"Lank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the lank Sergeant with the big feet, and the hair that stood up where it shouldn't, who dared to dream the most preposterous dream of them all. For, as he sang there in the firelight, a little god was busy lighting ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... before," grumbled a voice in the crowd, when, to relieve public suspense, Lawyer Perkins—a long, lank man, with stringy black hair—announced the verdict from ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the street below, and had halted right under the editor's window. In the midst thereof was seen the tall, lank figure of a man, whose extraordinary appearance enchained the attention of the multitude, and excited afresh their shouts and derisive laughter. And, in fact, nothing could be more striking or fantastic than this man. Notwithstanding the cool October weather, his gigantic figure was clothed ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... It deserves a more detailed delineation. His probable age has been stated—about thirty. His spare figure and ill-omened aspect have been alluded to. Add to this, low stature, a tripe-coloured skin, a beardless face, a shrinking chin, a nose sharp-pointed and peckish, lank black hair falling over the forehead, and hanging down almost low enough to shadow a pair of deep-set weazel-like eyes: give to this combination of features a slightly sinister aspect, and you have the portrait of Joshua Stebbins. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... that of Anamabao on the east side towards Timor and the north-east end; and that of Anabao, which contains the south-west end and the west side of the island; but I known not which of them is biggest. The natives of both are of the Indian kind, of a swarthy copper-colour, with black lank hair. Those of Anamabao are in league with the Dutch, as these afterwards told me, and with the natives of the kingdom of Kupang in Timor, over against them, in which the Dutch fort Concordia stands: but they are said to be inveterate enemies to their neighbours of Anabao. Those of Anabao, besides ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... hinds, too poor to house In frosty nights their starving cows, While not a blade of grass or hay Appears from Michaelmas to May, Must let their cattle range in vain For food along the barren plain: Meagre and lank with fasting grown, And nothing left but skin and bone; Exposed to want, and wind, and weather, They just keep life and soul together, Till summer showers and evening's dew Again the verdant glebe renew; And, as the vegetables rise, The famish'd cow her want supplies; Without an ounce ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... showed none of the ripe acquaintance with the vintages of the world which had been so plainly displayed on it during its owner's visit to the country. Again, hair and eyebrows were no longer black, but fair; and his hair was no longer curly and luxuriant, but thin and lank. His moustache had vanished, and along with it the dress of a well-to-do provincial man of business. He wore a livery of the Charmeraces, and at that early morning hour had not yet assumed the blue waistcoat which is an integral part of it. Indeed ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... on the top of the bank, not far from where Dacres and Mrs. Willoughby had made their appearance, the Baron caught sight of a tall, lank, slim figure, clothed in rusty black, whose thin and leathery face, rising above a white neck-tie, peered solemnly yet interrogatively through the bushes; while just behind him the Baron caught a glimpse of the flutter of ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... islands where I'll be quiet, and where no one comes poking around," said the lank burglar. "The swift places are ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... several young horses bred on the farm, who turned out very fine creatures, and gained him great glory, even amongst the knowing farmers of Yorkshire; but this first production was certainly not encouraging. To his dismay a huge, lank, large-boned foal appeared, of chestnut colour, and with four white legs. It grew apace, but its bones became more and more conspicuous; its appetite was unbounded—grass, hay, corn, beans, food moist and dry, were all supplied ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... sprawling youth with lank blonde hair, a long nose, and an incorrigible smile that spread to the furthest confines of his face. To quote himself, he was a bum artist and a squarehead. He took people at their own valuation and was consequently a ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... pause that fell thereafter, Yagorsha, imperturbable, the only one who had not laughed, smoothed his lank, iron-gray locks down on either side of his wide face, and went on renewing the sinew open-work ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... glossy as rich Tyrian silk— Such horses Israel's sacred prophets saw Bearing their conquerors in triumph home, A race for ages kept distinct and pure, Fabled from Alexander's charger sprung; Then three from distant desert Tartar steppes, Ewe-necked, ill-favored creatures, lank and gaunt, That made the people laugh as they passed by— Who ceased to laugh when they had run the race— Such horses bore the mighty Mongol hosts[16] That with the cyclone's speed swept o'er the earth; Then three, one gray, one bay, one glossy black, Descended from four horses ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... there in all his glory, and the Field-Marshal as lank and cadaverous as ever; and besides ourselves there was Whipcord with the straw in his mouth, and one or two other fellows belonging to our host's particular set. The supper was quite as elaborate ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... meet death in a marvellous way. Many of the dead come back now to my memory. I recall you, my old friend, who left the university with no degree, Avenir Sorokoumov, noblest, best of men! I see once again your sickly, consumptive face, your lank brown tresses, your gentle smile, your ecstatic glance, your long limbs; I can hear your weak, caressing voice. You lived at a Great Russian landowner's, called Gur Krupyanikov, taught his children, Fofa and Zyozya, Russian grammar, geography, and history, patiently bore ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... planning for years to visit her. This visit had now been paid. But Eberhard could not say that he had derived extraordinary pleasure from it: it had taken an inner figure from his soul. And, on the other hand, whether the nurse felt, on seeing the tall, lank, stiff, and ill-humoured foster son, that enraptured charm she so much liked to conjure up before her imagination, is a question that had ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... peristalick motion of the guts, is a little mov'd to and fro, not with a systole and diastole, but rather with a thronging or justling motion. Viewing one of these Creatures, after it had fasted two dayes, all the hinder part was lank and flaccid, and the white spot II hardly mov'd, most of the white branchings disappear'd, and most also of the redness or sucked blood in the guts, the peristaltick motion of which was scarce discernable; but ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... passengers very oddly. They were all kinds, these passengers, both first-cabin and second-cabin—for the second-cabin passengers were allowed on the upper deck, although not to sleep. A great many were Southerners, including a number of long, lank, dark Arkansans, Georgians, Louisianans and Mississippians. Pistols and knives were plentiful, although notices, posted about the ship, said, plainly: "The Wearing of Deadly Weapons Aboard this Ship is Forbidden." For that matter, another notice said: ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... directions! Your friend, the curly-haired blonde, with florid complexion, round cheeks, the best possible digestion and respiration, the stomach of an ostrich and the lungs of a pearl-diver, finds it perfectly easy to carry them into practice. You, of leaden complexion, with black and lank hair, lean, hollow-eyed, dyspeptic, nervous, find it not so easy to be always hilarious and happy. The truth is that the persons of that buoyant disposition which comes always heralded by a smile, as a yacht driven by a favoring breeze carries a wreath ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... described Jackson as he first saw him in his seat in the House: "A tall, lank, uncouth looking individual, with long locks of hair hanging over his brows and face, while a queue hung down his back tied in an eelskin. The dress of this individual was singular, his manners and deportment that of a backwoodsman." ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... reached the forest this prince and I got out of the chaise and walked along a narrow woodland path which was hidden among huge ferns. But before we had gone a hundred paces a tall, lank figure with a long oval face, wearing a shabby reefer jacket, a straw hat, and patent leather boots, rose up from behind a young fir-tree some three feet high, as though he had sprung out of the ground. The stranger held in one hand a basket of mushrooms, with the other ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... height; their skin-colour ranges from a rich medium brown to a very pale CAFE-AU-LAIT, hardly deeper than the colour of cream. Their hair is nearly black or very dark brown, and generally quite lank, but in some cases wavy or even almost curly. Their faces show in nearly all cases, though in very diverse degrees, some of the well-known mongoloid characters, the wide cheek-bones, the small oblique eyes, the peculiar fold of the upper eyelid at its nasal end, and the scanty beard. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... had just taken his seat, and was trying to make up his mind whether he were hungry enough to eat anything or whether it would not be less trouble to drink a glass of iced coffee and go away, when he was aware of a lank shadow cast across the white cloth by the glaring electric light. He looked up and saw Spicca standing there, apparently uncertain where to sit down for the place was fuller than usual. He liked the melancholy old man and spoke to him, offering ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... longer a shadow of uncertainty. "Margaret was dead!" and the lank Tim was ordered to drive faster, or the excited woman, perched on one of her traveling-trunks, would be obliged to foot it! A few vigorous strokes of the whip set the sorrel horse into a canter, and as the night was dark, and the road wound round among the trees, it is not at all surprising ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... lank brown hand that set his mug beside him shook so that some tea was spilt. Bates was in as dire need of the man he received so unwillingly as ever man was in need of his fellow-man. It is when the fetter of solitude has begun to eat into a man's flesh that he begins to proclaim his ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... State which supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woodmen and country schoolmasters. The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... the coroner. One of the others was short and thick set. His round and florid face, one felt, should have expressed friendliness and good-humour rather than the intolerant anger that marked it now. The third was a lank, bald-headed man, whose sharp face released ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... long walk for a tired man to the Polizeiamt. When I got there I was fortunate in encountering a lank, easy-going old fellow who had been commandeered for the job owing to the departure of all the local police for the war. He was clearly more interested in trying to find out something of his relations in some remote village in America, which he said was named ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... away. There were other places pleasanter than the Kennedy farm-some of "the Dutchmen" had fine big brick houses and finer and bigger barns, but their women were mostly homely and went around barefooted and barelegged, with ugly blue dresses hanging frayed and greasy round their lank ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... will mold characters, or invent machines that will revolutionize the commerce of the world. Every man was a boy—I trust I shall not be contradicted—it is really so. Wouldn't you like to turn Time backward, and see Abraham Lincoln at twelve, when he had never worn a pair of boots?—the lank, lean, yellow, hungry boy—hungry for love, for learning, tramping off through the woods for twenty miles to borrow a book, and spelling it out crouching before the glare of the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... on, "was a lank old man, with a beard that used t' put me in mind of a dead shrub on a cliff. Old, an' tall, an' skinny he was; an' the flesh of his face was sort o' wet an' whitish, as if it had no feelin'. They wasn't a thing in the way o' wind or sea that Skipper Jim was afeard ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... was taller, her limbs were fuller and more rounded; her complexion, though tanned by light, was fairer by far than his own sunburnt face; her hair, crowned with a garland of white flowers, was not lank, and straight, and black, like an Indian's, but of a rich, glossy brown, and curling richly and crisply from her very temples to her knees. Her forehead, though low, was upright and ample; her nose was straight and small; her lips, the lips of a European; her ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the shoulders, the air of discouragement—suddenly there flashed across Billie's mind a different picture, the picture of a tall lank man with stooped shoulders and dark, deep-set ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... undisguisedly avowed. Broad Cloth has, on the contrary, affected a sympathy with tatters, though with a constancy of purpose has refused an ell from its trailing superfluity to solace the wretchedness; the tears of Beef dropt on the lank abdomen of Starvation, are ancient as post diluvian crocodiles.—but it has spared no morsel to the object of its hypocritic sorrow. Now, however, even the decency of deceit is to be dropt, and Broad Cloth is to make sport with the nakedness of the land, and merry ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... twinkling brown eyes. She had never been a beauty, but people always liked to look at her, and the young people declared she grew prettier every year. Mrs. Means was tall and weedy, with a figure that used to be called willowy, and was now admitted to be lank; her once fair complexion had faded into sallowness, and her light hair had been frizzed till there was little left of it. Her eyebrows had gone up, and the corners of her mouth had gone down, so that her general effect was ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... worst apprehensions. He was a lean, lank, dark young man with long black hair and irregular, rather prolonged features; his chin was right over to the left; he looked constantly at the bishop's face with a distinctly sceptical grey eye; he could not ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... dress, showed at any rate his pretensions to nobility. This proud cavalier was followed by one servant only, who carried a capacious wallet, not over-well replenished with provision, as was apparent from its long lank shape and attenuated proportions. His master's cloak was slung on the other shoulder; and his belt displayed some implements that appeared alike formidable as ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... fury, and a ring of imps danced mad figures around him, danced and flung up their legs till the rags dropped from some of them, and they still danced on. A flare of naphtha, burning with a rushing noise, threw a light on one point of the circle, and Lucian watched a lank girl of fifteen as she came round and round to the flash. She was quite drunk, and had kicked her petticoats away, and the crowd howled laughter and applause at her. Her black hair poured down and leapt on her scarlet bodice; she ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... examination on all witnesses but the naval and military experts. I directed my fire against Rear Admiral T. B. Stratton Adair, who superintended the ordnance factories of the Beardmore Gun Works in Glasglow. The Admiral a typical English gentleman of the naval officer type, long, lank with a rather ascetic, clear-cut Roman head, not unlike Chamberlain in general appearance, even to the single eye-glass, did not make much of a showing as an expert witness for the prosecution. The Admiral was called in on testimony ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... the lank black hair, no longer sleek, and had received one gleam from the uplifted blue eyes; and now knew terror such as she had not ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... steamer, I found a party of country people, mostly young persons of both sexes, thin and lank figures, by no means equal, as productions of the country, to their bough apples. They passed through the fine spacious cabin on the upper deck, extending between the state-rooms the whole length of the steamer. At length they came to a large mirror, which stood ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... was truth in the observation, this is certain, that business did not prosper: it has been surmised that Jonathan's tall, lank, lean figure injured his custom, as people are but too much inclined to judge of the goodness of the ale by the rubicund face and rotundity of the landlord, and therefore inferred that there could be no good beer where mine ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... finespun^, gossamer; paper-thin; taper, slim, slight-made; scant, scanty; spare, delicate, incapacious^; contracted &c 195; unexpanded &c (expand) &c 194 [Obs.]; slender as a thread. [in reference to people or animals] emaciated, lean, meager, gaunt, macilent^; lank, lanky; weedy, skinny; scrawny slinky [U.S.]; starved, starveling; herring gutted; worn to a shadow, lean as a rake [Chaucer]; thin as a lath, thin as a whipping post, thin as a wafer; hatchet-faced; lantern-jawed. attenuated, shriveled, extenuated, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Emily had taken a fancy to the fashion, ugly and preposterous even during its reign, of gigot sleves, and persisted in wearing them long after they were "gone out." Her petticoats, too, had not a curve or a wave in them, but hung down straight and long, clinging to her lank figure. The sisters spoke to no one but from necessity. They were too full of earnest thought, and of the exile's sick yearning, to be ready for careless conversation or merry game. M. Heger, who had done little but observe, during the few first weeks of their residence in the Rue d'Isabelle, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... wrinkled, as though worn for a period of time by one suddenly and sorely stricken in the midst of health. The bride's once well-coifed hair hung in lank disarray about a face that was the color of prime old sage cheese—yellow, with a fleck of green here and there—and in her wan and rolling eye was the hunted look of one who hears something unpleasant stirring a long way off and fears ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... told me that when Mr. Johnson was first introduced to her mother his appearance was very forbidding; he was then lean and lank, so that his immense structure of bones was hideously striking to the eye, and the scars of the scrofula were deeply visible. He also wore his hair, which was straight and stiff, and separated behind; and he often had, seemingly, convulsive starts and odd gesticulations, which tended to excite ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... hand had done, they obeyed. Six men of them there were: surly crippled Manning, with eyes ablaze and jaws set like a trap; lank Wagner with his hands still in his pockets; Rank Judge, stumping on his wooden leg; greasy adipose Buck Walker, who ran the meat market; Slim Simpson, from the eating joint opposite, pale as the tucked-in apron around his waist; last of all the stranger, tall, smooth-shaven, alien ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... opened the cab door for them himself, and gave them the gaze of wondering approval which he reserved for these fair daughters. To him their growth, development, and beauty seemed something magical, incomprehensible. He had left them in the lank, homely, tooth-shedding period, at the time he placed them in school, and when he returned to see them graduated, here were two blooming maidens on the very borderland of charming womanhood. The usual love and ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... months," affirmed the latter, lifting him to her knee, and dropping into the wooden chair opposite with a sense of utter relaxation that struck the caller as being the next thing to unconscious grace, even in that lank, slatternly figure. "He can go clear 'round the room by takin' hold o' things. I ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... before said) George Cruikshank undoubtedly shares. In the "Sunday in London,"* Monsieur the Chef is instructing a kitchen-maid how to compound some rascally French kickshaw or the other—a pretty scoundrel truly! with what an air he wears that nightcap of his, and shrugs his lank shoulders, and chatters, and ogles, and grins: they are all the same, these mounseers; there are other two fellows—morbleu! one is putting his dirty fingers into the saucepan; there are frogs cooking ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... common to the Indo-Chinese races, the Tibetans and tribes of the Eastern Himalaya. They may be generally described as of a stout, active, well-proportioned form; of a brown but never of an intensely dark complexion, with black, coarse, lank and abundant hair, and a little more beard than is possessed by the Siamese. Owing to their gay and lively disposition the Burmese have been called "the Irish of the East," and like the Irish they are somewhat inclined ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... calf of his leg with grave self-complacency, and starting out of his reverie when spoken to with an inimitable vapid exclamation of 'Eh!' Mudford is like a man made of fleecy hosiery: Roger was lank and lean 'as is the ribbed sea-sand.' Yet he seemed the very man he represented, as fat, pert, and dull as it was possible to be. I have not ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... that little Rosenheim would smite the lank annoyer dead in his tracks. 'For heaven's sake be careful!' I cried. 'The man is drunk or crazy or he may even be right; the paint on this picture isn't two days old.' 'Correct,' declared the stranger. 'I finished it day before yesterday for this sale.' Then a marked ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... sprouting vegetables, turned sun-dazzled eyes to watch us as we clattered by; where ragged children, climbing on the stockades, called out to us in little, shrill voices; where feeding cattle lifted sober heads to stare; where lank, yellow dogs rushed out barking and snapping till a cut of the whip sent them ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... fitful gazing, Laughing till the tears chased madly Down her cheeks of pallid whiteness. "Dear, dear Blanche!" her husband murmured, Stretching out his hand towards her; But she started wildly forward, Crouched down in the furthest corner, And, with face tear-dabbled over, And her hair in long, lank tresses, With a voice so low and plaintive 'Twould have won a brute to lameness, Faintly sobbed she: "Do not take it! Do not take it!—do not take it!" And she hugged her infant closer, Sobbing sadly, "Do not take it!" "Blanche! dear Blanche!" her husband faltered, With a ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... distressed. He could not work. He would sit with his lank form huddled up in his office chair, gazing fixedly over his eyeglasses at nothing in particular. About two o'clock he bethought himself to look up the family with which Mr. Neal lodged in the telephone directory and to inform them of the accident. The whole office force listened ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... fear thee, ancient Mariner! I fear thy skinny hand; And thou art long and lank and brown ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... her]. O mother, mother! go not to that house— Among those fierce lank men, who laughed, and scowled, And showed their knives, and sang strange ugly songs Of you and us. O mother! let ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... a great, huge-boned, lank man crowded eagerly up to Thure's side, "jest say them words over ag'in; an' say 'em loud, so that Sal can hear. She's bin callin' me a fool regular 'bout every hour since we started for th' diggings. Says she'll eat all th' gold I find an' won't have no stumick-ake ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... knew nothing of these happenings, had just finished exercising his men on the smooth green in front of the Castle of Crichton, and had dismissed them, when a gaberlunzie or privileged beggar, a long lank rascal with a mat of tangled hair, and clad in a cast-off leathern suit which erstwhile some knight had worn under his mail, leaped suddenly from the shelter of a hedge. Instinctively Sholto laid ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... its first stage of twenty-eight years, and perpetuity is assured. A Christian Science Congress will reign in the Capitol then. She probably attaches small value to the first edition (1875). Although it was a Revelation from on high, it was slim, lank, incomplete, padded with bales of refuse rags, and puffs from lassoed celebrities to fill it out, an uncreditable book, a book easily sparable, a book not to be mentioned in the same year with the sleek, fat, concise, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... habit of living in this peaceful manner soon united me tenderly to my cousin Bernard; my affection was more ardent than that I had felt for my brother, nor has time ever been able to efface it. He was a tall, lank, weakly boy, with a mind as mild as his body was feeble, and who did not wrong the good opinion they were disposed to entertain for the son of my guardian. Our studies, amusements, and tasks, were the same; we were alone; each wanted a playmate; ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... about as if their spirits were depressed. The smoke of ages was on the walls and roof, and the tables and benches at one side had a sadly dilapidated appearance. The master was an Indian of lightish hue, his long, lank hair already turning grey with age, and perhaps with care. Several Indian women were moving about round a fire at the farther end of the room, preparing a meal for a somewhat numerous company assembled there. The ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... A large, lank, muley or polled cow used to annoy me in this way when I was a dweller in a certain pastoral city. I more than half suspected she was turned in by some one; so one day I watched. Presently I heard the gate-latch rattle; the gate swung open, and in walked the old buffalo. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... the pity!—our red-faced yeomen, alas, are fast sinking into lank-jawed mechanics! We shall find the king in his garden within the next ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that Eloise is a name I have bestowed upon the young lady who is visiting the Whites, in exchange for the compliment of her having given my name to her dog. He is a lank, sneaking greyhound which never leaves her side, and was called merely Senor, when she brought him to Mexico. Now she has added Tremonti to his title. She herself is baptized Eliza. She is a pretty, kittenish ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... sarcasm was appreciated by the assembled citizens of Elreno, and they raised a howl at Bill Buckhorn, scores of voices hurling derisive epithets at the lank stranger. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... forest and jungle, but animal life abounded. The hermits toddled about, carrying their stolen shells, some as small as watch charms, and the land-crabs fed on the purauand hibiscus-leaves. They are the scavengers of the shore, eating everything, and thus acting as conservators of health, as do the lank pigs of the Philippines. They were in myriads, rushing about seemingly without purpose, and diving into their holes beneath the palm-roots. Their legs, unshelled, are as excellent food as the crabs of the Atlantic. In the water a foot or two away moved ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... stirring outside the house any more than within; he knocked down a trellis by which a clematis was trying to climb over the window he emerged from, and found his way out of the grounds without alarming any one. He was not so successful at the hotel, where a lank boy, sweeping the long piazzas, recognized one of the St. Johnswort guests in the figure approaching the steps, and apparently had his worst fears roused for Hewson's sanity when Hewson called to him and wondered if he could get a cup of coffee ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... ragged, lank, starved-looking man, whose appearance was on this occasion rendered ludicrous by the feathers sticking all over him, and by an expression of dejection which would draw down the corners of his miserable mouth and roll up his piteous ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... Fear thee, ancient Mariner! I fear thy skinny hand! 225 And thou art long, and lank, and brown, As is ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... wrecking his life in New York and letting her watch their mine alone! A wave of resentment rose up at the thought—it was the old hatred that she tried to fight down—and she clasped her hands and gazed straight ahead as she beheld in a vision, the woman! A lank rag of a woman, a Kipling's vampire, who lived by the blood of strong men! And to think that she should have fastened on Rimrock, who was once so faithful ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... record of personal impressions was that made by W.H. Russell and later printed in his "Diary" but not reproduced in his letters to the Times. Russell was taken to the White House. "Soon afterwards there entered, with a shambling, loose, irregular, almost unsteady gait, a tall, lank, lean man, considerably over six feet in height, with stooping shoulders, long pendulous arms, terminating in hands of extraordinary dimensions, which, however, were far exceeded in proportion by his feet.... The impression produced by the size of his extremities, and by his flapping and ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... through the gate at the back of the house, his long, lank figure darkly cut against the background of the white that lay upon the slope. A flurry of blinding snow came suddenly flying on the wind. It wrapped him all about and hid him in its fury, and when the calmer falling of the flakes commenced he ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... the wolf-dog sprang, staggering back from the weight of its lank body hurled against his breast, and fired again as he felt the beast's vile breath in his face as it ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... looked just as he did the last time Marcy saw him—too lazy to take a long breath. He was tall and lank, his hair fell down upon his shoulders, his whiskers were as tangled and matted as a little brush heap—in short, he was as fine a specimen of a poor white as one could find anywhere in the seceded States. He looked stupid as well as ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... his hips, he roared without restraint, while they stood before him lank and straight, as though they had been shot up with a snap through a trap door in the ground. Only four-and-twenty months ago the masters of Europe, they had already the air of antique ghosts, they seemed less substantial in their ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... natives of marshy districts who permanently reside in them lose their whole bodily and mental constitution, contaminated by the poison they inhale. Their aspect is sallow and prematurely senile, so that children are often wrinkled, their muscles flaccid, their hair lank, and frequently pale, the abdomen tumid, the stature stunted, and the intellectual and moral character low and degraded. They rarely attain what in more wholesome regions would be considered old age. In the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... old woman's steadfastly tremulous advance, the bundle clutched in her gnarled lank hand, her nose (which was her countenance) wrinkled with breathless resolution. You see the poppies nodding fatefully on her bonnet, and the dust-white spring-sided boots beneath her skimpy skirts, pointing with an irrevocable ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... this moving world, Fanny made note of the many interesting exhibitions about her of country ignorance and enthusiasm. At one place she stopped near a tall, lank farmer, whose cowhide boots had left their massive imprint on every roadway on the grounds. He stood chewing a wisp of hay plucked from an exhibit, while he gazed in delight at the harvesters, plows and sheaves of wheat which stretched away before ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... Tolley bowed; and allowed herself to be drawn away by a lank-haired young man who had likewise been waiting for an opening. He represented the Uplift Film Association of Chicago, and was wishful to know if Miss Tolley would consent to altering the last chapter and ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... aspiring genius was D. Green; The son of a farmer,—age fourteen; His body was long and lank and lean,— Just right for flying, as will be seen; He had two eyes as bright as a bean, And a freckled nose that grew between, A little awry;—for I must mention That he had riveted his attention Upon his wonderful invention, Twisting his tongue as he twisted the strings, And ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... bent, and much bleached, faded and wrinkled. His eyes seemed both enormous in size and sunk almost to his occiput, by reason of being seen through the thickest of glasses. His lank, grayish hair, of no particular color, but resembling autumnal roadside grasses, hung thinly from a high and asymmetrical head, and straggled dejectedly down into a wisp of beard on chin and lip—a beard which any absent-minded man might well be supposed to have failed to observe, ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... this it does, partly to hinder the issuing out of the seed again, and partly to cherish it by an inward heat, the better to provoke it to action; which is one reason why women's bellies are so lank at their first conception. The woman having thus conceived, the first thing which is operative in conception is the spirit whereof the seed is full, which, nature quickening by the heat of the womb, stirs up ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... and household utensils. Girls were carrying heavy bundles under their arms and dragging tired, tearful children along. White-faced, sorrowful mothers were carrying peevish babies. Great wagons, loaded with furniture and bedding, and whole families sitting on top, were drawn by lank and bony horses. A little cart, with a pallid, aged woman cowering inside, was drawn painfully along by a white-haired man. They passed by us in the gathering gloom, and there seemed to be no end to these straggling multitudes ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... In it were two weather-beaten dames, neither of whom could possibly be mistaken for Bessie in disguise; and the lank, long-haired brother who was driving them looked ignorant as a child of anything save the management of his horses. I hailed them, and the wagon drew up at the side of ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... remarkable that, although Johnson and Wilmot were several years class-fellows at Lichfield, there never seems to have been the slightest intercourse between them in after life; but the Chief Justice used frequently to mention the Lexicographer as "a long, lank, lounging boy, whom he distinctly remembered to have been punished by Hunter for idleness." Lord Campbell blunders here. Northington and Clarke were from Westminster School (Campbell's Chancellors, v. 176). The schoolhouse, famous though it was, was allowed to fall ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... down his hat and stick, and hastily smoothed back some tumbling black hair which interfered with spectacled eyes already hampered by short sight. He was a tall, lank, powerful fellow; anyone acquainted with the West-country would have known him for one of the swarthy, ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a feast to see him, Lank as a ghost and tall, his shoulders bent, And long beard white with age—yet evermore, As if he were the only Saint on earth, He turns his face ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... was a man of middle age, thin to emaciation and having lank, dark hair. His face was ghastly white, and he lay with his head thrown back and with his arms hanging out upon either side of the bunk, so that his listless hands rested upon the carpet. It was a tragic face; a high, intellectual brow and finely ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... lank man! His suit of ancient black, A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl Make him the quaint great figure that men love, The ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... plainly than he, and had the same spirit of neglectful elegance. She was big, too, for a woman; somewhat lank but well muscled, and decisive in her motions as if she normally abounded in strength. What grace she had was an athlete's, but she looked overtrained or undernourished. Seeing that she did not look well, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... very grave-looking man, with lank hair, looked forth from the side-door communicating between the shop and the passage, and then stepped forward. "Come in, sir; you are my late uncle's assistant, Mr. Fairfield, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and consequently no priests or places of worship, yet all their youth are circumcised at six or seven years old, any one performing the operation. The natives are not all of one colour; some being quite black with crisp or curled hair like negroes; others not quite so black with lank hair; others again resembling mulatoes; while some that live in the interior are almost white, yet have hair of both kinds. They are of large stature, strong and well made, of clear judgment, and apt to learn. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... when their children are thinking on their own account. The exercise of their volition we construe as revolt. Our love does not like to be invalided and deposed from its command, and here I think yonder old thrush on the lawn who has just kicked the last of her lank offspring out of the nest to go shift for itself, much the kinder of the two, though sentimental people do shrug their shoulders at these unsentimental acts of the creatures who never wander from nature. Now, excess of obedience is, to one who manages most exquisitely, as bad as insurrection. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... be something of a baseball player. In fact he's still on the rolls of a certain National League club and back in 1914 it was Lank's mighty swatting that won the ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... toward the others, approaching now as fast as spurs would bring them, waving, shouting a warning as he went. Within a minute they were all together listening to his story. Within another, the rifles from off their saddles in their hands, the ponies left in charge of lank Bob Hoyt, the eight others now remaining moved back as Stetson had come: at first upright, then, crawling, hand over hand until, peeping over the intervening ridge, they saw lying before them the mingled ice patches and open running water of the low-lying Missouri. Beside ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... his master with the child in his arms, and at the throng pressing curiously after them, but the next moment he recovered from his amazement and, admitting the bishop, politely but firmly shut out the eager throng that would have entered with him. A lank, rough-haired dog attempted to slink in at the bishop's heels, but the servant gave him a kick that made him draw back with a yelp of pain, and he took refuge under the steps where he remained all night, restless and miserable, his quick ears yet ever on the alert for ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... expressing in unmistakable terms what he wished General Sheridan and his cavalry to accomplish. They were to go over into the Shenandoah and, putting themselves south of the enemy, follow him to the death. To which telegram the tall, lank, furrow-faced man in the White House whose kindly heart was bursting with the strain replied in characteristic fashion and told him that his purpose was exactly right. And then, with a gleam of humor, warned him against influences in Washington ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... These were dressed like the rickshaw-men. They wore tight trousers, short jackets and straw sandals. They were sitting, wearied, on the sides of the barge, wiping black faces with black towels. Their hair was long, lank and matted. Their hands were bruised and shapeless with the ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... something sinister that forbade such an even existence for the smoothest tempered cat. There were too many of them for companionship and perhaps too few for the humour of the thing to strike them: in and out the chilly shades they stalked gloomily, hither and thither like lank and unquiet ghosts of starved cats. They were of all colours—gay orange-tawny, tortoise shell with the becoming white patch over one eye, delicate tints of grey and fawn and lavender, brindle, glossy sable; and yet the gloom and dampness of the place seemed to mildew ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... time into the room where the Chamberlain was lying. The doctor, a lank, pock-pitted embodiment of mad chirurgy from books and antique herbal delusions inherited from generations of simple healers, mixed noxious stuff in a gallipot and plumed himself upon some ounces of gore drawn from his victim. Clysters he prated on; electuaries; troches; the weed that ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... the front door, his lank figure bent over as he drew tightly about his shoulders the shawl which he employed for such protection; for he was on his way to the War Department, at the west corner of the grounds, where in times of battle he was wont to get the midnight dispatches ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... tell—some of those higher-ups might be in New York and think there wasn't anything to it unless they could see it in the New York papers. I—" Then he stopped as the wire cut under his finger and clattered forth a message. He jumped. He grasped Ba'tiste in his lank arms, then turned beaming to the rest of the ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... Ostia, the night had fallen; and their situation began to be more than questionably safe. Now and then a wolf, slinking across the road towards his ghastly feast, glided like a lank ghost out of the darkness, and into it again, answering Bran's growl by a gleam of his white teeth. Then the voices of some marauding party rang coarse and loud through the still night, and made them hesitate and stop ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... to her knowledge set eyes on the shabby, lank, loosely-put-together figure sitting opposite her, with its small freckled face and big grey eyes almost disappearing under a smashed-down wet-weather hat, and she gazed at her a moment without ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... ensue, followed by possible skedaddling of the shrewd operators bearing off the spoil. Meanwhile the smoke was alarmingly on the increase and something must be done at once. While we were in this quandary, the principal partner in the concern, a long, lank fellow with tong-like fingers, in a fit of desperation seized the thing in one hand with an old rag, and over it went k-e-r-f-l-o-p! The danger was past, and we congratulated the skillful operator and one ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... behind him quickly—there were more fly cops on Broadway than on the lower East Side. One of them had dug his bony fingers between the shabby collar of the dummy-chucker's coat and the lank hair that hung down his neck. He had yanked the dummy-chucker to his feet. He had dragged his victim to a patrol-box; he had taken him to a police station, whence he had been conveyed to Jefferson Market Court, where a judge had sentenced him ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... tall, lank man with a slouch in his shoulders and a sad, hollow-chested voice. His voice was the deepest and mournfullest bass. "The boy says you want me to look at a cat," he said in his hopeless tone. ...
— Mike Flannery On Duty and Off • Ellis Parker Butler
... circumvolving, lounging lank, In scuffling circle or in mural rank, Of misery mechanic They look the wooden symbols; nought to show That even well-starched linen's sheeny snow Veils ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... high carts, on two solid wheels, and drawn by four or six oxen, hauling the cut cane. But the villages they passed, single streets of unrelieved squalor in a dusty waste, they decided were immeasurably depressing. No one who could avoid it walked; lank men in broad straw hats and coat-like shirts rode meagre horses with the sheaths of long formidable blades slapping their miserable hides. Groups of fantastically saddled horses drooped their heads tied in the vicinity of ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... platform outside the door, and Saunders appeared, sidling deprecatingly into the room. He pulled off his black, slouched hat and tucked it under his arm, smoothed his lank, black hair, ran his palm down over his lank, unshaven face with a smoothing gesture, and sidled over ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... tones; for he had heard stories of other lads who had left the settlement and had returned home lank, pale, and hungry. ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... her, close to her heels, was quite the most forlorn specimen of the cat tribe she had ever beheld. The animal was well past kitten-hood, lank, thin, disreputable looking. Pieces of both ears were lacking, one eye was temporarily out of repair, and one jowl ludicrously swollen. As for color, if a once black cat had been well and thoroughly singed ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... He came a little nearer to Maraton. He stood looking down at him with folded arms—a lank, gaunt figure, the angular lines of his body and limbs accentuated by his black clothes and ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a long, lank individual, "Centerville's goin' to be one of the smartest places in the United States. It's got a ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... process of digestion, while the other continued white. This fact is worthy of remark at a period when physiology is so busy with the human heart. The incandescence, so to call it, was on the left side. Though his long slim legs, supporting a lank body, and his pallid skin, were not indicative of health, Monsieur de Valois ate like an ogre and declared he had a malady called in the provinces "hot liver," perhaps to excuse his monstrous appetite. The circumstance ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... against the blast that held us leaning to the pull. Noon came and still we had not overtaken the skiff. Dark came, and we had not yet sighted it. But with the sun, the wind fell, and we paddled on, lank and chilled. About ten o'clock ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... this unlucky Pike, to the hope that the new race on the new continent is to be a handsome race. I lose that faith, which the people about me now have nourished, when I recall the Pike. He is hung together, not put together. He inserts his lank fathom of a man into a suit of molasses-colored homespun. Frowzy and husky is the hair Nature crowns him with; frowzy and stubby the beard. He shambles in his walk. He drawls in his talk. He drinks whiskey by the tank. His oaths are to his words as Falstaff's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... for a cow is considered a luxury among these small riverside cultivators; the man who owns one sells milk to his poorer neighbors. Such a nabob was at last found. The animal was called down from the rocky hills, by her barefooted owner, who, lank and malaria-skinned, leaned wearily against the well-curb, while his wife, also guiltless of hose and shoes, milked into my pail direct from the lean ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... a telephone call the city editor presented his lank form and bearded face at the door of the sanctum. "The Rookeries deaths?" ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... by women, rakes, confessors, and valets, but the France of his dead Sun King; and it seemed to Louis de Soyecourt that the memory had brought back with it the youth of his father for an instant. Just for a heart-beat, the lank man towered erect, his cheeks ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... know?" the merchant cried, wriggling his long lank body with amusement. "Why, my lad, if we spread the rumours ourselves we shall have pretty good reason to believe that they are unfounded. Eh, Ezra? Ha! ha! You see there are some brains ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Felix, and was doing his best to be a light of the Church by resembling nothing but an altar-taper. When they all repaired to the back of the cupboard door in Mr. Audley's room to be measured, his head was found far above Edgar's mark at fourteen, and therewith he was lank and thin, not yet accustomed to the length of his own legs and arms, and seeming as if he was not meant to be seen undraped by his surplice. His features and face were of the family type, but a little smaller, and with much less of the bright rosy tinting; ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the biting wind. He saw them when came the chinook, a howling, warm wind from out the southwest, cutting the snowbanks as with a knife that turned to water what it touched, and laying bare the brown grass beneath. He saw the riders go out with the wagons to gather the lank-bodied, big-kneed calves and set upon them the searing mark ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... to the Gerards, but he no longer called his little friends "thou." Louise was now seventeen years old, thin, without color, and with a lank figure; decidedly far from pretty. People, in speaking of her, began to say, "She has beautiful eyes and is an excellent musician." Her sister Maria was twelve years old and a ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... aspiring genius was D. Green; The son of a farmer—age fourteen. His body was long and lank and lean— Just right for flying, as will be seen; He had two eyes, each bright as a bean, And a freckled nose that grew between, A little awry—for I must mention That he had riveted his attention Upon his wonderful invention, Twisting his tongue as ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... to note, that till the Sun gets to such a height as to warm the earth and the water, the Trout is sick, and lean, and lowsie, and unwholsome: for you shall in winter find him to have a big head, and then to be lank, and thin, & lean; at which time many of them have sticking on them Sugs, or Trout lice, which is a kind of a worm, in shape like a Clove or a Pin, with a big head, and sticks close to him and sucks his moisture; ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... repeat them by heart; but he never read a novel in his life. His education came from the newspapers and from his contact with men and things. After he read a book he would write out an analysis of it. What a grand sight to see this long, lank, backwoods student, lying before the fire in a log cabin without floor or windows, after everybody else was abed, devouring books he had borrowed but ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... was wet with the mist, and he had apparently oft wiped it with his hand or sleeve, for great streaks of dirt marked his cheeks and forehead, giving him a curious satanic expression, whilst his short lank hair obviously roughed up by impatient fingers, bristled above his square-built head like the coat of ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... go on: he would have put half the strength and life in himself into Yarrow's lank little body that moment, if he could. There was a something else lost, different from all these, of which they both thought, but they did not speak of it. The convict looked out into the night. Beyond the square ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... on a raft! A Duke is here At sight of whose lank jaw the muses leer. Journeyman-printer, lamb with ferret eyes, In life's skullduggery he takes the prize— Yet stands at twilight wrapped in Hamlet dreams. Into his eyes the Mississippi gleams. The sandbar sings in moonlit veils of foam. A candle shines from one lone cabin home. The waves reflect ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... humiliated, panic-struck. Where are the vaunts, and the proud boasts with which you went forth? Where are your banners, and your bands of music, and your ropes to bring back your prisoners? Well, there isn't a band playing—and there isn't a flag but clings ashamed and lank ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... goes it?" he asked pleasantly, dropping his long, lank frame upon a bundle of hotel table-linen. "Did you try my advice about ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... lying ill of a bile fever, or has the gout in his muckle toe, yet he has aye the miseries of uncertainty to encounter; his coat grows bare in the cuffs, greasy in the neck, and brown between the shouthers; his jawbones get long and lank, his een sunk, and his head grey wi' vexation, and what the wise Solomon calls 'hope deferred;' so at long and last, friendless and penniless, he takes the incurable complaint of a broken heart, and is buried out of the gate, in some bit ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... intelligible process that could be based upon his genuine qualities, unknown to those who chose him, and unsuspected of what endowments may adapt him for his tremendous responsibility, should have found the way open for him to fling his lank personality into the chair of state,—where, I presume, it was his first impulse to throw his legs on the council-table, and tell the Cabinet Ministers a story. There is no describing his lengthy awkwardness, nor the uncouthness of his movement; and yet ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... no passing breeze The long lank sedges waved, All white with foam and heaving high ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... not say the right thing to them we are all done for,' said the Russian at my elbow. The knot of men with the stretcher had stopped, too, halfway to the steamer, as if petrified. I saw the man on the stretcher sit up, lank and with an uplifted arm, above the shoulders of the bearers. 'Let us hope that the man who can talk so well of love in general will find some particular reason to spare us this time,' I said. I resented bitterly the absurd danger of our situation, ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... its shrunk limbs distorted and fleshless, and its lank body covered with filthy rags; its head, of enormous size, was entirely devoid of hair; and the unnatural shape as well as the prodigious dimensions of that bald cranium, betokened beastly idiocy. Its features, ghastly and terrible to look upon, bore ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... all melted away, and Animula lay struggling feebly in what seemed to be a spot of dim light. Ah! the sight was horrible; the limbs once so round and lovely shrivelling up into nothings; the eyes,—those eyes that shone like heaven—being quenched into black dust; the lustrous golden hair now lank and discoloured. The last throe came. I beheld that final struggle of ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... of miles away lived a doctor,—or an individual who wore that title,—on whom, in emergencies, the scattered settlers were wont to call. This queer Aesculapian specimen was remarkably tall and lank, always went with his pants tucked in the tops of his thumping cowhide boots, and wore a red woollen shirt, the soiled and limpsy neck-band of which, coming nearly to his ears, served instead of a collar. He dwelt alone, with his cat, in a rude, claim-shanty, sleeping with his window ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... to the front of the room and went on talking to a lank spinster about ruchings, but Mr. Wrenn felt that he had known her long and as intimately as it was possible to know ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... only possess the merit of knowing how to observe the ridiculous side of human nature, and of portraying in a full light picturesque figures now worthy of Teniers and now of Callot; some fat and greasy, others lean and lank; he possesses a thing very rare with the picaresque school, the faculty of being moved. He seems to have foreseen the immense field of study which was to be opened later to the novelist. A distant ancestor of Fielding, as Lyly and Sidney appear to us to be distant ancestors of Richardson, he ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... and ambergris. He reported that she sat in mournful modesty, not speaking a word. What was taken from them I know not, but on departing, this gentleman shewed a princely spirit. He was a man of middle stature, of a black colour, with smooth or lank hair. There is considerable trade in these islands, by reason of the cocoa-trees; for they make ropes, cables, sails, wine, oil, and a kind of bread from that tree and its fruit. It is said that there are ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... t' have the papers fur that, mister," retorted the voice, and a man appeared from the shelter of a rock and came slowly down to them—a man, long-legged and lank, with haggard, unshaven face and eyes that had hunger and dogged endurance looking out. He picked his way carefully with his feet, his eyes and the rifle fixed unswervingly at the two. Beatrice was too astonished to ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... inviting arms; three folded umbrellas leaned over the edge of their shadowy stand, looking down at her like scrawny and baleful birds, ready to peck at her with crooked handles. And as for Adoniram, her lank black cat, the child's restless creative fancy was ever transforming him from goblin into warlock, from hydra to hippogriff, until the earnestness of pretence sent agreeable shivers down her back, and she edged a trifle ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... turned bodily round in his chair. The couple to whom Wrayson had drawn his attention were certainly incongruous enough to attract notice anywhere. The man was lank, elderly, and of severe appearance. He was bald, he had slight side-whiskers, he wore spectacles, and his face was devoid of expression. He was dressed in plain dinner clothes of old-fashioned cut. The tails of his ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... The solemn peal of the organ was superstitious. The light music of Ben Jonson's masques was dissolute. Half the fine paintings in England were idolatrous, and the other half indecent. The extreme Puritan was at once known from other men by his gait, his garb, his lank hair, the sour solemnity of his face, the upturned white of his eyes, the nasal twang with which he spoke, and above all, by his peculiar dialect. He employed, on every occasion, the imagery and style of Scripture. Hebraisms violently introduced into the English ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Terry. He had swallowed the insult, stuttered his thanks to the jeering laugh of the lank bully, and had gone home and cried in shame ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... with delight, and exhibiting many a frolic and gambol considerably at variance with the etiquette of fashionable life, although we question whether the most fashionable fete, of them all ever produced half so much happiness. Farmers had come from a distance in the country, mounted upon lank horses ornamented with incrusted hips, and caparisoned with long-straw back-suggauns that reached from the shoulders to the tail, under which ran a crupper of the same material, designed, in addition to a hay girth, to keep this primitive riding gear firm upon the animal's back. Behind the farmer, ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... land-offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. On the contrary, nobody has ever seen in my poor lank face that ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... group of villains was such as to lend an aspect of picturesqueness to the final proceedings. The sextet included a full-blooded Cherokee; a consumptive ex-dentist out of Kansas, who from killing nerves in teeth had progressed to killing men in cold premeditation; a lank West Virginia mountaineer whose family name was the name of a clan prominent in one of the long-drawn-out hill-feuds of his native State; a plain bad man, whose chief claim to distinction was that he hailed originally from the Bowery in New ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb |
