"Sleek" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... assiduous at the Levees of Great Men. These Worthies are got into an Habit of being servile with an Air, and enjoy a certain Vanity in being known for understanding how the World passes. In the Pleasure of this they can rise early, go abroad sleek and well-dressed, with no other Hope or Purpose, but to make a Bow to a Man in Court-Favour, and be thought, by some insignificant Smile of his, not a little engaged in his Interests and Fortunes. It is wondrous, that a Man can get over the natural Existence and Possession of his own Mind so far, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... she looked like a fading tea rose. Yet one knew at a glance that she and bird-like Miss Sarah Drayton were sisters. There was the same oval face—this hollowed and that plump; the same soft brown hair—this wavy and that sleek; the same wide-open hazel eyes—these soft and ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... A sleek gray-faced prairie wolf! his pointed black nose tucked in between his four feet drawn snugly together; his handsome bushy tail wound over his nose and feet; a coyote fast asleep in the shadow of a bunch of grass!—this ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... all three. Baxter stood there in his shirt and trousers; the Frenchman also was half-dressed, as if preparing for rest. But the third man was still as he had come aboard—a little, yellow-faced, dapper, sleek Chinaman, whose smart, velvet-collared overcoat, thrown open, revealed an equally smart dark tweed suit beneath it, and an elegant gold watch-chain festooned across the waistcoat. He was smoking a cigar, ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... every gust of rugged wings That blows from off each beaked promontory: They knew not of his story; And sage Hippotades their answer brings, That not a blast was from his dungeon stray'd; The air was calm, and on the level brine Sleek Panope with all her sisters play'd. It was that fatal and perfidious bark Built in the eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark, That sunk so low ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... following me; Taking me by the buttonhole, pulling off my boots, hustling me with the elbows; Sitting down with me to clams and the chowder-kettle; Plunging naked at my side into the sleek, irascible surges; Soothing me with the strain that I neither permit nor prohibit; Flocking this way and that, reverent, eager, orotund, irrepressible; Denser than sycamore leaves when the north-winds are scouring Paumanok; What can I do to restrain them? Nothing, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... brought round, and old Jack knew as well as I did that he was starting for a trip, as the tether rope was wound round his neck, and the horse-cloth was under his saddle. The old horse was sleek and in fine condition for a journey, and, without further loss of time, we started for Dambool, a distance of thirty-one miles. Not wishing to be benighted, we cantered the whole way, and completed the distance ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... worthy of the father of such a daughter, and looking daggers and ratsbane. On one side of him was Muckle-mouthed Mag, with an amorous smile across the whole breadth of her countenance, and a leer enough to turn a man to stone; on the other side was the father confessor, a sleek friar, jogging the youth's elbow, and pointing to the gallows, seen in ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... France at the Court of St. James, and that same persuasive eloquence did not fail now in its effect on the chief agent of the Committee of General Security. The latter was made of coarser stuff than his more brilliant colleague. Chauvelin was like a wily and sleek panther that is furtive in its movements, that will lure its prey, watch it, follow it with stealthy footsteps, and only pounce on it when it is least wary, whilst Heron was more like a raging bull that tosses its head in a blind, irresponsible fashion, rushes at an obstacle without gauging its ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... where, as I have heard, the splendour of her estate is tolerably notorious. I have not ever heard she gave a thought to me, her cat's-paw. Madame, when I think of you and then of that sleek, smiling woman, I am appalled by my own folly. I am aghast by my long blindness as I write the words which no one will believe. To what avail do I deny a crime which every circumstance imputed to me and my own confession ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... shone; the Ponsonby silver tea set looked as bright as if no battering years lay between it and its maker's hand a century ago; the curtains were always clean; the flowers seemed to grow by magic—and Deena still parted her wonderful bronze hair and kept it sleek. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... reply. How often had he inveighed against the opinions of the sleek worldly people who would add up advantages in a column and leave out of their consideration the merits of the ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... the voices that sang with it seemed to swell at him as he pushed open the swing door and tiptoed in toward a back seat, careful to be noiseless. But there were heads that turned, none the less heads of tame sailors from the ships, for whose service the mission struggled to exist, and a few sleek faces of shore folk; and, on the low platform at the upper end of the hall, the black-coated, whiskered missioner who presided over the gathering craned his neck to look at the new-comer, without ceasing to sing with ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... I've ridden you when Claver'se rode behind, And from the thumbscrew and the boot you bore me like the wind; And while I have the life you saved, on your sleek flank, I swear, Episcopalian rowel shall never ruffle hair! Though sword to wield they've left me none—yet Wallace wight I wis, Good battle did, on Irvine side, wi' ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... Singapore is not imposing in aspect, for there are no mountains; yet its appearance is not without attractions. It is a park checkered by pleasant highways and avenues. A handsome carriage, drawn by a sleek pair of New Holland horses, carried Phileas Fogg and Aouda into the midst of rows of palms with brilliant foliage, and of clove-trees, whereof the cloves form the heart of a half-open flower. Pepper plants replaced the prickly hedges of European fields; ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... ranting, sleek man-thief, Who lived on mutton, veal, and beef, Yet never would afford relief To needy, sable sons of grief, ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... gorilla," he said; "but you are like a sleek tigress. I am stronger, more powerful than you; but I am always in fear of your claws. Especially when you smile like that. What mischief are you ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... difficulties survives with a zeal and vitality which only proves the strength of the obstacles overcome. The flies, the mosquitoes, and the rats are proofs. We have none of your meek little wharf rats here. Ours are brazen imps, sleek and shameless, undaunted by cats or men. Their footmarks are as big as those of young puppies (withal not too well-fed puppies), and their raids on man and beast alike ally them with the horde Pandora loosed. Each ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... various cases. It was a gloriously sunny day in June. A wet spring, succeeded by a spell of hot weather, had transformed the range into a rolling expanse of green, over which meandered bunches of horses and cattle, their sleek hides and well-rounded bodies proclaiming ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... out a bumper of whisky and refilling his pipe, he cleared his throat and began: "As a boy I always hated cats—God knows why—but the sight of a cat made me sick. I could not stand their soft, sleek fur; nor their silly, senseless faces; nor their smell—the smell of their skins, which most people don't seem able to detect. I could, however; I could recognise that d——d scent a mile off, and could always tell, without seeing it, when there was a cat in the house. If any ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... mamma, a buxom, comely widow, who breakfasted in black moire, with a diadem of glossy braids on her sleek head, and many jet ornaments rattling and glistening about her person, informed them, with voluble affability, of the ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... Hunger drives a dog to hunt, so the leopard; passion the cat, so the leopard. A cat is sufficient unto himself, and a leopard is so; but a dog hangs on a man's nod, and a leopard can so be beguiled. A leopard is sleek as a cat and pleased by stroking; like a cat he will scratch his friend on occasion. Yet again, he has a dog's intrepidity, knows no fear, is single-purposed, not to be called off, longanimous. But the cat in him makes him wary, tempts him to treacherous dealing, keeps him ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... a peculiar and almost reverent interest. There was her fancy work lying where she had put it down on the little wicker table, a book with a paper knife in it, one of his own; by its side an open piano, with a little pile of songs on the stool, and a sleek dachshund blinking up at them from the hearthrug. The appointments of the room were simple enough, and yet everything seemed to speak of a culture, a refinement, and withal a dainty feminine charm which ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a muffler to tie round my neck and lower part of my face and, with that greasy hat pulled down over my eyes and in those worn and shrunken clothes, I must say I looked a pretty villainous person, the very antithesis of the sleek, well-dressed young fellow that had entered the flat half ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... the mountains died down and faded away in the west there opened out many broad meadows in which were countless sleek cattle tended by somnolent herdsmen on horseback. Much sugar-cane grew, lengths of which were sold to the brawling soldiers' wives and the carload in general, which was soon reeking with the juice and chewed pulp. By afternoon jungle was a rarity and most of ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... saying, and she noticed that his head came up with a fine kind of young defiance, as if a pair of invisible Mercury wings flowed with the sleek nap of his hair, "I'm for taking a chance on the Buffalo lease. I stopped over yesterday and the little theater looks good ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... had been driving one way and he walking another—a happy encounter with this obvious result. They might have come straight out of happy Theleme, whose motto is: "Do what thou wilt." The driver had taken his two sleek horses out; they grazed unchallenged; and he sat on a stone clapping time with his hands while the fiddler played. The shade of the trees did not altogether shut out the sunshine, the grass in the wood was lush and full of still daffodils, the turf ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... afraid that we are caught in our own trap," said Jack. "I thought that pig-tailed, pig-eyed skipper of ours, when he looked in on us just now, smiled very complacently at our sleek skins. We must get Jos to tell him that if we grow too fat we shall be worth very little. There is nothing like ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... the morning of the third day they reached their old camp where their things were buried. Here they went into camp again while the Seminole scoured the woods for their ponies. He returned triumphant the second day riding one of the horses and driving the others. The animals were sleek and fat from rich ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... strip of the brule was marked out to clear after the axes. The logs, brush, and stumps had to be removed and dragged to the burning-piles. Aleck, with his active, invincible French-Canadians, Ranald with Farquhar's big, sleek blacks, and Don with his father's team, worked side by side. A contest was inevitable, and before an hour had passed Don and Aleck, while making a great show of deliberation, were striving for the first place, with Aleck easily leading. Like a piece ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... the white rabbits so snowy and sleek, Away they went down to the shore; Little they thought, so happy and meek, They'd never ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford
... a sleek well-conditioned pastor, such as is often found in a snug living in the vicinity of a rich patron's table; but I was disappointed. The parson was a little, meagre, black-looking man, with a grizzled wig that was too wide, and stood off from each ear; so that his head seemed ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... sells them as both honest and healthy, mark you! So soon as he has completed his 'gang' he dresses them up in good clothes, makes them comb their kinky heads into some appearance of neatness, rubs oil on their dusky faces to give them a sleek healthy color, gives them a dram occasionally to make them sprightly, and teaches each one the part he or she has to play; and then he sets out for the extreme South.... At every village of importance he sojourns for a day or two, each day ranging his 'gang' in a line on the most busy ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... castle, on the contrary, in spite of its bullying look, is completely under petticoat government. Every corner and nook is built up into some snug, cozy nestling place, some "procreant cradle," not tenanted by meager expectants or whiskered warriors, but by sleek placemen; knowing realizers of present pay and present pudding; who seem placed there not to kill and destroy, but to breed and multiply. Nursery maids and children shine with rosy faces at the windows, ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... very quiet. Charles had been trained not to speak unless he was spoken to. Once or twice his father looked at him. A pinafore was rather ridiculous on such a big boy. How very large his white collar was! His hair looked too sleek. He was a ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... a large desk covered with papers. Tuppence felt her previous judgment confirmed. There was something wrong about Mr. Whittington. The combination of his sleek prosperity and his shifty ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... purpling clusters and happy folk gathering these in plaited baskets on sunny afternoons. A herd of cattle with incurved horns hurrying from the stable to the woods where there is running water and where purple-topped weeds bend above the sleek grass. A fair glen with white sheep. A dancing-place under the trees; girls and young men dancing, their fingers on one another's wrists: a great company stands watching the ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... These things were daily practised in that magnificent apartment, which L. (grown connoisseur since, we presume) praises so highly for the grand paintings "by Verrio, and others," with which it is "hung round and adorned." But the sight of sleek well-fed blue-coat boys in pictures was, at that time, I believe, little consolatory to him, or us, the living ones, who saw the better part of our provisions carried away before our faces by harpies; and ourselves reduced (with the Trojan ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... bearing straight down upon them, came a strange apparition. With unsteady gait, his hand stretched out in caution before him and a watery smile upon his lips, came Uncle Buzz. An incongruously picturesque figure amidst smartness and glitter. His head was as sleek as ever and he had waxed the tips of his moustaches so that they stuck out jauntily as did the tips of his black bow tie. But his jacket was short and rusty and in need of pressing, of which fact he seemed blissfully unaware. For, having ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... But the two sleek creatures were browsing away, and no one was in sight but the man, some hundred yards or so distant, hoeing the weeds from ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... Crumbling Germany ready to make terms! Why? Simply to keep filling our systems with more of the national inertia poison—to keep us retarded—to keep us from dashing into the big game with every fibre quivering, and our souls afire to finish it up! Berlin's hope is that while America grows sleek with too much optimism, Germany will grow stronger to prolong her insolent and murderous campaign. Open your columns, Amos, and shout these truths broadcast—for therein will rest the salvation of our country! Germany poor in food or munitions?—fiddle-sticks! ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... an art dealer's shop. The agent is making Herculean efforts to bamboozle an unsuspecting parvenu into buying an example of some very "advanced" painting. The canvas is fine persiflage in its clever psychological characterization of the sleek dealer and the stupid helplessness of the bloated customer and his wife, who seem hypnotized by the wicked eye in the picture. As a piece of modern genre in a much neglected field, it is one of the finest things ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... with what fantastic and ludicrous results at first; as when the anatomical sculptor Pollaiolo gives scenes of naked Roman prize-fighters as martyrdoms of St. Sebastian; or when the pious Perugino (pious at least with his brush) dresses up his sleek, hectic, beardless archangels as Roman warriors, and makes them stand, straddling beatically on thin little dapper legs, wistfully gazing from beneath their wondrously ornamented helmets on the walls of ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... SF-22 in anticipation of her start. Trim, speedy fighting ships these were, with heavy caliber machine-guns in turrets fore and aft and normally manned by crews of twelve each. The under surfaces of their bodies glistened smooth and sleek in the light from the field, for the landing gears had been drawn within and the openings sealed by the close-fitted armor plate that protected these ordinarily vulnerable portions when ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... without troubling themselves about consequences. In imitation, as one would think, of the strutting villain of a bird, which from feathered lady to feathered lady pursues his imperial pleasures, leaving it to his sleek paramours to hatch the genial product in holes and corners of their own ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... thy cheek to my cheek, love, One little year ago It was ripe, and round, and sleek, love, As the autumn peaches grow. But the rosy hue has fled, love, Save a flush that goes and comes, Like a flow'r born from the dead, love, And blooming over tombs: How should this be, in one short year? It is not age—can ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... up on the roof and opened the garage doors. The Copter was waiting for me, sleek and new; the latest model. I climbed in and took off, heading west toward the factory, ten ...
— Robots of the World! Arise! • Mari Wolf
... being taken on the regimental strength, our canteen was the paradise of a battalion of mice, from whose nightly raids nothing was sacred. But from the day "Skilly" enlisted the marauders became less and less obtrusive. And "Skilly" grew sleek. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... a rough, shed-like building, entered, and a couple of sleek, well-bred horses turned their heads from the posts to which they were ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... ill-planned joke until they saw the delegation of Jupiter Equilateral officials waiting at the port to greet Merrill Tawney like a man returned from the dead. They had watched Tawney climb into the sleek company car and drive off toward the gate, while the Captain had escorted them without a word down ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... and day. Find out where he lives and what he does; and ransack his room if possible. He is either an innocent man or a sleek rascal. Report to ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... raw winds of spring softened to the warm calm of summer. The horses had shed their winter coats, and grew sleek and fat on the lush grasses of the mesa. The mesa stream cleared from a ropy red to a sparkling thread of silver banked with vivid green. If infrequent thunderstorms left a haze in the canons, it soon vanished in ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... low-spirited gentleman of middle age, of a meagre habit, and a disconsolate face; who kept his hands continually in the pockets of his scanty pepper-and-salt trousers, very large and dog's-eared from that custom; and was not particularly well brushed or washed. The other, a full sized, sleek, well-conditioned gentleman, in a blue coat, with bright buttons, and a white cravat. This gentleman had a very red face, as if an undue proportion of the blood in his body were squeezed up into his head, which perhaps accounted for his having also the appearance of being ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... following morning the thermometer marked 40 degrees. The natives were early at work, ploughing land that was to remain fallow until the following season. The oxen were sleek and in good condition, and not inferior in weight to the well-known red animals of North Devon. Although the native plough is of the unchanged and primitive pattern that is illustrated on the walls of Egyptian temples, it is well adapted for the work required in the rough and stony ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... "Letters" in containing the germs of a three volumed romance, but they are the germs only—and the "proportions" of the picture are consequently well preserved. Indeed, the tale always reminds me of a series of peaceful scenes by Cuyp, with low horizons, sleek cattle, and a glow in the sky betokening the approach of sunset. First we have "Peter Paul and his two sisters playing in the ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... it. I spied a brig unloadin' coal at pier No. 47—how well I remembers it! I hailed the mate, an' offered myself for a coal-heaver. But I wasn't wanted, as he told me civilly enough, which was better treatment than usual. As I turned off rather glum I was signalled by one of them sleek, smooth-spoken rascals with a white hat an' a weed on it, as is always goin' about the piers a-seekin' who they ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... gowns sweep the dust brought in by plebeian feet, nor such Venetian point collars rub shoulders with the frowsy Norwich drugget worn by hireling perjurers or starveling clerks. The modish world had come down upon the great Norman Hall like a flock of pigeons, sleek, iridescent, all fuss and flutter; and among these unaccustomed visitors there was prodigious impatience for the trial to begin, and a struggle for good places that brought into full play the primitive brutality which underlies the politeness of the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... I civilly entered just as they had finished their hymn. She was seated beside the sleek-haired Rachael, with Daniel upon her other hand. I sensed her quickly ready smile; and with the same a surly stare from him, disclosing that by one person at least I ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... was as yellow of hew As any basin scoured new, Her flesh tender as is a chick, With bent brow(e)s, smooth and sleek; And by measure large were, The opening of her eyen [1]clere, Her nose of good proportion, Her eyen [1] gray as is a falcon, With sweet(e) breath and well savored, Her face white and well colored, With little mouth and round to see; A clove[2] chin eek had(de) she. Her ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... curious men and women at doors and windows and in the street, Johnnie was the only one who dared speak to her to-day. Mrs. Larabee was dressed in the overalls and jersey that simplified both the dressing and the labor of busy Monday mornings; her sleek black hair arranged fashionably in a "turban swirl." She ran out to the cart with a little cry of welcome, a smile on her thin, brown face that well concealed the trepidation this unheard-of circumstance caused her. "Lord, make me say the right thing!" prayed Johnnie, fervently. Mrs. ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... dark blob on the water. I heard a sudden sharp swish. An under-surface freight vessel, plowing from Venezuelan ports to the West Indian Islands, came suddenly to the surface. Its headlight flashed on, but missed us. It sped past. I could see the sleek black outline of its wet back, and the lines of foam as it sheered the water. We lay rocking in its ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... toothpick and a tater-peeler put together," said Siwash, when it came back to his hand. The young fellow with the black, sleek hair, who kept his gun on, reached for it, bent over it in the light, examining ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... have men about me that are fat: Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights: Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous. SHAKESPEARE: Julius Caesar, act i, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... where he sat speculating on the numerous instances of human cruelty, selfishness, and spite that had fallen to his lot to witness since that day in the jungle four years since that his eyes had first fallen upon a human being other than himself—the sleek, black Kulonga, whose swift spear had that day found the vitals of Kala, the great she-ape, and robbed the youth, Tarzan, of the only mother he had ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... feathers they are soft and sleek— So pretty, pretty! Long is thy neck and small thy breast; The color of thy plumage far More bright than rainbow colors are! Sweeter than dove is she I love— My pretty, ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... there appeared at the foot of the kopje two figures—the one, a dog, white and sleek, one yellow ear hanging down over his left eye; the other, his master, a lad of fourteen, and no other than the boy Waldo, grown into a heavy, slouching youth of fourteen. The dog mounted the kopje quickly, his master followed slowly. He wore an aged jacket much too ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... fire won't warm me, yet I bear all for virtues sake. Must I then leave you, Gin, Rum, Brandy, Aqua Vitae—pleasant jolly fellows—Damn Temperance and them that first invented it, some Anti Noahite. Coleridge has powdered his head, and looks like Bacchus, Bacchus ever sleek and young. He is going to turn sober, but his Clock has not struck yet, meantime he pours down goblet after goblet, the 2d to see where the 1st is gone, the 3d to see no harm happens to the second, a fourth to say there's another coming, and a 5th ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... "The Abbot sleek with visage meek, With candle, book and bell, Our souls may curse, we're none the worse, Since he's ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... grew fat and sleek and handsomer than ever, and by the time October came again was the largest animal in the herd. Only the year before he had been wretched and miserable and very lonely; now he was settled and contented and very happy, for, not only had he refused to allow the old chamois to enter ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... for the last fifty years, a kind welcome has awaited all, be they voluntary idlers or sea-wrecked men. Screened by the sand-hills, here is a well-stocked barn and barnyard, filled with its ordinary inhabitants, sleek milch cows and heady bulls, lazy swine, a horse grazing at a tether, with geese and ducks and fowls around. Two or three large stores and boat-houses, quarters for the men, the Superintendent's house, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... universal gloom thus awakened there came a sharp ring at the bell. Instantly all eyes turned toward the parlor door, just as it slowly opened, and the officer who had been sent off so mysteriously by the coroner an hour before entered, in company with a young man, whose sleek appearance, intelligent eye, and general air of trustworthiness, seemed to proclaim him to be, what in fact he was, the confidential clerk ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... poor luxury of a centime light. Possibly it was a little shopman, as the abbe had suggested, struggling with fortune—not scrupulous in honesty, and shunning observation; or it might be (who could tell) a sleek-faced villain, stealing about in the dusk, and far into the night, making the dim chamber his home only when more honest lodgers were astir in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... would know them in their fanciful dress. And here is a country bearing a well-known name, wherein no chill mists press upon our spirits, and no rain falls but what rolls off our backs like April showers off the backs of sleek drakes; where flowers bloom forever and birds are always singing; where every fellow hath a merry catch as he travels the roads, and ale and beer and wine (such as muddle no wits) flow like water in ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... had done, with tall glasses—nor need he tip the porter quite so often or so generously. A dollar looked bigger to me, just then, than a wheel of the Yellow Peril. I began to feel unkindly toward that porter! he had looked so abominably well-fed and sleek, and he had tips that I would be glad to feel in my own pocket again. I stood alone upon the platform and gazed wistfully after the retreating train; many people have done that before me, if one may believe those who write ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... see the beauty of it. His nickname through the wards was 'Little Friend of all the World'; and very often, being lithe and inconspicuous, he executed commissions by night on the crowded housetops for sleek and shiny young men of fashion. It was intrigue,—of course he knew that much, as he had known all evil since he could speak,—but what he loved was the game for its own sake—the stealthy prowl through the dark gullies and lanes, the crawl ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... them from the ship. Two bears and a walrus had been purchased from the Esquimaux, a party of whom—sleek, fat, oily, good-humoured, and hairy—were encamped on the lee side of the Dolphin, and busily engaged in their ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... is a larger and more powerful animal than the common greyhound; and its hair, instead of being sleek and smooth, is long, stiff and bristly. It ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... veiled threat, and was beginning to trouble myself with trying to remember how I had got amongst this curious people, when the old man called out in a cheery voice: "Now, my children, take your guest away, and make much of him; for it is your business to make him sleek of skin and peaceful of mind: he has by no means been as lucky as you have. Farewell, guest!" and ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... while in Cairo he had the gentleness of the dove, and I had engaged him at 5l. per month to accompany me to the White Nile. Men change with circumstances; climate affects the health and temper; the sleek and well-fed dog is amiable, but he would be vicious when thin and hungry; the man in luxury and the man in need are not equally angelic. Now Mahomet was one of those dragomen who are accustomed to the civilized expeditions of the British tourist to the ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... the whole back of the atrium was thronged by the motley crowd who ministered to the household needs of a great Roman nobleman. There was the arcarius, or account keeper, with his stylum behind his ear; the sleek praegustator, who sampled all foods, so as to stand between his master and poison, and beside him his predecessor, now a half-witted idiot through the interception twenty years before of a datura draught from Canidia; the cellarman, ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... appointed our hero made his appearance at the door, and, having given his name, was asked into the counting-house of the establishment, where sat Mr Small and his factotum, Mr Sleek. It may be as well here to describe the persons and peculiarities of these ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... in swings, or leaning on gates. There were three Annies: one in ringlets, plaid silk, and tasselled boots, at eight; one magnificent in drawing-room plumes; and a recent one, a cloudy study of the severely superb mother, with a sleek-headed, wide-collared boy on each side of her. There was a photograph of the son Theodore, handsome, sullen, dressed in the fashion of the opening century, and there was more than one of Theodore's daughter, the last of the Melroses. Leslie had been a wide-eyed, sturdy little ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... her milking she sang with full voice once more the old song which Daisy loved. Of late her voice had been very low, and the song scarcely reached beyond Daisy's sleek sides, but to-day it came back, and the farmyard ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... disappeared, leaving him bland, benign of countenance, although the same imperishable wrinkles lined his pinched cheeks. He was just as careless about his sparse hair as in the days of old. It was never by any chance sleek and orderly. The habit of running his fingers through his thatch still clung to him, significant reminder of the perplexities that filled his daily life over the ledgers and day- books. In all other respects, however, ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... onlooker it would appear that the traveler was meditating. A wide-winged living splotch of color fanned by overhead; there was a distant yap of sound. Dalgard neither looked nor listened. But perhaps a minute later what he awaited arrived. A hopper, its red-brown fur sleek and gleaming in the sun, its eternal curiosity drawing it, peered cautiously from the bushes. Dalgard made mind touch. The hoppers did not really think—at least not on the levels where communication was possible for ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... Oceanic Italy; no Athenians can there send sons and gods to a Coreyra: and no Fijian Miles Standish can there walk up and down before his pipe-clayed bandoleers in foreign colonies. How, then, can an over-increase of population be more harmoniously prevented than by making the young and sleek furnish the starving with a plump existence? Is it not, economically viewed, the principle of Dr. Franklin's smoke-consuming pipe applied to the infinitely more important sphere of human existence? The festive table, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... bearing and forbearing, that miscellaneous comradeship becomes easy and rather comforting; while extremely aged people are as compatible and as miserable as disabled old eagles, grouped with a few inches of each other's beaks and claws on the sleek ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... labour, I don't care how refined or how honest it is, never by any chance find themselves at the mahogany board of aristocracy. Coat-sleeves bearing the finger-marks of honourable industry could not safely rub against the sleek broadcloth of high-life unless by sacrificing some of their beautiful (?) hieroglyphics and forfeiting to some extent the reputations they have earned ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... softly is dying, On the door-step lazy puss is lying. 'Two small mice, Cream so thick and nice; Four small bits of fish Stole I from a dish; Well-filled am I and sleek, Am very languid and meek,' Says ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... withdrawn—tell me, if you were a bridegroom, soon to be happy, and if you could do the "double roll" with loaded guns and no danger to your bowels, and if while so engaged you should see within easy range this black, sleek pig, with its tail curled tightly, egotistically, contemptuously, over its back, what, as a man, would you do? What, as a man, could you do in a case like that, in a land where there was no law, where never a court had sat, where never such a thing as a case at law ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... Nymph; and bring with thee Jest and youthful Jollity, Quips and cranks and wanton wiles, Nods and becks and wreathed smiles Such as hang on HEBE's cheek And love to live in dimple sleek; Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... but a just and rational desire To light a taper at a neighbour's fire. There's danger too, you think, in rich array, 140 And none can long be modest that are gay. The cat, if you but singe her tabby skin, The chimney keeps, and sits content within: But once grown sleek, will from her corner run, Sport with her tail, and wanton in the sun: She licks her fair round face, and frisks abroad To show her ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... said he, taking a manner of sleek clerical pleasantry, "though we can so often say 'Christmas is coming,' I suppose that if at some suitable hour to-morrow afternoon I said to you, 'Christmas is going,' you would grant it to be a not inaccurate remark?" ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... head, he leaned back against the carving of his chair, and fixed his gaze on the portrait of the English ancestress over the mantelpiece. The firelight flickered over his firm, clear-cut features, over the sleek dark hair, which was brushed straight back from his forehead, and over his sombre smoke-coloured eyes in which a dusky glow came and went. Margaret, watching him with her pensive smile, thought that she had never seen ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... things decide the fate of nations and men! This was a race whose salutation was not nose-rubbing, but smelling, and the American had not in our worst straits failed to keep his hair sleek with hair-oil, verbena scented, and to perfume himself daily with new-mown hay or heliotrope. Thus was he of goodly savour to the chief, and the eyes of the savage grew bright. At that moment the food and drink came. During the repast the chief chuckled ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... innocent, either), in her role of the god in the machine she had been responsible for many things; several comedies, perhaps a tragedy or two. Ordinarily her parties were dull enough; complacent Washington parties; diplomats, long-haired Senators from the West, short-bearded Senators from the East, sleek young men and women, all of whom sat about discussing grave nonsense concerning a country with which they had utterly lost touch, if ever they had had any; but every now and then, out of the incalculable shufflings of fate, appeared a combination that seemed to offer more excitement. Tonight ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... pushed well away from the curious shore. There was not much variety in the visiting English type, but there was here and there a sharp imperial accent, as in the two pale little, spindle-legged Anglo-Indian boys, with their Hindu ayah, very dark, with sleek dark hair, and gleaming eyes in a head not much bigger than a ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... Anti-emigration pamphlets were scattered broadcast, and, after the manner of the day, the leading western enterprises were belabored with much bad verse. A rude cut which gained wide circulation represented a stout, ruddy, well-dressed man on a sleek horse, with a label, "I am going to Ohio," meeting a pale and ghastly skeleton of a man, in rags, on the wreck of what had once been a horse, with the label, "I ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... suggestion, and it was but a brief interval before the way would be retraced by the awe-stricken observer, noting with a deep interest impossible hitherto all the environment: the stark chimney of the vanished house, monumental in the weed-grown waste; the dripping forest; the roof of the barn, sleek and shining, and with rain pouring down the slant of its clapboards and splashing from its eaves; the groups of horses hitched to the scraggy apple-trees of the deserted homestead; and here and there the white canvas ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... there was no chance of my falling in love with Miss Falconer, dearest," he said, smiling at her gravity and earnestness. "She is very beautiful, lovely in her way, if you like; but it is not my way. She is like a statue at most times; at others, just now and again, like a—well, a sleek tigress in her movements and the way she turns her head. Oh, there wasn't the least danger of my falling in love with her, even if I hadn't seen the sweetest and loveliest girl ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... restaurant behind them a banquet was being given by a party of Chinese merchants, and Holt had thought the scene might amuse her. The round table was covered with dishes no larger than those played with in childhood and the portions were as minute. The sleek merchants wore gorgeously embroidered costumes, and behind them were women of their own race, dressed plainly in the national garb, their stiff oiled hair stuck with long pins lobed with glass. They were evidently an orchestra, ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... committee of safety, six thousand strong, took the situation in hand. The state and the national governments moved resolutely, and order was very soon restored. Kearney was clever and knew when to stop. He used his qualities of leadership for his individual advantage and eventually became sleek and prosperous. In the meantime he was influential in forming a political movement that played a prominent part in giving us a new constitution. The ultra conservatives were frightened, but the new instrument did not prove so harmful as was feared. ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... sleek, voluptuous lord, A hundred dainties smoke upon his board; Earth, air, and ocean ransack'd for the feast, In masquerade of foreign olios ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... across the street at Bohm and Charley and Kitty and Gazza. They were now staring about them in all their perfection of stare: small Charley in a sleek slate-colored suit, as neat as any little barber; Bohm, massive, portentous, his strong shoes and gloves the chief note in his dress, and about his whole firm frame a heavy mechanical strength, a look as of something ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... on at a quiet, easy amble, apparently at peace with his heart, his conscience, his sleek cob, and all the ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Mugwump sniffs and sneers; Gregarious 'votes of thanks' and sheepish 'cheers' Stir him to satire scornful. But when sleek Culture apes, irate and loud, The follies of the Caucus and the Crowd, The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... woman, one not easily led away by appearances. Nevertheless, it is probable that had Mr. Gilmore been less lugubrious, more sleek, less "seedy," she would have been more prone than she now was to have made instant use of Captain Marrable's loss of fortune on behalf of this other suitor. She would immediately have felt that perhaps something might be done, and she would have been tempted to tell him ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... know the sleek Count well enough to judge what effect a sermon would have upon that smooth vulpine determination of his.... "An instrument in the hands of God, my dear brother.... We must obey His call, even to the death," etc. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... Crouched on the staircase overhead, Like ghost she gloats, her lean hand laid On alabaster balustrade, And gazes on and on Down on that wondrous to and fro Till finger and foot are cold as snow, And half the night is gone; And dazzled eyes are sore bestead; Nods drowsily the sleek-locked head; And, vague and far, spins, fading out, That rainbow-coloured, reeling rout, And, with faint sighs, her ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... remarks about her relations with the doctor. Formerly Nekhludoff had paid no attention to them. But to-day, the sight of the doctor, with his oily, sleek head, which was parted in the middle, sitting near her couch, was repulsive ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... Frontino left (Frontino he was hight), Whom Bradamant then took into her care, And to Mount Alban sent; and had him dight, And nourished, at large cost, with plenteous fare; Nor let be rode except at easy pace, Hence was he ne'er so sleek ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... cook was seated by a hot kerosene-lamp, at a table covered with picture-papers, soft Japanese books, and writing-materials. He was in his stocking-feet and shirt-sleeves, and his mental efforts appeared to have had a confusing effect on his usually sleek black hair, which stood all ways distractedly, while his sleepy eyes blinked under Mr. ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... appearance, which for a short time completely distanced the horses. But this speed could not be continued, and the Major and Alexander soon found themselves rapidly coming up. The poor animals exerted themselves in vain; their sleek coats first turned to a blue colour, and then white with foam and perspiration, and at last they, were beaten to a stand-still, and were brought down by the rifles of our travellers, who then dismounted their horses, and walked up to ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... as we drew near with such interest that we forgot to feel shy. No, she was not pretty. She was tall for her fourteen years, slim and straight; around her long, white face—rather too long and too white—fell sleek, dark-brown curls, tied above either ear with rosettes of scarlet ribbon. Her large, curving mouth was as red as a poppy, and she had brilliant, almond-shaped, hazel eyes; but we did not ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery |
