"Wiry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... middle-aged and even elderly women in the train, their silver-wiry hair and wrinkled faces, scourged by time and trouble, having almost a grotesque, certainly a pathetic, appearance in such a jaunty situation. In a true view, perhaps, there was more to be gathered and told of each anxious and experienced one, to whom the years were ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... unworthy bustle or impatience. The woods on the neighboring shore were alive with pigeons, which were moving south, looking for mast, but now, like ourselves, spending their noon in the shade. We could hear the slight, wiry, winnowing sound of their wings as they changed their roosts from time to time, and their gentle and tremulous cooing. They sojourned with us during the noontide, greater travellers far than we. You may frequently discover a single pair sitting upon the lower branches of the white-pine in the ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... plain that they must cross on their long journey back to the village of Kovudoo, the Gomangani. The king, still roaring and shrieking, wheeled and followed him. In their wake came the handful of low country baboons and the thousands of the hill clan—savage, wiry, ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... from looking the "limp rag" of his phrase to Joan. Indeed, it might have taxed the resources of any crack regiment in Paris that day to produce his equal in condition. Twenty-four years old, nearly six feet in height, lean and wiry, square wristed, broad shouldered, and straight as a spear, he met the physical requirements, at least, of those classic youths beloved of Joan's ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... president of the East Coast Company reminded Steve of Caleb Hunter, even though there could be no two things more in contrast than the latter's calm and comfortable bigness and Elliott's thin and wiry and extremely nervous exterior. It was a similarity due entirely to the innate honesty of both men—such honesty as makes of every attempt at dissimulation an assured non-success. And Miss Sarah had never anticipated her brother's clumsiest finesse ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... just going to slip out, when I saw that my brother had left behind him one coin that lay gleaming on the long bench by the window. It was a bronze coin, and the colour, combined with the exact curve of the Roman nose and something in the very lift of the long, wiry neck, made the head of Caesar on it the almost precise portrait of Philip Hawker. Then I suddenly remembered Giles telling Philip of a coin that was like him, and Philip wishing he had it. Perhaps you can fancy the wild, foolish thoughts with which my head went round; I felt as if I had had a ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... from Paris which was then besieged. Their next engagement was at Martes. They were then under command of General Mocquard, a brave soldier who was always seen well to the front mounted on a little wiry Arab steed. Soon after this engagement the company, to which many new faces had been added to fill up the gaps caused by the shot and shells of the enemy, was joined to the ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... tiles The lovely bonnets beam their smiles; (The style's the man, so books avow; The style's the woman, anyhow); From flounces frothed with creamy lace Peeps out the pug-dog's smutty face, Or spaniel rolls his liquid eye, Or stares the wiry pet of Skye,— O woman, in your hours of ease So shy with ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the first line, soaring over the bar on a foamy roller-crest like a storm-driven gull winging in towards the land. The wiry figure of Bill Wheaton crouched in the stern while two sailors fought with their oars. As they gathered for their rush through the last zone of froth, a great comber rose out of the sea behind them, rearing ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... moment the two were grappling in a furious fight. John was smaller than Peter, but he was wiry and as lithe and powerful as a trained athlete, so that he was a match, at first, for the rugged strength of Peter. But he had had a hard day, and gradually Peter's strength wore him down, and, as they crashed to the ground together, Peter ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Long Lake - Bessie King in Summer Camp • Jane L. Stewart
... on Mrs. Gosnold's other hand, was a wiry roan virgin who talked too much but seldom stupidly, exhibited a powerful virtuosity in strange gestures, and pointedly designated herself as a "spin" (diminutive for spinster) apparently deriving ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... a thin, wiry man of middle height and middle age. Such a face I had never seen. The first sight of it made me suck in my breath as if I had touched the edge of a razor. The bridge half of his nose had gone, or he had never had it, and the lower half ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... a wiry sort, and stood hard going well; Blair was a patient, plodding nature and wouldn't have complained if he had dropped in his tracks; but Peter was impulsive and impatient, and ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... Pony Express, came to Carson City, Nevada, to engage riders and station-agents for the Pony Express route across the Great Plains. In a few days fifty or sixty were engaged—men noted for their lithe, wiry physiques, bravery and coolness in moments of great personal danger, and endurance under the most trying circumstances of fatigue. Particularly were these requirements necessary in those who were to ride over the lonely route. It was no easy duty; horse and human flesh were strained to the ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... to have suffered in reputation from their observers. "Those who inhabit," says Livingstone, "the hot sandy plains of the desert possess generally thin, wiry forms, capable of great exertion, and severe privation. Many are of low stature, but not dwarfish; the specimens brought to Europe have been selected, like coster-mongers' dogs, on account of their extreme ugliness; ...
— The Future of the Colored Race in America • William Aikman
... You may also alter the development of the muscles very much, by dint of training; all the world knows that exercise has a great effect in this way; we always expect to find the arm of a blacksmith hard and wiry, and possessing a large development of the brachial muscles. No doubt training, which is one of the forms of external conditions, converts what are originally only instructions, teachings, into habits, or, in other words, into organizations, ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... Septimus Smith, is lean and lanky and can stretch a long arm and a trade card for an amazing distance to just beneath your nose. But Larkin is small and wiry and has a knack of squeezing himself right into the midst of your mountain of luggage and children and porters, and earnestly informing you that Octavius Smith keeps the best bacon in the district, and promising you that if you deal with him, he, Larkin, will bring your ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... wound himself into the boat and coiled his great length upon the stern-sheets. Very lanky he was and very thin, with a craggy hard face, clean-shaven and sunburned, with a thousand little wrinkles intersecting it in every direction. He had lost his hat, and his short wiry hair, slightly flecked with grey, stood up in a bristle all over his head. It was hard to guess at his age, but he could scarce have been under his fiftieth year, though the ease with which he had boarded our boat proved that his strength and energy were unimpaired. Of all his characteristics, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was diminutive compared with Jaynes, was yet rather tall and wiry for his light weight, and had an unusually long reach for one of his size. He regretted now the great pains he had taken to train down to feather-weight weight. For when he had stepped on the scales in the gymnasium, the day before ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... a very characteristic nose—it was a combative nose, and a decided pug. So was the nose on the window-pane. Plunger's hair, too, was peculiar to Plunger. It was wiry, stubborn hair, with a tuft in front which resembled the comb of a turkey-cock. The same peculiarity was seen in the head on the window. And Plunger's eyebrows had a way of mounting to his head, as though they were anxious ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... clearing, two wiry little Florida ponies, tethered with rawhide ropes, browsed upon the short, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... so, and there was the corpse of a thin-faced tall wiry man, somewhat foxy of aspect, lying on a hand-bier ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... Bivens was always unimpressive. He was short, thin, and looked almost frail at first glance. A second look gave the impression of wiry reserve force in his compact frame. His hair was jet black and thinning slightly on top which gave him the appearance of much greater age than he could really claim. His thin features were regular, and his face was covered with a thick black beard which he kept trimmed to a keen ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... in 1864 in Laclede, Missouri, and is tall, wiry and strong. Every inch of his six feet is of fighting material. He is a man of action and has a penchant for utilizing the services of young men rather than staid old officers of experience. Pershing is a real military man, and has been notably absent from such things ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... temporary lull in the conversation and then a small, wiry, spiteful looking Cockney spoke. He had reddish hair and big round ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... the snows she sweeps, Hurling the haven behind, The Deutschland, on Sunday; and so the sky keeps, For the infinite air is unkind, And the sea flint-flake, black-backed in the regular blow, Sitting Eastnortheast, in cursed quarter, the wind; Wiry and white-fiery and whirlwind-swivelled snow Spins to the widow-making ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... be grown on it but it continues to deteriorate; or the tenant or landlord may turn it into a rabbit-warren, the most fatal policy of all. How hideous they are—those great stretches of downland, enclosed in big wire fences and rabbit netting, with little but wiry weeds, moss, and lichen growing on them, the earth dug up everywhere by the disorderly little beasts! For a while there is a profit—"it will serve me my time," the owner says—but the end ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... the toe of his boot. The native sprang up, fumbled at his disarranged turban, salaamed deeply, and finally stood upright, a splendid figure of a man, six feet of him, if his peaked turban were taken into account—hard, wiry, with aquiline features, grey beard, and eyes keen as a sword-thrust; a man without knowledge of fear, cunning and implacable in hatred, but staunchly devoted to the Englishman he served, who, in his eyes, was the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... They were wiry, slender brutes of Mojave Indian blood, only lately broken to harness, and still undisciplined in temper. The lash sent them rearing into the air, where, forgetting themselves in the slackened traces and loose reins, they came down with a succession of bounds that brought the light buggy leaping ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... will find that most of the steel pens made for artists have but a short period of usefulness. When new they are even more unresponsive than when they are old. At first they are disposed to give a hard, wiry line, then they grow sympathetic, and, finally, lose their temper, when they must be immediately thrown away. As a general rule, the more delicate points are better suited to the smooth surfaces, where they are not likely to get tripped ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... more before the night of which we write, there had come to Allington a peddler, whose home was across the sea, in Carnarvon, Wales. He was a little, cross eyed, red-haired, wiry man, with a blunt, sharp way of speaking, but was very popular with the citizens of Allington, to whom he sold such small articles as he could conveniently carry in a bundle upon his back; needles, pins, thread, pencils, matches, thimbles, cough ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... shook convulsively under his hands, which he laid on her paternally. His straggly, wiry moustache brushed her forehead in a good-night kiss. She closed the door, and went away from it to the middle of the room before she allowed herself a tired-out sort of ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... wiry boy of Bob's own age, but fully half a head shorter, turned around and gazed up ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... expectant, being mixed up with the rattling of chains. Then an angry voice was heard amidst the hubbub commanding silence, and a sudden whine or two seemed to imply that he had shown some practical intention of being obeyed. A bolt was drawn, the door opened, and a short wiry man, dressed in fustian and velveteen, with a fur cap on his head and a short pipe in ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... proceeded down the river accompanied by a large canoe, which was occupied by the rajah's son, six or seven hunters, and a pack of the dogs used in hunting the wild boar on this island. These dogs were small, but very wiry, with muzzles like foxes, and curling tails. Their hair was short, and of a tan colour. Small as they are, they are very bold, and one of them will keep a wild pig at bay till the hunters come ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... man, and stared at him. He was a middle-aged man, with a small wiry shape and a gait like a boy's. His name was Jake Noyes, and he was the doctor's hired man. He took care of his horse, and drove for him, and some said helped him compound his prescriptions. There was great respect in the village for Jake Noyes. He had a kind of reflected ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... in texture, short, close, and smooth, silky when stroked from the head towards the tail owing to its closeness, but not wiry when stroked ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... if he had his pen in hand, would he describe Israel Tenney for one of the folk tales Anne had so persistently urged him to? A thin, tall man with narrow shoulders and yet somehow giving an impression of great wiry strength. He had a boldly drawn line of profile, hair black and glossy and, as Raven saw with distaste, rather long under his hat, vertical lines marking his cheeks, lines deeper than seemed justified by his age, and, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... Tom in his undress—say, shirt-sleves, shorts, grey stockings and shoes, bore about the same resemblance to each other that a three months dead jay nailed to a keeper's lodge bears to the bright-plumaged bird when flying about. On horseback, Tom was a cockey, wiry-looking, keen-eyed, grim-visaged, hard-bitten little fellow, sitting as though he and his horse were all one, while on foot he was the most shambling, scambling, crooked-going crab that ever was seen. He was a complete mash of a man. He had been scalped ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... is still the prominent person among the native population of this territory. Major Harris describes him well. The bronzed and sunburnt visage, surrounded by long matted locks of raven hair; the slender but wiry and active frame, and the energetic gait and manner, proclaimed the untamable descendant of Ishmael. He nimbly mounts the crupper of his now unladen dromedary, and at a trot moves down the bazar. A checked kerchief round his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... prisoners, a fine handsome middle-aged man of swarthy complexion, with dark hair clustering in close ringlets all over his shapely head, dark piercing eyes, small ears, from the lobes of which depended a pair of plain gold ear-rings, and a somewhat slim yet wiry and athletic-looking figure clad in a picturesque but somewhat showy costume, I thought I identified the man I was so anxious to meet, Giuseppe Merlani. The man was badly wounded, having been run ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... a Chinese species, at present little known in this country. It forms a low bush with spreading wiry purplish downy branches, and loose terminal panicles of white flowers. Its peculiar spreading habit, dark green leaves, and abundant flowers render it a desirable acquisition to the shrubbery. It is quite hardy.—The ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... without an owner; this was inmmediately secured as a lawful prize by our guide. This fellow's name is Mahomet; he is, doubtlessly, an out-and-out scoundrel; he is about five feet ten inches in height, and as thin as a live man can be; he is so crafty-looking, and so wiry and eel-like, that if I were to lock him up I should secure the key-hole, as he looks capable of squeezing through anything. ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... that for a compliment," said Ned, looking up with a smile at the tall, wiry, sun-burnt, red-flannel-shirted, straw-hatted creature that leaned on ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... human breath. This person was apparently lying on his back, his face hid, his form not to be traced, a wild confusion of shawls and cushions, out of which, like some wily and dangerous reptile, glided the spiral involutions of his pipe. Next to the invisible sat a little wiry man with a red nose, sparkling eyes, and a white beard. His black turban intimated that he was a Hebrew, and indeed he was well known as Barizy of the Tower, a description which he had obtained from his residence near the Tower of ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... mount of the trooper next Weldon dropped and lay whimpering like a hurt child. Then she steadied to the touch of Weldon's hand upon her neck. It was not the first time he had guided her, unscathed, through a leaden shower. She would trust him yet once again. As he raised his rifle, her wiry legs were as steady as four iron rods. He saw another Boer fall and yet another and a third; but one khaki-colored figure lay stiffly beside him, and another was dragging itself away to a corner of the kraal, to give greater space to its unwounded comrades. And still the bullets whizzed about them, ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... thing[gy] Restless and worn, and stern and wearisome, Drooped as a wild-born falcon with clipt wing, To whom the boundless air alone were home: Then came his fit again, which to o'ercome, As eagerly the barred-up bird will beat His breast and beak against his wiry dome Till the blood tinge his plumage—so the heat Of his impeded Soul would through his ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... come up whilst he was talking, and was now looking into the horse's mouth. "Who am I?" said the man, still looking into the horse's mouth; "who am I? his lordship asks me. Ah, I see, close on five," said he, releasing the horse's jaws, and looking at me. This new-comer was a thin, wiry-made individual, with wiry curling brown hair; his face was dark, and wore an arch and somewhat roguish expression; upon one of his eyes was a kind of speck or beam; he might be about forty, wore a green ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... thin, but this morning very much his keen, wiry self—Bowers is quite himself to-day. Cherry-Garrard is slightly puffy in the face and still looks worn. It is evident that he has suffered most severely—but Wilson tells me that his spirit never ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... how my boy looked? He was slender, but he was strong and wiry. He was about five feet five inches tall; he topped his Dad by a handspan. And he was the neatest boy you might ever have hoped to see. Aye—but he did not inherit that from me! Indeed, he used to reproach me, oftentimes, for being careless about ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... and why she couldn't abide Mrs. Freddie Alden the Poetry Girl once said epics could have been written. Janet was gaunt and wiry, the relict of the late Jock MacGregor, who had cared for Uncle Peter Alden's horses for a lifetime and died leaving his savings and a bit of life insurance to Janet, together with an admonition to "keep an ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... HALE are men in middle life, the COUNTY ATTORNEY is a young man; all are much bundled up and go at once to the stove. They are followed by the two women—the SHERIFF's wife first; she is a slight wiry woman, a thin nervous face. MRS HALE is larger and would ordinarily be called more comfortable looking, but she is disturbed now and looks fearfully about as she enters. The women have come in slowly, and stand close ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... the premonitory symptom of serious disease. It should be remembered that a lessening quantity of food is required from middle life on. This applies to all the elements of food. It is noticeable that a fat person seldom lives to old age, most octogenarians being thin and wiry, and almost all attribute their long life to increasing watchfulness over their health, and ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... deal with the Russians, and we saw little of the better class. As a race the Yakutes are not interesting, while in appearance both sexes are distinctly plain, and often repulsive. The type is Mongolian; sallow complexion, beady eyes, flattened nostrils and wiry black hair. The men are of medium height, thick set and muscular, the women ungainly little creatures, bedizened with jewellery, and smothered with paint. Some marry Russians and assume European dress, ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... had not James been of too 'noticing' a nature, he would certainly have found himself going round the house a second time. He seemed so anxious to be asked questions, too, that James felt he must be on his guard. He began to suffer from his exertions, for, though wiry enough for a man of his long build, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Selah cried, struggling to be free, and trying in vain to tear down his thin wiry arms with her own strong shapely hands. 'Let me go at once,—there's a good boy, and I'll marry you on Monday fortnight, or do anything else you like, just to keep you quiet. After all, you're a kind-hearted fellow enough, and you want looking after and taking care ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... and saw Foe's face—that the truth broke on me—and then, at first, as a wild surmise, and no more. Even when I wheeled about again and stared at the man, full belief came slowly: for this Farrell was thin, wiry, gaunt; sun-tanned, with sunken eyes and a slight stoop; wearing the clothes of a gentleman and, when at length he spoke, using the accent of a gentleman. . . . But this ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of necessity, Captain Jack lay down as directed, passing his hands behind his back. These were deftly secured, after which his ankles were treated in the same fashion. Immediately the mulatto, who was strong and wiry, lifted the boy and the lantern together. The dogs remaining behind, Jack was carried out into the yard, where he discovered that daylight was coming on in the East. He was dumped on the ground long ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... or sound of the bungalow, except when Lady Greystoke chose to canter across the broad plain, or relieve the monotony of her loneliness by a brief hunting excursion. On such occasions Mugambi, mounted upon a wiry Arab, had ridden close at ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... stall next to Pacer, was a small, jet-black mare, with a lean head, slender legs, and a curious restless manner. She was a regular greyhound of a horse, no spare flesh, yet wiry and able to do a great deal of work. She was a wicked looking little thing, so I thought I had better keep at a ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... dots, though, don't seem to notice the stir she's causin', or don't mind if she does. A slim, wiry young female she is, well along in the twenties, I should say. What struck me most about her was the tan on her face and hands and the way her hair was faded in streaks. Sort of a general outdoor look she had, which is odd enough to see on ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... exploding the word as though he had been a member of Monsieur Crapeau's class in French elementary sounds, and with a start which seemed to shake every fibre in his wiry frame. ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... narrow passages formed by these mast-like growths. In addition to this difficulty, there were numerous clumps of the tough male bamboo, which nothing will break, and which is terribly dangerous should a runaway elephant attempt to penetrate it, as the hard wiry branches would lacerate a rider in a frightful manner. There were numerous ravines in this forest, and we kept along the margin, slowly and cautiously, peering at the same time into the depths, in the expectation of seeing the ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... more than a glance toward him I leaped for the great switch; but, quick as I was, that wiry old fellow ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... raked him with keen eyes that missed not a detail. He was certain that he had never seen the man before, yet he knew at once that the trim, wiry figure, so clean of build and so gallant of bearing, could belong only to Wolf Leroy, the most ruthless outlaw of the Southwest. It was written in his jaunty insolence, in the flashing eyes. He was a handsome fellow, white-toothed, ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... the horses was another animal, of a dirty slate colour, with some white marks along the back and shoulders. That was a true-bred Mexican mule, wiry and wicked as any of its race. It was a she-mule, and was called Jeanette. Jeanette was tethered beyond kicking distance of the horses; for between her and the mustang there existed no friendly feeling. Jeanette was the owner of the odd-looking saddle—the pack. Jeanette's duty ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... puckered eyes and alert manner, Lord Roberts in spite of his sixty-seven years preserves the figure and energy of youth. The active open-air life of India keeps men fit for the saddle when in England they would only sit their club armchairs, and it is hard for any one who sees the wiry figure and brisk step of Lord Roberts to realise that he has spent forty-one years of soldiering in what used to be regarded as an unhealthy climate. He had carried into late life the habit of martial exercise, and a Russian traveller ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a small race, are wiry and capable of enduring great hardships. They are very skilful artisans, the filigree jewellery of their silversmiths, for example, is unequalled as a work of art by anything of its kind in Europe. They are splendid divers, and seem equally at home in the water as on the land; the ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... liking. There was a quality very winning in the youthful East-sider and now that the chance for betterment had come his way Steve felt sure that the boy would make good. There was a lot of pluck and grit in that wiry little frame; a lot of honesty too, Stephen reflected, with a blush. He was not at all sure but that in the matter of fearlessness and moral courage the New York lad had the lead of him. Certainly ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... seem strung with pearls, and faint lines of soft fleecy mist lie in the hollows by the watercourses; long ere the hot, fiery sun has left his crimson bed behind the cold grey horizon, we are out on our favourite horse, the wiry, long-limbed syce or groom trotting along behind us. The mehter or dog-keeper is also in attendance with a couple of greyhounds in leash, and a motley pack of wicked little terriers frisking and frolicking behind him. This mongrel ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... of furious faces and struggling arms. The University were evidently recoiling, pressed back by the sheer weight of their opponents; but soon came a re-enforcement of grooms and stable-men, lightweights, active and wiry; and these, with their hunting-crops and heavy cutting-whips used remorselessly—like Caesar's legionaries, they struck only at the face—once more re-established the balance of ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... and received a wiry handclasp that caused him faint surprise. But then, he reflected as he went away, he had always known Saltash to be a queer devil, oddly balanced, curiously impulsive, strangely irresponsible, possessing through all a charm which seldom failed to hold its own. He realized by ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... on the ground, pressing his face into the wiry turf, trying to hide. Quite stunned, with a death taking place in his soul, he lay still, pressed against the earth. He held his breath for a long time before letting it go, then again he held it. He could scarcely bear, even by breathing, ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... a slight, wiry woman, who acted and talked easily and unceasingly, spread out a fresh linen cloth and laid a stone on each corner to hold it down, and then looked into each lunch basket in turn, to acquaint ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... followed a wiry, sharp-eyed shaggy devil of a terrier, dogging his steps as he went slashing up and down, now with one man beside him, now with another, and now quite alone, but always at a fast rolling pace, with his head in the air, and his eyes as wide open as he could get ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... future part of this voyage. Wreck Reef consists of six distinct patches of coral, extending twenty miles east and west; upon four of them there are dry banks, also frequented by birds, and the easternmost bank is covered with wiry grass and some shrubs, and is called Bird ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... thick clump of trees or a screen of poplars broke the flatness of the long smooth hills. In the hedgerows were blue cornflowers and poppies in all colors from carmine to orange that danced in the wind on their wiry stalks. At the turn in the road they lost the noise of the division and could hear the bees droning in the big dull purple cloverheads and in the gold ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... days. There were no guiding land marks. Soldiers measured the distance traveled each day by counting the footsteps. The plains were flat, save for an occasional channel cut by some river half buried in the sand; they were barren, except for a short wiry grass and a small rim of shrubs and stunted trees along ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... food, the fine exercise, the exquisite air, and his great happiness, Gibbie began to grow; and he took to growing so fast that his legs soon shot far out of his winsey garment. But, of all places, that was a small matter in Gormgarnet, where the kilt was as common as trowsers. His wiry limbs grew larger without losing their firmness or elasticity; his chest, the effort in running up hill constantly alternated with the relief of running, down, rapidly expanded, and his lungs grew hardy as well as powerful; till he became at ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... which is enhanced by the solemn silence. At first such a forest gives the impression of being more open than an English wood, but a few steps are sufficient to correct this error. There is a thick undergrowth matted together by wiry creepers, and the intermediate space is traversed in all directions by lines ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... interesting camp in more ways than one. The vaqueiros with their wives and families were housed on the two sides of the field in which our tents were pitched. On one side was a big, whitewashed, tile-roofed house in which the foreman dwelt—an olive- skinned, slightly built, wiry man, with an olive-skinned wife and eight as pretty, fair-haired children as one could wish to see. He usually went barefoot, and his manners were not merely good but distinguished. Corrals and outbuildings were near this big house. On the opposite side of the field stood the row of steep-roofed, ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... lantern, was not one to inspire confidence in a tenderfoot on a dark night. The features were those of a man who might have been drinking, with inconsiderable interruptions, for a very long time. He was short and stout and choleric, with a wiry moustache under a red nose; and seemed to be distinctly under the impression that Roosevelt had done something for ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... Orobo Rancho was an American named Grayson. He was a tall, wiry man whose education had been acquired principally in the cow camps of Texas, where, among other things one does NOT learn to love nor trust a greaser. As a result of this early training Grayson was ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... brushes are attached to each end of the instrument. Another instrument, used by the Dyaks, but said to have been borrowed from the Malays, is the palang anus, which is a ring or collar of plaited palm-fiber, furnished with a pair of stiffish horns of the same wiry material; it is worn on the neck of the glans and fits tight to the skin so as not to slip off. (Brooke Low, "The Natives of Borneo," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, August and November, 1892, p. 45; the ampallang ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the condition of the sap. Their tops, too, are never the same, whether the pollen clings to the surface or whether it has gone. Here the green is almost lost in red, or quite; here the grass has a soft, velvety look; yonder it is hard and wiry, and again graceful and drooping. Here there are bunches so rankly verdant that no flower is visible and no other tint but dark green; here it is thin and short, and the flowers, and almost the turf itself, can be seen; then there is an array of bennets (stalks which ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... trail up through the broken country of cliffs and canyon to the great league-long sage and cedar slope of the mountain. It was weeks since he had ridden the mustang. Nack-yal was fat and lazy. He loved his master, but he did not like the climb, and so fell far behind the lean and wiry pony that carried Nas Ta Bega. The sage levels were as purple as the haze of the distance, and there was a bitter-sweet tang on the strong, cool wind. The sun was gold behind the dark line of fringe on the mountain-top. A flock of sheep swept ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... mutually acknowledged boundary between Russia and Austria. A fierce yell of triumph caused the swimmer to pause in his efforts. He looked back over his shoulder to see the first pair of pursuers push their wiry mounts into the river. Then with a groan he realized that the stream was dotted ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... began a new Polka or Sehnsucht, and why it whined so sadly every time it was over. When some soldiers marched through the village, they said the dog had better enlist, he seemed so fond of the trumpet and drum. When the hand organ players came and excruciated the villagers with a wiry "Last Rose of Summer," they laughed to see the excited creature jumping about, and one of them would have carried it off for a dancing dog, if the grandmother had not run screaming after him. The old black ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... gun, sir, aboard the flagship, sir," said the wiry little cock-eyed head waiter, who was hopping about the room "like a parched pea on a griddle," as dad expressed it, stopping to flick the dust from the mantelpiece with his napkin as he replied to the mute inquiry he could read in my glance. "Look, sir! They've h'isted ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... editor of my acquaintance was a little boy in knickerbockers, with a lavish profusion of auburn locks, an old-fashioned physiognomy, a wiry if diminutive frame, and a quick, nervous temperament, whose youthful eyes had beheld ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... drive it home like the Doctor. There were times, sparse and special occasions, when the Doctor himself made one of the congregation. Then he would lean back luxuriously in the corner of his own pew, his wiry little form half-lost in the upholstery his arms folded, his knees crossed, his face all humorous indulgence; yes, humorous. At the announcement of the text a twinkle would lodge in the shrewd grey eyes and a smile but half-suppressed ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... latest news then?" remarked the boy with the thick head of stiff, wiry hair; and he made a grimace ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... the barn to inspect the horses. Passing the very last of the box-stalls, the manager saw in it a pony. He stopped. No second glance was needed to tell him it was a good horse; then he realized that this wiry, sleek-legged roan, contentedly munching at the moment some company hay, ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... of rural beauties. She had that placid innocence, that sweet serenity of heart, which best prepares us to relish them. Seeing therefore, that she was a prisoner, and that it was in vain to struggle and beat her wings against the wiry inclosure, she submitted. "Ah! unjust, unkind associates!" exclaimed Imogen, "ye can obey the dictates of a man, who has no right to your obedience, and ye can turn a deaf ear to the voice of benevolence and justice! Set me at liberty. This man has no right to see me, and I will not see him. ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... infernal humbugs were at him again." In fact, we began to hear sounds as if bullets were humming over our heads. In a moment something rapped me sharply on the forehead, then upon the neck, and immediately I felt an indefinite number of sharp wiry claws in active motion, as if their owner were bent on pushing his explorations farther. I seized him, and dropped him into the fire. Our party speedily broke up, and we adjourned to our respective tents, where, closing the opening fast, we hoped to be exempt from invasion. But all precaution ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Spriggs. A thin wiry little man about 5 feet 2 inches, with thin sandy coloured hair (a trifle bald), twinkly little blue eyes, a very pink face and carroty coloured moustache. He was attired in a rough tweed suit with knickaboccers, a turn down collar, very untidily put on, thick grey stockings, ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... A slim, wiry youth in high-heeled boots came out of the house with Brad Charlton just as the buggy stopped at the porch of the horse ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... Ayres, of the terrible blinding dust-storms which occur there, causing utter darkness for a space of ten or fifteen minutes; but Buenos Ayres is on the edge of a river, with hundreds and thousands of leagues of sandy plains behind it, the soil of which is only kept together by the roots of the wiry pampas grass. For this dust to reach the Messier Channel, where we now are, it would have to surmount two chains of snowy mountains, six or seven thousand feet in height, and in many places hundreds of miles in width, and traverse a vast extent of ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... a wooden trap-door which had a ring placed in the middle evidently for the purpose of lifting it. Frank gave it a heft, but the weight was too much for even his wiry muscles; but when Ben and, Harry assisted him the door gave with a jump that threw them all to ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... knew the way; she remembered the summer— oh, so long ago!—when she and Nannie had driven over that sandy road along the beach on their way to Mrs. Richie's house. It was so deep with mud now that sometimes she had to walk outside the wheel-ruts into the wiry beach-grass. The road toiled among the dunes; on the shore on her right she could hear the creaming lap of the waves; but rain was driving in from the sea in an impenetrable curtain, and only when in some turn of the wind it lifted and shifted could ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... wiry, and very active man did not usually fall into these fits of total enervation excepting in the daytime, for after sundown a wonderful change would come over the gray-headed veteran, who nevertheless still displayed much youthful energy in the exercise of his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... with features similar but not so pronounced, and eyes intensely blue. He had his father's humorous mouth modified and softened, and to the old man's look of stubborn strength he added something which suggested more imagination and sensitiveness. He appeared in excellent condition, wiry and vigorous, his skin tanned from five days ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell |
