"Skinny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spectacles, but from some strange half-conscious vanity had always refused to do so. Every year her sight grew worse. She was wearing now a dress of black silk, very badly made, cut to display her long skinny neck and bony shoulders. She wore her clothes as though she struggled between a disdain for such vanities and a desire to appear attractive. Her manner of twisting her eyelids and wrinkling her nose gave her a peevish expression, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... folks, for Holy League bear more Than the prodigal son in the Bible bore; For he, together with his swine, On bean, and root, and husk would dine; Whilst they, unable to procure Such dainty morsels, must endure Between their skinny lips to pass Offal and tripe of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... could reply, or I could say anything more, the door that led to the landing was opened softly and slyly, and Miss Jillgall peeped in. Eunice instantly left me, and ran to the meddling old maid. They whispered to each other. Miss Jillgall's skinny arm encircled my sister's ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... sight of the wood fire and sit down in the easy-chair to warm herself. We know who was sitting in it already; and thus she was received by Bad Luck at once into her very lap, and clutched about securely by that unpleasant lady's cold and skinny arms. She looked up at Fritzing with a shiver to remark wonderingly that the room, in spite of its big fire and its smallness, was like ice, but her lips fell apart in a frozen stare and she gazed blankly past him at the wall behind ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... small, infinitely aged and withered of aspect. His paws and forearms were black with half-dry ink. Here and there, all over his fuzzy gray body, ink-blobs were spattered. In one skinny paw he still clutched the splintered ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... sport in running down and spearing the skinny little wild pigs, but after it was done the party returned to the city, as the experienced hunters knew there would be no use looking further ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... went back slowly, and the door opened, and there was the old Madman standing, looking precious scared—his jacket off, his shirt-sleeves up to his elbows, and his long skinny arms all covered with anchors and arrows and letters, tattooed in with gunpowder like a sailor-boy's, and a stink fit to knock you down coming out. 'Twas all the Doctor could do to stand his ground, and East and I, who were looking in under his arms, held ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... had to pay for he, an' he give'd the money back to she 'cause her wer a nice li'I thing—bit skinny though. 'Twer a maazed muddle like. I ought to ha' ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... an island, which the French had called Massacre Island from the great quantity of human bones which they found bleaching on its shores. It was evident that there some awful tragedy had been acted; but Tradition, when interrogated, laid her choppy fingers upon her skinny ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... imagination with fear, horror, and mysterious attraction. The Witches, that is to say, are not goddesses, or fates, or, in any way whatever, supernatural beings. They are old women, poor and ragged, skinny and hideous, full of vulgar spite, occupied in killing their neighbours' swine or revenging themselves on sailors' wives who have refused them chestnuts. If Banquo considers their beards a proof that they are not women, that only shows his ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... lines, shading off and blurring into each other, sometimes starting from the mist, and then sinking back into it again. Among all these lines there were stiff, crabbed, and cramped designs, as though they were drawn with a set-square—patterns with sharp corners, like the elbow of a skinny woman. There were patterns in curves floating and curling like the smoke of a cigar. But they were all enveloped in the gray light. Did the sun never shine in France? Christophe had only had rain and fog since his arrival, and was inclined to believe so; but it is the ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... here we are," he said, with an awful funny smile, "and the question is, where is the little skinny fellow?" ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... woman with ragged hair and sunken yellow face, but even in her ruin indefinably elegant. Her parted lips were black and blistered within; her shapely skinny hands clutched the quilt with the tenacious suggestion of the eagle—that long-lived defiant bird. At the bedside sat a vigorous woman, the pallor of fatigue on ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... zennanah, the old governante, Kamalia, having counted us on her four skinny fingers, proceeded to fulfil that sacred rite, never omitted in the east, of presenting refreshments; without the heartless and niggardly-ceremony of appealing to the guests, as is wont in Europe, to learn whether they ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... interrupted by a knock on the door and a skinny young Terran with sergeant's chevrons on his shorts stuck his head through from the other room and said, "Major Chapelle's on the voice radio, sir. He's calling from battalion ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... dressed me in my best white frock and my crimson sash, with much lamenting over my skinny neck and arms, and bade me behave prettily, as became my bringing up. So I slipped in a corner, my hands and feet cold with excitement, for I think every drop of blood in my body had gone to my head, and my heart beat so hardly that it even ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... talked. It had been purely subconscious; Casey had expected the exact location of the mine in words, and perhaps with a crudely accurate map of Jim's making. But now he remembered Jim's words, certain motions made by the skinny hands, and from them ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... solvent. About half a minute under the pump formed the solution of this problem. A wet and skinny-looking cat, her elegance departed, streaked back to the wood shed and her offspring, while a sober and bedraggled little bear trotted behind his ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... damid, as th' potes call him, made th' mistake iv pokin' his head out iv th' palace 'twas diff'rent. 'Well, who d'ye think I see to-day but th' Sultan. I tell ye I did. What is he like? He ain't much to look at—a skinny little man, Osman, that ye cud sthrangle between ye'er thumb an' forefinger. He had a bad cold an' was sneezin'. He wore a hand-me-down coat. He has a wen on th' back iv his neck an' he's crosseyed. Here's a pitcher iv him.' 'What, that little runt? Ye don't mean to say that's ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... soon filled with the finest cambric handkerchiefs, all of which she first took the precaution to open and hold up to the light, rejecting those which were not of the finest texture. The silk stockings were the next articles that were coveted; they were unfolded one by one, and her skinny arm passed up, that the feet might be extended by her shrivelled hands, to ascertain whether they were darned or ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... excited tears had poured down his face.... But Paul had said no. Split it even, just like the ticket, Paul had said. There were hot words, and pleading, and threats, and Paul had just laughed at him until he got so mad he wanted to kill him with only his fists. Bad mistake, that. Paul was skinny, not much muscle, read books all the time it looked like a cinch. But Paul had five years on him that he hadn't counted on. Important five years. Paul connected with just one—enough to lay Dan flat on his back with a concussion and a broken jaw, and ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... got a banjo, an' a skinny mule 'e rides, An' the stuff 'e says an' sings us, Lord, it makes us split our sides! With 'is black coat-tails a-bobbin' to Ta-ra-ra Boom-der-ay! 'E's the proper kind o' padre for ten deaths ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... This 'ere lady 's a-goin' ter take us ter her shebang ter stay mos' two weeks. Gee-whiz! Bones, ain't this great!" And with one bound he was off the platform and turning a series of somersaults on the soft grass followed by the skinny, mangy dog which was barking itself nearly wild ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... side of the doorway but a portion of the wall on either side of it—reflected clearly, among other things, the stooping figure of a woman, her limp calico skirts dragged cautiously back in one skinny hand, her sharp, swarthy face bent slightly forward in ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... the article over, picked the seed-pearls and lace with her little skinny hands, turned out the pockets, and inspected the flower-pattern ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... him with a skinny hand. "There was a ship," quoth he. "Hold off! unhand me, gray-beard loon!" Eftsoons[30-1] ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... with which Captain Reud rubbed his skinny, yellow hands, when he ordered additional sentries, and a boat to row guard round the ship from sunset to sunrise, weather permitting, to prevent desertion, gave me a strong impression of the malignity of his disposition. Certainly, the officers, from the first lieutenant downwards, looked, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... of their method by supposing them to have taken their places in an order somewhat independent of chronology and a little different from their arrangement behind his brother. Immediately at his back, with a controlling hand (a trifle skinny) upon him, may stand his great-grandmother, while his father may be many removes arear. Or the place of power may be held by some fine old Asian gentleman who flourished before the confusion of tongues on the plain of Shinar; or by ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... should have clambered aboard and swung the long boat to its davits. Presently the attention of every man was drawn from his dreaming or his gossiping to the northern bank of the river. There, screaming at them in a cracked falsetto and with skinny arms outstretched, stood a strange ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the owner was not disposed to turn out, we determined upon a volley of snowballs and a good hurrah. They produced the right effect, for the crazy machine turned out into the deep snow, and the skinny old pony started on a ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the burn, and he staggered off to the bank. There he lay down upon his face, and he drank until I thought he would never have done. His long skinny neck was outstretched like a horse's, and he made a loud supping noise with his lips. At last he got up with a long sigh, and wiped his moustache with ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and told her he had noticed a falling off in her offerings and he thought her very ungrateful after what he had done for her husband. She grunted and the next morning she brings in as a present the most forlorn, skinny, one-and-a-half-feathered chicken you ever laid eye on, and in answer to the trader's comments she said: "Massa, fo sure them der chicken no be 'ticularly good chicken, but fo sure dem der man no be 'ticularly good man. They go" ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Peg Sliderskew gathered up the chosen suit, and folding her skinny arms upon the bundle, stood, mouthing, and grinning, and blinking her watery eyes, like an uncouth figure in some monstrous ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... at the sight, let her have her way, not dreaming that such a skinny spectre could move so enormous a weight. But Thamar bound the mouth of her sack with a cord, and to the great surprise of the Egyptian, lifted it on her back. Avarice lent to that broken-down frame unexpected strength of muscles; all the nerves and fibres ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... had a scabby skin as red as a salamander's. Its arms were long and muscular, and its bony hands were armed with eleven fingers each, upon which were nails or claws shaped like fish hooks and keen as razors. This boogaboo had skinny wings like a huge bat, and at the end of its rat-like tail was a sting more deadly than the poison of ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... and so did Polly, who was a Dyak baby brought to me after the pirate expedition of 1849. Her mother fled, and dropped her baby in the long grass, where it was found by an English sailor, who carried it to the boats and gave it to one of the women captives to bring to me—a poor little, skinny thing, with long yellow hair, like a fairy changeling. I got a wet nurse for her and fed her with baby food, but she got thinner and more elfish-looking. One day her nurse was standing by while the other children were eating their ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... of whom I have already particularly spoken came to see me. They sat down by the brasero in the middle of the apartment, and began to smoke small paper cigars. We continued for a considerable time in silence surveying each other. Of the two Gitanos one was an elderly man, tall and bony, with lean, skinny, and whimsical features, though perfectly those of a Gypsy; he spoke little, and his expressions were generally singular and grotesque. His companion, who was the man whom I had first noticed in the street, differed from him in many respects; he could be scarcely thirty, and ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... put in to fry until the fat is boiling hot; it is very necessary to observe this. It should be dipped in Indian meal before it is put in; and the skinny side uppermost, when first put in, to prevent its breaking. It relishes better to be fried after salt pork, than to be fried in lard alone. People are mistaken, who think fresh fish should be put into cold water as soon as it is brought into the house; soaking ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... to her, and was pleased when he saw from their eyes that they liked each other at first sight. He introduced the Happy Family and Applehead to her and to her husband, Lite Avery, and her father. He pulled a skinny individual forward and announced that this was Pete Lowry, one of the Great Western's crack cameramen; and another chubby, smooth-cheeked young man he presented as Tommy Johnson, scenic artist and stage carpenter. And he added with a smile for the whole bunch, "We're going to produce ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... "There are three mulattoes in that bunch over by the dune. And see that tall, skinny, dark man with the oilskin coat over his left arm? That must be ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... with mother Chiquard, and pleased at the prospect of a good dinner at midday; he opened the cottage door, and leisurely arranged a few logs within range of the axe with which he was going to split them; mother Chiquard began to throw down some grain to the skinny and famished ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... life it was—feeble beyond expression, and ugly with the ugliness of savagery. She wriggled and screwed up her skinny features with inane ferocity. A motherless wallaby would have submitted to human solace and ministrations with daintier mien; but the whole household thrilled with excitement. Could the spluttering spark of life be made to glow? That was the all-absorbing ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... kept my mouth shut and stayed away from the rascals," said the goat. "I knew that the soldiers would not care for a skinny old beast like me, for to the eye of a stranger I seem good for nothing. Had they known I could talk, and that my head contained more wisdom than a hundred of their own noddles, I might not have escaped ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... that basket down," said Kitty Silver, "an' I start fer the do', whiles she unfasten the lid fer to take one mo' look at 'em, I reckon: but open window mighty close by, an' nat skinny white cat make one jump, an' after li'l while I lookin' out thishere window an' see that ole fat Miz Blatch's tom, waddlin' ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... to git fat. He was so skinny you could do a week's washing on his ribs for a washboard and hang 'em up on his hip-bones ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... "Look here, Skinny Philander," he said, in belligerent tones, "if you are lookin' for a scrap, peel off your coat and come on down on the ground, and I'll punch your head just as I did sixty years ago in the alley back ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fashion and a simplicity of material which attracted the notice of every other woman in the room. One of them wore a black veil over her gray hair. Her hands were brown, and knotty at the joints; her eyes looked unnaturally bright for her age; innumerable wrinkles crossed and re-crossed her skinny face; and her aquiline nose (as one of the ladies present took occasion to remark) was so disastrously like the nose of the great Duke of Wellington as to be an offensive feature in the ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... attire, That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth, And yet are on't?—Live you? or are you aught That man may question? You seem to understand me, By each at once her chappy finger laying Upon her skinny lips:—you should be women, And yet your beards forbid me to interpret That you ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... fire, gleamed from under those white eyebrows; and on the portions of the cheeks yet left smooth enough to show the texture of the skin, there were deep gashes that had once been the tattooing of her barbarian youth and beauty. Her hands were withered, much more than her face, and seemed skinny and claw-like. Her dress, which had once been plaid cotton gingham, was fearfully dirty and unskilfully patched with other material; and the frayed silk shawl thrown around her old shoulders might have been rescued from a rag-heap in the ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... said Mr. Carson, slowly. "This is retaliation, I fancy. I'll go back with you Skinny, and see what has happened. But I'm sure ...
— Cowboy Dave • Frank V. Webster
... each other: Bosambo straight and muscular, a perfect figure of a man, N'gori grizzled and skinny, ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... see the skinny fellow? Limped, too. D'you notice that? Probably hurt in France. But he hasn't forgotten how to fight, I'll tell ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... communication—they grew out of touch with each other's microscopic affairs, and their mutual detestation increased with their resentful ignorance. And so, shrinking and silent, and protected as far as possible by their big bonnets, the squat Madame Depine and the skinny Madame Valiere toiled up and down the dark, fusty stairs of the Hotel des Tourterelles, often brushing against each other, yet sundered by icy infinities. And the endurance on Madame Depine's round face became more vindictive, and gentler grew ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... the man. He fitted the Chinese yoke to his skinny shoulders, and took up his burden. The load was heavy, the yoke bruised his bones, therefore he was moved to complain: "The idea of me totin' water for the very guys that stole my uncle's money! It's awful—the ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... me to write of my own love affair. That surprises you? You smile to think that old John Hanson, lately a commander of the Special Patrol Service, now retired, should have had a love affair? Well, 'twas many years ago, before these eyes lost their fire, and before these brown, skinny hands wearied as quickly as they ...
— Priestess of the Flame • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... like a flash and spoke sharply: "Skinny! Lanky! Follow that glory-outfit, an' see what's ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... dutifully nevertheless, telling himself he wasn't afraid of the ration-cops who were always suspecting him of underconsumption because he was the tall skinny type and never got fat like most people, but that he ate what the cooker had given him because his father had been unemployed for a long time during the depression seventy-five years before, so he'd never been able to bring himself to ...
— Waste Not, Want • Dave Dryfoos
... was lean to the point of being skinny, his eyes were clear, and what little flesh he had was healthy flesh. Though he was lonesome and hungry for action and for sight of Billy Louise, his mind had not grown morbid. He learned more of the Bobbie Burns verses, and he could repeat ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... tenderly towards their escorts. He would die of looking at faces that were not hers. A love-sick schoolboy. God, what an ass! Tesla was becoming an insufferable bore. What in God's name did he have to do with masses raising their skinny arms from a smoking field and crying aloud, "Bread!" Tesla had a lot to do with it. The skinny arms, the smoking field, and the balloon with the word "bread" in it were Tesla's soul. But his soul was ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... with his skinny hand, "There was a ship," quoth he. "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard, loon!" Eftsoons his ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... the pump, she had gone to the tavern, and purchased some gin. After drinking a large glass of the fiery liquor, she put down the glass and the money, looking so ravenously at the sparkling decanter, that the landlord feared she was going crazy. Reaching her skinny fingers out towards the bottle, she said, in a screeching ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... the most intense fraternal affection subsisted between them. They were Peas—Sweet-peas, born together in the largest end of the same Pod. When they were little, flat, skinny, green things, they regarded the Pod in which they were born with the same awful dread which the greatest of men have at one time felt for nursery authority. They believed that the Pod ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the group there was a withered little man, bent with age, with a long ragged beard and a nose like the beak of a hawk. He wore a great black coat that was very shiny and reached almost down to his ankles; and in his skinny fingers he held what I soon recognized as the large red stone that Tom Kinlay had found at Skaill. Tom himself was standing near the old Jew, and bargaining with him for all the treasure that had ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... and the wonders of the coral-reef beneath his eyes made Mark forget his troubles for a time, but he was recalled to his position by his sensations of hunger, a whine from Bruff, and an inquiring chatter from the monkey, who changed his position and sat up on one of the thwarts looking very skinny and miserable, his face wrinkled and puckered, and the appealing inquiring look in his eyes growing ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... notes swooped and curved and darted, Rising like gulls. Then, with a finger skinny, He rubbed the bow with rosin, said, "Your pardon Signor! — Maestro Nicolo Paganini They used to call me! Tchk! — The cold grips hard on A poor musician's ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... pappy was name Stephany. I think he take dat name 'cause when he little his mammy call him "Istifani." Dat mean a skeleton, and he was a skinny man. He belong to de Grayson family and I think his master name George, but I don't know. Dey big people in de Creek, and with de white folks too. My mammy name was Serena and she belong to some of de Gouge family. Dey was big people in de ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... beast, unable to stop, found himself with his head and eyes being dug at by a hooked beak, and his jaws closed upon a skinny leg instead of upon the skua's spinal column, as he had intended, which would have put the skua out of life like turning ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... of your Chinese feet, nor waspy, unhealthy waists, which those may admire who will. No: Dora's foot was a good stout one; you could see her ankle (if her robe was short enough) without the aid of a microscope; and that envious little, sour, skinny Amalia von Mangelwurzel used to hold up her four fingers and say (the two girls were most intimate friends of course), "Dear Dorothea's vaist is so much dicker as dis." And so I have no ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... breast and the throat. The breast was in his right hand, and the throat in his left, and its side bones between his fingers. The fifth priest stood with the two sides, the right side in his right hand, and the left side in his left hand, and the skinny side outward. The sixth priest stood with the intestines placed in a pan, and the legs over them. The seventh priest stood with the fine flour. The eighth priest stood with the pancakes. The ninth priest stood with the wine. They then proceeded and deposited the members on the lower half of ...
— Hebrew Literature
... talk was rather vague to Perrine, not knowing the persons to whom it applied, but she soon gathered that "Skinny", "Judas", and "Sneak" were all one and the same man, and that man was Talouel, the foreman. The factory hands evidently considered him a bully; they all hated ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... and sprang at him panther-like so that he fell back again in confusion, stumbled and collapsed upon a divan, with upraised, warding arms. "You Greek rat! you skinny Greek rat! Be careful what you think to say to me—to ME! to ME! Olaf van Noord—the poor, white-faced corpse-man! He is only one of Said's mummies! Be careful what you think to say to me... Oh! ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... unkempt, ragged—tore like a maniac over the polished floor, making for the group at the table, waving one skinny arm. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... the outward seeming of her cherished Bertha Binderwitz; and yet, when the desks were forced to disgorge their prey, the legs restored to their normal position were found to support a fat child—and Bertha was best described as "skinny"—in a dress of the Stuart tartan tastefully trimmed with purple. Investigation proved that Bertha's accumulative taste in dress was an established custom. In nearly all cases the glory of holiday attire was hung ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... the white alkali crust which thinly covers the desert floor, crumbles and breaks. Gaunt cacti stretch their skinny branches across the trail, which winds among foothills and ravines, and the horned toads and the lizards, the only visible beings of the animal world here, play in and out of their labyrinths as ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... of his voice, a strange spasm contorted the withered features of the dying woman. She bent her head as though to listen to some far-off echo, and held up her skinny finger ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... playing svayka, laughing as they threw their missiles which buried themselves in the soft mud. Rostov joined them. In the middle of the game, the officers saw some wagons approaching with fifteen hussars on their skinny horses behind them. The wagons escorted by the hussars drew up to the picket ropes and a crowd of hussars ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... to look out, or you'll get apoplexy sure," Andy soothed, giving himself another luxurious push and pulling the last, little whiff from his cigarette before he threw away the stub. "Fat men can't afford to get as excited as skinny ones can." ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... with his grandfather. The old man, sunk beneath his pile of cushions, his brown skinny hand clenching and unclenching above the rugs, was muttering to himself. In Peter himself, as he stood there by the fire, looking down on the old man, there was tremendous pity. He had never felt so tenderly towards his grandfather before; it was, perhaps, because ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Sara, I'm kicking about. You're getting as pale and skinny as a goop; and for a month already you've been coughing, and never a single evening home to stick your feet in hot water and a ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... real hot about it. He got hot too and all excited and offered to go out and kill somebody with his bare hands right off, or try to (he's a skinny little runt), if that's what he had to do to join. We argued it over, I pointed out that we let ex-soldiers count the killings they'd done in service, and that we counted poisonings and booby traps and such too—which are remote-control killings in ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... around her. There were her son and his wife, once such a stately pair, now reduced to two pale spectres; there were troops of grandchildren, once round-cheeked as the carved angels on the altar of the village chapel, now hollow-eyed and skinny, with their blanched faces upturned imploringly to the parents who were scarcely conscious of their presence there. Hunger had extinguished youth, strength, beauty, and had almost uprooted love. Not only had it destroyed their bodies, but it ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... was so unceremoniously disrobed of his priestly garments by Mrs. Smith's skinny hand, highly offended at so gross an invasion of his rights and dignities, to console himself he determined to run home and tell ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... a dale aisier to get the condition off a horse than off Billy. No man on this earth 'ud make a black fellow see why he shouldn't have a good blow-out whenever it came his way. Only that Providence made him skinny by nature, he'd be fat as a porpoise this day. I've been watchin' over his meals like a mother with a delicate baby these three weeks back; but what hope 'ud I have with Christmas comin' in the way? He got away on me at Christmas dinner, an' what he didn't ate in the way of turkey an puddin' wouldn't ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... Jermyn. I was at Eva Denison's side. They were marrying us on board. The ship's bell was ringing for us; a guitar in the background burlesqued the Wedding March under skinny fingers; the air was poisoned by a million cigarettes, they raised a pall of smoke above the mastheads, they set fire to the ship; smoke and flame covered the sea from rim to rim, smoke and flame filled the universe; the sea dried up, and I was left lying in its bed, lying ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... sugar, and with or without smoky milk, such a bitter, nauseous compound, that, after a while, I and others preferred doing without it. Such was then the amount of "luxuries" we had to depend on during our long captivity,—coarse, vitreous-looking, badly-baked bread; the ever-returning dish of skinny, tough mutton, the veteran cock, smoked butter, and bitter coffee. Tea, sugar, wine, fish, vegetables, &c., were not, either for love or money, to be obtained anywhere. The coarseness and uniformity of our food, however, was as nothing compared with our dread of being starved to death; for even the ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... a family goes without dinner, unless the father can knock down a squirrel in the woods, or his pale sickly boy pick up a terrapin in the swamps? We did, indeed, sometimes fall in with a little corn; but then, the poor, skinny, sun-burnt women, with long uncombed tresses, and shrivelled breasts hanging down, would run screaming to us, with tears in their eyes, declaring that if we took away their corn, they and their children must perish. Such times I never saw, and I pray God, I may never see nor hear of again; ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... of shingle and jerked by a string; and his address corresponded very well with his appearance. Never did that prim mouth give way before a laugh. A faint and misty smile was the widest departure from its propriety, and this unaccustomed disturbance made wrinkles in the flat, skinny cheeks like those in the surface of a lake, after the intrusion of a stone. Master Horner knew well what belonged to the pedagogical character, and that facial solemnity stood high on the list of indispensable ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... is a shoemaker, and he knows the daughter of the man who helps the butler in Casa Guinigi—Checco says she laughs at the Holy Countenance. Domine Dio! what an infamy!" cries Carlotta, in a cracked voice, raising her skinny hands and shaking them in the air. "I hate the Guinigi! I hate her! I spit on her, I ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... discovered that the whole time of a male servant would be required for errands of different kinds. Not unfrequently was the half of a day lost in the attempt to get a dozen eggs from the little scattered farms, or a skinny fowl, or such a rare delicacy as a cabbage. Sometimes Thursday came back from the town peevish and angry at his lost labor, having found the bread too hard or too musty, and mutton unprocurable; as ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... with joy; I talked in raptures to the state governante, and kissed her shrivelled hand with great devotion, She was so much transported with her good fortune, that she could not contain her ecstacy, but flew upon me like a tigress, and pressed her skinny lips to mine; when (as it was no doubt concerted by her evil genius) a dose of garlic she had swallowed that morning, to dispel wind, I suppose, began to operate with such a sudden explosion, that human nature, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... skinny building that stands on one leg like a stork and blinks down disdainfully from its thousand windows on ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... winding, rocky passages to her room, at the door of which Madre Dolores was waiting. The old woman cackled with laughter at sight of them, and rubbed her skinny hands together delightedly. ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... republican party until a later administration, being elected representative in 1799. He was a descendant of Pocahontas, of which fact he often boasted, and was noted for his keen retorts, reckless wit, and skill in debate. His tall, slender, and cadaverous form, his shrill and piping voice, and his long, skinny fingers—pointing toward the object of his invective—made him a conspicuous speaker. For thirty years, says Benton, he was the "political meteor" ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... Peter," said Hartog, smiling at my sorry appearance, "I have small wonder the cannibals did not make a meal off one so skinny." And, indeed, the hard life I had led on the island had reduced me to a bag of bones. But when I had washed and trimmed my hair and after I had clothed myself from my own sea-chest Hartog declared me fit to become, once ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... beggar and his dog," is good. The impostor beggar was in sunshine, and which he turned to his purpose: he could cope with the world's broad glare. This is no impostor; and the atmosphere he breathes is suited to his fortunes. The rejecting hand, with its shadow of the dry skinny ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... tack-earing, but wid time and help ye'll larn. There's good and just reason for ivry rope aboard, or else 'twould be overboard. D'ye follow me? 'Tis dollars an' cents I'm puttin' into your pocket, ye skinny little supercargo, so that fwhin ye've filled out ye can ship from Boston to Cuba an' tell thim Long Jack larned you. Now I'll chase ye around a piece, callin' the ropes, an' you'll lay your hand ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... line was C 80's southern one, and Skinny Thompson took his turn at outriding one morning after the season's round-up. He was to follow the boundary and turn back stray cattle. When he had covered the greater part of his journey he saw Shorty Jones riding toward ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... needy, poverty -stricken, straitened, necessitous, penniless, eleemosynary; emaciated, skinny, lean, spare, meager, bony, gaunt, thin, haggard, scrawny, angular, peaked, rawboned, pinched; inferior, mean, shabby, seedy, tacky, worthless; barren, sterile, effete infecund, inarable, exhausted, infertile; miserable, wretched, faulty, defective; despicable, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... on the bench before the door and stretched his skinny hands to the sun. About his shoulders he had a ragged coat which had once been red, but was now a coat of many colors. It was so hot that I took shelter in the shadow of the doorway, but the chilly old man was shivering. I had ...
— The Story Of The Little Mamsell • Charlotte Niese
... by a horrible fascination he could not control, he actually saw the bear looking straight at him! That settled it, and he just knew that the savage beast had already picked him out as a tender morsel. Oh! why was he so unlucky as to be born to plumpness? If only he could be more like the skinny Giraffe, or Step-hen, perhaps this awful beast would have passed ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... after I had worked with him and tried to get him to work right, I got mad. I says to my wife, Belle, I'm goin' to get rid of that mule if I have to trade him for a cat. An' I led him off. When I came back I had another mule and $15 to boot. This mule she wuz shore skinny but when I fattened her up ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... certainly sounded like the weak wail of Cousin Mary Bray's skinny little baby, but God and the dear angels would never let the helpless, tiny mite wander back to earth alone. My mother had said to me, last night, that it would never cry ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... speech, calculated to make a more favorable impression upon Sybil than his previous conduct had inspired her with; and, having ascertained from Luke to what his speech referred, she extended her hand to him, yet not without a shudder, as it was enclosed in his skinny grasp. It was like the fingers of Venus in the grasp ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... right. Give it." The skinny brown paw reached down for the weapon. All interest had apparently departed for the gatekeeper with the return of his knife. Barry was not ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... the wardrobe door must have been flung open, for a streak of light struck through a crack in the wood of the back. Creeping close and peeping through, I could see an awful sight. Lady Carwitchet in a flannel wrapper, minus hair, teeth, complexion, pointing a skinny forefinger that quivered with rage at her son, who was out of the range of ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... a fairly clever cartoon of Johnny in an airplane, ascending to the star Venus. She made it appear that Johnny's hair stood straight on end and his eyes goggled with fear, and she made Venus a long-nosed, skinny, old-maid face with a wide, welcoming simper. Up in a corner she placed the moon, with one eye closed ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... skinny, red hair, sharp-pointed nose. His name was Al Devis, and he was Joe Kivelson's engineer's helper. He wanted to know about the tread-snail shooting, so I had to go over it again. I hadn't anything to add to what Tom had told them already, ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... moment a long and skinny hand and arm were protruded, Nora's own arm was forcibly taken possession of, and she was dragged, against her will, into the underwood. Her first impulse was to cry out; but being as brave a girl as ever walked, she quickly suppressed this inclination, ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... choice between sending a green scientist who could stand the trip or an accomplished man who would probably not survive, so they picked Kroger. We've blasted off, though, and he's still with us. He looks a damn sight better than I feel. He's kind of balding, and very iron-gray-haired and skinny, but his skin is tan as an Indian's, and right now he's telling jokes in the washroom ...
— The Dope on Mars • John Michael Sharkey
... the price agreed upon; here it is," he said, taking out a thick bundle of notes that occupied the whole inside of the poor, limp pocket-book; and as the old woman stretched out a skinny claw for them and began to slowly count them, he turned his gaze away, on to the upturned face of the girl watching him with ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... Ragg was a helpless creature. She stood uncertainly before us, her skinny hands playing tremblingly with the buttons of her dress, and ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... in charge of the stores galloped after the carriage with a red and frightened face, whipping up his skinny horse. Several officers formed a group and some soldiers crowded round them. Their faces ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... skeletons, with huge heads; some were hulking miniatures of Brute. One steatopygean girl was so bulky in legs and hindquarters that she could waddle only a few inches with each step, yet her head and upper torso were skinny and fragile. ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... Belgian, a friend of Count Bragard, his name is Monsieur Pet-airs." From time to time Monsieur Pet-airs remarked something delicately and pettishly in a gentle and weak voice. His adam's-apple, at such moments, jumped about in a longish slack wrinkled skinny neck which was like the neck of a turkey. To this turkey the approach of Thanksgiving inspired dread. From time to time M. Pet-airs looked about him sidewise as if he expected to see a hatchet. His hands were claws, kind, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... at the boy with keen gray eyes, which seemed to light up the pinched and skinny face, and answered in a shrill voice that whistled through ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... skin, suntanned, Clung like a beast's hide to his fleshless bones. Bent was his back with load of many days, His eyepits red with rust of ancient tears, His dim orbs blear with rheum, his toothless jaws Wagging with palsy and the fright to see So many and such joy. One skinny hand Clutched a worn staff to prop his quavering limbs, And one was pressed upon the ridge of ribs Whence came in gasps the heavy painful breath. "Alms!" moaned he, "give, good people! for I die Tomorrow or the next day!" then the cough Choked him, ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... vault there is not a single cloud, on the face of the waters not a ripple. The sea is a vast pond of paraffin. The hot gases from the funnel rise vertically, and the sun quivers behind them. The flaps of the windsail hang dead, the sides of the canvas tube have fallen in like the neck of a skinny old man. Slowly the sun mounts over our heads and the air grows hotter and hotter. From the galley come sounds of quacking, and a few feathers roll slowly past us. Now and then an agonized trimmer will stagger out of a bunker hatch into the open air, his half-naked ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... the ceiling and I knew he was dividing eight million dollars by five. An expression almost of reverence passed into his face as he achieved the result. We none of us felt the slightest inclination to interrupt. Mrs. Bundercombe's long, skinny forefinger drew a little nearer to her victim. Then she coughed—the short, dry cough ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Skinny paused. There was a hard glint in his eyes. "Bull Coxine!" He spat the name out as though it had left a bad ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... enough so that we could divide, I bet they would. If Polly Martin had walked up as if she were alive, and had been washed and neat, and going somewhere to do some one good, Leon never would have dreamed of such a thing as training the Shropshire to bunt her. She was so long and skinny, always wore a ragged shawl over her head, a floppy old dress that the wind whipped out behind, and when she came to the creek, she sat astride the foot log, and hunched along with her hands; that tickled the boys so, Leon ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... aren't like wrens; I go to them every day. See!" and he took up in his hand a creature that could just be seen to be intended for a bird, though the long skinny neck was bare, and the tiny quills of the young wings only showed a little grey sprouting feather, as did the breast some primrose-coloured down. Miss Fosbrook had to part with some favourite cockney notions of the beauty of infant birds, and ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with his finger to a particular spot, to which the doctor directed his attention, expecting to see a long, skinny hand tapping against the glass; but ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... assuredly overweight the frail Fidelia Oldaker; the tiara of emeralds and diamonds was never meant for a brow less majestic; nor would the stomacher of lustrous grey pearls and glinting diamonds ever have clasped becomingly a figure that was svelte—or "skinny," as the great lady herself is frank enough to term all persons even remotely ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... not. She was thin, skinny, dark-haired, and possessed of great physical strength in the form of endurance. She had, too, something of the force and vigorous purpose of a man, tempestuous sometimes and wild to passionate, frightening her mother, and puzzling her easy-going ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... panting, squealing, laughing or shuddering, the girls pervaded the upper story. There was a ghostly gloom about the old place which made it all the more thrilling, and gave the players a feeling that at any moment some bogy might spring upon them from a dark recess, or a skinny hand be stretched downwards through a trap-door. Flushed, excited, and really a little nervous, both sides at last sought the safety of the "den." Two or three of them began to compare notes. They were joined by others. In a very short time the whole school knew that at least a ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... in and tell the girls to put ice on her head. She's gettin' hysterics again. And when you've told 'em, you go up to the grounds and tell Blake and Skinny to unpack the Petrified Man. Tell 'em I'm goin' to use him again to-day, and if he's lookin' shop-worn, have one of the men go over his complexion and make ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... a bachelor by profession, and his polygamistic tendencies were duly concealed, though pretty generally known, as most things are in the country. He had as housekeeper a woman so skinny that it made you feel cold to look at her, and her disposition was on a par with her appearance. Of course, it suited the national thrift, particularly congenial to Bogue, to feed us meanly, but we did ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... old dame was deeply engaged in her orisons, and her mind occupied with other affairs than appertain to this sinful world. She appeared at last, her eyes half closed, her lips moving fast in the fervour of her devotions, and her long skinny fingers employed in a manner equally devout, as with the most exemplary industry, and solemn sedateness, she let fall in measured intervals, one by one, the large black counters ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... have seen). Much to my amusement a lean toddy drawer of mine, an excellent shikari, went a few yards into the swampy ground, got on to a small boulder of rock, squatted down, took out his betel bag, threw some betel into his mouth preparatory to chewing, and then held out his long skinny arm and forefinger and said, "Look! A tiger made a meal of a man close to this last year. Let everyone therefore be careful and get up into trees, and mind what they are about." The next day the tiger was found dead quite close to the rock he had been squatting ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... got painfully tight knee-breeches, white stockings, and enormously long, broad-skirted coats, embroidered in tarnished gold. Algy's is plum-color. The arms of all three are very, very tight. Had our ancestors indeed such skinny limbs, and such ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... comfort, had he so willed. But the lust of gold possessed him. It was nothing short of physical pain for him to part with it, and he had no intention of changing his way of life for her. He was known in the district under the elegant sobriquet of Skinny Graham; and when Gladys heard it for the first time, she laughed silently to herself, thinking of its fitness. The simple-hearted child quickly accommodated herself to her surroundings, accepting her meagre lot with a serenity a more experienced ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... gazing round me, with the horror that the place inspires, when Goblin clutches me by the wrist, and lays, not her skinny finger, but the handle of a key, upon her lip. She invites me, with a jerk, to follow her. I do so. She leads me out into a room adjoining—a rugged room, with a funnel-shaped, contracting roof, open at the top, to the bright day. I ask her what it is. She folds her arms, leers hideously, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... guarantee against added chill, Mr. Ham should have provided himself with a buffalo robe, Mr. Drummond.' Harland observed —"skinny aide out and woolly side in," you know. We could not have objected so much ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... is El Pajarito coming again to Mesa Blanca, but coming with dust in your mouth and no song! Enter, senor, and take your rest in your own house. None are left to do you honor but me,—all gone like that!" and his skinny black hands made a gesture as if wafting the personnel of Mesa Blanca on its way. "The General Rotil has need the cattle, and makes a divide with Senor Whitely and all go,—all the ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Paris. Madame Lerat, eldest of the Coupeaus, was a tall, gaunt woman who talked through her nose. She was unattractively dressed in a puce-colored robe that hung loosely on her and had such long dangling fringes that they made her look like a skinny poodle coming out of the water. She brandished her umbrella like a club. After greeting Gervaise, she said, "You've no idea. The heat in the street is like a slap on the face. You'd think someone was throwing ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... owing to the duskiness of the chamber, and the antique dresses which they still wore, the tall mirror is said to have reflected the figures of the three old, gray, withered grand-sires, ridiculously contending for the skinny ugliness of ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... looked at her intently. Most of the servants on the plantation stood in awe of Aunt Peggy. Her having been brought from Africa, and the many wonders she had seen there; her gloomy, fitful temper; her tall frame, and long, skinny hands and arms; her haughty countenance, and mass of bushy, white hair. Phillis did not wonder most people were afraid of her. Besides, Peggy was thought to have the power of foresight in her old age. The servants considered her ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... more meat on her she wouldn't be a bad looker," said Dad. "Well, when a man's young he likes 'em slim, and when he's old he wants 'em fat. It'd be a calamity if a man was to marry a skinny girl like Joan and she was to stay ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... yellow-hammers built their nests and laid their white eggs; hard trees to climb, with their huge trunks. He knew the time to scale the tall pines where the crows built, to find the scrawny young birds, with wide-open mouths and skinny bodies, that looked like birds visited by famine. He knew where the red columbines blossomed on the face of some tall cliffs, where the stream flowed through a rocky gorge; and how to crawl painfully down a zigzag ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... boh, os ill luck wad ha' it, ey refused. 'Yo had better do it, John,' hoo said, 'or yo'll rue it efore to-morrow neet.' Ey laughed at her, an trudged on, boh when I looked back, an seed her shakin' her skinny hond at me, ey repented and thowt ey would go back, an gi' her the choice o' my wares. Boh my pride wur too strong, an ey walked on to Barley an Ogden, an slept at Bess's o th' Booth, an woke this mornin' stout and ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... usual fare; Not near the sacred mount with skinny nine; Not in the park upon a dish of air: But on real eatables, ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... small pipkin of milk, which she offered to me with a trembling hand. I drank the milk; it was sour, but I found it highly refreshing. I then took out a penny and offered it to her, whereupon she shook her head, smiled, and, patting my face with her skinny hand, murmured some words in a tongue which I had ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... cried once to one of his cronies, a certain Lord Eldershaw, "in these days I hate the sight of her, with her skinny throat and face. What's a woman for, after she looks like that? If she were not hanging about my neck I could marry some fine strapping girl who would give me an heir before a year ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... ere I could intervene there was a scuffle, a rapid rain of blows, a smothered groan, a splash alongside, and the next instant the Welshman's head reappeared above water, about a fathom away from the boat, his face grey and distorted with fear, and his skinny hands outstretched in a vain endeavour to reach the gunwale of the boat. Then, almost in the self- same instant, and before one's benumbed senses found time to realise the ghastly tragedy, there was a rapid swirl of water alongside, an ear- splitting yell, ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... the season I was fishing at Milton Lake, and I caught eighteen fine bass, and two eels, the latter as large round as a policeman's club and as dirty and slimy as usual. Eels always remind me of a skinny circus contortionist. When I am unfortunate enough to hook one, I generally make a clean cut of two yards of silk line, hook and all, and tie him up to the fence, or bow stay of my canoe. I would ...
— Black Bass - Where to catch them in quantity within an hour's ride from New York • Charles Barker Bradford
... precisely the predicament in which many thousand people are today. Like the boy, they have skinny purses, voracious appetites and mighty yearnings to make the best possible impression within their means. Perhaps having been "invited out," they learn by actual demonstration that the herbs are culinary magicians which convert cheap cuts and "scraps" into toothsome ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... philosophers and Swedes, half-breeds and just plain men. Some are Vagabonds who can't help their roving, and others are very tired and would like to lie over in port for or a long spell. There are Italians, and Portuguese, and many Greeks, and turbaned Hindus, tall and skinny, always traveling in pairs like nuns. Sometimes the Port ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... the bushes in the distance were quite still. The bushes trembled no longer. It was Benjamin who found it hard not to tremble now, as he saw thirteen sharp arrows taken from their quivers by thirteen skinny brown hands, and their notches held taut to thirteen bow-strings, all ready to shoot. Yet still the Friends sat on, ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... first monks were lonely men, Praying each in his lonely den, Rising up to kneel again, Each a skinny male Magdalene, Peeping scared from out his hole Like a burrowing rabbit or a mole; But years ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... hind-quarter, may sell for thirty cents a pound. Now this includes, besides the thick, fleshy portions, a quantity of bone, sinew, and thin fibrous substance, constituting full one third of the whole weight. If we put it into the oven entire, in the usual manner, we have the thin parts over-done, and the skinny and fibrous parts utterly dried up, by the application of the amount of heat necessary to cook the thick portion. Supposing the joint to weigh six pounds, at thirty cents, and that one third of the weight is so treated as to become perfectly useless, we throw away sixty cents. Of ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... string up one an hour, children and all, till Mrs. Tweedie was brought back safe; and he ordered Lum to cast loose one of the old women so that she might swim ashore and carry the news. My, if she wasn't over that rail like lightning, and striking out for home with her skinny arms! Coe knew mighty well that Afiola had a string of people up the mountain keeping him informed of everything that happened—the Kanaka telegraph, we used to call it. Then, besides, up there they could see ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... and incorporated with ourselves through the medium of the understanding or of the heart. There is an old story in the history of Israel about a young king that was bid by the prophet to bend his bow against the enemies of Israel, as a symbol; and the old prophet put his withered, skinny brown hand on the young man's fleshy one, and then said to him, 'Shoot.' But this Divine Spirit comes to strengthen us in a more intimate and blessed fashion than that, for it glides into our hearts ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Lily of Amelia, and a wonderful change came over Amelia. Her sallow cheeks bloomed; her eyes showed blue glitters; her little skinny figure became instinct with nervous life. She smiled charmingly, with such eagerness that it smote with ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... hour, the wretched prisoners were peering through the lattice windows of their prison, which evidently once had been the harem of some wealthy Turk; where beauties had once lain on voluptuous couches, wretched criminals now crouched half-starved, racked with disease, and as we passed held out skinny arms. All Montenegrin saddles are bound on with string, even those of the highest in the land; indeed, one cannot imagine how the people did before string was invented, and ours began to slip before we were ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... mighty smart way. But time 'ull coom when ye'll regret this day, when ye eat oot yer repentance in doost an' ashes. Ay, Lord 'ull punish ye, Tony, chastize ye properly. Ye'll learn that marriage begun in sin can end in nought but sin. Ay,' she concluded, as she reached the door, raising her skinny hand prophetically, 'ay, after I'm deed and gone, ye mind ye o' t' words o' t' apostle—"For them that hev sinned without t' law, shall also perish without ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... grave young lady of ten years, who might, I thought, be quite a beauty in a few more years, but was at the moment rather angular—all shoulders and elbows. Peter Cope, Jr. and Hilary Matlack were skinny kids, too. The three were of an age and were ...
— Junior Achievement • William Lee
... requisite finger-posts—"foreshadowing without forestalling." It has often been said that Macbeth approaches the nearest of all Shakespeare's tragedies to the antique model: and in nothing is the resemblance clearer than in the employment of the Witches to point their skinny fingers into the fated future. In Romeo and Juliet, inward foreboding takes the place of outward prophecy. I have quoted above Romeo's prevision of "Some consequence yet hanging in the stars"; and beside it may ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... tails myself since I first heard the story; and there actually is more variety in them than you would suppose. Some are nice little fat things—almost round, with the hair close and fine; others longer and more skinny, and with poor hair, although what there is may be of a handsome colour. And as to colour, even in rabbits' tails, which are white underneath, there are all shades from grey to dark brown one the upper side; and the patterns and markings differ, as you know they do on ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... longer in the water. He floated, gently moving his hands like fins, and letting the sea rock his long, skinny body. It was curious, but in spite of everything he was fond of Stanley Burnell. True, he had a fiendish desire to tease him sometimes, to poke fun at him, but at bottom he was sorry for the fellow. There was something pathetic in his determination to make a job of everything. You couldn't help ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... a burlesque, from behind On their hacks and skinny nags Came a rout of merry wenches, Most ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine |
