"Slender" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cannot help thinking how tremendous would be her onset, if pugnaciously inclined, and how futile the effort to inflict any counter-injury. She certainly looks tenfold—nay, a hundred-fold—better able to take care of herself than our slender-framed and haggard womankind; but I have not found reason to suppose that the English dowager of fifty has actually greater courage, fortitude, and strength of character than our women of similar age, or even a tougher physical endurance than they. Morally, she is strong, I suspect, only ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... greater tendency to put on fat than men, and the tendency is particularly well marked at puberty, when some girls become phenomenally stout."[60] The distinctive beauty of the female form is due to the storing of adipose tissue, and the form even of very slender women is gracefully rounded in comparison with that of man. Bischoff found the following relation between muscle and fat in a man of 33, a woman of 22, and a boy of 16, all of whom died accidentally ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... might be meat in plenty when the dogs and men returned a little later. One afternoon, he returned early, while the pale sun was still in the sky, laden with the meat of a musk-ox. As he came from the edge of the forest, his slender body doubled over under the weight of his pack, a terrifying sight greeted him in the little clearing ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... of the older aristocracy, and has been the foundation of several modern peerages. Yet Henry Cort, the rock from which they were hewn, is already all but forgotten; and his surviving children, now aged and infirm, are dependent for their support upon the slender pittance wrung by repeated entreaty and expostulation from ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... Seychelles—as modern botanists term it, that we have now to deal with. As its name implies, it is a palm, and one of the most nobly-graceful of that family, which have been so aptly styled by Linnaeus the princes of the vegetable kingdom. Its straight and rather slender-looking stem, not more than a foot in diameter, rises, without a leaf, to the height of from 90 to 100 feet, and at the summit is superbly crowned with a drooping plume, consisting of about a score of magnificent leaves, of a broadly-oval form. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... occasional letter to the Spectator), he said: "With the remaining Tragedies I shall also send you some reflections on that Paradise Lost of Milton's, which some are pleased to call a Poem, and assert Rhime against the slender Sophistry wherewith he attaques it." But two years after the appearance of Dryden's Juvenal and Persius Rymer prefixed to his translation of Rene Rapin's Reflections on Aristotle's Poesie some Reflections of his own on Epic Poets. Herein he speaks under the head Epic Poetry of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and of a slender frame, with features singularly handsome, was making his way, as best he could, with unsteady steps, and a face haggard and pale with debauchery, through ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... the original germ in comparative insignificance. He cast a glance towards me at the close, and observed, with a significant nod, 'You see, you did not hear one-half of that honest seaman's story this morning.' It was such slender hints, which in the common intercourse of life must have hourly dropped on the soil of his retentive memory, that fed the exuberance of Sir Walter's invention, and supplied the seemingly inexhaustible stream of fancy, from which he drew forth at pleasure the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... broad shaft, quite unlike the slender, tapering arrows of Norman workmanship, adapted for a long flight, in days when a furlong ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... certainty the incidents which Lady Mary was persuaded were matters of fact. The experiences of Captain Booth, when essaying to turn gentleman farmer, have been quoted as copies of Fielding's own ambitions at East Stour; but surely on very slender evidence. Much more personal seem many of the later scenes in the poor London lodgings, scenes of cruel distress and perfect happiness, of bitter disappointments and sanguine hope. Here, very probably, we have echoes of the struggles of Harry and Charlotte Fielding, in the days ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... if you are a man, let me get out! Call my father! I want to get out—make light—give me air—I am almost choking—I want to get out!'" As Soelver opened the shutter again so that the dim shadowy glow of the night could enter, he saw Gro "tall and slender in the pale light." "Let me out, let me out!" she begged. "I am afraid here below—not of you—but of myself and of the dark—let me out!" "For the first time Soelver heard a soft rhythm in this voice smooth as steel. A soft breath breathed itself in her entreaty. He became a man, a protector and ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... Now and then there were unexpected calls, too—Marie's mother, starving in Havre; sickness and death in the little town at the crossroads: a dozen small emergencies, but adding to the demands on her slender income. She had, as a matter of fact, already begun to ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Daddies to Kiss 'Em." Its cover exposed a tender love scene wherein a gentleman in evening clothes was engaged in an act of violent osculation with a young lady whose dress was as short as her modesty. Carroll shrugged, placed his long, slender fingers on the keys—shook his head—and ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... The slender little Corsican horses, red-chestnut in colour and active as cats, trotted, with a tinkle of bells, through the barred sunshine and shadow of the fragrant pine and cork woods. The road, turning inland, climbed steadily, the air growing lighter and ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... constraining mantle which rendered all movements of the arms impossible, looked very decorous and womanly compared with the soles of a pair of brown leather shoes, and the foreshortened figure of five feet eight of slender young womanhood stretched in strenuous devotion to her strange occupation ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... the short sleeves of which showed to good advantage her round white arms. A narrow velvet ribbon confined by a small brooch, and a black silk apron, completed her toilet, with the exception of a tiny locket, which was suspended from her neck by a slender gold chain. This last ornament, immediately riveted Mr. Stuart's attention, and from some strange cause sent the color quickly to his face. After a time, as if to ascertain whether it were really a locket, or a watch, he asked "if Miss Howard could ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... to have just a little happiness! I never had had any." She sat there, the bellows in her white, ineffectual hands, looking into the fire; how capable Lily's hands were! She remembered the sturdy left hand, and that shiny band of gold ... Then she looked at her own slender wedding ring, and that made her think of the circle of braided grass; and the locust blossoms; and the field—and the children who were to come there on the wedding anniversaries! And now—Maurice's child called another woman "mother"!... Well, she had tried to bring him back to Maurice; tried, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... episode. They would have declared him the most perfect as the most powerful of men were it not for one little spot on the bright sun of his fame. They did not like his domestic habits. The daughter who stood by his side on the watch tower was a young girl of charm, a fair, frail maiden, a slender lily under the towering shadow of her dark father. The citizens did not, perhaps, understand his instincts of paternity; and, indeed, if they understood them they would not have given them the sanction of their approval. ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... filled, and the work thus goes on without interruption. The fifteen animals which stand compressed, with their heads thrust upward, awaiting the stroke of fate, express their emotions in the language natural to them, and the noise is great. The executioner, armed with a long-handled, slender hammer, and sitting astride of the fence, gives to each of these yelling creatures his quietus by a blow upon the head. The pig does not fall when he is struck; he cannot; he only stares and becomes silent. The stranger who is unable to witness the execution has an awful sense of the progress ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... for. Little time was lost in mere "going into camp," and even before that was done every fifth brave was ordered out to look for game. Not only would fresh meat be better than dry, if they could get any, but it would save their somewhat slender stock ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... very young: five, six, seven. His mother, tall and slender and very fair, was bending over a blueprint, pointing with a delicate finger at something, straightening, saying in her ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... the 17th, Louis set out for Paris in a single carriage, escorted by a very slender guard and accompanied by a party of the deputies. He was fully alive to the danger he was incurring. He knew that threats had been openly uttered that he should not reach Paris alive;[4] and he had prepared for his journey as for death, burning his papers, taking the sacrament, and making arrangements ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... Wemmick. "Only his game. (You liked your bit of game, didn't you?) No; deuce a bit of a lady in the case, Mr. Pip, except one,—and she wasn't of this slender lady-like sort, and you wouldn't have caught her looking after this urn, unless there was something to drink in it." Wemmick's attention being thus directed to his brooch, he put down the cast, and polished the brooch ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... work, and what a slender reward! In the little domestic details with which the book abounds, what a simple life is shown to us! The most simple little pleasures and amusements delight and occupy him. You have revels on shrimps; the good ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and theirs. It does not come into our minds, that when we submit our claim for an extra allowance of Rs. 200 under section 1735 of the Code, and the mussaul gets the butler to prefer a humble request for an increase of one rupee a month to his slender puggar, we and the mussaul are made kin by that one touch of nature. We spurn the request and urge the claim, with equal wonderment at the effrontery of mussauls and the meanness of Governments. And ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... Oliver—nay, if she could only talk as she did herself to other boys! But words would not come, she could only listen and murmur little commonplace sentences now and again. But perhaps her dreamy eyes and her dented lip and her slender throat talked eloquently for her. At any rate Kenneth seemed in no hurry to suggest going back and when they did go back supper was in progress. He found a seat for her near the window of the lighthouse kitchen and sat on the sill ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... no great expectations of the gentility of the bailiff's abode: but, slender as they were, the few I had were disappointed. I was wholly unused to such places: this I suspect was one of the meanest of them; and the approach to the house, as well as all that was in it, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... About four or five feet north of the grave last-mentioned, large stones were again struck and on being lifted, the skeleton of a young girl was unearthed whose wisdom teeth had just begun to appear in the jaw. The large bone of her upper left arm had at one time been broken near the shoulder. Her slender skeleton was in the same crouching position as the others but much more closely bunched together; the top of the head was laid towards the north and looking partly downwards. Above her were found several flat stones which may have been used as scoops for the excavation. Under her neck ...
— A New Hochelagan Burying-ground Discovered at Westmount on the - Western Spur of Mount Royal, Montreal, July-September, 1898 • W. D. Lighthall
... coloured eyes, waxing and waning! Those moons of pearl! The copper that turns to crimson, the turquoise that turns to violet, the greenish, pointed head that swings and rolls its yoke of slender plumage! Ah! Eros, is it possible that you do not perceive that it is a symbol of my peacock, my bird translated into the language of this narrow and suppressed existence of ours? What a strange and exquisite messenger! My poor peacock, with ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... therefore scarcely a trustworthy witness), Eusebius, Jerome and Severianus. Of these, Eusebius[222] and Jerome[223] deliver it as their opinion that the name of 'Isaiah' had obtained admission into the text through the inadvertency of copyists. Is it reasonable, on the slender residuum of evidence, to insist that St. Mark has ascribed to Isaiah words confessedly written by Malachi? 'The fact,' writes a recent editor in the true spirit of modern criticism, 'will not fail to be observed by the careful and honest student of the Gospels.' But ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... illuminated all the boats around it. Every gondola that swam by us, with its crescents and pyramids and circles of colored lamps hung aloft, and lighting up the faces of the young and the sweet-scented and lovely below, was a picture; and the reflections of those lights, so long, so slender, so numberless, so many-colored and so distorted and wrinkled by the waves, was a picture likewise, and one that was enchantingly beautiful. Many and many a party of young ladies and gentlemen had their state gondolas handsomely decorated, and ate supper ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the surface of the broad channel, that now replaced the ancient harbour. Not a breath of wind unfolded the scorching sails of the deserted vessels at the quay. Over the marshes in the distance hung a hot, quivering mist; and in the vineyards, near the town, not a leaf waved upon its slender stem. On the seaward side lay, vast and level, the prospect of the burning sand; and beyond it the main ocean—waveless, torpid, and suffused in a flood of fierce brightness—stretched out to the cloudless horizon that closed ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... his companion to his destination. When one was at last found he embarked, leaving his furniture as a present to his landlady, and generally giving himself the air of a man of vast property, although at the time possessed of very slender resources; and that he really was a person of distinction and wealth the colonists were prepared to believe. They only awaited the time when he chose to reveal himself to receive ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... her age was Giuditta Pasta, born near Milan in 1798, of Hebrew parentage. For her Bellini wrote "La Sonnambula" and "Norma," Donizetti his "Anna Bolena," Pacini his "Niobe," and she was the star of Rossini's leading operas of the time. Her voice, a mezzo-soprano, at first unequal, weak, of slender range and lacking flexibility, acquired, through her wonderful genius and industry a range of two octaves and a half, reaching D in altissimo, together with a sweetness, a fluency, and a chaste, expressive style. Although below medium height, in impassioned moments she seemed to rise to queenly ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... the uprights within the shack had been too soon removed, which put a strain upon the all too slender horizontal timber which they had supported. This had been pieced mid-way, an instance of hasty and flimsy construction, and the weight of Blythe at this point caused the strip ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... at that charming figure, with the mass of blue black hair above it, and the slender silken ankles and slim tan-shod feet below. He remembered that her eyes were blue, and that they met him through long lashes, in a languidly alluring glance; that she was fair; and that her mouth was generous, with lips full but ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... destitute not only of troops, but even of the cultivation of the husbandman, they reached as far as the third stone on the Gabinian road. AEbutius, the Roman consul, was dead; his colleague, Servilius, was dragging out life with slender hope of recovery; most of the leading men, the chief part of the patricians, all of the military age, were lying sick, so that strength was wanting not only for the expeditions, which, amid such an alarm the conjuncture required, but scarcely had ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... knots, and the holm bending beneath its acorns, and the genial plane-tree,[13] and the parti-coloured maple,[14] and, together with them, the willows growing by the rivers, and the watery lotus, and the evergreen box, and the slender tamarisks, and the two-coloured myrtle, and the tine-tree,[15] with ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... of the cruel projection! Ian's slender hand could but just reach with its finger-tips the haunted spot. In vain he tried to knock it down against a stone put inside. Alister could suggest nothing. But Mistress Conal's cottage was near: they might there find something to help! Only Christina could not be left behind, and how was ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... three years younger than Madeline, and a slender, pretty girl. She did not resemble her sister, except in whiteness and fineness of skin, being more of a brown-eyed, brown-haired type. Having recovered her breath soon after Madeline took her to her room, ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... Then his face lightened. "Ah! Now I see. Your modesty forbids you to acknowledge your love—is that it? Well, I know that you admire me, for I can see it. All women admire me, and they all end by loving me." His chest arched imperceptibly; with a slender finger he delicately smoothed his black eyebrows. Alaire felt a wild impulse to laugh, but was glad she had subdued it when he continued: "I am impetuous, but impetuosity has made me what I am. I act, and then mold fate to suit my own ends. Opportunity has delivered to me my heart's desire, and I ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... place at the northwest corner, sat on the ground and taking a pencil from his pocket, he tore a leaf from a little notebook, and laboriously wrote a few lines by the light he carried. Then he went back to the region of the case and waited. Before his eyes swept the vision of the slender white creature with tossing hair. He smiled, and worshipped it, until a distant ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... and lay back upon the pillows with a sigh. Images were forming; memories were coming back now—scraps of things. There was a young girl whom she loved dearly. She had brown hair, very blue eyes and a delicious profile. She was tall and slender. She wore a blue serge suit. Her name—was—was Dorothy. She spread her palms upon the sheet and felt it ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... you wish to depart from the conventional style of making a table you may make variations in the design. For instance, the Chippendale style means slender legs and thin top. It involves some fanciful designs in the curved outlines of the top, and in the crook of the legs. Or if, on the other hand, the Mission type is preferred, the overhang of the top is very narrow; the legs are straight and heavy, ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... and I held him alone; catching his sword, she sprang like a flash of lightning into the open space before the log house, and, lifting the bare blade with naked, slender arm, its loose sleeve floating from her shoulder like a wing, she faced those ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... prominent and well-developed but short, and, as a rule, straight. Toward the confines of the Banuons we sometimes notice a slight curve upward at the top. The nostrils are somewhat slender, but otherwise well developed. They are a little larger than those of Bisyas. The ridge is broader than that of Bisyas, and the root ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... are usually constructed on the plan of a number of tales connected by a general or leading story running throughout, like the slender thread that holds a necklace of pearls together—a familiar example of which is the Book of the Thousand and One Nights, commonly known amongst us under the title of Arabian Nights Entertainments. In some the subordinate tales are represented as being ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... circumstances under which he had commenced this career, he might on the whole look back to those years without dissatisfaction. Three years ago he was poor and friendless, utterly ignorant of the world, and with nothing to guide him but his own good sense. His slender salary had not yet been increased, but with the generosity and aid of his sister and the liberality of Mr. Vigo, he was easy in his circumstances. Through the Rodneys, he had become acquainted with a certain sort of miscellaneous life, a knowledge of which is highly ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... His impulses were generous to a fault, and he had an invincible confidence that his neighbors would deal with him in the same spirit. The consequence was that year by year the expenses grew, and there was but a slender income. "O Pennsylvania," he cries, "what hast thou cost me? Above thirty thousand pounds more than I ever got by it; two hazardous and most fatiguing voyages, my straits and slavery here, and my ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... whereas the lower surface is exceedingly ragged, several parts hanging down to a considerable distance within the body of the fixed air, and sometimes in the form of balls, connected to the upper stratum by slender threads, as if they were suspended. The smoke is also apt to form itself into broad flakes, parallel to the surface of the liquor, and at different distances from it, exactly like clouds. These appearances will sometimes ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... himself the very opposite of a zealot. He had at the commencement of the civil war, borne arms for the King, had been made prisoner by the Roundheads, had then accepted a commission from the Parliament, and, with very slender pretensions to saintship, had raised himself to high commands by his courage and professional skill. He had been an useful servant to both the Protectors, and had quietly acquiesced when the officers at Westminster had pulled down Richard and restored the Long Parliament, and would ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Again, and with the snarl of a wild beast; but a woman had thrown herself across the prostrate figure and encircled the still form with her protecting arm. The butcher would have planted his iron-shod heel upon her, but at this critical juncture another woman—a slender, pale, weak-looking thing whose blonde hair fell loosely over her rouged cheeks—flew at him with a scream half human, half feline,—such as chills the blood in the midnight of the forest. With one hand she tore ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... gather together. (M414) But being drunken with too excessiue ioy, which they had conceiued for their returning into France, or rather depriued of all foresight and consideration, without without regarding the inconstancie of the winds, which change in a moment, they put themselues to sea, and with so slender victuals, that the end of their enterprise became vnlucky ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... beside him, and pointed silently to the horses. If ever poor beasts were done, were at their last gasp, they were, as they stood there, their noses touching the ground. The bushman's slender equipment had been reduced to its scantiest proportions, and yet it seemed cruelty to force them to carry even those slender packs; even the canvas water-bags, dry as tinder now, hanging at their necks, were a heavy burden. Wiser than their masters they had crawled beneath the shade, ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... it, you know my belief is that the total climatic influences here are getting up a number of new patterns of humanity, some of which are not an improvement on the old model. Clipper-built, sharp in the bows, long in the spars, slender to look at, and fast to go, the ship, which is the great organ of our national life of relation, is but a reproduction of the typical form which the elements impress upon its builder. All this we cannot help; but ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... a slender arm, hoping that the pounding of her heart might not be detected by Mrs. Ellsworth's hand. She wished that she could have slipped it under her right arm instead of the left, but owing to Mrs. Ellsworth's position in the doorway ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... and little Willy lay his weary head in her lap. They were now without father or mother. Sleep had stolen upon the weary eyes of Willy. Anna smoothed back the dark hair, which hung over his brow, then carefully raised his slender frame in her arms and laid him upon his bed. Then seating herself beside him she thought of her mother's last request to take care ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
... host's wife appeared as a medium-sized woman, neither plump nor slender, with a complexion neither brown nor white, with yellow-brown hair, gray-brown eyes, and in every outline, hue, and feature as neutral and inconspicuous a creature ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... these things had charms for Fra Paolo. Not even the beauty of the cloisters, where the low, gray arches rested on slender shafts of marble, wrought and twisted into as many devices, drew his thoughts from the ceaseless contemplation of his problems; not even the petted rose-tree, lovingly trained by the gentle Fra Francesco and lifting its pink glory to the crest of the colonnade, won his eyes to wander from the ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... stands Someone in Gray, with the candle burned nearly to the end. The slender blue flame flickers, now bending, now striving upward with its sharp little tongue. Its blue throws a ghastly glare on His ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... beside them, but that was not to diminish the effect of the first sight of the whole. Duomo and campanile make as fair a couple as ever builders brought together: the immense comfortable church so solidly set upon the earth, and at its side this delicate, slender marble creature, all gaiety and lightness, which as surely springs from roots within the earth. For one cannot be long in Florence, looking at this tower every day and many times a day, both from ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... more remarkable, because his physical organization was unusually delicate. From a child he had been weak and sickly. In the prime of manhood, his complaints had been aggravated by a severe attack of small-pox. He was asthmatic and consumptive. His slender frame was shaken by a constant hoarse cough. He could not sleep unless his head was propped by several pillows, and could scarcely draw his breath in any but the purest air. Cruel headaches frequently tortured him. Exertion soon fatigued ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... favourable; happily, a third of the parishes had the Elector for their patron, and in the towns the magistrates had, to some extent at least, fulfilled their duties satisfactorily. The clergy, for the most part, were good enough for the slender demands with which, under existing circumstances, their parishioners had to be content. But things were worse in many other parts of the country. A gross example of the rude ignorance then prevailing, not only among the country people, but even among the clergy, was found ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... was anxious to escape from the dark valley, could walk but slowly, and at each step her strength grew less. For Kuehleborn had played her many pranks ere she had been found. The storm also had bruised her slender form. ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... fly from the fold, since my passion's despair No longer must harbour the charms that are there; Anne's[95] slender eyebrows, her sleek tresses so long, Her turreted bosom—and Isabel's[96] song; What has been, and is not—woe 's my thought! It must not be ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... subdued their natural brightness; the smooth brown hair rippling upon the white forehead, which was low and broad, was of a colour which a duchess might have envied, or an empress tried to imitate with subtle dyes compounded by court chemists. The girl's figure, tall, slender, and flexible, imparted grace and beauty to a shabby cotton dress and linen collar, that many a maid-servant would have disdained to wear; and the foot visible below the scanty skirt was slim and arched as the foot ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... prisoner beside him, a youth whose lightning-swift hand had snuffed out a score of lives to avenge the killing of a friend. The collector recalled that on that day he had ridden his favorite horse, a deep-chested buckskin, slender legged, and swift, with a ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... circle on the broad ruddy stream, while the steamer rounding to, formed in a manner the base of the operation, and cut off the stag's retreat. Presently a shot fired without effect from Doughby's boat, drove the beast over towards the canoe. The long slender bark darted across the animal's track with the swiftness of an arrow, and as it did so, the Indian who was standing up dealt the stag a blow that caused it to reel and spin round in the water, and change its course for the second ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... many officers of the Carignan regiment, with but slender prospects in France, decided to stay in Canada and to this day their names—Chambly, Vercheres, Longueuil, Sorel, Berthier and others are conspicuous in the geography of the Province of Quebec. Malbaie was granted to a soldier of fortune, the Sieur de Comporte, who came to Canada ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... by the time she had reached Clemens Place, would have seen that she was faultlessly tailored in genial tweeds; that her small brown boots were sheltered by spats of that pale tan complexion exhibited by Pullman porters on the Pennsylvania Railroad; that her person was both slender and vigorous; that her shoulders were carrying a sumptuous fur of the colour described by the trade as nutria, or possibly opal smoke. The word chinchilla would have occurred irresistibly to this observer from behind; he might ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... would he think of the manse lady calling one of his sheep a Jezebel? "Well, David," she said to herself decidedly, "God gave you a wife for some purpose, and I'm slick if I haven't much brains." And she shook a slender fist at her image in the mirror and went ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... sunken in her face, but placed well on the surface. Her nose was perfect, but her mouth was too small; and Nick Dormer, and doubtless other persons as well, had sometimes wondered how with such a mouth her face could have expressed decision. Her figure helped it, for she appeared tall—being extremely slender—yet was not; and her head took turns and positions which, though a matter of but half an inch out of the common this way or that, somehow contributed to the air of resolution and temper. If it had not been for her extreme delicacy of line and surface she might have been called bold; ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... I first saw him (indeed, it was the first time and the last), he had just begun to adventure humbly in trade. His stock was very slender, but his neighbours accounted him a kindly man—and I know they spoke the truth. Thirty years ago, after half an hour's intercourse, which proved to me his benevolent nature, I squeezed ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... through the ill-hung gate, I approached the dwelling. Slowly the gate swung on its wooden hinges, and the rattle of its latch, in closing, did not disturb the air until I had nearly reached the porch in front of the house, in which a slender girl, who had noticed my ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... mood—the mood which took her in town to see exhibitions of Brabazon or Steer—the woods were fairyland. The high slender oak of the middle wood, the spreading oak that lived on its borders, the tall columnar beech feathering into the sky, its grey stem shining as though by some magic property in the beautiful forest twilight—the gleams and ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... they had dismounted, "do you see that tall slender sapling over there? It's just the thing I want. Please take the axe and get it for me, and don't cut off ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... past middle age, but newly born in her enthusiasm for the cause. She is a worker as well as a talker, and is a decided acquisition to the ranks. The other novice in the work is Mrs. Amy Dunn, who has taken such a novel way to render assistance. Mrs. Dunn is tall and slender, with dark hair and eyes. She is a shrewd observer, does not talk much socially, but when she says anything it is to the point. Her character sketch, "Zekle's Wife," will be a stepping-stone to many a woman on her way ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... maid recounted, until, the former fortified by cakes and tea, the two sauntered, side by side—a tall stalwart black figure, white capped and aproned and an equally tall but slender pale pink one—down across the lawn to the battery where the small obsolete cannon so boldly defied danger of piracy or invasion ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... voice seemed softer than its wont, "I ain't thought much of that word for a good many years now. But when I do—say, I seem to see myself sitting on our porch back home—thirty years ago. I've got on a simple little muslin dress, and I'm slender as Elsie Janis, and the color in my cheeks is—well, it's the sort that Norton likes. And my hair—but—I'm thinking of him, of Norton. He's told me he wants to make me happy for life, and I've about decided I'll let him try. I see ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... meadow side of the road. The foremost cow which, grazing the dusty grass, had strayed toward the gate, turned back into the ruts again. Elliott pulled the gate shut, in her haste leaving herself outside. There, too spent to climb over, she flattened her slender form against the gray boards, while, driven by Prince, the whole herd, horns tossing, tails switching, flanks heaving, thudded ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... represented seated behind the chariot of Hera, ready to do the bidding of her royal mistress. She appears under the form of a slender maiden of great beauty, robed in an airy fabric of variegated hues, resembling mother-of-pearl; her sandals are bright as burnished silver, she has golden wings, and wherever she appears, a radiance of light, and a sweet odour, as of delicate spring flowers, pervades ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... to every Youth apart, With well-taught Looks, and a deceitful Heart: A Web she wove of many a slender Twine, Of curious Texture, and perplext Design; My Youths, she cry'd, my Lord but newly dead, Forbear a while to court my widow'd Bed, 'Till I have wov'n, as solemn Vows require, This Web, a Shrowd for poor Ulysses' Sire. His Limbs, when ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... There were also small parties where faro was played for small stakes. I was tired of the pleasure, the misfortune, and the griefs I had had in three capitals, and I resolved to spend four months in the free city of Augsburg, where strangers have the same privileges as the canons. My purse was slender, but with the economical life I led I had nothing to fear on that score. I was not far from Venice, where a hundred ducats were always at my service if I wanted them. I played a little and waged war against ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... with the door beside it to your left; an M.R.C.S. diploma in a frame hung on the chimneypiece; an easy chair covered in black leather on the hearth; a neat stool and bench, with vice, tools, and a mortar and pestle in the corner to the right. Near this bench stands a slender machine like a whip provided with a stand, a pedal, and an exaggerated winch. Recognising this as a dental drill, you shudder and look away to your left, where you can see another window, underneath which stands a ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... droning the "Miserere." Children of the tenements, like moths drawn to globes of brilliant light on midsummer nights, hovered about the organ and danced. There was a capricious abandon about their movements which fascinated Simonoff. He had a way of running his slender fingers through his wavy, brown hair, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... supposed father, full-bosomed and round-limbed as a sculptor's ideal. In a community of waist less, neckless women she was as slender as a young tree, and held her head like ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... attentively, looking at him over the baby, while she put back on her slender fingers the rings she had taken off while giving ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... stars of heaven. Her features are like sculptured marble and her mouth is a trembling, curving Cupid's bow. (PETER, ASIDE: "What kind of a thing is that?") Her creamy skin is as fair and flawless as the petals of a white lily. Her voice is like the ripple of a woodland brook and her slender form is matchless in its symmetry. (DAN: "That's Valeria's way of putting it, but Uncle Roger says she don't show her feed much." FELICITY: "Dan! if Uncle Roger is vulgar you needn't be!") Her hands are like a poet's dreams. She dresses ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... descent into a coal-pit. There is the rushing noise of the cage, the whirring of wheels, the constant dripping and plashing sound of falling water, the thudding of the pump, the stifling feeling of dank heat, the stuffy mist, and joined to all the knowledge that if that slender thread of wire-rope should happen to break, the cage would fall perhaps hundreds of feet, and its occupants be killed. Then, he who descends knows that he is going into a series of subterranean caves where the gas escapes, that the slightest ...
— Son Philip • George Manville Fenn
... came into the room. She was tall and slender, not more than seventeen, very fair, with blue eyes and hair of pure gold. John was continually observing that while many of the French were dark and small, in accordance with foreign opinion that made them all so, many more were blonde and tall. Lannes' sister was scarcely more than ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... learning to labor and to wait, we have mined our way into the heart of educational authorities to grant such of our sons and daughters as are competent the privilege of becoming preceptors to the youth of the race. By the nurture of the same virtue, our slender means have tickled the greed of capital to call us away from obscure streets and narrow lanes that we may enjoy a wider range of selection of homes befitting higher tastes and growing ambition. Go, if you will, into the Southern section of our country where the bulk of our race resides, ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... below the middle stature, well made, but slender. His features indicate great sensibility; his eyes are particularly striking, and of a deep blue colour; his nose aquiline; his expression generally saturnine. His step is light, but firm; and he appears to possess much more energy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 407, December 24, 1829. • Various
... own authority, the diminishing of the king's, were still the objects pursued by the majority. Every attempt which had been made to gain the popular leaders, and by offices to attach them to the crown, had failed of success, either for want of skill in conducting it, or by reason of the slender preferments which it was then in the king's power to confer. The ambitious and enterprising patriots disdained to accept, in detail, of a precarious power, while they deemed it so easy, by one bold and vigorous assault, to possess themselves forever of the entire sovereignty. Sensible that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... Straight and slender, gallant and tall. Ah, how he loved her, years ago! Just so she looked at that last dim ball, When, in a niche of the dusk old hall, They whispered together soft and low. She whispered "yes," but fate answered "no:" Some one listened and ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... what a scene, how wild, how strange! The stars each moment break and change In thousand colours; look on high: Each slender wand points to the sky, Then waves and trembles: lo afar On lonely woods falls many ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... Stormont came out on the edge of Owl Marsh, the girl was kneeling by the water, washing deer blood from her slender, ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... idea she was so pretty. She was exceedingly pretty. Everything about her was very much that which it was. Her fair hair was very fair, her lovely grey eyes were very lovely and grey, her dark eyelashes were very dark, her white skin was very white, her red mouth was very red. She was extravagantly slender— the merest thread of a girl, though not without little curves beneath her thin frock where little curves should be. She was looking out across the bay, and was sharply defined against the background of empty blue. She was full in the sun. Her feet dangled among the leaves ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... African monarch possessed at least one virtue, that of perseverance under difficulties. He was not at all the sort of man to sit down and tamely submit to evils if he thought there was even the most remote and slender possibility of overcoming them. He had, on a previous occasion, encountered certain fair-skinned men so similar in appearance, and in every other respect, except dress, to these present troublesome visitors of his that they might well have been taken for beings of the same race; yet they ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... sun, it of course cut out a round notch from the edge of the sun. At first, when this notch was small, nothing could be seen of the outline of that part of the planet which was outside the sun. But when half the planet was on the sun, the outline of the part still off the sun was marked by a slender arc of light. A curious fact was that this arc did not at first span the whole outline of the planet, but only showed at one or two points. In a few moments another part of the outline appeared, and then another, until, ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... from the bedside as Virginia stirred, but I could see the milk-white lids of her eyes—eyes, as I have said, deep and blue and intense like the wall behind her, with their long black lashes. Her slender body shook as if she was undergoing the first rippling torsions of a convulsion. Her face was drawn into such an expression as one might imagine would appear on the face of an angel in agony, and then, gradually, as some renewed circulation relaxed the nerve centres, ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... though she was teaching in the Willow's district. Now it came to him with what dignity and unconscious pride her head was poised, how little the home-made print could conceal the long, free lines of her figure, still slender with the immaturity of youth. Soon now the woman in her would awaken and would blossom abundantly as the spring poppies were doing on the mountain side. Her sullen sweetness was very close to him. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... a delicate man of extreme refinement of mien and manner, sitting at the piano and playing with no sway of the body and scarcely any movement of the arms, depending entirely upon his narrow feminine hands and slender fingers. The wide arpeggios in the left hand, maintained in a continuous stream of tone by the strict legato and fine and constant use of the damper-pedal, formed an harmonious substructure for a wonderfully ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... the floor. The machines on the further row were in some way different; those in the front half of the row had the tubes leading to the floor below, but had no tubes jutting into the ceiling. Instead, there were many slender rods connected with a vast switchboard that covered all of one side of the great room. But everywhere were the great quartz rods, suggesting some complicated water system. Most of them were painted black, though the main rods leading from the ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... swans have not forgotten her; they sail unquietly hither and thither along the shore of the pond, they toss up their slender necks, and then plunge their red beaks down into the dark water seeking for the grateful bits which were not there. But when they saw that they were disappointed, they poured forth their peculiarly mournful song and slowly sailed away down the lakelet into ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... A chancier bit ye canna hae, So gin ye tak' an' angler's word, Ye 'd through the whins an' ower the brae, An' work awa' wi' cunnin' hand Yer birzy hackles black and reid; The saft sough o' a slender wand Is meetest ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... interview with the old Count Massetti Maximilian's hope for the success of his difficult mission had been but a very slender thread. Now that thread was stretched to its utmost tension, and Zuleika's ambassador felt that it must shortly snap asunder and vanish irrecoverably. Love is ever a potent influence with man but this poor demented creature appeared to have lost even the faintest conception of the crowning passion ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... that had put on a fragrant form of feminine and fairy beauty to drive the world to sheer distraction, half with love and half with woe. For like the silvery vision of the newborn streak of that Lord of Herbs, she was slender and pale and wan, formed as it seemed of some new strange essence of pure clear ice and new dropt snow, and she loomed on the soul of Aja out of the blackness of his trance like a large white drooping lily, just seen in the gloom of an inky night. And her hair and brow were ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... saw at once that her "new cousin" was older and more experienced in the ways of the world, and therefore liable to prove a dangerous antagonist. Slender and graceful of form, attractive of feature and dainty in manner, Louise must be credited with many advantages; but against these might be weighed her evident insincerity—the volubility and gush that are so often affected to hide one's real nature, and which so shrewd and suspicious ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... fashion understand the disappointment of the Germans when this towering military figure, this magnificent specimen of perfect physical and mental manhood, vanished from their ken, to be replaced by the slender, pale-faced, somewhat arrogant and despotic young man, who resembled this father ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... delicate; her hands, which did not betray the servant, were embellished with a lady's fingernails. And lazily, with graceful sloth, she allowed her indolent figure to curve and sway;—a figure that a garter might span, and that was made even more slender to the eye by the projection of the hips and the curve of the hoops that gave the balloon-like roundness to her skirt;—an impossible waist, absurdly small but adorable, like everything in woman that offends one's sense of proportion by ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... of the Northumbrian house of Blenkinsopp, which Camden styles "a right ancient and generous family." Miss Porter's father died in the prime of life, and left his widow with five almost infant children, in slender circumstances. The great talents of this orphan family raised them to affluence and distinction. Three of the children were sons; of these, the eldest perished in a dangerous climate abroad, at the commencement ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... nest. It hit the mark, but no angry wasps appeared. Another stone touched it more forcibly, and, when the third failed to bring a single wasp from the nest, Mr. Freeman declared that he knew it was vacant, and cutting a branch from a slender birch tree with his pocket-knife, which he speedily made into a smooth pole, he managed to secure the nest without damaging it and brought it proudly back to show to Rose and Anne, neither of whom ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... all the same. Some seemingly died of a disease of the lungs, some went insane, some were paralyzed, and lay helplessly inactive. But most of them were afflicted, for it was exceedingly virulent, and the normal serums were helpless. Before any quantity of new serum was made, all but a slender remnant had died, either of starvation through paralysis, none being left to care for them, or from the disease itself, while thousands who had gone mad ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... then it occurs to one to reflect upon what slender threads of accident depend the most important circumstances of his life; to look back and shudder, realizing how close to the edge of nothingness his being has come. A young man is walking down the street, quite casually, ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... and put his hand upon it. There was some form of vegetation there, and, leaning closer, he could see what appeared to be the ruins of a tiny forest, bent and trampled, the tree-trunks no larger than slender twigs that he could have snapped asunder ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... I tell?" replied Monsieur d'Albon. "A strange woman rose up there, just before me," he said in a low voice; "she seemed to come from the world of shades rather than from the land of the living. She is so slender, so light, so filmy, she must be diaphanous. Her face was as white as milk; her eyes, her clothes, her hair jet black. She looked at me as she flitted by, and though I may say I'm no coward, that cold immovable look froze the blood ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... had finished their supper the stars were winking down at them, and over the brow of a distant hill rose a slender crescent moon. Pierrette saw it first. "Oh," she cried, "the new moon! And I saw it over my right shoulder, too! We are sure to have ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... Universities, his readings with Hobbes in Paris, his commercial dealings, and his inquisitiveness into the processes of all trades and handicrafts by which men earn their livings. He came back a tall, slender youth, with a very large head, to be spoken of in London as an encyclopaedia of information, a wonderful mathematician and mechanician, teeming with schemes of all sorts, and yet shrewd, practical, and business-like. He was an invaluable addition to the ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... a voice whose soft tones seemed the echo of her own. A moment after, a slender, dark-eyed girl, about twenty years of age, entered the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... The slender figures ascending to tiny naked shoulders, presented a piquant contrast with the huge, black Assyrian, bull-like policemen, who guarded the passage, and reduced, by contrast, to almost doll-like proportions the white creatures who went up the great stairway. Overhead ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... independence of the Executive on the legislature, unless the one were possessed of the power of appointing or displacing the other. One answer to this inquiry may be drawn from the principle already remarked that is, from the slender interest a man is apt to take in a short-lived advantage, and the little inducement it affords him to expose himself, on account of it, to any considerable inconvenience or hazard. Another answer, perhaps more obvious, though not more conclusive, will result from the consideration of the ...
— The Federalist Papers
... the door. A strange gentleman stood at the gate. The strangest gentleman that Sammy had ever seen. Surely this could not be Ollie Stewart; this slender, pale-faced man, with faultless linen, well gloved hands and shining patent leathers. The girl drew back ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... line from the shoulder to the head. The chest should be wide, deep, projecting, but level in front. The shoulders should be oblique, the blades well set in towards the ribs. The forelegs should be stout, muscular above the knee, and slender below it; the hind legs should be slender to the hock, and from thence increase in thickness to the buttocks, which should be well developed. The carcass should be well rounded at each side, but level on the back and on ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron |
