"Limbed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... encamped on the eastern border of the largest clearing in Ugogo, called Kanyenye, stacking their loads beneath a large gouty-limbed tree. Here eight of the Wanyamuezi porters absconded, carrying off their loads, accompanied by ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... of more promising SPIOGS, (legs), than did Robin Oig M'Combich, called familiarly Robin Oig, that is young, or the Lesser, Robin. Though small of stature, as the epithet Oig implies, and not very strongly limbed, he was as light and alert as one of the deer of his mountains. He had an elasticity of step which, in the course of a long march, made many a stout fellow envy him; and the manner in which he busked his plaid ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... to himself, looked down into the kindly, narrow face of the missioner. He himself was tall, a long-limbed young man, with a serious, darkly tanned face in which the blue of the eyes showed up strongly; and in his bearing and the fashion of his address there was a touch of that arrogance which men acquire who earn their bread at the ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... minister, people, a stronghold, treasure, [power of] punishment, and allies—because these are its elements, a realm is called seven-limbed. ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... hunters who had found him, coming upon him almost by chance as, bare-limbed and pipe in hand, he was following the flock of the poor goatherd who had brought him up, and whose son he had always fancied himself to be. The child of the old King's only daughter by a secret marriage with one much beneath her ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... Italian and Etruscan ways of making war, but after nearly 400 years of this kind of fighting, a stranger and wilder enemy came upon them. These were the Gauls, a tall strong, brave people, long limbed and red-haired, of the same race as the highlanders of Scotland. They had gradually spread themselves over the middle of Europe, and had for some generations past lived among the Alpine mountains, whence they used ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of his trip and of the wonderfully fertile realm that he had discovered stirred the hearts of the Boone brothers. In 1769 Daniel Boone, his brother-in-law John Stuart, Joseph Holden, James Mooney and William Cooley, guided by the old but stout-limbed Findlay (a peddler by trade and a hunter by nature) crossed the Cumberland Gap Mountain of eastern Kentucky, and with horses and packs traveled still westward into that country where white foot had only ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... long-haired, strong-limbed savages who roamed the forest for him—ages and ages ago. And we, too, like him, remember the smell of the fallen leaves, and the taste of the forest fruits, and of pig, roast pig. And if the pig in his heart is still a wild boar, no less are we at times wild savages ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... outpointed knife, walked straight-limbed and head up, his shoulders squared, his jaw set in fashion that indicated how completely caution had been ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... capable of speech? No matter! This lad was certainly no suitable bearer of the message the prophet desired to send to his uncle, and Bai beckoned to Hornecht to come with him under the shadow of a broad-limbed sycamore-tree. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... then appears covered by a dense wood of enormous thistles, which have shot up to a height of nearly twelve feet, and are now in full bloom. So densely do they grow, that they present an impenetrable barrier to man and horse, or even to the strong-limbed cattle or wild beasts of the plain. The only passage through them is by those paths which have been kept open by the constant trampling of feet; while certain tracks, intricate as those of a labyrinth, which exist in some directions, are the abodes of bands of robbers, to whom alone they are ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... circumstances would allow. She was seated on a sofa at the far end of the room when Seymour Michael was shown in, and the first thing that struck her was his diminutiveness. After the hearty country gentlemen who habitually carried mud into the Stagholme drawing-room, this small-limbed dapper soldier of fortune looked almost puny. But there is a depth in every woman's heart which is only to be reached by one man. Whatever betide them both, that one is different from the rest ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... sired by her father's mighty Thunder, who had grown old but still could do the work of three ordinary horses in carrying the great bulk of his master. The son of Thunder was little like his sire, but a slender-limbed racer, graceful, nervous, eager. A clumsy rider would have ruined the horse in a single day's hard work among the trails of the mountain-desert, but Jacqueline, fairly reading the mind of the black, nursed his strength when it was needed and let him run free and swift ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... a man should love all things that are swift and strong and honest, keen for marks and goals—a big, clean-limbed, thoroughbred horse that will break his heart to get under the wire first; a high-power rifle, slim of muzzle, thick of breech, with its wicked little throaty cry, doing its business over a flat trajectory a thousand yards away: I love her as a man should love those. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... was an example of a general law, the workings of which few in the army failed to notice. It was always the large and strong who first succumbed to hardship. The stalwart, huge-limbed, toil-inured men sank down earliest on the march, yielded soonest to malarial influences, and fell first under the combined effects of home-sickness, exposure and the privations of army life. The slender, withy boys, as supple and weak as cats, had apparently the nine ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... Limber-limbed, lazy god, stretched on the rock, Where is sweet Echo, and where is your flock? What are you making here? "Listen," said Pan,— "Out of a river-reed music ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... shortcomings, did not look bad. Indeed, he was as engaging an urchin as ever beamed out on a jolly good world through a pair of big, velvet-brown eyes. He was chubby and firm-limbed, with a mop of beautiful golden curls, which were the despair of his heart and the pride and joy of Salome's; and his round face was usually a lurking-place for dimples ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... "Je te crais," and died. If in the vague dusk of her brain the thought glimmered that she was ballast for Jean on sea and anchor on land, she still was content. For twenty years the massive, straight-limbed Jean had stood to her for all things since the heavens and the earth were created. Once, when she had burnt her hand in cooking supper for him, his arm made a trial of her girth, and he kissed her. The kiss was nearer her ear than her lips, but to her mind it was the most solemn ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... before him, Joe did as he was directed, and there found two horses tethered side by side. Little wonder that his eyes gleamed with delight. One was jet-black; the other iron-gray and in every line the clean-limbed animals showed the thoroughbred. The black threw up his slim head and whinnied, with affection clearly shining in his soft, dark eyes ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... entered hurriedly, something like an amiable gust of wind. He is a tall, slender, and loose-limbed man, whose whole appearance bespeaks enthusiasm and energy. He wore a dark blue sack suit, and his long, dark hair stood straight up from his forehead, as if he were permanently electrified by his own enthusiasm. His voice is full and ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... large, powerfully-built fellow, deep-chested, and long- limbed, was occupied in writing, again and again, the name of "J.B. Barrett." He had covered sheet after sheet with the name, looking first at a letter before him, but was still far from satisfied. "Damn a man who will make his 'J's' in such a ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... wi' a hard stone inside it."[1] Over and over this view of Hetty's character is enforced on us, from the time when, early in the first volume, we are told that hers "was a springtide beauty; it was the beauty of young frisking things, round-limbed, gambolling, circumventing you by a false air of ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... down from the high land behind. He gained this in another two hundred yards, coming to a square house built, like its neighbor, of stout logs with a high-pitched roof, a patch of ragged grass in front, and a picket-fenced area at the back in which stood apple trees and cherry and plum, gaunt-limbed trees all bare of leaf and fruit. Ivy wound up the corners of the house. Sturdy rosebushes stood before it, and the dead vines of sweet peas bleached on ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Now, however, the gambler's fever was in her. Whatever happened, she must get a seat at the table where she had played last night. To do so was the most important thing on earth. Slender and tall and long-limbed, she ran like a young Diana; though not since she had become Sister Rose had she ever been undignified enough to run. Straight as an arrow she aimed for the table she wanted, and convulsively seized the back of the last unclaimed chair. It was grasped ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... His companion, however, large-limbed and strong, turning his bold and yet thoughtful face from side to side, and eagerly taking in all the strange, new life amidst which he found himself, was also a type, unfinished, it is true, but ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... go on horseback. Howard had brought out for her a pretty little mare, coal-black and slender-limbed, but sufficiently gentle. Barbee, who had been watching, suddenly set his toe in his own stirrup and went up into the saddle, racing on to overtake and pass the wagon. Howard and Carr glanced swiftly at each other; then their eyes went to the girl. Howard ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... smoke, I would go no further (though Skipper Tommy said that words were spoken not meet for the ears of lads to hear); for my interest was caught by a giant pup, which was not like the pups of our harbour but a lean, long-limbed, short-haired dog, with heavy jaws and sagging, blood-red eyelids. At a round table, whereon there lay a short dog-whip, his master sat at cards with a stout little man in a pea-jacket—a loose-lipped, blear-eyed, flabby little fellow, but, withal, hearty in his own way—and himself cut a ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... about 5 degrees 18 minutes longitude from east to west; it is generally high mountainous land, mixed with large valleys, which, as well as the mountains, appeared very fertile; and in most places that we saw the trees are very large, tall, and thick. It is also very well inhabited with strong, well-limbed negroes, whom we found very daring and bold at several places: as to the product of it, it is very probable this island may afford as many rich commodities as any in the world; and the natives may be easily brought to commerce, though ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... He was much quicker in his descent than ascent, for the branch upon which he sat had snapped in two and let him down from bough to bough of the thickly-limbed tree till he bumped on the last, which was not above five feet from the ground, and at its extremities almost touched. It was a most fortunate thing that he was not injured seriously; but a few bruises and scratches ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... they passed at some distance three canoes containing Indians, but the canoes showed no wish to come near and investigate. Henry said that the Indians in them looked sprawling and dirty, unlike the alert, clean-limbed natives of the North. ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... turned again at her order she was sitting on the side of the bed wrapped in a kimono, her feet in bedroom slippers. He saw now that she was a slender-limbed slip of a girl. The lean forearm, which showed bare to the elbow when she raised it to draw the kimono closer round her, told Clay that she was ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... the summit of an equatorial mountain where there was but little atmosphere between earth and sun, does not bleach off in a couple of months. Physically regarded, he was stronger, broader, heavier-limbed, more robust, than when she had last seen him—but her knowledge went deeper than complexion, or the passing ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... weather was so fine that most of the inmates preferred to sleep in the moonshine. Of course, there were plenty of dogs quarrelling over bones near various fires, or sleeping with one eye open in odd corners, and everywhere tumbled and laughed and danced, brown-faced, lithe-limbed children, who looked uncannily Eastern. And the men, showing their white teeth in smiles, together with the fawning women, young and handsome, or old and hideously ugly, seemed altogether alien to the quiet, tame domestic ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... in Asiatic seas? And America! Once again he felt the slow rising of wrath as he recalled the insults of past years ... the adventurous sons of his country treated like savages and negroes by that uncultured, strong-limbed race of coarse-fibered, unimaginative materialists. There was a call, indeed, to the soul of his country to avenge, to make safe, the homes and lives of her colonists. Across the seas he looked into the council chambers of the wise men of his race. He saw the ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... music—who sat for hours producing the most marvelous tones from instruments where other girls drew discords—who would sit all day at the piano, and not find the time long; and who spent her leisure in dawdling over sofas, or playing practical jokes on every one about her. She was a long-limbed, fair-haired girl, with a touch of wit from some remote ancestor who must have had O' tacked to his name, and a great inaptitude toward books. She could play. Exeter had never before boasted such skill as hers. ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... tell tales by daylight. And Naraini, the herd-girl, will hang her head and cover her dusky face with her rag of a veil, if you put the question to her; or little Râm Jas shake his bald shaven poll in denial; but not one of the dark-skinned, bare-limbed village children will yield to your ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... material and color; he had the face of a Don Basilio, with the eye of Nero. He motioned the guards to surround him more closely, when he saw with affright the dark group we have mentioned, and the strong-limbed and resolute peasants who seemed in attendance upon them. Then, advancing somewhat before the Canons and Capuchins who were with him, he pronounced, in a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... two slaves fought their best; but the blacks slew them both in less than the twinkling of an eye. So the damsel abode alone and wandered about the forest, eating of its fruits and drinking of its founts, till in due time she gave birth to a boy, brown but clean limbed and comely, whom she named Gharib, the Stranger, by reason of her strangerhood. Then she cut his navel-string and wrapping him in some of her own clothes, gave him to suck, harrowed at heart, and with vitals sorrowing for the estate she had lost and its honour and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... evening she had an object in turning aside. The visit she wished to pay took her into a disagreeable quarter, a street of squalid houses, swarming with yet more squalid children. On all the doorsteps Bat little girls, themselves only just out of infancy, nursing or neglecting bald, red-eyed, doughy-limbed abortions in every stage of babyhood, hapless spawn of diseased humanity, born to embitter and brutalise yet further the lot of those who unwillingly gave them life. With wide, pitiful eyes Jane looked at ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... there upon the platform. Listening to him, though we were all of us perfectly conscious of doing, through the Protean voice, and looking at him through the variable features of the Novelist, we somehow saw, no longer the Novelist, but—each time Noah Clay-pole said a word—that chuckle-headed, long-limbed, clownish, sneaking varlet, who is the spy on Nancy, the tool of Fagin, and the secret evil-genius of Sikes, hounding the latter on, as he does, unwittingly, to the dreadful ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... masters over Israel of Pa-Ramesu were emerging from the quarters. They were, almost uniformly, tall, slender and immature in figure. Dressed in the foot-soldier's tunic and coif, they looked like long-limbed youths compared with the powerful manhood of the sons ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... his duty owing to mere diminutiveness. An aquiline nose means no mouth, and consequently an inability to hold the hare fast. (8) A blinking bluish eye implies defect of vision; (9) just as want of shape means ugliness. (10) The stiff-limbed dog will come home limping from the hunting-field; (11) just as want of strength and thinness of coat go hand in hand with incapacity for toil. (12) The lanky-legged, unsymmetrical dog, with his shambling gait and ill-compacted frame, ranges heavily; while the spiritless ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... for cutting which would be fixed by it forester would be somewhere between 16 and 30 inches, but say it were 18 inches, for example, it would not arbitrarily apply throughout the stand. Most trees with yellow, smooth bark and small heavy-limbed tops, perhaps partially dead, are mature regardless of their size. If small, they have been crowded or stunted and may as well be cut. Trees with large, healthy crowns composed of many comparatively small branches, and with ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... some few years his senior, stalwart and clean-limbed. He appeared to be over six feet in height and a man of splendid physique. At first glance it was evident that he came of superior stock. His shapely hands were grimy, his eyes of a peculiarly light shade of blue were hollow and haggard looking. His face, emaciated and ghastly, ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... eagerly told her father that Miss Fulford had made out the subject of 'that picture.' It was a very beautiful Pre-Raffaelite, of a lady gathering flowers in a meadow, and another in contemplation, while a mysterious shape was at the back; the ladies stiff-limbed but lovely faced, and the flowers—irises, anemones, violets, and even the grass-blossom, done with botanical accuracy. A friend of Lord Hollybridge had picked it up for him in some obscure place in Northern Italy, and had ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mystery of the way. Thirsty for dark, you feel the long-limbed train Throb, stretch, thrill motion, slide, pull out and sway, Strain for the far, pause, draw to strength again. . ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... women, because it was worn longer, I suppose, took the form of long graceful curls. In colour it was a rich glossy black. They were certainly an exceptionally fine race of people, the men being lithe, clean-limbed, muscular fellows, every one of them apparently in the pink of condition, while the faces and figures of the women, especially the younger ones, would have excited the envy of many an English belle. But there was a something, very difficult to define, in ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... that of mere mass. I leave aside mathematical discussions which seem to me to have nothing in common with battle conditions. I would pick to wear the cuirass the best men in the army, big chested, red-blooded, strong limbed, the foot chasseurs. I would organize a regiment of light cuirassiers for each of our divisions. Men and horses, such a cavalry would be much more robust and active than our present cuirassiers. If our armored cavalry is worth more than any other ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... twenty years of age at that time, a large-limbed, lusty-lunged fellow, almost destitute of education but with a big brain and an unconquerable will; so he strapped his chest and emigrated to America. What work he found at first I never rightly knew. I can only remember to have heard ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... I have spoken, had a son, a great raw-boned lad whom he would have trained as an amanuensis, but who was one of Nature's dunces out of which there is nothing useful to be made. He was strong-limbed, however, and he was given odd menial duties to perform about the castle. But these he shirked where possible, as he had shirked his ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... instant a young girl, a mere child, appeared on the beach, dragging a sea-rake over the ground behind her. She was a lithe creature, bare-limbed and ragged, with the sea-tan on throat and knee. The blue tatters of her skirt hung heavy with brine; the creamy skin on her arms glittered with wet spray, and her hair was wet, too, clustering across ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... temporary screen; and drive the Austrian reserve rapidly to rearward again. But there is rally after rally of them. They rank again on every new height, and dispute there; loath to be driven into Kingdom Wood, after such a flourish of arms. One height, "bushy steep height," the light-limbed valiant Prince, little Ferdinand of Brunswick, had the charge of attacking; and he did it with his usual impetus and irresistibility:—and, strangely enough, the defender of it chanced to be that Brother of his, Prince Ludwig, with whom he had the little Interview lately. Prince ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... change and out-of-the-way experiences, and two studies resulted from this trip: 'La Grece Contemporaine,' a book of charming philosophic description; and the delightful story 'Le Roi des Montagnes' (The King of the Mountains). This tale of the long-limbed German student, enveloped in the smoke from his porcelain pipe as he recounts a series of impossible adventures,—those of himself and two Englishwomen, captured for ransom by Hadgi Stavros, brigand king in the Grecian ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... He had held her back as they jolted over the worn pavement of cedar blocks, but now they had reached the city limits and were starting out upon the rain-beaten sand. She was a tall, clean-limbed sorrel, a Kentucky-bred Morgan, and as she settled into her stride, Bannon watched her admiringly. Her wet flanks had the dull sheen ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... in their flannel shirts and corduroys, their Stetsons and high boots. There were men from the trail in sweaters and mackinaws, German socks and caps with ear-flaps. But all were bronzed and bearded, fleshless and clean-limbed. I marvelled at the seriousness of their faces, till I remembered that here was no problem of a languorous sunland, but one of grim emergency. It was a man's game up here in the North, a man's game in a man's land, where the sunlight of the long, long day is ever haunted by the shadow ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... immense freshness of the nocturnal sea took us in its huge embrace. The spray began to fly over our bows as we nosed into the glassy rollers, one of which, on the starboard side, admonished us, by half swallowing us, that only the mighty-limbed immortals might dance with safety on the bar that night, and that it were wise for even 45-foot yawls to hug the land till daylight. So, reluctantly, we kept the shadowy coast-line for our companion, as ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... above the middle size, and well made; they walk very gracefully, run nimbly, and are capable of bearing great fatigue; though, upon the whole, the men are somewhat inferior, in point of strength and activity, to the Friendly islanders, and the women less delicately limbed than those of Otaheite. Their complexion is rather darker than that of the Otaheitans, and they are not altogether so handsome a people. However, many of both sexes had fine open countenances, and the women, in particular, had good eyes and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... World, vigorous in some of the northern tribes as animals, though feeble as men, but gradually sinking in southern America, as among the wild Caribs or spotted Araucans; till at the extremity of the continent we find, naked and shivering among their snows, the hideous, small-eyed, small-limbed, flat-headed Fuegians, perhaps the most wretched of human creatures. And all these varieties of the species, in which we find humanity "fallen," according to the poet, "into disgrace," are varieties that have lapsed from the original Caucasian type. They are ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... as they stood there talking of him, Mrs. Stannard's door opened and he came forth, the three ladies following. He did look well,—more than well, as he turned with extended hand to say good-by. "Dandy," his lithe-limbed sorrel, pricked up his dainty, pointed ears and whinnied eagerly as he heard his step on the piazza, giving himself a shake that threatened the dislocation of his burden of blankets, canteen, and saddle-bags. The ladies surrounded ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... Full many a time to say his say Before he arrives to say it out. It is under the small, dim, summer star. I know not who these mute folk are Who share the unlit place with me— Those stones out under the low-limbed tree Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar. They are tireless folk, but slow and sad, Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,— With none among them that ever sings, And yet, in view of how many things, As sweet companions as might ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... Evelyn was staring now. She was staring in the direction of the Golden City. And now what was almost a wave of animals, all wild and all fleeing, swept across the field of vision of the dimensoscope. There were gazelles, it seemed—slender-limbed, graceful animals, at any rate—and there were tiny hoofed things which might have been eohippi, and then a monstrous armadillo clanked and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... He himself prepared by taking to himself a wife, a calm untroubled countrywoman of the place, that she might give him a son whom he might prepare, in due course, for his great destiny. John, father of Martin, was born, a large-limbed, smiling infant, with the tranquillity of his mother as well as something of the ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... certainly Melinda, but in his present sensitive loneliness it struck him for the first time that he had never actually seen her before as she really was. Like most men in his profession he was a quick reader of thoughts and faces when he was interested, and although this was the same robust, long-limbed, sunburnt girl he had met, he now seemed to see through her triple incrustation of human vanity, conventional piety, and outrageous Sabbath finery an honest, sympathetic simplicity ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... nature qualified Him so with happiness? and limbed him with Such young activity as winds, that ride The ripples, have, that dance on every side? As sunbeams know, that urge the sap and pith Through hearts of trees? yet made him to delight, Gnome-like, in darkness,—like a moonlight myth,— Lairing in labyrinths of ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... five seconds in which to save his life. Had he been a man of slight or even moderate physical and moral force, there would not have been the slightest chance for him. But he was six feet high, broad in the shoulders, limbed like a gladiator, solidified by hardships and marches, accustomed to danger, never losing his head in it, and blessed with lots of pugnacity. He was pinioned; but with one gigantic effort he loosened the Indian's lean sinewy arms, and in the next breath he laid him out with ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... towers. From these points the horns gradually grew broader and the shrubbery rose higher. First the rhododendrons mixed with clumps of hollyhocks, next flowering almonds, roses, spireas and syringas; then came the drooping long leaf sugar pines, with an artistic mingling of slender limbed graceful silver birches: farther back were the taller firs and spruces, interspersed with thick clumps of small copper beeches, extending to and joining at the back of the cottage, the dense forest of ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... reported.—Oh, I said, it had so much woman in it,—muliebrity, as well as femineity;—no self-assertion, such as free suffrage introduces into every word and movement; large, vigorous nature, running back to those huge-limbed Germans of Tacitus, but subdued by the reverential training and tuned by the kindly culture of fifty generations. Sharp business habits, a lean soil, independence, enterprise, and east winds, are not the best things for the larynx. Still, you hear noble voices among us,—I have known families ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... among them; the leaders dressed with the splendor of noblemen; not one of those leaders—save Three-Fingered Jack—but had his mistress beside him decked out like a Spanish lady; nor one but rode a clean-limbed thoroughbred. When the hills were turning brown with summer's beginning young Murieta led them out across the range and southward to ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... unsatisfactory condition, but they believed that all would be well if they could once get a fair go-in at the enemy. Pot-shots up and down the valleys were unsatisfactory, and the bayonet never seemed to get a chance. Perhaps it was as well, for a long-limbed Afghan with a knife had a reach of eight feet, and could carry away enough lead to disable three Englishmen, The Fore and Fit would like some rifle-practice at the enemy—all seven hundred rifles blazing together. That wish showed the mood ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... material part of their government, subordinate to the Chief of the latter, who bears an imperial title. Their country lies between Spanish Florida and the Cherokee mountains, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. They are a tall, well-limbed people, very brave in war, and as much respected in the South, as the Iroquois are in the ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... him and leaned on the wall again. Her slight, lissome figure acquired a new elegance from her black dress. Robert had never set eyes on Sylvia in such a costume before that day. Hitherto she had been a schoolgirl, a flapper, a straight-limbed, boyish young person in long frocks; but today she seemed to have put on a new air of womanliness, and he found it ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... Indians much the complections of the Mandans & ricaras high Cheeks, Streight limbed & high noses the men are large, their dress in Sumner is Simpelly a roab of a light buffalow Skin with or without the hair and a Breach clout & mockerson Some ware leagins and mockersons, their ornaments are but fiew and those are composed principally of Such articles as they precure from other ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... even the love you bear that active little round-limbed, rosy-cheeked daughter that I have seen in the fort these last few days! Out upon you, Sergeant! old fellow as I am, I could almost love that little lassie myself, and send the lieutenant-colonelcy ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... her cigarette, and made no move. Her slender, long-limbed body, as it lay at ease in the deep garden chair, the pale masses of her hair, and the confident quiet face beneath it, made a charming impression of graceful repose. As Arthur Coryston reached her she held out a welcoming ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... himself. Been years in the States. All sorts of business all over the place. With some patent medicine people, too. Travels. Writes advertisements and all that. Tells me funny stories. Tall, loose-limbed fellow. Black hair up on end, like a brush; long face, long legs, long arms, twinkle in his specs, jocular way of speaking—in a low voice. . . ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... forfeitable, by some extravagancy and disorder of the people." A wise man I had been, doubtless, for my pains, to raise the rabble to a tumult, where I had been certainly one of the first men whom they had limbed, or dragged ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... gentleman of benevolent aspect and snowy beard, but sturdy and lithe-limbed for his years, clearly one of those persons who seemed predestined for the placidity of clerical life. After a penetrating glance he greeted his visitor most graciously, and expressed pleasure ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... was a young man somewhere between twenty and thirty, tall, large-limbed, well set-up, and broad-shouldered. A young man who, at first sight, would seem eminently fitted to push his own fortunes. Also, at first sight, a remarkably handsome fellow, with straight, clear-cut features and light, curly hair. When he swung along the street, his round hat carelessly thrown back, ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... the footprint. The delicate shape, the deep hollow of the ball of the foot, the round cup which marked the heel, and, between them, the narrow, shallow indentation which formed the high-arched instep. In fancy he built over the marks the tall, lithe, straight-limbed creature Victor had told them of. He saw the long flowing hair which fell in a shower upon her shoulders; and the beautiful eyes blue as the summer sky. In a moment his tanned face was transformed ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... on. He and the girl made their way down the side of the rocky hill to the shore, and here there was an open boat awaiting them. When they approached, a man considerably over six feet in height, keen-faced, gray-eyed, straight-limbed and sinewy in frame, jumped into the big and rough boat and began to get ready for their departure. There was just enough wind to catch the brown mainsail, and the King of Borva took the tiller, his henchman sitting down by the mast. And no sooner had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... fill my gaze with blue and silver, Radiance through living roses, spires of green, Rising in young-limbed copse and lovely wood, Where the hueless ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... the seam, Weak and worn thou dost me deem: O light-handed dear delight, Certes thou must say aright. Weak I am, and certainly Long in white arms must I lie: Hast thou heart to leave me then, Fair-limbed ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... despairingly: "Don't let me go; they are strangers over there." She was a little country girl, strong limbed, fleet of foot, tanned in the face; she was raised on the frontier, the fields were her home. In vain we tried to reconcile her to the death that was inevitable. "Hold me fast," she cried; "don't let me go." But even as she was pleading, her little ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... along the shore we skirted, near Enough to scare the birds with our white sails, We saw a three-limbed gibbet rising sheer. Detached against ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... to attempt to carry that great, loose-limbed body. They brought the buckboard perilously through the shrubbery and then managed, with infinite labor, to lift Bull Hunter into it. With Pete Reeve supporting the head of the wounded man and cautioning them to drive gently, they managed ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... back to Middalhof, and now Eric Brighteyes let it be known that he needed men to sail the seas with him. Nor did he ask in vain, for, when it was told that Eric went a-viking, so great was his fame grown, that many a stout yeoman and many a great-limbed carle reached down sword and shield and came up to Middalhof to put their hands in his. For mate, he took a certain man named Hall of Lithdale, and this because Bjoern asked it, for Hall was a friend to Bjoern, and he had, moreover, great ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... Reed. You think he will do better metaphors than you; but you needn't worry. Dolph doesn't talk shop. Besides, he may get to be a real professor, if he keeps at work; and," Olive's glance, merry and not uncomfortably pitiful, rested upon the long-limbed figure lying so flat beside her; "even you must admit it, Reed, that rhetoric is a much safer means of livelihood than engineering. Good bye, boy, and keep out of mischief till ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... its people were childish and romantic. She recalled, vividly, the stagecoach which used to amble sedately, not to say wheezily, from the railway to the Fork and from the Fork back to the railway, in the days when she had ridden away in it a tearful, despairing, long-limbed girl, and fully expected to find it waiting for her at Sulphur City, with old Tom Quentan still as ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... green, In days agone, have I not seen The brown-clad maidens amorous, Below the long rose-trellised house, Dance to the querulous pipe and shrill, When the gray shadow of the hill Was lengthening at the end of day? Not shadowy or pale were they, But limbed like those who 'twixt the trees Follow the swift of goddesses. Sunburnt they are somewhat, indeed, To where the rough brown woolen weed Is drawn across their bosoms sweet, Or cast from off their dancing feet; But yet the stars, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and more loose-limbed, though his spare frame suggested great physical strength. He was dark in a hawk-like way, though the suggestion of the adventurer about him was softened by a pair of frank and pleasant grey eyes. Gerald Venner was ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... exception of Tom N., were soon assembled round the body of B.'s cow, which was black and fine-limbed. She was evidently in milk, and there was little doubt that the calf slain by me had belonged ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... wide Beat of the pilgrim winds and labouring seas, Sent up from all the harbouring ways of earth Wherein the travelling feet of men have trod, Mounting the firmamental silences And challenging the golden gates of God. 'We bear the burden of the years Clean-limbed, clear-hearted, open-browed; Albeit sacramental tears Have dimmed our eyes, we know the proud Content of men who sweep unbowed Before the legionary fears; In sorrow we have grown to be ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... Tull stopped in his tracks, with right hand raised and shaking. Suddenly it dropped, and he seemed to glide aside, to pass out of Venters's sight. Next he saw many horses with bridles down—all clean-limbed, dark bays or blacks—rustlers' horses! Loud voices and boisterous laughter, rattle of dice and scrape of chair and clink of gold, burst in mingled din from an open ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... species of the Hyena has been found at Port Dalrymple, which is extremely ferocious in appearance, has a remarkably large mouth, is striped all over, very strongly limbed, and its claws strong, long, and sharp. This animal is likewise of the Opossum kind, having, like the generality of subjects found in New Holland, a false belly. Notwithstanding its apparent ferocity, it has never yet ventured to attack any human ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... in Europe a quarter of a million years ago. Other specimens were afterwards found elsewhere, e.g. in Belgium ("the men of Spy"), in France, in Croatia, and at Gibraltar, so that a good deal is known of Neanderthal man. He was a loose-limbed fellow, short of stature and of slouching gait, but a skilful artificer, fashioning beautifully worked flints with a characteristic style. He used fire; he buried his dead reverently and furnished them with an outfit for a long journey; and he had a big brain. But he had great beetling, ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... last visit to the manor-house, we determined to go "beachway." We ran our rowboat on a sandy point jutting into the mouth of the creek, and took our way along the narrow strip of solid land that lay between river and marsh. White-limbed sycamores and tangled undergrowth went along with us, and sometimes inclined to take up more than their share of the narrow way. Brilliant berries gleamed on some bare, brown bushes, and the green leaves ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... flood, in the wider places, was a struggling mass of planks, timber, rocks, and roots—tokens of a tumultuous ruin above, to which the thunder-shower pouring around us gave but a feeble clew. A heavy-limbed willow, which overhung a rock on which I had often sat to watch the freshets of spring, rose up while we looked at it, and with a surging heave, as if lifted by an earthquake, toppled back, and ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... up the house, the Auld Licht lassies sat in the gloaming at their doors on three-legged stools, patiently knitting stockings. To them came stiff-limbed youths who, with a "Blawy nicht, Jeanie" (to which the inevitable answer was, "It is so, Cha-rles"), rested their shoulders on the doorpost, and silently followed with their eyes the flashing needles. Thus the courtship ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... leaves were already beginning to strew the ground beneath, and they could see the vista open upon the mullioned windows of the Priory, lighted up by the yellow October sunshine. In that sunshine stood a tall, clean-limbed young fellow, dressed in a shooting-suit, whom the consul recognized at once as Lord Algernon, the son of his companion. As if to accent the graces of this vision of youth and vigor, near him, in the shadow, an old man had halted, hat in hand, still holding ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... her. The lad, as she called him, was five and twenty years old, tall and straight and clean-limbed, with the blue eyes of the North, and a gentle, frank face. He worked early and late in the plot of ground that gave him his livelihood. He lived with his grandmother, and tended her with a gracious courtesy and veneration that never altered. ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... solitary height! The young girl, fair and slender as the wild flowers clinging to the rocks at their feet, yet with a poise of conscious strength; the man at her side, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, strong-limbed; his face dark with despair, hers ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... horse, of the old Galloway breed, of an under size, and not exceeding fourteen hands, but high shouldered, strong limbed, well coupled, and round barrelled, bore to the East Port the gallant smith. A judge of the animal might see in his eye a spark of that vicious temper which is frequently the accompaniment of the form that is most vigorous and enduring; ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... come, and stood up in his place clean-limbed and taut for running. He saw the sparks of the brand stream back along the Coyote's flanks as he carried it in his mouth, and stretched forward on the trail, bright against the dark bulk of the mountain like a falling star. He heard the singing sound of the Fire Spirits ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... Hercules beetle (Dynastes hercules) of Brazil. The family of the Dynastidae comprises some of the largest and most beautiful of the beetle race, and all of them are remarkable for enormous developments of the thorax and head. They are all large bodied and stout limbed, and by their great strength abundantly justify their generic name, Dynastes, which is from the Greek and signifies powerful. The larvae of these beetles inhabit and feed upon decaying trees and other rotting vegetable matter, and correspond in size with the mature insects. ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... Peruvian historians mention these giants, who were probably the large-limbed Gribs (Caraibes) of the Brazil: they will be noticed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... his own grave, he came to the stables. A groom was currying a strong, clean-limbed hunter haltered in the doorway. The man looked up as Barney approached him. A puzzled expression entered the fellow's eyes. He was a young man—a stupid-looking lout. It was evident that he half recognized ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... ordinary clean-limbed, rather block-headed young Englishman. Slow in his mental processes. On the other hand, it's quite impossible to lead him astray through his imagination. He hasn't got any—so he's difficult to deceive. He worries things out slowly, and once he's got hold of anything he doesn't let go. The ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... all shores, with an ugly black sky above and an angry sea beneath. You watch the grizzly old man at the helm carrying his craft with strange skill through the turmoil of waters, and the boy, supple-limbed, yet weather-worn already, and with steady eyes that look through the blast, you see him understanding commandments from the jerk of his father’s white eyebrow, now belaying and now letting go, now scrunching himself down into mere ballast, ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... what followed I don't believe was equalled by anything of the kind during the war. As the artillery came up we moved off by the right flank a few steps, to let it come in between us and the Illinois regiment next on our left. Where we were standing was in open, low-limbed oak timber. The line of Southern infantry was in tolerably plain view through the openings in the woods, and were still standing quietly. Of course, we all turned our heads away from them to look at the finely equipped battery, as it came galloping from the rear to our left flank, its officers ...
— "Shiloh" as Seen by a Private Soldier - With Some Personal Reminiscences • Warren Olney
... admirers of which I wholly agree. I read it with a certain awe, an undefined sense of sublimity, such as one experiences on entering, for the first time, upon those immense grassy deserts from which the work takes its name. The squatter and his family—that brawny old man and his large-limbed sons, living in a sort of primitive and patriarchal barbarism, sluggish on ordinary occasions, but terrible when roused, like the hurricane that sweeps the grand but monotonous wilderness in which they dwell—seem a natural growth ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... delight. The ground, which had been entirely cleared of undergrowth, was like an etching in clearest black and white, of the tender dancing foliage of the oaks and birches. The birches stood together in leaning, white-limbed groups like maidens, and the rustling spread of the oaks shed broad flashes of silver from the moon. In the midst of the grove the Hungarian orchestra played in a pavilion, and dancing was going on there. Many of the people outside moved with dancing steps. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... grey stones thereof but showed a little over their heads. But amidmost of the said Ring was a big stone, fashioned as a chair, whereon sat a very old man, long-hoary and white-bearded, and on either side of him stood a great-limbed woman clad in war-gear, holding, each of them, a long spear, and with a flint- bladed knife in the girdle; and there were no other women in all ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... will be clear, unwavering, and strong. There will be positiveness of statement, and sometimes intolerant dogmatism. Carlyle and Macaulay are among our strongest writers, the former being rugged, and the latter more polished in his strength. Macaulay's broad-shouldered, stout-limbed constitution is reflected in such passages as the following from his essay on Lord Bacon: "The moral qualities of Bacon were not of a high order. We do not say that he was a bad man. He was not inhuman or tyrannical. He bore ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... and limbed as just described, our hero, as you may well imagine, must have been a man of prodigious bodily strength. To be sure, a tall, supple, well-knit, athletic white man like Simon Kenton, for example, might, in a wrestling-match and ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... gloried in. He was like Bud—so much like him that Marie could not have loved him so much if she had managed to hate Bud as she tried sometimes to hate him. Lovin Child was a husky youngster, and he already had the promise of being as tall and straight-limbed and square-shouldered as his father. Deep in his eyes there lurked always a twinkle, as though he knew a joke that would make you laugh—if only he dared tell it; a quizzical, secretly amused little twinkle, as exactly like Bud's as it was possible for a two-year-old ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... cheered the captive, and Aurelia rose, weary-limbed and sad-hearted, with a patient trust in her soul that Love Divine would not fail her, and that earthly love ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the girl A-ya bore a child to Grom; a big-limbed, vigorous boy, with shapely head and spacious brow. In this event, and in the mother's happiness about it (a happiness that seemed to the rest of the women to savor of foolish extravagance), Grom felt a gladness which ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... The two supple-limbed youngsters met in the middle of the cabin floor and went down together. They were evenly matched, and the muscles of their necks stood out like whip cords as they struggled over the floor, each seeking to get a fall from ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... furniture. A single plain angular desk, with a blotting pad and a few sheets of large foolscap upon it, a waste-paper basket and four plain armchairs, completed the interior with a contrast as simple and homely as its long-limbed, black-coated occupant. Releasing the hand of the general to shut a door which opened into another apartment, the President shoved an armchair towards him and sank somewhat wearily into another before the desk. But ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... started to their feet, and found close behind them a half dozen of those miserable beggars. Two of them were old men, whose bleary eyes and stooping frames indicated extreme age. One was a woman on, crutches. Number Four was a thin, consumptive-looking man. Number Five and Number Six were strong-limbed fellows, with very villanous faces. It was with one universal whine that these unwelcome ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... with Indians standing respectfully about a man in the middle of the room, whom Roldan knew instinctively to be Anastacio. He was big and clean-limbed and sinewy, with small cunning eyes, a resolute mouth and chin, and an air of perfect fearlessness. Roldan warmed to him, and looked with admiration and envy at the ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... quiet hum of afternoon came the voices of the two children. Outside the lich-gate, under the shade of the spreading cedar, the horses stamped occasionally as the flies troubled them. The grooms were mounted; one held the delicate-limbed white Arab, the ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... Rotten Row, Selwyn and the English girl eased the reins and let the horses into a canter. With the motion of the strong-limbed chestnut the American felt a wave of exultation, and chuckled from no better cause than sheer enjoyment in the morning's mood of emancipation. He glanced at Elise Durwent, and saw that her eyes were sparkling like diamonds, and that the self-conscious bay was shaking his head and cantering ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... answer him. She slipped from the horse and ran into the arcade with the light grace that came of perfect health and the freedom of the hills. The eyes of the young man followed this slim, long-limbed Diana as she knelt beside Charlton and lifted his bloody head into her arms. He noticed that her eyes burned and that her virginal bosom rose and ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... stair by which ascent can be made. He shows him the first step of it through the mist. His feet are heavy; they have golden shoes. To go up that stair he must throw aside his shoes. He must walk bare- footed into life eternal. Rather than so, rather than stride free- limbed up the everlasting stair to the bosom of the Father, he will keep his precious shoes! It is better to drag them about on the earth, than part with them for a world where ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... evening harps and matin; when God said, Let the Earth bring forth soul living in her kind, Cattle, and creeping things, and beast of the Earth, Each in their kind. The Earth obeyed, and straight Opening her fertile womb teemed at a birth Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms, Limbed and full grown: Out of the ground up rose, As from his lair, the wild beast where he wons In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den; Among the trees in pairs they rose, they walked: The cattle in the fields ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... virtuous, and a little more tyrannical, if she borrowed her subjects' plate and repudiated her debts, instead of reducing her household expenses, and regulating court mournings by the interests of trade, I am very much afraid we should be a more loyal people! If we had a slender-limbed Stuart who insisted upon travelling with his temporary favourite when the lives and livelihoods of the best blood of Britain were being staked for his throne whilst he amused himself, I suppose we should wear white favours, and believe in the divine right of Kings. It must be impossible ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... axes and saws while Harry limbed the logs and looked after the Mayor. Their huge muscles flung the sharp axes into the timber and gnawed through it with the saw. Many big trees fell before noon time when they stopped for luncheon. While they were ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... hitherto sought in vain, with its suggestion of the backwoods of civilization, the pioneer, the primitive. And to emphasize and give the suggestion point, here was an example of the finest feminine beauty left to this degenerating world, beauty such as the Greeks knew, large-limbed, deep-bosomed, clear-eyed, product of a vigorous past, full of splendid augury ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... by the pines. Garments and boots were sodden, and Alton's face was set and drawn, for though he could now walk without much visible effort upon the level, a journey through the ranges of that country would at any season test the endurance of the strongest whole-limbed man, and his forced march had only been accomplished by stubborn determination and disregard of pain. Still, it was not physical distress alone which accounted for his gravity. He had put off his journey to the latest moment, ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... powers; but no one despised him because an expensive university training had made him nothing more than a first-rate oarsman, a fair billiard-player, and a distinguished thrower of the hammer. He was just what a country gentleman should be in the popular idea—handsome, broad-shouldered, long-limbed, with the fist and biceps of a gladiator, and a brain totally unburdened by the scholiast's dry-as-dust rubbish: sharp and keen enough where the things that interested him were in question, and never caring to look ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... ravine. But Jack was certain that the unwounded Kachins were still lurking in the cave out of his sight, and he had no intention whatever of creeping out and engaging in a hand-to-hand struggle with the iron-limbed little mountaineers. Fully half an hour passed in this profound silence. Jack kept the sharpest look-out, but could catch no sign to show that his lair ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... Not Mr. St. Leger, which had been Dolly's first momentary fear. No, this was a different creature. A young man, but how unlike that other. St. Leger was trim-built, smooth, regular, comely; this young fellow was lank, long-limbed, none of his joints played symmetrically with the others; and the face, though shrewd enough and good-natured, had no remote pretensions to beauty. His dress had not been cut by the sort of tailor that worked for the St. Legers; his gait, instead of the firm, compact, confident ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... think the earth is under a curse, since of all her children these that cling to her the closest are uncouth in body and as leaden of gait as if their very hearts were loaded with chains. But here on this same road you might have seen amongst these heavy men a being lithe, supple, and long-limbed, straight like a pine with something striving upwards in his appearance as though the heart within him had been buoyant. Perhaps it was only the force of the contrast, but when he was passing one of these villagers here, the soles of his feet did not seem to me to touch the dust of ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... which constantly it suffuses the air. You meet the Chinese everywhere. The men differ in no wise from the men with whom the smaller Chinatowns of the East have acquainted us. The women make the streets exotic. Little, slim-limbed creatures, amber-skinned, jewel-eyed, dressed in silk of black or pastel colors, loosely coated and comfortably trousered, their jet-black shining hair filled with ornaments, they go about in groups which include old women and young matrons, half-grown girls slender as forsythia branches, babies ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... supreme moment came. When all the potentates had taken their positions, right and left, with their silk-limbed soldiery in double ranks behind them, there came into view upstage a squad of little white-clad female naval officers, each, according to my recollection, carrying the Stars and Stripes. As these marched forward and deployed as skirmishers before the footlights, the ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... the choir approaching, the dusky flash of brown bodies swaying, palpitating to the intoxicating rhythm of the song. Slowly and with great dignity they entered the clearing and stood, a score of slender creatures, in the full blaze of the moon, their lithe-limbed bodies clad only in delicate ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... you prowlin' about the church then fur, anyhow?" demanded the stranger, standing up in his boots, into which his trousers were tucked; and he stood such a straight, long-limbed, lithe giant of a man that Levin saw he could never run away, even if the intruder meant to chew him ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... with him from Fort Pitt except his horse, a black-coated, fine limbed thoroughbred, which he frankly confessed was all he could call his own. When asking Colonel Zane to give him a position in the garrison he said he was a Virginian and had been educated in Philadelphia; that after his father died ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey |
