"Sleek" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reluctant share through heavy clay and abounding stones, now, bestridden by breathless couriers, scoured the country hither and yon, with news, messages, and orders from those who had taken the right to order out of the hands of sleek and positive officials. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... that a squirrel came tiptoeing across the moss, and struck tail momentarily to observe her. He looked critically at her, first with one round eye, and then, turning his sleek head, with the other, and decided that she ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... deep; then all noise ceased, and Opechancanough entered the hollow alone. An eagle feather was thrust through his scalp lock; over his naked breast, that was neither painted nor pricked into strange figures, hung a triple row of pearls; his mantle was woven of bluebird feathers, as soft and sleek as satin. The face of this barbarian was dark, cold, and impassive as death. Behind that changeless mask, as in a safe retreat, the supersubtle devil that was the man might plot destruction and plan the laying of dreadful mines. He had dignity and courage,—no man denied ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... his eyes. It was a fascinating roll of fat. A man could get his hand upon it and tear away one side of the neck; or he could place the muzzle of a rifle on it and blow away all the head in a flash. Losson had no right to be sleek and contented and well-to-do, when he, Simmons, was the butt of the room, Some day, perhaps, he would show those who laughed at the "Simmons, ye so-oor" joke, that he was as good as the rest, and held a man's life in the crook of his forefinger. ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... faced about to see who was coming. A blue-sleeved arm thrust the gate open, and there advanced into the sunlight, coming forth from the shadow as from a doorway Joan! Her round baby face, with the sleek brown hair over it, the massive infantile body, the sturdy bare legs, confronted them serenely. Mother uttered a deep sigh it sounded like that and in a moment she was kneeling on the ground with her arms round ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... like for me to call him brother," uttered the tramp, gutterally. "Wonder if he's forgot that he married sister Iris. I must look up the old girl. Mebbe she can do something for me. I'm aware that she'd be ashamed of me in these togs but I reckin I kin sleek up a bit with a part o' this"—clinching the gold-piece as ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... softening influence of wealth, and moralists speak of luxury as if its bad effects were negative and it only enervated. But if riches and the habit of trusting to them, if the material comforts of life and complacency in them, only made men sleek and tame—if luxury did nothing but soften and emasculate—the world would have been far more stupid and far less ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith
... congregation consisted of soldiers from the camp, who had come up from Melbourne to shoot us if occasion required. Six days of the week we hated them and called "Joey" after them, but on the seventh day we merely glared at them, and let them pass in silence. They were sleek and clean, and we were gaunt as wolves, with scarcely a clean shirt among us. Philip, especially hated them as enemies of his country, and the more so because they were his countrymen, all but one, who was a ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... stithy-swartness by the forge, Or troll-like in the mine; nor cares to walk With Wealth and Fashion in the parks and squares; But follow! Come thou down, and let the cold Cramp-headed cynics yelp alone, and leave The mugwump scoffers there to shape and sleek Their thousand paragraphs of acrid joke That like a squirting fountain waste in air: So waste thou not; but come; for hunger pale Awaits thee; haggard pillars of the hearth Appeal to thee; slum children call, and now The Crowd's astir, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... sink and be lost. We hauled steadily away, the line not coming in very easily, until I judged there was only about another hundred fathoms out. Our amazement may be imagined, when suddenly we were compelled to sleek away again, the sudden weight on the line suggesting that the fish was again sounding. If ever a young hand was perplexed, it was I. Never before had I heard of such unseemly behaviour, nor was my anxiety lessened when I saw, a ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... a mile inland we came upon the holluschickie—sleek young bulls, living out the loneliness of their bachelorhood and gathering strength against the day when they would fight their way into the ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... possible for their visit. There was another guest to meet them, an amiable bachelor, an old friend of Ralph's who happened to be in town and for whom prompt commerce with Miss Stackpole appeared to have neither difficulty nor dread. Mr. Bantling, a stout, sleek, smiling man of forty, wonderfully dressed, universally informed and incoherently amused, laughed immoderately at everything Henrietta said, gave her several cups of tea, examined in her society the bric-a-brac, of which Ralph had a considerable ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... much depressed. Headache. Called attention to J. as being beautifully sleek. D. fondled J. Associations thus awakened, opened floodgates of sorrow. Rush of grief admitted. (Are tears the dewdrops of ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... walking about it for an hour or two, I felt that I would have given the world for a crooked street. The collar of my coat appeared to stiffen, and the brim of my hat to expand, beneath its quakery influence. My hair shrunk into a sleek short crop, my hands folded themselves upon my breast of their own calm accord, and thoughts of taking lodgings in Mark Lane over against the Market Place, and of making a large fortune by speculations in ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... made fighting a business, had a contemptuous indifference to the clerical class. A blessing or a curse was alike of little consequence to men who feared neither God, man, nor Devil, and who would as readily strip a sleek priest as a good, fat merchant. Raynor's words were blunt and to the point. He knew nothing of the Abbot except through the gossip of the camp and guard-room, and that made him a cadet of a noble family of the South of England, ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... bunch of boys forming behind him, and found himself rushed into the comparative quiet of a Tudor courtyard. A charming youngster, hatless and sleek of hair, cried, "Right this way, Mr. Ericson—up this staircase in the tower—and ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... Eloquio[102] laid down a fourfold distinction among words on the analogy of the varying texture of the hair; enjoining the poet to avoid both the extremes of smoothness and roughness,—to prefer the "combed" and the "shaggy" to the "tousled" and the "sleek." All four kinds had their function in the versatile technique of Browning and Tennyson; but it is safe to say that while Tennyson's vocabulary is focussed among the "combed" in the direction of the "sleek," Browning's centres in the "shaggy," ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... received a cataract of cold water on his head. He was laid on his back; he was laid on his stomach; he was respectfully pounded and kneaded, from head to foot, by the knuckles of accomplished practitioners. He came out of it all, sleek, clear rosy, beautiful. He returned to the hotel, and took up the writing materials—and behold the intolerable indecision seized him again, declining to be washed out! This time he laid it all to Anne. "That infernal woman will be the ruin of me," said Geoffrey, ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... is for yourselves, gentlemen," declared the auctioneer. "We don't need to have this sleek little animal's paces shown. We are in a hurry to get through. Who opens with ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... United States, and in both the Canadas, and has had a thousand opportunities, if he had chosen to embrace them, to leave me. Excuse me, Mr. Mendenhall, for saying that my slaves are as well fed and clad, look as sleek and hearty, and are quite as civil and respectful in their demeanor, and as little disposed to wound the feelings of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... of place Rotherwood was! The wide village street seemed empty, with the exception of a black collie lying asleep in the middle of the road, and a patient donkey belonging to a travelling tinker. The clean, sleek country sparrows were enjoying a dust bath, and a long-legged chicken—evidently a straggler from the brood—was pecking fitfully at a cabbage stalk, unmindful of the alarmed clucking of the ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... tender shoots, and browsing contentedly enough, while the lion had stolen softly up nearer and nearer, without a sound, after perhaps following on the track of the antelopes for weeks, and taking toll from time to time, which might have accounted for its sleek condition and glistening hide. ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... far above the region of Lady Montgomery's formal, and after all only tentative, disapprobations; divine impertinence, sovereign disdain informed it. Lady Montgomery dropped her lorgnette with a little clatter and, adjusting her heavy diamond bracelets, turned her sleek mid-Victorian head to her neighbour. Gregory did not know whether to ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... little Blossoms and Jud went to pay their respects to all the dear farm animals the children had known that first summer they spent on Brookside Farm. Carlotta, the calf given to Meg and Bobby, had grown to be a beautiful sleek cow and Meg privately decided she was prettier than any Aunt Polly owned. Jerry and Terry, the two farm horses, acted as though they remembered the small visitors; and as for Mrs. Sally Sweet, Aunt Polly's pet Jersey cow, she came right up to the bars and fairly begged ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... silver. Even silhouetted against the eastern sky, it sparkled and glistened. Impassive it stood, graceful, seeming to strain into the sky, anxious to be off and gone. The loading gantry was a dark, spidery framework beside The Ship, leaning against it, drawing strength from its sleek beauty. ...
— Sound of Terror • Don Berry
... folk from Piney Woods, eight miles down from Newby's Point, Whites and Nicholsons, Albertsons, Newbys and Symmes, jogged along the country roads behind their sleek, well-fed nags, to answer with serene yea or nay the questions asked on witness stand or in jury room. Powdered and bewigged judge and lawyer, high and mighty King's officers from Edenton or New Bern, or Bath, ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... beauty: that the dull Saw no divinity in grass, Life in dead stones, or spirit in air; Then looking as 'twere in a glass, He smooth'd his chin and sleek'd his hair, And said the ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... strong For body's mating and its testimony, Hearts' intimacy, perfect, full and free. And Helen for her heart's ease did deny Her girdled Goddess of the beamy eye, Saying, "Come you down, Mistress of sleek loves And panting nights: your service of bought doves And honey-hearted wine may cost too dear. What hast thou done for me since first my ear With thy sly music thou didst sign and seal Apprentice to thy mystery, teach me feel Thy fierce divinity ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... beautiful horn and her whistle rang valiantly in the great ceilinged room but the hunting song usually lost itself in a whirr of laughter and frills as the huntress dropped breathless on the footstool at the Major's side and put her sleek ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... sleek, voluptuous lord, A hundred dainties smoke upon his board; Earth, air, and ocean ransack'd for the feast, In masquerade of ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... certainly, to all appearance, the last person to make or meddle in political intrigues of any kind, especially in such as might, by any possibility, peril his neck. Whoever had seen him, in his soberly cut coat, with his smooth-shaven, sleek, demure countenance and moderately rotund belly, leaning on the half-door of his Almacen de Panos, and witnessed his bland smile as he stepped aside to give admission to a customer or gossip, would have deemed the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... desert lodge to Tristram lookt So sweet, that halting, in he past, and sank Down on a drift of foliage random-blown; But could not rest for musing how to smoothe And sleek his marriage over to the Queen. Perchance in lone Tintagil far from all The tonguesters of the court she had not heard. But then what folly had sent him overseas After she left him lonely here? a name? ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... away, and cut an armful of willow sticks wherewith to coax Chub to a little brisker pace, and then we took the trail of the departed mess-wagon. Shortly, we topped a low range of hills, and beyond, in a cuplike valley, was the herd of sleek beauties feeding contentedly on the lush green grass. I suppose it sounds odd to hear desert and river in the same breath, but within a few feet of the river the desert begins, where nothing grows but sage and greasewood. ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... were quite friendly to Iris, and allowed her to watch their comings and goings without any show of anger. She had friends, too, in the pigeons, which soon learnt to come fluttering round her to be fed, and in the three sleek brown and white cows which she ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... princes. Unhappy Melantho, true child of universal nature! grievous work we should make with most households, if all who resemble thee were treated to as rough a destiny. And there are other old friends whom it is pleasant enough to recognise at so long a distance. 'Certain smooth-haired, sleek-faced fellows—insolent where their lords would permit them; inquisitive and pert, living but to eat and drink, and pilfering the good things, to convey them stealthily to their friends outside the castle wall.' The thing that hath been, that shall be again. When Homer wrote, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... common with the sharer of my blanket shelter derived infinite entertainment from an article therein contained, entitled "Feeding the Fighting Man." Of course, it is illustrated with photographs, the first one depicting a sleek and stiff Yeomanic-looking, khaki-clad being standing by the side of a swagger little drawing-table covered with a fringed tablecloth, and obviously groaning under what we learn are the gentleman's daily rations. Apart from the article, this picture alone is calculated to make one's mouth ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... the merciless tearing of sleep from his soul wrought magic and transformed him into a glowing, jeweled specter. He sprouted toes and long legs; he rose and inflated his sleek emerald frog-form; his sides blazed forth a mother-of-pearl waist-coat—a myriad mosaics of pink and blue and salmon and mauve; and from nowhere if not from the very depths of his throat, there slowly rose twin globes,—great ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... said the Queen to the clown, "and let me stroke your dear cheeks, and stick musk-roses in your smooth, sleek head, and kiss your fair large ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... were sleek and fat—those imprisoned for long terms or for life bearing witness of the good treatment which they receive at the hands of the authorities. One youngish man in particular attracted our attention, a merry laughing ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... then a sleek jaguar showed himself. Again a drove of peccaries peered out from among the underbrush, and more than once Cummings was forced to exert all his authority to prevent the Indians from stopping to bag an incautious tapir which had come to the ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... opinion he would gain the advantage of a direct antithesis to the ideas propounded by his father. This appeared to Bob an eminently just arrangement, but failed to account for a certain rather breathless excitement as he caught sight of Amy's sleek head bending ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... the possession of such a treasure," said the visitor, with unfeigned admiration,—as, with the eye of a connoisseur, he noted the fine points about the sleek, slim ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... wish my pony could fly," said Susy, gazing dreamily at his black mane and sleek sides. "The first place I'd go to would be the moon; and there I'd stay till I built a castle as big as a city. I'd come home every night, so mother wouldn't be frightened, and fly up in ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... and day. Find out where he lives and what he does; and ransack his room if possible. He is either an innocent man or a sleek rascal. Report to me ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... she interrupted, her great black eyes still deriding him, while her thin face was screwed up into seriousness, as she regarded Mr Sloyd's blameless garments of springtime gray, his black-and-white tie, his hair so very sleek, his drooping mustache, and his pink cheeks. She had taken his measure as perfectly as the tailor himself, and was enjoying the counterfeit presentment of a real London dandy who came to her in the shape of a house-agent. "I don't want a big place," she explained ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... tone made it a crime either to know these things or to be guilty of ignorance; which, Sam could not determine. Sam was of the sleek, oily-haired type of young men, with pimples and pale eyes and a predilection for gum and gossip. He was afraid of Ford ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... plastered close with an oily sleekness by a slimy clinging mud, the thin ribs showing plainly, and the hinder part of the poor wretch's barrel a mere hand-grasp. His very tail, which had used to look like an irregular much-worn bottle-brush, was thin and sleek like a rat's, and he tucked it away as if he were ashamed of it. His feet were clotted with red earth, and he walked as if his head were a burden to him, he hung it so mournfully and carried it ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... there appeared at the foot of the kopje two figures—the one, a dog, white and sleek, one yellow ear hanging down over his left eye; the other, his master, a lad of fourteen, and no other than the boy Waldo, grown into a heavy, slouching youth of fourteen. The dog mounted the kopje quickly, his master followed slowly. He wore an aged jacket much too large ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... at once, 'mid the fresh-sprinkled straw, The young pettitoes scampered away; And they rooted and burrowed and hid, Then all quiet a minute they lay: Soon their pink-pointed, noses peeped out; Then their bodies, so plump and so sleek. Oh the glad little piggies, the mad little piggies— How they ...
— The Nursery, June 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... ignore space? Whence comes the improvement of live-stock in this country? Compare the cattle of early New England with those on modern farms. Was the little scrubby stock of our forefathers replaced by large, sleek, well-bred cattle through accident? No, it was by the discovery of investigators and its practical adaptation by breeders. Compare the vineyards and the orchards of the early history of the nation, the grains and the grasses, or ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... tall that he was obliged to stoop as he entered the doorway. Within was an ordinary peasant's kitchen, but cleaner than the average. In spite of the weather the floor boards were freshly scrubbed. The hearth was swept, and by the stove lay a sleek tortoise-shell cat. There was a wooden dresser, a chimney shelf with rows of plates standing on it, and in a doorway just beyond an elderly peasant woman watching ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Gandhamadana. In this romantic forest there are various heavenly blossoming wild trees and creepers, bedecked with foliage and fruit, nor are there any trees that do not flower. On these slopes of the Gandhamadana, all the trees are of sleek foliage and fruit. And behold how these lotus-lakes with fullblown lotuses, and ringing with the hum of black bees, are being agitated by elephants with their mates. Behold another lotus-lake girt with lines of lotuses, like unto a second Sree in an embodied form wearing garlands. And in this ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... for a short time completely distanced the horses. But this speed could not be continued, and the Major and Alexander soon found themselves rapidly coming up. The poor animals exerted themselves in vain; their sleek coats first turned to a blue color, and then white with foam and perspiration, and at last they were beaten to a stand-still, and were brought down by the rifles of our travelers, who then dismounted their horses, and ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... elder Chuzzlewits are bad enough, but they bring their self-inflicted punishments; the Jonases and Tigg Montagues are execrable, but the law has its halter and its penal servitude; the Moulds and Gamps have plague-bearing breaths, from which sanitary wisdom may clear us; but from the sleek, smiling, crawling abomination of a Pecksniff, there is no help but self-help. Every man's hand should be against him, for his is against every man; and, as Mr. Taine very wisely warns us, the virtues have most need to be careful that they do not make themselves panders to his vice. It is ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... their various callings they may promote their own advantage, and convert the public loss into their private gains. For our annual officers wish this only, that those who commence, whether they are taught or untaught is of no moment, shall be sleek, fat, pigeons, worth the plucking. The Philosophastic are admitted to a degree in Arts, because they have no acquaintance with them. And they are desired to be wise men, because they are endowed with no wisdom, and bring no qualification for a degree, except the wish to have it. The ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... As the mountains died down and faded away in the west there opened out many broad meadows in which were countless sleek cattle tended by somnolent herdsmen on horseback. Much sugar-cane grew, lengths of which were sold to the brawling soldiers' wives and the carload in general, which was soon reeking with the juice and chewed pulp. By afternoon jungle was a rarity and most of the country was a rich sort of prairie ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... pass under the archway into Dean's Yard, we find a backwater indeed, where the roar of traffic scarcely penetrates, where sleek pigeons coo in the elm-trees round a grass plot, as if they were in the close of one of the sleepiest of provincial towns instead of in the midst of one of the greatest cities in the world. On the east side ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... imitating the lingo of the New York street gamin. A dignified person named James may be greeted with: "Hully Gee! Chimmy, when did youse blow in?" He likes to mimic and imitate types, generally, that are distasteful to him. The sanctimonious hypocrite, the sleek speculator, and others whom he has probably encountered in life are ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... think that the Rodents called Rats are beautiful animals; and I presume that, prejudice apart, the sleek skin, the sharp head, the long, slender tail, and the keen look of their bright black eyes, ought to be attractions; but those who have been annoyed with these animals as I have been, can scarcely regard them with anything ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... upon us. Much as I had heard of the fertile regions of Pennsylvania, the vast scale and the uniform luxuriance of this region astonished me. The grazing pastures were so green, the fields were under such perfect culture, the cattle looked so sleek, the houses were so comfortable, the barns so ample, the fences so well kept, that I did not wonder, when I was told that this region was called the England of Pennsylvania. The people whom we saw were, like the cattle, well-nourished; the young ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... certain "tiny kickshaws," I saw, for the first time, under the light of a glorious sunset, that exquisite velvety stretch of the park of Woodstock, dimpled with water, dotted with forest—clumps, where companies of sleek fallow-deer were grazing by the hundred, where pheasants whirred away down the aisles of wood, where memories of Fair Rosamond and of Rochester and of Alice Lee lingered,—and all brought to a ringing close ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... of a seditious character. The miserable outlook gave rise (among others) to a pair of caricatures, published by Fores on the 9th of January, John Bull in Clover, and (by way of contrast), John Bull Done Over. In the first, fat John is enjoying himself with his pipe and his glass; the sleek condition of his dog shows that it shares in the comforts of its master's prosperity. John, in fact, has what our Transatlantic cousins call "a good time;" scattered over the floor lie invoices of goods despatched by him to ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... La Feria would have prospered equally had it not been for the armed unrest of the country across the border. No finer stock than the "Box A" was to be found anywhere. The old lean, long-horned cattle had been interbred with white-faced Herefords, and the sleek coats of their progeny were stretched over twice the former weight of beef. Alaire had even experimented with the Brahman strain, importing some huge, hump-backed bulls that set the neighborhood agog. People proclaimed they were sacred oxen and whispered that they ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... shore. There was not much variety in the visiting English type, but there was here and there a sharp imperial accent, as in the two pale little, spindle-legged Anglo-Indian boys, with their Hindu ayah, very dark, with sleek dark hair, and gleaming eyes in a head not much bigger than a ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... from his elephant, and mounted his horse, and we rode on till we met the Raja himself, about a mile from our tents. He was on horseback, with a large and splendidly dressed train of followers, all mounted on fine sleek horses, bred in the Raja's own stables. He was mounted on a snow-white steed of his own breeding (and I have rarely seen a finer animal), and dressed in a light suit of silver brocade made to represent the scales of steel armour, surmounted by a gold ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... many contradictory conditions; eunuchs have not always been the fat and sleek attendants on Oriental harems as tradition and custom places them or would have us believe; neither does the loss of virility, in a procreative sense, seem to have always robbed them of their virility ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... liberal portions of its nightly tribute to the dairy of her mistress. To that inclosure the stranger, as it were by accident, suffered his sauntering footsteps to stroll, seemingly as much in admiration of the sleek herd as of any other of ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... thee down upon this flowery bed, While I thy amiable cheeks do coy, And stick musk roses in thy sleek, smooth, head, And kiss thy fair, large ears, ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... Robin, ever on the watch, had discovered her enemy, and flown off just in time to escape. The next scene is a large "dead-fall" trap, nicely set, with the bait placed temptingly within; and before it crouches a sleek marten, peeping into it as if undecided whether ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... hocks. It should be carried, when the dog is in action, in a straight line level with the back, slightly curved towards the end, but should not curl over the back. COAT—The hair is short and dense, and sleek-looking, and in no case should it incline to coarseness. GAIT OR ACTION—The gait should be lithe, springy, and free, the action high. The hocks should move very freely, and the head should be held ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... is all gone one can be at rest,' she said to herself, and at night she came home sleek and satisfied. The Mouse asked at once after the ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... a hale hearty yeoman, of a ruddy and cheerful countenance. A few wrinkles were puckered below the eyes; the rest of his face was sleek and comfortably disposed. A beard, once thick and glossy, was grown grey and thin, curling up short and stunted round his portly chin. Two bright twinkling eyes gave note of a stirring and restless temper—too sanguine, maybe, for success in the great and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... did not dare to fire a rifle, they were compelled to depend upon the old beaver-trap for their subsistence. The stream on which they were encamped was filled with beaver sign, and the redoubtable Ben Jones set out at daybreak with the hope of catching one of the sleek fur animals. While making his way through a bunch of willows he heard a crashing sound to his right, and looking in that direction, saw a huge grizzly bear coming toward him with a terrible snort. The Kentuckian was afraid ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... shall have mercy—just so much mercy as you deserve. Have I trusted you all these years, and did my father trust you before me, for this? Have you grown sleek and fat and smug in my service that you should requite me thus? Sangdieu, Rodenard! My father had hanged you for the half of the talking that you have done this night. You ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... tongue, you fool!" cried Mr. Franks, striking the merchant a tough blow on his sleek sides, as the young lad turned away. "Don't you see the young gentleman a-swabbing his eyes, and ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... along, or perhaps they are bestriding a diminutive donkey, their long, bony feet dangling idly to the ground. All the donkeys of Alexandria are not diminutive, however. Some of the finest donkeys in the world are here, large, sleek-coated, well-fed-looking animals, that appear quite as intelligent as their riders, or as the native donkey-boys who follow behind and persuade them along. These donkeys are for hire on every street-corner, and all sorts and conditions of people, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... outer world,—perhaps the quotations of the cattle market. They came up to me, and eagerly licked my hand, clothes, and gun. Salt was what they were after, and they were ready to swallow anything that contained the smallest percentage of it. They were mostly yearlings and as sleek as moles. They had a very gamy look. We were afterwards told that, in the spring, the farmers round about turn into these woods their young cattle, which do not come out again till fall. They are then in good condition,—not fat, like grass-fed cattle, but trim and supple, like ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... I never saw such a change. It seemed as though regretful remembrances of former times clung to him. There was no more the music of "the sounding horn" to awaken him from his drowse, and he passed much of his time under the woodshed. But he was not the sleek and canny dog of yore. He grew thin and weak. Long locks of indifferent colored brown hair grew out of his sides, and hung loosely down. His gait was slow and feeble, and it was not pleasant to look at him. Finally, one cold day, at least a year after the general departure, he was ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... may be a flabby fellow, and lymphatically yellow, that will matter not a mite. If you take yourself in hand, in a way you'll understand, to become a Son of Light. On your crassness superimposing the peculiar art of glosing in sleek phrases about Sin. If you aim to be a Shocker, carnal theories to cocker is the best way to begin. And every one will say, As you worm your wicked way, "If that's allowable for him which were criminal ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... tree, the ruddy And white blossoms, sleek with rain! Oh my garden, rich with pansies! Oh my childhood's bright romances! All revive, like Hector's body, And I ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... well-made figure, a face clean-shaven and deeply sun-burnt, and under the lifted hat caught a glimpse of sleek black hair. But when she saw his eyes, she knew his name, for they were the bluest she ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... the girl with her greedy maw, and deuced airs of high gentility when she is a perfect beggar, but it is a second heaven to dance with her. She has the go of a wild animal in her. She is a little like a panther—so round, so sleek, so agile in her spring. I told her just now I should like to paint her—yellow eyes, hair like an aureole, supple form and satin coat—lying ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... been ready for weeks. There wasn't a mechanical or electronic flaw in her. We hoped, I hoped, the man who designed her hoped. The Doll's father—he hoped most of all. Even lying quiescent in her hangar, she looked as sleek as a Napoleon hat done in poured monel. When your eyes went over her you knew instinctively they'd thrown the mach numbers out the ...
— The Very Black • Dean Evans
... freely circulating about the decks in citizen's clothes, and through the influence of his master, almost entirely exempted from the disciplinary degradation of the Caucasian crew. Faring sumptuously in the ward-room; sleek and round, his ebon face fairly polished with content: ever gay and hilarious; ever ready to laugh and joke, that African slave was actually envied by many of the seamen. There were times when I almost envied him myself. Lemsford once envied him outright, "Ah, Guinea!" he ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... line to be inspected and named. The snail heads the procession and sets the pace. The lion and the tiger stroll gossiping together. The unicorn walks alone, very stiff and proud. Two rats and two mice are closely followed by two sleek cats, who keep them well covered, and plainly await the time when Eve's amiable indiscretion shall assign them their natural prey. In the third tapestry the deed has been done, the apple had been eaten. The beasts ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... peril that this young woman might ride cozy in any chill soever. The fur coat had cost much money, but little of it had fallen into the frosted hands of the men who clubbed the seal to death on the ice-floes. The sleek furrier in the warm city shop, when he sold the finished garment, took in far more than the men who went out into the wilderness and brought back the pelts. That did not seem right; yet he had a heavy rent to pay, and if he did not create the market ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... would dance with any woman wishing to dance on the crowded floors of public tea rooms, dinner or supper rooms in the cafes, hotels, and restaurants of France. Lean, sallow, handsome, expert, and unwholesome, one saw them everywhere, their slim waists and sleek heads in juxtaposition to plump, respectable American matrons and slender, respectable American flappers. For that matter, feminine respectability of almost every nationality (except the French) yielded itself to ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... very far gone before he would willingly go into a hospital. Just now, between the mackerel and herring seasons, he is fat and sleepy, very sleek for him. Rheumatic fever in boyhood and neglected colds have left him rather deaf, and subject to noises in the head and miscellaneous bodily pains. He is 'a worriter' by nature. "When I gets bothered," he says, "I often feels as if summut be busted in me head." As the herring season comes ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... require braiding, but they did have enough to hold it back from their faces with hide headbands. The kilt-tunics of coarse material, duplicating samples brought from the past, were harsh to the skin and poorly fitting. But the workmanship of their link-and-plate bronze belts, the sleek bow guards strapped to their wrists, and the bows themselves approached fine art. Ashe's round cloak was the blue of a master trader, and he wore wealth in a necklace of polished wolf's teeth alternating with ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... full over him—for he occupied an arm-chair drawn close to the fire, and kept shrinking still nearer, as if he were cold, I compared him with Mr. Rochester. I think (with deference be it spoken) the contrast could not be much greater between a sleek gander and a fierce falcon: between a meek sheep and the rough-coated ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... pretty tough, and no mistake, to have a fellow of such villainous character circulating about in this region. I hope I won't be hung for his crime by indignant citizens. I agree with you that this Hubert Vander is a sleek villain, and that hanging is too good for him. It does seem that you made an ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... riding, expressed no surprise at Pete's message, but awakened the Mexican stableman and told him to fetch up a "real one," which the Mexican did with alertness, returning to the house leading another sleek and powerful thoroughbred. "Take him over to the shack," said Moody. "Harper wants him." And he gave Pete a package of food which he had been preparing while the Mexican ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... of his gaiety of soul, since he is gay when he is hungry! But you who, void of gaiety because void of love, have imagined that evil wit can take the place of good humour, and that one can play the sparrow when he is a sleek and vulgar trimmer, sniggering behind his wing, what I say to you is, "Guess again, Mock-sparrow, ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... powder and crust their faces and all their bodies with a certain odoriferous drug growing in their country, which being cleansed off, when they came to have familiarity with men they were found perfumed and sleek. 'Tis not to be believed how strangely all sorts of odours cleave to me, and how apt my skin is to imbibe them. He that complains of nature that she has not furnished mankind with a vehicle to convey smells to the nose had no reason; for they will do ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... variety of picturesque oriental costume with a background of mountain and blistered rock and white, painted houses. Chiefs from the mainland in gorgeous array, the King's Own Borderer's Regiment, all the ladies of the island in European or Asiatic costume, fierce-looking Arabs, meek-looking Hindoos, sleek Parsees, people from all the regions between the Persian Gulf, Zanzibar and Arabia, ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... Sal were out with Dad, Joe came home with a four-foot black snake in his hand. It was a beauty. So sleek and lithe and lively! He carried it by the tail, its head swinging close to his bare leg, and the thing yearning for a grab at him. But Joe understood the ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... land, men from the Clime of Snows. There you will find all the joys which an Indian covets. The beasts you will see will be fat, tame, and numerous as the trees of the forest, and the fowls and birds which will cover your waters and people your woods will be sleek as the forehead of a young girl. Then, how lovely and kind are its maidens, how green and gay its hills and valleys, how refreshing the winds which sweep over the bosom of the great lake on its border, how sweet, clean, and cool, the beautiful ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... laughed, first with her eyes, then with her throat, then with her whole body, shaking her head and rocking herself backwards and forwards. She laughed till her hair came down, and he took it and smoothed it into two sleek straight bands, and tied them in a ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... Narayana, with celestial trees bearing flowers and fruits in all seasons. And they also beheld that beautiful jujube of round trunk. And it was fresh; and of deep shade; and of excellent beauty; and of thick, soft and sleek foliage; and healthful; and having gigantic boughs; and wide-spreading; and of incomparable lustre; and bearing full-grown, tasteful, and holy fruits dropping honey. And this celestial tree was frequented by hosts of mighty sages, and was always ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... orders to the hostler connected with the Wadsworth estate, and now this man brought to the front of the mansion a fine, big sleigh drawn by a pair of sleek-looking, high-stepping steeds. The sleigh was well provided with heavy robes to protect its ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... was a pacer and he came up the drive with that rolling action peculiar to his kind, but which takes one over the road very rapidly. A white fleck of foam spotted the pacer's shiny chest. He was sleek and handsome, but with his rolling, unblinded eyes and his red nostrils, he looked ready ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... years older than when we first made her acquaintance. She is now over sixty. She still possesses her fair proportions; indeed, she has grown somewhat stouter with advancing years. Her face is sleek and comely, but the expression has not improved. When she wishes to appear amiable, she greets you with the same pleasing smile as ever; but if you watch her features as they relapse into their natural repose, you will discover a discontented, dissatisfied air, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... first lieutenant, who placed a watch in the neighbourhood where the ghost had appeared. The next night, in bodily form, the ghost of Sam Smitch was captured, dirtier than ever, but yet fat and sleek, though rather pallid. Not, however, till he was brought on deck, to be well scrubbed under the superintendence of the master at arms, were the crew convinced that the ghost was no ghost at all, but that dirty Sam, fool as he was, had been bamboozling them effectually, ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... consideration of the social rights of man—that they are gifted with a more stirring sympathy for the wants that, in the present iniquitous system of society, reduce him to little less than pining idiotcy, or madden him to what the statutes call crime, and what judges, sleek as their ermine, preach upon as rebellion to the government—the government that, in fact, having stung starvation into treason, takes to itself the loftiest praise for refusing the hangman—a task—for appeasing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... "Skilly" being taken on the regimental strength, our canteen was the paradise of a battalion of mice, from whose nightly raids nothing was sacred. But from the day "Skilly" enlisted the marauders became less and less obtrusive. And "Skilly" grew sleek. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various |
