"Scrawny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... long discussion, from which Agathemer and I learned nothing except that there was much insubordination among the men following Maternus and that the scrawny objector was named Torix. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... me alone; but it's no use. When it got to be so bad I couldn't stan' it, I sent her a letter, but I never got no answer. Next year, when our second boy died, frightened and worried to death, I believe, though he was scrawny enough when he was born, I took some money I'd saved to buy a yoke of oxen, an' went to Toledo o' purpose to see Rachel. It cut me awful to do it, but I was desprit. I found her livin' in a little house, with a bit o' garden, she'd bought. I s'pose she must 'a' had five or six hundred ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... but, at that, they sing laughter in place of Fysher lech. Leave behind you Paillard's, vainglorious in its bastard salades Danicheff, its souffles Javanaise; leave the blatant Boulevard des Italiens for the timid bistrop of Monsieur Delmas in the scrawny Rue Huygens, with its soupe aux legumes at twenty centimes the bowl, its cotelette de veau at fifty the plate. A queer oasis, this, with old Delmas's dog suffering from the St. Vitus and quivering against the tables as you eat; with its marked napkins ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... in thick, velvety folds on the weeds and grass of the open Kansas prairie; it lay, a thin veil on the scrawny black horses and the sharp-boned cow picketed near a covered wagon; it showered to the ground in little clouds as Mrs. Wade, a tall, spare woman, moved about a camp-fire, preparing supper in a sizzling skillet, huge iron kettle and ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... with a long, scrawny neck put down his highball and rose from the table. "Gosh, fellows," he said. "I'm sort of a fifth wheel around here, I guess. Here, neighbor," he insisted. "Take my place." He was all grins and teeth and bobbed his head around with ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett
... through the car windows, looking in vain for the luxuriant semi-tropical scenery which I had pictured in my mind. I did not find the grass so green, nor the woods so beautiful, nor the flowers so plentiful, as they were in Connecticut. Instead, the red earth partly covered by tough, scrawny grass, the muddy, straggling roads, the cottages of unpainted pine boards, and the clay-daubed huts imparted a "burnt up" impression. Occasionally we ran through a little white and green village that was like an ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... path, the bend which he had rounded on the day of his first excursion in those grounds, and which had afforded him the vision of Miss Snowden and Mrs. Chase framed in the ivy-draped window of The Eyrie. As he passed the clump of lilacs, now bare and scrawny, he came suddenly upon Phillips. The latter was standing there, deep in conversation with Mrs. Berry. Theirs should, it would seem, have been a pleasant conversation, but neither looked happy; in fact, Cordelia looked as if she had ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Edison, but has not the opportunity to develop it and show its capabilities. The same analogy is applicable to plant life. Under adverse conditions a plant or vegetable cannot put forth its best efforts. In a scrawny, impoverished soil, and exhausted atmosphere, lacking the constituents of nurture, the plant will become dwarfed and unproductive, whereas on good ground and in good air, which have the succulent properties to nourish it the best results may be expected. The ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... what's wrong with this suit," Peter objected, throwing out his scrawny chest and glancing down his front with a prejudiced eye, refusing to see any shabbiness. "A little ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... rough roads, they made fair time, and the miles of cactus and scrawny brush rolled swiftly past. Occasionally a lazy jack-rabbit ambled out of his road-side covert and watched them from a safe distance; now and then a spotted road-runner raced along the dusty ruts ahead of them. The morning ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... figure wear low-necked dresses, a lace shawl or scarf, or something of that sort, should be thrown over the neck; and the same advice might be given to thin and scrawny figures. A lady writes to us as to what dress should be worn at her child's christening. We should advise a high-necked dark silk; it may be of as handsome material as she chooses, but it should be plain and neat in general effect. No woman should overdress ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... body has suffered the fate of all flesh and plant-fibre that is denied light. A certain vision must direct all growth—and vision requires light. The covered things are white-lidded and abortive, scrawny from struggle or bulbous from the feeding dream into which they ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... more chipper in my life," I made flippant answer, "and I adore these people who are forever telling one how unusually thin, or pale, or scrawny one ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... am I? I am scrawny and skinny, am I? Well, you're a coward, a good-for-nothing coward, and so is your big brother. He wouldn't dare fight Tom, and you wouldn't dare say such things to me if Tom was anywhere near. You're a bully, an overgrown baby, a 'fraid-cat! Yes, that's what you are! I may be a Tabby ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... garment is a round-about mantle that reaches to his knees, and which seems to have been manufactured out of the tattered remnants of other tattered remnants tacked carelessly together without regard to shape, size, color, or previous condition of cleanliness; his thin, scrawny legs are bare, his long black hair is matted and unkempt, his beard is stubby and unlovely to look upon, his small black eyes twinkle in the semi-darkness like ferret's eyes, while soap and water have to all appearances been altogether stricken from the category of his personal requirements. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... brewed and Tim settles down to count the gain in money and in the interest he will make with Regan; the old building reels and shingles whir away like bats in the gale, but he only laughs dourly, the scrawny little breast hurting and straining with the ambition to be mounting on bigger storms than this. By dawn he is as drunk with scheming as ever his old grandfather with whisky, and yet his nerves do not tremble as he goes about the business of the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... need much for their consumption. While they sold milk to neighboring plantations, the Negroes were not denied the amount necessary to keep all strong and healthy. None of the children on the plantation were thin and scrawny nor did they ever complain ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... accomplishment: she could ride like a Sioux, either astride or womanwise, with a saddle or without, and many a race they had as the roads grew firm and dry. She was scrawny and flat-chested, but agile as a boy when occasion demanded. She was fearless, too, of man or beast, and once when her father became crazy with liquor (which was his weakness) she went with Mose to bring him from a saloon, where he stood ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... would have nothing to do with Madge. She would fly into a perfect tempest of rage whenever Madge approached her or tried to talk to her. The monkey even deserted her master to perch in Tania's arms. The animal put its little, scrawny arms about the queer child's neck, and there was almost the same elfish, wistful look in both pairs of ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... do sometimes, and stay as long as I often do, you may make up your mind never to see the dry land again; for you will certainly catch your death of cold, and be food for the fishes—if, indeed, they would deign to eat such a scrawny scrap!" ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... the ape-man had a close view of the chief. He saw an old man, a very old man with scrawny neck and wrinkled face—a dried, parchment-like face which resembled some of the little monkeys Tarzan knew so well. He saw the terror in the man's eyes—never before had Tarzan seen such terror in the eyes of ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a better chance for its life if it were lean and scrawny," said Mr. Morris. "They are over-feeding it, and I told Mr. Dobson so; but he wasn't inclined to ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... scrawny, mountain Steve," exclaimed Mr. Follet, "who did everything that was done here ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... slim, slight-made; scant, scanty; spare, delicate, incapacious[obs3]; contracted &c. 195; unexpanded &c. (expand &c. 194)[obs3]; slender as a thread. [in reference to people or animals] emaciated, lean, meager, gaunt, macilent[obs3]; 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 • Peter Mark Roget
... hopes are folly and there will be no more blossoming for them. Their leaves are dun and sere where they have not already fallen and their tops that in early September were such soft cumulus clouds of golden yellow are but scrawny clots of brown, draggled by the tears in which the sudden sun has drowned the pasture. Yet these least of all should be pessimistic in November, for as the sun dries their tears another summer comes back to them and to us, Indian summer, which is the finest season of the year. The Indian ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... His was, his biographer affirms, "a tender and a faithful heart." In him paternity and maternity met, which is a conjunction we have not given heed to as we ought in thinking on the heart. Motherhood is in the best fatherhood. Not long since I met a minister who, on my mentioning a black and scrawny village, said, with lovelit face and ringing, jubilant voice, "O yes, that is where my boy was born!" How true hearts do remember! And Colonel Newcome loved his son with such sweet and wide fidelity as makes the heart covet him for father. ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... somehow, to him. He stood, a lonely figure, on the deck, clad in ill-fitting, civilian clothes, not nearly so jaunty as those he used to wear before he went away. His clothes fell away from him strangely, for illness had wasted him, and his collar stood out stiffly from his scrawny neck. One leg was gone, shot away above the knee, and he hobbled painfully down the gangplank and on to the tender, using his ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... be true! I can understand, of course, their obedience to women of charm—but to fat women? to bony women? to women with scrawny cheeks? ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the man I had expected to find—even to his shaggy gray hair matted close about his ears, wrinkled, leathery face, and long, scrawny neck. He wore the same rough, cowhide boots and the very hat I had seen so often reproduced—such a picturesque slouch of a hat with that certain cant to the rim which betokens long usage and not a little comfort, especially on balsam boughs with the sky for a covering, ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and her drowsiness, the heat and fatigue had doubtless overcome her. She could be made out dimly in the light of the small lamp that hung by the hearth. She was a thin, scrawny woman, flat-chested, with lean arms, big red hands and skin of greyish hue. She slept seated upon a chair with her mouth open; her breathing ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... in the dust, sometimes erect, the linaria's delicate spikes of bloom wear an air of injured innocence, yet the plant, weak as it looks, has managed to spread over three Americas from ocean to ocean. More beautiful than the rather scrawny flowers are the tufts of cool green foliage made by the sterile shoots that take complete possession of a wide area around the ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... from the wild-haired leader, all the singing ceased. He uttered a few words apparently of command, then waved his scrawny ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... of the procession; and then he would march out to the cemetery and back again. Nobody knew where he came from nor where he went, and Uncle Carey called him the "funeral dog" and said he was doubtless looking for his dead master. Satan even made friends with a scrawny little yellow dog that followed an old drunkard around—a dog that, when his master fell in the gutter, would go and catch a policeman by the coat-tail, lead the officer to his helpless master, and spend the night ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... slick, slim youth named Jean, with a soapy blond lock plastered under the visor of his leather cap pulled down to his red ears. On fete days, he wore in addition a scarlet neck-tie girdling his scrawny throat. He had watched Yvonne for a long time, very much as the snake in the fable saved the young dove until ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... farewell of the surroundings she loved, climbed through the window and dropped to the ground. She crept stealthily to the back of the house and approached the dog-kennels. Through the dim light she could see the scrawny greyhounds pulling at their leashes as she fumbled at the wire-mesh door. Whines from several of the dogs made Fledra step inside, whence she glanced out misgivingly to see ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... Sara's ten year-old daughter, and she had been thoroughly spoiled. That is to say, she had been allowed her own way in everything and, having inherited her father's outdoor tastes, had simply run wild. She was a thorough tomboy, a thin, scrawny little thing with a trace of Sara's beauty. Betty took after her father's dark, tall race and, on the occasion of my first introduction to her, seemed to be all legs and neck. There were points about her, ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... age might have been anywhere from fifteen to thirty-five; for the twisted and misshapen body, angular and hard; the scrawny, wry neck; the old-young face, thin and sallow, with furtive, beady-black eyes, gave no hint of her years. As a matter of fact, I happened to know that Judith Taylor, daughter of the notorious Ozark moonshiner, ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... Ann wuz six feet high if she wuz a inch, but good lookin' in a big sized way. And he wuz barely five feet, and scrawny at that; but a good amiable lookin' young man. But I didn't approve of his callin' her Baby when she could have carried him easy on one arm and not felt it. The Henzys are all big sized, and Ann, her ma, could always clean her upper buttery shelves ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... again subdivided into the continuous and periodical. As a cause, he cites anaemia, scrofula, rachitis; but adds that physical debility is not necessary for its presence, as well-developed, vigorous, puffy children are as liable to be affected as thin and scrawny ones; while not all scrofulous or rachitic children are so affected, only a small portion being enuretic. Sex has no influence on the liability that tends to being attacked, the proportion between the sexes being about equal. As to age, he finds the greatest ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... reputed to be very rich. Knowing Mexican exaggeration in this regard, I computed that the twelve bushels of pesos she was supposed to have hidden might amount, perhaps, to $50 or $100 Mexican money. Whatever her wealth was, she showed it only in a lavish display of glass beads around her scrawny neck; they must have weighed at least six or eight pounds. But then, her homestead was composed mainly of four or five ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... time to piece things together, but once I did, it didn't take me long to come back and find the god where I might have at first suspected it would be—right here! For your sacrilege you will pay with every last drop of blood you have in your scrawny old body—and now!" Whereupon Thougor disappeared out ...
— Regeneration • Charles Dye
... in the guise of birds was no unusual thing, indeed, and a farmer named Blakesley shot one of them in that form. He was hunting in a meadow when a rush of wings was heard and he saw pass overhead a bird with long neck, blue feathers, and feet like scrawny hands. It uttered a cry so weird, so shrill, so like mocking laughter that it made him shudder. This bird alighted on a dead tree and he shot at it. With another laughing yell it circled around his head. Three times he fired with the same result. Then he resolved to see if ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... bonds were not tightly drawn. He found himself fighting them fiercely, trying to get his hands on Caleb Barter. He could see the scrawny Adam's apple of the mad scientist, and his fingers itched to ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... ink, sealed it and broke the seal, all this to give credibility to the fact of its being a real letter. Then I inclosed it in an envelope, stating that it was a part of a set which had incidentally fallen into my hands. This envelope was written in a scrawny, scrawly, gentleman's hand. ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... brings back that dreadful, ridiculous, delightful night when Ken came to say good-bye, and I was so furious and happy. Jims is pink and white and big-eyed and curly-haired and every now and then I discover a new dimple in him. I can never quite believe he is really the same creature as that scrawny, yellow, ugly little changeling I brought home in the soup tureen. Nobody has ever heard a word from Jim Anderson. If he never comes back I shall keep Jims always. Everybody here worships and spoils him—or would spoil him if Morgan and I didn't stand remorselessly ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... set a hoof off the range. Still, the' was somethin' about her you couldn't quite put your finger on; but which you knew in your heart was there all the time, awaitin' till she made up her mind to call it out; like a handful o' regulars givin' dignity to a scrawny two by twice fort in the ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... encountered a young wolf, gaunt and scrawny, loose- jointed with famine. Had he not been hungry himself, White Fang might have gone with him and eventually found his way into the pack amongst his wild brethren. As it was, he ran the young wolf down and killed and ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... gaze of his worn and watery eyes upon our backs, we left the Mohave Scenic Studio forever. A run across town in my car brought us again to my door. My scrawny busybody of a maid opened it before I had opportunity to even draw forth ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... in his bed drinking it—slowly to make it last the longer—Pauline sat looking at him. His hands had been fat and puffy; she was filled with pity as she watched the almost scrawny hand holding the cup to his lips; there were hollows between the tendons, and the wrist was gaunt. Her gaze wandered to his face and rested there, in sympathy and tenderness. The ravages of the fever had been frightful—hollows ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... intended direction to come soon to feed and water. Otherwise the drive would become a tremendous misfortune and loss. His cattle would lose weight rapidly under privation; they would when delivered in San Juan only vaguely resemble the choice herd he had promised; scrawny and jaded, under weight and wretched, their price would drop from the top to the bottom of the scale. He would make for the San Doran place; Doran, though no friend, would at least sell him hay; ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... the simple joys of their labor, the big rough fellows cut the meagre growth of leafless trees at the spring in the small ravine, and gathered evergreen mountain-tea that grew in scrawny clusters here and there ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... bare branches embracing her in immediate shadows. The gate creaked when she drew it backward, scraping outward and upon the sidewalk a hill of loose snow. Before that small house a garden lay tucked beneath its blanket, a scrawny line of hedge fluted with snow inclosing it and a few stalks that would presently flower. The hood of the dark veranda, surmounted with its high ruche of snow, seemed to ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... old man, carefully preserved. His uniform was padded, but his legs, thin and insecure, gave him away, and his standing collar, though it came up to his ears, failed to hide his scrawny neck where the flesh was caving in. He wore his gray beard trimmed to a point, and inside his beaklike nose was a quantity of grayish-yellow hair which made a very disagreeable impression on me. All the time I was speaking he examined his nails. When he raised his ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... you'd find out all about him, and we might even do stunts together—the three of us, with you as the watchful chaperon. You forget how I have worked for you, Dick. I took great chances in forcing an acquaintance with those frosty English people at Florence just because you were crazy about the scrawny blonde who wore the frightful hats. I wash my hands of you hereafter. Your taste ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... went with him. She wore a pale yellow dinner gown, with just a sophisticated touch of black here and there, and cut modestly square in the neck. Her shoulders are scrawny. And after they were gone—not her shoulders; Mr. Harbison and she—Aunt Selina announced that the next day was Monday, that she had only a week's supply of clothing with her, and that no policeman who ever swung a mace should wash her ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... ginger-brown, dashed with splashes of peacock feathers and Japanese fans. The vases were straddle-legged and pot-bellied Asiatic shapes. Dragons in bronze and ivory, sticky-looking faience and glittering majolica, stood in the corners. Silk embroideries representing the stork—a scrawny bird with a scalp-lock at the back of its neck, looking like a mosquito when flying—and porcelain landscapes out of drawing, like a child's first attempts, peopled by individuals with the expression of having their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... top." But doggedly brave as the little freckled villain was, he had down in the bottom of his heart an appreciation that some day Jim McMasters might lick him. Jim McMasters was a boy only some six months older than Billy, of North of Ireland blood—than which there is none better—a lank, scrawny, reddish-haired youngster, freckled almost as profusely as Billy. Three times had they met in noble battle, and three times had Billy been the conqueror, but somehow the spirit of young McMasters did not seem particularly broken, nor did he become a serf. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... met an old friend whom he had almost forgotten. It was the scrawny youth with the twisted nose and the husky voice who had been a second in his corner the night he fought Battling Rodriguez to get money to pay for his father's funeral. He remembered the youth as Murphy ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... Mrs. Gladding entered the room, followed by two strange young women—sleepy, tired, scrawny young women, who looked at Mr. Hamshaw as if he were a ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... color don't always do it, Mr. Foote, I've observed. I've known scrawny ones, without a thing to stir up the imagination, that had ten boys running after them to one running after the kind they have pictures of on calendars.... I don't know if it's brains, or what, but ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... effort that the two sections of the canals were forced ahead each day. The surface of the ground was like stone, only by repeated attempts pierced by plows and torn apart; while the subsoil immediately froze if left unworked. The weaker labourers began to break: the scrawny Mexicans, the debilitated white men, the drifters and the dissatisfied; and they left the camps. These the labour agencies found it harder and harder to replace as the cold weather persisted, so that the force ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... the natural rock lent itself to his fancies, and filled in the hollows with stones of volcanic origin. On the side of the hill, fountains and pools and a truly massive flight of steps have been made. Scrawny firs are trying to grow where they ought not to. Quasi-natural urns overflow with captive flowers, geraniums and nasturtiums predominating. Ferns hang as gracefully as shirtings displayed in a department store window. Stone lions defy, ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... don't know," said Battles. "Stand still, Dicky, and I'll be through all the sooner. Some folks is big and round, and some folks is little and scrawny." ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... neck. A band of gilt filigree was round her head at the temples, and was set with a huge green stone which rested in the middle of her forehead. Long barbaric earrings dangled and shook with every movement of her head, and round her somewhat scrawny neck was coiled an ugly greenish serpent of some flexible metal formation. For the rest, Miss Blaney wore a flowing robe of saffron yellow, a most sickly shade, and the material was frayed and worn as if ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... sea of clutching hands, ragged bodies with scrawny arms and bloated stomachs, trembling and writhing in its eagerness to get to him first. Then as one of the temporary officers swung back with a couple of field attendants, it broke apart to let him pass, its gaze riveted on him as ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... laboring at the art of learning to write, along with Friar Laurence—a scrawny, ill-favored monk, who, for good deeds or misdeeds, I know not which, was warded in a cell opening out of the lower or garden court of the Wolfsberg, when I heard Helene dance down the stairs to the kitchen of the ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... which accentuates the height of the over-tall, thin woman, is better adapted to enhance the charms of a woman of finer proportions. The bony and scrawny, of the type of No. 58, seem to have a perverse desire to wear what makes their poverty in physical charms only more conspicuous. A woman of distinction in Boston, who is exceedingly thin and tall, wore Watteau pleats so frequently, even on reception ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... all was still. A turkey leading her fuzzy little brood about in the grass thrust her scrawny neck and anxious head above the daisies, said "quit! quit!" to me, and returned to the brooding mother-tones that kept her family around her. Tiring of my position while waiting for the concert to resume, I laid my head back among the ferns, letting the daisies and buttercups ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... was a bilious Englishman with a thin, scrawny beard. He endeavoured to make one word do the work of two—or three if they were very short words—and working up a conversation with him was as tough a job as one could lay hold of. Sometimes a word came to the ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... and willful complications in the proceedings, sittings at three livres the hour for the advocate and three livres the hour for the bailiff. The black brood of judicial leeches suck so much the more eagerly, because the more numerous, a still more scrawny prey, having paid for the privilege of sucking it.[1351] The arbitrariness, the corruption, the laxity of such a regime can be divined. "Impunity," says Renauldon, "is nowhere greater than in the seigniorial ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... won't make her wink an eyelash, an' then there'll crop out heart disease or dropsy befo' the year is up. When I think of the trouble I had pickin' that thar woman it makes me downright sick. It ain't much matter about the colour or the shape, I said—a freckled face an' a scrawny waist I kin stand—only let it be the quality that wears. If you believe it, suh, I chose the very ugliest I could find, thinkin' that the Lord might be mo' willin' to overlook her—an' now this is what's come of it. She's my fourth, ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... exhausted of their product of malformed little bodies and souls; they provide waifs for the remotest colonies of the empire. So, as it chanced, Bagg had been exported to Newfoundland—transported from his native alleys to this vast and lonely place. Bagg was scrawny and sallow, with bandy legs and watery eyes and a fantastic cranium; and he had a snub nose, which turned blue when a cold wind struck it. But when he was landed from the mail-boat he found a warm welcome, just the same, ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... Lyddy Ann never took her eyes off her work. Them little spiteful things didn't seem to make no impression on her. I've thought a good many times sence, she didn't care how handsome other women was, nor how scrawny she was herself, if she could on'y keep Josh. An' Josh he got kind o' fretful to her, an' she to him, an' 'Mandy was all honey an' cream. Nothin' would do but she must learn how to make the gingerbread he liked, an' iron his shirts; an' when Lyddy Ann found he seemed ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... altered and malicious eyes; the claw-footed, haircloth sofa was a stealthy creature offering to entrap her with wide, 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 ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... leads us into a land of desolation. He makes for the sight blossoms of ugliness; for the smell repellant odors; for the taste bitterness and gall; for the hearing harsh discord, and death for the touch that is the only relief from a desert whose scrawny life ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... The waiter was scrawny and yellow, with bilious eyes, but he could not resist the laughter of Lyaeus. He made a ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... of the vice-admiral. This was an astonishing and disheartening state of things. It was very much as if a lion, hearing the approach of probable prey, had sprung from the thicket where he had been concealed, and had beheld before him, not a fine, fat deer, but an immense and scrawny elephant. ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... sell off his scrawny niggers. He wanted fine looking stock on his place. He couldn't sell real old folks. They kept them taking care of the children and raising chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, and made some of them ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... civilization it is that grows passionate over a scoreboard with little electric lights! What a civilization it is that has learned to enjoy its sport without even seeing it! If ever there was a symptom that this nation needed leisure and direct participation in games, it is that poor scrawny substitute for joy—the ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... adults, or to children bubbling over with life. Here, although the everlasting club, to which he is born, is wielded by his driver, he often looks comfortable and sleek, and sometimes wears a red ribbon at each ear. It would not pay to bring on to the ground the scrawny, bony creature that generally tugs in the costermonger's cart. It is in the coal region or trade that you meet with him and his driver in their worst apostacy from all that is seemly in man or beast. To watch ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... On a scrawny little sorrel that Mateo brought up from some hidden pasture where the feed was apparently short, Johnny departed, aware of Mateo's curious, half-suspicious stare. He had a full canteen from the car and a few ragged slices of bread wrapped in ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... came to a crude, half finished, frame house at the edge of a wide clearing. The sand lay in drifts on one side of the road. It had evidently moved in the last wind. A sickly vegetation covered the field. A ragged, barefooted man and three scrawny, ill clad children stood in the dooryard. It was noon-time. A mongrel dog, with a bit of the hound in him, came bounding and barking toward the wagon and pitched upon Sambo and quickly got the worst of it. Sambo, after much experience in self-defense, had learned that the best way out of ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller |
