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Famine   Listen
noun
Famine  n.  General scarcity of food; dearth; a want of provisions; destitution. "Worn with famine." "There was a famine in the land."
Famine fever (Med.), typhus fever.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Famine" Quotes from Famous Books



... down in the weather alleyway; the night was cloudless, the movement of the ship cradled him, he was oppressed besides by the first generous meal after so long a time of famine; and he was recalled from deep sleep by the voice of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... cord it's better to stop each poor man's breath, Than with famine you should see your subjects starve to death.' Up starts a Dutch Lord, who to Delaware did say, 'Thou deserves to be stabbed!' then he ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell

... do he hath declared unto Pharaoh. The seven good kine are seven years; and the seven good ears are seven years: the dream is one. And the seven lean and ill favoured kine that came up after them are seven years, and also the seven empty ears blasted with the east wind; they shall be seven years of famine, That is the thing which I spake unto Pharaoh: what God is about to do he hath shewed unto Pharaoh. Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: and there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various

... time, in the consulship of Cornelius and Valerius Messala, earthquakes of ill omen occurred and the Tiber tore away the bridge so that the City was under water for seven days. There was an eclipse of the sun, and famine set in. This same year Agrippa was enrolled among the iuvenes, but obtained none of the same privileges as his brother. The senators attended the horse-races separately and the knights also separately from the remainder ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio

... of life. Once or twice I tried to jest or ventured a humorous remark, but these attempts to lighten the gloom were met with chilling silence. No one whispered or smiled or turned aside. It was like a prayer meeting in the face of famine. ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... to you, mother,— How could I look to you For bread to give to your starving boy, When you were starving too? For I read the famine in your cheek, And in your eyes so wild, And I felt it in your bony hand, As you laid it on ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... regiment being still in Bimariabad owing to the prevalence of drought, famine, and cholera elsewhere) Damocles de Warrenne, knowing the Urdu language and argot perfectly, knew, in theory also, more of evil, in some directions, ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... like Lycurgus's iron money, which was so much less in value than in bulk, that it required barns for strong boxes, and a yoke of oxen to draw five hundred pounds. If there is a famine of invention in the land, we must travel, he says, like Joseph's brethren, far for food, we must visit the remote and rich ancients. But an inventive genius may safely stay at home; that, like the widow's cruse, ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... other wise man again and again, travelling from place to place, and searching among the people of the dispersion, with whom the little family from Bethlehem might, perhaps, have found a refuge. He passed through countries where famine lay heavy upon the land, and the poor were crying for bread. He made his dwelling in plague-stricken cities where the sick were languishing in the bitter companionship of helpless misery. He visited the oppressed ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke

... if the settlers had been allowed to carry on agricultural pursuits there. But these had always been discouraged by the English; and so they were dependent on the New England States for their supplies, and were threatened with absolute famine as soon as the war broke out. Had they been disloyal, they might have gained their rights from England; but their very loyalty to such a ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell

... fettered by ignorance and religious dogma. On one hand, immense armies are organized to kill the most healthy men by thousands and tens of thousands, and many more thousands are abandoned to famine, prostitution, alcoholism and exploitation; on the other hand, medicine is expected to employ its whole art and efforts in prolonging life as long as possible and thus martyrizing miserable human wretches, degenerate in body and mind ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... to mow a verst to earn ten kopecks! It's a poor business! Folks—in masses! Men had come tramping from the famine parts. They've knocked down the prices, go where you will. Sixty kopecks they paid in Kuban. And in years gone by, they do say, it was three, ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky

... scene came to be immodest. But at this time, amidst the calamities of the fourteenth century, in the terrible days of the Black Plague, and of so many a famine, in the days of the Jacquerie and those hateful brigands, the Free Lances,—on a people thus surrounded by danger, the effect was more than serious. The whole assembly had much cause to fear a surprise. The risk run by the Witch in this bold proceeding was very great, even tantamount to the forfeiting ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... colonization was obtained; and land, both in town and country, sold rapidly. The colonists, however, were most unfortunately more engaged in speculating with the land, than grazing upon or tilling it; and the consequence was, that in a few years the South Australians were only saved from a famine by the unexpected arrival overland of herds and flocks from Victoria. As it was, horses and cows of a very indifferent kind were sold for more than a hundred pounds a-piece, and sheep for five ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey

... then, and their special circumstances of difficulty, are here in view, as everywhere else in the Epistle. Tempted to "fall away," to give up the "hope set before them," to relapse to legalism, to bondage, to the desert, to a famine of the soul, to barrenness and death—here they are dealt with, in order to the more than prevention of the evil. And here, as ever, the remedy propounded is our Lord Jesus Christ, in His personal glory, in His majestic offices, in His ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule

... free distribution to the men. I make this an opportunity to thank Mr. Stanley Wilkins and the Bucks Comforts Fund for most generous gifts of 'smokes,' which more than once helped to stave off a cigarette famine. ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose

... of joys and toys, Wanting wisdom, void of right, Who shall nerve heroic boys To hazard all in Freedom's fight,— Break shortly off their jolly games, Forsake their comrades gay, And quit proud homes and youthful dames, For famine, toil, and fray? Yet on the nimble air benign Speed nimbler messages, That waft the breath of grace divine To hearts in sloth and ease. So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can. * * * * * Stainless soldier on the walls, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... boats, the consternation was extreme: all the terrors of thirst and famine arose before our imaginations, and we had besides to contend with a perfidious element, which already covered the half of our bodies: when recovered from their stupefaction, the sailors and soldiers gave themselves up to despair; all saw inevitable destruction before them, and ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard

... away before inspecting that final word in historical record. And heaven's just a row of Dinkies with little gold harps tucked under their wings. And you think you're breathing air, but all you're breathing is Dinkies, millions and millions of etherealized Dinkies. And when you read about the famine in China you inevitably and adroitly hitch the death of seven thousand Chinks in Yangchow on to the interests of your immortal offspring. And I suppose Rome really came into being for the one ultimate end that an ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... implies that the writer deems such admonition necessary, because his friend has passed the age when marriage is most frequent, and is verging toward the period of life when marriage is less probable. His friend appears to the writer as making a famine where abundance lies; he tells him that he beguiles the world, unblesses some mother; that he is his mother's glass and calls back the April of her prime; asks him why he abuses the bounteous largess given ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson

... day was Sunday, not a day to find work, and he faced a very sure famine. He began again his walk of the streets. It was on toward noon when he noticed crowds of children hurrying into a large building. He stood and watched them wistfully. They made him think of his brother and sister at home. Suddenly an overwhelming longing seized him ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... Alexandria alone annually supplied twenty millions of bushels: and, when the harvest happened to fail in one of these provinces, the other came in to its aid, and supported the metropolis of the world, which, without this supply, would have been in danger of perishing by famine. Rome actually saw herself reduced to this condition under Augustus; for there remained only three days' provision of corn in the city: and that prince was so full of tenderness for the people, that he had resolved ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... slain for food: And War, which for a moment was no more, Did glut himself again:—a meal was bought With blood, and each sate sullenly apart 40 Gorging himself in gloom: no Love was left; All earth was but one thought—and that was Death, Immediate and inglorious; and the pang Of famine fed upon all entrails—men Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh; The meagre by the meagre were devoured, Even dogs assailed their masters, all save one, And he was faithful to a corse, and kept The birds and beasts and famished men at bay, Till hunger clung them,[57] or the dropping ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... programs in order to increase investment and strengthen incentives to seek employment. The addition of 80 million people each year to an already overcrowded globe is exacerbating the problems of pollution, desertification, underemployment, epidemics, and famine. Because of their own internal problems and priorities, the industrialized countries devote insufficient resources to deal effectively with the poorer areas of the world, which, at least from the economic point of view, are becoming further marginalized. The introduction of the euro ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... enclose within their angle a fertile tract well irrigated with tanks and wells. The East Indian railway and the Grand Trunk road afford the principal means of land communication. In 1901 the population was 1,489,358, showing a decrease of 4% in the decade due to famine. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... paper and print, which the unamused reader may burn or not, as he pleases without searing his own conscience or exciting our revenge. To be sure, a few of our examples may border on civil liberty; but we shall not seek to find parallels for the Ptolemaian cages, or the Tower of Famine, in our times; neither shall we feast upon the horrors of the French Revolution, nor the last polite reception of the Russians by headless Turks; notwithstanding all these examples would bear us out in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various

... to various fabulous personages, whose names it is here unnecessary to introduce. In Egypt, however, corn must have grown abundantly; for Abraham, and after him Jacob, had recourse to that country for supplies during times of famine. ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... Constantine came to Novgorod. The grand duke, however, was soon (p. 058) displeased with him and displaced him by a younger son, Iaroslaf. Soon there were quarrels between him and the people, whereupon Iaroslaf moved to Torjok, a town within Novgorod territory, and from there stopped all supplies. Famine appeared in the city, and at last envoys were sent to the duke, who had them arrested. Nothing except absolute submission would satisfy him. In this dire need help came from an unexpected quarter. Mstislaf the Bold, son of Mstislaf the Brave, Duke of Smolensk, heard of Novgorod's ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen

... Wolf from their windfall. The next day there was no break in the terrible cold, and toward noon Kazan set out on a hunt for meat, leaving Gray Wolf in the windfall. Being three-quarters dog, food was more necessary to Kazan than to his mate. Nature has fitted the wolf-breed for famine, and in ordinary temperature Gray Wolf could have lived for a fortnight without food. At sixty degrees below zero she could exist a week, perhaps ten days. Only thirty hours had passed sinee they had devoured the last of the frozen ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... days of our mourning are ended, The lean years of famine are fled, When, sick for a spoonful of aught that was tuneful, We've sorrowed as over the dead For Music, forlorn and unfriended, Gone down into glimmerless gloom, While rude "rag-time" revels were dancing a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various

... immediately and when they were large the markets were soon glutted and the fruit became almost valueless. The first hot spell would demoralize the trade altogether. Then later in the season the supply would become exhausted and famine would ensue where but a few weeks before there had been a feast. Under such conditions it is not surprising that the apple industry did not develop very rapidly and that apple growing was mostly confined to areas near the ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt

... of food, that more than once the thought, crossed her, whether or not, death by famine would be her allotted doom; and human nature shuddered, but the spirit did not quail! Hour after hour passed, she knew not whether it was night or day, when the gloom of her dungeon was suddenly ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... in the gate, and in the jaws of hell, Revengeful cares, and sullen sorrows dwell, And pale diseases, and repining age— Want, fear, and famine's unresisted rage, Here toils and death, and death's half-brother sleep, Forms terrible to view, their sentry keep. With anxious pleasures of a guilty mind, Deep frauds, before, and open force behind; The Furies' iron beds, and strife that shakes Her hissing tresses, and unfolds ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... as falsehood, diamond-headed and cruel as pleasure, Coil by coil he lengthened and glided, straight to the fragrant curve of her throat: There in the print of the last of the kisses that still glowed red from the sweet long pressure, Fierce as famine and swift as lightning over the glittering ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... Moorish king of Grenada suddenly advanced upon it, and took it. A short time afterwards, the inhabitants rose against the Spanish Moors, and turned them out, and the Emperor of Morocco sent over an army to help them; but the Moors of Grenada besieged the place, and took it by famine. ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty

... pass, in the days when the judges ruled, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehem-judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab—he and his wife and his two sons. And the name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons Mahlon and Chilion, ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... persuaded, they will export much more. At the beginning of the century some of these colonies imported corn from the mother country. For some time past the Old World has been fed from the New. The scarcity which you have felt would have been a desolating famine, if this child of your old age, with a true filial piety, with a Roman charity, had not put the full breast of its youthful exuberance to the mouth of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... I ever read of, this battle of Otumba is one of the most miraculous. Some say that Cortez conquered Mexico by gunpowder: he had none then, neither cannon nor musket. The sword and lance did it all, and they in the hands of men worn out with famine, cold, and fatigue, and I had said broken-hearted into the bargain. But there was no breaking those men's hearts—what won that battle, what won Mexico, was the indomitable pluck of the white man, before which the Indian, whether American or Hindoo, ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley

... the people of England were startled with tidings of fierce conflicts which faction waged, the disloyalty of the great majority of the people, the relentless cruelty with which the Ribbon Society exacted its victims, and the continued pressure of famine and sickness upon the physical life of the people. Ireland, so long conversant with misery, was still to taste the cup in all its bitterness. Everything meant for her good by the legislature brought with it some new form of evil, or aggravated some that existed. She had sought ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... communications, and all the appliances of modern science and invention cannot do as much for India in pralaya, as her own native civilization could do for her in manvantara.—Then he goes on to show how that civilization guarded against famine and many other things; and incidentally to prove it not only much higher than the Greek, but much higher than our own. I said Manu provided in advance against the main destructiveness of war: here was the custom, which may have been dishonored in the breach sometimes, but still was the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... mouth, and then to his own. Mr Martin understood the signs, and shouted to the men to come on with the provisions. Even then he could scarcely recognise the features of Harry Oliver, or of the young midshipman by his side, so fearfully had famine and exhaustion told on them. The men were soon gathered round the sufferers. Before Mr Oliver would take any of the spirits and water brought to him, he watched to see a few drops poured down the throat ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston

... still fighting famine and frost as only range-bred stock can fight. He pictured them drifting miserably before the fury of the wind or crowding for shelter under some friendly cutback, their tails to the storm, waiting stolidly for the dawn that would bring no relief. Then, with the roar and rattle ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower

... the few fearless priests who sought them out. The priests, bravest of the brave, journeyed unarmed and far, even among the scornful Iroquois, enduring torture by fire and knife, the torment of mosquitoes, cold and famine, and draughty, crowded bark houses smotheringly thick ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin

... He was supported in his reluctance to embark on warlike enterprises by the whole force of the economic situation. No moment could have been less fitting: no man more disinclined. That Lord Elgin's Viceroyalty and the Famine year should have been marked by the greatest Frontier War in the history of the British Empire in India, vividly displays how little an individual, however earnest his motives, however great his authority, can really control ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... hours passed, there seemed no sign, and place after place was recognised in passing. The morning was glorious, and to the great satisfaction of all, game was seen to be sufficiently plentiful to set famine at defiance. But, of course, no shot was fired, the efforts of all being devoted to reaching the hills, where the first halt would be made for rest ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn

... long weeks, came that dread contest he had feared,—the battle with famine. With a good supply of provisions he could have ended the war in a fortnight. As it was, the men had simply to wait and forage, being at times almost in a starving state. The brave borderers found it far ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... lady remarkable for her charities, and was by consequence always surrounded by large crowds of poor folk during her residence at the Chatelaine, the ruins of which lie a mile or two from Arbois. On the occasion of a severe famine in Burgundy, she collected a band of her mendicant friends in a stable, and burned them all, saying that 'par pitie elle hauoit faict cela, considerant les peines que ces pauvres debuoient endurer en temps de si grande et tant ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... I trust your reward will not be delayed. You and I can lean with confidence upon the wisdom and the mercy of the God we worship; but each must serve out His appointed time of bondage in the Egypt of suffering, in the famine of the desert; and must drink at Marah, before the blessing of the manna, the grapes of Eshcol, the roses of Sharon. If ever you should need an earthly friend, remember me; and if all other refuge fail you, my home can ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... have read a copy of a letter from Madrid, circulated among the members of our foreign diplomatic corps, which draws a most deplorable picture of the Court and Kingdom of Spain. Forced into an unprofitable and expensive war, famine ravaging some, and disease other provinces, experiencing from allies the treatment of tyrannical foes, disunion in his family and among his Ministers, His Spanish Majesty totters on a throne exposed to the combined attacks ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... of Providence, derived from the order of the universe, is thought to spring from the seeming disorders to which we cannot shut our eyes. Much is said of plagues and earthquakes, of drought, flood, frost and famine, with a thousand more natural evils. But it deserves consideration whether, if there were no Providence, these anomalies would not be the rule instead of the exception; whether they do not feelingly ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden

... limit." After a year of Tommy, Mr. Smith had begun to mention him in his prayers, not so much for Tommy's good as for his own deliverance—mentally including him in the category of plague, pestilence, famine ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various

... often they heard the cries of ill-omened birds, which, gathering in throngs on empty fields, sharpened their beaks as if awaiting corpses. Too often they noticed that the dogs rooted up the earth, and, as if scenting death, howled piercingly, which was an omen of famine or of war. But the forest guards beheld how through the graveyard walked the Maid of Pestilence, whose brow rises above the highest trees, and who waves in her left hand a ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... they lie beside their nectar, and their bolts are hurled Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world. There they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands. But they smile, they find a music, centred in a doleful song, Steaming up, a lamentation, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... first instance, from a life of idleness and ease, to fight my way through the desert of difficulty, toward the promised land of honor. I should have remembered how in my darkest hours they went before me as a pillar of fire, how in the famine of my soul these words were the manna of encouragement, how in my thirst they struck clear water from the rock of adverse circumstance. But the Israelites came back to their true God at last; so I, little girl, to my true ideal. ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... prison! Heavens, I loath the hated name, Famine's metropolis, the sink of shame, A nauseous sepulchre, whose craving womb Hourly inters poor mortals in its tomb; By ev'ry plague and ev'ry ill possessed, Ev'n purgatory itself to thee's a jest; Emblem of hell, nursery ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... for a compass, because he had lost his way and could not find the North, were not lower or more pitiful than Drake might yet be: for stout heart and brave blood and quick brain have no charm against famine, pestilence, and a steady pressure of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... to read the number of a regiment at such a distance. I could only see ragged soldiers with their cheeks and famine-glistening eyes. Their great-coats were twice too large for them, and fell in folds along their bodies like cloaks. I say nothing of the mud; it was everywhere. No wonder the Germans were exultant, even after our ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann

... penetrating brambly copses, and getting dirty, ragged, and tired, Ripton awoke from his dream of Farmer Blaize and a blue nose to the vivid consciousness of hunger; and this grew with the rapidity of light upon him, till in the course of another minute he was enduring the extremes of famine, and ventured to question his leader whither he was being conducted. Raynham was out of sight. They were a long way down the valley, miles from Lobourne, in a country of sour pools, yellow brooks, rank pasturage, desolate heath. Solitary cows were seen; the smoke of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the time when Pharoah in his dream saw the seven fat kine followed and devoured by the seven lean kine; he was told that his dream signified seven years of plenty, to be followed by seven years of famine, and was advised to store up the harvests of the good years against the hard times to follow. This is a picture of the child's life. The first seven years of the child's life are years of plenty, when it is storing up material for the years ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall

... light and heat to themselves, and not be throwing such strong reflections into the weak eyes of the Grindwellites, and putting in danger the governmental powder-magazine,—as the machine-offices were sometimes called. An inundation or bad harvest, producing a famine among the poor, causes great alarm, and the government officers have a time of it, running about distributing alms, or raising money to keep down the price of bread. Thousands of servants in livery, armed with terrific instruments ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... committed, the wind and sea began to go down, and by the morning there was only a moderate breeze. The carpenter, however, discovered that the ship had sprung a leak, and all hands were now summoned to work the pumps; but weakened by disease and famine, and overcome with fatigue, they were soon obliged to give up the almost hopeless task. Three days of horror passed away without any ship coming near them, while several of them died from sheer starvation. Fortunately, at last they discovered some gunpowder which, being in ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... presently rejected it by answering, 'Rich is not quite the word for me, dame. I do work, and I must work. And even if I only get to Casterbridge by midnight I must begin work there at eight to-morrow morning. Yes, het or wet, blow or snow, famine or sword, my day's work to-morrow must ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy

... be sent South immediately: he received the news very stolidly, and betrayed no impatience during the interval that elapsed before the exchange-steamer could be got ready. Truth to say, it is rather an equivocal advantage—to be turned loose in a city where famine-prices prevail, utterly penniless. But, if my mate did not exult in his prospects, neither did he in any way despond. He "supposed he'd get along somehow;" indeed, he had plenty of a very ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... worker, were directly traceable to Centralized Wealth. The labor unions regulated wages and hours, but they were powerless to control the prices of the necessaries of life. The Trusts could at pleasure create famine or plenty. They usually willed to make it famine so they themselves might acquire more millions with which to pay for marble palaces, fast motor cars, ocean-going yachts and expensive establishments at Newport. Food was ever dearer and of poorer quality, clothes ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein

... winter, cold moist air, frosty, and in the dog days, hot, dry, thunder, fire, and such like; but he set in all his works the day and hour, when, where, and how it should happen. If any wonderful things were at hand, as mortality, famine, plague, wars, he would set the time and place, in true and just order, when it would ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... tender and pleading, to soften the heart of age. It may seem to some that the girl Aislinn is only a symbol, only the dream of his youth returned to the farmer Fardorrougha, who has hardened his heart even in famine time, but whether apparition, or child of the flesh and symbol, too, Aislinn is the bringer-back to Fardorrougha of the soft heart ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... his work to-day would live in to-morrow's tale, Content to bear hunger's pain though meat lay beneath his hand— to labor in ragged shirt that those whom he served might rest. If Dearth laid her hand on him, and Famine devoured his store, he gave but the gladlier what little to him they spared. He dealt as a youth with Youth, until, when his head grew hoar, and age gathered o'er his brow, to lightness he said, "Begone!" Yea, somewhat it soothes my soul that ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... written order to me from the Prince to admit them, I will dispense with their services wherever they come from," said the commandant. "The English are trustworthy enough, and fight well if they are well fed and are satisfied with their quarters, but I would not trust them should a famine get within our walls; and should they begin to feel the pinchings of hunger, they would then cry out that we must surrender, and would induce others to follow their evil example. They well know that it is the policy of the Spaniards just now to ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston

... never an example in history, of a great kingdom kept in awe for above a year in daily dread of utter destruction, not by a powerful invader at the head of twenty thousand men, not by a plague or a famine, not by a tyrannical prince (for we never had one more gracious) or a corrupt administration, but by one single, diminutive, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift

... half brother to AElfric. During a great famine he spent large sums in the relief of the poor, devoting to this purpose even some of the treasures that had been got together for the rebuilding of the church, and many gold and silver vessels assigned to his own use in the Abbey. The monks, however, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins

... very prosperous at first, until many obstacles came in the way. The road has been open to traffic some three years. The first year traffic was healthy and strong, but the second year, owing to famine in Arabistan, the traffic suddenly dropped and nothing would induce muleteers to travel by that route. Although they were offered as much as 100 (L2) to 110 krans (L2 4s.) per load from Isfahan ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... of Rome, marched into Italy, and in A.D. 408 besieged the capital. Pestilence and famine soon raged within the walls of Rome, until the Senate purchased a respite from their calamities by an enormous ransom. Honorius refused to confirm the treaty, and the next year Alaric once more appeared before the city. He took possession of Ostia, the port of Rome, reduced ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... settlement, in comparative isolation, still whispers the story of Gustavus Adolphus's statecraft and vision, and seems a solitary survivor of an old camp of emigrants voyaging by stream and plain, and all slain by famine and disease and Indian stealth and pioneer's hardship, save himself. Nordhoff and Stockholm and Pavonta are scattered reminders of an attempted sovereignty ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... or intestine commotion, the water may have been cut off from the low country, and the exterminating effects of famine may have laid the whole land desolate. It is, therefore, no longer a matter of astonishment that the present plain of Newera Ellia should have received its appellation of the "Royal Plain." In those days there was no very secure tenure to the throne, and by force alone could ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... emaciated and wretched, a miserable and piteous spectacle to behold. To crown their misfortunes, a great drought came on. The grain which they had planted was dried up and killed in the fields; and thus, in addition to the horrors of pestilence, they were threatened with the still greater horrors of famine. Their distress was extreme, and they were utterly at a loss to know what ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... often sold, but not by their mothers. Famine sometimes reduces fathers to part with them, but the selling of children, as a general practice, is quite unknown, and, as Speke put it, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... namely in 1438, is yet attested by an existing inscription, in gothic letters, towards the chief door of entrance. The inscription also testifies that in the same year, "there reigned DEATH, WAR, and FAMINE." The chancel of the choir, with the principal doors of entrance, &c. were constructed between the years 1520, and 1540. It may be worth remarking that the stalls of the choir were brought from the Abbey of St. John—on the destruction ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... suffered every kind of evil. In about eighteen months our elder brother, unaccustomed to the hard labor we were obliged to undergo, died of a fever. Since leaving France, we had experienced every kind of affliction, disease, pestilence, famine, poverty and hard labor! I have been for six months together without tasting bread, working the ground like a slave; and I have even passed three or four years without always having it when I wanted it. I should never have done ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... and curious little volume is not mentioned by Lowndes. The work commences with a Poetical Dialogue between Warre, Famine, and Pestilence. The Tales of my Landlord then follow, "Where the Fatte Host telles Tales at the upper ende of the Table." Mine host, however, does not have all the conversation to himself. The guests take a very fair share. One of the interlocutors, Gingle-Spur, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... famine in Ireland, there was more than a possibility that, in Canada, as in the United States, the main body of Irish immigrants would be hostile to Britain, and Elgin watched with anxious eyes for symptoms of a rising, sympathetic with that in Ireland, and fostered by Irish-American ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison

... its miserable shortcomings, with its wars, controversies, with its trades-unions, famine-insurrections,—it is her Practical Material Work alone that England has to show for herself! This, and hitherto almost nothing more; yet actually this. The grim inarticulate veracity of the English People, unable to speak its meaning in words, has turned itself silently on things; ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... full this morning of disturbing pictures of a little London child, full of town daintiness and accustomed to the spoiling of an indulgent father, crying herself into fits over the new unpalatable food, refusing it day after day, till the sharp, wilful face had grown pale and pinched with famine, and caring no more apparently for her aunt's beatings than she did for the clumsy advances by which her uncle would sometimes try to propitiate her. There had been a great deal of beating—whenever ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... OEdipus their king, giving him in marriage their queen Jocasta. OEdipus, ignorant of his parentage, had already become the slayer of his father; in marrying the queen he became the husband of his mother. These horrors remained undiscovered, till at length Thebes was afflicted with famine and pestilence, and the oracle being consulted, the double crime of OEdipus came to light. Jocasta put an end to her own life, and OEdipus, seized with madness, tore out his eyes and wandered away from Thebes, dreaded and abandoned by ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... plainly alarmed, more especially as the Sunakite broke out into one of his wild wails of denunciation, waving his hands like a prophet of wrath, and predicting famine, disease, pestilence, to these slack observers ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Ireland, Charmer of the sun and sea, Bright beguiler of old anguish, How could Famine ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... Althing, established in 930. Independent for over 300 years, Iceland was subsequently ruled by Norway and Denmark. Fallout from the Askja volcano of 1875 devastated the Icelandic economy and caused widespread famine. Over the next quarter century, 20% of the island's population emigrated, mostly to Canada and the US. Limited home rule from Denmark was granted in 1874 and complete independence attained in 1944. Literacy, longevity, income, ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... extravagant expressions of joy; and kept him up all night, relating the wonders he had seen since he left them; in doing which he talked to such a degree that when he came on board in the morning he could hardly speak from hoarseness. We found the natives had been suffering most severely from famine, occasioned by a long-continued drought that had dried up everything on the island, to such an extent, that the rice crops, upon which they chiefly depend for food, had entirely failed; but of livestock we found no difficulty in obtaining an abundant supply, and at a very moderate ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... city there is plenty of water. But I saw people rushing eagerly with buckets to catch the water out of gutters where it had leaked from a fire hose. In the first terrible water famine, the firemen broke into sewers and threw sewer water on ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... front of Belgrade was covered with the flotilla of the Turks. The wall in many places was broken down, and at other points in the wall they had obtained a foothold, and the crescent was proudly unfurled to the breeze. The feeble garrison, worn out with toil and perishing with famine, were in the last stages of despair. Hunniades came down upon the Turkish flotilla like an inundation; both parties fought with almost unprecedented ferocity, but the Christians drove every thing before them, sinking, dispersing, and capturing ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... famine; a Parliament and executions; pillage and the greatest heroism; "The Black Hundred," and Leo Tolstoy—what a mixture of figures and conceptions, what a fruitful source for all kinds of misunderstandings! The truth of life stands aghast in silence, and ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev

... had been assailed. In the body politic, as in the natural body, morbid languor generally succeeds morbid excitement. The people had been maddened by sophistry, by calumny, by rhetoric, by stimulants applied to the national pride. In the fulness of bread, they had raved as if famine had been in the land. While enjoying such a measure of civil and religious freedom as, till then, no great society had ever known, they had cried out for a Timoleon or a Brutus to stab their oppressor to the heart. They were in this frame of mind when the change of administration ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... district where he lived, and, although he had no time for the writing on which his living depended, he refused the government pay in order to preserve his own independence of action; in another year he was the leading spirit in organising practical measures of famine relief about Nizhni-Novgorod. From his childhood to his death, moreover, he was the sole support of his family. Measured by the standards of Christian morality, Tchehov was wholly a saint. ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... bear. It costs the price of three bushels of corn to carry one to the grain-marts by rail, and the whole world knows that they have been burning their three-year old crops as fuel in nearly all the Western States. Meanwhile, it seems clear that there is not too much corn raised, since a great famine has just swept over Persia, and others are threatening in different ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... and grievances of the Irish had a vivid historical background in their own country. There were four principal causes which induced the transplanting of the race: rebellion, famine, restrictive legislation, and absentee landlordism. Every uprising of this bellicose people from the time of Cromwell onward had been followed by voluntary and involuntary exile. It is said that Cromwell's Government transported many thousand Irish to the West Indies. Many of these exiles subsequently ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth

... task it must have been for him, every day, to get enough grass down his throat to supply his vast body. Do you wonder that, as scientists tell us, they died of exhaustion? Some starved to death even while feverishly chewing their cud—the remoter parts of their bodies fainting from famine while ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.

... Ireland, and, we presume, in all other countries, a class of hardened wretches, who look forward to a period of dearth as to one of great gain and advantage, and who contrive, by exercising the most heartless and diabolical principles, to make the sickness, famine, and general desolation which scourge their fellow-creatures, so many sources of successful extortion and rapacity, and consequently of gain to themselves. These are Country Misers or Money-lenders, who are remarkable for keeping meal until the arrival of ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... escape and interfere with our oversea supplies of food. Since Ireland lies directly across our trade routes, it is probable that the majority of our food supplies will be derived from Ireland or carried through that country. But Irish Ministers would not have forgotten the lesson of the famine, when food was exported from Ireland though the people starved. Curious as it may seem, Ireland, though a great exporting country, does not under present conditions feed herself, and therefore an Irish Ministry would certainly lay in a large stock of the imported food supplies before they were ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... laid aside, while I was writing articles in the Morning Chronicle (which unexpectedly entered warmly into my purpose) urging the formation of peasant properties on the waste lands of Ireland. This was during the period of the Famine, the winter of 1846-47, when the stern necessities of the time seemed to afford a chance of gaining attention for what appeared to me the only mode of combining relief to immediate destitution with permanent improvement ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... mankind have agreed to eat some animals, and reject others; and as the principle is not evident, it is not uniform. That which is selected as delicate in one country, is by its neighbours abhorred as loathsome. The Neapolitans lately refused to eat potatoes in a famine. An Englishman is not easily persuaded to dine on snails with an Italian, on frogs with a Frenchman, or on horseflesh with a Tartar. The vulgar inhabitants of Sky, I know not whether of the other islands, have not only eels, but ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... of social evils admits that the great obstacle to social improvement is that social residuum, the parasitic class, which multiplies so as to keep down the standard of living, and turns to bad purposes the increased power of man over nature. We have abolished pestilence and famine in their grimmest shape; if we have not abolished war, it no longer involves usurpation or slavery or the permanent desolation of the conquered; but one result is just this, that great masses can be regularly kept alive at the lowest stage of existence without ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... foe—could think of no way of enforcing order, except by a wholesale use of the sword and the gallows. They could find no means of restoring peace except turning the rich land into a wilderness, and rooting out by famine those whom the soldier or the hangman had not overtaken. "No governor shall do any good here," wrote an English observer in 1581, "except ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... among the peasantry once; and even yet it had not lost its prestige with the transplanted Pat M'Donagh. He had left Ireland a ragged pauper in the famine year, and was now a thriving artisan, with average wages of seven shillings a day; an independence with which Robert Wynn would have considered himself truly fortunate, and upon less than which many a lieutenant in ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... Famine or escalade was what the garrison had chiefly to fear. For artillery, the top of the Tower was mounted with some antiquated wall-pieces, and small cannons, which bore the old-fashioned names of culverins, sakers, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... cook just serving it up, because such a dish as that took more time than an ordinary lunch, and the things had come late. Louise said, Yes, she understood that; and went back to Maxwell, whom she found walking up and down the room in a famine very uncommon for him. She felt the motherly joy a woman has in being able to appease the hunger of the man she loves, and now she was glad that she had not postponed the fillet till dinner as she had thought of doing. Everything was turning out so ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... treatment which they had received from their new allies. They beheld around them the wealth and plenty of a fertile province, in the midst of which they suffered the intolerable hardships of artificial famine. But the means of relief, and even of revenge, were in their hands; since the rapaciousness of their tyrants had left to an injured people the possession and the use of arms. The clamors of a multitude, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... there came prophets in the land again, crying repentance unto them—that they must prepare the way of the Lord or there should come a curse upon the face of the land; yea, even there should be a great famine, in which they should be destroyed if they ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... the water failed to rise to the required height, and the horrors of starvation becoming the inevitable result, it was the custom of the people to nail to these crosses symbolical personifications of the Demon of Famine. To indicate the sterility of the domain over which he reigned, he was represented by the figure of a lean and haggard man, with a crown of thorns upon his head; a reed cut from the river's bank was placed in his hands, as his unreal sceptre; and, considering ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill

... continue to ask of us, whether the road to heaven is really so difficult, and the number of the saved really so small as we represent? To a question so often proposed, and still oftener resolved, our Savior answers you here, that there were many widows in Israel afflicted with famine; but the widow of Sarepta was alone found worthy the succor of the prophet Elias; that the number of lepers was great in Israel in the time of the prophet Eliseus; and that Naaman was only cured by the ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser

... group before of maladies, And griefs, and Famine empty as a breeze,— A double monster, with a gloating leer Fix'd on his other half. They drew them near, One after one, led onward by Despair, That like the last of winter glimmer'd there,— A dismal prologue to his brother Death, Which ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart

... word to the neighbors, an' that evening about forty of 'em rode over to the buryin', and they made a good bit of a fuss over us, 'cause the gang had been worse'n a plague an' a famine. You can judge o' their nerve when they made war on the Diamond Dot, we havin' one o' the biggest outfits in the territory, an' all patriotic toward the old man. Jabez give me more credit'n was due me, but he sure tried to ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... of the silk-worm might be bred, and silk in great quantities exported. Under the present system, when the vines fail, as the people do not grow sufficient corn in the island for their support, they are at once reduced to a state of famine. But I must not prolong my description of Madeira. It is a very lovely island, and has a very delicious climate, and produces all sorts of nice fruits; and though the inhabitants have rather a fancy for being dirty, the English residents set them ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... feel contagion's mortal breath That taints the realms with misery severe, No more behold pale famine, scattering death, With cruel ravage ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... upon his spindle neck, to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett

... murderer must go free because there was no judge or jury to try him, while the Indian must be shot by the soldiers, without trial, for trying to protect himself from murder. If the innocent could be separated from the guilty, "plague, pestilence, and famine" would not be an unjust punishment for the crimes committed in this country against the original occupants of the soil. And it should be remembered that when retribution comes, though we may not understand why, the innocent often share the fate of the guilty. The law under which nations ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield

... into political life shortly after 1848, I found this anti-Catholic feeling most intense. The Catholics in Massachusetts were, in general, in a very humble class. The immigration, which had well begun before the great Irish Famine, was increased very much by that terrible calamity. The Irishmen were glad to build our railroads at sixty cents a day, dwelling in wretched shanties, and living on very coarse fare. They had brought with them the habit ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... is present, but in combination with Irish gaiety and light-heartedness. It was the day of the comedy Irishman—Lover's and Lever's Irishman—Handy Andy, Rory O'More, Widow Machree and the like. It took the famine of '49 and the strenuous work of the Young Ireland Party which gathered about the Nation in 1848, to displace this traditional figure in favour of a more earnest and tragical national type. But a single quotation will illustrate the natural magic ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... invented stories of famine and disease in Havana. They need not have looked for the facts where they were to be found, in the seaports and villages and fever camps. Why not listen to these men or to Stephen Bonsai, of the New York Herald, in whom the late President showed his confidence by ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis

... the widow's veil which she had dropped. What might not her Captain have done? He might have procured things, to be sent to him, out of shops on false pretences; or, urged on by want and famine, he might have committed—forgery. "Oh, my!" she said, and dropped her hand from his arm, ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... possessed the right to assemble. In the famous "burghers' parlor" their solemn deliberations took place. Had it not been for the continual sacrifices which by that time made war intolerable to the corporations, who were weary of their losses and of the famine, Henri IV., that factionist who became king, might ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... of Flemish descent, and by trade a brewer. He was possessed of considerable wealth, which he freely spent among the poor, while famine pressed sore upon them; he was consequently loved, followed, and obeyed. He was the King of the Faubourgs; and though the most ruthless in his animosity to the royalists, he was not altogether a bad man, neither was he ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... joy for this victory on the side of the Portuguese was soon miserably abated in consequence of the destruction of their entire magazine of provisions by fire, by which they were reduced to the extremity of famine, and under the necessity of feeding on all kinds of vermin that could be procured. In this extreme distress, they were providentially relieved by a rough sea throwing up vast quantities of crabs or lobsters on the point of land where the chapel ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... in my own igloo again," he said, "the famine was already over. Flocks of sea-birds were flying overhead. The sea swarmed with fish, and with walrus and seal. Every one along the whole coast was happy. Ask yourselves—is it ...
— The Eskimo Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... horsemanship and nerve. On one side were two large stone tablets with inscriptions—the one in Persian, the other in English. They simply stated that the granary was erected in 1786 as part of a general plan ordered by the governor-general and council of India for the perpetual prevention of famine. It has never yet, however, been filled with grain, but has been employed as a military magazine. From the summit a fine view of the surrounding country is to be had, comprising plains and forests, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... and Publius Minutius were Consuls, when all thinges were quiet abrode, and dissention at home appeased, an other great mischiefe inuaded the citie. First a dearth of victuals, for that the land was vntilled, by the peoples departure, then a famine, such as chaunceth to the besieged: which had brought a great destruction of people, had not the Consuls forseene the same, by prouision in forren places. They sent purueiors into Scicilia: but the malice of the cities adioyning, stayed the ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter

... went on his way toward Libya and Egypt. Over the latter land ruled Busiris, the son of Neptune and Lysianassa. To him during the period of a nine-year famine a prophet had borne the oracular message that the land would again bear fruit if a stranger were sacrificed once a year to Jupiter. In gratitude Busiris made a beginning with the priest himself. Later he found great pleasure ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... the most diminutive but pretty little objects imaginable. I delayed here an additional day on the poor creature's account, but all our efforts to raise her proved unsuccessful. I could not leave the poor dumb brute on the ground to die by inches slowly, by famine, and alone, so I in mercy shot her just before we left the place, and left her dead alongside the progeny that she had brought to life in such a wilderness, only at the expense of her own. She had been Mr. Tietkens's hack, and one of our best ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... same hardening effect on men which fire, that melts gold, has on clay, more strikingly illustrated than on this occasion. So far from rending his heart with his garment, and humbling himself before the Lord, Joram flares up into fiercer rebellion; and turning from these victims of the famine to his courtiers, he grinds his teeth to profane God's name and vow vengeance on his prophet, saying, "God do so and more also to me, if the head of Elisha the son of Shaphat shall stand on him this day." Impotent rage against the only man who could ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie

... constellation Cassiopeia, and then disappeared just before King Charles IX. of France, who was responsible for St. Bartholomew massacre, died? Was it without significance that in the days of the Roman Emperor Justinian war and famine were preceded by the dimness of the sun, which for nearly a year gave no more light than the moon, although there were no clouds to ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... have been very difficult," The Emperor listened to no one. He did not suspect that the King of Prussia, seemingly his ally, had sent word secretly to the Czar: "Strike no blow at Napoleon. Draw the French into the heart of Russia; let fatigue and famine do the work." Meanwhile the sun was drying the roads; the grass was beginning to grow. Nature was preparing the earth for the common extermination of its people. And, oddly enough, at the moment when the slaughter was about to begin, Napoleon had no feeling of hate or ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... December, signed "John Pemberton," declaring their attachment to the British government.* These men are continually harping on the great sin of our bearing arms, but the king of Britain may lay waste the world in blood and famine, and they, poor fallen souls, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... unchangeable. As He swore by Himself that He would never fail David, so He has sworn that He will never fail any one of His Churches, or any one of us. Lo, said He, I am with you always, even to the end of the world. Nothing shall separate us from the love of Christ; neither battle nor famine, nor anything else in heaven or earth. All He wants is to educate us, because He loves us. He doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men. And because He is a God of love, He proves His love to us every now and then by blessing us, as well as by correcting us; else ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley

... upon him, since the other gods agreed to his proposal. But eventually a reconciliation takes place; the great bow of Anu is displayed in the heavens; Bel agrees that he will be satisfied with what war, pestilence, famine, and wild beasts can do in the way of destroying men; and that, henceforward, he will not have recourse to extraordinary measures. Finally, it is Bel himself who, by way of making amends, transports Hasisadra, his wife, and the faithful ...
— Hasisadra's Adventure - Essay #7 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... hunger and thirst for Bristol news. I long to be among you. If I could bring this climate to Bristol, it would make me a new being: but I am in utter solitude of all rational society; in a state of mental famine, save that I feed on rocks and woods, and the richest banquet nature can possibly offer to her worshippers. God ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... ye curs'd rulers, Thus of the blood y' have shed, I make libation And sprinkle it, mingling. May it rest upon you, And all your race. Be henceforth peace a stranger Within your walls; let plagues and famine waste Your generation—Oh, poor Belvidera! Sir, I have a wife, bear this in safety to her; A token that with my dying breath I bless'd her, And the dear little infant left behind me. I'm sick—I'm quiet. [dies; scene shuts ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway

... would require almost more than human wisdom to adjust it. It was one of those matters which almost seemed to require the interposition of some higher power,—the coming of some apparently chance event,—to clear away the evil; as a fire comes, and pestilential alleys are removed; as a famine comes, and men are driven from want and ignorance and dirt to seek new homes and new thoughts across the broad waters; as a war comes, and slavery is banished from the face of the earth. But in regard to tenant-right, to some arrangement by which a tenant in Ireland ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... consumed at once by famine, pestilence, and the sword. With the consent of Leo, and at the request of Genseric, he had been already named emperor. He took possession of the imperial palace, and made the senate acknowledge ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... witch-doctor existing as natural consequents of the belief that disease has a supernatural origin. We see it in both the teaching and practice of the early Christian Church. That great father of the Church, Origen, says: "It is demons which produce famine, unfruitfulness, corruption of the air, and pestilence." St. Augustine said that "All diseases of Christians are to be ascribed to demons." The Church of England still retains in its Articles an authorisation for the expulsion of demons; ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... emotional, nor yet unduly philosophical, that is nevertheless a sphered content of life; not crystalline, perhaps, and yet not utterly dark—an agate temperament, cloudy and strange. As a three-year-old child McKenty had been brought from Ireland by his emigrant parents during a period of famine. He had been raised on the far South Side in a shanty which stood near a maze of railroad-tracks, and as a naked baby he had crawled on its earthen floor. His father had been promoted to a section boss after working for years as a day-laborer on the adjoining railroad, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... and carelessly buried that their limbs in places protruded through the soil, poisoning the air with hideous smells and giving abundant promise of the pestilence which must surely follow. I saw districts noted for their fecundity on the raw edge of famine, and a people proverbial for their light-heartedness who ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... observed Hartrath, willing to change the subject, "I hear you are on the Famine Relief Committee. Does your ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... of this observation, and came to the scratch with animadversions on Dr. Gowdy's maladroit management of the finances of the Famine Fund (a matter that cannot be gone into here). This was blow for blow, and ever since then Dr. Gowdy had panted ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... preempted. So Caliph Spraggins menaced no more the people in the bazaars of the East Side. To keep down his growing surplus he doubled his donations to organized charity, presented the Y. M. C. A. of his native town with a $10,000 collection of butterflies, and sent a check to the famine sufferers in China big enough to buy new emerald eyes and diamond-filled teeth for all their gods. But none of these charitable acts seemed to bring peace to the caliph's heart. He tried to get a personal note into ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... to him in the play. The scene is a Jewish village in Poland. The war has ended. Famine, disease and poverty remain. Refugees, dying ones, starving ones, huddle together in the dismantled synagogue. No one knows what has happened. The armies have passed. Flame and blood brightened the sky for a time. Now the little village lies cut off from the world and its people clutch desperately ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... pledge himself to her service while life endured. ... And if emotion had swept every atom of reason out of his youthful head, there in the turmoil and alarm — there in the terrified, riotous city jammed with refugees, reeking with disease, halt frantic from famine and the filthy, rising flood of war — if really it all had been merely romantic impulse, ardour born of overwrought sentimentalism, nevertheless, what he had pledged that day to a little Grand Duchess in rags, he had fulfilled to the ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers

... paint—what's the matter with YOU? And," turning to the proprietor, "there's YOUR shed, Saunders, over on the creek, just bursting with last year's grain that you know has gone up two hundred per cent. since you bought it at a bargain—what are YOU growling at? It's enough to provoke a fire or a famine to hear you groaning—and take care it don't, some day, ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... statistical researches of M. Feillet. That writer cites the following passage from the record of an eye-witness of what he describes:[4]—"No tongue can tell, no pen describe, no ear may hear that which we have seen (at Rheims, Chalons, Rethel, &c). Famine and death on all sides, and bodies unburied. Those remaining alive pick up from the fields the rotten oat-straw, and make bread of it by mixing it with mud. Their faces are quite black; they have no longer the semblance of human beings, but that of phantoms.... ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... of 1792, a young officer of artillery was in garrison at Strasburg. His name was Rouget de Lisle, and his talents as poet, singer, and musician had rendered him a welcome guest at the house of Dietrich, the mayor of the city. Famine reigned in Strasburg, and one day, when the Dietrich family could offer but a scanty repast to the youthful soldier, Dietrich produced a bottle of wine, and said, "Let us drink to Liberty and to our country. There will soon be a patriotic ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands

... resting and sleeping. With full stomachs, bickering and quarrelling began among the younger males, and this continued through the few days that followed before the breaking-up of the pack. The famine was over. The wolves were now in the country of game, and though they still hunted in pack, they hunted more cautiously, cutting out heavy cows or crippled old bulls from the small moose-herds they ...
— White Fang • Jack London

... was ended. For each of the four men had borne his share of that winter's wounds and privations. It was still a reality rather than a memory to them; they could feel, even in this hot summer evening and round this dinner-table, the chill of its snows, and the pinch of famine. Yet their recollections were not all of hardships. The Major told how the subalterns, of whom he had then been one, had cheerily played cards in the trenches three hundred yards from the Malakoff. One of the party ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... Europeans have settled in this country, the number of the savages considerably diminishes. As they live chiefly upon their hunting, the woods that are destroyed to cultivate the country, must in course contract the district of their chace, and cause a famine amongst them, that must be fatal to them, or compel them to retire to other countries. The English, sensible of this effect, and who seemed to place their policy in exterminating these savage nations, ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard

... not know that you would not regain your old ascendency; I believe you are as dangerous, and I as weak, as ever. But I do know that, the more fascinating I found you, the harder it would be to bear. Thinking of what I had missed through that accursed time of famine would drive me mad soon. I have got used to my present burden: I won't give you the chance of making it heavier. Those tears of mine were selfish as well as childish; they were given to the happiness and hope that you killed eight years ago. Stay—we parted with a show of kindness ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... Famine was staring RICHARD'S army in the face, so that nothing could be more natural and proper than that he should have issued orders to butcher ten thousand of his lower soldiers, and have their meat canned for the subsistence of ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various



Words linked to "Famine" :   calamity, want, lack, the Great Hunger, the Great Starvation, the Irish Famine, the Great Calamity, catastrophe, dearth, shortage, tragedy, cataclysm, deficiency



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