"Lank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... anxiety they rush about him, sustain him, and give him marches, triumphal entries, and receptions beyond what even in the days of his highest prosperity they could have brought about in his favor. On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out. These are disadvantages all, taken together, that the Republicans labor under. We have to fight this battle upon principle, and upon principle ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... they had already taken, and others wandering restlessly about, or eagerly observing the movements of the fish in the water. One and all of them looked fierce and famished, their bodies showing gaunt and flaky, and their enormous limbs having a lank angular appearance, that gave them a still greater resemblance to heifers—only heifers that had been ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... Heaven, which disposes of all things, Differently regulated this thing. With lank-sided coursers, Lineal descendants from Rosinante, With ploughmen in the dress of postilions, Blockheads of impertinent nature; Our carriages sticking fast a hundred times in the road, We went along with gravity at a leisurely pace, Knocking against ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... was Mr Bircham from their preconceived notions that she could almost have laughed at the contrast. He was very tall and pompous, he wore a lank brown wig which looked as if it might come off at any moment, he had little keen gray eyes which twinkled, and a broad mouth which shut very closely; whether it was grim or humorous she could not quite decide. He was sitting in a swivel chair, and the table strewn with ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... rough, gaunt stems trickling with perpetual damps, stood on either hand the silent hosts of the forest. The skeletons of their dead, barkless, blanched, and shattered, strewed the mudbanks and shallows; others lay submerged, like bones of drowned mammoths, thrusting lank, white limbs above the sullen water; and great trees, entire as yet, were flung by age or storms athwart the current,—a bristling barricade of matted boughs. There was work for the axe as well as for the oar; till at length Lake Oneida opened before them, and they rowed all day over ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... their shaggy coats ruffled by the biting wind. He saw them when came the chinook, a howling, warm wind from out the southwest, cutting the snowbanks as with a knife that turned to water what it touched, and laying bare the brown grass beneath. He saw the riders go out with the wagons to gather the lank-bodied, big-kneed calves and set upon them the searing ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... native of Connecticut, a state which supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woodmen and country schoolmasters. The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Pilgrim Fathers but of reckless adventurers of all kinds. From across the sea came the ships of Tarshish bringing gold, and silver, and ivory, and apes, and peacocks, and a thousand tales of El Dorado. Muggleton the prophet, with that lank brown hair of his and the dreamy eye and the resolute lips, waited unmoved. Pleasure? If he wondered at anything it was to know what meaning there could be in the word. Riches? What purpose could they serve? To him it seemed that the Decalogue contained one wholly superfluous enactment; ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... rural was 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. ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... laughed 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 he was commanded ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... ancient Mariner! I fear thy skinny hand! 225 And thou art long, and lank, and brown, As is ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... raised. Dave Herriot sails the ship mostly, but when we sight a big merchantman with maybe a long nine or two aboard, then's when Stede Bonnet comes on deck. That Frenchman we sunk tonight, blast her bloody spars"—here the lank pirate interrupted himself to curse his luck, and continued—"probably loaded with sugar and Jamaica rum from Martinique and headed up for the French provinces. Well, we'll never know—that's sure!" He paused, bit off the end ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... ambergris. He reported that she sat in mournful modesty, not speaking a word. What was taken from them I know not, but on departing, this gentleman shewed a princely spirit. He was a man of middle stature, of a black colour, with smooth or lank hair. There is considerable trade in these islands, by reason of the cocoa-trees; for they make ropes, cables, sails, wine, oil, and a kind of bread from that tree and its fruit. It is said that there are 11,000 of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... branches of a stone pine; I see wide and far across a purple valley whose sides are terraced and set with houses of pine and ivory, the Gulf of Liguria gleaming sapphire blue, and cloud-like baseless mountains hanging in the sky, and I think of lank and coaly steamships heaving on the grey rollers of the English Channel and darkling streets wet with rain, I recall as if I were back there the busy exit from Charing Cross, the cross and the money-changers' offices, the splendid grime of giant London and the crowds going perpetually to and ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... sweet sake, I beg an alms';— The happy camels may reach the spring, But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome thing, The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone, That cowers beside him, a thing as lone And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas In the desolate ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... as being at this time "very plain in his costume, as well as rather uncourtly in his address and general appearance. His clothing was of home Kentucky jean, and the first impression made by his tall, lank figure upon those who saw him was not specially prepossessing. He had not outgrown his hard backwoods experience, and showed no inclination to disguise or to cast behind him the honest and manly though unpolished characteristics of his earlier days. Never was a man further removed ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... He recognized the white horse as it passed the lamps. He stood still for a space, undecided. Then he sped rapidly toward the side gates of the royal gardens. The vehicle stopped there. But this time no woman came out. Carmichael would have recognized that lank form anywhere. It was the chancellor. Well, what of it? Couldn't the chancellor go out in a common hack if he wanted to? But who was the ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... riding skirt and high-laced boots were made for use, not grace, but the man in the saddle found even in her manner of walking the charm of her direct, young courage. Free of limb, as yet unconscious of sex, she had the look of a splendid boy. The descending sun was in her sparkling hair, on the lank, undulating grace of her ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... door, wondering if it might be possible that Kilmeny should come to it. But a moment later it was opened by an elderly woman—a woman of rigid lines from the hem of her lank, dark print dress to the crown of her head, covered with black hair which, despite its few gray threads, was still thick and luxuriant. She had a long, pale face somewhat worn and wrinkled, but possessing a certain harsh comeliness of feature ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 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 ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 sucks his moisture; those I think the Trout breeds himselfe, and never thrives til ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... clear, ringing sound of 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 ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... the gate at the back of the house, his long, lank figure darkly cut against the background of the white that lay upon the slope. A flurry of blinding snow came suddenly flying on the wind. It wrapped him all about and hid him in its fury, and when the calmer falling of ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... the lank sexton, now fifty or upwards, had passed an hour or two with some village cronies, over a solemn pot of purl, in the kitchen of that cosy hostelry, the night before. He generally turned in there at about seven o'clock, and heard the news. ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... but likewise a thoroughly independent and capable citizen. He was of the lank, hewn, lean-faced, hawk-nosed type, deliberate in movement and speech, with a twinkling, contemplative, appraising eye, and an unhurried drawl. He told Nan he had come ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... for a maid with golden hair, who is perfect, tender and pure, and fit for a king who is old as love, with no trace of love in him. Even now our grinning dusty master wakes from sleep, and his yellow fingers shake to think of her flower-soft lips who comes to-night to his lank embrace and warms the ribs that our eyes have seen. Who will be bride ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... shot, he drops head and tail and assumes the most hang-dog air, without the least sign of self-respect; then crouches and lengthens into a roll, head forward and tail straightened, till he looks like a little, short gray snake, lank and limp. Anon, with a jerk and a sprint, every muscle tense, tail erect, eyes snapping, he darts into the air intent upon some well-planned mischief. It is impossible to describe his various attitudes or moods. In song and call he ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... A lank, muscular man at this moment came around a corner of the house. His face was tanned to the color of mahogany and around his eyes were the tiny wrinkles that come to men accustomed to peer into the wide spaces. He had on a pair ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... not think so," he replied, going back in his mind to the recollection of a thin-legged little girl with lank hair. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... night-cap, and a loose camlet coat, his feet wrapped in blankets. Behind him, with his hands crossed on the cane upon which he rested, stood Dominie Sampson, whom Mannering recognised at once. Time had made no change upon him, unless that his black coat seemed more brown, and his gaunt cheeks more lank, than when Mannering last saw him. On one side of the old man was a sylph-like form—a young woman of about seventeen, whom the Colonel accounted to be his daughter. She was looking, from time to time, anxiously towards the avenue, as if expecting the post-chaise; ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... clear of a stretch of heaven-high peaks, the scintillating shafts of the northern lights shuddered convulsively, like skeleton arms outstretched to grasp the rich gems which hung just beyond their reach. The moving shadows had changed to material forms. Lank, gaunt, hungry-looking beasts crowded just beyond the fire-lit circle; shaggy-coated creatures, with manes a-bristle and baleful eyes which ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... 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 ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... 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. ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... him, only extracted from him a half scornful smile as he coolly regarded them. The fearlessness of ignorance is often as unassailable as the most experienced valor, and the awe-inspiring invaders were at first embarrassed and then humanly angry. A lank figure to the right made a forward movement of impotent rage, but was checked by the evident leader ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... entry of the French into Milan. The pageant was arranged on the lines of a Roman triumph and the distances so calculated that Bonaparte was the one impressive figure. With his lean face and sharp Greek profile, his long, lank, unpowdered locks, his simple uniform, and awkward seat in the saddle, he looked like a new human type, neither angel nor devil but an inscrutable apparition from another sphere. To officers and men the voluptuous city extended wide its arms, and the shabby soldiery ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... would go to the Stroud side under the large beech tree, and sing, till 'twas quite pity of our lives to mark him; for his chin grew as long as a muscle—Oh! a' sung his soul and body quite away—a' was lank as any greyhound, and had such a scent! I hid his love-songs among your Worship's law-books; for I thought if a' could not get at them, it might be to his quiet; but a' snuff'd 'em out in a moment.—Good your Worship, have the wise woman of Brentfort secured—Master Abram may have been ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... on the mantel-shelf, and threw some pine-knots on the fire, which immediately broke into a blaze, and showed him to be a lank, narrow-chested man, past sixty, with sparse, steel-gray hair, and small, deep-set eyes, perfectly round, like a fish's, and of no particular color. His chief personal characteristics seemed to be too much feet and not enough teeth. His sharply cut, but rather simple ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... reply, "but a bankrupt marquess can't. I've got to marry that jade. Pah! She's as lank as a hop-pole and as yellow as a guinea. But what's a marquess to do, Noll? They say she could tie up the neck and armholes of her shift and fill it with diamonds. Damn her! I wish Brocton would snap her up, but he ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... alighting had failed, curiously, to turn the head of an odd, unkempt-looking child,—a girl of nine or ten, with an old calico sun-bonnet flung back upon her shoulders, tangled, sunburnt hair tossing above it; gown, innocent of crinoline, clinging to lank, growing limbs, and bare feet, whose heels were energetically planted at a quite safe distance from each other, to insure a fair base for the centre of gravity,—who, at the moment of their coming, was wrathfully "shoo-ing" off ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... or swim, So he may gratify, without control, The mean resentments of his selfish soul; Let Freedom perish, if, to Freedom true, In the same ruin Wilkes may perish too. With all the symptoms of assured decay, With age and sickness pinch'd and worn away, 420 Pale quivering lips, lank cheeks, and faltering tongue, The spirits out of tune, the nerves unstrung, Thy body shrivell'd up, thy dim eyes sunk Within their sockets deep, thy weak hams shrunk, The body's weight unable to sustain, The stream of life scarce trembling through the vein, More than half kill'd by honest ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... thrust forward as though he were peering at something just out of sight. A courtly touch in his style was probably a matter of inheritance, as was also his capacity for looking suitably attired while obviously neglectful of appearances. His thick, lank, sandy hair, fading to white, and long, narrow, stringy beard of the same transitional hue were not well cared for; and yet they helped to give him a little of the air of a Titian or Velasquez nobleman. In answer to Guion ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... her, close to her heels, was quite the most forlorn specimen of the cat tribe she had ever beheld. The animal was well past kitten-hood, lank, thin, disreputable looking. Pieces of both ears were lacking, one eye was temporarily out of repair, and one jowl ludicrously swollen. As for color, if a once black cat had been well and thoroughly singed the result would have resembled ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... hinds, too poor to house In frosty nights their starving cows, While not a blade of grass or hay Appears from Michaelmas to May, Must let their cattle range in vain For food along the barren plain: Meagre and lank with fasting grown, And nothing left but skin and bone; Exposed to want, and wind, and weather, They just keep life and soul together, Till summer showers and evening's dew Again the verdant glebe renew; And, as the vegetables rise, The famish'd cow her want supplies; Without ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... not a large house. But it is the largest house with which this story has dealings, and must always be thought of with respect. It was built about the year 1800, and favoured the architecture of ancient Rome—chiefly by means of five lank pilasters, which stretched from the top of it to the bottom. Between the pilasters was the glass front door, to the right of them the drawing room windows, to the left of them the windows of the dining-room, above them a triangular area, which ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... the center of the laughing throng, he found Hans catechising a tall, lank country boy named Ephraim Gallup, who was repeatedly forced to explain that he was "from Varmont, by gum," which expression seemed to delight the listening lads more and ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... Steve knocked and a voice called "Come in!" When they entered they saw a tall, lank youth standing in front of a music-rack close to the window. He held a violin to his chin and waved his ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... lank and lean discolour'd cheek, With heavy eye, knit brow, and strengthless pace, Feeble 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 ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... kinds, these passengers, both first-cabin and second-cabin—for the second-cabin passengers were allowed on the upper deck, although not to sleep. A great many were Southerners, including a number of long, lank, dark Arkansans, Georgians, Louisianans and Mississippians. Pistols and knives were plentiful, although notices, posted about the ship, said, plainly: "The Wearing of Deadly Weapons Aboard this Ship is Forbidden." For that matter, another notice said: "Passengers Are Requested ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... his appearance—his tall, lank, muscular form—and mentioned that he had been much in Spain, and I saw that it must be that most ubiquitous ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... even more plainly than he, and had the same spirit of neglectful elegance. She was big, too, for a woman; somewhat lank but well muscled, and decisive in her motions as if she normally abounded in strength. What grace she had was an athlete's, but she looked overtrained or undernourished. Seeing that she did not look well, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... tall, lank, grey-bearded, brought enough devotion for half a dozen followers. He had served with little Akbar's grandfather, Babar the brave, and when he saw the child standing so fair and square, he gave almost a sharp cry of remembrance and delight. And when he stood up ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... shall go with you," she said; and knowing that every moment was precious, and thinking that the only way to pacify her was to make the attempt, the men yielded, and a number of them entered the mine with her, the lank preacher among them. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... penance the more the sin, The more he whopped him the more he drank; Till his hair fell out and his cheeks fell in, And his corpulent figure grew long and lank. ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... I feared that little Rosenheim would smite the lank annoyer dead in his tracks. 'For heaven's sake be careful!' I cried. 'The man is drunk or crazy or he may even be right; the paint on this picture isn't two days old.' 'Correct,' declared the stranger. 'I finished it day before yesterday for this sale.' Then a marked change came over ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... remarkable manner, and taking special notice of her light-brown glossy hair, which seemed to fill them with unbounded astonishment and admiration; as well it might, for they had never before seen any other hair except the coarse curly wool on their own pates, and the long lank hair of the trader, which happened ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... be acknowledged, that a great proportion of the barley that is raised, even in the eastern states, is but very imperfectly suited to the purposes of the brewery, being what is termed winter barley, and generally a poor, thin, lank grain, by no means qualified to make good malt. This is so well known in England, that it is very rarely met with in the barley markets, and seldom, or ever, purchased by a brewer. The summer, or spring barley, always getting the preference, being the largest bodied grain, ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... of Joel Strides, between whom and the County Leitrim-man, there had early commenced a warfare of tricks and petty annoyances; a warfare that was perfectly defensive on the part of O'Hearn, who did little more, in the way of retort, than comment on the long, lank, shapeless figure, and meagre countenance of his enemy. Joel had not been seen to smile, since he engaged with the captain; though three times had he laughed outright, and each time at the occurrence of some mishap to Michael ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... of an uncanny gift; but in that remote period of my fresh rescue from the gutter, an executant appeared something superhuman. I stared at him with stupid open mouth. He played what I afterwards learned was one of Brahms's Hungarian dances. His lank figure and long hair worked in unison with the music which filled the room with a wild tumult of movement. I had not heard anything like it in my life. It set every nerve of me dancing. I suppose Paragot found his interest in me because I was such an impressionable ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... too full of repose, and the Ottoman race has become too degenerate through indulgence, to exhibit many striking specimens of physical beauty. The face is generally fine, but the body is apt to be lank, and with imperfect muscular development. The best forms I saw in the baths were those of laborers, who, with a good deal of rugged strength, showed some grace and harmony of proportion. It may be received as a general rule, that the physical ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... on his 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
... chin receding; lit withal by small protrusive eyes, so constructed, that the whites all round were generally visible, giving them a strange and staring look; elevated eye-brows; not an inch of whisker, but all shaved sore right up to the large and prominent ear; and lank black, hair, not much of it, scantily thatching all smooth. Then his arms, oscillating as he walked (as if the pendulum by which that rigid man was made to go his regular routine), were much too long for symmetry: and altogether, to casual view, Mr. Jennings must acknowledge to ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... bells, and other things of small value. Like people in the original simplicity of nature, they were all naked, and even a woman who was among them was entirely destitute of clothing. Most of them were young, seemingly not above thirty years of age, of a good stature, with very thick black lank hair, mostly cut short above their ears, though some had it down to their shoulders, tied up with a string about their head like women's tresses. Their countenances were mild and agreeable and their features good; but their foreheads were too high, which gave them rather a wild appearance. They ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... English mother, who was as jolly and happy as her boy, hugging the loaf to her bosom while she cut round after round of bread and butter and jam, for two cormorant throats. And the elder boy, long-limbed and lank, all wrist and ankle, had invariably been the hungrier of the two; for, on the glossy damask of the big house, often not enough food was set to satisfy the growing appetites of himself and his sisters.—"Dickybird, can't you see us, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... to say: Arqua is in the figure of a man stretched upon the hill slope. The head, which is Petrarch's house, rests upon the summit. The carelessly tossed arms lie abroad from this in one direction, and the legs in the opposite quarter. It is a very lank and shambling figure, without elegance or much proportion, and the attitude is the last wantonness of loafing. We followed our lout up the right leg, which is a gentle and easy ascent in the general ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... as Aunt Dide, the common ancestress of the Rougon-Macquarts, born at Plassans in 1768, was the last representative of a family who had owned a market-garden there for several generations. "This girl, whose father died insane, was a long, lank, pale creature, with a scared look and strange gait." In 1786, six months after the death of her father, she married one of her own workmen, named Rougon, "a rough-hewn peasant from the Basses Alpes." Rougon died fifteen months after his marriage, leaving ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... Ithuel would not consent to trust himself near the Proserpine without disguising his person. Raoul being well provided with all the materials for a masquerade, this had been effected by putting a black curling wig over his own lank, sandy hair, coloring his whiskers and eyebrows, and trusting the remainder to the transformation which might be produced by the dress, or rather undress, of a Neapolitan waterman. The greatest obstacle to this arrangement had been a certain queue, which Ithuel habitually wore in a cured eel-skin ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... upon which the Natural Bridge is situated. Passing through Nashville on his way, he saw General Andrew Jackson at a horse race. He describes the hero of New Orleans as an elderly man, "lean and lank, bronzed in complexion, deep marked countenance, grisly-gray hair, and a restless, fiery eye." ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... Androtauric type. On the coins of Sicily, of the archaic and also of the finest period of art, rivers are most usually represented by a youthful male figure, with small budding horns; the hair has the lank and matted form which characterises aquatic deities in Greek mythography. The name of the river is often inscribed round the head. When the whole figure occurs on the coin, it is ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Neither have they any beards. They are long-visaged, and of a very unpleasant aspect, having not one graceful feature in their faces. Their hair is black, short, and curled like that of the negroes; and not long and lank like the common Indians. The colour of their skins, both of their faces and the rest of their body, is coal-black like that of the negroes of Guinea. They have no sort of clothes but a piece of the rind of a tree ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... me: they seem to me so much less to be considered than his! When I've done half the good to people that he has, it will be time enough to begin attacking their beliefs. Meanwhile—meanwhile I can't touch his. ..." Draper leaned forward, stretching his lank arms along his knees. His face was as clear as a spring sky. "I won't touch them, Millner—Go ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... there in all his glory, and the Field-Marshal as lank and cadaverous as ever; and besides ourselves there was Whipcord with the straw in his mouth, and one or two other fellows belonging to our host's particular set. The supper was quite as elaborate and a good deal ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... serve. The first faint stirrings of rebellion were moving in him. It was not that he blamed her in the least. She was scarcely nineteen, the magnet for the eyes of all the unattached men in the district. Was it reasonable to suppose that she would give her love to a penniless puncher of twenty-eight, lank as a shad, with no recommendation but honesty? None the less, Jack began to doubt whether eternal patience was ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... perhaps, after all, he was that base thing, a coward, and lacked the nerve to pull a trigger—to throw a bold stake upon life's table and stand by the result. Each day he crept a little nearer, grew more daring; until he noticed a movement made by the lank, ill-fed dog, that seemed to indicate that the beast, at all events, knew of his presence in the rocks ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... went, and what he saw was a lank, grey beggarman; half his sword bared behind his haunch, his two shoes full of cold road-a-wayish water sousing about him, the tips of his two ears out through his old hat, his two shoulders out through his scant tattered cloak, and in his hand a ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... long, lank individual, "Centerville's goin' to be one of the smartest places in the United States. It's got a ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... and in several places decidedly deviating from the perpendicular. The roof was thatched with rushes, and shaped like unto a fish's back, having a marvellous big hump in the middle, upon which grew a fair tuft of long lank herbage, while bunches of the biting yellow stone-crop clung in irregular patches of bright green verdure about the extremities. The interior was lighted by a single casement, showing an assemblage of forms the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... himself, as he stood holding the door ajar, a lank little figure, dressed with reckless slovenliness in a suit of old-fashioned black; a loose neck-cloth fell stringing down his shirt front, which his unbuttoned waistcoat exposed, with its stains from the tobacco upon which his thin little jaws worked mechanically, ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... fifteenth birthday, Charles Browne bade farewell to the "Skowhegan Clarion;" and we next hear of him in the office of the "Carpet-Bag," edited by B.P. Shillaber ("Mrs. Partington"). Lean, lank, but strangely appreciative, young Browne used to "set up" articles from the pens of Charles G. Halpine ("Miles O'Reilly") and John G. Saxe, the poet. Here he wrote his first contribution in a disguised hand, slyly put it into the editorial box, and the next ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... studied the pair which guarded the end of the main ditch near Deer Key. These were no city toughs who would try to bully rather than fight, but lank-haired, sallow-faced killers from the darkest part of Big Cypress Swamp; men who were desperate because of the crimes they had left behind them, and to whom rifle fire was a familiar argument. By the fashion in which they ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... of linen about the lank jaws; combed back the grizzled hair from the forehead into sleek respectability; crossed the hands at the wrists, as only dead hands are ever laid; straightened the limbs, and was in the act of spreading a clean sheet over ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... never did a stoke of work in his life! Here are WE, with no foolishness, no airs nor graces, and yet men who would do credit to twice that amount of luck—and seem born to it, too—and we're set aside for some long, lank, pen-wiping scrub who just knows enough to sit down on his office stool and hold on ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... pressed a wall button. Presently a man stepped into the salon from the starboard passage. He was lank, with a lean, wind-bitten face and a ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... presented,—the German, erect, well-poised, plainly a soldier in spite of his ill-fitting clothes; the American, lank and stomachless, yet taller than the other in spite of his bent shoulders. His tawny beard was guiltless of care. Of all his slack body only his eyes showed alertness as they looked sidewise from ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... nonsense about the love affair I had once had with some Charlotte Holmes here. She declared you had told her about it yourself. I confess I flamed up. I'm a peppery chap, and I thought—I thought—oh, confound it, it might as well out: I thought you were some lank old maid who was amusing herself telling ridiculous stories about me. When you came into the room I knew that, whoever was to blame, ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... first attack was on a rigid Calvinist, a tallow-chandler by trade. He was a tall dingy man, in whom length was so predominant over breadth, that he might almost have been borrowed for a foundery poker. O that face! a face kat' emphasin! I have it before me at this moment. The lank, black, twine- like hair, pingui-nitescent, cut in a straight line along the black stubble of his thin gunpowder eye-brows, that looked like a scorched after-math from a last week's shaving. His coat collar behind ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the platform outside and a lank, good-looking countryman glanced cautiously in through the crack in the door. Observing Molly, he spat a wad of tobacco over the hitching rail by the steps, and stopped to smooth his straw-coloured hair with the palm of his hand before crossing ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... 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. The island-nature of the archipelago is very favourable ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... of the closeness of the room, opened the door and went out on the veranda, she saw a man, a stranger, riding towards the house and she stood to await his approach. He belonged to what is rather indiscriminately known in that section of the State as the "piney-woods" genus. A rawboned fellow, lank and long of leg; as ungroomed with his scraggy yellow hair and beard as the scrubby little Texas pony which he rode. His big soft felt hat had done unreasonable service as a head-piece; and the "store clothes" that hung ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... compared the great man to Captain Macheath. Imagine Mrs. Williams, old and peevish; Mrs. Hall, lean, lank, and preachy; Johnson, rolling in his chair like Polyphemus at a debate; Boswell, stooping forward on the perpetual listen; Mr. Levett, sour and silent; Frank, the black servant, proud of the silver salvers—and you have the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... porters were running here and there; cabs and carts were driving about, and other persons on foot and on horseback, mostly in a hurry, evidently with business on their hands. There were, however, a few saunterers, and they were either almost naked black aborigines, with lank hair, hideous countenances, and thin legs, or men with their hands in their pockets, in threadbare coats and uncleaned shoes, their countenances pale and dejected, and mostly marked by intemperance. Many ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... a decrepit old woman, with lank cheeks and toothless jaws. Her eyes were sunken, her brow furrowed, and her scanty ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... The rancher's lank, unshaven jaw fell. The blow had fallen at last. In a way he had expected it. Yet his mind was too stunned to ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... broad, flat features and high cheek-bones. The nose is often so buried between the puffed cheeks that a ruler might be laid across the face without touching it. The lips are thick, and the brow low. The hair is coarse, lank and black. The general muscular development is good, though usually the body is stunted. It has been suggested that they emigrated from the south, possibly from the Amur basin. In their arctic homes they long carried on war with the Ongkilon (Ang-kali) aborigines, gradually ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... scant herbage on the flat behind the trapper was a lank, long-limbed horse from which he had just dismounted, and which looked travel-stained and weary like his master. The news the man brought was worthy of consideration, and Ralph listened with rapt attention and ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... next morning "after sun up" James North was at Trinidad Joe's cabin. That worthy proprietor himself—a long, lank man, with even more than the ordinary rural Western characteristics of ill health, ill feeding, and melancholy—met him on the bank, clothed in a manner and costume that was a singular combination of the frontiersman and the sailor. When North had again related the story of his finding the child, ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... eyebrows, which the ravages of 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 ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... They presented a striking contrast:[709] Lincoln, tall, angular, and long of limb; Douglas, short, almost dwarfed by comparison, broad-shouldered and thick-chested. Lincoln was clad in a frock coat of rusty black, which was evidently not made for his lank, ungainly body. His sleeves did not reach his wrists by several inches, and his trousers failed to conceal his huge feet. His long, sinewy neck emerged from a white collar, drawn over a black tie. Altogether, his appearance bordered ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... turn'd to graze, And round the barren common strays, Hard exercise, and harder fare, Soon make my dame grow lank and spare Her body light, she tries her wings, And scorns the ground, and upward springs While all the parish, as she flies, Hear sounds ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... outface the jealous hours, Turn shame to love and pain to a tender sleep, And the strong nerve of hate to sloth and tears; Make spring rebellious in the sides of frost, Thrust out lank winter with hot August growths, Compel sweet blood into the husks of death, And from strange beasts ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Southland flowers ripen fast. Adolescence steals hard upon the heels of infancy. Nature was pushing her relentlessly toward a womanhood for which her splendid vitality and unschooled impulses but scantily safeguarded her. The lank, shy innocence of the fawn still wrapped her, but in the heart of this frank daughter of the desert had been born a poignant shyness, a vague, delightful trembling that marked a change. A quality which had lain banked in ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... sadly, shook his head, and said no more. For a moment they halted, where the path broadened on a market-place, part shade, part luminous with golden dust. A squad of lank boys, kicking miraculously with flat upturned soles, kept a wicker ball shining in the air, as true and lively as a plaything on a fountain-jet. Beyond, their tiny juniors, girls and boys knee-high, and fat tumbling babies in rainbow ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... Washington three days before expressing in unmistakable terms what he wished General Sheridan and his cavalry to accomplish. They were to go over into the Shenandoah and, putting themselves south of the enemy, follow him to the death. To which telegram the tall, lank, furrow-faced man in the White House whose kindly heart was bursting with the strain replied in characteristic fashion and told him that his purpose was exactly right. And then, with a gleam of humor, warned him against influences ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... changed 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, ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... a lank, sharp-featured man with china blue eyes that narrowed to a mere slit when he smiled, and from the corners of which crowsfeet, like fan-shaped streaks of light from the rising sun, radiated across his temples. ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... the face of the earth. They work now passively, like dumb brutes, to resist starvation, and human character isn't strong enough for such a strain. The public houses thrive, and the pawnshops are full. But the children haven't enough to eat. They are growing up lank, white, prematurely aged, the spectres to dance us statesmen ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lined with tiles, and provided with a gutter or trench to conduct the water drawn to the different watering-places. There we found a caravan from Damascus, with a number of horses and mules in the charge of several lank moukri, who were bound for Cairo. This herd, together with the tall drivers, with their fine swarthy features, and the background of gigantic palms, made up a strikingly harmonious and characteristic picture, the effect ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... was there, and that influence is the same everywhere. Leathern garments clothed the men; curtailed petticoats adorned the women; both wore leggings and moccasins. The boys and girls were similarly costumed, and all had brilliant teeth, brown faces, glittering eyes, lank black hair, and ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... lank, stoop-shouldered fellow who had never distinguished himself in any other pursuit than spelling. Except in this one art of spelling he was of no account. He could not catch well or bat well in ball. He could not throw well enough to make his mark ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... but turned her head away, with a sigh of oppression and look of resignation, sad in so young a child, though, indeed, the infantine form was fast shooting into tall, lank girlhood. Ella went on: 'I shall send him the objects for his microscope, when I get into the country; for I promised, so sister ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him singing as he passed on to his work. Across the river the bride was singing also, and there seemed to be a song in even the sound of the merry axes among the cottonwoods, where her neighboring settler and his two lank sons were chopping and hewing the logs for their cabin. But there was no song in her own heart, where it was ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... is all tongue and no brains. Here are brains, though 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 ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... a man of habit. When he got home, drenched to the skin, his clothes hanging lank about him, and a ghastly dew besmearing his hat, his only thought was of his health, of which he took studious care. So, after changing his clothes and encasing himself in a warm dressing-gown, he proceeded to prepare a sudorific ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... "Then a tall, lank, gray-haired Scotchman, who knew no French, who had hardly mingled with the other passengers, and who seemed always communing ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... 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 he made ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... St. Nicholas Hotel a lank and shabby man had mounted a cracker box, and was evidently making a speech, but Berkley could distinguish nothing he said because ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 blasted in its birth, with every ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... them, by the straight black hair which hung in matted disorder half-way down his face. His eyes were almost unnaturally bright and piercing; his cheek-bones were high and prominent; and his jaws were so long and lank, that an observer would have supposed that he was drawing the flesh of his face in, for a moment, by some contraction of the muscles, if his half-opened mouth and immovable expression had not announced that it was his ordinary appearance. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... offered her, with a solemn twinkle in his eye, a good-sized paper bag of the seductive sweetmeat; taking up his position on the top of a low dyke, and watching her, while she proceeded to make of that plump white bag, a lank and emaciated bag, surprising to behold. He sat and looked on, enjoying his idleness with the zest of a hard worker. The twinkle of amusement faded gradually from his face, and the sadness that Hadria ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... through the thinner cloud that remained we now saw what the wolves had been at. Standing in the centre of a ring, formed by its own turnings and struggles, was the huge form of a buffalo-bull. Its shape indicated that it was a very old one, lank, lean, and covered with long hair, raggled and torn into tufts. Its colour was that of the white dust, but red blood was streaming freshly down its hind flanks, and from its nose and mouth. The cartilage of ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... the shell Should fall to slay most rabble, And save foul regicides; or strike the knell Of weaklings 'mid the tribunes' babble. A Consul then, o'er young but proud, With midnight poring thinned, and sallow, But dreams of Empire pierce the transient cloud, And round pale face and lank locks ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo |
