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Leech   Listen
noun
Leech  n.  See 2d Leach.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Leech" Quotes from Famous Books



... found in similar situations during the heats of the dry season. The British Pisidea exibit the same faculty (see a monograph in the Camb. Phil. Trans. vol. iv.). The fact is elsewhere alluded to in the present work of the power possessed by the land leech of Ceylon of retaining vitality even after being parched to hardness during the heat of the rainless season. LYELL mentions the instance of some snails in Italy which, when they hybernate, descend to ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... said he—"let those leech his wounds for whose sake he encountered them. He is fitter to do the juggling tricks of the Norman chivalry than to maintain the fame and honour of his English ancestry with the glaive and brown-bill, the good old weapons ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... next few years little was heard of him. He read in chambers, drew pleadings and indictments, and gathered many useful tricks from the criminal advocate to whom he attached himself like a leech. During this period he also made the acquaintance of a Solicitor who had retired from the noon-day glare of professional rectitude to the congenial atmosphere of shady cases. He also struck up a friendship with two or three struggling journalists, who were occupied in hanging on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various

... the habits and disposition of this family. He says, "They are a destructive race of little savages; and one has been known, before now, to attack a child in his cradle, and inflict a deep wound upon his neck, where it clung, and sucked like a leech. They are very fond of blood, and to obtain this, they will sometimes destroy the occupants of a whole hen-roost, not caring to feed upon the bodies of the poultry which they have killed. They will climb trees, attack the ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth

... found out we were going to leave him at home he started up a howl like a calliope and fastened himself as tight as a leech to Bill's leg. His father peeled him away ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... streets innumerable, the names of none of which had I been able to read upon my plan. My next impression was one of delight at the fidelity with which little bits of street scenery had been portrayed by John Leech in Punch. In Newcastle we knew nothing of the kitchen area and the portico. I was filled with joy when, in passing through the Bloomsbury squares, I recognised, as I thought, the very houses, porticoes, ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... the poor were unheard when their suit they preferr'd, And appeal'd their distresses to thee? Say, once in thine hour, was thy medicine of power To extinguish the fever of ail? And seem'd, as the pride of thy leech-craft e'en tried O'er omnipotent death to prevail? Alas, that thine aid should have ever betray'd Thy hope when the need was thine own; What salve or annealing sufficed for thy healing When the hours of thy portion were flown? Or—wert thou a hero, a leader to glory, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... expressions of regret, that Damian gave himself too little rest, considering his early youth, slept too little, and indulged in too restless a disposition—that his health was suffering—and that a learned Jewish leech, whose opinion had been taken, had given his advice that the warmth of a more genial climate was necessary to restore his constitution to its general and ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... man" of Anacreon, for there was certainly a dreadful dash of vinegar in his composition; but if he did not hate hard enough, hit hard enough, and weigh men, motives, and books, nicely enough to satisfy Dr. Johnson, the Bolt-Courtier must have been a very leech of verjuice. There is a passage in one of his letters to Pope,—I cannot just now put my hand upon it,—in which he suggests, in rather coarse language, the subject of "The Beggar's Opera" as a capital subject for their common friend, Gay. And yet one can barely suppress a sigh at all this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... midnight," as in the ballad, the sleepless patient wishes he could make off as quietly and quickly as the ghostly sons of the "Wife of Usher's Well." Dogs delight to bark in the country more than in town. Leech's picture of the unfortunate victim who left London to avoid noise, and found that the country was haunted by Cochin-China cocks, illustrates the still repose of the rural life. Nervous people, on the whole, are in a minute minority. No one else seems to mind ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... waterside alleys of Chatham, or made trips to Sheerness with "Mr. Micawber", that is to say, his father, in the Navy Pay yacht, though he long afterwards pursued his studies of them more exhaustively at Wapping and the Isle of Dogs, and in expeditions with the Thames police. It was from a walk with Leech through Chatham by-streets that he gathered the hint of Charley Hexam and his father, for Our Mutual Friend, from the sight of "the uneducated father in fustian and the educated boy ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin

... find that under it my possessions pass to you and your heirs absolutely as my executors, for such especial trusts and purposes as are set out therein. Elsa has been ailing, and it is known that the leech has ordered her a change. Therefore her journey to Leyden will excite no wonder, neither, or so I hope, will even Ramiro guess that I should enclose a letter such as this in so frail a casket. Still, there is danger, for spies are many, but having no choice, and my need being ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... entirely healed. It is bad policy to remove leeches forcibly in spite of the temptation to do so. The application of salt or tobacco juice makes them drop off, and the wounds are less severe, but few persons have the patience to wait after discovering a leech. The animal is not easily killed. The Dayaks always remove it with the sword edge and immediately ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... dulness, ma tear, Tho' the case vas as desperate as poor Mister VAN'S. Dere is noting at all vat dis Pill vill not reach— Give the Sinecure Ghentleman van little grain, Pless ma heart, it vill act, like de salt on de leech, And he'll throw de pounds, shillings, and pence, up again! Vill nobodies try my nice Annual ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... hesitated, being, in fact, in no reasonable state of mind, he took the infant in his arms, and himself administered the draught. It soon proved its efficacy, and redeemed the leech's pledge. The moans of the little patient subsided; its convulsive tossings gradually ceased; and, in a few moments, as is the custom of young children after relief from pain, it sank into a profound and dewy slumber. The physician, as ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... a square sail which is secured to the yard is the "head," the lower part is the "foot," the outer edge is the "leech," the two lower corners are the "clews," the middle of the sail when furled is the "bunt." The "sheet" pulls the sail out to its full extent down to the yard below, the clewlines and buntlines bring it up ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various

... other women—"the old beldam" Anne West, who had "been suspected as a witch many yeers since, and suffered imprisonment for the same,"[12] her daughter Rebecca,[13] Anne Leech, her daughter Helen Clarke, and Elizabeth Gooding—were arrested. As in the case of the first, there was soon abundance of evidence offered about them. One Richard Edwards bethought himself and remembered that while crossing a bridge ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... back of Peter's head now that interests me, and the droop of his shoulders. They always remind me of Leech's sketch of Old Scrooge waiting for Marly's ghost, whenever I come upon him thus unobserved. To-night he not only wears his calico dressing-gown—unheard-of garment in these days—but a red velvet cap pulled over his scalp. Most bald ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... The glow-worms, numerous and bright, Illum'd the dewy dell last night. At dusk the squalid toad was seen, Hopping, and crawling o'er the green. The frog has lost his yellow vest, And in a dingy suit is dressed. The leech, disturb'd, is newly risen, Quite to the summit of his prison. The whirling winds the dust obeys, And in the rapid eddy plays; My dog, so alter'd in his taste, Quits mutton-bones on grass to feast; And see yon rooks, how odd their flight! They imitate the gliding kite, Or seem precipitate to fall, ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous

... the grub that makes its own way into the storeroom, that same grub which we have seen draining the Chalicodoma with its leech-like kisses? Let us call the creature to mind: a little oily sausage, which stretches and curls up just where it lies, without being able to shift its position. Its body is a smooth cylinder; its mouth simply a circular lip. Not one ambulatory ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... to the nearest church and marry him," Lucille would reply; or—"Stick to him like a leech for evermore, Auntie"; or—"Marry him when he isn't looking, or while he's asleep, if he's ill—or by the scruff of his neck ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... are not bribed often become sternly virtuous and denunciatory with a similar hope. Those who have received the wages of shame, on the other hand, become more insistent in their demands, crying, "Give! Give!" like the daughter of the horse-leech. ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... runes thou must know, if thou a leech wouldst be, and wounds know how to heal. On the bark they must be graven, and on the leaves of trees, of those ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... back into thy teeth base knave. Thou thyself art a very daughter of a horse-leech with a canteen ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... atone as much as possible for this deficiency, and prevailed upon by the importunity of his friends, he has allowed a portrait of himself, by that eminent artist, Mr. John Leech, to whom he is indebted for the embellishments, and very probably for the sale of the book, to be presented, facing the ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh

... the order was given to loose the royals. In an instant the gaskets were off and the bunt dropped. "Sheet home the fore royal!—Weather sheet's home!"—"Hoist away, sir!" is bawled from aloft. "Overhaul your clew-lines!" shouts the mate. "Aye, aye, sir, all clear!"—"Taught leech! belay! Well the lee brace; haul taught to windward"—and the royals are set. These brought us up again; but the wind continuing light, the California set hers, and it was soon evident that she was walking away from ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... he made a bustle. He would have the Queen's women come to untire her, a leech to see to Culpepper's recovery. He was willing to drink mulled wine before he slept. He was afraid to talk with his wife of delaying his letter to Rome. That was why he had told the news before her to ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford

... because one regards Wordsworth as a portrait-painter without faults. His portraits are marred in several cases by the intrusion of his own personality with its "My good man" and "My little man" air. His human beings have a way of becoming either lifeless or absurd when they talk. The Leech-Gatherer and The Idiot Boy are not the only poems of Wordsworth that are injured by the insertion of banal dialogue. It is as though there were, despite his passion for liberty, equality, and fraternity, a certain gaucherie in his relations ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... man: the interpretation of man to himself is with him a secondary process only-the response, in almost every instance, to impressions from without. This poet can nobly brace the human heart to fortitude; but he must first have seen the leech-gatherer on the lonely moor. The "presence and the spirit interfused" throughout creation is revealed to us in moving and majestic words; yet the poet requires to have felt it "in the light of setting suns and the round ocean and the living air" before he feels it "in the mind of ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... you see. It's a tricky place. I shall never forget the look of relief on that old fellow's face at sight of me. I believe he thinks to this day that I saved his life. He stuck to me like a leech all the way through the further caves and till we got back to ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... "Complain aloud," said the leech to the lady; "cry! scream! Jarnidieu! that man has a necklace that won't fit you any better than ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac

... illustrious leech look at each other, for the doctor wonders whether it is the husband or the wife ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... therefore remained where we were, and I set Jan and 'Ngulubi to look after the oxen and see that they came to no harm, while Piet, 'Mfuni, and I devoted ourselves to the task of looking after the invalid, though, goodness knows, our ignorance of everything connected with the leech's art was so complete that we could do nothing more than pour into her all the nourishment that she could be persuaded ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... frequent; but his busy spirit could not remain quiet. He employed my brother in his office; and he was made the medium of frequent notes and messages to me. William was a bright lad, and of much use to the doctor. He had learned to put up medicines, to leech, cup, and bleed. He had taught himself to read and spell. I was proud of my brother, and the old doctor suspected as much. One day, when I had not seen him for several weeks, I heard his steps approaching the door. I dreaded the encounter, and hid myself. He inquired for me, of course; but ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... regularity of living were essential to his existence. His answer was, "that he preferred a month's life of freedom to an age of solicitude about living;" and with this ghastly gaping wound he lived, in spite of the predictions of his leech, through fifteen campaigns. In command of a brigade of cavalry, he took share in the Russian expedition, and, on the night of the 6th December 1812, it fell to him to escort Napoleon from Osmiana to Wilna. Out of two regiments, not more than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... army in its march from Old Brandenburg. He had been prostrated by fever, and although he shook off the attack it left him so weak and feeble that he was altogether unfit for duty. The army was still lying in its swampy quarters, and the leech who had attended him declared that he could never recover his strength in such an unhealthy air. Nigel Graheme, who had now rejoined the regiment cured of his wound, reported the surgeon's opinion ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... he departed and went unto an hermit that was a good man and a great leech. So the hermit searched all his wounds and gave him good salves; so the king was there three days, and then were his wounds well amended that he might ride and ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... is true, a limit to this tendency to uniformity. The Leech or Doctor preserved his character intact: his darker habiliments, peculiar hat, and the bottle of physic slung under his arm, could never be mistaken. And the same might be said of the conventional figure of Father Christmas, ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... chance. And I must hang to it like a leech," admitted the other, trying to smile, but making a sorry ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach

... in putting a stop to the bleeding from leech-bites; a matter of considerable importance in the case of a delicate infant. The following measures may be ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.

... keep from being hurled out of one's berth was to cling like a leech to a rope fastened to a ring in the wall, for the little ship was bouncing back and forth so fast and so far that it was impossible to compare it with the motion of any other craft. Day began to dawn about 3 A.M. By the dim light I could make ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... us: on each side of her white foam marked the hissing, hungry sea. But, with the sail surging before us in its gear like a mad balloon, who noted aught but the sail? I leant out upon my taut bulge of living canvas, beat it with the flat of my hand, and being the youngest waited for the word to "leech" it or "skin" it up. Being tall I was not at the extremity of the yard arm; my fellow fore-topman and a little squat man from the lower Thames stood outside me. My mate and the man inside were my world. The others ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts

... Frost wrung her hands in nervous terror. She thought of that awful moment when she had swallowed the wood-lice. She thought of the terrible appearance of James when the wasps had stung him. She remembered another occasion when she had found a leech in her bed. Oh, how terrible Irene had been! And there was Miss Carter, who had nearly lost her life in the boat. Then there was Hughie—something very queer had happened to Hughie on one occasion, only Hughie was ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... our opening chapters, aided by our friend Leech's pencil, will have enabled our readers to embody such a Sponge in their mind's eye as will assist them in following us through the course of his peregrinations. We do not profess to have drawn such a portrait as will raise the same ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... monk— (What vineyards have those priests!) And Gobbo to quack-salver sunk, To leech vile murrained beasts; And lazy Andre, blown off shore, Was picked up by the Turk, And in some harem, you be sure, Is forced ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... Scotch gentleman, whose name was Leitch, and who explained that he was not the popular caricaturist, John Leech. "I'm aware of that; you're the Scotchman with the i-t-c-h ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... removed and the horse liberated with me on its back, then the fun would commence. The colt would run, jump, kick and pitch around the barn yard in his efforts to throw me off. But he might as well tried to jump out of his skin because I held on to his mane and stuck to him like a leech. The colt would usually keep up his bucking until he could buck no more, and then I would get my ten cents. Ten cents is a small amount of money these days, but in those days that amount was worth more to ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love

... too clever for the company of fools he makes wonderment for: having once the misfortune to relish their society, and to need but too pressingly their 'tobacco-money,' what can he do but suit himself to their capacities?—And D. Jerrold was very amusing and clever in his 'Country Gull'—And Mr. Leech superb in the Town Master Mathew. All were good, indeed, and were voted good, and called on, and cheered off, and praised heartily behind their backs and before the curtain. Stanfield's function had exercise solely in the touching up ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... and she looked strangely at him. When, however, they had disposed of Lempriere and Leicester had turned again towards her, she said: "Did you think I had no loyal and true gentlemen at my Court, my lord? Did you think my leech would not serve me as fair as he would serve the Earl of Leicester? You have not bought us all, Robert Dudley, who have bought and sold so long. The good leech did your bidding and sent your note to the lady; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... "that wot I well, that these are of the kin of the daughters of the horse-leech; but how shall they slake their greed, seeing that as thou sayest villeinage shall be gone? Belike their men shall pay them quit-rents and do them service, as free men may, but all this according to law and not beyond it; so that though the workers shall be richer than they now ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris

... for no sooner did this happen than all her sheets and halyards were let go, and the whole of her canvas was clewed up and hauled down together, man-o'-war fashion. And thus, with her jibs and stay-sails hauled down, and her square canvas gathered close up to her yards by the buntlines and leech-lines, she swerved slightly from her previous course and headed straight for us, still sliding fast through the water with the "way" or momentum remaining to her, and just sufficient to ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... walls, and threw some money here and there into the collection-boxes for the wounded, which were placed on chairs in the middle of the pathway. Then she stopped before some caricatures representing Louis Philippe as a pastry-cook, as a mountebank, as a dog, or as a leech. But she was a little frightened at the sight of Caussidiere's men with their sabres and scarfs. At other times it was a tree of Liberty that was being planted. The clergy vied with each other in blessing the Republic, escorted by servants in gold lace; and the populace thought this ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... of her parish church. Vernie was convalescent, able to sit up in his bed, propped with pillows, and eat hot-house grapes, and turn over the leaves of endless volumes of Punch, laughing with his hearty childish laugh at Leech's jokes and the curious garments of ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... not, is in the highest degree expressive, nor is there any type it may not express. It enables us to classify any 'professional man' at a glance, be he lawyer, leech or what not. Still more swift and obvious is its revelation of the work and the soul of those who dress, whether naturally or for effect, without reference to convention. The bowler of Mr. Jerome K. Jerome is a perfect preface to all his works. The silk hat of Mr. Whistler is a ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... however, being a man of determination, stuck to his text like a horse-leech; so, after a great to-do, and considerable argle-bargling, he got me, by dint of powerful persuasion, to give him my hand on the subject. Accordingly, at the hour appointed, I popped up the back-loan with my stick in my hand—Peter ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... way in which the tail of a fish acts in propelling the fish; as in the eel, snake and leech. ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... than autocracy. Nicholas I of Russia disapproved of late hours and ordered that court balls should be commenced early that they might be finished early. He found himself almost alone until eleven o'clock, and had to give up his reform.[408] In the height of the crinoline fashion Leech published in Punch a picture of two maiden ladies who "think crinoline a preposterous and extravagant invention and appear at a party in a simple and elegant attire." The shocked horror of the bystanders is perfect, but the two ladies would to-day be quite ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... God! As if that had ever been doubted. Well, then, when you have got your man into the net, you must take great care to land him cleverly. You see, my son, the way I have managed is thus: as soon as I was on the scent I stuck to my candidate like a leech; I drank brotherhood with him, and, nota bene, you must always pay the score. That costs a pretty penny, it is true, but never mind that. You must go further; introduce him to gaming-houses and brothels; entangle him in broils and rogueries till he becomes bankrupt in health ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... character, or, rather, absence of character, was applied alike to many totally dissimilar creatures. The term Articulata included not only Linnaeus's insects but a number of soft-skinned, apparently jointed, worm-like animals such as the leech and earthworm. Lastly, the name Radiata meant no more than that the organs of the creatures so designated were more or less disposed around a centre, as the sepals and petals of a flower are grouped around the central pistil; and it included animals so different as the starfish and sea-anemones ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... His Life and Work (BENTLEY) Mr. FRITH quotes from an anonymous but obviously not an original authority, the dictum, "It is the happiness of such a life (as LEECH's) that there is so little to be told of it." Mr. BENTLEY has produced two handsome volumes worthy the reputation of his ancient and honourable house. They enshrine admirable reproductions of some of LEECH's best work, selected by the trained hand and sympathetic eye of Mr. FRITH. These are ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various

... what I can do," said Giovanni, rising. "Probably, the best thing would be to send your military surgeon. He will not be so tender as the other leech, but he will get you away at once. My wife wished me to say that she sympathised, and hoped ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... broken with the pity of it all. A city's tragedies often require search to reveal them, but upon the frontier tragedy stalks unsepulchered in the background of nearly every life, ready to leap out in all its naked horror and settle itself leech-like upon the sympathetic heart, stifling it with the burden ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... bur, remora. conglomerate, concrete &c. (density) 321. V. cohere, adhere, stick, cling, cleave, hold, take hold of, hold fast, close with, clasp, hug; grow together, hang together; twine round &c. (join) 43. stick like a leech, stick like wax; stick close; cling like ivy, cling like a bur; adhere like a remora, adhere like Dejanira's shirt. glue; agglutinate, conglutinate[obs3]; cement, lute, paste, gum; solder, weld; cake, consolidate &c. (solidify) 321; agglomerate. Adj. cohesive, adhesive, adhering, cohering ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... know as much about broken bones as any leech in the countryside; and if you will but place yourself in my hands, I'll warrant you a sound man again before another moon has run her course. 'Tis a farrier's trade to be a bit of a surgeon; and the Iveses have been farriers in Much Waltham longer ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green

... contrivance combining the principles of the gimlet and the air-pump, it soon relieves the little human bud of its superfluous juices. It is, in fact, a born surgeon, a Sangrado of the Air, and rivals that celebrated Spanish Leech in its fondness for phlebotomy. Some infidels, who do not subscribe to the doctrine that nothing was made in vain, consider it an unmitigated nuisance, but the devout and thoughtful Christian recognizes it as ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various

... brought thee here, O Hound, To encounter a strong foe? O'er the trappings of thy steeds Crimson-red thy blood shall flow. Woe is in thy journey, woe; Let the cunning leech prepare; Shouldst thou ever reach thy home, Thou shalt need ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... his rival drew Meadows after him wherever he went, so fascinated was he with this subject. And now all the evening he sucked the books like a leech. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... no thieving contractor, no 'helping' official, no shoddy scoundrel, no unrighteously 'commission' gathering leech, who is not quietly noted down here and there, to be duly exposed, some soon—some in after years. We know that extensive researches have been undertaken, to prepare and keep in black and white a record of the rascality of this war, in high places as ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... a tree again. I see I don't even know the A B C of this business. In the old days the leech was a physician. You don't mean I'm ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... hour, and then commenced our descent, avoiding the landslip, and reached the waterfall in a little over the hour. Pausing here for a few minutes to rest, and quench our thirst, we resumed our journey, and reached the bungalow at midday none the worse, with the exception of leech-bites and cut feet, for the climb. Remarking to H. on the extraordinary number of snakes I had noticed on the way up, he informed me that Matang is famed for them, and that, on rising one morning ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt

... German Feldscherer, a sort of combination of leech, first-aid, and barber, who ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... Anne Leech said 'that her imps did usually suck those teats which were found about the privie parts of her body. [Two women searched Mary Greenleife], and found that the said Mary had bigges or teates in her secret parts, not like emerods, nor in those places where women use to be troubled with ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray

... and manufacture out of very trite materials a sort of snap-dragon wit, which flares up in an instant, is as soon out, and generally burns somebody's fingers. It may be urged on the contrary that many celebrated wits as Mathews, Leech, and others, have been melancholy men. But despondency is often found in an excitable temperament which is not unfavourable to humour, for the man who is unduly depressed at one moment is likely to be immoderately elated at another. Old Hobbes ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... foam-beads rise, His back gleams bright above the brine, And the wake-line foam behind him lies. But the water-sprites are gathering near To check his course along the tide; Their warriors come in swift career And hem him round on every side; On his thigh the leech has fixed his hold, The quarl's long arms are round him roll'd, The prickly prong has pierced his skin, And the squab has thrown his javelin, The gritty star has rubbed him raw, And the crab has struck with his giant claw; He howls ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake

... fact: I have even fascinated Mrs. Clemens with this yarn for youth. My stuff generally gets considerable damning with faint praise out of her, but this time it is all the other way. She is become the horse-leech's daughter, and my mill doesn't grind fast enough to suit her. This is no mean triumph, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... me tell you that in all those three provinces that I have been speaking of, to wit Carajan, Vochan, and Yachi, there is never a leech. But when any one is ill they send for their magicians, that is to say the Devil-conjurors and those who are the keepers of the idols. When these are come the sick man tells what ails him, and then the conjurors incontinently begin playing on their instruments and singing and dancing; ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... upper hand; and, as frequently happens, in spite of prognostications and diagnoses, nature had amused herself by saving the sick man under the physician's very nose. It was while he was still lying on the leech's pallet that he had submitted to the interrogations of Philippe Lheulier and the official inquisitors, which had annoyed him greatly. Hence, one fine morning, feeling himself better, he had left his golden spurs with the leech as payment, and had slipped away. This had ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... he shows his face. He is used to it. It is nothing to him that clever men and women ache audibly in his presence. He has no reputation to lose. The hostess is not a friend of his, for whom he feels that he must exert himself. A bore has no friends. He is a social leech. ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell

... Boscawen is in a scrape with him by a court-martial, of which he is one; it was appointed on a young poor soldier, who to see his friends had counterfeited a furlough only for a day. They ordered him two hundred lashes; but Molkejunskoi, who loves blood like a leech, insisted it was not enough-has made them sit three times (though every one adheres to the first sentence,) and swears they shall sit these six months till they increase the punishment. The fair Mrs. Pitt has been mobbed in the Park, and with difficulty rescued by some gentlemen, only because ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... said Johnson. "The impudence of an Irishman is the impudence of a fly, that buzzes about you, and you put it away, but it returns again, and flutters and teases you. The impudence of a Scotsman is the impudence of a leech, that fixes and sucks your blood." Upon another occasion, this writer went with him into the shop of Davies, the bookseller, in Russell street, Covent garden. Davies came running to him, almost out of breath with ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... man. Again, some information: there are five portages above Aitkin, as follows: first, into the western gulf of Lake Cass, saving six miles; second, Little Winnipeg Lake into a stream leading to the Ball Club Lake (missing the great tributary Leech Lake River); third, at White Oak Point, below the Eagle's Nest Savannah; fourth, Pokegama Falls, a carry of two hundred yards on the left bank (a necessity); and fifth, a cut-off above Swan River, saving six miles. This last was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... men of letters; a drawing of a dog by Turner I remember particularly, and a copy of "Don Juan," in the first edition, with Byron's manuscript notes. Dr. Brown had a great love and knowledge of art and of artists, from Turner to Leech; and he had very many friends among men of letters, such as Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Thackeray. Dr. Brown himself was a clever designer of rapid little grotesques, rough sketches of dogs and men. One or two of them are engraved ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... sooner was the struggling animal deposited in the bottom of my own boat than it savagely seized the calf of my devoted leg and endeavored to bite therefrom a generous cross section. My leggings and my leech stockings saved my life. That implacable little beast never gave up; and two days later it died,—apparently to ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... to Queen-Hoo Hall and closely guarded; meanwhile he anxiously inquired of young St. Clere about his wound. "A scratch, a trifle!" cried Henry; "I am in less haste to bind it than to introduce to you one without whose aid that of the leech would have come too late. Where is he? ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... exist on such bodies. At the same time, he made known that the small black body which until that time had been mistaken for the young state of a species of seaweed, was in reality the egg of Pontobdella muricata, a sort of sea-leech. On the 3rd of April following, the discoverer exhibited specimens of the latter ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... down in creation, you find that fishes vary. In different streams, in the same country even, you will find the trout to be quite different to each other and easily recognisable by those who fish in the particular streams. There is the same differences in leeches; leech collectors can easily point out to you the differences and the peculiarities which you yourself would probably pass by; so with fresh-water mussels; so, in fact, with every animal ...
— The Conditions Of Existence As Affecting The Perpetuation Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley

... the Caliph, "we know what thou wouldst say before it is spoken. We require not a vizier to talk, but to act as a leech, and draw blood where it is too rich or corrupt. How thinkest thou? If I were to impale one of these lazy dancers, would terror make ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... gondola be manned instantly," he said, "and let six of you take arms and go in search of our boat. Let another man at once summon a leech, for some of those on board are, I fear, grievously ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty

... glare and stare with life increasing, And leech-like eyebrows arching in; Be, if ye must, my fate unceasing, But never hope ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the morning, according to his promise; but there was nothing to be done, so he looked wise, wagged his head very solemnly, and said, "I will come again after two days more, when the fever must be near to its height, and bring a famous leech out of Tangier along ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... flitters under her flesh: Wynoc the leech must help us now. Go, run, Seek him, and come back quickly, and do not dare To come ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)

... seas under hurrying, leaden-grey skies and bitter snow squalls, with a foul wind persistently pounding at her day after day, he had thought, as some more than ordinarily angry puff whitened the water to windward and broke him off his course, with the weather leech of his close-reefed topsail shivering, how pleasant it must be to be a landsman, to go where he pleased in spite of wind or weather. Ah! they were the happy ones, those lucky landsmen, who could always do as they chose, blow ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... tortuously do the methods of the profession adapt themselves to the modern conception of an army of devoted men working as a whole under God for the health of mankind as a whole, broadening out from the frowsy den of the "leech," with its crocodile and bottles and hieroglyphic prescriptions, to a skilled and illuminating co-operation with those who deal with the food and housing and ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells

... a leech to the canted roof of the forward cabin, Steve himself worked along with the rope and, half-drowned in rain and surf, made it fast to the cleat. The others, struggling into life-belts, clung to the stanchions or whatever they could find. Steve crawled ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour

... William M. Johnston, met in a series of matches before a brilliant assembly of Diplomatic, Military and Political personages. C. S. Garland was unable to accompany the team owing to illness. Julian S. Myrick, President of the U. S. L. T. A., and A. Y. Leech completed the party. ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D

... barred, and Cuthbert was carried up to a cell in the building, where the leech of the monastery speedily examined his wound, and pronounced, that although his life was not in danger by it, he was greatly weakened by the loss of blood, that the wound was a serious one, and that it would be some time ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty

... the caricature of a baby for the purposes of a scorn that was not angry, but familiar. It is true that the poor child had first been burlesqued by the unchildish aspect imposed upon him by his dress, which presented him, without the beauties of art or nature, to all the unnatural ironies. Leech did but finish him in the same spirit, with dots for the childish eyes, and a certain form of face which is best described as a fat square containing two circles—the inordinate cheeks of that ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell

... let everybody into Mademoiselle Stangerson's secrets?—Come, let us go to dinner; it is time. This evening we dine in Frederic Larsan's room,—at least, if he is not on the heels of Darzac. He sticks to him like a leech. But, anyhow, if he is not there now, I am quite sure he will be, to-night! He's the one I am going to ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux

... for it by medicine or by potion or by herb or by root. There is not a remedy for every ill: mine is so rooted that it cannot be cured. Cannot? Methinks I have lied. As soon as I first felt this evil, if I had dared to reveal and to tell it, I could have spoken to a leech, who could have helped me in the whole matter; but it is very grievous for me to speak out. Perhaps they would not deign to listen and would refuse to accept a fee. No wonder is it then if I am dismayed, for I have a great ill; and yet I do not know ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes

... for all were suffering from wounds more or less severe. The following morning their bonds were unloosed, and their wounds carefully attended to by a leech. Then water and food were offered to them, and of these, following Beric's example, they partook heartily. An hour later they were placed in the centre of a strong guard, and then fell in with the troops who were formed up to ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... to be late rains, anyway," the man went on hoarsely. "Leech would let us have more seed if it wasn't for the mortgage." His voice broke into a strained whisper ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham

... Leech, the Vizier of a King his flatterers be, Very soon the King will part with ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold

... crowns, that not a thief of all the sixty-one was left alive. Next morning, when Ubbe rode past and saw the sixty-one dead bodies, and heard what Havelok had done, he sent and brought both him and Goldborough to his own castle, and fetched a leech to tend his wounds, and would not hear of his going away; for, said he, "This man is better ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... a great interest in Agriculture, and his Flemish Farm at Windsor was a model; but it was hard to make the average Englishman believe that a foreigner could ever do any good as a Farmer, and John Leech drew a fancy portrait of the prince in Punch, 25 Nov., where it illustrates a portion of a speech of Sir Robert Peel at Tamworth: "Prince Albert has turned his attention to the promotion of agriculture; and, if you have seen, as most probably you have, an account of the sale ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... hold in the flying International. He stalled off the attack somehow, and Bourne always covered his exertions, so that it seemed as if there would be a draw after all. At last the ball was swung across, and Aspinall was off on a final venture. Acton stuck to him like a leech, but the winger tipped the ball to his partner, and as Acton moved to intercept the inside, the latter quickly and wisely poked the ball back again to Aspinall. He was off again in his own inimitable style, and I saw him smile as he re-started his run. I rather fancy Acton saw ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson

... from Front Royal, one mile from Culpepper Pike. George Esom—Same place as Bresley. John Clark—Nine miles from Front Royal, to right of Culpepper Pike, on the mountain. Father is a farmer. John Maddox—Four miles from Front Royal on Hominy Road, is a farmer. George Leech—Three miles from Front Royal, on the Culpepper Pike. Shoemaker shop. James Bolton—Eight or nine miles from Front Royal, on Culpepper Pike, left hand side. Father is a blacksmith. James Anderson—Resides with Bolton. William Blackwell—Formerly on ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith

... are at the foot of the stairs, each ready to claim his rider. These fellows will stick to you like a leech; follow you about for hours, never intruding their presence on you, and yet seem to anticipate all your ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... the hand" of the Opposition. Watch the rapidity with which Lord Derby pounces upon the card Lord Russell has let drop, and "calls on him to play it." And in the face of all this you will see scores of these bland whiskered creatures Leech gives us in 'Punch,' who, if asked, "Can they play?" answer with a contemptuous ha-ha ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... slaves to raise the body of Sempronius and carry it to a couch, and to send at once for a leech. She also bade them throw water on the slave and bring him to consciousness, and then to bring him before her to ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty

... mother, "don't allow that thought to gain upon you. We'll get a fairy-man or a fairy-woman, because they know the best remedies against everything of that kind, when a common leech or chirurgeon ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... the sun, this isle, Trees and the fowls here, beast and creeping thing. Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a leech; Yon auk, one fire-eye, in a ball of foam, That floats and feeds; a certain badger brown He hath watched hunt with that slant white-wedge eye By moonlight; and the pie with the long tongue That pricks deep into oakwarts for a worm, And says a ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... show, and which is not absent, for instance (I don't mean the secret, but the intimation), from the beautiful doings of Mr. Abbey. It is extremely present in Mr. Du Maurier's work, just as it was visible, less elusively, in that of John Leech, his predecessor in Punch. Mr. Abbey has a haunting type; Du Maurier has a haunting type. There was little perhaps of the haunted about Leech, but we know very well how he wanted his pretty girls, his British swell, and his "hunting men" to look. He betrayed a predilection; ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James

... passed, through and through, fore and aft, especially the admiral, receiving only in return their prow and bow-chases. By these, as I passed to the north, two unfortunate shots cut asunder the weather leech ropes of the Roebuck's foresail and fore-topsail, in the middle depth of both sails; owing to which we could not bring her into stays, and were forced, for repairing these sails, to bear down to leeward, between the enemy and the shore; in which course, the three great ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... Edition, in 2 vols., with all the Illustrations by Cruikshank and Leech, 15s., or in one ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... mandoline from gondola or caique? Did it change into the cry of the wind, plaintive at first, angrily shrill as it freshened, rising to a tearing whistle, sinking to a musical trickle of air from the leech of the bellying sail? All these sounds the spellbound listener seemed to hear, and with them the hungry complaint of the gulls and the sea-mews, the soft thunder of the breaking wave, the cry of the protesting shingle. Back into speech again it passed, and with ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... the artist in no more and no less a degree, particularly no less. How often have I seen an exquisite drawing of Abbey's or Du Maurier's almost ruined by the slipping of the burin the one-thousandth part of an inch! How infinitely superior are the originals of John Leech's immortal caricatures in Punch to the reproductions, all because the shadow line under an eye, or that little dot which denotes the difference between amusement and curiosity in the expression of a face, has been cut away the thousandth part of a hair-line! The processes ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith

... castle, some of ye, and bring What aid you can. Saddle the barb, and speed For the leech to the city—quick! some ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... Chearfully uttered, with demeanour kind, But stately in the main; and, when he ended, I could have laugh'd myself to scorn, to find In that decrepit Man so firm a mind. "God," said I, "be my help and stay secure; I'll think of the Leech-gatherer on the lonely moor." ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth

... said, "You're as sound as a nut." "Hang him up," roared the King in a gale— In a ten-knot gale of royal rage; The other leech ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... Dear old John Leech! What an eye he had for the man who hunts and doesn't like it! But for such, as a pictorial chronicler of the hunting field he would have had no fame. Briggs, I fancy, in his way did like it. Briggs was a full-blooded, up-apt, awkward, sanguine man, who was able to ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope

... you sucking me like a leech all my life?" cried Daireh in a shrill voice, stamping ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... attach themselves to the skin of the legs and adjacent parts of the horse, and the Haemopis Sanguisuga, and others of this class, which, not being able to penetrate the skin, endeavor to enter the mouth or nostrils of the horse when he is drinking or grazing in wet and leech-infected pastures. They sometimes cling to the mucous membrane of the eyes. The horse leech, which lives in the water, usually gains access to the mouth and nostrils of the animal, when young and not more than one-tenth ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek

... the breakfast-room of a sunny and secluded house far uptown, where lived, in an aroma of the domestic virtues, a benevolent-looking old gentleman who combined the attributes of the ferret, the leech, and the vulture in his capacity as editor of that famous weekly publication, The Searchlight. Ives did not sell in that mart; he traded for other information. This time he wanted something about Judge Willis Enderby, for he was far enough on the inside politically to see ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... things were said in the hour which, when it passes over the world, all the wishes uttered by men are granted. And so it was with these Indians. For the first became a Leech, the second a Spotted Frog, the third a Crab, which is washed up and down with the tide, and the fourth a Fish. Ere this there had been in all the world none of the creatures which dwell in the water, and now they were there, and of all kinds. And the river came rushing ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... bleach screech leech breach beech coach roach poach broach preach fetch stretch itch botch notch blotch catch sketch crutch pitch latch batch snatch ditch match hatch patch hutch twitch clutch switch witch stitch ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett

... institutions while the land is filled with those whom they have robbed and wrecked. The government should suppress these eminently respectable gambling games. They have caused more sorrow, destitution and crime than all the cards and dice this side of the dark dominion of the devil. The horse-leech's daughters should be pulled off the body politic. Not only should the government suppress these shameless skin games which collect gold and distribute copper, but it should supply life insurance to heads ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... small sail usually cut to a third the size of the mizzen, or a fourth of the mainsail. It was secured through eyelet-holes to the leech of the mainsail, in the manner ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... leech, so long as we were whole: Who scann'd the nation's every outward part, But ah! misheard the beating of its heart. Sire of huge sorrows, yet erect of soul. Swift rider with calamity for goal, Who, overtasking his equestrian art, Unstall'd a steed full willing ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... had not been fasting, the shock must have killed him," pronounced the leech. "He was over-tired, and that saved him," and with a few directions as to the patient's treatment, he went to prepare a composing draught himself. M. de Sucy was better the next morning, but the doctor had insisted on sitting ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac

... he who girds on his sword for the good of the state, must be ready to spill his blood for it: that am I. No more of this—a mere scratch: it gave more blood than I recked of from so slight a puncture, and saves the leech the trouble of the lancet. How brightly breaks the day! We must prepare to meet our fellow-citizens—they will be here anon. Ha, my Pandulfo—welcome!—thou, my old friend, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton



Words linked to "Leech" :   phlebotomize, medicinal leech, leech onto, treat, class Hirudinea, medicine, practice of medicine, parasite, bloodsucker, annelid worm, phlebotomise, hirudinean, follower, Hirudinea



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