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Leech   Listen
noun
Leech  n.  
1.
A physician or surgeon; a professor of the art of healing. (Written also leach) (Archaic) "Leech, heal thyself."
2.
(Zool.) Any one of numerous genera and species of annulose worms, belonging to the order Hirudinea, or Bdelloidea, esp. those species used in medicine, as Hirudo medicinalis of Europe, and allied species. Note: In the mouth of bloodsucking leeches are three convergent, serrated jaws, moved by strong muscles. By the motion of these jaws a stellate incision is made in the skin, through which the leech sucks blood till it is gorged, and then drops off. The stomach has large pouches on each side to hold the blood. The common large bloodsucking leech of America (Macrobdella decora) is dark olive above, and red below, with black spots. Many kinds of leeches are parasitic on fishes; others feed upon worms and mollusks, and have no jaws for drawing blood. See Bdelloidea. Hirudinea, and Clepsine.
3.
(Surg.) A glass tube of peculiar construction, adapted for drawing blood from a scarified part by means of a vacuum.
Horse leech, a less powerful European leech (Haemopis vorax), commonly attacking the membrane that lines the inside of the mouth and nostrils of animals that drink at pools where it lives.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Leech" Quotes from Famous Books



... manners, deficient as above noticed) were nearly always readable—and sometimes very amusing—even to those who are not exactly Nimrods: and they were greatly commended to others still by the admirable illustrations of Leech. There is not a little sound sport in Kingsley and afterwards in Anthony Trollope: while the novels of Frank Smedley, Frank Fairlegh (1850), Lewis Arundel (1852), and Harry Coverdale's Courtship (1855), ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... her fortune with Durham Mustard; and it has been supposed that this was the only form in which Mustard was sold in Shakespeare's time, and that it was eaten dry as we eat pepper. But the following from an Anglo-Saxon Leech-book seems to speak of it as used exactly in the modern fashion. After mentioning several ingredients in a recipe for want of appetite for meat, it says: "Triturate all together—eke out with vinegar as may seem fit to thee, so that it may be wrought ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... their grinning! The law of the land's a good doctor; but, bad luck to those that gorge upon such a fine physician's poor patients! Sure, we know, now and then, it's mighty wholesome to bleed; but nobody falls in love with the leech. ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman

... steadily decrease in numbers and disappear. So again with the varieties of sheep: it has been asserted that certain mountain-varieties will starve out other mountain-varieties, so that they cannot be kept together. The same result has followed from keeping together different varieties of the medicinal leech. It may even be doubted whether the varieties of any one of our domestic plants or animals have so exactly the same strength, habits, and constitution, that the original proportions of a mixed stock could be kept up for half-a-dozen generations, if they were allowed to struggle together, like ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... bearded, their huge boots caked with Potomac mud and rough shirts open at their sunburnt throats; chapped hands and faces grimy with smoke and work, there was yet something about these men that spoke them, at a glance, raised above the herd. John Leech, who so reveled in the "Camps at Cobham," would here have found a companion-piece for the opposition ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... with blood. "There, see how these infernal imps have been drawing my life's blood," said he, thrusting a foot out of the hammock. The vampire had tapped his great toe; there was a wound somewhat less than that made by a leech; the blood was still oozing from it. I conjectured he might have lost from ten ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... your ears and tremble in every limb when they were torturing your father-in-law—well, that's your look out. As for me, if only I can unmask a downright lie, I am quite content to look death itself between the eyes immediately after. Ever since you fainted at the prick of a leech, and were not ashamed to burst into tears when I cut out one of your warts, I knew you to be a coward. Yes, a coward you are, and a very poor creature to boot; but whatever else I am, I am not that. Twice have I broken the bone of my own leg because it was ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

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

... 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, my ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... The leech-like fashion in which Grindle stuck to his heels was not to be misread. "This is what they call nursing, I suppose—he's nursing ME now!" said Mahony to himself. At the same time he reckoned up, with some anxiety, the money ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... the establishment, they met the leech who had been summoned some little time ago to hold himself in readiness ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

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

... Roman times.[147] In the medical treatises we see the practice of medicine greatly mingled with superstition. Witchcraft is reckoned among the causes of disease, and formul are provided for breaking the spell. The "Leech Book" contains a series of prescriptions for divers ailments, with directions for preparation and medical treatment. One batch of these prescriptions is said to have been sent to King Alfred by Elias, Patriarch of Jerusalem. A very popular book ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... digressive, it is a strict and accurate comment on Charles Keene, and the circumstances in which his art was produced. Charles Keene never sought after originality; on the contrary, he began by humbly imitating John Leech, the inventor of the method. His earliest drawings (few if any of them are exhibited in the present collection) were hardly distinguishable from Leech's. He continued the tradition humbly, and originality stole ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... thought of sending for a leech. Every man and woman within fifty miles of the border was accustomed to the treatment of wounds, and in every hold was a store of bandages, styptics, and unguents ready for instant use. Most of the men were very sorely wounded; ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty

... were bad, and his associates often of a vicious character. Bad habits and bad associates always involve the spending of money freely. This consequence naturally occurred in the case of Sanford. To supply his wants his salary proved insufficient. These wants were like the horse-leech, and cried continually—"give, give." They could not be put off. The first recourse was that of borrowing, in anticipation of his quarterly receipt of salary, after his last payment was exhausted. It was not long before, under this ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur

... 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 ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... The weather leech of the topsail shivers, The bowlines strain and the lee shrouds slacken, The braces are taut, the lithe boom quivers, And the waves with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... brews Th' extracted Liquor with Ambrosian Dews, And od'rous Panacee: Unseen she stands, Temp'ring the Mixture with her heav'nly Hands: And pours it in a Bowl, already crown'd With Juice of medc'nal Herbs, prepared to bathe the Wound. The Leech, unknowing of superior Art, Which aids the Cure, with this foments the Part; And in a Moment ceas'd the raging Smart. Stanched is the Blood, and in the bottom stands: The Steel, but scarcely touched with tender Hands, Moves up, and follows of its ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... the roots, and cut out quickly. This is the first fact to be determined, and a fool would know it. The second fact is that you must do it yourself. Hired killers are like the grave and the daughters of the horse leech,—they cry always, 'Give, Give.' They are only palliatives, not cures. By using them you swap perils. You simply take a stay of execution at best. The common criminal would know this. These are the facts of your problem. The ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... his own part he is raised to pinnacles which he imagined impossible of access, and soon learns to look down with a contempt that might spring of ancient lineage and assured merit, upon the hungry crowd whose cry is that of the daughter of the horse-leech. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various

... was shot away in the slings by a double-headed shot, and the yard-arms came down in front of the mainyard, the leech ropes of the mainsail were cut to pieces and the sail riddled. All the time, also, whenever the ships were within musket-range, showers of bullets came rattling on board, and several of the men were ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston

... 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 ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... d'Anquetil, "that for a leech and a village squirt your test is not a bad one. Nothing is worse than those little but deep wounds which look a mere nothing. Tell me of a nice cut across the face. It's pleasant to look on, and heals in no time. But know, my good sir, that this wounded man is my chaplain, ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... 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 escort ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... patted any hands that had gathered them nefariously. So far as she looked into the future she saw there always Cuckoo, and herself robbing Cuckoo comfortably, faithfully, unblamed and unrepentant, while the years rolled along, the leech ever ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... 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 ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... into the composition of any dish that appears on your table. And, in general, the more you can do without the employment of butter that has been subjected to the influence of heat, the better. The woman of modern times is not a "leech;" but she might often keep the "leech" from the door, if she would give herself the trouble to invent ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... the best of the many editions of Dickens is the Macmillan Pocket edition with reproductions of the original covers of the monthly parts of the novels as they appeared, the original illustrations by Cruikshank, Leech, "Phiz" (Hablot Browne) and others, and valuable and interesting introductions by Charles Dickens the younger. Another good edition is in the World's Classics, with brilliant introductions by G.K. Chesterton. In buying an edition ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch

... exceeding fat, and of a most solemn demeanour. The young Aga came for a pair of shoes, and his contortions were so delightful as he tried them, that I remained looking on with great pleasure, wishing for Leech to be at hand to sketch his lordship and his fat mamma, who sat on the counter. That lady fancied I was looking at her, though, as far as I could see, she had the figure and complexion of a roly-poly pudding; and so, with quite a premature bashfulness, she sent me a message by the shoemaker, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... amazing stubbornness?" he asked. "Why should you play at martyr, when your talent is commercial? You have no gifts for martyrdom but wooden tenacity. Pshaw! the leech has that. You mistake ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... him, he grew no better; soon he could not even sit upon his horse, but became so pale and wasted that he could hardly rise from his chair. And some thought that a spell was cast upon him, but that mended not matters at all; the king's own leech came to visit him, and shook his head, saying that no art could avail, since the spring of life was somehow broken within him and he must die unless God were good to him and ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Excellency the lord lieutenant. Sixteenth. Today it is. In aid of funds for Mercer's hospital. The Messiah was first given for that. Yes. Handel. What about going out there: Ballsbridge. Drop in on Keyes. No use sticking to him like a leech. Wear out my welcome. Sure to ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... visible much before noon. He was, therefore, prayed to take his meal alone. "Alone" was a word peculiarly unwelcome to Marmaduke Nevile, who was an animal thoroughly social and gregarious. He managed, therefore, to detain the old servant, who, besides the liking a skilful leech naturally takes to a thriving patient, had enough of her sex about her to be pleased with a comely face and a frank, good-humoured voice. Moreover, Marmaduke, wishing to satisfy his curiosity, turned the conversation upon Warner and Sibyll, a ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and all else was obscured by the brightness of a vortex toward which he was moving in swiftly-closing circles. Already two-thirds of his handsome fortune was embarked in this new scheme, that was still growing in magnitude, and still, like the horse-leech, crying "Give! give!" All that now remained was "Woodbine Lodge," valued at over twenty-five thousand dollars. This property he determined to leave untouched. But new calls for funds were constantly being made by Mr. Fenwick, backed ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur

... could see from his windows, and making us repeat them after him, to see if we had got them right. They were Gull Pond, (the largest and a very handsome one, clear and deep, and more than a mile in circumference,) Newcomb's, Swett's, Slough, Horse-Leech, Round, and Herring Ponds,—all connected at high-water, if I do not mistake. The coast-surveyors had come to him for their names, and he told them of one which they had not detected. He said that they were not so high as formerly. There was an ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... fell, her arm she brak, A compound fracture as could be; Nae leech the cure wad undertak, Whate'er was the gratuity. It 's cured! she handles 't like a flail, It does as weel in bits as hale; But I 'm a broken man mysel' Wi' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... ligilo. Least malplej. Least, at almenaux. Leather ledo. Leave lasi. Leave (bequeath) testamenti. Leave (depart) deiri. Leave off cxesi. Leaven fermentilo. Leavings (food) mangxrestajxo. Lecture parolado. Leech hirudo. Leer flanken rigardi. Lees fecxo. Left, on the maldekstre. Leg (limb) kruro. Leg (of a fowl, etc.) femuro. Leg of mutton sxaffemuro. Legacy heredajxo. Legal legxa. Legation (place) senditejo. Legation ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... fears concerning him, and these fears were realized when upon the morrow Gregory awoke on fire with the fever. They summoned a leech from Sheringham, and this cunning knave, with a view to adding importance to the cure he was come to effect, and which in reality presented no alarming difficulty, shook his head with ominous gravity, and whilst promising to do "all that his skill permitted," he spoke ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... could see nothing but the terrible white tusks just before my nose, the red tongue all covered with white foam. But at the same instant, another dark body was whisking before me like a ball—it was my darling Tresor defending me; and he hung like a leech on the brute's throat! The creature wheezed, grated its teeth and staggered back. I instantly flung open the door and got into the hall.... I stood hardly knowing what I was doing with my whole weight on the door, and heard a desperate battle going on outside. ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... echoed Asad sneeringly, stung to reprisals by Iskender's tone. "But concerning that Emir of thine I have a word to say. They have heard up there how thou hast fastened on him like a leech, and dost boast to all men that his wealth is thine. I myself heard the Father of Ice declare that thy designs were iniquitous and must be thwarted. He himself will go to the Emir and tell him thy whole history, which is nothing good; ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall

... friendly intercourse with Darwin. He did much to spread a love of Natural History, more especially by his seaside books, and by his introduction of the aquarium— the popularity of which (as Mr. Edmund Gosse shows) is reflected in the pages of "Punch," especially in John Leech's illustrations. Kingsley said of him (quoted by Edmund Gosse, page 344) "Since White's "History of Selborne" few or no writers on Natural History, save Mr. Gosse and poor Mr. Edward Forbes, have had the power of ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... the egg of Fear— Only lidless eyes are clear. Cobra-poison none may leech, Even so with Cobra-speech. Open talk shall call to thee Strength, whose mate is Courtesy. Send no lunge beyond thy length; Lend no rotten bough thy strength. Gauge thy gape with buck or goat, Lest thine eye should ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling

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

... also get the exact touch of 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 ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith

... dead list, and when he don't find any he makes a note of it; so, you see, havin' Dick's name down, an' not knowin' the full particulars, he hunted us up, thinkin' we was unsupplied in his line. So, you see, that's why he made sech a leech of ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... I am decidedly taken again; for my old nightmares have returned. Last night I felt somebody leaning on me who was sucking my life from between my lips with his mouth. Yes, he was sucking it out of my neck, like a leech would have done. Then he got up, satiated, and I woke up, so beaten, crushed and annihilated that I could not move. If this continues for a few days, I shall ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... curio-shops and to little native eating-houses. The Barringtons submitted, not because they liked Tanaka, but because they were good-natured, and rather lost in this new country. Besides, Tanaka clung like a leech and was useful in ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... died, when it appeared that in the jar containing the leeches, had been introduced, by accident, one of the venomous vermicular sangsues which are now and then found in the neighboring ponds. This creature fastened itself upon a small artery in the right temple. Its close resemblance to the medicinal leech caused the mistake to be ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... the nose present phenomena as interesting as wounds of this organ. Among the living objects which have been found in the nose may be mentioned flies, maggots, worms, leeches, centipedes, and even lizards. Zacutus Lusitanus tells of a person who died in two days from the effects of a leech which was inadvertently introduced into the nasal fossa, and there is a somewhat similar case of a military pharmacist, a member of the French army in Spain, who drank some water from a pitcher and exhibited, about a half hour afterward, a persistent hemorrhage from the nose. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... m'dear," he said with that funny, half-shy, half-inane laugh of his, "you see! when I found that that brute Chauvelin meant to stick to me like a leech, I thought the best thing I could do, as I could not shake him off, was to take him along with me. I had to get to Armand and the others somehow, and all the roads were patrolled, and every one on the look-out for your humble servant. I ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... ordered the 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 ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty

... further back and lower 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 ...
— The Conditions Of Existence As Affecting The Perpetuation Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley

... few and light, sport compulsory. Moral and health were excellent although the genial company of the leech-like post of active service—lice—began to irritate some few and to send creepy sensations down the spine of those who were still unblessed. The Duo scrubbed each other daily in—a biscuit tin ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq

... saith himself, "Ye weary, Come to me, and I will cheer ye;" Needless were the leech's skill To the souls that be ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther

... five miles away was the Rosan, and to the southward of her the Herring Bone with mean old Jed Martin aboard. Bijonah Tanner had tried his best to shake Martin, but the hard-fisted old skipper, knowing and recognizing Tanner's "nose" for fish, had clung like a leech and profited by the ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams

... was the first to systematically conduct the study of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in this country by making use of a carefully selected series of animals. His 'types' were the Rat, the Common Pigeon, the Frog, the Perch, the Crayfish, Blackbeetle, Anodon, Snail, Earthworm, Leech, Tapeworm. He had a series of dissections of these mounted, also loose dissections and elaborate manuscript descriptions. The student went through this series, dissecting fresh specimens for himself. After some ten years' experience ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... but you had Josepha on your hands!" replied Nucingen, "and that accounts for everything. Between ourselves, the Duc d'Herouville has done you a very good turn by removing that leech from sucking your purse dry. 'I have known what that is, and can pity your case,'" he quoted. "Take a friend's advice: Shut up shop, or ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... it 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

... strong arms of Malise and stood erect to listen for any renewal of the attack. The wise smith, whose skill as a leech was proverbial, carefully felt James Douglas all over in the darkness, and took advantage of every flicker of summer lightning to examine him as well ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... you don't see, that performs surprising revolutions. But you won't decline. You'll hang on to your two nice red-strapped axles and your new machine-moulded pinions like—a—like a leech on a lily stem! There's centuries of work in your old bones if you'd only apply yourself to it; and, mechanically, an overshot wheel with this head of water is about as efficient as ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... reminded me forcibly of the state of Mr. Briggs's household while the mason was carrying out the complex operations which began with the application of "a little compo." (I hope all my readers remember Mr. Briggs, whose adventures as told by the pencil of John Leech are not unworthy of comparison with those of Mr. Pickwick as related by Dickens.) Barring these unfortunate conditions, the hotel was commendable, and when in order would be a desirable place of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... Thomas Wiars passenger in the Emanuel, otherwise called the Busse of Bridgewater, wherein Iames Leech was Master, one of the ships in the last Voyage of Master Martin Frobisher 1578. concerning the discouerie of a great Island in their way homeward the 12. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... travel, and cared little for reading. His library consisted of his Bible, two or three small Divinity Handbooks, a Pickwick, Stonehenge on the Dog, and a couple of "Handley Cross" novels, with coloured illustrations by John Leech. Twice a year or thereabouts a letter reached him from his brother in Calcutta, who was apparently prospering, and had a wife and three children—though for some years the letters had brought ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... truly!' cried Yspaddaden; 'the iron pains me like the bite of a horse-leech. Cursed be the hearth whereon it was heated, and the smith ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... for Davis," he said. "Old Grab shall not have him this tack, nor the Foam neither. I'll throw him overboard before such a disgrace befall us or him. Well, this leech has driven us from the old road, and nothing now remains but to make the southern passage, unless the wind ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... sudden dashes and full stops. She would have rolled in the gravel if the boy's switch had ceased stinging her into motives for action, but she could not shake him off. He clung to her back like a little leech, and it began to look as if human will-power was going to conquer brute stubbornness, when suddenly a new idea seemed to enter the animal's head. Without a moment's warning, and utterly scorning the control of the bit which she had taken in her teeth, she swung round and at full gallop made ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... this at the time; nor, indeed, to any one else. But later he took it to a very private market of his own, 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 in him ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... davits. For we were drawn back from the pursuit of the strange boat by the creaking of the davits, and arrived at the Lancashire Queen just as the Italians were lowering their skiff. Another night, fully half a dozen skiffs rowed around us in the darkness, but we held on like a leech to the side of the ship and frustrated their plan till they grew angry and showered us with abuse. Charley laughed to himself in ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London

... swept the floor with a creepy rustle like the frou-frou of a brocaded spectre. She wore black silk mittens, and on either bony wrist a band of black velvet clasped with a large cameo set hideously in pale gold. Thus attired—a veritable caricature by Leech—this survival of a prehistoric age sat rigidly upright and mangled the reputations of all ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... guests right royally, and the land was full of friends and of strangers. He bade see to the sore wounded ones whose pride was brought low. To them that were skilled in leech craft they offered a rich fee of unweighed sliver and yellow gold, that they might heal the heroes of their wounds gotten in battle; the king sent also precious gifts to his guests. They that thought to ride home were bidden stay as friends. And the king ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown

... of Lobourne was the medical attendant, who, with head-shaking, and gathering of lips, and reminiscences of ancient arguments, guaranteed to do all that leech could do in the matter. The old doctor did admit that Richard's constitution was admirable, and answered to his prescriptions like a piano to the musician. "But," he said at a family consultation, for Sir Austin had told him how it stood with the young man, "drugs are not much ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... was always passing examinations and coming out top, and was consequently subjected herself, by an ambitious mother who was sure that she must be equally clever if she would only let herself go, to every examination that happened to be going for girls of her age; so that she and Miss Leech spent their days either on the defensive, preparing for these unprovoked assaults, or in the state of collapse which followed the regularly recurring defeat, and both found their lives a burden too ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... even younger when he came to our place," PAM whispered in DIZZY's ear, startling him as he inadvertently touched his cheek with the straw he still seems to hold in his teeth, as he did when JOHN LEECH ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 20, 1892 • Various

... writing, and would persuade the world, that what he writes is extempore wit, and written currente calamo. But I doubt not to shew, that though he would be thought to imitate the silk-worm, that spins its web from its own bowels, yet I shall make him appear like the leech, that lives upon the blood of other men, drawn from the gums; and, when he is rubbed with ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... was most strict, and even a small cut was sufficient to render a young man ineligible; a corn was considered as a blemish—and a young man even having been bled by a leech to save his life, lost him ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... are going through your blessed pockets and exploiting your holy dollars? No; you feel secure; "power is of the People," and you can effect a change of robbers every four years. Inestimable privilege—to pull off the glutted leech and attach the lean one! And you can not even choose among the lean leeches, but must accept those designated by the programmers and showmen who have the reptiles on tap! But then you are not "subjects;" you are "citizens"—there is much ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... Neptune weep for aye On thy low grave, on faults forgiven. Dead Is noble Timon, of whose memory Hereafter more. Bring me into your city, And I will use the olive with my sword; Make war breed peace, make peace stint war, make each Prescribe to other,as each other's leech. Let our ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]

... was a son of Bork the waxytoothed-blade, the son of Thorkell clubfoot, who took the land round about Threecorner as the first settler. His wife's name was Hallbera. The sons of Starkad and Hallbera were these: Thorgeir and Bork and Thorkell. Hildigunna the leech was their sister. ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous

... "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 can ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... Though June, the air is cold and chill; The mellow blackbird's voice is still. 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 ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous

... who breed leeches and apply them to patients, the name being derived from jonk, a leech. They were not separately classified at the census, but a few families of them are found in Burhanpur, and they marry among themselves, because no other Muhammadans will marry with them. In other parts of India leeches are kept and applied by sweepers and sometimes ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... nine thousand dollars the first year raising the Little Giant caper for boiled mutton. There certainly ought to be a law against such romantic trifling. In the first place, think of a Connecticut farmer abandoning anything worth money! Old Timmins comes from Connecticut. Any time that old leech abandons a thing, bookkeepers and all other parties will do well to ride right along with ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... Jocasta and forcing brandy between the white lips, while Elena bustled around the padre whose head she had been bathing. A basin of water, ruby red, was evidence of the fact that Padre Andreas was not in immediate need of the services of a leech. He sat with his bandaged head held in his hands, and shrank perceptibly when ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... approaching the sail from the direction of the mast. If you are sailing free on the port tack, with the boom at right angles to the mast on the starboard side, and you should steer your boat sufficiently to starboard, the wind would strike the sail at its outer edge or leech and throw the sail and boom violently over to the port side of the mast. This is called jibing and is a very dangerous thing; it should be carefully guarded against ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... found that, thanks to the snaffle bit, I could not pull him in, so when we came to a down grade he would usually put on steam. Then if there was a fence at the bottom and he checked at all, I was apt to shoot forward, and in such event we went over the fence in a way that reminded me of Leech's picture, in Punch, of Mr. Tom Noddy and his mare jumping a fence in the following order: Mr. Tom Noddy, I; his mare, II. However, I got in at the death ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... worn to protect the wearer from charms exercised by others. The "Leech Book" gives us one to be worn and another to be taken internally for this purpose. To be used "against every evil rune lay, and one full of elvish tricks, writ for the bewitched man, this writing in Greek letters: Alfa, Omega, Iesvm, BERONIKH. Again, another dust and drink against a ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... and twisted with all her splendid, lithe strength, but it was in vain. He clung like a leech, dragging her closer in spite of all she could do. She beat at his snarling face and the mouth out of which were whining things she fortunately did not understand. His yellow fangs were bare and saliva dripped ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... 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 grew a shade pale; ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay

... strangely mistaken. They were all possessed with the absurd notion that the Prince of Orange was a great man. No pains had been spared to undeceive them; but they were under an incurable delusion. They saw through a magnifying glass of such power that the leech appeared to them a leviathan. It ought to have occurred to Middleton that possibly the delusion might be in his own vision and not in theirs. Lewis and the counsellors who surrounded him were far indeed from loving William. But they did not hate him with that ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... stare, with life increasing, And leech-like eyebrows, arching in; Be, if ye must, my fate unceasing, But never hope ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... Indian Agent at Sault Ste. Marie, to visit the Indians of the Northwest, and, when advisable, to make treaties with them. They had a guard of soldiers, a physician, an interpreter, and the Rev. William T. Boutwell, a missionary at Leech Lake. They were supplied with a large outfit of provisions, tobacco and trinkets, which were conveyed in a bateau. They travelled in several large bark canoes. They went to Fond du Lac, thence up the St. Louis river, portaged round the falls, thence to the nearest point to Sandy lake, ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... stairway, she burst upon him from the ambush of some exotic shrub to demand which way he had thought of going. He had never thought of a way that did not prove to have been her own. The creature was a leech! If she had only talked, he believed that he could have thrown her off. But she would not talk. She merely walked beside him insatiably. Sometimes he thought he could detect a faint anxiety in the look she kept upon ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... Lilias, (speaking of them with due respect,) nor my silver hair, or golden chain, that will fill up the void which Roland Graeme must needs leave in our Lady's leisure. There will be a learned young divine with some new doctrine—a learned leech with some new drug—a bold cavalier, who will not be refused the favour of wearing her colours at a running at the ring—a cunning harper that could harp the heart out of woman's breast, as they say Signer David Rizzio did to our poor Queen;—these are the sort of folk who supply the loss of a ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... of a three-year old male. No 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 ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... physicion" recognized diabolic intervention were: first, the preternatural appearance of the disease from which the patient was suffering; and, secondly, the inefficacy of the remedies applied. In other words, if the leech encountered any disease the symptoms of which were unknown to him, or if, through some unforeseen circumstances, the drug he prescribed failed to operate in its accustomed manner, a case of demoniacal possession was considered to ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... 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 ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James

... ill-wishers would have it that his birthplace had been behind a foss, and that he had the blood of dwarves in him. Yet though he made sport for the company, he had respect from them, for he was wise in many things, a skilled leech, a maker of runes, and a crafty builder of ships. He was a master hand at riddles, and for hours the housecarles would puzzle their wits over his efforts. This was the manner of them. "Who," Leif would ask, "are the merry maids that glide above the land ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... perpetrate, and almost vie with the performances of the sweep. When "the cocks are crowing a merry 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 ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... on Dr. Brunton as a leech or mosquito fastens on fresh blood: this was an entirely new listener, and he felt free to tell his very oldest stories without a lurking suspicion that he had told them before. And Dr. Brunton enjoyed the evening, even ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... against travel in general and this phase of it in particular. Jessica in the "still small hours" was never really gay. It was dimly comforting to one of my companionable nature to turn from her to the little old woman opposite me. In figure and dress she might have posed for one of Leech's drawings of ancient dames, so quaintly prim was she, so precise in their folds were her little black mantle and her simple black gown, so effective a frame to her wrinkled face was the wide black bonnet she wore. On her hands, demurely crossed in her lap, were black lace mitts. Moreover, ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... 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

... men is not an appetite, but a fever. In them it is the craving of the tiger for blood. Gorged and glutted with riches, their millions piled into the hundreds, masters of the revenues of empires, still they are as the daughters of the horse-leech. ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... ecstacy through the sacred grove and read the will of the Gods when the mystic tablets and rune-carved lots were cast—all these, if the will were bad, if the soothsayer passed into the false prophetess, the leech into a poisoner, and the priestess into a witch, were as potent and terrible for ill as they had once been powerful for good. In all the Indo-European tribes, therefore, women, and especially old women, have practised witchcraft from the earliest times, and Christianity ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... are the goddesses? Har answered: Frigg is the first; she possesses the right lordly dwelling which is called Fensaler. The second is Saga, who dwells in Sokvabek, and this is a large dwelling. The third is Eir, who is the best leech. The fourth is Gefjun, who is a may, and those who die maids become her hand-maidens. The fifth is Fulla, who is also a may, she wears her hair flowing and has a golden ribbon about her head; she carries Frigg's ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre

... There is a poor widow there—a Mrs. Rannock—who took me in. They killed her husband in November. I am striving to repay her for the food and shelter she affords me. I have been given mending and washing at the fort. You see I am no leech to fasten on a body and nourish me for nothing. So I do what I am able. Will you come to me ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... his foot out of the hammock, 'see how these imps have been drawing my life's blood.' On examining his foot, I found the vampire had tapped his great toe. There was a wound somewhat less than that made by a leech. The blood was still oozing from it, and I conjectured he might have lost from ten to twelve ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... 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 gradually, like ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... were then again 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 before the ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty

... been confined in this country to the richer class of smokers, but when he wrote it was "in universal use." The wonder is that with so many men smoking cigars the old domestic and club restrictions, as pilloried in Thackeray's pages, were maintained so long. In 1853 Leech had an admirably drawn sketch in Punch of paterfamilias, in the absence of his wife, giving a little dinner. Beside him sits his small son, and on either side of the table sit two of his cronies. One has a cigar in his hand and is blowing a cloud of smoke, while the other is selecting ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... wild suspicion intruded on my fevered brain that this leech was no other than Basil Bainrothe himself, disguised for his own dark purposes; but the tall, square, high-shouldered form that rose before me to depart (taller, by half a head, than the man I suspected of this fresh deception), and ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... detestable assassins" and "merciless tyrants and despots." Palmerston, who expressed himself as "extremely flattered and highly gratified" by the references to himself, did not in terms reprehend the language used of the two Sovereigns, and added, in a phrase immortalised by Leech's cartoon, that "a good deal of judicious bottle-holding was obliged ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... tenacity, toughness; stickiness &c 352; inseparability, inseparableness; 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^; cement, lute, paste, gum; solder, weld; cake, consolidate &c (solidify) 321; agglomerate. Adj. cohesive, adhesive, adhering, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... those which are marked on the print; I place confidence in those I have received direct from the fountain-head; the difference is, however, so trifling, as scarce to need any notice. I regret omitting to obtain the length of the after-leech of the mainsail, and of the head of the jib; but I think the print, which I believe to be very accurate, would justify me in concluding that the former is about 110 feet and the latter ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... thousand pounds, against the Pennsylvanian Anthracite Coal Corporation, Limited. The sum he might raise on the policies of insurance would about cover these bills; and, simultaneously with their withdrawal, fresh bills might be floated, and the horse-leech cry of the brokers for contango might be satisfied until there came a reaction in the City, and the turning tide should float him into some harbour of safety. Beyond this harbour shone a splendid beacon, the dead girl's inheritance—his, ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... Whitefeathers, and gave the power to Wind-Rush, who was the worst nest-plunderer and robber that could be imagined—if his wife, Wind-Air, wasn't worse still. Under their government the crows had begun to lead such a life that now they were more feared than pigeon-hawks and leech-owls. ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... two together. I shipped him off to Australia when I came into the title. He has come back. Lately, I can tell you, he has pretty well drained me dry. He has become a regular parasite a cold-blooded leech. He doesn't get drunk now. He looks after his health. I believe he even saves his, money. There's scarcely a week I don't hear from him. He keeps me a pauper. He has brought me at last to that state when I feel that there must ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... gentleman, motioned him to a seat between us, and then uncovering my limb, desired him to examine it. The leech gazed intently from me to Toby, and then proceeded to business. After diligently observing the ailing member, he commenced manipulating it; and on the supposition probably that the complaint had deprived the leg of all sensation, began to pinch ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... besotted no less than ever by his wife's leech-like family. Thou knowest my appointment to the government of Ireland; Isabel, like myself, cannot endure the subordinate vassalage we must brook at the court, with the queen's cold looks and sour words. Thou knowest, also, with what vain pretexts Edward has put me of; and now, this very day, he ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... ailments. Very slowly and 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

... rather than he shall want diseases, he'll beget them. His especial practice (as I said before) is upon women; labours to make their minds sick, ere their bodies feel it, and then there's work for the dog-leech. He pretends the cure of madmen; and sure he gets most by them, for no man in his perfect wit would meddle with him. Lastly, he is such a juggler with urinals, so dangerously unskilful, that if ever the city will have recourse to him for diseases that need purgation, let ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... is particularly useful in cases of punctured and lacerated wounds from various instruments, such as needles, nails, hooks, bayonets, saws, &c. and in the bites of animals, leech-bites, stings of insects, &c. In considerable lacerations the same objection would exist to this treatment as ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom

... come and disturb the living, sucking their blood, appearing to them, making a racket at their doors, and in their houses, and lastly, often causing their death. They are named vampires, or oupires, which signifies, they say, in Sclavonic, a leech. The only way to be delivered from their haunting, is to disinter them, cut off their head, impale them, burn them, or pierce ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... 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, ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... that was Topper's feelings with regard to rats. Edwards did not enjoy the spectacle quite as much as he felt that he ought. Besides, he was engaged in desperate efforts to light his cigar. Match after match did he burn, sucking away all the time like a leech, but no ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough

... could be brought about, the land of Ochterhall was sold for much below its value, and the money paid over to our leech and sent by some private carriage into France. And now here was all the man's business brought to a successful head, and his pockets once more bulging with our gold; and yet the point for which we had consented to this sacrifice ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... And all done not only without a murmur, but with cheerfulness and thankfulness to God that their condition was no worse. I have heard hopeful accents from the plodding charwoman, that have made me ashamed, as Wordsworth stood rebuked before the 'leech-gatherer, upon the lonely moor.' Let England look to it. These women, mothers of men, are abandoning her shores for foreign lands. When good and dutiful children desert the maternal home, what provocation must they have ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... to and again close a-head of them as they rode at anchor, raking them as we 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 ships plied ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... nothing at all to the professed naturalist. From what I have seen of him at a distance, I should say that he was about the bigness of a grampus. He is very savage—a sort of Feegee fish. He sometimes takes the great Folio whales by the lip, and hangs there like a leech, till the mighty brute is worried to death. The Killer is never hunted. I never heard what sort of oil he has. Exception might be taken to the name bestowed upon this whale, on the ground of its indistinctness. For we are all killers, on land and on ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... gazed dreamily at the cartridge paper on the wall. "This town," said he, "is a leech. It drains the blood of the country. Whoever comes to it accepts a challenge to a duel. Abandoning the figure of the leech, it is a juggernaut, a Moloch, a monster to which the innocence, the genius, ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... to a tedious old Mumpsiman that kept himself and her in little ease by plying the trade of a horse-leech, which trade, for the girl's felicity, held him much abroad, and gave her occasion, seldom by her neglected, to prove to her intimate of the hour that there can be fire without smoke. Now I, being somewhat ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... up 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 to drown ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... evident that he is mad, and like a bear that has burst through the gates closing his den, this unmerciful rehearser chases the learned and unlearned. And whomsoever he seizes, he fastens on and assassinates with recitation: a leech that will not quit the skin, till ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... by the pumps, and Dr Nettleby, with Mr Macgilpin and Mr Leech, the two assistant-surgeons, had all the contents of their surgical cases—most murderous-looking instruments they were, too—spread out on the wardroom and gunroom tables, as well as plenty of lint and bandages for dressing; while Corporal ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... consequence; much worse than he deserves. Leopold had stuff in him too. He died, for example, in this manner: falling with his horse, I think in some siege or other, he had got his leg hurt; which hindered him in fighting. Leg could not be cured: "Cut it off, then!" said Leopold. This also the leech could not do; durst not, and would not; so that Leopold was come quite to a halt. Leopold ordered out two squires; put his thigh upon a block the sharp edge of an axe at the right point across his thigh: ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle

... even the weight of the bed clothes. But all through that weary time his fortitude never gave way, and the vein of humor which had stood him in such good stead all his life did not fail him even now. On the Monday when he was suffering torments, they tried the application of leeches. One leech escaped, and they had a great hunt for it, Raeburn astonishing them all by coming out with one of his quaint flashes of wit and positively making them laugh in spite of ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... that there would be no irksome delay attending his official discharge. When he walked out a "free man," as he called it, a gentlemanly pension attorney locked arms with him, and hung on like a leech, until the irritated soldier shook him off with less consideration ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... a key, and as he did so a sharp sting, hardly worse than a leech's bite, pricked Ronald Wyde's breast. A sense of languor crept slowly upon him, his feet tingled, his breath came slowly, and waves of light and shade pulsed in indistinct alternation before his sight; but through them the old man's eyes peered into his, like a dream. Presently ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... there came on a squall with rain, which almost blinded us; the sail was taken in very neatly, the clew-lines, chock-a-block, bunt-lines and leech-lines well up, reef-tackles overhauled, rolling-tackles taut, and all as it should be. The men lied out on the yard, the squall wore worse and worse, but they were handing in the leech of the sail, when snap went one bunt-line, then the other; the sail flapped and ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... final dash in a tightening spiral, its detector screen flickering on and off. It struck the battleship at a matched speed, with a thump and ringing of metal as the magnetic grapples fastened the cruiser like a leech to ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin

... named, as I think, in the Travels of Sir John Maundeville. This city of Damascus is very great, and there be about the same so fair gardens as I never did see at any other place; moreover, Saint Paul here dwelt, and was a leech. [See Note 2.] Also I give you to wit, good lady, that I look by our Lord's help, to go on to the holy city of Jerusalem, the which is from here five days' journey. And I send you herein a fine piece of baudekyn, the bravest I could see, the which I bought in the market at Byzantium, to make ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt

... to resist the word of Rome, whilst yet one Roman draws his breath. You have acted lightly, and by reason of vanity have wrought mischief to us who are the front and avengers of the world. You resemble a blind man, whose eyes the leech prepares to open. You know not yet, but very soon you will have learned, the presumption of him who teaches law to the justice of Rome. It is not enough to say that you have acted after your kind, and sinned according to your nature. Know you not whom you ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace

... great numbers, presentation copies of Dickens' books, given to his friends, and autographs and portraits of his contemporaries, as well as the original sketches of illustrations to the various works by Seymour, "Phiz," Cruikshank, Stone, Leech, Barnard, and Pailthorpe, not forgetting a reference to the excellent work of our own Darley, and latterly ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... The afternoon of the next saw them at it yet. Twice the crew of the Swedish frigate had thrown down their arms, refusing to fight any more. Vainly the vessel had tried to get away; the Dane hung to it like a leech. In the afternoon of the second day Wessel was informed that his powder had given out. He had a boat sent out with a herald, who presented to Captain Bactman his regrets that he had to quit for lack of powder, but would he come aboard and ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... and I do not wonder; but for your own sake, in order to keep your mind clear and strong for your vindication, you certainly ought to take care of your health. Starvation is the surest leech for depleting soul and body. Do you want to die here in prison, leaving your name tarnished, and smirched with suspicion of crime, when you can live to proclaim your innocence to the world? Remember that even if you care nothing for your life, you owe something to your mother. You ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... The men of the south have a saying, 'Unless he is stable a man will make neither a wizard nor a leech.' This is true. 'His instability of mind may ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius

... truth. Our native modesty and bursting heart caused our drooping eyes once more to scan the ground, and, next to the ground, the wretched Bluchers. But, joy of joys! we saw them all! ay, all!—all—from the seam in the sides to the leech-like fat cotton-ties. We counted the six lace-holes; we examined the texture of the stockings above, "curious three-thread"—we gloated over the trousers uncontaminated by straps, we hugged ourselves in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... you'll be away, Jack?" demanded the other casually as if it was really a matter of but little moment to him what the answer might be, since he could be depended on to hold to their booty with the tenacity of a leech. ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... condition in which, as Gilbert says, "A superfluous humor is abundant in the superficies of the lung, which compresses that organ and renders it unable to dilate in inspiration. Hence it labors in inspiration like a leech, from which the dyspnea ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson

... Cotter's Saturday Night of Burns is, in its own humble way, as quietly beautiful, as simplex munditiis, as the scenes of Tell. No other has even approached them; though some gifted persons have attempted it. Mr. Wordsworth is no ordinary man; nor are his pedlars, and leech-gatherers, and dalesmen, without their attractions and their moral; but they sink into whining drivellers beside Roesselmann the Priest, Ulric the Smith, Hans of the Wall, and the other sturdy confederates ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... mad, blind, despised and dying king,— Princes the dregs of their dull race who flow Through public scorn, mud from a muddy spring,— Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, But leech-like to their fainting country cling, Till they drop blind in blood without a blow,— A people starved and stabbed in unfilled field,— An army which liberticide and prey Make as a two-edged sword to all who wield,— Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran

... and departed to the surgery, catching sight of the coat-tails of Mr. Bitterworth's servant leaving it. Master Cheese was seated with the leech basin before him. It was filled with Orleans plums, of which he was eating with uncommon satisfaction. Liking variations of flavour in fruit, he occasionally diversified the plums with a sour codlin apple, a dozen or so of which he had stowed ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... 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 ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin

... bold, then by the doubtful, and lastly by the timid, the clatter soon made the circuit of the tables. Some were shocked, however, as the Colonel had feared they would be, at the want of the customary invocation. Widow Leech, a kind of relation, who had to be invited, and who came with her old, back-country-looking string of gold beads round her neck, seemed to feel very ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... Well,' 'The Brothers,' 'Michael,' which, with others of the same order, written in Germany, appeared in the second volume of 'Lyrical Ballads.' And after these two volumes had gone forth, Grasmere still gave more of the same high order,—'The Daffodils,' 'The Leech-Gatherer,' and above all the 'Ode on Immortality.' It was too the conclusion of the 'Prelude,' and the beginning of the 'Excursion.' So that it may be said that those Grasmere years, from 1800 to 1807, ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... will find you out,'" mused the young man; "and having found you, be sure that it will stick to you like a leech, if your sin takes the shape of an unprincipled acquaintance, as it does in my case. I may try my hardest to cut the past, but will Horatio Paget let me alone in the future? I doubt it. The bent of that man's genius shows itself in ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... leech used for medical purposes is called the hirudo medicinalis to distinguish it from other varieties, such as the horse-leech and the Lisbon leech. It varies from two to four inches in length, and ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... addressed primarily to adults. Indeed, the effort to make this chronicle even representative, much less exhaustive, breaks down in the fifties, when so much good yet not very exhilarating material is to be found in every publisher's list. John Leech in "The Silver Swan" of Mdme. de Chatelaine; Charles Keene in "The Adventures of Dick Bolero" (Darton, no date), and "Robinson Crusoe" (drawn upon for illustration here), and others of the Punch artists, should find their works duly catalogued even in this ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White

... most interesting in themselves, and at the same time most conducive to a display of those peculiar powers for which my friend was famous. As I turn over the pages, I see my notes upon the repulsive story of the red leech and the terrible death of Crosby, the banker. Here also I find an account of the Addleton tragedy, and the singular contents of the ancient British barrow. The famous Smith-Mortimer succession case comes also within this period, and so does the tracking and arrest of Huret, the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Sexually mature whilst still in the larval stage. Neorhynchus clavaeceps in Cyprinus carpio has its larval form in the larva of Sialis lularia and in the leech Nephelis octcculii: tact K. agilis is found in Mugil auratus and M. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... feebly, but pressing with weak fingers Godolphin's hand—"well, the game is up, the lights are going out, and presently the last guest will depart, and all be darkness!" here the doctor came to the bedside with a cordial. The dying man, before he took it, fixed upon the leech an eye which, although fast glazing, still retained something of ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... 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 of an inch long. They rarely go beyond the air and food passages, generally ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek



Words linked to "Leech" :   Hirudinea, bloodsucker, segmented worm, sponger, bleed, annelid worm, Hirudo medicinalis, sponge, parasite, care for, hirudinean, annelid, follower, leech onto, horseleech



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