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Leech

noun
1.
Carnivorous or bloodsucking aquatic or terrestrial worms typically having a sucker at each end.  Synonyms: bloodsucker, hirudinean.
2.
A follower who hangs around a host (without benefit to the host) in hope of gain or advantage.  Synonyms: parasite, sponge, sponger.



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"Leech" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... 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 ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... years, leech-like, Martin, sinking lower and lower all the time, continued his adhesion to the lawyer, abstracting continually, but in gradually diminishing sums, the money needed for natural life and sensual indulgence, until often his demands went not above a dollar. Grind, reluctantly as he yielded to these ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur

... shown to seats. Before the psalm ended, an old man came in and stood by the door—a poor man in mean garments, with the air of a beggar who had contrived to give himself a Sunday look. Perhaps he had come hoping to find it warmer in church than at home. There he stood, motionless as the leech-gatherer, leaning on his stick, disregarded of men—it may have been only by innocent accident, I do not know. But just ere the minister must rise for the first prayer, he saw Gibbie, who had heard a feeble cough, cast a glance round, rise as swiftly as noiselessly, open ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... 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 ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... pure English blood (if leech or lancet can furnish us with the precise product) did not declare itself predominantly in the party at present assembled. Miller, the broad man, an exceptional second-hand bookseller who knew the insides of books, had at least ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... gentlemen were about concluding to alight where they were, when Mr. Middleton was heard calling out, "Ho, thar, driver, don't run agin that ar ox-cart; turn a leetle to the right, can't ye? Now be keerful and not run afoul of the plaguey lye leech. I b'lieve the niggers would move the hut, Josh and all, into the yard, if they could only make ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes

... to threaten me, a loyal Englishman, you false priest and foreign traitor," he shouted, "whom all men know to be in the pay of Spain, and using the cover of a monk's dress to plot against the land on which you fatten like a horse-leech? Why was John Foterell murdered in the forest two nights gone? You won't answer? Then I will. Because he rode to Court to prove the truth about you and your treachery, and therefore you butchered him. Why do you claim my wife as your ward? Because you wish to steal her lands ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... A skilful 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, ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... back: "We're talking business, Eleanor. I'll send him up in a quarter of an hour. Don't lose your beauty sleep, my dear. (Mary must tell her not to be such an idiot!)" Then he looked at Maurice: "My boy, you can't be decent with a leech. You've got to leave ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... to bury his chagrin beneath the flowers of his German philosophy; but a week later he grew so yellow that Mme. Cibot exerted her ingenuity to call in the parish doctor. The leech had fears of icterus, and left Mme. Cibot frightened half out of her wits by the Latin word for an ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... His 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 know someone ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... 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 back ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour

... slept, 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 Suetonius ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... 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 having agreed to be waiting ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... 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

... the barricade, he had been left in possession of it. He was still in the same posture, with his breast bent over the table, his head lying flat on his arms, surrounded by glasses, beer-jugs and bottles. His was the overwhelming slumber of the torpid bear and the satiated leech. Nothing had had any effect upon it, neither the fusillade, nor the cannon-balls, nor the grape-shot which had made its way through the window into the room where he was. Nor the tremendous uproar of the assault. He merely replied to the cannonade, now and then, by a snore. He ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... Father Carheil!" I began, with a sorry show of dignity, while my palm stuck like a leech against his lips. "This ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... Boteler, who commanded the prisoner to be conveyed 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? Where is ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

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

... 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

... consequence. If suspicion conjectured aright, and they opened the proper grave, the body of the vampire would be found perfectly fresh and plump, sometimes indeed of rather florid complexion;—with grown hair, eyes half open, and the stains of recent blood about its greedy, leech-like lips. Nothing remained but to consume the corpse to ashes, upon which the vampire would show itself no more. But what added infinitely to the horror was the certainty that whoever died from ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... 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 the only portage (except ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray

... 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 by the ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur

... in very truth, already "himself in bonds under Philistian yoke." Alas, alas, it is very hard to break asunder the bonds of the latter-day Philistines. When a Samson does now and then pull a temple down about their ears, is he not sure to be engulfed in the ruin with them? There is no horse-leech that sticks so fast as your ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... me of a pestilent Fever, with Simples, when I was a little Child, and our Leech had given me Over, nor did he Bleed me once. Now Shooba's Back was Bleeding, and I might not ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... "if you mean our priests and spiritual writers, it is because they study it. We believe in the science of the soul; and we consult our spiritual guides for our soul's health, as the leech for our ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... 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 Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... look into this interesting document from the fact that the pen of the exquisite E.V. Lucas has but lately inspired itself at the same source. This was for a paper of Thackerayana which concluded, after reference to the death of Leech, Thackeray's friend: "On November 7th (1864) Leech's successor, George du Maurier, took his seat at the Table, and so the ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood

... across the front pages in glaring type—even the most stately journals, for the nonce aroused out of their dignified calm, indulging in "display" headlines that, quite apart from the mere text, could not but have startled their equally stately and dignified readers. The Gray Seal, the leech that fed upon society, the murderer, the thief, the menace to the lives and property of law-abiding citizens, the scourge that for years New York had combated in the no more effective fashion than that of ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... been reckoned a crack ship of her class in the British navy, and her crew was in admirable training. From her quarter-deck and forecastle groups of officers and seamen were watching the on-coming of the American frigate. One of the powder monkeys, named Samuel Leech, of the British ship, told graphically and simply the story of that day's ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... how you feel, 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 have ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... a leech, Not him who stanched my husband, but another We have no time: send for a leech, I say: There is an antidote against each poison, And he will sell it if we give him money. Tell him that I will give him Padua, For one short hour of life: I will not die. Oh, I am sick to death; no, do not touch me, ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde

... the lady's feet and pulled off the leech and held it up against his hollow palm, gorged with the blood of the ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... here; as I was turning over this bit of flat tile I saw in the water I found a creature something like a leech, and on raising it up I saw what looks like a quantity of the animal's eggs, and she seems to be sitting upon them as a hen upon her eggs." All right, Jack; let me look, I dare say it is one of the snail-leeches. Yes, to be sure it is, and here are the eggs which the creature carefully covers with ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton

... Kidlaw Leech, but most of my friends call me Kiddy for short. I came from—er—New York, but I have been up to Fairview and other places looking for work. Yesterday I started to walk to the next town, but I reckon I got lost on the road, ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill

... so embarrassed myself, that my whole attention was engaged in contriving excuses, and raising small sums to quiet such as words would no longer mollify. It cost me eighty pounds in presents to Mr. Leech the attorney, for his forbearance of one hundred, which he solicited me to take when I had no need. I was perpetually harassed with importunate demands, and insulted by wretches, who a few months before would not have dared to raise their eyes from the dust before me. I lived ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... 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

... Italian organ-grinder, let him remain there; but don't let him emerge thence to worry and drive to distraction authors, composers, musicians, artists, and invalids. It was mainly the organ-grinding nuisance that killed JOHN LEECH. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various

... horse a little above his hoofs, who was grazing in a morass, and which did not lose their hold when he moved about. The bare-legged travellers in Ceylon are said to be much infested by leeches; and the sea-leech, hirudo muricata, is said to adhere to fish, and the remora is said to adhere to ships in such numbers as to ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... up a penny now and then;" Janet pursed her pretty mouth and set her head sideways. "I made enough to pay Susan Jane for last week and this. Susan's an old leech, Cap'n Billy. It's simply awful to see her greed in money matters. Sitting in her chair, she can manage to want more, strive to get more, and make more fuss about it, than any other woman on the mainland. You have to live with Susan Jane to appreciate her. Oh! poor Davy. We never really knew ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock

... merely ludicrous to intrude, and to insist on being attended to, and expressed: it is perhaps too much the way with all of us now-a-days, to be forever joking. Mr. Punch, to whom we take off our hats, grateful for his innocent and honest fun, especially in his Leech, leads the way; and our two great novelists, Thackeray and Dickens, the first especially, are, in the deepest and highest sense, essentially humorists,—the best, nay, indeed the almost only good thing in the latter, being his broad and wild fun; Swiveller, and the Dodger, and Sam Weller, and ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... 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 ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... ascent from Gampola to Adam's Peak, he speaks of the monkeys with beards like a man (Presbytes ursinus, or P. cephalopterus), and of the "fierce leech," which lurks in the trees and damp grass, and springs on the passers by. He describes the trees with leaves that never fall, and the "red roses" of the rhododendrons which still characterise that lofty region. At the foot of the last ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... 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

... 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 I saw and heard not. The word came ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts

... 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 bringing out the human side of science, and giving to seemingly dry ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... 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 ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch

... 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 ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... of goods. Open it now and you will 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 ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... 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

... given way, her larboard main-topmast studding-sail boom-iron had hooked on to the leech rope of our main-topsail, and was producing so powerful a strain on the mast that it seemed as if it could not possibly stand a minute longer. Seeing this, a brave fellow named Burgess, a maintop man, sprang aloft, and, in spite of the bullets aimed at him by some ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston

... body a crime, and carried its precautions so far that, quite till the Reformation, the art of healing (as Paracelsus declares) was chiefly in the hands of witches and public executioners. Torturers, chiefly clergymen such as Grillandus, were in great honour, while the healing leech was disreputable. It was not, as people say, "the age" which caused all this—it was the result of religion based on crucifixion and martyrdoms and pain—in fact, on that element of torture which we are elsewhere taught, most inconsistently, is the special province of the devil in hell. The cant ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... and the whole condition of things 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... praise of good men be his! In real life, and, I trust, even in my imagination, I honour a virtuous and wise man, without reference to the presence or absence of artificial advantages. Whether in the person of an armed baron, a laurelled bard, or of an old Pedlar, or still older Leech-gatherer, the same qualities of head and heart must claim the same reverence. And even in poetry I am not conscious, that I have ever suffered my feelings to be disturbed or offended by any thoughts or images, which the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... of this book, now very rare, appeared in 1845. It was illustrated by Alfred Henry Forrester (Alfred Crowquill). In the subsequent editions drawings by Richard Doyle and John Leech, in a kindred spirit of fanciful extravagance, were added, and helped materially towards the attractions of the volume. Its popularity surpassed the utmost expectations of the authors. To them not the least pleasant ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... of the ship collapsed and shrivelled into massive festoons to the hauling of the crew upon the clew-garnets, buntlines, and leech-lines, preparatory to backing the maintopsail, we too shortened sail in readiness to heave-to at the same moment as the prize; and five minutes later I found myself, with my sword drawn and a dozen stout fellows, armed to the ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood

... Zeus, which Polydamna, the wife of Thon, had given her, a woman of Egypt, where earth the grain-giver yields herbs in greatest plenty, many that are healing in the cup, and many baneful. There each man is a leech skilled beyond all human kind; yea, for they are of the race of Paeeon. Now after she had cast in the drug and bidden pour forth of the wine, she made answer once again, ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.

... tale has won its way to the well-merited distinction of a 'Popular Edition,' embellished with a characteristic frontispiece from the telling pencil of John Leech. We can read it again and again with fresh ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous

... incidents, and prepared for them, had suffered no harm themselves. A wigwam was erected almost in an instant, where Edward was deposited on a couch of heather. The surgeon, or he who assumed the office, appeared to unite the characters of a leech and a conjuror. He was an old smoke-dried Highlander, wearing a venerable grey beard, and having for his sole garment a tartan frock, the skirts of which descended to the knee, and, being undivided in front, made the vestment serve at once for doublet and breeches. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... plethoric customer entered the shop, and I caught fright or snatched relief even from the weight of a footfall or the size of a shadow in my doorway. A dozen times in intervals of leisure I reached down the bottle from its shelf and studied my one remaining leech. A horrible suspicion possessed me that the little brute was dead. He remained at any rate completely torpid, though I coaxed him almost in agony to show some sign of life. Obviously the bottle contained nothing to nourish him; to offer him my own blood would ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... came in 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 ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... a ca, so, from the Wohenhoffens' point of view, do the barber and the horse-leech. In this house, the Aristocracy of Talent ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various

... feed in such a place, And run about untied, Was proof itself of some disease, As all the books decide. "I have, good Doctor, if you please," Replied the horse, "as I presume, Beneath my foot, an aposthume." "My son," replied the learned leech, "That part, as all our authors teach, Is strikingly susceptible Of ills which make acceptable What you may also have from me— The aid of skilful surgery." The fellow, with this talk sublime, Watch'd for a ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... ill, the king's own leech prescribes for him, and the chief priests repair daily to his palace to pray for his safe deliverance, and sprinkle him with consecrated waters and anoint him with consecrated oils. Should he die, all Siam is bereaved, and the nation, as one man, goes into mourning for him. But his ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... things' my mind was now so turned, that it lay like a horse leech at the vein, still crying out, Give, give (Prov 30:15); yea, it was so fixed on eternity, and on the things about the kingdom of heaven, that is, so far as I knew, though as yet, God knows, I knew but little; that neither ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... out, but his father felt that he had more need to go to school than to sea; so he refused, and Fred, after sighing very deeply once or twice, gave in with a good grace. Buzzby, too, who stuck to his old commander like a leech, was equally anxious to go; but Buzzby, in a sudden and unaccountable fit of tenderness, had, just two months before, married a wife, who might be appropriately described as "fat, fair, and forty," and Buzzby's wife ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... the teeth. Tight eyelids and tight lips give a strange refinement, and, at the same time, an air of mystery, a somewhat sinister seductiveness; they seem to take, but not to give. The mouth with a kind of childish pout, looks as if it could bite or suck like a leech. The complexion is dazzlingly fair, the perfect transparent rosette lily of a red-haired beauty; the head, with hair elaborately curled and plaited close to it, and adorned with pearls, sits like that of the antique Arethusa on a long, supple, swan-like neck. A curious, at first rather conventional, ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... long since my knife is rusting in my pouch waiting for thy tender flesh.' 'Och!' said I, 'it's not much thou wilt be bettered by me, though thou shouldst tear me asunder; I will make but one meal for thee. But I see that thou art one-eyed. I am a good leech, and I will give thee the sight of the other eye.' The Giant went and he drew the great caldron on the site of the fire. I was telling him how he should heat the water, so that I should give its sight to the other eye. I got leather and I made a rubber of it, and I set him upright in the caldron. ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce

... fighting 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

... its third quarter, but it was near midnight and the valley of the Nile between the distant highlands to the east and west was in soft light. On the eastern side of the river there was only a feeble glimmer from a window where some chanting leech stood by a bedside, or where a feast was still on. But under the luster of the waning moon Thebes lost its outlines and became a city of marbles and shadows ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... of fact, the wilderness provides but few real perils, and in a hammock one is safely removed from these. One lies in a stratum above all damp and chill of the ground, beyond the reach of crawling tick and looping leech; and with an enveloping mosquitaro, or mosquito shirt, as the Venezuelans call it, one is fortified even in the worst haunts of these most disturbing of ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... decree; While 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

... terriblest folks dat ever crossed my path. Who dey was I ain't never know'd, but dey took Alex Leech to Black's Ford on Bullet Creek and killed him for being a radical. It was three weeks befo' his folks got hold ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... of the paynims' cannonballs has carried off both my legs below the knee. The leech has been searing the wounds with a hot iron, and says that he thinks I shall get over it; but if so I fear that my fighting days are past, unless, indeed, I fight seated on a chair. However, I ought not to grumble. I have lost many brave comrades, and others are wounded more sorely ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty

... example being followed first by the 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... for the day Through lofty gratings found its way, And rude and antique garniture Decked the sad walls and oaken floor, Such as the rugged days of old Deemed fit for captive noble's hold. 'Here,' said De Brent, 'thou mayst remain Till the Leech visit him again. Strict is his charge, the warders tell, To tend the noble prisoner well.' Retiring then the bolt he drew, And the lock's murmurs growled anew. Roused at the sound, from lowly bed ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... said. "I know him too well. He is like a leech. He has given you time to reflect and therefore regret your action of the other night. Go down and ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... find 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 ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... (branch-) 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

... a maid with a cheek like a peach, like a peach, That is waiting for you in the church;— But he clings to your side like a leech, like a leech, And you leave your lost bride ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... leech (so God him speed) They said had wrought this blessed deed, This leech Arbuthnot was yclept, Who many a night not once had slept; But watch'd our gracious Sov'reign still: For who could rest when she was ill? O may'st thou henceforth sweetly ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... finest gold, and the best that he had. But when Mary went into Egypt she lost all the gifts of the three Kings by the way, bound all in one cloth together. And it happened there was a shepherd who had so great an infirmity that no leech might heal him, and all that he had he paid to the leeches to be whole,—yet it might not be. But, on a time, as he went into the fields with his sheep, he found these thirty gilt pennies, with incense and myrrh, bound all in a cloth together, ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... quick to fly, he bitter to recite! What hapless soul he seizes, he holds fast; Rants, and repeats, and reads him dead at last: Hangs on him, ne'er to quit, with ceaseless speech. Till gorg'd and full of blood, a very Leech! ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace

... however famous may be the men who go forth from the new ground which Sutton's famous foundation occupies, it must derive a great part of its fame for a long time to come from the place which sent out into the world Addison, Steele, Thirlwall, Grote, Leech and Thackeray, not to mention a host of names of those who in arms and arts have done credit to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... 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 Macan, with ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... like quality and spirit,—'Hartleap 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, mark the period when Wordsworth's genius was in its zenith. During all this time, sister Dorothy ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... 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. ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit

... to shew himself matter of the art of swift writing, and would persuade the world that what he writes is extempore wit, currente calamo. But I doubt not to shew that tho' he would be thought to imitate the silk worm that spins its webb from its own bowels, yet I shall make him appear like the leech that lives upon the blood of men, drawn from the gums, and when he is rubbed with salt, spues it up again. To prove this, I shall only give an account of his plays, and by that little of my own knowledge, that I shall discover, it will be manifest, that this rickety poet, (tho' ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber

... leech essay To pour the light on Allan's eyes:" His sand is done,—his race is run; Oh! never more ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... old, and was prepared for it. As the horse started to fall backwards, Jim who had been sticking like a leech, leaped lightly to the ground and with all his strength, pulling upon the bridle, slammed him to the ground. No sooner was the horse upon his feet again than ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt

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

... 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 out mighty mountains of green foaming water. At each roll ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... father and two sons, it is scarcely wonderful that I should be fearful for the last of my blood. Help me to rise, Hubert, for this water seems to gather in my limbs and makes them heavy. One day, the leech says, it will get to the heart and then all will ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard

... the Brotherhood, District No. 6, F. I. M. X. T. S. Z., was about to hold a meeting. The Council was composed of seven eminent Freaks—Sim Boles, the Double-Jointed Wonder; Bony Perkins, the Ossified Man; Duffer Leech, the Man with the Phenomenal Skull; Miss Tilly Boles, the Beautiful Mermaid of the Southern Sea; Mrs. Smock, the Bearded Circassian Beauty; Mr. Billy O'Fake, the Wild Man from Borneo, and the President of the Brotherhood, Runty, the Dwarf. These ladies and gentlemen were the leaders, nay, ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg

... Berkshire, had that morning met with a serious accident by a hurt from a lance, and was then lying dangerously wounded at the hostelry of the Checkers in Abingdon, whither he had been hastily conveyed. The messenger added, that the leech who had been called in was most anxious for the assistance of the skillful Friar, Roger Bacon, and urgently prayed that he would lose no time in coming to the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... this rambling preface, we are arrived at the subject in hand—Mr. John Leech and his "Pictures of Life and Character," in the collection of Mr. Punch. This book is better than plum-cake at Christmas. It is an enduring plum-cake, which you may eat and which you may slice and deliver to your friends; and to which, having cut ...
— John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character • William Makepeace Thackeray

... must prepare for his lord a clean shirt, under and upper coat and doublet, breeches, socks, and slippers as brown as a water-leech.] ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... vacant space left in the cringle; when done, the one end will hang down inside the right hand eyelet hole and the other end outside the left hand one; the ends are then hitched by being rove through their respective eyelet holes and passed over the leech rope and under their own part, one hitch being towards you and the other from you; then take the ends down under one strand on the right and two on the left of cringle nearest to it; then tuck the ends under the first two strands ...
— Knots, Bends, Splices - With tables of strengths of ropes, etc. and wire rigging • J. Netherclift Jutsum

... was endu'd With learning, conduct, fortitude, Incomparable: and as the prince Of poets, HOMER sung long since A skilful leech is better far 245 Than half an hundred men of war, So he appear'd; and by his skill, No less than ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... paid a hundred thousand dollars for a judgeship and for a blanket mortgage on your party. And if you should win, you'd find you could do little showy things that were of no value, but nothing that would seriously disturb a single leech sucking the ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... and since the first publication of the above paragraphs, the English newspapers have recorded the death of the "Princess Cariboo," who it appears afterward married in her own rank in life and spent a considerable number of years of usefulness in the leech trade—an occupation not without a metaphorical likeness to her early and more ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... of life. Many a well-dressed man or woman can be found in the rooms of the clairvoyant or the Chinese "doctor." In matters of health, especially, men grasp at the most unpromising straws. In certain cities of California there is scarcely a business block that did not contain at least one human leech under the trade name of "healer," metaphysical, electrical, astral, divine or what not. And these will thrive so long as men seek health or fortune with closed eyes ...
— California and the Californians • David Starr Jordan

... with a drum-boom and burst with a cymbal crash; the whole orchestra of battle was playing—it seemed that everyone must recognise the air—"The Ride of the Valkyrie;" and now the driving rain and the salt spindrift, the flapping of the leech of our brown sail, every note of accompaniment is being given to that great air that runs through Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata, which the wind is singing louder and louder. Tim sits up well to windward, the tiller quivering in his hand, the rain beating on one ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

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

... her only place in the moral universe is to act as a leech on Brenton's nervous system. The worst of it is, when her beneficent work is ended, he'll find out that he is powerless to shake her off. It's enough, the watching them, I mean, to make one believe in a tentative marriage system, at least within the rural ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... 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 plain word ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... looked at the patient, and pronounced a favourable opinion, saying that with time and care all would be well. But his left arm was broken, and he had received a slight blow on the head. Fever was the leech's chief apprehension; if he could keep that off, he said he doubted not all would ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... Clifford 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... incurred By endless riot, vanity, the lust Of pleasure and variety, despatch, As duly as the swallows disappear, The world of wandering knights and squires to town; London engulfs them all. The shark is there, And the shark's prey; the spendthrift, and the leech That sucks him. There the sycophant, and he That with bare-headed and obsequious bows Begs a warm office, doomed to a cold jail And groat per diem if his patron frown. The levee swarms, as if in golden pomp Were charactered on every statesman's door, 'BATTERED AND BANKRUPT ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... himself," said Sir Nigel. "I would beseech you to extend protection to all the females of this unhappy castle; to part not my sister from her lord, for, as you see, his wounds and weakness call for woman's care; to grant the leech's aid to those who need it; and if there be some unhappy men of my faithful troop remaining, I would beseech you show mercy unto them, and let them go free—they can work no further ill to Edward; they can fight no more for Scotland, for she lieth chained; they have ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... 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 ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake

... to him, by the General's orders, ever since. Like a leech, sir," said the sergeant, in ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn

... leave of this interesting book I think that the impression left on the mind of the reader in regard to the circumstances under which it was written, will be clearer, if I cite the following description by the editor:—"Here," he says, "a leech calmly sits down to compose a not unlearned book, treating of many serious diseases, assigning for them something he hopes will cure them.... The author almost always rejects the Greek recipes, and doctors as an herborist.... Bald was ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... Hie to the 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

... 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

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

... week, and had even told him so in Latin. But youth had gained the 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 ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... 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 general entered ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... trodden one had heard the name of Zarathustra he was transformed. "What happeneth unto me!" he exclaimed, "WHO preoccupieth me so much in this life as this one man, namely Zarathustra, and that one animal that liveth on blood, the leech? ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... day I reported at Fulham. More hours of waiting. I discovered an old postman who had also enlisted in the R.A.M.C., and as he "knew the ropes" I stuck to him like a leech. In the afternoon an old recruiting sergeant with a husky voice fell us in, and we marched, a mob of civilians, through the London streets to the railway station. Although this was quite a short distance, ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave



Words linked to "Leech" :   Hirudinea, care for, segmented worm, class Hirudinea, medicine, treat, annelid, annelid worm, Hirudo medicinalis, follower, practice of medicine



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