"Sleek" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mangadone, and his personality helped to make him a very definite figure in the place. He was a large man, his size accentuated by his full silk petticoat; a man with large feet, large hands and a round bullet head, set on a thick neck. He had a few sleek black hairs at the corners of his mouth, and his long, narrow eyes, with thick yellow whites and inky-black pupils, never expressed any emotion. Clothed in strawberry-red silk and a white coat, with a crimson scarf ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... himself the poor luxury of a centime light. Possibly it was a little shopman, as the abbe had suggested, struggling with fortune—not scrupulous in honesty, and shunning observation; or it might be (who could tell) a sleek-faced villain, stealing about in the dusk, and far into the night, making the dim chamber his home only when more honest lodgers ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the path, calling her name. No answer came to his cries. Above him lay the hillside, dozing in the noonday sun; below, the Mediterranean, sleek and blue, without a ripple. He stood alone in a land of silence ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... our mess was well supplied, and our forager began to look sleek and fat. The secret of his success did not leak out till long afterward, when he astonished the boys by declaring that he "had been 'living like a fighting-cock' on a paper of needles ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... was used to refined surroundings, found his gorge rising. At some of the little tables furtive, impudent, tattered, sleek men ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... mechanism displayed in the wild arum of Great Britain—the "lords and ladies" of the village lanes, the foreign counterpart of our well-known jack-in-the-pulpit, or Indian-turnip, with its purple-streaked canopy, and sleek "preacher" standing erect beneath it. A representation of this arum is shown in Fig. 12, and a cross section at A, ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... yourself a pale, melancholy visage, with two great wrinkles between the eyebrows, with an eye disgustingly severe, and a big wig; and you may have a perfect picture of my present appearance. On the other hand, I conceive you as perfectly sleek and healthy, passing many a happy day among your own children or those who knew you ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... went back to the stall where Jolly was feeding. He went in and untied his halter, and led him out. Jolly was a sleek, black, beautiful little horse, not old enough to do much work, but a very good horse to ride. George took down a bridle, and, after leading Jolly to a horse-block, where he could stand up high enough to reach his head, he ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... beneath him. One or two long tendrils of the climbing plants which grew higher up dangled like pendulous snakes, but the vegetable growth ceased at that point. Beneath him the naked sides of the pit gleamed sleek and wet in the rays of ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... were all nearly related, and yet they were as unlike each other as people of one family could be. The gentle, saintly Mary Carvel had little in common with her aesthetic sister Chrysophrasia Dabstreak, and neither of them was very like Madame Patoff. Sturdy John Carvel was not like his sleek son Macaulay, except in honesty and good-nature. Alexander Patoff was indeed like his mother, but Paul's stern, cold nature was that of his father, long dead and forgotten. As for Hermione, she presented a combination of character derived from the best points in her ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... miscreant! Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin's gore, And thus for wider carnage taught to pant, Transferred to gorge upon a sister shore, The vulgarest tool that tyranny could want, With just enough of talent and no more, To lengthen fetters by another fixed And offer ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... wives, Darby and Joan like. Coachmen were little squat men, wi' wigs like the oud-fashioned parsons'. Well, we could na get on for these carriages, though we waited and waited. Th' horses were too fat to move quick; they never known want o' food, one might tell by their sleek coats; and police pushed us back when we tried to cross. One or two of 'em struck wi' their sticks, and coachmen laughed, and some officers as stood nigh put their spy-glasses in their eye, and left 'em sticking there like mountebanks. ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Kitty's cage out in the yard, protected only from the rain and the direct wind, and fed her with all the oil-cake and fish-heads she could eat. In a week a change began to show. She was rapidly getting fat and sleek—she had nothing to do but get fat and dress her fur. Her cage was kept clean, and nature responded to the chill weather and the oily food by making Kitty's coat thicker and glossier every day, so that by midwinter she was an unusually beautiful Cat ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... violent, friend?" said some one behind them. And turning quickly, they perceived the sleek, clean-shaven, well-groomed figure of a Quaker, dressed in a shad-bellied brown coat, a low black silk hat with a curved brim, ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... Cervera led his ships out of the harbor of Santiago, in that brave dash for the freedom of the open sea, the veteran was engaged in his usual occupation of polishing the sleek coat of one of the big thirteen-inch guns. When the cry went up that the enemy was escaping, he gave a finishing touch to the muzzle and quickly took his station in the turret. Presently he turned to a young gunner near him and said: "Charley, I bet you a month's pay that ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes
... to see a sleek well-conditioned pastor, such as is often found in a snug living in the vicinity of a rich patron's table; but I was disappointed. The parson was a little, meagre, black-looking man, with a grizzled ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... come in from the country are generally very picturesque, with a network of crimson silk tassels over their heads, and a bright-coloured manta thrown across their sleek, glossy backs. These mantas serve many purposes; they are made of two breadths of brightly striped and ornamented material of wool and silk, sewn up at one end, or sometimes for some distance at each end, like a purse; sometimes ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... hills— To trace the coy retreating rills— To see the clouds at summer-tide Dappling all the landscape wide— To mark the varying gloom and glow As the seasons come and go— Again the green meads to behold Thick strewn with silvery gems and gold, Where kine, bright-spotted, large, and sleek, Browse silently, with aspect meek, Or motionless, in shallow stream Stand mirror'd, till their twin shapes seem, Feet linked to feet, forbid to sever, By some ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... mama deer brought their little, wabbly-legged baby deer to introduce to Sally Migrundy; and she rubbed their sleek sides and talked to them so they couldn't but ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... were thronged with mountebanks, peep-shows, performing acrobats, and conjurers. Sleek and pampered priests in yellow robes were met at every turn, a class who exercise a certain influence over the people through their superstition, but who command no personal respect. We were told ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... charged up the steps at Rena. Judy, the most demure and faithful of allies, confronted Rena, amazingly but unmistakably changed to a foe; Judy, with her immaculate and enviable frock smirched and torn, and her sleek hair wildly tossed, her cheeks darkly flushed, and her eyes strange and shining; a Judy to be reckoned with and ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... person, of urbane and distinguished manners, suddenly elongated towards them a mobile upper lip, his sleek head slightly on one side, his kind, ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... was uncouth and ill-dressed, but he was a wise man and a gentleman in the highest and best sense of that much misused word. On the other hand, Mr. Blank, who represents railway interests in the United States Senate, is sleek, polished and well-dressed, but he is neither very wise nor very good. He is a gentleman only in the conventional, false ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... heard of anything more clever. Nor was there ever a bigger idiot than I, to walk stupidly into this same trap! What's the game, I wonder? Robbery, it must be. And I have a watch, some other little valuables and nearly a hundred and fifty dollars in money on me. Oh, I'm the sleek, ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... and sat down, too, glass in hand. He listened attentively—and Brereton watched him while he listened. A sleek, sly, observant, watchful man, this, said Brereton to himself—the sort that would take all in and give little out. And he waited expectantly to hear what Mallalieu would say when he ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... to the lady, unknown to thee, (for so it may pass,) I will contrive to be the man, petticoated out, and vested in a gown and cassock. I once, for a certain purpose, did assume the canonicals; and I was thought to make a fine sleek appearance; my broad rose-bound beaver became me mightily; and I was much admired upon the whole by ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... The prisoners were sleek and fat—those imprisoned for long terms or for life bearing witness of the good treatment which they receive at the hands of the authorities. One youngish man in particular attracted our attention, a merry laughing ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... a sleek little man, particular about his dress, and as proud of his small hands and feet as a cat is of her fur, was waiting for him in ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... hundreds of limbers and "G. S." wagons drawn by sleek, well-fed mules, ridden by sleek, well-fed men, ever smiling. Although grimy with sweat and covered with the fine, white dust of ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... looking man, in the prime of his life, and of a most benignant aspect. The authority this man, whose name was Kolory, seemed to exercise over the rest, the episcopal part he took in the Feast of Calabashes, his sleek and complacent appearance, the mystic characters which were tattooed upon his chest, and above all the mitre he frequently wore, in the shape of a towering head-dress, consisting of part of a cocoanut branch, the stalk planted uprightly on his brow, and the leaflets ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... the old man's emulsion, then with the emulsion mixed with other drugs, all bound together in pure animal fat, until at last he found a mixture which to his joy made the sores heal and the skin harden and the hair sprout and Barabbas grow sleek as a swell mobsman in affluent circumstances. Then one day came His Grace of Suffolk into the shop with a story of a pet of the Duchess's stricken with the same disease. Sypher modestly narrated his own experience and gave the mighty man a box of the new ointment. A fortnight afterwards ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... but as a fixture—No! "Tolerate" is too harsh a word; but another might be too weak. The truth is, men do not care half so much what they get, as how they get it. The wolf in Aesop's fable keenly wanted a share of the bones which made his friend the mastiff so sleek; but the hint that the bones and the collar went together drove him hungry but free back to his desert. It is of no avail to give a man all he asks for; he resents having to ask you for it, and wants to know by what right you have it to ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... a damp hand over his brow. The dog, strangely undemonstrative, advanced and placed a sleek head against Gregg's knee, its pointed muzzle down, its tail hanging dispiritedly. Vaguely wondering what the trader's favorite lead-dog was doing among the boulders on the Point, Harlan patted the animal's broad ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... to get chilled whilst we amused ourselves. Although my beloved Helen was not there, having been exchanged for the day in favour of Master Mouse, a shaggy pony, whose paces were as rough as its coat, I begged a red blanket from Mr. K——, and covered up Helen's stable companion, whose sleek skin spoke of a milder temperature than that on Lake Ida's "gloomy shore." Our simple arrangements were soon made. Mr. K—— left directions to his mate to prepare a repast consisting of tea, bread, and mutton for us, and, each carrying our skates, we made the best of our way across the frozen ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... the Chamber of Commerce and the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association were in excellent condition for this evening's labor. They were not pale and thin, underfed and overworked, as were their prisoners; they were sleek and rosy, and ashine with health. It was as if long years ago their fathers had foreseen the Red menace, and the steps that would have to be taken to preserve 100% Americanism; the fathers had imported a game which consisted of knocking little white balls around a field with ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... large, elegantly furnished office, where clerks with sleek and severely apathetic countenances stood scribbling ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... green eyes, that seemed always on the look-out for something going wrong, was very fat, and moved as if it was too much trouble to her to walk across the room; while Friskarina's coat was of the richest tortoise-shell, and though she was quite plump, and as sleek as satin, yet there was not a more lively little creature in all Catland; it quite did one good to see her jumping over the foot-stools in the princess's drawing-room. She had a prodigious longing, ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... aren't giving them any reason to. But their farms are all nice and green and well tilled, and we haven't seen a burned house or mill, and the children are going to school, and the stock is all sleek and well fed—and if they haven't seen they've heard of the desolation on our side of the river. They've got a pretty good idea of what War is and they're where more people would be if they had that idea beforehand. They are willing to keep out of ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... mused, "and by what right?—how dared you come to this house, and lay hands on this woman? Who has ordained that she should suffer for you? You array yourself in fine linen, and set out, sleek and happy, for the home where your mistress languishes; you throw yourself upon the cushions where she has just knelt in prayer, for you and for her, and you gently stroke those delicate hands that still tremble. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... her pitying apron frill (Vespers) Over a little trembling mouse When the sleek cat ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... of Singapore is not imposing in aspect, for there are no mountains; yet its appearance is not without attractions. It is a park checkered by pleasant highways and avenues. A handsome carriage, drawn by a sleek pair of New Holland horses, carried Phileas Fogg and Aouda into the midst of rows of palms with brilliant foliage, and of clove-trees, whereof the cloves form the heart of a half-open flower. Pepper ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... pulpit is an ale-house bench, Whereon I sit so jolly; A smiling rosy country wench My saint and patron holy. I kiss her cheek so red and sleek, I press her ringlets wavy; And in her willing ear I ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... deep growl from Buck Denham seemed to comfort the great sleek beasts, and a word or two in his highly pitched voice from Dunn Brown turned the ponies' stamping ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... at the Court of St. James, and that same persuasive eloquence did not fail now in its effect on the chief agent of the Committee of General Security. The latter was made of coarser stuff than his more brilliant colleague. Chauvelin was like a wily and sleek panther that is furtive in its movements, that will lure its prey, watch it, follow it with stealthy footsteps, and only pounce on it when it is least wary, whilst Heron was more like a raging bull that tosses its head in a blind, irresponsible fashion, rushes at an obstacle without ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... A fat, sleek, prosperous male, clad in expensive garments, and wearing a derby hat and too much jewellery, became somehow personified in this tirade. I was led to picture him a residuary legatee who had never done a stroke of work in his life, and believed that no ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... came Glenn, that man of peace, And swore to facts as sleek as grease; By all his Uncle Aleck's geese, McFarland burnt ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... matter what the conditions. Have the candidates to be known as right and fitting persons? Is there even the simplest formula of preparatory examination? None! Two wholly unsuited people may rush into marriage—and misery—any day by simply presenting themselves before a sleek-faced person who mumbles drowsily over their clasped hands, and calls it a vow before God!—as he ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... boles and branches of the venerable trees dotted here and there in clumps along the roadside; of the verdant hedges with their rich clusters of delicate dog-roses and trailing honeysuckle or wild convolvulus; of the groups of sleek cattle feeding in the fields, contemplatively chewing the cud under the shade of some over-hanging tree, or browsing along the roadside; of the knots of rosy, sun-tanned children playing about the village-roads or on the green, and turning to stand open-mouthed and stare at the chaise ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... and I once saw raised in a paltry village near Chelmsford, after a poor hungry fox, who, watching his opportunity, had seized by the neck, and shouldered a sleek-feathered goose: at what time we beheld the whole vicinage of boys and girls, old men, and old women, all the furrows and wrinkles of the latter filled up with malice for the time; the old men armed with prongs, pitch-forks, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... drawn from English country life give its abiding value to George Eliot's work. Take the character of Mr. Pilgrim the doctor who 'is never so comfortable as when relaxing his professional legs in one of those excellent farmhouses where the mice are sleek and the mistress sickly;' or of Mrs. Hackit, 'a thin woman with a chronic liver complaint which would have secured her Mr. Pilgrim's entire regard and unreserved good word, even if he had not been ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... his elephant. Finding me on horseback, he got off from his elephant, and mounted his horse, and we rode on till we met the Raja himself, about a mile from our tents. He was on horseback, with a large and splendidly dressed train of followers, all mounted on fine sleek horses, bred in the Raja's own stables. He was mounted on a snow-white steed of his own breeding (and I have rarely seen a finer animal), and dressed in a light suit of silver brocade made to represent the scales of steel armour, surmounted by a gold turban. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... staying in the house of a friend, and had preferred to take him to an hotel in Brook Street, Grosvenor Square. Mr Merdle ordered his carriage to be ready early in the morning that he might wait upon Mr Dorrit immediately after breakfast. Bright the carriage looked, sleek the horses looked, gleaming the harness looked, luscious and lasting the liveries looked. A rich, responsible turn-out. An equipage for a Merdle. Early people looked after it as it rattled along the streets, and said, with awe in ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... gleaming eye, or tear-bedewed face, as the joy and triumph of the eve pierced through their wonted weariness of grief; then the rest of the warriors, and lastly the mingled crowd of Dalesfolk, tall men and fair women gaily arrayed, clean-faced, clear-skinned, and sleek-haired, with ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... handling of his troops on the actual battlefield—were wretched. "We were manoeuvred," says the disgusted Marbot, "like so many pumpkins." Napoleon was only forty-seven years old, but, as Wolseley says, "he was no longer the thin, sleek, active little man he had been at Rivoli. His now bloated face, large stomach, and fat and rounded legs bespoke a man unfitted for hard work on horseback." His fatal delay in pursuing Bluecher on the 17th, and his equally fatal waste of ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... Summers, when the monk was fat, And, issuing shorn and sleek, Would twist his girdle tight, and pat The girls upon ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... Merini, Boda and Brenda and Aelgyvarch, Gwynon and Celynin and Gwynodyl,' (p. 129.) "Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek, That would have ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... with an open front, a forge was glowing. In front a blacksmith was shoeing a horse, a sleek, well-kept animal with the signs of good blood and breeding. A young mulatto stood by and handed the blacksmith such tools as he needed from time to time. A group of negroes were sitting around, some in the shadow of the shop, one ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... for an instant suppose that this is the camp of Jung Bahadoor; his tents are green and red and generally surrounded by soldiers; his horses do not look so sleek and fresh as these; he has not got a barouche belonging to him, far less a piano, and I think I hear the music of one proceeding from yonder large tent.—No—this is an Indian picnic—none of your scrambling, hurried ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... flowers and what not, till no one would know them in their fanciful dress. And here is a country bearing a well-known name, wherein no chill mists press upon our spirits, and no rain falls but what rolls off our backs like April showers off the backs of sleek drakes; where flowers bloom forever and birds are always singing; where every fellow hath a merry catch as he travels the roads, and ale and beer and wine (such as muddle no wits) flow like water ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... sandalled monks, black-habited clerics, black canons, secular and regular, black in face too, some of them, heresy hunters from the neighboring abbey of St. Victor, mingled with the crowd of young and old, grave and gay, beggars and nobles, sleek ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... of the third day they reached their old camp where their things were buried. Here they went into camp again while the Seminole scoured the woods for their ponies. He returned triumphant the second day riding one of the horses and driving the others. The animals were sleek and fat from rich ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... behind a large desk covered with papers. Tuppence felt her previous judgment confirmed. There was something wrong about Mr. Whittington. The combination of his sleek prosperity and his ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... knowledge and wisdom. Before both windows hung, just as then, the dark red silken curtains, only that the sun had partially deprived them of their original coloring and interwoven sickly streaks of yellow. The old sofa, too, was yet in existence with its sleek brown leather covering, and by its side stood the two leather armchairs, with their high, straight backs and awkwardly turned feet. No one had taken the trouble to repair these inroads of dilapidation, and, long as they had been expecting the Electoral Prince, ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... Opal Verron's whole outfit. Not that they were unlovely in form or ungraceful. They were so small they hardly seemed like hands, so undeveloped, so useless, with the dimpling of a baby's, yet the sharp nails of a little beast. They were so plump and well cared for they were fairly sleek, and had an old wise air about them as she patted her puffy curls daintily with a motion all her own that showed her lovely rounded arm, and every needle-pointed shell-tinted finger nail, sleek and puffy, and never ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... honour much, I say, this man's appeal. We drag so deep in our commercial mire, We move so far from greatness, that I feel Exception to be character'd in fire. Who looks for Godlike greatness here shall see The British Goddess, sleek Respectability. ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... a coral beak, her very feet pink—the shyest, most timid little thing alive. Her bright eyes were popping with fear, and down there among the ferns, anemones and last year's dried leaves, she tilted her sleek crested head and peered at him with frightened wonder ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Sleek and fresh, you sit down to dinner in the 'Grande Salle a' Manger.' Graven on your wine-glasses, emblazoned on your soup-plate, are the armorial bearings of the company that shelters you. The College of Arms might sneer at them, be down on them, but to you ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... (among others) to a pair of caricatures, published by Fores on the 9th of January, John Bull in Clover, and (by way of contrast), John Bull Done Over. In the first, fat John is enjoying himself with his pipe and his glass; the sleek condition of his dog shows that it shares in the comforts of its master's prosperity. John, in fact, has what our Transatlantic cousins call "a good time;" scattered over the floor lie invoices of goods despatched by him to customers ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... cooler than Catherwood. He looked and acted no more like the exquisite on the steamboat than did Tom Gordon himself. He was the sleek, cunning, hypocritical villain he had always been, stealing, not because he was in need of money, but because it was his ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... this reconciliation with his uncle, very soon began to grow sleek, and to show signs of the benefits of good living and clean linen. He fasted rigorously twice a week, to be sure; but he made amends on the other days: and, to show how great his appetite was, Mr. Wycherley said, he ended by swallowing that fly-blown ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... cocktails with cobblers; when, being in trade, he would sell you saltpetre, he tries you with flax-seed; when he would buy indigo, he offers you indigo at a sacrifice. Yet, in Asirvadam, if any quality is more noticeable than the sleek respectability of the Baboo, it is the jealous orthodoxy of the Brahmin. If he knows in what presence to step out of his slippers, and when to pick them up again with his toes, in jaunty dandyisms of etiquette, he also makes the most of his insolent order and its patent of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... getting to the surface, in which case he might sink and be lost. We hauled steadily away, the line not coming in very easily, until I judged there was only about another hundred fathoms out. Our amazement may be imagined, when suddenly we were compelled to sleek away again, the sudden weight on the line suggesting that the fish was again sounding. If ever a young hand was perplexed, it was I. Never before had I heard of such unseemly behaviour, nor was my anxiety lessened when I saw, a short distance away, the huge body of my prize at the ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... story of an impregnable fortress two or three times over-garrisoned with patient, haggard soldiers starving in trenches, and sleek, faultlessly dressed officers living off the fat of the land in fashionable hotels ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Mr. Boxsious, contemptuously. "I dispute that point with you at the outset. Why, you've got a good cloth coat, a clean shirt, and a smooth-shaved chin. You've got the sleek look of a man who has slept between sheets and had his breakfast. You can't humbug me about poverty, for I know what it is. Poverty means looking like a scarecrow, feeling like a scarecrow, and getting treated like a scarecrow. That was my luck, let me tell you, when I first thought of trying ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... no mistake, to have a fellow of such villainous character circulating about in this region. I hope I won't be hung for his crime by indignant citizens. I agree with you that this Hubert Vander is a sleek villain, and that hanging is too good for him. It does seem that you made an important ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... pasha was so bumptious or overbearing to his inferiors, but to me and to his mistress while in Cairo he had the gentleness of the dove, and I had engaged him at 5l. per month to accompany me to the White Nile. Men change with circumstances; climate affects the health and temper; the sleek and well-fed dog is amiable, but he would be vicious when thin and hungry; the man in luxury and the man in need are not equally angelic. Now Mahomet was one of those dragomen who are accustomed to the civilized expeditions of the British tourist to the first or second cataract, in a Nile boat ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... took occasion to remonstrate with the sleek-limbed and lightly draped Martha, who chanced to be passing the tavern, carrying a pail of water, in which, as the poet neatly says, "the ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... ladies were followed by the four girls, who came in chattering, and by Mrs. Graham, who, even in evening clothes, with a necklace of diamonds, looked as if she liked dogs. Then came Humphrey, extraordinarily well dressed, his dark hair very sleek; and Dick, very well dressed too, but with less of a town air; and then the Squire, just upon the stroke of eight, obviously looking ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... fountains fell into full white marble basins, white statues gleamed among the leaves, and the pigeons that swept about among the branches or pecked on the smooth, soft gravel were not black and tumbled like the Museum pigeons are now, but bright and clean and sleek as birds of new silver. A good many people were sitting on the seats, and on the grass babies were rolling and kicking and playing—with very little on indeed. Men, as well as women, seemed to be in charge of the babies and were ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... of the bird; but mother Robin, ever on the watch, had discovered her enemy, and flown off just in time to escape. The next scene is a large "dead-fall" trap, nicely set, with the bait placed temptingly within; and before it crouches a sleek marten, peeping into it as if undecided whether to enter ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... the yellow cat. And each of these three minds was so busy with its own thoughts that all of the three tongues were still. Only the yellow cat, having but little mind, and that being soothed into a calm content by Pancha's gentle strokings of her sleek fur, expressed her perfect happiness, and so made talk for the whole party, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... gray with the dust that had settled on his sleek, glossy coat, forged ahead in a noble sprint with head on a level with its back, nose reaching for ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... of the great Eater-of-Men! A white slave so sleek to dance the dance of the ants! Eh! We'll slit up his nostrils and pull out his hairs! A white slave and four black ones to wait on one great chief! The son of Banyala! Ough! ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... which bend toward one another like gossips who would swap whispered confidences, is a strip of sky. Below are smells of age and dampness. And there is a rich, nutritious garlicky smell too; and against a jog in the wall a frowsy but picturesque rag-picker is asleep on a pile of sacks, with a big sleek cat asleep on his breast. I do not guarantee the rag-picker. He and his cat may have moved since I was there and saw them, although they had the look about them ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... were hers, adapted by her native logic to fit within the bounds of possibility,—though I must admit they bulged here and there and threatened to overlap and to encroach upon the impossible. Over the hills where her father's vast herds grazed, sleek and wild and long-horned and prone to stampede, galloped the Lorraine of Lorraine's dreams, on horses sure-footed and swift. With her galloped strong men whose faces limned the features of ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... witch-wife, and received us joyously; clad was she all gloriously in red scarlet broidered and begemmed; her arms bare and her feet sandalled, and her yellow hair hanging down from under its garland; and certainly it was so that she had grown fairer, and was sleek and white and well-shapen, and well-haired; yet by all that, the visage of her was little bettered, and ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... but Warrington stubbornly refused to look back upon this day either with shame or regret. Jab-jab, cut and slash! went the left. There was no more mercy in the mind back of it than might be found in the sleek felines who stalked the jungles north. Doggedly Mallow fought on, hoping for his chance. He tried every trick he knew, but he could only get so near. The ring was as wide as the world; there were no corners to make ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... of the column rode a squadron of gendarmes—the policemen of the army—gorgeous in uniforms of bottle-green and silver and mounted on sleek and shining horses. After them came the infantry: solid columns of grey-clad figures with the silhouettes of the mounted officers rising at intervals above the forest of spike- crowned helmets. After the infantry came the field artillery, the big guns rattling and rumbling over the cobblestones, ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... fortunate that the Indians came. They helped me to build corrals, big enough to give the reindeer plenty of pasturage and pretty soon they were fat and sleek." ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... garrulous banter of Eugene Thrush, at his best, it was impossible to encounter or incur; he had been, however, for a few minutes at his worst, and it was difficult to see why the pendulum should have swung so suddenly to the other extreme. Mullins went about his business with his usual sleek solemnity. But Thrush was yet another man the moment he was alone. His face was a sunny background for ideas, misgivings, and half-formed plans, one after the other, whirling like clouds across a crimson sky. But the sky was clear whenever Mullins was in the room. And at the breakfast-table ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... trim, tidy,neat, spruce, smart, tricksy[obs3]. bright, bright eyed; rosy cheeked, cherry cheeked; rosy, ruddy; blooming, in full bloom. brilliant, shining; beamy[obs3], beaming; sparkling, splendid, resplendent, dazzling, glowing; glossy, sleek. rich, superb, magnificent, grand, fine, sublime, showy, specious. artistic, artistical[obs3]; aesthetic; picturesque, pictorial; fait a peindre[Fr]; well-composed, well grouped, well varied; curious. enchanting &c. (pleasure-giving) 829; becoming &c. (accordant) 23; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... transpired, for a commotion at the gate attracted the attention of all. A small detachment of soldiers was advancing, at a leisurely pace, headed by a young officer whose arms blazed with gold and silver. No Hannibalian veterans these. As they came near, even Marcia could note the sleek, soft look of the men, and their listless, muscleless gait; while their leader's hair and person literally reeked with perfumes. His eyes turned slowly from the huge Gaul to the woman; then a flash ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... back, save that the fine delicate muscles moved and crept under the silken suit as she strove to keep her head above water. Her slim round arms were twined in yards of half-drowned stallion-mane, while her white round knees slipped on the sleek, wet, satin pads of the great horse's straining shoulder muscles. The white toes of her dug for a grip into the smooth sides of the animal, vainly seeking a hold on the ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... Street was like any High Street of a small Cathedral town in the early evening. The pavements were sleek and shiny after the rain; people were walking with the air of being unusually pleased with the world, always the human expression when the storms have withdrawn and there is peace and colour in the sky. There were lights ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... to see that the best way to capture Alce was to make herself as unlike her sister as possible. With him she was like a little soft cat, languid and sleek, or else delicately playful. She appealed to his protecting strength, and in time made him realize that she was unhappy in her home life and suffered under her sister's tyranny. She had hoped that this might help detach him from ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... square there were endless rows of carts drawn up, and behind the carts, horses of every possible kind: racers, stud-horses, dray horses, cart-horses, posting-hacks, and simple peasants' nags. Some fat and sleek, assorted by colours, covered with striped horse- cloths, and tied up short to high racks, turned furtive glances backward at the too familiar whips of their owners, the horse-dealers; private owners' horses, sent by noblemen of the steppes a ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... "Why didn't you jump over the fence—I think you COULD—and run, run, to freedom?" She grew quite melodramatic over the humiliation of the horse she had chosen to champion, and glared resentfully when Chip threw his saddle, with no gentle hand, upon the sleek back and tightened the cinches with ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... as straight as an arrow, and walk as queens walk in fairy stories; they have great braids of sleek, black hair, soft brown eyes, and gleaming white teeth; they can swim and ride and sing; and they are brown with a skin that shines like bronze ... There isn't a worried woman in Hawaii. The women there ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... "Skilly" being taken on the regimental strength, our canteen was the paradise of a battalion of mice, from whose nightly raids nothing was sacred. But from the day "Skilly" enlisted the marauders became less and less obtrusive. And "Skilly" grew sleek. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... cunning, and thrust their heads suicidally into any danger; and even so it fared with the 'black man,' as the girls, in their first terror, declared him to be. Some fellow's gun went off—of itself I should like to believe—but the whole charge disappeared into his sleek round visage, knocking the mackerel from between his teeth; and he turned over, a ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... confidence of the vain and empty-headed Jeames, Bucket declares that his own father was successively a page, a footman, a butler, a steward, and an innkeeper. As Bucket moves along London streets, young men, with shining hats and sleek hair, evaporate at the monitory touch of his cane. When there is a big job on the tapis "Bucket and his fat forefinger are much in consultation together. When Mr. Bucket has a matter of this pressing interest under consideration the fat forefinger seems to rise to ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... Percy Shanklyn was a sleek, suave, unpleasant youth who had been imported by a theatrical manager two years before to play the part of an English dude in a new comedy. The comedy had been what its enthusiastic backer had described ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... a tall, well-made figure, a face clean-shaven and deeply sun-burnt, and under the lifted hat caught a glimpse of sleek black hair. But when she saw his eyes, she knew his name, for they were the ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... in view, he laid himself flat in the road over which the fisherman must pass and pretended to be dead. The fisherman beheld him with surprise when he drew near, and jumping from his seat poked his sleek sides with his whip. The fox did not move a muscle, and Truvor decided that he had been frozen to death by the cold of the ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... "sauer-kraut" she sells you, the landlady tells you That there, in those walls all roofless and bare, One Simon, a Deacon, from a lean grew a sleek one On filling a ci-devant ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... had risen for no quality but his ruffianism; and Fouquier Tinville, the son of a provincial agriculturist, and afterwards a clerk at the bureau of the police, was little less base in his manners, and yet more, from a certain loathsome buffoonery, revolting in his speech; bull-headed, with black, sleek hair, with a narrow and livid forehead, and small eyes that twinkled with sinister malice; strongly and coarsely built, he looked what he was, the audacious bully of a lawless and ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... Dantzic, Carl, and Krantz, all the annoyances which threatened him. He was absorbed in his pursuit, and Marguerite was looking over with her attention not less absorbed than his own, when to their astonishment the magnificent carriage, with the heavy, sleek, overfed horses, of the Count Albrecht, rolled up to ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... peoples, which were formerly included, that are now being gradually disassociated, especially the Australians and the Veddahs, whose hair, by means of special care, appears quite wavy if not entirely sleek and smooth. Generally it is frowzy and matted, so that its natural form is difficult to recognize. To it is wanting the chief peculiarity, which obtrudes itself in the African blacks so characteristically that the compact spiral form which it assumes from its root, the so-called ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... table covered with picture-papers, soft Japanese books, and writing-materials. He was in his stocking-feet and shirt-sleeves, and his mental efforts appeared to have had a confusing effect on his usually sleek black hair, which stood all ways distractedly, while his sleepy eyes blinked ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... fine mustard-seed or robin, but the heavy duck-shot, that will enter at twenty rods. That is the kind for pigeons, their feathers are so compact; for if you fire at them flying, you might as well toss turnip-seed at them as to shoot fine shot that will glance from their sleek ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... me a muffler to tie round my neck and lower part of my face and, with that greasy hat pulled down over my eyes and in those worn and shrunken clothes, I must say I looked a pretty villainous person, the very antithesis of the sleek, well-dressed young fellow that had entered the flat ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... parlor-maid, in a tone which implied that she was accustomed to his name. He looked about the age of an undergraduate and was extraordinarily well-groomed, in spite of, or perhaps because of, being in a riding-dress. His sleek dark hair was neatly parted in the middle and he was clean shaven, when to be so smacked of the stage; but his manners and expression smacked of nothing ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... across the rocks again, side by side. While they stood over the prostrate form of the leopard—beautiful, incomparably graceful and sleek even in death—Guy Oscard stole a sidelong glance at his companion. He was a modest man, and yet he knew that he was reckoned among the big-game hunters of the age. This man had fired as quickly as himself, and there were ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... in this land of difficulties survives with a zeal and vitality which only proves the strength of the obstacles overcome. The flies, the mosquitoes, and the rats are proofs. We have none of your meek little wharf rats here. Ours are brazen imps, sleek and shameless, undaunted by cats or men. Their footmarks are as big as those of young puppies (withal not too well-fed puppies), and their raids on man and beast alike ally them with the horde Pandora loosed. Each day the toll mounts. One morning Miss Perrin, the head ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... soiled with the stain of labour, I don't care how refined or how honest it is, never by any chance find themselves at the mahogany board of aristocracy. Coat-sleeves bearing the finger-marks of honourable industry could not safely rub against the sleek broadcloth of high-life unless by sacrificing some of their beautiful (?) hieroglyphics and forfeiting to some extent the reputations they have earned ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... gentleman but as wise as Solomon's aunt. Talk to him like a sweet little boy, and then come back to the Legation and stop with us while you see something of the war. I can take you to within one hundred and fifty miles of the firing line and show you the crack regiments of Germany looking as happy and sleek as if they were merely out for one of the yearly manoeuvres. I would have difficulty, though, in showing you any of the wounded, as they are very careful to see that we are not offended by any of the horrors that one reads of in the ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... said sleek Silas, rising up and looking round upon the auditory. "If she will return, I will ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren |
