|
|
|
More "Leer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cordial among the Southerners, while the intruder pressed hard upon Mr. Reybold. He was a singular object; tall, grim, half-comical, with a leer of low familiarity in his eyes, but his waxed mustache of military proportions, his patch of goatee just above the chin, his elaborately oiled hair and flaming necktie, set off his faded face with an odd gear of finery and impressiveness. His skin was that of an old ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... the answer, with a leer. "We have nothing of that breed among us; we are all honest men. But what if a man has an acquaintance abroad, and gets a commission to sell a cargo of tea or brandy, or perhaps a present from a friend—what shall hinder him from going to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... leering or "empty, hence, perhaps, leer horse, a horse without a rider; leer is an adjective meaning uncontrolled, hence 'leer drunkards'" (Halliwell); according to Nares, a leer (empty) horse meant also a led horse; ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... corridor, to receive the benefit of fresh air. Here he remains some twenty minutes, stretched upon two benches, and eyed sharply by the vote-cribber, who paces in a circle round him, regarding him with a half suspicious leer, and twice or thrice pausing to fan his face with the drab felt hat he carries under ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... the door on seeing a stranger, twirled in his hand a perfectly round old hat without any vestige of a brim, and resting himself now on one leg and now on the other and changing them constantly, stood in the doorway, looking into the parlour with the most extraordinary leer I ever beheld. I entertained a grateful feeling towards the boy from that minute, for I felt that he was the comedy ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... VERY handsome," said he, with such a leer at a couple of passers-by, that one of them cried, "Oh, crickey, here's a precious guy!" and a child, in its nurse's arms, screamed itself into convulsions. "Oh, oui, che suis tres-choli garcon, bien peau, cerdainement," continued Mr. Pinto; "but you were right. That— that ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Thieves of renown, and pilferers of fame: Their front supplies what their ambition lacks; They know a thousand lords, behind their backs. Cottil is apt to wink upon a peer, When turn'd away, with a familiar leer; And Harvey's eyes, unmercifully keen, Have murder'd fops, by whom she ne'er was seen. Niger adopts stray libels; wisely prone To covet shame still greater than his own. Bathyllus, in the winter of threescore, Belies his innocence, and keeps a whore. ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... your pardon for keeping you waiting, I'm sure," said the clerk with an apologetic leer, meant ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... wretch looked up at him with the leer of a ghoul. He was dressed like a broken-down clergyman, in rusty black, with ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... hint, as it does now, of an overdoing of the outward demonstrations of modesty; a 'leer' was once a look with nothing amiss in it (Piers Plowman). 'Daft' was modest or retiring; 'orgies' were religious ceremonies; the Blessed Virgin speaks of herself in an early poem as 'God's wench.' In 'crafty' and ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... here, Thou haunting whisperer? Spirit of beauty immanent and sheer, Art thou that crooked servitor, Done with disguise, from whose malignant leer Out of the ghostly house ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... think of hunting when he could be talking to you instead?" said old Astrardente, whose painted face adjusted itself in a sort of leer that had once been a winning smile. Every one knew he painted, his teeth were a miracle of American dentistry, and his wig had deceived a great portrait-painter. The padding in his clothes was disposed with cunning wisdom, and in public he rarely ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... set purpose, had crept up behind us so softly that we should not suspect his approach, or else so engrossed were we that our ears had been deafened for the time. He stood there now in his untidy gown of black, and there was a leer of mockery on his long, white face. Slowly he put a lean arm between us, and took the ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... First favoured the court with a fascinating leer, which left no doubt on any one's mind that ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... losin' game to keep a store in the bush, ef you be a smart man,' observed Zack, with a leer, after a few minutes' devotion to the contents of his tin plate. By this adjective 'smart' is to be understood 'sharp, overreaching'—in fact, a cleverness verging upon safe dishonesty. 'I guess it's the ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... with a triumphant leer at the calm face of Marguerite. She still did not feel really frightened, only puzzled and perturbed; but all the blood had rushed away from her face, leaving her cheeks ashen white, and pressing against her heart, until ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... individual lingered near the May-pole. As he was especially active, we may describe him and his employment. He was apparently about fifteen. He had coarse straight white hair—a face that denoted stupidity—but with a cunning leer, which seemed to ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... they are unaccountable. It at first exhibited itself in restlessness, and an inability to remain quiet, and afterwards in half-suppressed groans and sighs. If he opened his eyes and looked at the reader, he saw a devilish figure, with a malignant leer glaring at him; if he shut them to exclude the disagreeable image it was converted into a thousand smaller figures, dancing up and down like motes in a distempered vision, all wearing that intolerable grin, while the whole time a hissing sound, as if it came from a snake, whispered in ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... by the lantern, I seemed to see the face of this embodied curse with an ever-changing mockery of expression; at one moment wearing the features of my father; at another those of Tom Wynne; at another the leer of the old woman I ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Monsieur," said the obese Turk with a graceful wave of the hand in my direction, "and not you, who has robbed my home of its treasure, unless," he added, and I shall always remember the hideous leer of that pulpy-nosed and small-pox pitted face, "unless Monsieur has relieved ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... to his feet; but the business was over in two twos. The four living fellows looked at each other in rather a ghastly fashion; the dead man contemplating a corner of the roof with a singular and ugly leer. ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... old critic Zabastes, squeezing his lean, bent body from out the throng, hobbled after Sah-luma at some little distance behind the harp-bearer, muttering to himself as he went, and bestowing many a side-leer and malicious grin on those among his acquaintance whom he here and there recognized. Theos noted his behavior with a vague sense of amusement,—the man took such evident delight in his own ill- humor, and seemed to be so thoroughly convinced that his ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... reception-room a mob was struggling at a window, beneath a blaze of electric light. A soldier was standing there like a statue, his face fixed with a leer of horror. In his hands was a rifle, with a blood-stained bayonet, dripping upon the hardwood floor at the edge of the rug. Upon the rug itself a stream of blood was ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... to "beat it," and Ash-Can Sam edged a little closer, wearing a dissolute, wicked leer of joy. He circled slowly round the stranger cat, eying Omar Ben's glossy coat and humming a sort of ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple
... the profanation of the word "love" rose to its height; the muse of science condescended to seek admission at the saloons of fashion and frivolity, rouged like a harlot and with the harlot's wanton leer. I know not how the annals of guilt could be better forced into the service of virtue than by such a comment on the present paragraph as would be afforded by sentimental correspondence produced in courts of justice, fairly translated into the true meaning of the words, and the actual object ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... who thus gossiped was a young man, Ambrogiuolo da Piacenza, by name, who, when Bernabo thus concluded his eulogy of his wife, broke out into a mighty laugh, and asked him with a leer, whether he of all men had this privilege by special patent of the Emperor. Bernabo replied, somewhat angrily, that 'twas a boon conferred upon him by God, who was rather more powerful than the Emperor. To which Ambrogiuolo rejoined:—"I make no doubt, Bernabo, that ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... round him, half frightened and much surprised, but the boy showed no symptoms of astonishment. His face relaxed into a ghastly leer, which showed the whole range ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... in writing annoys and offends them. The coarseness apart, I think I have met very, very few women who liked the banter of Swift and Fielding. Their simple, tender natures revolt at laughter. Is the satyr always a wicked brute at heart, and are they rightly shocked at his grin, his leer, his horns, hoofs, and ears? Fi donc, le vilain monstre, with his shrieks, and his capering crooked legs! Let him go and get a pair of well-wadded black silk stockings, and pull them over those horrid ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to carry further than Steen did the art of flattening noses, twisting mouths, shortening necks, making wrinkles, rendering faces stupid, putting on humps, and making his puppets seem as if they were roaring with laughter, vomiting, reeling, or falling. By the leer of a half-closed eye he expressed idiocy and sensuality; by a sneer or a gesture he revealed the brutality of a man. He makes one smell the odor of a pipe, hear the coarse laughter, guess at the stupid or foul discourses—to understand, in a word, tavern-life and the dregs of the ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... troubled fury. Whether he detected his own presentment in Miss Mannersley's sketch, or whether he recognized it as an unknown and unfamiliar treachery in his surroundings, I could not conjecture; for the next moment the matador, taking advantage of the bull's concentration, with a complacent leer at the audience, advanced toward the paper. But at that instant a young man cleared the barrier into the arena with a single bound, shoved the matador to one side, caught up the paper, turned toward the balcony and Miss Mannersley with a gesture of apology, dropped gaily before the bull, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... was thinking of the familiar and lecherous leer with which the stranger had addressed her mother—the horror, the shame of it. Could even a drunken man, if utterly mistaken, be so defiant, so persistent, so willing to explain? What shameful things had she ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... for her sake. She would still have his name, his income, her lover, her place in society, her right to explain his absence at her pleasure. He could ruin her ruined life by exposing her. Then would come the divorce court, the publicity, the leer of the mob, the pointed fingers of scorn. Impossible! Why could he not leave the matter untouched and keep up appearances before the world? Least endurable of any scheme. He knew that he could never meet her again without killing her, unless this problem was settled. When he had determined ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... on one side and an impudent leer. 'We are interrupting the turtledoves, Mr. Thomasson, ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... neglected novel. I went down to breakfast. Everything about the place looked bleak and dreary and as grey as a granite tombstone. Hawkes, who but twelve hours before had seemed the embodiment of life in its most resilient form, now appeared as a drab nemesis with wooden legs and a frozen leer. My coffee was bitter, the peaches were like sponges, the bacon and rolls of uniform sogginess and the eggs of a strange liverish hue. I sat there alone, gloomy and depressed, contrasting the hateful sunshine with the soft, witching refulgence of twenty-four candles ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... against his and rubbed his cheek with hers. To Philip her smile was an abominable leer, and the suggestive glitter of her eyes filled him with ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... Number 13, with the reflected glare of the lamp opposite upon it, seemed to leer down on him like a mocking ghost, claiming him as its own. What was the use of keeping up the struggle any longer? After all, was there ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... a cool and ready soldier," observed Pitts. "I saw him once in Philadelphia, before his Legion went south. He had a most determined look in spite of the good-humoured leer of his eye. He was one of the last men I should have wished to provoke; he was a complete Irishman—blunders and all. I heard of his telling a black servant who was walking barefoot on the snow to put on a pair of stockings the next time he ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... was gradually deserted—the appearance of the pastor was no longer a signal for every hat to be lifted from the head; on the contrary, boys of sixteen or seventeen years of age would lean against the church, or the walls of the churchyard, with their hands in both pockets, and a sort of leer upon their faces, as though they defied the pastor on his appearance—and there would they remain outside during the service, meeting, unquailed and without blushing, his eyes, cast upon them as he came out again. Such ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... the young man with the inscrutable smile that at moments was wont to curl upon his lips. Ernest had once likened it to the smile of Mona Lisa, but now he detected in it the suavity of the hypocrite and the leer of ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... the throng, whose choice he was, seated aloft upon men's shoulders, with a purple robe thrown on his shoulders, there sat a brawny, grinning, bloated, jibbering thing, with curled lips and savage eyes, and satyr's leer: the creature of greed, of lust, of obscenity, of brutality, of avarice, of desire. This thing the people followed, rejoicing exceedingly, content in the guide whom they had chosen, victorious in the fiend for whom they ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... unfortunately for himself barely so, for the delegates had been treated with lavish Western hospitality, and there had been many toasts to honor during the dinner. He leaned against the wall with one hand on a carved bracket, looking down upon her with what seemed to be a leer of brutal ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... it ain't so. He is the worst one that comes here. They say he has sold himself to the devil for a pretty face. It's nigh on eighteen years since I met him. He hasn't changed much since then. I have though," she added, with a sickly leer. ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... another house or in another land you might find me employing, again solely for decorative purposes, the prints of Japan, the landscapes of the modern impressionists, the rugs of the East, or the blankets of the Arizona desert. Free me, then, from the reproach implied in that covert leer at my Early Sienese." Yes, we must, I think, exclude from the ranks of the true zealots all who in any plausible fashion utilise the objects of art they buy. Excess, the craving to possess what he apparently ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... name and the tone were significant enough. He fell back a step, and scowled at Stonor as if he suspected him of a desire to make fun of him. Then his eyes went involuntarily to Hooliam. Stonor, following his glance, was struck by the odd, self-conscious leer on Hooliam's comely face. Suddenly it flashed on him that this was his man. His face went blank with astonishment. The supposed ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... he said, with a sickening leer. "I have come to offer you safety, liberty, and ease. My heart has been softened toward you in your suffering, and I would make amends as best ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... will recognize instantly the significant difference between filthy filth and funny "filth." Dirt for dirt's sake is something else again. Pornography, an eminent American jurist has pointed out, is distinguished by the "leer of the sensualist." ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... haven't zonner—haven't zonner your acquaintance. Want to see Will. Got prodigal on zands, Will has. Seems t'ave come back mos' 'no—mos' 'nopportune 'casion. All right, ole man: jus' give me y' arm and I get 'long mos' com-for-ble, mos' comfort-a-ble," he ended with a leer of triumph at having achieved ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... they be boyled tender in the Beefe Kettle, or Pot among some other meat, blanch and serve them cleane, then cut each Pallat in two, and set them a stewing between two Dishes with a piece of leer Bacon, an handful of Champignions, five or six sweetbreads of Veale, a Ladle-full or two of strong broth, and as much gravy of Mutton, an Onion or two, five or six Cloves, and a blade or two of Mace, and a piece of Orange Pils; as your Pallats stew, ...
— The Compleat Cook • Anonymous, given as "W. M."
... answered the old bookseller. "You're as good as they are." He leaned forward from the easy chair, and tapped the clerk's arm with a long, claw-like finger. "I say," he continued, with a smile that was something between a wink and a leer, and suggestive of a pleased satisfaction. "I've ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... endeavour to show that, though heredity and habit based on memory go about in different dresses, yet if we catch them separately—for they are never seen together—and strip them there is not a mole nor strawberry-mark, nor trick nor leer of the one, but we find ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... the callers, and many eccentricities, to use no harsher term, are the result. Towards the close of the day, everything is in confusion—the door bell is never silent. Crowds of young men in various stages of intoxication rush into the lighted parlors, leer at the hostess in the vain effort to offer their respects, call for liquor, drink it, and stagger out, to repeat the scene at some other house. Frequently, they are unable to recognize the residences of ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... upon his own blue-ringed legs, steadied by claws in the fleece, yet not so fiercely inserted as to get entangled and fast. With his large level-crowned head bobbing up and down, and turned a little first to one side and then to another, all the while a self-congratulatory leer in his eye, he unfolds his wings, and then folds them again, twenty or thirty times, as if dubious how to begin to gratify his lust of blood; and frequently, when just on the brink of consummation, jumps off side, back, or throat, and goes dallying about, round and round, and off to ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... creased backs and gooseflesh of his nudes! What lurking cynicism there is in some of his interiors! Voila l'animale! he exclaims as he shows us the far from enchanting antics of some girl. How Schopenhauer would laugh at the feminine "truths" of Degas! Without the leer of Rops, Degas is thrice as unpleasant. He is a douche for the romantic humbug painter, the painter of sleek bayaderes and of ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... intensity that almost paralyzed his senses. He had looked into her bloodshot eyes, noted the hard lines drawn around the corners of her mouth, the coarse, painted lips, dry hair, and sunken cheeks. He had heard her harsh laugh and caught the glint of her drunken leer. A cold shiver swept through him. It was as if he had stepped on a flat stone covering a grave which had tilted beneath his feet, revealing a corpse but a few months buried. Had he been anywhere else he would have sunk to the floor—not to pray, but to rest his knees, which seemed ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... morning, ready to enlist in what Bishop Bland called "the noble service of industry." Her work was in the finishing room where a number of girls were crowded at machines and tables, filing, clipping, and packing bottles. Her task was to take the screw-neck bottles that came from the leer, and chip and file their jagged necks and shoulders until all the roughness was removed. It was dirty work, and dangerous for unskilled hands, and she found ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... a grin and a sly wink. And sometimes Thyrsis would make a casual remark in conversation, and the man would twist it out of its meaning, or make a pun out of it—to find some excuse for his satyr's leer. So at last Thyrsis was moved to say to him—"Don't you ever realize what a state you've ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... a snicker from behind him. He, thinking it was one of his late tormentors, paid no attention to it. Then a cynical, biting laugh stung him. He wheeled, to see Shorty leaning against a tree, a sneering leer on his flushed face. Shorty's right hand was suspended above his holster, hooked to his belt by the thumb—a favorite position ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... had been sitting just within the door, rose and came to his chief's side. Jose felt his brain whirling. Fernando stepped outside and took his arm. The Alcalde's unlovely face expanded in a sinister leer. "It is permissible to place even a priest in the stocks, if he becomes loco," ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... other, "you will permit me to have my own ideas on that subject. They probably differ from yours at the present moment," he added with a leer, "but time will show which of ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... A gas jet above the wretched little washstand lighted the room but poorly. The door opened slowly. A tall, ungainly woman entered the room—a creature with a sallow, weather-beaten face and a perpetual leer. ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... hangs a quaint, strong head, Though merely sketched. What a marked, cunning leer Grins on the wide mouth! ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... faithful discharge, but with the highest honours and honourable emoluments of an established profession. The translation the reader will find in a note below [45]. "Am sorgfaeltigsten, meiden sie die Autorschaft. Zu frueh oder unmaessig gebraucht, macht sie den Kopf wueste and das Herz leer; wenn sie auch sonst keine ueble Folgen gaebe. Ein Mensch, der nur lieset um zu druecken, lieset wahrscheinlich uebel; und wer jeden Gedanken, der ihm aufstosst, durch Feder and Presse versendet, hat sie in kurzer Zeit alle versandt, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... from Hannibal by many miles and a Consular army, fell back to the Metaurus, and Rome was saved. Two thousand years later, Prince Frederick Charles, divided by a few marches and two Austrian army corps from the Crown Prince, lingered so long upon the leer that the supremacy of Prussia trembled in the balance. But the character of the Virginian soldier was of loftier type. It has been remarked that after Jackson's death Lee never again attempted those great turning movements which had achieved his most brilliant victories. Never again did he divide ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... Einstein's vicious leer was a silent answer. "Tell her she shall have a new silk dress from me, if you keep your ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... do so quite independently of him. But Peace would listen to no refusal, however decided its tone. Dyson threw over the card into Peace's garden. This only served to aggravate his determination to possess himself of the wife. He would listen at keyholes, leer in at the window, and follow Mrs. Dyson wherever she went. When she was photographed at the fair, she found that Peace had stood behind her chair and by that means got himself included in the picture. At times he had threatened ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... year ago; "They called me the hyacinth girl." - Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, 40 Looking into the heart of light, the silence. Od' und leer ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... declared that "the wide earth did not carry a bein' she liked or loved, but one—not even excepting herself, that she hated most of all." This however was not necessary to prove that she acted rather from the gratification of some secret malice, than from the principle of benevolence. The venomous leer of her eye, therefore, and an accurate knowledge of her character, induced him to connect some apprehension of approaching evil with the unpleasant information she had just ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... come with horns and tail, With diabolic grin and crafty leer; I say, such bogey-man devices wholly fail To waken in ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... I shouted, When I saw his hateful leer; 'Tell me what this means, Jim Johnson. Where is Billy? Ain't he here?' He was standing on the doorstep, And the light that shone within Seemed to twist his wrinkled features In a sort of wonder-grin. 'Well! well! Nancy! sure's I'm livin'! Out there in the pouring wet! Sure ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... too clevaire," said the maid with an evil leer,—"she would rob Madame, would she? She would play the espionne, hein? Eh bien, ma petite, you stay 'ere ontil you say what you lave done wiz ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... with gin; The Session's sentence wrung her to the soul, Nor could she lounge the gag to shule a win; The knowing bench had tipp'd her buzer queer, [8] For Dick had beat the hoof upon the pad, Of Field, or Chick-lane—was the boldest lad That ever mill'd the cly, or roll'd the leer. [9] And with Nell he kept a lock, to fence, and tuz, And while his flaming mot was on the lay, With rolling kiddies, Dick would dive and buz, And cracking kens concluded ev'ry day; [10] But fortune fickle, ever on the wheel, Turn'd up a rubber, ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... with the same unpleasant leer upon his face, rolled down the deck in her wake, carelessly humming a fragment of the tune he had just been playing. He had collected all the contributions in his big hand—a pitiful little collection of nickels ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... better away, a latent corruption,—a hint as of an impure presence. Some of that dreary double entendre may be attributed to freer times and manners than ours,—but not all. The foul satyr's eyes leer out of the leaves constantly. The last words the famous author wrote were bad and wicked. The last lines the poor stricken wretch penned were for pity and pardon." Now a line or two about Goldsmith, and I will then let my reader go to the volume and study the lectures ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... sank upon the floor in assumed exhaustion, a Chinaman with a perfectly impassive face, and a Burman, whose pock-marked, evil countenance was set in an apparently habitual leer, came running into the ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... a sort of swagger. He wes less intoxicated than Turner, but ugly enough. He faced the captain with a leer. ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... warned you. This is Argyle Street on a Saturday night; other nights it is quieter, of course. Oh, he won't harm you.' A lumbering carter in a wild state of intoxication had pushed himself against the frightened girl, and looked down into her face with an idiotic leer. ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... these? Why sit they here in twilight? Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows, Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish, Baring teeth that leer like skulls' tongues wicked? Stroke on stroke of pain,—but what slow panic, Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets? Ever from their hair and through their hand palms Misery swelters. Surely we have perished Sleeping, and walk hell; ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... distress; and the little silly, pretty Phillida, or Foolida, to stare at the strange creatures round her. It is this temper which constitutes the supercilious eye, the reserved look, the distant bowe, the scornful leer, the affected astonishment, the loud whisper, ending in a laugh directed full in the teeth of another. Hence spring, in short, those numberless offences given too frequently, in public and private assemblies, by persons of weak understandings, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... catch. Set your cap for him, Jessie, and you may ride in your own carriage." There was a vulgar leer in Mrs. Loring's eye. The color rose to Jessie's face, but she did ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... sinister in this invitation and in the leer which accompanied it, that Hugh felt a qualm of misgiving. He hung back, uncertain what to say next, until cross-eyed Harry gave him a push that sent him staggering through the doorway. The four men then entered the cabin after him, ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... years of age, son of a neighbouring small Squire, who lived in the doubtful capacity of parlour-boarder with Mr. Wapshot, flung himself into a theatrical attitude near a newly-made grave, and began repeating Hamlet's verses over Ophelia, with a hideous leer at Pen. The young fellow was so enraged that he rushed at Hobnell Major with a shriek very much resembling an oath, cut him furiously across the face with the riding-whip which he carried, flung it away, calling upon the cowardly villain ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... calico slip, with lots of jewels (sham), an immense colour in the very middle of the cheek, but terribly chalked just about the mouth, and shouting the "Soldier tired," with a most insinuating simper at the corporal of the Foot-guards in front, who returns the compliment by a most outrageous leer between each whiff ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... mouth and nose, The mother's eyes, as black as sloes? See here a shocking awkward creature, That speaks a fool in every feature.' 'The woman's blind,' the mother cries; 'I see wit sparkle in his eyes.' 20 'Lord! madam, what a squinting leer; No doubt the fairy hath been here.' Just as she spoke, a pigmy sprite Pops through the key-hole, swift as light; Perched on the cradle's top he stands, And thus her folly reprimands: 'Whence sprung the ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... choruses which make things go along as pleasantly as possible. Meanwhile the bottle is returned empty. He takes it, insists upon re-filling your "glass" from it, and tips it up over your cup. Then with a comical leer at you at the idea of attempting to pour wine from an empty bottle, he turns, dives into his cellar and fishes up another. You bid him go on with that capital song, offering to save him the trouble of unsealing ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... like this. He's goin' to be a rancher. Yes, don't y' see?" he asked, with a pitiful attempt at a knowing leer. ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... repeated the old man, with another disagreeable leer; "perhaps, then, it will be well for you to wait till you are ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... Perhaps the dead could really see from under their stiff eyelids, and old Halkett would laugh at the difficulty with which they disrobed him for this last time. Perhaps he had been watching when George and she looked through the window. Until now she had never seen him when he did not leer at her, and she felt that he must still be leering under ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... fixed their eyes upon Victoria, and ogled her with an impudent leer. Victoria sat erect and immovable, and even her eye- lashes did not move; she apparently did not see the glances fixed upon her; nor even heard what Bonnier had said about her, for her countenance remained calm and ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... drawing on. She felt the welcome chill of it on her burning face, and it kept her from yielding to the faintness that oppressed her. But still she could not enter, till a great, square-built Boer lounging near the doorway came up to her and looked into her eyes with an evil leer. ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... er is. Mijn hoop is Christus en zyn bloed. Door deze leer ik en hoop door die het eenwig goed. Ons leven is maar eenen dag, vol ziekten en vol naar geklag. Vol rampen dampen (!) en vendriet. Een schim Eien droom en ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... and loud with the raucity of phonographs and the stamping of feet. Everything was "wide open," and there was not even the thinnest veneer of respectability. Drinking and gambling and dancing go on all night long. Drunken men reel out upon the snow; painted faces leer over muslin curtains as one passes by. Without any government, without any pretence of municipal organisation, there is no co-operation for public enterprise. There are no streets, there are no sidewalks save such as a man ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... like the train of a lady's dress. His pantaloons had also once belonged to some full grown specimen of humanity, but had been torn off to suit the dimensions of the present owner—and, altogether, the appearance of this miserable object, with his one blind eye, and the cunning leer in the other, was calculated to excite both pity and disgust. The brothers looked upon him for a moment in mute astonishment, until again startled by that squeaking, supplicating voice—"Un picayune, Monsieur—one picayune to buy ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... Botticelli. Now, Botticelli builded on Giorgione, while Burne-Jones builded on Botticelli. Aubrey Beardsley, dead at the age at which Keats died, builded on both, but he perverted their art and put a leer where Burne-Jones placed faith and abiding trust. Aubrey Beardsley got the cue for his hothouse art from one figure in Botticelli's "Spring," I need not state which figure: a glance at the picture and you behold sulphur fumes about ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... line, his face a leer. "We are offering you a three-way partnership, Mathers. You, with your Medal of Honor, are our front man. Mr. Demming supplies the initial capital to get underway. And I ..." He twisted his mouth with evil self-satisfaction. "I was present when ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... of pain appeared between the Professor's eyes—but he stood his ground defiantly. "Yes," went on Bunker thrusting out his jaw in a baleful leer at his rival, "for many years he has had the proud distinction of being the Champion Rough-Riding ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... spirit upon a level with many of the least reputable elective Chambers in the world; and beneath the imposing mask of an assembly of notables backed by the prescription and traditions of centuries we discern the leer of the artful dodger, who has got the straight tip from the ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... in the house, and this morning as I was standing at the window I saw him go out. He glanced up and caught my eye. It was a loutish figure and a singularly repulsive face that I saw, and he gave me the benefit of a very unpleasant leer. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... rejoins the ruffian, interrupting. "There is one," he continues, looking askant at the Indian, with the leer of a demon, "one, I take it, whom the young Tovas chief would wish to retain as an ornament to his court. Pretty creature the nina was, when I last saw her; and I have no doubt still is, unless your Chaco sun has made havoc with her charms. She had a cousin about her own ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... the lowest streets in the city on my way back from a case which I had been attending. It was very late, and I was picking my way among the dirty loungers who were clustering round the doors of a great gin-palace, when a man staggered out from among them, and held out his hand to me with a drunken leer. The gaslight fell full upon his face, and, to my intense astonishment, I recognised in the degraded creature before me my former acquaintance, young Archibald Reeves, who had once been famous as one of the most dressy and particular men in the whole college. ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was evidently satisfactory to Hobson, for, as he opened the door, there was a leer of triumph on his face. He glanced suspiciously about the hall, and, on reaching the door, turned to Mrs. LaGrange, who had accompanied him, saying, in his ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... softly as a breath Through the woods that loured behind The City; hooded shapes of fear Slowly, slowly stealing near; While all the gloom that round them rolled With intertwisting coils grew cold. And there with leer and gap-toothed grin Many a gaunt ancestral Sin With clutching fingers, white and thin, Strove to put the boughs aside; And still before them all would glide Down the wavering moon-white track One lissom figure, clad in black; Who wept at mirth and mocked at pain And murmured a song of the wind ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... loose tresses hid: he in delight Both of her Beauty and submissive Charms Smil'd with superior Love, as Jupiter On Juno smiles, when he impregns the Clouds 500 That shed May Flowers; and press'd her Matron lip With kisses pure: aside the Devil turnd For envie, yet with jealous leer maligne Ey'd them askance, and to himself thus plaind. Sight hateful, sight tormenting! thus these two Imparadis't in one anothers arms The happier Eden, shall enjoy thir fill Of bliss on bliss, while I to Hell am thrust, Where neither ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... a great relief that the Reverend Orme was not looking at Shenton; his gaze was fastened on Manoel. Lewis, too, turned his eyes on Manoel. Cold sweat came out over him as he saw the terror in Manoel's face. The leer was still there, frozen. Over it and through it, like a double exposure on a single negative, hung the film of terror. The Reverend Orme, his hands half outstretched, walked slowly ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... cars at Leer, where on the platform a drunken German soldier lurched against us, and, seeing us tied together, offered to lend us his knife to cut the cord, but the guard quickly ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... booth Mr. Lord looked at him around the corner of the canvas—for it seemed to Toby that his employer could look around a square corner with much greater ease than he could straight ahead—with a disagreeable leer in his eye, as though he enjoyed the misery which he knew his little ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... word which had passed, and he saw at once that he would have a field for his diabolical machinations. Could Claude have seen the leer with which the ghastly apparition followed him as he passed, he would have shuddered with a sense of approaching danger. He did not look back, however, and the Man in Green, having requested an audience with De Roberval, ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... to his "No, sir" the explanatory sentence, "except finding him there when I went for my boots"; and Munger, the cad, added to his answer, "but I'll try to find out," with a leer and an oily smile, which Ainger felt strongly tempted to acknowledge by a kick as he passed back to his place. Stafford, painfully aware that he was one of the "mentioned" ones, looked horribly confused and red as he answered to his name, and satisfied several ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... 'Well, what's the matter with you?' "'Aw,' said the soldier, with a leer, 'I've got de lapsy-palls, and I wanter go ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... ugliest man I have ever seen. He has a squint and a leer, his mouth drops at both sides, he has no forehead, and his straight, combed hair meets his eyebrows—or rather, his left eyebrow, since that one is raised by a cut. He has the expression of a cut-throat, and yet he is quite young, ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... told her to see how she'd stare, and then I drugged her so she can't blab, out of that bottle I've seen you use, sir (with a cunning leer), more nor once. She wants to come with us, sir, she's so ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... better than raising potatoes on the Saskatchewan, or hiding among the niggers in Louis—hic—iana. Down with the Oligarchy. To hell with them. Hurrah! This is my palace. I am a king! Look-a-there,' he said, with a roll and a leer, pointing over his shoulder at the shrinking and terrified women; 'ain't they ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... show I must be getting home or Mother will think I have been waylaid and my watch stolen. So long, everybody, and pleasant dreams." Then thrusting his face back into the room through the narrowing crack of the door, he added with elfish leer, "Just the same, I still think that Coulter had something to ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... not be informed of your whereabouts at present," said Boris, shortly. "Because," he continued, with a villainous leer, "I am only cruel to be kind. I want to have all the details of our marriage settled as soon as possible. A night of waiting will soften your dear brother's heart, and he will probably listen ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... were trying to mob a Chinese laundryman. The evening papers said that I had stopped a runaway coach-and-four on Fifth Avenue, that morning, by lassoing the leader. On the coach were Mrs. Aster, Mrs. Fitch, Reggie Vanderbuilt, George Goold, Harry Leer and a passel of other "Among those presents." That night I went to a music-hall—according to the next morning's papers—and broke up the show by throwing a pocketful of solitaires to the chorus girls. The next day three burglars got into my room; I held them up ...
— Colonel Crockett's Co-operative Christmas • Rupert Hughes
... look grave and recall dire happenings to Captains who had elected to effect their repairs in the outer harbour—just here, at Port William. Old Jock's square jaw was set firm, his eyes were narrowed to a crafty leer; he looked on everyone with unconcealed suspicion and distrust. He was a shipmaster of the old school, 'looking after his Owners' interest.' He had put in 'in distress' to effect repairs.... He was being called upon to ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... the alehouse, where he sat, Came the Scalds and Saga-men; Is it to be wondered at, That they quarrelled now and then, When o'er his beer Began to leer Drunken Thangbrand, ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... at him with the leer of a ghoul. He was dressed like a broken-down clergyman, in rusty black, with a neck-cloth ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... while with the other he struck blows that sounded horrible to me. Angel was hitting out wildly. When the boy saw me, he hooked his leg behind Angel's and threw him on his back with deadly ease, at the same time administering a kick in the stomach. He turned then to me with a leer. ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... will," Skip replied with a leer, and then led his followers down the road, each one making some insulting remark as ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... know what business you've got to order me out—unless—" His gaze included the girl for a moment, and the insult of his leer was unmistakable. ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... overlook men of merit in distress; and the little silly, pretty Phillida, or Foolida, to stare at the strange creatures round her. It is this temper which constitutes the supercilious eye, the reserved look, the distant bowe, the scornful leer, the affected astonishment, the loud whisper, ending in a laugh directed full in the teeth of another. Hence spring, in short, those numberless offences given too frequently, in public and private assemblies, by persons of weak understandings, indelicate habits, and ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... at 11 a.m. (six), "Leer ons alzoo onze dagen tellen" ("So teach us to number our days"); afternoon, 4 p.m. (six), "En de dooden werden geoordeeld uit hetgeen in de boeken geschreven was, naar hunne werken" ("And the dead were judged out of those things which ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... nahm, als ich Abschied nahm, Waren Kisten und Kasten schwer; 10 Als ich wieder kam, als ich wieder kam, War alles leer." ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... story without getting sight of the madman. Finally he reached the roof. It was waving like swells on a lake before a breeze. He caught sight of the Mad Musician standing on the street wall, thirty stories from the street, a leer on his devilish ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... grasp, 'I have just shut us in snug and secure so that we can chat away without fear of interruption. Let us drink to a comfortable night's sleep. You will sleep sound enough here, I can tell you!' He handed me a glass as he spoke. 'Drink!' he said with a leer. 'You are not half an Australian if you cannot hold that! See!' and pouring himself out a tumbler of spirits and water he was about to gulp it down, when I uttered an ejaculation of horror. The light from the single gas jet over his head, falling on his face as he ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... was stout and thick-built; he had a fat face with bulging cheeks; his eyes were rather like a frog's; he leant very much forward as he walked, and swayed gently from side to side with a rolling swagger; and as his body rolled, his eye rolled too, and he looked this way and that with a jovial leer and a smile of contentment and amusement on his face. The smile and the merry eye redeemed his appearance from blank ugliness, but neither of them indicated ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... was one of the horrid creatures who write with a wink at you, which sets the wicked part of us on fire: I have known it myself, and I own it to my shame; and if I happened to be ignorant of the history of Countess Fanny, I could not refute his wantonness. He has just the same benevolent leer for a bishop. Give me, if we are to make a choice, the beggar's breech for decency, I say: I like it vastly in preference to a Nymney, who leads you up to the curtain and agitates it, and bids you to retire on tiptoe. You cannot help being angry with the man for both reasons. But ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Artillery, a brave officer, but a bad man; Varin, a proud, arrogant libertine, Commissary of Montreal, who outdid Bigot in rapine and Cadet in coarseness; De Breard, Comptroller of the Marine, a worthy associate of Penisault, whose pinched features and cunning leer were in keeping with his important office of chief manager of the Friponne. Perrault, D'Estebe, Morin, and Vergor, all creatures of the Intendant, swelled the roll of infamy, as partners of the Grand Company of Associates trading in New France, as their charter ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... to "tell" upon the callers, and many eccentricities, to use no harsher term, are the result. Towards the close of the day, everything is in confusion—the door-bell is never silent. Crowds of young men, in various stages of intoxication, rush into the lighted parlors, leer at the hostess in the vain effort to offer their respects, call for liquor, drink it, and stagger out, to repeat the scene at some other house. Frequently, they are unable to recognize the residences ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Pallats after they be boyled tender in the Beefe Kettle, or Pot among some other meat, blanch and serve them cleane, then cut each Pallat in two, and set them a stewing between two Dishes with a piece of leer Bacon, an handful of Champignions, five or six sweetbreads of Veale, a Ladle-full or two of strong broth, and as much gravy of Mutton, an Onion or two, five or six Cloves, and a blade or two of Mace, and a piece of Orange Pils; as your Pallats stew, make ready your Dish with the bottoms ...
— The Compleat Cook • Anonymous, given as "W. M."
... her cousin inquiringly, and he honored me again with his little languid leer. "Do you ...
— Four Meetings • Henry James
... answer, with a leer. "We have nothing of that breed among us; we are all honest men. But what if a man has an acquaintance abroad, and gets a commission to sell a cargo of tea or brandy, or perhaps a present from a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... pride, can Envy's leer appal, Or staring Folly's vain applauses soothe? Can jealous Fear Truth's dauntless heart enthrall? Suspicion lurks not in the heart ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... to her, glanced upward, and, as he thought of Eva's father lying stricken with the Madagascar madness in the room above, an evil leer came over his fox-like face. As he left he completely ignored both Locke and Balcom, unless it was that the look in his eyes meant a sort of ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... stood guarding the door with a threatening aspect, which very much disconcerted Pee-wee. He was a scout and he was brave, and not panicky in peril or emergency, but the striped clothing and cropped head and stupid leer of the man before him made him seem something less than human. His terror was more that of an animal than of a man and his apparent inability to express himself save by the repetition of that one sentence frightened the boy. ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... Pistol! Indeed, I am in the waist two yards about; but I am now about no waste; I am about thrift. Briefly, I do mean to make love to Ford's 40 wife: I spy entertainment in her; she discourses, she carves, she gives the leer of invitation: I can construe the action of her familiar style; and the hardest voice of her behaviour, to be Englished rightly, is, 'I ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... as an Afrikander. You see in him a whiskered, dark-complexioned, good-looking man of twenty-six, but looking older, whose regard was either insolent or cringing, according to circumstances, and whose smile was an evil leer. The owner of the waggons stood waiting near the closed-up foremost one, the yellow-haired child on his arm. He looked keenly at the landlord, Bough, and the man's hand went involuntarily up in the salute, to its owner's secret rage. Did he want every English officer to recognise him as an old ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the order, passing the American skipper, who was leaning on the bulwark looking sick, and as the sailor came up he turned to him with an ugly leer. ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... harvest-folks, and John, "Came in and look'd askew; "'Twas my red face that set them on, "And then they leer'd ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... not have understood the full meaning of this aspersion of her purity, had she not caught Humphreys's eye. His expression, half sneer, half leer, seemed to give her mother's saying its full interpretation. She put out her hand. She turned white, and said: "Say one word more, and I will go away from you and never come back! Never!" And then she sat down and cried, and then Mrs. Anderson's maternal love, her "unloving ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... "pish," and bid her go on. The gipsy told him that he was a bachelor, but would not be so long; and that he was dearer to somebody than he thought: the Knight still repeated she was an idle baggage, and bid her go on. "Ah, master," says the gipsy, "that roguish leer of yours makes a pretty woman's heart ache; you ha'n't that simper about the mouth for nothing—" The uncouth gibberish with which all this was uttered, like the darkness of an oracle, made us the more attentive to it. To be short, the Knight left the money with her that he had crossed her ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... shall go in; and as to who is to play Doll Wango, the master of the ceremonies will settle that, so you need give yourself no more concern about it; but if I were called on to decide," he added, with an amorous leer at Dame Baldwyn, whose proportions so well matched his own, "I know where my choice would light. There, now!" he shouted, "Open wide the gate for Squire Nicholas Assheton of Downham, and the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... wend, My brethren all in-fere: My purpose was to have dined to-day At Blyth or Doncaster." Forth then went that gentle Knight, With a careful cheer; The tears out of his eyen ran, And fell down by his leer. They brought him unto the lodge door: When ROBIN 'gan him see, Full courteously did off his hood, And set him on his knee. "Welcome, Sir Knight!" then said ROBIN, "Welcome thou art to me; I have abide you ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... subserviency to caucus direction, and a party spirit upon a level with many of the least reputable elective Chambers in the world; and beneath the imposing mask of an assembly of notables backed by the prescription and traditions of centuries we discern the leer of the artful dodger, who has got the straight tip from the ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... of his hair, and in every glare of his eye, and in every knuckle of his hand with which he clutches the money bag, hypocrisy and avarice and hate and low strategy and diabolism. The quickness with which he grabs the bribe for the betrayal of the Lord, the villainous leer at the Master while seated at the holy supper, show him to be capable of any wickedness. What a spectacle when the traitorous lips are pressed against the pure cheek of the Immaculate One, the disgusting smack desecrating the holy ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... you got? I don't mean in your clothes, but what youse has got salted away in your room," asked the thief. "I ain't got time to look for it or I'd leave you tied up," he added, with a leer. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... in his chair, a cunning leer on his vicious face, a gleam of triumph, greed, in the beady, ratlike eyes that never wavered from the other. Burton, moisture oozing from his forehead, stood there, hesitant, staring back at old ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... too here, Thou haunting whisperer? Spirit of beauty immanent and sheer, Art thou that crooked servitor, Done with disguise, from whose malignant leer Out of the ghostly ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... Savile. Just tell me one thing," Jasmyn said, with an inquisitive leer. "Is she dark ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... of England's sea power; because of the unblushing, shameless, gilded corruption of the French court, which cared less for the fate of Canada than the leer of a painted fool behind her fan. But be this remembered,—and here was the hand of overruling Destiny or Providence,—the fall of New France, like the fall of the seed to the ready soil, was the rebirth of a new nation. Henceforth it is not New France, the ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... the miner directed his companion's attention to the figure still bending over the log pile, and made several significant gestures. The brutish face of the pusher lighted with an ugly leer, expressive of understanding, and he began to move cautiously towards the man who had that day displaced him from the timber gang. As he had left his light on the car, there was nothing to warn Peveril of his approach until he was ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... Mother Guttersnipe took a drink from the broken cup, and, gathering all her greasy cards together in a business-like way, looked insinuatingly at Calton, with a suggestive leer. ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... mein The object of their strife is seen; His eyes with wild confusion roll, Mixt passions, with alternate sway, In his ambiguous features play, And speak as yet the undetermined soul; But that half-assenting leer, Obliquely on the little wheedler thrown, Portends, though checkt with aukward fear, That soon the apostate will be ...
— A Pindarick Ode on Painting - Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq. • Thomas Morrison
... Maxim's and your Catelans? Do we, when the week's work of your humbler people is done, see the laughter in dancing eyes in the Rue Mouffetard or, in the revel of your Saturday night, do we see only the belladonna'd leer of the drabs in the Place Pigalle? Do we hear the romance of your concertinas setting thousands of hobnailed boots a-clatter with Terpsichore in the Boulevard de la Chapelle, in Polonceau and Myrrha, or do we hear only your union orchestra soughing through Mascagni ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... I turned from him, That hateful cripple, out of his highway Into the path he pointed. All the day 45 Had been a dreary one at best, and dim Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim Red leer to see the plain ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... to saddle, and from saddle to bottle, my Lord. We must have our pleasure ashore, and sleep at sea," and the captain tipped his flask with a leer. He turned his eye uncertainly first on me, then on my Lord. "We are lately from Boston, gentlemen, that charnel-house of treason, and before we leave, my Lord, I must tell them how Mr. Robinson of the customs served that dog Otis, in the British Coffee House. God's word, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a dream so odd and funny, I cannot resist recording it here.— Methought that the Genius of Matrimony Before me stood with a joyous leer, Leading a husband in each hand, And both for me, which lookt rather queer;— One I could perfectly understand, But why there were two wasn't quite so clear. T'was meant however, I soon could see, To afford me a choice—a most excellent plan; And—who should this brace of candidates ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... leer Hunch entered and deposited a tray upon the table. Carl poured himself some whiskey and pushed the decanter toward his guest with a significant glance. Jokai of Vienna poured and drank with a ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... night the gaping people pay To see him in his panoply appear; To see him pad his paunch with dainty cheer, Puff his perfecto, swill champagne, and sway Just like a gentleman, yet all in play, Then bow himself off stage with brutish leer. ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... seemed to be laughing all the time—a fact that was afterward recalled with some surprise and no little horror. At the time, the loungers thought his smile was a merry one, but afterward they stoutly maintained there was downright villainy in the leer. His coat was very dusty, proving that he had driven far and swiftly. Three or four of the loungers followed him into the store. He was standing before the counter over which Mr. Lamson served his ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... had advantages. Make a good use of 'em. Mix with the young nobility. There's many of 'em who can't spend a dollar to your guinea, my boy. And as for the pink bonnets (here from under the heavy eyebrows there came a knowing and not very pleasing leer)—why boys will be boys. Only there's one thing I order you to avoid, which, if you do not, I'll cut you off with a shilling, by Jove; and ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... time. Nothing shocked her, nothing upset her. She was always ready with her hard, nurse's laugh and her nurse's quips. No one was better than she at double-entendres. No one could better give the nurse's leer. She had it all in a fortnight. And never once did she feel anything but exhilarated and in full swing. It seemed to her she had not a moment's time to brood or reflect about things—she was too much in the swing. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... unaccountable. It at first exhibited itself in restlessness, and an inability to remain quiet, and afterwards in half-suppressed groans and sighs. If he opened his eyes and looked at the reader, he saw a devilish figure, with a malignant leer glaring at him; if he shut them to exclude the disagreeable image it was converted into a thousand smaller figures, dancing up and down like motes in a distempered vision, all wearing that intolerable grin, while the whole time a hissing sound, as if it came from a snake, whispered in his ears ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... of age, son of a neighbouring small Squire, who lived in the doubtful capacity of parlour-boarder with Mr. Wapshot, flung himself into a theatrical attitude near a newly-made grave, and began repeating Hamlet's verses over Ophelia, with a hideous leer at Pen. The young fellow was so enraged that he rushed at Hobnell Major with a shriek very much resembling an oath, cut him furiously across the face with the riding-whip which he carried, flung it away, calling upon the cowardly villain to defend himself, and in another minute ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... man," said the jockey, or whatever he was, turning to me with an arch leer, "I suppose I may consider myself as the purchaser of this here animal, for the use and behoof of this young gentleman," making a sign with his head towards the tall young man by his side. "By no means," said I; "I am utterly unacquainted with either ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... older face, with its cruelty, its cunning, and its greed stood reproduced, feature for feature, line for line. It was as though Nature, for an artistic freak, had set herself the task of fashioning hideousness and beauty from precisely the same materials. Between the leer of the man and the smile of the girl, where lay the difference? It would have puzzled any student of anatomy to point it out. Yet the one sickened, while to gain the other most men ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... on the line, his face a leer. "We are offering you a three-way partnership, Mathers. You, with your Medal of Honor, are our front man. Mr. Demming supplies the initial capital to get underway. And I ..." He twisted his mouth with evil self-satisfaction. "I was present when the Kraden ship ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... theme to win the gaping rout, Nor aim at Pinkey's leer with "S'death, I'm out!" An arch dull rogue, who lets the business cool, To show how nicely he can play the fool, Who with buffoonery his dulness clokes, Deserves a cat-o'-nine-tails ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... me, and was resolved to invest my little fortune in such a way that I might have a modest competence, so that the dreadful spectre of poverty might never leer at ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... man. "Glad to see a new customer, sir." He pocketed the money, and showed them, out, standing to look after them with a malicious leer as they disappeared, and jerking his left thumb over ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... somewhat of a Spanish fashion, with a brown laced cloak, and faded red stockings. He had long lank legs, long arms, hands, and fingers, and a very long sickly face, with a drooping nose, and a sly, sarcastic leer, and a great purplish stain over-spreading more than half ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... opening of the door, and a group of excited men burst into the room. They were shouting with laughter at a joke which made her blush, and one dragged a companion in by the arm. Another, breaking off from rude horse-play, came toward her with a drunken leer. She shrank from his hot face and wine-laden breath as she drew back, wondering how she could reach her father, who stood in the doorway trying to restrain his guests. Then a young man sprang forward, with disgust ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... an odd leer on his sophisticated face, saying no more. He made a pack on his saddle of the camp outfit, and started off along the ridge, leaving Mackenzie to follow as he pleased. A mile or more along Reid pitched upon a suitable camping place. He had himself established long before Mackenzie came ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... new echo in his heart was born, And sometimes mid the weary task, and leer Of felon faces, ere he was aware From a compress'd unmurmuring lip, it broke, O Lamb of God! If still unquell'd Despair Thrust up a rebel standard, down it fell At the o'er-powering sigh, O Lamb of God! And ere upon his pallet low, he sank, It sometimes ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... with holy leer; Soft smiling, and demurely looking down, But hid the dagger underneath the gown: The assassinating wife, the household fiend, And far the ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... young girl, but when duty seemed to call, this school-mistress could be brave, and she offered to give Elspeth her schooling free of charge. Like the other two hers was a "mixed" school, but she did not want Tommy, because she had seen him in the square one day, and there was a leer on his face that ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... pain appeared between the Professor's eyes—but he stood his ground defiantly. "Yes," went on Bunker thrusting out his jaw in a baleful leer at his rival, "for many years he has had the proud distinction of being the Champion Rough-Riding Barber ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... in her menaced house—I know not how she fared—whether she gazes for ever, disconsolate, at the deed, remembering only in her smitten mind, at which the little boys now leer, that she once knew well those things at which man stands aghast; or whether in the end she crept away, and clambering horribly from abyss to abyss, came at last to higher things, and is wise and eternal still. For who knows of madness whether ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... by the book-stall. That be Mr. Waffles,' continued he, giving his master a touch in the ribs as he jerked his portmanteau into a fly, 'that be Mr. Waffles,' repeated he, with a knowing leer. ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... cunningest kind. Responding under the same mask adopted by this knavish elder, I said, "The chief of Kingaru has called me a rich sultan. If I am a rich sultan why comes not the chief with a rich present to me, that he might get a rich return?" Said he, with another leer of his wrinkled visage, "Kingaru is poor, there is no matama in the village." To which I replied that since there was no matama in the village I would pay him half a shukka, or a yard of cloth, which would be exactly equivalent to his present; ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... as much surprised at what we are going to do as the manner in which we are going to do it," replied Duval, with an evil leer. ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... Which had stood on the mantel near, Its silvering blemished,—yes, as if worn away By the eyes of the countless dead who had smirked at it Ere these two ever knew that old-time pier-glass And its vague and vacant leer. ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... a group before of maladies, And griefs, and Famine empty as a breeze,— A double monster, with a gloating leer Fix'd on his other half. They drew them near, One after one, led onward by Despair, That like the last of winter glimmer'd there,— A dismal prologue to his brother Death, Which was behind, and, with the horrid breath Of his wide ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... not satisfied with the way I had done his boots," muttered the man, with an evil leer as he spat contemptuously on the floor; "an aristo, quoi? A hell of a place this... twenty cells to sweep out every day... and boots to clean for every aristo of a concierge or warder who demands it.... Is that work for a free born ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... money by telling a man who is looking for you in the hotel that you are here," said the old man, with a wicked leer. ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... an arch leer; "all above it, hay? warrant your Spanish Don never thinks of such a thing! don't believe 'em my duck! great cry and little wool; no more of the ready than other folks; mere puff ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... he growled. "I have waited long enough, and too long, and you must choose between us now. You know we will soon be at 'Five Fingers,' and you must be good or they may get you," with a wicked leer and clutch at her arm calculated to startle her as she carelessly sat on the ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... natural control of his eyes, that one of them was aimed inward, as if to watch the growth of the carbuncle. We are warned against bad judgments; but the Admiral was certainly not sober. He made no attempt to rise when Richard entered, but waved his pipe flightily in the air, and gave a leer of welcome. Esther took as little notice of ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to whose head the fumes of the wine were rising once more, had already forgotten his son's advice and was eyeing a champagne-bottle with a tender leer as it stood, still nearly full, by the side of his plate. He dared not touch it for fear of being lectured again, and he was wondering by what device or trick he could possess himself of it without exciting Pierre's ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... Boches had come into his village early in the war, torn him from his wife and his 'petite fille.' Since then he had 'had fear,' been hungry, been cold, eaten grass; eyeing some fat little dog, he would leer and mutter: 'J'ai mange cela, c'est bon!' and with fierce triumph add: 'Ils ont faim, les Boches!' The 'arrogant civilian' had never done his military service, for his infirmity, it seemed, had begun before ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... the United States consent to go without its share of the swag. It is delicious. The biggest and proudest government on earth turned sneak-thief; collecting pennies on stolen property, and pocketing them with a greasy and libidinous leer; going into partnership with foreign thieves to rob its own children; and when the child escapes the foreigner, descending to the abysmal baseness of hanging on and robbing the infant all alone by itself! Dear ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... any will wish to interrupt you," returned the soldier, with a waggish leer of his eye; "but, should they be so disposed, I have no power to stop them, if they be of the prisoner's friends. I have my orders, and must mind them, whether the Englishman ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... magnificent to be such a willing—" added Schliemann, sidling up to him with a dreadful leer on his face. He made ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... Cheel house was about to be produced in public. It was stopped by Jonas, who rose to his feet, and with a leer and chuckle round, he said, "Neighbors and friends and all. Very much obliged for the complerment. But don't think it is all about a baby. Nothin' of the kind. It is becos I wanted all, neighbors and ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... letters under her pillow. Since he went away he had done much to blot out all that had gone before. And yet sometimes the memory of that past unhappiness, of its disagreements and quarrels and petty unkindnesses would raise its ugly head and look at her with a sort of leer as if daring her to ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... with rage, and he clenched his hand with an oath, but hearing some of the boarders coming in to breakfast in the next room, he only hissed, with a terrible leer: ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... sentence wrung her to the soul, Nor could she lounge the gag to shule a win; The knowing bench had tipp'd her buzer queer, [8] For Dick had beat the hoof upon the pad, Of Field, or Chick-lane—was the boldest lad That ever mill'd the cly, or roll'd the leer. [9] And with Nell he kept a lock, to fence, and tuz, And while his flaming mot was on the lay, With rolling kiddies, Dick would dive and buz, And cracking kens concluded ev'ry day; [10] But fortune fickle, ever on the wheel, Turn'd up a rubber, for ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... lying claim, Thieves of renown, and pilferers of fame: Their front supplies what their ambition lacks; They know a thousand lords, behind their backs. Cottil is apt to wink upon a peer, When turn'd away, with a familiar leer; And Harvey's eyes, unmercifully keen, Have murder'd fops, by whom she ne'er was seen. Niger adopts stray libels; wisely prone To covet shame still greater than his own. Bathyllus, in the winter of threescore, Belies his innocence, and keeps a whore. Absence of mind Brabantio turns to ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... exercise. Once he had worked himself into the vein, "the agitations of his mind and body" were an astonishment to all who knew him. Such a course as this, however pleasant to a thirsty vanity, was lowering to his nature. He sank more and more towards the professional Don Juan. With a leer of what the French call fatuity, he bids the belles of Mauchline beware of his seductions; and the same cheap self-satisfaction finds a yet uglier vent when he plumes himself on the scandal at the birth of his first bastard. We can well believe what we hear of ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... specimen. He had the rolling gait of the deep sea. A squinting eye gave him a villainous leer, while a bristly beard and long gray hair made him a ferocious spectacle. His age was doubtful, as the lines in his ruddy skin might have been cut by dissipation as much as age. The most prominent feature of his unlovely countenance was a nose, fiery red from prolonged exposure ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... visible change, but it begins at once, and will be perfected. The bloated look of self-indulgence passes away like the leprosy of Naaman, the cheek grows pure, the lips return to the smile of hope instead of the grin of greed, and the eyes that made innocence shrink and shudder with their yellow leer grow childlike and sweet and faithful. The mammon-eyes, hitherto fixed on the earth, are lifted to meet their kind; the lips that mumbled over figures and sums of gold learn to say words of grace and tenderness. The truculent, repellent, self-satisfied ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... favorably situated, an examination discloses many drawbacks. It needs better dock facilities and railroads to bring it up to standard and in order to relieve the extensive shipping of troops at Wilhelmshaven. Under existing circumstances Leer and Papenburg could be used for transporting purposes, and these two with Emden ...
— Operations Upon the Sea - A Study • Franz Edelsheim
... in the throng, whose choice he was, seated aloft upon men's shoulders, with a purple robe thrown on his shoulders, there sat a brawny, grinning, bloated, jibbering thing, with curled lips and savage eyes, and satyr's leer: the creature of greed, of lust, of obscenity, of brutality, of avarice, of desire. This thing the people followed, rejoicing exceedingly, content in the guide whom they had chosen, victorious in the fiend for whom they spurned ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... soft thing slid off the roof and dropped with a chug. Then the door, that hung awry like a drooping eyelid, gave a disreputable wink, and the whole front gable of the cabin loomed a giant countenance with a silly forehead and an evil leer. Now it seemed that a hand was hurling snow against the door, as a sower scatters grain,—snow that lay like beach sand on the floor, or melted into a crawling pool—red in the firelight, ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... anything in the world but stand by and see Josiah fussing and accompanying her to the stairs and on to her room. She hardly said the word good-night to him, and her very lips were white. Wensleydown's face, as he stood with Mildred, drove him mad with its mocking leer, and if he had heard their conversation there might have ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... McAdam, handsome, carefree boys of sixteen and eighteen, passed the drinks with many a jest and often a wink, but never a drop drank they, not until the Lodge had closed its doors on all visitors, and then Tom, the elder, with a final leer at Sandy the younger, drained off a glass of bad whisky with a grace ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... now, I ain't got no time to fool!" prompted the man, with a leer. "I'm dead onto your lay, and there's a bull comin' ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... and there was a leer on his bearded face seen by the dull swinging oil-lamp, as, half covering his mouth, he ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... infrequent in Juvenal and Horace— this man would look at him with a grin and a sly wink. And sometimes Thyrsis would make a casual remark in conversation, and the man would twist it out of its meaning, or make a pun out of it—to find some excuse for his satyr's leer. So at last Thyrsis was moved to say to him—"Don't you ever realize what a state you've got your ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... Friends. She was reading aloud to about sixteen women prisoners, who were engaged in needle-work. They all rose on my entrance, curtsied respectfully, and then resumed their seats and employment. Instead of a scowl, leer, or ill-suppressed laugh, I observed upon their countenances an air of self-respect and gravity, a sort of consciousness of their improved character, and the altered position in which they are placed. I afterwards ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... is leer, I warrant your purse is full, gaffer," shouted Hordle John. "See that you lay in good store of ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... these basement brothels invite the pencil of a Hogarth. Their bloated forms, pimpled features and bloodshot eyes are suggestive of an Inferno, while their tawdry dresses, brazen leer, and disgusting assumption of an air of gay abandon, emphasizes their hideousness and renders it more repulsive. Most of them have passed through the successive grades of immorality. Some of them have been the queenly mistress of the spendthrift, and have descended, step by step, ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... and gave a leer which, if possible, made her face more hideous than ever. Without thinking Harvey caught her by the arm and ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... graciously attired man of about thirty, who, turning in his seat so that nearly the whole house was in his circle of vision, stroked his golden moustache, and ran his eyes over the thousands of faces with a smile of pride and satisfaction which in a less handsome man would have been almost a leer. His name was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the chauffeur, from the sense that he must know exactly how long she had been on board the yacht. The hesitation caused her to linger, as the cold air had caused her to think. It was as though she feared that when he was found the man would be impudent to her, and leer, behaving familiarly as he might have done to a common woman. Because she was alone and unprotected. It was terrible. Her secret filled her with the sense of irremediable guilt. Already she was staled with the evening's ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... scarcely lifted. Ursula watched him in his crawling, slinking progress down the room. He was one of her boys! When he got to the desk, he looked round, half furtively, with a sort of cunning grin and a pathetic leer at the big boys in Standard VII. Then, pitiable, pale, in his dejected garments, he lounged under the menace of the headmaster's desk, with one thin leg crooked at the knee and the foot struck out sideways his hands in the low-hanging ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... sch—sch—schooner go against the wind." Old Koogah dropped an open leer to Opee-Kwan, and, the laughter growing around him, continued: "The wind blows from the south and blows the schooner south. The wind blows against the wind. The wind blows one way and the other at the same time. It is very simple. We ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... and fraud, unabashed, unawed, may strive to sting thee at heel in vain; Craft and fear and mistrust may leer and mourn and murmur and plead and plain: Thou art thou: and thy sunbright brow is hers that ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... the paint-denuded place of rest with a vilely glutinous compound peculiar to ship-board. He never looks directly at you as you approach, with book and jug, the desired spot, but you can tell by the leer in his eye and the roll of the quid in his immense mouth that the old villain knows all about the discomfort he is causing you, and you fancy you can detect a chuckle, you turn away in a vain quest for a quiet cosy spot. Then there is the captain himself, that most mighty despot. What king ever ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... or in another land you might find me employing, again solely for decorative purposes, the prints of Japan, the landscapes of the modern impressionists, the rugs of the East, or the blankets of the Arizona desert. Free me, then, from the reproach implied in that covert leer at my Early Sienese." Yes, we must, I think, exclude from the ranks of the true zealots all who in any plausible fashion utilise the objects of art they buy. Excess, the craving to possess what he apparently does not need, is the mark of your true collector. Now these visionaries—at least the ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... the Laureate's companion he was saluted with nearly equal courtesy. The old critic Zabastes, squeezing his lean, bent body from out the throng, hobbled after Sah-luma at some little distance behind the harp-bearer, muttering to himself as he went, and bestowing many a side-leer and malicious grin on those among his acquaintance whom he here and there recognized. Theos noted his behavior with a vague sense of amusement,—the man took such evident delight in his own ill- humor, and seemed to be so thoroughly convinced that his opinion on all ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... I'm no ascetic; I'm as pleasant as can be; You'll always find me ready with a crushing repartee; I've an irritating chuckle, I've a celebrated sneer, I've an entertaining snigger, I've a fascinating leer; To everybody's prejudice I know a thing or two; I can tell a woman's age in half a minute - and I do - But although I try to make myself as pleasant as I can, Yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man! ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... pretty far that time, and thought best to leave it. Fleda stopped crying as soon as she could, lest somebody should see her; and was sitting quietly again, alone as before, when one of the sailors whom she had never spoken to, came by, and leaning over towards her with a leer as he passed, ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... in the entrance where she had a view of both men, saw the cruel leer that accompanied Walcott's words and understood their significance as her father did not. Her hand sought the bosom of her dress for an instant, then dropped quietly at her side, but swift as the movement was, her companion had seen ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... but the human life that hung in the balance, I failed to observe the presence of the most disagreeable of the female nurses, who was standing, with "arms akimbo," looking on, until, with an insulting leer, she remarked, "It seems to me ye're taking great liberties for an honest woman." Paralyzed with surprise and indignation, I knew not how to act. Just then the surgeon in charge of the ward, who had been ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... and chiding of his companion, the noise of the horsemen's feet continuing to approach, Wamba could not be prevented from lingering occasionally on the road, upon every pretence which occurred; now catching from the hazel a cluster of half-ripe nuts, and now turning his head to leer after a cottage maiden who crossed their path. The horsemen, therefore, soon overtook them on ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... light shed by the lantern, I seemed to see the face of this embodied curse with an ever-changing mockery of expression; at one moment wearing the features of my father; at another those of Tom Wynne; at another the leer of the old woman I ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... it but speculatively; now he thought he knew it as a practical man; though perhaps he did not, even yet. Nevertheless humanity stood before him no longer in the pensive sweetness of Italian art, but in the staring and ghastly attitudes of a Wiertz Museum, and with the leer of a ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... which was almost a leer, seemed to imply that Alix was in the secret, a party to Cherry's foolishness, and did imply very distinctly that Martin felt himself to be more than a match for all their cunning. The woman was silent, looking straight into ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... said as softly as his gutturals would permit. "There is one in particular you know a great deal about. Urga told me. A long-lost lover, no?" His gray-ridged countenance contorted into a thick disgusting leer. ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... his heel, with military precision. Then he chuckled Dolores under the chin with a leer, to have his hand indignantly pushed aside. As the girl glared at him with a flash of hatred in her eyes, he stalked into the taproom, followed by the ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... you improvise absurd choruses which make things go along as pleasantly as possible. Meanwhile the bottle is returned empty. He takes it, insists upon re-filling your "glass" from it, and tips it up over your cup. Then with a comical leer at you at the idea of attempting to pour wine from an empty bottle, he turns, dives into his cellar and fishes up another. You bid him go on with that capital song, offering to save him the trouble of ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... distant, lurid moat, Where sighs and groans upon a flood Ascend to heights of a grey ghaut— Satellites to Destiny's crypt! And Vespers that the Twilight brought— More dooms that prayers nor sighs can break— Leer at each thought to Fancy's flight; And to the dais whereunder sit A demon-quire that Circe taught, Songs that echo to the isles in lake And valley deep, ravage the night Until Idols pall at the scene. And stationed Mounts toward the West Whose bones portray a ghastly lust; And ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... Now Gunch delighted them by crying to Mrs. Eddie Swanson, youngest of the women, "Louetta! I managed to pinch Eddie's doorkey out of his pocket, and what say you and me sneak across the street when the folks aren't looking? Got something," with a gorgeous leer, "awful important ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... pass out through the waiting-room, you leer at the others unpleasantly. The poor fishes! Why can't they take their medicine like grown people and not sit there moping as if they were going ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... Sapristi! Just think of this wonderful opportunity. You have ze keys to his vaults, you have control of his bank accounts." Lowering his voice, and, with a significant leer on his face, he added ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... softened it down. "You hear me say, Mr. Moss, that I'm an engaged young woman. Knowing that, you oughtn't to speak to me as you do." "Why, what do I say?" You should have seen his grin as he asked me; such a leer of triumph, as though he knew that he were getting the better of me. "Mr. Jones wouldn't approve if he were to see it." "But luckily he don't," said my admirer. Oh, if you knew how willingly I'd stand at a tub and wash your shirts, while the very touch of his gloves makes me creep ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... most reasonable conversation; a most respectable room; an intelligent girl. Only Madame herself seeing Jacob out had about her that leer, that lewdness, that quake of the surface (visible in the eyes chiefly), which threatens to spill the whole bag of ordure, with difficulty held together, over the pavement. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... own hand as it burned, and examining it closely. "I have heard of this before, but I have never seen it. You are indeed gods, you white men, you sailors of the sea." He glanced at Muriel. "And the woman, too," he said, with a horrible leer, "the woman is pretty." ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... out with Dick Giblet, this morning, when he was leaving packages," said little Joe Bowles, with a mischievous leer ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... There crawls on countless legs A lazy grinning dragon That wallows in the dregs; Of old I saw him nightly Look up with friendly leer, As if to hint politely, "I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... An ugly leer came over the brutal face of the giant; "Oh, I ain't, ain't I? You think I'm drunk. But I ain't, not so mighty much. Jest enough t' perten me up a pepper grain." Then, turning to his companion, who was grinning in appreciation of the scene, he ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... into the face of the boatswain, hoping that in this proposal he saw a commutation of his death-sentence. Rogers returned the gaze with a look of grim satisfaction, which the second mate mistook for a half-drunken leer of benevolence; and, anxious above all things to propitiate this man, who undoubtedly held the power of life and death in his hands, ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... thing, or the ugliness of an ugly one; but it takes a clever beast like Crawley to show you beauty in anything so absolutely repulsive as that woman's face. Look at it! He's got hold of something. He's caught the lurking fascination, the—the leer ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... he entered the laboratory library in fine spirits, "doing" the decayed dandy, with imaginary cane under his arm, struggling to put on a pair of tattered imaginary gloves, with a self-satisfied smirk and leer that would have done credit to a real comedian. This particular bit of acting was heightened by the fact that even in the coldest weather he wears thin summer clothes, generally acid-worn and more or less disreputable. For protection he varies the number of ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... but the business was over in two twos. The four living fellows looked at each other in rather a ghastly fashion; the dead man contemplating a corner of the roof with a singular and ugly leer. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... devil himself could not have given a leer at anything that had ever passed between Paul Oleron and Elsie Bengough, yet this nosing rascal must ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... of the Bourbons; he is one of our men. I looked, at him. At every fresh epithet of the Minister the Abbe bowed his head down to his plate with a smile of cheerfulness and self-complacency, and with a sort of leer. I never saw a more ignoble countenance. Fouche explained to me, on leaving the breakfast table, in what manner all these valets of literature were men of his, and while I acknowledged to myself that the system might be necessary, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... clevaire," said the maid with an evil leer,—"she would rob Madame, would she? She would play the espionne, hein? Eh bien, ma petite, you stay 'ere ontil you say what you lave done ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... going out this evening, Pavel Yakovlitch, eh?' Nikolai Artemyevitch asked with an amicable leer. ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... on with a species of leer peculiar to his physiognomy, which might be construed as expressive either of malice or of mere humour. The Varangian followed him with some suspicion, for it happened that he had had little intercourse with the unhappy race of Africa, and had not totally ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... gossiped was a young man, Ambrogiuolo da Piacenza, by name, who, when Bernabo thus concluded his eulogy of his wife, broke out into a mighty laugh, and asked him with a leer, whether he of all men had this privilege by special patent of the Emperor. Bernabo replied, somewhat angrily, that 'twas a boon conferred upon him by God, who was rather more powerful than the Emperor. To which Ambrogiuolo rejoined:—"I make no doubt, Bernabo, that thou believest that what ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... wat er is. Mijn hoop is Christus en zyn bloed. Door deze leer ik en hoop door die het eenwig goed. Ons leven is maar eenen dag, vol ziekten en vol naar geklag. Vol rampen dampen (!) en vendriet. Een schim Eien ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... The mother's eyes, as black as sloes? See here a shocking awkward creature, That speaks a fool in every feature.' 'The woman's blind,' the mother cries; 'I see wit sparkle in his eyes.' 20 'Lord! madam, what a squinting leer; No doubt the fairy hath been here.' Just as she spoke, a pigmy sprite Pops through the key-hole, swift as light; Perched on the cradle's top he stands, And thus her folly reprimands: 'Whence sprung the vain conceited lie, That we the world with fools supply? ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... would listen to no refusal, however decided its tone. Dyson threw over the card into Peace's garden. This only served to aggravate his determination to possess himself of the wife. He would listen at keyholes, leer in at the window, and follow Mrs. Dyson wherever she went. When she was photographed at the fair, she found that Peace had stood behind her chair and by that means got himself included in the picture. ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... here?' I shouted, When I saw his hateful leer; 'Tell me what this means, Jim Johnson. Where is Billy? Ain't he here?' He was standing on the doorstep, And the light that shone within Seemed to twist his wrinkled features In a sort of wonder-grin. 'Well! well! Nancy! sure's I'm livin'! Out there in the pouring wet! ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... never visited, but left to be cared for by Silvine; but nevertheless they all looked up to him with respect as a man who was making his fortune while others, even the shrewdest, were having a hard time of it to keep body and soul together. And he, with a sly leer out of his small red eyes, would shrug his shoulders and growl ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... reverend and dignified pillar of the church, as demure as a saint, turning up his eyes, and professing and preaching morality, which I had more than once or twice before heard him do, while, with a sanctified leer, he expressed great horror at my breach of conjugal chastity, or violation of the marriage vow. The reader will easily imagine the manner in which I eyed him, while he was uttering these truly religious and moral doctrines, when I inform him that, only a few hours before, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... to her house. The light that gleamed at the head of the hill was her light, and many a night in this same spot I had stopped to take a last look at it. It used to wink so softly to me as I waved a hand in good-night. Now it seemed to leer. The friendly beacon on the hill had become a wrecker's lantern. A battered hulk of a man, here I was, stranded by the school-house. As the ship on the beach pounds helplessly to and fro, now trying to drive itself farther into its prison, now struggling to break ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... Kein Stein mehr steht. Fhrt Straftag ins Land, Fhrt mit Feuer, die Frevler zu richten: 50 Da kann kein Verwandter vor dem Weltbrand[4] helfen. Wenn der Erdflur Breite ganz nun verbrennt, Und Feuer und Luft ganz leer gefegt sind, Wo ist die Mark, wo der Mann stritt mit den Magen? Die Sttte ist verbrannt, die Seele steht bedrngt, 55 Nicht weiss sie, wie bssen: so ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... Noll paused by the door, while Tip, with a confident leer on his face, strode into the ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... cynicism there is in some of his interiors! Voila l'animale! he exclaims as he shows us the far from enchanting antics of some girl. How Schopenhauer would laugh at the feminine "truths" of Degas! Without the leer of Rops, Degas is thrice as unpleasant. He is a douche for the romantic humbug painter, the painter of sleek bayaderes and ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... fool! And don't know which side your bread's buttered," he said, with a half leer, ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... bold but feminine characters, was without a signature; and when Fox had retired, with a cunning leer upon his sharp features, and Bruin was left alone to meditate upon the singularity of the adventure, that great beast lost himself in conjectures as to the writer, and figured to his imagination a creature very different, no doubt, to the being ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... his own shoulders, in exile and a branded man for her sake. She would still have his name, his income, her lover, her place in society, her right to explain his absence at her pleasure. He could ruin her ruined life by exposing her. Then would come the divorce court, the publicity, the leer of the mob, the pointed fingers of scorn. Impossible! Why could he not leave the matter untouched and keep up appearances before the world? Least endurable of any scheme. He knew that he could never meet her again without killing her, unless this problem was settled. When he had determined ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... faint praise; assent with civil leer; And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike; Just hint a fault, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... said that one individual lingered near the May-pole. As he was especially active, we may describe him and his employment. He was apparently about fifteen. He had coarse straight white hair—a face that denoted stupidity—but with a cunning leer, which seemed to belie ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... inspires the empty Cacus to deny his acquaintance, and overlook men of merit in distress; and the little silly, pretty Phillida, or Foolida, to stare at the strange creatures round her. It is this temper which constitutes the supercilious eye, the reserved look, the distant bowe, the scornful leer, the affected astonishment, the loud whisper, ending in a laugh directed full in the teeth of another. Hence spring, in short, those numberless offences given too frequently, in public and private assemblies, by persons ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... with no daintiness upon the untidy, coloured cloth of the centre-table. He poured out a cup and took it to her. She received it with a coaxing leer in her eyes, ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... no case will the United States consent to go without its share of the swag. It is delicious. The biggest and proudest government on earth turned sneak-thief; collecting pennies on stolen property, and pocketing them with a greasy and libidinous leer; going into partnership with foreign thieves to rob its own children; and when the child escapes the foreigner, descending to the abysmal baseness of hanging on and robbing the infant all alone by itself! Dear sir, this is not any more respectable than for a father to collect toll on the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Thoorko better nor the English understand Scotch, it's little speed I'll come wi' them," said Dan with a leer. "Howsomediver, I'll give 'em a trial. I say, Mr Red-beard, hubba doorum bobble moti squorum howko joski tearum thaddi whak? Come, now, avic, let's hear what ye've got to say to that. An' mind what ye spake, 'cause we ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... raucity of phonographs and the stamping of feet. Everything was "wide open," and there was not even the thinnest veneer of respectability. Drinking and gambling and dancing go on all night long. Drunken men reel out upon the snow; painted faces leer over muslin curtains as one passes by. Without any government, without any pretence of municipal organisation, there is no co-operation for public enterprise. There are no streets, there are no sidewalks save such as a man may choose to lay in front of ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... assent with civil leer, And without sneering teach the rest to sneer;[327-3] Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... see us eat, if you want to," said Josh Owen, with a malicious leer, as he spread a piece of paper on the ground and began to lay out the meal. "When are you two going to eat? I don't know. Maybe not for a few days yet. Ye see, it ain't so easy to make an enemy of a man by sneaky tricks, and then get on his ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... on his hips, his head inclined towards his right shoulder, and an insolent leer of expectancy upon ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... touched the peak of his cap, and looked from Barnabas to Cleone's flushing loveliness with eyes wide and profoundly innocent,—a very cherub in top-boots, only his buttons (Ah, his buttons!) seemed to leer and wink one to another, as much as to say: "Oh ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... came Botticelli. Now, Botticelli builded on Giorgione, while Burne-Jones builded on Botticelli. Aubrey Beardsley, dead at the age at which Keats died, builded on both, but he perverted their art and put a leer where Burne-Jones placed faith and abiding trust. Aubrey Beardsley got the cue for his hothouse art from one figure in Botticelli's "Spring," I need not state which figure: a glance at the picture and you behold sulphur fumes about the face of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... Hewlet came on, and no other word was spoken until he stopped three feet away. Swaying slightly, and looking into Brent's face with a simpering leer, in an undertone ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... said the jockey, or whatever he was, turning to me with an arch leer, "I suppose I may consider myself as the purchaser of this here animal, for the use and behoof of this young gentleman," making a sign with his head towards the tall young man by his side. "By no means," said ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... faint praise, assent with evil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer. Pope, Prologue to the Satires, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... parted, weak and wan: And he left the shore; His ship diminished, was low, was gone; And she heard in the waves as the daytide wore, And read in the leer of the sun that shone, That they ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... likely!" Curtis said with a stupid leer. "Ish it likely! Not much. Leon means nothing! He only wants the fun of being engaged to a pretty girl—like I wantsh fun ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... Temistocle, taking it, nevertheless, and examining it by the moonlight. "It has no visa," he added, with a cunning leer. Nino gave him another. Then Temistocle had no ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... faint praise, assent with civil leer, And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer." Pope {Essay On Man, ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... slender, imperious judge in the council-chamber with a defiant leer on his face. If he went down into the depths he would drag with him the fairest treasure he had coveted in all his years of ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... whose head the fumes of the wine were rising once more, had already forgotten his son's advice and was eyeing a champagne-bottle with a tender leer as it stood, still nearly full, by the side of his plate. He dared not touch it for fear of being lectured again, and he was wondering by what device or trick he could possess himself of it without exciting Pierre's remark. A ruse occurred to him, the simplest ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... serious; I'll give thee five hundred pounds for every inch of him that resembles me; ah, this eye, this left eye! A thousand pounds for this left eye. This has done execution in its time, girl; why, thou hast my leer, hussey, just thy father's leer. Let it be transmitted to the young rogue by the help of imagination; why, 'tis the mark of our family, Thy; our house is distinguished by a languishing eye, as the house of Austria is by a thick lip. Ah! when I was of your age, ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... Fosbe'ton," continued the man, with a tipsy leer. "Now I jus' ask you, sir, if these two gen'lemen don't owe me ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... Christening Feast, had this advantage over her likeness, that she was invited everywhere; though how she, at her age, could fly about to so many parties, unless she was a fairy, no one could say. Behind the fairy, up the marble stairs, came the most noble Farintosh, with that vacuous leer which distinguishes his lordship. Ethel seemed to be carrying the stack of flowers which the Marquis had sent to her. The noble Bustington (Viscount Bustington, I need scarcely tell the reader, is the heir of the house of Podbury), the Baronet of the North, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a-warnin' the lost sinner," he said, "like Jonah warned the sinners in Nineveh. I'm exhortin' him about the fall. Adam fell in the Garden of Eden." Then the leer came back into his face. "Ever hear of the Garden ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... woman," she answered, with a devilish leer. "You hate me, and you are afraid of me without any reason. If not, tell me, good sir, why you were so frightened the ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... but was evidently satisfactory to Hobson, for, as he opened the door, there was a leer of triumph on his face. He glanced suspiciously about the hall, and, on reaching the door, turned to Mrs. LaGrange, who had accompanied him, saying, in ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... unawed, may strive to sting thee at heel in vain: Craft and fear and mistrust may leer and mourn and murmur and plead and plain: Thou art thou: and thy sunbright brow is hers that ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Everything about the place looked bleak and dreary and as grey as a granite tombstone. Hawkes, who but twelve hours before had seemed the embodiment of life in its most resilient form, now appeared as a drab nemesis with wooden legs and a frozen leer. My coffee was bitter, the peaches were like sponges, the bacon and rolls of uniform sogginess and the eggs of a strange liverish hue. I sat there alone, gloomy and depressed, contrasting the hateful sunshine with the soft, witching refulgence of twenty-four candles and the light ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... zonner your acquaintance. Want to see Will. Got prodigal on zands, Will has. Seems t'ave come back mos' 'no—mos' 'nopportune 'casion. All right, ole man: jus' give me y' arm and I get 'long mos' com-for-ble, mos' comfort-a-ble," he ended with a leer of triumph ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... day a little Japanese picture of a boat in a stormy sea, the waves beating over it; three warriors in the boat lie prostrate and rigid with terror and misery. Above, through a rent in the clouds, is visible an ugly grotesque figure, with a demoniacal leer on his face, beating upon a number of drums. The picture is entitled "The Thunder-God beats his drums." Well, Carlyle seems to me like that; he has no pity for humanity, he only likes to add to its terrors and its bewilderment. He preached silence and seclusion to men of ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... short at the door on seeing a stranger, twirled in his hand a perfectly round old hat without any vestige of a brim, and resting himself now on one leg and now on the other and changing them constantly, stood in the doorway, looking into the parlour with the most extraordinary leer I ever beheld. I entertained a grateful feeling towards the boy from that minute, for I felt that he was the comedy of ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... ragged yellow velveteen breeches, indifferent fustian gaiters, and shoes, cobbled here and there, one of which had rather an ugly bulge by the side near the toes. His mouth was exceedingly wide, and his nose remarkably long; its extremity of a deep purple; upon his features was a half-simple smile or leer; in his hand was a ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... latent mine—these unlaunch'd voices—passionate powers, Wrath, argument, or praise, or comic leer, or prayer devout, (Not nonpareil, brevier, bourgeois, long primer merely,) These ocean waves arousable to fury and to death, Or sooth'd to ease and sheeny sun and sleep, Within ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... to-day when traitors spoke, it seemed as if the Divine Presence stood close to me amongst the shadows. Once more I saw the bleak and arid land, the skeleton arms of the trees, the blue firmament above my head, I saw the multitude of simple folk around Him and the leer in the eyes of the tempters. And above the din of drunken revelries to-night I heard again the voice that bade me then to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... equal courtesy. The old critic Zabastes, squeezing his lean, bent body from out the throng, hobbled after Sah-luma at some little distance behind the harp-bearer, muttering to himself as he went, and bestowing many a side-leer and malicious grin on those among his acquaintance whom he here and there recognized. Theos noted his behavior with a vague sense of amusement,—the man took such evident delight in his own ill- humor, and seemed to be so thoroughly convinced ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... was into the room, and as the Indian turned, with that beastly leer still on his face, Ted was ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... end of the room to the other and finally "scuttled too airily downstairs for a woman in her clothes"; and the chambermaid disguised as a fine lady, who by "the toss of her head, the jut of the bum, the sidelong leer of the eye" proclaimed her real condition—these types are treated by Defoe in a blunt realistic manner entirely foreign to Eliza Haywood's vein. Some passages,[2] perhaps, by a sentiment too exalted or by a description in romantic ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... yet the leer of the gipsy's eye made him think of the lying magpie. So he left her, and hastened on, and, behold! there stood before him the village maypole, bedecked with roses and ribbons, and a living garland of youths and ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... Turns of [the] Eye-sight, such as the voluntary or involuntary, the half or the whole Leer, I shall not enter into a very particular Account of them; but let me observe, that oblique Vision, when natural, was anciently the Mark of Bewitchery and magical Fascination, and to this Day tis a malignant ill Look; but when tis forced ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... term, are the result. Towards the close of the day, everything is in confusion—the door-bell is never silent. Crowds of young men, in various stages of intoxication, rush into the lighted parlors, leer at the hostess in the vain effort to offer their respects, call for liquor, drink it, and stagger out, to repeat the scene at some other house. Frequently, they are unable to recognize the residences of their friends, and stagger ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... individual seems to have not the slightest appreciation of propriety. He commits openly the most uncouth acts, if he does not manifest the most indecent unchastity of manner. When spoken to, he stares rudely at the person addressing him, often with a very unpleasant leer upon his countenance. In some few cases there seems to be a curious combination of conditions. While mentally fearful, timid, and hesitating, the individual finds himself, upon addressing a person, staring at him in the most ungainly manner. He is conscious of ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... general idea on the instant. The two exchanged looks, such as are only current between very 'cute, knowing, sharp-witted men. Hiram was betrayed into returning Mr. Bennett's leer before he was aware of it. It was a spontaneous recognition, and he felt ashamed at being thus thrown off his guard. He colored slightly, and said something about ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... criticised, made her portrait always recognized, whether simpering as a chocolate-box classicality, smiling sadly from the flowery circle of the Purgatorio, or breaking out of some rough mass of paint with the provocative leer of a cocotte of the ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... hand and then at Mr Cripps's face. There was the same ugly leer about the latter, into which a spark of anger was infused as the boy still held back from ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... enjoyed himself so well, nor found himself so easy as he had done since he cut off his tail. He said no more, but looked about with a brisk air to see what proselytes he had gained; when a sly old Fox in the company, who understood trap, answered him, with a leer, "I believe you may have found a conveniency in parting with your tail; and when we are in the same circumstances, perhaps we may ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... enclosure Bakahenzie and the other two were arrested by astonishment. Lowering the body to the base of the idol which leaned sideways in a drunken leer, Birnier lifted the spear and brought it down accurately between zu Pfeiffer's left arm and breast, and dropping swiftly upon his knees to cover his actions, slashed his own left forearm. Then he jumped to his feet and held the blooded spear ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... something that were better away, a latent corruption,—a hint as of an impure presence. Some of that dreary double entendre may be attributed to freer times and manners than ours,—but not all. The foul satyr's eyes leer out of the leaves constantly. The last words the famous author wrote were bad and wicked. The last lines the poor stricken wretch penned were for pity and pardon." Now a line or two about Goldsmith, ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... Muse, the simple Truth. Far be't from me the "virgin's mind" to "taint:" Seduction's dread is here no slight restraint: The maid whose virgin breast is void of guile, Whose wishes dimple in a modest smile, Whose downcast eye disdains the wanton leer, Firm in her virtue's strength, yet not severe; She, whom a conscious grace shall thus refine, Will ne'er be "tainted" by a strain of mine. But, for the nymph whose premature desires Torment her bosom with unholy fires, No net to snare her willing heart ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... replied, with an evil leer, "such as one might hope for from an Abbot. But, my Lord, they say the Nunnery is haunted, and I can't face ghosts. Man or woman, with rails or without 'em, Mother Flounder doesn't mind, but ghosts—no! Also Mistress ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... Alvina became blooming and bouncing at this time. Nothing shocked her, nothing upset her. She was always ready with her hard, nurse's laugh and her nurse's quips. No one was better than she at double-entendres. No one could better give the nurse's leer. She had it all in a fortnight. And never once did she feel anything but exhilarated and in full swing. It seemed to her she had not a moment's time to brood or reflect about things—she was too much in the swing. Every moment, in the swing, living, or active in full swing. When ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... heard a heavy tramp coming along the deck. He was hoisted roughly by hands under his arm-pits and placed upon his feet, though he was still too weak to stand without support. A dozen faces surrounded him, glaring angrily. Out of a sort of mist that partly obscured his vision came the terrible leer of the man with the broken nose. The twisted mouth opened and the man spoke with a deliberate ugliness. The very absence of oaths seemed to make his ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... the back yard, eying the house curiously, Billy with wide open eyes, and Tom with a hang-dog leer from under the brim of his hat. Their father met them at the door and put his arms ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... glad to think I didn't, sir. I've been to no small amount of personal inconvenience for you. I've pushed my way right up to the headspring. I've got the best opinion that's to be had. The best opinion that's to be had just gives you one leer over its spectacles. I guess that look will fix you if you ever get it straight. I've been able to tap, indirectly," Mr. Simmons went on, "the solicitor of your usurping cousin, and he evidently knows something to be in the wind. ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... his valet by to tell him how the dice came up. On the walls hung the works of Vandyke and Correggio and Raphael and Rubens; but the pure faces of art's creation looked down on statesmen bending low to the beck of adventuresses, old men pawning a noble name for the leer of a Portsmouth, and women vying for the ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... he went, he left an indelible trail behind him on the glittering streets; wherever he went he was still tethered to the house by the cemetery of St. John; wherever he went he must weave, with his own plodding feet, the rope that bound him to the crime and would bind him to the gallows. The leer of the dead man came back to him with a new significance. He snapt his fingers as if to pluck up his own spirits, and choosing a street at random, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... you, or robbing the cradle? Who's playing the king in this deal? I——" The leer suddenly vanished from his face, the tip of his tongue licked his lips. Mormon's gun was slowly coming up level with his heart, steady as Mormon's ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... lid to the pot, hung the long-handled spoon upon a projection of a forked upright, and, picking up a tin pail, disappeared down the well-worn path to the river. With an evil leer the man stepped boldly into the clearing and crossed to the opening ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... which this was put, together with the leer that accompanied it, made her start. Alone? Yes, but should she acknowledge it? Would it not be better to say that her husband was up-stairs. The man evidently saw the struggle going on in her mind, for he chuckled to himself ...
— Midnight In Beauchamp Row - 1895 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... so odd in the old man's sudden energy, and the subject which had called it forth, that Mr. Pickwick was prepared with no observation in reply; and the old man checking his impetuosity, and resuming the leer, which had disappeared during ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood
... knows), suddenly this sentence rushed in upon me, "The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin." At this I made a stand in my spirit and began to conceive peace in my soul, and methought I saw as if the tempter did leer and steal away from me, as being ashamed of what he had done. At the same time also I had my sin and the blood of Christ thus represented to me: that my sin, when compared to the blood of Christ, was no more to it than this little clod or stone is to the vast and wide field that here I see. ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... that I have done, And I shall say there till of good words a foyn[128] On height; Over your heads my hand I lift, Out go your eyes, fore to do your sight, But yet I must make better shift, And it be right. What, Lord? they sleep hard! that may ye all hear; Was I never a shepherd, but now will I leer[129] If the flock be scared, yet shall I nap near, Who draws hitherward, now mends our cheer, From sorrow: A fat sheep I dare say, A good fleece dare I lay, Eft white when I may, But this ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... to-night: My old friend cried pish, and bid her go on. The gipsy told him that he was a bachelor, but would not be so long; and that he was dearer to somebody than he thought: The Knight still repeated she was an idle baggage, and bid her go on. Ah, master, says the gipsy, that roguish leer of yours makes a pretty woman's heart ache; you have not that simper about the mouth for nothing—The uncouth gibberish with which all this was uttered, like the darkness of an oracle, made us the more attentive to it. To be short, the Knight ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... He began to leer at her with amorous eyes when he spoke, and he began to find frequent occasions for taking hold of her arm. He managed to make himself odious in the extreme, so that in sheer self-defense Marion made haste to bring his thoughts back ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... night; at which reproachful words Russell showed no signs of dejection, as Harry had expected, but, on the contrary, to his amazement, seemed to have upon his face a slight air of triumph, regarding him with a self-satisfied smile and a cunning leer which puzzled him greatly. This strange and unexpected change in Russell, from terror and despair to peace of mind and jocularity, was a puzzle over which Harry racked his brains for some time, but to ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... kill me! Shoot me if—you want to, but let me down from here!" The only effect of this upon Barrett was to light up his brutal face with a leer of fiendish satisfaction. He said to the guards with ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... not be more safe with thy confessor. Diamine! I am not a man to gad about among the water-sellers, with a secret at the top of my voice; but thou didst leer aside when I winked at thee dancing among the masquers on the quay. Is ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... so sinister in this invitation and in the leer which accompanied it, that Hugh felt a qualm of misgiving. He hung back, uncertain what to say next, until cross-eyed Harry gave him a push that sent him staggering through the doorway. The four men then entered the cabin after him, ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... tone were significant enough. He fell back a step, and scowled at Stonor as if he suspected him of a desire to make fun of him. Then his eyes went involuntarily to Hooliam. Stonor, following his glance, was struck by the odd, self-conscious leer on Hooliam's comely face. Suddenly it flashed on him that this was his man. His face went blank with astonishment. The supposed ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... ANTONIO.—La separacion de mandos en Puerto Rico. Discurso escrito y comenzado a leer ante la Comision del Congreso ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... decently enough to her, glanced upward, and, as he thought of Eva's father lying stricken with the Madagascar madness in the room above, an evil leer came over his fox-like face. As he left he completely ignored both Locke and Balcom, unless it was that the look in his eyes meant a sort ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... the mind of a young girl, but when duty seemed to call, this school-mistress could be brave, and she offered to give Elspeth her schooling free of charge. Like the other two hers was a "mixed" school, but she did not want Tommy, because she had seen him in the square one day, and there was a leer on his face that reminded her of ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... you say—trapped!" said Arden, with a leer on his dark face. "You are the fool, Helmar, not I. But see here, I am on business. Not of my own, but that of ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... scraping against the logs. Some heavy soft thing slid off the roof and dropped with a chug. Then the door, that hung awry like a drooping eyelid, gave a disreputable wink, and the whole front gable of the cabin loomed a giant countenance with a silly forehead and an evil leer. Now it seemed that a hand was hurling snow against the door, as a sower scatters grain,—snow that lay like beach sand on the floor, or melted into a crawling pool—red in the firelight, red ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... a typographical nature. In one of the five copies which we compared, the title-page, radically differing from the others, reads as follows: "Formula Concordiae. Das ist: Christliche, Heilsame Reine Vergleichunge, in welcher die Goettliche Leer von den vornembsten Artikeln vnserer wahrhafftigen Religion, aus heiliger Schrift in kurtze bekanntnues oder Symbola vnd Leerhafte Schrifften,: welche allbereit vor dieser zeit von den Kirchen Gottes Augspurgischer Confession, angenommen vnd approbiert:, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... purty," answered O'Gorman, with the leer of a satyr, "we'd take moighty good care you didn't do that. If Misther Conyers won't be obligin', why, we'll have to spare him, I s'pose; but we couldn't do widout you, my dear; what'd ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... and regarded us with indifference. He was cast for an old and withered Mephistopheles, his lines all downward, his few teeth fangs, and his smile a threatening leer, as if he thought of a joke he could not tell to decent visitors, but which almost choked him to withhold. His clothes were rags, and his naked feet like the flippers of seals. He opened his mouth, yawned, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... well known to his friends, as well as to his creditors. Lord Guildford met him one day. 'Well, Sherry, so you've taken a new house, I hear.'—'Yes, and you'll see now that everything will go on like clockwork.'—'Ay,' said my lord, with a knowing leer, 'tick, tick.' Even his son Tom used to laugh at him for it. 'Tom, if you marry that girl, I'll cut you off with a shilling,'—'Then you must borrow it,' replied the ingenuous youth.[8] Tom sometimes disconcerted his father with his inherited ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... said, with an evil leer on her lips, "I hold a secret of yours that is worth the keeping! I give you two weeks more; within that time you must act! Destroy the witch,—bring back to me my grandchild Britta, or else—it ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... of drugs, and, untrammeled by old traditions, have sought and are seeking milder means of mitigating our bodily ills. All honor to them. They have driven away the old doctor of our childhood, whose most pleasant smile resembled the amiable leer that a cannibal might be supposed to bestow upon a plump missionary. The old curmudgeon, with his huge bottles of mixtures and his immense boulders—I beg pardon, I should say, boluses of nastiness—has vanished like a surly ghost at the approach ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... the face of the drowned man, upon whose eyelids she was placing penny-pieces, to keep them from opening; and her one eye was fixed on her work, its sightless companion showing white in its socket, with an ugly leer. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... having been expressed, M. le Duc cast a brilliant leer at me, and prepared to speak; but the Keeper of the Seals, who, from his side of the table did not see this movement, wishing also to say something, M. le Duc d'Orleans intimated to him that M. le Duc had the start ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... did have one. Some class, too," he added with a leer that won Bulger's complete respect. He breathed freely again and was humming, "Love Me and the World Is Mine," as ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... at a glance. Somehow, he seemed to be laughing all the time—a fact that was afterward recalled with some surprise and no little horror. At the time, the loungers thought his smile was a merry one, but afterward they stoutly maintained there was downright villainy in the leer. His coat was very dusty, proving that he had driven far and swiftly. Three or four of the loungers followed him into the store. He was standing before the counter over which Mr. Lamson served his soda-water. In one hand he held an envelope and in the other his straw ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... "so all three shall go in; and as to who is to play Doll Wango, the master of the ceremonies will settle that, so you need give yourself no more concern about it; but if I were called on to decide," he added, with an amorous leer at Dame Baldwyn, whose proportions so well matched his own, "I know where my choice would light. There, now!" he shouted, "Open wide the gate for Squire Nicholas Assheton of Downham, and the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... sea. Not with its natural golden fringe, sweeping the furthest ends of the landscape, not with the strange glare of whiteness which it sometimes puts on as an alternative to colour, but as a splotch of vermilion red upon a leaden ground—a red face looking on with a drunken leer. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... on "Martin Luther on Celibacy and Marriage" Dr. Brandes derides with a satyr-like leer all traditional ideas of chastity, conjugal ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... by the side door, where a barman kept watch for the police. Presently the bricklayer came out, alone. He stood on the footpath, slightly fuddled, his giddiness increased by the fresh air. Immediately Chook lurched forward to meet him, with a drunken leer. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... the white and callous cliff. His hands were damp and chill; his back set against nothingness; his long eyelashes swept the chalk-surface. He had a sense that the cliff was swelling itself to thrust him off. It was alive; it was hostile. The leer he detected in the great blank face pressed against his own roused his anger. He clung the more tenaciously because of it, snarling back. G-r-r!—it ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... "empty, hence, perhaps, leer horse, a horse without a rider; leer is an adjective meaning uncontrolled, hence 'leer drunkards'" (Halliwell); according to Nares, a leer (empty) horse meant also a led horse; ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... upper windows were much wider than they were high, and this feature, together with a broad bay-window where the door might have been expected, gave it by day the aspect of a human countenance turned askance, and wearing a sly and wicked leer. To-night nothing was visible but the outline of the roof ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... in this woman,' muttered Arthur; adding with an ugly leer, 'I said I trusted everything to you, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... one and should continue to do so quite independently of him. But Peace would listen to no refusal, however decided its tone. Dyson threw over the card into Peace's garden. This only served to aggravate his determination to possess himself of the wife. He would listen at keyholes, leer in at the window, and follow Mrs. Dyson wherever she went. When she was photographed at the fair, she found that Peace had stood behind her chair and by that means got himself included in the picture. At times he had threatened her with a revolver. On one occasion when he was more ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... of the song, however, was Mac's leer, which, in a public hall, would have brought down the house, and which ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... the floor in assumed exhaustion, a Chinaman with a perfectly impassive face, and a Burman whose pock-marked, evil countenance was set in an apparently habitual leer, came running into ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... heaven knows he did not lack for self-esteem. Perhaps it was this very self-esteem that blinded him here to the appalling truth. Yet in the end understanding came to him. When the precise significance of the fond leer of that painted harridan's repellent coquetry was borne in upon him he felt the skin of his body creep and roughen But he dissembled craftily. He was a venal scamp, after all, and in the court of Hanover ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... and cordial among the Southerners, while the intruder pressed hard upon Mr. Reybold. He was a singular object; tall, grim, half-comical, with a leer of low familiarity in his eyes, but his waxed mustache of military proportions, his patch of goatee just above the chin, his elaborately oiled hair and flaming necktie, set off his faded face with an odd gear of finery and impressiveness. His skin was that of an old roue's, patched up and ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... of set purpose, had crept up behind us so softly that we should not suspect his approach, or else so engrossed were we that our ears had been deafened for the time. He stood there now in his untidy gown of black, and there was a leer of mockery on his long, white face. Slowly he put a lean arm between us, and took the sheet ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... mother's eyes, as black as sloes? See here a shocking awkward creature, That speaks a fool in every feature.' 'The woman's blind,' the mother cries; 'I see wit sparkle in his eyes.' 20 'Lord! madam, what a squinting leer; No doubt the fairy hath been here.' Just as she spoke, a pigmy sprite Pops through the key-hole, swift as light; Perched on the cradle's top he stands, And thus her folly reprimands: 'Whence sprung the vain conceited lie, That we ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... shouted, When I saw his hateful leer; 'Tell me what this means, Jim Johnson. Where is Billy? Ain't he here?' He was standing on the doorstep, And the light that shone within Seemed to twist his wrinkled features In a sort of wonder-grin. 'Well! well! ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... jewels (sham), an immense colour in the very middle of the cheek, but terribly chalked just about the mouth, and shouting the "Soldier tired," with a most insinuating simper at the corporal of the Foot-guards in front, who returns the compliment by a most outrageous leer between ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... about every one took extra care whilst bathing. I used to imitate the natives in not advancing far from the bank, and in keeping my eye fixed on that of the monster, which stares with a disgusting leer along the surface of the water; the body being submerged to the level of the eyes, and the top of the head, with part of the dorsal crest the only portions visible. When a little motion was perceived in the water behind the reptile's tail, bathers were obliged ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... for, he was bitterest of all. He formally offered his congratulations to Ratcliffe on his appointment. This little scene occurred in Mrs. Lee's parlour. The old Baron, with his most suave manner, and his most Voltairean leer, said that in all his experience, and he had seen a great many court intrigues, he had never seen anything better managed ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... launched into a sneering laugh. "Oh, is that so?" he demanded. "Fine! I'd like t' see Perkins, all right!" His great shoulders shook, and a horrible leer distorted his ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... The leer of the man who has sold lemonade in a circus has a strange charm for a young man. It has a strange repulsiveness for the "solid man" of business. The look of a man with a cigar put in his mouth at a sharp upward angle and with ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... but all night through his outraged brain has avenged itself by calling up crowds of hideous dreams. The blood-vessels of the eye are charged with bilious particles, and these intruding specks give rise to fearful, exaggerated images of things that never yet were seen on sea or land. Grim faces leer at the dreamer and make mock of him; frightful animals pass in procession before him; and hosts of incoherent words are jabbered in his ear by unholy voices. He wakes, limp, exhausted, trembling, nauseated, ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... and he whistled through his fingers, and shouted, 'Madame, Madame,' and added, 'She's as deaf as a tombstone, or she'll hear that. Gi'e her my compliments, and say I said you're a beauty, Miss;' and with a laugh and a leer he strode off. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... he had noticed on a bench directly opposite to the one he had occupied sidling towards him. The fellow was ragged and trampish looking. There was a queer leer in his face and his eyes were fixed ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... better can be,' said Riderhood, turning on his heel, 'Good-night!' But he turned again as the other set forth, and added under his breath, looking after him with a leer: 'You wouldn't be let to go like that, if my Relief warn't as good as come. I'll catch you up in ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Why sit they here in twilight? Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows, Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish, Baring teeth that leer like skulls' tongues wicked? Stroke on stroke of pain,—but what slow panic, Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets? Ever from their hair and through their hand palms Misery swelters. Surely we have perished Sleeping, and walk ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... out for a walk in the country. (Tournour makes a leer of contempt) Do you never go for a walk in the country, ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... aparecer desde que colocaron el que ahora le sustituye. Si a alguno de mis lectores se le ocurriese hacerme la misma pregunta, despues de leer esta historia, ya sabe el por que no se ha continuado el milagroso ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... the paper," said Mr. Russell, with a diabolical leer in the direction of the unfortunate Mr. Vickers. "The paper what your father found in your box. Didn't ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... weren't enough, A goat thrown in to make it tough. Let scientists the breed pooh! pooh! Come with me to some Social Zoo And hear the bearded Lion bleat Goat-like on patent-kidded feet, Whose "Civil leer and damning praise" The serpent's cloven tongue betrays. Lo! lion, goat, and snake combined! Thus ...
— The Mythological Zoo • Oliver Herford
... well dress like one of them barefooted dancers, only calling 'em barefooted must be meant like sarcasm—and they'd die before they'd let a daughter of theirs make a show of herself like that for odious beasts of men to leer at, and so on—until a couple years later Mrs. Henrietta Templeton Price gets a regular one and wears it down Main Street, and nothing objectionable happens; so then they all hustle to get one—not quite so extreme, of course, but after all, ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... three sports. She had been hidden behind so much glass and leather that the transformation was startling. The horsy gentlemen uttered murmurs of surprise and gratification. One of them sidled up to her with a leer. ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... ago," said he, "when you passed up here, I saw three men on board. Where are the other two?" I answered him briefly that the same crew was still on board. "But," said he, "I see you are doing all the work," and with a leer he added, as he glanced at the mainsail, "hombre valiente." I explained that I did all the work in the day, while the rest of the crew slept, so that they would be fresh to watch for Indians at night. I was interested in the subtle cunning ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... were mockers of Billy among the irreverent of the town. As he sat aloft on his boot-blacking throne, waiting for crime to be done among us, conning meantime one of those romances in which his heroes did rare deeds, he would be subjected to intrusion. Some coarse town humorist would leer upon him from the doorway—a leer of furtive, devilish cunning—and whisper ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... concierge was not satisfied with the way I had done his boots," muttered the man, with an evil leer as he spat contemptuously on the floor; "an aristo, quoi? A hell of a place this... twenty cells to sweep out every day... and boots to clean for every aristo of a concierge or warder who demands it.... Is that work for a free born ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... impotent rage, P. Sybarite climbed back on his stool, while George sat down at his desk, lighted a Sweet Caporal (it was after three o'clock and both the partners were gone for the day) and with a leer watched the bookkeeper carefully slit the envelope and withdraw ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... eye, with a leer, lighted on the cask in the corner. He bethought him that it had a vent-hole even though the landlord had removed the spigot. He tiptoed unsteadily across the room, and proceeded with much difficulty to ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... probably alter our estimates of a good many now well reputed people. It is perhaps enough to say that his letters contain many good traits as well as some bad ones; that his unlucky portrait, with its combination of leer and sneer, is probably responsible for much; and that the parts which, as we shall see further, he chose to play, of extravagant humorist and extravagant sentimentalist, not only almost necessitate attitudes which may easily become offensive in the playing, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... no ascetic; I'm as pleasant as can be; You'll always find me ready with a crushing repartee; I've an irritating chuckle, I've a celebrated sneer, I've an entertaining snigger, I've a fascinating leer; To everybody's prejudice I know a thing or two; I can tell a woman's age in half a minute - and I do - But although I try to make myself as pleasant as I can, Yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man! And I ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... the great red sun rising above the horizon as they fell on his eyes awoke him, and on looking round he caught sight of the fin of the shark gliding by a few feet off. The monster's eye was turned up towards him with a wicked leer, and he believed that in another instant the savage creature would have made a grab at the raft. His pole was brought into requisition, and the rapid blows he gave with it on the water soon made the monster ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... the architect hurried to the rendezvous, where he found the Devil waiting impatiently. But a leer soon spread over his visage, and he was evidently overjoyed at the prospect of wrecking a soul. He quickly produced a weird document, commanding his victim to affix his signature at a certain place. "But the beautiful ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... it was his former butler, the man who had deserted him the day before without a word. He was a big, heavy-jowled man of powerful build, and the momentary look of fright melted to a leer at the ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... see Lucille more clearly, and the large, hazy outlines of Tode's features were beginning to assume the proper proportions. There was a diabolical leer upon Tode's face, unchanged during the five years since Jim had seen him last, except that it had become more evil, more powerful. The enormous and distorted face that Jim had seen had been simply due to the presence of some ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... going to Bremen; but we shall travel together as far as—you go by Amsterdam, I suppose?—as far as Leer, then. That will be very pleasant.' I fancied there was a ghoulish gusto ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... men Worked then but as a little leaven; From some more modest palace then The Soul of Dives stank to Heaven. But when they planned with lisp and leer Their careful war upon the weak, They smote your body on its bier, For surety that ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... with idle house-girls; some courtesans flaunted in furs and ostrich feathers, through a group of coarse engineers; some sergeants of artillery, in red trimmings, and caps gilded with cannon, were reining their horses to leer at some ladies, who were taking the air in their gardens; and at a wide place in the street, a Provost-Major was manoeuvring some companies, to the sound of the drum and fife. There was much drunkenness, among both soldiers and civilians; and the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... be half starved if there were no candle-light. Probably nine-tenths of the gushing letters of indiscreet confession are written after nine or ten o'clock in the evening, and sent off before day returns to leer invidiously upon them. Few that remain open to catch our glance as we rise in the morning, survive the frigid ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... bachelor, but would not be so long; and that he was dearer to somebody than he thought: the Knight still repeated she was an idle baggage, and bid her go on. "Ah, master," says the gipsy, "that roguish leer of yours makes a pretty woman's heart ache; you ha'n't that simper about the mouth for nothing—" The uncouth gibberish with which all this was uttered, like the darkness of an oracle, made us the more attentive to it. To be short, the Knight left the money with ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... lips,—the clammy sweat superseded by returning warmth. Working earnestly, thinking of nothing but the human life that hung in the balance, I failed to observe the presence of the most disagreeable of the female nurses, who was standing, with "arms akimbo," looking on, until, with an insulting leer, she remarked, "It seems to me ye're taking great liberties for an honest woman." Paralyzed with surprise and indignation, I knew not how to act. Just then the surgeon in charge of the ward, who had ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... bookseller. "You're as good as they are." He leaned forward from the easy chair, and tapped the clerk's arm with a long, claw-like finger. "I say," he continued, with a smile that was something between a wink and a leer, and suggestive of a pleased ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... quiet as despair, I turned from him, That hateful cripple, out of his highway Into the path he pointed. All the day 45 Had been a dreary one at best, and dim Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim Red leer to see the plain ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... piercing pang of that memory remained with Beauty Stanton. She was a part of Benton. She was treading the loose board-walk of the great and vile construction camp. She might draw back from leer and touch, but none the less was she there, a piece of this dark, bold, obscure life. She was a cog in the wheel, a grain of dust in the whirlwind, a morsel of flesh and blood for the hungry maw of a wild and passing ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... that now filled the bench of bishops in the house of lords; but in all probability, the gratitude of the clergy is like their charity, which shuns the light — Mr Barton was immediately accosted by a person well stricken in years, tall, and raw-boned, with a hook-nose, and an arch leer, that indicated, at least, as much cunning as sagacity. Our conductor saluted him, by the name of captain C—, and afterwards informed us he was a man of shrewd parts, whom the government occasionally employed in secret services. But I have had the history of ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... demanded sharply. "Woman, away: am I not busy? Is not this the very Passion week of preparation before the Easter of the Assizes?" Then with an upward leer of his eyes, that were now filled with frolicksome humour, whilst at the corners of his mouth flickered a grim smile, he continued: "Mona Macdonald, I am neither selfish nor sensual, though women call me so; not prone to be provoked to ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... himself in arranging the objects upon it. In reality his long ears were stretched for sounds coming through the little door. Having satisfied himself that the Deaves' were good for several minutes in there, he came towards Evan with an ingratiating leer. ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... coffee and crunched our hardtack. Throughout the morning My Lady had ridden upon the seat of Daniel's wagon, with him sometimes trudging beside, in pride of new ownership, cracking his whip, and again planted sidewise upon one of the wheel animals, facing backward to leer ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... happy to act as friend to the elderly viscount, and to carve the fowl, and to make the salad at supper. When Pen and his young lady met the Viscount's party, that noble poor only gave Arthur a passing leer of recognition as his lordship's eyes passed from Pen's face under the bonnet of Pen's companion. But Tom Tufthunt wagged his head very good-naturedly at Mr. Arthur, and said, "How are you, old boy?" and looked extremely knowing at ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... suggested with a leer. "Here is an address. Send a messenger boy whenever you like. Every one thinks I am ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... ugly he is!" cried one of the sailors, with a leer at the half-drowned man's face. "I'd like to see the lass we'd please in saving him. He's only ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... arraignment of the corset are the creased backs and gooseflesh of his nudes! What lurking cynicism there is in some of his interiors! Voila l'animale! he exclaims as he shows us the far from enchanting antics of some girl. How Schopenhauer would laugh at the feminine "truths" of Degas! Without the leer of Rops, Degas is thrice as unpleasant. He is a douche for the romantic humbug painter, the painter of sleek bayaderes ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... festive memory; but I am informed that he contributed no otherwise towards this display than by a few touches of chalk. Among the heads of distinguished personages, finding those of the King of Prussia and the Empress of Hungary, he changed the cast of their eyes, so as to make them leer significantly at each other. Note.—These (which in the catalogue are called an original portrait of the present Emperor of Prussia and ditto of the Empress Queen of Hungary, its antagonist) were ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the grotesque roots of trees will leer magically from the wayside to meet the uncouth gestures of the labourer and his trull; while in the smoke-thick air of mellow tavern-corners the shameless mirth of honest revellers philosophising upon the world will have ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... rushed in upon me, "The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin." At this I made a stand in my spirit and began to conceive peace in my soul, and methought I saw as if the tempter did leer and steal away from me, as being ashamed of what he had done. At the same time also I had my sin and the blood of Christ thus represented to me: that my sin, when compared to the blood of Christ, was no more to it than this little clod or ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... to be Monsieur," said the obese Turk with a graceful wave of the hand in my direction, "and not you, who has robbed my home of its treasure, unless," he added, and I shall always remember the hideous leer of that pulpy-nosed and small-pox pitted face, "unless Monsieur has relieved you of ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... with the faithful discharge, but with the highest honours and honourable emoluments of an established profession. The translation the reader will find in a note below [45]. "Am sorgfaeltigsten, meiden sie die Autorschaft. Zu frueh oder unmaessig gebraucht, macht sie den Kopf wueste and das Herz leer; wenn sie auch sonst keine ueble Folgen gaebe. Ein Mensch, der nur lieset um zu druecken, lieset wahrscheinlich uebel; und wer jeden Gedanken, der ihm aufstosst, durch Feder and Presse versendet, hat sie in ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to her seat by the lamp, and took up her novel; but her eyes did not see the printed page. Suddenly she threw the book down on the table. It was impossible to read; Sam's talk had disturbed her to the point of sharp discomfort. What did old Mr. Wright mean by "knowing cakes and ale"? And his leer yesterday had been an offence! Why had he looked at her like that? Did he—? Was it possible—! She wished she had spoken to Lloyd about it. But no; it couldn't be; it was only his queer way; he was half crazy, she believed. And it would do no good to speak ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... shipwrecked wretch snatches at a floating spar, she clung to the little column at the left of the window, clutching it with her hand; for the dreadful thing had happened-Caracalla's eye had met hers and had even rested on her for a while! And that gaze had nothing bloodthirsty in it, nor the vile leer which had sparkled in the eyes of the drunken rioters she had met last night in the streets; he only looked astonished as at some wonderful thing which he had not expected to see in this place. But presently a fresh attack of pain apparently made him turn away, for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... quoth she, "is an odd sort of a fellow; methinks he makes a strange figure with that ragged, tattered coat appearing under his livery; can't he go spruce and clean, like the rest of the servants? The fellow has a roguish leer with him which I don't like by any means; besides, he has such a twang in his discourse, and an ungraceful way of speaking through the nose, that one can hardly understand him; I wish the fellow be not tainted with some bad disease." ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... a leer and drove them before him back to the table. There was more scratching in his register. The two uncouth witnesses scrawled something for their names and ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... the middle of the street, with a cunning leer on his face. The change of purpose supported his belief that ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... wild-looking specimen. He had the rolling gait of the deep sea. A squinting eye gave him a villainous leer, while a bristly beard and long gray hair made him a ferocious spectacle. His age was doubtful, as the lines in his ruddy skin might have been cut by dissipation as much as age. The most prominent feature of his unlovely countenance was ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... service of industry." Her work was in the finishing room where a number of girls were crowded at machines and tables, filing, clipping, and packing bottles. Her task was to take the screw-neck bottles that came from the leer, and chip and file their jagged necks and shoulders until all the roughness was removed. It was dirty work, and dangerous for unskilled hands, and she found it difficult ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... if there were no candle-light. Probably nine-tenths of the gushing letters of indiscreet confession are written after nine or ten o'clock in the evening, and sent off before day returns to leer invidiously upon them. Few that remain open to catch our glance as we rise in the morning, survive the frigid ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... young man," said the jockey, or whatever he was, turning to me with an arch leer, "I suppose I may consider myself as the purchaser of this here animal, for the use and behoof of this young gentleman," making a sign with his head towards the tall young man by his side. "By no means," said ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... wind swept down from the heights, cutting the fog into shreds. For an instant, with an evil leer the sun peered through the naked woods of Vincennes, sank like a blood-clot in the battery smoke, lower, lower, into ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... said she, with a cunning leer; "but this I know, that they had a love scene together this very morning, and that he kissed her very ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... her for a moment. He became suddenly conscious of the fact that Colonel Grand was staring at him across the intervening space. Turning, he met the combined gaze of the three persons who formed the little group. There was a comprehensive leer on the ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... it?" said the pedler with a leer that was good-humoredly knowing. "Well, old fellow, as you've given me quite a lesson how to behave myself, I guess I must show you that I understand how to prove that I'm thankful—so here, Caesar, is a cut for you from one of my ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... listening," he said with a leer. "And I'm telling you good things—things that people don't know and that I wouldn't tell them—the swine. You're not listening. You're thinking I'm a brute to my wife, eh?" And Thresk was startled by the shrewdness of his ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... "Never did have one. Some class, too," he added with a leer that won Bulger's complete respect. He breathed freely again and was humming, "Love Me and the World Is Mine," as ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... boat in a stormy sea, the waves beating over it; three warriors in the boat lie prostrate and rigid with terror and misery. Above, through a rent in the clouds, is visible an ugly grotesque figure, with a demoniacal leer on his face, beating upon a number of drums. The picture is entitled "The Thunder-God beats his drums." Well, Carlyle seems to me like that; he has no pity for humanity, he only likes to add to its terrors and its bewilderment. He preached silence and seclusion to men of activity, energy to men ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... trading," she replied, with an evil leer, "such as one might hope for from an Abbot. But, my Lord, they say the Nunnery is haunted, and I can't face ghosts. Man or woman, with rails or without 'em, Mother Flounder doesn't mind, but ghosts—no! Also Mistress Stower is a witch, and might lay a curse on ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... came into Lydia's eyes. I'm sorry, I'd have liked to have seen him end his days happily among the hens, a-treading of them. Joseph felt he had not rightly understood her, and when he inquired out her meaning from her, she told it with so repulsive a leer that he could not conquer a sudden dislike. He moved away from her immediately and asked her ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... with a sort of swagger. He wes less intoxicated than Turner, but ugly enough. He faced the captain with a leer. ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... seen at a glance. Somehow, he seemed to be laughing all the time—a fact that was afterward recalled with some surprise and no little horror. At the time, the loungers thought his smile was a merry one, but afterward they stoutly maintained there was downright villainy in the leer. His coat was very dusty, proving that he had driven far and swiftly. Three or four of the loungers followed him into the store. He was standing before the counter over which Mr. Lamson served his soda-water. ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... than I had expected, and quite some few minutes before she came back herself, he shuffled in again, carrying under his coat a roll of yellow paper, which he thrust into my hand with a gratified leer, saying: ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... such a willing—" added Schliemann, sidling up to him with a dreadful leer on his face. He made ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... Richmond a smiling leer, one which had proved very successful at more than one metropolitan bar, where he had paved the way for its success with gifts of flowers and a cheap ring or two; but it was utterly lost here, for its intended ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... the First favoured the court with a fascinating leer, which left no doubt on any one's mind that he had been ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... dream so odd and funny, I cannot resist recording it here.— Methought that the Genius of Matrimony Before me stood with a joyous leer, Leading a husband in each hand, And both for me, which lookt rather queer;— One I could perfectly understand, But why there were two wasn't quite so clear. T'was meant however, I soon could see, To afford me a choice—a most excellent plan; And—who should this brace of candidates ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... wrought, Worm-like vapours skirr thro' the halls And reach a distant, lurid moat, Where sighs and groans upon a flood Ascend to heights of a grey ghaut— Satellites to Destiny's crypt! And Vespers that the Twilight brought— More dooms that prayers nor sighs can break— Leer at each thought to Fancy's flight; And to the dais whereunder sit A demon-quire that Circe taught, Songs that echo to the isles in lake And valley deep, ravage the night Until Idols pall at the scene. And stationed Mounts toward the West Whose bones portray a ghastly ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... not offer him any explanation, only stood guarding the door with a threatening aspect, which very much disconcerted Pee-wee. He was a scout and he was brave, and not panicky in peril or emergency, but the striped clothing and cropped head and stupid leer of the man before him made him seem something less than human. His terror was more that of an animal than of a man and his apparent inability to express himself save by the repetition of that one sentence frightened ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... direction of the vast shadowy figure, which to Laurence's eye appeared to turn towards his niche with a leer, as if to say, "Listen to him. What ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... face of the drowned man, upon whose eyelids she was placing penny-pieces, to keep them from opening; and her one eye was fixed on her work, its sightless companion showing white in its socket, with an ugly leer. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Session's sentence wrung her to the soul, Nor could she lounge the gag to shule a win; The knowing bench had tipp'd her buzer queer, [8] For Dick had beat the hoof upon the pad, Of Field, or Chick-lane—was the boldest lad That ever mill'd the cly, or roll'd the leer. [9] And with Nell he kept a lock, to fence, and tuz, And while his flaming mot was on the lay, With rolling kiddies, Dick would dive and buz, And cracking kens concluded ev'ry day; [10] But fortune fickle, ever on ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... and broken teeth, lay open; the eye, close by whose lid the fatal wound had been inflicted, was not, as might have been expected, bathed in blood, but had started forth nearly from the socket, and gave to the face, by its fearful unlikeness to the other glazing orb, a leer more hideous and unearthly than fancy ever saw. The wig, with all its rich curls, had fallen with the hat to the floor, leaving the shorn head exposed, and in many places marked by the recent struggle; the rich lace cravat was drenched in blood, and the gay uniform in many ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... recognize instantly the significant difference between filthy filth and funny "filth." Dirt for dirt's sake is something else again. Pornography, an eminent American jurist has pointed out, is distinguished by the "leer of the sensualist." ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... know exactly how long she had been on board the yacht. The hesitation caused her to linger, as the cold air had caused her to think. It was as though she feared that when he was found the man would be impudent to her, and leer, behaving familiarly as he might have done to a common woman. Because she was alone and unprotected. It was terrible. Her secret filled her with the sense of irremediable guilt. Already she was staled with ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... is the one raised for the time above the commonalty by his criticism of the bishop, to whom the prelate would fain show how little he was to be despised, how far more honored and powerful he was among men. As for Gigadibs, it is to be noticed that Browning quietly makes him do more than leer enviously at his complacent competitor from a tomb-top. The "sudden healthy vehemence" that struck him and made him start to test his first plough in a new world, and read his last chapter of St. John to better purpose than towards self-glorification beyond ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... Curtis said with a stupid leer. "Ish it likely! Not much. Leon means nothing! He only wants the fun of being engaged to a pretty girl—like I wantsh fun with ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... after story without getting sight of the madman. Finally he reached the roof. It was waving like swells on a lake before a breeze. He caught sight of the Mad Musician standing on the street wall, thirty stories from the street, a leer on his devilish visage. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... of your whereabouts at present," said Boris, shortly. "Because," he continued, with a villainous leer, "I am only cruel to be kind. I want to have all the details of our marriage settled as soon as possible. A night of waiting will soften your dear brother's heart, and he will probably listen to reason ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... exhibits a taste for cheap electioneering, a subserviency to caucus direction, and a party spirit upon a level with many of the least reputable elective Chambers in the world; and beneath the imposing mask of an assembly of notables backed by the prescription and traditions of centuries we discern the leer of the artful dodger, who has got the straight tip from ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... near the architect hurried to the rendezvous, where he found the Devil waiting impatiently. But a leer soon spread over his visage, and he was evidently overjoyed at the prospect of wrecking a soul. He quickly produced a weird document, commanding his victim to affix his signature at a certain place. "But the beautiful plan," whispered the young man; ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... care of. Then Theodore Dodge was found lying bound and gagged on the floor. A ragged, foul-smelling coat had been substituted for the one that had been left at the river's bank. The banker looked up at the intruders with a stupefied leer, betraying neither ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... envious and spiteful, avenging himself for his incapacity on those whose competency makes him sensible of his incompetence; he denounces them as Moderates, and, at last, succeeds in having a warrant of arrest issued against his four chief clerks; on the morning of Thermidor 9, with a wicked leer, he himself carries the news to one of them, M. Miot. Unfortunately for him, after Thermidor, he is turned out and M. Miot is put in his place. With diplomatic politeness, the latter calls on his predecessor and "expresses to him the usual compliments." Buchot, insensible to compliments, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of the shire," &c. Truly on this occasion the holy father had not been unmindful of himself; and, considering the early hour and dreary state of the weather; was as jovial as the heart could desire. A peculiar leer and frequent ebullitions of laughter, from mysterious causes, showed the frame of mind he was in. After coffee, and a glass of aniseed brandy, we viewed his priestly robes, which were of cloth of gold and very handsome. We then proceeded to make the acquaintance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... of Plato, her face had worn an indescribable glow of feeling, which seemed to have come upon her from a higher and better world, and she had looked far more beautiful than now when she was fully dressed, and when her women crowded round leer—Zoe having laid aside the Plato—with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... general and cordial among the Southerners, while the intruder pressed hard upon Mr. Reybold. He was a singular object; tall, grim, half-comical, with a leer of low familiarity in his eyes, but his waxed mustache of military proportions, his patch of goatee just above the chin, his elaborately oiled hair and flaming necktie, set off his faded face with an odd gear of finery and impressiveness. His ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... manetane that this is infernul nonsense. I manetane that wax figgers is more elevatin than awl the plays ever wroten. Take Shakespeer for instunse. Peple think heze grate things, but I kontend heze quite the reverse to the kontrary. What sort of sense is thare to King Leer, who goze round cussin his darters, chawin hay and throin straw at folks, and larfin like a silly old koot and makin a ass of hisself ginerally? Thare's Mrs. Mackbeth—sheze a nise kind of woomon to have round ain't ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... him, an odd leer on his sophisticated face, saying no more. He made a pack on his saddle of the camp outfit, and started off along the ridge, leaving Mackenzie to follow as he pleased. A mile or more along Reid pitched upon a suitable ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... with which this was put, together with the leer that accompanied it, made her start. Alone? Yes, but should she acknowledge it? Would it not be better to say that her husband was up-stairs. The man evidently saw the struggle going on in her mind, for he chuckled to himself and ...
— Midnight In Beauchamp Row - 1895 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... the caress, and was going to shut the door, when the drunken old man turned round once more, and inquired with a cunning leer, "So you expect some one, my child? Whom do you expect, little Itzig? Is it a lad or ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... and Giorgione came Botticelli. Now, Botticelli builded on Giorgione, while Burne-Jones builded on Botticelli. Aubrey Beardsley, dead at the age at which Keats died, builded on both, but he perverted their art and put a leer where Burne-Jones placed faith and abiding trust. Aubrey Beardsley got the cue for his hothouse art from one figure in Botticelli's "Spring," I need not state which figure: a glance at the picture and you behold sulphur fumes about the face ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... an appraising leer. "Don't have to say so," he drawled, "if you ain't, what have you-alls got them dinky little canoes for, an' if you were after 'gators you'd be packing big rifles 'stead of them fancy guns. You ain't got no call to deny it, for ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... like a frog's; he leant very much forward as he walked, and swayed gently from side to side with a rolling swagger; and as his body rolled, his eye rolled too, and he looked this way and that with a jovial leer and a smile of contentment and amusement on his face. The smile and the merry eye redeemed his appearance from blank ugliness, but neither of them indicated a ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... that her hypersensitive nerves could almost have called his smile a leer; but she looked at the man's broad face, whose lines told of no resources of thought, no great natural capacity for heroism, and yet were furrowed by the sharpness of this persecution. The face would have been fat had it not been ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... ain't so. He is the worst one that comes here. They say he has sold himself to the devil for a pretty face. It's nigh on eighteen years since I met him. He hasn't changed much since then. I have though," she added, with a sickly leer. ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... just beyond the patch of light that streamed through the door. They waited, heavy-breathed, while Harrigan began to recover from the disconcertment into which O'Mara's coming had flung him. Slowly the former's lips twisted into a mocking leer; mockery rose and swam with the hatred in his inflamed eyes. He would have spoken, sparring for time, when Steve's hand leapt in and made of the joking effort only a rattle in his throat. Beneath the stiff red stubble the flesh was livid where those fingers ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... with a shrewd leer of recognition, and smoking an imaginary pipe, with his head very much on one side and his eyes very much out ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... or "empty, hence, perhaps, leer horse, a horse without a rider; leer is an adjective meaning uncontrolled, hence 'leer drunkards'" (Halliwell); according to Nares, a leer (empty) horse meant also a ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... a cunning leer, 'ere departing you must visit the caliph in my company, that you may relate to the King of the Franks how the King of Kings punishes men who ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... now filled the bench of bishops in the house of lords; but in all probability, the gratitude of the clergy is like their charity, which shuns the light — Mr Barton was immediately accosted by a person well stricken in years, tall, and raw-boned, with a hook-nose, and an arch leer, that indicated, at least, as much cunning as sagacity. Our conductor saluted him, by the name of captain C—, and afterwards informed us he was a man of shrewd parts, whom the government occasionally employed in secret services. But I have had the history of him ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... getting home or Mother will think I have been waylaid and my watch stolen. So long, everybody, and pleasant dreams." Then thrusting his face back into the room through the narrowing crack of the door, he added with elfish leer, "Just the same, I still think that Coulter had something ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... paper," said Mr. Russell, with a diabolical leer in the direction of the unfortunate Mr. Vickers. "The paper what your father found in your box. Didn't ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... shrill dissonance of his nerves, as seen in the physiological outbursts of the B minor Scherzo, is the agony of a tortured soul. The piece is Chopin's Iliad; in it are the ghosts that lurk near the hidden alleys of the soul, but here come out to leer and exult. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... born to write, converse, and live with ease: Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne. View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, And hate for arts that caused himself to rise; Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; Alike reserved to blame, or to commend, A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend; Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged, And so obliging, that he ne'er obliged; ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... blooming and bouncing at this time. Nothing shocked her, nothing upset her. She was always ready with her hard, nurse's laugh and her nurse's quips. No one was better than she at double-entendres. No one could better give the nurse's leer. She had it all in a fortnight. And never once did she feel anything but exhilarated and in full swing. It seemed to her she had not a moment's time to brood or reflect about things—she was too much in the swing. Every moment, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... hours to Law, sovereign, sits empress Laws grind the poor Laws in-lungs call cause or cure Lay, go forth my simple Leaf, lade as a —, the sear, the yellow Leap, look before you ere you Learning, whence is thy —, a little is a dangerous thing Leather or prunella Leaven leavenet the whole lump Leer, assent with civil Legion, my name is Leopard, his spots Less, beautifully —, of two evils choose the Let dearly or let alone —others hail Libertine, the air a chartered Liberty, I must have, withal Lief not be, as live to be Life, death in the midst of —, the ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... improvise absurd choruses which make things go along as pleasantly as possible. Meanwhile the bottle is returned empty. He takes it, insists upon re-filling your "glass" from it, and tips it up over your cup. Then with a comical leer at you at the idea of attempting to pour wine from an empty bottle, he turns, dives into his cellar and fishes up another. You bid him go on with that capital song, offering to save him the trouble of unsealing and ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... swiftly, departing with his order. Tunis was conscious of a hoarse voice at his elbow. He glanced aside. His neighbor in the next chair was a little, common man, with a little, common face, on which was a little, common leer. ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... in this invitation and in the leer which accompanied it, that Hugh felt a qualm of misgiving. He hung back, uncertain what to say next, until cross-eyed Harry gave him a push that sent him staggering through the doorway. The four men then entered the cabin after him, closing the ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... before of maladies, And griefs, and Famine empty as a breeze,— A double monster, with a gloating leer Fix'd on his other half. They drew them near, One after one, led onward by Despair, That like the last of winter glimmer'd there,— A dismal prologue to his brother Death, Which was behind, and, with the horrid breath Of his wide baneful ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... glass, and I snatched at it. Great God! as I did so, another arm was thrust forth—not mine, I swear, if I live a thousand years; and as I recoiled, I saw in that glass a fiend step back. Not me, not me!—but a fiend with bloody hands, and a foul leer upon its face, and a fierce, cruel laugh in its glittering eyes. It was he, it was he! It was the devil that had possessed me before, come back again. And as I shuddered and gasped, and turned away, and then looked again ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... girl, with the ends of a fly-blown boa floating out behind, aped a woman of fashion. Her swain moved a stick with a ragged bit of string dangling from the end, reproducing with strange fidelity the circular flourish of Swithin's whip, and rolled his head at his lady with a leer that had a weird likeness to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... seen the two people sitting over there?" and he twisted eyebrows and mouth awry, with a whimsical leer of caution. ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... fingered his hilt; even at that distance the Dark Master seemed to feel the icy blue eyes upon him, for his leer vanished. ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... part, therefore, of an hour and a half Jill and I hovered under the shadow of the tall ship, walking self-consciously up and down, or standing looking up at the promenade deck with, so far as I was concerned, an impotently fatuous air and, occasionally, the meretricious leer usually reserved for ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... here, ye maiden vile, And rob me of my mate?' And on her child the mother scowled 80 A deadly leer ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... have been accessory to such vile work as to stab an unarmed and unsuspecting man, yet often as I thought of Alessandro's satyr leer, and the loathing bravely coupled with defiance which I had seen leap in answer to it in the face of his child Duchess, I thanked God that Lorenzino had no such ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... features saw The message dated Mackinaw— Then ordered sumptuous cheer; Two dollars' worth, at least, they "cheered" While from his counter Charlie leered An instigating leer. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... despair, I turned from him, That hateful cripple, out of his highway Into the path he pointed. All the day Had been a dreary one at best, and dim Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim Red leer to see the plain catch ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... of the sailors chanced to set his eyes upon me; and, after regarding me with a comic leer, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... entrance of the enclosure Bakahenzie and the other two were arrested by astonishment. Lowering the body to the base of the idol which leaned sideways in a drunken leer, Birnier lifted the spear and brought it down accurately between zu Pfeiffer's left arm and breast, and dropping swiftly upon his knees to cover his actions, slashed his own left forearm. Then ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... echo in his heart was born, And sometimes mid the weary task, and leer Of felon faces, ere he was aware From a compress'd unmurmuring lip, it broke, O Lamb of God! If still unquell'd Despair Thrust up a rebel standard, down it fell At the o'er-powering sigh, O Lamb of God! And ere upon his pallet low, he sank, It sometimes ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... impertinent, and one afternoon turned sulky over her lessons, and set our teacher at defiance. Miss Evelyn, who had been growing more and more angry, had her rise from her seat. She obeyed with an impudent leer. Seizing her by the arm, Miss Evelyn dragged the struggling girl to the horse. My sister was strong and fought hard, using both teeth and nails, but it was to no purpose. The anger of our governess was fully roused, and raising her in her arms, she carried her forcibly to the horse, placed ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... Sybarite climbed back on his stool, while George sat down at his desk, lighted a Sweet Caporal (it was after three o'clock and both the partners were gone for the day) and with a leer watched the bookkeeper carefully slit the envelope and ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... of two prisoners is he raised to his feet, and supported into the corridor, to receive the benefit of fresh air. Here he remains some twenty minutes, stretched upon two benches, and eyed sharply by the vote-cribber, who paces in a circle round him, regarding him with a half suspicious leer, and twice or thrice pausing to fan his face with the drab felt hat he carries under ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... a look of malicious glee to see his bewilderment and suffering;—and a Court Fool, whom Death, playing on bagpipes, and dancing, approaches, and, plucking him by the garment, wins him, with a coaxing leer, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... that one individual lingered near the May-pole. As he was especially active, we may describe him and his employment. He was apparently about fifteen. He had coarse straight white hair—a face that denoted stupidity—but with a cunning leer, which seemed to belie his ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... toward a noonday meal. Bill and Halloway appeared loquacious, and inclined to steal glances at Joan when Kells could not notice. Halloway whistled a Dixie tune. Then Bill took advantage of the absence of Kells, who went down to the brook, and he began to leer at Joan and make bold eyes at her. Joan appeared not to notice him, and thereafter averted; her ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... plenty of all that makes life soft and easy. He bet there wouldn't many hit any higher spots than him. He bet there was one little girl that would be looked on as lucky, in case she was a good little girl and encouraged him to show his natural kindness. And I was favored with a blood-curdling leer from across the camp, of which I had put as much as possible between myself and ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... thoroughfare. The upper windows were much wider than they were high, and this feature, together with a broad bay-window where the door might have been expected, gave it by day the aspect of a human countenance turned askance, and wearing a sly and wicked leer. To-night nothing was visible but the outline of the roof ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... back from a case which I had been attending. It was very late, and I was picking my way among the dirty loungers who were clustering round the doors of a great gin-palace, when a man staggered out from among them, and held out his hand to me with a drunken leer. The gaslight fell full upon his face, and, to my intense astonishment, I recognised in the degraded creature before me my former acquaintance, young Archibald Reeves, who had once been famous as one of the most ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... will have it in for you,—if they ever get their hands on you," said Sid Jeffers, with a wicked leer. ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... and callous cliff. His hands were damp and chill; his back set against nothingness; his long eyelashes swept the chalk-surface. He had a sense that the cliff was swelling itself to thrust him off. It was alive; it was hostile. The leer he detected in the great blank face pressed against his own roused his anger. He clung the more tenaciously because of it, snarling back. G-r-r!—it ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... in the Cheel house was about to be produced in public. It was stopped by Jonas, who rose to his feet, and with a leer and chuckle round, he said, "Neighbors and friends and all. Very much obliged for the complerment. But don't think it is all about a baby. Nothin' of the kind. It is becos I wanted all, neighbors and friends, to be ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... you don't know much about lightin' a fire. Lemme show you. Let the White hunter learn the Injun somethin' about the woods," said he with a leer. ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Spain had of possible help from the back room died with that laugh. Then the door behind the bar slowly opened, and the scar-featured face of Sassoon peered cautiously from the gloom. The horse thief, stooping, walked in with a leer directed triumphantly at the ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... that it is all a dream. A few hours before Svidrigailov commits suicide he has an extraordinary dream of the cold, wet, friendless little girl, whom he places tenderly in a warm bed, and whose childish eyes suddenly give him the leer of a French harlot. Both he and the reader are amazed to find that this is only a dream, so terribly real has it seemed. Then Raskolnikov's awful dream, so minutely circumstanced, of the cruel peasants maltreating a horse, their drunken laughter and vicious conversation, ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... be privately married; that such was the view of this prostituted young man, may be fairly inferred from a glance at the object of his choice. Her charms are heightened by the affectation of an amorous leer, which she directs to her youthful husband, in grateful return for a similar compliment which she supposes paid to herself. This gives her face much meaning, but meaning of such a sort, that an observer being ask, "How ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... to taste the pleasures of independency; or whether you do not sometimes leer upon the Court, sculo retorto? Will you now think of an annuity when you are two years older, and have doubled your purchase-money? Have you dedicated your opera, and got the usual dedication fee of twenty guineas? Does W[alpole] think you intended an affront to him in your opera? Pray God ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... was something so odd in the old man's sudden energy, and the subject which had called it forth, that Mr. Pickwick was prepared with no observation in reply; and the old man checking his impetuosity, and resuming the leer, which had disappeared during his ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood
... saddle-flap, the savory, sizzling kabobs and the carpeted menzil, in comparison with the dreary tumble-down place I have just left. My first impression of the officer himself, however, is scarcely so favorable as my impression of the picture in which he is set—the picture as just described; a sinister leer characterizes the expression of his face, and what appears like a nod, with an altogether unnecessary amount of condescension in it, characterizes his greeting. Hopping down to the ground, lamp in hand, he examines the bicycle minutely, and then indirectly ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... little piece of information, and with his leer an inch from my chin, I answered slowly and calmly that it certainly was. I might add that he spoke Spanish by preference (according to Mexique very bad Spanish); for The Fighting Sheeney had made ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... Whether he detected his own presentment in Miss Mannersley's sketch, or whether he recognized it as an unknown and unfamiliar treachery in his surroundings, I could not conjecture; for the next moment the matador, taking advantage of the bull's concentration, with a complacent leer at the audience, advanced toward the paper. But at that instant a young man cleared the barrier into the arena with a single bound, shoved the matador to one side, caught up the paper, turned toward the balcony and Miss Mannersley with a gesture of apology, dropped gaily ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... Thou haunting whisperer? Spirit of beauty immanent and sheer, Art thou that crooked servitor, Done with disguise, from whose malignant leer Out of the ghostly house ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... fitted and fitting—women of plaster and parchment—to cut one's character by; who are to be spoken of, not to; who can make no excuse for people's failings, because they think they are themselves exempt from fault; who study devout looks, and leer at their lovers from under their hoods—hole-and-corner flirts, yet held up as pattern-women, bless the term! to innocent and laughter-loving maidens like myself, who having no evil to conceal, speak openly, and love not ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Hasdrubal, divided from Hannibal by many miles and a Consular army, fell back to the Metaurus, and Rome was saved. Two thousand years later, Prince Frederick Charles, divided by a few marches and two Austrian army corps from the Crown Prince, lingered so long upon the leer that the supremacy of Prussia trembled in the balance. But the character of the Virginian soldier was of loftier type. It has been remarked that after Jackson's death Lee never again attempted those great turning movements which had achieved his most brilliant victories. Never again did he divide ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... child, or drunken Indian. When this visitor was about every one took extra care whilst bathing. I used to imitate the natives in not advancing far from the bank, and in keeping my eye fixed on that of the monster, which stares with a disgusting leer along the surface of the water; the body being submerged to the level of the eyes, and the top of the head, with part of the dorsal crest the only portions visible. When a little motion was perceived in the water behind the reptile's tail, bathers were obliged ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... in," returned the operative, with a knowing leer. "Anything from planting divorce evidence to shoving the queer. I've been working for a pal of Pad's in St. Louis for three or four years—that's why I'm strange around here. Pad's up in the air about something, and wants this Charley-boy right away, and he tells me to look here ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... Hen, with an ugly leer. "I know what you want to do. You want to drive me out to that shanty, so that big fellow will jump on me. Go yourself, ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... still morning we looked upon the deed. We stopped our ears and held our leaping hands, but they—did they not wag their heads and leer and cry with bloody jaws: Cease from Crime! The word was mockery, for thus they train a hundred crimes while we ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... my evil genius in the person of the landlord, who took me out to the woodshed. "Dutchy, I have decided to adopt you as my only son; have you ever bucked a wood saw?" said he, and a sardonic leer distorted his evil features. After I recovered sufficiently from the shock, I answered indignantly, "Sir, know ye not that I have pledged my service to the vestal virgins of yon temple?" "Ha! Ha!" laughed the villain, "get busy now, son, and if by morning this ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... pastor was no longer a signal for every hat to be lifted from the head; on the contrary, boys of sixteen or seventeen years of age would lean against the church, or the walls of the churchyard, with their hands in both pockets, and a sort of leer upon their faces, as though they defied the pastor on his appearance—and there would they remain outside during the service, meeting, unquailed and without blushing, his eyes, cast upon them as he came ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... obeyed the order, passing the American skipper, who was leaning on the bulwark looking sick, and as the sailor came up he turned to him with an ugly leer. ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... harsher term, are the result. Towards the close of the day, everything is in confusion—the door-bell is never silent. Crowds of young men, in various stages of intoxication, rush into the lighted parlors, leer at the hostess in the vain effort to offer their respects, call for liquor, drink it, and stagger out, to repeat the scene at some other house. Frequently, they are unable to recognize the residences of their friends, and stagger into the wrong house. Some fall early in the day, and are ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Captain Ferguson was married on Monday last. I was present at the bridal, and I assure you the like hath not been seen since the days of Lismahago. Like his prototype, the Captain advanced in a jaunty military step, with a kind of leer on his face that seemed to quiz the whole matter." That the sketch was a portrait, though doubtless disguised to such an extent as rendered its introduction permissible, is very probable; and as it is beyond question one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... Gorilla with a leer, "as for myself, I am so confident of being considered an Apollo that I wish for nothing so ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... one of the family would have given me pain for the world. They faithfully kept their promise. Not a word was said of the matter; but there were wry faces, and suppressed titters, that went to my soul; and whenever my father looked me in the face, it was with such a tragi-comical leer—such an attempt to pull down a serious brow upon a whimsical mouth—that I had a thousand times rather he ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... good! I grant," he said, "with you to wend, My brethren all in-fere: My purpose was to have dined to-day At Blyth or Doncaster." Forth then went that gentle Knight, With a careful cheer; The tears out of his eyen ran, And fell down by his leer. They brought him unto the lodge door: When ROBIN 'gan him see, Full courteously did off his hood, And set him on his knee. "Welcome, Sir Knight!" then said ROBIN, "Welcome thou art to me; I have abide you fasting, Sir, All these hours ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... reasons: because of England's sea power; because of the unblushing, shameless, gilded corruption of the French court, which cared less for the fate of Canada than the leer of a painted fool behind her fan. But be this remembered,—and here was the hand of overruling Destiny or Providence,—the fall of New France, like the fall of the seed to the ready soil, was the rebirth of a new nation. Henceforth it is not ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... for him to do, and that was go away down the rivers and find the fugitive Jock Drones, whose mother feared for him. No other usefulness of purpose remained in his reach. If he stood up, now, before any congregation, the imps of Satan, the patrons of moonshiners, would leer up at him in his pulpit, reminding him that he, too, ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... catamount and cling there, shouting to all the world to come and help you, for you had caught Black Donald and would die before you would give him up? Ah! you little vampire, how you thirsted for my blood! And you pretended to like me!" said Black Donald, eying her from head to foot, with a sly leer. ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... mandos en Puerto Rico. Discurso escrito y comenzado a leer ante la Comision del Congreso de ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... Richard, with something of a waggish leer, thou owest the lad for the venison, I suppose that thou killed, Cousin Duke! Marmaduke! Marmaduke! That was a marvellous tale of thine about the buck! Here, young man, are two dollars for the deer, and Judge Temple can do no less than pay the ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... think yer got the cinch on me, don't yer, Job Malden! 'It's a long lane that has no turn,' they say, and yer'll wish some day yer'd treated Dan Dean square!" and he turned with a leer and was gone. ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... Of her loose tresses hid: he in delight Both of her beauty, and submissive charms, Smiled with superiour love, as Jupiter On Juno smiles, when he impregns the clouds That shed Mayflowers; and pressed her matron lip With kisses pure: Aside the Devil turned For envy; yet with jealous leer malign Eyed them askance, and to himself thus plained. Sight hateful, sight tormenting! thus these two, Imparadised in one another's arms, The happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill Of bliss on bliss; while I to Hell am thrust, Where neither joy nor love, but fierce desire, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... up this speech with a low chuckle and a leer, which sent a chill to the heart not only of Will Osten but of Larry and Muggins also, for it convinced them that their new master had guessed their intention, and that he would, of course, take every precaution to prevent its being carried out. After ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... just looked at the pictures in an uncomfortable manner. He spoke only once and that was about the mottled lady reaching over her shoulder and smiling. "Grinitch," says he with a knowing leer. But Vernabelle only says, yes, it was painted in the dear ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... a Leporello to hold the ladder. Tom Tufthunt was quite happy to act as friend to the elderly viscount, and to carve the fowl, and to make the salad at supper. When Pen and his young lady met the viscount's party, that noble peer only gave Arthur a passing leer of recognition as his lordship's eyes passed from Pen's face under the bonnet of Pen's companion. But Tom Tufthunt wagged his head very good-naturedly at Mr. Arthur, and said, "How are you, old boy?" and looked extremely knowing at the ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... there were mockers of Billy among the irreverent of the town. As he sat aloft on his boot-blacking throne, waiting for crime to be done among us, conning meantime one of those romances in which his heroes did rare deeds, he would be subjected to intrusion. Some coarse town humorist would leer upon him from the doorway—a leer of furtive, devilish cunning—and whisper ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... unlaunch'd voices—passionate powers, Wrath, argument, or praise, or comic leer, or prayer devout, (Not nonpareil, brevier, bourgeois, long primer merely,) These ocean waves arousable to fury and to death, Or sooth'd to ease and sheeny sun and sleep, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... its greed stood reproduced, feature for feature, line for line. It was as though Nature, for an artistic freak, had set herself the task of fashioning hideousness and beauty from precisely the same materials. Between the leer of the man and the smile of the girl, where lay the difference? It would have puzzled any student of anatomy to point it out. Yet the one sickened, while to gain the other most ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... Smith; but these are the sort we have in India," he answered with an unpleasant leer. "The English people are more fortunate, ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... expression of diablerie came in he found impossible to discover. Experiment was necessary. The eyebrows—it could scarcely be the eyebrows? But he altered them. No, that was no better; in fact, if anything, a trifle more satanic. The corner of the mouth? Pah! more than ever a leer—and now, retouched, it was ominously grim. The eye, then? Catastrophe! he had filled his brush with vermilion instead of brown, and yet he had felt sure it was brown! The eye seemed now to have rolled in its socket, and was glaring ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... she was a town character, like Old Man Givins, the drunkard, or the weak-minded Binns girl. When she passed the drug-store corner there would be a sniggering among the vacant-eyed loafers idling there, and they would leer at each other and jest ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... great relief that the Reverend Orme was not looking at Shenton; his gaze was fastened on Manoel. Lewis, too, turned his eyes on Manoel. Cold sweat came out over him as he saw the terror in Manoel's face. The leer was still there, frozen. Over it and through it, like a double exposure on a single negative, hung the film of terror. The Reverend Orme, his hands half outstretched, walked ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... of his song. Those Boches had come into his village early in the war, torn him from his wife and his 'petite fille.' Since then he had 'had fear,' been hungry, been cold, eaten grass; eyeing some fat little dog, he would leer and mutter: 'J'ai mange cela, c'est bon!' and with fierce triumph add: 'Ils ont faim, les Boches!' The 'arrogant civilian' had never done his military service, for his infirmity, it seemed, had begun before ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... certain. They would have reason enough for being afraid to have her at large, if, indeed, there were no worse passion than fear driving some of them in pursuit of her. I could not keep out of my mind the beastly look of the Irishman who asked me, with such an ugly leer on his face, if there were no passage through. Not that I told either of the two women of my fears. But, all the same, I did not undress myself for a week, and sat in the great easy-chair in our kitchen through the whole of every night, waiting for the least ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... likeness, that she was invited everywhere; though how she, at her age, could fly about to so many parties, unless she was a fairy, no one could say. Behind the fairy, up the marble stairs, came the most noble Farintosh, with that vacuous leer which distinguishes his lordship. Ethel seemed to be carrying the stack of flowers which the Marquis had sent to her. The noble Bustington (Viscount Bustington, I need scarcely tell the reader, is the heir of the house of Podbury), the Baronet of the North, the gallant ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I object to its treatment of flies—nasty little worries, they deserve everything that happens to them. But it is the appearance of a spider that is so against it. There is a shifty expression about the eye, and such a leer on the upper lip. Money spinners are not so objectionable. I can tolerate them. It is the big, almost tarantulas, from which I flee. Those creatures which start up suddenly, and run across the room close by where you are sitting; creatures so large that you ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... more than "a gentleman should squint." The costume—long coat, waistcoat buttoned to the neck, knee-breeches, and stockings—is not unpleasing, but the expression of the face is something between a leer and a sneer. Walpole (Letters, 1858, vii. 274) describes another portrait (by Zoffani) as "a delightful piece of Wilkes looking—no, squinting tenderly at his daughter. It is a caricature of the Devil acknowledging Miss ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... reckoned we might draw the game. I then added, that from the look of the establishment I could not be wrong in assuming that they did a large business in the way of feeding hungry politicians and honester people. 'You may stake some on that, old feller,' says he, with a suspicious leer. His nasal was somewhat strong, so I put him down as from Vermont State, perhaps from the more mountainous part of it. As if shy of my patronage he upon the counter, pompous, spread his hands, as if the mahogany was all his. This seeming indifference rather touched ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... infernul nonsense. I manetane that wax figgers is more elevatin than awl the plays ever wroten. Take Shakespeer for instunse. Peple think heze grate things, but I kontend heze quite the reverse to the kontrary. What sort of sense is thare to King Leer, who goze round cussin his darters, chawin hay and throin straw at folks, and larfin like a silly old koot and makin a ass of hisself ginerally? Thare's Mrs. Mackbeth—sheze a nise kind of woomon to have round ain't she, a puttin old Mack, her husband, up to slayin Dunkan with a ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... a page in Sterne's writing but has something that were better away, a latent corruption,—a hint as of an impure presence. Some of that dreary double entendre may be attributed to freer times and manners than ours,—but not all. The foul satyr's eyes leer out of the leaves constantly. The last words the famous author wrote were bad and wicked. The last lines the poor stricken wretch penned were for pity and pardon." Now a line or two about Goldsmith, and I ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... on each side, helped Ada into the cab. Her feet scraped helplessly over the flagged pavement her head lolled on her shoulder, and the baleful white gleam of the huge electric lamps fell like limelight on her face contracted in an atrocious leer. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... foyn[128] On height; Over your heads my hand I lift, Out go your eyes, fore to do your sight, But yet I must make better shift, And it be right. What, Lord? they sleep hard! that may ye all hear; Was I never a shepherd, but now will I leer[129] If the flock be scared, yet shall I nap near, Who draws hitherward, now mends our cheer, From sorrow: A fat sheep I dare say, A good fleece dare I lay, Eft white when I may, ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... A cunning leer passed over the greyish countenance as the dazzling vision protruded itself before Mr. Sharpley. He drew his fingers convulsively through the mass of bristling hair (which might be designated by ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... a little hot and angry after riding,' the horse-dealer returned, with the leer of a privileged jester. 'Presently, he will see my horse's points more clearly. I will wait till he has finished his talk with the Padre. I will wait under ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... to sage Piraeus sped the seer, His honour'd host, a welcome inmate there. O'er the protracted feast the suitors sit, And aim to wound the prince with pointless wit: Cries one, with scornful leer and mimic voice, "Thy charity we praise, but not thy choice; Why such profusion of indulgence shown To this poor, timorous, toil-detesting drone? That others feeds on planetary schemes, And pays his host with hideous noon-day dreams. ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... they answered. "Monsieur is a man of sense," said one, with a maniac leer at his companion. "We will allow him to make merry at our ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... to look at it, my Lord," said the man, with a leer, half servile, half cunning. "There came two young gentlemen of fashion yesterday morning, and almost lost their wits at sight of it. Either would have bought it, but both had had ill luck at basset for a week ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... such only, I was sure, could have left the foot-print in the court, and be the owner of the shoe I had seen—could hardly pass through the Rue de Seine without drawing the eyes of all the lodgers on the street. Dried up hag faces would have met the apparition with a leer; the porters would have turned to stare, and she would have ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... cool and ready soldier," observed Pitts. "I saw him once in Philadelphia, before his Legion went south. He had a most determined look in spite of the good-humoured leer of his eye. He was one of the last men I should have wished to provoke; he was a complete Irishman—blunders and all. I heard of his telling a black servant who was walking barefoot on the snow to put on a pair of stockings the ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... I went down to breakfast. Everything about the place looked bleak and dreary and as grey as a granite tombstone. Hawkes, who but twelve hours before had seemed the embodiment of life in its most resilient form, now appeared as a drab nemesis with wooden legs and a frozen leer. My coffee was bitter, the peaches were like sponges, the bacon and rolls of uniform sogginess and the eggs of a strange liverish hue. I sat there alone, gloomy and depressed, contrasting the hateful sunshine with the soft, witching refulgence of twenty-four candles and the light that ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... head. A gas jet above the wretched little washstand lighted the room but poorly. The door opened slowly. A tall, ungainly woman entered the room—a creature with a sallow, weather-beaten face and a perpetual leer. ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... hands into the hip pockets of his striped trousers; and putting on a leer of pretended indifference, turned to a man named Benoit, who was regarding ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... to the men; it was the feminine portion of the audience that interested him, and he regarded it with a gloating leer, the expression of a senile satyr. Albeit a little on the seamy side of life, his rank and wealth were such that he himself attracted a good deal of attention, matronly eyes being turned in his direction with not unkindly purport. The marquis perceived the stir his presence ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... very moment she entered the room, eager to learn from her husband what the magnificent stranger had confided to him in private. He looked at her with a roguish leer, but still with some ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... fringe, sweeping the furthest ends of the landscape, not with the strange glare of whiteness which it sometimes puts on as an alternative to colour, but as a splotch of vermilion red upon a leaden ground—a red face looking on with a drunken leer. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... strike him down and ride over his ugly grinning face flashed through her. But the wooden stock was light under the braided leather; she knew that she could not have knocked a grunt out of the tough rascal who barred her way with his insolent leer in his mean squint eyes. He was a man who had nothing to ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... daughter. The older face, with its cruelty, its cunning, and its greed stood reproduced, feature for feature, line for line. It was as though Nature, for an artistic freak, had set herself the task of fashioning hideousness and beauty from precisely the same materials. Between the leer of the man and the smile of the girl, where lay the difference? It would have puzzled any student of anatomy to point it out. Yet the one sickened, while to gain the other most men would ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... been expressed, M. le Duc cast a brilliant leer at me, and prepared to speak; but the Keeper of the Seals, who, from his side of the table did not see this movement, wishing also to say something, M. le Duc d'Orleans intimated to him that M. le Duc had the start of him. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... tries to be friendly, I meets him half-way. But that fellow," and he shook a remonstrating finger at the door of the lodging-house, "thinks himself better'n other people. And mind you," with a leer, "maybe ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... Deputy, with a shrewd leer of recognition, and smoking an imaginary pipe, with his head very much on one side and his eyes very much out ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... himself black in the face, and, with the napkin under his chin, was no bad representation of Sancho Panza in the suds, with the dishclout about his neck, when the duke's scullions insisted upon shaving him; this sea-wit, turning to the boy, with a waggish leer, "I suppose (said he) you don't understand the figure of amplification so well as Monsieur your father." At that instant, one of the nieces, who knew her uncle to be very ticklish, touched him under the short ribs, on which the little man attempted to spring up, but lost the centre of gravity. He ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... understand Thoorko better nor the English understand Scotch, it's little speed I'll come wi' them," said Dan with a leer. "Howsomediver, I'll give 'em a trial. I say, Mr Red-beard, hubba doorum bobble moti squorum howko joski tearum thaddi whak? Come, now, avic, let's hear what ye've got to say to that. An' mind what ye spake, 'cause we won't ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... successful politician, who had worked his way up from being a slim and impecunious "repeater" to the position of Alderman, or Custom House official, and President of the Fat Men's Club. There is a drunken leer in this beast's eye, an inebriate roll in all his movements, that lead one mechanically to peer into the darkness of his den with the view of seeing what the Bar fixings are like. It would be a rare ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... more that my daughter is very irritable and passionate, and withal so fond of admiration, that nothing in the shape of a leer comes amiss to her. She likes a good squeeze above all things. Evil, and the Father of Evil though I be, I am not so very wicked as to wish thee to marry a woman of that description without thy knowing what kind of treasure ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... quietly closed the lid and again covered the basket with a blanket, after which he looked up with a cunning and triumphant leer. ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... the irreverent of the town. As he sat aloft on his boot-blacking throne, waiting for crime to be done among us, conning meantime one of those romances in which his heroes did rare deeds, he would be subjected to intrusion. Some coarse town humorist would leer upon him from the doorway—a leer of furtive, devilish cunning—and whisper hoarsely, "Hist! Are ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... was a pleasant-looking fellow, with huge black whiskers and a roguish eye. He touched the guitar with masterly skill, and sang little amorous ditties with an expressive leer." ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... a most respectable room; an intelligent girl. Only Madame herself seeing Jacob out had about her that leer, that lewdness, that quake of the surface (visible in the eyes chiefly), which threatens to spill the whole bag of ordure, with difficulty held together, over the pavement. In short, something ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... shoulders Driscoll forced him down the trail to his caravan. Most of the animals were lying down, dozing under their packs. Murguia's eyes grew watery when he saw them, but he was still dazed and his delusion was obstinate. The leer shot exultant gleams. "A rich man can enter heaven," he chuckled with ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... there was a replica of Shelton's robot control, teleview disc and all. Carlos had just pulled the switch and the robot was taking visible form. The man who prodded him with the automatic was Cadorna, no doubt of that. His evil leer and yellow eyes marked him at once. The other occupant of the room was a big square-built man with a patch over one eye and strips of adhesive tape across his nose—his antagonist of the night before. Must have sneaked off after he came to; it ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... Leather, 'those by the book-stall. That be Mr. Waffles,' continued he, giving his master a touch in the ribs as he jerked his portmanteau into a fly, 'that be Mr. Waffles,' repeated he, with a knowing leer. ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... interrupted by one of the women, who seemed bent on keeping up the spirit of banter with which they had begun. She asked him with a leer if he had got ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... is favorably situated, an examination discloses many drawbacks. It needs better dock facilities and railroads to bring it up to standard and in order to relieve the extensive shipping of troops at Wilhelmshaven. Under existing circumstances Leer and Papenburg could be used for transporting purposes, and these two with ...
— Operations Upon the Sea - A Study • Franz Edelsheim
... it—for a luxury, you know! Able to take my wife to Frascati on the last Thursday of October as a great holiday. My wife, too! A creature of beads and saints and little books with crosses on them—who would leer at a friar through the grating of a confessional, and who makes the house hideous with her howling if I choose to eat a bit of pork on a Friday! A good wife indeed! A jewel of a wife, and an apoplexy on all such ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... Turkish service who was stationed here, we saluted in the usual manner. Without returning it, he walked up, stepped across us, flung himself on our rug, leaned on his elbow, and with an impertinent leer stared in our faces all round until he met Richard's eye, which partook of something of the tiger kind, when he started and turned pale. Richard called out, "Kawwasses!" The kawwasses and two wardis ran into the room. "Remove that son of a dog." They seized him, fat and big as he was, as if he ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... barred the sitting-room door he came and stood beside the table, and there was a repulsive, insulting leer on his face as he looked ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... women with evil faces crept like animals. And towering above them, unreal in size, his scornful face an epitome of sin, the knout which he wielded symbolical and ghastly, driving his motley flock with the leer of the evil shepherd, was the man from whom he had already learnt to recoil with horror. The picture came and went in a flash. Francis found himself accepting a courteously offered cigar ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things, Most terrible to see. Around, around, they waltzed and wound; Some wheeled in smirking pairs: With the mincing step of demirep Some sidled up the stairs: And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer, Each helped ...
— The Ballad of Reading Gaol • Oscar Wilde
... scorching. As he spun away in front of me, his body bent forward until his back was nearly horizontal, and his green-stockinged legs striking out behind him with the furious rapidity of a great frog trying to push his head into the mud, he turned back his little face with a leer of triumphant derision at every moving thing which might ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... crucified. I built in his arms—his right arm first—and mortised the stones, then his left arm in the same way. I was careful not to look in his face. No, no! I didn't look in his face." Knightley repeated the words with a horrible leer of cunning, and hugged himself with his arms. To Wyley's thinking he was strung almost to madness. "After his arms I built in his feet, and upwards from his feet I built in his legs and his body until I came to his neck. All this while he had been crying out for pity, babbling prayers, ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... going to put off the show I must be getting home or Mother will think I have been waylaid and my watch stolen. So long, everybody, and pleasant dreams." Then thrusting his face back into the room through the narrowing crack of the door, he added with elfish leer, "Just the same, I still think that Coulter had something to do with ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... villainous-looking a person as I have ever set eyes on. He was sullen and furtive. I judged him at sight to be half Hindu, half Tibetan. He had a dark complexion, between brown and tawny; narrow slant eyes, very small and beady-black, with a cunning leer in their oblique corners; a flat nose much broadened at the wings; a cruel, thick, sensuous mouth, and high cheek-bones; the whole surmounted by a comprehensive scowl and an abundant crop of lank black hair, tied up in a knot at the nape of the neck with a yellow ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... corner of a lane that ran into the principal thoroughfare. The upper windows were much wider than they were high, and this feature, together with a broad bay-window where the door might have been expected, gave it by day the aspect of a human countenance turned askance, and wearing a sly and wicked leer. To-night nothing was visible but the outline of the ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... enough. He fell back a step, and scowled at Stonor as if he suspected him of a desire to make fun of him. Then his eyes went involuntarily to Hooliam. Stonor, following his glance, was struck by the odd, self-conscious leer on Hooliam's comely face. Suddenly it flashed on him that this was his man. His face went blank with astonishment. The ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... of a boat in a stormy sea, the waves beating over it; three warriors in the boat lie prostrate and rigid with terror and misery. Above, through a rent in the clouds, is visible an ugly grotesque figure, with a demoniacal leer on his face, beating upon a number of drums. The picture is entitled "The Thunder-God beats his drums." Well, Carlyle seems to me like that; he has no pity for humanity, he only likes to add to its terrors and its bewilderment. He preached silence ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... clammy sweat superseded by returning warmth. Working earnestly, thinking of nothing but the human life that hung in the balance, I failed to observe the presence of the most disagreeable of the female nurses, who was standing, with "arms akimbo," looking on, until, with an insulting leer, she remarked, "It seems to me ye're taking great liberties for an honest woman." Paralyzed with surprise and indignation, I knew not how to act. Just then the surgeon in charge of the ward, who had been ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... sledge were ready did Bucky utter a word. The terrific beating he had received had stunned him for a few minutes; but now he jumped to his feet, not waiting for the command from Walker, and strode up close to Billy. There was a vengeful leer on his bloody face and his eyes blazed almost white, but his voice was so low that Conway and Walker could only hear the murmur of it. His words ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... new broad, black hat, a celluloid collar, a wrinkled suit of store clothes, and his same shrewd, evil leer. Oldham did not appear, but requested that the visitor be shown into his room. There, having closed the transom, he ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... Before this time he had known it but speculatively; now he thought he knew it as a practical man; though perhaps he did not, even yet. Nevertheless humanity stood before him no longer in the pensive sweetness of Italian art, but in the staring and ghastly attitudes of a Wiertz Museum, and with the leer of a ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... live with ease; Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear like the Turk no brother near the throne; View him with scornful yet with jealous eyes, And hate, for arts that caused himself to rise; Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; Alike reserved to blame as to commend, A timorous foe and a suspicious friend; Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged, And so obliging ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to you," insisted Anthony with a leer. "Firs' place, my wife wants nothin' whatever do with ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... perhaps once in a lifetime, he saw, even in the all-pervading darkness, the shadowy face that was pressed close to his own. The eyes that looked into his were dim pools of evil light, faintly phosphorescent like those of a cat, and the face that framed them was contorted into a malignant leer of triumph. That much he saw before the darkness crushed him out of existence and all things earthly faded ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... snatched at it. Great God! as I did so, another arm was thrust forth—not mine, I swear, if I live a thousand years; and as I recoiled, I saw in that glass a fiend step back. Not me, not me!—but a fiend with bloody hands, and a foul leer upon its face, and a fierce, cruel laugh in its glittering eyes. It was he, it was he! It was the devil that had possessed me before, come back again. And as I shuddered and gasped, and turned away, and then looked again into those eyes that pierced me through, and saw the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... yet with jealous eyes, And hate for arts that caused himself to rise, Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And with our sneering teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault and hesitate dislike, Alike reserved to blame or to commend, A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend, Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... thick lips drew back in an ugly leer, and he gave a savage curse. Nanette flinched as if struck ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... So I waited, I did." And here, again, Milo of Crotona touched the peak of his cap, and looked from Barnabas to Cleone's flushing loveliness with eyes wide and profoundly innocent,—a very cherub in top-boots, only his buttons (Ah, his buttons!) seemed to leer and wink one to another, as much as to say: "Oh yes! Of ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... contemptuously on his heel, with military precision. Then he chuckled Dolores under the chin with a leer, to have his hand indignantly pushed aside. As the girl glared at him with a flash of hatred in her eyes, he stalked into the taproom, ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... and cordial amongst the Southerners, while the intruder pressed hard upon Mr. Reybold. He was a singular object; tall, grim, half-comical, with a leer of low familiarity in his eves, but his waxed mustache of military proportions, his patch of goatee just above the chin, his elaborately oiled hair and flaming necktie, set off his faded face with ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... the corset are the creased backs and gooseflesh of his nudes! What lurking cynicism there is in some of his interiors! Voila l'animale! he exclaims as he shows us the far from enchanting antics of some girl. How Schopenhauer would laugh at the feminine "truths" of Degas! Without the leer of Rops, Degas is thrice as unpleasant. He is a douche for the romantic humbug painter, the painter of sleek ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... newspaper marked in the corner, "Compliments of J.P." I opened it with sensible shrinkings; and there, wedged between an account of a prize-fight and a skittish article upon chiropody—think of chiropody treated with a leer!—I came upon a column and a half in which myself and my poor statue were embalmed. Like the editor with the first of the series, I did but glance my eye down the head-lines and ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Your pluck has saved your life; but remember, I've not said I won't shoot him or your father, if chance throws them in my way," he added, looking back over his shoulder with a malicious leer, as he left the arbor, then disappearing from sight among the ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... distracted mein The object of their strife is seen; His eyes with wild confusion roll, Mixt passions, with alternate sway, In his ambiguous features play, And speak as yet the undetermined soul; But that half-assenting leer, Obliquely on the little wheedler thrown, Portends, though checkt with aukward fear, That soon the apostate will be ...
— A Pindarick Ode on Painting - Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq. • Thomas Morrison
... you through?" and what the judge intended for a smile of fatherly affection became a leer of ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... gipsy told him that he was a bachelor, but would not be so long; and that he was dearer to somebody than he thought: The Knight still repeated she was an idle baggage, and bid her go on. Ah, master, says the gipsy, that roguish leer of yours makes a pretty woman's heart ache; you have not that simper about the mouth for nothing—The uncouth gibberish with which all this was uttered, like the darkness of an oracle, made us the more attentive to it. To be short, the Knight left the money with her that he had crossed ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... of a Moorish palace; the hideous, hairy, red-eyed jacks-in-boxes; the flies in the Noah's arks, that "an't on that scale neither as compared with elephants;" the giant masks, having a certain furtive leer, "safe to destroy the peace of mind of any young gentlemen between the ages of six and eleven, for the whole Christmas or Midsummer vacation," were all of them like dreams of the Danish poet, coloured into a semblance ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... much as he would let me. He interrupted me with his thumb again, and on his face was what in a lesser person I should unhesitatingly have called a leer. ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... crying to Mrs. Eddie Swanson, youngest of the women, "Louetta! I managed to pinch Eddie's doorkey out of his pocket, and what say you and me sneak across the street when the folks aren't looking? Got something," with a gorgeous leer, "awful ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... kind which people do not admit even to themselves," said Raoul bitterly. "The kind that gives you a thrill, when you think of it... Picture it: a man who lives in a palace underground!" And he gave a leer. ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... Knight; "Of him I have heard much good! I grant," he said, "with you to wend, My brethren all in-fere: My purpose was to have dined to-day At Blyth or Doncaster." Forth then went that gentle Knight, With a careful cheer; The tears out of his eyen ran, And fell down by his leer. They brought him unto the lodge door: When ROBIN 'gan him see, Full courteously did off his hood, And set him on his knee. "Welcome, Sir Knight!" then said ROBIN, "Welcome thou art to me; I have abide you fasting, Sir, All these hours three!" Then answered the gentle Knight With ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... there was a leer on his bearded face seen by the dull swinging oil-lamp, as, half covering his mouth, he whispered hoarsely behind ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... leader, and who turns back with a look of malicious glee to see his bewilderment and suffering;—and a Court Fool, whom Death, playing on bagpipes, and dancing, approaches, and, plucking him by the garment, wins him, with a coaxing leer, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... am going to Bremen; but we shall travel together as far as—you go by Amsterdam, I suppose?—as far as Leer, then. That will be very pleasant.' I fancied there was a ghoulish gusto in ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... Both occupations are equally unhealthy." As he said this he watched the young man with the inscrutable smile that at moments was wont to curl upon his lips. Ernest had once likened it to the smile of Mona Lisa, but now he detected in it the suavity of the hypocrite and the leer of the criminal. ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... to Josh to come and look. There was not much to see; there was an easel and a small canvas thereon, an open black japanned paint-box, a large wooden palette blotched with many colours lying on a bed of fern, and whose thumb-hole seemed to comically leer up at the boys like some great eye. Then there was a pair of big, sturdy legs, upon which rested a great felt hat, everything else being covered in by a great opened-out white umbrella, perfectly useless then, for, as Will had said, all was ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... not walk; that awful crew Might speak or laugh as you pass by. Might touch or paw With a formless claw Or leer from a sodden eye, Might whisper awful things they knew, Or wring their ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... for Nurse Cavell's death to say, "Now you can bring me the American protest," has gone behind the moustache to the face, and behind the face to the type and the spirit. The Emperor is not commanding in a lordly voice from a throne, but with a leer and behind a curtain. In the few lines of the lean, unnatural face is written the real history of the Hohenzollerns, the kind of history not often touched on in our comfortable English humour, but common to the realism of Continental art: the madness of Frederick William, ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... up with a triumphant leer at the calm face of Marguerite. She still did not feel really frightened, only puzzled and perturbed; but all the blood had rushed away from her face, leaving her cheeks ashen white, and pressing against her heart, until ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... many murders. "About three weeks ago," said he, "when you passed up here, I saw three men on board. Where are the other two?" I answered him briefly that the same crew was still on board. "But," said he, "I see you are doing all the work," and with a leer he added, as he glanced at the mainsail, "hombre valiente." I explained that I did all the work in the day, while the rest of the crew slept, so that they would be fresh to watch for Indians at night. I was interested ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... turns back with a look of malicious glee to see his bewilderment and suffering;—and a Court Fool, whom Death, playing on bagpipes, and dancing, approaches, and, plucking him by the garment, wins him, with a coaxing leer, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... be feared than any depth of serious love, however absorbing and apparently foolish, is that vicious condition in which trifling takes the place of all serious love, when women are viewed only as dolls, and addressed with an odious leer of affected knowingness as 'my dear,' wink, etc. Now to this tends the false condition of women when called 'the ladies.' On the other hand, what an awful elevation arises when each views in the other a creature capable of the same noble duties—she no less than he a creature of lofty ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... and John, "Came in and look'd askew; "'Twas my red face that set them on, "And then they leer'd at Sue. ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... Sandy McAdam, handsome, carefree boys of sixteen and eighteen, passed the drinks with many a jest and often a wink, but never a drop drank they, not until the Lodge had closed its doors on all visitors, and then Tom, the elder, with a final leer at Sandy the younger, drained off a glass of bad whisky with a grace that betokened ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... pornography. The initiated, after years of wading through the mire, will recognize instantly the significant difference between filthy filth and funny "filth." Dirt for dirt's sake is something else again. Pornography, an eminent American jurist has pointed out, is distinguished by the "leer of the sensualist." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne. View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, And hate for arts that caused himself to rise; Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; Alike reserved to blame, or to commend, A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend; Dreading even fools, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... meal. Bill and Halloway appeared loquacious, and inclined to steal glances at Joan when Kells could not notice. Halloway whistled a Dixie tune. Then Bill took advantage of the absence of Kells, who went down to the brook, and he began to leer at Joan and make bold eyes at her. Joan appeared not to notice him, and thereafter averted; her ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... He seeks to excite pity, and pleads for time. A sharp attorney pounces on him, and suddenly he feels himself in the vulture's gripe. He tries a friend or a relative, but all that he obtains is a civil leer, and a cool repulse. He tries a money-lender; and, if he succeeds, he is only out of the frying-pan into the fire. It is easy to see what the end will be,—a life of mean shifts and expedients, perhaps ending in the ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... cried Hen, with an ugly leer. "I know what you want to do. You want to drive me out to that shanty, so that big fellow will jump on me. Go ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... with a leer toward the door. "Why, you don't think I'm afraid, Captain? You should know me ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... ich Abschied nahm, Waren Kisten und Kasten schwer; 10 Als ich wieder kam, als ich wieder kam, War alles leer." ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... grinning very oddly; and then, falling grave with a startling suddenness, he began to dribble out a piratical love-story he had once before favoured me with, describing the charms of the woman with a horrid leer, his head nodding with the nervous affection of age all the time, whilst he looked blindly in my direction—a hideous and yet ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... in the middle of the street, with a cunning leer on his face. The change of purpose supported his belief that a ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... hypersensitive nerves could almost have called his smile a leer; but she looked at the man's broad face, whose lines told of no resources of thought, no great natural capacity for heroism, and yet were furrowed by the sharpness of this persecution. The face would have been fat had it not been half-starved. It was pale now under ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... Macht von Stund zu Stund, Wie's Krueglein, das am Brunnenstein zersprang, Und dessen Inhalt sickert auf den Grund, So weit es ging, den ganzen Weg entlang,— Nun ist es leer. Wer mag daraus noch trinken? Und zu den ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... his feet; but the business was over in two twos. The four living fellows looked at each other in rather a ghastly fashion; the dead man contemplating a corner of the roof with a singular and ugly leer. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the ugliest man I have ever seen. He has a squint and a leer, his mouth drops at both sides, he has no forehead, and his straight, combed hair meets his eyebrows—or rather, his left eyebrow, since that one is raised by a cut. He has the expression of a cut-throat, and yet he is ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... you come with horns and tail, With diabolic grin and crafty leer; I say, such bogey-man devices wholly fail To waken in my ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... from the heights, cutting the fog into shreds. For an instant, with an evil leer the sun peered through the naked woods of Vincennes, sank like a blood-clot in the battery smoke, lower, lower, ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... press men to serve him in his wars, the legal luminaries who came after him, and more particularly those of the eighteenth century, differed from him almost to a man. Blackstone, whilst admitting that no statute expressly legalised pressing, reminded the nation—with a leer, we might almost say—that many statutes strongly implied, and hence—so he put it—amply justified it. In thus begging the question he had in mind the so-called Statutes of Exemption which, in protecting from impressment certain persons or classes of persons, proceeded on the assumption, so dear ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... the cops!" cried Carietta, her small face distorted with a leer of the most horrid satisfaction, ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... Looking round at the door which had given her egress, by the light of the solitary lamp fixed in the alley, she saw that it was arched and old—older even than the house itself. The door was studded, and the keystone of the arch was a mask. Originally the mask had exhibited a comic leer, as could still be discerned; but generations of Casterbridge boys had thrown stones at the mask, aiming at its open mouth; and the blows thereon had chipped off the lips and jaws as if they had been eaten away by disease. The appearance ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... lantern, I seemed to see the face of this embodied curse with an ever-changing mockery of expression; at one moment wearing the features of my father; at another those of Tom Wynne; at another the leer of the old woman I ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... was a reverend and dignified pillar of the church, as demure as a saint, turning up his eyes, and professing and preaching morality, which I had more than once or twice before heard him do, while, with a sanctified leer, he expressed great horror at my breach of conjugal chastity, or violation of the marriage vow. The reader will easily imagine the manner in which I eyed him, while he was uttering these truly religious and moral doctrines, when I inform ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... in his trunk to put off the Customs,' and that the intended deterrent had untimely emerged. My brothers, conceive my exhilaration. 'The old wheeze.' I could have broken the brute's neck. When he offered me a filthy-looking cigar with a kink in it, and said with a leer that I shouldn't 'get many like that on the other side of the Chops,' I could ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... distance from London, as to become the usual resort of those who wished to be privately married; that such was the view of this prostituted young man, may be fairly inferred from a glance at the object of his choice. Her charms are heightened by the affectation of an amorous leer, which she directs to her youthful husband, in grateful return for a similar compliment which she supposes paid to herself. This gives her face much meaning, but meaning of such a sort, that an observer being ask, "How dreadful must be this creature's hatred?" would naturally reply, "How hateful ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... off-loaded. For the best part, therefore, of an hour and a half Jill and I hovered under the shadow of the tall ship, walking self-consciously up and down, or standing looking up at the promenade deck with, so far as I was concerned, an impotently fatuous air and, occasionally, the meretricious leer usually reserved for ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... zonner—haven't zonner your acquaintance. Want to see Will. Got prodigal on zands, Will has. Seems t'ave come back mos' 'no—mos' 'nopportune 'casion. All right, ole man: jus' give me y' arm and I get 'long mos' com-for-ble, mos' comfort-a-ble," he ended with a leer of triumph at having achieved ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... Abraham's protestations of fairness were accompanied by a cunning leer and a wink from one or other of his wicked little eyes, the impression of ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... was put, together with the leer that accompanied it, made her start. Alone? Yes, but should she acknowledge it? Would it not be better to say that her husband was up-stairs. The man evidently saw the struggle going on in her mind, for he chuckled to himself and called ...
— Midnight In Beauchamp Row - 1895 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... how ugly he is!" cried one of the sailors, with a leer at the half-drowned man's face. "I'd like to see the lass we'd please in saving him. He's only fit to ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... promoted in the usual manner by nobody's agreeing with anybody else, the presiding Finch called the Grove to order, forasmuch as Mr. Drummle had not yet toasted a lady; which, according to the solemn constitution of the society, it was the brute's turn to do that day. I thought I saw him leer in an ugly way at me while the decanters were going round, but as there was no love lost between us, that might easily be. What was my indignant surprise when he called upon the company to ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... spectre, still more ghastly grown, Surveyed with visage obdurate as stone, Then smiled with grimace of derisive craft, And in a most repugnant manner, laughed, But all the knight discerned with eye and ear, Was his own maudlin laugh and drunken leer. "Breathe thou thy message," shrieked the frantic knight "Discharge thy purpose, though it blast and blight, I charge thee, speak, by all that is most fair. By all most foul, I charge thee to declare; By my bright armor and ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... Trice's business, and so at noon dined, and my wife telling me that there was a pretty lady come to church with Peg Pen to-day, I against my intention had a mind to go to church to see her, and did so, and she is pretty handsome. But over against our gallery I espied Pembleton, and saw him leer upon my wife all the sermon, I taking no notice of him, and my wife upon him, and I observed she made a curtsey to him at coming out without taking notice to me at all of it, which with the consideration of her being desirous these ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... raise his eyes from the cup into which he had been gazing, absorbed as gazes a seer into his crystal, he caught on the Seneschal's lips so odious a smile, in the man's eyes so greedy, hateful a leer as he bent them on the Marquise, that he had much ado not to alter the expression of that flabby face by hurling at it ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... bear with it a little longer, sister? Does any thing provoke you now" (with a sly leer and affected drawl) ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... him that he was a bachelor, but would not be so long; and that he was dearer to somebody than he thought: The Knight still repeated she was an idle baggage, and bid her go on. Ah, master, says the gipsy, that roguish leer of yours makes a pretty woman's heart ache; you have not that simper about the mouth for nothing—The uncouth gibberish with which all this was uttered, like the darkness of an oracle, made us the more attentive to it. To be short, ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... my place, but how about my principles, my conscience?" said Europe, cocking her crafty little nose and giving the Baron a serio-comic leer. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... be informed of your whereabouts at present," said Boris, shortly. "Because," he continued, with a villainous leer, "I am only cruel to be kind. I want to have all the details of our marriage settled as soon as possible. A night of waiting will soften your dear brother's heart, and he will probably listen ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... a leetle too clevaire," said the maid with an evil leer,—"she would rob Madame, would she? She would play the espionne, hein? Eh bien, ma petite, you stay 'ere ontil you say what you lave done wiz ze ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... exposed face. The Major, faint with the terror of his helplessness and the crushing weight of the quivering masses of muscle about him, would have fallen but for their dread support. His consciousness fast deserting him, fascinated, he watched the monstrous leer as the head drew farther back, poised. He felt the agonizing pressure as the great muscles steeled for the blow, and in the moment before his senses departed, heard two crashing shots that sounded from behind him. With the smashing reports the ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... so fiercely inserted as to get entangled and fast. With his large level-crowned head bobbing up and down, and turned a little first to one side and then to another, all the while a self-congratulatory leer in his eye, he unfolds his wings, and then folds them again, twenty or thirty times, as if dubious how to begin to gratify his lust of blood; and frequently, when just on the brink of consummation, jumps off side, back, or throat, and goes dallying about, round ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... us eat, if you want to," said Josh Owen, with a malicious leer, as he spread a piece of paper on the ground and began to lay out the meal. "When are you two going to eat? I don't know. Maybe not for a few days yet. Ye see, it ain't so easy to make an enemy of a man by sneaky tricks, and then get ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... and Noll paused by the door, while Tip, with a confident leer on his face, strode ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... easy as he had done since he cut off his tail. He said no more, but looked about with a brisk air to see what proselytes he had gained; when a sly old Fox in the company, who understood trap, answered him, with a leer, "I believe you may have found a conveniency in parting with your tail; and when we are in the same circumstances, perhaps we ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... praise, assent with civil leer, And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... went toward the booth Mr. Lord looked at him around the corner of the canvas—for it seemed to Toby that his employer could look around a square corner with much greater ease than he could straight ahead—with a disagreeable leer in his eye, as though he enjoyed the misery which he knew his little clerk ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... and the expression of the house made to look like morning. Some of the guests, however, fell asleep in their chairs. One or two went to the door, and gazed along the street more than once. Tinker Taylor was the chief of these, and after a time he came in with a leer on his face. ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... her eyes wide open, that at length Little Dorrit, to entice her from her box, rose and looked out of window. As she glanced down into the yard, she saw Pancks come in and leer up with the corner of his eye ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... haunting whisperer? Spirit of beauty immanent and sheer, Art thou that crooked servitor, Done with disguise, from whose malignant leer Out of the ghostly ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... and then at Mr Cripps's face. There was the same ugly leer about the latter, into which a spark of anger was infused as the boy still held back from the ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... Peace would listen to no refusal, however decided its tone. Dyson threw over the card into Peace's garden. This only served to aggravate his determination to possess himself of the wife. He would listen at keyholes, leer in at the window, and follow Mrs. Dyson wherever she went. When she was photographed at the fair, she found that Peace had stood behind her chair and by that means got himself included in the picture. ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... came over toward Rex, walking a little unsteadily, and with such a leer in his eye that Rex ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... wider than they were high, and this feature, together with a broad bay-window where the door might have been expected, gave it by day the aspect of a human countenance turned askance, and wearing a sly and wicked leer. To-night nothing was visible but the outline of the ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... story after story without getting sight of the madman. Finally he reached the roof. It was waving like swells on a lake before a breeze. He caught sight of the Mad Musician standing on the street wall, thirty stories from the street, a leer on his devilish visage. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... about doing good—only good," returned the old sinner with a leer at the young widow, whose fingers he managed to press unseen, as he swung the little bottle of cordial before the eyes of Mere Langlois. He was not wholly surprised when Palass Poucette's widow did not show abrupt displeasure at his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... we looked upon the deed. We stopped our ears and held our leaping hands, but they—did they not wag their heads and leer and cry with bloody jaws: Cease from Crime! The word was mockery, for thus they train a hundred crimes while we do cure one. Turn again ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... know that any will wish to interrupt you," returned the soldier, with a waggish leer of his eye; "but, should they be so disposed, I have no power to stop them, if they be of the prisoner's friends. I have my orders, and must mind them, whether the Englishman goes to ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... them has the Wolf devour'd. The Wolf, I say, for Wolves too sure there are Of every sort, and every character. Some of them mild and gentle-humour'd be, Of noise and gall, and rancour wholly free; Who tame, familiar, full of complaisance Ogle and leer, languish, cajole and glance; With luring tongues, and language wond'rous sweet, Follow young ladies as they walk the street, Ev'n to their very houses, nay, bedside, And, artful, tho' their true designs they ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... to the quaker, hearing this remonstrance, which seemed pregnant with contention, interposed in the conversation with a conscious leer, and begged there might be no rupture between the spirit and the flesh. By this remonstrance he relieved Obadiah from the satire of this female orator, and brought the whole vengeance of her elocution upon his own head. "Flesh!" cried she, with all the ferocity ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... suspect the errand which had taken him out of it. For sooner than I had expected, and quite some few minutes before she came back herself, he shuffled in again, carrying under his coat a roll of yellow paper, which he thrust into my hand with a gratified leer, saying: ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... and grey, cruel and blind, Stealing softly as a breath Through the woods that loured behind The City; hooded shapes of fear Slowly, slowly stealing near; While all the gloom that round them rolled With intertwisting coils grew cold. And there with leer and gap-toothed grin Many a gaunt ancestral Sin With clutching fingers, white and thin, Strove to put the boughs aside; And still before them all would glide Down the wavering moon-white track One lissom figure, clad in black; Who wept ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... everything, especially the eider-down quilt, which rises in slow billows in front of my eyes and threatens to engulf me. When in a paroxysm of fury I suddenly cast it on the floor, it lies there still billowing, and seems to leer at me. There is something fat and sinister and German about that eiderdown. I never noticed it before. Two Hundred ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... the Gorilla with a leer, "as for myself, I am so confident of being considered an Apollo that I wish for nothing so much as your ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... dear," he said, with a sickening leer. "I have come to offer you safety, liberty, and ease. My heart has been softened toward you in your suffering, and I would make amends as ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... beauty and submissive charms, Smiled with superior love (as Jupiter On Juno smiles, when he impregns the clouds That shed May flowers), and pressed her matron lip With kisses pure. Aside the Devil turned For envy, yet with jealous leer malign Eyed them askance; and to himself thus plained:— 'Sight hateful, sight tormenting!' ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the larboard rigging stood a big, broad-shouldered fellow, who nodded familiarly at the second mate, cast a bit of a leer at the captain as if to impress on the rest of us his own daring and independence, and gave me, when I caught his eye, a cold, noncommittal stare. His name, I shortly learned, was Kipping. Undeniably he was impudent; but he had, nevertheless, a mild face and a mild ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... outrage. They stare at her as she approaches; and I have seen them turn and contemplate ladies as they passed them, keeping a few paces in advance, with a leisurely sidelong gait. Something of this insolence might be forgiven to thoughtless, hot-blooded youth; but the gross and knowing leer that the elders of the Piazza and the caffe put on at the approach of a pretty girl is an ordeal which few women, not as thoroughly inured to it as the Venetians, would care to encounter. However, as I never ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... sat aloft on his boot-blacking throne, waiting for crime to be done among us, conning meantime one of those romances in which his heroes did rare deeds, he would be subjected to intrusion. Some coarse town humorist would leer upon him from the doorway—a leer of furtive, devilish cunning—and whisper hoarsely, "Hist! Are ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... welcome postern open'd on a court— Say rather, grave-yard; gloomy yews begirt Its cheerless walls; ranges of headstones show'd, Each on its hoary tablature, half hid With moss, with hemlock, and with nettles rank, The sculptured leer of that hyena face, Softening as backwards, through the waves of time, Receded generations more remote. It was a square of tombs—of old, grey tombs, (The oldest of an immemorial date,) Deserted quite—and rusty gratings black, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... bounced" from one end of the room to the other and finally "scuttled too airily downstairs for a woman in her clothes"; and the chambermaid disguised as a fine lady, who by "the toss of her head, the jut of the bum, the sidelong leer of the eye" proclaimed her real condition—these types are treated by Defoe in a blunt realistic manner entirely foreign to Eliza Haywood's vein. Some passages,[2] perhaps, by a sentiment too exalted or by a description in romantic style suggest ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... designed to be temporary, and they were superfluous when the occasion which called them into being had passed. The question of disposing of them was summarily solved. One day some boys playing near the Terminal Station saw a sinister leer of flame inside. A high wind soon blew a conflagration, which enveloped the structures, leaving next day naught but ashes, tortured iron work, and here and there an arch, to tell of the regal ...
— Official Views Of The World's Columbian Exposition • C. D. Arnold
... reverend father, with a holy leer, Saw he might well be spared, and soon withdrew: This forced my servant to a quick retreat, For fear to ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... are thinking. But the mind goes out under this regimen, like a fire without a draught; and it is not very strange, if the instinct of mental self-preservation drives them to brandy-and-water, which makes the hoarse whisper of memory musical for a few brief moments, and puts a weak leer of promise on the features of the hollow-eyed future. The Colonel was kept pretty well in hand as yet by his wife, and though it had happened to him once or twice to come home rather late at night with a curious tendency to say the same thing twice and even three times over, it had always been ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... beyond thy care! And tears came into Lydia's eyes. I'm sorry, I'd have liked to have seen him end his days happily among the hens, a-treading of them. Joseph felt he had not rightly understood her, and when he inquired out her meaning from her, she told it with so repulsive a leer that he could not conquer a sudden dislike. He moved away from her immediately and asked her no ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... in the paper," said Mr. Russell, with a diabolical leer in the direction of the unfortunate Mr. Vickers. "The paper what your father found in your box. Didn't he ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... brothels invite the pencil of a Hogarth. Their bloated forms, pimpled features and bloodshot eyes are suggestive of an Inferno, while their tawdry dresses, brazen leer, and disgusting assumption of an air of gay abandon, emphasizes their hideousness and renders it more repulsive. Most of them have passed through the successive grades of immorality. Some of them have been the queenly mistress of the spendthrift, and have descended, step by step, to the foul, degraded ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... weakening as he climbed the bank. "You come and lock the door agin, Billy Louise, and Marthy won't know I ain't been there all the time. She'll think you caught the fish." He looked at her with a weak leer of conscious cunning. ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... had suspected, it was his former butler, the man who had deserted him the day before without a word. He was a big, heavy-jowled man of powerful build, and the momentary look of fright melted to a leer at the sight ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... leap he was into the room, and as the Indian turned, with that beastly leer still on his ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... regarded his question with an expressive leer. "Arrah! now, ye won't tell?" he said, in a hoarse whisper; "sure it'll be the death o' me av ye do. There's no end o' them things here—as many as ye like to pick; it's only the day before to-morrow that I turned up a nugget ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... useless for the local pilot to look grave and recall dire happenings to Captains who had elected to effect their repairs in the outer harbour—just here, at Port William. Old Jock's square jaw was set firm, his eyes were narrowed to a crafty leer; he looked on everyone with unconcealed suspicion and distrust. He was a shipmaster of the old school, 'looking after his Owners' interest.' He had put in 'in distress' to effect repairs.... He was being called upon ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... favored him with an appraising leer. "Don't have to say so," he drawled, "if you ain't, what have you-alls got them dinky little canoes for, an' if you were after 'gators you'd be packing big rifles 'stead of them fancy guns. You ain't ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... face, and in every curl of his hair, and in every glare of his eye, and in every knuckle of his hand with which he clutches the money bag, hypocrisy and avarice and hate and low strategy and diabolism. The quickness with which he grabs the bribe for the betrayal of the Lord, the villainous leer at the Master while seated at the holy supper, show him to be capable of any wickedness. What a spectacle when the traitorous lips are pressed against the pure cheek of the Immaculate One, the disgusting smack desecrating ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... my hand I lift, Out go your eyes, fore to do your sight, But yet I must make better shift, And it be right. What, Lord? they sleep hard! that may ye all hear; Was I never a shepherd, but now will I leer[129] If the flock be scared, yet shall I nap near, Who draws hitherward, now mends our cheer, From sorrow: A fat sheep I dare say, A good fleece dare I lay, Eft white when I may, But ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... 11 a.m. (six), "Leer ons alzoo onze dagen tellen" ("So teach us to number our days"); afternoon, 4 p.m. (six), "En de dooden werden geoordeeld uit hetgeen in de boeken geschreven was, naar hunne werken" ("And the dead were judged out of those things which were written ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... knights with radiant features saw The message dated Mackinaw— Then ordered sumptuous cheer; Two dollars' worth, at least, they "cheered" While from his counter Charlie leered An instigating leer. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... maid laughed and showed all her big white teeth. "I can't see any rats. There are none here, Pani," and she looked at her mistress with a half stupid, half cunning leer on her face. "Pani must have been dreaming, there's not a living thing in the cellar except Pani and Marianna. Sh! sh! hark!" She bent her head and listened for a moment; then she shook it and laughed again. "Rats would patter, but there's no ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... unhealthy." As he said this he watched the young man with the inscrutable smile that at moments was wont to curl upon his lips. Ernest had once likened it to the smile of Mona Lisa, but now he detected in it the suavity of the hypocrite and the leer of the criminal. ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... interrupted the other, "you will permit me to have my own ideas on that subject. They probably differ from yours at the present moment," he added with a leer, "but time will show which of us is ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... with its natural golden fringe, sweeping the furthest ends of the landscape, not with the strange glare of whiteness which it sometimes puts on as an alternative to colour, but as a splotch of vermilion red upon a leaden ground—a red face looking on with a drunken leer. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... superseded by returning warmth. Working earnestly, thinking of nothing but the human life that hung in the balance, I failed to observe the presence of the most disagreeable of the female nurses, who was standing, with "arms akimbo," looking on, until, with an insulting leer, she remarked, "It seems to me ye're taking great liberties for an honest woman." Paralyzed with surprise and indignation, I knew not how to act. Just then the surgeon in charge of the ward, ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... until they passed the turn beyond the bridge. Mr Blumenthal watched them too, from behind the curtains in his room. His leer went from one to the other, but always returned and rested on Rex. Then, as there was a mountain chill in the morning air, he crawled back into bed, hauling his night cap over his generous ears and rolling himself ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... southeast angle, with an outwork called the Spanish Half Moon on the other side of the Geule. The south side was similarly defended by a wall with four strong bastions, while beyond these at the southwest corner lay a field called the Polder, extending to the point where the Yper Leer ran into ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... caress her, or do anything in the world but stand by and see Josiah fussing and accompanying her to the stairs and on to her room. She hardly said the word good-night to him, and her very lips were white. Wensleydown's face, as he stood with Mildred, drove him mad with its mocking leer, and if he had heard their conversation ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... courtesy. The old critic Zabastes, squeezing his lean, bent body from out the throng, hobbled after Sah-luma at some little distance behind the harp-bearer, muttering to himself as he went, and bestowing many a side-leer and malicious grin on those among his acquaintance whom he here and there recognized. Theos noted his behavior with a vague sense of amusement,—the man took such evident delight in his own ill- humor, and seemed to be so thoroughly ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... to the daughter. The older face, with its cruelty, its cunning, and its greed stood reproduced, feature for feature, line for line. It was as though Nature, for an artistic freak, had set herself the task of fashioning hideousness and beauty from precisely the same materials. Between the leer of the man and the smile of the girl, where lay the difference? It would have puzzled any student of anatomy to point it out. Yet the one sickened, while to gain the other most men would have ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... starved if there were no candle-light. Probably nine-tenths of the gushing letters of indiscreet confession are written after nine or ten o'clock in the evening, and sent off before day returns to leer invidiously upon them. Few that remain open to catch our glance as we rise in the morning, survive the frigid criticism ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... at night, my dear Prince," put in Doola, with a leer. "The clattering of the shields would keep ...
— Bright-Wits, Prince of Mogadore • Burren Laughlin and L. L. Flood
... was go away down the rivers and find the fugitive Jock Drones, whose mother feared for him. No other usefulness of purpose remained in his reach. If he stood up, now, before any congregation, the imps of Satan, the patrons of moonshiners, would leer up at him in his pulpit, reminding him that he, ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... Eichwald brauset, die Wolken ziehn, Das Mgdlein wandelt an Ufers Grn, Es bricht sich die Welle mit Macht, mit Macht, Und sie singt hinaus in die finstre Nacht, Das Auge von Weinen getrbet: Das Herz ist gestorben, die Welt ist leer, Und weiter giebt sie dem Wunsche nichts mehr. Du Heilige, rufe dein Kind zurck, Ich habe genossen das irdische Glck, Ich ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... been blowing and panting all the way down, like another engine, and whose eye had often wandered from his newspaper to leer at the prospect, as if there were a procession of discomfited Miss Toxes pouring out in the smoke of the train, and flying away over the fields to hide themselves in any place of refuge, aroused his friends by informing him that the post-horses were harnessed ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... long; the fair American spills her coffee and looks an exclamation; the Bishop pays for his daughter's tea, drops the change in the one chink which the buffet boards disclose, and thinks one; the travelled person, disdaining haste, smiles on all with a pitying leer; the foolish man, who has forgotten something, makes public his conviction that he will lose his train. The adamantine official alone is at his ease, and, as the minutes go, the knell of the train-loser sounds the deeper, the horrid jargon is yet ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... constable spoke, Buzzard's eye, with a leer, lighted on the cask in the corner. He bethought him that it had a vent-hole even though the landlord had removed the spigot. He tiptoed unsteadily across the room, and proceeded with much difficulty to insert a straw in the small opening. He had thus ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... his explanation there was a puzzled silence for an instant. But Dan's half-leer irritated Lieutenant ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... English public-house of the second class, there were three conveniences of that kind, for the use, as the landlord used to say, of the troop-horses when the soldiers came to search his house; while a knowing leer and a nod let you understand what species of troops he was thinking of. A huge ash-tree before the door, which had reared itself to a great size and height, in spite of the blasts from the neighbouring Solway, overshadowed, as usual, the ale-bench, as our ancestors called it, where, though ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... a solution to the mystery, a key rasped in the door across the room. He turned his head. A gas jet above the wretched little washstand lighted the room but poorly. The door opened slowly. A tall, ungainly woman entered the room—a creature with a sallow, weather-beaten face and a perpetual leer. ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... of hesitation; which she, interpreting to her advantage, repeated her request, and endeavoured to force a leer of invitation into her countenance. He took her arm, and they walked on to one of those obsequious taverns in the neighbourhood, where the dearness of the wine is a discharge in full for the character of the house. From what impulse he did this we do not mean to enquire; as it has ever been against ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... rifle in both hands, ready for instant action. John did the same, and with an ugly leer the Indian paused. His action had attracted attention, however, and at this critical juncture Capt. Pipe discovered the presence of the visitors, and called angrily to Buffalo to ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... cleaned daily. Parenthetically, let us ask why so many men, with coarse red wrists and big hands, persist in the white kid glove and wristband system? Baroski's gloves alone must cost him a little fortune; only he says with a leer, when asked the question, "Get along vid you; don't you know dere is a gloveress that lets me have dem very sheap?" He rides in the Park; has splendid lodgings in Dover Street; and is a member ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sir," said the man. "Glad to see a new customer, sir." He pocketed the money and showed them out, standing to look after them with a malicious leer as they disappeared, and jerking his ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... 'those by the book-stall. That be Mr. Waffles,' continued he, giving his master a touch in the ribs as he jerked his portmanteau into a fly, 'that be Mr. Waffles,' repeated he, with a knowing leer. ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... old traditions, have sought and are seeking milder means of mitigating our bodily ills. All honor to them. They have driven away the old doctor of our childhood, whose most pleasant smile resembled the amiable leer that a cannibal might be supposed to bestow upon a plump missionary. The old curmudgeon, with his huge bottles of mixtures and his immense boulders—I beg pardon, I should say, boluses of nastiness—has vanished like a surly ghost at the approach ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... remark with a chuckle of intense satisfaction and a leer at our big neighbour, Bob dived below again; and shortly afterwards a frizzling sound from forward, and an odour strongly suggestive of bacon and eggs, which was wafted upwards from the companion, informed me that he had entered upon the duties of the less dignified ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... the nasty weed, said little Robert Reed,'" replied Barclay, with a leer on his face. Then, he added: "I've held your miserable little note-shaving shop up by main strength for a year, by main strength and awkwardness, and now you come home with your mouth all fixed for prisms and prunes, and want to get on a higher plane. You try that," continued ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... was going to shut the door, when the drunken old man turned round once more, and inquired with a cunning leer, "So you expect some one, my child? Whom do you expect, little Itzig? Is it a lad or ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... talk to you," insisted Anthony with a leer. "Firs' place, my wife wants nothin' whatever do with you. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... I get the razz for fair!" Now Gunch delighted them by crying to Mrs. Eddie Swanson, youngest of the women, "Louetta! I managed to pinch Eddie's doorkey out of his pocket, and what say you and me sneak across the street when the folks aren't looking? Got something," with a gorgeous leer, "awful important ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... suitable inscription, or twelve lines of verse, for L4, 17s. 6d.,' I took up his packet of In Memoriam cards and went through them. The first one was a hand-drawn design in cream and gold—Kate's fancy. It represented in the centre an enormously bloated infant with an idiotic leer, lying upon its back on a blue cloud with scalloped edges, whilst two male angels, each with an extremely vicious expression, were pulling the cloud along by means of tow-lines attached to their wings. Underneath were these words in MS.: 'More angels can be added, if desired, ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... acquaintance, and overlook men of merit in distress; and the little silly, pretty Phillida, or Foolida, to stare at the strange creatures round her. It is this temper which constitutes the supercilious eye, the reserved look, the distant bowe, the scornful leer, the affected astonishment, the loud whisper, ending in a laugh directed full in the teeth of another. Hence spring, in short, those numberless offences given too frequently, in public and private assemblies, by persons of weak understandings, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... adopted by this knavish elder, I said, "The chief of Kingaru has called me a rich sultan. If I am a rich sultan why comes not the chief with a rich present to me, that he might get a rich return?" Said he, with another leer of his wrinkled visage, "Kingaru is poor, there is no matama in the village." To which I replied that since there was no matama in the village I would pay him half a shukka, or a yard of cloth, which would be exactly equivalent to his present; that if he preferred to call his small basketful ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... it, my Lord," said the man, with a leer, half servile, half cunning. "There came two young gentlemen of fashion yesterday morning, and almost lost their wits at sight of it. Either would have bought it, but both had had ill luck at basset for a week and so could do no more than look, ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... but has something that were better away, a latent corruption,—a hint as of an impure presence. Some of that dreary double entendre may be attributed to freer times and manners than ours,—but not all. The foul satyr's eyes leer out of the leaves constantly. The last words the famous author wrote were bad and wicked. The last lines the poor stricken wretch penned were for pity and pardon." Now a line or two about Goldsmith, and I will then let my reader go to ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... that man is meat. To glory some advance a lying claim, Thieves of renown, and pilferers of fame: Their front supplies what their ambition lacks; They know a thousand lords, behind their backs. Cottil is apt to wink upon a peer, When turn'd away, with a familiar leer; And Harvey's eyes, unmercifully keen, Have murder'd fops, by whom she ne'er was seen. Niger adopts stray libels; wisely prone To covet shame still greater than his own. Bathyllus, in the winter of threescore, Belies his innocence, and keeps a whore. Absence of mind Brabantio ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... been responded to with a few jeers and a good many dark, threatening looks. Tinville himself had bowed to him with mock sarcasm and an unpleasant leer. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... a smiling leer, one which had proved very successful at more than one metropolitan bar, where he had paved the way for its success with gifts of flowers and a cheap ring or two; but it was utterly lost here, for its intended recipient was looking another way, and as it faded from its inventor's face there was ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... of the fifth engaged in smearing the paint-denuded place of rest with a vilely glutinous compound peculiar to ship-board. He never looks directly at you as you approach, with book and jug, the desired spot, but you can tell by the leer in his eye and the roll of the quid in his immense mouth that the old villain knows all about the discomfort he is causing you, and you fancy you can detect a chuckle, you turn away in a vain quest for a quiet cosy spot. Then there is the captain himself, ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... Montgomery favored the judge with a drunken leer. "Suppose I was to go home full, what's to hinder her from gettin' things out of me? I'm a talker, drunk or sober, and Andy Gilmore knows it—that's what ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... mask or face; and on these the Shakspearian imagination of the Gothic artists seems to have let itself loose to run riot: there is every variety of expression, from, the most beautiful to the most goblin and grotesque. One has the leer of fiendish triumph, with budding horns, showing too plainly his paternity; again you have the drooping eyelids and saintly features of some fair virgin; and then the gasping face of some old monk, apparently in the agonies of death, with his toothless gums, hollow cheeks, ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... speculatively; now he thought he knew it as a practical man; though perhaps he did not, even yet. Nevertheless humanity stood before him no longer in the pensive sweetness of Italian art, but in the staring and ghastly attitudes of a Wiertz Museum, and with the leer of a ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... safe with thy confessor. Diamine! I am not a man to gad about among the water-sellers, with a secret at the top of my voice; but thou didst leer aside when I winked at thee dancing among the masquers on the quay. Is it not ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... it. Fleda stopped crying as soon as she could, lest somebody should see her; and was sitting quietly again, alone as before, when one of the sailors whom she had never spoken to, came by, and leaning over towards her with a leer as he ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... gemeinen Menschen als schdlich, der Geistlichkeit als gefhrlich, dem Staat als unzulssig erschienen mchte, daran hatten wir keinen Zweifel, und wir hofften, dieses Bchlein sollte nicht unwrdig die Feuerprobe bestauden haben. Allein wie hohl und leer ward uns in deiser tristen Atheistischen Halbnacht zu Mute, in welcher die Erde mit allen ihren Gebilden, der Himmel mit allen seinen Gestirnen verschwand! Eine Materie sollte sein von Ewigkeit und von Ewigkeit her bewegt, und sollte nun mit dieser Bewegung rechts und links ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... don't understand Thoorko better nor the English understand Scotch, it's little speed I'll come wi' them," said Dan with a leer. "Howsomediver, I'll give 'em a trial. I say, Mr Red-beard, hubba doorum bobble moti squorum howko joski tearum thaddi whak? Come, now, avic, let's hear what ye've got to say to that. An' mind what ye spake, 'cause we won't stand ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... overabundance of good living; but with us she was a town character, like Old Man Givins, the drunkard, or the weak-minded Binns girl. When she passed the drug-store corner there would be a sniggering among the vacant-eyed loafers idling there, and they would leer at each other ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... an oracle. After two hours' dodging and maneuvering the fox came out at the very end of Bellman's Coppice, with nothing near him but Richard Bassett. Pug gave him the white of his eye in an ugly leer, and headed straight as a ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... miles and a Consular army, fell back to the Metaurus, and Rome was saved. Two thousand years later, Prince Frederick Charles, divided by a few marches and two Austrian army corps from the Crown Prince, lingered so long upon the leer that the supremacy of Prussia trembled in the balance. But the character of the Virginian soldier was of loftier type. It has been remarked that after Jackson's death Lee never again attempted those great turning movements which had achieved his most brilliant ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... every word which had passed, and he saw at once that he would have a field for his diabolical machinations. Could Claude have seen the leer with which the ghastly apparition followed him as he passed, he would have shuddered with a sense of approaching danger. He did not look back, however, and the Man in Green, having requested an audience with De Roberval, ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... he said with a leer. "And I'm telling you good things—things that people don't know and that I wouldn't tell them—the swine. You're not listening. You're thinking I'm a brute to my wife, eh?" And Thresk was startled by the shrewdness of his ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... she slackened her pace. Whatever was following her also took a slower gait. She cast a furtive look over her shoulder and gave a horrified gasp as her eyes squarely encountered two other eyes, which were fixed upon her own in an insulting leer from beneath the rim of a rakish felt hat which was worn tilted on the side of a very unprepossessing head. The eyes, bad as they were, proved the best feature in a thoroughly vicious face, and for the first time in her life Nan felt frightened—chokingly ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... Society of Friends. She was reading aloud to about sixteen women prisoners, who were engaged in needle-work. They all rose on my entrance, curtsied respectfully, and then resumed their seats and employment. Instead of a scowl, leer, or ill-suppressed laugh, I observed upon their countenances an air of self-respect and gravity, a sort of consciousness of their improved character, and the altered position in which they are placed. I afterwards ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... treated with lavish Western hospitality, and there had been many toasts to honor during the dinner. He leaned against the wall with one hand on a carved bracket, looking down upon her with what seemed to be a leer of brutal pride upon ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... was the answer, with a leer. "We have nothing of that breed among us; we are all honest men. But what if a man has an acquaintance abroad, and gets a commission to sell a cargo of tea or brandy, or perhaps a present from a friend—what shall hinder him from going to bring ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... droning menaces of the Ordinary. At one point a chorus of maidens cast wreaths upon their way, or pinned nosegays in their coats, that they might not face the executioner unadorned. At the Crown Tavern they quaffed their last glass of ale, and told the landlord with many a leer and smirk that they would pay him on their way back. Though gravity was asked, it was not always given; but in the Eighteenth Century courage was seldom wanting. To the common citizen a violent death was (and is) the worst of horrors; to the ancient highwayman it was ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... seat himself near me. The key turned in the door, it opened, and the Forest-master issued forth with papers in his hand. A mist seemed to envelop my head. I looked up, and—horror! the man in the gray coat sat by me, gazing on me with a satanic leer. He had drawn his magic-cap at once over his head and mine; at his feet lay his and my shadow peaceably by each other. He played negligently with the well-known parchment which he held in his hand, and as the Forest-master, busied with his documents, went ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... the seats and crouched down on his haunches. Margaret shuddered, for the uneven surface of the sack moved strangely. He opened the mouth of it. The woman in the corner listlessly droned away on the drum, and occasionally uttered a barbaric cry. With a leer and a flash of his bright teeth, the Arab thrust his hand into the sack and rummaged as a man would rummage in a sack of corn. He drew out a long, writhing snake. He placed it on the ground and for a moment waited, then he passed his hand over it: it became immediately as rigid as a bar ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... of trees will leer magically from the wayside to meet the uncouth gestures of the labourer and his trull; while in the smoke-thick air of mellow tavern-corners the shameless mirth of honest revellers philosophising upon the world will have ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... doing here?' I shouted, When I saw his hateful leer; 'Tell me what this means, Jim Johnson. Where is Billy? Ain't he here?' He was standing on the doorstep, And the light that shone within Seemed to twist his wrinkled features In a sort of wonder-grin. 'Well! well! Nancy! sure's I'm livin'! ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... hunting when he could be talking to you instead?" said old Astrardente, whose painted face adjusted itself in a sort of leer that had once been a winning smile. Every one knew he painted, his teeth were a miracle of American dentistry, and his wig had deceived a great portrait-painter. The padding in his clothes was disposed with cunning wisdom, and in public he rarely removed the gloves from his ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... classify people too definitely into types; you will find that all through their youth they will persist annoyingly in jumping from class to class, and by pasting a supercilious label on every one you meet you are merely packing a Jack-in-the-box that will spring up and leer at you when you begin to come into really antagonistic contact with the world. An idealization of some such a man as Leonardo da Vinci would be a more valuable beacon to ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... though not quite like the old one. The old look was one of serene and placid content, an air of animal comfort, and of easy-going self-indulgence; but now the expression was more restless and excited. There was a certain knowing look—a leer of triumphant cunning—combined with a tendency to chuckle over some secret purpose which no one else knew. Together with this there was incessant restlessness; he appeared perpetually on the look-out, as though dreading discovery; and he alternated between ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... on his lichen-decorated, snow-draped bowlder, hands in pockets, so to speak, abominably untidy, with a pessimistic hunch of the shoulders, but a light in his eyes, a strangely malignant, devilishly roguish leer, that belied his appearance. Perhaps he was waiting to see if Cob during his struggles obligingly touched off any further deadly surprises that might lie hidden in the vicinity. One never knows. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... rite was done, and the marriage-knot was tied, And Colt withdrew his blushing wife a little way aside; "Let's go," he said, "into my cell; let's go alone, my dear; I fain would shelter that sweet face from the sheriff's odious leer. The jailer and the hangman, they are waiting both for me,— I cannot bear to see them wink so knowingly at thee! Oh, how I loved thee, dearest! They say that I am wild, That a mother dares not trust me with the weasand of her child; They say my bowie-knife is keen ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... uncouth convolutions. I saw the other day a little Japanese picture of a boat in a stormy sea, the waves beating over it; three warriors in the boat lie prostrate and rigid with terror and misery. Above, through a rent in the clouds, is visible an ugly grotesque figure, with a demoniacal leer on his face, beating upon a number of drums. The picture is entitled "The Thunder-God beats his drums." Well, Carlyle seems to me like that; he has no pity for humanity, he only likes to add to its terrors and its bewilderment. He preached silence and seclusion to men of activity, energy ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... watchmen. Noisiest and most conspicuous of these descendants of the Mohawks, the sleek and orderly scholar beheld the childish figure of his son. Nor did Gabriel shrink from his father's eye, stern and scornful as it was, but rather braved the glance with an impudent leer. ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... features any trace of mean or evil passions. The man was thoroughly wholesome. Even his occasionally free utterances on sexuality are only sins against decorum. They do not violate nature. He never spoke on this subject with the slobbery grin of the voluptuary, or the leer of prurience. He was at such moments simply unreticent. Meaning no harm, he suspected none. In this respect he belonged to a less self-conscious antiquity, when nothing pertaining to man was common or unclean, and even the worship of the powers ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... naturalibus'. They walk about without the smallest sense of shame. They have even lost the tradition of the "fig-leaf". I asked a fine, large-bodied old man if he did not think it would be better to adopt a little covering. He looked with a pitying leer, and laughed with surprise at my thinking him at all indecent; he evidently considered himself above such weak superstition. I told them that, on my return, I should have my family with me, and no one must come near us in that state. "What shall ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... whole of their brood—sisters, brothers, two or three children, a priest, and several servants—a round dozen in all, have been condemned to death. The guillotine for them to-morrow at daybreak! Would it could have been to- night," added Marat, whilst a demoniacal leer contorted his face which already exuded lust for blood from every pore. "Would it could have been to-night. But the guillotine has been busy; over four hundred executions to-day...and the tumbrils are full—the seats bespoken ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... her arm. She started and looked up. A young man was standing beside her and gazing at her with an impudent leer. She stared at him, full in the face, still quite absentmindedly; then he ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... the all-pervading darkness, the shadowy face that was pressed close to his own. The eyes that looked into his were dim pools of evil light, faintly phosphorescent like those of a cat, and the face that framed them was contorted into a malignant leer of triumph. That much he saw before the darkness crushed him out of existence and all things earthly faded from ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... claim, Thieves of renown, and pilferers of fame: Their front supplies what their ambition lacks; They know a thousand lords, behind their backs. Cottil is apt to wink upon a peer, When turn'd away, with a familiar leer; And Harvey's eyes, unmercifully keen, Have murder'd fops, by whom she ne'er was seen. Niger adopts stray libels; wisely prone To covet shame still greater than his own. Bathyllus, in the winter of threescore, Belies his innocence, and keeps a whore. Absence of mind Brabantio turns to ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... they don't understand Thoorko better nor the English understand Scotch, it's little speed I'll come wi' them," said Dan with a leer. "Howsomediver, I'll give 'em a trial. I say, Mr Red-beard, hubba doorum bobble moti squorum howko joski tearum thaddi whak? Come, now, avic, let's hear what ye've got to say to that. An' mind what ye spake, 'cause we won't ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... now he thought he knew it as a practical man; though perhaps he did not, even yet. Nevertheless humanity stood before him no longer in the pensive sweetness of Italian art, but in the staring and ghastly attitudes of a Wiertz Museum, and with the leer of a study ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... was a pretty lady come to church with Peg Pen to-day, I against my intention had a mind to go to church to see her, and did so, and she is pretty handsome. But over against our gallery I espied Pembleton, and saw him leer upon my wife all the sermon, I taking no notice of him, and my wife upon him, and I observed she made a curtsey to him at coming out without taking notice to me at all of it, which with the consideration of ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... which you improvise absurd choruses which make things go along as pleasantly as possible. Meanwhile the bottle is returned empty. He takes it, insists upon re-filling your "glass" from it, and tips it up over your cup. Then with a comical leer at you at the idea of attempting to pour wine from an empty bottle, he turns, dives into his cellar and fishes up another. You bid him go on with that capital song, offering to save him the trouble of unsealing and dispensing the jolly ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... wolves at any rate," replied the giant, with a wide grin at his witticism. "And if Yellow Franz is the particular wolf you're after, my friend, why here I am," he concluded, addressing the American with a leer. ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... aloud, 'Madame, Madame!' and he whistled through his fingers, and shouted, 'Madame, Madame,' and added, 'She's as deaf as a tombstone, or she'll hear that. Gi'e her my compliments, and say I said you're a beauty, Miss;' and with a laugh and a leer he ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... regimen, like a fire without a draught; and it is not very strange, if the instinct of mental self-preservation drives them to brandy-and-water, which makes the hoarse whisper of memory musical for a few brief moments, and puts a weak leer of promise on the features of the hollow-eyed future. The Colonel was kept pretty well in hand as yet by his wife, and though it had happened to him once or twice to come home rather late at night with a curious tendency to say the same thing twice and even ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... don't know," said she, with a cunning leer; "but this I know, that they had a love scene together this very morning, and that he kissed her very sweetly ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... ridge of crumbling, brown chips, and, upon this ridge, where the sun streamed down hotly, lay something coiled in a black mass, and there was a flat, hideous head resting upon it all with beady eyes which seemed, to leer. ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... nobody dependent on me, and was resolved to invest my little fortune in such a way that I might have a modest competence, so that the dreadful spectre of poverty might never leer at me again. ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... fellow, with huge black whiskers and a roguish eye. He touched the guitar with masterly skill, and sang little amorous ditties with an expressive leer." ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... returned to tell what they found!" concluded the little monster, with a diabolical leer. And as the landlord fell, gray and gasping, back in his seat, he broke out into a ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... said, taking the vesta in his own hand as it burned, and examining it closely. "I have heard of this before, but I have never seen it. You are indeed gods, you white men, you sailors of the sea." He glanced at Muriel. "And the woman, too," he said, with a horrible leer, "the woman is pretty." ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... furthest ends of the landscape, not with the strange glare of whiteness which it sometimes puts on as an alternative to colour, but as a splotch of vermilion red upon a leaden ground—a red face looking on with a drunken leer. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... on the shoulder. It was one of the men who had boarded the ship. An evil leer passed over Thurman's face as he ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... sleep is calm; There, with rapture sorrow leaves the breast,— Man's afflictions there no longer harm. Slander now may wildly rave o'er thee, And temptation vomit poison fell, O'er the wrangle on the Pharisee, Murderous bigots banish thee to hell! Rogues beneath apostle-masks may leer, And the bastard child of justice play, As it were with dice, with mankind here, And so on, until the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... know only the burlesque of your Maxim's and your Catelans? Do we, when the week's work of your humbler people is done, see the laughter in dancing eyes in the Rue Mouffetard or, in the revel of your Saturday night, do we see only the belladonna'd leer of the drabs in the Place Pigalle? Do we hear the romance of your concertinas setting thousands of hobnailed boots a-clatter with Terpsichore in the Boulevard de la Chapelle, in Polonceau and Myrrha, or do we hear only your union orchestra soughing through Mascagni ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... the king taunted him from the black chaos that hid the dungeon walls. The words struck at him, filling his head with shooting pain, and he tottered back and sank to the ground to get away from them. They followed, and that vengeful leer of the king was behind them, urging them on, until they beat his face into the sticky earth, and smothered him into what he thought ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... probability, the gratitude of the clergy is like their charity, which shuns the light — Mr Barton was immediately accosted by a person well stricken in years, tall, and raw-boned, with a hook-nose, and an arch leer, that indicated, at least, as much cunning as sagacity. Our conductor saluted him, by the name of captain C—, and afterwards informed us he was a man of shrewd parts, whom the government occasionally ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... knuckle of his hand with which he clutches the money bag, hypocrisy and avarice and hate and low strategy and diabolism. The quickness with which he grabs the bribe for the betrayal of the Lord, the villainous leer at the Master while seated at the holy supper, show him to be capable of any wickedness. What a spectacle when the traitorous lips are pressed against the pure cheek of the Immaculate One, the disgusting smack desecrating the holy ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... would be a baseness foreign to his nature; and yet have not men of the most lofty sense of honor often fallen from their original nobility, and revelled in self-degradation? And it somehow seemed as though, at the last, the dwarf had looked up at her with a strangely knowing leer. And was it merely her imagination that made her think there was a certain sly approach to undue familiarity in the usually deferential deportment ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... away and obeyed the order, passing the American skipper, who was leaning on the bulwark looking sick, and as the sailor came up he turned to him with an ugly leer. ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... applause. Nothing was said between Blanquette and myself, but she became my sworn sister from that moment. And Narcisse sat at our feet looking down on the crowd, his tongue lolling out mockingly and a satiric leer on ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... cheeks. But Oh! it was so sad to see how soon the manly gait would change to the drunkard's stagger. To see eyes once bright with intelligence growing vacant and confused and giving place to the drunkard's leer. In many cases lassitude supplanted vigor, and sickness overmastered health. But the saddest thing was the fearful power that appetite had gained over its victims, and though nature lifted her signals of distress, and sent her warnings through weakened ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... beheld Foxey Jack Quinn standing near at hand, a leer on his wide mouth and in his pale eyes, and his nunney-bag on his shoulder. His skinnywoppers (high-legged moccasins of sealskin, hair-side inward) were glistening with moisture of melted snow, and his face was red from the rasp of raw wind. ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... Frenchman, with a violent execration, suddenly let go his hold on the knob, the door swung in, and Dan fell back on all fours upon the floor. By the time he had recovered himself for another dash, he was confronted by Jean, a disagreeable leer upon his unpleasant countenance and a cocked pistol in ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... think she would make use of it. Mary grew impertinent, and one afternoon turned sulky over her lessons, and set our teacher at defiance. Miss Evelyn, who had been growing more and more angry, had her rise from her seat. She obeyed with an impudent leer. Seizing her by the arm, Miss Evelyn dragged the struggling girl to the horse. My sister was strong and fought hard, using both teeth and nails, but it was to no purpose. The anger of our governess was fully roused, and raising her in her arms, ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... right," responded Frye, in an instantaneously sweetened tone, "I am glad you were, and, as I told you, you are wise to cultivate him. I suppose," he continued with a leer, "that you were buying wine for ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... departed, followed by Loveday, leaving Aurelia standing in the middle of the hall, the old hag gazing on her with a malignant leer. "Ho! ho'! So that's the way! He has begun that work early, has he? What's your name, my lass? Oh, you need give yourself airs! I cry you mercy," and she ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a poor weak woman," she answered, with a devilish leer. "You hate me, and you are afraid of me without any reason. If not, tell me, good sir, why you were so frightened the ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... half closed her eyes and threw out her thick lips in an ugly leer. "I should say we have! And found ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... life were spent in prison. Toward the last she was allowed to live in nominal freedom. But despotism, with savage leer and stealthy step, saw that Fenelon was kept far away. In those declining days, when the shadows were lengthening toward the east, her time and talents were given to teaching the simple rudiments of knowledge to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... be no peace even after that was done," said Isaac Martin, with a leer, "unless we shot you ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... but a bad man; Varin, a proud, arrogant libertine, Commissary of Montreal, who outdid Bigot in rapine and Cadet in coarseness; De Breard, Comptroller of the Marine, a worthy associate of Penisault, whose pinched features and cunning leer were in keeping with his important office of chief manager of the Friponne. Perrault, D'Estebe, Morin, and Vergor, all creatures of the Intendant, swelled the roll of infamy, as partners of the Grand Company of Associates ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the room alone; the rector remained below in the library. She found her father well propped up with pillows, and his skull-cap, with the long white tassel, was drawn down over one eye, giving him a curious leer. The rakish angle of the cap, with the piercing eyes beneath, the hawk-like beak, and the shriveled old mouth, puckered into a sardonic smile, made him an almost comic figure. Trimmer stood at attention by the head of the bed like a sentinel. His humility and deference to both his master ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... quips now, Pistol! Indeed, I am in the waist two yards about; but I am now about no waste; I am about thrift. Briefly, I do mean to make love to Ford's 40 wife: I spy entertainment in her; she discourses, she carves, she gives the leer of invitation: I can construe the action of her familiar style; and the hardest voice of her behaviour, to be Englished rightly, is, ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... and find the fugitive Jock Drones, whose mother feared for him. No other usefulness of purpose remained in his reach. If he stood up, now, before any congregation, the imps of Satan, the patrons of moonshiners, would leer up at him in his pulpit, reminding him that he, too, was one ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... Saturday night; other nights it is quieter, of course. Oh, he won't harm you.' A lumbering carter in a wild state of intoxication had pushed himself against the frightened girl, and looked down into her face with an idiotic leer. ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... eyes on the plunging animal to see him leer, for whenever the sidling motion was made it brought to view the tawny horizontal form that seemed to be clinging to the bridle, as if riding for life. Suddenly there arose a cry from ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... noble pride, can Envy's leer appal, Or staring Folly's vain applauses soothe? Can jealous Fear Truth's dauntless heart enthrall? Suspicion lurks not in the heart ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... quoth Storri, giving the polite Assistant Secretary a kind of leer, "do not that door and lock remind you of the chains and locks upon your leathern letterbags?—a leathern bag which the most ignorant of men would slash wide open with a penknife in an instant and ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... began to conceive peace in my soul, in methought I saw as if the tempter did leer[35] and steal away from me, as being ashamed of what he had done. At the same time also I had my sin, and the blood of Christ thus represented to me, that my sin, when compared to the blood of Christ, was no more to it, then this little clot or stone before me, is ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was interested. He carefully noted the number of the house again, and when she passed up his fare looked into her face with a knowing leer. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... insinuating expression of tenderness, old Ned, aware, for the first time, that she was a widow, and kept that most convenient of establishments, an eating-house, cocked his nightcap, with great spirit and significance, and with an attempt at a leer, which, from the force of habit, made him look upon her rather as the criminal than the accuser, he said—"It was scandalous, Mrs. Mulroony; and it is a sad thing to be unprotected, ma'am; it's a pity, too, to see sich a woman as you are without somebody to take care of her, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Hypocrisy, with holy leer; Soft smiling, and demurely looking down, But hid the dagger underneath the gown: The assassinating wife, the household fiend, And far the ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... back with a look of malicious glee to see his bewilderment and suffering;—and a Court Fool, whom Death, playing on bagpipes, and dancing, approaches, and, plucking him by the garment, wins him, with a coaxing leer, to join ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... raises and adorns the fairy fabric of thought, that nature has begun! Pleasure is "scattered in stray-gifts o'er the earth"—beauty streaks the "famous poet's page" in occasional lines of inconceivable brightness; and wherever this is the case, no splenetic censures or "jealous leer malign," no idle theories or cold indifference should hinder us from greeting it with rapture.—There are other parts of this poem equally delightful, in which there is a light startling as the red-bird's wing; a perfume like that of the ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... up at him with the leer of a ghoul. He was dressed like a broken-down clergyman, in rusty black, with a ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... Sphinx in her menaced house—I know not how she fared—whether she gazes for ever, disconsolate, at the deed, remembering only in her smitten mind, at which the little boys now leer, that she once knew well those things at which man stands aghast; or whether in the end she crept away, and clambering horribly from abyss to abyss, came at last to higher things, and is wise and eternal still. For who knows of madness whether ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... a schooner that was gwine to run the blockade," answered Christy. "We was comin' out'n Pass Christian, and was picked up off Chand'leer [Chandeleur] Island, and fotched over hyer. We didn't feel too much to hum after we lost our wages, and we done took a whaleboat and came ashore here, with only one bottle of whiskey atween us. That's all there is on't. Now, how comes you ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... himself out as an Afrikander. You see in him a whiskered, dark-complexioned, good-looking man of twenty-six, but looking older, whose regard was either insolent or cringing, according to circumstances, and whose smile was an evil leer. The owner of the waggons stood waiting near the closed-up foremost one, the yellow-haired child on his arm. He looked keenly at the landlord, Bough, and the man's hand went involuntarily up in the salute, to its owner's secret rage. Did he want every English officer to recognise him ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the other he struck blows that sounded horrible to me. Angel was hitting out wildly. When the boy saw me, he hooked his leg behind Angel's and threw him on his back with deadly ease, at the same time administering a kick in the stomach. He turned then to me with a leer. ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... There was not much to see; there was an easel and a small canvas thereon, an open black japanned paint-box, a large wooden palette blotched with many colours lying on a bed of fern, and whose thumb-hole seemed to comically leer up at the boys like some great eye. Then there was a pair of big, sturdy legs, upon which rested a great felt hat, everything else being covered in by a great opened-out white umbrella, perfectly useless then, for, as Will had said, all ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... of shame on his own shoulders, in exile and a branded man for her sake. She would still have his name, his income, her lover, her place in society, her right to explain his absence at her pleasure. He could ruin her ruined life by exposing her. Then would come the divorce court, the publicity, the leer of the mob, the pointed fingers of scorn. Impossible! Why could he not leave the matter untouched and keep up appearances before the world? Least endurable of any scheme. He knew that he could never meet her again without ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... nor dray! The very Slop, That imp of power, is powerless! Ever he dares, And, daring, lands his public neck and crop. Even the many-tortured London ear, The much-enduring, loathes his Speeshul yell, His shriek of Winnur! But his dart and leer And poise are irresistible. PALL MALL Joys in him, and MILE END; for his vocation Is to purvey ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... upon a level with many of the least reputable elective Chambers in the world; and beneath the imposing mask of an assembly of notables backed by the prescription and traditions of centuries we discern the leer of the artful dodger, who has got the straight tip from the ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... the old bookseller. "You're as good as they are." He leaned forward from the easy chair, and tapped the clerk's arm with a long, claw-like finger. "I say," he continued, with a smile that was something between a wink and a leer, and suggestive of a pleased satisfaction. "I've had ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... right and left at the pretty faces—and there were plenty of them, too—that a momentary curiosity drew to the windows; but although we smiled and ogled and leered as only a newly arrived regiment can smile, ogle, or leer, by all that's provoking we might as well have wasted our blandishments upon the Presbyterian meeting-house, that frowned upon us with its high-pitched roof ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the room to the other and finally "scuttled too airily downstairs for a woman in her clothes"; and the chambermaid disguised as a fine lady, who by "the toss of her head, the jut of the bum, the sidelong leer of the eye" proclaimed her real condition—these types are treated by Defoe in a blunt realistic manner entirely foreign to Eliza Haywood's vein. Some passages,[2] perhaps, by a sentiment too exalted or by a description in romantic ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... bones, the narrow forehead, and the lines above her brow show that this is no ideal sketch—it is the portrait of a woman who once lived. But the peculiar mark of depravity is the eye: this woman looks at you with a cold, calm, calculating, brazen leer. Hidden in the folds of her dress or in the coil of her hair is a stiletto—she can find it in an instant—and as she looks at you out of those impudent eyes, she is mentally searching out your most vulnerable spot. In this woman's face there ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... naval crew called his fellows, and they approached their white prisoners with ropes—vegetable vines. And with the leer of a devil, the officer leaned down and flung Barry ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... the tone were significant enough. He fell back a step, and scowled at Stonor as if he suspected him of a desire to make fun of him. Then his eyes went involuntarily to Hooliam. Stonor, following his glance, was struck by the odd, self-conscious leer on Hooliam's comely face. Suddenly it flashed on him that this was his man. His face went blank with astonishment. The supposed Hooliam ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... towards the combatants, as if he were standing in a trap-door of the sea, leaning forward leisurely with his arms complacently folded over upon the edge of the horizon—this queer face wore a serious, apishly self-satisfied leer, as if the Man-in-the-Moon had somehow secretly put up the ships to their contest, and in the depths of his malignant old soul was not unpleased to see how well his charms worked. There stood the grinning Man-in-the-Moon, his head just ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... guilt, God knows), suddenly this sentence rushed in upon me, "The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin." At this I made a stand in my spirit and began to conceive peace in my soul, and methought I saw as if the tempter did leer and steal away from me, as being ashamed of what he had done. At the same time also I had my sin and the blood of Christ thus represented to me: that my sin, when compared to the blood of Christ, was no more to it than this ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... that froze me with apprehension was that of Dejah Thoris and Sola standing there before him, and the fiendish leer of him as he let his great protruding eyes gloat upon the lines of her beautiful figure. She was speaking, but I could not hear what she said, nor could I make out the low grumbling of his reply. She stood there erect before him, her head high held, and even ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... companion, the noise of the horsemen's feet continuing to approach, Wamba could not be prevented from lingering occasionally on the road, upon every pretence which occurred; now catching from the hazel a cluster of half-ripe nuts, and now turning his head to leer after a cottage maiden who crossed their path. The horsemen, therefore, soon overtook them on ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... later she was able to distinguish the pattern of the wall-paper, and as she followed its design human life seemed black and intolerably loathsome. She strove against the thought, but she saw the creature leer so plainly that there was no way of escaping from the conviction that what she had accepted as life was but a mask worn by a leper. The vision persisted for what seemed a long while, and when it faded it was pictures of her own life that ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... uncle; but I haven't zonner—haven't zonner your acquaintance. Want to see Will. Got prodigal on zands, Will has. Seems t'ave come back mos' 'no—mos' 'nopportune 'casion. All right, ole man: jus' give me y' arm and I get 'long mos' com-for-ble, mos' comfort-a-ble," he ended with a leer of triumph at having ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... your heads my hand I lift, Out go your eyes, fore to do your sight, But yet I must make better shift, And it be right. What, Lord? they sleep hard! that may ye all hear; Was I never a shepherd, but now will I leer[129] If the flock be scared, yet shall I nap near, Who draws hitherward, now mends our cheer, From sorrow: A fat sheep I dare say, A good fleece dare I lay, Eft white when I may, ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... with lavish Western hospitality, and there had been many toasts to honor during the dinner. He leaned against the wall with one hand on a carved bracket, looking down upon her with what seemed to be a leer of brutal pride upon ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... case, these boys will have it in for you,—if they ever get their hands on you," said Sid Jeffers, with a wicked leer. ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... human faces. In intensifying the portraiture of Giants, he had sunk quite a little capital; and, though no painter himself, he could indicate, for the instruction of his artists, with a piece of chalk, a certain furtive leer for the countenances of those monsters, which was safe to destroy the peace of mind of any young gentleman between the ages of six and eleven, for the whole Christmas or ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... think of this wonderful opportunity. You have ze keys to his vaults, you have control of his bank accounts." Lowering his voice, and, with a significant leer on his face, he added ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... half frightened and much surprised, but the boy showed no symptoms of astonishment. His face relaxed into a ghastly leer, which showed the whole range of his ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... yesterday) be it merely in my nightcap, and still more when I come forth at full length and in my Sunday suit into the marketplace, one can't help swearing that the whole gang of them have started out of every hole and corner in Europe merely for my sake: they so leer, and ogle me, and whisper, and ask questions, and laugh, and are in ecstacies. I might grow rich, meseems, were I to let myself be stared at for money while I stay here; and if I chance to give them all this pleasure gratis, forthwith a pack of blockheads begin barking and hallooing at ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... in a tight grip till flushed and triumphant he again acknowledged the applause. Nothing was said between Blanquette and myself, but she became my sworn sister from that moment. And Narcisse sat at our feet looking down on the crowd, his tongue lolling out mockingly and a satiric leer on his face. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... the secret felon wrought, 560 And treason labouring in the traitor's thought; And midwife Time the ripen'd plot to murder brought. There the red Anger dared the pallid Fear; Next stood Hypocrisy, with holy leer, Soft smiling, and demurely looking down, But hid the dagger underneath the gown: The assassinating wife, the household fiend; And far the blackest there, the traitor-friend. On the other side, there stood Destruction bare; Unpunish'd Rapine, and a waste of War. 570 Contest, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... to Dr. Alphonse Mingana for this information. But the philological question is discussed in a learned memoir by the late Professor P. J. Veth, "De Leer der Signatuur," Internationales Archiv fuer Ethnographie, Leiden, Bd. VII, 1894, pp. 75 and 105, and especially the appendix, p. 199 et seq., "De Mandragora, Naschrift op het tweede Hoofdstuk der Verhandeling ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... said to my Uncle John, who was dancing attendance on her with the leer of a satyr, "please do not let me disturb this lady. I am so troubled about the anxiety I must be causing my father and my friends at the present moment, that I could not really stop here. All I ask is that she will be kind enough to lend ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... man looked at him for a moment, gave an incoherent grunt, the meaning of which the Doctor found it impossible to decipher, and presently, with a cunning leer, said.— ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... and her garden's grant She offers in reward for handsome cheer: Choice of the nymphs whose looks will slant The secret down a dewy leer Of corner eyelids into haze: Many a fair Aphrosyne Like flower-bell to honey-bee: And here they flicker round the maze Bewildering him in heart and head: And here they wear the close demure, With subtle peeps to reassure: Others parade where ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... himself into the vein, "the agitations of his mind and body" were an astonishment to all who knew him. Such a course as this, however pleasant to a thirsty vanity, was lowering to his nature. He sank more and more towards the professional Don Juan. With a leer of what the French call fatuity, he bids the belles of Mauchline beware of his seductions; and the same cheap self-satisfaction finds a yet uglier vent when he plumes himself on the scandal at the birth of his first bastard. We can well believe what we hear of ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... employing, again solely for decorative purposes, the prints of Japan, the landscapes of the modern impressionists, the rugs of the East, or the blankets of the Arizona desert. Free me, then, from the reproach implied in that covert leer at my Early Sienese." Yes, we must, I think, exclude from the ranks of the true zealots all who in any plausible fashion utilise the objects of art they buy. Excess, the craving to possess what he apparently does not need, is the mark of your true collector. Now these visionaries—at ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... they were living things, Most terrible to see. Around, around, they waltzed and wound; Some wheeled in smirking pairs: With the mincing step of demirep Some sidled up the stairs: And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer, Each helped us ...
— The Ballad of Reading Gaol • Oscar Wilde
... more odious by its diminutive, obtruded itself on Lily's thoughts like a leer. It stood for one of the many hated possibilities hovering on the edge of life. If she did not marry Percy Gryce, the day might come when she would have to be civil to such men as Rosedale. IF SHE DID NOT MARRY HIM? But she meant ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... as it does now, of an overdoing of the outward demonstrations of modesty; a 'leer' was once a look with nothing amiss in it (Piers Plowman). 'Daft' was modest or retiring; 'orgies' were religious ceremonies; the Blessed Virgin speaks of herself in an early poem as 'God's wench.' ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... nonsensical fiddle-faddle that must be used with those women, magni magna, shittencumshita, cringes, grimaces, scrapes, bows, and congees; double honours this way, triple salutes that way, the embrace, the grasp, the squeeze, the hug, the leer, the smack, baso las manos de vostra merce, de vostra maesta. You are most tarabin, tarabas, Stront; that's downright Dutch. Why all this ado? I don't say but a man might be for a bit by the bye and away, to be doing as well as his neighbours; but ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... fire without a draught; and it is not very strange, if the instinct of mental self-preservation drives them to brandy-and-water, which makes the hoarse whisper of memory musical for a few brief moments, and puts a weak leer of promise on the features of the hollow-eyed future. The Colonel was kept pretty well in hand as yet by his wife, and though it had happened to him once or twice to come home rather late at night with a curious tendency to say the same thing twice and even three times ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... traegt uns eine Macht von Stund zu Stund, Wie's Krueglein, das am Brunnenstein zersprang, Und dessen Inhalt sickert auf den Grund, So weit es ging, den ganzen Weg entlang,— Nun ist es leer. Wer mag daraus noch trinken? Und zu den andern Scherben muss ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... easy. He bet there wouldn't many hit any higher spots than him. He bet there was one little girl that would be looked on as lucky, in case she was a good little girl and encouraged him to show his natural kindness. And I was favored with a blood-curdling leer from across the camp, of which I had put as much as possible between myself and the object of ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... Drawn by the hand of Death; each fleshless pate, Cursed with a ghastly grin to eyes unrubbed With love's magnetic ointment, seems to mine To smile an amiable smile like his Whose amiable smile I—I alone Am able to distinguish from his leer! See how the gathering coyotes flit Through the lit spaces, or with burning eyes Star the black shadows with a steadfast gaze! About my feet the poddy toads at play, Bulbously comfortable, try to hop, And tumble clumsily with all their warts; While pranking lizards, sliding up and down My ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... because you ride on my mail, I'm going to talk to you about 'orses. I talk to nobody about 'orses except lords." "Well," said I, "I have been called a lord in my time." "It must have been by a thimble-rigger, then," said the coachman, bending back, and half-turning his face round with a broad leer. "You have hit the mark wonderfully," said I. "You coachmen, whatever else you may be, are certainly no fools." "We a'n't, a'n't we?" said the coachman. "There you are right; and, to show you that ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the train of a lady's dress. His pantaloons had also once belonged to some full grown specimen of humanity, but had been torn off to suit the dimensions of the present owner—and, altogether, the appearance of this miserable object, with his one blind eye, and the cunning leer in the other, was calculated to excite both pity and disgust. The brothers looked upon him for a moment in mute astonishment, until again startled by that squeaking, supplicating voice—"Un picayune, Monsieur—one picayune to buy ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... work on it at night, my dear Prince," put in Doola, with a leer. "The clattering of the shields would ...
— Bright-Wits, Prince of Mogadore • Burren Laughlin and L. L. Flood
... an old-time pier-glass Which had stood on the mantel near, Its silvering blemished,—yes, as if worn away By the eyes of the countless dead who had smirked at it Ere these two ever knew that old-time pier-glass And its vague and vacant leer. ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... answered. "Monsieur is a man of sense," said one, with a maniac leer at his companion. "We will allow him to make merry at our ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... at the knees, going already with the pauper's crawl, his feet in their big boots scarcely lifted. Ursula watched him in his crawling, slinking progress down the room. He was one of her boys! When he got to the desk, he looked round, half furtively, with a sort of cunning grin and a pathetic leer at the big boys in Standard VII. Then, pitiable, pale, in his dejected garments, he lounged under the menace of the headmaster's desk, with one thin leg crooked at the knee and the foot struck out sideways his hands in the low-hanging pockets ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... his evil leer, or avoid it. He turned it upon her again, but she remained steady at the point to which she had fixed herself. He got off the table, placed a chair near the sofa, sat down in it, and leaned an arm upon the sofa close to her own, which he touched with his hand. Her face was ever ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... find that all through their youth they will persist annoyingly in jumping from class to class, and by pasting a supercilious label on every one you meet you are merely packing a Jack-in-the-box that will spring up and leer at you when you begin to come into really antagonistic contact with the world. An idealization of some such a man as Leonardo da Vinci would be a more valuable ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... about the place looked bleak and dreary and as grey as a granite tombstone. Hawkes, who but twelve hours before had seemed the embodiment of life in its most resilient form, now appeared as a drab nemesis with wooden legs and a frozen leer. My coffee was bitter, the peaches were like sponges, the bacon and rolls of uniform sogginess and the eggs of a strange liverish hue. I sat there alone, gloomy and depressed, contrasting the hateful sunshine with the soft, witching refulgence of twenty-four ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... might have graced the lounge of a West End club had a voice soft with Celtic brogue. The other owned a gross body clothed in loud checks and, with his mean blue eyes, his mottled complexion, and cunning leer, would not have seemed out of place ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... sweeping the furthest ends of the landscape, not with the strange glare of whiteness which it sometimes puts on as an alternative to colour, but as a splotch of vermilion red upon a leaden ground—a red face looking on with a drunken leer. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... fool. "Harry of Shirley! Harry of Shirley! Methinks I could help you to the man, if so be as you will deem him worth the finding," he added, suddenly turning upside down, and looking at them standing on the palms of his hands, with an indescribable leer of drollery, which in a moment dashed all the hopes with which they had turned to him. "Should you know this minks of ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... chess in the bar-rooms, every marble table being in requisition for the purpose of the games on Sundays. Having noticed the sparse attendance at the cathedral, we remarked to Jane that the church was quite empty, whereupon she replied with a significant leer, "True, Senor, but the jail is full." More than once an underlying vein of sarcasm was observed in the very pertinent remarks of which ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... It was that of a man who looked like a Lascar, who wore an ill-fitting slop-shop suit of blue, soaked and stained and clinging hideously to his body. His dank black hair was streaked upon his low brow; and his face, although it was notable for a sort of evil leer, had assumed in death another ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... full around and gave a leer which, if possible, made her face more hideous than ever. Without thinking Harvey caught her by the ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... which they have fortunately passed through. Here and there about the wharf, leaning their head carelessly over black piles, are sly-looking policemen, who scan every voyager with a searching eye. They are incog., but the initiated recognise them at a glance. The restless leer of that lynx eye discovers their object; anything, from a runaway nigger to a houseless debtor, is to them acceptable prey. Atween decks of the steamer, secured at the end of the wharf, another scene of bustle and confusion presents itself. A passenger is not quite ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... from my writing by her cry that I am making strange faces again. It is my contemptible weakness that if I say a character smiled vacuously, I must smile vacuously; if he frowns or leers, I frown or leer; if he is a coward or given to contortions, I cringe, or twist my legs until I have to stop writing to undo the knot. I bow with him, eat with him, and gnaw my moustache with him. If the character be a lady with an exquisite laugh, I suddenly terrify you by laughing exquisitely. One reads of ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... a walk in the country. (Tournour makes a leer of contempt) Do you never go for a walk in the country, ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... spring, usually carved in some fantastic mask or face; and on these the Shakspearian imagination of the Gothic artists seems to have let itself loose to run riot: there is every variety of expression, from, the most beautiful to the most goblin and grotesque. One has the leer of fiendish triumph, with budding horns, showing too plainly his paternity; again you have the drooping eyelids and saintly features of some fair virgin; and then the gasping face of some old monk, apparently in the agonies of death, with his toothless gums, hollow cheeks, and sunken eyes. Other ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... (six), "Leer ons alzoo onze dagen tellen" ("So teach us to number our days"); afternoon, 4 p.m. (six), "En de dooden werden geoordeeld uit hetgeen in de boeken geschreven was, naar hunne werken" ("And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... Spaulding walked through his outer office. He stopped at the desk where the pretty brunette WAC sergeant was typing industriously, leaned across the desk, and gave her his best leer. "How about a date tonight, music lover?" he asked, "'Das Rheingold' is playing tonight. A night at the opera would do ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the baron, with his wickedest leer, "what for is my conclusion good? You Americans believe yourselves to be excepted from the operation of general laws. You care not for experience. I have lived seventy-five years, and all that time in the midst of corruption. I am corrupt myself, only I do have courage to ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... we'd go as fur as wedlock," explained Ted, with a wicked leer. "I said we'd be shouted. Eh, theer's mony a slip 'twixt cup an' lip, ye know. Margaret an' me 'ull happen fall out afore weddin' day cooms; but once Canon shouts us ye mun down wi' your ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... with a species of leer peculiar to his physiognomy, which might be construed as expressive either of malice or of mere humour. The Varangian followed him with some suspicion, for it happened that he had had little intercourse ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... arm behind his shoulders Driscoll forced him down the trail to his caravan. Most of the animals were lying down, dozing under their packs. Murguia's eyes grew watery when he saw them, but he was still dazed and his delusion was obstinate. The leer shot exultant gleams. "A rich man can enter heaven," he chuckled ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... preparations made toward a noonday meal. Bill and Halloway appeared loquacious, and inclined to steal glances at Joan when Kells could not notice. Halloway whistled a Dixie tune. Then Bill took advantage of the absence of Kells, who went down to the brook, and he began to leer at Joan and make bold eyes at her. Joan appeared not to notice him, and thereafter averted; her gaze. ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... back to the suller," Jase remarked, his defiance weakening as he climbed the bank. "You come and lock the door agin, Billy Louise, and Marthy won't know I ain't been there all the time. She'll think you caught the fish." He looked at her with a weak leer of conscious cunning. ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... he, in delight Both of her beauty and submissive charms, Smiled with superior love (as Jupiter On Juno smiles, when he impregns the clouds That shed May flowers), and pressed her matron lip With kisses pure. Aside the Devil turned For envy, yet with jealous leer malign Eyed them askance; and to himself thus plained:— 'Sight hateful, sight tormenting!' . ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... own that to be always having the fellow dogging us, with his dejected leer, is not agreeable. He watches us now, because my lips are close by your cheek. He should be absent; he is one too many. Speed him on his voyage with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... remembered. But to him London was empty, and heedless of the curiosity of men and the tumult of the elements he pressed on. Nothing penetrated to his consciousness save the eternal repetition of his own name and the name of his book. Evidences of his influence seemed to leer at him from window and hoarding. A performance of the French symphony, Dawn, was advertised to take place at the Queen's Hall, and he found one bill announcing an exhibition of pictures by an ultra-modern Belgian—pictures which their painter declared to be "illustrations" ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... a pleasant-looking fellow, with huge black whiskers and a roguish eye. He touched the guitar with masterly skill, and sang little amorous ditties with an expressive leer." ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... was suddenly and horribly conscious of her audience as she had never been since her first appearance. Was that a leer on a pallid face in the front row, a droop of disgust on one young girl's mouth? These shoulders of hers—these shoulders shaking—were they hers? Were they real? Surely ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... received us, however, with a free, open, poor devil air, that was irresistible. It is true he did at first appear slightly confused; buttoned up his waistcoat a little higher and tucked in a stray frill of linen. But he recollected himself in an instant; gave a half swagger, half leer, as he stepped forth to receive us; drew a three-legged stool for Mr. Buckthorne; pointed me to a lumbering old damask chair that looked like a dethroned monarch in exile, and bade us ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... one side he stood motionless for just an instant glaring into my face with such a horrid leer of malignant triumph as to almost unnerve me—then he sprang for me with his bare hands. But it was Jubal's day to learn new methods of warfare. For the first time he had seen a bow and arrows, never before that duel had he beheld a sword, and now he learned what a man ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sailors chanced to set his eyes upon me; and, after regarding me with a comic leer, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... man, dressed in a dingy suit, somewhat of a Spanish fashion, with a brown laced cloak, and faded red stockings. He had long lank legs, long arms, hands, and fingers, and a very long sickly face, with a drooping nose, and a sly, sarcastic leer, and a great purplish stain over-spreading more than half of ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the daughter. The older face, with its cruelty, its cunning, and its greed stood reproduced, feature for feature, line for line. It was as though Nature, for an artistic freak, had set herself the task of fashioning hideousness and beauty from precisely the same materials. Between the leer of the man and the smile of the girl, where lay the difference? It would have puzzled any student of anatomy to point it out. Yet the one sickened, while to gain the other most men would ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... A leer towards Lilian accompanied this laughter, rendering its hideous significance more palpably expressive. So provoked was I by the brutal behaviour of the yellow wench, I could scarcely restrain myself from rushing up, and kicking her over the bank upon which she was standing. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... heel, with military precision. Then he chuckled Dolores under the chin with a leer, to have his hand indignantly pushed aside. As the girl glared at him with a flash of hatred in her eyes, he stalked into the taproom, followed by the ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... haymaker over the dial mowing down imaginary grass, jerking right and left with his scythe in front of a Moorish palace; the hideous, hairy, red-eyed jacks-in-boxes; the flies in the Noah's arks, that "an't on that scale neither as compared with elephants;" the giant masks, having a certain furtive leer, "safe to destroy the peace of mind of any young gentlemen between the ages of six and eleven, for the whole Christmas or Midsummer vacation," were all of them like dreams of the Danish poet, coloured into a semblance of life by the grotesque humour of the English Novelist. But dear little ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... was sure, could have left the foot-print in the court, and be the owner of the shoe I had seen—could hardly pass through the Rue de Seine without drawing the eyes of all the lodgers on the street. Dried up hag faces would have met the apparition with a leer; the porters would have turned to stare, and she would ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... with a chuckle of intense satisfaction and a leer at our big neighbour, Bob dived below again; and shortly afterwards a frizzling sound from forward, and an odour strongly suggestive of bacon and eggs, which was wafted upwards from the companion, informed me that he had entered upon the ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... revelation to the three sports. She had been hidden behind so much glass and leather that the transformation was startling. The horsy gentlemen uttered murmurs of surprise and gratification. One of them sidled up to her with a leer. ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... was a rich, sweet smell that I had smelled before, but I couldn't tell what it was. I decided it was a lactone, and let it go at that. I nodded as I went past the receptionist, and her smile made me feel uncomfortable again, just as it always did; there was too much of a leer in it. I never stopped to tell her where I was going; I just ...
— The Professional Approach • Charles Leonard Harness
... time—a fact that was afterward recalled with some surprise and no little horror. At the time, the loungers thought his smile was a merry one, but afterward they stoutly maintained there was downright villainy in the leer. His coat was very dusty, proving that he had driven far and swiftly. Three or four of the loungers followed him into the store. He was standing before the counter over which Mr. Lamson served his soda-water. In one hand he held an envelope and in the other ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... Squire, who lived in the doubtful capacity of parlour-boarder with Mr. Wapshot, flung himself into a theatrical attitude near a newly-made grave, and began repeating Hamlet's verses over Ophelia, with a hideous leer at Pen. The young fellow was so enraged that he rushed at Hobnell Major with a shriek very much resembling an oath, cut him furiously across the face with the riding-whip which he carried, flung it away, calling upon the cowardly villain to ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hedge (full of sorrow and guilt, God knows), suddenly this sentence rushed in upon me, "The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin." At this I made a stand in my spirit and began to conceive peace in my soul, and methought I saw as if the tempter did leer and steal away from me, as being ashamed of what he had done. At the same time also I had my sin and the blood of Christ thus represented to me: that my sin, when compared to the blood of Christ, was no more to it than this little clod or stone is to the vast ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com
|
|
|
