"Sleek" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... miss.' I could never succeed in forcing myself to smoke. I studied—why conceal my shortcomings?—very lazily, especially at the beginning of the course. I went out a great deal. My aunt had bestowed on me a wide sledge, fit for a general, with a pair of sleek horses. At the houses of 'the gentry' my visits were rare, but at the theatre I was quite at home, and I consumed masses of tarts at the restaurants. For all that, I permitted myself no breach of decorum, and behaved very ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... that black Burrell! I am very happy that I'm not a lady, for I'd die, that I would ten times over, sooner than marry any one I didn't love. It will kill her, I know—I feel it will: yet why does she marry him? And she keeps such deep silence too.—Down, pretty Blanche, and do not rouse your sleek ears: your ears, Blanchy, are lady's ears, and so ought to hear nothing frightening—and your eyes, Blanche, are lady's eyes, and should never see any thing disagreeable.—What ails thee, doggy? Nay, wag ye'r tail, and do not crouch so; 'tis but the ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... animal is for yourselves, gentlemen," declared the auctioneer. "We don't need to have this sleek little animal's paces shown. We are in a hurry to get through. Who opens ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... lapidary, lapidarian. V. smooth, smoothen^; plane; file; mow, shave; level, roll; macadamize; polish, burnish, calender^, glaze; iron, hot-press, mangle; lubricate &c (oil) 332. Adj. smooth; polished &c v.; leiodermatous^, slick, velutinous^; even; level &c 213; plane &c (flat) 251; sleek, glossy; silken, silky; lanate^, downy, velvety; glabrous, slippery, glassy, lubricous, oily, soft, unwrinkled^; smooth as glass, smooth as ice, smooth as monumental alabaster, smooth as velvet, smooth as oil; slippery as ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Still, this Nelchen was a practical body, prone to laughter,—as in nature, any person would be whose mouth was all rotund and tiny scarlet curves. Why, it was, to a dimple, the mouth which Francois Boucher bestowed on his sleek goddesses! Louis Quillan was sorry for poor Boucher painting away yonder at a noisy garish Versailles, where he would never see that perfect mouth the artist had so often dreamed of. No, not in the sweet flesh at least; lips such as ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... fourth day, however, the Reverend Frederick crept forth, white and shaken, with his sleek hair elaborately combed to cover a long scratch on his forehead, and announced his intention of departing from the ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... face paler than usual but perfectly calm, his head bent a little to one side and his smooth hair, which had been slightly ruffled in the encounter in the park, as smooth as ever. It was a very distinctive feature of him; it was part of the sleek and spotless neatness which Mrs. ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... constant survey. Even in that moment of acute despair he arrested Robert's attention. There was something odd about him—something distressful and indignant. Whilst he prayed he made jerky, irritable movements which fluttered out the wings of his gown, so that with his sleek black hair and pointed face he looked like a large angry blackbird, trapped and ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... never,' she answered. It appeared atrocious and Flemish-clumsy, spreading out and overshadowing the Queen's heavy face. Their English hoods with the tails down made the head sleek and comely; or, with the tails folded up and pinned square like flat caps they could give to the face a gallant ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... independent of the actual stars as geometrical truth is independent of the lines of an ill-drawn diagram. This is, we imagine, very nearly if not exactly, the astronomy which Bacon compared to the ox of Prometheus, [De Augmentis, Lib. iii. Cap. 4] a sleek, well-shaped hide, stuffed with rubbish, goodly to look at, but containing nothing to eat. He complained that astronomy had, to its great injury, been separated from natural philosophy, of which it ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Europeans are the bullock gharries by which the heavy traffic of the town is carried on. These are carts curiously shaped and often carved, with large and very wide-rimmed wheels. They are drawn by a pair of Indian bullocks, sleek cream-coloured beasts with mild and patient eyes, and often bearing enormous horns, which, somewhat after the shape of a lyre, stand four feet above ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... a tall, well-made figure, a face clean-shaven and deeply sun-burnt, and under the lifted hat caught a glimpse of sleek black hair. But when she saw his eyes, she knew his name, for they were the bluest she had ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... the Testament de Cesar Girodot, or Oedipe-Roi, inscribed not on the green bills of the Opera-Comique, but on the wine-coloured bills of the Comedie-Francaise, nothing seemed to me to differ more profoundly from the sparkling white plume of the Diamants de la Couronne than the sleek, mysterious satin of the Domino Noir; and since my parents had told me that, for my first visit to the theatre, I should have to choose between these two pieces, I would study exhaustively and in turn ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... of innocent baby-kisses. Embarrassment and stifled joy had brought a rosier color to her cheek; Gay's vandal hand had ruffled the smoothness of her sandy locks, so that a few stray hairs were absolutely curling with amazement that they had escaped from their sleek bondage; in a word, Samantha Ann Ripley was ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... no better than hunting creatures tied by a string. First of all, it was such a little bit of a place, and then what scarecrows the poor beasts were, one halt, and another maimed! But those real animals on the mountains and the plains—what splendid beasts, so gigantic, so sleek and glossy! Why, the stags leapt up against the sky as though they had wings, and the wild-boars came rushing to close quarters like warriors in battle! And thanks to their breadth and bulk one could ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... our hero made his appearance at the door, and, having given his name, was asked into the counting-house of the establishment, where sat Mr Small and his factotum, Mr Sleek. It may be as well here to describe the persons and peculiarities ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... how the fat nag canters, as to the tune of a sinner's psalm, slow and hard-breathing. What reason or right can the people have to complain, while their bishop's steed is so sleek and well caparisoned? Inclination to change, desire to abolish old usages. Up! up! for shame! They shall smart for it, idlers! Sir Bishop, I must ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... universal, of the choicest parentage. He was blooded, and of Arabian, through English, stocks. You might detect his blood at a glance, even as you did that of his rider. The beast was large, high, broad-chested, sleek of skin, wiry of limb, with no excess of fat, and no straggling hair; small ears, a glorious mane, and a great lively eye. At once docile and full of life, he trod the earth with the firm pace of an elephant, yet with ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... Romans vociferating to their friends to bestir themselves to procure places at the steeple-chase programmed for this 14th of March. An hour before Aurora had opened her porte cochere to Phoebus, and those sleek piebald coursers whose portraits are to be seen in the Ludovisi and Ruspigliosi palaces, all the vetturini and cabmen of Rome had already opened theirs; and while some were adjusting misfitting harness to every specimen of horseflesh that could be procured for the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... expressed a wish to transmit their lineaments to posterity by moans of his skill. Whenever such proposals were made, he fixed his piercing eyes on the applicant and seemed to look him through and through. If he beheld only a sleek and comfortable visage, though there were a gold-laced coat to adorn the picture and golden guineas to pay for it, he civilly rejected the task and the reward; but if the face were the index of anything uncommon in thought, sentiment or experience, or if he met ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... have a wonderful love for nature that's raw and human, and this session-made morality is but a gloss. They'll be taking the tartan off us next maybe! Some day the old dog at the heart of the Highlands will bark for all his sleek coat Man! I hate the very look of those Lowland cattle sitting here making kirk laws for their emperors, and their bad-bred Scots speech jars on my ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... Stimpcett came forward and said to grandma that three gentlemen had come, one after another, and had each asked to have a private talk with her. There was a large fleshy man in the front room, a chubby little man in the kitchen, and a sleek, long-faced man ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... hurrying back to Tulagi to connect with the Sydney steamer, sent a boat ashore with the orange and lime trees from Ulava. And these several weeks marked a period of perfect weather. There were days on end when sleek calms ruled the breathless sea, and days when vagrant wisps of air fanned for several hours from one direction or another. The land-breezes at night alone proved regular, and it was at night that the occasional cutters and ketches slipped by, too eager to take advantage ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... fancied to myself that the doll and the little white playful creature must be very jealous of each other on my account. Now Herr Eleazar detested and persecuted everything that even looked like a cat; for he says they are malicious. This seems to be a general superstition. Wherever the sleek animals shew their faces, everybody, even the best-natured people, will begin shouting, puss! puss! and will worry and hunt them, as if, in pursuing the harmless things, they were driving away Antichrist himself. And this it is that makes them, as no doubt they are, so mistrustful ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... guests; and there their seats they took, Each in his rank, the masters of the lands, With crowns of fragrant blossoms garlanded, And polished jewels swinging in their ears. Of some the thews, knitted and rough, stood forth Like iron maces; some had slender limbs, Sleek and fine-turned like the five-headed snake; Lords with long-flowing hair; glittering lords; High-nosed, and eagle-eyed, and heavy-browed; The faces of those kings shone in a ring As shine at night the stars; and ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... Ricardo, and the Scotch "Feelosofers,"—and closes his anathema with the charming picture of a wooded "hanger," up which he toils (with curses on the road) only to rejoice in the view of a sweet Hampshire valley, over which sleek flocks are feeding, and down which some white stream goes winding, and cheating him into a rare memory of his innocent boyhood. He gains at length his election to Parliament; but he is not a man to figure well there, with his impetuosity and lack of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... Diva her well-trained mind did seriously incline, during that last Milan campaign. Nor did her moral aim seem to be without good promise of success. The sleek young colts with their shiny coats, glossy, with the rich pastures of the Lombard plains, pranced up and nibbled, all unconscious of the hidden noose. One fine young unsuspecting animal, the noblest of the herd, came so close to the noose that Bianca ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... strong and free, Able to give thee all content and ease. I am not bashful, Virgin, I can please At first encounter, hug thee in mine arm, And give thee many Kisses, soft and warm As those the Sun prints on the smiling Cheek Of Plums, or mellow Peaches; I am sleek And smooth as Neptune, when stern Eolus Locks up his surly Winds, and nimbly thus Can shew my active Youth; why dost thou flye? Remember Amaryllis, it was I That kill'd Alexis for thy sake, and set An everlasting hate 'twixt Amoret And her beloved Perigot: 'twas I That drown'd ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... splendid stud of horses. And my horses came—from what stock do you think, young sir? Why, from none other than the celebrated stables of the Tsar, Ivan Alexeitch, brother of Peter the Great ... it's the truth I'm telling you! All fawn-coloured stallions, sleek—their manes to their knees, their tails to their hoofs.... Lions! And all that was—and is buried in the past. Vanity of vanities—and every kind of vanity! But still—why regret it? Every man has his limits ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Athene's temple in the upper city, and with her key open the doors of the holy house; and let her lay the robe, that seemeth to her the most gracious and greatest in her hall and far dearest unto herself, upon the knees of beauteous-haired Athene; and vow to her to sacrifice in her temple twelve sleek kine, that have not felt the goad, if she will have mercy on the city and the Trojans' wives and little children. So may she perchance hold back Tydeus' son from holy Ilios, the furious spearman, the mighty deviser of rout, whom in ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... space? Whence comes the improvement of live-stock in this country? Compare the cattle of early New England with those on modern farms. Was the little scrubby stock of our forefathers replaced by large, sleek, well-bred cattle through accident? No, it was by the discovery of investigators and its practical adaptation by breeders. Compare the vineyards and the orchards of the early history of the nation, the grains and the grasses, or the fruits and the flowers with those of present ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... lay like a great shining shield before him, blazing with millions of mirrors that danced on the shoulders of the sleek and lazy swells, lifting in the sun-dazzle from the entrance, some twenty-five ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... vain that Thyrsis tried at any time to work at things that were interesting to other people. Perhaps he could have worked better at them, if there had not been so many things that were interesting to him. He would find himself confronted with the image of the society clergyman, or of the sleek editor in his club, or some other memory out of the world of luxury and pride. And each day came the newspaper, with its burden of callousness and scorn; and perhaps also a letter from Corydon, with ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... I gaping stare, And eye her o'er and o'er; Lean as a rake, with sighs and care, Sleek as a ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... vulgar costermonger to bestride his long-ear'd Arabian, and belabor his panting sides with merciless stick and iron-shod heels to impel him to the goal in the mimic race—or the sleek and polish'd courtier to lick the dust of his superiors' feet to obtain a paltry ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... river, but the word of command that would have sent the boat hurriedly back to pick up the swimmer was not given. Instead a lusty cry for greater speed ahead urged the sinuous muscles gliding beneath the sleek brown hides; and when Muda Saffir rose to the surface with a cry for help upon his lips Ninaka shouted back to him in derision, consigning his carcass to the ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... naturally during the London Season that the life of the Hurlingham Girl is at its fullest and best. On week-day mornings she is a frequent attendant in the Row, the means of her father being apparently sufficient to provide her with a sleek and showy Park hack and an irreproachable groom. Thence she hastens home to rest and dawdle until the hour arrives for luncheon, to which meal she has invited the youth who happens to be temporarily dancing attendance upon her, ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... that he tried to do his best. During all that month, they lived on very short commons indeed, seldom tasting meat except on Sundays, and poor old Diamond, who worked hardest of all, not even then—so that at the end of it he was as thin as a clothes-horse, while Ruby was as plump and sleek as ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... any northern country; and the difference in their temperaments. Our dogs are alert in their movements and of wideawake features; here they are arowsy and degraded mongrels, with expressionless eyes. Our cats are sleek and slumberous; here they prowl about haggard, shifty and careworn, their fur in patches and their ears a-tremble from nervous anxiety. That domestic animals such as these should be fed at home does not commend itself to the common ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... scorn of Faust for this poor fiend and all he has to bestow, we read the failure of the plot. Faust may sign a hundred such bonds in his blood with little fear. He knows well enough that a spirit such as his can never be satisfied with what the fiend has to give, nor lie down in sleek contentment to enjoy the earth ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... fairly and fully discussed, and the subject brought forward and argued upon precedent, as well as all its collateral relations. I should be pleased to see the question fairly committed, were it for no other reason but to hear the sleek, smooth contractors from the other House come to this bar and declare, that they, and they only, could frame a money bill, and they, and they only, could dispose of the property of the peers of Great Britain. Perhaps ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... forearms were almost as large as a man's body; the three largest of his five knifelike claws were five and a half inches long; in the mud his feet had left tracks that were fifteen inches from tip to tip. He was fat, and sleek, and powerful. His eyes, no larger than hickory nuts, were eight inches apart. His two upper fangs, sharp as stiletto points, were as long as a man's thumb, and between his great jaws he could crush the ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... witch-doctor, so we did not see him. The scenery along the watershed between the Kei and the Kobonqaba is wonderfully beautiful. The weather was calm and clear; the ocean like a world of sapphire fringed with snow. The populous villages of the Natives stood on every ledge; sleek cattle grazed in every valley. The people looked prosperous and contented. We met civility everywhere; milk was offered us at every kraal. I visited the same locality a few years ago and sojourned for a few weeks ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... a sleek-headed whimsical old man, appeared, who was commonly called the Wooden Poet, from his carrying wooden ware, which was slung in a basket round his neck, and who chaunted a kind of song in doggerel rhyme, somewhat similar ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the convenient dress for truth discovered for himself through experience; or it may be literary ornament. The humorous and not unsatiric lines to his poet-friend Albius Tibullus,—"when you want a good laugh, come and see me; you will find me fat and sleek and my skin well cared for, a pig from the sty of Epicurus,"—are as easily the jest of a Stoic as the confession of an Epicurean. Horace's philosophy is individual and natural, and representative of Roman common sense ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... sit thee down upon this flowery bed, While I thy amiable cheeks do coy, And stick musk roses in thy sleek, smooth, head, And kiss thy fair, large ears, ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... couple of fat pigs and emptied it into their wooden trough. Going into a little corn-crib adjoining the stable and wagon-shed, she brought out a bucketful of wheat-bran and fed it to the cow, which stood trying to lick the back of a sleek young calf over the low fence in another lot. "I'll milk you after breakfast," she said, as she stroked the cow's back. "The calf will have to wait; I can't attend to all humanity and the brute creation at the same time. You'll feel more like suckling the frisky thing, anyway, after you've filled ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... may be kindness, lofty souls, Great Brains, and whatso ne'er grows older, Him the Material controls: He shrugs a sleek, good-natured shoulder. Time scatters dalliance, joy, and joke; Your choicest vintage passes; e'en your Supreme tobacco ends in smoke— And so will ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... The sleek black monoplane came scudding out of the south, flying low over fields of ice and snow that were thawing slowly under the heat of the arctic sun. After a long time it wheeled, circled gradually, and then, as if it had found what it had been looking for, came lightly down ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... said the hostler to the deputy hostler, 'give the gen'lm'n the ribbons.' 'Shiny Villiam'—so called, probably, from his sleek hair and oily countenance—placed the reins in Mr. Pickwick's left hand; and the upper hostler thrust ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... meek, with his form so sleek, Was the heartiest of them all, And would take his place, with a smiling face, When the refection bell would call; And they sung and laughed, And the rich wine quaffed, Till they shook ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... this reconciliation with his uncle, very soon began to grow sleek, and to show signs of the benefits of good living and clean linen. He fasted rigorously twice a week, to be sure; but he made amends on the other days: and, to show how great his appetite was, Mr. Wycherley said, he ended by swallowing that fly-blown rank ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... them with her eyes. Her father's face was apoplectic; he was leaning forward, trying to speak, but he was too choked for utterance. Nathaniel Puntz looked as though a wet sponge had been dashed upon his sleek countenance. The other directors stared, dumfounded. This case had no precedent in their experience. They were at a ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... were to do great things with them, and I dreaded any of them dying. We used to have them up on deck every day to walk about, two at a time, and they all became as tame as lambs; indeed, they lived like aldermen, and grew as sleek and fat, for we kept them well washed and clean, for I couldn't help thinking that would be conducive to ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... this is naturally an important military post as well as the forwarding depot for the troops stationed along the great western trade route to Batang and Lhasa. The Chinese population under their protection, numbering some four hundred families, mostly traders, looked sleek and prosperous. Evidently they made a good living off the country, unlike the Tibetans who were generally dirty and ragged and poor in appearance. I must confess that I was disappointed at the latter. In spite ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... should have made me Prime Minister, and have let him be Chancellor of the Exchequer. I begin to see the ways of Government now. I could have done all the dirty work. I could have given away garters and ribbons, and made my bargains while giving them. I could select sleek, easy bishops who wouldn't be troublesome. I could give pensions or withhold them, and make the stupid men peers. I could have the big noblemen at my feet, praying to be Lieutenants of Counties. I could dole out ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... of the day, heralds had announced that the sovereign was prepared to listen to any grievances or complaints from his people. For a few minutes no one came forward, but at last a pair of sleek mules, handsomely caparisoned, with a richly adorned palankeen slung between them, the identical equipage of the maharanee which had been harboured in my home, emerged from the crowd, and advanced at a grave pace toward the royal dais. That some high-born lady was within ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... if some one were lifting it and dropped it; indefinite noises came from upstairs: there was a hand in the house moving everything. Another pause. The kitten was curled up on the window-ledge outside in the sunshine, just as the sleek cats curled up in the warmth at Thebes of old Egypt five or six thousand years ago; the sparrow was happy at the rose tree; a bee was happy on a broad dandelion disc. 'Soo-hoo!'—a low whistle came through the chink; a handful of rain was flung ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... to him that, for some reason, the presence of that particular person affected her. He was a plump little man, sleek and well-dressed, with black hair, very large pearl studs, black moustache and imperial. Mrs. Weatherley stood quite still for a moment. Perhaps, he thought, she was listening to ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and the anvil comes up to us even here; and down by the banks of the river, away westward, as far as the eye can see, up spring clean bright houses of the wealthy manufacturers and traders of Rouen,—rich, sleek, and portly gentlemen with the thinnest boots, who never even pass down the old streets if they can help it, but whom we shall find very pleasant and hospitable; and with whom we may sit down at a cafe under the trees and ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... many other incidents and characters which often contribute nothing to the progress of the novel. They are a part of life, however, so Tolstoi includes them. One might say there is an attempt at unity, in the person of that sleek egotist, Stepan—his relation by blood and marriage to both Anna and Kitty makes him in some sense a link between the two couples. But he is more successful as a personage than as the keystone of an arch. The novel would really lose nothing by ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... should be found any who are willing to follow the lead of such foreign propagandists as the ringleted, gloved exotic, Ernestine L. Rose. We can understand how such a man as the Rev. Mr. May, or the sleek-headed Dr. Channing, may be deluded by her into becoming one of her disciples. They are not the first instances of infatuation that may overtake weak-minded men, if they are honest in their devotion to her and her doctrines; nor would they be the first examples of a low ambition that seeks notoriety ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... you mean by sleek? You wouldn't have a minister of the church go about with long hair and a velveteen coat and a pipe in his mouth, ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... girandoles on the mantelpiece beaming full over him—for he occupied an arm-chair drawn close to the fire, and kept shrinking still nearer, as if he were cold, I compared him with Mr. Rochester. I think (with deference be it spoken) the contrast could not be much greater between a sleek gander and a fierce falcon: between a meek sheep and the ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... pardon, sir," the woman interrupted coolly, "but its not such a great mistake of mine, I'll be bound the young gentleman as has had his finger in the pie, is just as sleek and fine to look at outside as yourself," then meditatively "there's no trusting young men by their ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... passed another mountain, very difficult for the mules, who each carried two heavy bales: There were above an hundred in this drove. The mules of Chili are the finest in the world; and though they are continually upon the road, and have nothing but what they pick up at night, they are as fat and sleek as high-fed horses in England. The fourth night we lay upon a plain in sight of St Jago, and not above four leagues ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... kickshaws," I saw, for the first time, under the light of a glorious sunset, that exquisite velvety stretch of the park of Woodstock, dimpled with water, dotted with forest—clumps, where companies of sleek fallow-deer were grazing by the hundred, where pheasants whirred away down the aisles of wood, where memories of Fair Rosamond and of Rochester and of Alice Lee lingered,—and all brought to a ringing close by Southey's ballad of "Blenheim," as the shadow of the gaunt Marlborough ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... the stall where Jolly was feeding. He went in and untied his halter, and led him out. Jolly was a sleek, black, beautiful little horse, not old enough to do much work, but a very good horse to ride. George took down a bridle, and, after leading Jolly to a horse-block, where he could stand up high enough to reach ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... sorrow seemed to have made it itself feebly felt hitherto, now when Adam Bede's tall figure was suddenly seen being ushered to the side of the prisoner's dock. In the broad sunlight of the great hall, among the sleek shaven faces of other men, the marks of suffering in his face were startling even to Mr. Irwine, who had last seen him in the dim light of his small room; and the neighbours from Hayslope who were present, and who told Hetty Sorrel's story by their ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... been puzzled in Venice to know why churches should keep cats, church-mice being proverbially so poor, and so little capable of sustaining a cat in good condition; yet I have repeatedly found sleek and portly cats in the churches, where they seem to be on terms of perfect understanding with the priests, and to have no quarrel even with the little boys who assist at mass. There is, for instance, a cat in the ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... sleek little man, particular about his dress, and as proud of his small hands and feet as a cat is of her fur, was waiting for him in ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... indignant. The idea of this sleek-looking old rascal settling down on his poor sister, and making her support him, was too much ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... female. The zebra is conspicuously striped, and stripes cannot afford any protection in the open plains of South Africa. Burchell (40. 'Travels in South Africa,' 1824, vol. ii. p. 315.) in describing a herd says, "their sleek ribs glistened in the sun, and the brightness and regularity of their striped coats presented a picture of extraordinary beauty, in which probably they are not surpassed by any other quadruped." But as throughout the whole group of the Equidae the sexes are ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... Not that they were unlovely in form or ungraceful. They were so small they hardly seemed like hands, so undeveloped, so useless, with the dimpling of a baby's, yet the sharp nails of a little beast. They were so plump and well cared for they were fairly sleek, and had an old wise air about them as she patted her puffy curls daintily with a motion all her own that showed her lovely rounded arm, and every needle-pointed shell-tinted finger nail, sleek and puffy, and never used, not even for a bit of embroidery or knitting. She couldn't, ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... train, Like savage Hun and merciless Dane! "We come as brothers!" Trust them not! By all that's dear in heaven and earth, By every tie that hath its birth Within your homes—around your hearth; Believe me, 'tis a tyrant's plot, Worse for the fair and sleek disguise— A traitor in a patriot's cloak! "Your country's good Demands your blood!" Was it a fiend from hell ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... tutor roughly bade him be still, telling him that he would never reign if these young men lived, and presently another came there and stood beside him. The Marshal de Retz it was, who, with a fiendish smile upon his sleek parchment face, conducted the Lady Sybilla to see the end. But it was a good end to see, and nobler far than most lives that are ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... moment where he was, his heart heavy with foreboding, then he descended slowly to the office, his head bent, deep in thought. So preoccupied was he that he did not see the sleek face which leered at him from the shadow into which the dim figure ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... clamber; but my cousin gossip the Rat, that lives close above thee, will gnaw in two the shelf on which thou standest; thou shalt jingle down, and I catch thee in my apron, that thy nose be not broken, or thy fine sleek face at all injured; then I will carry thee to Mam'sell Veronica, and thou shalt marry her when thou ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... whimsical observer might have termed Jerry, with his tawny head, the lion, and O'Brien behind the bar, a shaggy bear, and the deputy marshal a wolverine, fat but dangerous, and here stood a man as ugly and hardened as a desert cayuse, and there was Dan Barry, sleek and supple as a panther; but among the rest this whimsical observer must have noticed a fellow of prodigious height and negligible breadth, a structure of sinews and bones that promised to rattle in the wind, a long, narrow head, ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... either), in her role of the god in the machine she had been responsible for many things; several comedies, perhaps a tragedy or two. Ordinarily her parties were dull enough; complacent Washington parties; diplomats, long-haired Senators from the West, short-bearded Senators from the East, sleek young men and women, all of whom sat about discussing grave nonsense concerning a country with which they had utterly lost touch, if ever they had had any; but every now and then, out of the incalculable shufflings of fate, appeared a combination that seemed ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... but snort like a startled horse, wear long hair on foot and a halo on horseback, and fail in everything else he attempted. The third of this company of his followers, a young minister of the United Brethren, did not return for some years; then he came, well dressed and looking fat and sleek, and preached to the people on Leatherwood Creek the faith in which he had not faltered. He accounted for the disappearance of Dylks from the eyes of his other worshipers in Philadelphia very simply: he had seen ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... as thy foot there treads, Thou seest a present godlike power Imprinted in each herb and flower; And smell'st the breath of great-eyed kine, Sweet as the blossoms of the vine. Here thou behold'st thy large sleek neat Unto the dewlaps up in meat; And, as thou look'st, the wanton steer, The heifer, cow, and ox, draw near, To make a pleasing pastime there. These seen, thou go'st to view thy flocks Of sheep, safe from the wolf and fox; And find'st their bellies there as full Of short sweet ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... black depths of that untrodden bush hid from his eyes, Jose might only imagine. But he felt their presence—crawling, creeping things that lay in patient ambush for their unwitting prey—slimy lizards, gorgeously caparisoned—dank, twisting serpents—elephantine tapirs—dull-witted sloths—sleek, wary jaguars—fierce formicidae, poisonous and carnivorous. He might not see them, but he felt that he was the cynosure of hundreds of keen eyes that followed him as the boat glided close to the shore and silently crept through ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... being—and not a monster, as Mrs Verloc believed him to be. He paused, and a snarl lifting his moustaches above a gleam of white teeth gave him the expression of a reflective beast, not very dangerous—a slow beast with a sleek head, gloomier than a seal, ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... this annual election go on undisturbed. Smile and keep your counsel. Let this sleek ferret Ferris, go on and marry the girl, for I, alone, can aid you. Worthington fears me. I know too much ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... Why not? These words were spoken to men who stood as before a Higher than Kings. They had set more than their own lives on the cast. The Parliament may call it, in official language, a fighting 'for the King;' but we, for our share, cannot understand that. To us it is no dilettante work, no sleek officiality; it is sheer rough death and earnest. They have brought it to the calling-forth of War; horrid internecine fight, man grappling with man in fire-eyed rage,—the infernal element in man called forth, to try it ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... was a hale hearty yeoman, of a ruddy and cheerful countenance. A few wrinkles were puckered below the eyes; the rest of his face was sleek and comfortably disposed. A beard, once thick and glossy, was grown grey and thin, curling up short and stunted round his portly chin. Two bright twinkling eyes gave note of a stirring and restless temper—too sanguine, maybe, for success in the great and busy world, and not fitted either by education ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... Court of St. James, and that same persuasive eloquence did not fail now in its effect on the chief agent of the Committee of General Security. The latter was made of coarser stuff than his more brilliant colleague. Chauvelin was like a wily and sleek panther that is furtive in its movements, that will lure its prey, watch it, follow it with stealthy footsteps, and only pounce on it when it is least wary, whilst Heron was more like a raging bull that tosses its head in a blind, ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... archway into Dean's Yard, we find a backwater indeed, where the roar of traffic scarcely penetrates, where sleek pigeons coo in the elm-trees round a grass plot, as if they were in the close of one of the sleepiest of provincial towns instead of in the midst of one of the greatest cities in the world. On the east side there is a long building of smoke-blackened, old stone. ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... his mass of greenbacks and stalked away with his smart hat on the back of his incredibly sleek head, Tobias was not greatly worried. The young swell was sweet on Child, and wasn't above a flirtation with red-haired Leavitt at the same time he was trying to spoon the English girl. He would come back, and soon—no fear!—to see how ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... pig, an it were sleek," said the young lord; "your eyes, Chiffie, have the very blink of one. But what hath all this to do with the Plot? Hold, I have ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... saw them winding cautiously down the hill, stepping daintily here and there with those absurd little feet of theirs, and appearing so extremely anxious for the safe conveyance of their loads. They belonged to a Spanish packer, were in excellent condition, sleek and fat as so many kittens, and of every possible color,—black, white, gray, sorrel, cream, brown, etc. Almost all of them had some bit of red or blue or yellow about their trappings, which added not a little to the brilliancy ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... moment, before he had time to know what was happening, Methuselah—sleepy old dotard as he seemed—had woke up at once to a sense of danger. Turning suddenly round upon the sleek, caressing hand, he darted his beak with a vicious peck at his assailant, and bit the divine finger of the Pillar of Heaven as carelessly as he would have bitten any child on Boupari. Tu-Kila-Kila, thunder-struck, drew back his ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... my father died, and I came into a small fortune, which I squandered. My mother helped me; then she died. My brothers cut me, condemning me as a Bohemian and a vagabond. I confess that I did take a malicious pleasure in rubbing their sleek fur the wrong way. Then I crossed the Atlantic as the guest of an American millionaire. He took me on in his own car to California. I started a studio in San Francisco—and a life class. That undid me, I found myself bankrupt. Then I fell desperately ill. Each day I felt the quicksands ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... my pony could fly," said Susy, gazing dreamily at his black mane and sleek sides. "The first place I'd go to would be the moon; and there I'd stay till I built a castle as big as a city. I'd come home every night, so mother wouldn't be frightened, and fly up ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... mounted on their sleek mules, the twelve monks of Glastonbury, whom the Knight and his nephew reverently received at the door, and conducted across the hall to the chapel, where the parish Priest, Father Cyril, and some of the neighbouring clergy had been chanting psalms since morning light. On the way Sir Eustace ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of a lot of coarse hair in his face, some of it between his teeth, and of green turf streaming past in front of his eyes. He saw the shoulder of the Master Horse, vast and sleek, with the muscles flowing swiftly under the skin. He perceived that his arms were round the neck, and that the violent jerkings he experienced had a ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... storehouse, or the piles of caplin which they cached under the sand on the shore, were the wandering herds of caribou,—splendid old stags with massive antlers, and long-legged, inquisitive fawns trotting after the sleek cows, whose heads carried small pointed horns, more deadly by far than the stags' cumbersome antlers. Wherever the wolves went they crossed the trails of these wanderers swarming out of the thickets, sometimes by twos and threes, and again in straggling, ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... sank back in her chair, her hand pressed against the kerchief crossed over her bosom, and laughed shamefacedly, for it had been nothing more terrible that had startled her than big, purring Graymalkin, the cat, insinuating his sleek back under her hand as he arched and rubbed about her chair. And so, sitting down shamefacedly, she gathered Will up again and called him goose and little chuck, as if he and not she had been the one to ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin
... stomach and with two hands in order that he may work twice as much as he eats." And Mackay held out before them his own hands blackened with the work of the smithy, rough with the handling of hammer and saw, the file and lathe. "But you," and he turned on them with a laugh and pointed to their sleek bodies as they shone in the glow of the forge fire, "you are all ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... the north. Looking more attentively I noticed that outside the line of buoys patches of the surface heaved and worked; in one or two places streaks and circles of white were forming; in the midst of one such circle a sleek mauve hump had risen, like the back of a sleeping whale. I saw that an old spell was enthralling Davies as his eye travelled away to the blank horizon. He scanned it all with a critical eagerness, too, as one ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... psi, sigma, zeta, which require a great deal of wind, are employed in the imitation of such notions as shivering, seething, shaking, and in general of what is windy. The letters delta and tau convey the idea of binding and rest in a place: the lambda denotes smoothness, as in the words slip, sleek, sleep, and the like. But when the slipping tongue is detained by the heavier sound of gamma, then arises the notion of a glutinous clammy nature: nu is sounded from within, and has a notion of inwardness: alpha is the expression of size; eta of length; ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... but, O my! we were the dirtiest lot of men and animals one ever saw. We were little more than one-quarter mile from Raft River, and we lost no time in getting there and wading out in the clear, running water, about two feet deep, with rocky bottom, where we and the animals were washed sleek and clean. ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... Dimpey! don't the sorrels go beautiful? Your hair is just as sleek as when we started, and your cheeks are only a little redder, but that don't ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the voyage across the Atlantic, somewhat arduous at that period, nor need we pick up Will again till we find him in Richmond, with his horses all safe, and as fat and sleek as if they had been fed by Neptune's wife, and had drawn her across in place of her own steeds. There he found directions waiting from Mr. Dreghorn, to the effect that he was to proceed with the horses to Peach Grove, his plantation, a place far ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... bays of "K" Troop trip quickly past; then the beautiful, sleek grays of "B," Captain Montgomery's company; then more bays in "I" and "A" and "D," and then some sixty-five blacks, ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... upon Abrahm Kantor in avoirdupois only. He was himself plus eighteen years, fifty pounds, and a new sleek pomposity that was absolutely oleaginous. It shone roundly in his face, doubling of chin, in the bulge of waistcoat, heavily gold-chained, and in eyes that behind the gold-rimmed glasses gave sparklingly forth his ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... if you were a bridegroom, soon to be happy, and if you could do the "double roll" with loaded guns and no danger to your bowels, and if while so engaged you should see within easy range this black, sleek pig, with its tail curled tightly, egotistically, contemptuously, over its back, what, as a man, would you do? What, as a man, could you do in a case like that, in a land where there was no law, where never a court had sat, where never ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... old crony of his, one Bob Still, would come in; and then they would occupy the sentry-box together, and swill their beer in concert. This pot-friend of Danby was portly as a dray-horse, and had a round, sleek, oily head, twinkling eyes, and moist red cheeks. He was a lusty troller of ale-songs; and, with his mug in his hand, would lean his waddling bulk partly out ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... characterised her in better days still clung to her, and made her neat and tidy in misfortune. The blue ribbon round her neck was indeed faded, but in other respects she looked as clean and white and sleek as Lily herself. She had evidently licked herself all over every day, instead of moping in the dirt. She and Lily had always been somewhat alike in point of cleanliness. Indeed, I once imagined that Lily must lick ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... rein-ed cars at all; Relume in hanging hedgerows The rain-quenched blossom, And roses sob their tears out On the gale's warm heaving bosom; Shake the lilies till their scent Over-drip their rims; That our runaway may see We do know her whims: Sleek the tumbled waters out For her travelled limbs; Strew and smoothe blue night thereon, There will—O not doubt her!— The lovely sleepy lady lie, With ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... said, touching the young man lightly with a finger-tip on the top of his very sleek, copper-hued head, "we're going to have picnic-lunch to-day up here; it's so much cooler than any of the downstairs rooms, and we shan't be bothered with the servants trotting in and out all the time. Rather a good idea of mine, ...
— When William Came • Saki
... plump alderman, and suck the blood Enriched by generous wine and costly meat; On well-filled skins, sleek as thy native mud, Fix thy light pump and press thy freckled feet. Go to the men for whom, in ocean's halls, The oyster breeds, and ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... though it were the first, and not the tenth, time they had traversed the great gallery; the elastic poise of each the same, the gold-colored gauze of Nina's dress exactly matching the rippling waves of glorious hair only a shade below the sleek black head ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... human genus that I call the gin-horse class: what enviable dogs they are! Round, and round, and round they go,—Mundell's ox that drives his cotton-mill is their exact prototype—without an idea or wish beyond their circle; fat, sleek, stupid, patient, quiet, and contented; while here I sit, altogether Novemberish, a d—mn'd melange of fretfulness and melancholy; not enough of the one to rouse me to passion, nor of the other to repose me in torpor, my soul flouncing ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... them from the ship. Two bears and a walrus had been purchased from the Esquimaux, a party of whom—sleek, fat, oily, good-humoured, and hairy—were encamped on the lee side of the Dolphin, and were busily engaged in their ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... wont to say, looking suspiciously at our wet, sleek heads and general clean appearance—clean for us, that is, for the Missouri River, sandy though it was, was vastly cleaner than Duffy's Pond or puddles of that ilk—"been in swimming again, have you? In ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... His sleek face, garlanded with mutton-chop whiskers, was creased in smiles. Evidently a broker who had just 'done' some one, was my sour thought. There were but few on the street, and the outlook ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... Dilworthy did. It is the custom. He got the usual amount of suspension. Far and wide he was called a thief, a briber, a promoter of steamship subsidies, railway swindles, robberies of the government in all possible forms and fashions. Newspapers and everybody else called him a pious hypocrite, a sleek, oily fraud, a reptile who manipulated temperance movements, prayer meetings, Sunday schools, public charities, missionary enterprises, all for his private benefit. And as these charges were backed up by what seemed to be ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the long, long beard, Who dwellest in the deep blue sea, Finest treasures have I heard, And glittering fish belong to thee. The richest pearls beyond compare Are stored up in thy realm below, And Ocean's cows so sleek and fair Feed on the grass ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... started off to find a spring. We made our way from shade to shade, expiring at every step, and finally, at the base of the hill, on the brink of the swamp, discovered a rill of tepid water, that evaporated before it had trickled a hundred yards. If a sleek and venomous water-snake—for there were thousands of them hereabout—had coiled in the channel, I would still have sucked the draught, bending down as I did. Then I bethought me of my pony. He had neither been fed nor watered for twenty hours, and I hastened to obtain him from his ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... portraits drawn from English country life give its abiding value to George Eliot's work. Take the character of Mr. Pilgrim the doctor who 'is never so comfortable as when relaxing his professional legs in one of those excellent farmhouses where the mice are sleek and the mistress sickly;' or of Mrs. Hackit, 'a thin woman with a chronic liver complaint which would have secured her Mr. Pilgrim's entire regard and unreserved good word, even if he had not been in awe ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... joined that party, had announced that he was "bound for a long talk with Mark the Lark." Mr. Watts, refused by Enid Biddell and separated from her, had relapsed into melancholia. He had ceased to brilliantine his once sleek hair, and dust and crumbs were allowed to collect in each fold of his clerical waistcoat. As we of the Set buzzed richly away in taxicabs, I saw him in a shabby arabeah between two old ladies, gazing wistfully after us. He ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... fire from her sat a young Indian maiden of about Bob's own age netting the babiche in a snow-shoe, her fingers plying deftly in and out. The woman and girl wore deerskin garments of peculiar design. The former was fat and ugly, the latter slender, and very comely, he thought, from her sleek black hair to her feet encased in daintily worked little moccasins. At that moment she glanced towards him and said something to her companion, who turned ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... he continually conceived, and which his troop undertook to carry out. A chronicler of the time says, that by means of certain herbs which he gave to a half-starved horse, he made him into a fat and sleek animal; the horse was then sold at one of the neighbouring fairs or markets, but the purchaser detected the fraud within a week, for the horse soon became thin again, and usually ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... reached the age of a hundred and twenty years, and some surpassed even this; and their food was boiled flesh and their drink was milk. And when the spies marvelled at the number of years, he conducted them to a certain spring, in the water of which they washed and became more sleek of skin, as if it were a spring of oil; and from it there came a scent as it were of violets: and the water of this spring, said the spies, was so exceedingly weak that it was not possible for anything to float upon it, either wood or any of those things which ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... here. The holy ashes had piled up and piled up until they stood as a hill more than twenty feet high. The people waited around the foot of it, watching. The priests walked up its side. Men led up the sleek cattle to be slain for the feast of the gods. And on the very top a fire leaped toward heaven. Far up in the sky Charmides could half see the beautiful gods leaning down and ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... hairbreadth escapes of the heroine of the movie serial were hers, adapted by her native logic to fit within the bounds of possibility,—though I must admit they bulged here and there and threatened to overlap and to encroach upon the impossible. Over the hills where her father's vast herds grazed, sleek and wild and long-horned and prone to stampede, galloped the Lorraine of Lorraine's dreams, on horses sure-footed and swift. With her galloped strong men whose faces limned the features ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... when we gits money, you gits wuk. Jes' let Marse Moyne wait till de crap comes off, an' den yer'll make it all squar wid him. I tell yer what, 'Liab, it's gwine ter be great times fer us niggers, now we's free. Yer sees dat mule out dar?" he asked, pointing to a sleek bay animal which he had tied to the rack in front of the ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... People whose hands are soiled with the stain of labour, I don't care how refined or how honest it is, never by any chance find themselves at the mahogany board of aristocracy. Coat-sleeves bearing the finger-marks of honourable industry could not safely rub against the sleek broadcloth of high-life unless by sacrificing some of their beautiful (?) hieroglyphics and forfeiting to some extent the reputations they have earned ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... bore: Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest and youthful jollity, Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles, Nods, and Becks, and wreathed Smiles, Such as hang on Hebes Cheek, And love to live in Dimple sleek: Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter holding both his Sides. Come, and trip it, as you go, On the light fantastick Toe: And in thy right Hand lead with thee The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty; And if I give thee Honour due, Mirth, admit me ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... work. But I was happy in it. In an odd way I felt as I wrote all day on the smooth white paper that I was stroking the sleek breasts of doves. Tonight the steady patter of the ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton
... chapter in an old-world book. After she had finished with her flowers in the mornings she would walk through the kitchen garden and thence into her orchard. Four or five tortoise-shell cats and two sleek spaniels followed her around, and took a dignified interest in her proceedings. When the lady had visited the cows in the paddock she walked through the dairy and got ready to go out. When she came out ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... morning of the third day they reached their old camp where their things were buried. Here they went into camp again while the Seminole scoured the woods for their ponies. He returned triumphant the second day riding one of the horses and driving the others. The animals were sleek and fat from rich ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... government did not exist; whoever agitated for some measure of it was deported to Australia or forced to fly to America. Glasgow and Manchester weavers starved and rioted. The press was gagged and the Habeas Corpus Act constantly suspended. A second rebellion in Ireland, when Castlereagh "dabbled his sleek young hands in Erin's gore," was suppressed with unusual ferocity. In England in 1812 famine drove bands of poor people to wander and pillage. Under the criminal law, still of medieval cruelty, death ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... every morning as they went to the fields and to other duties, and picked them up at night. These children were fed about five times a day in little wooden trough-like receptacles. Their principal foods were milk, rice, pot-licker, vegetables and corn dumplings; and they stayed so fat and sleek "dat de Niggers calt 'em Marse Major's ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... rolling, battered light-ship; as helpless as—well, there was nothing ashore to compare to her helplessness. And when she hit in on the beach—when she hit the sand—it would be over and over she'd roll, and out of her he would come and be smothered. For a second he'd be smooth and sleek as a wet rat and ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... shows us the animals marching in line to be inspected and named. The snail heads the procession and sets the pace. The lion and the tiger stroll gossiping together. The unicorn walks alone, very stiff and proud. Two rats and two mice are closely followed by two sleek cats, who keep them well covered, and plainly await the time when Eve's amiable indiscretion shall assign them their natural prey. In the third tapestry the deed has been done, the apple had been eaten. The beasts are ravening in the background. Adam, ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... be very far gone before he would willingly go into a hospital. Just now, between the mackerel and herring seasons, he is fat and sleepy, very sleek for him. Rheumatic fever in boyhood and neglected colds have left him rather deaf, and subject to noises in the head and miscellaneous bodily pains. He is 'a worriter' by nature. "When I gets bothered," he says, "I often feels as if summut be busted in me ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... so faithfully a dozen times a day; and in ten minutes they crept down again, kinking defiance to Louisa, who might make Mary Isabel submit to her in all things but had no power over naturally curly hair. Louisa had never had any trouble with her own hair; it was straight and sleek and ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... His wife, who was expecting a baby, had to be carried fainting from the dock. Counsel could not bring himself to say that she was expecting a baby. He said that she was "in a certain condition." The modesty of the law is marvellous. One of the most interesting of the prisoners was a little sleek-headed man accused of fraud, who kept moving his head about like a tortoise's out of its shell. His head was black and shining where it was not bald and shining. He had gold-rimmed spectacles and a sallow face. He glided his hands over the knobs on the front of the dock with a reptilian smoothness. ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... brawled and wrangled with the host; "By Becket's bones," cried one, "I fear That some false Scot has stol'n my spear!" Young Blount, Lord Marmion's second squire, Found his steed wet with sweat and mire; Although the rated horse-boy sware, Last night he dressed him sleek and fair. While chafed the impatient squire like thunder, Old Hubert shouts, in fear and wonder, "Help, gentle Blount! help, comrades all! Bevis lies dying in his stall: To Marmion who the plight dare tell, Of the good steed he loves so well?" Gaping for fear and ruth, they saw ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... polished circles where wit and talent sparkled. The Vicomte D'Haberville, a French d'Argentenaye, took us to a reception—not too proud of us I daresay, for the gloss of his shoes and the magnificence of his cravat outshone us as the sleek skin of a race-horse does a country filly. Especially did he eye Quinet a little coldly, so that I could scarcely persuade ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... the next day, and some hours after he left them a rickety oil field wagon drove up and left a box of groceries. The boy driving the sleek mule was in a great hurry "to see the fire," and he merely tumbled the box off and drove on ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... rang valiantly in the great ceilinged room but the hunting song usually lost itself in a whirr of laughter and frills as the huntress dropped breathless on the footstool at the Major's side and put her sleek ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... tears rolling down to her high white chest and finally on to the crispiness of her plain nightgown. Crept to bed finally, into a darkness as sleek as a black cat's flank, silently, to save the sag of mattress, her body curving to the curve of ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... at him disdainfully, beginning at his little sleek grey head and travelling slowly downwards to his untidy boots and then back again. He repeated this several times, until Mr. Piper, unable to bear it patiently, began to eye him ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... open carriage was waiting in front of the painted toy-looking building which served as the railway station of Teignmouth. The fine bay horses stood patiently enduring the attacks of hosts of winged foes, too well-behaved to express their annoyance otherwise than by twitchings of their sleek shining skins, but duly grateful to the coachman, who roused himself now and then to whisk off some more pertinacious tormentor with the ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spruce, and a bold camp-robber was hopping in front of the cabin door picking up morsels of food which were occasionally cast forth. Stephen was preparing dinner, and the appetizing smell drifted out upon the air. Not far away, perched upon the branch of a tree, a sleek squirrel was filling the air with his noisy chattering and scolding. His bright little eyes sparkled with anger at the big strange intruder into his domain, causing him to pour forth all the vitriol of the squirrel vocabulary. ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... had never before met. The enemy was astonishingly large and lithe and distinctly resembled one of the big gold-colored lions that live in the wilds of the Harpeth Mountains out beyond Paradise Ridge. His head, with its tawny thatch that ought to have waved majestically but which was sleek and decorous to the point of worldliness, was poised on his neck and shoulders with a singularly strong line that showed through a silk soft collar, held together by an exquisitely worldly amethyst silk scarf ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... her cousin Will. He had town clothes and was thin, with a very curious head, black as jet, with hair like sleek, thin fur. It was a curious head: it reminded her she knew not of what: of some animal, some mysterious animal that lived in the darkness under the leaves and never came out, but which lived vividly, swift and intense. She always thought of him with that black, keen, blind head. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... she was in the motor car did she distinguish the three people who were to accompany them. The owner, now at the wheel, was the essence of decent self-satisfaction; a baldish, largish, level-eyed man, rugged of neck but sleek and round of face—face like the back of a spoon bowl. He was chuckling at her, "Have you got us ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... be taken for anything else. But as he entered the "Rising Sun" in Meek Street, there was nothing of the policeman about him. He might probably have been taken for a betting man, with whom the world had latterly gone well enough to enable him to maintain that sleek, easy, greasy appearance which seems to be the beau-ideal of a betting man's personal ambition. "Well, Mr. Howard," said the lady at the bar, "a sight of you ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... continually overrun by cats. I have seen one afternoon, as many as thirteen of them seated on the grass beside old Milne, the Master Builder, all sleek and fat, and complacently blinking, as if they had fed upon strange meats. Old Milne was chanting with the saints, as we may hope, and cared little for the company about his grave; but I confess the spectacle had an ugly side for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... peace, a holy calm pervades me." So did his hair, just grizzled with an iron gray, which was all brushed off his forehead, and stood bolt upright, or slightly drooped in kindred action with his heavy eyelids. So did his person, which was sleek though free from corpulency. So did his manner, which was soft and oily. In a word, even his plain black suit, and state of widower, and dangling double eye-glass, all tended to the same purpose, and cried aloud, "Behold ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... bravely through the ceremony as the father of the bride, and bore himself with his usual massive, rude dignity. But he inwardly winced as he saw Elga, looking very stately and beautiful in her bride's veil, towering half a head above the sleek-haired little clerk. Not a few of the company smiled at the contrast, but she had no other feeling ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... thy old friend, who has known thee from a colt? seven years next grass have I fed thee and bred thee; provided thee with sweet hay, delicate corn, and fresh litter, that thou mought lie warm, dry, and comfortable. Han't I currycombed thy carcass till it was as sleek as a sloe, and cherished thee as the apple of mine eye? for all that thou hast played me an hundred dog's tricks; biting, and kicking, and plunging, as if the devil was in thy body; and now thou couldst run away with a thief, and leave me to be flayed alive by measter. What canst thou say for thyself, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... was amiably indifferent to them, and spent most of his time, when at home, in the lower chamber, which was now dry and clean enough for his luxurious tastes. Their small mother, however, was assiduous in her care; and in an exceedingly short time the youngsters, very sleek and dark in their first fur, were investigating the wonderful, great world beyond their water-gate. They had prodigious appetites, and they grew prodigiously. One, on their very first outing, got snapped up by a greedy black duck. The attention of the little mother ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... engaging smile, and casting a possessive glance down the front of his white trousers. "And it was an awful rush to get the job done." But in spite of Pilchard's sleek figure and social smile, he looked pale that morning. The hot sunlight that bathed the end of the dock met no ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... Primrose purchasing green spectacles, I could scarcely have been more taken in. My Jenkinson was an old college acquaintance, whom I was idiot enough to imagine a respectable man. The fellow had a very smooth tongue and sleek sanctified exterior. He was rather a popular preacher, and used to cry a good deal in the pulpit. He and a queer wine merchant and bill discounter, Sherrick by name, had somehow got possession of that neat little literary paper, The Museum, which perhaps you remember, ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... horsemen and carriages, country squires and their sons, gentlemen-farmers on sleek hunters, and humbler tenant-farmers on their stiff cobs, butchers and innkeepers, all eager for the chase. All was life, gaiety excitement, noise; the hounds, giving forth occasional howls and snappish yelpings, expressive of an impatience that was almost beyond endurance; the huntsman cracking ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... of a great, rambling, old house, set in the midst of a wide lawn, brown and sere now with approaching winter, and surrounded by huge, knotted, gnarled, old oaks, whose dry leaves still clung to the twisted branches and rustled in the crisp air. A fat, sleek, black Tabby lay asleep on the warm porch-rail; a gaunt, ungainly greyhound lay sunning himself on the door mat, and from inside somewhere came the sound of a canary's riotous song. The whole place breathed of home, and with a deep sigh of content, Peace lifted ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the lariat twisted about her upper body from shoulders to waist, constricting her arms, fastened where she could not reach it by a hitch, sat on Blaze, looking with steady contempt at Plimsoll, who held her bridle rein. He regarded her with sleek complacency and then his eyes slowly traveled over her rounded figure, accented by her ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... Now and then a sleek jaguar showed himself. Again a drove of peccaries peered out from among the underbrush, and more than once Cummings was forced to exert all his authority to prevent the Indians from stopping to bag an incautious tapir which had come ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... good host's daughter, a maiden young and fair, Lifting to light her sweet blue eyes and pride of soft brown hair, The master of the village school, sleek of hair and smooth of tongue, To the quaint tune of some ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... down upon this flowery bed, While I thy amiable cheeks do coy, And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head, And kiss thy fair large ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... would have blown them off their feet), by means of the long-poled halberts they carried; but this impression of the farcical was modified by the nature of the body whereof they were the pioneers or advance guard. Sleek magistrates and councillors in unaccustomed black suits and silver-buckled shoes, the provost ermined at their head, showed the way to the more actual, the more dignified embodiment of stern Scots law. At least a score ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro |
