"Lank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... presently repair to drink the waters, in a medley of notables and notorieties, members of Parliament, chaplains and led-captains, Noblemen with ribbons and stars, dove-coloured Quakers, Duchesses, quacks, fortune-hunters, lackeys, lank-haired Methodists, Bishops, and boarding-school misses. Ferdinand Count Fathom will be there, as well as my Lord Ogleby; Lady Bellaston (and Mr. Thomas Jones); Geoffry Wildgoose and Tugwell the cobbler; Lismahago and Tabitha Bramble; the caustic ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... their element. Here and there stalked a stately chief in his scarlet coat, leggings, mocassins, and feathers in his head. The councillors, of which there were three to each band, wore dark coats with scarlet trimmings. But there were more outlandish personages than these to be seen; tall, lank men, with nothing on them but a scarlet blanket wound around the naked body, at times covering the shoulders, at times drawn only around the waist. Nearly all had plaited hair and silver earrings, and many had feathers in their heads, or head-dresses of beads and ribbons. The squaws ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... tall, lank, stoop-shouldered fellow who had never distinguished himself in any other pursuit than spelling. Except in this one art of spelling he was of no account. He could not catch well or bat well in ball. He could not throw well enough to make his mark in that famous Western game ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... they entered the hall Bobby recognized the sallow, wizened features of the coroner. One of the others was short and thick set. His round and florid face, one felt, should have expressed friendliness and good-humour rather than the intolerant anger that marked it now. The third was a lank, bald-headed man, whose sharp face released ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... of woes; Quite lank and lean Augustus grows. Yet, though he feels so weak and ill, The naughty fellow cries out still— "Not any soup for me, I say: O take the nasty soup away! I ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... now in the National Portrait Gallery, and have traced what appear to be indisputable signs of one predominant type of face supplanting another. For instance, the features of the men painted by and about the time of Holbein have usually high cheekbones, long upper lips, thin eyebrows, and lank dark hair. It would be impossible, I think, for the majority of modern Englishmen so to dress themselves and clip and arrange their hair, as to look like ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... when not masquerading as Charon, was a lean, brown, and wrinkled old salt, neither complete nor clean of garb, and bulging as to one lank cheek with a quid of tobacco. At first he sat silent, dividing his attention between the conduct of ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... excellent illustration of this soon after tying up at the landing. A tall, lank, ungainly officer, with a face so distinctively homely as to instantly attract my attention, led his company of men up the river bank, and ordered them to transport the pile of commissary stores from where they had been promiscuously thrown to a drier spot farther back. ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... see him, Lank as a ghost and tall, his shoulders bent, And long beard white with age—yet evermore, As if he were the only Saint on earth, He turns ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... subject were extremely elevated, but altogether imaginary. The habit of living in this peaceful manner soon united me tenderly to my cousin Bernard; my affection was more ardent than that I had felt for my brother, nor has time ever been able to efface it. He was a tall, lank, weakly boy, with a mind as mild as his body was feeble, and who did not wrong the good opinion they were disposed to entertain for the son of my guardian. Our studies, amusements, and tasks, were the same; we were alone; each wanted a playmate; to separate would ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... he would reply, "but a bankrupt marquess can't. I've got to marry that jade. Pah! She's as lank as a hop-pole and as yellow as a guinea. But what's a marquess to do, Noll? They say she could tie up the neck and armholes of her shift and fill it with diamonds. Damn her! I wish Brocton would snap her up, but he ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... man," and a great, huge-boned, lank man crowded eagerly up to Thure's side, "jest say them words over ag'in; an' say 'em loud, so that Sal can hear. She's bin callin' me a fool regular 'bout every hour since we started for th' diggings. Says she'll eat all th' gold ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... Whitefoot moved like a lank and ghostly wolf through the tall grass and crops, skirting the barer places and keeping close in to the dusky verges of the hedges. All went well with him till he took the ha-ha ditch at his usual racing pace, and was instantly ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... bowed him into a big, handsomely furnished room flooded with the morning sun. A tall, gray man, faultlessly dressed in a gray frock suit and wearing white spats, turned from the breezy, open window to inspect him; the lean, well groomed, rather lank type of gentleman suggesting a retired colonel of cavalry; unmistakably well bred from the ends of his drooping gray mustache to the last ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... level and capacity of a common ditch, and was almost hidden from view by the overhanging boughs and branches of the park trees on the opposite side, and the half- decayed trunks of former monarchs of the forest that filled its bed—a ditch covered with a superstratum of slimy, green water, lank weeds, and rank vegetation; and wherein, at flood time, urchin anglers could fish for eels and sticklebats, and, at ebb, the village ducks disport themselves ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... eyes and going tenderly over through the poor dead babes, I looked, and there, full in the shine, lay a woman's skeleton, still wrapped in a robe of which little was left save the hard gold embroidery. Her brown hair, wonderful to say, still lay like lank, dead seaweed about her, and amongst it was a fillet crown of plain iron set with gems such as eye never looked upon before. There were not many, but enough to make the proud simplicity of that circlet glisten ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... matters out of his diary into his draft bill book for the ultimate behoof of his three daughters. So might an industrious fox or bear make up his account of chickens or stray travellers with an eye to his cubs, not to disparage by that word the three raw-visaged, lank, and buttoned-up maidens who dwell with the parent Vholes in an earthy cottage situated in a ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... kitchen, The fat-fed smoking temple, which in The wholesome savour of thy mighty chines Invites to supper him who dines, Where laden spits, warp'd with large ribs of beef, Not represent but give relief To the lank stranger and the sour swain, Where both may feed and come again; For no black-bearded vigil from thy door Beats with a button'd-staff the poor; But from thy warm love-hatching gates each may Take friendly morsels and there ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... brows'd. On the Alpes, It is reported thou did'st eate strange flesh, Which some did dye to looke on: And all this (It wounds thine Honor that I speake it now) Was borne so like a Soldiour, that thy cheeke So much as lank'd not ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... not only possess the merit of learning how to observe the ridiculous side of human nature, and of portraying in a full light picturesque figures—now worthy of Teniers and now of Callot—some fat and greasy, others lean and lank; he possesses a thing very rare with the picturesque school, the faculty of being moved. He seems to have foreseen the immense field of study which was to be opened later to the novelist. A distant ancestor of Fielding, as Lilly and Sidney appear to us to be distant ancestors of Richardson, ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... could but answer "no," but the fact was they bore a ludicrous resemblance to two boars about to engage in mortal combat; the captain, with his jolly, rosy face and portly figure, not at all unlike a sleek, well fed "White Chester," and Dyer quite as much resembling a lean, lank, wiry "razor-back" native of his own pine woods. I discharged Dyer. The poor fellow's subsequent fate was a sad one. While acting as pilot of a blockade-runner, inward bound, he committed the folly one day of saying that he would put a steamer under his charge ashore, before he would be captured. ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... taking out a little pocket volume, laying it down to think, rubbing the calf of his leg with grave self-complacency, and starting out of his reverie when spoken to with an inimitable vapid exclamation of 'Eh!' Mudford is like a man made of fleecy hosiery: Roger was lank and lean 'as is the ribbed sea-sand.' Yet he seemed the very man he represented, as fat, pert, and dull as it was possible to be. I have not ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... "after sun up" James North was at Trinidad Joe's cabin. That worthy proprietor himself—a long, lank man, with even more than the ordinary rural Western characteristics of ill health, ill feeding, and melancholy—met him on the bank, clothed in a manner and costume that was a singular combination of the frontiersman and the sailor. When North had again related the story of his ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... Topping them they could see the black, craggy summits of the curious volcanic hills which rise upon the Libyan side. On the crest of the low sand-hills they would catch a glimpse every now and then of a tall, sky-blue soldier, walking swiftly, his rifle at the trail. For a moment the lank, warlike figure would be sharply silhouetted against the sky. Then he would dip into a hollow and disappear, while some hundred yards off another would show for ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and women, old and young. Whether they draw them out or not I know not. Neither have they any beards. They are long-visaged, and of a very unpleasant aspect, having not one graceful feature in their faces. Their hair is black, short, and curled like that of the negroes; and not long and lank like the common Indians. The colour of their skins, both of their faces and the rest of their body, is coal-black like that of the negroes of Guinea. They have no sort of clothes but a piece of the rind of ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... settled down. There was just daylight enough to see his face when I went to him; and what a change in a fortnight! He was paler and more worn, I thought, than even in those dreadful days in the plains before we left India. His hair seemed to me to have grown long and lank; his eyes were like blazing lights projecting out of his white face. He got hold of my hand in a cold and tremulous clutch, and waved to everybody to go away. "Go away—even mother," he said; "go away." This went to her heart; for she did not like that even I should have more ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... were grouped a score of men of Saint-Eustache's company—half soldiers, half ploughboys—ill-garbed and indifferently accoutred in dull breastplates and steel caps, many of which were rusted. By the carriage door stood the long, lank figure of the Chevalier himself, dressed with his wonted care, and perfumed, curled, and beribboned beyond belief. His weak, boyish face sought by scowls and by the adoption of a grim smile to assume an air of ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... Your friend, the curly-haired blonde, with florid complexion, round cheeks, the best possible digestion and respiration, the stomach of an ostrich and the lungs of a pearl-diver, finds it perfectly easy to carry them into practice. You, of leaden complexion, with black and lank hair, lean, hollow-eyed, dyspeptic, nervous, find it not so easy to be always hilarious and happy. The truth is that the persons of that buoyant disposition which comes always heralded by a smile, as a yacht ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... over it and fixing his eyes carelessly upon her, asked what she wanted to look at. His tone and manner struck Ellen most unpleasantly, and made her again wish herself out of the store. He was a tall, lank young man, with a quantity of fair hair combed down on each side of his face, a slovenly exterior, and the most disagreeable pair of eyes, Ellen thought, she had ever beheld. She could not bear to meet them, and cast down her own. Their look was bold, ill-bred, and ill-humoured; ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... old, of middle height, with lank limbs, and an exceedingly spare frame; he is wrapped in a long, blood-red pelisse, lined with black fur; his complexion, fair by nature is bronzed by the wandering life he has led from childhood; his hair, of that dead yellow peculiar to certain races of the Polar ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... squeezed into pancakes, little men were being covered out of sight, tall men were being clambered upon as if their manifest destiny were to serve as poles, and every man of them, big, short, thin, fat, lank, and heavy, was flourishing his arms in the air and howling at the top ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... satisfied himself that the bills had not been marked, and pocketed his jeweller's glass, pushed back his lank ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... wealth, for old Jonathan was fond of money, and the lack of it distressed him worse than a conscience. "If only I could have gold enough," he muttered, "I'd sell my soul for it." Whiz! came something down the chimney. The general was dazzled by a burst of sparks, from which stepped forth a lank personage in black velvet with clean ruffles and brave jewels. "Talk quick, general," said the unknown, "for in fifteen minutes I must be fifteen miles away, in Portsmouth." And picking up a live coal in his fingers he looked at his ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... his body bending over the volume, like a boot- jack, and his sentimental eyes glaring obstinately into the pit. He was prodigiously good, in bed, with an immense collar to his shirt, and his little hands outside the coverlet. So was Dr. Antommarchi, represented by a puppet with long lank hair, like Mawworm's, who, in consequence of some derangement of his wires, hovered about the couch like a vulture, and gave medical opinions in the air. He was almost as good as Low, though the latter was great at all times—a decided brute and ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... brass buttons a victory. His tightness made his fatness elastic; he looked wound up for a dance, and could hardly hold on a leg; but the presentation of a creature in a battered hat and soiled garments, carrying a tattered knapsack half slung, lank and with disorderly locks, as the Earl of Fleetwood's friend—the friend of the wealthiest nobleman of Great Britain!—fixed him in a perked attitude of inquiry that exhausted interrogatives. Woodseer passed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had drawn the attention of a few of the bystanders. A tall, lank countryman, standing ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... seen it plainly—its repulsive gray sides so lank that they seemed almost to meet, its red, hungry tongue lolling from its ugly mouth, its cruel white fangs, and its malevolent, gleaming eyes. His hatred for the creature became an obsession, for it appeared again presently, persistently ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... gown was wrinkled, as though worn for a period of time by one suddenly and sorely stricken in the midst of health. The bride's once well-coifed hair hung in lank disarray about a face that was the color of prime old sage cheese—yellow, with a fleck of green here and there—and in her wan and rolling eye was the hunted look of one who hears something unpleasant stirring a long way off and fears it ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... streaming lank over his forehead, Nelson, in the act of reloading, swung about to meet this new menace. Hell! What point was there in prolonging the pitiful ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... three days for the milk-journal advertisement to work. On the afternoon of August tenth, a lank, husky-voiced teamster called at the office of the Ad-Visor and was passed in ahead of the ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... longer a shadow of uncertainty. "Margaret was dead!" and the lank Tim was ordered to drive faster, or the excited woman, perched on one of her traveling-trunks, would be obliged to foot it! A few vigorous strokes of the whip set the sorrel horse into a canter, and as the night was dark, and the road ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... opened, and a thin, lank old man, with a fierce peaked face like a bird of prey, came out upon the steps. His face softened, however, into friendliness when he saw Feversham, and a smile played upon his lips. A stranger might have thought that he winked. But his left eyelid ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... not marked, where the full cheek should be, Incipient lines of lank flaccidity, Lymphatic pallor where the pink should glow, And where the throb of transport, pulses low? - Most tragical of shapes from Pole to Line, O wondering child, unwitting Time's design, Why should Art ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... pillow during the whole of that memorable night. At dawn, the corpulent matron again appeared from among the wild and reeling crowd, and concluding her functions by some mysterious ceremonies, led forth the lank groom from the dark cavity of his hot and sleepless oven, looking more like a bewildered wretch rescued from drowning, than a radiant lover fresh from his charmer. In due time, the bride also was brought forth by the matrons ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... off that haunch of venison yet!—Bring me the lamb, a glass of currant jelly, and a clean plate. A hob-nob, sir." "With all my heart." "Two bumpers of Madeira!—Love, health, and ready rhino, to all the friends that you and I know."—On the contrary, these lank looks form the half-famished face. [Puts on the Methodist ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... unmistakable terms what he wished General Sheridan and his cavalry to accomplish. They were to go over into the Shenandoah and, putting themselves south of the enemy, follow him to the death. To which telegram the tall, lank, furrow-faced man in the White House whose kindly heart was bursting with the strain replied in characteristic fashion and told him that his purpose was exactly right. And then, with a gleam of humor, warned him against influences in Washington ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... alighting had failed, curiously, to turn the head of an odd, unkempt-looking child,—a girl of nine or ten, with an old calico sun-bonnet flung back upon her shoulders, tangled, sunburnt hair tossing above it; gown, innocent of crinoline, clinging to lank, growing limbs, and bare feet, whose heels were energetically planted at a quite safe distance from each other, to insure a fair base for the centre of gravity,—who, at the moment of their coming, was ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... her knees and gazed out forlornly over the empty waters. Not a sail, not a trail of smoke broke the blueness of the bay. With another sigh, this time of disappointment, she turned her gaze landward, and beheld there nothing but lank marsh grass ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... desolation of rocks and stones buried in a shock of brown drenched seaweed, broad tracts of glistening mud, sandbanks black with mussel-beds, and half-submerged meadows of eel-grass, with myriads of minute shellfish clinging to its long lank tresses. Beyond all these lies the main, or northern channel, more than deep enough, even when the tide is out, to float a line-of-battle-ship. On its farther bank stands the old house of the Pepperrells, wearing even ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... and much bleached, faded and wrinkled. His eyes seemed both enormous in size and sunk almost to his occiput, by reason of being seen through the thickest of glasses. His lank, grayish hair, of no particular color, but resembling autumnal roadside grasses, hung thinly from a high and asymmetrical head, and straggled dejectedly down into a wisp of beard on chin and lip—a beard which any absent-minded man might well be supposed to have failed to ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... water and scrubbing could make it. The three-quarters of an acre of garden were mainly devoted to the culture of potatoes, though under the parlour window Mrs Jimson had a plot of sweet-smelling herbs, and lines of lank sunflowers fringed the path that led to the front door. It was Mrs Jimson who received me as I descended from the station fly—a large red woman with hair bleached by constant exposure to weather, clad in a gown which, both in shape and material, seemed ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... blamed her in the least. She was scarcely nineteen, the magnet for the eyes of all the unattached men in the district. Was it reasonable to suppose that she would give her love to a penniless puncher of twenty-eight, lank as a shad, with no recommendation but honesty? None the less, Jack began to doubt whether eternal patience was ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... with whom Mr. Beckwith was exchanging amenities behind the railing, were arranging their books and papers; some of the people were leaving, and others talking in groups about the room. The Honourable Dave whispered to the judge, a tall, lank, cadaverous gentleman with iron-grey hair, who nodded. Honora was led forward. The Honourable Dave, standing very close to the judge and some distance from her, read in a low voice something that she could not catch—supposedly the petition. It was all ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a precipice, even while he dreaded it, led me to advance as near as I durst to the side of the great hole, and to gaze down into it. I could see but little of its black, shining, interior walls, or of the fragments of rock which here and there jutted out from them, crowned with patches of long, lank, sea-weed waving slowly to and fro in empty space—I could see but little of these things, for the spray from the bellowing water in the invisible depths below, steamed up almost incessantly, like smoke, and shot, hissing in clouds out of the mouth of ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... barrier between her and her pursuer. Haley therefore slowly and discontentedly returned to the little tavern, to ponder further what was to be done. The woman opened to him the door of a little parlor, covered with a rag carpet, where stood a table with a very shining black oil-cloth, sundry lank, high-backed wood chairs, with some plaster images in resplendent colors on the mantel-shelf, above a very dimly-smoking grate; a long hard-wood settle extended its uneasy length by the chimney, and here Haley sat ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... say: Arqua is in the figure of a man stretched upon the hill slope. The head, which is Petrarch's house, rests upon the summit. The carelessly tossed arms lie abroad from this in one direction, and the legs in the opposite quarter. It is a very lank and shambling figure, without elegance or much proportion, and the attitude is the last wantonness of loafing. We followed our lout up the right leg, which is a gentle and easy ascent in the general likeness of a street. World-old stone cottages crouch on either side; here and ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... live in large bodies, but dispers'd in small parties along by the Water side. Those I saw were about as tall as Europeans, of a very dark brown Colour, but not black, nor had they woolly, frizled hair, but black and lank like ours. No sort of Cloathing or Ornaments were ever seen by any of us upon any one of them, or in or about any of their Hutts; from which I conclude that they never wear any. Some that we saw had their ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... hotel in Lagrange, a rival establishment, that bore the reputation of being much the worse in point of comfort. It was owned by a widow, and this widow had a son—a lank, overgrown youth of eighteen. His poverty, on one point, was the greatest I ever knew. He could have been appropriately selected as the hero of a certain popular novel by Wilkie Collins. No name had ever been given him by his parents. In his infancy they spoke of him ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... know what was going to befall him, but he did not feel unsafe with John Farden, and besides, his lank frame was in the grasp of that big hand like a mouse in the power of a mastiff. So he let himself be hauled down the ladder, into an empty stall, where, behold, there was a dark lantern (which had ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are a very timid people who inhabit the mountains of Mindoro Island. They have long, lank hair and whitish faces, and do not appear to be of one of the original races. They are occasionally met with (when they do not hide themselves) in the cordillera which runs north-west to south-east and then ends off ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... careful WHO you marry," said Mr. Brisher, and pulled thoughtfully with a fat-wristed hand at the lank moustache that ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black, A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl Make him the quaint great figure that men love, The prairie-lawyer, master ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... believing to be labour pains, till at length, she and her husband became the standing joke of the parish; and this infatuated couple could scarce be prevailed upon to part with their hope, even when she appeared as lank as a greyhound, and they were furnished with other unquestionable proofs of their having been deceived. But they could not for ever remain under the influence of this sweet delusion, which at last faded away, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... share), persuasives towards that. O Henault! Prayers? From a France smitten (by black-art) with plague after plague, and lying now in shame and pain, with a Harlot's foot on its neck, what prayer can come? Those lank scarecrows, that prowl hunger-stricken through all highways and byways of French Existence, will they pray? The dull millions that, in the workshop or furrowfield, grind fore-done at the wheel of Labour, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... level lot;—I tell ye, pard, I know'd when it touch'd the first black hide, Me an' the mustang would hev a show Fur a breezy bit of an' evenin' ride! One! it flow'd over a homely pine Thet riz from a cranny, lean an' lank, A cleft of the mountain;—reckinin' two, It slapp'd onto ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... had a welcome ready for him and for the treasured reminiscences of his mother's past, and the three older sisters trained with him to their limit. Lydia sat by and listened, smiling all the time. She thought Eben's long, lank, broad-shouldered figure very manly, and it shocked her beyond speech to hear one of the trainers avow that, for her part, she thought his thin, Yankee face, with its big features and keen eyes, as homely as a hedge-fence. Lydia said nothing, but she wondered what people could expect. She was a greedy ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... receive such a visitor in proper style, and to make an imposing appearance. The main guard was turned out as soon as possible, equipped to the best advantage in the few suits of regimentals, which had to do duty, by turns, with the whole garrison. One tall, lank fellow appeared in a little man's coat, with the buttons between his shoulders; the skirts scarce covering his bottom; his hands hanging like spades out of the sleeves; and the coat linked in front by worsted loops made out of a pair of red garters. Another ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... He saw before him the tall thin figure of a half-breed. He had black lank hair which hung loosely down almost on to his shoulders. His face was the color of mud, and he was possessed of a pair of keen gray eyes and a thin-hooked nose. His face wore a lofty look of command, and was stamped by an expression of the unmost resolution. He spoke easily ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... fierce dogs of the mastiff breed, regularly trained to hunting fugitive negroes, rushed out upon me. I had only a small riding whip with me, having left my fire-arms with a friend at Fort Andrews, and much dreaded laceration. Their noise soon brought out a ferocious, lank-visaged-looking man, about forty years of age, who immediately called off the dogs; but before I had time to make the inquiry that brought me there, he began in ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... Terry. He had swallowed the insult, stuttered his thanks to the jeering laugh of the lank bully, and had gone home and cried ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the gate at the back of the house, his long, lank figure darkly cut against the background of the white that lay upon the slope. A flurry of blinding snow came suddenly flying on the wind. It wrapped him all about and hid him in its fury, and when the calmer falling ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... shoulders, the air of discouragement—suddenly there flashed across Billie's mind a different picture, the picture of a tall lank man with stooped shoulders and dark, deep-set eyes, looking ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... a tall, muscular man of about forty years of age, with a full dark-brown beard, and long lank hair falling over his shoulders. The visible parts of his dress consisted of three articles—a dingy-brown robe of coarse material buttoned closely at the neck and descending to the ground, a wideawake hat, and a pair of large, heavy boots. As to the esoteric parts ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... was almost the exact shape of the hearts on valentines; her nose turned up just enough to be impudent; her freckles, for she was indubitably freckled, were just wide enough apart to emphasize the inquiring, unabashed self-reliance of her eyes. Her figure was long and lank but moved with a freedom and a confidence that indicated her full control of it. She was probably ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... frame, broad and square of shoulder, tall and lank of hip as some great tiger-cat, and splendid in its sinuosity. She had walked with a long stride and as she dropped into the chair she crossed her limbs so that her well-turned ankles showed and the hands she clasped about ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... best of reasons. Mahony could still see Purdy's plump, red-cheeked English mother, who was as jolly and happy as her boy, hugging the loaf to her bosom while she cut round after round of bread and butter and jam, for two cormorant throats. And the elder boy, long-limbed and lank, all wrist and ankle, had invariably been the hungrier of the two; for, on the glossy damask of the big house, often not enough food was set to satisfy the growing appetites of himself and his sisters.—"Dickybird, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... are considerably elevated by the large size of the frontal sinuses; the ears are large and gradually tapered to a point from their broad bases, and they have the ordinary fissure towards their posteal base; the head is broad; the teeth large and strong; the body long and lank, the limbs elevated and very powerful; the brush extends to half-way between the mid-flexure (os calcis) of the hind limbs and their pads, and is as full as ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... which seemed to fill them with unbounded astonishment and admiration; as well it might, for they had never before seen any other hair except the coarse curly wool on their own pates, and the long lank hair of the trader, which happened to ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... matchbox and a piece of candle, proceeded to make a light. The tomb in the daytime, and when wreathed with fresh flowers, had looked grim and gruesome enough, but now, some days afterwards, when the flowers hung lank and dead, their whites turning to rust and their greens to browns, when the spider and the beetle had resumed their accustomed dominance, when the time-discoloured stone, and dust-encrusted mortar, and rusty, dank iron, and tarnished brass, and clouded silver-plating gave back the feeble ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... garb, from the minute regulations then existing in regard to dress, showed at any rate his pretensions to nobility. This proud cavalier was followed by one servant only, who carried a capacious wallet, not over-well replenished with provision, as was apparent from its long lank shape and attenuated proportions. His master's cloak was slung on the other shoulder; and his belt displayed some implements that appeared alike formidable as means ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... fellow at the pleugh, His acres till'd, he's right eneugh; A country lassie at her wheel, Her dizzens done, she's unco weel; [dozens] But gentlemen, an' ladies warst, Wi' ev'ndown want o' wark are curst, [positive] They loiter, lounging, lank, and lazy; Though de'il haet ails them, yet uneasy; [devil a bit] Their days insipid, dull, and tasteless; Their nights unquiet, lang, and restless. And e'en their sports, their balls, and races, Their galloping through public ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... nearer, was heard the grinding of feet on the rough planks of the floor and the faint, tremulous cry of a child. A lank young man appeared at the door. He wore a ragged, earth-stained shirt and patched pants. His yellowish hair was tousled, a scant tuft of beard was on his sharp chin, and whiskers of a week's standing mottled his hollow cheeks. His ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... little surf-lashed promontories of Kennington Cove. But Wolfe's brigade made straight for shore. The French held their fire until the leading boats were well within short musket-shot. Then they began so furiously that Wolfe, whose tall, lank figure was most conspicuous as he stood up in the stern-sheets, waved his cane to make the boats ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... young Englishman. "The house has a claim on us, for hospitality. We paid it in part to old Spencer Forsyth—he was my revered ancestor's friend—when he came over to England after the war. Got a portrait of him now at Guenn Oaks. Straight, lank, stern, level-eyed, shrewd-faced old boy—regular whackin' old Yankee type. I beg your ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Wardle had paid him Jingle had set up as a gentleman: he even had a servant—a sneaking fellow with a sallow, solemn face and lank hair, named Job Trotter, who could burst into tears whenever it suited his purpose and whose favorite occupation seemed to be reading a hymn-book. Sam Weller soon picked an acquaintance with Job, and it was not long before the latter confided to him that Jingle his master (whom ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... From the great house on the hill the guests had all departed and only the musicians remained. As they filed out through the ample doorway, on their way home, the first faint streak of early dawn became visible in the east. One of them, a lank, plain-featured young man of ungainly aspect but penetrating eye, called the attention of the others ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... "Say," said a tall, lank cowman, "if you'll go in and sleep till daylight, usn'll scour this part of the desert with a fine-tooth comb. So you all won't lose a minute by taking a little rest. An' if we find the Injun we'll string him up and save you ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Washington's administration, having ridden on horseback nearly eight hundred miles to his destination. Gallatin, himself a Western man, describes Jackson as he entered the halls of Congress: "A tall, lank, uncouth-looking personage, with long locks of hair hanging over his face and a cue down his back tied in an eel-skin; his dress singular; his manners those of a rough backwoodsman." And Jefferson testified: ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... joined by a very old gentleman, who, amid many complaints, informed me that he had had an attack of apoplexy during the night, and some one, finding him insensible, had opened the jugular vein. His lank white hair flowed over his shoulders, and his neckcloth and shirt-front were smeared with blood. He said he had cut his wife's throat, and that her ghost was after him. "There, there!" he said, pointing to a ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... goes it?" he asked pleasantly, dropping his long, lank frame upon a bundle of hotel table-linen. "Did you try my advice about ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... he would have put half the strength and life in himself into Yarrow's lank little body that moment, if he could. There was a something else lost, different from all these, of which they both thought, but they did not speak of it. The convict looked out into the night. Beyond the square patch ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... Theron!" she called again; and in obedience to the summons the tall lank figure of her husband appeared in the open doorway behind her. A long loose, open dressing-gown dangled to his knees, and his sallow, clean-shaven, thoughtful face wore a morning undress expression of youthful good-nature. He leaned against ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... placidity and behaved like an animal. I don't mean it in an offensive sense. What he did was to give way to an instinctive panic. Like some wild creature scared by the first touch of a net falling on its back, old de Barral began to struggle, lank and angular, against the empty air—as much of it as there was in the cab—with staring eyes and gasping mouth from which his daughter shrank as far as she could in the ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... murky with the interchange of compliments that flew back and forth from the "web-foots"[4] to the "critter company," and from the "critter company" to the "web-foots." As the train moved off, "I say, boys," drawled a lank, coatless giant on the roadside, with but one suspender and one spur, "tha-at's right! Gen'l Beerygyard told you to strike fo' yo' homes, an' I see you' a-doin' it ez fass as you kin git thah." ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... seat? Usually the lank form and the shrill voice simultaneously uprise from the middle of the second Bench behind Mr. G.; but GEORGE has a little way of pleasantly surprising the House. Members looking across see this Bench empty. "Ah! ah!" they say to themselves, "the CAMPBELLS are gone. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... woods, and have made a Turneresque effect, ambling along, a blaze of colours, quite as self-satisfied in their finery as if 'the rainbow had been entail settled on them and their heirs male.' Quite probably their broad, flat noses, and their long, lank hair, their faces fixed immovably, as if they were carved in nandubay, contrasted strangely with their finery. But there were none to judge — no one to make remarks; most likely all was conscience and tender heart, and not their bitterest enemy has laid the charge ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... fantastic, long-toed shoes; jousts and tournaments; and Minnesingers, and lovers, whose heads reach to the towers, where their ladies sit;—and all so angular, so simple, so childlike,—all in such simple attitudes, with such great eyes, and holding up such long, lank fingers!—These things are characteristic of the Middle Ages, and persuade me ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... when Mr. Johnson was first introduced to her mother his appearance was very forbidding; he was then lean and lank, so that his immense structure of bones was hideously striking to the eye, and the scars of the scrofula were deeply visible. He also wore his hair, which was straight and stiff, and separated behind; and he often had, seemingly, convulsive ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... "poor whites," or crackers; lank, sallow, ragged creatures, living in poverty, ignorance, and dirt, who regarded all strangers with suspicion as "outlandish folks." [Footnote: Smythe's Tours, I., 103, describes the up-country crackers of North Carolina and Virginia.] With every chance to rise, these ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... backbone, blindly devoted to his daughter, and contemptuous of all the myriad mysteries of civilisation that he doesn't understand. I don't know why I should be authorised to imagine him personally long and lank, with possibly a tobacco habit of some sort. His natural history, upon no better authority, is that of a hard-headed farmer, who found out that farming could never be more than a livelihood, and came into the village, and began to lend money, and get gain, till he was in a position to help found ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... rail, careless now whether or not he was heard, and ran down to the beach. He gave an order, the proa was floated and the sail run up. In a moment the brisk evening breeze caught the lank canvas and bellied it taut. The proa bore away to the northwest out of which ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... that they were alike insensible of the roughness and discomforts of the road, though often obliged to force their way through brushwood and coppice, which poured down on them all the liquid pearls with which they were loaded, till the mantles they were wrapped in hung lank by their sides, and clung to their shoulders heavily charged with moisture. They stopped when they had attained a station under the coppice, and shrouded by it, from which they could see all that passed on the little esplanade before the King's Oak, whose broad and scathed ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... would get in after the green feed and break the ditches, causing the water to wash the soil away. That band of hogs began to torment me as much as the mules had done. They were so hungry you could not keep them out. I didn't blame them, poor, lank, starved creatures, for getting in and getting something to eat. I would have done the ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... now to take a more leisurely view of the Indians whom we had rescued. They were small men, wiry, active, and well-built, with lank black hair tied up in a bunch behind their heads with a leathern thong, and leathern also were their loin-clothes. Their faces were hairless, well formed, and good-humored. The lobes of their ears, hanging ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... oasis. It is of large dimensions, lined with tiles, and provided with a gutter or trench to conduct the water drawn to the different watering-places. There we found a caravan from Damascus, with a number of horses and mules in the charge of several lank moukri, who were bound for Cairo. This herd, together with the tall drivers, with their fine swarthy features, and the background of gigantic palms, made up a strikingly harmonious and characteristic picture, the effect of ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... stood high on lank black legs, with long black arms thrown up stiffly above the black shape of a hat. The two others crouched low on the very edge of the water, peering as ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... wrapped in the gloomy interest and frightened reticence which followed it, that "Jim Hooker" first characteristically flashed upon Clarence's perceptions. Hanging half on and half off the saddle of an Indian pony, the lank Jim suddenly made his appearance, dashing violently up and down the track, and around the wagon in which Clarence was sitting, tugging desperately at the reins, with every indication of being furiously run away with, and retaining his seat only with the most dauntless courage ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... white horse as it passed the lamps. He stood still for a space, undecided. Then he sped rapidly toward the side gates of the royal gardens. The vehicle stopped there. But this time no woman came out. Carmichael would have recognized that lank form anywhere. It was the chancellor. Well, what of it? Couldn't the chancellor go out in a common hack if he wanted to? But who was the ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... this lump," said he, looking at a fat, rolled up, heavy breathing sleeper; "but what signify brains to such a lazy dog? I might kick him for my football this half hour before I should get him awake. This lank jawed harlequin beside him is a handy fellow, to be sure; but, then, if he has hands, he has no head—and he'd be afraid of his own shadow too, by this light, he is such a coward! And Townsend, why, he ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... by a sparkling circle of glass, a monocle fixed upon him with aggressive insistence. A lank lieutenant with the corseted waist of the officers that he had seen in Berlin, a genuine Junker, was a few feet away, sword in hand behind his men, like a wrathful ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... man of habit. When he got home, drenched to the skin, his clothes hanging lank about him, and a ghastly dew besmearing his hat, his only thought was of his health, of which he took studious care. So, after changing his clothes and encasing himself in a warm dressing-gown, he proceeded to prepare a sudorific in the shape of a hot gin ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... the wisest of all," and spoke of him as dressed like one of the "mummers that used to be going about the country." Since then a friend has gathered me some few stories of him, and I have heard that he is known, too, in the highlands. I remember seeing a long, lank, ragged man sitting by the hearth in the cottage of an old miller not far from where I am now writing, and being told that he was a fool; and I find from the stories that my friend has gathered that he is believed to go to faery in his sleep; but whether he becomes ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... off, and switching it at her side, skipped along on the outskirts of the wood and ambled after the wagon. Seen in the full, merciless glare of a Californian sky, she justified her father's description; thin and bony, her lank frame outstripped the body of her ragged calico dress, which was only kept on her shoulders by straps,—possibly her father's cast-off braces. A boy's soft felt hat covered her head, and shadowed her only notable feature, a pair of large dark eyes, looking larger for the ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the platform outside the door, and Saunders appeared, sidling deprecatingly into the room. He pulled off his black, slouched hat and tucked it under his arm, smoothed his lank, black hair, ran his palm down over his lank, unshaven face with a smoothing gesture, and sidled over to ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... picture described by Lockhart, the strong, lank frame, hard features, sunken eyes, and grizzled eyebrows, the green jacket, white hat, and gray trousers—the outer appointments of the faithful serving man. One sees Scott walking familiarly by his side, staying himself on Tom's shoulder, while Tom talks with glee ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... fast as spurs would bring them, waving, shouting a warning as he went. Within a minute they were all together listening to his story. Within another, the rifles from off their saddles in their hands, the ponies left in charge of lank Bob Hoyt, the eight others now remaining moved back as Stetson had come: at first upright, then, crawling, hand over hand until, peeping over the intervening ridge, they saw lying before them the mingled ice patches and open running ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... ere they reached Ostia, the night had fallen; and their situation began to be more than questionably safe. Now and then a wolf, slinking across the road towards his ghastly feast, glided like a lank ghost out of the darkness, and into it again, answering Bran's growl by a gleam of his white teeth. Then the voices of some marauding party rang coarse and loud through the still night, and made them ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... little, but didn't say nothin'. My hosses fell to grazin', and I eased myself around in my saddle, and made a cigareet. The men was tall, lank fellows, with kind of sullen faces, and sly, shifty eyes; the woman was dirty and generally mussed up. I knowed that sort all right. Texas was gettin' too ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... of Boston had become marked objects of the displeasure of the British Parliament. Later, in 1775, Ethan Allen had startled Captain Delaplace by presenting his lank figure at the captain's bedside and demanding the surrender of Ticonderoga in the name of the "Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." In the language of Daniel Webster, "A spirit pervaded all ranks, not transient, not ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... she had ordered for Enid from Hastings. The girls admired them, but declared that Gladys was extravagant, as usual; the flowers from her own yard would really have been enough. The car was driven by a lank, ragged boy who worked about the town garage, and who was called "Silent Irv," because nobody could ever get a word out of him. He had almost no voice at all,—a thin little squeak in the top of his throat, like the gasping whisper of a medium in her trance state. When he came ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... soft shadows of the summer night a boy moved from the remuda toward the camp-fire. He was a lean, sandy-haired young fellow, his figure still lank and unfilled. In another year his shoulders would be broader, his frame would take on twenty pounds. As he sat down on the wagon tongue at the edge of the firelit circle the stringiness of his ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... swathed in some thin, dirty, white stuff down even to the fingers and feet: I have never seen men so wrapped up before, and women so only in the East. They wore turbans too, and thereunder peered out their elfin faces at me,—faces with protruding lower-jaws and bright eyes. They had lank black hair, almost like horsehair, and seemed as they sat to exceed in stature any race of men I have seen. The white-haired man, who I knew was a good six feet in height, sat a head below any one of the three. I found afterwards that really none were taller than myself; but their bodies ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... the duty of Christian charity by dealing indiscriminate condemnation against all except those who belonged to his own exclusive and somewhat ignorant school of religious intolerance. His face was the reflex of his mind; his lank black hair stuck down in stiff dry straightness over a contracted forehead and an ill-shaped head; his spectacles gave additional glassiness to a lack-lustre eye, and the manner in which he carried his chin in the ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... the St. Nicholas Hotel a lank and shabby man had mounted a cracker box, and was evidently making a speech, but Berkley could distinguish nothing he said because of the ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... and, worse than all, singed the faint suggestion of a mustache that was visible by the aid of a microscope, on my upper lip. While I was engaged in lighting my cigar, a large dog—a tall, lean, much-ribbed, lank and hungry-looking hound—went out to the sleigh, and my friend induced him to accept passage with us; so when I got back to my seat it was proposed that the hound should accompany us. I have often wondered since ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... Reardon remarked after seeing one passed as broken, following five minutes of furious pitching and squealing—Cappy Ricks was one of the first at the corral and the last to leave. Perched on the topmost, rail, he piped encouragement to the lank, flat-bellied border busters who, a dozen times a day, risked life and limb at ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... wooden hinges, that they were usually left open to avoid the difficulty of shutting them. Guns and fishing-tackle were on the walls, and the seats were wooden benches or leather-bottomed chairs. A tall, lank woman, with red hair, and a severe aspect, was busy mending a garment. When asked if the traveller could be provided with supper, she curtly replied that she "reckoned so"; and, without further parlance, or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... a strip of linen about the lank jaws; combed back the grizzled hair from the forehead into sleek respectability; crossed the hands at the wrists, as only dead hands are ever laid; straightened the limbs, and was in the act of spreading a clean ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... had knobbed up under your eyes. There will be a staircase of political wrinkles upon your forehead. Your eyes—— Oh, my God! I cannot bear the vision I see of you, with your eyes showing like gray stones casting eddies of wrinkles! And you'll be lank, the skeleton left by the passing of a great and successful movement undertaken ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... harassed air, And she, in her cloud of loose lank hair, Seemed trouble-tried As the dawn drew in on ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... den to-night," observed this new-comer, whose heavy face, watery blue eyes, lank hair plentifully streaked with gray, and unwholesome complexion would not have produced a too-favorable impression on any one unacquainted with his ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... pleased him better than a stormy visit from his hostess in this temper. The young scapegrace would close his novel, and set down his glass of sherry and water (it sometimes smelt very like brandy, I'm afraid). To hear her rant, one would have supposed, who had not seen him, that her lank-haired, grimly partner, was the prettiest youth in the county of Dublin, and that all the comely lasses in Chapelizod and the country round were sighing and setting caps at him; and Devereux, who ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... flopping solemnly in unison with their measured tread. Ever and anon the leader halts, uprolls the speculative eye, arrests the oscillation of the ears, laying them rigidly back along the neck, exalts the conscious tail, drops the lank jaw, and warbles a psalm of praise that shakes the blind hills from their eternal repose. His companions take up the parable in turn, "and the echoes, huddling in affright, like Odin's hounds," go baying down the valleys and ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... she stood smiling up into the dark face above her, she looked what she was; a girl in the flush of early womanhood, a prairie girl, wild as the flowers which grow hidden in the lank grass of the plains, as wayward as the breezes which sweep them from every point of ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... others assembled, and crowded into the place of meeting. Twenty-two delegates from the eleven plantations were there, clad in their dingy and dilapidated raiment, and wide-brimmed hats; most of them with swords at their sides, and some with rusty muskets in their hands. Their cheeks were lank and their faces sunburned; their bearing was listless, yet marked with some touch of curiosity and expectation. There were among them some well-filled brows and strong features, announcing men of ability and thoughtfulness, though they had lacked the opportunity and the cue for action. Their long ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... we started from the station we were accompanied by several dogs. They had a good time ranging around over the plain and through the forest after the manner of dogs when let loose, and seemed to enjoy themselves thoroughly. They were large and rather lank animals, and capable of making high speed when necessary. We asked our entertainer what they were specially used for, and were told that the animals ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... fell foul of the waiter, because he had brought me goat's milk which was very sour. There ensued the most comical scene. In an access of fury the stout woman raged and stormed; the waiter, a lank young fellow, with a simple, good-natured face, after trying to explain that he had committed the fault by inadvertence, suddenly raised his hand, like one about to exhort a congregation, and exclaimed in a tone of injured remonstrance, "Un po' di calma! Un po' di calma!" ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... country, that is, from the Barranca de Batopilas and Carichic in the north toward the regions of the mining place Guadalupe y Calvo in the south. By and by I also found a suitable lenguaraz, Don Nabor, who lived a day's journey from Guachochic. He was a tall, lank, healthy-looking fellow, some fifty years old, very poor and blessed with a large family of sons and daughters, some of them full grown. All his life he had been intimate with the Indians; he spoke their language as well as he did Spanish, and really liked ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... brought about a great change for the better in the life of the mountain woman. Once we saw her lank, slatternly, meek, stoic—mother of a dozen or more, obeying with patient fortitude the will of her man. We saw too the pitiable child-bride marrying perhaps a man three times her age because he could take care of her. There being so many in the family Pappy and Mammy ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... of about thirty, though at first sight he seemed older, from his exceedingly worn and sickly appearance. His lank black hair fell about his thin, sallow face; he wore what we now call the Byron collar and Byron tie—for it was in the Byron era, when sentimentalism and misery-making were all the fashion. Certainly the poor captain looked miserable enough, without any pretense of it; for, ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... a string of dried snaps from the outhouse, called to him to hurry before the cloudburst. She was a lank, colourless girl, with bad teeth and small pale eyes. Jubal, at the churn in the hall, rested from his labours as Nicholas entered, and grinned as he pointed to his mother in the kitchen. Marthy Burr was ironing. As Nicholas crossed the threshold, she stopped ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... spare man, with sharp features, a brown leather face, thin lank black hair, and eyes like a snake, drew back from the door, as Algernon thus unceremoniously effected an entrance. His partner in penury, the miser, was seated at an old oak table making arithmetical calculations upon a ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... last to an unpainted, one-room shanty in the woods by the railroad track, a telegraph station. Prescott stared in at the window and at the lone operator, a lank youth of twenty, who started back when he saw the unshorn and ghastly face at the window. But he recovered his coolness in ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... he does not look a bit older than when I first came here. He is a great breeder of sheep, and deals extensively in cattle. He attends market days for miles around in every sort of weather, and drives sitting bowed low over the reins, his lank grey hair curling over the collar of his warm coat, and with a green plaid rug round his legs. The calmness of advanced age gives a solemnity to his manner. He is clean-shaved; his lips are thin and sensitive; something rigid and monarchal in the set of his features ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... family of boys I knew, who were all of them starved in their infancy by a miserly father, that gave them barely a bit of Graves to eat and not a drop of Pempton to drink; and on the afternoon of his funeral, I found them in the drawing-room, four lank fellows, heels up, walking on their hands, from long practice; and the girl informed me, that her brothers were able so to send the little blood they had in their bodies to their brains, and always felt quite cheerful for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... her]. O mother, mother! go not to that house— Among those fierce lank men, who laughed, and scowled, And showed their knives, and sang strange ugly songs Of you and us. O mother! let ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... I feared that little Rosenheim would smite the lank annoyer dead in his tracks. 'For heaven's sake be careful!' I cried. 'The man is drunk or crazy or he may even be right; the paint on this picture isn't two days old.' 'Correct,' declared the stranger. ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... while the profile was thrust forward as though he were peering at something just out of sight. A courtly touch in his style was probably a matter of inheritance, as was also his capacity for looking suitably attired while obviously neglectful of appearances. His thick, lank, sandy hair, fading to white, and long, narrow, stringy beard of the same transitional hue were not well cared for; and yet they helped to give him a little of the air of a Titian or Velasquez nobleman. In answer to Guion now, he spoke without lifting his ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... lover does that of his mistress. I tried to penetrate his methods. He never wears a wig or false hair; he is too wise for that folly. Yet he seems able to change his hair from light to dark, to make it lank or curly, short or long. He does it; how I don't know. He alters the shape of his nose, his cheeks, and his chin. I suppose that he pads them out with little rubber insets. He alters his voice, and his figure, and even his height. He can be stiff and upright like a drilled ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... had brought up my lee-way, James appeared with his summons to our frugal supper—radishes, cheese, and a bottle of the old ale-only two plates though—and no chair set for Mr. Darsie, by the attentive James Wilkinson. Said James, with his long face, lank hair, and very long pig-tail in its leathern strap, was placed, as usual, at the back of my father's chair, upright as a wooden sentinel at the door of a puppet-show. 'You may go down, James,' said my father; and exit Wilkinson.—What is to come next? thought I; for the weather is not ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... watched the caretaker up to bed. She came upstairs, clinging to the balusters for support, a tired, worn-looking, elderly woman, with a lank, frail body, and a care-lined, miserable face. How ridiculous were Julia's suspicions! She not only did not lock her door to-night, but left it ajar. At intervals I peeped through mine to see if her light was extinguished; she had not—so poorly dressed she was—the appearance ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... marches, triumphal entries, and receptions, beyond what even in the days of his highest prosperity they could have brought about in his favor. On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out. These are disadvantages all taken together, that the Republicans labor under. We have to fight this battle upon principle, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... of no less repelling expression; but the organs were concealed beneath a pair of enormous green goggles, through which they glared around with a fierceness that denounced the coming day of wrath. All was fanaticism, uncharitableness, and denunciation. Long, lank hair, a mixture of gray and black, fell down his neck, and in some degree obscured the sides of his face, and, parting on his forehead, fell in either direction in straight and formal screens. On the top of this ungraceful ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... from somewhere among the pitiful rags that covered his lank carcase he drew forth a small wooden pipe scarce two foot long and having a bulbous mouthpiece at one end. "The Indians use 'em longer than this—aye, six foot I've seen 'em, but then, Lord! they'll blow ye a dart from eighty to a hundred paces sometimes, whereas ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... tears in her eyes. "Why, it's nothin' to be away from home a week, mother. And just think how happy I am." But there were more tears; and Jasper stormed at a dog and shook the wagon wheel to satisfy himself that it was sound. The driver, as lank a lout as ever slept in a stable, sat upon a board seat, stuffing his greedy mouth with ginger cake. He took up the lines and clucked to the horses, but it was discovered that something more remained to be said and ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... and mittens, which all require a different style of manufacture, and are all items of such importance during the winter snows. Melancthon Grey, whose most Christian and protestant appellation was abbreviated into "Lank," was a true-blooded blue nose. His father had a noble farm of rich intervale on the banks of the river Saint John, and was well to do in the world. Lank was his eldest son, yet no heritage was his, save his axe and the arm which swung it. The ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... they are right in insisting upon the characteristic difference of the male and female figure. Our modern sculptors and painters, whose study of the nude is usually most perfunctory, have often scandalised me by the lank and greyhound-like fining off of the frame, which thus becomes rather ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... looked at the lank fellow appraisingly. "But I know a fellow who wants a chauffeur for a ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... Anamabao on the east side towards Timor and the north-east end; and that of Anabao, which contains the south-west end and the west side of the island; but I known not which of them is biggest. The natives of both are of the Indian kind, of a swarthy copper-colour, with black lank hair. Those of Anamabao are in league with the Dutch, as these afterwards told me, and with the natives of the kingdom of Kupang in Timor, over against them, in which the Dutch fort Concordia stands: but they are said to be inveterate enemies to their neighbours of Anabao. Those ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... groupe that had been collected for this purpose was brought together in the morning, it was impossible not to regard it with an eye of pity. Most of them consisted of infirm and decrepit old men, and the rest were such lank, sickly-looking, ill-clothed creatures, that the whole groupe appeared to be much fitter for an hospital than for performing any kind of labour. Our companions pretended to say that every farmer, who rented lands upon the public rivers or canals, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... manageable set of people, than the representatives of the nation at large. And can any sensible man doubt for a moment, which are the most respectable body of men? Examine their persons. Among their predecessors I see many poor, lank, shrivelled, half-starved things, some bald, some with a few straggling hairs, and some with an enormous bag, pendant from no hair at all. Turn, my lord, to the other side. There you will see a good, comely, creditable race ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... pasquinades," declared a workman, lank and withered from operating the blowpipe. "To me it looks like ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... to note, that till the Sun gets to such a height as to warm the earth and the water, the Trout is sick, and lean, and lowsie, and unwholsome: for you shall in winter find him to have a big head, and then to be lank, and thin, & lean; at which time many of them have sticking on them Sugs, or Trout lice, which is a kind of a worm, in shape like a Clove or a Pin, with a big head, and sticks close to him and sucks his moisture; those I ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... haint exactly settled yet," replied the philosopher, who was of a tall, lank figure, and of a mighty brown beard. "But I've been around pretty much everywhere, and I find that about the poorest use you can put a man to ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... moored myself on the railing about three yards from Freedham. This could easily be managed, Freedham being one of those boys who were always alone. For a little I pretended to watch the game and then stole a furtive, sideways glance at his lank profile. I had immediate cause to wish I had done nothing of the sort, for he turned his unholy eyes on mine and so disconcerted me that I swung my face back upon the cricket field and affected complete indifference. I even hummed a little ditty to show that if any mind was free from ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... for life; he understood that thoroughly, and settled down to it, bending low in the saddle, bridle in one hand, revolver in the other. And as he rode his sobered thoughts dwelt now on Lorraine, now on the great lank Uhlan, lying stricken in the red dust of the highway. He seemed to see him yet, blond, dusty, the sweat in beads on his blanched cheeks, the crimson furrow in his colourless scalp. He had seen, too, the padded yellow shoulder-knots bearing the regimental number "11," and he knew that he had ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers |
