"Sinewy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but sinewy and well-knit son of the mountains, named Jose Garcia, set off at a canter down the banks of the Darro. "Don't ride so fast!" cried Napoleon, who watched our setting out, from the door of the fonda; but Jose was already out of hearing. This guide is a companion to my liking. Although he is ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... and was, no doubt, quite as appropriate as the more pretentious one of the "Duke of Marlborough," or the "Lord Warden." As a general thing, however, people designated her in a less formal manner, using the simpler and shorter title of the "Parson." Her owner and commander was a tall, lean, sinewy young man, whoso Sunday-go-to-meeting name was Zion Awake Cox, but who was usually referred to by an ingenious combination of the initials of these three names, and thus became Zac, and occasionally Zachariah. This was the schooner which, on a fine May morning, might have been seen "bounding over ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... through the window. I callously observe them through my peep-hole. The man is of a fine American type, sinewy, resolute, hawk-eyed. The mountain sunshine provides me with Roentgen rays, and I see Wall Street inside his brow. "Dew lait," they yell. As there is no answer, they hammer at the door. The door is adamant. They leave reluctantly. "I think I saw the face of one of those Swiss ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... a born aristocrat. He was not impressive in point of size; he was rather small, in fact; but there was that in his bearing and demeanor that attracted instant attention. He was beautifully built,—lithe, sinewy, muscular, with powerful shoulders and solid haunches; his legs were what Oscar Wilde might have called poems, and with better reason than when he applied the epithet to those of Henry Irving: they were straight, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... defense; but the hunter quickly and mercifully puts an end to his fast-ebbing life. His canine teeth seem unusually large and formidable, and the dog bears the marks of them in many deep gashes upon his face and nose. His pelt is quickly stripped off, revealing his lean, sinewy form. ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... describe him. He was of great height and extreme leanness. His face matched his form, for it was long and thin, terminating in a small peaked beard which, like his hair and mustachios, was as white as snow. With all this, his eyes glowed with much of the fire of youth, and his brown complexion and sinewy hands seemed still to indicate robust health. He was dressed in garments which had once been fashionable, but now bore marks of long and rough usage, and I remarked that the point of his sword, which, as he sat, trailed on the stones behind him, had worn its way through the scabbard. Notwithstanding ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... the widest shoulders of any man she had ever seen, and they made him appear rather short. But his lithe, powerful limbs proved he was not short. Whenever he moved the muscles rippled. His hands were clasped round a knee—brown, sinewy hands, very broad, and fitting the thick muscular wrists. His collar was open, and he did not wear a scarf, as did the men Ellen knew. Then her intense curiosity at last brought her steady gaze to Jean Isbel's head and face. He wore a cap, evidently of some thin fur. His hair was straight ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... the workman, with his superb hand, brown and sinewy, yet elegant and shapely as a duchess's, and the fingers almost as taper, and his black eye that glowed like a coal over the model, which grew under his masterly strokes, now hard, now light: the enchanting girl who sat to him, and seemed on fire with curiosity ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... standing out like living cords. In a corner of the cage cowered the powerful creature, its broad, snake-like head thrust forward, its tiny golden eyes fixed before it, a curious snarl—like a grin—now and then contorted the immobility of its powerful jaws. The sinewy tail beat a restless tattoo on the floor of ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... back in dismay as the bull drew near: and she was right; for, in his agony and amazement, the unwieldy but sinewy brute leaped the five-barred gate, and cleared it all but the top rail; that he burst through, as if it had been paper, and dragged Uxmoor after him, and pulled him down, and tore him some yards along the hard road on his back, and bumped his head against a stone, and so ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... tricky work young Carberry had for a boon companion one "Sandy" Hollingshead, a sinewy chap, whose most prominent trait was his faculty for disappearing suddenly in a pinch. He was considerable of a boaster, but could always invent a most remarkable excuse for going before the storm broke. But Percy, no coward himself, ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... for a sketch, if possible, of this excellent purveyor. Pere Seguin was tall as an obelisk, strong as a Hercules, vif as gunpowder, thin and sinewy as any wolf in his beloved forests. His ear large, flat, and full of hair; his teeth long, white, regular, and sharp as those of his favourite and extraordinary dog; his eyes yellow, calm, and piercing as those of a mountain eagle, and his chin had never been ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... sweet smile, modest and benign, No longer hides from us its beauties rare, At the spent forge his stout and sinewy arms Plieth that old Sicilian smith in vain, For from the hands of Jove his bolts are taken Temper'd in AEtna to extremest proof; And his cold sister by degrees grows calm And genial in Apollo's kindling beams. Moves from the rosy ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... cooked form we figured it had pipped the shell with a burglar's jimmy and joined the Dominecker Kid's gang before it shed its pin-feathers. There were two of us engaged in the fruitless attack upon its sinewy tissues—the present writer and his ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... took sinewy lumps from the shins of old frumps, And mangled the errand-boys—when he could get 'em. He shammed furious rabies, and bit all the babies [3], And followed the cats up the ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... the poor man's son inherit? Stout muscles and a sinewy heart, A hardy frame, a hardier spirit; King of two hands, he does his part In every useful toil and art; A heritage, it seems to me, A king might wish to ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... was something of defiance in his flashing eye and crimson cheek, as he turned his brightening glance upon what might almost be called the host of his foes; and the nervous pressure which returned the grasp of his cousin's sinewy hand, spoke something more of readiness for battle than could have been ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... field, work began immediately—they peeled off their shirts for calisthenics. This was the only part of the day that Anthony enjoyed. Lieutenant Kretching, who presided at the antics, was sinewy and muscular, and Anthony, followed his movements faithfully, with a feeling that he was doing something of positive value to himself. The other officers and sergeants walked about among the men with the malice of schoolboys, grouping here and there around some unfortunate who lacked muscular ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... four saints, the cupola, and the raised throne, and he is specially attracted by the groups of music-making angels; but Montagna has more moral greatness than Alvise, and his lines are stronger and more sinewy. He keeps faithful to the Alvisian feeling for calm and sweetness, but his personages have greater weight and gravity. He essays, too, a "Pieta" with saints, at Monte Berico, and shows both pathos and vehemence. He has evidently seen Bellini's rendering, ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... feels the influence, and the son of the sinewy and susceptible European becomes the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... constantly raising their heads and peering over the bank, as though watching something in the wood, which in this section was quite open. All four were attired in the garb of hunters, and were evidently men whose homes were in the great wilderness. They had embrowned faces, and sinewy limbs, and the personnel of the woodman—of the men who hovered only upon the confines of civilization, rarely, if ever, venturing within the crowded city or village. It is hardly necessary to say that each carried his rifle ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... sojourn'd not far thence; So were I under shelter now with him! Nor hook nor talon then should scare me more."—. "Too long we suffer," Libicocco cried, Then, darting forth a prong, seiz'd on his arm, And mangled bore away the sinewy part. Him Draghinazzo by his thighs beneath Would next have caught, whence angrily their chief, Turning on all sides round, with threat'ning brow Restrain'd them. When their strife a little ceas'd, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... before. By the neck of the womb we must understand the channel that lies between the above-mentioned knobs and the inner bone of the womb, which receives the penis like a sheath, and so that it may be more easily dilated by the pleasure of procreation, the substance is sinewy and a little spongy. There are several folds or pleats in this cavity, made by tunicles, which are wrinkled like a full blown rose. In virgins they appear plainly, but in women who are used to copulation ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... could not shroud it—distance could not separate it from my burning eye-balls!—awake, it was there—asleep, it flickered and blazed before me!—it has been my rock a-head through life, and it will herald me to hell!" So saying, he pressed his sinewy hands upon his face, and buried his head between his knees, till the rock beneath him seemed to shake with his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... herself. Her poor master, his brother, Mrs Jonathan, Rowland, but mostly Owen. He who had said the least, had shown the greatest self-command and done the most. His large kind eyes seemed to be looking at his mother or at her, and trying to anticipate their wants. His hands so brown and sinewy, yet so very gentle, seemed to be touching hers, as they had done when moving his mother or otherwise helping in the sick-room. His cheery voice seemed to be telling her not to weary herself so much, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... some papers into his mouth with the evident intention of swallowing them, but Tom's sinewy hands were at his ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... in a corner of the place, amongst the straw and litter of the lair, lay the Burmese dacoit, his sinewy fingers embedded in the throat of the third and largest leopard—which was dead—whilst the creature's gleaming fangs were buried in the tattered flesh ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... with. If I can be a contributor in a humble way to their success by my exertions here they shall not want them, but I fear the angusta res domi may press too heavily upon us to permit of an effectual benevolence. If you wanted five hundred men six feet high with sinewy arms and case hardened constitutions, bold spirits and daring adventurers who would travel upon a bushel of corn and a gallon of whiskey per man from the extreme point of the world to Constantinople we could furnish you with them, but I doubt whether ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... sprung to her feet, answering with a loud glad halloo. Immediately, as if in response to her call, an Indian swung his pony into the firelight, slipped off and stood looking about him. Straight, tall and sinewy, he stood, with something noble in his face ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... carnival. It was the bathing hour, when those who had much energy plunged through and through the breakers, those who had little floundered in the edge of the foam, and those who had none sat upright under the awnings, lorgnette in hand, and passed judgment upon their fellows. The tall, sinewy bathing master sat on the shore, his yellow collie beside him, enjoying an interval of well-earned leisure, for at this season he was the most conspicuous and the most popular figure on Quantuck beach. Just ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... water, and sometimes with rapid gesture as though he plucked it out, he removed with his sinewy fingers the tear which ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... a splendid black horse; not a Mexican mustang, like that of his companions, but a large sinewy animal, that showed the breed of Kentucky. And so should he—since he was the same steed Frank Hamersley had been compelled to leave behind in that rapid rush into the crevice ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... the end, I know not! what will be the doom of Camus? Shall I die disowned, dishonoured? Shall I live, and yet be famous? Backs as strong as oxen have we, legs Herculean and bare, Legs that in the ring with Titan wrestler might to wrestle dare. Arms we have long, straight, and sinewy, Shoulders broad, necks thick and strong, Necks that to the earth-supporting Atlas might full well belong. "But our strength un-scientific strives in vain thro' stagnant water, Every day, I blush to own it, Cambridge strokes are rowing shorter. With a short spasmodic ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... of the antagonist's forces, directing the fire of continually shifting great guns upon the apparatus and supports in the rear of his fighting line, forecasting his night plans and seeking some tactical or strategic weakness in that sinewy ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... another foreign importation, and her alias is founded on a long sinewy throat or pescuezo which ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... at this time, you will be Madame Montlivet." She did not stir, and I laid my hand on her shoulder where it rose slim and sinewy as a boy's from the low neck of her squaw's dress. I bent lower. "You strange woman," I went on, marveling at her calm. "You strange woman, with the justice of a man and the tempers of a child. Have you a woman's heart, I wonder? I do not talk to you of love, but it may be that it ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... live darkness, hideous With stir of crouching forms that wait to kill? Ah, look! See there! and there! and there again! Great yellow, glassy eyes, close to the ground! Look! Now the clouds are lighter I can see The long slow lashing of the sinewy tails, And the set quiver of strong jaws that wait—! Go there? Not I! Who dares to go who sees So perfectly the ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... the stranger into one of the chambers I saw that he was of medium height, spare in figure, but tough and sinewy. He had a swarthy complexion, and small, black, twinkling eyes that gave the impression of good-humour. His right arm, evidently broken, was carried in a rough, hastily-made sling; his doublet ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... and long-haired plainsmen, I saw but one woman, and she certainly was fit to bear them company. I should say that she was at least sixty years of age, and nearly six feet in height, thin, angular, wrinkled and sinewy. She wore a sunbonnet of enormous projection, dipped snuff vigorously each few moments, and never allowed from her hands the long squirrel rifle which made a part of her equipage. She was accompanied by her son, a tall, thin, ague-smitten youth of perhaps seventeen years and ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... with pride at his column. Like most of the regiments at that period of the war it was small, three hundred sinewy well-mounted young men, who had endured every kind of hardship and who could endure the like again. All of them were wrapped in heavy overcoats over their uniforms, and they rode the best of horses, animals that Colonel Winchester had been ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... towards the door to open it. Herr Freudenberg, with footsteps like a cat, came up behind him. Suddenly he threw his long, sinewy arm around the other's neck. Taken utterly unprepared, Julien was powerless. Herr Freudenberg swung him round upon his back and ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... piercing wild, As makes his very life-blood start:— "My child! Almighty God, my child!" He hears, And 'gainst the tottering wall The ponderous ladder rears: While blazing fragments round him fall, And crackling sounds assail his ears, His sinewy arm, with one rude crash, Hurls to the earth the opposing sash; And, heedless of the startling din, Though smoky volumes round him roll, The mother's shriek has pierced his soul,— See! see! he plunges ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... completed his wish, and some copy of the rough old poem having, as it seems, been found among his papers, it was in after time inserted in the manuscripts of his works as the "Cooke's Tale." As it stood in the fourteenth century this story recited mere deeds of valour, of strong, sinewy fighters; love and women played no part in it; and it is a great loss for us not to know whether old Chaucer would have made this very necessary addition, and what sort of mediaeval Rosalind ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... those common to the pedestrian visitors of A——. He was tall, and of one of those athletic forms in which vigour in youth is too often followed by corpulence in age. At this period, however, in the full prime of manhood—the ample chest and sinewy limbs, seen to full advantage in their simple and manly dress—could not fail to excite that popular admiration which is always given to strength in the one sex as to delicacy in the other. The stranger was walking impatiently to and fro the small apartment when Mr. Price ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Maria and Francisco, up the magic river. Already their bronze bodies, sinewy and naked, were glistening with perspiration, for in here, between the high wooded hills, it was very hot and moist. Charley's neck was tired, from twisting his head so that he could see everything at once; and on their seat amidships ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... seat over the sea, stared absently at the jocose revelers, for he was a stranger in a strange land. He leaned back on the granite railings with the easy indolence of an invalid, though his frame was robust and sinewy as a mountaineer's. The hidden power of his bronzed and Moresque features, if developed, might inspire a certain amount of wonder; but then you would as readily have sought expression in the statues below. His gaze was almost indifferent; yet the unmoving ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... untroubled; but her lips were full and heavy, her waist was long and stiff, her form was plump like a child's, and her timidity and self-consciousness were uncontrollable. The French taste inclines to lines in the human form which suggest a lithe and sinewy figure; the French instinct seeks in the expression signs of quick emotion, not to say passion; the French eye knows but one standard of taste in dress; that alone is natural to French feeling which is the product of self-control and ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... up and grasped with his strong, sinewy hands the straps which hung from the supports above ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... brass spurs and immense mustaches; another was distinguished by an enormous surface of black satin cravat, across which meandered a Pactolus of gold chain; a third had his coat laced and braided a la Polonaise, and pinched and padded a la Russe, with trousers shaped to the calf of a sinewy leg, and a glass screwed ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Baron Conrad in his expeditions and adventures a short, deep-chested, broad-shouldered man, with sinewy arms so long that when he stood his hands ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... heavy-built, sinewy slave-woman who guarded the portal of the Atrium passed her in without remark. She met no one on her way up to her suite, where she found Utta squatted outside her ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... a tumbrel, drawn by two horses, in which sat the abbot alone, the two other prisoners being kept back for the present. Then came Demdike, in a leathern jerkin and blood-red hose, fitting closely to his sinewy limbs, and wrapped in a houppeland of the same colour as the hose, with a coil of rope round his neck. He walked between two ill-favoured personages habited in black, whom he had chosen as assistants. A band of halberdiers brought up the rear. The ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... was the breaking straw, the big prospector jumped forward, and caught the man's wrist with dexterous, sinewy fingers. He gave the arm a jerk that almost took the man from his feet. His eyes were hard and sharp now, and his jaw ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... development, and a good deal of straight, rather dry brown hair. His complexion was brown, and his nose had a bold well-marked arch. His eye was of a clear, cold gray, and save for a rather abundant mustache he was clean-shaved. He had the flat jaw and sinewy neck which are frequent in the American type; but the traces of national origin are a matter of expression even more than of feature, and it was in this respect that our friend's countenance was supremely eloquent. ...
— The American • Henry James
... into a long, lank, loutish youth, with a face of extraordinary pallor, a sullen mouth, hot black eyes, and dark hair like a mane, so seldom was it trimmed. He looked considerably older than he was and the slightness of his body was deceptive, disguising a power of sinewy strength. More than this, he could care very handily for himself in a scrimmage: la savate had no secrets from him, and he had picked up tricks from the Apaches quite as effectual as any in the manual of jiu-jitsu. Paris he knew as you and I know the palms of our hands, and he could ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... sinewy hands were upon the sentry's throat, stifling the cry that sought to issue from ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... eventful periods of its history, possessed qualifications which, if his education had not been interrupted by his early accession to supreme power, might have entitled him to a high place among the monarchs of his line. Unlike most of the imperial family, he was of a spare sinewy form, and lofty stature; and his features are said by Evliya to have been remarkably handsome, though his forehead was disfigured by a deep scar which he had received in his infancy, by being thrown by his father, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... save that his left eyelid drooped somewhat, like that of his father, and hid part of the pupil. He spoke with a stammer, which did not, however, detract from the persuasiveness of his eloquence. His sinewy, muscular arms were those of the consummate swordsman, and his long legs gave him a firm hold in the saddle when riding the most spirited of steeds. His chief delight was in war and tournaments, but he derived great pleasure from hawking and hunting, and had a special joy in chasing down ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... one's luck of life, to forget the cark of care and withering of young fingers; not to feel, or not be moved by, all the change of thought and heart, from large young heat to the sinewy lines and dry bones of old age—this is what I have to do ere ever I can make you know (even as a dream is known) how I loved my Lorna. I myself can never know; never can conceive, or treat it as a thing of reason, never can behold myself dwelling in the midst of it, and think that this was I; ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... were pretty well matched. The pistol had fallen at the first onset, and for a few minutes it seemed doubtful which should prove the victor, as they swayed to and fro, straining their dark and sinewy forms in deadly conflict. At last the strength of Talaloo seemed to give way, but still he retained a vice-like grasp of ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... slightly prominent, the mouth firm, the gray eyes full of character and daring. His dress was that of rough service, plain leather "chaps," showing marks of hard usage, a gray woolen shirt turned low at the neck, with a kerchief knotted loosely about the sinewy bronzed throat. At one hip dangled the holster of a "forty-five," on the other hung a canvas-covered canteen. His was figure and face to be noted anywhere, a man from whom you would expect both thought and action, and one who seemed to exactly fit ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... at his heels when he went back to the beach to clean fish for supper. She sat and watched his deft and work-hardened hands as he dipped and washed and drew and scaled his spoil. He was a clean-skinned, blue-eyed Canadian Irishman, well made and sinewy, bright and open of countenance. His blond hair clung in almost flaxen tendrils to his warm forehead. No ill-nature was visible about him, yet he turned like a man in fierce self-defence on his partner, who followed Jess and ...
— The Cursed Patois - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... everything, that he may not be a Sir Paris, a carpet-knight,[774-6] but a sinewy, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... swooped a furry whirlwind of burnished mahogany-and-snow. Down it swooped with the whirring speed and unerring aim of an eagle. Sixty-odd pounds of sinewy weight smote the lunging mongrel, obliquely, on the left shoulder; knocking the great brute's legs from under him and throwing him completely off his balance. Into the dust crashed the two dogs; Lad on top. Before they struck ground, the collie's teeth had found their goal ire the side of ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... finished with the iron catches. Behind the shielding falsework he heard and felt the rustle and the heave of a great sinewy body threshing about in a confined space. He turned his head toward the announcer, awaiting ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... rule and test. Sleep with softest touch locks all the gates of our physical senses and lulls to rest the conscious will—the disciplinarian of our waking thoughts. Then the spirit wrenches itself free from the sinewy arms of reason and like a winged courser spurns the firm green earth and speeds away upon wind and cloud, leaving neither trace nor footprint by which science may track its flight and bring us knowledge of the distant, shadowy country that we nightly visit. When we ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... babbling wags, Who scorn him, yet would share his money-bags; Who hate him, yet can stoop to such appeal! Beneath his meekness there's a soul of steel. High-featured, amply-bearded, see he stands Facing the Autocrat; those sinewy hands, Shaped but for clutching—so his slanderers say— The huckster bait can coldly put away "Blood against bullion." The Jew-baiting band Howl frantic execration o'er the land; Malign and menace, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... was all over it seemed to the girl like some dreadful nightmare. After just one keen glance the doctor had probably decided that her young hands would afford him the better help. And so she had been obliged to remain at his side and look upon the sinewy shoulder and the arm that had been laid bare, and at the angry and inflamed wound which had been flooded with iodine. And then had come the picking up of shining instruments just taken out of one of the boiling vessels. ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... accessible height, which he had diligently surveyed, a place where the stones were less entire, or the slope less perpendicular, or the guard less vigilant. Seven of the stoutest Saracens mounted on each other's shoulders, and the weight of the column was sustained on the broad and sinewy back of the gigantic slave. The foremost in this painful ascent could grasp and climb the lowest part of the battlements; they silently stabbed and cast down the sentinels; and the thirty brethren, repeating a pious ejaculation, "O apostle of God, help and deliver us!" were ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... at him now, sitting in my office-chair, the smoke of the cigar curling about his bronzed, weather-tanned face, my eye taking in his slim waist, slender thighs, and long, sinewy arms and hands that have served him so well all his life, I can hardly believe that twenty years have passed over his head since we worked together on Shark Ledge. But for the marks chalked on his temples ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... strong, active, and sinewy. The position in which he had been placed had given him the habit of command, and the heavy responsibility which had devolved upon him had added two or three years to his apparent age. He was taller than most of his countrymen, ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... hungrily, darling, and feast myself too long on your sweet lips without pausing for breath?" asked Don Carlos, after a pause, when he saw that Myra was recovering. He, too, was flushed and rather breathless, and his long, sinewy hands were trembling slightly. "Myra, beloved, have my ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... suddenly shot half-way up to the cap-visor, then came down with a jerk; his heels had clicked together and his knees straightened out, then as suddenly went limp. The new-comer had sprung up the steps. The form was slender and sinewy. Hands, face, and dress were black with soot, but the young voice was deep and the ring of accustomed command was in every word. "That's your cue, Mr. Cullin. Arrest him and fetch him along." Then turning to Toomey: "There's no one at the cab. Better get back, ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... persons all the other unerring evidences of their peculiar profession. The former was of a short, thick-set powerful frame, in which, by a happy ordering of nature, a little confirmed perhaps by long habit, the strength was principally seated about the broad and brawny shoulders, and strong sinewy arms, as if, in the construction of the man, the inferior members had been considered of little other use than to transfer the superior to the different situations in which the former were to display their energies. ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... a cock, a herring, a whale, "Who spouted rivers up as if he meant o join our seas with seas above the firmament." Next, as a mouse, it crept up an elephant's sinewy proboscis to the soul's bedchamber, the brain, and, gnawing the life cords there, died, crushed in the ruins of the gigantic beast. Afterwards it became a wolf, a dog, an ape, and finally a woman, where the quaint ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... chiefly in his limbs: they were long, large, and sinewy. His frame was of equal breadth from the shoulders to the hips. His chest, though broad and expansive, was not prominent, but rather hollowed in the centre. He had suffered from a pulmonary affection in early life, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... spring a man lounged against the wall of the station waiting for the express from the east. Slender of waist and hip, stalwart of shoulder, some seventy-two inches of sinewy height, he was the figure of the typical cattleman. His eyes were deep-set and far-seeing; his lean, brown face, roughened by outdoor life, was austere ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... presently rattled out of town in the old wagon. On the back seat sat the impassive and good-natured Chinese boy, and a Swedish cook discovered at the last moment in the railroad camp and pressed into service. On the front seat Mary Bell was wedged in between the driver and Grandpa Barry, a thin, sinewy old man, stupid from sleep. Mary Bell never forgot the silent drive. The evening was turning chilly, low clouds scudded across the sky, little gusts of wind, heavy with rain, blew about them. The fall of the horse's ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... his death, I myself was accustomed to use. But if Dares likes not such gloves, let AEneas provide others for both of us." With these words he threw off his upper garments and bared his massive shoulders and sinewy arms. The Trojan chief brought out two pairs of gauntlets of less formidable make, with which the two champions armed themselves; and then they stood face to face, and both raised their arms for the encounter. For some time they stood parrying each other's blows and ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... and made him sit up in bed. Had he been dreaming? Was it one of those strange appeals which cross the dreams of disquieted minds? No, he heard it still, that reverberating cry-which had entered his ears and remained in his flesh-to the tips of his sinewy fingers. Certainly somebody had cried out and called "Ulrich!" There was somebody there near the house, there could be no doubt of that, and he opened the door and shouted, "Is it you, Gaspard?" with all the strength of his lungs. But there was no reply, no murmur, no groan, nothing. It was ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... most remarkable. They are of great stature, the men averaging nearly six feet in height, with splendid chests. But the most noticeable point about them is their legs, which are very slender and sinewy, resembling the legs of the deer. Since the first coming of the Spaniards they have been known to other tribes as the runners. It is said that they can run from 150 to 200 miles per day, not pausing for rest. The jack rabbit is considered a very fleet animal, yet these ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... riding-whip in the other, the attorney stepped out on the colonnade, and pausing involuntarily, at sight of the stranger, they looked at each other. A man, perhaps, more, certainly not less than thirty years old, of powerful and impressive physique; very tall, athletic, sinewy, without an ounce of superfluous flesh to encumber his movements, in the professional palaestra; with a large finely modeled head, whose crisp black hair closely cut, was (contrary to the prevailing fashion) parted ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the north, Sinewy, fearless and fleet, Urging the pack through the pathless snow, The Indian driver, calling low, Follows ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... to come into sharp and fatal collision with the early colonists. One result among others is that we have several portraits of him with both pen and pencil. Like Waharoa and Hongi he was small, spare and sinewy; an active man even after three-score years and ten. In repose his aquiline features were placid and his manners dignified. But in excitement, his small, keen, deep-sunken eyes glared like a wild beast's, and an overhanging ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... his thin, sinewy hands in my collar, and was pressing his bony knuckles into my throat, until I was half throttled, when, of a sudden, by dint of an effort of which I had never believed myself capable, I gave his arm a twist which nearly dislocated his shoulder and forced him ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... interval of deep silence ensued; when Tom Dunning's tall, sinewy form, and sharp, bronzed features, screwed up with an expression of sly mischief, was seen rising from a back ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... sits his horse, a thin, sinewy, nervous figure; old, too,—as old as that frontier which has at last moved round the world. (See p. 87.) The statue, which is by Solon Borglum, is immensely expressive of that hard, efficient type of frontiersmen who, scarcely civilized, yet found ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... Mackay's word of command, the great wire cables mooring the ship to the jetty were cast off; and, a gang of the dock labourers manning the capstan, with their broad chests and sinewy arms pressed against the bars, as they marched round it singing some monotonous chorus ending in a "Yo, heave, ho!" the ship began to move—at first slowly inch by inch, and then with increased way upon her as the vis inertiae of her hull was overcome—towards the lock ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... cavity she stopped with a terrible growl. The sinewy body of a great snake—a bushmaster,—was gliding rapidly into the opening; in fact, half its scale-covered length had already disappeared from view. This was an advantage to the Jaguar for the head with its death-dealing fangs, being ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... religious rites the Indians, according to Adair, cut out the sinewy part of the thigh; in commemoration, as he says, of the Angel wrestling ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... the door; but drunken lethargy was still upon him, and his disinclination to move was stronger than his thirst. His eyes, roving along the wall, fell upon the electric call button. Stretching a sinewy arm to its full length he made dumb show of pressing it, as he said, "One push, one cocktail; two pushes, two cocktails!" Then he shook his head despairingly. "Too far, can't reach it," he muttered. But his face ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... the party, a lean, wide-shouldered, sinewy youth, blue silk kerchief knotted loosely around his neck, broke in with a gesture that swept the sky. "Funny about all them buzzards. What are ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... endeavor," said he, hurriedly; "and if I escape, shall await you at the great Waterfall; and so, farewell." And, with one vigorous bound, he sprang through the ring of his foes, overthrowing some three or four of them to the earth. And bravely did he stretch away his sinewy limbs in the flight for life and liberty; and though fifty active runners followed in pursuit, yet soon did he outstrip them all, and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... accentuating the anatomical structure with rough and angular decision, give the effect of illustrative diagrams to his studies. Harmony of proportion and the magic of expression are sacrificed to energy emergent in a powerful physique. Redundant life, in sinewy limbs, in the proud carriage of the head upon the neck, in the sway of the trunk backward from the reins, the firmly planted calves and brawny thighs, the thick hair, broad shoulders, spare flanks, and massive gluteal muscles of a man of ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... the street to buy fruit to distribute among the travelers. She liked to watch the French Canadian girls who slipped quietly up the broad cathedral steps. They were the daughters of the rank and file, but their movements were graceful and they were tastefully dressed. Then the blue-shirted, sinewy men, who strolled past, smoking, roused her curiosity. They had not acquired their free, springy stride in the cities; these were adventurers who had met with strange experiences in the frozen North and the lonely West. ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... cannot tarry here, We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... you're a brick." Impulsively, he took a step toward her, thrust forth a sinewy hand and gripped the one she raised. "It makes me feel like a new man just to listen to you—and the only thing I can't understand is why you think me ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... amazement. He was a dirty-looking man, young and sinewy, with long and oily hair and threadbare clothes, shiny and unctuous. His eyes were red and furtive, and he had a trick of passing his hand over his mouth while he spoke. His mates stood around him, listening rather studiedly ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... man be threading unfrequented hill trails armed with a revolver and a brown leather jug?" No answer suggested itself, and summoning her haughtiest, coldest look, she met the glance of the man who drew rein beside her. His features were clean-cut, bronzed, and lean—with the sinewy leanness of health. His gray flannel shirt rolled open at the throat, about which was loosely drawn a silk scarf of robin's-egg blue, held in place by the tip of a buffalo horn polished to an onyx luster. The hand holding the bridle reins rested carelessly ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... than in the old High School days, but they had not quite reached the height of Dick and Greg. Both of the young civil engineers, besides being heavily bronzed, were thin and sinewy looking. Thin as they were, both looked the pictures of health. Though Tom and Harry did not "advertise" their tailors as well as did the two West Point cadets, nevertheless the pair of young civil engineers looked prosperous. They had the general air of being the kind of young men who are ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... away before the light, taking only one guide with them, a sinewy, dark man with a clubbed beard on his chin. If they had had two it had been better, and Urquhart, who knew that, made a great fuss; but to no purpose. All the men were at the saeters, they were told; haymaking was in full swing out ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... by the debauch that was evidently being slept off. This, too, accounted for the persistence with which the flies clustered around the mouth, lured by the alcohol-laden exhalations. He was a powerfully built man, thick-necked, broad-shouldered, with sinewy wrists and toil-distorted hands. Yet the distortion was not due to recent toil, nor were the callouses other than ancient that showed under the dirt of the one palm upturned. From time to time this hand clenched tightly and spasmodically into a ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... buckskin or homespun, wearing wolfskin and coonskin caps, and carrying their long rifles on their shoulders, the wild soldiery of the backwoods tramped into the little French town. They were tall men, with sinewy frames and piercing eyes. Under "Old Hickory's" lead they had won the bloody battle of the Horseshoe Bend against the Creeks; they had driven the Spaniards from Pensacola; and now they were eager to pit themselves against the most ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... He was tall, sinewy, active, and powerful. Three stained eagle feathers were fastened on his crown in the long black hair, and his hunting shirt, leggings, and moccasins were bright with different colored beads and fringes. In the red sash which passed around his waist were ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... myself surrounded by Indians. One stout, sinewy fellow, naked, with the exception of a breechcloth, seized my horse by the bits, and by main strength, forced him back upon his haunches, and in the twinkling of an eye, I lay upon my back in the dust of the road, deprived of my weapons, with an Apache, whose nude body had been well smeared with ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... the room with great loftiness of demeanour, just as the operator was being introduced-a tall, sinewy man, with one of those strong yet meek faces often to be found among the peasantry. He came in after the old farmer, pulling his forelock to the lady, and waiting for orders as if he had been sent for to mend the grate; ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... points of resemblance and difference between the two comrades. Each was in middle life, embrowned, hardened, and toughened by years of exposure and the wild life of the border; but Tom Hardynge was taller, more sinewy and active than Dick Morris, who was below the medium stature, with a stunted appearance; but he was a powerful man, wonderfully skillful in the use of the rifle, and the two friends together made the strongest possible ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... Sanson's sinewy assistants thrust him against an upright plank. In the last remnants of her congested, distorted vision, Cyrene saw the bright knife ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... adjoining closet. Up and down the corridor walked the great chasseur, who had announced her arrival, and who acted as a kind of sentinel or guard. He was a dark, stern, powerful-looking fellow, and as the light of a lamp in the corridor fell upon his deeply-marked face and sinewy form, he seemed capable of defending the castle with his ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... leagues to the westward, as, aeons ago, they had rolled and rippled here. There was not a breath of air. Freeman could hear his heart beat, and the veins in his temples and wrists throbbed. The sweat rose on the surface of his body, but without cooling it. The pony which he bestrode, a bony and sinewy beast of the toughest description, trod onwards doggedly, but with little animation. Freeman had no desire to push him. Were the little animal to overdo itself, nothing in the future could be more certain than that his master would never see ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... his vivid poetic sense the man who had left him,—the pure face, the delicate, sinewy limbs, in harmony with all he knew of beauty or truth. In his cloudy fancy he had pictured a Something like this. He had found it in this Mitchell, even when he idly scoffed at his pain: a Man all-knowing, all-seeing, crowned by Nature, ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... of old ivory hue, a long, yellow, clawish hand, with part of a sinewy forearm, crept in from the black lobby through the study doorway and touched the ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... weight to the blow, it was afterwards continued up the fore-arm, and formed also a weapon of defence. Mr. Morrissey, or any other "shoulder-hitter," would hardly need more than a few rounds to settle his opponent, if his sinewy arm were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... His nervous, sinewy hand clenched itself and fell with a crash upon the table, overturning a flagon and sending a lake of wine across the board, to trickle over at a dozen points and form in puddles at the feet of Valerie. Startled, they ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... and Carr saw that a curtain of woven rushes had been dropped over the mouth of the cave. There were soft padding footsteps on every side and he drew back against the rock wall with Ora clasped in his arms. A sinewy hand grasped his wrist and twisted his right arm free. He lashed out in the darkness and was rewarded by a grunt of pain as his fist contacted with an unseen face. Nazu's voice rose in anguish, and Mado's wrathful bellow was followed by a frightful commotion ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... heart's-ease eyes and violet eyes Are merchandise! O purchased lips that kiss with pain! O cheeks coin-spotted with smirch and stain! O trafficked hearts that break in twain! — And yet what wonder at my sisters' crime? So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime, Men love not women as in olden time. Ah, not in these cold merchantable days Deem men their life an opal gray, where plays The one red Sweet of gracious ladies'-praise. Now, comes a suitor with ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... pleasure in visiting the Indian Reservation, and talking to Sun-in-the- North, the only good Indian chief she knew, or that anyone else on the prairies knew. She loved all that was strong and untamed, all that was panting with wild and glowing life. Splendidly developed, softly sinewy, warmly bountiful, yet without the least physical over-luxuriance or suggestiveness, Jen, with her tawny hair and dark-brown eyes, was a growth of unrestrained, unconventional, and eloquent life. Like Nature ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... me, I suppose. She's told you I knock her about, I daresay. I don't care what she tells you or any o' the people that she works for. But this I'll say: I never touched her but she touched me first. Look here! that's marks of hers!" and, drawing up his sleeve he showed a scratch on his sinewy tattooed forearm. "I've not come here about her; that's no business ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... at the cabin now ceased. But the hungry pack were loth to abandon their prey. Still they scurried here and there. From the opening the boys could see the sinewy bodies and the gleaming eyes. Above the din of yelps and howls ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... and artificial periods, the rounded and decorative sentences that she puts into the mouths of her characters under the extremest pressure of emotion or suffering, the italics, the sentimentalities, are of another age than the sinewy English and hard sense of 'Jane Eyre' or 'Adam Bede.' Doubtless her peculiar, sheltered training, her delicate health, and a luxuriant imagination that had seldom been measured against the realities of life, account ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... She laid a hand upon his bare sinewy arm, fingering the heavy golden armlet on it, and for a fleeting instant raised her eyes to his. "Thou ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... brow and his cheeks, like the marks of the chisel on the granite, made him venerable without telling his age. His brown and wrinkled neck was joined to his powerful shoulders by gaunt but still powerful muscles, and a network of sinewy veins showed upon his hands, which did not tremble as old men's hands generally do. A soul more energetic than a human soul vivified his body, and on his face shone in the shadow a strange light. It seemed like the ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... now before the rougher's hackle, turned up his shirt sleeves over a pair of sinewy arms and powerful wrists and set ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... breakfastless, for the young leader had ordered his wagons on to the rendezvous before crack of day. Of the two, young Woodhull, planter and man of means, mentioned by Molly's mother as open suitor, himself at first sight had not seemed so ill a figure, either. Tall, sinewy, well clad for the place and day, even more foppish than Banion in boot and glove, he would have passed well among the damsels of any courthouse day. The saddle and bridle of his mount also were a trace to the elegant, and the horse itself, ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... flowers, the air, light, the stars, the happiness of going whithersoever the sinewy limbs of one-and-twenty chance to wish ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... favorites of the Prince, each wearing full-brimmed, three-cornered hats, very flat and very wide-spreading, beneath which grinned their swarthy, tanned, and wrinkled faces, lighted by three pairs of twinkling eyes, were noticeably lean, sinewy, and vigorous, like men in whom sport had become a passion. All three were supplied with immense horns of Dampierre, wound with green worsted cords, leaving only the brass tubes visible; but they controlled ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... a Frankfort banker only three days earlier, and this was the first time he had asked for letters. Even the disillusioned official was amused by the difference between the two latest occupants of No. 20,—Herr Bamberger, a tub of a man, bald headed and bespectacled, and this alert, sinewy youngster, with the cleancut features of a Greek statue, and the brilliant, deep set, earnest eyes of one to whom thought and ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... height and the sinewy strength of his young shoulders he began to be afraid of the man who had come to him out of the storm. There was something strangely disconcerting, even sinister, in the ceaseless movements of his pale hands and the sudden lightning ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... suddenly the entrance flap of the wigwam opened and two Indians entered—the most savage looking men Bob had ever seen—and he felt a thrill of fear as he beheld them. They were very tall, slender, sinewy fellows, dressed in snug fitting deerskin coats reaching half way to the knees and decorated with elaborately painted designs in many colours. Their heads were covered with hairy hoods, and the ears of the animal from which they were made ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... treasured heirloom he felt the "power," that men of magic possess, creep up his sinewy arms. It entered his heart, his blood, his brain. For a long time he sat and chanted songs that only great medicine men may sing, and, as the hours drifted by, the heat of the forest fires subsided, the flames diminished into smouldering blackness. At daybreak ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... And he too drew his sword; at once they rush'd Together, as two eagles on one prey Come rushing down together from the clouds, One from the east, one from the west; their shields Dash'd with a clang together, and a din Rose, such as that the sinewy woodcutters Make often in the forest's heart at morn, Of hewing axes, crashing trees—such blows Rustum and Sohrab on each other hail'd. And you would say that sun and stars took part In that unnatural[189-18] conflict; for a cloud Grew suddenly in heaven, and dark'd the sun Over the fighters' ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... foot upon the first stair, Nayland Smith stood, his lean body bent perilously backward, his arms rigidly thrust out, and his sinewy fingers gripping the throat of an almost naked man—a man whose brown body glistened unctuously, whose shaven head was apish low, whose bloodshot eyes were the eyes of a mad dog! His teeth, upper and lower, were bared; they glistened, they gnashed, and a froth was on ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... He was a large, sinewy man, his face rendered hideous by streaks of yellow and red, wearing a high crown of eagle feathers, with a scalp of long light-colored hair, still bloody, dangling at his belt. For a moment he and Captain Wells looked sternly into each other's ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... will soon strike you that a large number of the trees do not seem to bear coconuts at all, but black earthen pots. If your visit should chance to be made early in the morning, or late in the afternoon, the mystery will soon be revealed. You will see a dusky, sinewy figure, not of a monkey, but of a man, ascending and descending those trees with marvellous celerity and ease, grasping the trunks with his hands and fitting his naked feet into slight notches cut in them. The distance between the notches is so great that his knee goes up to his chin at each step, ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... part of the town. And I am bound to admit that my first impression of the men was that their appearance was in perfect accord with their surroundings. They most undoubtedly were, as Forbes had said, as rowdy-looking a set of ruffians as one would care to meet. Tough, sinewy desperadoes, swarthy as mulattoes by long exposure to the fierce southern sun, with long, dense, tangled thatches of hair mingling with a thick, neglected growth of beard and whisker that permitted scarcely a feature, save the nose and eyes, to be seen, clad in the remains of the inevitable ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... and forth across the narrow room, locked in a tight embrace. The Crouch woman was the larger and stronger, but her adversary was lithe and sinewy and as cool as a veteran in the line of battle. She succeeded in tripping the heavier woman, resorting to a new trick in wrestling that had just come into practice among athletic women, and they went to the floor with a crash, ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... these savages, as they crowded round our decks, with the critical eye of an artist; they were generally taller and larger men than ourselves; those of middle height were broad-chested and muscular, and their limbs as sinewy as though they had been occupied all their lives in laborious employments. Their colour is lighter than that of the American Indian, their features small and regular, their hair is in a profusion of beautiful curls, whereas that of the Indian ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... crew on the point of mutiny into a set of rollicking, good-natured souls who—until the wind veered again—would not hurt a fly. So with these. They spread themselves into a circle, squatting or kneeling or standing upon the white sand in the bright sunshine, their sinewy hands that should have been ingrained red clasped over their knees, or, arms akimbo, resting upon their hips, on their scoundrel faces a broad smile, and in their eyes that had looked on nameless horrors a pleasurable expectation as of ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... laughed with a touch of bitterness, and held out his hand, fresh from the soil, hardened by the plough. It was a powerful hand, brown and sinewy, with distorted knuckles and broken nails. "Oh, not that," he said. "I don't mean that. That shows work, but I know you—Genia—you will tell me work is manly. So it is, but is ignorance and poverty ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... light flashed along the rubbed fine blades; they were beautiful, flawless, without a trace of defilement. He felt the satin smoothness of the steel with an actual thrill of pleasure; his eyes narrowed until they were like the glittering points of knives; he held the razor firmly and easily, with a sinewy ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... hesitated and then stopped. It was an ominous sound to them, and their hearts smote them with a great fear. But they had little time for thought, for at once nine hundred pounds of quivering horse flesh, bone, and sinewy muscle leaped out of the darkness into their midst, and reared wildly when suddenly checked by a pair of strong, tense arms. With head tossed high, and champing madly at his bits, Midnight reeled back almost upon his haunches in such a manner that an inexperienced rider would have been ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... adoring ladies at her feet and a little cluster of youths behind and beside her, she used to peer long and earnestly through the branches to see them collect their flocks and start for the hills at dusk. Lithe, brown, sinewy lads they were! What long legs they had, with what bravery wore their ragged cloaks! One carried a great bulging skin under his arm—bagpipes! She was sure they made good music to each other in the green country places. Very ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... being a little vain, Jim, any more than I can. You know you're a stunning-looking fellow. These Yankee girls all love you at first sight—the tall, straight, sinewy figure, strong and swift in every movement, the finely chiselled face, the deep-set, dark brown eyes under their heavy brows, that big masterful ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... might have wielded the paddles with a bit more of skill, have kept the course a little straighter, or skimmed the turns a trifle more close; but neither could have put more of life and vim into the strokes. A large, thick-set youth was Harvey, strongly built, with arms bronzed and sinewy—clearly a youth who had lived much out of doors, and had developed ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... lover's past life; and when, a little later, Ruth and Aram again meet, she wooingly begs him to tell her of any secret trouble that may be weighing upon his mind. At this moment Houseman comes upon them, and utters Aram's name. From that point to the end of the act there is a sustained and sinewy exposition, strong in spirit and thrilling in suspense,—of keen intellect and resolute will standing at bay and making their last battle for life, against the overwhelming odds of heaven's appointed doom. Aram defies Houseman and is denounced by him; but the ready adroitness and iron ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... the striped intruder. Intently peering through the indistinct light, we eagerly watched the development of this strange rencontre. The tiger was now crouching low, crawling stealthily round and round the boar, who changed front with every movement of his lithe and sinewy adversary, keeping his determined head and sharp, deadly tusks ever facing his stealthy and treacherous foe. The bristles of the boar's back were up at a right angle from the strong spine. The wedge-shaped head poised on the strong neck and thick rampart of muscular shoulder was bent ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... slower pace—and suddenly he heard men's voices on the lower slopes beneath him. He paused catching his breath and listening. And then, just as suddenly as he had heard the voices, he felt a hand, firm, steady, sinewy, fasten on his ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... and children screeched when Baltic stepped into the circle formed by caravans and tents; and several swart, sinewy, gipsy men darted threatening glances at him as an intrusive stranger. There burned a fire near one of the caravans, over which was slung a kettle, swinging from a tripod of iron, and this was filled ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... market is artistically arranged to this end. The rule is so to cut their meats that no portion designed to be cooked in a certain manner shall have wasteful appendages which that mode of cooking will spoil. The French soup-kettle stands ever ready to receive the bones, the thin fibrous flaps, the sinewy and gristly portions, which are so often included in our roasts or broilings, which fill our plates with unsightly debris, and finally make an amount of blank waste for which we pay our butcher the same price that we pay ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and analysis. This man was peculiar in that he alone was not perspiring in the sodden August humidity. The clear-browned skin and the rangy strength of the figure gave him a certain distinction. He held in his sinewy hands a doubly folded newspaper. Presently it slipped from his hold to the seat beside him. He stared at the window opposite with harassed and unseeing eyes. Abruptly he rose and went out on the platform. Average Jones picked up the paper. In the middle of the column ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... fiend in his 'Temptation of Christ.' It is an indescribable hermaphroditic genius, the genius of carnal fascination, with outspread downy rose-plumed wings, and flaming bracelets on the full but sinewy arms, who kneels and lifts aloft great stones, smiling entreatingly to the sad, grey Christ seated beneath a rugged pent-house of the desert. No one again but Tintoretto could have dashed the hot ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... silence, this waiting, and I was glad to hear Marget tap the floor with her sinewy hazel and say merrily, thinking to lighten her mother's concern, "My grandfather insisted that a stick with a nob was no stick for a Highland gentleman. It escaped, he would say, when it was most needed, and that might, at times, ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... large kettles and other vessels for potash-making were set up, but in front of these Bates and his man were at work making a rude pinewood coffin. The servant was the elder of the two. He had a giant-like, sinewy frame and a grotesquely small head; his cheeks were round and red like apples, and his long whiskers evidently received some attention from his vanity; it seemed an odd freak for vanity to take, for all the rest of him was rough and ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... river, in the month of ripe berries, when he beheld, by the light of the moon, a forest-chief in all his pride enter the lodge. The step of the stranger was noiseless as the fall of snow, and of word or sound uttered he none. The chief of the Tuscaroras arose, and took down his sinewy bow, and drew from his quiver a sharp and barbed arrow—the figure faded away like a morning mist before the beams of the sun, and was gone from his eyes. Tetontuaga woke his comrades, who lay scattered about in careless ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... evening we were visited by several friendly Arabs, short and thin, but strong and sinewy people. Their complexion was yellowish-brown, their eyes were small and vivacious. An assumed dignity barely disguised their native vivacity, and their guttural speech reminded us very strongly of the Jews. Their dress consisted of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... where the flesh is thicker there is less feeling, except in certain parts which the Creator has made solely of flesh, as for example, the tongue. Had the combination of solid bone and thick flesh been consistent with acute perceptions, the Creator would have given man a sinewy and fleshy head, and then he would have lived twice as long. But our creators were of opinion that a shorter life which was better was preferable to a longer which was worse, and therefore they covered the head with thin bone, and placed the sinews at the ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... the signature of the grandfather upon a title deed in Culpeper County in Virginia. Now, place that signature side by side with the signature of Abraham Lincoln on the emancipation proclamation, and the strong, sinewy sweep in the signature of the grandfather comes down and repeats itself in the strong, steady clearness of the grandson. And perhaps the strong, sinewy sentence came down and repeated itself also, for all fine thinking stands with one foot on fine brain fibre. The time has come ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis |
