"Lank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in rags about a window begrimed with soot and smoke. The only easy-chair was the one occupied by Foster, who himself looked as shabby and worn as the room. The cuffs and collar of his shirt were yellow and tattered; his hair hung long and lank; and his skin had a sallow, unwholesome tint. The diamond ring upon his finger was altogether out of keeping with his threadbare coat, buttoned up to the chin, as if there were no waistcoat beneath it. From head to foot he looked a broken-down, seedy fellow, yet still preserving some ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... splendour has passed away, and the stern wardour disputing entrance to the belted knight is now succeeded by a lank cobbler, who watches for lounging strangers, and acts as "Cicerone," blending the most absurd and ridiculous stories in order to eke another sixpence from the purse of his auditor, and to add greater importance to himself; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... they very heartily did do, in sending him of the best that was in the city, and he drank reasonably well, but poor Panurge bibbed and boused of it most villainously, for he was as dry as a red-herring, as lean as a rake, and, like a poor, lank, slender cat, walked gingerly as if he had trod upon eggs. So that by someone being admonished, in the midst of his draught of a large deep bowl full of excellent claret with these words—Fair and softly, gossip, you suck up as if you were mad —I give thee to the devil, said he; thou hast ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... ceased as Steve knocked and a voice called "Come in!" When they entered they saw a tall, lank youth standing in front of a music-rack close to the window. He held a violin to his chin and waved his bow ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... smoke, driven back by the wind from an opening in the roof, was spreading around in so thick a shroud that for a long time I was unable to see about me. Seated by the fire were two old women, a number of children and a lank Georgian—all of them in tatters. There was no help for it! We took refuge by the fire and lighted our pipes; and soon the teapot was ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... hour of rapid walking proved the squaw's words. The lank tree-trunks, down aisles of which they had been passing, became lost in a wealth of dense undergrowth. It was here that the woman paused for her bearings. But her fault was brief, and in a few moments she picked up the opening of a distinct but winding pathway. The windings, the entanglement of ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... W.H. Russell and later printed in his "Diary" but not reproduced in his letters to the Times. Russell was taken to the White House. "Soon afterwards there entered, with a shambling, loose, irregular, almost unsteady gait, a tall, lank, lean man, considerably over six feet in height, with stooping shoulders, long pendulous arms, terminating in hands of extraordinary dimensions, which, however, were far exceeded in proportion by his feet.... The impression ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... of the St. Nicholas Hotel a lank and shabby man had mounted a cracker box, and was evidently making a speech, but Berkley could distinguish nothing he said because ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... this. Her stature was taller, her limbs were fuller and more rounded; her complexion, though tanned by light, was fairer by far than his own sunburnt face; her hair, crowned with a garland of white flowers, was not lank, and straight, and black, like an Indian's, but of a rich, glossy brown, and curling richly and crisply from her very temples to her knees. Her forehead, though low, was upright and ample; her nose was straight and small; her lips, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... masquerading as Charon, was a lean, brown, and wrinkled old salt, neither complete nor clean of garb, and bulging as to one lank cheek with a quid of tobacco. At first he sat silent, dividing his attention between the conduct of his ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... fell foul of the waiter, because he had brought me goat's milk which was very sour. There ensued the most comical scene. In an access of fury the stout woman raged and stormed; the waiter, a lank young fellow, with a simple, good-natured face, after trying to explain that he had committed the fault by inadvertence, suddenly raised his hand, like one about to exhort a congregation, and exclaimed in a tone of ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... but how changed! The beautifully arched and glossy neck was now straight, and lank, and fallen in; the clean, straight legs and delicate fetlocks were swelled; the joints were grown out of shape with hard work; the face, that was once so full of spirit and life, was now full of suffering, and I could ...
— Black Beauty, Young Folks' Edition • Anna Sewell
... undisguisedly avowed. Broad Cloth has, on the contrary, affected a sympathy with tatters, though with a constancy of purpose has refused an ell from its trailing superfluity to solace the wretchedness; the tears of Beef dropt on the lank abdomen of Starvation, are ancient as post diluvian crocodiles.—but it has spared no morsel to the object of its hypocritic sorrow. Now, however, even the decency of deceit is to be dropt, and Broad Cloth is to make sport ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... this moving world, Fanny made note of the many interesting exhibitions about her of country ignorance and enthusiasm. At one place she stopped near a tall, lank farmer, whose cowhide boots had left their massive imprint on every roadway on the grounds. He stood chewing a wisp of hay plucked from an exhibit, while he gazed in delight at the harvesters, plows and sheaves of wheat which stretched away before ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... too close or curious a gaze might discern some pilgrim, whom he cared not to see, traversing that shadowy quivering foot-bridge. He was mounted on a strong, handsome chestnut, as marked a contrast to his guide's lank and trace-galled sorrel as were the two riders. A slender gloved hand had fallen with the reins to the pommel of the saddle. His soft felt hat, like a sombrero, shadowed his clear-cut face. He was carefully shaven, save for a long drooping dark mustache and imperial. His suit of dark cloth was ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... aspiring genius was D. Green; The son of a farmer,—age fourteen; His body was long and lank and lean,— Just right for flying, as will be seen; He had two eyes as bright as a bean, And a freckled nose that grew between, A little awry;—for I must mention That he had riveted his attention Upon his wonderful invention, Twisting his ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... days for the milk-journal advertisement to work. On the afternoon of August tenth, a lank, husky-voiced teamster called at the office of the Ad-Visor and was passed in ahead of the ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... bodily round in his chair. The couple to whom Wrayson had drawn his attention were certainly incongruous enough to attract notice anywhere. The man was lank, elderly, and of severe appearance. He was bald, he had slight side-whiskers, he wore spectacles, and his face was devoid of expression. He was dressed in plain dinner clothes of old-fashioned cut. The tails ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... keeping polite company. The Dutchman is vastly ceremonious, and is perhaps exactly what a Frenchman might have been in the reign of Louis XIV. Such are the better-bred. But the downright Hollander is one of the oddest figures in nature. Upon a head of lank hair he wears a half-cocked narrow hat laced with black ribbon: no coat, but seven waistcoats, and nine pairs of breeches; so that his hips reach almost up to his armpits. This well-clothed vegetable is now fit to see company, or make love. But what a pleasing creature is the ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Guilder came alone to his studio and found him lying on the lounge, his lank, muscular hands, still clay-stained, hanging inert to the floor above an evening paper ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... the last tram. The lank brown horses knew it and shook their bells to the clear night in admonition. The conductor talked with the driver, both nodding often in the green light of the lamp. On the empty seats of the tram were scattered a few coloured tickets. No sound of footsteps came up or down the road. No sound broke ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... looked just as he did the last time Marcy saw him—too lazy to take a long breath. He was tall and lank, his hair fell down upon his shoulders, his whiskers were as tangled and matted as a little brush heap—in short, he was as fine a specimen of a poor white as one could find anywhere in the seceded ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... goes it?" he asked pleasantly, dropping his long, lank frame upon a bundle of hotel table-linen. "Did you try ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... I feared that little Rosenheim would smite the lank annoyer dead in his tracks. 'For heaven's sake be careful!' I cried. 'The man is drunk or crazy or he may even be right; the paint on this picture isn't two days old.' 'Correct,' declared the stranger. 'I finished it day before yesterday for this sale.' ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... shadow fell across the entrance door of the pretty summer-house. An elderly woman, with a thin face and lank, ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... hips, he roared without restraint, while they stood before him lank and straight, as though they had been shot up with a snap through a trap door in the ground. Only four-and-twenty months ago the masters of Europe, they had already the air of antique ghosts, they seemed less substantial in their faded coats than ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... failed, curiously, to turn the head of an odd, unkempt-looking child,—a girl of nine or ten, with an old calico sun-bonnet flung back upon her shoulders, tangled, sunburnt hair tossing above it; gown, innocent of crinoline, clinging to lank, growing limbs, and bare feet, whose heels were energetically planted at a quite safe distance from each other, to insure a fair base for the centre of gravity,—who, at the moment of their coming, was wrathfully "shoo-ing" off from a bit of rude toy-garden, fenced with ends ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... gratify, without control, The mean resentments of his selfish soul; Let Freedom perish, if, to Freedom true, In the same ruin Wilkes may perish too. With all the symptoms of assured decay, With age and sickness pinch'd and worn away, 420 Pale quivering lips, lank cheeks, and faltering tongue, The spirits out of tune, the nerves unstrung, Thy body shrivell'd up, thy dim eyes sunk Within their sockets deep, thy weak hams shrunk, The body's weight unable to sustain, The stream of life scarce trembling through the vein, More than half kill'd ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... to the lank youth chopping wood, "you've worked hard enough for one day. Come in ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... with them to be bribed on the one side, and then to take a fee of the other; to plead weakly, and to be bribed and rebribed on the one side, then to be fee'd and refee'd of the other; till at length, per varios casus, by putting the case so often, they make their clients so lank, that they may case them up in a comb-case, and pack them home from the term, as though they had travelled to London to sell their horse only; and, having lost their fleeces, live afterward like poor ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... but nothing in the world seemed adequate. It was one of those times when words have no weight: mine sounded like a fly buzzing in the tomb of kings. And after all, he did not hear me; I could tell that by the look on his face as he sat there staring into the light, the lank, dark hair framing his waxen brow, his shoulders hanging forward, his lean, strong, sentient fingers wrapped around the brown neck ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... came nearer. In it were two weather-beaten dames, neither of whom could possibly be mistaken for Bessie in disguise; and the lank, long-haired brother who was driving them looked ignorant as a child of anything save the management of his horses. I hailed them, and the wagon drew up at the side ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... sentiment (as we have before said) George Cruikshank undoubtedly shares. In the "Sunday in London,"* Monsieur the Chef is instructing a kitchen-maid how to compound some rascally French kickshaw or the other—a pretty scoundrel truly! with what an air he wears that nightcap of his, and shrugs his lank shoulders, and chatters, and ogles, and grins: they are all the same, these mounseers; there are other two fellows—morbleu! one is putting his dirty fingers into the saucepan; there are frogs cooking in it, no doubt; ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Of slow Euphrates laps the muddy tide. Long eagle-plumes his arching neck invest, 220 Steal round his arms, and clasp his sharpen'd breast; Dark brinded hairs in bristling ranks, behind, Rise o'er his back, and rustle in the wind, Clothe his lank sides, his shrivel'd limbs surround, And human hands with talons print the ground. 225 Silent in shining troops the Courtier-throng Pursue their monarch as he crawls along; E'en Beauty pleads in vain ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... himself looking out with very much more eagerness for the rumbling coach, that kept up a daily wicked activity about the tavern, than he did for Parson Hobson, who snuffled in his reading, and who drove an old, thin-tailed sorrel mare, with lopped ears and lank jaws, that made passes at himself and Phil, if they teased ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... spring, after his fifteenth birthday, Charles Browne bade farewell to the "Skowhegan Clarion;" and we next hear of him in the office of the "Carpet-Bag," edited by B.P. Shillaber ("Mrs. Partington"). Lean, lank, but strangely appreciative, young Browne used to "set up" articles from the pens of Charles G. Halpine ("Miles O'Reilly") and John G. Saxe, the poet. Here he wrote his first contribution in a disguised hand, slyly put it into the editorial box, and the next day disguised his ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... turned sharply at a knock on the door behind him to see a lean, lank man enter who peered at him curiously through screwed-up eyes as though he had never seen ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... coals, which I lifted so near my mouth that I scorched my hair and burnt my face, and, worse than all, singed the faint suggestion of a mustache that was visible by the aid of a microscope, on my upper lip. While I was engaged in lighting my cigar, a large dog—a tall, lean, much-ribbed, lank and hungry-looking hound—went out to the sleigh, and my friend induced him to accept passage with us; so when I got back to my seat it was proposed that the hound should accompany us. I have often wondered since if he was not heartily ashamed of being ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... Bircham from their preconceived notions that she could almost have laughed at the contrast. He was very tall and pompous, he wore a lank brown wig which looked as if it might come off at any moment, he had little keen gray eyes which twinkled, and a broad mouth which shut very closely; whether it was grim or humorous she could not quite decide. He was sitting in a swivel chair, ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... Industry all is a Cheat; They flock to their Prey at the Dice-Box's Sound, And join to promote one another's Deceit. But if by mishap They fail of a Chap, To keep in their Hands, they each other entrap. Like Pikes, lank with Hunger, who miss of their Ends, They bite their Companions, and prey ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... remark created much amusement. Mr. Lincoln then bent down his long, lank body, and taking Nutt by the ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... rail, careless now whether or not he was heard, and ran down to the beach. He gave an order, the proa was floated and the sail run up. In a moment the brisk evening breeze caught the lank canvas and bellied it taut. The proa bore away to the northwest out ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... in all his glory, and the Field-Marshal as lank and cadaverous as ever; and besides ourselves there was Whipcord with the straw in his mouth, and one or two other fellows belonging to our host's particular set. The supper was quite as elaborate and a good deal more noisy than that at ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... looked like a stream of liquid honey, upon which giant rose-leaves had been scattered, and a breeze was stirring in the grasses and among the leaves. The Sisters were busily repacking their baskets. Little Miss Wiercke, and her lank-haired young organist, sat under a bush, gazing in each other's eyes with the happy fatuity of lovers in the second stage, while the young lady who had kept the registers at the Public Library was teaching her Cornish mining-engineer ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... drink first? No one seemed to care for the first drink, but all were willing enough, if somebody else would just "try it." It was the first and only time I ever saw whiskey go begging among a lot of soldiers. At last a long, lank, lantern-jawed son of the "pitch and turpentine State" walked ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... visitor was a long lank Caucasian, Phineas Pratt by name, carpenter by trade, Weymouth settler by position. This man half dead with suffering of various sorts, footsore and weary, came stumbling down the King's Highway just as Bradford came out of his own door followed ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... frog, and fell on all fours at the opposite corner of the hearth. His grandmother, the black woman, put him behind her, and looked steadily at their tyrant. She sat on the floor like an Indian; and she was by no means a soft, full-blooded African. High cheek-bones and lank coarse hair betrayed the half-breed. Untamed and reticent, without the drollery of the black race, she had even a Pottawatomie name, Watch-e-kee, which ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... a short, lean, wiry man, whose drooping moustache, heavy eyelids, watery eyes and long, lank hair gave him a ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... I called in the faculty of Apemama. They came in a body, all in their Sunday's best and hung with wreaths and shells, the insignia of the devil-worker. Tamaiti I knew already: Terutak' I saw for the first time—a tall, lank, raw-boned, serious North-Sea fisherman turned brown; and there was a third in their company whose name I never heard, and who played to Tamaiti the part of famulus. Tamaiti took me in hand first, and led me, ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... His lank body and cadaverous face were constructed on principles not generally accredited to nature as it applies to men. When erect, his body swayed as if it were a stubborn reed determined to maintain its dignity in the face of the wind; he did not walk, he glided. His long square chin, rarely ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... now look, the picture shows How lank and lean Augustus grows! Yet, though he feels so weak and ill, The naughty fellow cries out still "Not any soup for me, I say: O take the nasty soup away! I ...
— Struwwelpeter: Merry Tales and Funny Pictures • Heinrich Hoffman
... country fellow at the pleugh, His acres till'd, he's right eneugh; A country girl at her wheel, Her dizzen's done, she's unco weel: But Gentlemen, an' Ladies warst, Wi' ev'n down want o' wark are curst. They loiter, lounging, lank, an' lazy; Tho' deil haet ails them, yet uneasy; Their days insipid, dull, an' tasteless; Their nights unquiet, lang an' restless; An' even their sports, their balls an' races, Their galloping thro' public places, There's sic ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... cloud that remained we now saw what the wolves had been at. Standing in the centre of a ring, formed by its own turnings and struggles, was the huge form of a buffalo-bull. Its shape indicated that it was a very old one, lank, lean, and covered with long hair, raggled and torn into tufts. Its colour was that of the white dust, but red blood was streaming freshly down its hind flanks, and from its nose and mouth. The cartilage of the nose was torn to pieces by the fierce enemies it had so lately ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... of the United States differ in appearance from the parent Anglo-Saxon race; and selection cannot have come into action within so short a period. A good observer[676] states that a general absence of fat, {277} a thin and elongated neck, stiff and lank hair, are the chief characteristics. The change in the nature of the hair is supposed to be caused by the dryness of the atmosphere. If immigration into the United States were now stopped, who can say that the character of the whole people would not be greatly ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... And then with lank and lean discolour'd cheek, With heavy eye, knit brow, and strengthless pace, Feebly Desire, all recreant, poor, and meek, Like to a bankrupt beggar wails his case: The flesh being proud, Desire doth fight with Grace, For ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... beef and brandy personage, scouted the idea, and thought the matter settled, by pointing to two or three young camels and asking the editor if he thought any man, Turk or Christian, would think of eating one so lank, meagre, and uninviting, as himself, when they had so much capital food of another sort at their elbow. "Take your share of the liquor while it is passing, man, and set your heart at ease as to the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... vastly ceremonious, and is, perhaps, exactly what a Frenchman might have been in the reign of Louis XIV. Such are the better bred. But the downright Hollander is one of the oddest figures in nature. Upon a lank head of hair he wears a half-cocked narrow hat, laced with black ribbon; no coat, but seven waistcoats and nine pair of breeches, so that his hips reach up almost to his armpits. This well-clothed vegetable is now fit ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... ugliness, an uncouth grin doing the part of a smile; a pair of eyes so small that they would have been invisible, but for the serpent-like vivacity and brightness with which they sparkled from their deep sockets, and a profusion of long hair, coal-black, but lank and uncurled as an Indian's, combed smoothly down with a degree of care entirely out of keeping with the other details, whether of dress or countenance, on either cheek. Above these sleek and cherished tresses he wore a thing which might have passed for either cap or castor, at the wearer's ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... thoughts along, Until it seemed, a mystic sea Of hidden delight and harmony Began to ripple and rise all round The prison where our hearts lay bound; And from sweet heaven's most rosy rim There swelled a distant marching hymn Which made the hideous Hermit pause And listen with lank down-dropt jaws, Till, with great bulging eyes of fear, He sought the wicket again to peer Along the tunnel, as like sweet rain We heard the still approaching strain, And, under it, the rhythmic beat Of multitudinous marching feet. Nearer, nearer, they rippled and rang, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... great overgrown, lank-haired, chubby boy, who would be hunched and punched by every body; and go home with his finger in his eye, and tell ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... feet four in his shoes, and was proportionably broad, was chosen to act the part of Neptune, and the cooper's mate, who was as wide as he was high, that of his wife. The armourer took the part of the barber, and the carpenter's mate, who was lank and tall, the doctor. ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... Bulger, the dentist of Sackville Street, who neglected his ivory and gold plates for his voice, as every unfortunate individual will do who is bitten by the music mania. Then among the ladies there were a half-score of dubious pale governesses and professionals with turned frocks and lank damp bandeaux of hair under shabby little bonnets; luckless creatures these, who were parting with their poor little store of half-guineas to be enabled to say they were pupils of Signor Baroski, and so get pupils ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the team in front of the shack, threw the lines to the ground, stretched his long, lank frame over the wheel and began to unload the baggage. He pushed open the unbolted door with the grass grown up to the very sill, and set the boxes and trunk inside. Grass. Dry, yellow ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... lank spider, that in the ante-chamber quietly dost spin thy web over the expectant's foot, spin my eyelids close in a sleep as still as the horse's pace! Patience? no, she was not with us in the carriage to Zaether. But to ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... haven't you heard?' exclaimed Mr. Jogglebury, taking off his great woolly hat, and giving his lank, dark hair, streaked with grey, a sweep round his low forehead with the bandana. 'Oh! (puff—gasp) haven't you heard?' repeated he, getting a little more breath. 'I'm (wheeze) undertaking a series of (gasp) sticks, representing—(gasp)—immortalizing, I may say (puff), all the (wheeze) crowned ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... large dimensions, lined with tiles, and provided with a gutter or trench to conduct the water drawn to the different watering-places. There we found a caravan from Damascus, with a number of horses and mules in the charge of several lank moukri, who were bound for Cairo. This herd, together with the tall drivers, with their fine swarthy features, and the background of gigantic palms, made up a strikingly harmonious and characteristic picture, the effect of which was greatly ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... watchmaker, long and lank, with grey bushy eyebrows meeting over his nose, wandered, with the gait of a heedless pair of compasses, across from his own shop to Redford the bookseller's, at whose door a ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... in the pasquinades," declared a workman, lank and withered from operating the blowpipe. "To me it looks like Padre ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... a voice in the crowd, when, to relieve public suspense, Lawyer Perkins—a long, lank man, with stringy black hair—announced the verdict ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... experts. I directed my fire against Rear Admiral T. B. Stratton Adair, who superintended the ordnance factories of the Beardmore Gun Works in Glasglow. The Admiral a typical English gentleman of the naval officer type, long, lank with a rather ascetic, clear-cut Roman head, not unlike Chamberlain in general appearance, even to the single eye-glass, did not make much of a showing as an expert witness for the prosecution. The Admiral was called in on testimony concerning the new fourteen-inch ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... their eyes open. They saw cities with ovens, long and short ovens, fat stubby ovens, lean lank ovens, all for baking either long or short clowns, or fat and stubby or lean ...
— Rootabaga Stories • Carl Sandburg
... a chanting sort of way, Mr. Steel Spring stretched out his legs with a jerk, which resembled the sudden opening of a jackknife. He stood upon his feet, and then we had an opportunity to see how long and lank he really was; and yet beneath all his withered skin we saw that his muscles were of prodigious size, and that his strength ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... English play at dice, And chide the cripple, tardy-gaited night Who like a foul and ugly witch doth limp So tediously away. The poor condemned English, Like sacrifices, by their watchful fires Sit patiently and inly ruminate The morning's danger, and their gesture sad, Investing lank-lean cheeks and war-worn coats, Presenteth them unto the gazing moon So many horrid ghosts. O now, who will behold The royal captain of this ruined band Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent, Let him cry 'Praise and glory on his head!' For forth ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... led me to advance as near as I durst to the side of the great hole, and to gaze down into it. I could see but little of its black, shining, interior walls, or of the fragments of rock which here and there jutted out from them, crowned with patches of long, lank, sea-weed waving slowly to and fro in empty space—I could see but little of these things, for the spray from the bellowing water in the invisible depths below, steamed up almost incessantly, like smoke, and shot, hissing in clouds out of the mouth of the chasm, on to a huge flat rock, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... pallid whiteness. "Dear, dear Blanche!" her husband murmured, Stretching out his hand towards her; But she started wildly forward, Crouched down in the furthest corner, And, with face tear-dabbled over, And her hair in long, lank tresses, With a voice so low and plaintive 'Twould have won a brute to lameness, Faintly sobbed she: "Do not take it! Do not take it!—do not take it!" And she hugged her infant closer, Sobbing sadly, "Do not take it!" "Blanche! dear Blanche!" ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... tall, lank, athletic private had been detailed for fatigue duty at the landing, when the ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... golden hair, who is perfect, tender and pure, and fit for a king who is old as love, with no trace of love in him. Even now our grinning dusty master wakes from sleep, and his yellow fingers shake to think of her flower-soft lips who comes to-night to his lank embrace and warms the ribs that our eyes have seen. Who will be ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... these half-moon lines of blocky men, to the lank, slouch-hatted, low-collared country delegates—farmers, school teachers, country doctors and country lawyers—who filled the seats behind them and on beyond them. To the one group politics was ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... of middle height, with lank limbs, and an exceedingly spare frame; he is wrapped in a long, blood-red pelisse, lined with black fur; his complexion, fair by nature is bronzed by the wandering life he has led from childhood; his hair, of that dead yellow peculiar to certain races ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... no longer a shadow of uncertainty. "Margaret was dead!" and the lank Tim was ordered to drive faster, or the excited woman, perched on one of her traveling-trunks, would be obliged to foot it! A few vigorous strokes of the whip set the sorrel horse into a canter, and as the night was dark, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... rebellion were moving in him. It was not that he blamed her in the least. She was scarcely nineteen, the magnet for the eyes of all the unattached men in the district. Was it reasonable to suppose that she would give her love to a penniless puncher of twenty-eight, lank as a shad, with no recommendation but honesty? None the less, Jack began to doubt whether eternal patience ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... reported that she sat in mournful modesty, not speaking a word. What was taken from them I know not, but on departing, this gentleman shewed a princely spirit. He was a man of middle stature, of a black colour, with smooth or lank hair. There is considerable trade in these islands, by reason of the cocoa-trees; for they make ropes, cables, sails, wine, oil, and a kind of bread from that tree and its fruit. It is said that there ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... of death-fruit nearly, but not quite, ready to fall. Much depended on the executioner, and that grim functionary was in this case a raw hand, unused to his work, who bungled the job. The knot was ill-adjusted, the rope too long, the convict tall and lank. This last circumstance was no fault of the executioner's, but it helped. When they turned him off, the lad's feet swept the ground, and his friends, gathering round him like guardian angels, bore him up. Cut down at the end of a tense half-hour, he was hurried away to a ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... sleep-broken, travel-creased figure, with more than the Western man's usual indifference to dress; with sad, dull eyes, and an untrimmed beard that hung in points and tags, and thinly hid the corners of a large mouth. He took her hand laxly in his, and bowing over her from his lank height listened to her report of his wife's state, while he held his little girl on his left arm, and the child fondly pressed her cheek against his bearded face, to which he had quietly lifted her as soon as he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of the Hebrew dawned over level fields, green with unripe wheat and meadow grass. Wherever the soil was better for grazing great flocks of sheep moved in compact clouds, with a lank dog and an ancient shepherd ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... man having lank black hair and a smile of sly contentment perpetually adorning his round face, rose hurriedly from the chair upon which he had been seated. Another man who was in the room rose also, as if galvanized by the glare of the fierce ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... profile was thrust forward as though he were peering at something just out of sight. A courtly touch in his style was probably a matter of inheritance, as was also his capacity for looking suitably attired while obviously neglectful of appearances. His thick, lank, sandy hair, fading to white, and long, narrow, stringy beard of the same transitional hue were not well cared for; and yet they helped to give him a little of the air of a Titian or Velasquez nobleman. In answer to Guion now, he spoke without ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... a magical change of values will take place. We who live on salaries may have better times than even the extortioners—who cannot inherit the kingdom of Heaven. And relief cannot come too soon: for we who have families are shabby enough in our raiment, and lean and lank in our persons. Nevertheless, we have health and never-failing appetites. Roasted potatoes and salt are eaten with a ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... gift; but in that remote period of my fresh rescue from the gutter, an executant appeared something superhuman. I stared at him with stupid open mouth. He played what I afterwards learned was one of Brahms's Hungarian dances. His lank figure and long hair worked in unison with the music which filled the room with a wild tumult of movement. I had not heard anything like it in my life. It set every nerve of me dancing. I suppose Paragot found his interest in me because I was such an impressionable youngster. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... to the Abbess most respectful, and, poor boy, be least likely to startle the babe on whom his heart was set. At almost every inn, the little children had shrieked and run from his white and gashed face, and his tall, lank figure in deep black; and it was very sadly that he said to Philip, 'You must come with me. If she turns from me as an ogre, your bright ruddy face will ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Where the sun-rays glance and gleam, Clarine, Peach-bloom and Phebe Phillis Stand knee-deep in the creamy lilies, In a drowsy dream; To-link, to-lank, tolinklelinkle, O'er banks with buttercups a-twinkle, The cows come ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... one roams the streets a little in the early morning, when the multitudes are on their way to their work, one is amazed at the number of persons who look wholly or half-consumptive. Even in Manchester the people have not the same appearance; these pale, lank, narrow-chested, hollow-eyed ghosts, whom one passes at every step, these languid, flabby faces, incapable of the slightest energetic expression, I have seen in such startling numbers only in London, ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... regular but high and aquiline order of feature: with stony eyes turned upon them—with a look that met and fascinated theirs—they beheld in that fearful countenance the very image of a corpse!—the same, the glazed and lustreless regard, the blue and shrunken lips, the drawn and hollow jaw—the dead, lank hair, of a pale grey—the livid, green, ghastly skin, which seemed all surely tinged and tainted ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... your master: "Many, many compliments. I thank him for all that he has sent me; but the month has only 18 days, the moon is only half full, the chorister of dawn was not there, and the he-goat's skin is lank and loose. But, to please the partridge, let him not beat the sow."' (That is to say, there were only 18 loaves, half a cheese, no roasted cock, and the wine-skin was scarcely half full; but that, to please the young girl, he was not to beat the servant, ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... Pont de la Concorde became covered with troops. Among them General Vast-Vimeux, lean, old, and little; his lank white hair plastered over his temples, in full uniform, with his laced hat on his head. He was laden with two huge epaulets, and displayed his scarf, not that of a Representative, but of a general, which scarf, being too long, trailed on the ground. He crossed ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... the town of Boston had become marked objects of the displeasure of the British Parliament. Later, in 1775, Ethan Allen had startled Captain Delaplace by presenting his lank figure at the captain's bedside and demanding the surrender of Ticonderoga in the name of the "Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." In the language of Daniel Webster, "A spirit pervaded all ranks, not transient, not boisterous, but deep, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... the interior of these mountains at least two thirds of the year where the suffered as we then saw great heardships for the want of food sometimes living for weeks without meat and only a little fish roots and berries. but this added Cameahwait, with his ferce eyes and lank jaws grown meager for the want of food, would not be the case if we had guns, we could then live in the country of buffaloe and eat as our enimies do and not be compelled to hide ourselves in these mountains and live on roots ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... before them was weird and terrifying, no less distinct and ominous was the change that, during the last few minutes, had come over the living speaker. For it was no longer the youthful Clarence who sat there, but a haggard, prematurely worn, desperate-looking avenger, lank of cheek, and injected of eye, whose white teeth glistened under the brown mustache and thin pale lips that parted when his restrained breath now ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... smiling upon him over a bouquet,—while the woman he had afflicted with the burdens, without giving her the blessings, of marriage, came in curtsying humbly with a tea-tray. Everybody understood the relation perfectly; but not even the pious shrugged their shoulders or seemed to care. One day, a lank Virginian, wintering South in the same hotel with myself, began pitching into me on the subject of "Northern amalgamators." I called to me a pretty little boy with the faintest tinge of umber in his skin, and pointed him to the lank Virginian without a word. The lank Virginian understood the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... waned. Still the hunter lay quiet. From time to time the calf struggled and bellowed. Lank, gray wolves appeared on all sides; they prowled about with hungry howls, and shoved black-tipped noses through the grass. The sun sank, and the sky paled to opal blue. A star shone out, then another, and another. Over the prairie slanted the first dark ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... brought about a great change for the better in the life of the mountain woman. Once we saw her lank, slatternly, meek, stoic—mother of a dozen or more, obeying with patient fortitude the will of her man. We saw too the pitiable child-bride marrying perhaps a man three times her age because he ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... her, thought Prosper,—and he quoted one of Joan's quaint phrases to himself, smiling with radiance as he did so,—"she won't be carin' to leave me." In his gay, little, firelit room, he sat, stretched out, lank and long, in the low, deep, red-lacquered chair, dozing through the long day, sipping strong coffee, smoking, reading. He was singularly quiet and content. The devil of disappointment and of thwarted desire ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... loosely-limbed youth of two-and-twenty, with broad shoulders, a heavy overhanging brow, dark gray serious eyes, and a mouth scarcely curved, and so fast shut as to disclose hardly any lip. The hair was dark and lank; the air was of ungainly force, that had not yet found its purpose, and therefore was not at ease; and but for the educated cast of countenance he would have had a peasant look, in the brown, homely undress garb, which to most youths of his ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge |
