"Leathery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... machine noises. Here and there a girlie picture or a sentimental landscape from Earth was posted. Men moved busily along them, bearing tools, instruments, supplies. They were from numerous countries, those men, though mostly North Americans, but they had acquired a likeness, a rangy leathery look and a free-swinging stride, that went ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... skin underneath except on the top of each, where she cut it away from a spot about the size of a silver quarter of a dollar. She then placed them on a waiter, with the cut part uppermost, and set them where the dew would fall on them all night. Morning found them with the skin hard and leathery, but filled with delicious juice, which could be readily withdrawn ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... gunning somewhere in the backwoods. Down the stony winding road saunters one of the natives in a two-piece suit. Overalls and a hickory shirt constitute his entire outfit. He grows a beard to save himself the labor of shaving. His leathery feet scarcely feel the sharp stones of the highway. Here is a picture worth preserving, for the "cracker" type is becoming a rarity, almost extinct. Set your pointer at "8" and take his full length. If you wish a close-up of his head, set the ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... gallery reserved for the attendants of the tables. The building was pervaded by a distant muffled hooting, piping and bawling, of which he did not at first understand the import, but which recalled a certain mysterious leathery voice he had heard after the resumption of the lights on the night ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... the hotel register about facing Sam, nodded her head, and then, leaning over the desk, bestowed a quick kiss upon the leathery cheek of the ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... Carrie came home with a dull glow in her leathery cheeks, and her eyes alight with resolve. They had what ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... give us the cold shivers. And it made us hush down, too, and talk low, like people at a funeral. We dropped down slow and stopped, and me and Tom clumb down and went among them. There was men, and women, and children. They was dried by the sun and dark and shriveled and leathery, like the pictures of mummies you see in books. And yet they looked just as human, you wouldn't 'a' believed it; just like ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... gangrene when applied as a fomentation to a finger, especially in women and children. Thrombosis occurs in the blood vessels of the part, which at first is pale and soft, but later becomes dark and leathery. On account of the anaesthetic action of carbolic acid, the onset of the process is painless, and the patient does not realise his danger. A line of demarcation soon forms, but the dead ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... lance-shaped appendages in front. A membrane of various forms is also often attached to the nose, in one species the shape of a horse-shoe. The bodies are always covered with hair, but the wings consist of a leathery membrane. Another singularity in one genus is the extremity of the spine being converted into two jointed, horny pieces, covered with skin, so as to form a box of two valves, each having an independent ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... Oh, limp and leathery type of Social Sham, And Legislative Flam! Which cunning CUNNINGHAME and MATTHEWS cool (Both prompt to play the fool, In free-lance fashion or official form) Prattled of, 'midst a storm Of crackling laughter, and ironic cheers, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... of fact I was not talking of the Derby or even thinking of it at the moment. I had just been telling Elizabeth that the omelette which she had served us at dinner was leathery, and her remark struck me ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... Uncle Paul. "Fry! That is wild west-country ignorance, madam! Are you not aware, madam, that the action of boiling fat upon albumen is to produce a coagulate leathery mass of tough indigestible matter inimical to the tender sensitive lining of the most important organ of the human frame, lying as it does without assimilation or absorption upon the epigastric region, and producing an irritation that may require ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... young, but harsh and coarse at maturity. The golden flowers, grouped in huge heads, are rich in nectar, attracting birds and butterflies by day and flying foxes at night. The fruit, enclosed in a crisp capsule, is tough and leathery, in shape a flattened oval, and is entirely covered with silken seeds lying close and dense as the feathers of the grebe. When numbers of the capsules open simultaneously, the seeds float earthwards like a silvery mantle or stream before the wind like a veil. Rarely ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... of those leathery egotists that nothing will make a dint in, and she came back with, "But we don't speak the language, and they don't speak English, and how are we to manage if the ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... Through each thin, leathery, semi-transparent shell you could have seen, if you had examined it closely, a pair of bright, beady eyes, and a dark little thread of a backbone that was always curled up like a horseshoe because there wasn't room for it to lie straight. But along the outside of ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... celebrated for the saltness of its waters and the leathery qualities of its clams. This island is said to have been so named on account of its resemblance in shape to an inverted cone, but the attrition of the ocean has materially changed the conic base. Researches in the direction of the apex have not ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... of achenes or follicles. The flowers contain honey, and attract flies, short-lipped bees or other small insects by the agency of which pollination is effected. The fruit of Butomus is of interest in having the seeds borne over the inner face of the wall of the leathery pod (follicle). Damasonium derives its popular name, star-fruit, from the fruits spreading when ripe in the form of a star. It is ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the city almost a year now. But the city had not digested Ben. He was a leathery morsel that could not be assimilated. There he stuck in Chicago's crop, contributing nothing, gaining nothing. A rube in a comic collar ambling aimlessly about Halsted Street, or State downtown. You saw him conversing hungrily with the gritty and taciturn Swede who was janitor for the ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... said Mrs. Makely, who had a leathery insensibility to everything but the purpose possessing her, "that we ought at least to go and say something ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... girls who have outstayed their market and have to get a hustle on! Sending a man out there alone is like driving a new-born lamb into a pack of wolves!" Lady Staines with her eye on the heavily built and rather leathery lamb beside her gave a sardonic chuckle. Winn ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... at the other, then his eyes dropped. He scarcely comprehended. He was startled at the expression of that leathery, puffed face. He shifted uneasily with the curious weakly restlessness of a ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... things are edible—or store water?" Brion's voice was a harsh rasp. Lea blinked and squinted at the leathery shape on the summit of the dune. Plant or animal, it was hard to tell. It was the size of a man's head, wrinkled and grey as dried-out leather, knobbed with thick spikes. Brion pushed it up with his toe and they had a brief glimpse of a white roundness, ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... it is leathery; Esau betrays himself by hairs, Maudlin by weeping; and as for the "Bishop that burneth" the explanation is complicated. It seems that Cicely would run after the bishop for his blessing, and leave the milk on the fire to burn.[A] For all these ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... the corner of the hotel to reach Main Street he saw Luke Tweezy single-footing into town from the south. The powdery dust of the trail filled in and overlaid the lines and creases of Luke Tweezy's foxy-nosed and leathery visage. Layers of dust almost completely concealed the original colour of the caked and matted hide of Luke Tweezy's well-conditioned horse. It was evident that Luke Tweezy had ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... has bought a chaise. There are now two in the place. His is green-bottomed. It has a most agreeable leathery smell, and a gentle creak which is very pleasant. The minister's is dark blue. They are set high, and the tops tip forward, serving to keep out both sun and rain. Poor Mrs. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... The oldest person in every community is a gossip and there are others still blooming and tender, who we know will live to be leathery and hard. That the life-insurance actuaries do not recognize this truth is a shame to their perception. Ancestral lesions should bulk for them no bigger than any slightest taint of keyhole lassitude. For it is by thinking of ourselves that we die. It leads to rheums and indigestions ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... awake, were either industriously painting their features or washing their wounds and scratches and filling them with balsam and bruised witch-hazel, or were eating the last of our parched corn and stringy shreds of leathery venison. All seemed as complacent as a party of cats licking their rumpled fur; and examining their bites, scratches, bruises, and knife wounds, I found no serious injury among them, and nothing to stiffen for very long the limbs of men ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... them and find out what they are so busy about; see the patterns of their leathery little clothes; their high hats, leathery capes and aprons. Some time I will see them. I am not familiar with all this, but I imagine very thick leather belts and buckles. Their feet are small, but too big for them, and make a little clatter ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... A wave of red rolled dully up from her withered neck in its gala collar over her leathery face to the roots of her ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... water, at another of young jelly-fish growing on their tiny stalks, and splitting off one by one as transparent bells to float away with the rising tide. Or it may be that the whelk has chosen this quiet nook to deposit her leathery eggs; or young barnacles, periwinkles, and limpets are growing up among the green and brown tangles, while the far-sailing velella and the stay-at-home sea-squirts, together with a variety of other sea-animals, find a nursery ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... meal-worm—simply it is gone! The toad's eyes are tightly shut whilst he swallows the morsel, and then he turns to pick up a second. Now is the time to approach him from behind and begin to stroke his leathery, warty skin. In a few seconds he is in a state of perfect ecstasy, his front legs are stretched out, he leans first to one side, then to the other, to guide the hand where he wishes to be stroked, and ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... with a vague, ironical smile, ate one mouthful of her buttered toast, now very old and leathery, gave the rest to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... had discovered at supper the night before, consisted of Grandma Watterby, her son Will, a man of about forty-five, and the daughter-in-law, Emma, a tall, silent woman with a wrinkled, leathery skin, a harsh voice, and the kindest heart in the world. An Indian helped Mr. Watterby run the farm. In addition there were two boarders, a man and his wife who had come West for the latter's health and who, for the sake of the glorious air, ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... it was unforgettable, to see these people as they stood beside the rounded, supple, splendid figure of the speaker and took her strong, smooth hand in their work-scarred, leathery palms—these women of many children and never-ending work, bent by toil above the wash-tub and the churn, shut out from all things that humanize and make living something more than a brute struggle against ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... prepared a junk of jaguar meat, which he roasted, being curious to taste it, as he had been told that the Indians like it very much. It was pretty good, but not equal to the turtle-eggs. The shell of the egg is leathery, and the yolk only is eaten. The Indians sometimes eat them raw, mixed with farina. Cakes of farina, and excellent coffee, concluded their repast; and Barney declared he had never had such a satisfactory ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... look at her?" inquired Nanna, shifting the big empty basket she carried on her head, hitching her broad shoulders and wrinkling her leathery forehead, as her small eyes turned upward. "Do you take me for a man, that I should make ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... down and extracted a thorn from the leathery sole of his bare foot. The prick of the thorn had cleaned his mind of any merely fanciful fears. A surpassing lot of berries was there for the bold to take. His brother stared not too boldly through the fence at ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... above the mottled reds and yellows of the grotesque trees, a head appeared. It waved at the end of a long, leathery neck. All mouth, it seemed to the watchers, as they saw a pair of short forelegs pull the succulent tops of the giant growth into a capacious maw. Below, there was visible a part of a gigantic, grayish body. It was crashing down toward them, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... a man act so?" he says. "There's my fellow-man. Look at him! I'm sorry for him. Most of him had hard luck to be born, and yet when he gets in my way I just walk all over him. I can't help it. He's leathery and he's passive, my fellow-man. He goes to sleep in the middle of the road. When I ketch one of him, I kicks a hole in his trousers first, and then it occurs to me, 'My sufferin' brother! This is too ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... them brown faces and tanned leathery white ones you can imagine what a pink rosebud she seemed to be; and it wasn't like that she stopped at that, for she could sing like a nightingale and talk to beat the band; and her laugh itself was like music, sounding long afterwards in your ears ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... the benches in the Morals Court. The years had made a coarse mask of her face. There was nothing to see in her eyes. Her hands were red and leathery, like a man's. They had done ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... fish are sometimes called sea-hogs and are five or six feet long. Either to get their food of small fish, or in play, they keep swimming and diving near the tops of the breakers. Fishermen catch them with a strong hook and use the thick, leathery skin for straps or strings, while they try oil out ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... centimeters and a breadth of 7 centimeters; the leaf is rather coriaceous, and slightly downy only along the nerves on the under side. The handsome and imposing looking flowers of the Cananga odorata occur to the number of four on short peduncles. The lobes of the tripartite leathery calyx are finally bent back. The six lanceolate petals spread out very nearly flat, and grow to a length of 7 centimeters and a breadth of about 12 millimeters; they are longitudinally veined, of a greenish color, and dark brown when dried. The somewhat bell-shaped elegantly drooping flowers ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... a trifle hot," and then everything was resolved into the question of meat—rich, tender, juicy meat—glorious to one whose fare had been dry, leathery, rather tainted biltong ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... DESCRIPTION. PILEUS. Leathery, tough, and of an equal cream color, pliable when moist; shrivelling, wrinkled, even brittle when dry, changing from the former to the latter with a dew or rain followed by a hot sun, and also vice versa. ...
— Mushrooms of America, Edible and Poisonous • Anonymous
... si nina," he mumbled, chewing his lips, his round leathery cheeks quivering. And the landau rolled slowly out of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... tubes. A loud sound of this description is, not infrequently, detected at the anterior part of either side of the chest; whilst the respiratory murmur is entirely lost, posteriorly, from consolidation of the lungs. A decided leathery, frictional sound is detected over a considerable portion of the thoracic surface. As the disease advances, and gangrene, with the production of cavities in the lungs, ensues, loud, cavernous rales are heard, which are more or less circumscribed, ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... which bulged somewhat, showing an unhealthy white glitter. I set down this glitter as due to long weeks at sea: but the explanation couldn't quite satisfy me. When a lost friend returns as it were from the grave—from shipwreck, at any rate, and uncharted travel—you look to find him gaunt, brown, leathery, hollow of cheek and eye, eh? Foe's appearance didn't answer to this conception . . . not one ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the arm looked down at the tired little bundle it was supporting. A wistful tenderness was in the leathery face. To the rest of the world he was a man of iron. To this wee bit of humanity he was a nurse, a playmate, ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... the wealth of society in some other way. Only it happened at Grimworth, which, to be sure, was a low place, that the maids and matrons could do nothing with their hands at all better than cooking: not even those who had always made heavy cakes and leathery pastry. And so it came to pass, that the progress of civilization at Grimworth was not otherwise apparent than in the impoverishment of men, the gossiping idleness of women, and the heightening prosperity of ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... (F. elastica) is not indigenous to Ceylon, it is now very widely diffused over the island. It is remarkable for the pink leathery covering which envelopes the leaves before expansion, and for the delicate tracing of the nerves which run in equi-distant rows at right angles from the mid-rib. But its most striking feature is ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... possess thick, leathery leaves, as a protection against the force of the tropical raindrops. The direct influence of the rain cannot be the cause of this power of resistance, for the leaves, while they were still thin, would simply have ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... several small species of palms, varying in height from two to fifteen feet, are common; and now and then magnificent tree ferns send off their feathery crowns twenty feet from the ground to delight the sight by their graceful elegance. Great broad-leaved heliconias, leathery melastomae, and succulent-stemmed, lop-sided leaved and flesh-coloured begonias are abundant, and typical of tropical American forests; but not less so are the cecropia trees, with their white stems and large palmated leaves standing up like great candelabra. Sometimes the ground ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... off the heads from the wayside weeds as he walked. He refused our offer to take him in, alleging that he was out for exercise and to reduce his flesh—an ancient jibe at his bony frame which made him for an instant show a leathery smile. ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... impressive dramatic effect! It was difficult to decide, without due consideration, which was the more interesting. Bildad, a huge, gnarled old Viking, with matted gray hair, bushy eyebrows, a flowing beard, and leathery face, a fierce-looking giant, was appalling to behold, but so was Caesar Napoleon, an immense bulldog, cruel, bloodthirsty, his massive jaws working convulsively, his ugly fangs gleaming, as he set his great body against the leash, and gave evidence ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... watery God; His ponderous oars to slender spindles turns, 90 And pours o'er massy wheels his foamy urns; With playful charms her hoary lover wins, And wields his trident,—while the Monarch spins. —First with nice eye emerging Naiads cull From leathery ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... graceful tread, as she easily kept pace with the horse, I could not realise that in a few more years she would probably be no more graceful and beautiful than the women at work in the fields—coarse, clumsy shapes, with frowzy hair, leathery ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... cheeks. The mariner was suddenly very red indeed; he clenched his hands. "I been talking here this ten minutes," he said; "and you, you little pot-bellied, leathery-faced son of an old boot, couldn't ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... tall, spare, bony man, with a dry, brown, leathery skin, lean legs and arms, a stringy neck, almost no chin, a hooked nose, deep set little greeny-gray eyes and intensely black, harsh, stiff, curly hair and very bushy eyebrows. He wore old, worn, faded garments and ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... evening when he told it, propped up on his pillows, with the blankets drawn up under his chin, and his lean, leathery face, a little softened by his fever, fronting the long, benevolent visage of Father Bates. The Father had a deckchair, and sprawled in it at length, listening over his deep Boer pipe. A faint, bitter ghost of an odor tainted the still air from the mangroves beyond the town, and there ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... Desmond buttered a leathery triangle of toast with elaborate precision. "You may as well encourage that notion, old chap. It simplifies things. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... "French cooks declare that salt should never be mixed with eggs when they are prepared for omelette. It makes the omelette tough and leathery. A little salt, however, may be sprinkled upon it just before it is ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... larva is leathery and settles on the Bee's body. Its object is to get itself carried into a cell filled with honey. On reaching the cell, it devours the Bee's egg; and ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... his feet and dragged up his prisoner. The man was a heavy-set, bowlegged fellow of about forty, hard-faced, and shifty-eyed—a frontier miscreant, unless every line of the tough, leathery countenance told a falsehood. But he had made his experiment and failed. He knew what manner of man his captor was, and he had no mind for another lesson from him. He slouched to his horse, under propulsion of the revolver, and led ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... to study the man. He seemed to be a little old for a policeman, though on second thought it was really hard to tell his age. His hair was gray and cropped as short as a skull cap, but the wrinkles on his leathery skin seemed to have been caused more by exposure than advanced years. Tall and firmly erect, he appeared underweight at first glance, until Jason realized this effect was caused by the total absence of any excess flesh. It was as though he had been cooked by the sun and leeched ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... position which would betray a weakened muscle, but though he exerted every ounce of his own mighty strength Corrigan held him even. They broke at last, mutually, and Corrigan must have felt the leathery quality of Trevison's muscles, for his face was set in serious lines. His eyes glittered malignantly as he caught a confident smile on Trevison's lips, and he bored in silently, ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... trees had fallen, presenting a tangled wilderness of leathery, five-foot-wide strips. Webs of roots, tough and gnarled, whitish in color, curled in all directions to catch the feet and baffle the eye. It was an appalling underbrush. And it was an underbrush, moreover, in which there was plenty of ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... that talks disrespectful and ignorant of cows like that didn't oughter be allowed to live. A cow is one of the worstest things you can run up against. I'd rather run into a row of brick houses than one of them nasty leathery old devils; and you can hand the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... straight until it was safe to relax, and Mrs. Reid drove on with a soft feeling in her leathery old heart, which had been so toughened by long endurance of poverty and toil, and a husband who wouldn't work and couldn't be made to work, that it was no longer a very susceptible organ where members of ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... fruit the principal difference is that the fleshy portion of the peach becomes in the almond a leathery hull which splits at maturity revealing a seed or nut, the shell of which is generally softer than that of the peach pit. The kernel may or may not be bitter, depending upon the characteristics of that particular seedling. If 100 almonds from a sweet almond tree ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... (or "column"). The body is covered externally with an armour of closely-fitting calcareous plates (fig. 62), and its upper surface is protected by similar but smaller plates more loosely connected by a leathery integument. From the upper surface of the body, round its margin, springs a series of longer or shorter flexible processes, composed of innumerable calcareous joints or pieces, movably united with one another. The arms are typically five in number; but they generally subdivide ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... squeezed and as obscure as a porter at a coronation." Nor is it altogether reassuring for one who is himself by way of being an author to view the certain neglect that awaits him when attics are cleared at last. There is too leathery a smell upon the premises, a thick deposit of mortality. I draw a deep breath when I issue on the street, grateful for the sunlight and the wind. However, I frequently put my head in at Pratt's around the corner, sometimes by chance when the family are ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... farming for knight-erranting he must expect sharp turns and rough tumbles, but surely Fate and Fortune were overdoing it now. It was the Colonel beyond doubt, and Margaret had limned him to the life. The hawk-eyes, the hook nose, the leathery skin, the orange-tawny campaign-wig with the grizzled hair peeping under the rim of it, the tall, thin, supple figure, all were there. And if I had been in any doubt of it, Sultan would have settled the matter, for his pleasure at finding his ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... the more marked forms and general features of the tropical zones, such as palms, bananas, etc., exhibit the most striking characteristics of their own, consisting of a greater abundance of forest trees, especially those having broad, leathery and shining leaves, like the magnolias, the different species of laurels, and plants of the myrtle family. The tropical forms all disappear in these zones, as the equatorial ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... bract subtending an ovuliferous scale; cover-scale and ovuliferous scale attached at their bases; cover-scale usually remaining small, ovuliferous scale enlarging, especially after fertilization, gradually becoming woody or leathery and bearing two ovules at its base; cones maturing (except in Pinus) the first year; ovuliferous scales in fruit usually known as cone-scales; seeds winged; roots mostly spreading horizontally at a short distance ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... institutions of the German empire, and soaking himself in beer all day long and day after day in De Jongh's back-shop, till De Jongh, who charged a guilder for every bottle without as much as the quiver of an eyelid, would beckon me aside, and, with his little leathery face all puckered up, declare confidentially, "Business is business, but this man, captain, he make me very ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... lifted. Even when he was hauling in his wet and dripping line with a struggling fish at the end of it a recurrent memory of what he had seen would suddenly come upon him, and he would groan in spirit at the recollection. He looked at Matt Abrahamson's leathery face, at his lantern jaws cavernously and stolidly chewing at a tobacco leaf, and it seemed monstrous to him that the old man should be so unconscious of the black cloud that wrapped them ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... crying his wares along the platform, and just before we started from Laroche breakfast was preparing on board the train; I thought a basket of French grapes—the grapes that grow in the open air, not the leathery hot-house grapes filled with lumps of glue that we eat in England—would pass the time. I got out and bought a basket from him. On journeys like these one has to resort to many various little expedients. Alas! The grapes were decaying; only ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... with the sneer which seemed to be on his leathery countenance most of the time, "I notice you got in a little ahead of us. Congratulations! I suppose ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... pretty nearly twelve hours, I should guess at least, on end, I got over it. You'd hardly think what it meant in that heat and stink. I don't think any of them dreamt of the man inside. I was just a wonderful leathery great joss that had come up with luck out of the water. But the fatigue! the heat! the beastly closeness! the mackintosheriness and the rum! and the fuss! They lit a stinking fire on a kind of lava slab there was before me, and brought in ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... water of the ponds plants vegetated; some were leathery and gray, and others long, soft, and transparent. But from the very heart of these poor and sad algae there rose into the very blue of the sky itself, green lance-like stalks whose rose and white umbels challenged the ardent day with their grace; water-lilies slept on their leaves ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... times before returning to the ground. There was, in fact, no evidence of decrepitude anywhere about him. The thatch of coal-black hair was only moderately streaked with gray, and it streamed in profuse ringlets to his shoulders. His black eyes were still keen; the leathery face, with its imperious features, was ruddy. He carried his six-foot-three of bone ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... only the stump was left; this creature had been forced to hop or crawl his way through the isuan swamps. The head, too, was no more than a skull, with great sunken dark-rimmed eyes, discolored fangs and loose, leathery lips. There had been no hair on this death's head; it had long been bald, and now, washed, clean for the first time in months or even years, it was to hold the brain of Dr. Ralph Swanson, Earth's one-time leader ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... deserted and tumble-down mining structures; the same God-forsaken-looking Dutch homesteads, whose owners had apparently taken on the triste hopelessness of their surroundings; the same miserable wayside inns, where leathery goat-flesh and bones and rice, painted yellow, were dispensed under the title of breakfast and dinner, what time the coach halted to change horses, and even then only served up when the driver was frantically vociferating, "All aboard!" ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... left the Fabbo path and struck off to our left for several miles, over ground that had been cleared by burning, which showed in many directions the crimson fruit of the wild ginger, growing half-exposed from the earth. This is a leathery, hard pod, about the size of a goose-egg, filled with a semi-transparent pulp of a subacid flavour, with a delicious perfume between pine-apple and lemon-peel. It is very juicy and refreshing, and is decidedly the best wild ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... come, one by one, from every direction radiating about the building, which is Minky's store. Their faces are hard. Their skin is tanned to a leathery hue, and is of a texture akin to hide. They are silent, thoughtful men, too. But their silence is of the vast world in which they delve, and their thought is the thought of men absorbed in their quest. No, there is ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... comment. "But some of them are certainly the limit," and he nodded towards one crowd that were talking loudly and using language that was anything but choice. In this crowd one fellow in particular, a tall, thin, leathery individual, called by the others Sol Blugg, seemed to be ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... One leathery hand was raised to shield his slitted eyes; the wind from the north struck toward the mouth of the cave, and it brought with it cold driving rain and whirling flurries of frozen pellets that ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... peasant farmer, small, leathery, peat faced, with a deep voice and a surliness that is meant to be aggressive, and is in effect pathetic—the voice of a man of hard life and many sorrows—comes in at the gate. He is old enough to have perhaps worn a long tailed ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... PARDOE, a barrister practising on the Archester Circuit, and established herself in town. Shortly afterwards she became the rage. Her beauty, her wit, her music, her dinners, her diamonds, were spoken of with enthusiasm. All the elderly roues, whose leathery hearts had been offered up at hundreds of shrines, became her temporary slaves. She coaxed them, cajoled them, and fooled them, did this innocent daughter of a simple-minded Dean, to the top of their various bents. She schemed successfully against countless rivals, in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... table to the left as you entered the dining-room. Here he stood, and threw at everyone (as everyone entered) a hunk of the most extraordinary meat which I have ever had the privilege of trying to masticate—it could not be tasted. It was pale and leathery. B. and myself often gave ours away in our hungriest moments; which statement sounds as if we were generous to others, whereas the reason for these donations was that we couldn't eat, let alone stand the ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... refrigeration rooms, too, and using Martha's ice axe and the pistollike vibratool Sachiko carried on her belt, they pounded and pried one open, to find dessicated piles of what had been vegetables, and leathery chunks of meat. Samples of that stuff, rocketed up to the ship, would give a reliable estimate, by radio-carbon dating, of how long ago this building had been occupied. The refrigeration unit, radically different from anything their own culture had produced, had ...
— Omnilingual • H. Beam Piper
... snatched a few hours in the West, and was just returning home. It being then well past twelve, we sauntered a little way with him, and called at a coffee-stall for a cup of the leathery tea which is the speciality of the London coffee-stall. Most stalls have their "regulars," especially those that are so fortunate as to pitch near a Works of any kind. The stall we visited was on the outskirts of Soho, and near a large colour-printing house which was then ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... several Aximite houses came on board. We drained the normal stirrup-cup and embarked in the usual heavy surf-boat, manned by a dozen leathery-lunged 'Elmina boys' with paddles, and a helmsman with an oar. There are smaller surf-canoes, that have weather-boards at the bow to fend off the waves. Our anchorage-place lies at least two miles south-west-and-by-south of ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... to this bit of paradox, Johann inhaled as much smoke as his leathery lungs could contain and relapsed into silence. Vjera, the Polish girl, glanced at the tobacco-cutter and went on with her work. The insignificant girl beside her giggled vacantly. Dumnoff did not seem to have heard ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... the top of the bank, not far from where Dacres and Mrs. Willoughby had made their appearance, the Baron caught sight of a tall, lank, slim figure, clothed in rusty black, whose thin and leathery face, rising above a white neck-tie, peered solemnly yet interrogatively through the bushes; while just behind him the Baron caught a glimpse of the ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... to body. A full, coarse face; dark leathery skin; and eyes that are a match for the Evil One's. There is a deep scar across his left forehead, running past the outer corner of his eye, and ending against the cheek bone. The lower lid of this eye is drawn down, and the ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... with a crutch was showing one or two visitors around, and at a word from him a keeper unlocked a cage door, to allow a young chimpanzee to leap into his arms. It hugged him, exhibiting extravagant affection; it thrust out its absurd muzzle to kiss his cheek, and patted him with its small, leathery, unpleasantly human hands. ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... its main distinctions is its somewhat shrubby and evergreen character; of the whole genus, so far as it is at present comprehended, it is the only species with such traits; its foliage, too, is of leathery substance, and compares oddly with the herb-like leaves of its relatives; it is, moreover, as indicated by its specific name, of a glaucous hue; and otherwise, as may be seen in the following description, there exist well marked dissimilarities. ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... the fashion that cowboys can," said Dave, and then he invited Sid Todd to sit down with them, which the cowboy did. He was a man of about forty, tall and leathery. His eyes were bubbling over with good humor, but they could become very stern when the occasion demanded it. Laura had become well acquainted with him during her former visit to the ranch, and knew that the Endicotts trusted him implicitly. While he had taught her how to ride, ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... Paradise of the Oriental imagination. How they are huddled like sheep on deck from Beirut to Marseilles; and like cattle transported under hatches across the Atlantic; and bullied and browbeaten by rough disdainful stewards; and made to pay for a leathery gobbet of beef and a slice of black flint-like bread: all this we know. But that New World paradise is well worth ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... weird imagination of the artist. "Talk of Fuseli and his wind-bag, there is real vivid imagination enough in this to make a whole academy of Fuselis. It is just an Egyptian darkness, with breaking through it, above a bog-hole, some black bulrushes, and above them a bending, leathery goblin exulting over some drowned traveller, the meteor lamp he carries casting a downward flicker on the dark water. Such darkness, such wicked speed, such bad, Puck-like malice, such devilry, Hoffman and Poe together ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... of the eunuchoid the striking feature is the incomplete, irregular, or absent hair development. Below thirty it is chubby and ruddy, and rather childish in its texture; after thirty, there is an effect of premature senility: the skin is yellowish, leathery, and wrinkled as the faces of old women are wrinkled: the upper lip is traversed by vertical wrinkles, and wrinkles come around corners of the mouth. The expression ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... into the leathery, pulpy body of the monster, but with no other effect than the sudden snapping of the inch line like thread. It was subsequent to this that, as the diver stayed his steps in the unsteady current, his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... spreading petals. Stamens and pistils numerous, the former yellow in upper flowers; usually absent or imperfect in lower pistillate flowers. Leaves: Exceedingly variable; those under water usually long and grass-like; upper ones sharply arrow-shaped or blunt and broad, spongy or leathery, on long petioles. ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... his skin was not tanned to the proper leathery look. His eyes were not those of a man used to looking off over the sea. His hands were too soft and unscarred for a sailor's. He had never pulled on ropes ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... pleasant Sun Tavern in Noerten is not to be despised, either; I stopped there and found dinner ready. All the dishes were excellent and suited me far better than the wearisome, academical courses of saltless, leathery dried fish and cabbage rechauffe, which were served to me in Goettingen. After I had somewhat appeased my appetite, I remarked in the same room of the tavern a gentle man and two ladies, who were about to depart. The cavalier was clad entirely in green; he even ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... "buckin'-rolls," and listened to all the range gossip without adding so much as an opinion. They never talked politics nor told which candidates received their two votes. They kept the same two men season after season,—leathery old range hands with eyes that saw whatever came within their field of vision, and with the gift ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... piece of the ankle bare, and that also was dirt-brown, like the buck-skin. There was no undershirt, waistcoat, or other garment to be seen, with the exception of a close-fitting cap, which had once been cat-skin, but the hair was all worn off it, leaving a greasy, leathery-looking surface, that corresponded well with the other parts of the dress. Cap, shirt, leggings, and moccasins looked as if they had never been stripped off since the day they were first tried on, and that might have been many a year ago. The shirt was open, displaying the ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... a cigarette in his landlord's shop, and imparting an air of distinction and an agreeable aroma to the close leathery atmosphere. Crowl cobbled away, talking to his tenant without raising his eyes. He was a small, big-headed, sallow, sad-eyed man, with a greasy apron. Denzil was wearing a heavy overcoat with a fur collar. He was never seen without it in public during the winter. In private he removed ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... appetite who even leans toward dates if she may buy them from a cart. "Those dear dirty dates," she calls them, but I cannot share her liking for them. Although the cart is a beguiling market, dates so bought are too dusty to be eaten. They rank with the apple-john. The apple-john is that mysterious leathery fruit, sold more often from a stand than from a cart, which leans at the rear of the shelf against the peppermint jars. For myself, although I do not eat apple-johns, I like to look at them. They are so shrivelled and so flat, as though a banana had caught a ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... his teeth," suggested a leathery individual, stroking his bony jaw knowingly. "I used to be up on the game myself, but I'm a little out of ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... I wasn't afraid of prosing, I might tell another story about an old boot in a pieman's loft, contracting there between sun and oven an unseemly, dry-seasoned curl and warp. You've seen such leathery old garretteers, haven't you? Very high, sober, solitary, philosophic, grand, old boots, indeed; but I, for my part, would rather be the pieman's trodden slipper on the ground. Talking of piemen, humble-pie before proud-cake ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... revolver bullets down its throat, while Ayrault pulled both barrels almost simultaneously, with the muzzles but a few inches from its side. In this case the initial velocity of the heavy buckshot was so great, and they were still so close together, that they penetrated the leathery hide, tearing a large hole. With a roar the wounded monster beat a retreat, first almost prostrating them with another blast of its awful breath. "It would take a stronger light than we get here," said Bearwarden, "to impress a negative through that haze. I think," he continued, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... form of a woman lying stretched out at full length. At first glance, one might have mistaken her for a mummy, so still and lifeless she lay; her face, too, carried out the resemblance startlingly, for it was furrowed and seamed with countless wrinkles, the skin appearing like parchment in its dry, leathery texture. Only the eyes gave assurance that this was no mummy, but a living, sentient body—eyes large, full-orbed and black as midnight, arched by heavy brows that frowned with great purpose, as if the soul behind and beyond were seeking, powerless, to relieve itself ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... "stingaree," with slowly-waving outspread flappers, and long, whip-like tail, follows, intent upon the cockles and soft-shell clams which he can so easily discover in the sand when he throws it upwards and outwards by the fan-like action of his thin, leathery sides. Again more mullet—big fellows these—with yellow, prehensile mouths, which protrude and withdraw as they swim, and are fitted with a straining apparatus of bristles, like those on the mandibles of a musk duck. They feed ...
— The Colonial Mortuary Bard; "'Reo," The Fisherman; and The Black Bream Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... knew it was all over for her. She faded painlessly into death. She knew she was going, said so calmly and happily. She made Millie and Granma Gregory promise they'd be good to me. I wept and wept. I kissed her leathery, leaf-like hand with utter devotion ... she could hardly lift it. Almost of itself it sought my face and flickered ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... shrub of Chinese origin now before us, growing among a host of common American plants, displays no special characteristics which would attract attention to itself. It resembles an orange plant. Its developed leaves are smooth on the surface, leathery in texture, dark green in color, with edges finely serrated from point almost to stalk. They are without odor, and when chewed in the mouth, have a mild and not unpleasant astringency, but no other perceptible flavor. A leaf of any familiar domestic plant, ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... a look of comprehension swept over the Missioner's face. He chuckled, the chuckle grew, it shook his body, and he laughed—laughed until the forest flung back the echoes of his merriment, and even the leathery faces of the Indians crinkled in sympathy. David could see no reason for his levity. He looked at Thoreau. His host ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... with wide-spreading leaves which trailed on the ground for several yards, proved to be the seat of the virulent fumes. None of us had ever met such a plant before. A vast bulb was suspended on a thick stem, which rose from the heart of the leathery leaves, and this we prepared to examine intently, though we were all but overcome by ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... pets like certain birds; boxfish armed with stings formed by extensions of their bony crusts, and whose odd grunting has earned them the nickname "sea pigs"; then some trunkfish known as dromedaries, with tough, leathery flesh and ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... was this hide, just as it had been stripped from the starved horses of the cattlemen six months back. In its frozen state it was more like strips of galvanized iron, and when a dog wrestled it into his stomach it thawed into thin and innutritious leathery strings and into a mass of short hair, ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... nothing to be seen but a grassy slope, open fields, a reddish ribbon of road, a wreck of a villa burned by a fire shell, and a wood. The autumn had turned the leaves of the trees, seemingly without exception, to a leathery brown, and in almost all lights the trunks of the trees were a cold, purplish slate. Such was the forest which, battle-areas excepted, has cost more lives than any other point along the line. The wood had been contested trench by trench, literally foot by foot. It was at once the key to the Saint-Mihiel ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... in his immediate acceptance of his Yankee acquaintance as a member of their party, but there are some men who need no letters of recommendation. Obed Stackpole certainly was not a handsome man. He was tall, lean, gaunt in figure, with a shambling walk, and his skin was tough and leathery; but in spite of all there was an honest, manly expression, which instantly inspired confidence. Both Harry and Jack liked him, but Dick Fletcher seemed to regard ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... a reminiscence in it of Bouillabaisse, but it was not too insistent; the supions were octopi, but delicate little gelatinous fellows, not leathery, as the Italian ones sometimes are; the dorade was a splendid fish, and though I fancy the langouste had come from northern waters and not from the bay, it was beautifully fresh and a ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... morning we examined several we had knocked down. They measured twenty-eight inches across the wings, which were of a leathery consistency, the bodies being covered with grey hair. We found their stomachs filled with the pulp and seeds of fruits, with the remains ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... wanted, evidently. He felt a cold something suddenly thrust between his teeth. It was hard as well as cold. He tasted it, rolled it over his tongue, and found it not painful. Then came something else. His head was being hurriedly fitted with a leathery contrivance. But neither was this painful, save only as it touched his twisted ears, and he therefore experienced no increasing alarm. Then, with this adjusted, he was introduced to something else—a something held ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... was standing by the stove, turning the bacon in its sizzling grease, with a knack which told of much experience in camp cookery. The face which the lean and grizzled plainsman turned toward his friend was seamed by a thousand tiny wrinkles in the leathery skin, the result of years of exposure ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... looked down on a small field of very green grass, set as an oasis between the waves and the walling rock, with a miniature chaos of heaped-up boulders to left and right. A few of them were scattered over it, and even the highest of these wore a scarf of leathery flat sea-ribbon, in token of occasional submergence; but amongst them grew hawthorn and sloe bushes, and a clump of scarlet-tasselled fuchsia. To heighten the incongruity of its aspect, this pasture was inhabited by a large strawberry cow, who seemed to be enjoying the alternate ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... the purifying powers of orthodoxy, was racking him. Strangely enough this wave of scepticism tossed up the thought of Esther Ansell, and stranger still on the top of this thought, in walked Mr. Henry Goldsmith. Raphael jumped up and welcomed his late host, whose leathery countenance shone with the polish of a sweet smile. It appeared that the communal pillar had been passing casually, and thought ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... blends into the radicle, there is a projection or heel which varies in shape, but its outline is too angular in our former figure (Fig. 61). The radicle first protrudes from a small hole at one end of the tough, leathery, winged fruit. At this period the upper part of the radicle is packed within the fruit parallel to the hypocotyl, and the single cotyledon is doubled back parallel to the latter. The swelling of these ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... like a big bat than anything else in the world. It had sharp, short ears, and soft fur, and its wings were leathery. Its teeth were little but devilish sharp, and its jaw could not have been very strong or else it would ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the poor squirt, the ancestor of the human race. If you doubt it, here is the latest deliverance of infallible science upon the subject. He describes the Ascidians: "They hardly appear like animals, and consist of a simple tough leathery sack, with two small projecting orifices. They belong to the Molluscoida of Huxley, a lower division of the great family of the Mollusca; but they have recently been placed by some naturalists among the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... wings are leathery. Look at 'em up yonder." Alden pointed to the roof of that immense aviary where, hanging head downwards like gigantic bats, must have been hundreds upon hundreds of the pteranodons. One of them, whistling ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... his bellowing abuse. They had heard it before, and knew that he didn't mean a word he said. They were almost at the foot of the hill now, and the thick white dust, kicked up in choking spurts by the rumbling wheels, sifted down on the leathery ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens |
