"Lank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... possible in the South. There is a loud rap: the hum of voices ceases. The individual who gives the signal stands at a small table at the end of the long narrow hall. One hand rests upon the table, with the other he nervously toys with a gavel. He is a tall, lean, lank, ungainly chap, whose cheek bones as prominent as an Indian's seem to be on the eve of pushing through his sallow skin. A pair of restless black eyes, set far apart, are apparently at times hidden by the scowls that occasionally ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... as possible from the wild, waving arms, the frenzied eyes, the gaunt and wolfish aspect, the piercing, agonized voice of the fanatic, who had assumed to himself the solemn office of soul-comforter in a time of extremity. I saw from a distance his long, lank figure writhing like a sapling in a storm, as it overtopped the crowd; but his words were lost on my ear, and I sat leaning back against the bulwark with folded hands, absorbed in my own thoughts, when a young girl, bursting from the throng, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... the new entry. A lank, disconcerted, hesitating young man it was, flaxen-haired, gaping of mouth, awkward, stricken to misery by the lights and company. His clothing was butternut, with bright blue tie, showing four inches of bony wrist and white-socked ankle. He ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... proportion less will hurt them. A country fellow at the pleugh, His acres till'd, he's right eneugh; A country lassie at her wheel, Her dizzens done, she's unco weel; [dozens] But gentlemen, an' ladies warst, Wi' ev'ndown want o' wark are curst, [positive] They loiter, lounging, lank, and lazy; Though de'il haet ails them, yet uneasy; [devil a bit] Their days insipid, dull, and tasteless; Their nights unquiet, lang, and restless. And e'en their sports, their balls, and races, Their galloping through public places; There's sic parade, sic pomp and art, The joy can ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... nobody would think it, in this lump," said he, looking at a fat, rolled up, heavy breathing sleeper; "but what signify brains to such a lazy dog? I might kick him for my football this half hour before I should get him awake. This lank jawed harlequin beside him is a handy fellow, to be sure; but, then, if he has hands, he has no head—and he'd be afraid of his own shadow too, by this light, he is such a coward! And Townsend, why, he has puns in plenty; but, when there's any work to be done, he's the worst ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... his seat, and was trying to make up his mind whether he were hungry enough to eat anything or whether it would not be less trouble to drink a glass of iced coffee and go away, when he was aware of a lank shadow cast across the white cloth by the glaring electric light. He looked up and saw Spicca standing there, apparently uncertain where to sit down for the place was fuller than usual. He liked the melancholy old man and spoke to him, offering to ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... you are to note, that till the Sun gets to such a height as to warm the earth and the water, the Trout is sick, and lean, and lowsie, and unwholsome: for you shall in winter find him to have a big head, and then to be lank, and thin, & lean; at which time many of them have sticking on them Sugs, or Trout lice, which is a kind of a worm, in shape like a Clove or a Pin, with a big head, and sticks close to him and ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... directions! Your friend, the curly-haired blonde, with florid complexion, round cheeks, the best possible digestion and respiration, the stomach of an ostrich and the lungs of a pearl-diver, finds it perfectly easy to carry them into practice. You, of leaden complexion, with black and lank hair, lean, hollow-eyed, dyspeptic, nervous, find it not so easy to be always hilarious and happy. The truth is that the persons of that buoyant disposition which comes always heralded by a smile, as a yacht driven by a favoring breeze carries ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that he overbalanced himself and dropped off the post, but only to stay down and caress a little black-and-white dog, which trotted up wagging its stump of a tail, and then beginning to growl and snarl, twitching its ears, as another dog appeared on the scene—a long, lank, rough-haired, steely-grey fellow, with a pointed nose, which, with his lean flanks, gave him the aspect of an animal of a vain disposition, who had tried to look like a ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... by several dogs. They had a good time ranging around over the plain and through the forest after the manner of dogs when let loose, and seemed to enjoy themselves thoroughly. They were large and rather lank animals, and capable of making high speed when necessary. We asked our entertainer what they were specially used for, and were told that the animals were ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... regiment did not differ from any other kind of society. Among their number were good people and bad, clever and silly.... One of them, a certain Avdey Ivanovitch Lutchkov, staff captain, had a reputation as a duellist. Lutchkov was a short and not thick-set man; he had a small, yellowish, dry face, lank, black hair, unnoticeable features, and dark, little eyes. He had early been left an orphan, and had grown up among privations and hardships. For weeks together he would be quiet enough,... and then all at once—as though he were possessed ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... saw him once or twice during these camp days. And he marvelled. The spectacles had gone. The lank, round-shouldered figure had filled and straightened. Suddenly a man had been born. A soldier, too. This fellow of the pen and ledger, this very type of the British clerk who had never handled a rifle in his life and didn't know the smell of powder from eau de Cologne, who had never experienced ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... sweet sake, I beg an alms;" The happy camels may reach the spring, But Sir Launfal sees naught save the grewsome thing,[29] 275 The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone, That cowered beside him, a thing as lone And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas In the desolate ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... the superintendent, were the Sixth Class little boys and girls, the latter painfully starched and still, with hair tortured by many devices into damp links or wispy spirals that passed by courtesy for curls. Very silent and submissive were little girls of Class VI., impressed by the long, lank superintendent in his Sunday black, and believing in many wonders secreted above the dusty rafters or in the wide yellow cupboards. The first classes were nearest the door. The young ladies, if we make reasonable allowance ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... would bring them, waving, shouting a warning as he went. Within a minute they were all together listening to his story. Within another, the rifles from off their saddles in their hands, the ponies left in charge of lank Bob Hoyt, the eight others now remaining moved back as Stetson had come: at first upright, then, crawling, hand over hand until, peeping over the intervening ridge, they saw lying before them the mingled ice patches and ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... himself behind it; and leaning over it and fixing his eyes carelessly upon her, asked what she wanted to look at. His tone and manner struck Ellen most unpleasantly, and made her again wish herself out of the store. He was a tall, lank young man, with a quantity of fair hair combed down on each side of his face, a slovenly exterior, and the most disagreeable pair of eyes, Ellen thought, she had ever beheld. She could not bear to meet them, and cast down her own. Their look ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... selfish, griping miser, betraying his own soul, and holding a false promise to his heart, as with lank jaw, keen eye, and brow knit with anxiety for the safety of his absent wealth, he joined some group, sager if possible to defraud them even of the benefit of their prayers, and attempting to practise that knavery ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... Milmans, Mrs. Norton, Rogers, Sydney Smith and others—among them poor, dear Jane Porter. She told me she was taken for me the other night, and talked to as such by a party of Americans! She is tall, lank and lean and lackadaisical, dressed in the deepest black, with rather a battered black gauze hat and the air of a regular Melpomene. I am the reverse of all this, and without vanity the best-dressed woman wherever I go. Last night ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... small ability as an actress, having never risen beyond the primer stage of mere posing and declamation in which so many players are halted by their vanity—the universal human vanity that is content with small triumphs, or with purely imaginary triumphs. But she had a notable figure of the lank, serpentine kind and a bad, sensual face that harmonized with it. Especially in artificial light she had an uncanny allure of the elemental, the wild animal in the jungle. With every disposition and effort ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... pirate bred under the English virago, and by her fleshed in Spanish blood and ruin.' His influence with James was boundless. He could 'pipe James asleep,' it was said, 'with facetious words and gestures.' They were the more diverting from their contrast with his lank, austere aspect. James had supreme faith in his wisdom, to the extravagant extent, according to his own incredible letter in 1622 from Madrid to the King, of having appointed him a member 'non seulement de votre Conseil d'etat, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... where no oath was heard, and where lank-haired men discussed election and reprobation through their noses; Jew coffee-houses, where dark-eyed money changers from Venice and Amsterdam greeted each other; and Popish coffee-houses, where, as good Protestants believed, Jesuits planned over their cups another ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the liver or pancreas, which, by the peristalick motion of the guts, is a little mov'd to and fro, not with a systole and diastole, but rather with a thronging or justling motion. Viewing one of these Creatures, after it had fasted two dayes, all the hinder part was lank and flaccid, and the white spot II hardly mov'd, most of the white branchings disappear'd, and most also of the redness or sucked blood in the guts, the peristaltick motion of which was scarce discernable; but upon the suffering it to suck, it ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... a very awful penance to them at first. We used to hear them splashing away at the pump and puffing like porpoises; and they came in with shining faces and lank hair in wet rats' tails, the foremost of which they pulled on all occasions of sitting down, getting up, ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... observe that a very special sharply-defined track of mental vision is preferred by each individual who sees them. The influence of the mood of the moment is shown in the curves that are felt appropriate to the various emotions, as the lank drooping lines of grief, which make the weeping willow so fit an emblem of it. In constructing fire-faces it seems to me that the eye in its wanderings tends to follow a favourite course, and it especially dwells upon ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... 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 there it revels; and when that decays, ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... those that are narrow chested or lank and lean, can never learn to float, though once you know how, it is easier and far more comfortable than "falling off ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... evidence against her. Not one of these things that Nature made her do counted on her side, but how they fanned his longing, his desire, and distress! He went to the glass and tried to part his hair with his fingers, but being rather fine, it fell into lank streaks. There was no comfort to be got from it. He drew his muddy boots on. Suddenly he thought: 'If I could see her alone, I could arrive at some arrangement!' Then, with a sense of stupefaction, he made the discovery that no arrangement could possibly be made that would not be dangerous, even ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... your Arabs moan, your camels sigh, and you see the same pattern on the silk, and the same glare beyond; but conquering Time marches on, and by-and-by the descending sun has compassed the heaven, and now softly touches your right arm, and throws your lank shadow over the sand, right along on the way to Persia. Then again you look upon his face, for his power is all veiled in his beauty, and the redness of flames has become the redness of roses; the fair, wavy cloud that fled in the morning ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... the dock, at the foot of the lawn, a hundred yards below, checked his rambling words. Lad, at sudden attention, by his master's side, watched the boat's occupant clamber clumsily out of his scow; then stamp along the dock and up the lawn toward the house. The arrival was a long and lean and lank and lantern-jawed man with a set of the most fiery red whiskers ever seen outside a musical comedy. The Master had seen him several times, in the village; and recognized him as Homer Wefers, the newly-appointed Township Head Constable. The Mistress recognized him, too, as the vehement official ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... with tears in her eyes. "Why, it's nothin' to be away from home a week, mother. And just think how happy I am." But there were more tears; and Jasper stormed at a dog and shook the wagon wheel to satisfy himself that it was sound. The driver, as lank a lout as ever slept in a stable, sat upon a board seat, stuffing his greedy mouth with ginger cake. He took up the lines and clucked to the horses, but it was discovered that something more remained to be said and ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... heart, Like a strong swimmer, bore me up against The howling sea of my adversity. At length o'er Sana, in the act to swoop, I stood like a young eagle on a crag. The traveller passed me with suspicious fear: I asked for nothing; I was not a thief. The lean dogs snuffed around me: my lank bones, Fed on the berries and the crusted pools, Were a scant morsel. Once, a brown-skinned girl Called me a little from the common path, And gave me figs and barley in a bag. I paid her with a kiss, with nothing more, And she looked glad; for I was beautiful, And virgin as a fountain, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... a very grave-looking man, with lank hair, looked forth from the side-door communicating between the shop and the passage, and then stepped forward. "Come in, sir; you are my late uncle's assistant, Mr. Fairfield, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sleeping in his wind-swept farmhouse and watching from its windows the movements of the British, indulged when opportunity offered in the social pleasures of the other American officers. Rough and unattractive in appearance,—he seems to have been a kind of Cyrano de Bergerac, "a tall man, lank and thin, with a huge nose,"—he had, when he chose, a certain amount of social grace, and ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... blaze of lightning illuminated the landscape as far as the eye could see. Ahead of us a flying shape, hair lank and glistening in the downpour, followed a faint path skirting that green tongue of morass which we had noted from ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... dully ahead of her. The water was dark, but the fog was slowly lifting, to show barges at anchor, and empty rowboats rocking by the pier. The tide was low, piles closely covered with shining black barnacles rose lank from the water; odorous webs of green seaweed draped the wooden cross-bars and rusty ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... he 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
... cavalry, about 250 horse. These were certainly VERY irregular. Each man was horsed and armed according to his individual notion of a trooper's requirements. There were lank, half-starved horses; round short horses; very small ponies; horses that were all legs; others that were all heads; horses that had been groomed; horses that had never gone through that operation. The saddles and bridles were only fit for an old curiosity shop. There were ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... Ostia, the night had fallen; and their situation began to be more than questionably safe. Now and then a wolf, slinking across the road towards his ghastly feast, glided like a lank ghost out of the darkness, and into it again, answering Bran's growl by a gleam of his white teeth. Then the voices of some marauding party rang coarse and loud through the still night, and made them hesitate and stop a while. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... that fell thereafter, Yagorsha, imperturbable, the only one who had not laughed, smoothed his lank, iron-gray locks down on either side of his wide face, and went on renewing the sinew open-work in ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... was a ride for life; he understood that thoroughly, and settled down to it, bending low in the saddle, bridle in one hand, revolver in the other. And as he rode his sobered thoughts dwelt now on Lorraine, now on the great lank Uhlan, lying stricken in the red dust of the highway. He seemed to see him yet, blond, dusty, the sweat in beads on his blanched cheeks, the crimson furrow in his colourless scalp. He had seen, ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... insisted upon stopping and shaking hands. This was a young architect from New York, who had from time to time done work for his father's estate and who had also made some alterations at the Little Place in the Country for Edestone himself. He was a tall, lank young man of about twenty-seven, with little rat-like eyes, placed so close to his hawk-like nose that one felt Nature would have been kinder to him had she given him only one eye and frankly placed it in the middle of his receding forehead. His small blonde ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... examination on all witnesses but the naval and military 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 gun. The point they were trying ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... warning in his tones; for he had heard stories of other lads who had left the settlement and had returned home lank, pale, and hungry. ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... walk for a tired man to the Polizeiamt. When I got there I was fortunate in encountering a lank, easy-going old fellow who had been commandeered for the job owing to the departure of all the local police for the war. He was clearly more interested in trying to find out something of his relations in some remote village ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... me, Dick Jenkins, with such a look, or I'll have a finger in that pie, old fellow. I'm no Yankee to be frightened by sich a lank-sided fellow as you; and, by dogs, if nobody else can keep you in order, I'm jist the man to try if I can't. So don't put on any shines, old boy, or I'll darken your peepers, if I don't come very ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... was a ragged, lank, starved-looking man, whose appearance was on this occasion rendered ludicrous by the feathers sticking all over him, and by an expression of dejection which would draw down the corners of his miserable mouth and roll up ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... hips, he roared without restraint while they stood before him lank and straight, as unexpected as though they had been shot up with a snap through a trapdoor 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 ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... probable, but there were cool heads and hands as strong as their own in the room, and in a few minutes they had been dragged apart and stood, each held back by the arms, staring at each other and panting. The lank peacemaker in blue jeans who held Dave Humes shook him gently and with amiable toleration ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... paced the room awhile, and ran Through his lank hair his fingers nervously. At length his plan took shape; he stopped and said "You shall take back your picture to this dealer; Tell him 'tis not for sale, but get his promise To have it, for a fortnight, well displayed At his shop window. This he'll not refuse. Don't sell at any price. ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... to expectation or representation, at least presented facilities and opportunities for living. When the great valleys of Utah were reached, men who a few months before had been strong and hardy, but who now were lank and lean, fell on their knees and offered up thanksgiving for their deliverance, while the exhausted women and children sought repose and rest, which had been denied them for so many ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... a long, lank fellow, who never exerted himself any more than was absolutely necessary, so he simply unwound one of his arms, which was twisted around one of the posts of the bed, and blindly felt above till he found the article desired. Handing them ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... 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 ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... 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 ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... like a lank and ghostly wolf through the tall grass and crops, skirting the barer places and keeping close in to the dusky verges of the hedges. All went well with him till he took the ha-ha ditch at his usual racing pace, and was ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... Felix, and was doing his best to be a light of the Church by resembling nothing but an altar-taper. When they all repaired to the back of the cupboard door in Mr. Audley's room to be measured, his head was found far above Edgar's mark at fourteen, and therewith he was lank and thin, not yet accustomed to the length of his own legs and arms, and seeming as if he was not meant to be seen undraped by his surplice. His features and face were of the family type, but a little smaller, and with much less of the ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... belong to the Melanesian race, which is a collective name for the dark-skinned, curly-haired, bearded inhabitants of the Pacific. The Melanesians are quite distinct from the Australians, and still more so from the lank-haired, light-skinned Polynesians of the eastern islands. Probably a mixture of Polynesians and Melanesians are the Micronesians, who are light-skinned but curly-haired, and of whom we find representatives in the New Hebrides. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... great Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of the shop windows in Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern blue eyes, and queer compressed lips that seemed to say "No smiling permitted," he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable-looking personage, nor one that a well-trained boy would care to ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... 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 ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... the invitation to join him, while his aid-de-camp practised the same airs among the cadets. Then, there was a proportion of civilians and Indian officers returning from furlough or sick certificate, with patched-up livers, and lank countenances, from which two winters of their native climate had extracted only just sufficient sunbeams to leave them of a dirty lemon colour. Next, there were a few officers belonging to detachments of king's troops proceeding ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... path before me leading wherever I choose. These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why are they? Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands my blood? Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank? Why are there trees I never walk under but large and ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... disturbed. So I moored myself on the railing about three yards from Freedham. This could easily be managed, Freedham being one of those boys who were always alone. For a little I pretended to watch the game and then stole a furtive, sideways glance at his lank profile. I had immediate cause to wish I had done nothing of the sort, for he turned his unholy eyes on mine and so disconcerted me that I swung my face back upon the cricket field and affected complete indifference. I even hummed a little ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... disease had condescended to leave to him. His nose, which was his best feature, was beaky, but beautifully aquiline; but his mouth was wide, with a lower lip that sagged loosely from its fellow above. His head was small, and was burdened with a crown of lank black hair which had been allowed to grow Indian-like until it hung upon his shoulders. He was of medium height, and his arms ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... the last faint traces of hope faded from the mind of Nicholas as he looked in dismay around! There were pale and haggard faces, lank and bony figures, boys of stunted growth; little faces which should have been handsome, darkened with the scowl of sullen, dogged suffering; vicious-faced boys, brooding with leaden eyes, with every kindly sympathy and affection ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... exquisitely droll nonsensical nonsense is as uncommon as common sense. The titles of his various books are inviting and informing, as Seaweed and What We Seed. He wrote several parodies on sensational novels of his time. Griffith Gaunt, he made fun of as "Liffith Lank"; St. Elmo, as "St. Twelmo." A Wicked Woman was another absurd tale. But I like best a large volume, "John Paul's Book, moral and instructive, travels, tales, poetry, and like fabrications, with several portraits of the author and other spirited engravings." This book was dedicated, "To the ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... solitary street of Morsbronn the artillery rolled, jolting; cannoneers, wrapped in their wet, gray overcoats, limbers, caissons, and horses plastered with mud. The slim cannon, with canvas-wrapped breeches uptilted, dripped from their depressed muzzles, like lank monsters slavering ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... a severe manner and a freshly starched purple calico, was sitting straight and stiff on the edge of the cretonne-covered lounge, and as he entered she rose to receive him with a visible unbending of her person. She was a lank woman, with a long, scrawny figure which appeared to have run entirely to muscle, and very full skirts that always sagged below the belt-line in the back. Her face was like that of a man— large-featured, impressive, and not without a ruddy ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... not grown out of recognition. A lank figure of a man, red-cheeked, white-bearded, slouch-hatted, and in his shirt-sleeves, stepped forward and ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... than skin deep, a glowing, hidden fire, a ripeness like that of the grape and the peach which grows in the soft air and the sun. And they wither, like grapes that hang upon the stem. I have never seen a handsome, scarcely a decent-looking, old woman here. They are lank and dry, and their bones are covered with parchment. One of these brown-cheeked girls, with large, longing eyes, gives the stranger a start, now and then, when he meets her in a narrow way with a basket of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... life.' In fact (he writes), 'Nash does not only possess the merit of learning how to observe the ridiculous side of human nature, and of portraying in a full light picturesque figures—now worthy of Teniers and now of Callot—some fat and greasy, others lean and lank; he possesses a thing very rare with the picturesque school, the faculty of being moved. He seems to have foreseen the immense field of study which was to be opened later to the novelist. A distant ancestor ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... shadows of the summer night a boy moved from the remuda toward the camp-fire. He was a lean, sandy-haired young fellow, his figure still lank and unfilled. In another year his shoulders would be broader, his frame would take on twenty pounds. As he sat down on the wagon tongue at the edge of the firelit circle the stringiness of ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... from the same instrument. He had a large pair of bellows, with a long slender muzzle of ivory: this he conveyed eight inches up the anus, and drawing in the wind, he affirmed he could make the guts as lank as a dried bladder. But when the disease was more stubborn and violent, he let in the muzzle while the bellows were full of wind, which he discharged into the body of the patient; then withdrew the instrument to replenish it, clapping his thumb strongly ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... an ax on the frosty morning air, wielded by the powerful arm of some hardy chopper. Looking along shore Paul discovered the wood cutter just about the same instant that worthy discovered him. The tall, lank West Virginian eyed the strange looking creature far a second, dropped the ax and started in a lope for his cabin. Suspecting that the curious landsman was going after his rifle, as it is customary for them to shoot at anything in the water they cannot ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... a good deal since the day the Holts found them sitting there. There seemed a greater difference in their ages than there had seemed then, for Katie, as bonnie and fresh as ever, was almost a woman now. Davie was a boy still, long and lank, and not nearly so handsome as he used to be, but there was promise of strength and good looks too, when a few years should be over. He had worked constantly and hard for the last year, and he stooped a little sometimes when he was tired, and Katie was beginning to fear lest he should become ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... third 'dition, one penny!" until the ear wearies of the constant repetition. Cabs rattle incessantly along the street; here, a fast-looking hansom, with a rakish horse, bearing some gilded youth to his Club—there, a dingy-looking vehicle, drawn by a lank quadruped, which staggers blindly down the street. Alternating with these, carriages dash along with their well-groomed horses, and within, the vision of bright eyes, white dresses, and the sparkle of diamonds. Then, further up, just on the verge of the pavement, ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... shoulders, and a hollow chest, which made him look rather frail and delicate, although as a fact he had nothing to complain of on the score of health. His large, dome-shaped head was carried a little on one side; his soft, flaxen hair straggled in lank locks about his slender neck. His face was not handsome, and might even have struck one as absurd, owing to the long, full, and reddish nose, which seemed almost to overhang his wide, straight mouth. But his open brow was splendid; ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Beclere's. It spoils a story to cut it down to a mere sporting episode. There doesn't seem to be anything to tell now except I tell it at length: those great birds, nearly three feet high, with long heads like javelins, and round, clear eyes, and lank bodies, feathered thighs, and talons that find out instinctively the vital parts, the heart and the liver; the bird moves up seeking these. And that is what is so terrible, the cruel instinct which makes every life conditional on another's death. We live upon dead ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... Washington baffed, humiliated, panic-struck. Where are the vaunts, and the proud boasts with which you went forth? Where are your banners, and your bands of music, and your ropes to bring back your prisoners? Well, there isn't a band playing—and there isn't a flag but clings ashamed and lank to its staff. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the top of the bank, not far from where Dacres and Mrs. Willoughby had made their appearance, the Baron caught sight of a tall, lank, slim figure, clothed in rusty black, whose thin and leathery face, rising above a white neck-tie, peered solemnly yet interrogatively through the bushes; while just behind him the Baron caught a glimpse of the flutter of a ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... I hearn ye wuz up Lenox way a lookin fer suthin to dew," inquired Peleg Bidwell, a lank, loose-jointed farmer, who was leaning against a post in the middle of the room, just on the edge ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... Sixty-two, she found Edna Bucher awaiting her. Edna was tall and slender; long and lank, perhaps would be more nearly her description. She was colorless and lifeless. Her one desire seemed to be to be ladylike and to go with the best people. In her lexicon, best meant those with ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... mental qualities, they should be ever highly valued. A manly man! Nature designs such to be the sires of future generations. No danger that we shall fall to worshiping physical beauty again. The only fear is that in this lank, puny, scrawny generation of ours, we shall, out of vanity, underrate such beauty. Let it be ever remembered that this is the ideal, from which any departure ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... bride of five years and obviously proud of it, hurried by, and Mrs. John Barclay drove down the street in her phaeton; Oscar Fernald, with a pencil behind his ear, came out of his office licking an envelope and loped into the post-office and out like a dog looking for his bone; and then a lank figure sauntered down the street, stopping here and there to talk with a passerby, stepping into a stairway to light a cigar, and betimes leaning languidly against an awning post in the sun and overhauling farmers passing down Main Street ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... Wegg had let his dusty friend off lightly, having been baulked in that amiable design of frequently dining with him, by the machinations of the sleepless dustman. He had been constrained to depute Mr Venus to keep their dusty friend, Boffin, under inspection, while he himself turned lank ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... mean the smooth, boyish hair with a parting—not the kind of hair that would be lank if it grew long. Curly all over. Looks uncommonly well, I assure you. She has a capital head. Odd girl; very odd girl! Quiet, thoughtful—not very happy, I'm afraid. Seems to think with dread ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... first stage of twenty-eight years, and perpetuity is assured. A Christian Science Congress will reign in the Capitol then. She probably attaches small value to the first edition (1875). Although it was a Revelation from on high, it was slim, lank, incomplete, padded with bales of refuse rags, and puffs from lassoed celebrities to fill it out, an uncreditable book, a book easily sparable, a book not to be mentioned in the same year with the sleek, fat, concise, compact, compressed, and competent Annex ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... bearded to the cheek bones and with lank locks of hair falling from a coon-skin cap, gave his introduction briefly. They were a party of trappers en route from Fort Laramie to St. Louis with the winter's catch of skins. In skirted, leather hunting shirt and leggings, knife and pistols in the belt and powder ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... with pleasant brown eyes, and brown hair brushed down flat, giving his head the appearance of smallness, looked very lank and Yankeeish among the robust, fat Teutons of the Saxon capital. He was entering Dresden on a late afternoon brown with German sunshine. The school year had begun, but a loitering summer-time brightened city and countryside. As ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... course of events. Their military pursuers are now wending their way in the opposite direction until they are almost lost to view. Now is the time for a last desperate effort. They rush for the shore, and there accost a sallow lank-looking boatman followed by a negro, on the lookout for custom, in their marine calling. A request is made for their boat and services, for conveyance to the ship. At first the man looks suspicious and sceptical, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... when New York had still some New York feeling left; when her old historic names still carried weight and found universal respect, and her old families still ruled society with a despotic sway; and especially before the whole state had been overrun by the lank, angular, loose-jointed, slouching, shrewd, money-worshiping sons of the Puritans, whose restless activity had triumphed over the slow and steady respectability of the original settlers. The scene of this story, so far as it is laid on land, is mainly in the river counties; but in ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... eleven o'clock. It was too late to return to the city, and we agreed to sleep in the church. The next morning, I was surprised to hear a great noise on the outside, and opening the door, looked out and saw a lean, lank, white woman. She was calling to her daughter, "Louisa, Louisa, come here." Her daughter {152} came to her mother and said, "My —— ——, they have painted the nigger church white. We must put a stop to that." They said we would have to ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., June, 1888., No. 6 • Various
... one of the benches sat Kitty Wilson. If I hadn't been blind as a bat and full of trouble—oh, it thickens your wits, does trouble, and blinds your eyes and muffles your ears!—I'd have suspected something at the mere sight of her. For there sat Kitty Wilson enthroned, a hatless, lank little creature about twelve, and near her, clustered thick as ants around a lump of sugar, was a crowd of children, black and white, boys and girls. For Kitty—that deplorable Kitty—had money to burn; or what was even more effective at her ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... fear thee, ancient Mariner! I fear thy skinny hand! And thou art long, and lank, and brown, As ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... pious ardor young Pressaeus brings, Betwixt the fortunes of contending kings; Lank, harmless frog! with forces hardly grown, He darts the reed in combats not his own, Which, faintly tinkling on Troxartas' shield, Hangs at the point and drops ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... four or six oxen, hauling the cut cane. But the villages they passed, single streets of unrelieved squalor in a dusty waste, they decided were immeasurably depressing. No one who could avoid it walked; lank men in broad straw hats and coat-like shirts rode meagre horses with the sheaths of long formidable blades slapping their miserable hides. Groups of fantastically saddled horses drooped their heads tied in the vicinity of a hands-breadth of shade ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Jonathan was fond of money, and the lack of it distressed him worse than a conscience. "If only I could have gold enough," he muttered, "I'd sell my soul for it." Whiz! came something down the chimney. The general was dazzled by a burst of sparks, from which stepped forth a lank personage in black velvet with clean ruffles and brave jewels. "Talk quick, general," said the unknown, "for in fifteen minutes I must be fifteen miles away, in Portsmouth." And picking up a live coal in his fingers ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... size, its shrunk limbs distorted and fleshless, and its lank body covered with filthy rags; its head, of enormous size, was entirely devoid of hair; and the unnatural shape as well as the prodigious dimensions of that bald cranium, betokened beastly idiocy. Its ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... and much bleached, faded and wrinkled. His eyes seemed both enormous in size and sunk almost to his occiput, by reason of being seen through the thickest of glasses. His lank, grayish hair, of no particular color, but resembling autumnal roadside grasses, hung thinly from a high and asymmetrical head, and straggled dejectedly down into a wisp of beard on chin and lip—a beard which any absent-minded man might well be supposed to have failed to observe, and therefore ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... 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 ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... lounging lank, In scuffling circle or in mural rank, Of misery mechanic They look the wooden symbols; nought to show That even well-starched linen's sheeny snow ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... he, pointing one lank fore-finger at me, "Ramsay, draw your neck out of that collar; for the vanities of the wicked are a ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... close-locked ranks they splashed their way through mud and puddle, with many a rough country joke and many a lusty stave from song or hymn. Sir Gervas rode at the head of his musqueteers, whose befloured tails hung limp and lank with the water dripping from them. Lockarby's pikemen and my own company of scythesmen were mostly labourers from the country, who were hardened against all weathers, and plodded patiently along with the rain-drops glistening upon their ruddy faces. In front were the Taunton foot; behind, the lumbering ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... came to London, and saw Fox, Nepean, and Grey. Pitt received him and others of the Irish deputation at Downing Street on the 12th. Scully noted in his diary: "He [Pitt] wore dirty boots and odd-fashioned, lank leather breeches, but otherwise well dressed and cleanly, his hair powdered, etc. He was very courteous and cordial in words and looks, but his carriage was stiff and strait, perhaps naturally so. His face cold and harsh, rather selfish, but acute ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... looked at him with a contempt and loathing such as she had never felt even in all the years of her wedded life. Mr. Hayes was snoring profoundly: by his bedside, on his ledger, stood a large greasy tin candlestick, containing a lank tallow-candle, turned down in the shaft; and in the lower part, his keys, purse, and tobacco-pipe; his feet were huddled up in his greasy threadbare clothes; his head and half his sallow face muffled up in a red woollen nightcap; ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... put to my prenticeship, having made free choice of the tailoring trade, I had a terrible stound of calf-love. Never shall I forget it. I was growing up, long and lank as a willow-wand. Brawns to my legs there were none, as my trowsers of other years too visibly effected to show. The long yellow hair hung down like a flax-wig, the length of my lantern jaws, which looked, notwithstanding ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... not marked, where the full cheek should be, Incipient lines of lank flaccidity, Lymphatic pallor where the pink should glow, And where the throb of transport, pulses low? - Most tragical of shapes from Pole to Line, O wondering child, unwitting Time's design, Why should ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... slight, and he was made to appear the more diminutive, perhaps, by his dress, which consisted of short trousers, a long, coarse jacket, and a flat woollen cap, drawn down to the eyebrows. His hair, hanging, in lank locks, to his shoulders, was light and sandy, and his face was deeply freckled; while a pair of long, falling eyelashes contributed to add still further to the peculiarity of his looks, and to give his countenance, with those who did not note the keen, bright orbs that occasionally peeped from ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... trow right meagre hath been thy fare Since they roused thee at dawn from thy straw-piled lair, To tread with those echoless unshod feet Yon weltering flats in the noontide heat, Where no palmtree proffers a kindly shade And the eye never rests on a cool grass blade; And lank is thy flank, and thy frequent cough Oh! it goes to my heart—but away, ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... 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 ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... is our shop, Nickleby." It was a crowded scene. A bare and dirty room, with a couple of windows, whereof a tenth part might be of glass, the remainder being stopped up with old copybooks and paper. Pale and haggard faces, lank and bony figures, little faces, which should have been handsome, darkened with the scowl of sullen, dogged suffering. There was childhood with the light of its eye quenched, its beauty gone and its helplessness alone remaining—truly an ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... race." And the Heathflower thing was a splendid traveler, coming out of her padded stall as ready to run as when she went into it. She had got to the Bay Park only two days back, in charge of her rubber, Amos, and Black Tim, her jockey. Tim stood at her head, Amos was giving her lank sides their last polish, as Allys and her train ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... broken—God save the mark!—as Terence Reardon remarked after seeing one passed as broken, following five minutes of furious pitching and squealing—Cappy Ricks was one of the first at the corral and the last to leave. Perched on the topmost, rail, he piped encouragement to the lank, flat-bellied border busters who, a dozen times a day, risked life and limb at ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... able now to take a more leisurely view of the Indians whom we had rescued. They were small men, wiry, active, and well-built, with lank black hair tied up in a bunch behind their heads with a leathern thong, and leathern also were their loin-clothes. Their faces were hairless, well formed, and good-humored. The lobes of their ears, hanging ragged ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... promontories of Kennington Cove. But Wolfe's brigade made straight for shore. The French held their fire until the leading boats were well within short musket-shot. Then they began so furiously that Wolfe, whose tall, lank figure was most conspicuous as he stood up in the stern-sheets, waved his cane to make the boats ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... And we are in a Fog! Cabbin' it, Council? Ah! each absent Member May be esteemed a vastly lucky dog! The streets are up—of course! No Irish bog Is darker, deeper, dirtier than that hole SP-NC-R is staring into. On my soul, M-RL-Y, we want that light you're seeking, swarming Up that lank lamp-post in a style alarming! Take care, my JOHN, you don't come down a whopper! And you, young R-S-B-RY, if you come a cropper Over that dark, dim pile, where shall we be? Pest! I can hardly see An inch before my nose—not to say clearly. Hold him up, H-RC-RT! He was down then, nearly, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... out of so many millions, unlooked for, unselected by any intelligible process that could be based upon his genuine qualities, unknown to those who chose him, and unsuspected of what endowments may adapt him for his tremendous responsibility, should have found the way open for him to fling his lank personality into the chair of state,—where, I presume, it was his first impulse to throw his legs on the council-table, and tell the Cabinet Ministers a story. There is no describing his lengthy awkwardness, nor the uncouthness of his movement; and yet it seemed as if I had ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... enraged stepdame, Guendolen, Commended her fair innocence to the flood That stayed her flight with his cross-flowing course. The water-nymphs, that in the bottom played, Held up their pearled wrists, and took her in, Bearing her straight to aged Nereus' hall; Who, piteous of her woes, reared her lank head, And gave her to his daughters to imbathe In nectared lavers strewed with asphodil, And through the porch and inlet of each sense Dropt in ambrosial oils, till she revived, And underwent a quick immortal change, Made Goddess of the river. Still ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... his wife upon a miserable horse, lean and lank, which he had picked out for the purpose, and himself and his servant no better mounted; they journeyed on through rough and miry ways, and ever when this horse of Katharine's stumbled, he would storm and swear at the poor jaded beast, who could ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to the main chance, lavish, but not generous, Philistine to the backbone, blindly devoted to his daughter, and contemptuous of all the myriad mysteries of civilisation that he doesn't understand. I don't know why I should be authorised to imagine him personally long and lank, with possibly a tobacco habit of some sort. His natural history, upon no better authority, is that of a hard-headed farmer, who found out that farming could never be more than a livelihood, and came into the village, and began to lend money, and get gain, till he was in a position ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... dishonoured for ever, at least. He would never dare show his face in town or country. How could he? Mr. Hadley would spit him like a joint. The good Charles! She found some consolation in the memory of Mr. Hadley's sardonic contempt. Nay, but the others, that fire-eating little Scotsman and his lank friend, they were of the same scornful mind about Mr. Waverton. His blusterous bullying went for nothing with them but to call for more disdain. They had no doubt that he cut a miserable figure, that it was he who was ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... housekeeping, that your mother wouldn't like to have see the way she left things," said Kenton, and he smiled at the notion of any one being housekeeper enough to find a flaw in his wife's. "My, but this is pleasant!" he added. He took off his hat and let the breeze play through the lank, thin hair which was still black on his fine, high forehead. He was a very handsome old man, with a delicate aquiline profile, of the perfect Roman type which is perhaps oftener found in America than ever it was ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... nuisance; at worst he was the Terror of Quicksand. His ostensible occupation was something subordinate in the real estate line; he drove the beguiled Easterner in buckboards out to look over lots and ranch property. Originally he came from one of the Gulf States, his lank six feet, slurring rhythm of speech, and sectional idioms giving evidence ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... The Biscayan had an inscription under his feet which said, "Don Sancho de Azpeitia," which no doubt must have been his name; and at the feet of Rocinante was another that said, "Don Quixote." Rocinante was marvellously portrayed, so long and thin, so lank and lean, with so much backbone and so far gone in consumption, that he showed plainly with what judgment and propriety the name of Rocinante had been bestowed upon him. Near him was Sancho Panza holding the halter of his ass, at whose feet was another label that said, "Sancho Zancas," and ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... with believing to be labour pains, till at length, she and her husband became the standing joke of the parish; and this infatuated couple could scarce be prevailed upon to part with their hope, even when she appeared as lank as a greyhound, and they were furnished with other unquestionable proofs of their having been deceived. But they could not for ever remain under the influence of this sweet delusion, which at last faded away, and was succeeded by ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett |
