"Sleek" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... That a polo club existed, called 'The Cuff and Collar Team'. As a social institution 'twas a marvellous success, For the members were distinguished by exclusiveness and dress. They had natty little ponies that were nice, and smooth, and sleek, For their cultivated owners only rode 'em once a week. So they started up the country in pursuit of sport and fame, For they meant to show the Geebungs how they ought to play the game; And they took their valets with them — just to give their boots a rub Ere they started operations ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... and donkeys which come in from the country are generally very picturesque, with a network of crimson silk tassels over their heads, and a bright-coloured manta thrown across their sleek, glossy backs. These mantas serve many purposes; they are made of two breadths of brightly striped and ornamented material of wool and silk, sewn up at one end, or sometimes for some distance at each end, like a purse; sometimes they are thrown across the mule to serve as saddle-bags, ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... prairies alternate; On the vine-tangled islands the flowers peep timidly out at the white men; In the dark-winding eddy the loon sits warily watching and voiceless, And the wild-goose, in reedy lagoon, stills the prattle and play of her children. The does and their sleek, dappled fawns prick their ears and peer out from the thickets, And the bison-calves play on the lawns, and gambol like colts in the clover. Up the still-flowing Wakpa Wakan's winding path through the ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... old-fashioned, long shingles) inside and out, and a friend of his got up on the roof with mortar and a trowel, and pointed-up the brick chimney; and my father and Mr. Sturtevant contributed a load of beautiful, sleek, rich pasture sod and the labor to lay it; so that by midsummer the little domain was the spickest, spannest little dream of a home in the whole county. The young couple bought furniture, and received gifts of furniture, prints, an A1 range, a tiny, shiny, ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... man who loves her a peculiar and almost reverent interest. There was her fancy work lying where she had put it down on the little wicker table, a book with a paper knife in it, one of his own; by its side an open piano, with a little pile of songs on the stool, and a sleek dachshund blinking up at them from the hearthrug. The appointments of the room were simple enough, and yet everything seemed to speak of a culture, a refinement, and withal a dainty feminine charm which appealed to him both as an artist and a lover. She drew an easy chair to the fire, and when ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... which the master sat, with his account-book and bags of specie. A deep obeisance and a scrape of the foot accompanied each payment, and many a giggle was given to the lazy one whose small payment testified to his indolence. What a contrast between those happy, sleek, laughing faces and the sullen, careworn, ill-fed ones of now! In the early springtime, what was known as the "trash-gang," that is, boys and girls who had never worked, were set to clearing up fences, knocking down cotton stalks, ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... days the sleek native missionary was an unknown quantity in the Tokelaus and Kingsmills, and the local white trader answered all requirements. He was generally a rough character—a runaway from some Australian or American whaler, or a wandering Ishmael, who, for reasons of his own, preferred living among ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... potatoes. In one corner of the lot were three tidy-looking negro-houses, and close beside them I noticed a low shed, near which a large quantity of the stalks of the tall, white corn, common to that section, was stacked in the New-England fashion. Browsing on the corn-stalks were three sleek, well-kept milch-cows ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... ever-growing thing. The conspicuous coat of the active though blanching mare made horse and rider easy objects for the vision. Though Darling had been chosen with such pains by Winterborne for Grace, she had never ridden the sleek creature; but her husband had found the animal exceedingly convenient, particularly now that he had taken to the saddle, plenty of staying power being left in Darling yet. Fitzpiers, like others of his character, while ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the house and looked at Benoni. His thin little face was peaceful and happy as if he had found rest and an end of pain. Old Seth Green slouched in after me. Winter pig we used to call him, he was so sleek and fat. He looked at Benoni with a woe-begone expression, and, turning away, helped himself to some liquor ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... arrived for the hurling of the Ultimatum, in very deed "not a gaiter button" was found wanting on their side; and every fighting man was well within reach of his appointed post. Fierce-looking farmers from the remotest veldt, and sleek urban Hollanders, German artillerists, French generals, Irish-Americans, Colonial rebels, all were ready. The horse and his rider, prodigious supplies of food stuffs, and every conceivable variety of warlike stores, were planted at sundry strategic points ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... across the rocks again, side by side. While they stood over the prostrate form of the leopard—beautiful, incomparably graceful and sleek even in death—Guy Oscard stole a sidelong glance at his companion. He was a modest man, and yet he knew that he was reckoned among the big-game hunters of the age. This man had fired as quickly as himself, and there were two small trickling holes ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... sonorous is an English oath. Bright is the steel, arming each clattering hoof! Leather strap and shining buckle, replace musty rope and ponderous knot! The carriage is easier than a Landgravine's,—the horses more sleek,—the driver as civil,—the road is like a bowling green,—the axletree and under-spring, of Collinge's latest patent. But the heart! the heart! ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... the dragonproof bottle, made of burnished brass, and ran back to the wood, and to the dell, where Elfin was sitting among his sleek ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... with hunger, chanced to meet a well-fed Dog, and as they stopped to salute each other, "Pray," {said the Wolf}, "how is it that you are so sleek? or on what food have you made so much flesh? I, who am far stronger, am perishing with hunger." The Dog frankly {replied}: "You may enjoy the same condition, if you can render the like service to your master." ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... Ilus and Assaracus, and Dardanus, founder of Troy. Afar he marvels at the armour and chariots empty of their lords: their spears stand fixed in the ground, and their unyoked horses pasture at large over the plain: their life's delight in chariot and armour, their care in pasturing their sleek horses, follows them in like wise low under earth. Others, lo! he beholds feasting on the sward to right and left, and singing in chorus the glad Paean-cry, within a scented laurel-grove whence Eridanus river surges upward full-volumed through the wood. Here is the band of them who bore wounds ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... The restaurant—destined to be, in after years, so salient a delight of London—was not known to them, but they were often admirable upon the steps of clubs. The Lyceum held them never, but nightly they gathered at the Gaiety Theatre. Nightly the stalls were agog with small, sleek heads surmounting collars of interminable height. Nightly, in the foyer, were lisped the praises of Kate Vaughan, her graceful dancing, or of Nellie Farren, her matchless fooling. Never a night passed but the dreary stage-door was cinct with a circlet of fools bearing ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... consideration of the social rights of man—that they are gifted with a more stirring sympathy for the wants that, in the present iniquitous system of society, reduce him to little less than pining idiotcy, or madden him to what the statutes call crime, and what judges, sleek as their ermine, preach upon as rebellion to the government—the government that, in fact, having stung starvation into treason, takes to itself the loftiest praise for refusing the hangman—a task—for appeasing Justice with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various
... enjoying this most delightful way of life for ten days, and am certainly much better. I begin to eat and sleep again, and cough less. My crew are a great amusement to me. They are mostly men from near the first Cataract above Assouan, sleek-skinned, gentle, patient, merry black fellows. The little black Reis is the very picture of good-nature and full of fun, 'chaffing' the girls as we pass the villages, and always smiling. The steersman is of lighter complexion, also very cheery, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... vagrant thoughts might be, she was entirely unprepared to see a human head, made sleek by sea water, emerge from the floating weeds ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... with a certain amount of respect. Were they framing up something themselves? At any rate I felt that I would rather see them here and know what they were than to be jostled by them in a street car. The sleek proprietor kept a careful eye on them and I knew that a sort of unwritten law would prevent them from trying on anything that would endanger their welcome in a ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... accounts, in which he and the managing-clerk remained so absorbed for the next half-hour that Tom began to wonder whether he should have to sit in this way till the bank closed,—there seemed so little tendency toward a conclusion in the quiet, monotonous procedure of these sleek, prosperous men of business. Would his uncle give him a place in the bank? It would be very dull, prosy work, he thought, writing there forever to the loud ticking of a timepiece. He preferred some other way of getting rich. But at last there was a change; his uncle took a pen and wrote something ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... neighborhood—often including dames and demoiselles who flew their own falcons. Roger was rather proud of the fact that Eleanor could ride as well almost as he could, and was quite as fearless. The bright-eyed sleek-plumaged Mabonde had been her pet for weeks, and would already answer her call and eat from her hand. The little round bells of silver, the jesses and hood of Spanish leather, for the falcon's hunting-gear (Sir Walter's gift) were laid away in Eleanor's own coffret. She looked forward happily to ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... Just near the door was a long chevral glass, and Kitty caught sight of herself in it, wan and spectral- looking, in her white dress, and, as she let the heavy blue cloak fall from her shoulders, a perfect shower of apple blossoms were shaken on to the floor. Her hair had come undone from its sleek, smooth plaits, and now hung like a veil of gold on her shoulders. She looked closely at herself in the glass, and her face looked worn and haggard in the dim light. A pungent acrid odour permeated the room, and the heavy velvet curtains moved with subdued rustlings ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... little bite they ate in wintertime, so that when the grass came again the poor creatures would fall over trying to crop it. They were so starved and weak that, as the saying went, they had to lean up against the fence to breathe. They don't do that way now, as one look at the fine, sleek cows will show you. A cow these days is a different sort of a being, her coat like satin, and her udder generous, compared with the wild-eyed things with burrs in their tails, and their flanks crusted with filth, their udders the size of a kid glove, and yielding such a little dab of milk ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... his ships out of the harbor of Santiago, in that brave dash for the freedom of the open sea, the veteran was engaged in his usual occupation of polishing the sleek coat of one of the big thirteen-inch guns. When the cry went up that the enemy was escaping, he gave a finishing touch to the muzzle and quickly took his station in the turret. Presently he turned to a young gunner near him and said: "Charley, I bet you a month's pay ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes
... though young, by no means raw, Had seen a horse, the first he ever saw: "Ho! neighbour wolf," said he to one quite green, "A creature in our meadow I have seen,— Sleek, grand! I seem to see him yet,— The finest beast I ever met." "Is he a stouter one than we?" The wolf demanded, eagerly; "Some picture of him let me see." "If I could paint," said fox, "I should delight T' anticipate your ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... a sleek jaguar showed himself. Again a drove of peccaries peered out from among the underbrush, and more than once Cummings was forced to exert all his authority to prevent the Indians from stopping to bag an incautious tapir which had come to ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... thief was seated in the very corner which he had destined for himself, bending over the pages with every appearance of absorption. Her face was hidden from view, and all that could be seen was a trim little figure in a trim white gown, a pair of trim little feet, a sleek brown head, and a well-rounded cheek. No one could deny that it was a pleasing figure, but the lordly stranger was too much ruffled in his feelings to be influenced by appearances. His manner was perhaps a trifle less haughty than it would have been, had the thief taken the shape ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... After some dusty tramping, I found a captain of the Staffords, saluted, and made my request. We were, I suppose, about equal in social station, but I suddenly—I don't know why—felt what a gulf the service put between us. He was sleek and clean, and talking about the hour of his dinner to another one, just as if he were at a club. I was dirty, unshaven, out at knees, and was carrying half a sack of fuel—a mission like this has to serve subsidiary purposes—and felt like an abject ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... on my right So sleek, so prosperously clad! What see you in that aged wight That makes your smile so gay and glad? What opportunity unmissed? What golden gain, what pride of place? What splendid hope? O Optimist! What read you ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... table, and beside them three gentlemen who lived in the neighbourhood. They were laughing, and feasting, and pledging each other in glasses of wine, and, as he looked at them, he wondered how he had ever allowed the sleek, cunning-looking steward to become Lord of Linne in ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... good-natured, no-account, irreverent fisherman, hunter, boys' friend, stray-dogs' friend, typical "Sam Lawson" of the town. The little mean, smirking, oily Pinkerton showed the sack to all comers, and rubbed his sleek palms together pleasantly, and enlarged upon the town's fine old reputation for honesty and upon this wonderful endorsement of it, and hoped and believed that the example would now spread far and wide over the American world, and be epoch-making in the matter of moral regeneration. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and take a walk, although it was so early. He had already heard sounds in the house, as though somebody was astir; so he rang the bell. It was answered by a sleepy and disheveled personage, whom he scarcely recognized for the sleek "night chamberlain," whose duty it was to watch while others slept, and who had given him a bed-candle ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... starved, he presented a pitiable contrast to his wife, neat little lady, who, after her husband had lost his situation, left him and joined a respectable circle of cows and spent her time with them, fat, sleek, eminently respectable, and as regular as clockwork in taking them out to pasture and bringing them home. The moral point that I wish to make is this—if you give a woman half a chance she will be a lady; ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... apparently grey, and with several persons inside, had gone by at a tremendous pace not long before. That sounded as if the car we chased could not be far away. Our eyes searched the tell-tale dust, and found the sleek, straight trail of a pneu in the midst of wobbling cart tracks. We had but to follow that straight trail, then, I said, to come up with Carmona and ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... dark and sleek as greyhounds, as they stood impatiently stamping the paving-stones, while a visible cloud of vapor rose from ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... saw everything transfigured; the splendid Shire horses; the famous bull, progenitor of a coming race; the sheds full of glistening cows and mottled calves. These smooth, sleek creatures, housed there for the profit of Canada and her farm life, seemed to Elizabeth no less poetic than the cattle of Helios to Delaine. She loved the horses, and the patient, sweet-breathed kine; she found even a sympathetic ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... their ship stood on was part of the crater, he saw, with an Earth bulldozer working on it. There was room for no more than ten ships now. Two of the berths were occupied by fat Earth ships, sleek and well kept. Three others held the pitted, warped hulks of Meloan battleships. There were no native freighters, and no sign of tending ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... overhead, Like ghost she gloats, her lean hand laid On alabaster balustrade, And gazes on and on Down on that wondrous to and fro Till finger and foot are cold as snow, And half the night is gone; And dazzled eyes are sore bestead; Nods drowsily the sleek-locked head; And, vague and far, spins, fading out, That rainbow-coloured, reeling rout, And, with faint sighs, her spirit flies ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... which David had entertained, that she might one day be mistress of that fair lordship. Just while this disappointment was bearing heavy on his spirits, Butler comes before his imagination—no longer the half-starved threadbare usher, but fat and sleek and fair, the beneficed minister of Knocktarlitie, beloved by his congregation—exemplary in his life—powerful in his doctrine—doing the duty of the kirk as never Highland minister did before—turning sinners as a colley dog turns sheep—a ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... fitted for hunting, were twelve sleek, fleet hounds. Taken altogether, here was a sight to make a hunter's ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... the vulgar costermonger to bestride his long-ear'd Arabian, and belabor his panting sides with merciless stick and iron-shod heels to impel him to the goal in the mimic race—or the sleek and polish'd courtier to lick the dust of his superiors' feet to obtain a paltry riband or ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... and malaria prevail among them; their work is terribly arduous; they suffer greatly from exposure; they appear to be starving in the midst of abundance. My coolie showed well by contrast with the trackers; he was sleek and well fed. A "chop dollar," as he would be termed down south, for his face was punched or chopped with the small-pox, he swung along the paved pathway and up and down the endless stone steps in a way that made me breathless to follow. We passed a few straggling houses and wayside shrines ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... of willow sticks wherewith to coax Chub to a little brisker pace, and then we took the trail of the departed mess-wagon. Shortly, we topped a low range of hills, and beyond, in a cuplike valley, was the herd of sleek beauties feeding contentedly on the lush green grass. I suppose it sounds odd to hear desert and river in the same breath, but within a few feet of the river the desert begins, where nothing grows but sage and greasewood. ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... cost our horses much exertion to drag the limbers up the steep, slippery trail. It was curious to notice the difference between those who dwelt along the bank and the inhabitants of the upland plateau. The latter appeared distinctly more "outlandish" and less sleek and prosperous. The highlands we found veiled in mist, and as I looked back at the dim outlines of horse and man and caisson, it seemed as if I were ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... and the sign of it that won and that gave general satisfaction, even to the man who lost, was a group of German soldiers sweeping the streets of St. Pol. They were guarded only by one of their own number, and they looked fat, sleek, and contented. When, on our return from the trenches, we saw them again, we knew they were to be greatly envied. Between standing waist-high in mud in a trench and being drowned in it, buried in it, blown up or asphyxiated, ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... Shelley biography is a literary cake-walk. The ordinary forms of speech are absent from it. All the pages, all the paragraphs, walk by sedately, elegantly, not to say mincingly, in their Sunday-best, shiny and sleek, perfumed, and with boutonnieres in their button-holes; it is rare to find even a chance sentence that has forgotten to dress. If the book wishes to tell us that Mary Godwin, child of sixteen, had known afflictions, the fact saunters forth in this nobby ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... into the innermost heart of the shoal, as if from some mountain torrent we had slid into a serene valley lake. Here the storms in the roaring glens between the outermost whales, were heard but not felt. In this central expanse the sea presented that smooth satin-like surface, called a sleek, produced by the subtle moisture thrown off by the whale in his more quiet moods. Yes, we were now in that enchanted calm which they say lurks at the heart of every commotion. And still in the distracted distance we beheld the tumults of the outer concentric circles, and saw ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... already admitted that for me he is more especially the man who in his youth had eaten roast dog in the depths of a gloomy forest of snow-loaded pines. My memory cannot place him in any remembered scene. A hooked nose, some sleek white hair, an unrelated evanescent impression of a meagre, slight, rigid figure militarily buttoned up to the throat, is all that now exists on earth of Mr. Nicholas B.; only this vague shadow pursued by the memory of his grandnephew, the last surviving human being, I suppose, of all those ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... a fat sleek Rat was caught in a shower of rain, and being far from shelter he set to work and soon dug a nice hole in the ground, in which he sat as dry as a bone while the raindrops splashed outside, making ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... cats. I have seen one afternoon, as many as thirteen of them seated on the grass beside old Milne, the Master Builder, all sleek and fat, and complacently blinking, as if they had fed upon strange meats. Old Milne was chanting with the saints, as we may hope, and cared little for the company about his grave; but I confess the spectacle had an ugly side for me; and I was glad to step forward and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bench was occupied by Timothy, sleek and complacent, with a snowy breast and white paws. After old Robert had taken a mouthful of anything he gave a piece to Timothy, who ate it daintily ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... deemed a fortune, and which he treated as merely so much oil, with which to lubricate the machinery of his great enterprise. She had heard, at various times, the embittered details of the disappearance of this money, little by little. Nearly a quarter of it, all told, had been appropriated by a sleek old braggart of a company-promoter, who had cozened Joel into the belief that London could be best approached through him. When at last this wretch was kicked downstairs, the effect had been only to make room for ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... always in the antechamber, but never entered his presence unless sent for, and then only with every mark of humility. His dress, which he often changed, was sometimes made of vicuna wool, sometimes of bats' skins, sleek as velvet. Nothing which he had worn could be used by another; when he laid it aside it was burned. To while away the time the Spaniards taught him to play chess, at which he became expert, spending upon it many of the tedious hours of his imprisonment. Soon after the return of Hernando ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... about me that are fat: Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights: Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous. SHAKESPEARE: Julius ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... facing the valley. It was deep in grass, watered with streams like twisting shining ribbons, and held a sleek slow-grazing ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... 'Snifter and Snivell's Reports,' vol. 86, page 1480, in which an old woman, who was too poor to purchase a Bible, stole one, and was prosecuted for the theft. The counsel for the prosecution and the defence were both equally eminent and able. Counsellor Sleek was for the prosecution and Rant for the defence. Sleek, who was himself a religious barrister, insisted that the locus delicti aggravated the offence, inasmuch as she had stolen the Bible out of a church; but Rant maintained that the locus delicti was a prima ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... presume to eat a bit: Turn every way thy watchful eye, And every guest be sure to ply: Let never at your board be known An empty plate, except your own. Be these thy arts;[34] nor higher aim Than what befits a rural dame. "But Cloacina, goddess bright, Sleek——claims her as his right; And Smedley,[35] flower of all divines, Shall sing the Dean in ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... questioned every gust of rugged wings, That blows from off each beaked promontory: They knew not of his story, And sage Hippotades their answer brings, That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed, The air was calm, and on the level brine Sleek Panope with all her sisters played. It was that fatal and perfidious bark Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark, That sunk so low that sacred head of thine. Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow, His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge, Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge, ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... to do yourselves most uncommonly well. I don't mean anything personal, of course. I am just stating a self-evident fact. Commerce is in the air—you all reek of success. And so even shopwalkers, like Worthington, and that thrice odious puppy Farge, grow sleek, and venture to spread themselves in the presence of their betters—in the presence of a scholar and a gentleman, who is well connected and has received a classical ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... sturdy quality of such as he was the one strong factor that worked for freedom. Gainsborough was never a tuft-hunter: he toadied to no man, and his swinging independence refused to see any special difference between himself and the sleek, titled nobility. He asked no favors of the Academy, no quarter from his rivals, no grants from royalty. This dissenting attitude probably cost him the mate of the knighthood which went to Sir Joshua, but behold the paradox! he was usually closer ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... the difference between the appearance of cats and dogs hereabouts, and in England or any northern country; and the difference in their temperaments. Our dogs are alert in their movements and of wideawake features; here they are arowsy and degraded mongrels, with expressionless eyes. Our cats are sleek and slumberous; here they prowl about haggard, shifty and careworn, their fur in patches and their ears a-tremble from nervous anxiety. That domestic animals such as these should be fed at home does ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... Lays of the Shattered Heart-strings. It a hard thing that a poet may not protrude his gentle sorrows for our commiseration, mourn over his blighted hopes, or rejoice the bosom of some budding virgin by celebrating her, in his Tennysonian measure, as the light-tressed Ianthe or sleek-haired Claribel of his soul, without being immediately greeted by a burst of impertinent guffaws, and either wantonly parodied or profanely ridiculed to his face. So firm is our belief in the humanising influence of poetry that we would rather, by a thousand times, that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... two figures, locked in deathlike embrace, stumbled through the doorway of the cave to the outer porch. One was Om-at, the other a creature of his own kind but with a rough coat, the hairs of which seemed to grow straight outward from the skin, stiffly, unlike Om-at's sleek covering. The two were quite evidently well matched and equally evident was the fact that each was bent upon murder. They fought almost in silence except for an occasional low growl as one or the other acknowledged thus some ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... "Come, ram, with thy blunt-muzzled kids and sleek wives at thy side, Where winds the brook by woodlands myriad-deep: There is her haunt. Go, Stump-horn, tell her how Proteus plied (A god) the shepherd's trade, ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... bravely through the ceremony as the father of the bride, and bore himself with his usual massive, rude dignity. But he inwardly winced as he saw Elga, looking very stately and beautiful in her bride's veil, towering half a head above the sleek-haired little clerk. Not a few of the company smiled at the contrast, but she had no other feeling ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... tegmentajxo. Slaughter (animals) bucxadi. Slaughter mortigi. Slaughter-house bucxejo. Slave sklavo. Slavery sklaveco. Slavish sklava. Slavishness sklavemo. Slay mortigi. Sled, sledge glitveturilo. Sleek glata. Sleep dormi. Sleet hajlnegxo. Sleeve maniko. Sleigh glitveturilo. Slender maldika. Slender (graceful) gracia. Slice trancxajxo. Slide glitejo. Slide gliti. Slight maldika. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... ill to carry on at the Front, were sent there for a rest. These too were attacked by these fellows and told that if they were ill they should be on a hospital ship or if not ill they ought to be at the Front. These men have no intention themselves of going nearer the Front, they are all fat and sleek and live on the fat of the land, are faultlessly dressed, and strut about with their monocles, looking with contempt on all the poor devils who are doing the dirty work. Every one is now up in arms ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... me cold. It was blue-gray in the first place. In the second, the eyes were rolled back till you could only see the whites of them; and, in the third, the face was the face of a demon—a ghoul—anything you please except of the sleek, oily old ruffian who sat in the daytime over his turning-lathe downstairs. He was lying on his stomach with his arms turned and crossed behind him, as if he had been thrown down pinioned. His head and neck were the only parts of him off the floor. ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... its landscapes green and cool, Sleek cattle standing in shadow or pool, And dairy-maids bearing pail and stool,— That is the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Moyne wait till de crap comes off, an' den yer'll make it all squar wid him. I tell yer what, 'Liab, it's gwine ter be great times fer us niggers, now we's free. Yer sees dat mule out dar?" he asked, pointing to a sleek bay animal which he had tied to the rack in front of the house when he ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... never,' she answered. It appeared atrocious and Flemish-clumsy, spreading out and overshadowing the Queen's heavy face. Their English hoods with the tails down made the head sleek and comely; or, with the tails folded up and pinned square like flat caps they could give to the face a ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... the gorgeously embroidered robes of a high caste Chinese lady, her fair hair covered by a sleek black wig that struck out something odd, almost ominous, in the coloring of her skin, the very planes of her features. Outside, along the porch, sounded the patter of many feet; Skeet wriggled through the narrow frame under her tall sister's ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... who exclaims 'pshaw,' when he glances his eye on the praises of Deity, is an egotist; an old man, when he speaks contemptuously of love verses is an egotist; and the sleek favourites of fortune are egotists when they condemn all 'melancholy discontented' verses. Surely it would be candid not merely to ask whether the poem pleases ourselves, but to consider whether or no there may not be others, to whom it is ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... your friend: Virgil at first, that faithful heart and true, And Varius after, named my name to you. Brought to your presence, stammeringly I told (For modesty forbade me to be bold) No vaunting tale of ancestry of pride, Of good broad acres and sleek nags to ride, But simple truth: a few brief words you say, As is your wont, and wish me a good day. Then, nine months after, graciously you send, Desire my company, and hail me friend. O, 'tis no common fortune, when one earns ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... usual but perfectly calm, his head bent a little to one side and his smooth hair, which had been slightly ruffled in the encounter in the park, as smooth as ever. It was a very distinctive feature of him; it was part of the sleek and spotless neatness which Mrs. Ambrose so ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... Your sleek patrician sisters dwell On lawns where gleams the shrub's trim bosk, In terraced gardens, tended well, Near pebbled walk and quaint kiosk. In costliest urns their colors rest; They beam on beauty's ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... consisting of so few persons. The principal individual in the group was a florid, fat, happy-looking gentleman of about fifty, with a profusion of nearly white whiskers, which met at his chin, mounted upon a sleek charger, whose half-ambling, half-prancing pace, had evidently been acquired by long habit of going in procession; this august figure was habited in a scarlet coat and cocked hat, having aiguillettes, and all the other ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... have been so fierce and burning. Two of us started off to find a spring. We made our way from shade to shade, expiring at every step, and finally, at the base of the hill, on the brink of the swamp, discovered a rill of tepid water, that evaporated before it had trickled a hundred yards. If a sleek and venomous water-snake—for there were thousands of them hereabout—had coiled in the channel, I would still have sucked the draught, bending down as I did. Then I bethought me of my pony. He had neither been fed nor watered ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... upon her. It had marred her beauty but Samson writes, "the girl was still very handsome. She was well filled out and stood as straight as an arrow and was always dressed as neat as a pin. I fear she was a little extravagant about that. She carried her head like a sleek, well-fed Morgan colt. She was kind of scared to meet Harry for fear of what he'd think of those little marks on her face but I told her not ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... get to the next platform and catch my train to Ealing. I was just killing time about the station. I like seeing a train come in—the gleam and smoke and rush and whirr of the evil-looking thing—and the sudden metamorphosis of its sleek sides into mouths belching forth humanity. I think of Hades. This, by the way, isn't a bad representation of it—the up-to-date Hades. They've got a railway bridge now across the Styx, and Charon has a gold band ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... discouraged because of these attacks, it will be all over with you, as you will have no strength left to withstand them. In that case I advise you to brush your hair, to put oil on it, and so make it lie as sleek as that of the famous Corsican; but even that would never do, for Napoleon had such sleek hair that it was quite original. Well, you might try to brush your hair as smooth as Prudhon's, [Footnote: Prudhon was one of the artistes of the Theatre Francais.] then there would be no risk for you. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... permitting it. At his time of life to be "good" is to insult humanity. Goodness is proper to the aged; it is their sole glory; why should this milky stripling bring it into disrepute? Why should he be permitted to defile with the fat of his sleek locks a crown intended to adorn the grizzled ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... undecided where to go, and he hobbled along a little, to get out of the crowd, and to plan a little what he should do. As he stood there undecided, waiting a little, hanging upon his crutches, two young men came along, sleek, well-fed, laughing. He recognised them at once—two of his old colleagues in the office. They glanced in his direction, looked down on his pinned-up trouser leg, caught his eye, and then, without ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... called for, de Spain walked with him out into the barn to inspect the horses. Passing the very last of the box-stalls, the manager saw in it a pony. He stopped. No second glance was needed to tell him it was a good horse; then he realized that this wiry, sleek-legged roan, contentedly munching at the moment some company hay, ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... a satirist by profession, the sleek courtier Horace spared the emperor's vice, contenting himself with only declaring that play was forbidden.(27) The two following verses of his, usually applied to the effects of gaming, really refer ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... (Goes up to table as if to resume darning, and looks out of window.) Why, as I live, there is Monna Giovanna coming down the hill from the castle. Stops and stares at our cottage. Ay, ay! stare at it: it's all you have left us. Shame upon you! She beautiful! sleek as a miller's mouse! Meal enough, meat enough, well fed; but beautiful—bah! Nay, see, why she turns down the path through our little vineyard, and I sneezed three times this morning. Coming to visit my lord, for the first time in her life too! Why, bless the saints! ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... of the inn at Lichfield, in league with the highwaymen. This sleek, jolly publican is fond of the cant phrase, "as the saying is." Thus, "Does your master stay in town, as the saying is?" "So well, as the saying is, I could wish we had more of them." "I'm old Will Boniface; ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... like the beavers, seemingly take great pride in their toilets. Their fur is always sleek ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... pony corn and hay, With oats to tempt him twice a week; I smooth and curry every day Until his coat is bright and sleek; At night he has a cosy stall; He does not seem to ...
— A Jolly Jingle-Book • Various
... In another country I should have named it as a charred log on an old pine burning, for that was precisely what it looked like. We glanced at it casually through our glasses. It was a sable buck lying down right out in the open. He was black and sleek, and we could make out ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... the agriculturists, and so quiet and solid the evidence of their wellbeing. They own their farms, they love good horses, their wagons are built like ships, and their cattle, as aboriginal as the county families, might be the embodiment of the sleek genius of those hills and meadows, so famous are they for cream. The people of that country live well. They know their worth and the substance which they add to the strength of the British community. And they pride themselves on the legends, peculiarly ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... plump Bess, And all across the green Came scampering in, on wing and claw, Chicken fat and lean: Dorking, Spaniard, Cochin China, Bantams sleek and small, Like feathers blown in a great wind, They came ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... unmistakable aspect of business prosperity about the streets of the city. Everybody seemed active and engaged in some purpose. There were few loungers, and, we must make a note of it, no beggars. It was observable that the large Norman horses used in the working teams were sleek and fat, splendid creatures; such as Rosa Bonheur represents in her famous picture of the Horse Fair. What a contrast these noble, well-kept animals presented to the poor, half-starved creatures to be met with in the East, and, indeed, in only too many ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... congenial errand to do, and striking a "bee line" across the prairie, over a river, through a grove, halted before a cosy cottage that would remind one of New England. The acres and acres of tilled land stretched away from the dwelling, enclosed in the most substantial manner, and sleek cattle, that fed in the rich pasture, bespoke competency and enterprise. He stopped not to knock at the door, but entering, asked of a ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... steadily against the ground with one impatient hinder foot, clink, clink, clink upon the paved yard. "Easy, damn ye; ye'll smash the bricks!" came a voice. Then there was the smart slap of an open hand on a sleek neck, a quick start, and the rattle of chains as the horse quivered ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... shall ever forget the sunsets of gold across Manila Bay night after night; with great warships and majestic steamers, sleek and slender cutters, white sails, long reaching docks, and graceful Filipino women, silhouetted against the gold? And who shall forget the domes, towers, and pinnacles of the Cathedrals; and the old fort ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... was led out, making sparks fly from her feet as she plunged in passing beneath the doorway. She looked in perfect condition—sleek, mettlesome, strong, and beautiful. Tom's heart leaped at the sight of the splendid creature, who turned a responsive head at the sound of his voice, and dropped her ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... from the body to unite with, it combines with the fat, and some other soft portions of the body, which the Author of nature seems to have provided for this very purpose; as is seen in the case of hibernating animals, who enter their places of winter abode sleek and fat, but crawl out in the spring not merely deprived of their fatty matter, but also with great diminution of all the softer parts, which have given up their share of carbon to supply animal heat. One important ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... short, if the truth must be displayed In puris—Beauty wasn't a maid. Beauty, furry and fine and fat, Yawny and clawy, sleek and all that, Was a pampered and ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... were already there. The robin came on to the rail fence, and with rain pouring off his sleek coat, bade us "Be cheery! be cheery!" the bluebird sat silent and motionless on a fence post; the "veery's clarion" rang out all the evening from the valley below; many little birds sang and ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... down under that scarcely veiled threat. The sight of Pratt, of his self-assurance, his comfortable offices, his general atmosphere of almost sleek satisfaction, had roused her temper, already strained to breaking point. But that smile, and the quiet look which accompanied his last words, warned her that anger was mere foolishness, and that she was in the presence of a man who would have to be dealt with calmly if ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... grief that really exists were some rare and precious brand of joy or grief. In its trivial conversational uses so simple and pure a thing as joy becomes a sandwich-man—humanity degraded to an advertisement. The poor dejected word shuffles along through the mud in the service of the sleek trader who employs it, and not until it meets with a poet is it ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... with me," said the queen to the clown, "and let me stroke your dear cheeks, and stick musk-roses in your smooth, sleek head, and kiss your fair large ears, ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... too much to say that Gib was another creature. That once dilapidated-looking object, under Ermine's fostering care, had developed into a sleek, civilised, respectable cat; and as he sat on her lap, purring and blinking at the wood-fire, he suggested ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... the lingo of the New York street gamin. A dignified person named James may be greeted with: "Hully Gee! Chimmy, when did youse blow in?" He likes to mimic and imitate types, generally, that are distasteful to him. The sanctimonious hypocrite, the sleek speculator, and others whom he has probably encountered in life are done "to ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... faces of wolves and foxes. They followed their visitors into the church, where there was only an old woman praying to a picture, beneath which hung a votive hand and foot, and a few young Huron suppliants with very sleek hair, whose wandering devotions seemed directed now at the strangers, and now at the wooden effigy of the House of St. Ann borne by two gilt angels above the high-altar. There was no service, and the visitors soon quitted the chapel amid the ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... when, being in trade, he would sell you saltpetre, he tries you with flax-seed; when he would buy indigo, he offers you indigo at a sacrifice. Yet, in Asirvadam, if any quality is more noticeable than the sleek respectability of the Baboo, it is the jealous orthodoxy of the Brahmin. If he knows in what presence to step out of his slippers, and when to pick them up again with his toes, in jaunty dandyisms of etiquette, he also makes the most of his insolent order and its patent of privilege, and wears ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... of humble fidelity. Into our midst come each year thousands of boys who are strangers in the great city. Passing along the streets these lonely lads behold each horse having some friendly hand to care for it. Yea! each sleek dog hath some owner's name engraven on the collar for the neck. But for the youth, weeks pass by, and no face lifts a friendly smile, no hand is outstretched in gentle kindness, and oft the thought is bitter: "No man careth for my soul." The youth who sits ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the sound Of rusling leaves, but minded not, as used To such disport before her through the field, From every beast; more duteous at her call, Than at Circean call the herd disguised. He, bolder now, uncalled before her stood, But as in gaze admiring: oft he bowed His turret crest, and sleek enamelled neck, Fawning; and licked the ground whereon she trod. His gentle dumb expression turned at length The eye of Eve to mark his play; he, glad Of her attention gained, with serpent-tongue Organick, or impulse of vocal air, His fraudulent temptation thus began. Wonder not, sovran ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... away with him from the feasts of the rich which he attended. He lacked the power to make the most of his opportunities. The ability to cultivate acquaintances, to push his way into a good place in this sleek company of the well-to-do,—an ability characteristically American,—he was utterly without. It would be better for him, he reflected with depression, to return to Marion, Ohio, or some similar side-track ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... young woman," about 23 years of age, neatly dressed, not black, but slightly coloured. The auctioneer was a sleek-looking fellow, with a face that indicated frequent and familiar intercourse with the brandy-bottle. He stood upon a platform, about four feet high. Behind him was a table, at which a clerk sat to record the sales. High above was a semi-circular board, ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... The sacrifices have dwindled down to nothing. Zeus has put down his eagle. Hera has eaten her peacocks. Apollo's lyre is never heard—pawned, no doubt. Bacchus drinks water, and Venus—well, you can imagine how she gets on without him and Ceres. And here you are, sleek and comfortable, and never troubling yourself about your family. But you had better, or I swear I will tell Zeus; and we shall see whether these Christians will keep you with your ante-chamber full of starving gods. Take a day to think of what I ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... grin was very sleek and sly: Timidly we passed him by. He did not seem at all to care: So, thinking we were safely past, We ventured to look back at last. O, dreadful blank!—He was not there! He must have hid behind his chest: We did not stay ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... jungle. As the mountains died down and faded away in the west there opened out many broad meadows in which were countless sleek cattle tended by somnolent herdsmen on horseback. Much sugar-cane grew, lengths of which were sold to the brawling soldiers' wives and the carload in general, which was soon reeking with the juice and chewed pulp. By afternoon jungle was a rarity and most of the ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... in the lower chamber, which was now dry and clean enough for his luxurious tastes. Their small mother, however, was assiduous in her care; and in an exceedingly short time the youngsters, very sleek and dark in their first fur, were investigating the wonderful, great world beyond their water-gate. They had prodigious appetites, and they grew prodigiously. One, on their very first outing, got ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... her as we drew near with such interest that we forgot to feel shy. No, she was not pretty. She was tall for her fourteen years, slim and straight; around her long, white face—rather too long and too white—fell sleek, dark-brown curls, tied above either ear with rosettes of scarlet ribbon. Her large, curving mouth was as red as a poppy, and she had brilliant, almond-shaped, hazel eyes; but we did not ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and Sal were out with Dad, Joe came home with a four-foot black snake in his hand. It was a beauty. So sleek and lithe and lively! He carried it by the tail, its head swinging close to his bare leg, and the thing yearning for a grab at him. But Joe understood the ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... but the word of command that would have sent the boat hurriedly back to pick up the swimmer was not given. Instead a lusty cry for greater speed ahead urged the sinuous muscles gliding beneath the sleek brown hides; and when Muda Saffir rose to the surface with a cry for help upon his lips Ninaka shouted back to him in derision, consigning his carcass to the belly of ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... noble looking man, in the prime of his life, and of a most benignant aspect. The authority this man, whose name was Kolory, seemed to exercise over the rest, the episcopal part he took in the Feast of Calabashes, his sleek and complacent appearance, the mystic characters which were tattooed upon his chest, and above all the mitre he frequently wore, in the shape of a towering head-dress, consisting of part of a cocoanut branch, the stalk planted uprightly on his brow, and the leaflets ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... his desperateness, she was caught by his sleek force—that air of iron strength under a parlor mask. His long, brown, artistic hands, hard and muscular, indicated an idle force that might be used in many ways. They harmonized with his teeth ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... it not been for the armed unrest of the country across the border. No finer stock than the "Box A" was to be found anywhere. The old lean, long-horned cattle had been interbred with white-faced Herefords, and the sleek coats of their progeny were stretched over twice the former weight of beef. Alaire had even experimented with the Brahman strain, importing some huge, hump-backed bulls that set the neighborhood agog. People proclaimed they were sacred oxen and whispered that ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... shave; level, roll; macadamize; polish, burnish, calender^, glaze; iron, hot-press, mangle; lubricate &c (oil) 332. Adj. smooth; polished &c v.; leiodermatous^, slick, velutinous^; even; level &c 213; plane &c (flat) 251; sleek, glossy; silken, silky; lanate^, downy, velvety; glabrous, slippery, glassy, lubricous, oily, soft, unwrinkled^; smooth as glass, smooth as ice, smooth as monumental alabaster, smooth as velvet, smooth as oil; slippery as an eel; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... moment the joyous song of a lark captivated him; at another, the capering of some colts, or a sleek herd of cattle quietly grazing in a nearby pasture attracted his attention; or a colony of prairie gophers which dived excitedly into their burrows at his approach, amused ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... for me when at last I was to see again my saint, adored so many years in the holy, dusky light of memory. My heart beat and my hands trembled as I stood behind the sleek hotel porter in front of the closed door of the apartment and heard the voice - soft, languidly cordial ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... from Leipzig to Dresden crosses the Elbe,—there, if you happen to have daylight, is a flat, rather clayey country, dirty-greenish, as if depastured partly by geese; with a big full River Elbe sweeping through it, banks barish for a mile or two; River itself swift, sleek and of flint-color; not unpleasant to behold, thus far on its journey from the Bohemian Giant-Mountains seaward: precisely there, when you have crossed the Bridge, is the south-most corner of August the Strong's Encampment,—vanished ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... rien," returned the man, puffing, and giving another lusty sweep, by which he succeeded in forcing the punt fully twenty feet from the shore. "Edouard! cher Edouard!" "Laisse-moi m'amuser,—je m'amuse, je m'amuse," cried the husband in a tone of indignant remonstrance. But Edouard, a tight, sleek little epicier, of about five-and-thirty, had never heard that an oar on each side was necessary in a boat, and the harder he pulled the less likely was he to regain the shore. Of this he began to be convinced, as he whirled more into the centre of the current; and his efforts now really became ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... sadly impaired by providing any inmates at all. He had not much imagination, but with what he had he was addicted to the reconstruction of the Home for Old Men into a kind of "castle in Spain," with himself as castellan, hospitably entertaining about a score of sleek and prosperous middle-aged gentlemen, consummately good-humored and civilly willing to pay for their board and lodging. In this revised project of philanthropy the trustees, to whom he was indebted for his office and responsible for his conduct, had not the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... young—so young that she seemed scarcely to have passed out of puppyhood. Her body was strong and slim and beautifully shaped. In the moonlight the hair under her throat and along her back shone sleek and soft. She whined at the red staring light in Kazan's eyes, and it was not a puppy's whimper. Kazan moved toward her, and stood with his head over her back, facing the pack. He felt her trembling against his chest. He ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... and talked to him, she sang, she patted his sore neck with sleek, dirty little fingers. And finally she won him. George laughed, and entered into her mood. He thought her a very smart little girl, as indeed she was. She had a precocious knowledge of the affairs of her mother's friends, ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... brought their little, wabbly-legged baby deer to introduce to Sally Migrundy; and she rubbed their sleek sides and talked to them so they ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... put it plainly, I cannot like Charles Kingsley. Those who have had opportunity to study the deportment of a certain class of Anglican divine at a foreign table d'hote may perhaps understand the antipathy. There was almost always a certain sleek offensiveness about Charles Kingsley when he sat down to write. He had a knack of using the most insolent language, and attributing the vilest motives to all poor foreigners and Roman Catholics and other extra-parochial folk, and would exhibit a pained and completely ludicrous surprise ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... way down the ramp, Hendricks, Artur, and the three Zenians following. As we came out into the daylight, a silent shadow fell across the great avenue that ran before the entrance, and there, barely clearing the shining roof of the auditorium, was the sleek, fat bulk of the Ertak. Correy had wasted ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... land of difficulties survives with a zeal and vitality which only proves the strength of the obstacles overcome. The flies, the mosquitoes, and the rats are proofs. We have none of your meek little wharf rats here. Ours are brazen imps, sleek and shameless, undaunted by cats or men. Their footmarks are as big as those of young puppies (withal not too well-fed puppies), and their raids on man and beast alike ally them with the horde Pandora loosed. Each day the toll ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... of himself to the analysis-gymnast would ever have been possible, and with the students of Shakespeare (as students go and if they are caught young enough) the habit of analysis is not only a possibility but a sleek, industrious, ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... a slight wink at the second, addressed the tutor. "Supposing you were to happen to forget yourself," said he to that sleek gentleman, "would ...
— Philosophy 4 - A Story of Harvard University • Owen Wister
... bridle-rein to the required length, took a firm grip on Pirate's mane, and vaulted into the saddle. Pirate stood perfectly still. He shook his head. James talked to him and patted his sleek neck, and touched him gently with his heel. Then things livened up a bit. Pirate waltzed, reared, plunged, and started to do the pas seul on the flower-beds. Then he immediately changed his mind. He ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... gobbled up their pies and cake, And everything the mice could bake; They stuffed themselves with good fresh meal, And ruined all they could not steal; They slapped their long tails in the butter Until they made a frightful splutter; Then, sleek and fine in coats of silk, They swam about in buttermilk. They ate up everything they found, And flung the plates upon the ground. And catching three mice by their tails, They drowned them in the water-pails; Then seeing it ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... horse, wear long hair on foot and a halo on horseback, and fail in everything else he attempted. The third of this company of his followers, a young minister of the United Brethren, did not return for some years; then he came, well dressed and looking fat and sleek, and preached to the people on Leatherwood Creek the faith in which he had not faltered. He accounted for the disappearance of Dylks from the eyes of his other worshipers in Philadelphia very simply: he had seen him ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... were. Pickens was little, scrubby, dusty, sandy, mottled, and he resembled a rattlesnake. Hilliard was big, gaunt, bronzed, with huge mustache and hollow, fierce eyes. I never had seen a grave-robber, but I imagined one would be like Hilliard. Bo Snecker was a sleek, slim, slender, hard-looking boy, marked dangerous, because he was too young and too wild to have caution or fear. Blome, the last of the bunch, showed the effects ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... who became Mayor of Paris, and even Minister of War during the French Revolution, "the sleek Tartuffe that he was," is credited with the authorship of the famous revolutionary motto, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... up, and sooner or later he has it out with the old farmer about his clothes. "Well, well, don't rare and pitch like a flax-break: we'll see about it," says the old gentleman. The old farmer takes the boy to town and buys him a sleek, shiny black suit—the coat is a long-waisted, long-tailed frock—and he adds a pair of good "stubbid" shoes, having ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... the chances of adverse weather which March would not suggest as probable in the last week in September. The event justified her unconscious faith. The ship's run was of unparalled swiftness, even for the Cupania, and of unparalled smoothness. For days the sea was as sleek as oil; the racks were never on the tables once; the voyage was of the sort which those who make it no more believe in at the time than those whom they afterwards ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... into an Oceanic Italy; no Athenians can there send sons and gods to a Coreyra: and no Fijian Miles Standish can there walk up and down before his pipe-clayed bandoleers in foreign colonies. How, then, can an over-increase of population be more harmoniously prevented than by making the young and sleek furnish the starving with a plump existence? Is it not, economically viewed, the principle of Dr. Franklin's smoke-consuming pipe applied to the infinitely more important sphere of human existence? The festive table, to which, according to the great Malthus, Nature ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... the gentle things they appear to be, with their soft brown eyes and their sleek coats. On the contrary, they are very fierce and warlike if any attempt is made to ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 26, May 6, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... prince!—in short, his Highness's words acted upon my mind like thunder upon beer. And, moreover, I could almost have sworn that I was an old lean wolf, contemptuously observing a bald ring rubbed by the collar, from the neck of a sleek, well-fed mastiff dog; however, recovering myself, I managed to give as much information as it was in my humble power to afford; and my noble guest then taking his departure, I returned to my open window, to give vent in solitude ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... to the hostler connected with the Wadsworth estate, and now this man brought to the front of the mansion a fine, big sleigh drawn by a pair of sleek-looking, high-stepping steeds. The sleigh was well provided with heavy robes to protect its occupants from ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... curious sort of short nightgown worn over white and flappy trousers, below which were revealed a pair of big, flat naval feet. The first lieutenant, Sabhana—sleek and civil-spoken, but desperately afraid of work—was, we understand, son-in-law to the Admiral Satarah, having to wife the Lady Jiggry, eldest daughter of that worthy, who, with her younger sisters Nouri, Azizi, and "the ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... arrival in Mangadone, and his personality helped to make him a very definite figure in the place. He was a large man, his size accentuated by his full silk petticoat; a man with large feet, large hands and a round bullet head, set on a thick neck. He had a few sleek black hairs at the corners of his mouth, and his long, narrow eyes, with thick yellow whites and inky-black pupils, never expressed any emotion. Clothed in strawberry-red silk and a white coat, with a crimson scarf knotted low ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... the long, long beard, Who dwellest in the deep blue sea, Finest treasures have I heard, And glittering fish belong to thee. The richest pearls beyond compare Are stored up in thy realm below, And Ocean's cows so sleek and fair Feed on the grass in thy ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... fields of independent farmers. Organized counties and all the subordination of social life are there; and there are the noisy school-house, the decent church, the mill, the country store, the fat ox, and the sleek plough-horse. The yankee is there with his notions and his patent-rights, and the travelling agent with his subscription book; there are merchandise from India and from England, and, in short, all the luxuries of life, from Bulwer's last novel down to Brandreth's pills. And all this ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... the corral. Moody, the cook, a grizzled, heavy-featured man, too old for hard riding, expressed no surprise at Pete's message, but awakened the Mexican stableman and told him to fetch up a "real one," which the Mexican did with alertness, returning to the house leading another sleek and powerful thoroughbred. "Take him over to the shack," said Moody. "Harper wants him." And he gave Pete a package of food which he had been preparing while the Mexican was at ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... Carrion Crow hath a coat of black, Silky and sleek like a priest's to his back; Like a lawyer he grubbeth—no matter what way— The fouler the offal, the richer his prey. Caw! Caw! the Carrion Crow! Dig! Dig! in ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... first time since my capture I hated the enemy. The simple, valiant burghers at the front, fighting bravely as they had been told 'for their farms,' claimed respect, if not sympathy. But here in Pretoria all was petty and contemptible. Slimy, sleek officials of all nationalities—the red-faced, snub-nosed Hollander, the oily Portuguese half-caste—thrust or wormed their way through the crowd to look. I seemed to smell corruption in the air. Here were the creatures who had fattened on the spoils. ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill |
