"Wiry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... clumsy imitations of foraging-caps with furs—preferring, if the weather be warm, to go about without any head-dress at all; or, if it be cold, using the large hood of their capotes as a covering. They are thin, wiry men, not generally very muscular in their proportions, but yet capable of enduring great fatigue. Their average height is about five feet five inches; and one rarely meets with individuals varying much from this average, nor with deformed people, ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... at last visible, their backs to Val. Nervously he sized them up. The Boss was tall and thin, but his movements suggested possession of wiry strength. Red, his brick-colored hair making him easy to identify, was shorter and thick across the shoulders, but his waistline was also thick and the boy thought that his wind was bad. Of the two, the Boss was the more dangerous. Red might lose his head in a sudden ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... Gyp, his wiry arms, and legs flying in more directions than seemed possible, his shoes, that were many sizes too large for him, clattering on the hard-trodden earth of ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... straggled oily and tangled locks of glossy black. His face was long, narrow, hook-nosed and sinister; his eyes, as I have described them, a steady and beady black. I could at first glance ascribe great activity, but only moderate strength to his slender, wiry figure. In this I was mistaken. His sheer physical power was second only to that of Captain Selover. One of his forearms ended in a steel hook. At the moment I could not understand this; could not see ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... lady first, Miss Mybus was indignant at the resigned manner in which the police accepted their defeat. She was a little bright-eyed wiry woman; and she spoke her ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... that a thin, poor soil grows little but weeds. I am inclined to think that the substratum is the same, and that the only choice in this world is what kind of weeds you will have. I am not much attracted by the gaunt, flavorless mullein, and the wiry thistle of upland country pastures, where the grass is always gray, as if the world were already weary and sick of life. The awkward, uncouth wickedness of remote country-places, where culture has ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... active and wiry; but the cramped life and squalid worry of a year-in year-out, semi-detached, suburban existence had, as he told himself, played the mischief with his nerves, and now to this was added the ghastly vista of ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... atone for its triangular shape by the noble mien of an elevated mind, and his low forehead indicated only extreme energy. Life seemed to centre in his chest, which was rather hollow. More nervous than sanguine, Cristophe's bodily appearance was thin and threadlike, but wiry. His pointed noise expressed the shrewdness of the people, and his countenance revealed an intelligence capable of conducting itself well on a single point of the circumference, without having the ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... have worked with them on the round-up. Like most cowboys, they carried 44-calibre Colt revolvers, and were accustomed to and fairly expert in their use, and they were mounted on ordinary cow-ponies—quick, wiry, plucky little beasts. In one case the bear was seen from quite a distance, lounging across a broad table-land. The cowboy, by taking advantage of a winding and rather shallow coulie, got quite close to him. He then scrambled out of the coulie, put spurs to his pony, and raced up to ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... into the counting-room late one evening. Loud voices had halted me as I passed the door. Mr Greeley stood back of the counter; a rather tall, wiry grey-headed man before it. Each was shaking a right fist under the other's nose. They were shouting loudly as they argued. The stranger was for war; Mr Greeley for waiting. The publisher of the Tribune stood beside the latter, smoking a pipe; a small man leaned ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... as above stated, to have labored hard, or to have worked at high tension, or in great excitement, or with mental worry, all of which tend, as long as there is health, to increase the blood pressure. These men may add weight from the age of 40 on, or they may be thin and wiry. Besides the hypertension there is likely to be a too sturdily acting heart, which is often hypertrophied, and there is an accentuated closure of the aortic valve. There may be dizziness, or no head symptoms at all. Nicotin is likely to be an ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... arrival of the St. Cyr cadets at the Gare d'Orsay station on their way to the Gare de l'Est. These young French "West Pointers" are sturdy, active, wiry little chaps, brimful of pluck, intelligence, and determination. They carried their bags and boxes in their hands, and their overcoats were neatly folded bandlire fashion from the right shoulder to the left hip. Then came a couple of hundred requisitioned horses ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... called Du Mesne; and in response there arose from the shadows a wiry little Frenchman, who might have been of any age from twenty to forty-five, so sun-burnt and wrinkled, yet so active and ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... Guenic was a tall, straight, wiry, lean old man. His oval face was lined with innumerable wrinkles, which formed a net-work over his cheek-bones and above his eyebrows, giving to his face a resemblance to those choice old men whom Van Ostade, Rembrandt, Mieris, and Gerard Dow so loved to paint, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... to stones interspersed with patches of wiry grass on which browsed some hardy sheep, resembled a disturbed ocean suddenly made solid. It was not level, but ran in long, almost regular undulations. In the trough between two of these rounded ridges the road bifurcated, the way to Bristol ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... eyes, he met the gaze of a man sitting directly opposite, a man who somehow did not seem exactly in harmony with his surroundings. He was short and stockily built, with round rosy face, and a perfect shock of wiry hair brushed back from a broad forehead; his nose wide but stubby, and chin massive. Apparently he was between forty and fifty years of age, exceedingly well dressed, his gray eyes shrewd and full of a grim humor. Keith ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... athletic young man, who had borne a captain's commission in Papineau's patriot army. He rode a sorel horse—a great, wiry raw-bone, with a lunge like a moose, and legs that struck the ground with the precision of a piston-rod. As soon as his nose was turned towards Bonaventure he smelt the wind of home in his nostrils; his hatchet head ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... promises are faithfully kept." It was the day when he had left Hannibal. His mother, Jane Clemens, a resolute, wiry woman of forty-nine, had put together his few belongings. Then, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hands, poked his head through the open transom. An instant later he was on the floor again. She heard him inserting a key in the lock. Almost before she could realise that it had actually happened, the door opened slowly, cautiously, and his thin wiry figure slid through what seemed to her no more than a crack. As softly ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... Meantime, some of the crew whispered among themselves in applause of their ship-mate's nerve; but the greater part were breathlessly silent as the keen scourge hissed through the wintry air, and fell with a cutting, wiry sound upon the mark. One dozen lashes being applied, the man was taken down, and went among the crew with a smile, saying, "D——n me! it's nothing when you're used to it! Who wants ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... first to come in, having received permission from Captain Davenant to gallop on ahead. They had met the enemy, and had inflicted a decisive defeat upon them, but the greater part had escaped, by taking to the hills on their wiry little horses, which were able to traverse bogs and quagmires impassable to the ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... 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 down one of the sage levels, looking like a narrow stream ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... asked "Freckles"—a wiry looking little fellow, with carotty locks and a freckled nose, whose leaping had ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... to the second, all right and regular. But his sufferings when the clock was going to strike were frightful to behold; and when a Cuckoo looked out of a trap-door in the Palace, and gave note six times, it shook him, each time, like a spectral voice—or like a something wiry plucking at ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... class—ladies, you call them." She accented the title, without bitterness. A cursory estimate of her appearance would have placed her in the profession of a trained nurse, or perhaps in the remotest analysis, a sewing woman of superior tastes. She was small, wiry, her head too large for her body; but the abounding nervous vitality, the harsh fire that burned in her large brown eyes, and the firm mouth would have attracted the attention of the most careless. Her mask, with its high Slavic cheek-bones and sharp Jewish nose, proclaimed ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... meant to appear at his mother's tea table. He was far 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
... we had fought. The ground was also dyed with blood for several yards round, and where it had fallen the grass was withered up to the roots, as if scorched with fire. We also picked up a cluster of hairs—long, wiry, crooked hairs, barbed at the ends like fish-hooks; also three or four scales like fish-scales, only rougher, and as large as doubloons. The spot where the fight took place is now called La Canada del Diablo, and I have heard that since that day the devil has never appeared corporeally ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... 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 safe ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... set to strike my flint and blow the match into a flame to search for the fallen candle. Yet all the time I kept in my fingers this handful of light stuff; and when the flame burnt up again I held the thing against the light, and saw that it was no wisp of seaweed, but something black and wiry. For a moment, I could not gather what I had hold of, but then gave a start that nearly sent the candle out, and perhaps a cry, and let it drop as if it were red-hot iron, for I knew that it was a ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... wiry, and almost skips some beats. I'm not much of an authority on such subjects, but I believe a boy of your age ought to have a normal pulse. Where do you expect to wind up with your 'makings' ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... clearing, two wiry little Florida ponies, tethered with rawhide ropes, browsed upon ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... ten years left an awful, bloody trail over the country. Simon Girty, the so-called White Indian, with his keen, authoritative face turned expectantly; Elliott, the Tory deserter, from Fort Pitt, a wiry, spider-like little man; and last, the gaunt and gaudily arrayed form of the demon ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... a short, thick, swarthy young gentleman, with wiry black hair, a nose somewhat flat, sharp eyes, and tusky mouth; altogether not very unlike a terrier. His tastes were unknown: he had not travelled, nor done anything very particular, except, with a few congenial ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... comes, He shall bring store of seeds and crumbs. Doubt not, so long as earth has bread, Thou first and foremost shalt be fed; The Providence that is most large Takes hearts like thine in special charge, Helps who for their own need are strong, And the sky doats on cheerful song. Henceforth I prize thy wiry chant O'er all that mass and minster vaunt; For men mis-hear thy call in Spring, As 't would accost some frivolous wing, Crying out of the hazel copse, Phe-be! And, in winter, Chic-a-dee-dee! I think old Caesar must have heard In northern Gaul my dauntless bird, And, echoed in some frosty ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the studio of William Story, whom my father had slightly known in Salem before he became a voluntary exile from America. Mr. Story was at this time a small, wiry, nervous personage, smiling easily, but as much through nervousness as from any inner source or outward provocation of mirth, and as he smiled he would stroke his cheeks, which were covered with a short, brown beard, with the fingers and thumb of his right hand, while wrinkles would ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... but looked tough and wiry; he had a sandy complexion, with light hair and mustache. He had lost one eye, the other was that light gray colour that is usually associated with indomitable nerve. He had a shrewd, rather humorous expression, and gave one the impression of ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... green valleys of the sea, now mounting aloft, like a feather floating on the ridge of some toppling surge. The old man seemed to bear a charmed life; for at all seasons, and in almost all weather, the little wiry seaman, with his short pipe in his mouth, and his noble Newfoundland dog, Neptune, in the bow of his boat, might be seen coasting along the ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... an epitome of humanity. Grandmamma, bald under her cap, was seated by the stove dandling grandchild, bald under its cap. Each was highly entertained with the other. Grandpapa was sandy with grandboy's gingerbread-crumbs. The intervening ages were well represented by wiry men and shrill women. The house, also, without being tavern or shop, was an amateur bazaar of vivers and goods. Anything one was likely to want could be had there,—even a melodeon and those inevitable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... undulating surface numerous shallow sandy ravines, in which are tufts of a herbage so coarse that, as a source of nourishment, it would be valueless to a domestic animal: nevertheless, upon this dry and wiry substance the delicate gazelles subsist; and, although they never fatten, they are exceedingly fleshy and in excellent condition. Entirely free from fat, and nevertheless a mass of muscle and sinew, the gazelle is the fastest of the ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... in less than half an hour, bringing with them a short, thin man, spare in build, but tough and wiry. His eyes were sharp and bright, and his face was shrewd and ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... summer was relegated to the corner of the room, sat Harry Hobbs, a man of any age from his appearance, thin and wiry, with keen, darting eyes, which now, however, were fastened upon the preacher. All other eyes were, too. Even the smallest of the children seated on the front bench were gazing with mouths wide open, as if fascinated, upon the preacher who, moving ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... man. He was a tall, wiry, and broad-shouldered fellow, clad in a handsome armour of bright steel that certainly had not been made for a yeoman, but over it he had a common linen smock-frock or gabardine, like our field workmen wear now or used to wear, and in his helmet ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... that this elastic and wiry action is partly connected with the plant's more or less predatory or fly-trap character, in which these curiously degraded plants are associated with Drosera. I separate them therefore entirely from the Bladderworts, and hold them to be a link between the Violets and the Droseraceae, placing them, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... thing off, his fingers closing on wiry fur as he caught and squeezed. The thing went limp, and suddenly melted in his hands. He heard it splash as it struck the damp ...
— The Dark Door • Alan Edward Nourse
... a big army cap like a huge blue extinguisher. He wrapped his wiry form in a cut-down, long-napped white beaver coat, the lapels of which were a foot square, and shingled his ankles as if he stood between a couple of placards. I had seen the latest caricature on the philosopher ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... iron grip of the young inventor was not to be shaken off so easily, and the wiry bandit found himself as helpless as an infant in the hands ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... 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 collection is known as ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... dust, but upon close examination I found a peculiar fleshy herb something like the stone-crop which grows upon the old walls and rocks of England. This plant was exceedingly salt, and the sheep devoured it with avidity, and were in fair condition. The wool was long, but of a coarse wiry texture, and much impaired by the adherence of thistles and other prickly plants. The musical sound of distant bells denoted the arrival of a long string of camels, laden with immense bales of unpressed cotton on their way to the port of Larnaca. Each animal carried two bales, and I observed ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the same plan, formed of two leaves, stiff and strong, soldered at their bases. Sometimes the pillager meets prickles that sting him, as in the roses and briers; and if he is a little fellow he is sure to regard him with intense disgust, a bristly guard of wiry hair—hence the commonness of that kind of fortification. Against enemies of larger growth a tree or shrub will often aim sharp thorns—another piece of masquerade, for thorns are but branches checked in growth, and frowning with a barb in ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... Norof. He had with him dispatches 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 Arme de ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... "You're strong enough and wiry enough to outlive anything. . . . But I wrote to Walter from Sir Anthony's this morning, and told him I would wait for him if I waited forever. For, of course, while YOU live, I couldn't think of marrying him. I couldn't think of burdening an honest man ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... the low bank of forest far beyond gunshot on their right, they moved before a favoring wind. The schoolmaster regained his strength fast. He was old, but a temperate life in the open air reenforced by plenty of exercise, had kept him wiry and strong. Now he sat up and listened to the long tale of the adventures of the five, whom he had not seen for many months previous to their great journey ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... whom we lost sight of in Boston years ago,—is here seen pursuing his antiquated vocation. Market-men have the same peculiar mode of delivering purchases to their customers that we have noticed elsewhere in this country, and are seen galloping about upon wiry little horses, bearing upon their arms large well-filled baskets. Women, with small handcarts full of slaughtered rabbits, cry them for sale at twelve cents a pair, besides which they receive a bounty for ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... said the Cardinal, in his wiry and peculiar tone, which was broken at intervals by a hoarse and hollow cough—"had he conspired against the sovereign or against the state, my duty as a minister, and my devotion as a subject, would have compelled me on this occasion to remain silent; but it was against my person alone ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... They passed safe. But Homans shook his head. He could not venture a locomotive on that frail stuff. So we lost the society of the "J.H. Nicholson." Next day the Massachusetts commander called for some one to dive in the pool for the lost rail. Plump into the water went a little wiry chap and grappled the rail. "When I come up," says the brave fellow afterwards to me, "our officer out with a twenty-dollar gold piece and wanted me to take it. 'That a'n't what I come for,' says I. 'Take it,' says he, 'and share with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... he said with a stern joy in his voice. "But there's only one of you can go, and I'll pick him. Here, Jim," he added to a small, wiry fellow not more than five feet four in height—"here, Jim Gawley, you're comin' wi' me, an' that's all o' you as can come. No, no," he added, as there was loud muttering and dissent. "Jim's got no missis, nor mother, and he's tough as leather and can squeeze in small places, and he's all ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... wiry youth in high-heeled boots came down to the water's edge. His face was boyish but with a premature severity that hinted at a man's experience. His complexion was naturally dark; and the sun and wind of an ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... war I have come to know Colonel Mosby personally, and somewhat intimately. He is a different man entirely from what I had supposed. He is slender, not tall, wiry, and looks as if he could endure any amount of physical exercise. He is able, and thoroughly honest and truthful. There were probably but few men in the South who could have commanded successfully a separate ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... little fellow, with a snub nose and eyes so diminutive and deeply sunken, that but for the sparks of light they emitted, they would have been undiscernible. The expression of his face was like that of a wiry terrier, being derived partly from his occupation, which, in his opinion, required him to be as vigilant in spying out offenders as the aforesaid peppery animal, in scenting vermin, and being partly the gift of nature. ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... your ladyship; we shall be afther moving out of this cellar before long, and away from the likes of them," (pointing in the direction of the curtain); "and, savin' your ladyship's presence," said he, running his fingers through his mop of wiry hair, "Irish people sometimes understhand dhriving a thrade as well as Yankees;" and Michael drew himself up as though General Washington couldn't be named on the ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... radiated a cold and ruthless sanity. It belonged not to a man who would kill you wantonly, but to one who would not scruple to kill you for a purpose, and who would do the job quickly and neatly, and not be found out. Was he physically strong? Though he looked very wiry, he was little and narrow, like his eyes. He could not overpower me by force, I thought (and instinctively I squared my shoulders against the cushions, that he might realise the impossibility of overpowering me), but I felt he had enough 'science' to make me less ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... small, wiry, vigorous woman, and she had an expressive, if a vinegary, face. She rose from her seat and forgot all ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... imagine, unless he intended, should Bear gain the grove, to smoke him out with it. The truth is, he was putting up a stove in his cabin when the cry of "Bear, bear," interrupted his labors, and he joined the chase, forgetting that he held anything in his hand. He was wiry, lank, and long-legged, with sandy hair that came down straight and thin upon his shoulders, and being without his coat, with pants that reached only half way between his knees and ankles, he cut a ludicrous figure as he straddled on, followed by a short, dumpy man, who, waddle as ambitiously as ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... light so fell, hoarse voices shouted, and then a concussion shivered through the steamer, and her headway was slackened. But of this Helwyse knew nothing; for the voice had burst forth in a cry of fear, amazement, and hate; and in another breath he found himself clutched tightly in long, wiry arms, and felt panting ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... than himself; and for Dick he had a genuine 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 he was not one who shrank from confessing ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... wiry ponies inured to hardships, to picking up a living on the scanty herbage of the plains, riding without saddles, and carrying no equipment, the Indians had little trouble in avoiding the soldiers. Leaving the reservation, the Apaches would commit some outrage, and ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... 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 ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... seem 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; consequently English ideas ...
— The Future of the Colored Race in America • William Aikman
... with the manly art. He developed an amazing capacity to accept punishment. Indeed, he appeared almost to welcome rough handling, especially from the young men and boys bigger than himself. Light in weight and not very muscular, he was wiry and quick in eye and in action, and under his father's teaching he learned how to "make his heels save his head." He was always ready for a go with any one who might offer, and when all others had wearied of the sport Larry would put in ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... the firm consisted in the collection of house-rents, frequently entailing visits from tenants and questions of repairs. A certain Mr. Smith, a wiry little grey-headed man, with a keen face and a decisive manner, looked after this branch; and the gusto with which he did it was one of Henry's earliest and most instructive amazements. House-repairs were quite evidently his poetry, and he never seemed so happy as when passionately wrangling ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... taken a small house on the outskirts of the town, where he lived with his two daughters. He must have been upwards of sixty at the time of the first visit I paid to Cranford after I had left it as a residence. But he had a wiry, well-trained, elastic figure, a stiff military throw-back of his head, and a springing step, which made him appear much younger than he was. His eldest daughter looked almost as old as himself, and betrayed the fact that ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... audiences, by his voice as well as by his pen. In person he would have been pronounced by a casual passer-by to be rather insignificant, being exceedingly short in stature, and not well proportioned as to his figure, which was slight, wiry, and—owing to a restless habit and a highly-strung nervous system—seldom in repose. Still, no one who contemplated his features with attention would ever have dreamed of pronouncing him commonplace. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Arenaria, another type of sterility, rose here and there, and tufts of Myosotis, Artemisia, Astragali, and Adrosace, formed flat cushions level with the soil. Grass was very scarce, but a running wiry sedge (Carex Moorcroftii) bound the sand, like the Carex ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... looked more than once at his visitor as he did so, in a preoccupied, impersonal way. To the other's notion, he seemed the personification of business—without an ounce of distracting superfluous flesh upon his wiry, tough little frame, without a trace of unnecessary politeness, or humour, or sensibility of any sort. He was the machine perfected and fined down to absolute essentials. He could understand a joke if it was useful to him to do so. He could drink, and even smoke cigarettes, with a natural ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... having strong, wiry limbs, ascended cheerily the steep mountain-path. His tall, spare figure, always in advance of his companion, was visible through the tender green of the young oaks, clothed in a brown coat, a black cravat, and a very high hat, which the justice, who ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... about thirty, dressed without much care, middle-sized, wiry, ruddy of cheek, and his coarse but strong features vivid with festive energy, held a hand to her. Luckworth Crewe was his name. Nancy had come to know him at the house of Mrs. Peachey, where from time to time she had met various ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... her neatest cap and frock, was crying, though she did not exactly know why; for, as her cousin Wiry Ben, who stood near her, judiciously suggested, Dinah was not going away, and if Bessy was in low spirits, the best thing for her to do was to follow Dinah's example and marry an honest fellow who was ready to have her. Next to Bessy, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... seem to get any light from this statement. He turned his eyes again upon the face of Mr. Dexter, and stood in thought for almost a minute. Then he examined her pulse again. It had a strong, rapid, wiry beat. Stooping, he looked very closely at the condition of her skin; then shook his head, and said something in an ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... saw a horseman coming towards them, and Kate recognised him as Tom Knowles, the overseer of Kaburie, for whom Gerrard had a letter from Mrs Tallis. He was a lithe, wiry little man of fifty, and Kate and her father exchanged smiles as, when he drew near, they saw that he was arrayed in his best riding "togs," was riding his best horse, and that his long grey moustache was carefully waxed. ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... stirred, but stood gazing up at the big man who held her hands so lightly and yet so kindly, and who had such bright, deep, quiet brown eyes. Margaret, standing in the doorway, scrutinised the three, and felt a sinking at the heart. Basil Montfort was a tall boy for his age, slender and wiry, with tow-coloured hair that stood straight on end, thin lips that curled up at the corners with a suggestion of malice, and piercing gray eyes, which he had a trick of screwing up till they were like gimlet ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... sort of stupor, from which he was awakened by a knock, and the entrance of a nervous, little wiry gentleman whose clothes of rusty black had the effect of having been purchased in a ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... but this time I took the lead myself, bending low, and feeling carefully for footing in the wiry grass. The bank was not high, and once safely at its edge, we could peer out through the thick growth of rushes with little fear of being observed from below. The darkness, however, so shrouded everything, blending objects into shapeless shadows, that it required ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... very 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 wavered for a moment. Bowers has come through best, all things considered, and ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... becomes distended, tympanitic (caused by gas). An early symptom is vomiting and it is often repeated. There is constipation; occasionally diarrhea occurs. The temperature may rise rapidly to 104 or 105 and then become lower; it is sometimes normal. The pulse is frequent, small, wiry and beats 100 to 150 per minute; the breathing is frequent and shallow. The tongue becomes red and dry and cracked. Passing the urine frequently causes pain; sometimes there is retention of urine. The face looks pinched, the eyes are sunken, the expression is anxious, and the ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... made it past 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 high above their heads. The crowd at the surf's edge shouted. The boat wavered, sucked ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... ragged, dirty, shoeless—each with a sugar-loaf straw hat, a Remington rifle of the pattern of 1882, or a brand new Krag-Jorgensen donated by Uncle Sam, and the inevitable and ever ready machete swinging in a case of embossed leather on the left hip. Very young they were, and very old; and wiry, quick-eyed, intelligent, for the most part and, in countenance, vivacious and rather gentle. There was a little creek next, and, climbing the bank of the other side, Grafton stopped short, with a start, in ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... days, or mayhap years, and of services. His breeches were of the homeliest thickset; and he also wore a pair of large leather gaiters—such as are very common among farmers and peasants in Kent and Sussex. Though the conformation of his figure was not powerful, yet it was muscular and wiry, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... abortion, but what is left of the organism suffers sadly. When this sort of arrest of development occurs in a man, it takes the element of masculineness out of him, and replaces it with adipose effeminacy. When it occurs in a woman, it not only substitutes in her case a wiry and perhaps thin bearded masculineness for distinctive feminine traits and power, making her an epicene, but it entails a variety of prolonged weaknesses, that dwarf her rightful power in almost every direction. The persistent neglect and ignoring by women, ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... thistle tribe has attracted the notice of most travellers—the wind-witch, as it is called by the German colonists, or leap-the-field, as the Russian name may be translated. It forms a large globular mass of light wiry branches interlaced together, and in autumn decays off at the root, the upper part drying up. It is then at the mercy of the autumn blast, and it is said that thousands may sometimes be seen coursing over the plain, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... Goldring, and he was a wiry, intense man who had prevailed on one of his colleagues to give him a tiny slit of a mouth. He sat behind a shining plastiline desk, waiting patiently until ...
— The Happy Unfortunate • Robert Silverberg
... carpenter, who rejoiced in the designation of Caractacus Chessle, the name of the British hero having been bestowed on him by his father, who had once on a time been a stage-player. He was as tall and bulky as the gunner was short and wiry; indeed, the three warrant-officers formed a ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... was fat and had none of her sister's wiry agility. She declined; her mind was attuned to other issues just then, and her soul was a-quiver with malicious, anticipatory glee; for this was the day of Split's music lesson, and her teacher was none other than ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... the thought, but in truth there was nothing to shudder at in Robert Judge's appearance. He was a man of forty, bronzed, and wiry, with agreeable if not regular features. Round his eyes the skin was deeply furrowed, but the eyes themselves were bright and youthful, and the prevailing expression was one of sincerity and kindliness. He wore a loose ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... made the canoe-fleet which the Northern Pacific Railway shunted out upon its station-platform at Detroit City, Minnesota, in the early gray of last July's first Thursday. We had bargained by post with Beaulieu, a shrewd, wiry, reckless French half-breed, for transportation of ourselves, canoes, equipment and provisions to Itasca Lake, or to a point upon the Mississippi five miles below the lake, as we might elect. His assurance was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... 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 ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Long Lake - Bessie King in Summer Camp • Jane L. Stewart
... three were in the room. The third was a man of medium height, lowering looks, and slow tongue. His hair was black, and he had the appearance of always needing a shave. He was trained down to perfect condition by his years on the plains, and was as wiry and tough as the cow pony he rode. He was Black Mike Stelton, foreman of the ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... Tom saw him approaching, he felt an immediate and revolting horror at him, that increased as he came near. He was evidently, though short, of gigantic strength. His round, bullet head, large, light-gray eyes, with their shaggy, sandy eyebrows, and stiff, wiry, sun-burned hair, were rather unprepossessing items, it is to be confessed; his large, coarse mouth was distended with tobacco, the juice of which, from time to time, he ejected from him with great decision and explosive force; his hands were immensely large, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... slight acclivity of the interminable plain—which had really been the bank of the creek in bygone days—he pulled up, alighted, tied his horse to a rail fence, and clambering over the inclosure made his way along the ridge. It was covered with nettles, thistles, and a few wiry dwarf larches of native growth; dust from the adjacent highway had invaded it, with a few scattered and torn handbills, waste paper, rags, empty provision cans, and other suburban debris. Yet it was the site ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... He was well known throughout the district, a plucky, wiry fellow, who was generally at the pit's mouth immediately after an accident, ready and keen to go with any rescue party on any errand, however dangerous—purely, as he himself declared, for professional and scientific reasons. ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Bonnebault, a tall, wiry fellow, had lately returned to Conches after six years' service in the cavalry, with a permanent discharge due to his evil conduct,—his example being likely to ruin better men. He wore moustachios and a small chin-tuft; a peculiarity ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... charming creature must needs send me out for a piece of ice to put in her wine. It was evening and a hard frost. I shall never forget the cold, cutting, dreary, dead look of every thing out of doors, with a wind through the wiry trees, and the snow on the ground, contrasted with the sudden return to warmth, light, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... cried loudly. And before he could say "Jack Robinson" a tuft of the wiry stuff covered his eyebrow. "Keep your face still!" And, to his horror, the gum was daubed from the borders of the beard, halfway up to his eyes, and little prickly ends of hair were held in Peggy's palm and pressed against his cheeks ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... forty-eight years of age. His complexion was darker than that of the majority of his countrymen, the nose slightly curved, the mouth large, the lips so small as hardly to be perceived. Of middle size, well knit, wiry rather than muscular, he excelled as a horseman, in the use of the spear, and on foot would tire his hardiest followers. The expression of his dark eyes, slightly depressed, was strange; if he was in good humour they were soft, with a kind of gazelle-like timidity about them ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... talkative, and perhaps I struck those around me as grown 'clever', because I said the things which I had previously only thought. There was a change, no doubt, yet I believe that it was mainly physical, rather than mental. My excessive fragility—or apparent fragility, for I must have been always wiry—decreased; I slept better, and therefore, grew less nervous; I ate better, and therefore put on flesh. If I preserved a delicate look—people still used to say in my presence, 'That dear child is not long for this world!'—it was in consequence of a sort of habit into which my body ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... highest object in sight. Swallows were flying about us, and the chewink and cuckoo were heard near at hand. The summit consists of a few acres, destitute of trees, covered with bare rocks, interspersed with blueberry bushes, raspberries, gooseberries, strawberries, moss, and a fine wiry grass. The common yellow lily, and dwarf-cornel, grow abundantly in the crevices of the rocks. This clear space, which is gently rounded, is bounded a few feet lower by a thick shrubbery of oaks, with maples, aspens, beeches, cherries, and occasionally a mountain-ash intermingled, among which ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... to strike me, and I wonder that I did not run from the cabin and jump ashore, but I stood my ground, more from stupor and what we Dutch call dumbness than anything else. Ace let his fist fall and looked me over with more respect. He was a slender boy, hard as a whip-lash, wiry and dark. He was no taller than I, and not so heavy; but he had come to have brass and confidence from the life he lived. As a matter of fact, he was not so old as I, but had grown faster; and was nothing like as strong after I had got my muscles hardened, as ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... over sixty years of age, being, in fact, considerably senior to Sir Thomas himself. But no one would have dreamed of calling Mr. Prendergast an old man. He was short of stature, well made, and in good proportion; he was wiry, strong, and almost robust. He walked as though in putting his foot to the earth he always wished to proclaim that he was afraid of no man and no thing. His hair was grizzled, and his whiskers were grey, and round about his mouth his ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... 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 us, so free ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the turn of the road, it came down, and with a wiry spring or two brought itself close to my feet, and continued to keep up with me, as I quickened my pace. It was at my left side, so close to my leg that I felt every moment as if I should ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... no sheep as yet had ever strayed Hardy was startled by their appearance. Gaunt, rough, stunted, with sharp hips and hollow flanks and bellies swollen from eating the unprofitable browse of cactus and bitter shrubs, they nevertheless sprinted along on their wiry legs like mountain bucks; and a peculiar wild, haggard stare, stamped upon the faces of the old cows, showed its replica even in the twos and yearlings. Yet he forbore to ask Creede the question which arose involuntarily to his lips, for he knew the ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... and wrote a note to Messrs. Smith and Hanson, and said that he would like to have a consultation with a member of their firm. He sent this note by messenger, and an hour or so later a wiry little person, with a much-wrinkled face and a shrewd look in his eyes, came into his office and introduced ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... of the Beldon Brotherhood's detachment here, and the Duke of Fluel, Movaine's personal gun. Going by Heraga's descriptions, the big, florid-faced man with white hair and flowing white mustaches who was doing the talking was Velladon, the commodore; while the fourth man, younger, wiry, with thinning black hair plastered back across his skull, would be Ryter, chief of the ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz
... still useful as a watch-dog, and a determined enemy to all vermin, whatever. Then, again, are the small rat-terriers, as they are termed, weighing from a dozen to twenty pounds; some with rough, long, wiry hair; a fierce, whiskered muzzle; of prodigious strength for their size; wonderful instinct and sagacity; kind in temper; and possessing valuable qualities, bating a lack of beauty in appearance. They are of all colors, but are generally uniform in their color, whatever it be. Another ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen |
