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More "Supple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... departed in de Beze's case from his usual habits. He never loved him, for this harsh legislator totally ignored all friendship, but, not fearing him in the light of a successor, he liked to play with Theodore as Richelieu played with his cat; he found him supple and agile. Seeing how admirably de Beze succeeded in all his missions, he took a fancy to the polished instrument of which he knew himself the mainspring and the manipulator; so true is it that the ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... appointed, the combatants met, and each took the customary oath that he bore no charms or amulets about him, or made use of any magic, to aid him against his antagonist. They then attacked each other, sword in hand. La Chataigneraie was a strong robust man, and over confident; De Jarnac was nimble, supple, and prepared for the worst. The combat lasted for some time doubtful, until De Jarnac, overpowered by the heavy blows of his opponent, covered his head with his shield, and, stooping down, endeavoured to make amends by his agility for his deficiency of strength. In this crouching posture he aimed ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... the hall, the Colonel tried to frown over his glasses, but he was only partially successful. She was too satisfying a sight with her shining hair and eyes, and lithe, supple figure, every motion of which bespoke that quick, unconscious freedom of body peculiar to children and those favored of the gods, ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... leaves to the sunshine in an ever-moving plain of bewildering beauty. These willows never attain to the dignity of trees; they have no rigid trunks; they remain humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft outline, swaying on slender stems that answer to the least pressure of the wind; supple as grasses, and so continually shifting that they somehow give the impression that the entire plain is moving and alive. For the wind sends waves rising and falling over the whole surface, waves of leaves instead of waves of water, ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... fanciers, and have become few in number owing to the obvious fact that it is impossible to make pets of them or keep them in the house. The reason of this is that the coat must, from time to time, be oiled in order to keep the cords supple and prevent them from snapping, and, of course, as their coats cannot be brushed, the only way of keeping the dog clean is to wash him, which with a corded Poodle is a lengthy and laborious process. Further, the coat takes hours to dry, and unless ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... sweet Enough to die. When she broke off the dance, Turning round short and soft-I never saw Such supple ways of walking as ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... corduroy; elation was in her face; her waist, as she stepped, showed supple as a willow; her suede-gloved little hands were compact and tempting to his grasp. His senses breathed the air of her perfect and compelling femininity. But sharper than all these impressions rang the words of the worldly-wise ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... had been at all decent about it, she would have forgiven me at once; but, ah me! I never saw her move so quickly as when she went out the back door and broke off a supple green apple switch. After making most vigorous use of it she sent me to my room, with the remark, 'It fortunately comes ...
— Harper's Young People, July 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... birth and education, Greek also in subtle thought and philosophic insight, in oratorical power and supple statesmanship. Though born almost within the shadow of the mighty temple of Serapis at Alexandria, he shows few signs of Coptic influence. Deep as is his feeling of the mystery of revelation, he has no love of mystery for its own sake, nothing of the Egyptian passion ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... people nor city, behind it. Russia's mightiest adversary, Napoleon, knew the character of the race more intimately than its idol, Napoleon's adroit flatterer and false friend, the Czar Alexander, knew it; yet the enthusiast of Valerie, supple and calculating even in his mysticism, is still the noblest representative of the oppressive ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... down in a country village for the rest of my very unnatural life, but I'll be shot if I'll regulate mine or my wife'& behaviour by the twaddle they talk! I'll have that dagger." Slipping it slowly into its sheath he watched it travel home, the supple female curve gliding and yielding as a woman yields to a man's caress. "Voluptuous, I call it. Under the left breast, eh?" He drew it again and held it poised and pointing at his cousin. "Come, even I could cut your heart out with a gem ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... gesture of indifference and moved away slowly and listlessly, as though fatigued by the mere effort of speech. Miss Leigh noted this with some concern, watching her as she went, and admiring the supple grace of her small figure, the well-shaped little head so proudly poised on the slim throat, and the burnished sheen ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... able to scratch or fight to-day, or I wouldn't let you cover me up with this heap of gold; but I've got a rheumatic creak in my neck, which makes me physically stiff and morally supple and unprincipled, so I've put two pounds sixteen in my own "till," where it just fills up some lowering of the tide lately by German bands and the like, and I've put ten pounds aside for Sheffield Museum, now in instant mendicity, and I've ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... drives men to strong drink; the rosy Orient lures to the dream splendors of the lotus. The big-bodied, white-skinned northern dweller, rude and ferocious, bellows his anger uncouthly and drives a gross fist into the face of his foe. The supple south-sojourner, silken of smile and lazy of gesture, waits, and does his work from behind, when no man looketh, gracefully and without offence. Their ends are one; the difference lies in their ways, and therein the climate, and the cumulative effect thereof, is the determining factor. Both ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... breeze!' he answered. My sensations this morning were vastly livelier than those of yesterday at the same hour. My limbs were supple again and my head clear. Not even the searching wind could mar the ecstasy of that plunge down to smooth, seductive sand, where I buried greedy fingers and looked through a medium blue, with that translucent blue, fairy-faint and angel-pure, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... he continued, after silent thought, "that in these cases the Virgin acts upon us, it is she who moulds and places us in the hands of her Son, but her fingers are so light, so supple, so caressing, that the soul they have handled has ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... and Wus the still park permeate; The los and pis their sweet perfume enhance; And supple charms the third spring flowers ornate; Softly is wafted one streak of fragrance! A light mist doth becloud the tortuous way! With moist the clothes bedews, that verdure cold! The pond who ever sinuous could hold? Dreams long and subtle, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... years, but that the interval between one session and another should not exceed that period. But this wise law, which had passed by acclamation during the reign of Charles I., and for which even Clarendon had voted, was regarded by Charles II. as subversive of the liberty of his crown; and a supple, degenerate and ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... who has ever dared to twist his tail is his brother-in-law, the Cap'n," said Odbar Broadway, oracularly, to the leaders who had met in his store to canvass the political situation. "The Cap'n won't be as supple as some in town office, but he ain't no more hell 'n' repeat than what we've been used to for the last twenty years. He's wuth thutty thousand dollars, and Gid Ward can't foreclose no mo'gidge on him nor club him with no bill o' sale. He's the only prominunt man ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... and acute diseases, in their severest forms, we have changed the secretions, renewed structure, and restored health; have elongated shortened limbs, relaxed rigid muscles, made cicatrized joints supple; restored carious bones to healthy conditions, renewed that which is termed the lost substance of the lungs; and restored healthy organizations where disease was organic instead ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... take down the Epistles of Erasmus, and turn to the letters which the great Humanist of Rotterdam wrote from Cambridge and London four hundred years ago when young Henry VIII had just suddenly (in 1514) plunged into war. One reads them to-day with vivid interest, for here in the supple and sensitive brain of the old scholar we see mirrored precisely the same thoughts and the same problems which exercise the more scholarly brains of to-day. Erasmus, as his Pan-German friends liked to remind ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... struck and returned, keen and sudden as lightning. The 'hammer of the Scots,' wielded by the English kings, had smitten, and under its blows the race had been welded together and wrought to a temper like steel, supple upon occasion to bend, but elastic and unbreakable, and with a sharp ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... he, with a courtesy that sat well on the supple shape and the dark beauty of the boy, whose homely garb, whose poverty, and whose profession seemed only the disguise of some young prince,—and sipped the wine, and broke the fine, white bread, while his cheek was scarlet ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... different fashion. She had now taken off her straw hat; the curly crop of a brown mane gave the brilliant face an added accent of vigor. The chien de race was the dominant note now in the muscular, supple body, the keen-edged nostrils, and the intent gaze of the liquid eyes. These latter were fixed with the fixity of a savage on Charm. She was giving, in a sweet sibilant murmur, the man seated next her—Monsieur d'Agreste, the man who refused ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... nothing but to look at, it gave you a sensation of heavy pressure on the top of your head and an impression of magnificently cynical untidiness. She leaned forward, hugging herself with crossed legs; a dingy, amber- coloured, flounced wrapper of some thin stuff revealed the young supple body drawn together tensely in the deep low seat as if crouching for a spring. I detected a slight, quivering start or two, which looked uncommonly like bounding away. They were followed by the most ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... frame of Greaves seemed to contract and burst. His spring was that of an animal in terror and agony. It was so tremendous that it broke Jean's hold. Greaves let out a strangled yell that cleared, swelling wildly, with a hideous mortal note. He wrestled free. The big knife came out. Supple and swift, he got to his, knees. He had his gun out when Jean reached him again. Like a bear Jean enveloped him. Greaves shot, but he could not raise the gun, nor twist it far enough. Then Jean, letting go with his right arm, swung the bowie. Greaves's strength went out in an awful, hoarse cry. ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... on her pretty supple shoulder. "Hold your tongue, you wretched creature. I'll give you worse than that! If that scoundrel dares to show himself here ever again, if I see you— listen!—with that blackguard ever again, don't ask for ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... strong and supple as a tiger, had advanced from the opposite wood, and, unmindful of a bitch and her puppies, seated himself in the middle of the terrace. As he sat tidying his coat the puppies conceived the foolish idea of a gambol with him. The cat continued to lick himself, though no doubt fully aware of the ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... its dizzy din; Beneath that stern regard the chewing-gum Which writhed and squeaked between the teeth is dumb; Obedient to his will the dunce-cap flies To perch upon the brows of the unwise; The supple switch forsakes the parent wood To settle where 'twill do the greatest good, Puissant still, as when of old it strove With Solomon for spitting on the stove Learned Professor, variously great, Guide, guardian, instructor ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... forces and brought him crashing to the ground. The sword was in my hand and shortened, the point was at his throat, when my arm was jerked backwards. A moment, and half a dozen hands had dragged me from the man beneath me, and a supple savage had passed a thong of deerskin around my arms and pinioned them to my sides. The game was up; there remained only to pay the ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... were amazed to see her spring up into an apple-tree and cling to a bough lightly as a bird. She snatched at the fruit, ate it, and dropped to the ground with the same supple grace that charms us in a squirrel. The elasticity of her limbs took all appearance of awkwardness or effort from her movements. She played about upon the grass, rolling in it as a young child might have done; then, on a sudden, she lay still and stretched out her feet and ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... manage him. I felt my advantage at once. His supple nature was one which yielded to roughness far more readily than to entreaty. He flushed with shame, and his eyes filled with tears. But MacCoy saw my advantage also, and was determined that I should not ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... said the sage, as he shook his gray locks, "I kept all my limbs very supple By the use of this ointment—one shilling the box— Allow me to ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... danger threatened, to be called out, in marching- order, to the field of battle. But by this time the pistols were in the hands of the two infatuated young men, Mr Bloatsheet, as fierce as a hussar dragoon, and Magneezhy as supple in the knees as if he was all on oiled hinges; so the next consideration was to get well out of the way, the lookers-on running nearly as great a chance of being shot as the principals, they not being accustomed, like me for instance, to the use of arms; on which account, I scougged myself behind ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... regard it as quite unimportant. Their good nature, freed from all taint of snobbishness and from the fear of seeming too friendly, grown independent, in fact, has the ease, the grace of movement of a trained gymnast each of whose supple limbs will carry out precisely the movement that is required without any clumsy participation by the rest of his body. The simple and elementary gestures used by a man of the world when he courteously holds out his hand to the unknown youth who is being introduced to him, and when ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... we want no assistance, as you say. I am his match, myself, if that were all; but it is not strength which is required. He is as little and supple as an eel, and as difficult to hold, that I am certain of. If we were to use our rifles, there would be no difficulty, but to hold him would give some trouble to two of us, and if once he breaks loose, he will be too fleet for ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... course, to some extent, to the Mamelucos, who now constitute a great proportion of the population. The inflexibility of character of the Indian, and his total inability to accommodate himself to new arrangements, will infallibly lead to his extinction, as immigrants, endowed with more supple organisations, increase, and civilisation advances in the Amazon region. But, as the different races amalgamate readily, and the offspring of white and Indian often become distinguished Brazilian citizens, there is little reason to regret ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... all the way Advised thy servant what to do and say; These taught him at the well, and thither brought The chaste and lovely object of thy thought. But here was ne'er a compliment, not one Spruce, supple cringe, or studied look put on. All was plain, modest truth: nor did she come In rolls and curls, mincing and stately dumb; But in a virgin's native blush and fears, Fresh as those roses which the day-spring ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... fingers, slipping across my palm like a belt of silk. It glided with the noiseless haste of a thing in flight. Quite naturally, even in the dazed moment of awakening I closed my hand upon it. It was soft in my grasp, yet resilient; solid, yet supple. If I may speak irrationally, it felt as if it must be fragrant. It was a strange visitor to my experience, yet I recognized its identity unerringly as a blind man gaining sight might identify a flower or a bird. In ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... lustrous satins, broken by folds into many tints, delicate laces, elaborate embroideries, gleaming jewels—these are the never-failing accessories of his compositions. Yet while he loved rich draperies, he was also a careful student of the nude. Examples of his work range from the supple and youthful torso of Icarus to the huge muscular body of the beggar receiving St. Martin's cloak. The modelling of the Saviour's body in the Crucifixion and the Pieta shows both scientific knowledge and ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... preparatory sketch of a large work. It is too imperfect to allow us to judge of what Gibbon even designed to make of it. But it contains some masterly pages, and the style in many places seems more nervous and supple than that ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... a fair amount of climbing up iron ladders can be achieved by an active man in a ship's engine-room, but I remember moments when even to my supple limbs and pride of nimbleness the sailing- ship's machinery seemed to reach up to ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... from the mill, Which floor upon floor many windowed shall blaze And light up each bud in the crown with its rays. We shall have out that carriage, so costly and grand, Fit to carry the one Royal Prince in this land; And a crowd bearing torches shall light up the way, Till along Supple's lane be as brillant as day And to guard and escort him our brave volunteers With their swords and their bayonets, which ought to be spears, Shall wait at the landing for him, and the band With the noise and the music they have at command, Shall be heard in the distance before they are ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... the latter field still being preserved—and she united with these a rare physical beauty. M. Leroy, Keeper of the Park of Versailles, thus describes her at the time of her meeting with the King: "She was taller than the average, graceful, supple, and elegant. Her features comported well with her stature, a perfect oval face, framed by beautiful hair of a light shade, large eyes marked by eyebrows of the same hue, a perfect nose, a charming ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... them, and then is the moment when the angler must follow the fish at the top of his speed. To stand still, or to go cautiously in pursuit, is to allow the salmon to run out with an enormous length of line; the line is submerged—technically speaking, drowned—in the water, the strain of the supple rod is removed from the fish, who finds the hook loose in his mouth, and rubs it off against the bottom of the river. Thus speed of foot, in water or over rocks, is a necessary quality in the angler; at least in the northern angler. By the banks of the Usk a contemplative man who ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... it had been the instrument of uncommon strength and wielded an authority that none could stand against. Her fancy wandered over the scenes it had known; when it had felled trees in the wild forest, and those fingers, then supple and slight, had played the fife to the struggling men of the Revolution; how its activity had outdone the activity of all other hands in clearing and cultivating those very fields where her feet loved to run; how in its pride of strength it had handled the scythe and the sickle ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... from under his cap, fell in jetty curls over his white brow, his eyes, that had a golden gleam in them, shone out with a dazzling brilliance. He possessed the arms of Hercules and the hands of a Nymph. His shoulders were broad, and his figure slim and supple. He was well skilled in breaking difficult horses and wielding heavy weapons, and a peerless rider at the ring. Whenever he passed along the city streets to hear Mass at San Giovanni or San Michele, or walked by Arno side in the water-meadows, that were pranked with flowers ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... a physique that was naturally strong. In his nineteenth year he was six feet in height, and measured thirty-nine inches round the chest. He had exceptionally broad shoulders. Not an ounce of superfluous flesh weighed on the sinewy, supple frame. There was about him the fragrance, radiant vitality and ease of poise that are characteristic of the athlete in ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... enthusiasm or austere rectitude; and the relations between Charles and Lewis were such that no English nobleman could long reside in France as envoy, and retain any patriotic or honourable sentiment. Sunderland came forth from the bad school in which he had been brought up, cunning, supple, shameless, free from all prejudices, and destitute of all principles. He was, by hereditary connection, a Cavalier: but with the Cavaliers he had nothing in common. They were zealous for monarchy, and condemned in theory all resistance. Yet they had ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... as though the cotton jacket had been made for a larger woman. If she seemed tired, and if a stranger might have guessed that her head ached until the chestnut curls were too heavy for it, she was still supple. And, as she whipped the pony into an unwilling trot and old mission-named Joanna broke into a jog behind, revolt—no longer impatience, or discontent, or sorrow, ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... consequence I have made it my business to study them even as I have studied men. But this woman who sat under the sacred snakes in her golden half-castle on the mammoth's back, fairly baffled me. Of her thoughts I could read no single syllable. I could see a body slight, supple, and beautifully moulded; in figure rather small. Her face was a most perfect book of cleverness, yet she was fair, too, beyond belief, with hair of a lovely ruddiness, cut short in the new fashion, and bunching on her shoulders. And eyes! Gods! who could plumb the depths of ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... Amru rose, went closer to him, and said "And you will seek them in vain, my young friend; nor, if you found them, could you use them. It is easier to hit a woman, an eel, a soaring bird, than these supple, weak, unarmed, robed creatures, who have love and peace on their tongues and use their physical helplessness as a defence, aiming invisible but poisoned darts at those they hate—at you first and foremost, Son of the Mukaukas; I know it and I advise you: Be on your guard! If indeed manly revenge ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... both, to me, deeply interesting. One of them, Albert Moore, an unbending upholder of the sufficiency in art of whatever is nobly decorative, was a devoted student of the severer graces of Hellenic art, and married in his works spontaneous and supple gesture with forms of chaste sobriety, clothing them in delicately harmonious tones, of which the studied arrangement announced to the first glance the refined idiosyncrasy of his artistic temper. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... of his greatness and the exercise of his power. Without faith in God, despising men, loving and thinking only of himself, distrusting all around him, audacious in design, immovable in resolution, inexorable in execution, merciless in vengeance, by turns insolent, humble, violent, or supple according to circumstances, always and entirely logical in his egotism, he is Cesar Borgia reborn as a Mussulman; he is the incarnate ideal of Florentine policy, the Italian prince converted ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Vaermland polska is the most wonderful dance. It transforms the heavy-footed sons of earth. Without a sound soles an inch thick float over the unplaned barn floor. They whirl about, light as leaves in an autumn wind. It is supple, quick, silent, gliding. Its noble, measured movements set the body free and let it feel itself light, ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... tied a rope to the chain of the handcuffs. This done, they passed the rope through a hole in the top of a high post behind me, and by tugging at it, strained my arms upward in a way that, had I been less supple, would certainly have broken them. When all their strength combined could not stretch me another inch without tearing my body to pieces, they made the rope fast, and I remained half suspended, and feeling as if all the bones ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... was! The sunlight, gleaming through the tops of the trees in long slanting rays, played like fire upon her red-gold hair; and the plain black gown, which yielded easily to her graceful movements, seemed to show every line of her supple yet delicate figure. She came nearer still, so near that he could trace the faint blue veins in her forehead, and once more recall the peculiar color of her eyes. Then he spoke to her, raising his hand with a suddenly returning ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sure enough, he spied her for whom he waited,—the tall, long limbed, supple-waisted creature—whose skin was pink and gold like the peaches and apricots in the garden, and with soft, little rings of hair that would have made such an excellent lining to a nest. From this strictly utilitarian point ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... day. They never went out together. He would stay in bed late, while Wanda bought what they needed for the day's meals; lying on his back, hands clasped behind his head, recalling her face, the movements of her slim, rounded, supple figure, robing itself before his gaze; feeling again the kiss she had left on his lips, the gleam of her soft eyes, so strangely dark in so fair a face. In a sort of trance he would lie till she came back. Then get up to breakfast about noon off things which ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... put on a riding-habit, which revealed the lines of her supple figure, and a wide-brimmed felt hat, which encircled her lovely face and auburn hair, and sat down to her writing-desk, at which she wrote to her uncle, M. d'Aigleroche, a farewell letter to be delivered to ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... bone and muscle, is a magnificent animal. The gods forgot little of their old-time cunning in the making of him, in the forging of his shoulders, massive as a bull's withers, in the shaping of his limbs, sturdy as pillars of granite and supple as willows, in the setting of his well-poised head, his heavy jaw, (p. 055) and muscled neck. But the gods seem to have grown weary of a momentous masterpiece when they came to the man's eyes, and Goliath wears glasses. For all that he is a good marksman ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... waltz was over I threw myself on a chair; my heart beat wildly. "O, Heaven!" I murmured, "how can it be possible! O, superb monster! O, beautiful reptile! How you writhe, how you coil in and out, sweet adder, with supple and spotted skin! Thy cousin the serpent has taught thee to coil about the tree of life, holding between thy lips the apple of temptation. O, Melusina! Melusina! The hearts of men are thine. You know it well, enchantress, with your ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... table. "A thin, wiry, sallow-faced man; black-haired, black-eyed, supple as an eel, cunning as a cat; a scholar and travelled gentleman, who might easily be a cut-throat; one who professes the old faith, and swears by the ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... sure-footed as any mountaineer. His clothes were old, so neither rock nor sea could do them much harm; his feet were bare. He was short but very broad, and his muscles were strong and supple. When he came to the foot of the rock he stood a moment, hunting for the deepest pool at its base, then, loosing his hold, he ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... the Jew when he came to look upon him to save him—"As for thy nativity," says God, "in the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to supple thee; thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all. None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field, to the loathing of thy person, in the day that thou wast born. And when I ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... a swift runner; he wished to out-distance the artist, and ran with all his might. As he turned around he saw the artist catching up with Katiousha, but with her supple limbs she gained on him and ran to the left. In front of them was a patch of lilac bushes, behind which no one ran, but Katiousha, turning toward Nekhludoff, motioned him with her head to join her there. He understood her, and ran behind the bushes. But here was ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... the Birch canoe was builded In the valley, by the river, In the bosom of the forest; All its mystery and its magic, All the brightness of the birch tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the larch trees supple sinews; And it floated on the river Like a yellow leaf in ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... into a course of wonder concerning the pretty little structure she beheld. Structure was not the proper word for it at all; for it seemed to have grown from the nature around, with a little aid of human hands to guide it. Branches of sea-willow radiant with spring, and supple sprays of tamarisk recovering from the winter, were lightly inwoven and arched together, with the soft compliance of reed and rush from the marsh close by, and the stout assistance of hazel rods from the westward cliff. The back was afforded by a grassy hillock, with a tuft or two of ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... spare form, that curl-crowned head, the knitting Of supple hands behind it as he sat, That quaint face-wrinkling smile like sunshine flitting, The droll, dry ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... the Birch Canoe was builded In the valley, by the river, In the bosom of the forest; And the forest's life was in it, All its mystery and its magic, 100 All the lightness of the birch-tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the larch's supple sinews; And it floated on the river, Like a yellow leaf in Autumn, 105 ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... bears health upon its wings, and sometimes breathes softly as an infant's breath, and sometimes sweeps with irresistible power. He comes as the 'Oil,' gently flowing, lubricating, making every joint supple, nourishing. He comes as the 'Water of Life,' refreshing, vitalising, quickening all growth. He comes fluttering down as the Dove of God, the bird of peace that will brood upon our hearts. The predicates which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Indian eyes to gaze upon. Tall as was the woman, comely in her maturing years, she was left dwarfed beside the youthful manhood she had watched grow from its earliest days. The young man had the erect, supple, muscular body of a trained athlete and the face of the mother who had long since been laid to rest in the woods of the Sleeper Indians. He had moreover the strength of the father's unspoiled character, and all the ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... idle, childless existence Iambe was much, very much, to her, and now as she saw her faithful companion and friend creep ill-treated and whining up to her bed—as the supple animal tried in vain to spring up and take refuge in her lap, and held out to his mistress his trembling, perhaps broken, little paw, fear vanished from the miserable young woman's heart—she sprang ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... but do tell me strange stories of the faults of Cooper his master, put in by me, which I do not believe, but am sorry to hear and must take some course to have him removed, though I believe that the Captain is proud, and the fellow is not supple enough to him. So to my office again to set down my Journall, and so home and to bed. This evening my boy Waynman's brother was with me, and I did tell him again that I must part with the boy, for I will not keep him. He desires ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... 'Who then, sir?' 'Black cap!' If Black cap, then, doesn't say 'Is it me, sir?' before the priest has time to call him, he must put his hand on his ham, and get a pelt of the brogue. A body must be supple with the tongue ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... encircled those soft yielding shoulders; the warm agitated bosom was touching mine; my hands held, and felt within it, the smooth muscles of the white arm—a vision of the whole indefinably supple form swam giddily before me in a suffocating proximity, till I pressed my hands on my eyes, and the ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... I, and I was sorry for it when I went to typewriting. The fingers have to be light and supple and quick. Come with me, and I'll show ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... looking at the Jersey hills, blue and fair in the distance, and dreaming of Helen, who was to bless and crown my good fortune, when I heard a step at the door and a young man came in—a tall, blonde, supple fellow not much older than I. Then the Judge appeared, ponderous, slow of tread, immaculate of dress; the same, unless his iron-gray locks have retreated yet farther from his wall of a brow, that I have remembered ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... Touch has its ecstasies. The hands of people of strong individuality and sensitiveness are wonderfully mobile. In a glance of their finger-tips they express many shades of thought. Now and again I touch a fine, graceful, supple-wristed hand which spells with the same beauty and distinction that you must see in the handwriting of some highly cultivated people. I wish you could see how prettily little children spell in my hand. They are wild ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... almost decay'd, Trudges to town, and first turns chambermaid; Awkward and supple, each devoir to pay, She flatters her good lady twice a-day; Thought wondrous honest, though of mean degree, And strangely liked for her simplicity: In a translated suit, then tries the town, With borrow'd ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... conventional phrases which she scarcely answered, and then nothing was heard but the sounds of the sickle and the corn. She worked steadily for some time, and he looked up at her at intervals with her round bare arms and supple waist and firm-set foot and tight red stocking. Two butterflies tumbling in the air played around her sun bonnet and a lady-clock ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... They must not only be born again but they must be born again each one of them of a new father and of a new mother and of a different line of ancestry for many generations before their minds could become supple enough to learn anew. The only thing to do with them was to humour them and make the best of them till they died—and be thankful ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... and placed just inside the door-way, where the light of the saloon lamps shown athwart the countenance of my self-constituted physician. He was a young man, and looked younger than his years; slightly built, though possessing a supple, well-knit frame, with hands of an elegant shape, fine texture, and great expression. You saw at a glance that he had a poet's head, and a poet's sensitiveness of face; but it was only after observation that you saw how ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... all the fairies and nymphs, noted for the shortness of her filmy skirts, the supple beauty of her shapely limbs, her incomparable dancing, and her dark, bright beauty, flashed ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... later did Betty exactly understand her roommate's sudden devotion to parallel bars, ropes, the running track, and breathing exercises. But in time she did thoroughly appreciate the results of this physical training. Helen Chase Adams was never exactly "a marvel of grace"; but she was erect and supple, with considerable poise and dignity of bearing, when she ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... tak' a grip o' the rod, my lad," said the forester; and, catching the long supple wand from the boy's hand, he stood thinking for a few moments winding in a few ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... had torn the hands of Antinous, so did the bow tear and strain his hands, and marred his delicate fingers, yet could he not once stir the string. Then called he to the attendants to bring fat and unctuous matter, which melting at the fire, he dipped the bow therein, thinking to supple it and make it more pliable; but not with all the helps of art could he succeed in making it to move. After him Liodes, and Amphinomus, and Polybus, and Eurynomus, and Polyctorides essayed their strength, but not any one of them, ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... supposed to show strength of character. His pleasant, clean-shaven, slightly sunburnt face bore an expression of animation with a certain humorous anxiety natural in a man who was generally a good deal in debt and always a little in love. Further he had the advantage of a tall, strong yet supple figure, with a natural grace of movement and much personal charm. Harry knew he was good-looking and did not undervalue the fact, but regarded it solely as an asset, not as a private satisfaction. He regarded everything as an asset. He was no fop, ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... hath Claudia a choice for her maiden. Confusion will take the buoyancy from her supple limbs, and so drawn will her arms be to her face to hide its shame, that the sensuous swing thou dost desire will be stiff as the scabbard on thy wall. Lest she be veiled my maiden can not dance to do ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... by the soul of my mother, who is your own sister," continued Philippe, "to make your Rabouilleuse as supple as my glove, and the same as she was before that scoundrel, who is unworthy to have served in the Imperial Guard, ever came to quarter ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... her exquisite figure and the supple grace which she displayed when she moved toward Dirk were evidence, however, of the Latin blood which was ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... astonished her husband, with her new neighbors. Apparently she was not over twenty-five. Her chestnut hair was a marvel for brightness and profusion, her broad brow smooth and white, her figure, as Winston had described it to his sister, rounded, even to voluptuousness, yet supple as it had been at fifteen. In her cheeks, too, the blushes fluctuated readily and softly, and when she smiled, her teeth showed like those of a little child in size and purity. Her voice matched her beauty well, never loud, always melodious, with a peculiar, gliding, legato ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... gathering places every man, when strife arises, seeks to possess himself of as many of these as possible, and hurls them then uncommonly far. Most of the Baiovarii carry a sort of spear, or in their language, "chaser", made of the hazel of their forests, with blunt end, supple, and very handy. In the lack of these weapons, each man assumes any that chance may offer. Indeed, for this purpose even articles of household furniture, such as tables and chairs, are robbed of their supports. In high favor are also the constituent parts of garden inclosures. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... crouched before that baneful, blazing glance, while his head, mentally brave, reared itself, as if to redeem the cowardice of the frame to which it belonged. So the attitude of the serpent: the body pliant, yielding, supple; but the crest thrown aloft, erect, and threatening. As for Zonela, she was frozen in the attitude of motion;—a dancing nymph in colored marble; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... sing, 170 The pictures men shall study; while my life, Complete and whole now in its power and joy, Dies altogether with my brain and arm, Is lost indeed; since, what survives myself? The brazen statue to o'erlook my grave, 175 Set on the promontory which I named. And that—some supple courtier of my heir Shall use its robed and sceptered arm, perhaps, To fix the rope to, which best drags it down. I go then: triumph thou, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... black, black with horror and suffering and crime. And yet such a year as this, I am almost persuaded, is worth a score of years of peace. It certainly has achieved more for truth and humanity and God than the score of years which preceded it. As a nation, we had become almost despicable. Such supple, yielding slaves of 'Democratic' demagogues; such cringing, fawning, knee-bending, hand-kissing agents of the diabolical, traitorous Slave-Power; such apologists and supporters of Wrong; such pusillanimous, weak-hearted advocates of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... morally. Let us forecast her future. She will be well clad in clothes that allow of lithe and even development of the body; she will be taught to run, to play games, to dance, to swim; she will be supple and healthy, finely moulded and knit in limb and organ, beautiful in face and features, splendid and graceful in the native curves of her lissom figure. No cramping conventions will be allowed to cage her; no worn-out moralities ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... one while in the old Convocation house, and another while in the Chapel at Westminster; when all the faith and religion that shall be there canonized is not sufficient without plain convincement, and the charity of patient instruction to supple the least bruise of conscience, to edify the meanest Christian, who desires to walk in the Spirit, and not in the letter of human trust, for all the number of voices that can be there made; no, though Harry VII himself there, with all his liege tombs about him, ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... pinched his companion's biceps, and took a grip of his wrist. "Supple enough, brother, or I'm ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... Simpson with the wonderfully supple and sinewy Apache began and ended in a few seconds. In the most thrilling moments the hunter did not forget his ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... he cried exultantly. He reached out his fingers—and then something shot from the car, something lithe and supple, something that gripped the little man by the throat and hurled him back ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... satin dress trimmed with lace. The flowers were still in her hair; and the blow had come with such suddenness, that, even in death, she retained the appearance of life; she was still warm, her skin transparent, and her limbs supple. Even her eyes, still wide open, retained their expression, and betrayed the last sensation that had filled her heart,—terror. It looked as if she had had at that last moment a revelation of the future which her too great ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... in screaming wild alarms O'er a dead carcase muttering her charms, 410 (And with her frequent and tremendous yell Forcing great Hecate from out of hell) Shoots in the corpse a new fictitious soul; With instant glare the supple eyeballs roll, Again it moves and speaks, and life informs ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... for a night-light. In the dim glimmer he saw a little white-clad figure, slight and supple, taking short steps and swinging its arm in the ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The supple hands of Pete here clutched his corded throat, fingertips meeting at the back, and two potent thumbs uniting in a sinister pressure upon his Adam's apple. To further enlarge my understanding he contorted his face unprettily. From rolling eyes ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... great cypress log. In the end of each an Indian stood erect plying a long pole which sent their clumsy looking crafts forward at surprising speed. Magnificent savages they were, not one less than six feet tall, framed like athletes, and lithe and supple as panthers. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... at all forbid them to "behave like that." Not in the least. She almost encouraged them. She laughed and arched her eyes and flirted. But her backbone became only the stronger and firmer. Soft and supple as she was, her backbone never yielded for an instant. It could not. She had to confess that she liked the young doctors. They were alert, their faces were clean and bright-looking. She liked the sort of intimacy with them, when they kissed ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... escape being crushed by the big trees, they took refuge in a thicket of bushes, Jean came near being killed by a projectile, only it fortunately failed to explode. They could no longer make any progress now on account of the dense growth of the shrubbery; the supple branches caught them around the shoulders, the rank, tough grass held them by the ankles, impenetrable walls of brambles rose before them and blocked their way, while all the time the foliage was fluttering down about them, clipped by the gigantic scythe that was mowing down the wood. Another man ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... undeniable touch!" said he. "I feel a foil as quick and supple as my own. He got home upon me very prettily that time. So his name was ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... 1300 the pay of a common scribe was about one half-penny a day, see Stevenson's Supple. to Bentham's Hist. of the ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... man; the other was still young. He was tall and sinewy, but slender, for these Venetians are rarely massive in their strength. Each limb is equally developed by the exercise of rowing upright, bending all the muscles to their stroke. Their bodies are elastically supple, with free sway from the hips and a mercurial poise upon the ankle. Stefano showed these qualities almost in exaggeration. The type in him was refined to its artistic perfection. Moreover, he was rarely in repose, but moved with a singular brusque grace. A black broad-brimmed hat was thrown back ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... however, until afternoon; when Squeers, having refreshed himself with his dinner, and further strengthened himself by an extra libation or so, made his appearance (accompanied by his amiable partner) with a countenance of portentous import, and a fearful instrument of flagellation, strong, supple, wax-ended, and new,—in short, purchased that morning, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... light, his slight and supple form was unmistakable to one who had seen it before, even though his face was disfigured by a scant black visor across his eyes and the bridge ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... fair as the faces of women, and as they lounged, half-naked, carelessly in the drift, their muscles stood out in knots, and in the dim light of the candles, as they rose to return to work, their movements were supple and elastic as those of caged lions. The one who answered to the name of Browning was shorter than the other by an inch, but deeper-chested; the candlelight showed that his eyes were blue, and his mustache and short curly hair were of chestnut color. The other was a little taller, but not so ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... Rome, seize upon the fugitive, and drag him before some heartless and perfidious "Judge," for authority to send him back to Colosse? Did he hurry his victim away from the presence of the fat and supple magistrate, to be driven under chains and the lash to the field of unrequited toil, whence he had escaped? Had the apostle been like some teachers in the American churches, he might, as a professor of sacred literature in one of our seminaries, or a preacher of the gospel to the rich in some of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... single-stick, and the chief object of the player should be to make his attack in the fewest possible motions. For this reason a slightly bent arm is necessary when on guard. Of course if the arm is unduly bent the elbow will be exposed, but a little practice will soon enable any moderately supple man to so hold his arm as to be ready to cut direct from his guard and yet keep his elbow out of peril. And this brings me to a question often discussed amongst players, viz. which is the better guard, the upright or the hanging guard, for general purposes. Although I have been ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... cold way in which Hetty is described that one catches glimpses of the sex of the consummate author of the story. She is quite alive to Hetty's plump arms and pretty cheeks. She likes to pat her and watch her, as if Hetty were a cat, or some other sleek and supple animal. But we feel that the writer of Adam Bede is eyeing Hetty all over from the beginning to the end, and considering in herself the while what fools men are. It would be unjust and untrue to say that George Eliot in all her works does not do ample justice, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... marvel that I let her suffer so, that I did not break down the partition with my hands and strike that supple gentleman dead at her feet in atonement for the anguish he was causing her. But I had a mind to see how far he would drive this game ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... hand are many. Touch has its ecstasies. The hands of people of strong individuality and sensitiveness are wonderfully mobile. In a glance of their finger-tips they express many shades of thought. Now and again I touch a fine, graceful, supple-wristed hand which spells with the same beauty and distinction that you must see in the handwriting of some highly cultivated people. I wish you could see how prettily little children spell in my hand. ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... mouth?—her mouth, oh, heaven, he could not fix her mouth! The distracted young man tossed upon his pillow and went elsewhere. Distinctly he could remember her little feet with those silver buckles, quite different from any other feet. And she held herself slim and supple. Held herself? Why, good heavens! she was tall, and he had been thinking of her as short! This was appalling! He might meet her and pass her by. He might ... he ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... of youth, when it had been, the instrument of uncommon strength, and wielded an authority that none could stand against. Her fancy wandered over the scenes it had known; when it had felled trees in the wild forest; and those fingers, then supple and slight, had played the fife to the struggling men of the Revolution; how its activity had outdone the activity of all other hands in clearing and cultivating those very fields where her feet loved to run; how, in its ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Stripped to the waist, bent over in the low tunnel, hour after hour Jim plied the pick and shovel with the regularity and power of a machine. There was at once something fascinating and heroic in the rippling glide of the muscles over his broad back, and in the supple swing that sent the pick to join ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... rendered with wonderful freshness—scarlet roses, golden roses—and in such masses and so scattered about the nude figure as to give it a character of purity and modesty. The flesh tints are warm, the figure is supple in effect, and the whole is a happy picturing of the sleep and dream of a lovely young woman who has thrown herself down in the ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... to lead; One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, Not lured by any cheat of birth, 170 But by his clear-grained human worth, And brave old wisdom of sincerity! They knew that outward grace is dust; They could not choose but trust In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, 175 And supple-tempered will That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust. His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind, Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind; 180 Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, Fruitful ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... was builded In the valley, by the river, In the bosom of the forest; And the forest's life was in it, All its mystery and its magic, All the lightness of the birch-tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the larch's supple sinews; And it floated on the river Like a yellow leaf in ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... tall, she is slender—there is a supple grace about her even now—she has shapely feet and hands. She is a brunette of the most pronounced type, with a skin like creamy velvet, just touched on either ripe cheek with a peach-like glow, and with lips like cherries. You ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... chases through the hot, sulphureous gloom, A mocking phantom,—fair as it is foul! With naked arms, white breast, and ebon locks, And big black eyes that dart the humid flame Which sets the heart ablaze; and red moist lips, And checks as spotless as the falling flake Ere it has touched the earth, and supple form Wherein is knit each grace of womanhood In its perfection! and with wanton looks That speak the burning language of desire, It seems to woo its loathsome follower,— Yet ever from his foul embraces flies. And on his brow his name is written, "Lust!" Dismiss the spectre, for it blasts my sight, ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... Even if Milton had not written the choruses of Samson Agonistes and Shakespeare his songs, nobody would be so absurd as to suggest that they adopted this five-foot line and spent their mighty artistry in sending supple and flowing variety through its external uniformity, because they could not manage any other. They used it because they found that its rhythm perfectly expressed their poetic emotion, and because the formal relation of one line to another satisfied the instinct for co-ordination, and for ...
— The Lyric - An Essay • John Drinkwater
... across the table. "A thin, wiry, sallow-faced man; black-haired, black-eyed, supple as an eel, cunning as a cat; a scholar and travelled gentleman, who might easily be a cut-throat; one who professes the old faith, and swears by the Pope—ye ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... the best society in our cities is often in an advanced process of decay. The muscles may be a little more delicate but they are softer; the skin may be a little fairer, but it is not so healthy; the thought a little more supple, but less vigorous. The whole tendency of life in big cities is toward deterioration. City people rarely live really normal lives. It is not natural for human beings to live far from the soil. It is Mother Earth and country life that give vitality, stamina, courage and all the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... surmises were correct. For not only the inspecting eyes of her hostess, but the amatory glances of the youthful Emile, had been fastened upon her window until the light disappeared, and even the Holy Mission Church of San Jose had assured itself of the dear child's safety with a large and supple ear at her keyhole. ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... a single comprehensive glance that was polite without being cordial. Her neck, he noticed, was extraordinarily supple in spite of its proportions, for it turned so easily to follow him, and the head it ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... folds into many tints, delicate laces, elaborate embroideries, gleaming jewels—these are the never-failing accessories of his compositions. Yet while he loved rich draperies, he was also a careful student of the nude. Examples of his work range from the supple and youthful torso of Icarus to the huge muscular body of the beggar receiving St. Martin's cloak. The modelling of the Saviour's body in the Crucifixion and the Pieta shows both scientific knowledge ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... (1696-1743).—Writer of memoirs, was a younger s. of the 1st Earl of Bristol. Entering Parliament he proved an able debater, and held various offices, including that of Lord Privy Seal. He was a favourite with Queen Caroline, and a dexterous and supple courtier. He wrote Memoirs of the Reign of George II., which gives a very unfavourable view of the manners and morals of the Court. It is written in a lively, though often spiteful style, and contains many clever and ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... foul hag, in screaming wild alarms O'er a dead carcase muttering her charms, 410 (And with her frequent and tremendous yell Forcing great Hecate from out of hell) Shoots in the corpse a new fictitious soul; With instant glare the supple eyeballs roll, Again it moves and speaks, and life ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... of lesions the two characteristics are (a) the readiness with which oozing of blood occurs; and (b) the sense of rigidity, or fixation, of the involved area as palpated with the esophagoscope, in contrast to the normally supple esophageal wall. Esophageal dilatation above a malignant lesion is rarely great, because the stenosis is seldom severely obstructive until late in the ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... good to look upon as he lolled at his ease on that summer morning. Tall, straight, supple; a typical British gentleman of the educated class, with all parts of the body properly developed and held in some kind ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... joints of yours, I think you are mistaken. They can't be stiff. At the worst they merely want the air of New York, which, being impregnated with the flavour of last year's oysters, has a surprising effect in rendering the human frame supple and flexible in all ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... river," said Irene, drawing off her sweater. "What's the eats? Gee, I'm hungry. Getting pretty supple, Daddykins, aren't you?" ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... on a riding-habit, which revealed the lines of her supple figure, and a wide-brimmed felt hat, which encircled her lovely face and auburn hair, and sat down to her writing-desk, at which she wrote to her uncle, M. d'Aigleroche, a farewell letter to be delivered to him that evening. It was a ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... as Kenelm took his ground, there was a supple ease in his posture which at once brought out into clearer evidence the nervous strength of his build, and, contrasted with Tom's bulk of chest, made the latter ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Raffaelle showed themselves now and then in hers,—a face hitherto obscured by the malady of grief, as the canvas of the great master is encrusted by time. Her hands seemed whiter; her shoulders took on an exquisite fulness; her graceful, animated movements gave to her supple ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... allowing yellow ripples of hair to wave out in jaunty glory. In the higher light it seemed to Anthony that her personality was infinitely softer—she seemed so young, scarcely eighteen; her form under the tight sheath, known then as a hobble-skirt, was amazingly supple and slender, and her hands, neither "artistic" nor stubby, were small as a ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... pistols, and at least one dagger, the jewelled handle of which flashed over his glaring sash of many tints. And then the lady—Pobloff was very gallant, too gallant, his wife said. The bell would not ring! What was he to do? He soon made up his mind, supple Slav that he was. With a muttered apology he sank back and closed ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... to the bottom of the compartments like tangled knots of snakes; while the larger ones—those whose bodies were about as thick as a child's arm—raised their heads and slipped of their own accord into the water with the supple motion of serpents gliding into the concealment of a thicket. And meantime the other fish, whose death agony had been lasting all the morning as they lay on the soiled osiers of the basket-trays, slowly expired amidst all the uproar of the auctions, opening their mouths ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... know it white boy," replied the Krooman. "In the days when my limbs were supple I have hunted and fished there ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... whoop it up a lot more'n I've ever done before. You'll see some hopping to beat the band, too. I've managed to cover a good deal of territory up to now but, say, I aspire to do still better. I'm rubbing snake oil on my joints right along so as to make 'em more supple. Why, I'd bathe in it if I thought that would make me better able to do my part toward corraling that great game ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... though supple and active, Linty was old, and the day could not be distant when they must part company: she was then nine and twenty. And now—the night before, she had been taken ill: there was a disease about amongst the horses. The ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... cry she freed him and bent over him. Her supple young arms went under his shoulders. She raised him, half dragging, half lifting, until she had him stretched upon the floor in front of the stove. She ran for a basin of water, cut some linen into strips and, on her knees beside him, she bathed and dressed the raw, open wound in his side, ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... sticks that suited him, and then he laid them across the top of the stove and rested the barrel of the shotgun upon them. After all was complete, he stepped back against the door and squinted, gauging the elevation. It was to his satisfaction. With supple wrist and quick movements he uncoiled the small cotton rope he had brought with him and took two turns around the trigger of the shotgun. The rest of the rope he passed around a rod in the foot of the bed, which gave a direct back pull on the trigger, and thence he carried it ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... tyrannous crew depart, Knowing there was a storm in Hero's heart, Greater than they could make, and scorn'd their smart. She bow'd herself so low out of her tower, That wonder 'twas she fell not ere her hour, With searching the lamenting waves for him: Like a poor snail, her gentle supple limb Hung on her turret's top, so most downright, As she would dive beneath the darkness quite, To find her jewel;—jewel!—her Leander, 250 A name of all earth's jewels pleas'd not her Like his dear name: "Leander, still my choice, Come naught but my Leander! ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... of mind, Polly instantly pulled Noddy up on a mound of ground just above the reptile, and caught hold of a long supple branch of wood. In another instant she was whipping the snake until it could not tell from which direction the blows were descending—right, left, front or back! In a moment of indecision, the snake remained quiet and in that second Polly brought down ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... the silence. Not a leaf moved on the bushes of those far-swelling fields or on the hill that hid their summit; the air was like the moonlight, so fragrantly cool with the odors of the damp fern and birch. The straight, supple figure of Girard still stood in the roadway, bareheaded, with that powerful effect which he had, even here, of absorbing all the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... Stricken in years, yet vigorous was the sage, And well had proved himself with sword and spear; And said, he found himself in gray old age, Such as in green and supple youth whilere. They own his claim, and for an embassage Forthwith a courier find, then bid him steer For Africa, where camped the Christians lie, And Count Orlando on their ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... and life. He runs up the steps, two at a time. The lady on the porch lifts her eyes just one moment, but womanlike she sees much in a glance. She sees that his eyes are of a wonderful dark blue; that his hair is thick and wavy; and that he is tall, straight and strong. How lithe and supple he seems, too, as he runs up the steps and disappears into the house. Has he seen the lady Madonna? She does not know. There is indeed something strange about this dark haired man; something out of ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... campaigns against the herds, over the rolling prairie. Many a buffalo fell upon the plain with Louis Riel's arrow quivering in his flank; many a feast was held around the giant pot at which no hunter received honours so marked as stolid male, and olive-skinned, bright-eyed, supple female, accorded him. Surfeited for the time of the luxury of the limitless plain, Riel took rest; and then a girl with the lustrous eyes of Normandy began to smile upon him, and to besiege his heart with all her mysterious force of coquetry. He was not proof; ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... to one of the grand-stand seats, as he spoke, and sat down, leaning on the rail with an easy movement of his supple figure. That was the first characteristic strangers usually noted in him: an exquisite Hellenic grace of strength and faultless proportion. He was a man's beauty, as distinguished from a beauty-man; other men were given to admiring him extravagantly and unresentfully. Unresentfully, ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... young men rose to play, to wrestle and to jump, for on the following day was the annual festival of the Rifle Club, and there would be trials of strength, and competitions; it was im-portant therefore that their limbs should be supple. ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... Neal, after the schoolmaster's last visit, absolutely thunder-struck all who knew him. The clothes, which he had rashly taken in to fit his shrivelled limbs, were once more let out. The tailor expanded with a new spirit; his joints ceased to be supple, as in the days of his valor; his eye became less fiery, but more brilliant. From being martial, he got desperately gallant; but, somehow, he could not afford to act the hero and lover both at the same time. This, perhaps, ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... where is the woman to be found who is not supple enough to slip through the stiff fingers of Reason? She sheltered herself from his logic ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... that Andrew could not answer? He felt all at once so supple that he was hot tallow which those small fingers would mold and bend ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... fortunate enough to secure a pliant bough of a tree which was lying on the ground. Having discovered this treasure, she sat down contentedly and began to pull off the leaves and to strip the bark. When she had got the long, supple bough quite bare, she whipped some string out of her pocket, and converted it into the semblance of a bow. It was certainly by no means a perfect bow, but it was a bow after ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... together. He would stay in bed late, while Wanda bought what they needed for the day's meals; lying on his back, hands clasped behind his head, recalling her face, the movements of her slim, rounded, supple figure, robing itself before his gaze; feeling again the kiss she had left on his lips, the gleam of her soft eyes, so strangely dark in so fair a face. In a sort of trance he would lie till she came back. Then get up to breakfast about noon off things which she had cooked, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to be natural. His teeth were larger than normal on earth, and the incisors smaller and more pointed, the canines heavier and longer. There was a point to his chin, heavy-angled and thick-boned as it was, it was not an earthman's chin. His neck was long, more supple and active, he kept moving his head in an unnatural watchfulness like a wild animal's. I wondered what other differences, small in themselves, but adding up to complete strangeness of aspect, ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... and my father each holding one of my hands. Two other nuns accompanied us, one of whom was the Mother Prefect, a tall, cold woman with thin lips, and the other Sister Seraphine, who was as white and supple as a spray of lily of the valley. We entered the building, and came first to the large class-room in which all the pupils met on Thursdays at the lectures, which were nearly always given by Mother St. Sophie. Most of ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... Flattery's fawning face; To Grandeur with his wise grimace; To upstart Wealth's averted eye; To supple Office, low and high; To crowded halls, to court and street; To frozen hearts and hasting feet; To those who go, and those who come; Good-bye, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... With most Princes, the supple courtier and the fawning favourite have greater influence than the profound statesman and subtle Minister; and the determinations of Cabinets are, therefore, frequently prepared in drawing-rooms, and discussed in the closet. The ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... his own eyes beheld, Lord Henry tells us how Sir John leapt to snatch a weapon from the armoured walls; how Sakr-el-Bahr barked out a single word in Arabic, and how at that word a half-dozen of his supple blackamoors sprang upon the knight like greyhounds upon a hare and bore him ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... the wild, leaping horde. His brown, sweat-streaked, muscular body, glistening in the moonlight, shone supple and graceful among the uncouth, awkward, ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... while in the old Convocation house, and another while in the Chapel at Westminster; when all the faith and religion that shall be there canonized is not sufficient without plain convincement, and the charity of patient instruction to supple the least bruise of conscience, to edify the meanest Christian, who desires to walk in the Spirit, and not in the letter of human trust, for all the number of voices that can be there made; no, though Harry VII himself there, with all his liege tombs about ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... emerge from the twilight are the failure of the Aryan Hindus to achieve any permanent form of political unity or stability, and their success, on the other hand, in building up on adamantine foundations a complex but vital social system. The supple and subtle forces of Hinduism had already in prehistoric times welded together the discordant beliefs and customs of a vast variety of races into a comprehensive fabric sufficiently elastic to shelter most of the indigenous populations of India, and sufficiently ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... But these were the extreme types; the majority were a mixture of the two races, and the mingling of African and American blood appeared to have had a beneficent effect upon both, the product being an individual of less bulky frame perhaps than his negro progenitor, but lithe, active, supple, and apparently of tireless endurance, superior in intelligence, courage, and good looks to either of ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... first camp was opened, the colleges, military schools, and high schools of the country poured out a stream of young men whose minds had been trained in the classroom and whose bodies had been made supple and virile on the athletic field. They came with intelligence, energy, and enthusiasm and, under a course of intensive training, rapidly took on the added discipline and capacities necessary to equip ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... What reuerence he did throw away on slaues; Wooing poore Craftes-men, with the craft of soules, And patient vnder-bearing of his Fortune, As 'twere to banish their affects with him. Off goes his bonnet to an Oyster-wench, A brace of Dray-men bid God speed him well, And had the tribute of his supple knee, With thankes my Countrimen, my louing friends, As were our England in reuersion his, And he our subiects next ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... beyond her own old rocking-chair. As for her father, she had made him afraid of her, not for his sake, but for her own. Sometimes she would seem to be fond of him, and the parent's heart would yearn within him as she twined her supple arms about him; and then some look she gave him, some half-articulated expression, would turn his cheek pale and almost make him shiver, and he would say kindly, "Now go, Elsie, dear," and smile ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... ails the censurer, that he at thee should flite? How shall I be consoled for thee, and thou a sapling slight? O thou, the splendour of whose sight has ta'en my heart by storm, Whose supple bending grace compels to passion's utmost height,[FN125] Whose eyes, with Turkish languor caught, work havoc in the breast And leave such wounds as ne'er were made by falchion in the fight! Thou layst on me a heavy load of ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... her tiny taes, Nae stockings on her feet; Her supple ankles white as snow, Or early blossoms sweet. Her simple dress of sprinkled pink, Her double, dimpled chin; Her pucker'd lip and bonny mou', With nae ane tooth between. Her een sae like her mither's een, Twa gentle, liquid things; Her ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... her man by means of the supple splinter her condemnation is assured. The penalty is piecemeal slicing, and in it are involved those of her direct line, in the humane effort to ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... rumbling wheels, And clink of chiming bridles in the stall; Then more and more to love his master's voice Caressing, or loud hand that claps his neck. Ay, thus far let him learn to dare, when first Weaned from his mother, and his mouth at times Yield to the supple halter, even while yet Weak, tottering-limbed, and ignorant of life. But, three years ended, when the fourth arrives, Now let him tarry not to run the ring With rhythmic hoof-beat echoing, and now learn Alternately to curve each bending leg, And be like one that struggleth; then at last Challenge ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... and the assistance the republic owed to indigent citizens. All these reports passed into decrees, agreeably to the wishes of the democrats. Barrere, whose habitual speeches in the convention were calculated to disguise his servitude from himself, was one of the most supple instruments of the committee; he belonged to the regime of terror, neither from cruelty nor from fanaticism. His manners were gentle, his private life blameless, and he possessed great moderation of mind. But he was timid; and after having been a constitutional royalist before ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... described! I can only appeal to your memory of other women like her, whom you must often have seen—women who are tall and fair, and fragile and elegant; who have delicate aquiline noses and melting blue eyes—women who have often charmed you by their tender smiles and their supple graces of movement. As for the character of this popular young lady, I must not influence you either way; ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... statesman, indeed, but his interest was in the grand alliance; he "borrowed England on his way to Versailles," and governed it in the interest of the Dutch Coalition. Queen Anne and the first Georges reigned but did not govern; and in the early eighteenth century power fell to men of supple intelligence and complacent conviction—to Marlborough and little Sidney Godolphin, to Harley and St. John and Sunderland, and at last to Robert Walpole, the very personification of the shrewd curiosity, the easy-going morals, the material ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... that he would go to Caesar, but privately sent messengers to Milo, who had murdered Clodius, and had been condemned for it; and having invited him into Italy, because he had engaged the remains of the gladiators to his interest, by making them supple presents, he joined him, and sent him to Thurinum to tamper with the shepherds. When he himself was on his road to Casilinum, at the same time that his military standards and arms were seized at Capua, his slaves seen at Naples, and the design of ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... Art, Nature pass, and there is no dot of admiration in his stupid eyes: nothing moves him, except when a very great man comes his way, and then the rigid, proud, self-confident, inflexible British Snob can be as humble as a flunkey and as supple as a harlequin. ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his race. Slender figure, firm step, smiling countenance, piercing glance, limbs made supple by all bodily exercises, with a heart disposed to love, and a splendid horseman, that great accomplishment of princes; a condescension void of familiarity, a ready eloquence, unquestionable courage, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... suspect that we might be conversing with an angel. Bread may not always nourish us; but it always does us good, it even takes stiffness out of our joints, and makes us supple and buoyant, when we knew not what ailed us, to recognize any generosity in man or Nature, to share any ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... cometh a white rag thinly from the inner tent—mark her provenance. Son kneeleth down. "Wilt thou have my son, cony?" saith father. "Yea, dear heart," saith she. "'Tis my counterpart, mark you," saith father. "Better than nothing at all," saith she. Benevolent father, supple-kneed son, convenient lady. Here is agreement. And thus it ends.' Again he laughed outright at the steel-blue face of the sky, then jumped in a flash from his seat to the throat of Bertran. Bertran tumbled backwards with a strangled cry, and Richard ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... tell me strange stories of the faults of Cooper his master, put in by me, which I do not believe, but am sorry to hear and must take some course to have him removed, though I believe that the Captain is proud, and the fellow is not supple enough to him. So to my office again to set down my Journall, and so home and to bed. This evening my boy Waynman's brother was with me, and I did tell him again that I must part with the boy, for ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... supple and beautifully built, his bones were small and finely jointed, his features chiseled with classic regularity—later on his lips might grow coarse, but as yet they were merely full. The chief characteristic of his expression was its mobility, but it was the mobility of an actor who ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... day she had resorted to the wood, but soon tiring of playing the part of modest nymph with her friends, she wandered off to more solitary places. Her head, generally so erect, was bowed under the weight of depression or preoccupation; her flexible, supple figure moved from side to side like the body of a bedouin; those dark African eyes, the most precious ornament of the noble city of Lancia, were fixed upon the ground, and the very deep line on her forehead testified to the fixed, gloomy drift ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... the devil,' he said, 'had sought out an agent expressly for the purpose of embroiling this miserable country, I do not think he could find a better than such a fellow as this, whose temper seems equally active, supple, and mischievous, and who is followed, and implicitly obeyed, by a gang of such cut-throats as those whom you are ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... growing along the walls, The row of carvers in their linen coats Took in his vision a virtue that alone Carving they had not nor the thing they carved. Knowing the health that flowed about his close Imagining, the daily quiet won From process of his clean and supple craft, Those carvers there, far on the floor below, Would haply be transfigured in his thought Into a gallant company of men Glad of the strict and loyal reckoning That proved in the just presence of the brain Each chisel-stroke. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... to be mentioned as having influenced the history of my future life. I was somewhat above the middle stature. Without being particularly athletic in appearance, or large in my dimensions, I was uncommonly vigorous and active. My joints were supple, and I was formed to excel in youthful sports. The habits of my mind, however, were to a certain degree at war with the dictates of boyish vanity. I had considerable aversion to the boisterous gaiety of the village gallants, and contrived to satisfy ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... he still saw the furrows free of the earthborn men. And all round his comrades heartened him with their shouts. And in the helmet he drew from the river's stream and quenched his thirst with the water. Then he bent his knees till they grew supple, and filled his mighty heart with courage, raging like a boar, when it sharpens its teeth against the hunters, while from its wrathful mouth plenteous foam drips to the ground. By now the earthborn men were springing up over ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... which is the birthright of all spectatorship. Gerald and Phebe were skipping stones, thoroughly absorbed in energetic enjoyment of the simple game; their two contrasting figures, Gerald dark and tall and slim, and Phebe so round and fair and supple, making a pretty-enough picture for any artist. Olly, little Maggie Dexter, and an assortment of sturdy urchins known throughout Joppa only as the Anthony boys, were dancing and chattering aimlessly around, and near by was drawn up a clumsy old boat ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... none other than Black Bruin, was holding up a section between his paws, while with his supple red tongue he licked out the contents. Although the bees were swarming about him in a black cloud and doing their best to punish the thief, he paid little attention to them but licked away ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... not only with natural wisdom, but with candour and logical honesty. But if the subject of debate be something in the air, an abstraction, an excuse for talk, a logical Aunt Sally, then may the male debater instantly abandon hope; he may employ reason, adduce facts, be supple, be smiling, be angry, all shall avail him nothing; what the woman said first, that (unless she has forgotten it) she will repeat at the end. Hence, at the very junctures when a talk between men grows brighter and quicker and begins to promise to bear fruit, talk between the sexes is menaced with ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... too, She gives him back, her supple breast thrills out Sharp airs, and staggers in a warbling doubt Of dallying sweetness, hovers o'er her skill, And folds in waved notes, with a trembling bill, The pliant series of her slippery song; Then starts she suddenly into a throng Of short thick sobs, whose thund'ring vollies ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... family, my bitter enemies—to supple to them, or if I do not, to make her as unhappy as she can ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... though guilty breast? Yet, tendering from thy vessel's freight Offerings of such exceeding weight, And free thee from one earthly chain! Envy and over-weening hate Would on thy orphan greatness wait; Folly that supple nature bend For parasites to scorn thy friend; And pamper'd vanity incline To wilful blindness such ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... face, To grandeur with his wise grimace, To upstart wealth's averted eye, To supple office low and high, To crowded halls, to court and street, To frozen hearts and hasting feet, To those who go and those who come,— Good-bye, proud world, I'm going home, I am going to my own hearth-stone Bosomed in ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... sincere. It fell on adders' ears. His scheme found favour neither with Brethren nor with Utraquists. To the Brethren Augusta was a Jesuitical juggler. To the Utraquists he was a supple athlete trying to dodge his ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... the sake of elegance, which indeed is a fine quality when natural but not when affected. Sound bodies, with a healthy condition of blood, and strong by exercise, receive their beauty from the very things from which they receive their strength. They are fresh-colored, active, and supple, neither too much nor too little in flesh. Paint and polish them with feminine cosmetics, and admiration ceases; the very pains taken to make them appear more beautiful add to the dislike we conceive for them. ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... kingdom was in a manner engaged, and the men of greatest abilities soon acquired the ascendant, which their family interest enabled them to maintain. The earl of Argyle, though he long seemed to temporize, had at last embraced the covenant; and he became the chief leader of that party; a man equally supple and inflexible, cautious and determined, and entirely qualified to make a figure during a factious and turbulent period. The earls of Rothes, Cassils, Montrose, Lothian, the lords Lindesey, Louden, Yester, Balmerino, distinguished themselves in that party. Many Scotch officers had acquired ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... opportunity to pay his court; but scarcely was Rizzio in her service than Mary discovered that music was the least of his gifts, that he possessed, besides that, education if not profound at least varied, a supple mind, a lively imagination, gentle ways, and at the same time much boldness and presumption. He reminded her of those Italian artists whom she had seen at the French court, and spoke to her the tongue of Marot and Ronsard, whose most beautiful ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... ever, considerably over six feet now, somewhat lanky, but supple of joint and square of shoulder, he strode with the easy stride of a strong traveller. His colour was up, his blue-gray eyes ablaze as he took the long trail in a crow line across country for Sackett's Harbour. The sentry saluted, and the officer of the day, struck by his figure ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... burn in case there might be a foul odour. This precaution, however, was not necessary, as there was no smell perceptible, they were as fresh, so to speak, as if they were still alive. We remarked especially that the body of Brother Jean Marie, (the lay Brother) was supple. I touched it myself, and saw that it was really so, for while I held him his legs swayed as would those of ...
— Memoir • Fr. Vincent de Paul
... Somewhere way down in the depths of her nature the primal tiger awoke and snarled. She was suddenly alive from hair to finger tip. Harry Cresswell paused a second and swept her full length with his eye—her profile, the long supple line of bosom and hip, the little foot. Then he closed the door softly and walked slowly toward her. She stood like stone, without a quiver; only her eye followed the crooked line of the Cresswell blue blood on his marble forehead as she looked down from her greater height; ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... off downward. And as she wheeled about, Olof again was aware of something he had not marked before—the curve of her hips, her lithe, supple waist, and the splendid poise of her head. He was so close now that her hair touched his face—touched it, or was it only the air as it flew past his cheek? And from her eyes shot beams of light, challenging, beckoning, urging ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... These supple variations and contradictions so manifest in us, have given occasion to some to believe that man has two souls; other two distinct powers that always accompany and incline us, the one towards good and the other towards ill, according to their own nature and propension; so ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... rolling in dust his excellent friend the precursor. Peace be with all! but afar be ambition to follow the Roman, Led by the German, uncomb'd, and jigging in dactyl and spondee, Lumbering shapeless jackboots which nothing can polish or supple. Much as old metres delight me, 'tis only where first they were nurtured, In their own clime, their own speech: than pamper them here I would rather Tie up my Pegasus tight to the scanty-fed ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... graceful throat, which was remarkably elegant. The Grecian bodice, crossing from left to right with five folds, opened slightly, showing delicious curves; the gray merino dress with green furbelows defined the pretty waist, which had never looked so slender nor so supple. She wore earrings of gold fret-work, and her hair, gathered up a la chinoise, let the eye take in the soft freshness of a skin traced with blue veins, where the light shone chastely on the pure white tones. Cesarine was so coquettishly lovely ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... longer than usual watching the young mason wield his hammer and trowel. Archie had ruffled her badly with his talk about money losses, and now she felt soothed, freed from stupid perplexities. The mason's large hands, she noted, were supple and dexterous—he made no useless movements. Occasionally he turned his head to spit tobacco or drew off to look at his wall, but these were the only interruptions in his rhythmic motions. He paid no attention whatever to the woman ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... make a living; and that was all. Literary work is not well paid as a rule. There is fair pay to be had on the staff of the best daily papers, but that kind of work requires a special aptitude. It requires, in particular, a supple and indifferent mind, ready to take its cue from other people, with the art of representing things from day to day not exactly as they are, but as an editor or paymaster wants them to appear. If we suffered ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... young man, but not the act of a wise one!" said Pearson. "You should always keep your horse's strength for an emergency on a long journey. His limbs are supple enough, I'll warrant; there was no necessity for trying ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the five was a large-boned, muscular man, nearly six feet high. The sleeve rolled up above the elbow showed an arm that was likely to win the prize for feats of strength; yet the long, supple hand, with its broad finger tips, looked ready for works of skill. In his tall stalwartness Adam Bede was a Saxon, and justified his name. The face was large and roughly hewn, and when in repose had no other beauty ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... and the Baronet was left alone kneeling beside the body. The young and supple limbs, the rounded cheeks, the delicate ripe lips, the smooth white hands, were lying cold and rigid; and the aged face was bending over them in silent anguish; the aged deep-veined hands were seeking with tremulous inquiring touches for some ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... a dozen armed men. They wore the same beaked helmets, the supple encasing breast- and back-plates, but their leggings were gray. They, too, carried curved swords, but the weapons were still latched to their belts and they made no move to draw them in spite of the very patent hostility of the guards ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... sad to tell! She went to the well— The time was as close to eve as to dawn— To Chickamy Chick, So supple and slick, The clock said "Tick!" But when she came ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... not caused by hard work or the lack of it; Rachel had worked hard all her life. It was a difference inherent in temperament. The Spencers, no matter what they did, or how hard they labored, all had plump, smooth, white hands, with firm, supple fingers; the Chiswicks, even those who toiled not, neither did they spin, had hard, knotted, twisted ones. Moreover, the contrast went deeper than externals, and twined itself with the innermost fibers of life, ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... infinite patience to gluing the tiniest fibres of the sea plants. Some were bright pink, suggesting in formation and colour the little red fishing boats. Others were gold with their slender little flowers rising in clusters. The long supple green algaes, swelling along their stems into little round beads, like beads of jade, looked as though they wore some Chinese costume. As the album grew it gave ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... Eve, with her body white, Supple and smooth to her Slim finger tips; Wondering, listening, Listening, wondering, Eve with a ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... the Committee— Sweet-breathed and smooth of skin And supple of spine and knee, With shining unpouched eyes And the blood, high-powered, Leaping in flexible arteries— The insolent, young, enthusiastic, undiscriminating Committee, Who would placard tombstones And scatter ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... sixteen, her graceful body had retained most of the lines and slender curves of childhood; and she was long of limb and broad of shoulder. Her head was poised alertly above her strong young throat, and she was as straight as a fir-tree and as supple as a birch. A life out-of-doors had given to her skin a tone of warm brown, which, in a land that expected women to be lily-fair, was like a mask added to her disguise. The blackness of her hair was equally unconnected with Northern ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... only spends a quarter of a comfortable income. If you are as clever as I suppose, you can go to Paris at his expense. There, run along, my little doe; go and twist him round your finger. Only, mind this: be as supple as silk; at every word take a double turn round him and make a knot. He is a man to fear scandal, and if he has given you a chance to put him in the pillory—in short, understand; threaten him with the ladies of the Maternity Hospital. Besides, he's ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... errors. Ah! to attain that glorious result, I have studied to their depths the masters of color. I have analyzed and lifted, layer by layer, the colors of Titian, king of light. Like him, great sovereign of art, I have sketched my figure in light clear tones of supple yet solid color; for shadow is but an accident,—remember that, young man. Then I worked backward, as it were; and by means of half-tints, and glazings whose transparency I kept diminishing little by little, I was able to cast strong shadows deepening almost to blackness. The shadows of ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... noses, flashing eyes, burkas flowing; cartridge-belts of silver and ivory gleaming across chests in the glare of the electric light; bashliks of white, black, and yellow wool upon the head, increasing the stature; evil-looking Black Sea knives stuck in most belts, rifles swung across great supple shoulders, long swords trailing; Turkish gypsies, dark and furtive-eyed, walking softly in leather slippers—of endless and fascinating variety, many colored and splendid, it all was. From time to time a droschky with ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... Marya had engaged him in half smiling, low-voiced conversation; and Palla looked at her golden-green eyes and warm, rich colouring, cooled by a skin of snow. Tiger-golden, the rousse ensemble; the supple movement of limb and body fascinated her; but most of all the lovely, slanting eyes with their glint ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... be added that in this picture a row of torch-bearing angels makes the result, if possible, even less Christian, for these delightful creatures, with their ambiguous smiles and supple grace, have all the dangerous attraction of wicked angels. They are Ganymedes, borrowed from mythology, ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... see how this miracle is accomplished. Do you mark yonder couple who seem to excel the rest in grace and ardor. Let us take this couple for a sample. He is stalwart, agile, mighty; she is tall, supple, lithe, and how beautiful in form and feature! Her head rests upon his shoulder, her face is upturned to his; her naked arm is almost around his neck; her swelling breast heaves tumultuously against his; face to face they whirl, his limbs interwoven with her limbs; with ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... to the side of his rock, and its feeble flicker fell on a chaos of rocks below. He looked long and cautiously for supple yellow arms or tiny whip-like threads which might coil suddenly round his legs and drag him ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... Gallo, senator, Grand Cross, and whatnot? There is much to tell, though there is nothing which could not be also told of many another gentleman in high place. It is the usual story: the supple spine, the sharp eye, the greased foot. He was a young lawyer, useful to deputies. He married a lovely woman whom a prince had admired beyond him. He asked no questions; her dower was large. To do him justice, he has always behaved very well to her. He entered Parliament ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... planted himself next to Pickle, without sustaining any misfortune but that of his stocking being torn by a ragged nail of the seat, as he raised his legs on a level with the rest of his limbs. But the baron, who was neither so wieldy nor supple in his joints as his companions, flounced himself down with such precipitation, that his feet, suddenly tilting up, came in furious contact with the head of the marquis, and demolished every curl in a twinkling, while his own skull, at the same ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... atmosphere that made her vaguely uneasy. Was it a cat he resembled, crouching there in front of her? No, there was nothing domestic about him though she had a feeling that he could purr when he was pleased. Yes, there was undoubtedly something feline about him, a supple grace, a noiselessness, a guile, that made her aware of the necessity for caution in her dealings with him. This was a man of many subtleties—she knew it instinctively—a man of tigerish temperament, ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... looked him full in the eyes; then, as by magic, the loveliest of smiles transfigured the dull, blank features; her round shoulders, pendulous arms, slouching pose, melted into superb symmetry, quickening with grace and youth as she straightened up and faced him, erect, supple, laughing, adorable. ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... broad steps holding herself stiffly erect, head uptilted—a striking figure, graceful, supple, almost commanding. In fact, so attractive was the picture she made as she stood a moment on the sidewalk, that a passing policeman, seized by a gallant impulse, opened the door of the waiting taxicab and held it ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... the slow supple walk that she adopted when she wore her Teacher's Robes. Before many seconds had passed, she came back more quickly and ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... was dark save for a night-light. In the dim glimmer he saw a little white-clad figure, slight and supple, taking short steps and swinging its arm in ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... be impregnable to a foe of our stature. There is but one hope for us—the uniting of the Balkan forces to turn a masterly front to North and West as well as to South and East. Is that a task for old hands to undertake? No; the hands must be young and supple; and the brain subtle, as well as the heart be strong, of whomsoever would dare such an accomplishment. Should I accept the crown, it would only postpone the doing of that which must ultimately be done. What avail would it be if, when the darkness ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... would have immortalized a painter. No wonder the man's heart softened as he gazed. He saw a glitter of golden curls, and the scarlet gleam of a mantle—a young girl, tall and slender, with rounded, supple limbs, and a figure graceful in every line and curve—while her arms, bare to the elbow, would have charmed a sculptor. Cheek and lips were a glowing rosy red—while her eyes, of the deepest and darkest blue, were the merriest that ever gazed ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... had dressed and dined, he soaked his hands in hot water to make them supple, and played Beethoven till far ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... tall and sinewy, but slender, for these Venetians are rarely massive in their strength. Each limb is equally developed by the exercise of rowing upright, bending all the muscles to their stroke. Their bodies are elastically supple, with free sway from the hips and a mercurial poise upon the ankle. Stefano showed these qualities almost in exaggeration. The type in him was refined to its artistic perfection. Moreover, he was ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... nonpreparedness for war when Germany first began acting up—Grover Cleveland Bergdoll felt the same way about it and so did Ma Bergdoll;—and I, for one, have no doubt that Mr. Bryan will be just as supple, mentally and physically, three years hence when, if he runs true to form, he will be advocating yet another of that series of those immemorial Jeffersonian principles of the fathers, which he thinks up, to order, right out of his own ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... Australian journalism is written it will contain two outstanding Irish names: Daniel Henry Deniehy, who died in 1865, was called by Bulwer Lytton "the Australian Macaulay" on account of his brilliant writings as critic and reviewer in the press of Victoria. Gerald Henry Supple, another Dublin man, is also remembered for his contributions to the Age and the Argus of Melbourne. In India one of the first—if not the first—English newspapers was founded by a Limerick man, named Charles Johnstone, who had previously ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... moulded men of clay, the red clay from the marshy river-side at Vanua Lava. At first he made men and pigs just alike, but his brothers remonstrated with him, so he beat down the pigs to go on all fours and made men walk upright. Qat fashioned the first woman out of supple twigs, and when she smiled he knew she was a living woman. (R.H. Codrington, "The Melanesians" (Oxford, 1891), page 158.) A somewhat different version of the Melanesian story is told at Lakona, in Santa Maria. There they say that ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... the great swab, who is supple as a glove, and will do ALL, which some interpret NOTHING. However, we ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... for laughing round an apple. There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple; And God will grow no talons at his heels, Nor antlers through the thickness of ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... when, with the end of his schooldays in sight, he was putting away childish things, that he seriously turned his attention to the piano and his hands. They were those of the pianist, broad, strong and supple, and the new occupation soon engrossed him deeply; he gave up all his spare time to it, and, in a few months, attained so creditable a proficiency, that he went through a course of instruction with a local teacher of music, who, scenting talent, dismissed preliminaries with the assurance ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... water down the slope To bring relief to those who toss in waves. They care for mothers left to starve, alone. In pestilence, they labor long to soothe The fevered brow and ease the gnawing pain With medicine and shelter, food and clothes. In war the wound is dressed and duly nursed With gentle supple hands—with nourishment For mind and body. Cross of red, all hail! They serve for us most willingly and well. Then chide themselves when they have come too late! Like mothers when their sons have fallen ...
— Clear Crystals • Clara M. Beede
... went about it clumsily despite her supple gracefulness—she withdrew the heavy weapon from the window and laid it upon the counter. He was looking at her with a peculiar smile upon his lips. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... many children. When the calamity came which incapacitated him for further usefulness he had come into possession of a whole block in the portion of the city known as "New Town." His prosperity did not, however, lessen his activity; he forgot that he was getting old, for his limbs were yet supple and his eyes perfectly clear. He measured off his lumber and drove nails with the strength and accuracy of a young man; yet, as death lurks in every passing breeze, feeling well is no evidence of sound ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... our tea in silence. Suzee came back presently with cigarettes for us and sat down on the floor herself, rolling one up between supple fingers. She had an air of extraordinary unruffled placidity. The dragging about of the child had not disturbed her dress nor heated her face. In cool, tranquil, placid beauty she sat and rolled cigarettes while the child's cries dimly echoed ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... disappointed, considerable candor and allowance. Especially they will be candid, and I believe that there are many such, who have occasionally tried their own strength in this bow of Ulysses. They have not found it supple and pliable, and with me are perhaps ready to acknowledge that they could not always even approach with it the mark of their ambition. But I would willingly, were it possible, obviate uncandid criticism, because to answer it is lost labor, and to receive it in silence has the appearance ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... all Svenson needed. He was putting up the fight of his life. It was a beautiful demonstration of Scandinavian defense methods—one man unarmed against five with knives and clubs! His huge arms were working like flails. His powerful, supple body bent and heaved this way and that with powerful sweeps as he met the incessant attack. As fast as they came at him he sent them hurling ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... bells rung backwards, nothing but noise and giddiness; and come to years once, there drops a son by th' sword in his Mistresses quarrel, a great joy to his parents: A Daughter ripe too, grows high and lusty in her blood, must have a heating, runs away with a supple ham'd Servingman: his twenty Nobles spent, takes to a trade, and learns to spin mens hair off; there's another, and most are of ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont
... desirable. To obviate this evil he instituted the gymnastic exercises, which, by bringing all the muscles of the body into action, and by increasing the development of the frame generally, rendered the men lithe and supple, and in every way more fitted for the performance of duties in which their lives frequently depended on their promptitude ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... but women thus formed are imperious, self-willed, and more voluptuous than tender. On the other hand, women with flat waists are devoted in soul, delicately perceptive, inclined to sadness, more truly woman than the other class. The flat waist is supple and yielding; the round waist ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... thought so well of those doings before," he was saying. "If they've kept you as supple as a willow, in spite of your weight, I should say you'd better ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... a reasonable confidence that I shall be fairly contented. For I, at least, am supple, and I court the influences which you think it a ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... shoe pulled off, and, before the bear could understand it, the supple lad was perched above his reach ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... some steps, she stopped at the table with the lamp on it, and again opened one of the books there. Miss Mary followed, put her arm around Cara, and wished to draw her near, but she, with an alarmed and supple movement, slipped from her embrace, put the book down, and turning, started to go somewhere. Miss Mary faced toward the door, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... He, bathed in icy sweat, would start in fear, Trembling and pale; then did his glances seem Sad as the sun's last, conscious, farewell gleam Upon the eve of judgment. Such appear His days and nights whom hope has ceased to cheer But grov'llers know it not. The supple slave Whose worthiest record is a nameless grave, Whose truckling spirit bends and bids him kneel, And fawn and vilely kiss a patron's heel— Even he can cast the cursed suspicious eye, Inquire the cause of this—the reason why? And stab the sufferer. Then, the tenfold ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... for all that God and man In art and nature make or plan, And lady-loves for spidery lace And broideries and supple grace ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... proudly poised head, the small, swiftly moving hands, and the tiny feet there was a birdlike alertness which was the epitome of action. The supple body, however, lacked the bird's fluttering uncertainty; rather the figure bespoke a control that had its birth in an absence of all self-consciousness and the obedience of perfectly trained muscles to ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... appearance. He was solidly built, rather short and had a resolute, determined air, rather unpolished and without those distinguishing marks of intellect and social position. But his hands were delicate and supple, and ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... what a business it is, that getting up! Your shoulders are cramped and your back is stiff; and as for your legs underneath you, you wonder if they will really ever get supple and strong again. First you lift your head from your breast and try moving your neck about, and sniff at the walls of your den. Then you unfold your arms, and—ooch!—how they crack, first one and then the other! At last you begin to roll ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... knob and watched the great discs begin to whir softly around under their glass dome. At the familiar sound her hunger for the coming comfort mounted fiercely, and she seized the long, supple, silk-wrapped cords and pressed the bulbs to either temple. A slight shock ran through her blood and with the realization of her folly came the knowledge that she could not take down her hands. The whirring grew, doubled, multiplied in volume; the ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... pistol in my belt and went out. She was waiting for me at the edge of the cliff. Her attire was more than light, and a small kerchief girded her supple waist. ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... heads over the contrivance, when I became aware that Medea herself was moving down the path from the house. Dark-haired, supple, of a figure lightly poised and swayed, but pale and listless—I knew her at once, and having come out to find her, naturally felt no surprise at all. But Harold, who was trying to climb on the top of the sun-dial, having a cat-like fondness for the summit of ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... Andalusia and seen the women there. For certain, they were handsome; a Sevillana, for instance! Would they wear flowers in their hair—over the ear—unless they dared be looked at? Manuela was of Valencia, more than half gitana: a wonderfully supple girl. When she danced the jota it was like nothing so much as a snake in an agony. Her hair was tawny yellow, and very long. She wore no flower in it, but bound a red handkerchief in and out of the plaits. She was vain of ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... wooden object, lacquered scarlet-and-gold, on which the priests beat with a padded mallet while chanting the Sutra. And, finally, in one place I perceive a pair of sitting animals, of some mythological species, supple of figure as greyhounds. 'Kitsune,' says Akira—'foxes.' So they are, now that I look upon them with knowledge of their purpose; idealised foxes, foxes spiritualised, impossibly graceful foxes. They are chiselled in some grey stone. They have long, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... the vocal organs may be used; this may be considered play, but it is more artificial and less spontaneous than the informal activity already described. It is well to be clear as to the kind of exercises best suited to make the vocal organs supple, and then to make these the basis of a game: for example, little children constantly imitate the cries of ordinary life; town children could dramatise a railway station where the sounds produced by engines and by porters give a valuable training; they ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... stood and watched her. God! how beautiful she was! The sunlight, gleaming through the tops of the trees in long slanting rays, played like fire upon her red-gold hair; and the plain black gown, which yielded easily to her graceful movements, seemed to show every line of her supple yet delicate figure. She came nearer still, so near that he could trace the faint blue veins in her forehead, and once more recall the peculiar color of her eyes. Then he spoke to her, raising his hand with a suddenly returning instinct of conventionality for his ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... young. He was tall and sinewy, but slender, for these Venetians are rarely massive in their strength. Each limb is equally developed by the exercise of rowing upright, bending all the muscles to their stroke. Their bodies are elastically supple, with free sway from the hips and a mercurial poise upon the ankle. Stefano showed these qualities almost in exaggeration. The type in him was refined to its artistic perfection. Moreover, he was rarely in repose, but moved with ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... looks as if it could bite or suck like a leech. The complexion is dazzlingly fair, the perfect transparent rosette lily of a red-haired beauty; the head, with hair elaborately curled and plaited close to it, and adorned with pearls, sits like that of the antique Arethusa on a long, supple, swan-like neck. A curious, at first rather conventional, artificial-looking sort of beauty, voluptuous yet cold, which, the more it is contemplated, the more it troubles and haunts the mind. Round the lady's neck is a gold chain with little gold lozenges ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... cried the supple Mr Simkins, "how can you be so hard? for my share, I must needs own I think the poor lady's to be pitied; for it must have been but a melancholy sight to her, to see her spouse cut off so in the flower of his youth, as one may say: and you ought to scorn to take exceptions at a lady's proudness ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... had been fastened a rose, badge of favor from a bunch nestling at the white throat of the young girl. She rode with a grace and rhythmical ease suggestive of large experience in the pastime; the slender, supple figure swayed as if welcoming gladly the swing and the quick rush of air. Sometimes at her side, again just behind, galloped the horse bearing John Steele, and, as they went at a fair pace, preceded and followed by others of a gay party, the eyes of ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... be introduced to him, Stevens received another surprise—for she was one of those rare, but exceedingly attractive beings, a natural blonde with brown eyes and black eyebrows. Sun and wind had tanned her satin skin to a smooth and even shade of brown, and every movement of her lithe and supple body bespoke to the ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... his own, he must necessarily sink under the load, and of course his family must suffer with him. On his exertions as a hunter their existence depends; in order to be able to follow that rough employment with success, he must keep his limbs as supple as he can, he must avoid hard labor as much as possible, that his joints may not become stiffened, and that he may preserve the necessary strength and agility of body to enable him to pursue the chase, and bear the unavoidable hardships attendant on it; for the fatigues of hunting ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... to please, and ready to submit, The supple Gaul was born a parasite: Still to his interest true where'er he goes, Wit, bravery, worth, his lavish tongue bestows; In every face a thousand graces shine, From every tongue flows harmony divine. These arts in vain our rugged natives try, Strain out, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... model—they conform to patterns which intertwine and melt and are suddenly and surprisingly transformed; they are without punctuation, uncadenced, irregular, unpredictable, indescribably sensitive and supple. There is a marked indifference to the possibilities of contrapuntal effect, a dependence upon a method fundamentally homophonic rather than polyphonic—this music is a rich and shimmering texture of blended chord-groups, rather than a pattern of interlaced melodic strands. One ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... Friday night, which was the last night before the fight, Montgomery's three backers assembled in the gymnasium and inspected their man as he went through some light exercises to keep his muscles supple. He was certainly in splendid condition, his skin shining with health, and his eyes with energy and confidence. The three walked ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... head and face, with the exception of an opening from the eyes down to the mouth. In addition to these, was given to each as a present a pair of Ostjak boots. These were large and loose. They were made of goat-skins, rendered perfectly supple by grease and rubbing, and with the hair inside. They came up to the thighs, and had a thick sole made of layers of elk-hide. There was also for each a pair of socks of squirrel's skin, with the hair inside, and ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... hero Qat moulded men of clay, the red clay from the marshy river-side at Vanua Lava. At first he made men and pigs just alike, but his brothers remonstrated with him, so he beat down the pigs to go on all fours and made men walk upright. Qat fashioned the first woman out of supple twigs, and when she smiled he knew she was a living woman. (R.H. Codrington, "The Melanesians" (Oxford, 1891), page 158.) A somewhat different version of the Melanesian story is told at Lakona, in Santa Maria. There they say that Qat and another spirit ("vui") ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... carefully nursing his connection, he contrived to make a living; and that was all. Literary work is not well paid as a rule. There is fair pay to be had on the staff of the best daily papers, but that kind of work requires a special aptitude. It requires, in particular, a supple and indifferent mind, ready to take its cue from other people, with the art of representing things from day to day not exactly as they are, but as an editor or paymaster wants them to appear. If we suffered our journalists to sign their articles, they would probably write ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... engineering so far as Teuton effort is concerned. Certainly it has placed many notable flights to its credit. The Gross airship is an equally serviceable craft, its lines of design and construction closely following those of the early French supple airships. There are several other craft which have become more or less recognised by the German nation as substantial units of war, such as the Ruthemberg, Siemens-Schukert, and so forth, all of which have proved their serviceability more or less conclusively. But in the somewhat ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... hath no other glass To show itself, but pride; for supple knees Feed arrogance, and are the proud man's fees. 1378 SHAKS.: Troil. and ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... been eighteen. Her long, slim figure, in its clinging riding habit, betrayed, despite roundness and supple grace, a certain immaturity. Her hands and feet were long and slender. Her sun-tanned cheek and neck were soft and rounded. Her mouth was delicately chiseled and the lips were pink as the heart of a Bridesmaid rose, but, being ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... several amongst you, as well as by many who are now no more, and with whom I was acquainted. Believe me, gentlemen! to pretend to the favours of fortune it is only necessary to render one's self useful, and to be supple and obsequious to those who are in possession of credit and authority; to be handsome in one's person; to adulate the powerful; to smile, while you suffer from them every kind of ridicule and contempt whenever they shall do you ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... impending misfortunes, that two men of stable temperament and lucid perception were in authority at Candahar. General Nott was a grand old Indian officer, in whom there was no guile, but a good deal of temper. He was not supple, and he had the habit of speaking his mind with great directness, a propensity which accounted, perhaps, for the repeated supersessions he had undergone. A clearheaded, shrewd man, he was disgusted with very many things which he recognised as unworthy in the conduct of the affairs of Afghanistan, ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... I threw myself on a chair; my heart beat wildly: "Oh, heaven!" I murmured, "how can it be possible? Oh, superb monster! Oh! beautiful reptile! How you writhe, how you coil in and out, sweet adder, with supple and spotted skin! Thy cousin the serpent has taught thee to coil about the tree of life holding between thy lips the apple of temptation. Oh! Melusina! Melusina! The hearts of men are thine. You know it well, enchantress, with your soft languor that seems to suspect nothing! ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... eyebrows, dark in comparison with the amber hair, the turquoise blue eyes, the mouth of the pictured lady were curiously reproduced in Milly Flaxman. Possibly her figure may have been designed by nature to be as slight and supple, yet rounded, as that of the white-robed, gray-scarfed lady above there. But something or some one had intervened, and Milly looked stiff and shapeless in a green velveteen frock, scooped out vaguely around her white young throat and ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... defended by rocks, intercourse was carried on with the natives, whose dwellings were scattered about amongst palm-trees on the sea shore. The natives were strong and well proportioned, and their chief wore on his head a kind of crown made of small black feathers so fine and supple that they might have been taken for silk. His fair hair, which descended to the waist, excited the wonder of the Spaniards, who, not being able to understand how a man with so tawny coloured a face could have such light yellow hair, "chose to think that he was married, and that ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... The damp and soggy climate of Britain drives men to strong drink; the rosy Orient lures to the dream splendors of the lotus. The big-bodied, white-skinned northern dweller, rude and ferocious, bellows his anger uncouthly and drives a gross fist into the face of his foe. The supple south-sojourner, silken of smile and lazy of gesture, waits, and does his work from behind, when no man looketh, gracefully and without offence. Their ends are one; the difference lies in their ways, and therein the climate, and the cumulative effect thereof, is the determining ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... five was a large-boned, muscular man, nearly six feet high. The sleeve rolled up above the elbow showed an arm that was likely to win the prize for feats of strength; yet the long, supple hand, with its broad finger tips, looked ready for works of skill. In his tall stalwartness Adam Bede was a Saxon, and justified his name. The face was large and roughly hewn, and when in repose had no other beauty than such as belongs to an ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... "expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face: it is in his limbs and joints also; it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists; it is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees; dress does not hide him; the strong, sweet, supple quality he has strikes through the cotton and flannel; to see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more. You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side." He says he has perceived that to be with ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... with her at Morimond! He would wheel her all round the house in a little carriage, and at every few steps turn round to look at her screaming with laughter, with the sunshine playing on her cheeks, and her little supple, pink foot curled up in her hand. Or he would take her with him when he went for a walk, and would go as far as a village and let the child throw kisses to the people who bowed to him, or he would enter one of the farm-houses and show his daughter's teeth with great pride. On ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... awful glance its dizzy din; Beneath that stern regard the chewing-gum Which writhed and squeaked between the teeth is dumb; Obedient to his will the dunce-cap flies To perch upon the brows of the unwise; The supple switch forsakes the parent wood To settle where 'twill do the greatest good, Puissant still, as when of old it strove With Solomon for spitting on the stove Learned Professor, variously great, Guide, guardian, instructor of the State— Quick to discern and zealous to correct The faults which ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... characters of the men with whom he had to deal, and then assumed them. He practised this art mainly upon personages of exalted station, for his scheme was to govern the world by acquiring dominion over its anointed rulers. A smooth and supple slave in appearance, but, in reality, while his power lasted, the despot of his masters, he exercised boundless control by enacting their parts with such fidelity that they were themselves deceived. It is impossible not to admire the facility with which this accomplished Proteus successively ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... not," said the ticket-collector, "but a drop of sweet oil the way the joint would be kept supple." ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... the rope, which was looped around her, and then, with him pulling from above and Shefford assisting Jane as she climbed, she was finally gotten up without mishap. When Lassiter reached the level they rested a little while and then faced the great slide of jumbled rocks. Fay led the way, light, supple, tireless, and Shefford never ceased looking at her. At last they surmounted the long slope and, winding along the rim, reached the point where Fay had led out ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... Nobody knew the youth. He was a handsome, ruddy young fellow of about six and twenty, with a little spiral moustache twisted upwards in betyar fashion, flowing curly locks gathered up into a top-knot, black flashing eyes, and a bold expressive mouth, slight of build, but muscular and supple. His dress was rustic, but simple almost to affectation; you would not have found a seal on his white bulging shirt, search as you might, and he wore his cap, with a tuft of meadow-sweet in it, as gallantly as ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... fingers were not quite as steady as they might have been. Still, in a moment they appeared to become surer in their work. She had beautiful hands, not too large, though certainly not small, and they were strong, brown, supple. He observed next, with stealthy, upward-stealing glance, that she had rolled up her sleeves, exposing fine, round arms graceful in line. Her skin was brown—no, it was more gold than brown. It had a wonderful clear tint. Dick ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... roof, to give them festive welcome. Fred drew out his fiddle; the Doctor gathered his strength and shook as lively a shoe on the sanded floor of the best room as one will hear the clang of in many a day. Clumsy joints grew supple; heavy boots made the splinters fly; a fellow-townsman, like ourselves on a vacation tour, jigged with the inimitable grace of a trained dancer. How few of our muscles are aware of the joy of full development! ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... hatred— By danger—the two hands that tightest grasp Each other—the two cords that soonest knit A fast and stubborn tie; your true love knot Is nothing to it. Faugh! the supple touch Of pliant interest, or the dust of time, Or the pin-point of temper, loose or rot Or snap love's silken band. Fear and old hate, They are sure weavers—they work for the storm, The whirlwind, and the rocking surge; their ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... outward callings of men, planting our faith one while in the old Convocation House, and another while in the Chapel at Westminster; when all the faith that shall be there canonized is not sufficient, without plain convincement and the charity of patient instruction, to supple the least bruise of conscience, to edify the meanest Christian who desires to walk in the spirit and not in the letter of human trust, for all the number of voices that can there be made—no, though Harry the Seventh himself there, with all ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... away. So mother and son were constantly together. He had early become a great comfort and help to her, God blessing her in this vital respect, though her lot seemed hard in other ways. Thus, while he had the heart and courage of a man, he also had the quick, supple hand and gentle bearing of a woman, when occasion required. As proof of his skill, a tempting meal from the simplest materials was placed smoking on the table, and the little girls were soon chatting contentedly ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... of herself. She did not know why, but he stood alone, whenever she thought of him, wonderfully strange, and strong, and enduring, as much Toby as she was Sally. She did not fear him. In some ways she despised him, for being so little pliable, so little supple in his way of managing the world. But she adored him as a man, and as a simple-minded baby who unerringly made her happy by his assurance, and flighted her by behaving as though she was something ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... with all the politics, both the greater and the smaller, of the time; he was shrewd and adroit as a politician, and he had as good a right as any man then prominent in public life to the more dignified title of statesman. He had the art of popularity, and upon sufficient occasion could be supple and accommodating even in the gravest matters of principle. He had always been a Democrat. He now regarded himself as properly the leader of the Democratic party; and of course he still aimed at the high office which he had twice missed.[72] With this object in view, he had ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... which might be opened!" Sir John said gently, he had done no otherwise than he had been desired; which however the lord chamberlain, in part, denied, (cautious and civil!) "and I was not so unmannerly as to contest against," (supple, but uneasy!) This affair ended miserably for the poor Dutchmen. Those new republicans were then regarded with the most jealous contempt by all the ambassadors, and were just venturing on their first ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... up the steps, two at a time. The lady on the porch lifts her eyes just one moment, but womanlike she sees much in a glance. She sees that his eyes are of a wonderful dark blue; that his hair is thick and wavy; and that he is tall, straight and strong. How lithe and supple he seems, too, as he runs up the steps and disappears into the house. Has he seen the lady Madonna? She does not know. There is indeed something strange about this dark haired man; something out of ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... War Veteran lives alone with the care of Mr. Jones' niece, who resides next door to him. He has managed to survive his ninety-fifth year. It is almost a miracle to see a man at his age as suple [SP: supple] as he. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States, From Interviews with Former Slaves - Virginia Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... thick-set man with a hooky nose, and with bright, long-sighted brown eyes and strong, sensitive hands, wrists tempered and supple as a rapier, and a tongue that talked ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... not only the inspecting eyes of her hostess, but the amatory glances of the youthful Emile, had been fastened upon her window until the light disappeared, and even the Holy Mission Church of San Jose had assured itself of the dear child's safety with a large and supple ear at ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... instrument of uncommon strength and wielded an authority that none could stand against. Her fancy wandered over the scenes it had known; when it had felled trees in the wild forest, and those fingers, then supple and slight, had played the fife to the struggling men of the Revolution; how its activity had outdone the activity of all other hands in clearing and cultivating those very fields where her feet loved to run; how in its pride of strength it had handled the ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... cried Miss Vane delightedly. "I believe Lemuel is a little more supple, a little less like a granite boulder in one of his meadows. But I can't say that he's glib yet. He isn't apparently going to say ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... litter and made my bearers trot all the way round by the big and little Coelian Hills to the Querquetulan Gate. We passed on this route many cheap shops. From one I bought a pair of horseman's high boots, soft and supple and mud-proof. All the way I enjoyed hugely my outing and the sights and sounds around me. From another shop one of my reliefs brought me an umbrella hat which fitted me and a voluminous horseman's raincloak ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... the Dryads be silent, and the springs welling from the rock, and the many-mingled bleating of the ewes; for Pan himself makes music on his melodious pipe, running his supple lip over the jointed reeds; and around him stand up to dance with glad feet the water-nymphs and ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... He held a supple riding-switch in his hands, at which his fingers strained and twisted continually, as though somewhere in the inner man there burned a fierce impatience. But his dark face was as immovable as though it had been carved ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... first time I had ever been in a room with her alone. The embarrassing sense of her position had heightened her color and brightened her eyes. She stood, leaning one hand on the table, confused and irresolute, her firm and supple figure falling into an attitude of unsought grace which it was literally a luxury to look at. I said nothing; my eyes confessed my admiration; the writing materials lay untouched before me on the table. How long the silence might have lasted I cannot ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... of Nyssia was of a perfection rare even in Greece and antique Asia. The great toe, a little apart like the thumb of a bird, the other toes, slightly long, and all ranged in charming symmetry, the nails well shaped and brilliant as agates, the ankles well rounded and supple, the heel slightly tinted with a rosy hue—nothing was wanting to the perfection of the little member. The leg attached to this foot, and which gleamed like polished marble under the lamp-light, was irreproachable ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... and conciliating reflections. She was quite happy in it; for Christina was one of those wise women, who do not look into their ideals and hopes too closely. Her face reflecting them was beautiful and benign; and her shoulders, and hands, her supple waist and limbs, continued the symphonies of her soft, deep, loving eyes and her smiling mouth. Every now and then she burst into song; and then her thrilling voice, so sweet and fresh, had tones in it that only birds and good women full of love may compass. Mostly the song was a ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... splendor. The young widow across the table was also using her eyes, but in a very different fashion. She had now taken off her straw hat; the curly crop of a brown mane gave the brilliant face an added accent of vigor. The chien de race was the dominant note now in the muscular, supple body, the keen-edged nostrils, and the intent gaze of the liquid eyes. These latter were fixed with the fixity of a savage on Charm. She was giving, in a sweet sibilant murmur, the man seated next her—Monsieur d'Agreste, the man who ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... had engaged him in half smiling, low-voiced conversation; and Palla looked at her golden-green eyes and warm, rich colouring, cooled by a skin of snow. Tiger-golden, the rousse ensemble; the supple movement of limb and body fascinated her; but most of all the lovely, slanting eyes with their glint ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... opposition to him was clearly far deeper than a difference of opinion on these two points. Calvin instinctively felt that the bold and independent spirit of this young scholar, his qualities of leadership, and his literary genius marked him out as a man who could not long be an easy-minded and supple subordinate. A letter which Calvin wrote at this time to his friend Viret shows where the real tension lay. "Castellio has got it into his head," he writes, "that I want to rule!" The great Reformer may not have been conscious yet of such a purpose, but there can be no question that ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... tone of this reply which warned Barrant that he had made a blunder in allowing his irritation to get the better of him. But his private opinion was that the letter was the outcome of some secret of the dead man's which he had imparted to his lawyer. He changed his mood with supple swiftness, in order to ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... religious people so harsh, so querulous, so unsociable? 'Tis because they have imposed a task upon themselves which is not natural to them. They suffer, and when people suffer, they make others suffer too. That is not my game, nor that of my protectors either; I have to be gay, supple, amusing, comical. Virtue makes itself respected, and respect is inconvenient; virtue insists on being admired, and admiration is not amusing. I have to do with people who are bored, and I must make them laugh. Now it is absurdity and madness which ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... pretty, for a village of six hundred people!" Clementine was pretty enough to be admired in a city of eight hundred thousand. Fancy to yourself a little blonde creole, with black eyes, creamy complexion and dazzling teeth. Her figure was round and supple as a twig, and was finished off with dainty hands and pretty Andalusian feet, arched and beautifully rounded. All her glances were smiles, and all her movements caresses. Add to this, that she was neither a fool nor a prude, nor even an ignoramus like girls brought up in convents. Her education, ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... Egyptian beggar-girls was dancing to it on the floating quay down below us by the flicker of the arc-lamp. She was a tiny mite, with a shock of black hair and brown face and arms. She wore a pink dress with some brass buttons hung round her neck. She danced with all the supple gracefulness of the out-door tribes of the desert, never out of step, always true and rhythmic in every motion of ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... spirit of the flesh or the despicable taste for high society. So that the first duty of any man who is to write is intellectual. Designedly or not, he has so far set himself up for a leader of the minds of men; and he must see that his own mind is kept supple, charitable, and bright. Everything but prejudice should find a voice through him; he should see the good in all things; where he has even a fear that he does not wholly understand, there he should be wholly silent; and he should recognise from the first ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... half of the first circle thus before Dollops had leaped to the bending willows, had scrambled up the rough trunk of the nearest of them, and, pushing his weight out upon a strong and supple bough, bent it downward until the half of its strongest withes were ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... and Prince Richard were as supple as willows, as straight as pines, as graceful as silver birches. Their blond hair hung thick and straight against their necks and was cut square above their level brows. Their manners were so good that their father didn't ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... Antinous, so did the bow tear and strain his hands, and marred his delicate fingers, yet could he not once stir the string. Then called he to the attendants to bring fat and unctuous matter, which melting at the fire, he dipped the bow therein, thinking to supple it and make it more pliable; but not with all the helps of art could he succeed in making it to move. After him Liodes, and Amphinomus, and Polybus, and Eurynomus, and Polyctorides essayed their strength, but not any one of them, or of the rest of those aspiring suitors, had ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... way to manage him. I felt my advantage at once. His supple nature was one which yielded to roughness far more readily than to entreaty. He flushed with shame, and his eyes filled with tears. But MacCoy saw my advantage also, and was determined that ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rolling on the ground, wrestling and striking according to their ability. Sholto might easily have had the best of the fray, but for the temper aroused by Laurence's recent degradation, for the elder brother was taller by an inch, and of a frame of body more lithe and supple. Moreover, the accuracy of Sholto MacKim's shape and the severe training of the smithy had not left a superfluous ounce of ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... the contestants immediately took their positions. The land baron, lithe and supple, presented a picture of insolent and conscious pride, his glance lighted by disdain, but smoldering with fiercer passions as he ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... bodies of the convulsionists, the assistants employed weapons of considerable volume, having flat or rounded surfaces, cylindrical or blunted. But the action of such physical agents is not to be compared, as regards its danger, with that of thongs, switches, or other supple and flexible instruments with distinct edges. Finally, the contact and the repeated impression of the blows produced on the convulsionists the effect of a sort of salutary pounding, and rendered less poignant and less sensible the tortures of hysteria. It would have been preferable, doubtless, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... memories to him. In days gone by Elena had been fond of lingering over this fireside. She expended much art and ingenuity in piling the wood high on the fire-dogs, grasping the heavy tongs in both hands and leaning her head slightly back to avoid the sparks. Her hands were small and very supple, with that tendril-like flexibility, so to speak, of a Daphne at the very first ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... out, as she stood there among the crowd, vivacious, vivid, clad all in white except for the loose coral-hued sweater which set off her warm brunette beauty and the slim but charmingly rounded curves of her supple young body. Yes, she was like Laura, like her and yet different, with a quality which he fancied belonged to herself ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... countries—assegais, spears, boomerangs, throwing sticks, sjamboks and South Sea Island clubs and shields. A special nail held Jim's own stockwhip, to which Norah always attended after he had gone away, lest the supple thong should become harsh through disuse. Then there were weapons of peace—hockey sticks, rackets, cricket-bats—the latter an assortment of all Jim had used, from the tiny one he had begun with at the age of eight to the full sized beauty that had split honourably in an inter-State ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... savage cruelties. Thirty thousand of his opponents fell in this battle, and Sextus Pompey alone, of all the marked men, escaped to the mountains, and defied pursuit. On this victory he celebrated his last triumph, and the supple Senate decreed to him the title of Imperator. He was made consul for ten years, dictator for life, his person was decreed inviolable, and he was surrounded by a guard of nobles and senators. He also received ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... poor.—When fat turkeys are to be purchased in the market, in order to judge of their quality it is necessary to observe, that the cock bird when young has a smooth black leg, and a short spur. If fresh and sweet, the eyes are full and bright, and the feet moist and supple. If stale, the eyes will be sunk, and the feet stiff and dry. The hen turkey is known by the same rules; but if old, the legs will be red ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... age (dating from her last birthday) she possessed the development of the bosom and limbs which in England is rarely attained before twenty. Everything about the girl—except her little rosy ears—was on a grand Amazonian scale. Her shapely hand was long and large; her supple waist was the waist of a woman. The indolent grace of all her movements had its motive power in an almost masculine firmness of action and profusion of physical resource. This remarkable bodily development was far from ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... aroused now. Every angry force within her was fully awake. Every sense of right and justice inherited and taught came flocking forward. Horror unspeakable filled her, and wrath, that such a dreadful thing should come to her. There was no time to think. She brought her two strong supple hands up and beat him in the face, mouth, cheeks, and eyes, with all her might, until he turned blinded; and then she struggled away crying, "You are a wicked man!" and fled from ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... Oriole twines herself, from plant fibres, adding strings of cotton or worsted when she has a chance to find any. She secures it to the end of a strong supple twig, usually at a good height from the ground, and she likes an elm tree best of all, because it is not easy for cats or House People to climb far out on the slender swaying branches. Up there the eggs and young are safely rocked by the wind and sheltered by leaves. A cat may ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... preserved health. In cases of chronic and acute diseases, in their severest forms, we have changed the secretions, renewed structure, and restored health; have elongated shortened limbs, relaxed rigid muscles, made cicatrized joints supple; restored carious bones to healthy conditions, renewed that which is termed the lost substance of the lungs; and restored healthy organizations where disease was organic ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was none other than Black Bruin, was holding up a section between his paws, while with his supple red tongue he licked out the contents. Although the bees were swarming about him in a black cloud and doing their best to punish the thief, he paid little attention to them but licked ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... warned by a sky shaded from blue to the murkiest gray, into having the top of his car put up. The rain chased him for thirty miles and whelmed him in a wild swirl at the thirty-first. Driving through this with some caution, he saw ahead of him a woman's figure, as supple as a willow withe, as gallant as a ship, beating through the fury of the elements. Hal slowed down, debating whether to offer conveyance, when he caught a glint of ruddy waves beneath the drenched hat, and the next instant he was out and looking into the flushed face ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... down on the steps of their house. Her head back, her supple strong throat arched with the passion of hating boredom, she devoured the starlight dim over the stale old roofs ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... dame of more than seventy years, very thin, but straight and supple, and with hair still jet black. Her eyes were gray-green or green-gray, as the light happened to strike them; her cheeks were hollow, and a long sharp chin slanted up to meet a long sharp nose. Ordinarily, as the Knight had hinted, she was no doubt an unholy terror, ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... in the door. Mrs. Hopkinson was right,—she had "no style," unless an original and half-foreign quaintness could be called so. There was a desperate attempt visible to combine an American shawl with the habits of a mantilla, and it was always slipping from one shoulder, that was so supple and vivacious as to betray the deficiencies of an education in stays. There was a cluster of black curls around her low forehead, fitting her so closely as to seem to be a part of the seal-skin ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... or detach myself from her, she had twisted herself about, in a peculiarly supple and child-like manner that she had, and had made the suggestion ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... hag, in screaming wild alarms O'er a dead carcase muttering her charms, 410 (And with her frequent and tremendous yell Forcing great Hecate from out of hell) Shoots in the corpse a new fictitious soul; With instant glare the supple eyeballs roll, Again it moves and speaks, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... taught me. Such talks! I can close my eyes and actually smell the sea-weed and the damp sand and hear the inrush of the big combers. She used to sit in the lee of the rocks, all huddled in that heavy, supple army-blue officer's cloak of hers with its tarnished silver clasps, and talk as Miranda must have talked to Ferdinand's old bachelor friend, who probably appreciated the chance—too well, ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... pretty quiet at present on both sides, but greater activity was expected soon. I made the acquaintance of Venosta, an Italian Artillery officer attached to the Battery. He was from Milan, a member of a well-known Lombard family, and had a soft and quiet way with him and a certain supple charm. At ordinary times he preferred to take things easily, and was imperturbable by anything which he thought unimportant. But in crises, as I learned later on, he could show much ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... that was tall and straight and strong—that would mean Alastair? Maybe you would rather find you had got hold of a withered old stump with a lot of earth at the root—a decrepit old man with plenty of money in the bank? Or maybe you are wishing for one that is slim and supple and not so tall—for one that might mean ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... tied, Kamasura was stripped to the waist, and then Harrigan saw Borgson, grinning evilly, step up with a long whip in his hand. It was a blacksnake, heavily loaded and stiff at the butt and tapering gradually to a slender, supple, snakelike body, with a thin, sinister lash. Borgson whirled the whip around his head to get its balance. Henshaw stepped back, still with ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... as firemen with that ease and celerity which are so desirable. To obviate this evil he instituted the gymnastic exercises, which, by bringing all the muscles of the body into action, and by increasing the development of the frame generally, rendered the men lithe and supple, and in every way more fitted for the performance of duties in which their lives frequently depended on their ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... as might be imagined, and many fine players drive their best balls with stiff clubs. It must always be remembered that when the stroke is not made perfectly there is a much greater tendency to slice with a supple shaft than with a stiff one, and the disadvantages of the former are especially pronounced on a windy day. It is all a matter of preference and predilection, and when these are absent the best thing to do is to strike the happy medium and select a shaft that is fairly supple ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... the pay of a common scribe was about one half-penny a day, see Stevenson's Supple. to Bentham's Hist. of the Church ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... the saddle, then dropped him a courtesy as good as he had sent, and answered, "Fair sir, I ride 'cross country on my own business." And she gathered up the bridle in her supple little hand. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... had been with me for two years, winter and summer, and it was a great pleasure to witness his gracious development of body, mind, and character. Clean-limbed, smooth-skinned, slender, and supple, his Indian blood showing chiefly in a slight swarth of complexion and aquilinity of feature, he now approached his twentieth year and began to gain the strength of his manhood and to give promise of more than the average stature and physical power. With only one full year's ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... him to Bazarov; Pavel Petrovitch greeted him with a slight inclination of his supple figure, and a slight smile, but he did not give him his hand, and even put it back ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... bran, the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled, on the floor; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have more significance to the touch. He took the body by the shoulders and turned it on its back. It was strangely light and supple, and the limbs, as if they had been broken, fell into the oddest postures. The face was robbed of all expression; but it was as pale as wax, and shockingly smeared with blood about one temple. That was, for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and giddiness; and come to years once, there drops a son by th' sword in his Mistresses quarrel, a great joy to his parents: A Daughter ripe too, grows high and lusty in her blood, must have a heating, runs away with a supple ham'd Servingman: his twenty Nobles spent, takes to a trade, and learns to spin mens hair off; there's another, and most are of this ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont
... spurring and reining his supple, cringing steed. "Eeeeeee-yip-yeeeee!" Thus vociferating, he rode straight at the footman, with apparently the deliberate wish to ride him down. He wist not that the latter had seen cavalry in his day, and was not easily to be disconcerted, and, finding that he failed to create a panic, he pulled ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... on, arguing with his companion, who was rather spare than prodigal in his person, but marvelously lithe and supple. The latter was shod with low shoes, garters united the stockings to the light-blue breeches, the waistcoat was cane-colored, his sash light green, and jaunty shoulder-knots, lappets, and rows of buttons ornamented the carmelite jacket. The open cloak, the hat drawn over his ear, his short, ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... the grand alliance; he "borrowed England on his way to Versailles," and governed it in the interest of the Dutch Coalition. Queen Anne and the first Georges reigned but did not govern; and in the early eighteenth century power fell to men of supple intelligence and complacent conviction—to Marlborough and little Sidney Godolphin, to Harley and St. John and Sunderland, and at last to Robert Walpole, the very personification of the shrewd curiosity, the easy-going morals, the material ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... in their Savoy-cake skirts and nougat waists were not as pretty as little Maria in her simple brown frock. How she improved from day to day! It seemed to Amedee as if he never had seen her before until this minute. Where had she found that supple, round waist, that mass of reddish hair which she twisted upon the top of her head, that lovely complexion, that mouth, and those eyes that smiled with the artless ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... torch to the side of his rock, and its feeble flicker fell on a chaos of rocks below. He looked long and cautiously for supple yellow arms or tiny whip-like threads which might coil suddenly round his legs and drag him to ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... stones until it was filled with hot steam, and Malchus began to think that he was going to be boiled alive. After being kept for an hour in this vapour bath, he was annointed with oil, and was rubbed until every limb was supple, he was then placed on a couch and covered with soft skins, and in a few more minutes ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... I will do it;" and Fern leaned forward and kissed her softly. The moon was shining brightly now, and in the clear white light Fern noticed for the first time how thin and pale Crystal looked; how her cheek, and even her slight supple figure, had lost their roundness. There were deep hollows in the temples, dark lines under the dark eyes, in spite of her beauty she was fearfully wan. The grief that preyed upon her would soon ravage her good looks. For the first time Fern felt a vague fear oppressing ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Paul could hardly believe his senses. He was conscious, as he gazed into the depths of two marvellous eyes, of a tall supple figure all in black, a crimson rose in her dark hair lending a touch of ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... complexion was the clearest, whose hair the prettiest colour, and whose figure the best. You can imagine that among these figures sanctified to God there were fine ones, stout ones, lank ones, thin ones, plump ones, supple ones, shrunken ones, and figures of all kinds. Then they would quarrel amongst themselves as to who took the least to make a girdle, and she who spanned the least was pleased without knowing why. At times they would relate their dreams and what they had seen in them. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... story-teller, but that's a small part of him," said Samson. "He's a kind of a four horse team. He knows more than any man I ever saw and can tell it and he can wrestle like old Satan and swing a scythe or an axe all day an' mighty supple. He's one of us common folks and don't pretend to be a bit better. He is, though, and we know it, but I ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... till we see they was all in the land o' nod. Then we riz an' set up a hussle. Hones' we could 'a' killed 'em with a hammer an' done it delib'rit. I started to pull the young Huron out o' the bunch. He jumped up very supple. He wasn't asleep. He had knowed better than to swaller a ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... not mean, however, to represent him as a monster of wickedness. He was not wantonly cruel or treacherous. He was merely a supple, timid, interested courtier, in times of frequent and violent change. That which has always been represented as his distinguishing virtue, the facility with which he forgave his enemies, belongs to the character. Slaves of his class are never vindictive, and never grateful. A present ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... gloom, A mocking phantom,—fair as it is foul! With naked arms, white breast, and ebon locks, And big black eyes that dart the humid flame Which sets the heart ablaze; and red moist lips, And checks as spotless as the falling flake Ere it has touched the earth, and supple form Wherein is knit each grace of womanhood In its perfection! and with wanton looks That speak the burning language of desire, It seems to woo its loathsome follower,— Yet ever from his foul embraces flies. And on his brow his ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... hour of danger threatened, to be called out, in marching- order, to the field of battle. But by this time the pistols were in the hands of the two infatuated young men, Mr Bloatsheet, as fierce as a hussar dragoon, and Magneezhy as supple in the knees as if he was all on oiled hinges; so the next consideration was to get well out of the way, the lookers-on running nearly as great a chance of being shot as the principals, they not being accustomed, like me for instance, to the use of arms; on which account, I scougged ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... councils the moderate Republicans proved triumphant. With a supple dexterity, Thiers knew how to steer between the Democratic-Republican party and the Monarchists. When Gambetta endeavored to establish a "league of Republican towns," the attempt was forbidden as illegal; and when the decree of banishment against the Bourbon ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... III., the last of that supple dynasty which had managed to thrive on the jealous and often treacherous patronage of Rome, left his dominions at his death to the Republic. He had begun his reign by massacring all his father's friends ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... admit. Mlle. Frahender devoted infinite patience to gluing the tiniest fibres of the sea plants. Some were bright pink, suggesting in formation and colour the little red fishing boats. Others were gold with their slender little flowers rising in clusters. The long supple green algaes, swelling along their stems into little round beads, like beads of jade, looked as though they wore some Chinese costume. As the album grew it ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... rise beyond the dead level of ordinary practice. As fine draughtsmen with a feeling for their materials they did not trace with the knife, they drew and carved with it. Their feeling for line and shape was sensitive, crisp, and supple. But although they created the masterpieces of the medium they suffered from the traditional contempt for their craft. Creative ability in a woodcutter was rarely recognized, and the art fell into gradual decline. By the time the 18th century opened it had been almost entirely abandoned as ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen
... outstanding Irish names: Daniel Henry Deniehy, who died in 1865, was called by Bulwer Lytton "the Australian Macaulay" on account of his brilliant writings as critic and reviewer in the press of Victoria. Gerald Henry Supple, another Dublin man, is also remembered for his contributions to the Age and the Argus of Melbourne. In India one of the first—if not the first—English newspapers was founded by a Limerick man, named Charles Johnstone, who had previously ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... distinguished officers by his tall, straight figure and quick movements, was the Chevalier La Corne St. Luc, supple as an Indian, and almost as dark, from exposure to the weather and incessant campaigning. He was fresh from the blood and desolation of Acadia, where France, indeed, lost her ancient colony, but St. Luc reaped a full sheaf ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... was toward him, and a pink sunbonnet, freshly starched, concealed all her face. The long, straight lines of her gown fell about a vigorous and supple figure that swayed with every stroke of the hoe. Bob stopped and watched her. There was something refreshing in the eagerness with which she attacked the weeds, as though it were less a drudgery than a live interest which it was well to meet joyously. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... her youthful grace of movement. Her tall figure, so round with the charms of womanhood, yet so supple, so full of natural, unfettered grace, made her a delight to the eye. Her beauty was unquestioned. But the change in her expression was marked. Her ripe young lips were firmer, harder even. There was, too, a slight down drooping at the corners of her mouth. Then her eyes had lost something ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... ideal it is impossible to see how it could be achieved, either along the line of working at Heredity, or along the line of working at the Environment. Even the most keenly intellectual people that ever existed, the most amorous of novelty, the most supple-minded, could not permit Socrates to live, though all the time Socrates was going their own way, his feet pressing the same path; they still could not understand his prosaic way of looking intently where his feet fell. It ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... Tad was lithe and supple. As the champion wrestler of the high school, back in his home town in Missouri, he was possessed of many tricks that had proved useful to him on more than one occasion since the Pony Riders set out on their ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... his liege, After Palermo's fatal siege, Across the western seas he fled, In good King Bomba's happy reign. His face was like a summer night, All flooded with a dusky light; His hands were small; his teeth shone white As sea-shells, when he smiled or spoke; His sinews supple and strong as oak; Clean shaven was he as a priest, Who at the mass on Sunday sings, Save that upon his upper lip His beard, a good palm's length at least, Level and pointed at the tip, Shot sideways, like a swallow's wings. The poets read he o'er and o'er, And most of all the ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... startling black hair which breaks into a floss of little curls, and with unexpected blue eyes. Her full lips made a bud, and it only half bloomed when she smiled. From crown to slipper she was a ripe and supple woman. Though clad, like Emeline, in black, her garment was a transparent texture over white, and she held a parasol with crimson lining behind her head. She had left her bonnet ...
— The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... like was not to be found, either for life, learning, or any other quality which might beautify a man." And now here he stood at the bar, paler than ever, so numbed with racking that he could not lift his hand to plead—that supple musician's hand of his, once so skilful on the lute—so that Mr. Sherwin had to lift it for him out of the furred cuff in which he had wrapped it, kissing it tenderly as he did so, in reverence for its sufferings; ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... that I let her suffer so, that I did not break down the partition with my hands and strike that supple gentleman dead at her feet in atonement for the anguish he was causing her. But I had a mind to see how far he would drive this game ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... take some of them, dear," said Lily, in her cooing voice, and she gathered up some of the parcels under her long, supple arm. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... possession of one, goes farther in influencing his thoughts and actions than whole tomes of ethical culture science. You know perhaps how the Arabs conquered the best half of the world with an epigram, a word. And Khalid loves a fine-sounding, easy-flowing word; a word of supple joints, so to speak; a word that you can twist and roll out, flexible as a bamboo switch, resilient as a fine steel rapier. But once Shakib, after reading one of Khalid's first attempts, gets up in the night when his friend is asleep, takes from the bottom drawer of the peddling-box the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... the teaching of the hunter," said Venning, wisely. "Deep breathing gives a man deep lungs. That is his teaching. Also this, that a man should keep his skin clean and his muscles supple by hard rubbing after the bath. Therefore, I did ask the bo'sun to turn the hose on us in the morning when they clean down the decks. It is ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... he wished to out-distance the artist, and ran with all his might. As he turned around he saw the artist catching up with Katiousha, but with her supple limbs she gained on him and ran to the left. In front of them was a patch of lilac bushes, behind which no one ran, but Katiousha, turning toward Nekhludoff, motioned him with her head to join her there. He understood her, and ran behind the bushes. But here ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... was the perfection of grace. Her figure was lithe and supple as a boy's. There was a suggestion of fire and strength and agility about her that made one think of a panther as she postured there against a background of barbaric color. The grace of her movements, ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... de Casimir shrugged their supple shoulders at his simple talk. They spoke of him half-contemptuously as of one who had had a thousand chances and had never taken them. He was not even rich, and he had handled great sums of money. He was only a General, and he had slept ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... with the assurance that 'He will abundantly pardon.' But it is sadly too plain to observation, and to the experience of some of us, that obstacles grow with years, that habits and associations grip with increasing power, that in all things our natures become less flexible, the supple sapling becoming gnarled and tough, that a middle-aged or old man is more inextricably 'tied and bound by the cords of his sins,' than a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... a picturesque rascal for all he wears no satin harness, no plumed bonnet, no silken tights. His attitude is stately; he is lithe and supple; all his movements are full of grace. When his long canoe, and his fine figure, towering from its high perch on the stern, are cut against the evening sky, they make a picture that is very novel and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to them. Week after week, month after month, they came stringing-in from seven-syllabled localities on all points of the compass; some with sunburnt wives, and graduated sets of supple-jointed keen-sighted children—the latter, I grieve to admit, distinctly affirming that disquieting theory which assumes evolution of immigrating races ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... growl echo the shouts of the spectators. Here are great lions from Numidia and tigers from far Arabia, wolves from the Apennines and bears from Libya, not caged and half-tamed as we see them now, but wild and fierce, loose in the arena. Now the hunters swarm in, on horse and on foot,—trained and supple Thracian gladiators, skilled Gaetulian hunters, with archers, and spearmen, and net-throwers. All around the great arena rages the cruel fight. Here, a lion stands at bay; there, a tigress crouches for the spring; a snarling wolf snaps ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... in the city, within closed doors, I saw a young slave-girl dancing. She was about fifteen years old, thin and supple; she danced like a reed in the wind; but her eyes were weary as death, and her white body was marked with bruises. She stumbled, and the men laughed at her. She fell, and her mistress beat her, crying out that she would fain be rid of such a heavy-footed slave. ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... business to study them even as I have studied men. But this woman who sat under the sacred snakes in her golden half-castle on the mammoth's back, fairly baffled me. Of her thoughts I could read no single syllable. I could see a body slight, supple, and beautifully moulded; in figure rather small. Her face was a most perfect book of cleverness, yet she was fair, too, beyond belief, with hair of a lovely ruddiness, cut short in the new fashion, and bunching on her shoulders. And eyes! Gods! ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... its full advantage her supple and stately figure. She had a queenly poise of the head. Aristide contemplated her ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... Supple gloves covered the hands, the helmet was then put on, and the knapsack of compressed air adjusted ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood
... am Hugh Morrison from Glenae, come of the Manly Morrisons of auld langsyne, that never took short weapon against a man in their lives. And neither needed they; they had their broadswords, and I have this bit supple (showing a formidable cudgel)—for dirking ower the board, I leave that to John Highlandman. Ye needna snort, none of you Highlanders, and you in especial, Robin. I'll keep the bit knife, if you are feared for the auld spae-wife's tale, and give it back ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... the recollection of a supple, expressive, un-English bow, and of a deftness of phrase compared with which Trenby's laboured compliment savoured of the elephantine. Swiftly she dismissed the memory, irritably chasing it from her mind, for was it not five long, black, incomprehensible ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... tryals that I could imagine, having dipt, I say, several of these drops in this transparent Glue whilst hot, and suffering them to hang by a string tied about the end of them till they were cold, and the skin pretty tough; then wrapping all the body of the drop (leaving out only the very tip) in fine supple Kids-leather very closely, I nipped off the small top, and found, as I expected, that notwithstanding this skin of Glue, and the close wrapping up in Leather, upon the breaking of the top, the drop gave a crack ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... eyes. She looked, indeed, like one of those wonderful boys of the Italian Renaissance, whom you may still see at the National Gallery, whose beauty is no denial, but rather the stamp of their slender, supple strength, young painters and sculptors who held the palette for Leonardo, or wielded the chisel for Michelangelo, and anon threw both aside to take up sword for Guelf or Ghibelline in ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... himself. "I cannot quite make up my mind, but I am very sure that she is charming. Like my bracelet, this is a fancy article. She is a little thin, and her shoulders are too vigorously fashioned for her waist, which is slender and supple as a reed; but, such as she is, she has not her equal. Her walk, her carriage, resemble nothing I ever have seen before. I can well imagine that when she appears in the streets of Paris people turn to look after her, but no one would have the audacity ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... in love with a few weeks ago), fastening it here and there with diamond pins. "Madame will be late if we are not careful," the Frenchwoman said. "Everything takes so long to-night." She laid on the floor at Beverley's feet a cloud of silver gauze, supple as chiffon. It was the new dress and Madame must step into it to avoid ruffling her hair. Beverley obeyed, and when her arms had slid into the odd little jewelled sleeves, she let Leontine draw her gently ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... you, as well as by many who are now no more, and with whom I was acquainted. Believe me, gentlemen! to pretend to the favours of fortune it is only necessary to render one's self useful, and to be supple and obsequious to those who are in possession of credit and authority; to be handsome in one's person; to adulate the powerful; to smile, while you suffer from them every kind of ridicule and contempt whenever they shall do you ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... it. In her movement there was the fluent, untamed grace that expressed a soul not yet stunted by the claims of convention. The golden little head was carried buoyantly. In her step was the rhythm of perfect ease. The supple resilience of her was another expression of the spiritual quality that spoke ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... Uncle Felix, half in fun, "it makes me dizzy." He was tempted to copy them, however, and made an effort, but the movement caught him in the ribs a little. His body, like his mind, was not as supple as theirs. An oak tree or an elm, ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... but not mischievous, in the human sense. They frolic in the pure delight of motion. By mortal standards of age they are between childhood and youth, when limbs are long and bodies supple. Their only draperies are narrow scarfs which they twist about them ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... to the custom of the country; but if there is a company of a hundred despots, I am exposed to repeating this ceremony a hundred times a day, which in the long run is very annoying if one's hocks are not supple. If I have a farm in the neighbourhood of one of our lords, I am crushed; if I plead against a relation of the relations of one of our lords, I am ruined. What is to be done? I fear that in this world one is reduced to being either hammer ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... indifferently, his eyes fixed on the slim, supple figure of the Princess Ziska as she slowly moved amid her circle of admirers out of the ball-room, her golden skirts gleaming sun-like against the polished floor, and the jewels about her flashing in vivid points of light from the hem of her robe to ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... short, in the deep shadow of a clump of chestnut-trees. Something moved, behind the very tree he was looking at. A figure came lightly out into the open; a woman's figure, slight and supple, clad in shadowy white. A dryad? No! the girl he had seen in the summer-house. He knew the face, as it shone upturned in the moonlight; knew the firm mouth and chin, the blue eyes, the look of careless power; seen once ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... faces of women, and as they lounged, half-naked, carelessly in the drift, their muscles stood out in knots, and in the dim light of the candles, as they rose to return to work, their movements were supple and elastic as those of caged lions. The one who answered to the name of Browning was shorter than the other by an inch, but deeper-chested; the candlelight showed that his eyes were blue, and his mustache and short curly hair were of chestnut color. The other was a little taller, ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... sentence of the present day— has been compared to a heavy cart without springs, while the newer English sentence is like a modern well-hung English carriage. Norman-French, then, gave us a brighter, lighter, freer rhythm, and therefore a sentence more easy to understand and to employ, more supple, and better adapted to ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... her admiringly, at the thin supple body and long light arms that could reach so far among the cotton bolls. He untied the bags and proceeded to fill the gin. A girl who could pick two hundred and seventy-five pounds of cotton a day was a ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... that the Trappists interpret the rule of Saint Benedict, which is very broad and supple, less in its spirit than in its letter, while the Benedictines do ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... supereco. Superlative (gram.) superlativo. Supernatural supernatura. Supernumerary ekstrulo. Superscription surskribo. Supersede anstatauxi. Superstition supersticxo. Superstitious supersticxa. Supervise observi. Supper noktomangxo. Supplant anstatauxi, uzurpi. Supple fleksebla. Supplement aldono. Supplement aldoni. Supplementary aldona. Supplicate petegi. Supply provizi. Support subteni. Support (prop) subportilo. Supporter partiano. Suppose supozi, konjekti. Suppress subpremi. Supremacy superegeco. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... this she was not fine in texture, but hardy as a man. She could endure immense fatigue without yielding to it. Her supple form had the strength of steel. There was a gleam in her hazel eyes that showed her to be brimful of an almost fierce vitality. Young as she was, she was the mistress of a thousand arts, and she exhaled a sort of atmosphere that turned the heads of men. The Stuart ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... a Greek by birth and education, Greek also in subtle thought and philosophic insight, in oratorical power and supple statesmanship. Though born almost within the shadow of the mighty temple of Serapis at Alexandria, he shows few signs of Coptic influence. Deep as is his feeling of the mystery of revelation, he has no ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... the signal to begin, pointed her little foot at the precise moment, and, holding her dress in the tips of her slender fingers, slid into the movement with a grace and accuracy never to be attained except by vigorous practice, or a temperament as sensitive to time and tune, limbs as supple, and impulses as graceful, as were those of this ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... paddle-dip, every twist and turn of the supple canoes, revealed some new caprice of the river's moods. In places the current would be shallow and the canoes would lag. Then the paddlers must catch the veer of the flow or they would presently be out waist-deep ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... youth, when it had been, the instrument of uncommon strength, and wielded an authority that none could stand against. Her fancy wandered over the scenes it had known; when it had felled trees in the wild forest; and those fingers, then supple and slight, had played the fife to the struggling men of the Revolution; how its activity had outdone the activity of all other hands in clearing and cultivating those very fields where her feet loved to run; how, in its pride of strength, it had handled the scythe, and the sickle, and the ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... they went out to see a reed shaken by the wind, or someone dressed like a courtier—the last things to which anyone would compare John. There was nothing supple about him, as Herod found, and Herodias (Mark 6:17-20); he was not shaken by the wind; there was no trimming of his sails. The austerity of his life and the austerity of his spirit go together, and he preached in a tone and a language that scorched. He ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... drawing, and engraving—some excellent examples of her work in the latter field still being preserved—and she united with these a rare physical beauty. M. Leroy, Keeper of the Park of Versailles, thus describes her at the time of her meeting with the King: "She was taller than the average, graceful, supple, and elegant. Her features comported well with her stature, a perfect oval face, framed by beautiful hair of a light shade, large eyes marked by eyebrows of the same hue, a perfect nose, a charming mouth, teeth of exceptional beauty ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... meant to cheat; yet he did cheat. Yet, even if he lied, lies help truth to live; and he must live himself; and God may have made fools for him to live on;" and many other are the twists of his defence. The poem is as lifelike in its insight into the mind of a supple cheat as it is a brilliant bit of literature; but Browning leaves the matter unconcluded, as he would not have done, I hold, had he been writing poetry. Prince Hohenstiel's defence of expediency in politics is made by Browning to seem now right, now wrong, because he assumes ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... not harder for a woman than to launch a boat, and sail her without a mast. See my father, Michael Penfold. See Undercliff, the expert. See the solicitor, the counsel. Sift the whole story; and, above all, find out why Arthur Wardlaw dared not enter the witness-box. Be obstinate as a man; be supple as a woman; and don't talk of dying when there is a friend to be rescued from dishonor by living ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... are insufficient because the throatiness of tone is partly brought about by a stiffening of the throat in general. The oo-o-ah must then be preceded by staccato exercises upon the syllable Koo, which have the effect not only of throwing the tone forward, but also of making the throat supple. Make the experiment before a mirror and you ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... three years younger than Richard Crashaw, and the alexandrine is to be found—to be found by searching—in Crashaw; and he took precisely the same care as Cowley that the long wand of that line should not give way in the middle—should be strong and supple and should last. Here are four of ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... large business desk with prosaic standard equipment which stood on the carpet on the other side of the pool. They moved rapidly past the pool, Quillan still hauling at her arm. Trigger kept staring at the pillars they passed. Long-limbed, supple and languid, they floated in their crystal cages, in tinted, shifting lights, eyes closed, hair ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... fellow-players, from whom came low, inspiriting words; then, facing the batter, Keene, he eyed him in cool speculation, and swung into supple action. ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... tan corduroy; elation was in her face; her waist, as she stepped, showed supple as a willow; her suede-gloved little hands were compact and tempting to his grasp. His senses breathed the air of her perfect and compelling femininity. But sharper than all these impressions rang the words of the worldly-wise Higbee: "She's hunting night and ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... holiday, and went directly to her own room as though she were at home. When she stepped presently out on the porch, where the gentlemen had gone to smoke, a soft black silk showing every line of her supple figure, glimpses of the rounded arms revealed with every movement of the loose sleeves, one or two thick green leaves in her light hair—ugly, quiet, friendly—they all felt more at home than they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... level of ordinary practice. As fine draughtsmen with a feeling for their materials they did not trace with the knife, they drew and carved with it. Their feeling for line and shape was sensitive, crisp, and supple. But although they created the masterpieces of the medium they suffered from the traditional contempt for their craft. Creative ability in a woodcutter was rarely recognized, and the art fell into gradual decline. ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen
... her at Morimond! He would wheel her all round the house in a little carriage, and at every few steps turn round to look at her screaming with laughter, with the sunshine playing on her cheeks, and her little supple, pink foot curled up in her hand. Or he would take her with him when he went for a walk, and would go as far as a village and let the child throw kisses to the people who bowed to him, or he would enter one of the farm-houses and show his daughter's teeth with great pride. ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... meant to be careful whom I admitted, but I had scarcely withdrawn the latch when the door was pushed open, and a slim, thickly-cloaked figure glided past me into the room. I knew her by the supple swiftness of her movements. Ray sat still, and smoked with the face ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... panditas, or priests, subject him to a system of enthusiastic excitement that will turn him into a wild beast of the most formidable kind. They madden his already disordered brain, they make still more supple his oily limbs, until they have the strength of steel and the nervous force of the tiger or panther. They sing to him their rhythmic impassioned chants, which show to his entranced vision the radiant smiles of intoxicating houris. In the shadow of the lofty forests, broken by the gleam ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... no great importance, in which it appears to take pleasure. Sometimes, to say all that can be said, it consents to cure certain ailments, cleanses an ulcer, closes a wound, heals a lung, strengthens or makes supple an arm or leg, or even sets bones, but always as it were by accident, without reason, method or object, in a deceitful, illogical and preposterous fashion. One would set it down as a spoilt child that has been allowed to lay hands on the most tremendous secrets ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the faintest trace of a smile touched her lips. She turned, settled the pillows to her liking, and stretched out her supple figure on the ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... and nymphs, noted for the shortness of her filmy skirts, the supple beauty of her shapely limbs, her incomparable dancing, and her dark, bright beauty, flashed La ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... embossed print. At first I could feel nothing like letters or any regular characters, only a roughness as though the paper had been badly wrinkled. A card was then placed in my hand on which the alphabet was printed in very large type, and my attention called to each letter. My fingers, then soft and supple, were not long in tracing the outlines of each character, and, my memory being naturally retentive, I was soon able to distinguish each letter, and give its name as my finger was placed on it. Another card was then given me in smaller type, which I mastered in the ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... salaciously enjoying. She soon found she must come to more rapid and vigorous movements, and lying down on my belly embraced and kissed me. Toying with our tongues I put an arm round her waist, and held her tight, while her glorious buttocks and most supple loins kept up the most delicious thrust and pressures on my thoroughly engulphed weapon. I again stimulated her to the highest pitch of excited desires by introducing my finger behind, and we both came to the grand crisis in a tumultuous state of enraptured agony, unable to do ought, but from moment ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... bright, naked body advances, blown over by leaves, Half-quenched in their various green, just a point Of you showing, A knee or a thigh, sudden glimpsed, then at once Blotted into The filmy and flickering forest, to start out again Triumphant in smooth, supple roundness, edged Sharp as white ivory, Cool, perfect, with rose rarely tinting your lips and Your breasts, Swelling out from the green in the opulent curves Of ripe fruit, And hidden, like fruit, by the swift intermittence Of leaves. So, clinging to branches and moss, you advance on the ledges ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... afraid of him and she didn't treat him as girls did who had an idea that if they talked to him very long he might faint or even die on their hands. He noted her fine rounded arms and supple fingers that spoke for strength, reflecting that very likely she could pick him up and pitch him through the window. He had always disliked athletic girls, fancying that they nodded to him patronizingly as they passed him on country club verandas all ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... strengthened himself by an extra libation or so, made his appearance (accompanied by his amiable partner) with a countenance of portentous import, and a fearful instrument of flagellation, strong, supple, wax-ended, and new,—in short, purchased that morning, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... of Tralee as sunrise is from midnight; indeed, so bright was the light within Orlando's spirit that the very prairie around him seemed aflame. The moment with Louise in the garden lighted by the dim moon, the passing instant of perfect understanding, the touch of her hair upon his lips, her supple form yielding to his as he clasped her in his arms, had dropped like a curtain between him and the fateful episode in the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... them both on the back, and sent them from the room. He stood, on the top step of the flight that led from sidewalk to front door, and watched them swing, broad-shouldered, supple, erect, down ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... starts life fresh and vigorous. It grows rapidly. The shoots are long and straight. The wood is smooth and fair and supple. The leaves are usually large. It is good to see the young trees acquire ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... as, on the reflex, she started, turned and fled, scudding with an unthinkable swift beating of her white feet and fraying of her white garments, towards the church. Like a hound the young man was after her, leaping the steps and swinging past her father, his supple haunches working like those of a hound that ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... The garish motor-coat was discarded now, and her supple figure was seen to best advantage in one of those dark silken gowns which she affected, and which had a seeming of the ultra-fashionable because they defied fashion. She held in her hand an orchid, its structure that of an odontoglossum, but of a ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... You've a splendid figure—tall, supple, strong; you're like a Nez Perce girl I knew once.... You're a beautiful thing. Didn't ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... recent slumber; that on her face and the light print dress fell the golden rays of the morning sun filtering through the young leaves; her hair was tied in a loose knot, and the flowing morning dress showed the outline of her shoulders and supple waist, and in its very carelessness had a certain freshness, which enhanced a thousandfold her charm. It did not escape my notice how much smaller than usual she looked among the tall elm trees of the avenue,—almost a child; in brief, nothing escaped me, but all my ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... and she rode up close and dropped off her horse. She was attired in a soft white waist and white riding breeches, but there was about her none of the tomboy so easily suggested by such togs. In spite of the masculinity of her attire the long, supple lines of her body were exquisitely feminine. And she was as relieved at the sight of him as he was glad to ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... striving to recall a hymn. As Latin was the language of witchcraft, so, also, was it the antidote. Contemptuously she turned her back and walked slowly to the fire. Upon her white face and supple figure played the elfish glow, lighting the little cap ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... loafing he caught me at the end of his pistol so regularly that there ceased to be any contest in it. I never did get the sleeve trick; but then, I never succeeded in fooling the merest infant with any of my attempts at legerdemain. Johnny could flip that little derringer out with a twist of his supple wrist as neatly as a snake darts its forked tongue. For ten minutes at a time he practised it, over and over, as regularly ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... certainly good to look upon as he lolled at his ease on that summer morning. Tall, straight, supple; a typical British gentleman of the educated class, with all parts of the body properly developed and held in some kind of ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... had indicated. She stood where she was and watched him. For two or three minutes he looked at the picture in silence, and she thought his expression had become slightly hostile. His audacious and rather thick lips were set together firmly, almost too firmly. His splendid figure supple, athletic and harmonious, looked almost rigid. She wondered what he was feeling, whether he disliked the portrait of the judge of the Criminal Court at which he was looking. ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... plain; but he went back again to the ship, while he still saw the furrows free of the earthborn men. And all round his comrades heartened him with their shouts. And in the helmet he drew from the river's stream and quenched his thirst with the water. Then he bent his knees till they grew supple, and filled his mighty heart with courage, raging like a boar, when it sharpens its teeth against the hunters, while from its wrathful mouth plenteous foam drips to the ground. By now the earthborn men were springing up over all the field; and the plot of Ares, the death-dealer, ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... the woods, but not far from one another and in a parallel direction, so that they could see each other. Among the ferns between the pine trees could be seen fluttering the vari-colored skirt and yellow kerchief of Kasya. The slender, supple maiden seemed to float amid the berry-laden bushes, mosses and ferns. You would say it was some fairy wila or rusalka of the woods; every moment she stooped and stood erect again, and so, further and further, passing the pine trees, she entered deeper into the ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... of God and man, the universe and the future. We feed on Christ when, with lowly submission, we habitually subject thoughts, purposes, desires, to His authority, and when we let His will flow into, and make plastic and supple, our wills. We nourish our wills by submitting them to Jesus, and we feed on Him when we not only say 'Lord! Lord!' but when we do the things that He says. We feed on Christ, when we let His great, sacred, all-wise, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... play and horse-trickery, but that the glory of sitting upon her seemed to be too great for me; especially as there were rumours abroad that she was not a mare after all, but a witch. However, she looked like a filly all over, and wonderfully beautiful, with her supple stride, and soft slope of shoulder, and glossy coat beaded with water, and prominent eyes full of docile fire. Whether this came from her Eastern blood of the Arabs newly imported, and whether the ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... she stood up she kicked from her feet the clumsy deer skin boots and, from beneath her parka extracted grass slippers light as silk. Then, standing on tip toe with arms outspread, like a bird about to fly, she bent her supple body forward, backward and to one side. Waving her arms up and down she chanted in a low, ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... standing before him. The slave was middle-aged; his kinky hair was growing gray; but he was of superb proportions, and the muscles which showed through the rents in his cotton garments were as smooth and supple as those of a stripling. His black face was puckered with ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... in waves. They care for mothers left to starve, alone. In pestilence, they labor long to soothe The fevered brow and ease the gnawing pain With medicine and shelter, food and clothes. In war the wound is dressed and duly nursed With gentle supple hands—with nourishment For mind and body. Cross of red, all hail! They serve for us most willingly and well. Then chide themselves when they have come too late! Like mothers when their sons have fallen short; In early dawn and through the night they ...
— Clear Crystals • Clara M. Beede
... before Barlow became a bishop, has been dispelled by the recently discovered warrant. The dates and circumstances are now found to tally. The warrant for Bunyan's apprehension bears date March 4, 1675. On the 14th of the following May the supple and time-serving Barlow, after long and eager waiting for a mitre, was elected to the see of Lincoln vacated by the death of Bishop Fuller, and consecrated on the 27th of June. Barlow, a man of very dubious churchmanship, who had succeeded in keeping his university appointments undisturbed ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... Gerard de Nerval, and Victor Hugo, and Theophile Gautier, and Petrus Borel were boys also—boys of the same ambitions, and with much the same romantic tastes. Stoddart had, luckily, another love besides the Muse. "With the spring and the May fly, the dagger dipped in gore paled before the supple rod, and the dainty midge." Finally, the ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... proud, independent temper, particularly if she belongs to the militant type, she will leave her husband in a huff, regardless of consequences. But if she is a woman of the gentler, more pliable, more supple (and I may also say more subtle) type, and if she really loves her husband, she will overlook his little foibles, peccadilloes and transgressions—and she may live quite happily. And the time will come when the husband himself will give up his peccadilloes and transgressions ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... reflected the sunshine in throbbing spangles like those one so often sees on the rippled surface of a glacier lake. But the Silver Pines were now the most impressively beautiful of all. Colossal spires two hundred feet in height waved like supple golden-rods chanting and bowing low as if in worship; while the whole mass of their long, tremulous foliage was kindled into one continuous blaze of white sun-fire. The force of the gale was such that the most steadfast monarch of them all rocked down to its ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... we want no assistance, as you say. I am his match myself, if that were all; but it is not strength which is required. He is as lithe and supple as an eel, and as difficult to hold, that I am certain of. If we were to use our rifles there would be no difficulty; but to hold him will give some trouble to two of us, and if once he breaks loose he would be too fleet for any ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... black? is it of so general concern that thou and all thy family must rise up as one man to reproach it? When it lost everything, did it lose the right to pity too? Or did he who maketh poor as well as maketh rich strip it of its natural powers to mollify the heart and supple the temper of your race? Trust me you have much to answer for. It is this treatment which it has ever met with from spirits like yours which has gradually taught the world to look upon it as the greatest of evils, and shun it as the worst ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... but there was nothing critical in his glance. Pride and love filled his eyes as they ran over his son's face and figure. And small wonder! The youth was good to look upon. A shade under six feet he stood, straight and slim, strength and supple grace in every move of his body. His face was beautiful with the beauty of features, clean cut and strong, but more with the beauty of a clear, candid soul. He seemed to radiate an atmosphere of cheery good nature and unspoiled simplicity. ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... to hide her tiny taes, Nae stockings on her feet; Her supple ankles white as snow, Or early blossoms sweet. Her simple dress of sprinkled pink, Her double, dimpled chin; Her pucker'd lip and bonny mou', With nae ane tooth between. Her een sae like her mither's een, Twa gentle, liquid things; Her face is like ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... man's eyes were like a fixed blaze; his face looked dried up, his bald skull was red, and his frame was a terror to behold, he was so emaciated. His wife—no, you cannot imagine her. Her figure had the supple swing for which the Spaniards created the word meneho; though pale, she was still beautiful; her complexion was dazzlingly fair—a rare thing in a Spaniard; and her gaze, full of the Spanish sun, fell on you like a ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... forty-two he was young,—supple, successful in his way, rich if you wanted to put it in that word. And no heart for life; listless. It was wrong.... All he could think of doing was to be intimate with an easy woman. No zest for her great noble frame, her surge of flaxen hair. ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... however, to represent him as a monster of wickedness. He was not wantonly cruel or treacherous. He was merely a supple, timid, interested courtier, in times of frequent and violent change. That which has always been represented as his distinguishing virtue, the facility with which he forgave his enemies, belongs to the character. Slaves of his class are never vindictive, and never grateful. A present interest ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... The full-throated birds sang to him, and the booming insects hummed to him and her eyes prophesied to him of a thousand days like this which lay like roses in bud. He watched with growing awe the supple movement of her body, the tender arch of her neck, and the clear surface of her features ever alive with the quick expression of her eager thoughts. She caught his gaze once and colored prettily but without lowering ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Kamasura was stripped to the waist, and then Harrigan saw Borgson, grinning evilly, step up with a long whip in his hand. It was a blacksnake, heavily loaded and stiff at the butt and tapering gradually to a slender, supple, snakelike body, with a thin, sinister lash. Borgson whirled the whip around his head to get its balance. Henshaw stepped back, still ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... on a square carpet beneath a pine-tree, a little way from his noisy, crowded camp. Four secretaries were writing on their knees to his dictation. He was undoubtedly a man of majestic appearance. He had a fine figure—tall, supple, and marvelously preserved—and calm, noble features. The only indications of old age were his long white hair and long white moustaches. His dress was very simple—a jacket of black cloth, immense blue cotton trousers, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... the strength of her lithe and supple body. Above his cheek-bone a red streak leaped out where the sharp knuckles had crushed ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... must be that of the race at large. We must temper our emotion and enthusiasm with the impersonal determination of science. We must unite in the task of creating an instrument of steel, strong but supple, if we are to triumph finally in the ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... waitress, excitedly engrossed in her story, was unconsciously acting out the thrilling scene of her dialogue with the Indian, even imitating his voice and gestures. And Kemper and I listened and watched her breathlessly, fascinated by her lithe and supple grace as well as by the astounding story she was so frankly unfolding with the consummate artlessness ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... much groaning and straining as ever, but it was not so loud or squeaky in tone; and when the ship quivered she did not jar stiffly, like a poker hit on the floor, but gave with a supple little waggle, like ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... were delicately regular, and her hands and feet perfection. Her complexion was extremely fair, so she was not a brunette; some remote Spanish ancestor on her mother's side was, however, occasionally mentioned as an apology for a type and a supple grace sometimes complained of by people with white eyelashes as rather un-English. So many artistic young men had told her she was like La Gioconda, that when she first saw the original in the Louvre she was ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... beauty that dazzled the eyes of the old voluptuary. How had she come there and in such company, this ravishing girl on whom Nature had lavished the last touch of virginal loveliness, this maiden with her figure of such supple grace, the proud little oval face with its complexion of cream and roses, the dainty head from which twin plaits of golden hair fell almost to her knees, and the eyes blue as violets, now veiled demurely, now opening wide to reveal their glories, enhanced by a ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... handsome, a tall, long-limbed sapling of a girl, with a flaming crest of copper-colored hair and movements as lithe and supple as a cat's. She danced buoyantly, without losing breath, advancing and retreating with mincing steps, her face grave as though the performance had its own dignity and was not to be taken lightly. Her partner, ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... could still see no issue; and no object in such an intrigue. And in the end I contented myself with bidding him watch the Spaniard closely, and report to me the following evening; adding that he might confide the matter to La Trape, who was a supple fellow, and of ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... in with a single comprehensive glance that was polite without being cordial. Her neck, he noticed, was extraordinarily supple in spite of its proportions, for it turned so easily to follow him, and the head it ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... "Supple as a willow twig, eh?" he laughed. "Well, I have made whistles out of willows before now, and hallo! where did you ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... occasion upon which I have listened with simple wonder, to a fluency which ever flows undisturbed, undismayed, whether the obstacles in its way be those of law or justice, reason or truth. But if I have wondered at a facility so remarkable, never, for a single instant, have I wished to rival this supple dexterity. It is an accomplishment one can scarcely envy. On the other hand, these wholesale supplies of bombastic declamation form so large a part of the local stock in trade of the individual to whom I refer, that it would seem almost cruel to deprive him of ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... a whole month and have not yet wearied of it for a moment. Each day brings a new, wonderful experience; and each day I feel a real part of the great wonderful scheme of things. Indeed, I am becoming a part of nature. I have grown so straight and tall, and so beautifully thin and supple that I can dart in and out of the stream without bumping myself against the rocks, can climb steep hills, and let the winds blow me where they will. I should not be at all surprised to awaken some morning and find that I had become one of ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... the land. Generous and kind-hearted to a degree, his impatience often hurried him into actions which grieved his parents. He was generally in hot water at school. He fought, and he generally won, but his cause was not always right. He was supple, and he ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... in that era which professors still persist in calling the Great Age, hardly stimulated Des Esseintes. With its carefully premeditated style, its sameness, its stripping of supple syntax, its poverty of color and nuance, this language, pruned of all the rugged and often rich expressions of the preceding ages, was confined to the enunciation of the majestic banalities, the empty commonplaces tiresomely ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... possible that these two creatures—the notable disciplinarian and the wife of the assigned servant—could have been more than friends in youth? Quite possible. He is the sort of man for gross amours. (A pretty way I am abusing my host!) And the supple woman with the dark eyes would have been just the creature to enthral him. Perhaps some such story as this may account in part for Mrs. Frere's sad looks. Why do I speculate on such things? I seem to do violence to myself and to insult her by writing ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... MOLLISSIMA.—The black wattle tree of Australia, which furnishes a good tanning principle. These trees were first called wattles from being used by the early settlers for forming a network or wattling of the supple twigs as a substitute for laths in ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... and outward callings of men, planting our faith one while in the old Convocation House, and another while in the Chapel at Westminster; when all the faith that shall be there canonized is not sufficient, without plain convincement and the charity of patient instruction, to supple the least bruise of conscience, to edify the meanest Christian who desires to walk in the spirit and not in the letter of human trust, for all the number of voices that can there be made—no, though Harry the Seventh himself there, with all his liege tombs about him, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... he, "I am Hugh Morrison from Glenae, come of the Manly Morrisons of auld langsyne, that never took short weapon against a man in their lives. And neither needed they; they had their broadswords, and I have this bit supple (showing a formidable cudgel)—for dirking ower the board, I leave that to John Highlandman. Ye needna snort, none of you Highlanders, and you in especial, Robin. I'll keep the bit knife, if you are feared for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... young saplings as they loosened the roots, then trimming them into shape. More than once, however, she detected glances, and his thoughts were more flattering than she imagined. "What vigor she has in that supple, rounded form! Her very touch ought to put life into these trees; I know it would into me. How young she looks in that comical old dress which barely reaches her ankles! Yes, Hal Minturn; and remember, that trim little ankle can put a ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... and dragged at him trying to make him run with her to her saddle and few belongings. The saddle nearly overmastered her; it was heavy, and she knew as little of it as did any city girl. But her need was sore and her young body not without supple strength. In half of the allotted time Gloria came riding up the ridge. Now King glanced toward her briefly. But less at her ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... albeit as soft as ravelled silk, and marvellous hard to comb on account o' its fineness. Mistress Marian was full head and shoulders taller than her cousin, the Lady Patience, and she could lift her aloft in her arms, and swing her from side to side, as a supple bough swings a bird. And her eyes were dark, and cool to gaze into, like a pool o' clear water o'er autumn leaves, and sometimes there were glints o' light in them, like the spikes i' th' evening-star when thou dost gaze steadily upon it. Black and white were not ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... beholding Yolande amid her flowers, herself as sweet and fresh as they, he made an end of his singing and betook him, straightway, to amorous looks and deep-fetched sighs together with many supple bendings of the back, elegant posturings and motitions of slim legs, fannings and flauntings of be-feathered cap, and the like gallantries; and thereafter fell to ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... against the light, his slight and supple form was unmistakable to one who had seen it before, even though his face was disfigured by a scant black visor across his eyes and the bridge ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... morsel of bunting in the wind; her manner expressed the repose and confidence which come from a large experience. Experience, however, had not quenched her youth; it had simply made her sympathetic and supple. She was in a word a woman of strong impulses kept in admirable order. This commended itself to Isabel ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... of Godfrey at Emmaus came two ambassadors from the king of Egypt, Alethes, a supple crafty courtier of low lineage, and Argantes, a haughty and powerful warrior. But their efforts to keep Godfrey from Jerusalem, first by persuasion, and then by threats, were in vain. They were dismissed from the camp, and the ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... desire to take those same hands in his and kiss them, but instead he rose and spread out his own long brown fingers on the edge of the wall, a man's hands, fine and supple, but meant ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... runnel of the brook again accompanied the silence. Not a leaf moved on the bushes of those far-swelling fields or on the hill that hid their summit; the air was like the moonlight, so fragrantly cool with the odors of the damp fern and birch. The straight, supple figure of Girard still stood in the roadway, bareheaded, with that powerful effect which he had, even here, of absorbing all ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... the train of a Roman cardinal, he took service with Richelieu, who, remarking in him all the qualities of a supple, insinuating, artificial nature,—that is to say, the nature of a good politician,—appointed him his private secretary, and entrusted him with all his secrets, as if he had singled ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... at all decent about it, she would have forgiven me at once; but, ah me! I never saw her move so quickly as when she went out the back door and broke off a supple green apple switch. After making most vigorous use of it she sent me to my room, with the remark, 'It fortunately comes ...
— Harper's Young People, July 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... great American nation was literally held up and robbed of more than nineteen million dollars! No highwayman ever more successfully clutched the wizen of his victim than did the Street with its supple fingers around the white larynx of Columbia. The wheezing of the strangulated Republic could be heard from the St. Lawrence to the Rio Grande. The nation was thus "saved," and the robbers took the money and went sailing away ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... lounging on the sofa and watching her. He loved to watch her dress, she did it so gracefully, and the motions brought out latent charms of her supple figure. "You're not so sure-fingered tonight as usual," said he. "I never saw you make so many blunders—and you've got one stocking on wrong ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... with such a frankness in his urgency, such amiable kindliness, that Mrs. Pasmer could not feel that it was pushing. She looked at her daughter, but she stood as passive in the transaction as the elder Mavering. She was taller than her mother, and as she waited, her supple figure described that fine lateral curve which one sees in some Louis Quinze portraits; this effect was enhanced by the fashion of her dress of pale sage green, with a wide stripe or sash of white dropping down the front, from her delicate waist. The ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to manage him. I felt my advantage at once. His supple nature was one which yielded to roughness far more readily than to entreaty. He flushed with shame, and his eyes filled with tears. But MacCoy saw my advantage also, and was determined that I should not ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hypocritical ones, and there still existed sufficient pulpit rigorism to provide him with an adequate target for satire and a substantial number of readers who would detect and approve the satire. As Fielding's Squire Western said to Parson Supple when the latter reproved him for some misdeed: "At'nt in pulpit now? when art a got up there I never mind what dost say; but I won't be priest-ridden, nor taught how to behave myself by thee." Only if it is read as a satire on rigorist sermons ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... clink of chiming bridles in the stall; Then more and more to love his master's voice Caressing, or loud hand that claps his neck. Ay, thus far let him learn to dare, when first Weaned from his mother, and his mouth at times Yield to the supple halter, even while yet Weak, tottering-limbed, and ignorant of life. But, three years ended, when the fourth arrives, Now let him tarry not to run the ring With rhythmic hoof-beat echoing, and now learn Alternately to curve each bending ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... release in 1672, three years before Barlow became a bishop, has been dispelled by the recently discovered warrant. The dates and circumstances are now found to tally. The warrant for Bunyan's apprehension bears date March 4, 1675. On the 14th of the following May the supple and time-serving Barlow, after long and eager waiting for a mitre, was elected to the see of Lincoln vacated by the death of Bishop Fuller, and consecrated on the 27th of June. Barlow, a man of very dubious churchmanship, who had ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... be; ill clad was her strong young figure; her face showed the strain of years of effort; her eyes had the fire of experience in suffering; and she stood, a supple girl of heightened beauty while the hunter, sure of his welcome, walked up to her, and, as both her hands held the awkward bushel basket, ventured to tickle her ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... Etruscans, riveted to their chain, did not stir; those who were dead, being prevented from falling, formed an obstruction with their corpses; and the great bronze line widened and contracted in turn, as supple as a serpent, and as impregnable as a wall. The Barbarians would come to re-form behind it, pant for a minute, and then set off again with the fragments of their weapons ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... each his own way, jostling and yelling to each other, were men of all nations, and the confusion was of tongues as well as of work. At one minute I found myself standing next to a live Chinaman in a pigtail, who was staring as hard as I at some swarthy supple-bodied sailors with eager faces, and scant clothing wrapped tightly round them, chatting to each other in a language as strange to the Chinaman as to me, their large lustrous eyes returning our curiosity with ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... at Garnache. His eyes were upon the girl. He was remarking the slender, supple figure, moderately tall and looking taller in its black gown of mourning; the oval face, a trifle pale now from the agitation that stirred her, with its fine level brows, its clear, hazel eyes, and its crown of lustrous brown hair rolled back under the daintiest of white ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... matches Tausig's in technic and tone. Paderewski, who has broadened and developed amazingly during ten years, has many of Henselt's traits—and I am sure he never heard the elder pianist. But he belongs to that group: tonal euphony, supple technic, a caressing manner, and a perfect control of self. Remember, I am speaking of the Henselt who played for a few friends, not the frightened, semi-limp pianist who emerged at long intervals before the public. Paderewski is thrice as poetic as Henselt—who in the matter ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... Sir John said gently, he had done no otherwise than he had been desired; which however the lord chamberlain, in part, denied, (cautious and civil!) "and I was not so unmannerly as to contest against," (supple, but uneasy!) This affair ended miserably for the poor Dutchmen. Those new republicans were then regarded with the most jealous contempt by all the ambassadors, and were just venturing on their first dancing-steps, to move among crowned heads. The Dutch now resolved not to be present; declaring ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... to be a young man, some five and twenty years of age, of a handsome and impressive exterior. His dark hair lay close about his well-shaped head; his features were regular and cut bold as an Etruscan cameo; his limbs were elastic and moulded into the supple finish of one whose life has not been set upon level roads. At a speculative distance he appeared a straight specimen of a Burgundian youth—sinewy, clean-formed, and graceful, though slender to gauntness; and it was only on nearer contact that one marvelled to see the ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... needed. He was putting up the fight of his life. It was a beautiful demonstration of Scandinavian defense methods—one man unarmed against five with knives and clubs! His huge arms were working like flails. His powerful, supple body bent and heaved this way and that with powerful sweeps as he met the incessant attack. As fast as they came at him he sent them hurling off ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... brothers I have never seen," he continued, blowing a thick cloud from his meerschaum pipe. "Big L was a strapping fellow, with clumsy arms and legs and a big fat head; [1] Little L was like a willow switch, so slender and supple. He had a small, fine head, and light, wavy hair that curled of itself, and a delicate nose like a young eagle's, but above all—he ...
— Good Blood • Ernst Von Wildenbruch
... sprite; Eve, with her body white, Supple and smooth to her Slim finger tips; Wondering, listening, Listening, wondering, Eve with a berry ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... smiles transfigured the dull, blank features; her round shoulders, pendulous arms, slouching pose, melted into superb symmetry, quickening with grace and youth as she straightened up and faced him, erect, supple, laughing, adorable. ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... they began to dance, she found with a little glow of relief that she could do this rather well. Thank Heaven she had taken those dancing lessons a year ago; and she was younger than most of these creatures, and more lithe and supple. The men were noticing, crowding a round her. She caught a glare from one of their wives. And that glare helped tremendously, it came like a gleam of light in the dark. She caught Joe's admiring glances. She danced with him, then turned him down for somebody else, kept turning him down. ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... freshly killed, have supple feet. If young, the windpipe and beak can be easily broken by pressure of the thumb and forefinger. Young birds also have soft, white fat, tender skin, yellow feet, and ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... gently, go easy, beetle; don't start off so proudly, or trust at first too greatly to your powers; wait till you have sweated, till the beating of your wings shall make your limb joints supple. Above all things, don't let off some foul smell, I adjure you; else I would rather have you stop in the ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... stay gin'rous to th' end niver lave ye'er gin'rosity idle too long. Don't run it ivry hour at th' top iv its speed, but fr'm day to day give it a little gintle exercise to keep it supple an' hearty an' in due time ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... through the deep recesses of the low mullioned windows. Perhaps on the day following market day he sometimes lay an hour longer; but his stern rule of life spared none, and himself least of all. If at sixty his powerful limbs were less supple than of old, if his Jove-like head with its flowing beard had become tipped with the hoar frost, he had relaxed nothing of his rigid self-government on that account. When the clock in the kitchen had struck ten at night, Angus had risen up, whatever his occupation, whatever his company, and retired ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... the history of Australian journalism is written it will contain two outstanding Irish names: Daniel Henry Deniehy, who died in 1865, was called by Bulwer Lytton "the Australian Macaulay" on account of his brilliant writings as critic and reviewer in the press of Victoria. Gerald Henry Supple, another Dublin man, is also remembered for his contributions to the Age and the Argus of Melbourne. In India one of the first—if not the first—English newspapers was founded by a Limerick man, named Charles Johnstone, who had previously ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... they don't say it amongst your people." M. Pichard relates several unknown and hidden things which the demon revealed, and that he performed several feats which it is not possible for any person, however agile and supple he may be, to achieve by natural strength or power; such as crawling on the ground without making use of hands or feet, appearing to have the hair ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... which was left to the right, and Mount Hardy whose summit rose on the left to a height of 3,700 feet, the journey was very trying; for about ten miles the bush was a tangle of "supple-jack," a kind of flexible rope, appropriately called "stifling-creeper," that caught the feet at every step. For two days, they had to cut their way with an ax through this thousand-headed hydra. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... personal distinction. She shares his vision, rising to all the heights it unfolds in a splendid future. Child she is, but she is transformed into a woman by the prospect not of her own pleasure, but of participation in splendid achievement with this man so keen, so supple, yet so firm in high purpose. And as the prospect opens to her desire and his there looms the obstacle. They cannot marry, for Rezanov is a heretic. And now the passion flames. This child woman will go with him. Ah, but the church, the king of Spain, will they permit? And the Czar! ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... when she heard the verdict of the surgeons. She knew little about disease and it seemed wildly impossible to her that this limb of hers which had been so strong and supple a month ago would become an agent of death if not amputated. She was in an agony of mind. Never to swim again! Never to run and jump and slide and skate and dance! Always to go about on crutches! Before the prospect of being crippled for ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... me for two years, winter and summer, and it was a great pleasure to witness his gracious development of body, mind, and character. Clean-limbed, smooth-skinned, slender, and supple, his Indian blood showing chiefly in a slight swarth of complexion and aquilinity of feature, he now approached his twentieth year and began to gain the strength of his manhood and to give promise of more than the average stature and physical power. With only one ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... in a dreadful fright, and require reassuring. Next take your knife, put it between your teeth, and, standing over him, take the caps off your gun, and lay it down by your side. Then handcuff him, in whatever way you best can. The reason of setting to work in this way is, that a quick supple savage, while you are fumbling with your strings, and bothered with a loaded gun, might easily spring round, seize hold of it, and quite turn the tables against you. But if the gun had no caps on, it would be of little use in his hands, except as a club; and also, ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... Gray Oaks stables were many good hunters, but none better than Pasha. Cream-white he was, from the tip of his splendid, yard-long tail to his pink-lipped muzzle. His coat was as silk plush, his neck as supple as a swan's, and out of his big, bright eyes there looked such intelligence that one half expected him to speak. His lines were all long, graceful curves, and when he danced daintily on his slender legs one could see the muscles ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... with a little spiral moustache twisted upwards in betyar fashion, flowing curly locks gathered up into a top-knot, black flashing eyes, and a bold expressive mouth, slight of build, but muscular and supple. His dress was rustic, but simple almost to affectation; you would not have found a seal on his white bulging shirt, search as you might, and he wore his cap, with a tuft of meadow-sweet in it, as gallantly as ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... but not tall. He spoke very fair old-fashioned English, with the Yorkshire tone and turn. His walk was rather plodding, and his movements slow and stiff; but in communion with his violin they were free enough, and the more delicate for the strength that was in them; at the anvil they were as supple as powerful. On his face dwelt an expression that was not to be read by the indifferent—a waiting in the midst of work, as of a man to whom the sense of the temporary was always present, but present with the constant reminder that, just therefore, work must be as good as work can be that things ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... double bridle, should be sewed to the bridle; it is safer for leading, and it is only the curb bit which you wish to have the power of changing. The reins should be thin and supple, they will last the longer for it; for reins break from being stiff and cracking, and suppleness of reins is essential ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... North Africa;" but it is said to have been introduced into England during the last century, and then in a curious way. "Many years ago, the well-known poet, Alexander Pope, who resided at Twickenham, received a basket of Figs as a present from Turkey. The basket was made of the supple branches of the Weeping Willow, the very same species under which the captive Jews sat when they wept by the waters of Babylon. The poet valued highly the small and tender twigs associated with so much that was interesting, ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... at 'Buttons.' Fielding both smoked and chewed. About 1740 it became unfashionable, and was banished from St. James' to the country squires and parsons. Squire Western, in Tom Jones, arriving in town, sends off Parson Supple to Basingstoke, where he had left his Tobacco-box! The snuff-box was substituted. Lord Mark Kerr, a brave officer who affected the petit maitre (a la Pelham, in Lord Lytton's second novel), invented the invisible hinges, and it was this 'going out of fashion' that Jonson ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... him in half smiling, low-voiced conversation; and Palla looked at her golden-green eyes and warm, rich colouring, cooled by a skin of snow. Tiger-golden, the rousse ensemble; the supple movement of limb and body fascinated her; but most of all the lovely, slanting eyes with their glint of beryl amid ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... studied to their depths the masters of color. I have analyzed and lifted, layer by layer, the colors of Titian, king of light. Like him, great sovereign of art, I have sketched my figure in light clear tones of supple yet solid color; for shadow is but an accident,—remember that, young man. Then I worked backward, as it were; and by means of half-tints, and glazings whose transparency I kept diminishing little ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... of thought that appeared to dissatisfy and disquiet him, Boabdil again turned impatiently round "My soul wants the bath of music," said he; "these journeys into a pathless realm have wearied it, and the streams of sound supple and ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book I. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... walks she gives herself a little concentric and harmonious twist, which makes her supple or dangerous slenderness writhe under the stuff, as a snake does under the green gauze of trembling grass. Is it to an angel or a devil that she owes the graceful undulation which plays under her long black silk ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... style of the younger Pitt, with a certain freshness and force which {28} the younger Pitt did not always exhibit. Bolingbroke's English prose style is hardly surpassed by that of any other author, either before his time or since. It is supple, strong, and luminous; not redundant, but not bare; ornamented where ornament is suitable and even useful, but nowhere decorated with the purple rags of unnecessary and artificial brilliancy. Such a man, so gifted, must in any case have held ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... One man more supple than the others, and reckless in his bravery, clambers to the top ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... leveret lies stronger (26) than that of the grown animal. While the limbs are still soft and supple they trail full length on the ground. Every true sportsman, however, will leave these quite young creatures to roam freely. (27) "They are for the goddess." Full-grown yearlings will run their first chase very swiftly, (28) but they cannot keep up the pace; in spite of ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... body so," whispered Chunda Lal, "that is straight and supple as the willow branch. O, Miska"—his voice trembled emotionally and he that had been but a moment since so fierce stood abashed before her—"for you I become as the meanest and the lowest; for you ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... from a little "black fellow," who had been a sort of retainer of mine in the bush, and on the plains a bright active lad, as supple as a snake, and, as he used to say, the son of a chief. He was called Jacky Fishook, and was a very useful fellow out there, for he could follow a trail like a hound, could climb trees, kill game, and ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... to wait long, bitter years. 'Tis always so with genius. I have ever felt myself a chosen spirit, and I am sure I am destined to become the greatest actress that has yet charmed and captivated the world. Am I not tall, surpassingly beautiful, lithe and supple as a reed—graceful as a lily? But that is not all. In me is reincarnated the spirit of the ancient East, and it is my mission to interpret that spirit to the modern world. I will help you, dear, ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... volubility of his aunt was most particularly disagreeable, but who had nevertheless saluted the stalwart old lady's cheek with much affection, here bent his supple back with a ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... advantage, to transfer incidents from Part II to Part I, and vice versa. Correcting, pruning, augmenting, enlivening, rewriting, she may indeed (pace the memory of the merry jester of Charles II) be well said to have clothed dry bones with flesh, and to have given her creation a witty and supple tongue. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... his helmet, a sort of sun-hat in bronze which is decorated with a chaplet of leaves; below his feet is a wreath of bay. It is a consistent study in anatomy. The David is perhaps sixteen years old, agile and supple, with a hand which is big relative to the forearm, as nature ordains. The back is bony and rather angular; the torso is brilliantly wrought, with a purity of outline and a morbidezza which made the artists in Vasari's time believe the figure had been moulded from life. One might break ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... embroideries, gleaming jewels—these are the never-failing accessories of his compositions. Yet while he loved rich draperies, he was also a careful student of the nude. Examples of his work range from the supple and youthful torso of Icarus to the huge muscular body of the beggar receiving St. Martin's cloak. The modelling of the Saviour's body in the Crucifixion and the Pieta shows both scientific knowledge ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... of half-unbound hair, does not, indeed, equal the sovereign loveliness of the Dresden Venus or the disquieting charm of the Giovanelli Zingarella (properly Hypsipyle). Its beauty is all on the surface, while theirs stimulates the imagination of the beholder. The body with its strong, supple beauty, its unforced harmony of line and movement, with its golden glow of flesh, set off in the true Giorgionesque fashion by the warm white of the slender, diaphanous drapery, by the splendid crimson mantle with the changing hues and high lights, is, however, the most perfect ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... the small-pox. In the same evening the Progresso set sail. For the first few hours all went on well—the breeze was light, the weather warm, and the negroes were sleeping on the deck; their slender supple limbs entwined in a surprisingly small compass, resembling in the moonlight confused piles of arms and legs, rather than distinct human forms. But about an hour after midnight, the sky began to gather clouds, a haze overspread ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... at his birth is supple and weak; at his death, firm and strong. (So it is with) all things. Trees and plants, in their early growth, are soft and brittle; at their death, ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... so well of those doings before," he was saying. "If they've kept you as supple as a willow, in spite of your weight, I should say ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... but that God, by a particular permission, or command, permits or commands them to come back to earth, and resume for a time their own body; for when they are exhumed, their bodies are found entire, their blood vermilion and fluid, and their limbs supple and pliable. ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... was impressed by Remonencq's respect for this singular person; real power, moreover, even when it cannot be explained, is always felt; the portress was supple and obedient, she dropped the autocratic tone which she was wont to use in her lodge and with the tenants, accepted Magus' conditions, and agreed to admit him into ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... to the ankles, and furnished with a hood covering the head and face, with the exception of an opening from the eyes down to the mouth. In addition to these, was given to each as a present a pair of Ostjak boots. These were large and loose. They were made of goat-skins, rendered perfectly supple by grease and rubbing, and with the hair inside. They came up to the thighs, and had a thick sole made of layers of elk-hide. There was also for each a pair of socks of squirrel's skin, with the hair inside, and a pair of fingerless gloves of double skin, the fur being both inside and ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... the still park permeate; The los and pis their sweet perfume enhance; And supple charms the third spring flowers ornate; Softly is wafted one streak of fragrance! A light mist doth becloud the tortuous way! With moist the clothes bedews, that verdure cold! The pond who ever sinuous could hold? Dreams long and subtle, dream the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... and sinewy, but slender, for these Venetians are rarely massive in their strength. Each limb is equally developed by the exercise of rowing upright, bending all the muscles to their stroke. Their bodies are elastically supple, with free sway from the hips and a mercurial poise upon the ankle. Stefano showed these qualities almost in exaggeration. The type in him was refined to its artistic perfection. Moreover, he was rarely in repose, but moved with a singular brusque grace. A black broad-brimmed ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... a jewel! always supple o' foot. Phil, call to them to bring out the horse bastes, while I swallow my breakfast—and a good ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... rest of them. An artist, if he sees all that really exists, sometimes also sees things which have no existence at all. Of these were the qualities with which I invested her — the moral and mental correspondencies to her blonde skin and supple figure. She justified my perspicacity one day by leaving me for a loathsome little Jew. The last time I heard of her she had been turned out of a gambling hell in his company. His name is Emanuel Pick. Is not this a shabby romance? Is it not enough to make a self-respecting man ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... Calf" is a maturer production and includes some of the loveliest women Tintoretto ever painted. We see too plainly the planning, the device of concentrating interest on the idol by turning figures and pointing fingers, but nothing can be imagined more supple and queenly than the woman in blue, and the way the light falls on her head and perfectly foreshortened arm shows to what excellence Tintoretto had attained. The "Presentation" is a riper work. The drawing of the flight of steps and of the groups upon ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... toss in waves. They care for mothers left to starve, alone. In pestilence, they labor long to soothe The fevered brow and ease the gnawing pain With medicine and shelter, food and clothes. In war the wound is dressed and duly nursed With gentle supple hands—with nourishment For mind and body. Cross of red, all hail! They serve for us most willingly and well. Then chide themselves when they have come too late! Like mothers when their sons have fallen short; In early ...
— Clear Crystals • Clara M. Beede
... mounted. So did the dance. Wave followed on ripple, sea on wave, and on the sea the foaming, far-flung billow. Limb after limb, the whole supple body of the blind dancer came into play; yet there was no visible tension. Never dead, never hard, but limp,—as limp as flowing, rushing water,—she whirled and swayed through all the emotions until, at the highest pitch of the mounting music, she fell prone, riven by a single, throbbing ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... very intelligent; they were of a dreamy sea-blue. Long hair, which would have been called red even in England, fell in long meshes upon his broad shoulders. The movements of this native were lithe and supple; but he made little use of his arms in speaking, like a man who knew nothing or cared nothing about the language of gestures. His whole appearance bespoke perfect calmness and self-possession, not indolence but tranquillity. It was felt at once that he would be beholden ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... selected nothing but volunteers, all men of good family. It is pleasant when on duty not to be forced to be on intimate terms with unpleasant fellows. This Marchas was as smart as possible, cunning as a fox and supple as a serpent. He could scent the Prussians as a dog can scent a hare, could discover food where we should have died of hunger without him, and obtained information from everybody, and information which was always reliable, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... trumpets, Zephyrine swung passionately into the arena. With a bound she stood erect, one foot upon each of her supple, plunging Arabs; and at once I knew that my fate was sealed, my chapter closed, and the Bride of the Desert was the one bride for me. Black was her raiment, great silver stars shone through it, caught in the dusky ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... ran critically over the strong young body, with its long, supple, sinewy lines. "Yes," she nodded. ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... on the water, then a round, gray, glistening surface, then a rugged snout. Puff! His blow was a roar. He rolled on, downward a little; the water surged white and green. When he came up to sound he humped his huge back. It was shiny, leathery, wonderfully supple. It bent higher and higher in an arch. Then this great curve seemed to slide swiftly out of sight and his wonderful tail, flat as a floor and wide as a house, emerged to swing aloft. The water ran off ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... somewhat on the other side of forty, complexion a bronze paleness, hair a bronze brown, in strong ringlets cropped short behind,—handsome hair for a man; lips that, when closed, showed inflexible decision, when speaking, became supple and flexible with an easy humour and a vigilant finesse; eyes of a red hazel, quick but steady,—observing, piercing, dauntless eyes; altogether a fine countenance,—would have been a very fine countenance in a ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... disconnected, and bold, not pedant-like, not preacher-like, not pleader-like." That fixity which Montaigne could not give to his irresolute and doubtful mind he stamped upon the tongue; it came out in his Essays supple, free, and bold; he had made the first decisive step towards the formation of the language, pending the advent of Descartes and the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of loosely twisted blonde hair; she has large grey eyes, that can be grave, or mocking, or passionate, or cruel, or watchful; a large nose, an intent, eloquent mouth. She wears a trailing dress that follows the lines of the figure vaguely, supple to every movement. When she sings, she has an old, high-backed chair in which she can sit, or on which she can lean. When I heard her, there was a mirror on the other side of the room, opposite to her; she saw no one else in the room, once she had surrendered herself to the ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... beauties of the hand are many. Touch has its ecstasies. The hands of people of strong individuality and sensitiveness are wonderfully mobile. In a glance of their finger-tips they express many shades of thought. Now and again I touch a fine, graceful, supple-wristed hand which spells with the same beauty and distinction that you must see in the handwriting of some highly cultivated people. I wish you could see how prettily little children spell in my hand. They are wild flowers of ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... Indian ball presented a scene of wonderful effort and excitement. Hundreds of strong and supple braves could be seen running over the plain, darting this way and that, or struggling in a yelling, kicking, fighting mass, all in a mad scramble ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... squalid in the extreme, and, being destitute of the means of making a coffin, had rolled the corpse up in such wretched materials as they happened to possess. One consequence of this was, that it was quite supple. On being lifted out of the canoe, the joints bent, and a sort of noise was emitted from the mouth, which was exceedingly horrible. Had the dead face been visible, the effect would not have been so powerful, but its being covered tended ...
— Fort Desolation - Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land • R.M. Ballantyne
... shapeless things, each hewed out of a great cypress log. In the end of each an Indian stood erect plying a long pole which sent their clumsy looking crafts forward at surprising speed. Magnificent savages they were, not one less than six feet tall, framed like athletes, and lithe and supple as panthers. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... swift movement of her supple body and arm the woman possessed herself of the packet. At the feel, the almost imperceptible sound, of it her eyes gleamed, her dusky ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... Askew Wiley, see him as he paces the lawn, his supple back writhed just a little towards my lady deferentially, his head just a little on one side, lending her an ear. By the gait of him he is looking another way. Yes; for now my lady turns, he turns too, and they halt front to front; his pallid visage half ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... with a curtness at which Weston could not take offense. "He can put in the evening that way if it's necessary. It will supple him, and I guess he needs it. I have a rig ready. You're coming along ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... dressed in tan corduroy; elation was in her face; her waist, as she stepped, showed supple as a willow; her suede-gloved little hands were compact and tempting to his grasp. His senses breathed the air of her perfect and compelling femininity. But sharper than all these impressions rang the words of the worldly-wise Higbee: "She's hunting night and day for a rich husband; she ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... the best things are found, cities degrade us by magnifying trifles. The countryman finds the town a chop-house, a barber's shop. He has lost the lines of grandeur of the horizon, hills and plains, and, with them, sobriety and elevation. He has come among a supple, glib-tongued tribe, who live for show, servile to public opinion. Life is dragged down to a fracas of pitiful cares and disasters. You say the gods ought to respect a life whose objects are their own; but in cities they have betrayed you to a cloud ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... expressed besides weakness that Mary wondered what illness could thus have cut the man off from the world. She was used to the waste products of life; one "resident patient" succeeded another at her father's house, and to each she was a deft nurse and a supple companion. They had in common, she found, a certain paltriness; most of them had been overtaxed by easy burdens; but this man's aspect conveyed suggestions of a long struggle with a burden beyond all strength. The meanness of him, all his appearance of having begun in the gutter and failed there, ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... had carried, together with an assortment of native weapons from various countries—assegais, spears, boomerangs, throwing sticks, sjamboks and South Sea Island clubs and shields. A special nail held Jim's own stockwhip, to which Norah always attended after he had gone away, lest the supple thong should become harsh through disuse. Then there were weapons of peace—hockey sticks, rackets, cricket-bats—the latter an assortment of all Jim had used, from the tiny one he had begun with at the age of eight to the full sized beauty that had ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... teased he could be very violent; he would throw anything he could lay his hands on at the head of the offender. He liked the company of others, especially of men. By the time he was four years old he had learned to eat without help. Paul was very supple, was fond of climbing, and had great strength in his arms and hands especially; these had actually a horny appearance, and thus reminded one of the hands of the chimpanzee. He could sit on the ground with his legs wide apart. His gait was uncertain, ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... fine and supple texture, especially for the first disks used in the lid and for the pieces which form the lining of the wallet. The rest, less carefully executed, allows of coarser stuff; but even then the piece must be flexible ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... room and had learned the dance from Brandon; and was able to teach it also, though I lacked practice to make my step perfect. The princess had needed no practice, but had danced beautifully from the first, her strong young limbs and supple body taking as naturally to anything requiring grace of movement as a cygnet ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... "A book of honest, direct, sympathetic, humorous writing about Australia from within is worth a library of travellers' tales ... The result is a real book—a book in a hundred. His language is terse, supple, and richly idiomatic. He can tell a yarn ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... be there with his boat, a white-clad, supple figure, with his handsome olive face, and his dark eyes with their friendly laugh? Surely it was the flash of his oars in the sunlight that dazzled her so! She would swim to him through the crystal water, and he would stretch out his hands to her, and she ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... his very soul fluttered with hallucinations, and with many and various phantasms. He might be compared to a salmon in a weir, or to a bird after being caught in the strait prison of a crib," &c. "When he was seized with this frantic fit, he made a supple, very light leap, and where he alighted he was on the boss of the shield of the warrior next him; and he made a second leap, and perched on the crest of the helmet of the same hero, who, nevertheless, did not feel him. Then he made a third ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... encased in living tombs, bodies that were dead to righteousness but alive to sin. Like a spider weaving its meshes around the unwary fly, John Anderson wove his network of sin around the young men that entered his saloon. Before they entered there, it was pleasant to see the supple vigor and radiant health that were manifested in the poise of their bodies, the lightness of their eyes, the freshness of their lips and the bloom upon their cheeks. But Oh! it was so sad to see how soon the manly gait would change to ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... robes the beautiful Earth-maidens stood before their lovers. Upon their feet were jeweled slippers. Their lovely bodies were clothed in softly shimmering garments that left their rounded arms and throats bare—garments infinitely more supple than the finest silk, thick-woven of metallic threads of such fineness that the individual wires were visible only under a lens; garments that floated and clung about their perfect forms in lines of exquisite grace. For black-haired ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... and sanguine stain They cleanse their bodies in the neighb'ring main: Then in the polished bath, refresh'd from toil, Their joints they supple with dissolving oil, In due repast indulge the genial hour, And first to Pallas the libations pour: They sit, rejoicing in her aid divine, And the crown'd goblet foams with ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... was for myself, you silly thing. Are you not myself? and the part of myself I love the best?" And her supple wrist was round his neck in ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... always commanding his own temper, (p. 111) proud because he is a Spaniard, but supple and cunning, accommodating the tone of his pretensions precisely to the degree of endurance of his opponent, bold and overbearing to the utmost extent to which it is tolerated, careless of what he asserts or how grossly it ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... Tory placemen. The oath of allegiance, the Whigs said, was drawn in terms far too lax. It might exclude from public employment a few honest Jacobites who were generally too dull to be mischievous; but it was altogether inefficient as a means of binding the supple and slippery consciences of cunning priests, who, while affecting to hold the Jesuits in abhorrence, were proficients in that immoral casuistry which was the worst part of Jesuitism. Some grave divines had openly said, others had even dared to write, that they had sworn ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... her to the bridge where she relieved the duty officer and began taking readings for the jump-setting. She looked out of place among the machines, a sturdy but supple figure in a simple, one-piece shipsuit. Yet there was no denying the efficiency with which she went ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... occasionally, not normally, a formidable predatory beast, a killer of cattle and of large game. Although capable of far swifter movement than is promised by his frame of seemingly clumsy strength, and in spite of his power of charging with astonishing suddenness and speed, he yet lacks altogether the supple agility of such finished destroyers as the cougar and the wolf; and for the absence of this agility no amount of mere huge muscle can atone. He is more apt to feast on animals which have met their death by accident, or which have been killed by other beasts ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... it mattered. He was supple and swift and flushed; his eyes (which he believed to be cynical) were candidly eager. But he was not over-gentle. He waved his hand at poor dumpy Verona and drawled: "Yes, I guess we're pretty ridiculous ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... say if I were to marry a man that loot himsel' be thrashed by Tommy Potts, a great supple wi' a back nae stiffer than a willy brand? . . . When one comes to close quarters wi' him he's ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... that era which professors still persist in calling the Great Age, hardly stimulated Des Esseintes. With its carefully premeditated style, its sameness, its stripping of supple syntax, its poverty of color and nuance, this language, pruned of all the rugged and often rich expressions of the preceding ages, was confined to the enunciation of the majestic banalities, the empty commonplaces tiresomely reiterated ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... across them on the shelves. These forces are the self-propelling and self-healing forces of the creative mood. The creative mood protects the books, and it protects all who come near the books. It protects from the inside. It toughens and makes supple. Parents who cannot trust a boy to face the weather in a library should ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... his fellow-players, from whom came low, inspiriting words; then, facing the batter, Keene, he eyed him in cool speculation, and swung into supple action. ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... her flesh; none would ever again see the superb play of light in her hair and eyes, the reflections, now pale, now pearly, of her dead-white skin. But her body, that filled him with such rage, would be young and warm and supple for long years yet, and lover after lover would feel it quiver and awake to passion. She would exist for other men, but not for him. Was that to be borne? Ah! the deliciousness of plunging a dagger ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... head was palsied and his hands fluttering, seemed strange and rather inexplicable to Amos. He counted Daniel a young man, four years his junior, barely seventy-nine; a man who should be in his prime. Amos did not realize that his legs had been kept supple by climbing on and off a high printer's stool hourly for fifty years, and that his body had buffeted the winds of the world unprotected all those years and had kept fit. But Daniel Sands's sad case seemed pathetic ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... their lustre was not the less for it; it added something of charm and mystery to the classical lines of her face. Sanin was especially struck that day by the exquisite beauty of her hands; when she smoothed and put back her dark, glossy tresses he could not take his eyes off her long supple fingers, held slightly apart from one another like ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... watching every movement of the supple limbs, when he uttered an exclamation of horror. At the very moment Victor was gathering his muscles for the leap, and when close to the edge, the dripping stone caused his foot to slip. He fell sideways, let go of his ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... belonging to the sect of the Lughardars (Stranglers), after having again listened, rose almost entirely from amongst the brushwood. With the exception of white cotton drawers, fastened around his middle by a parti-colored sash, he was completely naked. His bronze, supple, and nervous limbs were overlaid with a thick coat of oil. Stretching himself along the huge trunk on the side furthest from the cabin, and thus sheltered by the whole breadth of the tree with its surrounding creepers, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... very narrow and undeveloped. The hands and feet are generally good, particularly the hand, which is less developed and not so coarse as the lower limbs generally and the feet in particular. The fingers are usually long and quite supple, with well-proportioned nails. The thumb is, nevertheless, hardly ever in good proportion with the rest of the hand. It generally lacks length and character. The feet bear the same characteristics as the hands ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... right and justice inherited and taught came flocking forward. Horror unspeakable filled her, and wrath, that such a dreadful thing should come to her. There was no time to think. She brought her two strong supple hands up and beat him in the face, mouth, cheeks, and eyes, with all her might, until he turned blinded; and then she struggled away crying, "You are a wicked man!" ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... country wench, almost decay'd, Trudges to town, and first turns chambermaid; Awkward and supple, each devoir to pay, She flatters her good lady twice a-day; Thought wondrous honest, though of mean degree, And strangely liked for her simplicity: In a translated suit, then tries the town, With borrow'd pins, and patches not her own: But just endured ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... by the hall door. She is of middle height, supple, and delicately built. Somewhat sunburnt. Dressed in a tourist costume, with skirt caught up for walking, a sailor's collar open at the throat, and a small sailor hat on her head. Knapsack on back, plaid in ...
— The Master Builder • Henrik Ibsen
... pliant, supple, limber, lithesome, lithe, flexile, malleable; irresolute, yielding, facile, compliant. Antonyms: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... chief object of the player should be to make his attack in the fewest possible motions. For this reason a slightly bent arm is necessary when on guard. Of course if the arm is unduly bent the elbow will be exposed, but a little practice will soon enable any moderately supple man to so hold his arm as to be ready to cut direct from his guard and yet keep his elbow out of peril. And this brings me to a question often discussed amongst players, viz. which is the better guard, the upright or the hanging guard, for general purposes. Although I have been taught to use the ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... life. A girl in a soft, clinging frock of white satin darted swiftly from the rooms and flung herself nervously upon a bench. She could not, to Ricardo's thinking, be more than twenty years of age. She was certainly quite young. The supple slenderness of her figure proved it, and he had moreover caught a glimpse, as she rushed out, of a fresh and very pretty face; but he had lost sight of it now. For the girl wore a big black satin hat with a broad brim, from which a couple of white ostrich ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... oars—one was all the girl really could manage. But she was not afraid of a little hard work, her muscles were supple, and she had rowed one season in the first eight at Briarwood Hall, and so considered herself something ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... austere rectitude; and the relations between Charles and Lewis were such that no English nobleman could long reside in France as envoy, and retain any patriotic or honourable sentiment. Sunderland came forth from the bad school in which he had been brought up, cunning, supple, shameless, free from all prejudices, and destitute of all principles. He was, by hereditary connection, a Cavalier: but with the Cavaliers he had nothing in common. They were zealous for monarchy, and condemned in theory all resistance. Yet they had sturdy English hearts which ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... her ball costume,—a blue satin dress trimmed with lace. The flowers were still in her hair; and the blow had come with such suddenness, that, even in death, she retained the appearance of life; she was still warm, her skin transparent, and her limbs supple. Even her eyes, still wide open, retained their expression, and betrayed the last sensation that had filled her heart,—terror. It looked as if she had had at that last moment a revelation of the future which her too great cautiousness had prepared ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... being exceedingly precarious required the greatest caution. Neb and Herbert took the lead, Pencroft the rear, the captain and the reporter between them. The animals which frequented these heights—and there were numerous traces of them—must necessarily belong to those races of sure foot and supple spine, chamois or goat. Several were seen, but this was not the name Pencroft gave them, for all of a ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... as that hollow wooden object, lacquered scarlet-and-gold, on which the priests beat with a padded mallet while chanting the Sutra. And, finally, in one place I perceive a pair of sitting animals, of some mythological species, supple of figure as greyhounds. 'Kitsune,' says Akira—'foxes.' So they are, now that I look upon them with knowledge of their purpose; idealised foxes, foxes spiritualised, impossibly graceful foxes. They are chiselled in some grey stone. They have long, narrow, sinister, glittering ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... there, And bade Melanthius a vast pile prepare; He gives it instant flame, then fast beside Spreads o'er an ample board a bullock's hide. With melted lard they soak the weapon o'er, Chafe every knot, and supple every pore. Vain all their art, and all their strength as vain; The bow inflexible resists their pain. The force of great Eurymachus alone And bold Antinous, yet untired, unknown: Those only now remain'd; but those confess'd Of all ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... the majority were a mixture of the two races, and the mingling of African and American blood appeared to have had a beneficent effect upon both, the product being an individual of less bulky frame perhaps than his negro progenitor, but lithe, active, supple, and apparently of tireless endurance, superior in intelligence, courage, and good looks to either of ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... dry, and as he tested his muscles he found them supple and strong. Now he took precautions, thinking he had let the fire burn as long as was safe. He scattered the coals with a stick, and then softly crushed out each under the stout heel of his moccasin. With the minute patience that he had learned from his forest ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
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