"Leathery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Desmond buttered a leathery triangle of toast with elaborate precision. "You may as well encourage that notion, old chap. It simplifies things. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... and looked behind him at the blank boards of the unpainted door. Just as slowly he turned back to Casey. A slow grin split his leathery face. ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... stretches across the bows. This class of food and the method of eating it went on uninterruptedly during the whole voyage. The duff, which was made of flour, water and fat, was boiled in a canvas bag made in the shape of a nightcap; it was very leathery, and was responsible for much dyspepsia. It was cut into equal parts according to the number of men who were to share it. On Sundays a few currants or raisins were scattered amongst the flour and water; this was considered a luxury which was often taken off at the ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... mushrooms attain their full size and burst their frills, as seen in Fig. 24, and gather them before the caps open out flat, or the gills lose any of their bright pink color. If you let them get old enough for the gills to turn brown before gathering, the mushrooms will become leathery in texture, and lose in flavor and ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... which has a combined odour of gas-works and drains. Pulque, as you drink it, looks like milk and water, and has a mild smell and taste of rotten eggs. Tortillas are like oat-cakes, but made of Indian corn meal, not crisp, but soft and leathery. We thought both dreadfully nasty for a day or two; then we could just endure them; then we came to like them; and before we left the country we wondered how we should do ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... them. Not for a moment was it lifted. Even when he was hauling in his wet and dripping line with a struggling fish at the end of it a recurrent memory of what he had seen would suddenly come upon him, and he would groan in spirit at the recollection. He looked at Matt Abrahamson's leathery face, at his lantern jaws cavernously and stolidly chewing at a tobacco leaf, and it seemed monstrous to him that the old man should be so unconscious of the black cloud ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... were met by the farmer in whose house they were going to lodge, a stolid, good-natured fellow named Pammenter, with red, leathery cheeks, and a corkscrew curl of black hair coming forward on each temple. His trap was waiting, and in a few minutes they started on the drive to Danbury. The distance is about five miles, and, until Danbury Hill is reached, the countryside has no point of ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... shivers. And it made us hush down, too, and talk low, like people at a funeral. We dropped down slow and stopped, and me and Tom clumb down and went among them. There was men, and women, and children. They was dried by the sun and dark and shriveled and leathery, like the pictures of mummies you see in books. And yet they looked just as human, you wouldn't 'a' believed it; just like ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... head; besides which they have leaf, or lance-shaped appendages in front. A membrane of various forms is also often attached to the nose, in one species the shape of a horse-shoe. The bodies are always covered with hair, but the wings consist of a leathery membrane. Another singularity in one genus is the extremity of the spine being converted into two jointed, horny pieces, covered with skin, so as to form a box of two valves, each having an independent motion. The large bats of the East Indies measure five feet from the tip of one wing to ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... "where the best author is as much squeezed and as obscure as a porter at a coronation." Nor is it altogether reassuring for one who is himself by way of being an author to view the certain neglect that awaits him when attics are cleared at last. There is too leathery a smell upon the premises, a thick deposit of mortality. I draw a deep breath when I issue on the street, grateful for the sunlight and the wind. However, I frequently put my head in at Pratt's around the corner, sometimes by chance when the ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... little hall, she approached its alcove and glanced first at the hat-stand. They were all there—the silk hat, the bowler, the straw! So he was in! And within each hat, in turn, she seemed to see her husband's head—with the face turned away from her—so distinctly as to note the leathery look of the skin of his cheek and neck. And she thought: "I pray that he will die! It is wicked, but I pray that he will die!" Then, quietly, that he might not hear, she mounted to her bedroom. The door into his dressing-room was open, and she went to shut it. He ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... perpendicular. Her father looked at her with as fond a delight as a lover could have felt in her fascination. She was, in fact, a youthful, feminine version of himself in her plainness; though the grace was all her own. Her complexion was not the leathery red of her father's, but a smooth and even white from cheek to throat. She let her loose cloak fall to the chair behind her, and showed herself tall and slim, with that odd visage of hers drooping from a perfect neck. "Why," she said, "if we had all been horned cattle, he couldn't ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... jal or van (Salvadora oleoides), and the coral-flowered karil or leafless caper (Capparis aphylla). All these show their desert affinities, the jand by its long root and its thorns, the jal by its small leathery leaves, and the karil by the fact that it has managed to dispense with leaves altogether. The jand is a useful little tree, and wherever it grows the natural qualities of the soil are good. The sweetish fruit of the jal, known as pilu, is liked by the people, and in famines they ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... use. In the morning (after taking as much of it as you want) put the rennet water into a bottle and cork it tightly. It will keep the better for adding to it a wine glass of brandy. If too large a proportion of rennet is mixed with the milk, the cheese will be tough and leathery. ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... with impressive dramatic effect! It was difficult to decide, without due consideration, which was the more interesting. Bildad, a huge, gnarled old Viking, with matted gray hair, bushy eyebrows, a flowing beard, and leathery face, a fierce-looking giant, was appalling to behold, but so was Caesar Napoleon, an immense bulldog, cruel, bloodthirsty, his massive jaws working convulsively, his ugly fangs gleaming, as he set his great body ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... he mumbled, chewing his lips, his round leathery cheeks quivering. And the landau rolled ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... they contain much of the same bitter taste of Prussic acid common to the kernel of the ordinary peach. They are interesting to observe while growing especially as they begin to ripen. The covering outside the seed is thin and leathery and while ripening, splits and ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... the leathery complexion and the belt to match, and the untidy hair and the big feet? I like her face. And why does she sit at a table with all those strange-looking men? And who are all the men? And who is the fur-lined grand opera ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... body (the "calyx"), supported upon a longer or shorter jointed stem (or "column"). The body is covered externally with an armour of closely-fitting calcareous plates (fig. 62), and its upper surface is protected by similar but smaller plates more loosely connected by a leathery integument. From the upper surface of the body, round its margin, springs a series of longer or shorter flexible processes, composed of innumerable calcareous joints or pieces, movably united with one another. The arms are typically five in number; but they generally subdivide at least ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... useless, for her mental vision called up his figure, painted in yellow and red upon the background of the sage. She knew the expression of the lithe body as it leaned from the saddle, the gnarled hand from which the rein hung loose, the eyes, diamond hard and clear, living sparks set in leathery skin wrinkled against the glare of the waste. She did not lie to herself any more. No delusions could live in this land stripped ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... golden sides glittered in the sun as it lay upon the bright green daisy-sprinkled bank, in all the glory, as a fisherman would term it, of a noble tench of nearly four pounds' weight—a great slimy fellow, with tiny golden scales and dark olive-green back, huge thick leathery fins, and a mouth that looked as though the great fish had lived upon pap all its lifetime. He had been a cowardly fish in the water, and yielded himself up a prisoner with very little struggling—nothing ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... shoe-leathery step came down the street—it was Squire Deacon. Reuben knew who it was before the Squire came near, for he flushed up, and for a moment stood with his back resolutely turned towards the gate; then with an air as resolute, but different, he turned round and bowed as courteously ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... stood smoking a cigarette in his landlord's shop, and imparting an air of distinction and an agreeable aroma to the close leathery atmosphere. Crowl cobbled away, talking to his tenant without raising his eyes. He was a small, big-headed, sallow, sad-eyed man, with a greasy apron. Denzil was wearing a heavy overcoat with a fur collar. He was never seen without it ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... he muttered; but he was helpless. The old man would give no sign of what, no doubt, was in his mind; he would hold that leathery face in placid acquiescence in prevalent ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... am I? and my wings are leathery? Catch me, and you will find my wings are like down, my eyes as bright as diamonds. How much you know, writing yourselves down in books as Naturalists! My name is Vespertila; my family are from Servia, at your ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... came home with a dull glow in her leathery cheeks, and her eyes alight with resolve. They had what she called a ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... effects of the earlier dissipation. The more respectable servant, however, turns up her nose at the herrings, and goes in for smoked eel. These fish-stalls are very quaint in appearance, for they are hung with garlands of dried 'scharretje' (a white, thin, leathery-looking fish), which dangle in front, and form a most original decoration. In the towns a separate day and evening are set apart for the servant classes to go to the fair, and there is also a day for ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... first place, his skin was not tanned to the proper leathery look. His eyes were not those of a man used to looking off over the sea. His hands were too soft and unscarred for a sailor's. He had never pulled on ropes ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... April, May and June feeding upon the leaves of the pecan. They are ravenous feeders, and if present in sufficient numbers, considerable damage is done. The caterpillars are from two to two and a half or three inches in length when fully extended, gray and striped, leathery in appearance, very closely resembling the back of the tree upon which they rest when not feeding. Having attained its full growth as a caterpillar, it ties together two or three leaves with strands of silk, thus ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume
... and put in a cool place for two days. It was then opened out, washed clean in the brook and hung till nearly dry. Then Caleb cut a hardwood stake to a sharp edge and showed Yan how to pull and work the hide over the edge till it was all soft and leathery. ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... cheerfulness; and often, before he knew what he was about, he would be struggling and kicking and screaming and flinging himself upon one or the other of his comrades, while Fuss—as we must call her for convenience—laughed till she shook, and tears of joy ran down her ugly leathery cheeks. Then Florio, ashamed, miserable, and unhappy, would creep off to a corner and weep as if ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... have done so with the greatest propriety," returned the rector. "My conscience sided with you all the time. You found me out. I've got a bit of the muscle they call a heart left in me yet, though it has got rather leathery.—But what do they mean when they say you are setting ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... carried a cane and was characteristically occupied in violently switching off the heads from the wayside weeds as he walked. He refused our offer to take him in, alleging that he was out for exercise and to reduce his flesh—an ancient jibe at his bony frame which made him for an instant show a leathery smile. ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... Peden's wide door, one on either hand, two vigilant strangers stood, each belted with two revolvers, each keeping a hand near his weapons. One of these was a small, thin-faced white rat of a man; the other tall, lean, leathery; burned by sun, roughened by weather. A shoot from the tree that produced Seth Craddock he might have been, ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... length of 18 centimeters and a breadth of 7 centimeters; the leaf is rather coriaceous, and slightly downy only along the nerves on the under side. The handsome and imposing looking flowers of the Cananga odorata occur to the number of four on short peduncles. The lobes of the tripartite leathery calyx are finally bent back. The six lanceolate petals spread out very nearly flat, and grow to a length of 7 centimeters and a breadth of about 12 millimeters; they are longitudinally veined, of a greenish color, and dark brown when dried. The somewhat bell-shaped ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... Goldarn your skins!" Uncle Ethan pounded the pan with his paddle and scraped two or three crawling abominations off his leathery wrist. ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... stood near panting, with blood dripping from their open jaws. Philip could not imagine why Bill did not butcher the beast at once; it seemed impossible that a leathery old savage like that could ever be transformed into tender pork. For the present he was left prone on the field of battle, and the pig hunt proceeded. There was soon much squealing of pigs, and barking of ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... color in the woodland undergrowth. Tall torches touched with the crimson of the sunset sky are made of the shell-bark hickory whose inner bud scales enlarge into enormous, leathery bracts, often crimsoning into rare brilliance. Circles of creamy white here and there among the hazel brush mark the later blossoms of the sweet viburnum. Sweeping curves like sculptured arms bearing thickly clustered hemispheres of purplish white ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... wind-bag, there is real vivid imagination enough in this to make a whole academy of Fuselis. It is just an Egyptian darkness, with breaking through it, above a bog-hole, some black bulrushes, and above them a bending, leathery goblin exulting over some drowned traveller, the meteor lamp he carries casting a downward flicker on the dark water. Such darkness, such wicked speed, such bad, Puck-like malice, such devilry, Hoffman and Poe together could ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... a leathery grin. "Mighty unfortunate—ain't it, boys? Puts a kind of a kink in our plans for the little entertainment we were figuring on pulling off. But maybe you've a notion of ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... leathery. Look at 'em up yonder." Alden pointed to the roof of that immense aviary where, hanging head downwards like gigantic bats, must have been hundreds upon hundreds of the pteranodons. One of them, whistling oddly, fluttered up to ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... the process of oxidation to be due to a microscopical fungus (mycoderma aceti), possessing the power of condensing oxygen and conveying it to the fermentable substance. This organism, which is a true bacterium, as the fermentation proceeds, forms a leathery membrane (slightly differing according to the substance fermenting) on the surface of the liquor, which constitutes the so-called mother of vinegar, ...
— The Production of Vinegar from Honey • Gerard W Bancks
... which urged, "Signora, if my devotion—" I knew both voices—the woman's was not to be mistaken. Aurelia was there—the divine Aurelia—close at hand. Without thinking what I did, I took a strong breath and stepped forward to my task. I reached the statue of the faun, which leered and writhed its leathery tongue at me; and in the bay which opened out beyond it I found ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... in some other way. Only it happened at Grimworth, which, to be sure, was a low place, that the maids and matrons could do nothing with their hands at all better than cooking: not even those who had always made heavy cakes and leathery pastry. And so it came to pass, that the progress of civilization at Grimworth was not otherwise apparent than in the impoverishment of men, the gossiping idleness of women, and the heightening ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... The huge leathery wings of the dragon overshadowed the shrinking form of the girl, and the talons of its drooping feet caught in her dress. She made one desperate, but futile effort to free herself from its terrible ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... impossible for rats, mice, or squirrels to cross the intervening belt of three hundred leagues of sea, their little winged relation, the flitter-mouse, made the journey across quite safely on his own leathery vans, and with no greater difficulty than a swallow ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... had decreed first that all visitors should change their clothes for a sort of official sackcloth, and then (when this method caused some murmurs) that they should at least turn out their pockets. Colonel Morris, the officer in charge, was a short, active man with a grim and leathery face, but a lively and humorous eye—a contradiction borne out by his conduct, for he at once derided the safeguards ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... Asano he was able to view this place from a little screened gallery reserved for the attendants of the tables. The building was pervaded by a distant muffled hooting, piping and bawling, of which he did not at first understand the import, but which recalled a certain mysterious leathery voice he had heard after the resumption of the lights on the night ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... It all comes back to me, that convergence of attention, even the faint leathery smell of its atmosphere returns, and the coarse feel of my aunt's black dress beside me in contact with my hand. I see again the old Welsh milkman "wrestling" with me, they all wrestled with me, by prayer or exhortation. And I was holding out stoutly, though convinced now by the ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... and stern, as much like those sitting Egyptian images one sees as I could manage, for pretty nearly twelve hours, I should guess at least, on end, I got over it. You'd hardly think what it meant in that heat and stink. I don't think any of them dreamt of the man inside. I was just a wonderful leathery great joss that had come up with luck out of the water. But the fatigue! the heat! the beastly closeness! the mackintosheriness and the rum! and the fuss! They lit a stinking fire on a kind of lava slab there was before me, and brought in a lot of ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... from or near the stem, when the stem is present; or from the point of attachment of the pileus when the stem is absent. The plants vary widely in form and consistency, some being very soft and soon decaying, others turning into an inky fluid, others being tough and leathery, and some more or less woody or corky. The spores when seen in mass possess certain colors, white, rosy, brown or purple brown, black or ochraceous. While a more natural division of the agarics can be made on the basis ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... to fifteen feet, are common; and now and then magnificent tree ferns send off their feathery crowns twenty feet from the ground to delight the sight by their graceful elegance. Great broad-leaved heliconias, leathery melastomae, and succulent-stemmed, lop-sided leaved and flesh-coloured begonias are abundant, and typical of tropical American forests; but not less so are the cecropia trees, with their white stems and large palmated leaves standing up like great candelabra. Sometimes the ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... Captain Jeb, his leathery face darkening. "Why they wanted to set up that consarned thing just across from Killykinick, I don't know. Hedn't we been showing a light thar for nigh onto fifty years? But some of these know-alls come along and said it wasn't the right kind; it oughter blink. And they made the old captain ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... bark of trees in the shady place near our watering-place; one was Dendrobium caniculatum, Brown; the other was also subsequently found at Cape Grafton and is not yet described; it has oblong, three-nerved, thick and leathery leaves; we saw no quadrupeds ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... her busy eyes, and Miss Kendal and Miss Louisa, Mrs. Oldshaw and Dorsy; and Mrs. Horn, the grocer's wife, very stiff in a corner by herself, sewing unbleached calico and hot red flannel, hot sunlight soaking into them. The library was dim, and leathery and ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... not appetising: Bread, 1-1/4 lb., or biscuit, 1 lb.; coffee, 2/3 oz.; sugar, 2-1/2 oz.; meat, 1-1/4 lb.; tea, 1/6 oz.; and salt, 1/2 oz. These were reduced as the siege proceeded. The meat was trek beef, a leathery substitute for steak, and the biscuits were veterans, having "served" in the Zulu and Sekukuni campaigns, and now being nothing better than a swarm of weevils. Life in Pretoria was enlivened by occasional sorties against the Boer laagers, where the enemy was supposed ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... invention of the devil. "God knows what misery I suffered with it." He hated French meters, and his teacher vowed he had no soul for poetry. He idled away his time at Bonn, and was "horribly bored" by the "odious, stiff, cut-and-dried tone" of the leathery professors. Humboldt was feeble as a child and "had less facility in his studies than most children." "Until I reached the age of sixteen," he says, "I showed little inclination for scientific pursuits." He was ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... find, and are seen only upon the wing, their power of flight is their most striking peculiarity in the popular mind, and it is perhaps no great wonder that by many people, both in ancient and modern times they have been regarded as birds. Nevertheless, their hairy bodies and leathery wings are so unlike anything that we ordinarily understand as pertaining to a bird, that opinion was apparently always divided, as to the true nature of these creatures—"a mouse with wings," as Goldsmith called it once, according to James Boswell, ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... acquaintance as a member of their party, but there are some men who need no letters of recommendation. Obed Stackpole certainly was not a handsome man. He was tall, lean, gaunt in figure, with a shambling walk, and his skin was tough and leathery; but in spite of all there was an honest, manly expression, which instantly inspired confidence. Both Harry and Jack liked him, but Dick Fletcher seemed to regard ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... Scots-woman, who immediately proffered us food, an offer too tempting to be declined, and we presently sat down to our first Colonial meal of excellent home-made bread, mutton, and tea, and how delighted we were to taste the fine fresh mutton after many weeks of salt junk and leathery fowls ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... midst of these plains there are some rocky knolls, like islands, on which grow spiny cactuses, low leathery-leaved trees, slender, spiny palms, with plum-like fruit, prickly acacias, and thorny bromelias. This spiny character of vegetation seems to be characteristic of dry rocky places and tracts of country liable to great ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... young, but harsh and coarse at maturity. The golden flowers, grouped in huge heads, are rich in nectar, attracting birds and butterflies by day and flying foxes at night. The fruit, enclosed in a crisp capsule, is tough and leathery, in shape a flattened oval, and is entirely covered with silken seeds lying close and dense as the feathers of the grebe. When numbers of the capsules open simultaneously, the seeds float earthwards like a silvery mantle or stream before the wind like ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... he told it, propped up on his pillows, with the blankets drawn up under his chin, and his lean, leathery face, a little softened by his fever, fronting the long, benevolent visage of Father Bates. The Father had a deckchair, and sprawled in it at length, listening over his deep Boer pipe. A faint, bitter ghost of an odor tainted the still air from the mangroves beyond the town, and there was heard, ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... you think," said Mrs. Makely, who had a leathery insensibility to everything but the purpose possessing her, "that we ought at least to go and say something to ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... there when it is leathery; Esau betrays himself by hairs, Maudlin by weeping; and as for the "Bishop that burneth" the explanation is complicated. It seems that Cicely would run after the bishop for his blessing, and leave the milk on the fire to burn.[A] For all these ill-timed guests you are to baste Cicely, or ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... leathery face stolid, but his eyes glinting. When Blake had finished, he remarked shortly: "Must be the same man. ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... looked at the other, then his eyes dropped. He scarcely comprehended. He was startled at the expression of that leathery, puffed face. He shifted uneasily with the curious weakly restlessness ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... ovuliferous scale; cover-scale and ovuliferous scale attached at their bases; cover-scale usually remaining small, ovuliferous scale enlarging, especially after fertilization, gradually becoming woody or leathery and bearing two ovules at its base; cones maturing (except in Pinus) the first year; ovuliferous scales in fruit usually known as cone-scales; seeds winged; roots mostly spreading horizontally at a ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... through thorny briars and bramble-brakes, or, when hardly pushed, and not able to climb quickly a tree of his own choice, he was by circumstances forced up the sides of some rough-barked or thorny tree. This leathery pouch also protected him from the many leeches, small aquatic lizards, or other animals that infested the marshes or rivers through which he had at times to wade or swim; or served as a protection from the bites of ants or other vermin when, tired, he rested on ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... Lycopodiums, but it was also encumbered with masses of vegetable debris and a thick coating of dead leaves. Fruits of many kinds were scattered about, amongst which were many sorts of beans, some of the pods a foot long, flat and leathery in texture, others hard as stone. In one place there was a quantity of large empty wooden vessels, which Isidoro told us fell from the Sapucaya tree. They are called Monkey's drinking-cups (Cuyas de Macaco), ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... brown faces and tanned leathery white ones you can imagine what a pink rosebud she seemed to be; and it wasn't like that she stopped at that, for she could sing like a nightingale and talk to beat the band; and her laugh itself was like music, sounding long afterwards in your ears at sea. Hit? Jimini Christmas, I should say ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... intellectual tangles, that Solomon had scarce more to do than to play the part of chorus. He was fortunate in that his father could not afford to send him to a Chedar, an insanitary institution that made Jacob a dull boy by cutting off his play-time and his oxygen, and delivering him over to the leathery mercies of an unintelligently ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... built, as to body. A full, coarse face; dark leathery skin; and eyes that are a match for the Evil One's. There is a deep scar across his left forehead, running past the outer corner of his eye, and ending against the cheek bone. The lower lid of this eye ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... cunning scheme at once, so the first thing she did was to untie the cord from Cap'n Bill's big toe and retie it to the leg of the lounge. Then she unfastened her friend's hands and leaned over to give his leathery face a smacking kiss. Cap'n Bill sat up and rubbed his eyes. He looked around the room and rubbed his eyes again, seeing no one who could have kissed him. Then he discovered that his bonds had been removed, and he rubbed his eyes once more to make sure he was not dreaming. ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... trifle hot," and then everything was resolved into the question of meat—rich, tender, juicy meat—glorious to one whose fare had been dry, leathery, rather tainted biltong for a long ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... roared Uncle Paul. "Fry! That is wild west-country ignorance, madam! Are you not aware, madam, that the action of boiling fat upon albumen is to produce a coagulate leathery mass of tough indigestible matter inimical to the tender sensitive lining of the most important organ of the human frame, lying as it does without assimilation or absorption upon the epigastric region, ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... naked eye as minute spots in the water, at another of young jelly-fish growing on their tiny stalks, and splitting off one by one as transparent bells to float away with the rising tide. Or it may be that the whelk has chosen this quiet nook to deposit her leathery eggs; or young barnacles, periwinkles, and limpets are growing up among the green and brown tangles, while the far-sailing velella and the stay-at-home sea-squirts, together with a variety of other sea-animals, ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... water of the ponds plants vegetated; some were leathery and gray, and others long, soft, and transparent. But from the very heart of these poor and sad algae there rose into the very blue of the sky itself, green lance-like stalks whose rose and white umbels challenged the ardent day with their grace; water-lilies slept on ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... lend power to his arm, and sprang up on the altar with naught but his teeth and his bare arms for weapons. It may be that he expected a miracle—he has not spoke since, poor soul, in explanation—but all he met were blows from leathery wings, and rakings from talons which went near to disembowelling him. The bird brushed him away as easily as we could sweep aside a fly, and there he lay bleeding on the pavement beside the altar, whilst the sacrifice was torn and eaten in the presence of all the people. And then, when the ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... bitterness is a very useful accompaniment of the gum, which alone is cloying and even oppressive to the stomach. The presence of a bitter principle in many lichens promotes their digestion, and thus even the tough and leathery ones, called tripe of the rocks, can be eaten, and sustain life amid great privations and sufferings. The rein-deer moss (cludonia rangiferina) is another lichen of great utility: it is not much employed as human food, but it is the main support of the rein-deer for a great portion ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... damage in fields and gardens, especially to crops of lettuces, cabbages, or turnips. Their track is perceived by the shining and slimy substance which they leave behind them. There are several kinds of these little animals. The white and brown leathery kind often even destroy the strong stems of young cabbage, and other similar plants. The destruction of them has been suggested to be effected by the use of tar-water, sprinkled over the ground; and also by having recourse to lime, in the preparation ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... like a boy beside him, so large and massive did the heavy bulk. The contrast between them was so great that Yeager was scarcely conceded a fighting chance. Steve himself knew quite well that he was in for a licking at the hands of this wall-eyed Hercules with the leathery brown face. ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... surprise when the cell door was opened to admit Cyrus Whitredge, the lawyer whose bungling defense had done so little to stave off my conviction, was almost like a premonition of further disaster. Before I could rise from my seat on the cot he was shaking hands with me and twisting his dry, leathery face into its ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... if I wasn't afraid of prosing, I might tell another story about an old boot in a pieman's loft, contracting there between sun and oven an unseemly, dry-seasoned curl and warp. You've seen such leathery old garretteers, haven't you? Very high, sober, solitary, philosophic, grand, old boots, indeed; but I, for my part, would rather be the pieman's trodden slipper on the ground. Talking of piemen, humble-pie before proud-cake for me. This notion of ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... for her. She faded painlessly into death. She knew she was going, said so calmly and happily. She made Millie and Granma Gregory promise they'd be good to me. I wept and wept. I kissed her leathery, leaf-like hand with utter devotion ... she could hardly lift it. Almost of itself it sought my face and flickered there ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... the dry, fever-yellowed skin. Of one leg, only the stump was left; this creature had been forced to hop or crawl his way through the isuan swamps. The head, too, was no more than a skull, with great sunken dark-rimmed eyes, discolored fangs and loose, leathery lips. There had been no hair on this death's head; it had long been bald, and now, washed, clean for the first time in months or even years, it was to hold the brain of Dr. Ralph Swanson, Earth's one-time leader in ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... sound of this description is, not infrequently, detected at the anterior part of either side of the chest; whilst the respiratory murmur is entirely lost, posteriorly, from consolidation of the lungs. A decided leathery, frictional sound is detected over a considerable portion of the thoracic surface. As the disease advances, and gangrene, with the production of cavities in the lungs, ensues, loud, cavernous rales are heard, which are more or less circumscribed, occasionally attended ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... a couple of miles farther to the grove of trees, where, under very indifferent shade, travellers are in the habit of halting to pitch their camps; and on reaching this, I was glad to throw myself down on the grass, and, after a drink of milk, and the slight refreshment afforded by a leathery chupattie, to go to sleep on the grass, until the arrival of our servants and baggage should give us a prospect of breakfast. These made their appearance about two P.M., and all hands requiring a little rest from the toils of the ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... the Rhine-woods, of course; long years ago, in summertime. But the frog-music here was not amiable at all; never have I heard such angry batrachian vociferations. They came in a discontented and menacing chorus from ten thousand leathery throats, and almost drowned our converse as we crept along through the twilight of trees that shot ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... could have cracked him with a stone and his clothes would have fallen off like plaster from the ceiling. So those early iron workers learned to puddle forge iron and make it into wrought iron which is tough and leathery and can not be broken by a blow. This process was handed down from father to son, and in the course of time came to my father and so to me. None of us ever went to school and learned the chemistry of it from books. We learned the trick by doing it, standing with our faces in the scorching ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... like a big bat than anything else in the world. It had sharp, short ears, and soft fur, and its wings were leathery. Its teeth were little but devilish sharp, and its jaw could not have been very strong or else it would have bitten ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... apple tree in health and vigor, properly nurtured and protected against fungous disease by modern "spraying," is a thing of beauty in its form and color. See those deep red Baldwins shine overhead in the frosty air of early fall; note the elegance of form and striping on the leathery-skinned Ben Davis; appreciate true apples of gold set in green enamel on a tree of the sunny Bellefleur! These in the fall; but it is hardly full summer before the closely set branches of Early Harvest are as beautiful ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... of his light. I may say, in passing, as our subject is really a matter of decoration, that our nineteenth century efforts in this direction are all of a somewhat gloomy tendency. We fill our rooms with imitations of somber Spanish leather, stain and paint our woodwork in leathery and muddy tones, to arrive at what is now a sort of decorator's god. Quaintness is the name of that god. Many are the sins for which he has to answer. Had we not better worship a deity called beauty, whose place is a little higher up Parnassus? Why should we not in our ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... the right hand the stick wherewith he had thrashed old Clutch, and this he now transferred to the left, whilst extending his right hand and forcing a smile on his leathery face. The artist made a pretence of seeking out some place where he could put down the articles encumbering his hands, but finding none, he was unable ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... round me as though I were in the trough of a stormy sea. Quicker than I can write it lapped a corner over and rolled me in its folds like a chrysalis in a cocoon. I gave a wild yell and made one frantic struggle, but it was too late. With the leathery strength of a giant and the swiftness of an accomplished cigar-roller covering a "core" with leaf, it swamped my efforts, straightened my limbs, rolled me over, lapped me in fold after fold till ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... be more hideous, when seen from the front, than the countenance of the largest South American vampire-bat. Fancy a creature measuring twenty-eight inches in expanse of wing, its large leathery ears standing out from the sides and top of the head, and an erect spur-shaped appendage on the tip of the nose,—the grin, and the glistening black eye, all combining to make up a figure which reminds one of some mocking imp of fable. No wonder that imaginative people ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... or forty years ago. I spent my nights with John and Helen Garth, three miles from town, in their spacious and beautiful house. They were children with me, and afterward schoolmates. That world which I knew in its blooming youth is old and bowed and melancholy now; its soft cheeks are leathery and withered, the fire has gone out of its eyes, the spring from its step. It will be dust and ashes when I ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and he goes into raptures over things long, long ago gone by, or which have never existed at all; it is all one to him. 'Hertzog says so and so, somebody else tells the tale a different way,' and he is perfectly happy! His leathery face gets more and more deeply wrinkled, his broken angular back bends into sharper angles and corners, his pointed elbows dig beds for themselves in the oak table, his skinny fingers bury themselves in his cheeks, his piggish grey eyes get redder ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... is a skillful burrower and makes long tunnels in the earth with his strong claws. His round body is thickly covered, first, with woolly fur and then with long hairs. A leathery hanging protects his round eyes from the ...
— Dew Drops - Volume 37, No. 18, May 3, 1914 • Various
... grumpy. In the ordinary way 'the Master' came to his meals with a smiling serenity as regular as his appetite, and with teeth which, sound as a foxhound's, were not to be discouraged by stale bread or leathery meat, or by the miscellaneous disagreeables which are ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... popinjay of adult age can never learn to take a man's place among rough-and-ready workers. Even in spite of Willoughby's personal resemblance to Dixon, there was a suggestion of latent physical force and leathery durability in the bullock driver, altogether lacking in the whaler, and equiponderated only by a certain air of refinement. How could it be otherwise? Willoughby, of course, had no horse—in fact, like Bassanio, all the wealth he had ran in his veins; he was a gentleman. Well ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... quarters. There he found that he had not folded his blankets. In the midst of this work his hands stopped.... He was as accustomed as any man can be to unremoved horse by this time. It came steadily to his nostrils, mingled with the leathery smell of his own field-outfit. Presently he looked at his watch, and snapped the case shut with a crack. The strength of his fingers ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... brought up the subject, "but some time ago I articulated a skeleton brought me by an Arab slave trader and found extending from the shoulder blade two distinct bony frames which had in life apparently been covered with a thin fleshy substance of leathery like tenacity stretching thence to the wrists. I asked the slave trader where he had found the skeleton," went on the savant, "and he told me he had come across it at the foot of a giant silk cotton ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... and dragged up his prisoner. The man was a heavy-set, bowlegged fellow of about forty, hard-faced, and shifty-eyed—a frontier miscreant, unless every line of the tough, leathery countenance told a falsehood. But he had made his experiment and failed. He knew what manner of man his captor was, and he had no mind for another lesson from him. He slouched to his horse, under propulsion of the revolver, and led the animal into ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... the laugh, the newcomer made a raid on the dutch ovens and pails. Having filled his plate, he squatted on his heels and fell to his belated meal. He was a tall, slab-sided individual, with a lean, leathery face, a sweeping white moustache, and a grave and sardonic eye. His leather chaps were plain and worn, and his hat had been fashioned by time and wear into much individuality. I was not surprised to hear ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... anterior leathery or chitinous wings of beetles, serving as coverings to the secondaries, commonly meeting in a straight line down the middle of dorsum in repose: also applied ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... existence by the phylloxera when you were a babe in arms. Infandum jubes renovare— no one any longer can tell you what that wine was. They made it of the ripe grape. It had the raisin flavour with something—no more than a hint—of Madeira in it: the leathery tang—how ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... masterful nose. Thomas Van Dorn should be in the adolescence of maturity; but he is in the old age of adolescence. His skin has no longer the soft olive texture of youth; it is brown and mottled and leathery. His lips—his lips once full and red, ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Monegasque had a reminiscence in it of Bouillabaisse, but it was not too insistent; the supions were octopi, but delicate little gelatinous fellows, not leathery, as the Italian ones sometimes are; the dorade was a splendid fish, and though I fancy the langouste had come from northern waters and not from the bay, it was beautifully fresh and a monster of ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... alert and wiry, dressed in gray, and apparently bringing on his coat, his hat, his gaiters and his long and pendent moustache all the dust of his native town, fell upon the neck of the hero and rubbed against his smooth fat cheeks the withered leathery skin of the retired ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... all the unripe thoughts which it contained came to full growth. The pleasant Sun Tavern in Noerten is not to be despised, either; I stopped there and found dinner ready. All the dishes were excellent and suited me far better than the wearisome, academical courses of saltless, leathery dried fish and cabbage rechauffe, which were served to me in Goettingen. After I had somewhat appeased my appetite, I remarked in the same room of the tavern a gentle man and two ladies, who were about to depart. The cavalier was clad entirely in green; he even had ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of the several Aximite houses came on board. We drained the normal stirrup-cup and embarked in the usual heavy surf-boat, manned by a dozen leathery-lunged 'Elmina boys' with paddles, and a helmsman with an oar. There are smaller surf-canoes, that have weather-boards at the bow to fend off the waves. Our anchorage-place lies at least two miles south-west-and-by-south of the landing-place. ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... measures from ten to twelve inches in length, but the arms are prolonged, and especially the metacarpal bones and phalanges of the four fingers over which the leathery wings are distended, till the alar expanse measures between four and five feet. Whilst the function of these metamorphosed limbs in sustaining flight entitles them to the designation of "wings," they are endowed with another faculty, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... a rock by a short stumpy stalk, sometimes sealed firmly to a loose stone, you may find an object in form and structure resembling an elongated, coreless pineapple, composed of a leathery semi-gelatinous, semi-transparent substance, dirty yellow in colour. It is the spawn case or the receptacle of the ova (if that term be allowable), and the cradle of what is commonly known as the bailer shell (CYMBIUM AETHIOPICUM) the "Ping-ah" of the blacks, one of the most singular ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... against the gray of the walls and the stuccoed houses; clustered together, the high caps that nodded in unison to the chatter were in startling contrast to the bronzed faces bending over the fish-nets, and to the blue-veined, leathery hands that flew in and out of the coarse meshes with the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... Great paw-like hands they had, toughened with the gripping of cables; eyes that had that way of looking through and far beyond things. (Seamen and plainsmen have it.) And they had such romantic, crinkly, wrinkly, leathery faces. They got so on the way to Benton and back. And they talked about it—those old men lounging on the docks—because it was so far away and they were so old that they couldn't get there ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... with his enormous ears, and his forehead ran up to the summit of his egg-shaped head. His nose was pendulous and his eyes were closely set, with too crafty a look for honesty. He wore no beard, and his leathery cheeks were blue from the razor. His age may have been fifty; his air was mean and sycophantic. Finally he was dressed in a black gaberdine that descended to his knees, and he ended in a pair of the leanest shanks and ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... that morning. There were eggs without egg-spoons, toast which was leathery from being kept, dried-up rashers, and grounds in the coffee. Above all, there was that dreadful smell which pervaded everything and gave a horrible twang ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... is leathery and settles on the Bee's body. Its object is to get itself carried into a cell filled with honey. On reaching the cell, it devours the Bee's egg; ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... in with such vigor that it seemed almost savage and when the "Amen" came to an end Mary observed that the very same thing had happened to him which had happened when he found out that Colin was not a cripple—his chin was twitching and he was staring and winking and his leathery old ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and Queen of the Pelicans we; No other Birds so grand we see! None but we have feet like fins! With lovely leathery throats and chins! Ploffskin, Pluffskin, Pelican jee! We think no Birds so happy as we! Plumpskin, Ploshkin, Pelican Jill! We think so then, ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... of light afar into the darkness. The only sounds were the low wash of the surf and the hum of the eager mosquitoes. Brown was silent, alternately puffing at the pipe and slapping at the insects, which latter, apparently finding his skin easier to puncture than that of the tanned and leathery Atkins, were making the most of ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... odor of republicanism about everything one eats here, which is enough to ruin the healthiest appetite, and a certain barbaric uniformity in the bill of fare which would throw even a Diogenes into despair. May the devil take your leathery beef-steaks, as tough as the prose of Tacitus, your tasteless, nondescript buckwheats, and your heavy, melancholy wines, and I swear it would be the last ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... not in the fashion that cowboys can," said Dave, and then he invited Sid Todd to sit down with them, which the cowboy did. He was a man of about forty, tall and leathery. His eyes were bubbling over with good humor, but they could become very stern when the occasion demanded it. Laura had become well acquainted with him during her former visit to the ranch, and knew that the Endicotts trusted him implicitly. While he had taught her how to ride, cowgirl fashion, ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... best shape. He saw that leaves about a foot long with broad and tapering points would be best. He saw too, that if the leaves had their veins running parallel with the midrib they would be stronger. He made search and at length found leaves that seemed made for his purpose. They were thick and leathery and tapered from base to ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... they had discovered at supper the night before, consisted of Grandma Watterby, her son Will, a man of about forty-five, and the daughter-in-law, Emma, a tall, silent woman with a wrinkled, leathery skin, a harsh voice, and the kindest heart in the world. An Indian helped Mr. Watterby run the farm. In addition there were two boarders, a man and his wife who had come West for the latter's health and who, for the sake of the glorious ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... holding a big knife without a handle between his teeth, he would creep nearer and nearer, crouching low and advancing by little leaps and bounds, with ferocious grimaces which gradually gave place to a look of disappointed appetite, as a closer scrutiny showed how tough and leathery his victim was. Jean could not help laughing at this buffoonery, trivial and ill-bred as it was. His aunt had never got clearly to the bottom of the little farce that dogged her heels, but more than once, turning her head sharply, she had found reason to suspect something ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... unwholesomeness of new bread and hot rolls. When bread is taken out of the oven, it is full of moisture; the starch is held together in masses, and the bread, instead of being crusted so as to expose each grain of starch to the saliva, actually prevents their digestion by being formed by the teeth into leathery poreless masses, which lie on the stomach like so many bullets. Bread should always be at least a day old before it is eaten; and, if properly made, and kept in a cool dry place, ought to be perfectly ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton |
