"Shapely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no mercy there. She stamped her foot again, jabbed her forefinger at the door, and said, "Go-o-o!" in a tone that startled the majority of the company nearly as much as it did Danny. Then Yankee Jack threw down his cards, rose from the table, laid his strong, shapely right hand—not roughly—on Danny's ragged shoulder, and engineered the ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... publication, wrote: "Written in pursuance of a foolish plan I forget, or have no wish to remember; the world was never to guess that such an opera, such a comedy, such a speech proceeded from the same notable person.... Only this crab remains of the shapely Tree of Life in my fool's Paradise." It was in conformity with this plan that he not only issued "Pauline" anonymously, but enjoined secrecy upon those to whom he communicated ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... never forget the closing scenes of the wondrous test of courage and endurance. She was a pretty, fair-haired thing, a trifle undersized, but shapely and sinewy. The vast crowd that without much diminution, though with intermittent changes, had watched her from start to finish, began to grow tense with the approach to the end, and the last hour the enthusiasm was overwhelming. Wave upon wave of cheering followed every ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... assured—such things are said—that cigars were excellent for the health, and he was quite capable of believing it; but he knew as little about tobacco as about homeopathy. He had a very well-formed head, with a shapely, symmetrical balance of the frontal and the occipital development, and a good deal of straight, rather dry brown hair. His complexion was brown, and his nose had a bold well-marked arch. His eye was of a clear, cold gray, and ...
— The American • Henry James
... three months had passed away, and the shapely hull of the Mahina was eighteen inches deeper in the water than when she first anchored in the lagoon. During all this time fine weather had prevailed, and the boats had been constantly at work, the crew, however, being given plenty of liberty to rest and refresh themselves, ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... distance, sat a young man, almost her match in beauty, though in quite another style. In height about five feet ten, broad-shouldered, clean-built, a model of strength, agility, and grace. His face fair, fresh, and healthy-looking; his large eyes hazel; the crisp curling hair on his shapely head a wonderful brown in the mass, but with one thin streak of gold above the forehead, and all the loose hairs glittering golden. A short clipped mustache saved him from looking too feminine, yet ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... prescribed gaiter boots, a plain pointed waist and straight skirt, worn very long and full. Miss Stanhope wore a full waist made with a yoke and belt, a gored skirt, extremely scant, and so short as to afford a very distinct view of a well-turned ankle and small, shapely foot encased in snowy stocking and low-heeled black kid slipper. The material of her dress was chintz—white ground with a tiny brown figure—finished at the neck with a wide white ruffle; she had black silk ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... said she in sudden contrition, burying her face in both her shapely hands. "Say anything but that! I did not mean me hasty words. My uncle is a congressman, and he has ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough
... her shapely little sunburnt hands and held it gently in his; then with his other hand he took a pearl ring from his pocket and was about to slip it on her finger, but, suddenly changing his mind, he laid it ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... Language is not vituperatious enough to describe the effect of its downward elongation." Godwin, if one may trust the portrait by Northcote, had impressive if not exactly handsome features. The head is shapely, the brow ample, the nose decidedly too long, the shaven lips and chin finely chiselled. The whole suggestion is of a character self-absorbed and contemplative. He was short and sturdy in build, and in his sober dress and grave deportments, suggested rather the dissenting preacher ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... the Benedictine habit, just then becoming common in England, and his features were those of a man formed by nature to command, while they reconciled the beholder to the admission of the fact by the sad yet sweet smile which frequently played on the shapely countenance. He was now in the thirtieth year of his age, having been born in the first year of King Athelstane, and had been abbot of Glastonbury for several years, although his services as counsellor to King Edred had led him to spend much of his time in town, and he had therefore accepted ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... seems at first, the hewing off great masses of stone, so firmly compacted, fused and concreted together. At first it seems unintelligible enough; but the dints become minuter and minuter, here a grain and there an atom, till the smooth and shapely limbs begin to take shape. At first it seems a mere bewildered loss, a sharp pang as one parts with what seems one's very self. How long before the barest structure becomes visible! but when one once gets a dim inkling of what is going on, as the stubborn temper yields, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... faced, regular featured, fair skinned, blue eyed, and bright haired. During those long dreary hours, Edgar often beguiled the time with sketches of them, and the outlines—whether of chiselled profiles, shapely heads, or Cupid's-bow lips—were still almost exactly similar; yet it had become impossible to mistake one twin for the other, even when Alda had dressed the tresses on Wilmet's passive head in perfect conformity with her own. Looking at their figures, Alda's air of fashion ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rocky banks, An army issues out of wilderness, With battle plucking round its ragged flanks; Obstruction in the van; insane excess Oft at the heart; yet hard the onward stress Unto more spacious, where move ordered ranks, And rise hushed temples built of shapely stone, The work of hands not pledged to grind or slay. They gave our earth a dress of flesh on bone; A tongue to speak with answering heaven gave they. Then was the gracious birth of man's new day; Divided from the haunted ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to see a middle-aged housewife. But Mrs. Joll was hardly over thirty; a shapely woman, with a plain, pleasant face and auburn hair, the wealth of which she concealed by wearing it drawn straight back from the forehead and plaited in the severest coil ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... her shapely foot on the rock. The light was strong where she sat, and he noticed a freckle on her cheek, and this slight blemish drew her ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... the midst of packing, but Langston had a box of bon-bons which the ladies, or the boys, might enjoy as reminders of Chicago, and he rang. Miss Loomis herself, in cap and apron, opened the door. Her shapely, soft white hands were covered with the dust of books and papers she had been busily storing in the boxes, and her face flushed, just a bit, at sight of ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... it, observing the shapely, pointed fingers, the delicately curving nails. Reluctantly, almost, he admitted to himself how complete was her beauty, how absolute her charm. He sighed—a sigh for that lost youth of his, perhaps—as he bowed from his fine, lean height to press cold lips ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... "Queen" with sincere delight, her eyes drinking in hungrily the beauty of the exotic blossoms—for Robin and Beryl had helped themselves to the best the Manor had. "And fruit—ah, Brina's heart will rejoice. What is this?" Her slender, shapely hands fussed over the wrappings of the book, while Robin and ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... indubitably clean,—this also cheers. We take heart. Napkins and plates appear, white as the cloth; knives, forks, glasses, rapidly follow, seats are placed, we gather around, and the old lady herself comes triumphantly in, with a huge, shapely omelet, silky and hot,—and lo, our three cheers swell into ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... him, a pink, delicate, but shapely hand, which his eyes fell upon as he stood in half-reverie. He exchanged ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... a long and baffling silence, during which the doctor grew first red, then pale, then red again, and Messer Gambara stood with his scarlet cloak sweeping about his shapely limbs, sniffing his pomander and smiling almost insolently into the other's face; and some of the insolence of his look, I thought, was reflected upon the pale, placid countenance ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... sculptor does his block, and body forth in imagination the glory hidden within. That which these may have faintly imagined stands before us palpable if not yet perfected, the amorphous veil of the shapely figure hewn away, and the long toil of drill and chisel only in too ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... something of the tradition still survived. Set in the heart of hilly moorlands, it was like a cameo gem in a tartan plaid, a piece of old Vauxhall or Ranelagh in an upland vale. Of an afternoon sleep reigned supreme. The shapely immobile trees, the grey and crumbling stone, the lone green walks vanishing into a bosky darkness were instinct with the quiet of ages. It needed but Lady Prue with her flounces and furbelows and Sir Pertinax with his cane and buckled shoon to re-create the ancient world before good Queen Anne ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... there like Indra's self he shone, She loved the youth she gazed upon. She grim of eye and foul of face Loved his sweet glance and forehead's grace: She of unlovely figure, him Of stately form and shapely limb: She whose dim locks disordered hung, Him whose bright hair on high brows clung: She whose fierce accents counselled fear, Him whose soft tones were sweet to hear: She whose dire form with age was dried, Him radiant in his youthful pride: She whose ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... mind." There follows: "The Story of a Society Girl," in which we are told "there is a confession of love and the startling discovery that Dolly was a professional model"; "The Doctor's Story," with a picture of a corpse, "whose white shapely hands were clasped one over the other"; and "Would you Convict on Circumstantial Evidence?—A Scaffold Confession. A True Story." I glance at this, and read, "While the crowd watched in strained, breathless ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... Frith of Clyde. He went to school at Eton and also at Cambridge, then came to London, hired a piece of land out a little way from the city, and raised peppermint, camomile, and other simples for medicine. He had a love for private theatricals, had shapely legs and liked to show them. One evening the Prince of Wales saw his legs, and, taking a fancy to the owner, told him to make himself at home in Leicester House. That was enough for John Stuart. Having got a foothold, he made himself useful to Fred, and especially ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... gave the fish an inch of slack line; and at last he lay glittering on the rocks, with the black St. Andrew's crosses clearly marked on his plump sides, and the iridescent spots gleaming on his small, shapely head. "Une belle!" cried Ferdinand, as he held up the fish in triumph, "and it is madame who has the good fortune. She understands well to take the large fish—is it not?" Greygown stepped demurely down from her pinnacle, and as we drifted down the pool in the ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... of such varying report. First impressions are ever strong, and what she saw was this: a lithe, deep-chested, square-shouldered young fellow, with nerve and spring in every motion, standing bare-headed before them with the sunlight dancing on his close-cropped hair and shapely head. His eyes were dark, and heavily shaded with thick brows and long curling lashes, but the eyes brightened with every laughing word,—were full of life and health and straightforwardness and fun. She could not but note how clear and brave and wide-open they were, despite the little wrinkles ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... first day's work Mrs. Carter came down to note progress, and was shown several feet of sound, shapely dike, with planks and large stones laid on the exposed end as a protection against the tide. A little calculation showed that it would be quite feasible, with perhaps a week or so of hired help toward the last, to finish the dike before hard ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... garments, though it was clearly not an imitation of either: the materials were light and gay to suit the season. As to the women themselves, it was pleasant indeed to see them, they were so kind and happy-looking in expression of face, so shapely and well-knit of body, and thoroughly healthy-looking and strong. All were at least comely, and one of them very handsome and regular of feature. They came up to us at once merrily and without the least affectation of shyness, and all three shook ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... dark shapely head, and something in her poise and in her voice made his heart suddenly begin to thump ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... that. I just sat there looking at her and trying to remember that her shapely one hundred and eighteen pounds were steel hard and monster strong and that she could probably carry me under one arm all the way to Homestead without breathing hard. I couldn't cut and run; she could outrun me. I couldn't slug ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... of surprise to see no scantiness of trees in the Park at Hawarden. It is true that he attacks trees with the same vigour as he attacks abuses in the body politic, {32b} but he attacks them on the same principle—they are blemishes and not ornaments. No one more scrupulously respects a sound and shapely tree than Mr. Gladstone; and if he is prone to condemn those that show signs of decay, he is always ready to listen to any plea that may be advanced on their behalf by other members of the family. In this, as in other matters, doubtful points will of course arise; but there ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone
... own forehead, was thrown into relief by the exquisite gold embroidery that edged the shirt of finest Flemish linen. He wore a close-fitting tunic of fine scarlet cloth, with tight sleeves slightly turned back to display his shapely wrists; it was gathered to his waist by a splendid sword-belt, made of linked and enamelled plates of silver, the work of a skilled Byzantine artist, each plate representing in rich colours a little scene from the life and passion ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... around her lips. She was about to answer, when a man came to her and led her to the piano, and the first thing Schumann knew the shapely little hands struck into Beethoven's F-minor Sonata and played it through with a firm, sure touch and fine musical feeling. No wonder she ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... very clean, not very shapely, and worn by many an honest day's toil, persuading and pleading for peace at once. "Sure," says she, "if you'd wurrk at fairs you'd know that you can't be doing things like you'd do them at home; and 'twas only for a minit they wiped the saucers with the paper napkins, clean ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... raged and cried and said it was "betises" and on this occasion she listened no more patiently than on any other; she sprung nervously from the chair, and clasping her hands behind her back, raised her shapely head to address a large green parrot, that was whistling in his great iron cage, on the verandah beside her,—"Poor Poll, Pretty Poll"—came from the thin, pretty coral lips. Poll, thrust his head on one side, and ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... towering above the teams that draw them, brushing against the bar-ways and the lower branches of the trees along their course, slowly winding their way toward the barn. Then the great mows of hay, or the shapely stacks in the fields, and the battle is won. Milk and cream are stored up in well-cured hay, and when the snow of winter fills the meadows as grass fills them in summer, the tranquil cow can still rest and ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... stood his brave men's horses in the angles of the worm-fence, and two or three horse-holders took a shot at me as I sped in after the man who was bent on reaching the right of his divided force before Quinn should strike it, as I was bent on foiling him. Twice I fired at his shapely back, and twice, while he kept his speed among the tree-trunks, he looked back at me as coolly as at an odd passer-by and sent me a ball from his revolver. A few more bounds carried him near enough to his force to shout his commands, but half a hundred cheers suddenly ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... they had to pass on their way to the house, she found almost worthy to be compared with the centenarians of the Forest. The western sun was still upon the house itself. The dusk-tiled mansard roof, pierced by two rows of twinkling dormers, and crowned by solid chimney-stacks, bulked vast and shapely against the primrose sky, and the stone-shafted lower windows caught many a fiery reflection in their blackness. Through a porch broad and deep, and furnished with oaken seats, Bessie preceded her grandfather into a lofty and spacious hall, where the foot rang on the bare, polished ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... spoken of it. To an exceptionally fine presence, she added unusual intelligence and brilliant power of repartee. I have often heard the story that at a social function at the White House an accomplished courtier was enlarging to Miss Lane upon her shapely hands—"hands," he ejaculated, "that might have swayed the rod of empire." Her retort came without a moment's hesitation, "or wake to ecstasy the living lyre." Emily Schomberg, who married Hughes Hallett of England, wrote some years ago a charming sketch of Harriet ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... out of his regiment. To the contrary, his first abode had been in the city of New York, where during his brief stay he acquired a certain acquaintance. Colonel Battersleigh was always a striking figure, the more so by reason of his costume, which was invariably the same. His broad cavalry hat, his shapely varnished boots, his gauntlets, his sweeping cloak, made him fairly historic about the clubs. His air, lofty, assured, yet ever suave, showed that he classified himself cheerfully as being of the natural aristocracy of the earth. When Colonel Battersleigh ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... yellow, and stood out against the far background of sombre pine woods a brilliant mass of gold and brown. In winter, when there was no longer dun of upturned sod, nor waving daisy gardens, nor ruddy autumn grasses, it rose above the dazzling snow crust, lifting its bare, shapely branches in sober elegance and dignity, and seeming to say, "Do not pity me; I have been, and, please God, ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... His shapely, slim figure and broad shoulders gave evidence of a strong constitution, capable of enduring all the hardships of a nomad life and changes of climates, and of resisting with success both the demoralising effects of life in ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... reluctant away to their beds. As the darkness deepened the servants brought out a small table and placed a lamp on it, and by its light carried round drinks to the men of the party. Miss Benson was leaning back in a cane chair and chatting lazily with Burke, who sat beside her. She had one shapely silk-clad leg crossed over the other, and a small foot resting on the grass. Opposite her sat Colonel Dermot and Wargrave. As the brilliant tropic stars came out in the velvety blackness of the sky occasional ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... clasped in his hands when 'Rita came in. She was smoking her inevitable cigarette, and the thin wreaths of blue smoke curled upwards from her lips as she leant one arm on the table and caressed Blackett's ice-cold forehead with her shapely hand. Suddenly she stooped and sought gently to remove his ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... rule, are fine-looking, shapely, well-dressed and particular as to the fit of their gaiters and hose—a most refreshing sight to one for a year accustomed to the general dowdiness which in this respect prevails in England. Most of the English girls seem to have no idea that their feet should ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... that time was only sixty-four years old, and did not look his age. His eyes were bright, his smile benevolent and charming, and his hands small and still shapely. He was habitually attired in black with a gold chain in his buttonhole from which hung three crosses, the Legion of Honour, the Iron Crown, and his Order of Westphalia created by him in imitation ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... and burying her face in the pillows she began to sob. Lane looked down at her, at her glistening auburn hair, and slender, white, ringed hand clutching the cushions, at her lissom shaking form, at the shapely legs in the rolled-down silk stockings—and he felt a melancholy happiness in the proof that he had reached her shallow heart, and in the fact that this was ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... the boat, remembering how and with whom I had last heard this song, then wheeling about I caught my breath and stared as one that sees at last a long-desired, oft-prayed-for vision: for there, pacing demurely along the beach towards me, her body's shapely loveliness offset by embroidered gown, her dark and glossy ringlets caught up by jewelled comb, I thought to behold again the beloved shape of her I had lost ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... perch behind the vehicle, flung open the door, and lowered a short flight of steps. A very stately gentleman, richly dressed, with a handkerchief of point in one hand and a jeweled snuff-box in the other, descended the steps, placing one shapely leg in its maroon-colored stocking before the other with the mannered grace of the leader ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... lady-performers alleged by the programme to be "Serios and Bone Soloists," whereas they were the reverse of lugubrious; nor were their physiognomies fleshless or osseous; but, on the contrary, so shapely and well-favoured that JESSIE did remonstrate with me upon the perseverance with which I ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... mild-eyed beauty of a race Known as the blameless Ethiops of Greek song, Plotting to do her royal master wrong, Watching, reproachful of the lingering light, The evening shadows deepen for her flight, Love-guided, to her home in a far land, Now waited death at the great Shah's command. Shapely as that dark princess for whose smile A world was bartered, daughter of the Nile Herself, and veiling in her large, soft eyes The passion and the languor of her skies, The Abyssinian knelt low at the feet Of her stern lord: "O king, if it be meet, And for thy honor's ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... could reply the door opened, and Mrs. Ware and Katherine entered the room. Mrs. Ware, ignorant of tension, went smilingly to Austin, and, drawing down his shapely head with both hands, ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... whose life and soul she trifled with, that had he been a saint of stone, his glance would have been constrained to follow the flexousities of the dress in order to admire and re-admire the perfections and beauties of the shapely leg, which moulded the white stocking of the seneschal's lady. Thus it was certain that a weak varlet would be taken in the snare, wherein the most vigorous knight would willingly have succumbed. When she had turned, returned, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... a large, muscular man, towering over the slender young professor like a very giant, and in his eyes there was a cruel gleam. Vincent Burgess was at the limit of mental resistance. Lifting his shapely right hand in the ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Elizabeth laid her shapely arm upon the mantelpiece and looked into the fire. He stood beside her, looking down at her—for he was a little taller than herself—but she seemed unconscious of his gaze. She spoke presently ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... a figure slightly inclined toward stoutness, brown hair with just a single streak of silver discernible here and there amongst it, a complexion still in fairly good preservation, a pair of keen but kindly grey eyes, an excellent set of teeth, shapely hands and feet, and a pleasant smile which at once prepossessed the beholder in its possessor's favour. Of the three younger women, two, aged respectively twenty-one and nineteen, were sisters; whilst the third, aged twenty-five, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... such an one as I shall tell you. Aucassin was the name of the damoiseau: fair was he, goodly, and great, and featly fashioned of his body and limbs. His hair was yellow, in little curls, his eyes blue-gray and laughing, his face beautiful and shapely, his nose high and well set, and so richly seen was he in all things good, that in him was none evil at all. But so suddenly was he overtaken of Love, who is a great master, that he would not, of his will, be a knight, nor take arms, nor follow tourneys, nor do whatsoever him beseemed. Therefore ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... receiving consisted in leaving her door open and allowing people to come and go and sit down a moment, without stirring from her work for them, or even breaking off a discussion she might have begun, to welcome new arrivals. There were artists with shapely heads and bright red beards, and here and there the white poll of an old man, sentimental friends of the elder Ruys; then there were connoisseurs, men of the world, bankers, brokers, and some young ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... and pausing beneath it, began to pick up the fallen fruit. . . . There were so many berries, each containing a shapely nut, that Honoria might ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... nature of those who in full fruition of expanded reason tower above and control them; and, awed by something which she read in this dominative new face, Regina stood irresolute in front of him, unwilling to accept the shapely white hand held out ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... coast that fish were running in the north. So up went the sails of the little Rescue; and with Billy Topsail, Jimmie Grimm and Bobby North aboard she swept daintily between the tickle rocks and turned her shapely prow towards ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... wander through the devious air; Thyself untimely, and thy consort died, But four celestials both your cares supplied. Venus in tender delicacy rears With honey, milk, and wine their infant years; Imperial Juno to their youth assigned A form majestic, and sagacious mind; With shapely growth Diana graced their bloom; And Pallas taught the texture of the loom. But whilst, to learn their lots in nuptial love, Bright Cytherea sought the bower of Jove (The God supreme, to whose eternal eye The registers of fate expanded lie; Wing'd ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... had mastered the rebellious hair, and it lay shining and beautiful, braided and coiled about her shapely head. She was standing now, having shaken down and smoothed out the rumpled riding habit, and had made herself look quite fresh and lovely in spite of ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... come to her side, she waived him back with her shapely hand, nor would she talk to him; when he talked she hardly looked at him; till at last he burst into tears. For he suffered as one can suffer but once, when the childish penitence is fresh and therefore boundless, and when the yearning for love ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... seemed each of them a fair burgess, For sitting in a guildhall on a dais. And each one for the wisdom that he can Was shapely for to be an alderman. They had enough of chattels and of rent, And very gladly would their wives assent; And, truly, else they had been much to blame. It is full fair to be yclept madame, And fair to go to vigils all before, And have a ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Giton down a dark and dirty passage, after me, and fly with all speed to my lodgings. Arriving there, I slam the door shut, embrace him convulsively, and press my face against his which is all wet with tears. For a long time, neither of us could find his voice, and as for the lad, his shapely bosom was heaving continuously with choking sobs. "Oh the disgraceful inconsistency of it all," I cried, "for I love you still, although you abandoned me, and no scar from that gaping wound is left upon this breast! What can you say that ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... blacksmith. Let us try to live as honestly, as uprightly, and as laboriously as he, so that one day we may deserve to hear the words, "Well done, My good and faithful servants!" Let us try so to live that each action of our lives shall be a good and shapely thing, a help and a benefit to others, like the horseshoes made by the honest blacksmith ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... all that the earth has yielded with or without the farmer's help, of all that he can call his own within the limits of his land, nothing pleases him better than those still, brown fields where the shapely stacks stand amid the deadened trees. Two months have passed, the workmen are at it again. The stacks are torn down, the bundles scattered, the hemp spread out as once before. There to lie till it shall be dew-retted or rotted; there to suffer freeze and ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... there are other tools also that greatly facilitate the keeping of the plantation in order. Yet wholly aside from the value of a tool as an implement of tillage and as a weapon for the pursuit of weeds, is its merit merely as a shapely and interesting instrument. A man will take infinite pains to choose a gun or a fishing-rod to his liking, and a woman gives her best attention to the selecting of an umbrella; but a hoe is only a hoe and a rake only a rake. If one puts his personal choice into the ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... Verily, of the world's women 'twas she was the dearest and loveliest and justest that the eyes of men had ever beheld. It seemed to King Eochaid and his followers that she was from the elfmounds. Of her was said: "Shapely are all till compared with Etain," "Dear are all ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... never had dimples—but hints, suggestions of dimples, that caught themselves when he smiled, here and there like hidden mischief well kept under control, but still merrily ready to come to the surface. His hands were white and firm, the fingers long and shapely, the hands of a brain worker. The vision of Hanford Weston's hands, red and bony, came up to her in contrast. She had not known that she looked at them that day when he had stood awkwardly asking if he might walk with her. Poor Hanford! He would ill compare with ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... strange that I dare to say it to you when I have known you so little." She lifted her eyes, full of a wonderful love light, and she was glorified to him, all meanly dressed though she was. The smooth Madonna braids around the shapely head, covered by the soft felt hat, seemed more beautiful to him than all the elaborate ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... interview took place in a densely shaded alley of the garden of the Palazzo Costi one sultry afternoon of the early autumn. The youthful couple were seated very near each other upon a rustic bench. Massetti held Zuleika's small, soft hand in his and the electric touch of her tiny and shapely fingers thrilled him as the touch of female fingers had never thrilled him before. He gazed into the liquid depths of her dark, glowing eyes and their subtile fire seemed to melt his very soul. ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... himself waiting to catch a view of the man's face in full. The head was shapely, and balanced upon a neck broad at the base, but of exceeding pliancy and grace. The features in profile were of Oriental outline, and of that delicacy of expression which has always been thought a sign of blood ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... had been brought from Knowehead, and I was so much recovered that I found myself able to rise, and set about dressing immediately. My continental visions of beard were more than realised; and if I failed to produce a shapely moustache, 'twas not for lack of material. With fluttering expectation, I selected the most graceful of the pantaloons; drew on my rings; arrayed myself in the purple velvet slippers, cap, and brocade dressing-gown; took one lingering last look at the ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... toys. Memories beset his brooding brain. Her glass of water from the kitchen tap when she had approached the sacrament. A cored apple, filled with brown sugar, roasting for her at the hob on a dark autumn evening. Her shapely fingernails reddened by the blood of squashed ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... your ladyships, at a poor miserable creature like me. I know that my body is anything but shapely; but my soul— that, I trust, is different. But, Senoritas, ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... would ask God the same question as several others in the town did—namely, why he, Petit, he the sheriff, he the provost royal, had to himself, Petit, provost royal and sheriff, a wife so exquisitely shapely, said dowered with charms, that a donkey seeing her pass by would bray with delight. To this God vouchsafed no reply, and doubtless had his reasons. But the slanderous tongues of the town replied for him, that the young lady was by no means a maiden when she became the wife of Petit. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... queenly grace, for their lifelong habit of carrying burdens upon their heads, and their freedom from confining garments, have given them a carriage which women in this country might well envy. Though generally dark-skinned and toil-worn, many of the younger women are beautiful, while all have shapely and delicately-formed limbs, and eyes and teeth of great beauty. At the water's edge the children are engaged in scrubbing cooking-pots and other utensils, while their elders are employed in washing their clothing or domestic linen, when, after perhaps enjoying ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... charming havoc of what, without it, would have been a conventional regularity of profile. She was really no more slender than the normal woman, but, compared with her mates, she seemed of elfin slimness; she was shapely in a supple, long-limbed way. There was something a little exotic about her. Her green and gold plumage gave her a touch of the fantastic and the bizarre. Prevailingly, she arrayed herself in flowers that ran all the ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... over the crowd of onlookers, then trips modestly down the steps. With a little frisson, she casts the sheet from her and stands revealed—well, perhaps not quite as Eve was to Adam, but so nearly so that the difference is scarcely worth remarking. She glances down at her shapely legs and then again ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... it would have been to the old woman to see one of her young ladies reduced to this, and she preferred ladening herself to hurting the poor old creature's feelings. So she walked out bravely in her best style. But nevertheless her shapely neck would turn itself now and then from side to side, as though in dread of some familiar face. And there were little pin-pricks all over her of irritation and mortified self-love. "A thing is all very well ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... I do not know who it is, but I am beginning to think I know who it might be; who it can be. Is that dubious?" His eyes were now gleaming. The three men watching him knew the signs. His small shapely hand was pounding the arm of his chair softly. He became suddenly grave. ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... night within a wooded park Like an ocean cavern, fathoms deep in bloom, Sweet scents, like hymns, from hidden flowers fume, And make the wanderer happy, though the dark Obscures their tint, their name, their shapely bloom. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... on the tower, In vigorous life its shapely tendrils weaves, But, resting on the summit, forms a bower, And sleeps, a tangled mass ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... eyebrows, from the deep cavities beneath which his dark eyes seemed literally to flash. His nose was aquiline, his cheek-bones prominent. His hands were small, but strong and nervous, with little flesh upon them, and the fingers were long and shapely. ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... her chin in her brown, shapely hands, and looked at him curiously, and with a frank envy in her ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... frost. In this case the inundations have to find new paths on either side of the obstructed way. The result is a type of valleys characterized by very irregular and changeable stream beds, the rivers having no chance to organize themselves into the shapely curves which they ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... his eye fell upon a column headed "A Colored Congressman." He read the article with astonishment that rapidly turned to chagrin and dismay. It was an interview describing the Congressman as a tall and shapely man, about thirty-five years old, with an olive complexion not noticeably darker than many a white man's, straight hair, and ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... shade too short, revealing in its undulations a trifle too much of the dainty hose; but the revelation was so shapely it would have been ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... But they found themselves confronted by rear views of two shapely pairs of young shoulders, while Mrs. Bentley had the air of looking through the young men without being able ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... in.' He grew up to man's estate in happy ignorance of such minute and invidious distinctions between his anterior extremities. Enough for him that his hands could grasp the forest boughs or chip the stone into shapely arrows; and he never even thought in his innocent soul which particular hand ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... definition: "well-grown, shapely, goodly: graceful. II. of good natural parts: clever, witty; also 'of ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... age was about forty, which at that period, in a woman's habit of mind, was the equivalent of about fifty to-day. Her latest photograph was considered to be very successful. It showed her standing behind a velvet chair and leaning her large but still shapely bust slightly over the chair. Her forearms, ruffled and braceleted, lay along the fringed back of the chair, and from one negligent hand depended a rose. A heavy curtain came downwards out of nothing into the picture, and the end of it lay coiled and draped on the seat of the chair. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... brushed, and his lean face was brown with the play of wind and rain and sun. Such features as his broad forehead, aquiline nose, and strong well-shaped mouth, would have distinguished any countenance. Yet the whole of it was shapely and clean-cut, and there was a quiet fearlessness about the keen grey eyes that set you thinking. As a footman he looked magnificent. But he would have killed any master stone dead. Royalty itself could not have borne ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Lizzie with a graceful bend of the shapely head; and clasping with her timid little hand the strong arm of the manly cadet, she passed with him from the lower drawing-room across ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... in the vehicle regarded the scene with an expression of terror. One of them was an old woman, and the other a damsel of about sixteen. A mass of golden hair fell daintily from a small head, and the oval of her comely face was as shapely as an egg, and white with the transparent whiteness seen when the hands of a housewife hold a new-laid egg to the light to let the sun's rays filter through its shell. The same tint marked the maiden's ears where they glowed in the sunshine, and, in short, what with the tears ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... and books devoured by ancestresses in the long solitary winter evenings of their lonely cabins on the frontier. A beardless, classical head, covered by short flocculent blonde curls, poised on a shapely neck and shoulders, was more Greek in outline than suggestive of any ordinary American type. Finally, after having thoroughly amused his small audience, he lifted his straw hat to the "ladies," and lounged out across the road to the gateway. ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... ten I was some six or seven miles out along the Newcastle road—a road in these parts being merely a worn track over the open veldt, distinguishable only by the ruts and mud. Close on the left were high and shapely hills, like Welsh mountains, but on the right the country was more open. A Mr. Malcolm's farm stood in the middle of a waving plain, with a few fields, aloe hedges, and poplars. The kraal of his ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... and power of expression, with dark lashes of unusual thickness; but for the rest, her complexion was tanned by reckless exposure to the sun, her nose had a saucy tendency, and her mouth, though shapely, was not by any means a rosebud; indeed, she had a wide smile which was readily excused for the charm of it, and because of her splendid teeth. Soulless men admired Honor for her eyes, her teeth, and her figure which was truly classical; others, for her ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... busybody of Beorminster, I should say,' rejoined the man with a sneer. 'See here, my friend,' and he rapped Cargrim on the breast with a shapely hand, 'if you interfere in what does not concern you, there will be trouble. I saw Dr Pendle on private business, and as such it has nothing to do with you. Hold your tongue, you black crow, and keep away from me,' cried the stranger, with sudden ferocity, 'or I'll knock your head off. ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume |
