"Meagre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... half a century, pleasantly,—never called it heroism. It was done. He had time now to stretch his nerves of body and soul with a great sigh of relief,—to see that Duty was, after all, a lean, meagre-faced angel, that Christ sends first, but never meant should be nearest and best. Faith, love, and so, happiness, these were words of more pregnant meaning in the gospel the Helper left us. So McKinstry stood straight up, for the first time ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... though while the Ferrier influence had ignored him, the Darcy influence had not troubled itself to do much for him. That he had claims could not be denied. So this very meagre bone had been flung him. But if he had refused it, he would have ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... meagre fare, as no meat had as yet been obtained, but mealy cakes and bowls of tea were sufficient to satisfy their hunger for the present. Scarcely had they begun breakfast, however, when Umgolo, who had gone to the top of a slight elevation in the neighbourhood, came hurrying back with the report ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... characters' Cibber terms him, and old Aston sums him up thus: 'Mr. Sanford, although not usually deem'd an Actor of the first Rank, yet the Characters allotted him were such, that none besides, then, or since, ever topp'd; for his Figure, which was diminutive and mean, (being Round-shoulder'd, Meagre-fac'd, Spindle-shank'd, Splay-footed, with a sour Countenance and long lean Arms) render'd him a proper Person to discharge Jago, Foresight and Ma'lignij, in the Villain.—This Person acted strongly with his Face,—and (as King ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... contrasted with previous excessive heat—such air must, nevertheless, be rarefied to the full extent indicated by the mercurial thermometer, and give us, therefore, our supply of vital oxygen in a very diluted form, and of a meagre, unsupporting, and unsatisfying consistence.... The sine qua non, therefore, for healthy and robust life in tropical countries, is air cold and dry—cold to the thermometer and dry to the hygrometer; or, in other words, dense, and containing ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... itself with the production of chronicles. Other Annales Monastici have been edited in five volumes (Rolls Series, vol. v. is the index) by Dr. Luard. They are of special importance for the reign of Henry III. In vol. i. the meagre annals of the Glamorganshire abbey of Margam only extend to 1232. The Annals of Tewkesbury are useful from 1200 to 1263, and specially for the history of the Clares, the patrons of that house. The Annals of Burton-upon-Trent illustrate the years 1211 to 1261 with somewhat intermittent ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... to think of any one being contented with such a meagre share of the good things of life, when she was unsatisfied in spite of the rich store showered upon her. She could not understand it, and fell asleep wishing every one could be comfortable,—it was so annoying to see them grubbing in kitchens, teaching in bleak school-houses ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... drawn up by the Noble Lords, did not, it must be confessed, surmount this difficulty very skilfully. The assertion of the Prince's consistency was confined to two meagre sentences, in the first of which His Royal Highness was made to say:—"With respect to the proposed limitation of the authority to be entrusted to me, I retain my former opinion:"—and in the other, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... womanhood with but a limited education; indeed, a very meagre one, such only as she could obtain from an irregular attendance at the village school, in summer when the farm work was lightest, and in winter, a day now and then when the bleak weather and the rough, ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... Southern Railway not far south of Manassas. His grandfather, John Marshall, the first of the family of whom there appears to be any record, was an emigrant from Wales. He left four sons, the eldest of whom was Thomas Marshall, the father of the Chief Justice. Thomas Marshall, though a man of meagre early education, possessed great natural gifts, and rendered honorable and useful public service both as a member of the Virginia Legislature, and as a soldier in the Revolutionary War, in which ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... was not in the least like any of the trim State buildings that now decorate every Victorian township and mark every mining or agricultural centre that can scrape together two or three meagre classes; it was the result of a purely local enthusiasm, and was erected by public subscription shortly after Mr. Joel Ham, B.A., arrived in the district and let it be understood that he did not intend to go away again. Having discovered that ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... to have had a little weekly journal sent to him by the post; which came at rare intervals on an ass's back to Ruscino, the ass and his rider, with a meal sack half filled by the meagre correspondence of the district, making the rounds of that part of the province with an irregularity which seemed as natural to the sufferers by it as to the postman himself. "He cannot be everywhere at once," they said of him ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... the office with a nervous teeter and a loud rattle of starched cottons. That morning she was clad in blue gingham trimmed profusely with white lace, and her face looked infinitesimal and meagre in the midst of her puffs of ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... lay south from Wei. After passing the small State of Ts'ao [5], he approached the borders of Sung, occupying the present prefecture of Kwei-teh, and had some intentions of entering it, when an incident occurred, which it is not easy to understand from the meagre style in which it is related, but which gave occasion to a remarkable saying. Confucius was practising ceremonies with his disciples, we are told, under the shade of a large tree. Hwan T'ui, an ill-minded officer of Sung, heard of it, and sent a band of men to pull down the tree, and kill ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... laborer Valois married the sub-lieutenant Lamotte, who lived in a little garrison city of the province, and sought to increase his meagre salary by many ingenious devices. He not merely gave instruction in fencing and riding, but he was also a very skilful card-player—so skilful, that fortune almost always ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... stairs!"—"Go on, sir."—"Fearfully alarmed at the noise, I drew my curtain—." "Proceed."—"And saw a faint glimmering light enter my chamber."—"Of a blue colour, was it not?" interrogated the doctor.—"Of a pale blue! and this pale blue light was followed by a tall, meagre, stern figure, who appeared as an old man of seventy years of age, arrayed in a long light coloured rug gown, bound with a leathern girdle: his beard thick and grisly; his hair scant and straight; his face of a dark sable hue; upon his head ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... Meanwhile Mr. Huxley and myself walked about unheeded by almost anyone. The women kept themselves in the bush at a little distance, making a great noise, but avoided showing themselves. Occasionally we caught a glimpse of these sable damsels, but only one female came near us—a meagre old woman who darted past with an axe in her hand, and sprang up into one of the huts like a harlequin, showing at the same time more of her long shrivelled shanks than was strictly decorous. Besides the usual ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... Paris—happy at last! You shall have diamonds. Jean-Marie, take it out of the boot, with religious care, and bring it piece by piece into the dining-room. We shall have plate at table! Darling, hasten and prepare this turtle; it will be a whet—it will be an addition to our meagre ordinary. I myself will proceed to the cellar. We shall have a bottle of that little Beaujolais you like, and finish with the Hermitage; there are still three bottles left. Worthy wine for ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an astounding figure in headlong flight. Its goal appeared to be the bunk house fifty yards distant; but its course was devious, laid clearly with a view to securing such incidental brief shelter as would be afforded by the corral wall, by a meagre clump of buck-brush, by a wagon, by a stack of hay. Good time was made, however. The fugitive vanished into the bunk house and the door of that structure was slammed to. But now the small puzzle I had ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... for the present, let us enquire what we mean by giving many names to the same thing, e.g. white, good, tall, to man; out of which tyros old and young derive such a feast of amusement. Their meagre minds refuse to predicate anything of anything; they say that good is good, and man is man; and that to affirm one of the other would be making the many one and the one many. Let us place them in a class with our previous opponents, and interrogate both of them at once. ...
— Sophist • Plato
... subordinate spirits, to whom were assigned peculiar employments. The chief of these were the Fairies, concerning whom the reader will find a long dissertation, in Volume Second. The Brownie formed a class of beings, distinct in habit and disposition from the freakish and mischievous elves. He was meagre, shaggy, and wild in his appearance. Thus, Cleland, in his satire against the Highlanders, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... trite; but it contains in a single page such a profusion of historical suggestion; it is so vigorous, so characteristic of Macaulay in all his undoubted resources as in all his mannerism and limitations; it is so essentially true, and yet so thoroughly obvious; it is so grand in form, and yet so meagre in philosophic logic, that it may be worth while to analyse it in detail; and for that purpose it must be set forth, even though it convey to most readers little more ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... of Canada was indeed deplorable. The St. Lawrence was watched by British ships; the harvest was meagre; a barrel of flour cost two hundred francs; most of the cattle and many of the horses had been killed for food. The people lived chiefly on a pittance of salt cod or on rations furnished by the King; all prices were inordinate; the officers from France were starving ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... cloudless sky, hot, sultry, the warmest day of the year. Not a breath of air stirred the leaves, and in the tree branches above us birds sang gleefully. Before daybreak we, who had been permitted to sleep for a few hours, were aroused by the sentries, and, in the gray dawn, partook of a meagre breakfast. A fresh supply of ammunition was brought up and distributed among the men, and, before sunrise, we were in line, stripped for a hot day's ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... and after a meagre breakfast which finished his resources, he went weakly to the address the dramatist had given him. Mr. Holt had left behind him apologies for unavoidable absence. Would Mr. Stretton call again at three? He wandered desolately home, and; waited, and when the time drew near set out ...
— Cruel Barbara Allen - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... they may afford some trifling advantages to local traffic, and they may even in time become the channels of a more extended commerce. Yet I have never been thoroughly satisfied either of the necessity or expediency of projects promising such meagre results to the great body of our people. But with regard to the transcendent merits of the gigantic enterprise contemplated in this bill I never entertained the shadow ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... articles, I have only been able to suggest rather than put forward ideas, for my own knowledge of these correspondences is very incomplete. As far as I know the subject has been untouched hitherto, and this must be my excuse for the meagre nature of the information given. I hope later on to treat of the relation of sound and colour to form and to show how these correspondences will enable us to understand the language which the gods speak to us through flowers, trees, ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... communications of Walter's were beyond her comprehension; and often she looked at him as if she doubted his sanity. From her meagre weekly allowance she saved a few doits, thinking to gladden Walter's heart with some ginger cakes, which he had always enjoyed. It was no use: Walter's soul had outgrown ginger cakes. This ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... from the comparison of pottery and pipes. On the whole the Hochelagan facts throw much light both forward on the history of the Iroquois and backwards on that of the Huron stock. Interpreted as above, they afford a meagre but connected story through a period hitherto lost in darkness, and perhaps a ray by which further links may still be discovered through continued ...
— Hochelagans and Mohawks • W. D. Lighthall
... Stranger still, these modern historians excel their predecessors as much in learning and depth of research as in dramatic power, artistic arrangement and construction, and beauty and picturesqueness of style. Compare the meagre array of references in the foot-notes of Watson's "History of Philip the Second" with the multitude of authorities cited by Mr. Prescott. It may be doubted, whether any printed book, however rare or little known, which could throw the least glimmer of light upon his subject, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... beyond this, nature must look after things. His view had much real wisdom. She was a quick and voracious reader, bad at remembering what she read; and though she had soon devoured all the books in Winton's meagre library, including Byron, Whyte-Melville, and Humboldt's "Cosmos," they had not left too much on her mind. The attempts of her little governess to impart religion were somewhat arid of result, and the interest of the vicar, Gyp, with her instinctive spice ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Luther in his own persevering study of Holy Writ. In this also he was encouraged by Staupitz, who must, however, have been amazed at his indefatigable industry and zeal. For the interpretation of the Bible the means at his command were meagre in the extreme. He himself explored in all cases to their very centre the truths of Christian salvation and the highest questions of moral and religious life. A single passage of importance would occupy ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... until the time of Dean Monk, is meagre. Dean Tarrant (1764-1791) collected the fragments of stained glass and had them all inserted in the windows of the apse. He also repaved the church, but most unfortunately without carefully preserving ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... as fishes that swim up And stare upon an element not theirs Through a thin skin of shrewish water, then Turn on a languid fin, and dip down, down, Into unplumbed, vast, oozy deeps of dream. His stomach was his master, and proclaimed it; And never were such meagre puppets made The slaves of such a tyrant, as his thoughts Of that obese epitome of ills. Trussed up he sat, the mockery of himself; And when upon the wan green of his eye I marked the gathering lustre of a tear, Thought I myself must weep, until I caught A grey, smug ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... of variety, existence turned a smiling face toward him. He had passed his examinations, most unexpectedly to himself, with a respectable percentage to spare. There was a time when he would have been ashamed of this meagre result. He was now, just a little, but the feeling was somewhat submerged in his gratitude at having "squeaked ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... with a force that was passionate. There was violence in the grip of his hands. His light eyes were ablaze. His whole meagre body quivered as though galvanized by some vital, electric current more ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... undisturbed horizontal character of the strata. Like the Silurian formations described elsewhere, they remain to this day nearly as flat and unaltered as they were originally laid down. Judged by mere vertical depth, they present but a meagre representative of the massive Devonian greywacke and limestone of Germany, or of the Old Red Sandstone of Britain. Yet vast though the area is over which they form the surface rock, it is probably only a small portion of their total extent; for they ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... impervious gloom Opposed itself to Cynthia's silver ray, And shaded all beneath. But now the sun With orient beams had chased the dewy night From earth and heaven; all nature stood disclosed: When, looking on the neighbouring woods, we saw The ghastly visage of a man unknown, 30 An uncouth feature, meagre, pale, and wild; Affliction's foul and terrible dismay Sat in his looks, his face, impaired and worn With marks of famine, speaking sore distress; His locks were tangled, and his shaggy beard Matted with filth; in all things else a Greek. He first advanced in haste; but, when he saw Trojans and ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Janet assuaged; Eda's was the love content to pour out, that demands little. She was capable of immolation. Janet was by no means ungrateful for the warmth of such affection, though in moments conscious of a certain perplexity and sadness because she was able to give such a meagre return for the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... for the earth-born worm, So deep engraven on the meagre platen Of human frailty, so debased in hue, That he who dares peruse it needs but blush For his own nature. The poor shrivell'd wretch, For whose lean carcass yawns this hideous pit, Had naught that he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... On the following day, when a detachment of the Cardinal's troops came to take charge of the prisoners and escort them to the capital, they were so exhausted with fatigue, loss of blood, and want of food, that before they could move, it was necessary to supply them with bread and water. This meagre refreshment taken, they were stripped to their shirts, manacled in couples, and marched off to Naples. Although informed of it by their captors, many of them had refused to credit the downfal of the city. "This illusion was soon dispelled by the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... are many devils that walk this world, Devils so meagre and devils so stout, Devils that go with their tails uncurl'd, Devils with horns and devils without. Serious devils, laughing devils, Devils black and devils white, Devils uncouth, and devils polite. Devils ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... melancholy picture to see this bowed-down old man; his thin, pale face shaded by a worn-out, three-cornered hat, his dirty uniform strewn with snuff; and his meagre legs encased in high-topped, unpolished boots; his only companion a greyhound, old and joyless as his master. Neither the bust of Voltaire, with its beaming, intelligent face, nor those of his friends, Lord-Marshal ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... handsome bribe to tell even the meagre facts he knows. Marie Berard's case is one of the reigning sensations. Her lips are ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... the row of unswathed mummies that follow. Here, in each coffin over which we bend, there is a face which stares at us—or else closes its eyes in order that it may not see us; and meagre shoulders and lean arms, and hands with overgrown nails that protrude from miserable rags. And each royal mummy that our lantern lights reserves for us a fresh surprise and the shudder of a different fear—they resemble ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... rather lost than gained in the esteem of his professional brethren by the attempt to make his commentaries an exception to the rule—and the volumes may be counted on the fingers which are at once entertaining and trustworthy compends of legal lore. To the meagre collection of attractive introductions to this subject an addition has recently been made by BENJAMIN VAUGHAN ABBOTT in a couple of brochures, respectively called The Travelling Law School and Famous Trials, which are published in one volume by D. Lothrop & Co. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... Shakespeare, in which he lived and carried on his business, still stands on Henley Street, in Stratford, much the same as it was four hundred and fifty years ago. It is a paltry hovel of two low stories, half timbered, with meagre windows, and must have been a squalid abode even in its prime. It is built flush with the sidewalk, having neither vestibule nor entry, and the rough broken pavement of the kitchen is sunken a step lower than the street. A huge open fireplace of unhewn gray stones yawns rudely in the wall ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... cut of Wade's jib was unclerical. He did not stoop, like a new minister. He was not pallid, meagre, and clad in unwholesome black, like the same. His bronzed face was frank and bold and unfamiliar with speculations on Original Sin or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... success in nut-growing, brought about by our activities, when we compare nut-growing in our field with pecan-growing in the South, and with walnut, almond, and perhaps filbert-growing, on the Pacific Coast, our results are meagre indeed. Of course commercial production, the building of a new industry of food supply for the people, is our ultimate goal. Why are our results in this direction, after fourteen years of effort, so small? Is it because we have devoted ourselves ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... tyrant, ugly, meagre, lean, 931 Hateful divorce of love,'—thus chides she Death,— 'Grim-grinning ghost, earth's worm, what dost thou mean To stifle beauty and to steal his breath, Who when he liv'd, his breath and beauty set Gloss on the rose, smell to the ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... given for this statement, I admit, is meagre, but it is as accurate as many of the figures by means of ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... what were we to do? The longboat, fine boat though she was, when stocked with even a meagre supply of provisions and water, would not accommodate more than twenty-five men, and I gravely doubted whether she would live ten minutes in such a sea as was then running, with half that number in her. Still, with the exception of such a ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... had cleared the farm, and while the soil was new it gave good crops; but as the rich surface, or "black muck," as it is called, became exhausted by continual cropping, nothing but a poor, meagre soil remained. ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... another individual, who I told him was God's Son; that he came out of heaven; that he had not been bad, and was not to go in the pit; but that he allowed himself to be killed; and when he died, God shut up the pit; so the people were spared. This seemed to myself too strange, vague, meagre, to convey any definite idea to the boy's mind; but how effectual does the Lord make our poorest efforts when HE wills to work! After a few moments' deep thought, Jack astonished me by an objection that proved he saw the grand doctrine of a substitute for sinners, which I was ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... impresses upon these simple-minded, out-of-the-world people a due sense of my importance as the guest of his master, the Ameer of Seistan, and they skirmish around in the liveliest manner to provide what creature comforts their meagre resources are equal to. The best they can provide in the way of eatables is bread and eggs, and muscal, but they make full amends for the absence of variety by bestowing upon us a superabundance of what they have, and no slaves of Oriental despot ever displayed more eager haste to anticipate ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... observed, that under the name of Targa Popolo, no mention is made of the Touaricks of Ghat. Indeed, all the notices of the Renegade Tourist on this part of Africa, are extremely meagre and unsatisfactory. As to his divisions of The Sahara into so many deserts, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, &c., this is all arbitrary and most unnatural. The story about the abundance of manna gathered in the districts of Aheer, seems to have been invented to please the Christian doctors of Rome; at ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... neglect. The framers of such a bill must be content to inherit the honours of that Athenian lawgiver whose edicts were said to be written not in ink but in blood. But suppose it past; suppose one of these men, as I have seen them,—meagre with famine, sullen with despair, careless of a life which your Lordships are perhaps about to value at something less than the price of a stocking-frame;—suppose this man surrounded by the children for whom he is unable to procure bread at the hazard of his existence, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... two very affectionate letters. What was this, then, that hung and hovered? It was in the very air of the house and the garden and the place. Grace had left her mark upon everything and every one, even upon the meagre person of Mitch the dog. Especially upon Mitch, a miserable creeping fox-terrier with no spirits and a tendency to tremble all over when you called him. He had attached himself to Maggie, which was strange, because animals were not, as a rule, interested in her. Mitch followed her about, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... forget you when we reach the Landing, Rob!' were, the meagre words that rose to my lips, but the tone of voice supplied what the words might lack. And I did not forget him or the others; and Robillard said afterward, 'By Gar, dat de best day's work I ever done, by Gar, de time I run down dat hell river after ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... devil who, while receiving a salary of fifteen hundred francs a year, spent a couple of thousand, and utilized his wits in defending his meagre salary from his creditors. On perceiving Chupin, he made a wrathful gesture, and his first words were: ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... Doubtless there is much more of it available; but a considerable of it consists of steep mountain-sides, of deserts, and the beds and overflow of the rivers. With your permission, Mr. Commander, I will retreat from this prominent position, after doing the best I could with a meagre subject;" and the doctor bowed to the audience, while ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... unsatisfactory to the philanthropist than our meagre and inadequate system of education,—a system which aims to cram the memory with acquired knowledge, which does not develop original thought, and which does not elevate the moral nature. Such a system will never elevate society, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... might be this lovely apparition. Of such patrician beauty, such elegance of form and bearing, such witchery of simple attire, and such un-Italian yet Latin type, in this antique Creole, modernly Italianized quarter—who and what, so early in the day, down here among the shops, where so meagre a remnant of the old high life clung on in these balconied upper stories—who, what, ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... was far from satisfied with the very meagre information he had received, and directly he got a favourable opportunity, he besieged Mrs. Mittens, the old housekeeper, with questions concerning the new relation who was coming to make her home with them, and of the Uncle Frank whose name he had never heard before. Eddie did not ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... the Imagination of the Thing had so entirely possess'd his Mind, that all that could be said of him, had no Influence upon him, to make him doubt of the Matter; and he dreamt of nothing but Spectres and Devils: The very Habit of his Mind was got into his Face, that he was so pale, and meagre and dejected, that you would say he was rather a Sprite than a Man: And in short, he was not far from being stark mad, and would have been so, had it not ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... of the report on hardiness, the returns on these varieties are too meagre to enable one to arrive at a corroborated conclusion. In hardiness, the Hobson stands first with a rating of 95%. Zimmerman and Carr are tied at 60%; Yankee rates 50%. Reliable seems to be little planted but also seems to rate well in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... said, she had fallen from high communion with the probabilities. She had taken more satisfaction in Isabel's accession of fortune than if the money had been left to herself; it had seemed to her to offer just the proper setting for her sister's slightly meagre, but scarce the less eminent figure. Isabel had developed less, however, than Lily had thought likely—development, to Lily's understanding, being somehow mysteriously connected with morning-calls and ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... appreciated. That he decided rightly there can be no doubt, but very few officers holding commands in India at that time would have accepted such responsibility. His knowledge as to what had happened at Meerut and Delhi was based on one or two meagre telegrams, and the information Montgomery gave him as to the treacherous intentions of the sepoys at Mian Mir had been obtained by means of a spy, who, it was quite possible, might have ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... but a meagre man, Bright eyed, but lean and pale: And swordless, with his harp and rags, He seemed a beggar, such as lags Looking for crusts ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... Burgundy, and not a day's journey from the town where now we sit a-sipping of old Medoc, there lived a cure. I say he lived; but barely. The parish was small, the parishioners greedy; and never gave their cure a doit more than he could compel. The nearer they brought him to a disembodied spirit by meagre diet, the holier should be his prayers in their behalf. I know not if this was their creed, but ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... customer, by producing some substitute, which, when rejected by Wayland, as not being what he had asked for, they maintained possessed, in a superior degree, the self-same qualities. In general they all displayed some curiosity concerning the purpose for which he wanted it. One old, meagre chemist, to whom the artist put the usual question, in terms which Tressilian neither understood nor could recollect, answered frankly, there was none of that drug in London, unless Yoglan the Jew chanced to have some of ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... reclamation hardly less important than irrigation itself. A third step in the reclamation of desert lands is arid farming—that is, the adapting to the soils of crops that require a minimum amount of moisture, and the utilization, to the fullest possible extent, of the meagre amount of rainfall in the region. Experiments conducted in this direction in Utah ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... otherwise. Mother, kneeling on the carpet beside him, like the faithful, ruffed, and farthingaled wife on a fifteenth-century tomb. Behind them, again, at some little distance, we and our visitor. With the best will in the world to do so, I can get but a meagre view of the latter. The room is altogether rather dark, it being one of our manners and customs not to throw much light on prayers, and he has chosen the darkest corner of it. I only vaguely see ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Kinglake's external life, his literary and political career, his speeches, and the more fugitive productions of his pen, were recoverable from public sources; but his personal and private side, as it showed itself to the few close intimates who still survive, must have remained to myself and others meagre, superficial, disappointing, without Madame Novikoff's ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... reached us through the newspapers was meagre and contradictory; many people discredited it; but a letter from my mother left us no room for doubt. The sickness was in the city. The hospitals were filling up, and hundreds of the citizens were flying from the stricken ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... these meagre expressions of the general approbation, and would not have had them different. From this time, within the narrow bounds that brought them all necessarily together in some sort, Hicks abolished himself as nearly as possible. He chose often to join the second mate at meals, which ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... being now over, the strangers requested to be shown to their place of repose. The old people would gladly have talked with them a little longer, and have expressed the wonder which they felt, and their delight at finding the poor and meagre supper prove so much better and more abundant than they hoped. But the elder traveller had inspired them with such reverence, that they dared not ask him any questions. And when Philemon drew Quicksilver aside, ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... we should dine in the waiting-room while Autolycus and the chuprassis went on with the luggage to acquaint the dak-bungalow people of our arrival, I upbraided him for not making proper arrangements, and reviled the meagre repast, and was altogether very unpleasant. When we reached our destination we found Autolycus prancing distractedly. "This," he said to Boggley, "is what comes of making no bundabust." Some other people were already occupying the bungalow, and we could only get the back rooms, small, ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... my story of the Commonstable. Young fellows being always hungry, and tea and dry toast being the meagre fare of the evening meal, it was a trick of some of the boys to impale a slice of meat upon a fork, at dinner-time, and stick the fork, holding it, beneath the table, so that they could get it at tea-time. The dragons that guarded this table of the Hesperides found ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... just those qualities which endear English biographical literature to us, that we were inclined to believe that the fault was inherent in Americans and American life, that our days and works lacked picturesqueness and color and left no salient points for the chronicler to seize. We now see that the meagre harvests of former biographers were due to their hasty and superficial generalizations. For at least three of the volumes in this series—the life of James Fenimore Cooper and the two now before us—may be favorably compared with the best ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field—that, of course, they are many in number,—or, that, after all, they are other than the little, shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... looking at the sky, he remembered again how fate in the person of an unknown woman had by chance caressed him, he remembered his summer dreams and fancies, and his life struck him as extraordinarily meagre, poverty-stricken, and ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... four hundred miles, to the Rocky Mountains. This desert, broken by precipitous ravines, canons, and gorges, at the bottom of which gurgles some insignificant stream, its banks clothed with stunted and meagre vegetation, produces nothing but cacti with ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... appeared, poor lad, that he 'had talent,' and 'wanted to write'; and, an obdurate family having insisted that his calligraphy should take the form of double entry, Alice had intervened to win him six months' respite, during which he was to travel on a meagre pittance, and somehow prove his ultimate ability to increase it by his pen. The quaint conditions of the test struck me first: it seemed about as conclusive as a mediaeval 'ordeal.' Then I was touched by her having sent him to me. ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... on the fifth floor of a building in New York City he toiled at his experiments day and night, with little food, and that of the simplest kind. Indeed so meagre was his fare, mainly crackers and tea, that he bought provisions at night in order to keep his friends from finding out ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... at nine in the morning we were at anchor in the bay just mentioned, situated westward of the mouth of the Rio Capaya. We found there neither village nor farm, but merely two or three huts, inhabited by Mestizo fishermen. Their livid hue, and the meagre condition of their children, sufficed to remind us that this spot is one of the most unhealthy of the whole coast. The sea has so little depth along these shores, that even with the smallest barks it is impossible ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... however, saw them standing their little empty shoes in front of the meagre fire, he bowed his head on his hands, and the tears trickled through his fingers. But the mother smiled softly to herself, as she kissed each of the children and tucked them into ...
— Gabriel and the Hour Book • Evaleen Stein
... not fall within the contentions of party usually cut a meagre figure on the page of the historian, and the railway policy of this decade is one of those questions. It was settled without much careful deliberation or foresight, and may be said in the main to have shaped itself. At the time when Mr. Gladstone presided over the department ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... of the telescope and the microscope is not questioned, but the thought of the planchette evokes ridicule. The practical success of wireless telegraphy depends on the use of an adequate medium for the transmission of electricity. The most meagre training suffices to prevent the declaration that if wireless messages cannot be sent without apparatus they cannot be ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... toward its bloody goal. To a civilian, unaccustomed to scenes of war, the tranquillity of these men would have seemed very wonderful. Many of the soldiers were still munching the hard bread and raw pork of their meagre breakfasts, or drinking the cold coffee with which they had filled their canteens the day previous. Many more were chatting in an undertone, grumbling over their sore feet and other discomfits, chaffing each other, and laughing. The general bearing, however, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... fire and winked at him as though it were aware of the absurdity of anything so trivial being held in such high esteem. More of the "calico," which really was an inexpensive but tasteful chintz, hung against the wall and served to hide from prying eyes the child's meagre wardrobe, and a bow of it was perkily tied to ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... was more renaissance than architecture and more bay-window than both; but the number was the number of his sister's house; and, as the street and the avenue corroborated the numbered information, he mounted the doorstep, rang, and leisurely examined four stiff box-trees flanking the ornate portal—meagre vegetation compared to what he had been accustomed to ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... one of the boys bewailed the meagre celebration, "never mind, shipmate. There's a good time coming when we can whoop 'er up for Old Glory as much as we please. Then we'll make up for to-day. We can't expect to do much ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... an immense number of proverbs are associated with corn, many of which are very varied. Thus, of those who contrive to get a good return for their meagre work or money, it ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... not to be interpreted too literally. He has made a business success in raising small fruits, and his literary output has been by no means meagre. I might also mention that in youth he was something of a champion at swinging the scythe, and few could mow as much in the course of a day. But certainly labor is no fetich of his, and he has a real genius for loafing. In another man his leisurely rambling with its pauses to rest on rock or ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... a small point, with a small orifice. The first use of the blowpipe that we have recorded is that of a Swedish mining officer, who used it in the year 1738 for chemical purposes, but we have the most meagre accounts of his operations. In 1758 another Swedish mining officer, by the name of Cronstedt, published his "Use of the Blowpipe in Chemistry and Mineralogy," translated into English, in 1770, by Van Engestroem. Bergman extended its use, and after him Ghan and the venerable ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... is," said he, "is freely yours. Yet as I was only a few weeks in London my budget may be very meagre. But if you will ask, I will gladly tell ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... extent this is the case, it must be the business of this paper to attempt to show. But first it is desirable to give, as usual, a brief sketch of De Quincey's life. It need only be a brief one, for the external events of that life were few and meagre; nor can they be said to be, even after the researches of Mr. Page and Professor Masson, very accurately or exhaustively known. Before those researches "all was mist and myth" about De Quincey. I remember as a boy, a year or two after his death, hearing a piece of scandal about his domestic relations, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... we have almost always outshone them: and till they have excelled Newton, and come near to Shakspeare, pre-eminence in genius must remain with us. I think they are most entitled to triumph over the Italians; as, with the most meagre and inharmonious of all languages, the French have made more of that poverty in tragedy and eloquence, than the Italians have done with the language the most capable of both. But I did not mean to send you a dissertation. I hope it will not be long before you remove to Hampton.—Yet why should ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... worked out by force of logic and analogy an extensive system of private law from the meagre fabric of the Twelve Tables, so under the lead of American lawyers American judges have applied the processes familiar in the development of unwritten law to the development of our written ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... ordinary intelligence to say that I sought with unwearying assiduity to figure my way into the stern father's good-will; that never did dullard apply himself to mathematics more patiently than I; that never did faithfulness achieve such meagre reward. Then I engaged a private tutor. His instructions met ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... The rider was dressed in the plainest attire of a quiet citizen, though the material of his clothes and the few ornaments that were visible about his person indicated their owner to be one who was no meagre possessor of the riches of this world. Both rider and horse were as still as though they had been carved in marble instead of being living objects, save the quick, nervous motion, now and then, of the full-blooded animal's ears, ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... offending Youghal was presently succeeded by a smile of gratified achievement, as she encountered a bow of recognition and welcome from a portly middle-aged gentleman, who seemed genuinely anxious to include her in the rather meagre group that ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... accident at midnight having thrown all the traffic hours into arrear. We paid for this in the flesh, for we had no meals all that day. Fruit we could buy upon the cars; and now and then we had a few minutes at some station with a meagre show of rolls and sandwiches for sale; but we were so many and so ravenous that, though I tried at every opportunity, the coffee was always exhausted before I could elbow my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... common-sense with which life was regarded, the simplicity of its faith and the patience with which trials were borne. The lessons he learned in it had more practical influence in his life than all the books he read. Nor were his opportunities for the study of character so meagre as the limit of one family would imply. As often happens in New England households, individualities were very marked, and from his stern uncle and his placid aunt down to the sweet and nimble-witted Alice, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... immensity. Yet the present church is but the nave of a temple designed with transepts and choir. The length was to have been 800 feet, the width of the transepts 625, the dome 183 feet in diameter. A building so colossal in extent, and so monotonously meagre in conception, could not ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... of elaborate preparation. Beyond the fact that a "Push" was to be inaugurated upon an entirely new and experimental form of advance, nothing was disclosed even to the men. The utter importance of maintaining absolute secrecy of this meagre information was earnestly reiterated. The slightest inkling of the impending intentions escaping to Fritz would have cast upon the troops engaged a disaster perhaps unequalled in the ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... heard of Stuffer, but he played his meagre hand with a winning bluff. The boundary line between detectivism and ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... meagre, it was true. The "candy butcher," who sold popcorn and sandwiches as well, was bought out at an exorbitant price by two traveling men, who distributed what they had secured with liberal hand. Bess, more cautious than usual, hid the remains of her lunch ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... one so bound by such a vow, And women were as phantoms. O, my brother, Why wilt thou shame me to confess to thee How far I faltered from my quest and vow? For after I had lain so many nights A bedmate of the snail and eft and snake, In grass and burdock, I was changed to wan And meagre, and the vision had not come; And then I chanced upon a goodly town With one great dwelling in the middle of it; Thither I made, and there was I disarmed By maidens each as fair as any flower: But when they led me into hall, behold, The Princess of that castle ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... wedding-day, and little Marie Ethier, whom he had played with when a child, was to have been his wife. All night long, as he tossed about in his cell, he had been thinking of her and of his two old aunts who had taken him to their meagre home when his parents died, and had watched over and cared for him with the love of a mother. They had believed in him—although, alas! his guilt was so glaringly apparent—even when the whole world had forsaken him. So, because of all these things, his ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... such poor cattle as were left in their desolate fields. He and Margot and Reine Allix, between them, fed many mouths that would otherwise have been closed in death by famine, and denied themselves all except the barest and most meagre subsistence, that they might give ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... performances before them, to suggest plans for the improvement of the poetic art. Their essays are curious, as the beginnings of that great critical literature, which in England, in spite of much infelicity, has only been second to the poetry which it judged. But in themselves they are crude, meagre, and helpless; interesting mainly, as showing how much craving there was for poetry, and how little good poetry to satisfy it, and what inconceivable doggrel could be recommended by reasonable men, as fit to be admired and imitated. There is fire and eloquence in ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... the soldiers, and the mob along the high road disappeared amid the darkness of the trees. The expanse, the beams, the piles of planks alone grew pale under the fading light, assuming a muddy tint that vaguely suggested the bed of a dried-up torrent. The sawyers' trestles, rearing their meagre framework in a corner, seemed to form gallows, or the uprights of a guillotine. And there was no living soul there excepting three gipsies who showed their frightened faces at the door of their van—an old man and woman, and a big girl with woolly ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... her cold gray eyes. She had never admired any man so much as she had admired this brilliant young painter. Many men had paid her compliments; as the rich Mr. Granger's sole daughter and heiress, she had been gratified with no meagre share of mankind's worship; but no words ever spoken had sounded so sweet in her ears as those few civil speeches that Mr. Austin had found time to address to her during his visits to the Rue de Morny. And after having taken so much pleasure in his ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... heath, and through the deep sand. They stopped at length before the house of mourning, which was crowded with strangers, some inside, some on the outside. Vehicle after vehicle stood together; the horses and oxen were turned out amidst the meagre grass; large sand-hills, like those at home by the German Ocean, were to be seen behind the farm, and stretched far away in wide long ranges. How had they come there, twelve miles inland, and nearly as high and as large as those near the shore? The wind had lifted ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... the Colonel is launched in English society of an intellectual order, and mighty dull he finds it. During two hours of desultory conversation and rather meagre refreshments, the only bright spot is his meeting with Charles Honeyman, his dead wife's brother, whom he was mighty glad to see. Except for this meeting there was little to entertain the Colonel, and as soon as possible ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... ears like the noise of a windmill in the country at night. Nevertheless, I was able to see that the manuscript offered every evidence of indubitable authenticity. The two drawings of the Purification of the Virgin and the Coronationof Proserpine were meagre in design and vulgar in violence of colouring. Considerably damaged in 1824, as attested by the catalogue of Sir Thomas, they had obtained during the interval a new aspect of freshness. But this miracle did not surprise me at all. And, besides, what did I care about the ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... however, it appears that the information concerning Ceylon collected by the Macedonian explorers of India, was both meagre and erroneous. ONESICRITUS, as he is quoted by Strabo and Pliny, propagated exaggerated statements as to the dimensions of the island[1] and the number of herbivorous cetacea[2] found in its seas; the elephants he described as far surpassing those of continental ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... imploring appeals for further money, embarked upon lecturing campaigns, wrote aviation articles for the Press, and canvassed possible supporters in the effort to raise funds for his next enterprise. Two years passed, but the fruits of the propaganda were meagre. It was at this juncture, when everything appeared to be impossible, that Count Zeppelin discovered his greatest friend. The German Emperor, with an eye ever fixed upon new developments, had followed Zeppelin's uphill struggle, and at last, in 1902, came to ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... design. The propriety of inserting their names at all was for a time considered doubtful. It is believed, however, that they could not, in strict justice, have been entirely omitted. But let not the meagre sketch of their views I have given, satisfy us. We want a full development of their principles from their own pens—such a development as, I hope, will not long be withheld from a world which is famishing for the want of it. But now ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... difficult—was to continue down the river as far as its junction with the Tres Barras, from which place I would strike across the virgin forest as far as the Madeira River. I had not the faintest idea how I could realize either plan with the ridiculously meagre resources at my disposal. I had money enough, but unfortunately that was one of the few spots on earth where money was of little use. Again I trusted in Providence to come to our help. Both plans involved thousands of kilometres of navigation ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the gratification of hearing, at the Protestant chapel, the Te Deum for the grand victory, in presence of the King and Queen of the Low Countries—or Holland, and of the Dowager Princess of Orange, and the young warrior her grandson. This prince looked so ill, so meagre, so weak, from his half-cured wounds, that to appear on this occasion seemed another, and perhaps not less dangerous effort of heroism, added to those which had so recently distinguished him in the field. What enthusiasm would such an exertion, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... from international science is incalculable.... Our debts are manifest in all directions.... When we draw up our scientific balance-sheet in account with the rest of the world, the credit side is meagre. In this respect we have to speak chiefly of our passive advantages, and our modesty forbids us to refer ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... method of eating the material in front of them. Detached by their mandibles, fragment by fragment, the material is digested. It passes from end to end through the body of the pioneer, yields during its passage its meagre nutritive principles, and accumulates behind it, obstructing the passage, by which the larva will never return. The work of extreme division, effected partly by the mandibles and partly by the stomach, makes the digested material ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... Shyness's soon shatter'd Chinese Wall. But in her dim fantastic temple bower The little Chinese puppet sits and sighs, A dream of far-off wonders in her eyes— And in her hand a golden tulip flower. For her the tender firstling tendrils grew;— Rich crop or meagre, what is that to you? Instead of it we get an after crop They kick the tree for, dust and stalk and stem,— As hemp to silk beside ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... every way considerably the better for our bath. Our next business was to go to breakfast, but our bread was by this time so completely destroyed as to be quite uneatable. We therefore threw it overboard, and made a meagre and unpalatable meal off more raw salt beef, washed down ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... broken French at her. Some day she will poison the soup or the vin rouge; but I hope that will not be until after mother and I shall have left her. She has two daughters, who, except that one is decidedly pretty, are meagre imitations of herself. ...
— A Bundle of Letters • Henry James
... female, on seeing the house in such a crowded state, started, paused, and glanced with some terror at the persons assembled. Her dress was not altered since her last visit; but her countenance, though more meagre and emaciated, expressed but little of the unsettled energy which then flashed from her eyes, and distorted her features by the depth of that mysterious excitement by which she had been agitated. Her countenance was still muffled as before, the awful protuberance rose from her shoulders, and the ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... bravely on, heartening each other with jests under conditions in which it is extremely likely men would merely cavil and sulk and fill the air with their complainings; dressing themselves daintily through personal effort in spite of meagre purses; throwing themselves with a splendid joyousness into their few precious days of freedom; banding themselves together often and often to wring occasional hours of gaiety from the months of toil; keeping brave eyes to the front and brave hearts to the task, while they wait steadfastly ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... iss it? You will be getting tired early. And who is keeping you from a rest?" said Mackenzie, whose knowledge of contemporary slang was decidedly meagre. ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... Cheer, the Sullen Month will die, And a young Moon requite us by and by: Look how the Old one, meagre, bent, and wan With age and Fast, is fainting ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... leave Aspinwall. However, our fears proved groundless; at all events, no such attempt was made, and we reached New York in safety in November, 1861. A day or two in New York sufficed to replenish a most meagre wardrobe, and I then started West to join my new regiment, stopping a day and a night at the home of my parents in Ohio, where I had not been since I journeyed from Texas for the Pacific coast. The headquarters of my regiment were at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... ruin. Beware, Macduff, the fallen stars! Venus aggrieved will fly to Mars; There's mischief brewing. What mountain of a fair is that, Whose jewels, lace, and Spanish hat, Proclaim her high degree, With a tall, meagre-looking man, Who bears her reticule and fan? That was Maria D-, Now the ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... these matters at the time, not a rumor of them having reached me as yet in my meagre reading, I knew that it must be so. It fired me with a keen desire to read—not the old orthodox emasculated histories of the schools but those other books and pamphlets to which I fancied he must have access. Eagerly I inquired of ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... wretchedest creature present. She was about to smite on both cheeks him she loved, as well as the woman she despised and had been foiled by. Still she had the consolation that Rose, seeing the vulgar mother, might turn from Evan: a poor distant hope, meagre and shapeless like herself. Her most anxious thoughts concerned the means of getting money to lockup Harry's tongue. She could bear to meet the Countess's wrath, but not Evan's offended ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... breakfast. In no meal has luxury advanced more upon the model of the ancients than in this: the dinners (cn) of the Romans were even more luxurious, and a thousand times more costly, than our own; but their breakfasts were scandalously meagre; and, with many men, breakfast was no professed meal at all. Galen tells us that a little bread, and at most a little seasoning of oil, honey, or dried fruits, was the utmost breakfast which men generally allowed themselves: some indeed drank wine after it, but this ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... step too far plunged her into twenty feet of water, and the next moment she was spinning round and round in the current. She had learned to swim a few strokes in the creek on her father's farm, and her meagre skill now stood her in good stead, for she was able to keep afloat until the current threw her against a gravel bar that jutted into the river. She dragged herself ashore, very wet, and of a sudden, ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... worth while to make an effort to give him the place he has honestly earned, before the inevitable reaction sets in, and unmerited laudations have brought about an unmerited neglect. His life was arduous. His meagre physical means and his fervent spirit were pathetically ill-mated. It was impossible to survey his career without a sympathy which trembled from admiration to pity. Certain, in spite of all precaution, to die young, and in the face of that stern fact genially and unconquerably ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... drown it. The story of Dickens's boyhood, as told by himself, is not more pathetic—nor is its outcome more beautiful—than what we know of our guest's experiences—his orphanage, his few years' meagre schooling, his work as a boy in all sorts of shifting occupations, the attempt to make a learned blacksmith of him, his final apprenticeship to iron-moulding, at which he worked on the East Side from his eighteenth to his twenty-first year. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... opened his eyes sharply and beheld the meagre figure of Mrs. Silk. In one hand she held a medicine-bottle and a glass and in ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... children of eating clay. This habit is not confined to the Otomacs on the Oronoco, nor to Indians altogether; for negroes and whites have the same propensity—Mr. Hauxwell found it impossible to restrain his own children. Bates ascribes the morbid craving to the meagre diet. This may be true to some extent, but it is certainly strange that the extraordinary desire to swallow earth (chiefly unctuous clays) is found only in the tropics, where vegetation is so rank ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... and frequently fatal. I was unwilling to lose my head just then. So I lay still. If this were the Huron, he was probably merely reconnoitring, as I had reason to believe he had done several times before. His game interested me, for he seemed to work unnecessarily hard for meagre returns, and Indians are seldom spendthrifts of endeavor. I could accomplish nothing by capturing him, for I should learn nothing. There was ostensible peace between the Huron nation and myself. I would let him work out ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... most girls in the same rank of life,—she had not been taught to fritter away such capacities for culture as Providence gave her in the sterile nothingnesses which are called feminine accomplishments. She did not paint figures out of drawing in meagre water-colours; she had not devoted years of her life to the inflicting on polite audiences the boredom of Italian bravuras, which they could hear better sung by a third-rate professional singer in a metropolitan music-hall. ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... like her father, generous to the point of absurdity with her meagre possessions. Mary admired a Spanish fan—a Mexican treasure that had come down from one of the grand ladies of the Court of the Emperor Maximilian. Polly's delight flamed like wild-fire. Mary found herself the immediate owner of the fan, almost labouring under the fictitious impression that she ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... you are alluding to the labours of missionaries in foreign lands?" I observed. "But I have heard it said, that in spite of all the money expended, their preaching produces but meagre results. In India, for instance, the Company will not admit them. In Africa, the climate destroys them. The fanatical Turks and other Mohammedan nations will not listen to their message; and it would be but time lost and energies wasted were they ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... being thus inseparable: and what rendered us more conspicuous, my cousin was very tall, myself extremely short, so that we exhibited a very whimsical contrast. This meagre figure, small, sallow countenance, heavy air, and supine gait, excited the ridicule of the children, who, in the gibberish of the country, nicknamed him 'Barna Bredanna'; and we no sooner got out of doors than our ears were assailed with a repetition of "Barna Bredanna." ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... record of American art up to the period of ultra-modernism, it will be found that these men are the true originals among American painters. We shall find outside of them and a very few others, so much of sameness, a certain academic convention which, however pronounced or meagre the personalities are, leave those personalities in the category of "safe" painters. They do not disturb by an excessively intimate point of view toward art or toward nature. They come up to gallery requirements by their "pleasantness" or the inoffensiveness of their style. They offer little ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... vigour immediately following each foreign conquest (such as the Mongol conquest in the Thirteenth Century and the Manchu in the Seventeenth) not only has there never been any absolutism properly so-called in China, but that apart from the most meagre and inefficient tax-collecting and some rough-and-ready policing in and around the cities there has never been any true governing at all save what the people did for themselves or what they demanded of the officials as a protection against one another. Any ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... comprising the last of their provisions. The animal heat, produced by their great and continued exertions in travelling, had thus far prevented them, from suffering much from the cold, or perceiving its actual intensity. But they had been at rest scarcely long enough to finish their meagre repast, when they were driven from their seats by the chill of the invading element, and were eagerly demanding, as a lesser annoyance, again to be led forward on their journey. The snow by this time had accumulated to the depth of a foot and a half, and still came swiftly sifting ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... before the door. Heidi ran to it and began splashing and rubbing, till she quite glistened with cleanliness. The grandfather meanwhile went inside the hut, calling to Peter to follow him and bring in his wallet. Peter obeyed with astonishment, and laid down the little bag which held his meagre dinner. ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... came, therefore, his utterance was a culmination of the two preceding centuries. An entire side of the richly endowed human nature to which we owe the high qualities of New England,—a nature which is often so easily disposed of as meagre, cold, narrow, and austere,—this side, long suppressed and thrown into shade by the more active front, found expression at last in these pages so curiously compounded of various elements, answering to those traits of the past which Hawthorne's ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... the justest celebrity, have assured us, that endless and dreadful evils are the portion of all who are engaged in the manufacture of tobacco; that the workmen are in general meagre, jaundiced, emaciated, asthmatic, subject to colic, diarrheas, to vertigo, violent headach, and muscular twitchings, to narcotism, and to various diseases of the breast and lungs.[48] They have also declared that some of these evils have ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... high comb. She was the only one without spectacles or eyeglasses. Henry looked older and feebler than any of the company. His scant hair hung in thin and long white locks, and his tall, slender figure had gained a still more meagre effect from his dress, while his shoulders were bowed in a marked stoop; his gait was rigid and jerky. He assisted himself with a gold-headed cane, and sat in his chair ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... and in the haste with which the afflicted crew had abandoned their ship no one had bothered about extinguishing them. By means of the meagre illumination afforded by them, the two airmen were able to take a fairly comprehensive survey ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... to the meagre and narrow hearts of men such enlargement? How to make them capable of a universal sympathy? Christ believed it possible to bind men to their kind, but on one condition—that they were first bound fast to himself. He stood forth as the representative of men, he identified himself ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... to do with Fashion as with the changing clouds. I have given considerable attention to this fact. It is worthy of the deepest thoughtfulness. Oh, it is a solemn fact that we descend into our children, in our weakness or strength, in our meanness or majesty, as we have lived. And what a lean, meagre, moonshine inheritance does a fashionable mother convey to her offspring! I confess that to me there is something grand in being the mother of a noble son or daughter, of a strong and virtuous family of children. If there is a just human ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... lodged in the same apartments in which Saxe had lived, when, at the height of power and glory, he visited Prussia. Frederic, indeed, stooped for a time even to use the language of adulation. He pressed to his lips the meagre hand of the little grinning skeleton, whom he regarded as the dispenser of immortal renown. He would add, he said, to the titles which he owed to his ancestors and his sword, another title, derived from ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... great mass of the people in Europe—men and women—were ignorant to the last degree, possessing little if any sense of delicacy or refinement, and were utterly uncouth. For the most part, they lived in miserable hovels, were clothed in a most meagre and scanty way, and were little better than those beasts of burden which are compelled to do their master's bidding. Among these people, rights depended quite largely upon physical strength, and women were generally misused. To the lord of the manor it was a matter of little importance ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... Asenath had Manassah and Ephraim. Thus giving the Patriarchs just seven legitimate descendants in the first generation. If it had not been for polygamy and concubinage, the great harvest so recklessly promised would have been meagre indeed. ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... time Thress had been subsisting on the meagre diet permitted to a man in his condition, but his stomach rebelled even at that. He had heard of the Dewey fasting cure and its boasted efficacy against all human ills, and, though he had little faith, death ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... life, in which sport had filled up so large a place and work so little, and in which he had developed so little power of initiative and such meagre self-dependence, and he envied the solemn-faced boy at his side, handling his team and wagon with the skill ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... meagre details of a fabled existence, which are all that the author has been able to collect from any source whatever, has sprung the following poem. The poet feels quite justified in dissenting from the statements made in the preceding ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier |
