"Leathery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... evening when he told it, propped up on his pillows, with the blankets drawn up under his chin, and his lean, leathery face, a little softened by his fever, fronting the long, benevolent visage of Father Bates. The Father had a deckchair, and sprawled in it at length, listening over his deep Boer pipe. A faint, bitter ghost of an odor tainted the still ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... rose at the thought of being able to land on the morrow. I was even able to do justice to the abominable food set before us at dinner—greasy sausages and a leathery beefsteak, served on dirty plates and a ragged table-cloth that looked as if it had been used to clean the boiler. But the German Jew had recovered from his temporary indisposition, the cadaverous Persian had disappeared on ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... a woman lying stretched out at full length. At first glance, one might have mistaken her for a mummy, so still and lifeless she lay; her face, too, carried out the resemblance startlingly, for it was furrowed and seamed with countless wrinkles, the skin appearing like parchment in its dry, leathery texture. Only the eyes gave assurance that this was no mummy, but a living, sentient body—eyes large, full-orbed and black as midnight, arched by heavy brows that frowned with great purpose, as if the soul behind ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... nine-pin, with the broken staff of the pitch-fork in his hand; and the bull reared in the air with agony, the prong having gone clean through his upper lip in two places, and fastened itself, as one fastens a pin, in that leathery but ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... had fallen, presenting a tangled wilderness of leathery, five-foot-wide strips. Webs of roots, tough and gnarled, whitish in color, curled in all directions to catch the feet and baffle the eye. It was an appalling underbrush. And it was an underbrush, moreover, in which there ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... composition of the piece would be thus accounted for; but I cannot pretend that Mr. Tadema reminds one of either Poussin or Annibale Carracci. However, rumour whispers that a high price has been paid for this curious performance. To my thinking the friends of Heliogabalus are a little flat and leathery in the handling of the flesh. The silver work, and the marble, will please admirers of this eccentric artist; but I can hardly call the whole effect "High." But Mr. Armitage's "Siren" will console people who remember the old school. ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... burrower and makes long tunnels in the earth with his strong claws. His round body is thickly covered, first, with woolly fur and then with long hairs. A leathery hanging protects his round eyes from the ...
— Dew Drops - Volume 37, No. 18, May 3, 1914 • Various
... miles farther to the grove of trees, where, under very indifferent shade, travellers are in the habit of halting to pitch their camps; and on reaching this, I was glad to throw myself down on the grass, and, after a drink of milk, and the slight refreshment afforded by a leathery chupattie, to go to sleep on the grass, until the arrival of our servants and baggage should give us a prospect of breakfast. These made their appearance about two P.M., and all hands requiring a little rest from the toils of the road, we pitched our camp ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... it can be fit for use. In the morning (after taking as much of it as you want) put the rennet water into a bottle and cork it tightly. It will keep the better for adding to it a wine glass of brandy. If too large a proportion of rennet is mixed with the milk, the cheese will be tough and leathery. ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... a leathery grin. "Mighty unfortunate—ain't it, boys? Puts a kind of a kink in our plans for the little entertainment we were figuring on pulling off. But maybe you've a notion of ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... we examined several we had knocked down. They measured twenty-eight inches across the wings, which were of a leathery consistency, the bodies being covered with grey hair. We found their stomachs filled with the pulp and seeds of fruits, with the remains ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... was taken in silence. The hay-fever from which I am prone to suffer at all seasons of the year was particularly persistent that evening. A rising irritability, engendered by leathery eggs and fostered by Henry's expression, was taking possession of me. Quite suddenly I discovered that the way he held his knife annoyed me. Further, his manner of eating soup maddened me. But I restrained myself. I merely remarked: 'You have finished ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... by a short stumpy stalk, sometimes sealed firmly to a loose stone, you may find an object in form and structure resembling an elongated, coreless pineapple, composed of a leathery semi-gelatinous, semi-transparent substance, dirty yellow in colour. It is the spawn case or the receptacle of the ova (if that term be allowable), and the cradle of what is commonly known as the bailer shell (CYMBIUM AETHIOPICUM) the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... the mottled reds and yellows of the grotesque trees, a head appeared. It waved at the end of a long, leathery neck. All mouth, it seemed to the watchers, as they saw a pair of short forelegs pull the succulent tops of the giant growth into a capacious maw. Below, there was visible a part of a gigantic, grayish body. It was crashing down toward them, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... major-general to drummer-boy, he was the man whom they would all have elected to serve under, had the work to be done once more. As one of them said, "The sight of his long nose was worth ten thousand men on a field of battle." They were themselves a leathery breed, and cared little for the gentler amenities so long as ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... leathery face was quite red now, and his sentences were hurled out in a sarcastic bass, enough to wither the marrow of a weak man. But the school-master was no weak man. His foot was entirely on his native heath, I assure you. He knew every inch ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... and a Barbus, or Oreinus with small scales, thick leathery mouth, and cirrhi; a Loach of largish size, flat head, reddish, with conspicuous brownish mottlings, and ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... looked behind him at the blank boards of the unpainted door. Just as slowly he turned back to Casey. A slow grin split his leathery face. ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... structures and between and around them there scuttled formless blobs of matter, one of which Roger brought up into his vessel by means of a tractor ray. Held immovable by the beam it lay upon the floor, a strangely extensile, amoeba-like metal-studded mass of leathery substance. Of eyes, ears, limbs, or organs it apparently had none, yet it radiated an intensely hostile aura; a mental effluvium concentrated of rage and ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... the road half an hour later at a cowpuncher's jog-trot. He slid from the saddle and came forward chewing tobacco. His impassive, leathery face expressed no emotion whatever. Carelessly and casually ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... famous for its cuisine, and the dinner which followed was, for various reasons, a memorable one, though some of the guests appeared distinctly puzzled by the sequence of viands and liquors. Still, even those who, appreciating the change from leathery venison and grindstone bread, had eaten too much at the first course, struggled manfully with the succeeding, and good fellowship reigned until the cloth was removed, and the party prepared ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... definition of a nut as "a fruit consisting of a kernel or seed enclosed in a hard woody or leathery shell that does not open when ripe, as in the hazel, beech, oak, chestnut." Technically speaking, it is a hard, indehiscent, one-seeded dry fruit resulting from a compound ovary. In horticultural language the fruit consists of the hard or leathery nut containing ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... place, his skin was not tanned to the proper leathery look. His eyes were not those of a man used to looking off over the sea. His hands were too soft and unscarred for a sailor's. He had never pulled on ropes ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... Stelleri, Cuvier) in a way took the place of the cloven-footed animals among the marine mammalia. The sea-cow was of a dark-brown colour, sometimes varied with white spots or streaks. The thick leathery skin was covered with hair which grew together so as to form an exterior skin, which was full of vermin and resembled the bark of an old oak. The full grown animal was from twenty-eight to thirty-five English ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... that the clusters were terminated by a compound grape. Seringe has remarked sometimes two, sometimes three, fruits of Ranunculus tripartitus soldered together. He has also seen three melons similarly joined.[47] Turpin mentions having seen a complete union between the three smooth and leathery pericarps which are naturally separate and enclosed within the spiny cupule of the chestnut.[48] Poiteau and Turpin have figured and described in their treatise on fruit trees, under the name of Nefle de Correa, four or five medlars, joined together and surmounted ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... Mrs. Wragge alone, attired in a voluminous brown holland wrapper, with a limp cape and a trimming of dingy pink ribbon. The ex-waitress at Darch's Dining-rooms was absorbed in the contemplation of a large dish, containing a leathery-looking substance of a mottled yellow color, profusely sprinkled with ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... a point where he looked down on a small field of very green grass, set as an oasis between the waves and the walling rock, with a miniature chaos of heaped-up boulders to left and right. A few of them were scattered over it, and even the highest of these wore a scarf of leathery flat sea-ribbon, in token of occasional submergence; but amongst them grew hawthorn and sloe bushes, and a clump of scarlet-tasselled fuchsia. To heighten the incongruity of its aspect, this pasture was inhabited by a large strawberry cow, who seemed to be enjoying the alternate ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... requires shade and moisture, and over-pruning is prejudicial. If allowed to run to its natural height it would grow up to 15 to 25 feet high, but it is usually kept at 7 to 10 feet. The leaves are evergreen, very shining, oblong, leathery, and much resemble those of the common laurel. The flowers are small, and cluster in the axils of the leaves. They are somewhat similar to the Spanish jasmine, and being snow-white, the effect of a coffee plantation in bloom is delightful, whilst the odour is fragrant. The fruit, when ripe, is ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... distant. Soon we found where it had swum across the bayou. Piranhas or no piranhas, we now intended to get across; and we tried to force our horses in at what seemed a likely spot. The matted growth of water-plants, with their leathery, slippery stems, formed an unpleasant barrier, as the water was swimming-deep for the horses. The latter were very unwilling to attempt the passage. Kermit finally forced his horse through the tangled mass, swimming, plunging, and struggling. He left a lane of clear water, through which we ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... it, you blessed old scalawag!" Don Mike replied in English, and ruffled the grizzled old head before passing on to the expectant Carolina, who folded him tightly in her arms and wept soundlessly when he kissed her leathery cheek. While he was murmuring words of comfort to her, Pablo got up on his feet and ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... rarer phenomenon. And it seems to be occurring whenever a string of Laraghmenians come plodding up their winding mountain-path under the burden of heavy creels filled with earth, or oftener with slippery brown sea-wrack and leathery weed. For it is in this way that whatever scanty foothold their starveling crops may find, has been fashioned and maintained in the stony little fields. Year by year, as the blustery days of late autumn darken ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... buy them from a cart. "Those dear dirty dates," she calls them, but I cannot share her liking for them. Although the cart is a beguiling market, dates so bought are too dusty to be eaten. They rank with the apple-john. The apple-john is that mysterious leathery fruit, sold more often from a stand than from a cart, which leans at the rear of the shelf against the peppermint jars. For myself, although I do not eat apple-johns, I like to look at them. They are so shrivelled and so flat, as though a banana had caught ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... or two of the more remarkable instances. Many of you, when at the seaside, must have found, clinging to rocks and shells, peculiar, tough, leathery and somewhat bottle-shaped bodies, popularly known as 'sea-squirts,' from their habit of squirting out water when touched. But how many of you have any idea that these same 'squirts' really belong to the great division of vertebrates ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... there called at Butler's office a long, preternaturally solemn man of noticeable height and angularity, dark-haired, dark-eyed, sallow, with a face that was long and leathery, and particularly hawk-like, who talked with Butler for over an hour and then departed. That evening he came to the Butler house around dinner-time, and, being shown into Butler's room, was given a look at Aileen by a ruse. Butler sent for her, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... grade may present also in the first several days, but in many cases one to several weeks may elapse before it appears; it is quite commonly preceded by erythema and vesication. The necrosis may be superficial or deep, and quite usually results in a persistent ulcer covered by a leathery coating; it is ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... ancestor of the human race. If you doubt it, here is the latest deliverance of infallible science upon the subject. He describes the Ascidians: "They hardly appear like animals, and consist of a simple tough leathery sack, with two small projecting orifices. They belong to the Molluscoida of Huxley, a lower division of the great family of the Mollusca; but they have recently been placed by some naturalists among the vermes or worms. Their larvae somewhat resemble tadpoles in shape, and have the power of swimming ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... hotel register about facing Sam, nodded her head, and then, leaning over the desk, bestowed a quick kiss upon the leathery cheek ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... think," said Mrs. Makely, who had a leathery insensibility to everything but the purpose possessing her, "that we ought at least to go and say something ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... enjoyment of dreams, and he goes into raptures over things long, long ago gone by, or which have never existed at all; it is all one to him. 'Hertzog says so and so, somebody else tells the tale a different way,' and he is perfectly happy! His leathery face gets more and more deeply wrinkled, his broken angular back bends into sharper angles and corners, his pointed elbows dig beds for themselves in the oak table, his skinny fingers bury themselves in his ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... driven as far as the car could go we left car and driver, and scrambled over the rocks like goats. Rocks frowned above us, between us and the sky, rocks all round in black confusion. As we climbed from slippery rock to slippery rock, over long leathery coils of thick sea weed, like serpents, on, on through the Dorus to the open sea, noticing the dark passages, the gloomy caves, the recesses among the cliffs, the narrow passes, where one could turn to bay and keep ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... vent to this bit of paradox, Johann inhaled as much smoke as his leathery lungs could contain and relapsed into silence. Vjera, the Polish girl, glanced at the tobacco-cutter and went on with her work. The insignificant girl beside her giggled vacantly. Dumnoff did not seem to have heard ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... organic debility unable to support a diet too substantial, too hard, or too highly spiced. The grubs which consume the larva of the Cetoniae, for example (the Rose-chafers), those which feed upon the leathery cricket, and those whose diet is rich in nitrobenzine, must assuredly have complacent gullets and adaptable stomachs. Yet these robust eaters die of hunger or poison for no greater cause than a drop of syrup, the lightest diet imaginable, adapted to the weakness of extreme youth, ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... went by. Clare sat hungry and sleepy on the grass by the roadside. Before he knew, he was on his feet, startled by a terrible noise. The lion had opened his great jaws, and his brown leathery sides, working like a pair of bellows, had sent from his throat a huge blast, half roar, half howl. When Clare came to himself he knew, though he had never heard it before, that the fearful sound was the voice of the lion. He did not know that all it meant ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... forget-me-not, in hue. In watching her firm yet graceful tread, as she easily kept pace with the horse, I could not realise that in a few more years she would probably be no more graceful and beautiful than the women at work in the fields—coarse, clumsy shapes, with frowzy hair, leathery faces, and enormous ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... that also was dirt-brown, like the buck-skin. There was no undershirt, waistcoat, or other garment to be seen, with the exception of a close-fitting cap, which had once been cat-skin, but the hair was all worn off it, leaving a greasy, leathery-looking surface, that corresponded well with the other parts of the dress. Cap, shirt, leggings, and moccasins looked as if they had never been stripped off since the day they were first tried on, and that might have been many a year ago. ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... like to see them and find out what they are so busy about; see the patterns of their leathery little clothes; their high hats, leathery capes and aprons. Some time I will see them. I am not familiar with all this, but I imagine very thick leather belts and buckles. Their feet are small, but too big for them, and make a little clatter as they go over the rocks. Their hands ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... customer. He is rather stout, wears dark clothes, with a large gold chain. Following him comes CHARLES SHELDER, a lawyer of fifty, with a bald egg-shaped head, and gold pince-nez. He has little side whiskers, a leathery, yellowish skin, a rather kind but watchful and dubious face, and when he speaks seems to have a plum in his mouth, which arises from the preponderance of his shaven upper lip. Last of the deputation comes WILLIAM BANNING, an energetic-looking, square-shouldered, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... because we are not fooled through a well cared for, fine and elegant hand. Everybody, I might say, knows the convincing quality that may lie in the enormous leathery fist of a peasant. For that, too, is often harmoniously constructed, nicely articulated, appears peaceful and trustworthy. We feel that we have here to do with a man who is honest, who presents himself and his business ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... of the devil. "God knows what misery I suffered with it." He hated French meters, and his teacher vowed he had no soul for poetry. He idled away his time at Bonn, and was "horribly bored" by the "odious, stiff, cut-and-dried tone" of the leathery professors. Humboldt was feeble as a child and "had less facility in his studies than most children." "Until I reached the age of sixteen," he says, "I showed little inclination for scientific pursuits." He was essentially self-taught, and acquired most of his knowledge ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... Elytra: the anterior leathery or chitinous wings of beetles, serving as coverings to the secondaries, commonly meeting in a straight line down the middle of dorsum in repose: also applied to the tegmina ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... Accordingly it seems plain to the Malay that if, while seeking for camphor, he were to eat his salt finely ground, the camphor would be found also in fine grains; whereas by eating his salt coarse he ensures that the grains of the camphor will also be large. Camphor hunters in Borneo use the leathery sheath of the leaf-stalk of the Penang palm as a plate for food, and during the whole of the expedition they will never wash the plate, for fear that the camphor might dissolve and disappear from the crevices ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Monegasque had a reminiscence in it of Bouillabaisse, but it was not too insistent; the supions were octopi, but delicate little gelatinous fellows, not leathery, as the Italian ones sometimes are; the dorade was a splendid fish, and though I fancy the langouste had come from northern waters and not from the bay, it was beautifully fresh and a ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... night, Carrie came home with a dull glow in her leathery cheeks, and her eyes alight with resolve. They had what she ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a longer or shorter jointed stem (or "column"). The body is covered externally with an armour of closely-fitting calcareous plates (fig. 62), and its upper surface is protected by similar but smaller plates more loosely connected by a leathery integument. From the upper surface of the body, round its margin, springs a series of longer or shorter flexible processes, composed of innumerable calcareous joints or pieces, movably united with one another. The arms ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... were either industriously painting their features or washing their wounds and scratches and filling them with balsam and bruised witch-hazel, or were eating the last of our parched corn and stringy shreds of leathery venison. All seemed as complacent as a party of cats licking their rumpled fur; and examining their bites, scratches, bruises, and knife wounds, I found no serious injury among them, and nothing to stiffen for very long the limbs of men ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... my own lair," he said, leading me into a dark plain room at the end of the florid vista. It was square and brown and leathery: no "effects"; no bric-a-brac, none of the air of posing for reproduction in a picture weekly—above all, no least sign of ever having been used as ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... course he had come to take "Florrie" home. The scene was the dining-room—breakfast interrupted, dishes growing cold, little Fyne's toast growing leathery, Fyne out of his chair with his back to the fire, the newspaper on the carpet, servants shut out, Mrs Fyne rigid in her place with the girl sitting beside her—the "odious person," who had bustled in with hardly a greeting, looking ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... unmistakable signs in Sandy himself of what would have been called arrant terror in any other man. His face was so bloodless that the pallor showed even through the leathery tan; one eye stared wildly, the other being sheltered under a clumsy patch which could not quite conceal the ugly bruise beneath. Under his great moustache his lips were as puffed and swollen as the ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... general appearance these almonds are much like peach pits. Very often they contain much of the same bitter taste of Prussic acid common to the kernel of the ordinary peach. They are interesting to observe while growing especially as they begin to ripen. The covering outside the seed is thin and leathery and while ripening, splits and peels outward ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... Ayrault pulled both barrels almost simultaneously, with the muzzles but a few inches from its side. In this case the initial velocity of the heavy buckshot was so great, and they were still so close together, that they penetrated the leathery hide, tearing a large hole. With a roar the wounded monster beat a retreat, first almost prostrating them with another blast of its awful breath. "It would take a stronger light than we get here," said Bearwarden, "to impress a negative through that haze. I ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... but he was helpless. The old man would give no sign of what, no doubt, was in his mind; he would hold that leathery face in placid acquiescence ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... Chelmsford, and were met by the farmer in whose house they were going to lodge, a stolid, good-natured fellow named Pammenter, with red, leathery cheeks, and a corkscrew curl of black hair coming forward on each temple. His trap was waiting, and in a few minutes they started on the drive to Danbury. The distance is about five miles, and, until Danbury ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... been stripped from the starved horses of the cattlemen six months back. In its frozen state it was more like strips of galvanized iron, and when a dog wrestled it into his stomach it thawed into thin and innutritious leathery strings and into a mass of short ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... a tall, spare, bony man, with a dry, brown, leathery skin, lean legs and arms, a stringy neck, almost no chin, a hooked nose, deep set little greeny-gray eyes and intensely black, harsh, stiff, curly hair and very bushy eyebrows. He wore old, worn, faded garments and stalked about as if the ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... rains and the melting of the "robin snows" soften the leathery lichens and their painted circles on the trees and rocks vary from olive gray and green to bright red and yellow. They revel in the moist gray days. And the mosses which draw a tapestry of tender velvet ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... of his Yankee acquaintance as a member of their party, but there are some men who need no letters of recommendation. Obed Stackpole certainly was not a handsome man. He was tall, lean, gaunt in figure, with a shambling walk, and his skin was tough and leathery; but in spite of all there was an honest, manly expression, which instantly inspired confidence. Both Harry and Jack liked him, but Dick Fletcher seemed to ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... old man stood in the doorway, cap in hand. He had very watery blue eyes, his expression was mild in the extreme, and long white hair fell on his shoulders; but for his tanned, leathery skin, Mart would have taken him for an old clerk in ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... like a big bat than anything else in the world. It had sharp, short ears, and soft fur, and its wings were leathery. Its teeth were little, but devilish sharp, and its jaw could not have been very strong or else it would ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... while Martin prepared a junk of jaguar meat, which he roasted, being curious to taste it, as he had been told that the Indians like it very much. It was pretty good, but not equal to the turtle-eggs. The shell of the egg is leathery, and the yolk only is eaten. The Indians sometimes eat them raw, mixed with farina. Cakes of farina, and excellent coffee, concluded their repast; and Barney declared he had never had such a satisfactory "blow out" in his life; a sentiment with which Martin ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... until it was safe to relax, and Mrs. Reid drove on with a soft feeling in her leathery old heart, which had been so toughened by long endurance of poverty and toil, and a husband who wouldn't work and couldn't be made to work, that it was no longer a very susceptible organ where members of the ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... under almost any climatic conditions. Many of the huge, crystal clear boulders which covered the beach and the coastal plain which led to the hills, were covered with leafless flowers which had immense, leathery petals and sharp, fang-like spines. Other evidences of swift growing life showed on every hand. Ugly, jelly-like creatures oozed about the ship and everywhere else. In places the very rocks seemed ready ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... lifted. Even when he was hauling in his wet and dripping line with a struggling fish at the end of it a recurrent memory of what he had seen would suddenly come upon him, and he would groan in spirit at the recollection. He looked at Matt Abrahamson's leathery face, at his lantern jaws cavernously and stolidly chewing at a tobacco leaf, and it seemed monstrous to him that the old man should be so unconscious of the black cloud that wrapped them ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... of the two preceding Impromptus, yet is it none the less fascinating music. And the Mazurkas—I refuse positively to discuss at the present writing such a fertile theme. I am fatigued already, and I feel that my antique vaporings have fatigued you. Next month I shall stick to my leathery last, like the musical shoemaker that I am—I shall consider to some length the use of left-hand passage work in the Hummel sonatas. Or shall I speak of Chopin again, of the Chopin mazurkas! My sour bones become sweeter when I think of Chopin—ah, there I go again! Am I, too, among ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... society in some other way. Only it happened at Grimworth, which, to be sure, was a low place, that the maids and matrons could do nothing with their hands at all better than cooking: not even those who had always made heavy cakes and leathery pastry. And so it came to pass, that the progress of civilization at Grimworth was not otherwise apparent than in the impoverishment of men, the gossiping idleness of women, and the heightening ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... of the sun.) We had a glimpse of a vast red pit as it opened its mouth to bleat and bellow again; we had a breath from the pit, and then the monster heeled over like a ship, dragged forward along the ground, creasing all its leathery skin, rolled again, and so wallowed past us, smashing a path amidst the scrub, and was speedily hidden from our eyes by the dense interlacings beyond. Another appeared more distantly, and then another, and then, as though ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... two days. It was then opened out, washed clean in the brook and hung till nearly dry. Then Caleb cut a hardwood stake to a sharp edge and showed Yan how to pull and work the hide over the edge till it was all soft and leathery. ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... from the wayside weeds as he walked. He refused our offer to take him in, alleging that he was out for exercise and to reduce his flesh—an ancient jibe at his bony frame which made him for an instant show a leathery smile. ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... with George Boker, and Professor Dodd, and the very elite of the seniors, added not a little force. We were mysterious. Hitherto a Freshman had been the greenest of the green, a creature created for ridicule, a sort of "leathery fox" or mere tyro (ty—not a ty-pographical error—pace my kind and courteous reviewer in the Saturday)—and here were Freshmen of a new kind rising ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... him the remainder of the ammonia and it brought a tinge of color to the tanned and leathery ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... spindles turns, 90 And pours o'er massy wheels his foamy urns; With playful charms her hoary lover wins, And wields his trident,—while the Monarch spins. —First with nice eye emerging Naiads cull From leathery pods the ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... (DIPLANTHERA TETRAPHYLLA), with its big leaves, soft of surface when young, but harsh and coarse at maturity. The golden flowers, grouped in huge heads, are rich in nectar, attracting birds and butterflies by day and flying foxes at night. The fruit, enclosed in a crisp capsule, is tough and leathery, in shape a flattened oval, and is entirely covered with silken seeds lying close and dense as the feathers of the grebe. When numbers of the capsules open simultaneously, the seeds float earthwards like a silvery mantle or ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... small one, weighing about fifteen pounds. The wet, leathery body glistened, and the kite-shaped wings flapped like those of some ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... Granma Wandon took sick. We knew it was all over for her. She faded painlessly into death. She knew she was going, said so calmly and happily. She made Millie and Granma Gregory promise they'd be good to me. I wept and wept. I kissed her leathery, leaf-like hand with utter devotion ... she could hardly lift it. Almost of itself it sought my face and flickered ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... served out to each man daily are not appetising: Bread, 1-1/4 lb., or biscuit, 1 lb.; coffee, 2/3 oz.; sugar, 2-1/2 oz.; meat, 1-1/4 lb.; tea, 1/6 oz.; and salt, 1/2 oz. These were reduced as the siege proceeded. The meat was trek beef, a leathery substitute for steak, and the biscuits were veterans, having "served" in the Zulu and Sekukuni campaigns, and now being nothing better than a swarm of weevils. Life in Pretoria was enlivened by occasional sorties against the Boer laagers, where ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... back and billowed up round me as though I were in the trough of a stormy sea. Quicker than I can write it lapped a corner over and rolled me in its folds like a chrysalis in a cocoon. I gave a wild yell and made one frantic struggle, but it was too late. With the leathery strength of a giant and the swiftness of an accomplished cigar-roller covering a "core" with leaf, it swamped my efforts, straightened my limbs, rolled me over, lapped me in fold after fold till head ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... of a sign? Goldarn your skins!" Uncle Ethan pounded the pan with his paddle and scraped two or three crawling abominations off his leathery wrist. ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... not to be mistaken. Aurelia was there—the divine Aurelia—close at hand. Without thinking what I did, I took a strong breath and stepped forward to my task. I reached the statue of the faun, which leered and writhed its leathery tongue at me; and in the bay which opened out beyond it I found ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... Australian genus of shrubs and trees (natural order Proteaceae), with leathery leaves often deeply cut and handsome dense spikes of flowers. It is named after Sir Joseph Banks (q.v.). The plants are grown in England for their handsome ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... looked down at the tired little bundle it was supporting. A wistful tenderness was in the leathery face. To the rest of the world he was a man of iron. To this wee bit of humanity he was a nurse, a playmate, ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... that morning. There were eggs without egg-spoons, toast which was leathery from being kept, dried-up rashers, and grounds in the coffee. Above all, there was that dreadful smell which pervaded everything and gave a horrible twang to ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... celebrated for the saltness of its waters and the leathery qualities of its clams. This island is said to have been so named on account of its resemblance in shape to an inverted cone, but the attrition of the ocean has materially changed the conic base. Researches in the direction of the apex ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... eaten in silence. The hay-fever from which I am prone to suffer at all seasons of the year was particularly persistent that evening. A rising irritability engendered by leathery eggs and fostered by Henry's face was taking possession of me. Quite suddenly I discovered that the way he held his knife annoyed me. Further I was maddened by his manner of taking soup. But I restrained myself. I merely remarked, "You have finished ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... scarce more to do than to play the part of chorus. He was fortunate in that his father could not afford to send him to a Chedar, an insanitary institution that made Jacob a dull boy by cutting off his play-time and his oxygen, and delivering him over to the leathery mercies of an ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... certain other things, the use of which they did not understand, like queer-smelling, soft, yellow balls which Necia said were oranges and good to eat, although the skins were leathery and very bitter, nor were they nearly so pleasant to the nose as the toilet soap, which Necia would not allow them even to taste. Then there was a box of chocolate candies such as the superintendent ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... there when it is leathery; Esau betrays himself by hairs, Maudlin by weeping; and as for the "Bishop that burneth" the explanation is complicated. It seems that Cicely would run after the bishop for his blessing, and leave the milk on the fire ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... leathery triangle of toast with elaborate precision. "You may as well encourage that notion, old chap. It simplifies things. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... knocking scales loose with the jackhammer and cutting into the leathery skin underneath with sonocutters. The sea was getting heavy, and the ship and the attached ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... not believe Helen dead, but knelt by her side and coaxed her to wake, rubbing her fair, slender hands between his leathery palms and calling her by every pet name ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... that mingled with your own? Can you faintly, as in a dream—blase old dancer that you are—invoke a reminiscence of the delirium that stormed your soul, expelling the dull demon in possession? Was it lust, as the Prudes aver—the poor dear Prudes, with the feel of the cold wall familiar to the leathery backs ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... and soaking himself in beer all day long and day after day in De Jongh's back-shop, till De Jongh, who charged a guilder for every bottle without as much as the quiver of an eyelid, would beckon me aside, and, with his little leathery face all puckered up, declare confidentially, "Business is business, but this man, captain, he make ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... also encumbered with masses of vegetable debris and a thick coating of dead leaves. Fruits of many kinds were scattered about, amongst which were many sorts of beans, some of the pods a foot long, flat and leathery in texture, others hard as stone. In one place there was a quantity of large empty wooden vessels, which Isidoro told us fell from the Sapucaya tree. They are called Monkey's drinking-cups (Cuyas de Macaco), and are the capsules which contain the nuts sold under the name ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... and brown and ugly. This one was that, and more. What had once been clothes were tattered and spattered with swamp mud. The hair was a wisp, the teeth only a memory. The skin was tight and leathery across the bony structure of the face, the eyes distended and yellow, the unmistakable sign of a ...
— One Purple Hope! • Henry Hasse
... stood smoking a cigarette in his landlord's shop, and imparting an air of distinction and an agreeable aroma to the close leathery atmosphere. Crowl cobbled away, talking to his tenant without raising his eyes. He was a small, big-headed, sallow, sad-eyed man, with a greasy apron. Denzil was wearing a heavy overcoat with a fur collar. ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... tall, thin, angular man seated in an arm-chair by the fire. He turned as I drew my chair up to him. It was the man of all others whom I should have chosen—Tarp Henry, of the staff of Nature, a thin, dry, leathery creature, who was full, to those who knew him, of kindly humanity. I ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... am I? and my wings are leathery? Catch me, and you will find my wings are like down, my eyes as bright as diamonds. How much you know, writing yourselves down in books as Naturalists! My name is Vespertila; my family are from Servia, at your service. Could you offer me a fly, or a beetle? I was chasing Judge Blue Bottle, ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... insists on wearing. The soft hat and his lank hair make him womanish in profile, in spite of a body to which a blue jersey does full justice, and the sea-boots; but when he turns his face to you, with his light eyes and his dark and leathery face, you feel he is strangely masculine and wise, and must be addressed with care and not as most men. He rarely smiles when a foolish word is spoken or when he is contradicted boldly by the innocent. ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... said "Dismiss," and they went their appointed ways. The Indian cooks were boiling dhal and rice in the galley; the bakers were squatting on their haunches on the lower deck, making chupattis—they were screened against the inclemency of the weather by a tarpaulin—and they patted the leathery cakes with persuasive slaps as a dairymaid pats butter. Low-caste sweepers glided like shadows to and fro. Suddenly some one crossed the gangway and the sentry stiffened and presented arms. The O.C. looked ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... dry, fever-yellowed skin. Of one leg, only the stump was left; this creature had been forced to hop or crawl his way through the isuan swamps. The head, too, was no more than a skull, with great sunken dark-rimmed eyes, discolored fangs and loose, leathery lips. There had been no hair on this death's head; it had long been bald, and now, washed, clean for the first time in months or even years, it was to hold the brain of Dr. Ralph Swanson, Earth's one-time leader in the ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... smaller and very thin, and made in a similar way [sc. to dampers: see Damper]; when eaten hot they are excellent, but if allowed to get cold they become leathery." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... deal of botany, and enough about birds to differentiate between carnivorous species and those fit for human food, whilst the salt in their most fortunate supply of hams rendered their meals almost epicurean. Think of it, ye dwellers in cities, content with stale buns and leathery sandwiches when ye venture into the wilds of a railway refreshment-room, these two castaways, marooned by queer chance on a desert island, could sit down daily to a banquet of vegetable soup, fish, ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... rapid that one can never see the tongue that has picked up the meal-worm—simply it is gone! The toad's eyes are tightly shut whilst he swallows the morsel, and then he turns to pick up a second. Now is the time to approach him from behind and begin to stroke his leathery, warty skin. In a few seconds he is in a state of perfect ecstasy, his front legs are stretched out, he leans first to one side, then to the other, to guide the hand where he wishes to be stroked, and at last uplifts his ponderous body until he is an inch or more ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... three-fingers of red-eye. Daniels stepped to the bar, poured his own drink, and then stood toying with the glass. For though the effect of red-eye may be pleasant enough, it has an essence which appalls the stoutest heart and singes the most leathery throat; it is to full-grown men what castor oil is to a child. Why men drink it is a mystery whose secret is known only to the profound soul of the mountain-desert. But while Daniels fingered his glass he kept an eye upon the ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... greenish eye, set at the upper end of a nose that was like a triangle of leather. The eye held the geographical center of the whole countenance, this because its owner kept his head tipped, precisely as if he had a stiff neck. Under the leathery nose, which seemed to have been cut from the same welt as the watchchain, was a drooping, palish mustache, hiding a mouth that had lost too many teeth. As for the other eye, it was brushed aside under the band of ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... wings are leathery. Look at 'em up yonder." Alden pointed to the roof of that immense aviary where, hanging head downwards like gigantic bats, must have been hundreds upon hundreds of the pteranodons. One of them, ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... mentioned with the vine, fig, and olive, among the pleasant fruits of the promised land. It is about the size of a large peach, of a fine golden color, with a rosy tinge on one side. The rind is thick and leathery. The central portion is composed of little globules of pulp and seeds inclosed in a thin membrane, each seed being about the size of a red currant. It is sub-acid, and slightly bitter in taste. The rind is strongly astringent, and often used ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... vision called up his figure, painted in yellow and red upon the background of the sage. She knew the expression of the lithe body as it leaned from the saddle, the gnarled hand from which the rein hung loose, the eyes, diamond hard and clear, living sparks set in leathery skin wrinkled against the glare of the waste. She did not lie to herself any more. No delusions could live in this land stripped of ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... bulged, burst upon the scene with impressive dramatic effect! It was difficult to decide, without due consideration, which was the more interesting. Bildad, a huge, gnarled old Viking, with matted gray hair, bushy eyebrows, a flowing beard, and leathery face, a fierce-looking giant, was appalling to behold, but so was Caesar Napoleon, an immense bulldog, cruel, bloodthirsty, his massive jaws working convulsively, his ugly fangs gleaming, as he set his great body against the leash, and gave evidence of a sincere ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... a lanky, leathery native, and beside him sat a small, plump woman who looked as though ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... the other, then his eyes dropped. He scarcely comprehended. He was startled at the expression of that leathery, puffed face. He shifted uneasily with the curious weakly restlessness ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... will they remember?" asked one of the two smaller men, throwing a brown and leathery crust ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... cooks declare that salt should never be mixed with eggs when they are prepared for omelette. It makes the omelette tough and leathery. A little salt, however, may be sprinkled upon it just before it is ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... beneath the dreaming evening star. One dreams of coffee after dinner in the open air, as described in "In Memoriam;" one longs for the cool, the hush, the quiet. But try the country on a July night. First you have trouble with all the great, big, hairy, leathery moths and bats which fly in at the jasmine-muffled lattice, and endeavour to put out your candle. You blow the candle out, and then a bluebottle fly in good voice comes out too, and is accompanied by very fair imitations of mosquitoes. ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... able to view this place from a little screened gallery reserved for the attendants of the tables. The building was pervaded by a distant muffled hooting, piping and bawling, of which he did not at first understand the import, but which recalled a certain mysterious leathery voice he had heard after the resumption of the lights on the night of ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... National Intelligencer, Ohio State Journal, Courier and Inquirer, etc. These did not so much attract the young man's attention; but, approaching a large book-case, filled compactly with dull yellow books, uniform in their dingy, leathery appearance, he asked: "Are ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... pathetic, it was unforgettable, to see these people as they stood beside the rounded, supple, splendid figure of the speaker and took her strong, smooth hand in their work-scarred, leathery palms—these women of many children and never-ending work, bent by toil above the wash-tub and the churn, shut out from all things that humanize and make living something more than a brute struggle against ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... from back to front, giving the effect of a Cinderella Coach fitted on to a motor. Never was paint so blue, never was crest on carriage panel so large and so like a vague, over-ripe tomato. Never was a chauffeur so long, so slim, so smart, so leathery. ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... underside of the body, which make good house pets like certain birds; boxfish armed with stings formed by extensions of their bony crusts, and whose odd grunting has earned them the nickname "sea pigs"; then some trunkfish known as dromedaries, with tough, leathery flesh and big ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... close to a cattle war," said one old lean and leathery individual to Bob; "I know, for I been thar. Used to run cows in Montana. I hear everywhar talk about Wright's cattle dyin' in mighty funny ways. I know that's so, for I seen a slather of dead cows myself. Some of 'em fall off cliffs; some seem to have broke their legs. Some bogged down. Some look ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... an upper one, lighted and aired by a brass-framed port- hole. Here, when his meal was at an end, he lay, his pipe in his mouth, his hands behind his head, smoking with slow relish, with his wry old face upturned, and the leathery, muscular forearms showing below the rolled shirt-sleeves. His years had ground him to an edge; he had an effect, as he lay, of fineness, of subtlety, of keen and fastidious temper. Forty years of subjection to arbitrary ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... and grinned scornfully at "swell-forks" and "buckin'-rolls," and listened to all the range gossip without adding so much as an opinion. They never talked politics nor told which candidates received their two votes. They kept the same two men season after season,—leathery old range hands with eyes that saw whatever came within their field of vision, and with the gift ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... the corridor and stood before the beasts. One, an old man in a long white beard, leathery, sun-tanned face and hooked nose, clasped the bars with both hands, gazing at us intently. I recognized his kind the moment I looked at him. He was like my Jonathan Gordon, my old fisherman who lived up in the Franconia Notch. His coarse, ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... which it is said can be reproduced once without an extra dose, by bathing in cold water. Confirmed awa drinkers might be mistaken for lepers, for they are covered with whitish scales, and have inflamed eyes and a leathery skin, for the epidermis is thickened and whitened, and eventually peels off. The habit has been adopted by not a few whites, specially on Hawaii, though, of course, to a certain extent clandestinely. Awa is taken also as ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... cooking. The animal was cut into small portions. Smoking hot the viands were placed under the noses of the gasping guests. With the great age of the beast it had accumulated great toughness. The younger members had the consolation of their jibes at the old fellows. They tore at, struggled with, the leathery fragments. But the latter had no teeth, and the malicious Aoyama would see to it that it stuck in their throats. "How, now, ancients? Is not the meat of this tanuki tender beyond measure? Truly one cannot call this engaging ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... I found the first untilled land. It stretched far away to the west, overgrown with shrub-willow, wolf-willow and symphoricarpus—a combination that is hard to break with the plow. I am fond of the silver grey, leathery foliage of the wolf-willow which is so characteristic of our native woods. Cinquefoil, too, the shrubby variety, I saw in great numbers—another one of our native dwarf shrubs which, though decried as a weed, should figure as a border plant in my ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... immediately proffered us food, an offer too tempting to be declined, and we presently sat down to our first Colonial meal of excellent home-made bread, mutton, and tea, and how delighted we were to taste the fine fresh mutton after many weeks of salt junk and leathery fowls on board the ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... Rotundifolia is very characteristic. The skin is thick, has a leathery appearance, adheres strongly to the underlying flesh and is marked with lenticel-like russet dots. The flesh is more or less tough but the toughness is not localized around the seed as in the case of Labrusca. The fruit and most of the varieties of the species are characterized ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... and, hastily helping herself from the dish her aunt pushed toward her, consumed the leathery compound with as much grace as she could assume, though unable to repress a laugh at Aunt Pen's disturbed countenance. There was a slight lull in the clatter, and the blithe sound caused several heads to turn toward the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... perhaps but a moment before sniffing or pecking at its rim. A very little blaze sets the piece of cold fat swimming, and the black cavity soon glows and splutters with extemporaneous content. But what dreams howl about the camp-fires, what hideous scalping-humor creeps from the leathery supper into the limbs and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... volume, forever, for you, will the smoke of martyr-fires hover about the Piazza Signoria, and from the gates of San Marco you will see emerge that little man in black robe and cowl—that homely, repulsive man with the curved nose, the protruding lower lip, the dark, leathery skin—that man who lured and fascinated by his poise and power, whose words were whips of scorpions that stung his enemies until they had to silence him with a rope; and as a warning to those whom he had hypnotized, they ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... with the sneer which seemed to be on his leathery countenance most of the time, "I notice you got in a little ahead of us. Congratulations! I suppose ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... the others slept, lounged, cooked, waited. There was no food, by the way, but the hard, leathery, tasteless jerked meat of the grizzly bears, which had begun to pall upon them so they could hardly swallow it. Eating was merely a duty, ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... little sugar, the juice of an orange, or other fruit, and set by to cool, I know of no jelly more agreeable or refreshing. The leaf is about six inches long, narrow and pointed, deeply serrated, and the margins ciliated; the middle part smooth, semi-transparent, and of a leathery consistence. The ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... animals have in the matter of cosmopolitan dispersion; for while it was quite impossible for rats, mice, or squirrels to cross the intervening belt of three hundred leagues of sea, their little winged relation, the flitter-mouse, made the journey across quite safely on his own leathery vans, and with no greater difficulty than a swallow ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... too salt, like Lot's wife. (3) Argus, because a cheese should not be full of eyes, like Argus. (4) Tom Piper, because a cheese should not be "hoven and puffed," like the cheeks of a piper. (5) Crispin, because a cheese should not be leathery, as if for a cobbler's use. (6) Lazarus, because a cheese should not be poor, like the beggar Lazarus. (7) Esau, because a cheese should not be hairy, like Esau. (8) Mary Maudlin, because a cheese should not be full of whey, as Mary Maudlin was full of tears. (9) Gentiles, because a cheese ...
— 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.
... his feet and dragged up his prisoner. The man was a heavy-set, bowlegged fellow of about forty, hard-faced, and shifty-eyed—a frontier miscreant, unless every line of the tough, leathery countenance told a falsehood. But he had made his experiment and failed. He knew what manner of man his captor was, and he had no mind for another lesson from him. He slouched to his horse, under propulsion of the revolver, and led the animal into ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... won't have to look far for him." General Gomez's leathery countenance lightened into a smile. "He happens to be right here in Cubitas." Calling Judson to him, he said: "Amigo, take Mr. O'Reilly to Colonel Lopez; you will find him somewhere about. I am sorry we are not to have this young fellow for a soldier; he looks like a real ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... time, perhaps upon a broad sand flat of a stream in the low-water stage; the muscles and viscera thus became completely dehydrated, or desiccated by the action of the sun, the epidermis shrank around the limbs, was tightly drawn down along all the bony surfaces, and became hardened and leathery, on the abdominal surfaces the epidermis was certainly drawn within the body cavity, while it was thrown into creases and folds along the sides of the body owing to the shrinkage of the tissues within. At the ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... youth leaves farming for knight-erranting he must expect sharp turns and rough tumbles, but surely Fate and Fortune were overdoing it now. It was the Colonel beyond doubt, and Margaret had limned him to the life. The hawk-eyes, the hook nose, the leathery skin, the orange-tawny campaign-wig with the grizzled hair peeping under the rim of it, the tall, thin, supple figure, all were there. And if I had been in any doubt of it, Sultan would have settled the matter, for his pleasure at finding his master ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... surrounded by test-tubes and mixing jars, Eliot spent the best part of the day handling the germs of the deadliest diseases; making cultures, examining them under the microscope; preparing vaccines. He went home to the brown velvety, leathery study in his Welbeck Street flat to write out his notes, or read some monograph on inoculation; or he dined with a colleague and ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair |
