remark that they were grimy, perhaps, or lean. The great German artist saw them folded in prayer, and heard all the language of a despairing soul as it came out in the expression of those hands,—wonderful hands, "instinct with spirit." Look at ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder

... I know it might have been worse, and I'm a brute to be discontented, but—two and a half years! Why, it seems more like twenty, since we lived in a place where you could lean out of the window and drink the air; where I could go outside in my pyjamas before tubbing in the morning, and see the dogs, and set the rabbits flying in the orchard. Two years and four months. Do you know, if we give spring madness half a chance this year, it strikes me it will lead us out of ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... every institution (state, church, school, legislature, court, business, yes, even charity) is necessarily a robbing instrumentality by which a small class of non-producers, fat masters, rob a large class of producers, lean slaves, and rob them twice, ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... who to my person pay their court: I cough like Horace, and, tho' lean, am short, Ammon's great son one shoulder had too high, 115 Such Ovid's nose, and "Sir! you have an Eye"— Go on, obliging creatures, make me see All that disgrac'd my Betters, met in me. Say for my comfort, languishing in bed, "Just so immortal Maro held his head:" ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... is I did need to lean upon somebody. My knights couldn't arrive in time. They would be as much as three hours too late. Nothing in the world could save the King of England; nor me, which was more important. More important, not merely to me, but to the nation—the only nation on earth standing ready to blossom into ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... like a large sock, pulled over his ears and close to his eyes, and below it his clean-shaven brown face showed. He had blue woollen mittens, and boots of russet leather, without heels, came to his knees; he got a pair every time he went home on St. John's day. His lean little body was swathed in several short jackets, and he brought the letters buttoned into one of the innermost pockets. He produced the letter from Jackson promptly enough when Cynthia came out to the barn for it, and then he made a show of getting ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... finger that I may feel whether you are getting fat." But Hansel used to stretch out a bone, and the old woman, having very bad sight, thought it was his finger, and wondered very much that he did not get fatter. When four weeks had passed, and Hansel still kept quite lean, she lost all her patience, and would not wait any longer. "Grethel," she called out in a passion, "get some water quickly; be Hansel fat or lean, this morning I will kill and cook him." Oh, how the poor little ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

... room, and a lean-to. Nearly half the room was taken up with a big bed, and on the other side were the fire-place and cooking utensils. Opposite the door was a box-sofa, on which Marie had slept since she was a child, and which with a small table, two chairs and a ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall

... never spoken to them, I knew them all—the Penfields, father and son, tall and lean with bony faces and sandy hair and eyebrows, and restless, pale blue eyes—Squire Land, small and ascetic, his lips constantly puckered as though he had tasted something unpleasant. Captain Proctor, stouter than ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand

... women had been dressed in their finest clothes—brilliant colors, skirts with many tucks, and great colored bows at the end of plaits of hair which hung far down their backs. Before service an old Samoyede and a comely young girl led out a lean reindeer which was to be offered to the church—to the old church, that is to say. Even up here, as already mentioned, religious differences have found their way. Nearly all the Samoyedes of these parts belong to the old faith and attend the old church. But they go occasionally to the new one too; ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... benefit. He was pressing, as they say in golf, and it didn't improve his game. I saw that Marie was not quite so fond of him. I had maintained an attitude of strict neutrality, but could not fail to observe that Marie had begun to lean. ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller

... glass may not come up instead of that precious stone? "John Gordon might be a very steady fellow; but we have only his own word for that,"—as Mr Whittlestaff observed to himself. There could not be a doubt but that Mr Whittlestaff himself was the safer staff of the two on which a young lady might lean. He did make all these excuses for himself, and determined that they were of such a nature that he might rely upon them with safety. But still there was a pang in his bosom—a silent secret—which kept on whispering ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope

... had flung down his cap, his coat, and stood propped against the gear-casing in a striped cotton shirt open on his breast. The little brass wheel in his hands had the appearance of a bright and fragile toy. The cords of his neck stood hard and lean, a dark patch lay in the hollow of his throat, and his face was still ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad

... in that direction, and as the crowd was then scattering, there appeared in the midst of them, and advancing with the slowness of a phantom, a human being, bent, lean, entirely naked, and covered down to his flanks with long hair bristling with dried leaves, dust and thorns. About his loins and his knees he had wisps of straw and linen rags; his soft and earthy skin hung on his emaciated limbs like tatters on dried boughs; ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert

... found. It was suspected that he had been stolen, with the connivance of one of the domestics, who owed him a grudge. Weeks passed away, and all hope of recovering Rosswell had been abandoned, when one day he rushed into the house, looking lean and gaunt, with a broken piece of rope hanging to his neck, showing that he had been kept "in durance vile," and had only just broken his bonds. The two elder sisters he greeted with the most exuberant marks ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston

... of his allies would show many missing—and many gone over to the foe. But greater than all these things was the change in himself. The cloyed wolf who had gorged too deep of success was no longer the lean fighting beast with a ravenous light of conquest in his eyes. That Burton might have met even the present and triumphed. This was a wolf on the defensive, fating a pack which had turned upon his leadership. His weakened fangs were against the jaws of all the rest—and he came ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... reproduce either exactly or in correct substance what you read to yourself without any supporting aids to stimulate your memory? If you have this kind of mind develop it along that line. Do not weaken its power by letting it lean on any supports at all. If you find you can do without them, do not get into the habit of taking notes. If you can remember to do everything you should do during a trip downtown don't make a list of the items before you go. If you can retain from a single reading the material you ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... rage. She longed to lean across the table and dash her hand full in that smiling blonde face. But she looked at him instead quite tranquilly, and said, with a queer smile: "Then you would do me a favor, even at your own personal—inconvenience, ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... district which the queen "had cleansed of all idolatry." For Margaret would by her example undo much of that which had been so assiduously labored for, and the Roman Catholics who had remained would become "more unwilling to hear the Gospel, they having a staff to lean to."[880] ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... when you shall see his model." I set hand to the work, and made a drawing for the reliquary, well adapted to contain the sacred phial. Then I made a little waxen model of the cover. This was a seated Christ, supporting his great cross aloft with the left hand, while he seemed to lean against it, and with the fingers of his right hand he appeared to be opening the wound in his side. When it was finished, it pleased the Duke so much that he heaped favours on me, and gave me to understand that he would keep ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... December's biting blast, I see the slippery hail-drops fall— That shot which frost-sprites laughing cast In some great Arctic arsenal; I lean my cheek against the pane, But start away, it is so chill, And almost pity tree and plain For ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various

... the race course, their white velvety noses resting on the wooden rail they are tied to. Many of them wear their blinkers and head-harness, and others are ornamented with ribands fastened in their halters. The lookers-on lean against this railing, and chat with the boys at the donkeys' heads, or with the men who stand behind them, and keep continually hitting and shouting at the poor still beasts, to make them prance. Sometimes ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... and prince-patriarch of hungry starvelings, Lean Aurelius, all that are, that have been, That shall ever ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus

... lean and blanched and grey-haired. She wears gold spectacles, which stand out oddly against the thin whiteness of her face; she is still a handsome, distinguished woman, who can have, when she chooses, a most gracious manner. As I, worldling ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... laugh, for only the comedy of the situation at the moment struck him. A stage director, setting a comedy scene with that most ancient of jests, the gawking of boobs at some new sight, could hardly have improved on this tableau. At the front stood Tamarack Spicer, the returned wanderer. His lean wrist was stretched out of a ragged sleeve all too short, and his tattered "jimmy" was shoved back over a face all a-grin. His eyes were blood-shot with recent drinking, but his manner was in exaggerated and cumbersome ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... locked on the inside and he was unable to gain an entrance there. He was fearful that to enter by the front door would be but to proclaim his presence, but at last he perceived that there was an entrance by a small door that was partly open above the roof of the little lean-to on the side of the barn. Carefully he climbed up on the roof and cautiously made his way to the door. He peered within but it was dark and at first he was unable to discern anything. He waited until his eyes became somewhat ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson

... be sorry,—I remarked, a day or two afterwards, to the divinity-student,—if anything I said tended in any way to foster any jealousy between the professions, or to throw disrespect upon that one on whose counsel and sympathies almost all of us lean in our moments of trial. But we are false to our new conditions of life, if we do not resolutely maintain our religious as well as our political freedom, in the face of any and all supposed monopolies. Certain men will, of course, say two things, if we do not take ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... afterwards the hungry party killed some buffalo, and feasted on the lean meat, and the next day they shot a swan "which was very delicious," as Donelson recorded. Their meal was exhausted and they could make no more bread; but buffalo were plenty, and they hunted them steadily for their meat; and they also made what some of them ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... neat and trim our boys looked? None of this flub-dub of scarlet shirts with a big white monogram on the breast, or these fawn-colored suits with querlycues of braid all over. They spot very easily. And did you notice how the Caledonias had long, lean men walking with short, fat men, and nobody keeping step? Our boys were all carefully graded and matched, and their dark blue uniforms with just the neat nickel badge, I think, presented the best appearance of all. ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... arranged a bark hut for my mother and Edith, while lean-tos served for the rest of the party. Considering our circumstances, we were very merry as we sat round the fire enjoying a good supper, for, having an abundance of provisions, there was no necessity to stint ourselves; indeed, we possessed ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston

... Pericles first bore; The Prince of Tyre was elder than the Moor: 'Tis miracle to see a first good play; All hawthorns do not bloom on Christmas-day. A slender poet must have time to grow, 20 And spread and burnish, as his brothers do. Who still looks lean, sure with some pox is cursed: But no man can be Falstaff-fat at first. Then damn not, but indulge his rude essays; Encourage him, and bloat him up with praise, That he may get more bulk before he dies: He's not yet fed enough for sacrifice. Perhaps, if now your grace you ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... expect a man of my acquaintance, a Paul's man with a good rapier to sell," quoth Baldry. "Boy, is the gentleman a lean gentleman with a Duke Humphrey look? Wait for me, sirs, at ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... made in a decidedly "dim religious light". Everyone's knees were aching when at last they emerged through a small door on to the causeway. They were standing on a flat terrace edged by a stone parapet just tall enough to allow them to lean their arms on it and look over. Above them rose the spire, tapering thinner and thinner till its slender point ended in a weather-cock. Below, the town lay spread out like an architect's design. They could see the ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... the office of George Wythe, and absorbed all that Fauquier had to offer, and grew wise in the companionship of Doctor Small. From a red-headed, lean, lank, awkward mountaineer, he developed into a gracious and graceful young man who has been described as "auburn-haired." And the evolution from being red-headed to having red hair, and from that ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... his daughters at an expense of something like two millions of gold pieces. A curious instance of his tyranny relates to his hunting establishment. Having saddled his subjects with the keep of 5,000 boar-hounds, he appointed officers to go round and see whether these brutes were either too lean or too well-fed to be in good condition for the chase. If anything appeared defective in their management, the peasants on whom they were quartered had to suffer in their persons and their property.[1] This Bernabo was also remarkable for his cold-blooded cruelty. Together with his ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... the sea, Or on the mud-bank by the elder tree, Or by the bounding marsh-dike, there was he: And when unable to forsake the town, In the blind courts he sat desponding down - Always alone: then feebly would he crawl The church-way walk, and lean upon the wall: Too ill for this, he lay beside the door, Compell'd to hear the reasoning of the poor: He look'd so pale, so weak, the pitying crowd Their firm belief of his repentance vow'd; They saw him then so ghastly and so thin, That ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... to be;—if to be his wife seems to me to be the greatest bliss that could happen to a woman; if I feel that I could die to serve him, that I could live to worship him, that his touch would be sweet to me, his voice music, his strength the only support in the world on which I would care to lean,—what then?" ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... gentleman—leans over the table writing. He has an abundant crop of dark hair on his head, under his chin, and on his upper lip. He is not just now troubled with a superabundance of flesh, or, in other words, no one would suspect him of being fat. On the contrary, he might remind one of the lean kine, or the prodigal son who had been feeding on husks. He is wide awake at this late hour of the night, from which I conclude he has slept more or less during the day. No one, to look at this gentleman, would take him to be a remarkable man; in fact, his most intimate friends could not find it ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... these mountains there are certain great and deep valleys to the bottom of which there is no access. These valleys are full of rubies. Wherefore the men who go in search of them take with them a piece of flesh as lean as they can get, and this they east into the bottom of the valley. Now there are a number of white eagles that haunt these mountains and feed upon the serpents in which the valley abounds. When the eagles see the meat thrown down, they pounce upon ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes

... breakfasted, and were again seated in the coach, all the farmers, the lean one excepted, seemed quite alive again, and now began a conversation on ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz

... and mingled largely in state and political affairs. Of course, in the great insurrection of the year 1848 he took an active share, and after the catastrophe of Vilagos he was seized and imprisoned at Olmuetz. At that time I was a lean, overgrown youngster of sixteen. I was compelled to take charge of the household, and behave as head of the family, for which dignity I had no inclination and but little talent. Study was the great object of my life. After my father's release from prison I was just ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai

... concrete was of the proportion by volume of 1 cement, 2 sand, and 6 crushed stone (sizes from to 1 ins.). This was rather a lean mixture, and as it could not be rammed enough to flush all over, the surface was finished where necessary by a thick mortar made in the proportion of 1 cement to 6 sand, and applied with heavy brushes. Before placing any of the concrete, the bank back of the old concrete left in place ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette

... Indian "up country" road, skirting miles of irrigated rice fields, gold-green in their beginnings, gold-brown in the days of ripening and reaping. It winds past patches of sugar cane and cocoanut palm; then half arid uplands, where goats and lean cattle search for grass blades that their predecessors have overlooked; then the bizarre shapes of the ghats, wide spaces open to the play of sun and wind and rain, of passing shadow and sunset glory. They are among ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren

... gravel-walk. A man and a woman were hurrying up to the parsonage. The woman short, sharp, lean; the man unctious and foxy,—yet also representing a chronic state of gelatinous bewilderment. The Great Socialists,—I knew ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... will persuade those who are hardened in guilt to die to save another?—Is that the reed you would lean to?" ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... proposed to treat his fellow-clerks. This quiescence would not have been a subject for astonishment if it had not completed the supernatural aspect of the man's whole person. The old soldier was dry and lean. His forehead, intentionally hidden under a smoothly combed wig, gave him a look of mystery. His eyes seemed shrouded in a transparent film; you would have compared them to dingy mother-of-pearl with a blue iridescence changing in the gleam of the wax lights. His face, pale, livid, and ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac

... men to their statutes, though they never saw them; and his discourse is all aphorisms, though his reading be only Alexis of Piedmont,[9] or the Regiment of Health.[10] The best cure he has done, is upon his own purse, which from a lean sickliness he hath made lusty, and in flesh. His learning consists much in reckoning up the hard names of diseases, and the superscriptions of gally-pots in his apothecary's shop, which are ranked in his shelves, and the doctor's memory. ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... seized the rope and tried to draw the captive back into the garden, but the effort was vain, so leaving it he drew back, took a run and a jump, scrambled on to the top of the wall, so as to lean over, and then began thrashing away with his stout hazel as if ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... would have to eat nearly 4-1/4 lbs. daily.... He would be compelled to take about double the quantity of carbon required in order to obtain the necessary weight of nitrogen.... Next, let us suppose that he feeds on lean meat only. Then, in order to obtain the necessary quantity of carbon, he must eat no less than 6-1/2 lbs. daily.... In this case we notice a similar waste of nitrogen, the removal of which would give an undue amount of work to the organs concerned.... But it is possible to ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan

... down in a cold pale flare of light. The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east: And lights wink out through the windows, one by one. A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night. Pale slate-grey clouds whirl ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken

... this very way in other fields! But we are not cultivating ourselves when we merely set in motion with ease and convenience that which lies in us. Every artist, like every man, is only an individual, and will always lean to one side. For that reason, man should pursue so far as possible, both theoretically and practically, that which is contrary to his nature. Let the easy-going seek what is serious and severe; let the stern keep before his eyes the light and agreeable; the strong, loveliness; the amiable, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... the doorway was tall and lean, and the prison blench upon his face was in unpleasant contrast to the ruddy tan of the faces about the table. His sombrero was tipped back and the hair hung dank about the pale, sweating forehead, suggestive of sickness. But weak health did not imply weak purpose; every feature ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... sheep was seized by a second assistant standing at the shearer's left, who at once threw the poor thing down on its side, where he quickly painted the brand of that particular ranch, after which it was given its freedom. It was most laughable to see the change in the sheep—most of them looking lean and lanky, whereas in less than one short minute before, their sides had been broad and woolly. A third man to wait upon the shearer was kept busy at his right carefully gathering the wool and stuffing it in huge sacks. Every effort was made to keep it clean, and ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... thicket; plaster hands, feet and torsos hung upon the walls; bull-headed Nero swelled upon a shelf beside the mutilated Venus which is a revelation of the glory that merely human beauty can attain without a gleam borrowed from the divine; fat Vitellius seemed to snore open-eyed beside lean and wakeful Julius Caesar; a mask of Medusa leaned lovingly upon the shoulder of Dante; Apollo Belvedere smiled upon an ecorche—in atelier parlance "skun man;" finished and unfinished studies of heads, bodies and detached sections ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... this capricious partiality in the national councils? Is it to be exercised in a discrimination between the different departments of industry, or between the different kinds of property, or between the different degrees of property? Will it lean in favor of the landed interest, or the moneyed interest, or the mercantile interest, or the manufacturing interest? Or, to speak in the fashionable language of the adversaries to the Constitution, will it court the elevation of "the wealthy and the well-born," to ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... creature," or as the margin has it "a new creation" (II Cor. v: 17). Such vain philosophies have only one logical result which is to put yourself in the place of God, and then what have you to lean upon in the hour of trial? It is like trying to climb up a ladder that is resting against nothing. Therefore, says the Apostle Paul, "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of man, after the rudiments of the ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward

... coaxed them back to childhood and a child's protected sleep. It seemed a song that could not stop, that must return on its simple refrain so long as there were arms to encircle and breasts to lean upon. ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... Ice! ICE!" the man repeated loudly. Still failing of a response, he shouted, "Don't you know what 'ice' is?" He wrapped his long, lean arms about himself and shivered. "Cold! Icie! ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... the first time since she had entered Mr. Van Torp's lodging, had not moved from the fireplace since she had taken up her position there. Women are as clever as Napoleon or Julius Caesar in selecting strong positions when there is to be an encounter, and a fireplace, with a solid mantelpiece to lean against, to strike, to cry upon or to cling to, is one of the strongest. The enemy is thus reduced to prowling about the room and handling knick-knacks while he talks, or smashing them if he ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford

... wages. After the men, however, realize that this is the case and an opportunity comes for them to change these conditions, in their reaction against what they believe unjust treatment they are almost sure to lean so far in the other direction as to do an equally great injustice ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor

... as if I were hearing, I saw Selwyn lean forward, after admitting that the number wanted was the right one, and heard him ask again: "Who is it? Who ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher

... your heart did not prompt you where to find me, then it would have been a proof that you were indifferent to me. When I cannot lean upon your love, then there is no longer any protection or abiding-place for me in the world, and the grave will be ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... of loneliness came to Phil after he had parted with Frank. He was going out into the world with no one to lean upon, and no one to sympathize with him or lend him a helping hand. No wonder he felt friendless and alone. But this mood did not ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger

... between you and it, a pool floating with blossoming water-weeds. On the edge of the rushes grow tall yellow irises in great profusion; the cuckoo's note sounds in the distance; the sun, the warmth, the intoxication of color, make you drowsy, and you lean back among the green things, close your eyes, and then begin listening to the wonderful music of the rushes. A million million reeds stirred by the breeze bend to and fro, making a faint silken sound like that of a summer wave lapping the shore, ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the completest personal contrast imaginable. Mr. Keller was lean, tall, and wiry—a man of considerable attainments beyond the limits of his business, capable (when his hot temper was not excited) of speaking sensibly and strongly on any subject in which he was interested. Mr. Engelman, short and fat, devoted to the office ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins

... Caroline sighs. She lies in ambush like a hunter at the cover; she surprises the young woman, her face actually illuminated with happiness. Finally, by dint of watching the charming couple, she sees the gentleman and lady open the window, and lean gently one against the other, as, supported by the railing, they breathe the evening air. Caroline gives herself a nervous headache, by endeavoring to interpret the phantasmagorias, some of them having an explanation ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... the yard through the rear door, he stepped under a rough lean-to of a shed, and soon emerged with his wheel, which, being geared to suit his peculiar form, made him look almost like a caricature when mounted. He fastened his paraphernalia in place, steered it around in front and was just mounting when the man with the newspaper issued from ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... does perpendicular mean? A. A line up straight, like the stem of some trees. Q. If you look, you will see that one end of the line comes on the middle of another line; what does it form? A. The one which we now see forms two right angles. Q. I will make a straight line, and one end of it shall lean on another straight line, but instead of being upright like the perpendicular line, you see that it is sloping. What does it form? A. One side of it is an acute angle, and the other side is an obtuse angle. Q. Which side is the obtuse angle? A. That which is the most ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... to help her, the fear of her inability to do it; and Henrietta looked back with a hint of defiance, the symbol of her attitude to the cruel world in which fond lovers were despised and love had a hard road. Rose restrained an impulse to lean across the table and say quietly, 'I saw you to-night with Francis Sales and I am sorry for you. He told me I should not let you meet him. He said that himself, so you see he does not want you,' and she wondered how ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG

... Murad's line at the battle of Konia in 1381, before the treachery of another body of the same race gave him the victory eight years later at Kosovo. So little did the Osmanli state model itself on the earlier caliphial empires and so naturally did it lean towards the Roman or Byzantine ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... as a lean-to, all round his inner, apartment, and long rafters lay from the thirty two angles to the top posts of the inner house, being about twenty feet distant; so that there was a space like a walk within the outer wicker wall, and without the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... wilt preserve, O Lord, From this vile generation; Make us to lean upon thy word, With calm anticipation. The wicked walk on every side When, 'mid thy flock, the vile abide In power ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther

... fortunate. I have no one on whom to lean, or to whom I can look for guidance. Shall you remain long here?" she asked, fearing she had spoken too ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams

... growled the captain, and he fell to frowning and cracking his long fingers—his habit when perplexed. He was a short, thick-set man, with a round, red face, keen blue eyes, and strong, square jaws: a typical specimen of the old-time British sailor. Hugh Maclean, on the other hand, was a lean and lank Australian, of evident Scottish ancestry. His long, aquiline nose and high cheek-bones were tightly covered with a parchment-like skin, bronzed almost to the hue of leather. He wore a close-cropped, ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... than the children did for theirs. While he was teaching the advanced Bible class, his own understanding of spiritual things was greatly broadened and strengthened, and he became one on whom the entire congregation could lean and in whom ...
— How John Became a Man • Isabel C. Byrum

... Under Town was Seacombe, a lawyer lived here—hence the front passage. It has a cat-trodden front garden, in which only wall-flowers and some box edging have survived. Over the front door is a broken trellis-work porch. Masts and spars lean against the wall. The house is built of red brick, straight up and down like an overgrown doll's house, but the whole of the wall is weathered and toned by the southerly gales which blow down the Gut from the open sea. Those same winds see to it that Alexandra Square does not smell squalid, however ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... the two courts thorny and strained at bottom, though still perfectly smooth in appearance. It was from England that Abbe Dubois urged the Regent to seek support. Dubois, born in the very lowest position, and endowed with a soul worthy of his origin, was "a little, lean man, wire-drawn, with a light colored wig, the look of a weasel, a clever expression," says St. Simon, who detested him; "all vices struggled within him for the mastery; they kept up a constant hubbub and strife together. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... crouched in the dark of the lean-to shelter, just as its fellow was on sentry duty in the tree! Only this one did not have the self-color of the foliage to disguise it. Four-limbed, its long forearms curved about its bent knees, its general outline almost that of a human—if a human went clothed in a ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton

... by application to one of his type-writing women, he got word of a young lady, one Miss Mamie McBride, who was willing and able to conduct him in these bloomless meadows; and, her circumstances being lean, and terms consequently moderate, he and Mamie were soon in agreement for two lessons in the week. He took fire with unexampled rapidity; he seemed unable to tear himself away from the symbolic art; an hour's ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... love shelter and the blessings of the sun, who hate dark weather and perpetual tilting against squalls, there could scarcely be found a more unhomely and harassing place of residence. Many such aspire angrily after that Somewhere else of the imagination, where all troubles are supposed to end. They lean over the great bridge which joins the New Town with the Old—that windiest spot, or high altar, in this northern temple of the winds—and watch the trains smoking out from under them and vanishing into the tunnel on a voyage to brighter ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... reach the point of seriously quarrelling when one knows the other so well, when they have lived together like two twins at the breast of the lean and strong nurse, Poverty, sharing her sour milk and her rough caresses! These thoughts passed through Hemerlingue's mind like a flash of lightning. Almost instinctively he let his heavy hand fall into the one which the Nabob was holding out to him. Something ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... pair of men's lasts was taken down from the shelf, and these were tied to one end of the waxed-end and were let right down to the pavement. People collected in the street outside, and stood there staring. Pelle had to lean right out of the window, and bend over as far as he could, while Emil, as the oldest apprentice, laid the waxed-end over his neck. They were all on their feet now, with the exception of the young master; he took no ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... as far as possible by plunging overboard and swimming twice or thrice round the ship, had I not happened to have noticed a large shark under her counter, when, to test the clearness of the water, I happened to lean over the taffrail to look at the rudder and stern-post. Even the men dawdled over the job of washing decks that morning, using a much greater quantity of water than usual, and placing themselves where there was a chance to get the hose played upon their bare feet and legs. And if it was hot ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... fastened or girdled at the waist, straw sandals, kept on by a thong passing between the great toe and the others, and if they wear any head- gear, it is only a wisp of blue cotton tied round the forehead. The one garment is only an apology for clothing, and displays lean concave chests and lean muscular limbs. The skin is very yellow, and often much tattooed with mythical beasts. The charge for sampans is fixed by tariff, so the traveller lands without having his temper ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... stood in the store listening to the eager patter of words that fell from the lips of the traveling man, was tall and lean and looked unwashed. On his scrawny neck was a large wen partially covered by a grey beard. He wore a long Prince Albert coat. The coat had been purchased to serve as a wedding garment. Before he became a merchant Ebenezer was ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson

... you wish to lean on my arm, and yet to walk your own way? That can hardly be, Frank;—however, I suppose you mean to obey my directions, so far as they do ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... on the border of Mid-Lothian, and of all the sheep I ever saw, these were the kindest and most affectionate to their lambs. I was often deeply affected at scenes which I witnessed. We had one very hard winter, so that our sheep grew lean in the spring, and the thwarter-ill (a sort of paralytic affection) came among them, and carried off a number. Often have I seen these poor victims, when fallen down to rise no more, even when unable ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley

... of the lungs or other tubercular tissues do not require food of different composition than is generally recommended, provided their digestive organs are healthy. They must have albumen (medium fat beef, veal lean pork, haddie, pickled herring, eggs, brick cheese, peas) and fat in sufficient, even abundant quantity. Warmed milk is recommended especially. Variety in food should prevail. This will be the best means of overcoming the dangerous lack of appetite, which ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... was tall, lean and pale. He was a sedentary person and loved meddling with figures. He swore continually about his salary and blasphemed against the bank, but his work was always perfect and he was always watching over it with pride. Filter was what was known as a "fusser." He worked slowly, mechanically, ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... stone. The great building round this tower is very like the pictures of the Ducal Palace at Venice; and there is a long market area, with columns down the middle, from which hung shreds of rather lean-looking meat, that would do wonders under the hands of Cattermole or Haghe. In the tower there is a chime of bells that keep ringing perpetually. They not only play tunes of themselves, and every quarter of an hour, but ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray

... corpse of her aunt carried down these steps, and the ruffian-like figure, that stood with a torch at the bottom to receive it—all her fortitude was lost in emotions of inexpressible grief and terror. She turned to lean upon Annette, who was cold and trembling like herself, and she lingered so long on the summit of the flight, that the gleam of the torch began to die away on the pillars of the chapel, and the men were almost beyond her view. Then, the gloom around her awakening ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... dust above the lone pedestrian. For when the boy raised his feet with each stride, the man-sized, hob-nailed boots which encased them failed to lift in turn. Indeed, the toes did clear the ground, but the heels, slipping away from the lean ankles, dragged in the follow-through. And the boy's other garments, save for his flannel shirt and flapping felt hat, were of a size in keeping with ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... of the Resurrection, which stands just beyond the Puerta del Campo, in Valladolid, there issued one day a soldier, who, by the excessive paleness of his countenance, and the weakness of his limbs, which obliged him to, lean upon his sword, showed clearly to all who set eyes on him that, though the weather was not very warm, he must have sweated a good deal in the last few weeks. He had scarcely entered the gate of the city, with tottering steps, when he was accosted by an old friend who had not seen ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... jolted along, "seemed to be marching by," in broad platoons. The fountains piled their flexile columns of spray and waved them to and fro. The great bell clanged from the belfry. Groups wandered forth in the great Piazza. The old Egyptian obelisk in the centre pointed its lean finger to the sky. We were in Rome! This one moment of surprised sensation is worth the journey from Civita Vecchia. Entered by no other gate, is Rome so suddenly and completely possessed. Nowhere is the contrast so instantaneous and vivid as here, between the silent, desolate Campagna and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... thinking,—going over again in imagination all that had passed between her father and herself during the last few weeks, recalling their conversations, especially every word he had addressed to her bearing upon her future; all his loving counsels; his exhortations to lean upon God in every time of trial and perplexity; to carry every sorrow, anxiety, and care to the Lord Jesus in unwavering confidence that there she would find never-failing ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley

... near the center of the village, John and Jane Clemens established their household. It was a humble one-story affair, with two main rooms and a lean-to kitchen, though comfortable enough for its size, and comparatively new. It is still standing and occupied when these lines are written, and it should be preserved and guarded as a shrine for the American people; for it was here that the foremost American-born author—the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... that Pharaoh dreamed: and, behold, he stood by the river. And, behold, there came up out of the river seven well favoured kine and fat-fleshed; and they fed in a meadow. And, behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the river, ill favoured and lean-fleshed; and stood by the other kine upon the brink of the river. And the ill favored and lean-fleshed kine did eat up the seven well favoured and fat ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous

... into roars of laughter, none joining so heartily as the minister himself, who was compelled to lean against the wall for support, and wipe the tears ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith

... have the experience of passing through a large barnyard, and going from one end to the other with a lean, hungry hog after you, yelling and squealing, trying to eat you up by snapping first at one of your legs and then at the other? You kick at him with first one foot, saying, "Sooy, sooy;" then you, with the other foot, kick backwards, saying, "Sooy, ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge

... could play my poor little part no longer, and though I continued to lean on the yellow velvet of the barrier in front of me I dropped my eyes as often as that woman was on the stage, and hoped and prayed for the end ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... qualities of his nature revealed themselves; with crisp curling hair, surmounting a tall, expansive forehead—full of benevolence, idealism, and quick perceptions; broad, brown, melancholy eyes, overflowing with tenderness; a lean and haggard cheek, a rugged Flemish nose; a thin flexible mouth; a slender moustache, and a peaked and meagre beard; so appeared Sainte Aldegonde in the forty-seventh year of his age, when he came to command ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... The Hottentots had fried and eaten, and fried and eaten, till they could hold no more; and the Bushmen, who in the morning looked as thin and meager as if they had not had a meal for a month, were now so stuffed that they could hardly walk, and their lean stomachs were distended as round as balls. The Bushman who had been tossed by the buffalo came up and asked for a little tobacco, at the same time smiling and patting his stomach, which was distended ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat

... support in Crescent Alley. On the left were the 5th Border Regiment, and on the right the 47th Division, but it was not possible to get into touch with the flanks during the night. The Company Commanders were now W Company, 2nd Lieut. Barnett; X Company, 2nd Lieut. Lean; Y Company, Lieut. Catford; and Z Company, Capt. Peberdy. By dawn all preparations, including the alteration of watches to winter time, were completed for the attack, which had been ordered for the ...
— The Story of the 6th Battalion, The Durham Light Infantry - France, April 1915-November 1918 • Unknown

... is the truth. The Jesuits are for France, because they are for wealth, strength, and courage. France is the only great Catholic country which has yet remained erect and sovereign, the only one on which the papacy can some day lean. Thus the Holy Father, after momentarily dreaming of obtaining support from victorious Germany, has allied himself with France, the vanquished, because he has understood that apart from France there can be no salvation for the Church. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... pocketbook when it came to buying the Coles horses, but it would be a distinct blow to her pride as a horsewoman. Moreover, there was that in the stallion which roused instinctive aversion. Hatred for Cordova sustained him, for there was no muscle in the lean shoulders or the starved quarters to drive him ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... mean in an automobile," she corrected. "Let us see if you can't lean on some of us while the others go for a car. We will be glad to help you," she insisted, feeling the Girl Scout pledge surge ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis

... surmounted, was so crushingly greater. And there had been reasons for her running away, even if she had not run away to Mackenzie. She stood by them later and they helped her to forget Mackenzie's share in the flight. But now she could only lean back and taste the blessed relief that Dick had ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall

... all the bone, fat, gristle, and skin. Cut the lean in small thin pieces, about as large, generally, as the palm of your hand. Beat the meat well with the rolling-pin, to make it juicy and tender. If you put in the fat, it will make the gravy too greasy and strong, as it cannot ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie

... design'd to loose Those real bonds false freedom did impose. The blessed saints that watch'd this turning scene Did from their stars with joyful wonder lean, To see small clues draw vastest weights along, Not in their bulk, but in their ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... loneliness, His yearning for a loving hand to grasp, His continual conflict with temptations to choose an easier way than that of the Cross. He has known all the pain of being alone, and feeling in vain for a sympathetic heart to lean on. He has had to resist temptation, not only in the desert at the beginning, or in Gethsemane at the end, but throughout His life. He treasures in His heart, and richly repays, even a little love dashed with much selfishness, and faithfulness broken by desertion. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Lahul and the few villages are situated at a height of 10,000 feet in their elevated valleys. The people are Buddhists. In summer the population is increased by "Gaddi" shepherds from Kangra, who drive lean flocks in the beginning of June over the Rotang and take them back from the Alpine pastures in the middle of ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... out loud and full, even when there was scarce a puff of breath behind them. She felt so proud and happy to think that fate had given her the power to help William, and that he had consented to avail himself of the power. Once more he had begun to lean on her. As in the past, so in the future, he would derive support from his poor little misunderstood, but always ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... will send for thee." With this he returned to the palace and forgot about his promise. But the poor girl did not forget. Year after year passed, till at last after eighty years of waiting she was a very old woman. Then she thought, "My face and form are lean and withered, there is no longer any hope. Nevertheless, if I do not show the Heavenly Sovereign how truly I have waited, my disappointment will be unbearable." And so with such gifts as she could afford she presented herself before the emperor. He wondering ...
— Japan • David Murray

... lean back on that cushion, Miss Alicia. For the next few minutes this is going to ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... so weak that she could scarcely stand, and Thornton took her in his arms and carried her to the sleigh; then springing in beside her he made her lean her tired head upon his shoulder as they drove to Prospect Hill. She did not seem frivolous to him now, but rather the noblest type of womanhood he had ever met. Few could do what she had done, and there was much of warmth and fervor in the clasp ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes

... me with the love That casteth out my fear; Teach me to lean on Thee, and feel That Thou art very near: That no temptation is unseen, No childish grief too small, Since Thou, with patience infinite, Doth soothe and ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... himself, remembering the days of Louis Philippe. He knelt down beside the dead man, and perhaps the attitude reminded him of his calling; for he fell to praying, and made the gesture of the cross over Andrei's head. Then suddenly he leapt to his feet, and shook his lean fist out towards the valley and St. Florent, as if he knew ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman

... have gone with them," she said, the words so soft that they had to lean close to her to catch them. "I would have been so proud ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope

... limits, which still flourish among critics. Who has not met these censors of music? They will tell you with solid complacence how far music may go, and where it must stop, and what it may express and what it must not. They are not always musicians themselves. But what of that? Do they not lean on the example of the past? The past! a handful of works that they themselves hardly understand. Meanwhile, music, by its unceasing growth, gives the lie to their theories, and breaks down these weak barriers. But ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... adversary, not perhaps the less bold that he saw matters were taking the turn of a pacific debate; "and a pity it is that a kindly Scot should ever have married in foreign parts, and given life to a purse-proud, pudding- headed, fat-gutted, lean-brained Southron, e'en such as you, Maister Christie. But fare ye weel—fare ye weel, for ever and a day; and, if you quarrel wi' a Scot again, man, say as mickle ill o' himsell as ye like, but say nane of ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... appropriate as the more pretentious one of the "Duke of Marlborough," or the "Lord Warden." As a general thing, however, people designated her in a less formal manner, using the simpler and shorter title of the "Parson." Her owner and commander was a tall, lean, sinewy young man, whoso Sunday-go-to-meeting name was Zion Awake Cox, but who was usually referred to by an ingenious combination of the initials of these three names, and thus became Zac, and occasionally ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille

... after the receipt of this extraordinary composition, the banker, escorted by a lean and cadaverous-looking doctor, arrived at our chateau, half strangled with a churchyard cough, and in a state of apparently hopeless debility. He was evidently very, very ill; and if it had not been for the sincere friendship my father had for ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... then began. Kate's high-heeled boots were hard to walk in, and every now and then her feet would fail her, and she would utter little cries of fear, and lean against the cliff's side. It was delightful to reassure her, and Montgomery profited by those occasions to lay his hands upon her shoulders and hold her arms in his hands. No human creature was in hearing or in sight, and solitude seemed to unite them, and the mimic danger of ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... few seconds there was silence, while the long ranks leant forward between the hedges of lean and cruel spears. A whisper went down the line; it sounded like the noise of wind among trees, and was the signal to prepare. Next a far-off voice shouted some word, which was repeated again and again by other voices before and behind me. I became aware that we were moving, ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard

... was in his shoulder, and it had left his sense of humor unimpaired. As a rule, the fighting records of the wounded never came inside that long, bed-bordered room; but there were few within it now who were ignorant of the plucky ride made by the lean, boyish-looking Canadian trooper. A part of the story had come by way of the doctor in charge of the ambulance train which had brought him from Krugersdorp to Johannesburg, a part of it had come from the trooper's own lips, and that was the most ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... much of her. The workmen, with the indolent, inconsequent Irish temperament which makes it irksome to follow up a task continuously, and easier to do anything than the work in hand, would break off to amuse her at any time. One young carpenter—lean, sallow, and sulky—who was working for her mother, interested her greatly. He was making packing-cases, and the first one was all wrong, and had to be pulled to pieces; and the way he swore as he demolished it, ripping out oaths as he ripped up the boards, impressed ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... Polychrome sprang upon a point of rock and held out her arms. Straightway the Rainbow descended until its end was at her very feet, when with a graceful leap she sprang upon it and was at once clasped in the arms of her radiant sisters, the Daughters of the Rainbow. But Polychrome released herself to lean over the edge of the glowing arch and nod, and smile and throw a dozen kisses ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... will sacrifice anything for their passions. But no, Ralph had always been nice with her, she owed him a great deal; they had had pleasant times together—in this very gallery. She could remember almost every word he said. She had liked him to lean over her shoulder, and correct her drawing. He would never ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... thought to the emotion, which originally prompted it; whence his success and influence. But for his strength, plainly aimed at by the author, and to be conceded by the reader, if the book was to convince? Drake compared him to scree and shingle as against solid granite. Lean on him ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason

... to the Hotel d'Angleterre,—it was full,—and ditto to four or five others, and in the last effort our refractory wheel came off again, and we all got out into the street. About a dozen lean, ragged "corbies," who are called porters and who are always lying in wait for travelers, pounced upon us. They took down our baggage in a twinkling, and putting it all into the street surrounded it, ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... spare and lean cattle of earlier times, the former paucity of our flocks and herds, and the present innumerable supplies,—the result of good treatment, and of people's obedience to a law of mine which forbade them to slaughter the female, so that our resources for multiplying our ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... entertaining Law-volume or another: how he would breakfast upon Stamford,[359] dine upon Coke, and sup upon Fitzherbert, &c.; and, in truth, a most insatiable book appetite did this eminent judge possess. For, not satisfied ("and no marvel, I trow") with the foregoing lean fare, he would oftentimes regale himself with a well-served-up course of the Arts, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... mention one thing; Lord Cadogan was brought to absolute despair, and hatred of life, by a stomach complaint, being now an old man. The symptoms, as stated to me, were strikingly like yours, excepting the nervous difference of the two characters; the flittering fever, &c. He was advised to reduce lean beef to a pure jelly, by Papin's digester, with as little water as could secure it from burning, and of this to take half a wine glass 10 or 14 times a day. This and nothing else. He did so. Sir George Beaumont saw, within a few weeks a letter ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... dey line up, dis here Haitian come crowdin' in ahead o' de fust man in de line, an' he cut off de bes' lean meat ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... the steps and placed one knotted foot upon them, standing thus in silence a little while, as if thinking it over. The dust of the highroad was on his broad black hat, and gray upon his grizzly beard. In the attitude of his lean frame, in the posture of his foot upon the step, he seemed to be asserting a mastery over the place which he had invaded to the sad dispersion ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... viscera, or the broken limb (all three classed alike), large should have been his fee [166]. But feeless went he now from man to man, with his red ointment and his muttered charm; and those over whom he shook his lean face and matted locks, smiled ghastly at that sign that release and death were near. Within the enclosures, either lay supine, or stalked restless, the withered remains of the wild army. A sheep, and a horse, and a clog, were yet ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... says she, "to walk into the forest till we were at some distance from the high road, my poor mistress grew so tired that she begged the man who walked beside her to allow her to lean on his shoulder. He looking round and seeing that they had reached a lonely spot, replied, 'We need hardly go any farther,' and made us sit dawn on a plot of grass which was to be the scene of our martyrdom. My poor mistress began to plead with the barbarians in the most touching manner, and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... The "Cap'n" condescended to lean a little on his oars in pursuit of a bargain, and sent the little boat spinning over the water toward one of the barges in the rear part of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... you are thin. Have not much bulk to carry; one of Pharaoh's lean kine. It requires a warm day to make your blood circulate freely. I like winter and spring best for ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... of Maryland; six feet tall, thin, lean, always hungry, perhaps a trifle freckled, a little sandy of hair, blue I suppose of eye, although I am not sure; good rider and good marcher, I know; something of an expert with the weapons of my time and people; fond ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough

... the kitchen, there were a man and a boy without doors, two or three lean cows, a flock of sheep which were half starved on the moor, a great dog, and sundry pigs and fowls living at large about the tower; and, to crown our description, it must be added, that all the domestic arrangements which were beyond the sphere of Mrs. ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]



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