"Gaunt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very beautiful hair once. Her thin hands and thinner face and neck looked more like brown parchment than ever, as she sat in the lamplight, my old blue dressing-gown folded negligently round her, and taking picturesque folds which it never did when I was inside it. Those long, gaunt limbs must have been graceful once. Her feet were bare in her slippers—in my slippers, I mean. She looked rather like ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... was summoned to Beardsley's "study" (so called probably from the total absence of either book or newspaper), and found himself and his wife awaiting me, and also a Doctor Scheffer, whom I had previously noticed among the guests—a gaunt, hectic young man, apparently on the high road to death, the ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... that they were of our own race. Those flat and shapeless tones could come through the noses of no other. The beauty and the elegance were also ours, and the fearless trust of circumstance. They sauntered up and down before the gaunt, high porticoes of the hotels, as much at home as they could have been in their own houses, and in much the same dress as if they had been receiving there. The effect is one of incomparable cheer, and is a promise of social brilliancy which Saratoga no more keeps ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... steel armor, and carrying short drawn swords, appeared, and marched with quick, ringing steps, across the hall toward the throne—arrived at the dais, they halted, wheeled about, saluted, and parted asunder in two compact lines, thus displaying in their midst the bound and manacled figure of a tall, gaunt, wild-looking old man, with eyes that burned like bright flames beneath the cavernous shadow of his bent and shelving brows,—a man whose aspect was so grand, and withal so terrible, that an involuntary ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... sleep. All of a sudden and without any warning the door of the hut swung wide open and the steam of the heated room rolled out in a great cloud, out of which seemed to rise like a genie, as the steam settled, the figure of a tall, gaunt peasant impressively crowned with the high Astrakhan cap and wrapped in the great sheepskin overcoat that added to the massiveness of his figure. He stood with his rifle ready to fire. Under his girdle lay the sharp ax without ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... see the poor fellow. Thin, gaunt, plainer than ever, if also ennobled by that almost saintly dignity which is given by illness, the first impression made on Leam was one of acute physical repulsion: the second only gave room to compassion. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... ran to the door when we halted and called to someone within. The fiddle played on with no faltering, but a woman came out—a gaunt and tattered woman who was yet curiously cheerful. The children lurked in her wake as she came to us and peered from beyond her while we did ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... talking of that Peasant we approach'd Close to the spot where with his rod and line He stood alone; whereat he turn'd his head To greet us—and we saw a man worn down By sickness, gaunt and lean, with sunken cheeks And wasted limbs, his legs so long and lean That for my single self I look'd at them, Forgetful of the body they sustain'd.— Too weak to labour in the harvest field, The man was using his best skill to gain A pittance ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... all of these groups the modelling and the varied expressions of hope, fear, love, and rage, were an immense step in advance of the old wooden school of taxidermy; specimens of which are still to be found in museums—stiff, gaunt, erect, and angular. Copies of those early outrages on nature may still be seen in the dreary plates of the anything but "animated" work of "poor Goldie," who, as Boswell said, "loved to shine" in ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... Clenk, he could look up and see the jagged portal of the cave he had left, high above the river, though not so high as the great, tall deciduous trees waving their lofty boughs on the summit of the cliffs. Certain grim, silent, gaunt figures, grotesquely contorted in the mist, the child's wide blue eyes traced out, as the other moonshiners climbed too down the rugged face of the crag, all burdened with bundles of varying size and unimaginable contents—food, clothing, ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Goats also browse along it, and nibble at the twigs that thrust themselves across the way. Not seldom, in its more secluded portions, where the black shadow of the forest strives to hide the trace of human- footsteps, stalks a gaunt wolf, on the watch for a kid or a young calf; or fixes his hungry gaze on the group of children gathering berries, and can hardly forbear to rush upon them. And the Indians, coming from their distant wigwams to view the white man's settlement, marvel at the deep track which ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... she knew awaited her as soon as she should declare herself awake, when Soeur Ursule entered the room. She had come with some message to Soeur Lucie, and when it was delivered, stood chatting a few minutes by the window where Soeur Lucie sat knitting. She was a gaunt, brisk, elderly woman, who had been governess in a large school, before an opportune legacy had enabled her to fulfil her dearest wish and enter the convent, where, with fresh zeal and energy, she resumed the duties most congenial to her, as teacher and superintendent of the school. Thoroughly ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... very moment a gaunt-looking woman, with a child in her arms, stood in the twilight on the opposite side of the street, looking ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... and pious Nature, where he lay so gaunt and grim, Moved by her divine compassion, did the same kind ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... He reached the bush a full length ahead of the others, who were laughing so hard they could hardly stay on their horses. The spectacle of the gaunt, elderly man sitting straight up in the saddle, teeth clenched and bowed legs wrapped around his pony, was too much for them. They leaned on their pommels weakly and roared ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... they beheld a tall, gaunt man, dressed in deer hides, who stood leaning upon a long gun with his eyes fixed upon them. His face was browned and weather-beaten—indeed so dark that it was difficult to say if he were of ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... life he had often journeyed there. It was a little shopping emporium, almost a city. He recognized building after building. Now and then he thought he saw a face which he had once known, and he was thankful that there was hardly any possibility of any one recognizing him. He had grown gaunt and thin since those far-off days; he wore a beard, grizzled, as was his hair. In those days he had not been an umbrella man. Sometimes the humor of the situation struck him. What would he have said, he the spruce, plump, ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... light "pacer" of Louisiana, the cob, the barb, his descendant the "mustang," that but a few weeks ago was running wild upon the prairies, may all be seen in the troop. Mules, also, of two distinct races—the large gaunt mule of North America, and the smaller and more sprightly variety, ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... are hardly worthy of Tamoszius, the other two members of the orchestra. The second violin is a Slovak, a tall, gaunt man with black-rimmed spectacles and the mute and patient look of an overdriven mule; he responds to the whip but feebly, and then always falls back into his old rut. The third man is very fat, with a round, red, sentimental nose, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... children of the Moorfields Schools, who had just passed near where we stood, as they entered the church. One of us remarked in reference to the Tower close by, that it was the dower of the Lady Blanche, the daughter of John O'Gaunt, who, although occupying so eminently marked a place in history, was a man so narrow-minded that he would not allow any of his vassals to receive the least education as he held that it unfitted them for the duties ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... with clearer eye, The plague-spot o'er her spreading, None heard more sure the steps of Doom Along her future treading. For her as for himself he spake, When, his gaunt frame up-bracing, He traced with dying hand "REMORSE!" ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... there was every possibility of our being reduced to nakedness. This was no pleasant prospect, running out of tropical latitudes towards England, in the month of January. In the course of six weeks, such a ragged, woebegone, gaunt, and famished gang of reefers was never before huddled together in one of his Majesty's vessels of war. The shifts we were obliged to have recourse to were quite amusing, to all but the shiftmakers. The only good hat, and wearable uniform coat, went round and round; it was a happy thing ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... mother, two gaunt, bent, toothless old people, just of the same height, came back. The women—the sisters-in-law Marya and Fyokla—who had been working on the landowner's estate beyond the river, arrived home, too. Marya, the wife of Nikolay's brother Kiryak, had six children, and Fyokla, the wife of Nikolay's brother ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... toward the file of policemen keeping the crowds back. Desnoyers saw in the young officer a certain resemblance to his son. The father was wearing in his lapel the black and green ribbon of 1870—a decoration which always filled Desnoyers with remorse. He was tall and gaunt, but was still trying to hold himself erect, with a heavy frown. He wanted to show himself fierce, inhuman, in ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... creatures—for whom, in spite of its being the wet season, no houses had been provided—more than 20 per cent. died in the space of five months. Mr. Hutchinson, who was English Consul at the time, tells us that "In a very short time gaunt figures of men, women, and children might be seen crawling through the streets, with scarcely an evidence of life in their faces, save the expression of a sort of torpid carelessness as to how soon it might ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... constantly repeated to me. In the district crowded with the poorer classes, who are dependent on their daily labor for their daily bread, the fever stalks gaunt and noisome, marking his victims and seldom in vain. All day long, and far into the night in bad seasons, the low, dull rumble of the dead-cart echoed through the narrow streets; and at the door of every squalid house ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... the house was a tall, gaunt man, engaged in mending a fence. He was dressed in a farmer's blue frock and overalls, and his gray, stubby beard seemed to be of a week's growth. There was a crafty, greedy look in his eyes, which overlooked a nose sharp and aquiline. His feet were incased in a pair ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... comprehend how her gifted son was now being counted among the very ablest artists in Paris—that world center of art. Artists should struggle for recognition, be rebuffed, live on a crust in dingy garrets, cultivate a gaunt and haggard look, and wear suits shiny ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... confines of the city, where the belt of protecting verdure grows thin and the gaunt face of the desert presses against the city walls, rose the square, white dwelling of Ahmed Ali, and his garden was the largest and most beautiful of the city. High white walls enclosed it on every side, and from the broad, travelled highway that ran beside it the dusty and wearied wayfarer ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... ran wild. It was a den of thieves as well as of wolves. Men, young men too, had ridden in, high-hearted, proud of their trappings, horses, curls, and what not; none had ever seen them come out. They might be roaming there yet, grown old with roaming, and gaunt with the everlasting struggle to kill before they were killed: who could tell? Or they might have struck upon the vein of savage life; they might go roaring and loving and robbing with the beasts— why not? Morgraunt had swallowed them up; who could ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... her own effigy, she burst into exclamations of frank delight. "Am I like that! is it possible? Oh, how beautiful! Mr. Merle, Mr. Merle, Mr. Merle!" and running out of the room before Vance could stop her, she returned with the Cobbler, followed, too, by a thin gaunt girl, whom he pompously called his housekeeper, but who in sober truth was servant-of-all-work. Wife he had none: his horoscope, he said, having Saturn in square to the Seventh House, forbade him to venture ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tall and gaunt, with lean face, sunken eyes, white hair and beard, and a complexion between the hue of cinnamon and bronze. He, too, was unarmed. His costume was Hindostani; over the skull-cap a shawl was wound in great folds, forming a turban; his body garments ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... presentiment of the peril he was in, of the sharp destroying fire of a resolute woman's eyes, which he was subjecting himself to, in including her in his universal caress? Who knows? Perhaps his flute had whispered tidings to him. He was, said Papa Isbister, immensely proud of his plaything, this huge gaunt sailor, who had been bent into the shape of a rainbow—the foot of a rainbow—by a chance shot, which shattered his hip and gave him an impressive forward cant, which appeared to women, it seemed—I quote my old friend—in the light of an ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... said—and often said by Judge Graver, of the Supreme Court—that old Colfax remained in the comparative obscurity of a probate judgeship simply from an innate modesty and a belief that he had found his work in life in which he might best serve humanity without hope of personal power and glory. Gaunt, tall, stoop-shouldered, gray, walking the same path each day,—home, court-house, club, neighbors, home,—with a grapevine stick as thick as a fence-post in ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... on the moistened beach, But these were lost soon in a wooded dell Where all trace had an end. The long day through We sought among the tombs, up from the dell; But unrewarded, when the sun was quenched, Sat down to weep. So darkness dropped, And like an awful spider, o'er the earth Crawled with gaunt legs of shadow. Then our homes We sadly sought, ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... open air, the sky overhead, movement and liberty to calm the joyful tumult in heart and brain. He hastened to the nearest point whence he could look over trees and fields. The prospect was not very beautiful. The trees were few—some cropped willows by a mud-banked rivulet and a group or two of gaunt and melancholy elms. And the fields had a trodden, suburban aspect, which made it hardly needful to stick up boards describing them as eligible building-ground. Yet there was grass, such as it was, and daisies ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... ill cared-for, his hair unkempt, his face a trifle haggard, working on into the day whose dawn he had seen arise, the tall, gaunt old man set aside first one minor matter, then another, leaving them all exactly finished. At last he wrote down, for later forwarding, the last item of his own knowledge regarding the new country into which he had sent ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... in a few minutes I was a second time asleep, nor did I again awake till the morning was far advanced. At this eventful juncture, while casting my eyes round the room with all the voluptuous indolence of a jaded traveller, they suddenly chanced to fall on a gaunt, spectral figure, undressed, unwashed, unshaved, decked out in a red worsted night-cap, its left cheek swollen, as if with cold or tooth-ache, and seated bolt upright in the very next bed, scarce six inches off my ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... should surely say He touched no meat of all this live-long day. For sure methought, yet that was but a guess, His eyes seem sunk for very hollowness, But could he have (as I did it mistake) So little in his purse, so much upon his back? So nothing in his maw? yet seemeth by his belt, That his gaunt gut not too much stuffing felt. Seest thou how side it hangs beneath his hip? Hunger and heavy iron makes girdles slip. Yet for all that, how stiffly struts he by, All trapped in the new-found bravery. The nuns of new-won Cales his bonnet ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... or Miller, was a tall, gaunt, sallow girl, who handled her machine with the touch of a master, eliminating every superfluous move and filling a form of a dozen rough cheroots quickly enough to take a visitor's breath away. No doubt it was very instructive to see how fast cheroots could be made. However, the stirring ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... her groves and desolated in her wheat-fields; her gardens were naked, her vineyards were barren, and the vultures grew fat on the dead in her pastures. About the thrice-fortified walls of her cities her gaunt husbandmen were camped, pensioners upon the granaries of the king. Her commerce had stagnated because she had no goods to barter; her society ceased to revel, for her people were called upon to preserve themselves. Her ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... People came and went; people of all degrees and descriptions, none of whom suggested in any particular the first century, B. C. One individual only maintained any permanency of situation. He was a gaunt, powerful, freckled man of thirty who sprawled on a settee and regarded Average Jones with obvious and amused interest. In time this annoyed the Ad-Visor, who ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... now, of our influence and appeals to minimize the likelihood of war and throw off the crushing burdens of armament. It is all very earnest, with a national soul impelling. But a people unemployed, and gaunt with hunger, face a situation quite as disheartening as war, and our greater obligation to-day is to do the Government's part toward resuming productivity and promoting fortunate and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding • Warren Harding
... no longer any possibility of concealment, and Saunders suddenly stood up in the moonlight which had crept close up to the brake, a tall, gaunt figure with the rifle ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... Richmond, was herself royally descended, being great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, son of Edward III.; was daughter-in-law of Henry V.'s widow, and mother of Henry VII. Being descended from the antenuptial children of John of Gaunt's third wife, who had been legitimatised by act of parliament ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... water-soaked and slimy, and infested by myriads of insects and worms, which crawled over the prisoners' bodies, stinging and biting them and almost driving them wild. There were large and vicious rats also. The prisoners were thin and gaunt, and it was evident ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... The gaunt, coatless Mr. Mott commanded the port side of the vessel; Mr. Codge, the purser, the starboard. Fighting men in the breeches and leggings of the American Navy; blackened and bandaged stokers, sailors ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the great chiefs of rebeldom, as related by a reliable witness. We did hear from her, and from officers who saw the rebel soldiers at Harper's Ferry, of the pitiable condition of some of the infantry, of their naked, bleeding feet, and their gaunt looks. Our landlady affirmed that we could not find a dog in the neighborhood; for they had gone before the rebel hordes in the way that such flesh disappears before the Chinese and Pacific Islanders. It is probably true that at times they were hard pressed for food, and many badly off for shoes; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... morning, when he returned to Hendlip, he was met by two wan, gaunt men, whose countenances showed privation and suffering. They gave their names as William ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... enormous taxation. I have seen it on my own estate in Poitou, and can make every allowance for them. In many cases the amounts they are adjudged to pay are absolutely greater than their whole income. They are forced to live upon bread made of bran and sawdust, to eat acorns and beechnuts; they are gaunt with hunger; they see their children dying before their eyes. They know not how their sufferings arise, they only know that they suffer, and in their despair they turn like hungry wolves against all who are better off ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owl For truth and flitteth here and there about Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft Is minded for to sit upon a bough, Dry-dead and sharp, of some long-stricken tree And muse in that gaunt place, — 'twas then my heart, Deep in ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... Does gaunt poverty surround thee, With its pale and meagre train? Do they gather closely round thee, Want, and suffering and pain? Mourn not, for the chilly dew-drops, Fell upon thy Master's bed; Mourn not, for the Prince of Glory Had not ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... a tall, gaunt man with a sweet, kindly face, reflecting his sweet, kindly nature; he had deep-set, dark eyes, very gentle in their gaze, a tender mouth that was a little drawn by lines of suffering and an upright wrinkle, deep as a gash, between his brows at ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... French mule, and a very large one: for it required a good-sized quadruped of the kind to make an appropriate roadster for the ex-grenadier of the Imperial guard. It was not a very fat mule, however, but raw-boned and gaunt as a Pyrenean wolf. ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... daybreak the Guerillas were in motion, and having taken a most ceremonious leave of us, they mounted their horses and set out upon their journey. I saw their gaunt figures wind down the valley, and watched them till they disappeared in the distance. "Yes, brigands though they be," thought I, "there is something fine, something heroic in the spirit of their unrelenting vengeance." The sleuth-hound ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... across this waste land toward the crumbling Spanish convent. In this place there was a fine sense of repose, of vast quiet. Everything was dead; the soft spring air gave no life. Even in the geniality of the April day, with the brilliant, theatrical waters of the lake in the distance, the scene was gaunt, savage. To the north, a broad dark shadow that stretched out into the lake defined the city. Nearer, the ample wings of the white Art Building seemed to stand guard against the improprieties of civilization. To the far south, a line of thin trees marked the outer desert of the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Randolph, whom he began by winning over from the opposite party, and by the favourite general and eloquent speaker, "Light-Horse Harry." Conspicuous in the ranks of Federalists, and unsurpassed in debate, was a tall and gaunt young man, with beaming countenance, eyes of piercing brilliancy, and an indescribable kingliness of bearing, who was by and by to become chief justice of the United States, and by his masterly and ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... endeavored to leap up the parapet that divided it from the audience, and on falling, uttered rather a baffled howl than its deep-toned and kingly roar. It evinced no sign either of wrath or hunger; its tail drooped along the sand, instead of lashing its gaunt sides; and its eye, though it wandered at times to Glaucus, rolled again listlessly from him. At length, as if tired of attempting to escape, it crept with a moan into its cage, and once more laid itself ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... called off Wagtail; and the poor creature sunk down in the bottom of the trench amongst the young firs without a sound, and there lay. My father went up to her; but she only stared at him with big blank black eyes, and yet such a lost look on her young, handsome, yet gaunt face, as almost convinced him she was the mother of the child. But, whatever might be her rights, she could not be allowed to recover possession, without those who had saved and tended the child having a word in ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... But she recovered herself and went on, still gazing intently at Tressady, her gaunt hand raised as though ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... braids, took off her shoes, stained with the mud of her husband's claim, and put on her slippers. Then she ascended to her eyrie in the little gallery, and gazed smilingly across the sunlit Bar. The two gaunt shadows of her husband and lover, linked like twins, were slowly passing along the river bank on their way to the eclipsing obscurity of the cottonwoods. Below her—almost at her very feet—the unconscious Arthur Wayne was pushing ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... gave it up, sleeping and watching together. They had taken care of their boat and provisioned it, ready to lower and pull into the track of any craft that might approach. But it was four months from the beginning of this strange voyage when the two men, gaunt and hungry—with ruined digestions and shattered nerves—saw, with joy which may be imagined, the first land and the first sail that gladdened their eyes after the storm in ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... lifted the wooden latch of the door, she looked over her shoulder. Not three hundred yards away loped five gaunt, gray animals. Their tongues hung limply from the sides of their mouths and their eyes glowered with ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... for some time leaned unobserved against the door-post, grimly watching the gayety. Suddenly the air was rent by a warwhoop which brought the dancers to a stop. An Indian brave, lounging in the firelight, had caught a glimpse of the tall, gaunt, buff and blue figure in the doorway and had recognized it. Women shrieked; men cursed; the musicians left their posts; all was disorder. Advancing, Clark struck a theatrical pose and in a voice of command told the merrymakers to go on with their ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... Metz and the surrounding country as General von Heeringen. Often on stormy, bitter cold winter nights, sentries on outposts stationed and guarding the approaches of Metz are startled to find a gaunt, limping figure, covered in a gray army greatcoat with no distinguishing marks, stalking along. Accompanied by orderlies carrying camp stools and table; night glasses and electric torches, halting repeatedly, hidden men taking down in writing the short, croaking sentences escaping between the thin ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... sitting on the stone, The dank moss dripping from the wall, The thorn-trees gaunt, the walks o'ergrown, I love ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... a more dangerous animal still, and did much the same; then a gaunt wild boar. But no creature hurt her, and Watho was angry with the ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... beast-howl of a fog-horn. We were drifting upon a tragic coast, where the great waves slipped up the cliffs noiselessly, to disappear upon the other side. At the time, I was talking to a person who had just been a sort of composite of several of my friends, but was now a gaunt bay mule. "Isn't it co-o-ld?" I said to him, and shivered. He looked me sternly in the eye. "Get up!" said he. The vessel struck a rock and trembled violently. "Get up!" repeated the mule, and there was a menace in his voice now. ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... a wayfarer, gazing upon the fjord. It was the well-known lay-preacher, Hans Nilsen Fennefos. Tall, gaunt, with bright searching eyes, he stood absorbed in thought, and leant against the post of the gate leading ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... glory of former achievements sullied by his massacre at Limoges, and the City of London had made him a present of valuable plate.(586) The conduct of the war was transferred to his eldest surviving brother, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. In 1372 the king himself set out with the flower of the English nobility, and accompanied by a band of London archers and crossbow men.(587) The expedition, which had for its object the ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... they crossed the courtyard where Leslie's Scottish archers lurked in every shadow, in silence passed the many guards grouped at the gateway to the King's lodgings, in silence traversed the great square hall, gaunt and comfortless, but brighter than daylight from its many lamps—the King was afraid of gloom—and in silence mounted the stone stairway. At its head they turned along the right-hand corridor, entering a silent ante-room with sentinels at its door; ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... refused a second glass. 'You've been patient while I've talked—I can't to most—and I don't want you to remember me drunk. Take good care of yourself, and, generally speaking, don't start your whisky till your day's painting is done.' I stood for some minutes on the corner of Broadway as his gaunt form merged into the glow that fell full into Cedar Street from the setting sun. I wondered if the hour recalled the old days on the farm and the formation of ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... when the king's men had things pretty much their own way, and mystery and plot held full sway, that there lived, in a little house near McGown Pass on the upper end of Manhattan Island, a widow and her lame son. She was a tall, gaunt woman of Scotch ancestry, but loyal to the land that had given her a second home. She was not a woman of many opinions, but the few that she held were rigid, and not to be trifled with. With all her might she ...
— Then Marched the Brave • Harriet T. Comstock
... Yukon runs twenty-five hundred miles to Bering Sea, traversing an almost unknown region, the remote recesses of which had never felt the moccasined foot of the pathfinder. At occasional intervals men wallowed into its dismal fastnesses, or emerged gaunt and famine-worn. But in the fall of 1896 a great gold strike was made—greater than any since the days of California and Australia; yet, so rude were the means of communication, nearly a year elapsed before ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... stepped forward, though hesitatingly and unwillingly. Just as he crossed the threshold, the giant warder reached out a gaunt hand ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... who remain there of their own free will, in the hope of meriting a higher and more distinguished reward for their austerities in a future life. One such was pointed out to us, who had never left the Eremo for more than fifty years, a tall, very gaunt, very meagre old man with white hair, hollow cheeks, and parchment skin, a nose like an eagle's beak, and deep-set burning eyes—as typical a figure, in its way, as the rosy mountain of a man whom we met travelling down ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... The gaunt, iron-visaged woman knelt down upon her knees, gazing with unshrinking eyes upon the face of her victim, as if curiously marking the effect of a successful experiment ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... looking at it for some minutes. His erring thoughts, which wandered like things fatigued that cannot rest, went to a mountain village in Sicily, through which he had once ridden at night during a terrific thunder-storm. In a sudden, fierce glare of lightning he had seen upon the great door of a gaunt Palazzo, which looked abandoned, a strip of black cloth. Above it were ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... written memorial of the primitive world, are, as is well known, full of them. On the other hand, poets of a very cultivated taste, like Petrarch, or orators, like Cicero, have delighted in them. Whoever, in Richard the Second, is disgusted with the affecting play of words of the dying John of Gaunt on his own name, should remember that the same thing occurs in the Ajax of Sophocles. We do not mean to say that all playing upon words is on all occasions to be justified. This must depend on the disposition of mind, whether it will admit of such a play of fancy, and ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... white bird is the big sky. Under it a cowering city stares. The houses are half-dead old people. A gaunt carriage-horse gapes grumpily. Winds, skinny dogs, run weakly. Their skins squeel on sharp corners. In a street a crazed man groans: You, oh, you— If only I could find you... A crowd around him is surprised and ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... scene. I want a London engagement for her. Can't you get your friend Dolphin to come and see her—to engage her—to take her out of this place? A word from a noble friend of ours (you understand) would be invaluable, and if you could get the Gaunt House interest for me—I will promise anything I can in return for your service—which I shall consider one of the greatest that can be done to me. Do, do this now as a good fellow, which I always said you were: and in return, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hardly able to believe my own eyes. There stood the Breton twisting his battered cap nervously between his bony fingers. The little oil lamp, which we always kept lighted at night in the passageway, illuminated his pale face and gaunt figure. ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... the king deeper and deeper into a wild and desolate country where he had never been before, and where there were no pathways. Arthur looked to and fro over the waste, but saw no sign of man or beast, and no bird flitted or piped. Great gaunt stones stood upright on the hillsides, solitary or in long lines as if they marched, or else they leaned together as if conspiring; while great heaps or cairns of stone rose here and there from the lichen-covered and rocky ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... wide lawn, brown and sere now with approaching winter, and surrounded by huge, knotted, gnarled, old oaks, whose dry leaves still clung to the twisted branches and rustled in the crisp air. A fat, sleek, black Tabby lay asleep on the warm porch-rail; a gaunt, ungainly greyhound lay sunning himself on the door mat, and from inside somewhere came the sound of a canary's riotous song. The whole place breathed of home, and with a deep sigh of content, Peace lifted her great, brown eyes to the President's ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... so a gaunt lady wearing steel spectacles and black mittens stood before her, with a long finger pointing, and exclaimed: ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... came on the beasts; their food 3910 Failed, and they drew the breath of its decay. Millions on millions, whom the scent of blood Had lured, or who, from regions far away, Had tracked the hosts in festival array, From their dark deserts; gaunt and wasting now, 3915 Stalked like fell shades among their perished prey; In their green eyes a strange disease did glow, They sank in hideous spasm, or pains severe ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... plainly. Who would deem, that scent Of water and an apple, could have prov'd Powerful to generate such pining want, Not knowing how it wrought? While now I stood Wond'ring what thus could waste them (for the cause Of their gaunt hollowness and scaly rind Appear'd not) lo! a spirit turn'd his eyes In their deep-sunken cell, and fasten'd then On me, then cried with vehemence aloud: "What grace is this vouchsaf'd me?" By his looks I ne'er had recogniz'd him: but the voice Brought to my knowledge what his cheer conceal'd. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... into the conservatory which opened out of the room, before the gaunt, pale, unwashed, unshaven weaver was ushered in. There he stood at the door sleeking his hair with old country habit, and every now and then stealing a glance round at the ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... gaunt figure, unshaven, with a beard of a week's growth. Two great eyes looked out of caverns, then two arms were stretched out, and Nora was clasped ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... the Bible was not more extensive than that of other officers, and comprised little more than the story of Joseph, and that of David and Goliath; so he bowed to his hostess for her comparison, while his gaunt and bristly countenance gave way to a pleasant smile. For this officer of the British Crown had a face of strong features, and upon it whatever he thought was told as plainly as the time of day is told by the clock ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... darlings of my dream! But she, O Lotus-flower, my promised bride, Star of my youth, my pure unspotted dove! Again I see her in her gentle pride, Her starry eyes meet mine with melting beam; Unsightly grief approach not near my Love, Flee from her presence, O thou gaunt Despair, Good Time, embalm her daintily and fair, Link her sweet fame with hymns and fragrancy. And happy stars, and blissful utterance, And with all transports that immortal be. Fold her, good Time, from my remembrance, ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... there were in him gathered for one superhuman and crowning effort; a flash of time, not half a second in duration, and he was lifted in the air higher, and higher, and higher in the cold, fresh, wild winter wind, stakes and rails, and thorn and water lay beneath him black and gaunt and shapeless, yawning like a grave; one bound, even in mid-air, one last convulsive impulse of the gathered limbs, and Forest King ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... started out, moving along the railing, straight and gaunt, and, there was something peculiar in his entire figure. He seemed to feel himself deeply insulted. At the door of the smoking-room, he met Mr. Carson of New York, his recent antagonist, and amiably taking his arm, he started ...
— The Shield • Various
... replied Kate, softly. (She had called him "Mr. Gaunt" in public till now.) "But money and lands do not always bring content. I think I was happier a minute ago than I feel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... sort of lumber-yard, to all appearance, with the addition of a sort of rough shipyard. Chips and shavings and fragments of boards lay all about. Here and there on trestles stood the gaunt frames of what appeared to be rough flatboats, long, wide, and shallow, constructed with no great art or care. There was no keel to any one of these boats, and the ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... temporal, is left to the reader to imagine. The sufferings of the Dissenters were awfully severe at this time. Had it been a year later, we might have guessed it to have referred to the sufferings of that pious, excellent woman, Elizabeth Gaunt, who was burnt, October 23, 1685. She was a Baptist, and cruelly martyred. Penn, the Quaker, saw her die. 'She laid the straw about her for burning her speedily, and behaved herself in such a manner that all the spectators melted ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Xmas, dear, yet none of the Yule-tide joys float out to this frozen wilderness. Snow, snow everywhere. The tall alders, whose vivid coloring so inspired me when I arrived, are now black and gaunt, and the pitiless desert wind comes tearing and howling from the north to bend and crack their stiffened joints. I often wonder—am I any more the arbiter of my fate than these lifeless snow-draped spectres ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... let in whatever air there might be. Her mother in a blue dressing-gown, dingy with wear and travel, from which one of the ribbon bows hung by a thread, her face turned to the canvas and weeping silently. The gaunt form of her father with his fanatical, saint-like face, pale beneath its tan, his high forehead over which fell one grizzled lock, his thin, set lips and far-away grey eyes, taking off his surplice and folding it ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... promptly at that hour. I was taken into the dining-room by Mr. Philip Griffith, one of the Secretaries of the British Legation. We had just finished our second course when, to the surprise of everyone, a tall and gaunt gentleman was ushered into the dining-room. It was Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, then a member of Congress and subsequently Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy. Mr. Everett at once arose and shook hands with Mr. Stephens ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... shuddered still more. For Satan, the gaunt-jawed hook-nosed rail-faced head foreman, diabolically smiling when angry, sardonically sneering when calm, was a lean human whip-lash. Pete sniggered. He dilated upon Satan's wrath at Wrennie for not "coming across" with ten dollars ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... hurted by the fust shot," said Hank, as they stood over the gaunt animal, and surveyed her proportions with almost a touch of awe; "but seemed like the critter had enough strength left t' make thet leap, as nigh knocked me flat. Then she jest keeled over, an' guv up the ghost. Arter this the young heifers kin stray away from their mother's sides, without ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... the present day, and has undergone surprisingly little variation. A certain distinctive character in the foliage (Fig. 163) employed in capitals and other decorative carving, and mosaics of splendid colour but somewhat gaunt and archaic design, though often solemn and dignified, were typical of the work of Justinian's day, and could long afterwards be recognised in ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... across country, avoiding roads and houses like poison. The land was very low and flat and the dykes very numerous, sometimes whole fields being practically inundated. The only things that tended to relieve the monotony were the solitary gaunt willow trees, most of them mere shells of their former selves, which stood out from the misty darkness, black and ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... Men—gaunt, hollow-eyed men—looked at him as if he were an obscene bird, looked at him with ever-increasing hate, with their fingers itching for the trigger of a gun. Pap had his weakness. He liked to babble of his own cuteness; he liked to sit upon a sugar barrel in the village store ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... away from these highlands, and shaped her course towards a long low spit of sand, that lay several miles to the northward of them. In this direction, fifty small sail were gathering into, or diverging from, the pass, their high, gaunt-looking canvas resembling so many church towers on the plains of Lombardy. These were coasters, steering towards their several havens. Two or three outward-bound ships were among them, holding their way in the direction of China, the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... voice was strange, the figure she saw when she looked up was stranger still. A gaunt old man in a suit of rusty black, with straggling gray hair and beard, stood holding his hat in his hand, gazing at her with eyes so bright they ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... And he's got a record for beating up waiters and cabbies about New York. Now, my boy," the judge slid a gaunt hand along the other's shoulder and paused. The hand also paused; then it gripped, ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... ferny paths, and amid stretches of heather just coming to its purple prime, up towards the higher regions of the moor where the millstone grit cropped out in sharp edges, showing gaunt and dark against the afternoon sky. Here the beautiful stream that made a waterfall within the park came sliding down shelf after shelf of yellowish rock, with pools of deep brown water at intervals, overhung ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... come closer in, and so one side of his camping-place was walled by virgin bush; a dense tract of blue-gum and iron-bark stretching, almost as far as the eye could reach, to the foot-hills of a gaunt mountain range. For a mile or so from the circus camp the trees had all been ring-barked a couple of seasons or more before this time, with the result that they were now the very haggard skeletons of mighty trees, naked for the most part, their white bones open to all ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... died in this tall, gaunt man, with a pale-blue eye the color of the horizon dusted with the first morning mist. He was the very spirit of lost causes, full of apprehensions, foreboding, superstitions. A hunch might make him journey five hundred miles; a snort of his horse could make him give up the ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... be of grief or want If love and honesty held away on earth! The demon poverty, so grim and gaunt, But for injustice never need have birth! Give room and wages for the poor man's toil, And thus the ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... took up a position which enabled him to distinguish forms moving about the spacious drawing-room. With what straining eyes and breathless anxiety he scrutinized them! Now he saw a lady of noble carriage walking to and fro,—that might be Lady Langdon; by and by he caught sight of a gaunt, ungainly figure, and recognized Lady Vivian. Who would have believed that a glimpse of that angular, unsymmetrical form could ever have called such radiance to the eyes of a young and handsome man?—could have kindled such a glow upon his ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... A tall, gaunt Vermonter, whose uniform was a woolen bedcover draped to his knees, laughed loudly from the doorway of his log hut as he flung these taunts at the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... with salt-water boils. All hands, with the exception of Kettle—who remained, as usual, neat—grew gaunt, bearded, dirty, and unkempt. They were grimed with sea-salt, they were flayed with violent suns; but by dint of hard schooling they were becoming handy sailormen, all of them, and even the negro stonemason learned to obey an order without first thinking over its justice till ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... gaunt woman, bearing the tragedy of her race written in her face, with its melancholy eyes, subdued expression, and the pathetic patience of a wronged dumb animal. She received Christie with an air of resignation, and speedily bewildered her with an account ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... water. "Help, help;" he again shouted, and he felt that in another minute he must go down, for the more he attempted to approach the shore, the more his legs became entangled by the fatal weeds. He thought that he recognised the gaunt figure of Ellis. ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... moment of freedom, the little lady put her hand on that gaunt arm, and tripped up the path and into the house, where, alas! Augusta Price lost sight of them. Yet even she, with all her disapproval of strong-minded ladies, must have admired the tenderness of the man-o'-war's-man. Miss North put ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland
... work-a-dayness as we have been talking of, but something very different indeed beyond the walls of our private garden. There are black, oozy factory yards and mangy grass-plots heaped with brickbat and refuse; and miles of iron railing, and acres of gaunt and genteel streets not veiled enough in fog; a metaphorical beyond the garden walls, in which a certain number of us graduate for the ownership of sooty shrubberies and clammy orchid houses. And we poor latter-day mortals have become so deadly accustomed to ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... arose, himself again, strong, big, gaunt, powerful, his great wistful eyes had a gentle astonishment in them that there were no curses to rouse him and no blows to drive him; and his heart awakened to a mighty love, which never wavered once in its fidelity whilst ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... nor treble the sum," responded the gaunt, grizzled and threadbare Peter Goldthwaite. "The fact is, Mr. Brown, you must find another site for your brick block and be content to leave my estate with the present owner. Next summer I intend to put a splendid new mansion over the cellar ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... him to give some very piquant details concerning the women in his theatrical company to Brahim Bey, who listened to him as one turns the pages of an obscene book, and to talk theology to his nearest neighbor, a young priest, cure of some little Southern village, a thin, gaunt fellow, with a complexion as dark as his cassock, with glowing cheek-bones, pointed nose, all the characteristics of an ambitious man, who said to Cardailhac, in a very loud voice, in a tone of condescension, of ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... asleep. There are things that are theorems and things that are rags: they'll go by like Euclid arm in arm with the spirit of anarchy. Here and there will flit little harlots. Many are clowns. But many are of the highest respectability. Some are assassins. There are pale stenches and gaunt superstitions and mere shadows and lively malices: whims and amiabilities. The naive and the pedantic and the bizarre and the grotesque and the sincere and the insincere, ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... strain was getting too much for him and he was anxious to be alone. Without a word more they passed the old school-house, the massive new one, and went on, in silence, down the street. Hitched to a post, near the hotel, were two gaunt horses with drooping heads, and on one of them was a side-saddle. Sitting on the steps of the hotel, with a pipe in his mouth, was the mighty figure of Devil Judd Tolliver. He saw them coming—at least he saw Hale ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... there is no instance of such a union, save that of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, with Dona Constanza, daughter of Peter the Cruel, in 1371, from whom Queen Isabella was lineally descended on the father's side. The title of Prince of the Asturias, appropriated to the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... a gaunt, yellow spectre of a man, reduced to his last chemise, and that a sad spectacle of ancient purity, starting from Lincoln's-Inn, and making all haste for Waterloo-bridge, the inference is rather natural, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... battle, as an assembly place for men going up against Pozieres. Here the men in our line could see nothing but chalk slope to right, left, or front, except the last tree of La Boisselle, rising gaunt and black above the line of the hill. Just behind them, however, at the foot of the Sausage Valley they had a pleasant wooded hill, the hill of Becourt, which was for nearly two years within a mile of the front line, yet ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... or mill showed uncompromisingly all its forbidding sharpness of angle and outline darkening against the twilight. In better days, perhaps, some friendly tree had hung over it, shielding part of its faults, and redeeming the rest. Now nothing but the gaunt skeleton of a friend stood there doubtless to bud forth again as fairly as ever, should the season smile. Still and quiet, all was, as Fleda's spirit, and in too good harmony with it; she resolved to choose the morning to go out in future. There was as little of the light of spring or ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... on his back, just like old Pechicho the sheep-dog, described in the first chapter. Now, in his decline, he grew irritable and surly, and ceased to be our playmate. The last two or three months of his life were very sad, and when it troubled us to see him so gaunt, with his big ribs protruding from his sides, to watch his twitchings when he dozed, groaning and wheezing the while, and marked, too, how painfully he struggled to get up on his feet, we wanted to know why it was so—why we could not give him ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... had not yet heard the spreading rumor of the imaginary elopement—that the stranger, on his way from Father M'Mahon's to the Mitre, was met in a lonely part of the road, near the priest's house, by a man of huge stature and savage appearance. He was literally in rags; and his long beard, gaunt features, and eyes that glared as if with remorse, distraction, or despair, absolutely constituted him an alarming as well as a painful spectacle. As he approached the stranger, with some obvious and urgent purpose, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... watched the boat being hoisted and secured. Shortly afterwards, as we were observing the Lion shortening sail, the first of the rain descended between her and us like a lowered veil. For a time she remained mistily visible, dark and gaunt with her bared spars. The downpour redoubled; she disappeared; and our hearts were stirred ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... mill, too, standing fast by the bridge, the manorial appendage of the town, which I loved in my boyhood for its gaunt and crazy aspect and dim interior, whence the clapper kept time mysteriously to the drone of the mill-sluice? I think it is gone. Surely that confounded thing can't be my venerable old ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu |
