"Sleek" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... doomsday book. There is also Guy's well, where this renowned champion was accustomed to slake his thirst, which is described by Leland as follows, it still remaining in the same state as it was then—"The silver wells in the meadows were enclosed with pure white sleek stones, like marble, and a pretty house, erected like a cage, one end only open, to keep comers from the rain." The apartments under the chapel, where the chantry priests were used to reside, still remain entire, without having undergone ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... Brunbelois, 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 ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... trickeries which he continually conceived, and which his troop undertook to carry out. A chronicler of the time says, that by means of certain herbs which he gave to a half-starved horse, he made him into a fat and sleek animal; the horse was then sold at one of the neighbouring fairs or markets, but the purchaser detected the fraud within a week, for the horse soon became thin again, and ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... The sleek, lean warship was knifing the waters at 22 knots. It was like looking at a picture—a moving picture—and all was beautifully distinct. Our commander consulted a card, decided the speed of the warship, and then again propped his head ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... or they'll take you for a tramp,' observed Harry; but at that moment Mysie broke in with a shout at having discovered the kittens making a plaything of the best library pen-wiper, their mother, the sleek Begum, abetting them, and they were borne off to display the coming glories of their ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the inn at Lichfield, in league with the highwaymen. This sleek, jolly publican is fond of the cant phrase, "as the saying is." Thus, "Does your master stay in town, as the saying is?" "So well, as the saying is, I could wish we had more of them." "I'm old Will Boniface; pretty well known upon this road, as the saying ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... eastern sky, it sparkled and glistened. Impassive it stood, graceful, seeming to strain into the sky, anxious to be off and gone. The loading gantry was a dark, spidery framework beside The Ship, leaning against it, drawing strength from its sleek beauty. ...
— Sound of Terror • Don Berry
... yards of the side of a fat sleek animal, and slowly raised his pistol. The trappers held their breath, and Bertram uttered a low groan of anxiety. One moment more and a white puff was followed by a loud crack, and a bellow, as the horror-stricken ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... judgment might amount to, the pony was brought out. He was larger than Loupe, and had not Loupe's peculiar symmetry of mane and tail: he was a fat dumpy little fellow, sleek and short, dapple grey, with a good long tail and a mild eye. Preston declared he had no shape at all and was a poor concern of a pony; but to my eyes he was beautiful. He took one or two sugarplums from my hand with as much amenity as if we ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... flinging along the face of the waters great shafts of lambent gold and orange, that split into a thousand particles of shimmering light as the ripples caught them up and played with them, and finally tossed them back again to the sun from the shining curve of a wave's sleek side. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... corner like some one of importance, here comes a sleek and tawny mastiff, with the silvery tinkle of a trinket which gleams on his neck. He is proclaiming and preceding his young mistress, Mademoiselle Evelyn de Monthyon, who is riding her pony. The little girl caracoles sedately, ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... did come back, glowing, dripping, laughing, her head as sleek as a young seal's, salt upon her lips and on her wave-whipped cheek. Spence, whose swims were shorter and more sedate, ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... consisting of so few persons. The principal individual in the group was a florid, fat, happy-looking gentleman of about fifty, with a profusion of nearly white whiskers, which met at his chin, mounted upon a sleek charger, whose half-ambling, half-prancing pace, had evidently been acquired by long habit of going in procession; this august figure was habited in a scarlet coat and cocked hat, having aiguillettes, and all the other ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... of a touchin' meetin', I expect," remarked Mrs. Lem, lifting her pompadour and sighing sentimentally. Judge Trent had surprised her in a state of sleek and simple coiffure; but no sooner had his high hat disappeared down the hill than she flew into the bedroom and remedied the modest workaday appearance of her head; nor would the pompadour abate one half inch of its majestic proportions until he ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... speaking with an effort. "If flesh counts, of course he is. 'Let me have men about me that are fat; sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights.' To look at Ryde, one would fancy he slept well, not only by night ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... starved with hunger, chanced to meet a well-fed Dog, and as they stopped to salute each other, "Pray," {said the Wolf}, "how is it that you are so sleek? or on what food have you made so much flesh? I, who am far stronger, am perishing with hunger." The Dog frankly {replied}: "You may enjoy the same condition, if you can render the like service to your ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... an old one I picked up in the Fife lines, I have in common with the sharer of my blanket shelter derived infinite entertainment from an article therein contained, entitled "Feeding the Fighting Man." Of course, it is illustrated with photographs, the first one depicting a sleek and stiff Yeomanic-looking, khaki-clad being standing by the side of a swagger little drawing-table covered with a fringed tablecloth, and obviously groaning under what we learn are the gentleman's daily rations. Apart from the article, ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... 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 ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... convoy of army planes had taken off and was circling over the 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 ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... thrown her bonnet by; And her feet she has been dipping In the shallow water's flow— Now she holds them nakedly In her hands, all sleek and dripping, While ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... costermonger to bestride his long-ear'd Arabian, and belabor his panting sides with merciless stick and iron-shod heels to impel him to the goal in the mimic race—or the sleek and polish'd courtier to lick the dust of his superiors' feet to obtain a paltry ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... he usually took away with him from the feasts of the rich which he attended. He lacked the power to make the most of his opportunities. The ability to cultivate acquaintances, to push his way into a good place in this sleek company of the well-to-do,—an ability characteristically American,—he was utterly without. It would be better for him, he reflected with depression, to return to Marion, Ohio, or some similar side-track of the world, or to reenter the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... grew wide with wonder, comprehending the sleek, pretty face of a Chinese girl of about her own age who, with eyes downcast, demure mouth and folded hands, submissively ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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
... the fresh-sprinkled straw, The young pettitoes scampered away; And they rooted and burrowed and hid, Then all quiet a minute they lay: Soon their pink-pointed, noses peeped out; Then their bodies, so plump and so sleek. Oh the glad little piggies, the mad little piggies— How they snuffle ...
— The Nursery, June 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... not until the first of the two heavy handsome old-fashioned carriages, drawn by fine, sleek horses, was beginning to crawl up a very steep hill that its occupants began to take an interest in those who ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... seen better days, and whom necessity obliged to deny himself the 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
... cost our horses much exertion to drag the limbers up the steep, slippery trail. It was curious to notice the difference between those who dwelt along the bank and the inhabitants of the upland plateau. The latter appeared distinctly more "outlandish" and less sleek and prosperous. The highlands we found veiled in mist, and as I looked back at the dim outlines of horse and man and caisson, it seemed as if I ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... out, and his mate came down the narrow alleyway from the after-cabin. He was a tall, lean, smooth-faced man, with moist black hair that was partly sleek and shining, partly bristling out in straggling wisps. His face was dewy, and his eyes perpetually blinking. Cospatric asked him to play something. He peered at me for a moment or two as though taking my measure, and then went ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... vanished together, and it was all one cold, dazzling white. "Oh, how glorious!" Ellen almost shouted to herself. It was too cold to stand still; she ran to the barnyard to see the cows milked. There they were all her old friends Streaky and Dolly, and Jane and Sukey, and Betty Flynn sleek and contented; winter and summer were all the same to them. And Mr. Van Brunt was very glad to see her there again, and Sam Larkens and Johnny Low looked as if they were too, and Ellen told them with great truth she was very ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... collar was like porcelain, the single pearl he wore in his white scarf was so perfect that it might have been false. His light hair and moustache were very smoothly brushed and combed and his face was exasperatingly sleek. There was a look of conscious security about him, of overwhelming correctness and good taste, of pride in himself and in his success, which Beatrice felt to be almost more than she could bear with equanimity. He bent gracefully over the Marchesa's ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... can help it," answered Mrs. Stoddard; "we'll not drive the creature back and forth while the British are about. I can slip over the hill with a bucket and milk her night and morning. She's gentle, and there's no need of letting the pirates see how sleek and fat the ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... And Party passion own thy soft control, In thy saloons the Lord of War Muffles the wheels of his wild car, And drops his thirsty lance at thy command. Smoothed by a snowy hand, Aquila's self, the fierce and feathered king, With sleek-pruned plumes, and close-furled wing Will calmly cackle, and put by The terrors of his beak, the lightnings of his eye. Thine the voice, the dance obey; Tempered to thy pleasant sway, Blue and Buff, Orange and Green, In polychromatic harmony are seen, As on a bright ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... usual but perfectly calm, his head bent a little to one side and his smooth hair, which had been slightly ruffled in the encounter in the park, as smooth as ever. It was a very distinctive feature of him; it was part of the sleek and spotless neatness which Mrs. Ambrose ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... valleys which beautify the State of Maryland, none is more charming than the one through which the Antietam winds its tortuous course. Looking from some elevation down upon its green fields, where herds of sleek cattle graze, its yellow harvests glowing and ripening in the September sun; its undulating meadows and richly laden orchards; its comfortable farm houses, some standing out boldly upon eminences, which rise here and there, others half hidden by vines or fruit trees; ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... bright soul and a dark soul. It is black and golden, slim and strong, cat and dog. 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 ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... gemstones] lapidary, lapidarian. V. smooth, smoothen^; plane; file; mow, shave; level, roll; macadamize; polish, burnish, calender^, glaze; iron, hot-press, mangle; lubricate &c (oil) 332. Adj. smooth; polished &c v.; leiodermatous^, slick, velutinous^; even; level &c 213; plane &c (flat) 251; sleek, glossy; silken, silky; lanate^, downy, velvety; glabrous, slippery, glassy, lubricous, oily, soft, unwrinkled^; smooth as glass, smooth as ice, smooth as monumental alabaster, smooth as velvet, smooth as oil; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Percy Shanklyn was a sleek, suave, unpleasant youth who had been imported by a theatrical manager two years before to play the part of an English dude in a new comedy. The comedy had been what its enthusiastic backer had described in the newspaper advertisements as a "rousing live-wire success." That is to say, ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... bravely through the ceremony as the father of the bride, and bore himself with his usual massive, rude dignity. But he inwardly winced as he saw Elga, looking very stately and beautiful in her bride's veil, towering half a head above the sleek-haired little clerk. Not a few of the company smiled at the contrast, but she had no other feeling than perfect love ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... battered covers and torn pages. She probably meant to finish them after tea. The book of American gems was in its usual place on the shelf. The temptation was irresistible. Ulyth did not notice, as she was taking it down, that someone with a smooth head of sleek fair hair was peeping round the corner of the door, and that a pair of not too friendly blue eyes were watching the deed. If flying footsteps whisked along the corridor and out into the garden, she was blissfully unconscious of the fact. She took the volume ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... he was 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
... white eyes, black-and-tan ears, and tail as long and smooth as a policeman's night-club;—one of those sleek and shining dogs with powerful chest and knotted legs, a little bowed in front, black lips, and dazzling, fang-like teeth. He was spattered with brown spots, and sported a single white foot. Altogether, he was a dog of quality, of ancestry, of a certain position ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... passed people in the street, she saw again and again as new arrivals appeared. Kathryn was quite excited by her eyes and eyelashes and George hovered about. There was a great deal of hovering. At the dinner table sleek young heads held themselves at an angle which allowed of their owners seeing through or around, or under floral decorations and alert young eyes showed an eager gleam. After dinner was over and dancing ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... any thing that he had no special affinity for, it was for French things. He had small opinion of French morals, and French ways in general; but then at this moment he saw his Lillie, whom, but half an hour before, he found all pale and tear-drenched, now radiant and joyous, sleek as a humming-bird, with the light in her eyes, and the rattle on the tip of her tongue; and he felt so delighted to see her bright and gay and joyous, that he would have turned his house into the Jardin Mabille, ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... danced for the head of John the Baptist, and where now the prisoners were caged. There was a marked difference between the condition of the Turkish prisoners and that of the Germans: the former were ragged, half-starved, and yellow with privation and fatigue, but all the Germans I saw were sleek, well-clad, and bearing every sign of good living. It was impossible to cage them together, for they fought like cats with each other on every possible occasion, and caused endless trouble to the guards, who had to go amongst them with the bayonet in ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... speak of is to cast out the demagogue. They are the fellows that are the curse of both and of all political parties. We have had them from the days of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony down to date. [Laughter.] These smooth, sleek, mellifluous-tongued fellows that always have the same blood-stained garment to hold up before the populace, and some forged will to read, whereby the people were to get great legacies which they never could ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... way down the ramp, Hendricks, Artur, and the three Zenians following. As we came out into the daylight, a silent shadow fell across the great avenue that ran before the entrance, and there, barely clearing the shining roof of the auditorium, was the sleek, fat bulk of the Ertak. Correy had wasted no ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... machine shop, where giant cannon were forged into smooth, sleek instruments of death, came noise: unchecked, unmuffled, blasphemous din. But something odd was afoot. There was a sudden hush. It seemed as if a giant hand had covered the metal city to muffle ...
— The Whispering Spheres • Russell Robert Winterbotham
... warm morning at the end of May two horses were brought to Obrutchanovo to the village blacksmith, Rodion Petrov. They came from the New Villa. The horses were sleek, graceful beasts, as white as snow, and ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... desert-like valleys of the West! Land which under Nature's treatment supports only a scanty growth of sagebrush or greasewood, and over which a few half-starved cattle have roamed, becomes, when irrigated, covered with green fields and neat homes, while sleek, well-fed herds graze upon the rich alfalfa. Ten acres of irrigated land will in many places support a family, where without irrigation a square ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... eloquent that one could almost see the sleepers stretching themselves in turn, blinking heavy lids, and rubbing dishevelled locks like so many sleek, lazy kittens. For a moment no one spoke, then ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... feet shall rock those floors in wrath, Or blest aspersion sleek His path, Is only choice ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... time he is lean and wan, like a patient in the last stage of consumption: you could count his teeth through his cheeks; you would say he must have passed some days without tasting a morsel, or that he is fresh from La Trappe. A month after, he is stout and sleek as if he had been sitting all the time at the board of a financier, or had been shut up in a Bernardine monastery. To-day in dirty linen, his clothes torn and patched, with barely a shoe to his foot, he steals along ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... said the Queen to the clown, "and let me stroke your dear cheeks, and stick musk-roses in your smooth, sleek head, and kiss your fair large ears, ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... a man of less than medium height, with grey hair and beard, powerfully built and with a sleek, well-groomed appearance. Hat in hand, and with many bows and smiles, he addressed a few remarks to the lady, who answered him courteously, but with obvious condescension. Then he came on to me, and his manner was very different indeed. The dapper little ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... breath for a shout which should make itself heard above the roar of the wind and water, when a strange appearance on the face of the cliff made him pause. About six feet from him—glowing like molten gold in the gusty glow of the burning tree—a round sleek stream of water slipped from the rock into the darkness, like a serpent from its hole. Above this stream a dark spot defied the torchlight, and John Rex felt his heart leap with one last desperate hope as he comprehended ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... 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 feeding and ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... and slim, with a springing step and a very graceful bow; his sleek hair was brushed across a rather bald head, and he had a long reddish nose. He carried a small fiddle, on which he was able to play while he was executing the most agile and difficult steps for the benefit of his pupils. On that day, and ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... by no means raw, Had seen a horse, the first he ever saw: "Ho! neighbour wolf," said he to one quite green, "A creature in our meadow I have seen,— Sleek, grand! I seem to see him yet,— The finest beast I ever met." "Is he a stouter one than we?" The wolf demanded, eagerly; "Some picture of him let me see." "If I could paint," said fox, "I should delight T' anticipate your pleasure at the sight; But come; who knows? perhaps it is a prey ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... soldiers in this city. In consideration of this attempt to forestall the action of this Legislature, I offer an amendment to the bill now under consideration, by adding after the word 'ratio' the words 'as it existed on the 1st day of July, 1865.' In this way we shall cut off any action which these sleek gentlemen may have taken yesterday. It is now evident that these railroad gentlemen have set a trap for this Legislature; and I propose that we now spring the trap, and see if we cannot catch these wily railroad directors in it. Mr. Speaker, I move ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... the descent of goods from a hatchway at the end of its tense rope. Salesmen were calling, trucks were trundling, shipping clerks and porters were replying. One brawny fellow he saw, through the glass, take a herring from a broken box, and stop to feed it to a sleek, brindled mouser. Even the cat was valued; but he—he stood there absolutely zero. He saw it. He saw it as he never had seen it before in his life. This truth smote him like a javelin: that all this world wants is a man's permission to do without him. Right then ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... North British Railway would allow a glimpse, the country towns and villages of the north appeared to be swarming with Territorials in khaki. A painful sight at some of the stations was the number of restive horses forced into the railway trucks by troopers — beautiful, well-fed animals whose sleek appearance showed that they were unaccustomed to the rough life to which the Tommies were leading them. Further, it was sad to think that these noble creatures by their size were to be rendered easy targets for ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... party in Paris manifested itself in a variety of ways. At the principal theatre an uncouth pantomime was exhibited, in which his Catholic Majesty was introduced upon the stage, leading by a halter a sleek cow, typifying the Netherlands. The animal by a sudden effort, broke the cord, and capered wildly about. Alexander of Parma hastened to fasten the fragments together, while sundry personages, representing the states-general, seized ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the rocks again, side by side. While they stood over the prostrate form of the leopard—beautiful, incomparably graceful and sleek even in death—Guy Oscard stole a sidelong glance at his companion. He was a modest man, and yet he knew that he was reckoned among the big-game hunters of the age. This man had fired as quickly as himself, and there were two small trickling ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... at the place of entertainment. As he entered the gay ball-room, his lofty plumage swayed grandly and a glittering tomahawk shone from his girdle. The scene that met his eyes was resplendent with life and beauty. Masked figures were flitting by, clad in every imaginable garb. Here was a sleek-faced friar, rotund and merry; there, a gypsy maid, or mild-eyed shepherdess with her stave. Lonely hermits and whimsical jesters, cackling witches, and members of a pilgrim band—all thronged together with laugh or grimace, adding their own peculiar ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... Let me 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 ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... and he was eating SNAKES. If I found Pat Ryan eating a snake, it would frighten me so I would stand still and let him eat me, if he wanted to, and perhaps he wasn't too crazy to see how plump I was. I seemed to see swarthy, dark faces, big, sleek cats dropping from limbs, and Paddy Ryan's matted gray hair, the flying rags of the old blue coat, and a snake in his hands. Laddie was slipping the letter into my apron pocket. My knees threatened to let ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... accepted this permission, and had before him a large plate of corned-beef, with a goodly tankard of beer. Mr. John Molyneux, although he was a great authority among English workmen generally, and especially among the trades-unionists of the North, had little about him of the appearance of the sleek-haired demagogue as that person is usually represented to us. He was a stout, yeoman-looking man, with a frosty-red face and short silver-white whiskers; he had keen, shrewd blue eyes, and a hand that gave a firm grip. The fact is, that Molyneux had in early life been a farmer, ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... suddenly the quick eye of Romescos discovered the white smoke curling above the green foliage! "See! see!" he whispers again, motioning his hand behind, as Bengal stretches his neck, and looks eagerly in the same direction. "Close dogs-close!" he demands, and the dogs crouch back, and coil their sleek bodies at the horses' feet. There, little more than a mile ahead, the treacherous smoke curls lazily upward, spreading a white haze in the blue atmosphere. Daddy Bob has a rude camp there. A few branches serve for a covering, the bare moss is his bed; the fires of ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... She'd been ready for weeks. There wasn't a mechanical or electronic flaw in her. We hoped, I hoped, the man who designed her hoped. The Doll's father—he hoped most of all. Even lying quiescent in her hangar, she looked as sleek as a Napoleon hat done in poured monel. When your eyes went over her you knew instinctively they'd thrown the mach numbers out the window ...
— The Very Black • Dean Evans
... sun. His forearms were almost as large as a man's body; the three largest of his five knifelike claws were five and a half inches long; in the mud his feet had left tracks that were fifteen inches from tip to tip. He was fat, and sleek, and powerful. His eyes, no larger than hickory nuts, were eight inches apart. His two upper fangs, sharp as stiletto points, were as long as a man's thumb, and between his great jaws he could crush the ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... cut an armful of willow sticks wherewith to coax Chub to a little brisker pace, and then we took the trail of the departed mess-wagon. Shortly, we topped a low range of hills, and beyond, in a cuplike valley, was the herd of sleek beauties feeding contentedly on the lush green grass. I suppose it sounds odd to hear desert and river in the same breath, but within a few feet of the river the desert begins, where nothing grows but ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... notion of that sallow, wan face of his? I wish the Academie would give me leave to dub such faces the lunar type. It was like silver-gilt, with the gilt rubbed off. His hair was iron-gray, sleek, and carefully combed; his features might have been cast in bronze; Talleyrand himself was not more impassive than this money-lender. A pair of little eyes, yellow as a ferret's, and with scarce an eyelash to them, peered out from under the sheltering peak of a shabby old cap, as if ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... stonework and curtained windows of the Anglo-Southern Steamship Company's office did not invite any Mr. Wrenns to come in and ship, nor did the hall porter, a beefy person with a huge collar and sparse painfully sleek hair, whose eyes were like cold boiled mackerel as ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... I never gave him a chance," she responded. "He's a sly one, too, padding around the offices like a cat, in his soft slippers; and he looks for all the world like a cat, with the sleek white whiskers of him! Excuse me, Miss Lawton, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but he's trying, the old gentleman is! I think he got suspicious of me when Margaret Hefferman made such a botch of her ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... she concluded, shaking her sleek, black head at the Lockwood twins. "You bumped right ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... at her 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 ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sailor approached the Witch's door, a young fur seal, who had been basking in a little pool left along the beach by the tide, hastened out of his puddle, and running swiftly toward him on his flappers, nuzzled his hand with his sleek, wet head, just like a ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... and glassy, the other lively and bright; he seemed to keep that dead eye for the bill-discounting part of his profession, and the other for the trade in the pornographic curiosities upstairs. A few stray white hairs escaping from under a small, sleek, rusty black wig, stood erect above a sallow forehead with a suggestion of menace about it; a hollow trench in either cheek defined the outline of the jaws; while a set of projecting teeth, still white, seemed to stretch the skin of ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... leading. What will, perhaps, most strike Europeans are the bullock gharries by which the heavy traffic of the town is carried on. These are carts curiously shaped and often carved, with large and very wide-rimmed wheels. They are drawn by a pair of Indian bullocks, sleek cream-coloured beasts with mild and patient eyes, and often bearing enormous horns, which, somewhat after the shape of a lyre, stand ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... Nagasaki holding a great clandestine orgy! In an apartment as bare as my own, there are a dozen of them, seated in a circle on the ground, attired in long blue cotton dresses with pagoda sleeves, long, sleek, and greasy hair surmounted by European pot-hats; and beneath these, yellow, worn-out, bloodless, foolish faces. On the floor are a number of little spirit-lamps, little pipes, little lacquer trays, little teapots, little cups-all the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... account-book and bags of specie. A deep obeisance and a scrape of the foot accompanied each payment, and many a giggle was given to the lazy one whose small payment testified to his indolence. What a contrast between those happy, sleek, laughing faces and the sullen, careworn, ill-fed ones of now! In the early springtime, what was known as the "trash-gang," that is, boys and girls who had never worked, were set to clearing up fences, knocking down cotton stalks, and burning small ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... "Sir," said the sleek-looking agent, approaching the desk of the meek, meaching-looking man and opening one of those folding thingumjigs showing styles of binding, "I believe I can interest you in this massive set of books containing the speeches of the world's greatest ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... that he would presently receive the merchant—who came well recommended—had retired to recreate himself, and was now engaged in a game of draughts, heedless of those whom he kept waiting. He reclined on a divan covered with a sleek lioness' skin, while his young antagonist sat opposite on a low stool, The doors of the room, facing the Nile, where he received petitioners were left half open to admit the fresher but still warm evening-air. The ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... deception, ladies and gentlemen, all is peace, a holy calm pervades me.' So did his hair, just grizzled with an iron-gray, which was all brushed off his forehead, and stood bolt upright, or slightly drooped in kindred action with his heavy eyelids. So did his person, which was sleek though free from corpulency. So did his manner, which was soft and oily. In a word, even his plain black suit, and state of widower, and dangling double eye-glass, all tended to the same purpose, and cried ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... fitting persons? Is there even the simplest formula of preparatory examination? None! Two wholly unsuited people may rush into marriage—and misery—any day by simply presenting themselves before a sleek-faced person who mumbles drowsily over their clasped hands, and calls it a vow before God!—as he hurries ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... her robe several small vials a few inches long. They were tightly stoppered. The feel of them was cool and sleek; they seemed of some strange, polished metal. Some of them were tinted black while the others glowed opalescent. She gave each of us one vial of ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... grins, pathetic, sometimes not without a suggestion of humour. That the German Marine should be told off in a pretty rural district to round up cattle for food for the German troops is a case in point. The sleek and shapely kine which these sturdy fellows are commandeering plod peacefully along in happy ignorance of the fact that they are prisoners of war being led to their doom by an armed guard. If it were not ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 15, Nov. 18, 1914 • Various
... bridle-rein to the required length, took a firm grip on Pirate's mane, and vaulted into the saddle. Pirate stood perfectly still. He shook his head. James talked to him and patted his sleek neck, and touched him gently with his heel. Then things livened up a bit. Pirate waltzed, reared, plunged, and started to do the pas seul on the flower-beds. Then he immediately changed his mind. He decided to re-enter ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... came a slight, small figure. It was, I felt positive, Vicky Van herself! I couldn't mistake that sleek, black head—she wore no hat—or those short, full skirts, that she always wore. She looked about cautiously, and then with swift motions she unlocked the letter-box that was beside her front door, ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... shade to shade, expiring at every step, and finally, at the base of the hill, on the brink of the swamp, discovered a rill of tepid water, that evaporated before it had trickled a hundred yards. If a sleek and venomous water-snake—for there were thousands of them hereabout—had coiled in the channel, I would still have sucked the draught, bending down as I did. Then I bethought me of my pony. He had neither been fed nor watered for twenty hours, and I hastened ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... Sun" in Meek Street, there was nothing of the policeman about him. He might probably have been taken for a betting man, with whom the world had latterly gone well enough to enable him to maintain that sleek, easy, greasy appearance which seems to be the beau-ideal of a betting man's personal ambition. "Well, Mr. Howard," said the lady at the bar, "a sight of you ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... majority of his fellows who made fighting a business, had a contemptuous indifference to the clerical class. A blessing or a curse was alike of little consequence to men who feared neither God, man, nor Devil, and who would as readily strip a sleek priest as a good, fat merchant. Raynor's words were blunt and to the point. He knew nothing of the Abbot except through the gossip of the camp and guard-room, and that made him a cadet of a noble family of the South of England, who for some unknown reason had, in early manhood, ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... his. Brown—deep brown it is, like bronze, and clean-shaved (not rough and scrubby), with dark grey eyes (I knew at once they were grey because the light struck into them) rimmed with black lashes, so long you couldn't help noticing them; black eyebrows and hair short and sleek like Stan's, or any other well-groomed man one knows. Besides, commonness shows in people's mouths more than anywhere else; it's hard to define, but it's there; and this man's mouth is the best part of his face—unless it's the chin; ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... come in from the country are generally very picturesque, with a network of crimson silk tassels over their heads, and a bright-coloured manta thrown across their sleek, glossy backs. These mantas serve many purposes; they are made of two breadths of brightly striped and ornamented material of wool and silk, sewn up at one end, or sometimes for some distance at each end, like a purse; sometimes they are thrown across the mule to serve as saddle-bags, ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... sleek-browed sleeper? 'Tis the Great Pooh-pooh, The 'Mugwump' of the Weekly Whillaloo, A most superior creature; Too high for pity and too cold for wrath; The pride of dawdlers on the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... occurred to Margaret Ransom that she was sitting in the shade. She supposed that the full light of the chandeliers was beating on her face—and there were moments when it seemed as though all the heads about the great horse-shoe below, bald, shaggy, sleek, close-thatched, or thinly latticed, were equipped with an additional pair of eyes, set at an angle which enabled them to rake her face as ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... home. The American bird, who is bigger and stands on a bigger rock, is sleek enough except about the head which is a bit ruffled. But he is more of a raven than an eagle in his sable plumes of professional cut, and he is obviously not at ease. He does not look the other in the face. He stares straight in front of him ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... brought him over-seas to Sicily, I must needs come too, for my wry wit diverts him and my wry body sets off his comeliness. I plumed myself on my favor, but I was bottle-brave last night, and I blundered. In my cups I aped the King's airs and graces to a covey of court strumpets till their sleek sides creaked with laughter. 'Thus does King Robert carry himself,' jigged I, 'and thus does he kiss a lady's hand—fa, la, la!' Oh, it ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the city, now seen clearly from the deck and as the Baserite ship righted itself, Mike saw similar ships—sleek metal fighters, rising from a port near ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... fire. And although his satire is often almost inconceivably coarse, the prompting instinct is healthy at bottom. He hates Vice, although his hand is too often in the kennel to pelt her withal. He lays his grasp on the bridle-rein of the sleek prelate, and upbraids him with his secret sins in language unsuited to modern ears. His greater satires have a wild sheen of imagination about them. They are far from being cold, moral homilies. His wrath or his contempt breaks through the bounds of time and space, and brings ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... in search of, and, heading his horse into it, he parted from the shadow of the bluffs, and rode out under the full moonlight. This, shining down upon him, showed a young man of fine proportions, dressed in ranchero costume, and mounted upon a noble steed, whose sleek black coat glittered under the silvery light. It was easy to know the rider. His bright complexion, and light-coloured hair curling thickly under the brim of his sombrero, were characteristics not ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... self-contempt. Then, when the edge of his bitter disappointment wore away, he made another dreadful discovery. He still loved her and longed for her just as keenly as before. He wanted madly to see her—her flower-like face, her great, asking eyes, the sleek, braided flow of her hair. Ghost or woman—spirit or flesh—it mattered not. He could not live without her. At last his hunger for her drew him to the old grey house on the bay shore. He knew he ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... The normal being is sleek by nature. It's only when he cramps himself that he gets wrinkled. Cramps himself, I say. Cramping from an outside source never has much effect upon him, unless he chooses to have it. No; that's not Christian Science; it's mere common sense. As a rule, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... salute,—almost with a quality of concession,—gracious as well as graceful; he would do as much for any puppy of a cadet who might drop in on the Sahib. On the other hand, lowly louteth the Baboo, with eyes downcast and palm applied reverentially to his sleek forehead. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... 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 an ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... drinking. Broderick glanced apprehensively about. The gambler's sleek form was not in evidence. McGowan came in with Casey and Mulligan. Casey, too, had been drinking. He was in an evil humor, his usually jovial face sullen ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... suck the blood Enrich'd by gen'rous wine and costly meat; On well-filled skins, sleek as thy native mud, Fix thy light pump, and press thy freckled feet. Go to the men for whom, in ocean's halls, The oyster breeds and ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... and all the Nobility; and the nonchalance with which he hurries over the more uncomfortable portions of the service, the seventh commandment for instance, with a studied regard for the taste and feeling of his auditors, only to be equalled by that displayed by the sleek divine who succeeds him, who murmurs, in a voice kept down by rich feeding, most comfortable doctrines for exactly twelve minutes, and then arrives at the anxiously expected 'Now to God,' which is the signal for the dismissal ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... these days—a beautiful butterfly like the frontispiece of that nature book—but he got into bad company and got 'stung.' Now, instead of hatching a butterfly, out comes this robber fly, a long, lean, sleek-looking fellow that has been living for weeks on the body of that poor caterpillar, and we didn't know it. You want to watch out who you run with, fellows, or you're liable to turn out 'Ichneumon men' instead of gentlemen." He laughed as ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... 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 the colonists—but sensations of friendship and good will could ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... well-made figure, a face clean-shaven and deeply sun-burnt, and under the lifted hat caught a glimpse of sleek black hair. But when she saw his eyes, she knew his name, for they were the bluest she ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... fixture—No! "Tolerate" is too harsh a word; but another might be too weak. The truth is, men do not care half so much what they get, as how they get it. The wolf in Aesop's fable keenly wanted a share of the bones which made his friend the mastiff so sleek; but the hint that the bones and the collar went together drove him hungry but free back to his desert. It is of no avail to give a man all he asks for; he resents having to ask you for it, and wants to know by what right you have ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... great astonishment, I saw a stout and apparently powerful man discarded by Ormond as utterly worthless. His full muscles and sleek skin, to my unpractised eye, denoted the height of robust health. Still, I was told that he had been medicated for the market with bloating drugs, and sweated with powder and lemon-juice to impart a gloss to his skin. Ormond remarked that these jockey-tricks are as ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... back to the Legation and stop with us while you see something of the war. I can take you to within one hundred and fifty miles of the firing line and show you the crack regiments of Germany looking as happy and sleek as if they were merely out for one of the yearly manoeuvres. I would have difficulty, though, in showing you any of the wounded, as they are very careful to see that we are not offended by any of the horrors that one reads of in the ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... together with a thousand and one other things that displayed themselves from floor to ceiling; amidst which, Mr. Ravenslee observed a stir, a slight confusion, and from a screen of vivid-bosomed shirts a head protruded itself, round as to face and sleek as to hair. ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... is now three centuries since an English pig has fallen in a fair battle upon English ground, or a farm-house been rifled, or a clergyman's wife been subjected to any other proposals of love than the connubial endearments of her sleek and orthodox mate. The old edition of Plutarch's Lives, which lies in the corner of your parlour window, has contributed to work you up to the most romantic expectations of our Roman behaviour. You are persuaded that Lord Amherst ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... between the two men was extreme. Each was precisely what the other was not. The one, long, angular, loose-jointed; the other, tight, trim, small, and compact. The one osseous, the other sleek; the one stoop-shouldered, the other erect as a corporal ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... himself, bending over the pages with every appearance of absorption. Her face was hidden from view, and all that could be seen was a trim little figure in a trim white gown, a pair of trim little feet, a sleek brown head, and a well-rounded cheek. No one could deny that it was a pleasing figure, but the lordly stranger was too much ruffled in his feelings to be influenced by appearances. His manner was perhaps a trifle less haughty than it would have been, had ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey |
