Sleary, proprietor of the circus at Coketown. A stout man with one eye fixed and one loose, a voice like the efforts of a broken pair of bellows, a flabby skin, and muddled head. He was never sober and never drunk, but always kind-hearted. Tom Gradgrind, after robbing the bank, lay concealed in this circus as a black servant till Sleary connived at his escape. This Sleary did in gratitude to Thomas Gradgrind, Esq., M.P., who adopted and educated Cecilia Jupe, daughter of his clown, Signor Jupe.
Josephine Sleary, daughter of the circus proprietor, a pretty girl of 18, who had been tied on a horse at two years old, and had made a will at 12. This will she carried about with her, and in it she signified her desire to be drawn to the grave by two piebald ponies. Josephine married E. W. B. Childers, of her father’s circus.--C. Dickens, Hard Times (1854).
Sleek (Aminadab), in The Serious Family, a comedy by Morris Barnett.
Sleeper (The). Almost all nations have a tradition about some sleeper who will wake after a long period of dormancy.
American (North). Rip van Winkle, a Dutch colonist, of New York, slept twenty years in the Catskill Mountains[Mountains].--Washington Irving.
American (South). Sebastian I., supposed to have fallen in the battle of Alcazarquebir, in 1578, is only asleep, and will in due time awake, return to life, and make Brazil the chief kingdom of the earth.
Arabian Legends. Mahommed Mohadi, the twelfth imân, is only sleeping, like Charlemagne, till Antichrist appears, when he will awake in his strength, and overthrow the great enemy of all true believers.
Nourjahad is only in a temporary sleep, waiting the fulness of time.
British Traditions. King Arthur is not dead in Avillon, but is merely metamorphosed into a raven. In due time he will awake, resume his proper person, claim the throne of Britain, and make it the head and front of all the kingdoms of the globe. “Because King Arthur bears for the nonce the semblance of a raven, the people of Britain never kill a raven” (Cervantes, Don Quixote, I. ii. 5).
Gyneth slept 500 years by the enchantment of Merlin. She was the natural daughter of King Arthur and Guendolen, and was thus punished because she would not put an end to a combat in which twenty knights were mortally wounded, including Merlin’s son.--Sir W. Scott, Bridal of Triermain (1813).