"Meagre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lads trudged down the track toward the hut. Carefully they picked their way between groups of genuine refugees rearranging their meagre possessions in the coaches. ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... to recall the Melbourne of 1840, as it looked in that year, the year of my arrival. In the first place I must protest against the meagre view given some years ago in the "Illustrated London News", from a sketch by Mossman, an early colonist of my acquaintance, and copied into the lively and pleasant volume of my esteemed friend, Miss Isabella Bird (now Mrs. Bishop). It may be ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... 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
... possible to find some more bread and oil on the other side of it, but finally shaking her head she sat looking thoughtfully into her lap; only for a few minutes however, for the door opened and the slim form of her sister Klea appeared, the sister whose meagre rations she had dreamily eaten up, and Klea had been sitting up half the night sewing for her, and then had gone out before sunrise to fetch water from the Well of the Sun for the morning sacrifice ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... he did thirty years ago, and expects the world never to forget it either. The more of a weakling he is, and the more incapable of repeating his former triumph, the more he thinks of it; and the more he thinks of it the more it satisfies his meagre soul, and prevents him essaying another brave venture in the world. His petty achievement ruins him. The memory of it never leaves him, but swells to a huge balloon that lifts him off his feet and carries ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... amongst the little leaders of party in that preposterous capital, watch their little tricks, the rapacity with which they clutch the meanest spoils and wonder how political profligacy grows fat upon diet so meagre and uninviting. He will come away with a conviction, already indorsed by the more respectable portion of the American community, that their government is the most corrupt under the sun; but he will not, with them, lay the flattering notion ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... upon this meagre regimen, but beyond all other evils a true Spaniard of the poorer sort dreads obesity. During the darkest night of the season he will get up at an absurd hour and stab his best friend in the back ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... experience of this master of exact literature was reduced to a minimum; but this minimum sufficed for him, precisely because of the philosophical insight which he possessed to so high a degree. To this meagre number of positive faculties furnished by observation, he applied an analysis so intuitive that he discovered, behind the small facts amassed by him in no unusual quantity, the profound forces, the ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... systematic use of the Old Testament by the Puritans, as if it were "the rule of life" to Christians, I saw to be a glaring mistake, intensely opposed to the Pauline doctrine. This discovery, moreover, soon became important to me, as furnishing a ready evasion of objections against the meagre or puerile views of the Pentateuch; for without very minute inquiry how far I must go to make the defence adequate, I gave a general reply, that the New Testament confessed the imperfections of the older dispensation. I still presumed the Old to have been perfect for its own objects ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... called "eeklar." It fell in the heart of the hot weather, and, after the wedding, Slane was going up to the Hills with the Bride. None the less, Slane's grievance was that the affair would he only a hired-carriage wedding, and he felt that the "eeklar" of that was meagre. Miss M'Kenna did not care so much. The Sergeant's wife was helping her to make her wedding-dress, and she was very busy. Slane was, just then, the only moderately contented man in barracks. All the rest were more or ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... L. is one of that unfortunate class who have hitherto gained a meagre support from the stolen hire of a few slaves, and who, after entire emancipation, will be stripped of every thing. This is the class upon whom emancipation will fall most heavily; it will at once cast many out of a situation of ease, into the humiliating dilemma of laboring ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... nothing but his own regret at his necessarily meagre hospitality, for which he tried to make amends ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... chance made us acquainted with a highly extraordinary individual, a tall, bony, meagre figure, in a tattered Andalusian hat, ragged capote, and still more ragged pantaloons, and seemingly between forty and fifty years of age. The only appellation to which he answered was Manuel. His occupation, at the ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... her time in the midst of stupid English people who mumble 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 ...
— A Bundle of Letters • Henry James
... principal points of distinction being, that animals of the horse kind have long flowing manes, full tails, and warty callosities on both hind and fore limbs; while asses, on the contrary, have short, meagre, and upright manes, tails slender and furnished only with long hairs at the extremity, and their hind limbs wanting the callosities. These, however, are found on the fore-legs as ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... meagre boy slid in through the crowd just ahead of Livingstone, to a woman who was toiling along with a large bundle. Holding out a pinched hand, he offered to carry the parcel ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... and the dishonour was aggravated by personal enmity to the bridegroom Edward had preferred. [The Croyland Historian, who, as far as his brief and meagre record extends, is the best authority for the time of Edward IV., very decidedly states the Burgundian alliance to be the original cause of Warwick's displeasure, rather than the king's marriage with Elizabeth: "Upon which (the marriage of Margaret with Charolois) Richard Nevile, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... all her rays dispense, And shine abroad in perfect excellence; Else we may dread some greater curse at hand, To scourge a thoughtless and ungrateful land: Now war is weary, and retir'd to rest; The meagre famine, and the spotted pest, Deputed in her stead, may blast the day, And sweep the relics of the sword away. When peaceful Numa fill'd the Roman throne, Jove in the fulness of his glory shone; Wise Solomon, a stranger ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... solitary column, last relic of the great temple of Hera. I sometimes follow it as far as certain wells that are sunk, Arab-fashion, into the sand, and dedicated to Saint Anne. Goats and cows recline here after their meagre repast of scorched grasses, and the shepherds in charge have voices so soft, and manners so gentle, as to call up suggestions of the Golden Age. These pastoral folk are the primitives of Cotrone. From father to son, for untold ages before Theocritus ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... hours of darkness, his condition sufficiently betokened that many of them had been spent beneath the open sky. Besmeared with mire; his saturated clothes clinging with a damp embrace about his limbs; his beard unshaven, his face unwashed, his meagre cheeks worn into deep hollows,—a more miserable wretch could hardly be, than this man who now cowered down upon the widow's hearth, and watched the struggling ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Merryon lay on his veranda, smoking his pipe in stark endurance while the dreadful hours crept by. Sometimes he held a letter from his wife hard clenched in one powerful hand. She wrote to him frequently—short, airy epistles, wholly inconsequent, often provocatively meagre. ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... enthusiasm. Above you and around you rises the old convent and the great tower; there, in the far corner, perhaps a friar plays with a little cat, here a pigeon flutters under the arches about the little ruined space of grass, the meagre grass of the south, where now and then the shadow of a white cloud passes over the city, whither who knows. For a moment in that silent place you wonder why you have come, you feel half inclined to go back into the church, when shyly the friar comes towards ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... a very long face. It is difficult to trace the workings of such a man's mind, or to calculate the meagre chances on which he is too often driven to base his hopes of success. He feared that he could not show his face in Kimberley, unless as the representative of the whole old Stick-in-the-Mud. And with that object he had declared ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... suffered none but silent and submissive slaves to surround him. The Duchess showed herself docile to Courtin's advice, and passed in profound obscurity the many long years which, remained to her of existence. Saint-Simon and Dangeau say nothing more about her, save to enregister the meagre favours which the Court measured out with an avaricious hand, and that woman, to whom was owing the signature of the Treaty of Nimeguen, was reduced in 1689 to solicit a pension of 20,000 livres, which was considerably diminished when the disasters soon afterwards ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... with the threat of getting out guardianship papers and of confining him in the state asylum for the insane—which was reasonable for a man who had, a quarter of a century before, speculated away all but ten meagre acres of a California principality, and who had displayed no better business acumen ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... more especially the man who in his youth had eaten roast dog in the depths of a gloomy forest of snow-loaded pines. My memory cannot place him in any remembered scene. A hooked nose, some sleek white hair, an unrelated evanescent impression of a meagre, slight, rigid figure militarily buttoned up to the throat, is all that now exists on earth of Mr. Nicholas B.; only this vague shadow pursued by the memory of his grandnephew, the last surviving human being, I ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... she was many years without succeeding in obtaining mastery over herself. At last God touched her. Her sin had never been accompanied by forgetfulness; she used often to leave the King to go and pray in her cabinet; nothing could ever make her evade any fast day or meagre day; her austerity in fasting continued amidst all her dissipation. She gave alms, was esteemed by good people, never gave way to doubt of impiety; but she was imperious, haughty and overbearing, full of mockery, and of all the qualities by which beauty with the power it bestows is naturally ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... household in Overcombe Mill was great in the extreme. John came thither daily for more than a week; but no further particulars reached England till the end of that time, and then only the meagre intelligence that there had been a gale immediately after the battle, and that many of the prizes had been lost. Anne said little to all these things, and preserved a superstratum of calmness on her countenance; but some inner voice seemed to whisper to ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... etc., until they be preferred, and then others in their places for ever."(1044) Within the last few years the City Chamberlain's accounts—touching "the lands of Mr. John Carpenter, sometyme commen clarke of this cittie"—have been brought to light, and serve to supplement in a small way Stow's meagre but valuable statement. The rental or amount with which the Chamberlain charged himself for the year 1565 or 1566 is there set down as L41 0s. 4d., and the discharge—embracing a quit rent due to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, and expenses incurred in overseeing, clothing and ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... gentleman. Such are all the interiors where Salassatore is written over the door; they bleed and they shave indifferently, and doing either, talk of the last take of thunny, the opera that has been or is to be, and the meagre skimmings of their permitted newspaper, which begins probably with the advertisement of a church ceremony, and ends always with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... be sitting amongst the first row of the spectators, close to the statue of Dionysus[72] and loaded with perfumes. Crates,[73] again, have you done hounding him with your rage and your hisses? True, 'twas but meagre fare that his sterile Muse could offer you; a few ingenious fancies formed the sole ingredients, but nevertheless he knew how to stand firm and to recover from his falls. 'Tis such examples that frighten our poet; in addition, he would ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... obtained the permission he had so eagerly sought. There had been no handkerchiefs to work upon, for two or three days, and the dinners had been rather meagre. Perhaps these were reasons for the old gentleman's giving his assent; but, whether they were or no, he told Oliver he might go, and placed him under the joint guardianship of Charley Bates, and his friend ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... known Venner. Indeed, there had been few secrets between them since the day when they had come down from Oxford together. From time to time, during his wanderings, Venner had written to his old chum a fairly complete account of his adventures. During the last three years the letters had been meagre and far between; and at their meeting a few days ago, Gurdon had noticed a reticence in the manner of his old chum that he had not ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... But I see many ways in which I may be helpful, and I know that she needs and wants the secretarial work which I have given her. Usually she holds her head high and one isn't even allowed to guess. But one does guess. Her meagre ration of life is plain beyond ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... known to send their brothers and sisters out into the world penniless, and sell from over their mothers' heads the homes in which they had hoped to die, obliging them to subsist or starve, as they might, upon their meagre "thirds." Whether justice to mother or children was done or not, depended entirely upon this one boy. And this was the brightest side of primogeniture. In cases of entailed property, very often the entail specified that it was to go to the heir male for all time. A father ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... have no relish for biographies that round the meagre skeleton of authentic facts with a plump padding of what might have been, this sentence of Paulin Paris is quite refreshing in its stern limitation to positive knowledge. And certainly no contemporary authority has yet been found ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... my sad experience in such matters, I am not at all surprised at the meagre number of replies to your ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... the friendliest welcome. A stranger would have thought her pretty, but by no means impressive. She was short, anything but meagre, fair-haired, brisk of movement, idly vivacious in look and tone. The mourning she wore imposed no restraint upon her humour, which at present ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... so many brilliant reputations which had been built up in the Lower Chamber that the general prophecy, mistaken as it was, was not at all a thing to be surprised at; Mr Punch's cartoon of Lord John Russell's entry into the House of Peers is not forgotten. The meagre little figure in robes and coronet is shown slinking by Lord Brougham similarly attired, and the latter addresses the arrival, saying, "You'll find it very cold up ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... they walked for an appetite, they doubtless lived en pension - were contracted for - otherwise their poverty would have made it a rash action. They were stooping, blear-eyed, dull old men, slip-shod and shabby, in long-skirted short-waisted coats and meagre trousers, and yet with a ghost of gentility hovering in their company. They spoke little to each other, and looked as if they might have been politically discontented if they had had vitality enough. Once, we overheard ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... small and low, the foliage of the olive thin and pale, the leaves of the fig broad and few, and the soil appearing everywhere at their roots, as well as between the rows of vines, the vegetation, when viewed from a little distance, has a meagre and ragged appearance. The whiteness of the hills, which the eye can hardly bear to rest upon at noon, the intense blue of the sea, the peculiar forms of the foliage, and the deficiency of shade and verdure, made me almost fancy myself ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... lightly outlined her own doings since she had met the young man in the Tsar's capital, and this recital brought the topic round to London, where it stayed till the final piece of steak was eaten. Theodore Racksole noticed that Mr Dimmock gave very meagre information about his own movements, either past or future. He regarded the youth as a typical hanger-on of Courts, and wondered how he had obtained his post of companion to Prince Aribert of Posen, and who Prince Aribert of Posen might be. The millionaire ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... Sometimes they had a few coppers over and above the daily expenses, sometimes they fell below that sum and had to make up the deficit on the morrow. On the occasions when they were in debt to the proprietor, they were forced to forego the small outlay required for food, and neither could afford a meagre bowl of millet. Pulling a rickshaw on an empty stomach is not conducive to health. Kwong, being an older man, found the strain very difficult, and Liu, being but a fledgling and weak and undeveloped at that, ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... beginnings of the library of Worcester Cathedral. We cannot but think that a collection of books was formed slowly and steadily here, as in other foundations of the same kind, although actual records are scanty and meagre. In over forty of the manuscripts now at Worcester are inscriptions on fly-leaves stating where they were procured: sometimes the price is given. The dates of these inscriptions run from about 1283 to 1462, or later.[1] "In 1464," writes the Rev. J. K. ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... people who paraded the streets of Rome impatient for their country to enter the War, and threatening with death the Minister Giolitti who had hitherto succeeded in keeping them out of it. The grandiose bargain which the Government had made was unknown to them; but surely Mr. Trevelyan is paying meagre tribute to their idealism and liberal thought when he implies they would have been elated by a knowledge of the details of the Treaty. Ought not, rather, a people imbued with the afore-mentioned ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... as claim to be the pink of the mode. The Castle is a fine old pile, with various courts and towers, and the entrance is magnificent. It wants, however, the splendid feature of a keep. The inside fitting up is an attempt at Gothic, but the taste is meagre and poor, and done over with too much gilding. It was done half a century ago, when this kind of taste was ill-understood. I found here the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... in the early morning to breathe the scent of honeysuckle, and sweetbriar, and lemon thyme, and all the dear, old-world treasures to be found in the gardens of well-conducted farmhouses. She had a craving for flowers in these hot summer days; not the meagre sixpennyworth which adorned the saffron parlour, but a wealth of blossom, bought without consideration of cost. And one day, with the unexpectedness of a fairy ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Tillemont and Dupin are very full and very learned. But a truly immortal history of the church, exhaustive yet artistic, brilliant as well as learned, is yet to be written. The ancient historians, like Eusebius and Socrates and Zosimus, are very meagre. The genius and spirit of the early church can only be drawn from the lives ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... they observed, and then told us that thirty of their own number had died of smallpox, having been bewitched by the people of Tette, who envied them because, during the first year, none of their party had died. Six of their young men, becoming tired of cutting firewood for a meagre pittance, proposed to go and dance for gain before some of the neighbouring chiefs. "Don't go," said the others, "we don't know the people of this country;" but the young men set out and visited an independent half-caste chief, a few miles ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... English country gentleman in many cases gives the neighborhood and the stranger a certain degree of freedom in the use of the broad expanse of ground in which they and their forefathers have loved to sequester their residences. The figure kept on, showing more and more distinctly the tall, meagre, not unvenerable features of a gentleman in the decline of life, apparently in ill-health; with a dark face, that might once have been full of energy, but now seemed enfeebled by time, passion, and perhaps ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Geographical Society are some of the more recent works published in Lisbon on the topography of that country, but they are generally very meagre and unsatisfactory. In a periodical published in Lisbon in numbers, on the plan of the Penny Magazine, there is a good deal of information, with engravings, regarding many places of interest in Portugal. I think it is called The Album, but I am sorry I have not ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.04.06 • Various
... gone by, and nothing more can be done concerning the poet's life except through careful study and through patient research. All students must regret that their labours have such comparatively meagre results. Though sharing in this regret, I have been able, besides adding minor details, to find at last a definite link of association between the Park Hall and the Wilmcote Ardens; and I have located a John Shakespeare in St. Clement's Danes, Strand, London, who is probably the poet's cousin. ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... 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, will never repress any vice or crime, will never make the educated ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... of any kind, by way of 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
... Lazarus from the dead! That, as Bunyan justly says, would be to make a new Bible, to improve the finished salvation. No, if they will not hear Moses and the prophets, our Lord and his apostles, they must all likewise perish. This is a very meagre outline of this solemn treatise; it is full of striking illustrations, eminently calculated to arouse the thoughtless, and to convey solid instruction to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... heroic work. Balzac appears not to have been extravagant; he had neither wife nor children (unlike many of his comrades, he had no illegitimate offspring), and when he admits us to a glimpse of his domestic economy, we usually find it to be of a very meagre pattern. He writes to his sister in 1827 that he has not the means either to pay the postage of letters or to use omnibuses, and that he goes out as little as possible, so as not to wear out his clothes. In 1829, however, we find him in correspondence with a duchess, Mme. d'Abrantes, the widow ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... This is certainly a conspicuous defect in North Wales, considered as a region of fine scenery. The few lakes I have since become acquainted with, as that near Bala, near Beddkelert, and beyond Machynleth, are not attractive either in their forms or in their accompaniments; the Bala Lake being meagre and insipid, the others as it were unfinished, and unaccompanied with ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... already tried to make clear, were really based on scientific observations of a kind, and the attempt at true inferences from these observations. But whether or not the Egyptian physician desired anatomical knowledge, the results of his inquiries were certainly most meagre. The essentials of his system had to do with a series of vessels, alleged to be twenty-two or twenty-four in number, which penetrated the head and were distributed in pairs to the various members of the body, and which were vaguely thought of as carriers of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... some use; that might be seen to," said Brandon, doubtfully. "Our data are meagre enough. Your mother is dead, I suppose, and she is the only person besides yourself who knew of the crime ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... remove distempers, much more frequently to prevent them, or to chase them away in their beginnings. It is not nutritive in any great degree. But if not food, it greatly alleviates the want of it. It invigorates the stomach for the digestion of poor, meagre diet, not easily alliable to the human constitution. Wine the poor cannot touch. Beer, as applied to many occasions, (as among seamen and fishermen, for instance,) will by no means do the business. Let me add, what wits inspired with champagne and claret will turn ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Too meagre a force to embrace the opportunity, there was nothing to do but to return to Panama. There it was agreed that Pizarro, with De Candia, should go over to Spain, taking with him Peruvians and treasures, tell what he had seen, and secure the royal countenance and support ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... circumstance, he continued his flight and the doctor was then enabled to escape. After a toilsome travel of twenty-one days, during which time he subsisted altogether on wild gooseberries, young nettles, a raw terrapin and two young birds, he arrived safely at Fort McIntosh—meagre, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... awful catastrophe recorded in earlier pages of this volume. Probably the Ameer, had he desired, would not have dared to concede such demands on any terms, no matter how full of advantage. But the terms which Lord Lytton was instructed to tender as an equivalent were strangely meagre. The Ameer was to receive a money gift, and a precarious stipend regarding which the new Viceroy was to 'deem it inconvenient to commit his government to any permanent pecuniary obligation.' The desiderated recognition of Abdoolah Jan as Shere Ali's successor was promised with the ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... Neela Deo, most exalted King of all elephants, came a runner at the end of his last strength. Stripped naked, but for his meagre loincloth, the oils of his body ran thick down all his limbs and his splitting veins shed blood from his nostrils and from his mouth. In the market-place he fell and with his last breaths coughed out a ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... at a length for which we must apologise to our readers; and yet this is but a meagre sketch of the contents of a book which deals with a very large proportion of the subjects that occupy the thoughts and move the feelings of religious men. We will attempt to sum up in a few words the leading ideas of the author. Addressing a mixed ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... and was given in Paris in 1872. But after the years of war and bloodshed, its sweetness was out of place, and so it was forgotten, until it was revived again in Germany. Though the text is meagre, the opera had great success on the stages of Berlin, Leipsic, Vienna and Dresden, and so its Publisher, Paul Choudens in Paris was right, when he remarked years ago to a German critic: "l'Allemagne un jour comprendra les beautes ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... rolling their eyes in appraisement of such meagre female beauty as is on display in Christendom, bring to their judgments a capacity but slightly greater than that a cow would bring to the estimation of epistemologies. They are so unfitted for the business that they are even unable to agree upon its elements. Let one such man succumb to the plaster ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... from garrets for old folks' concerts and other like occasions, but generally they do not correspond with each other, or with the performances. The result is committed to accident. The actors wear what their meagre wardrobes of the antique furnish. The wider the divergence from present fashions the better. Chance may bring together the styles of a dozen successive periods, and render the whole without coherence. In such an exhibition our interest is felt simply in the grotesque. It shows us ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... their natural complexion. He instances this paragraph from Cibber: "The first thing that enters into the head of a young actor is that of being a heroe: In this ambition I was soon snubb'd by the insufficiency of my voice; to which might be added an uniform'd meagre person (tho' then not ill-made) with ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... a gentleman named Villiers Wyckliffe, accompanied by Dr. Moloney, called at the police-station and reported himself as being the victim of a terrible assault by which he will be marked for life. It appears from particulars to hand, which are very meagre, that two men named Morris and Winter have followed him for some months in order to be revenged for some fancied wrong. They decoyed him into a house and committed the assault complained of. We ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... about which I was doubtful. As we encamped early, and I was desirous of recruiting the horses, I employed myself in taking an observation for latitude, whilst the black boy went out to look for an opossum. He succeeded in bringing in a fine large one, which formed a welcome addition to our meagre fare. The nights ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... grown hard of flesh and tense of muscle, with his scant rations and meagre covering in the cold nights, with his long marches and fruitless risks and futile fightings, when he is shot down, has little consolation, save in the fact that the thing he and his comrades and the regiment and the army ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... well-known bark of a pack of Esquimau dogs. In another moment they dashed into the midst of a snow village, and were immediately surrounded by the excited natives. For some time no information could be gleaned from their interpreter, who was too excited to make use of his meagre amount of English. They observed, however, that the natives, although much excited, did not seem to be so much surprised at the appearance of white men amongst them as those were whom they had first met ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... been, once upon a time, an engineer and built dams that broke and bridges that fell down and wharves that floated away in the spring floods. He had been a manufacturer and failed, had been a contractor and failed, and now lived a meagre life as a sort of surveyor or land ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... dripping coat and crossed the room to hang it on a chair-back. The stranger drover followed the meagre, shirt-clad figure with shifty eyes; then he buried his face in ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... attentively at her, as she put that singular question to me. It was then nearly one o'clock. All I could discern distinctly by the moonlight was a colourless, youthful face, meagre and sharp to look at about the cheeks and chin; large, grave, wistfully attentive eyes; nervous, uncertain lips; and light hair of a pale, brownish-yellow hue. There was nothing wild, nothing immodest in her manner: it was quiet and self-controlled, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... had broached me upon a spit all larded like a rabbit, for I was so dry and meagre that otherwise of my flesh they would have made but very bad meat, and in this manner began to roast me alive. As they were thus roasting me, I recommended myself unto the divine grace, having in my mind the good ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... and moping Pensiveness; With Meagre, discontented Looks they sit, And watch the wasting of the ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... Copiapo, but with a coarse scanty vegetation near the Cordilleras along watercourses and on the slopes where moisture from the melting snows above percolates through the sand. In the valleys of the Copiapo and Huasco rivers a meagre vegetation is to be found near their channels, apart from what is produced by irrigation, but the surface of the plateau and the dry river channels below the sierras are completely barren. Continuing southward into the province of Coquimbo a gradual change in the arid conditions may ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... listen to a stupid lecture on geography and history; but in the present instance it was not so. The information communicated in regard to England and Scotland was so familiar to them that it was robbed of its interest; but the school-books contained only very meagre allusions to Holland and Belgium. Many of them had read Mr. Motley's eloquent descriptions of the bravery and devotion to principle of the Dutch people in their civil wars and in their terrible conflict with the Spaniards, and they ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... and blue eyes and gold lashes— Made in the mold of the Saviour, they say! Drink deep of my bosom, my starved, meagre bosom, That—keeps ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... come. His little strength was completely worn out in efforts to disentangle himself. Once a day a door opened, and Herr Hippe placed a crust of bread and a cup of water within his reach. On this meagre fare he had subsisted. It was a hard life; but, bad as it was, it was better than the horrible death that menaced him. His brain reeled with terror at the prospect of it. Then, where was Zonla? Why did she not come to his rescue? But she was, perhaps, dead. The darkness, too, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... Mr. GLADSTONE, signing them, "A Literary Constituent," "A Wavering Anabaptist," and so forth, but, extraordinary to relate, I have received no answer, and no notice has been taken of my disinterested presents. The reviews were of the most meagre and scornful description. Messrs. SAUL, SAMUEL, Moss & Co. have just written to me, begging me to remove the "remainder" of my book, and charging L23 15s. 6d. for warehouse expenses. Yet, when I read Geoffrey's Cousin, I fail to see that it falls, in any way, beneath the general run ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... of last year terrified the imaginations of those who had lived through it. "Gentlemen" having again predominated in reinforcements sent from England, the crops planted and gathered in Smith's absence had been meagre, while rats brought over in one of the vessels had wrought havoc with stored grain. Like an angel of mercy was the apparition of Pocahontas, at the head of a "wild train" of Indians laden with corn and game, approaching the fort. "Ever once in four or five days during the time ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... than trout, and a novice almost always overestimates them. But the guides were not deceived. "This one will weigh four pounds and three-quarters, and this one four pounds, but that one not more than three pounds; he is meagre, M'sieu', BUT he is meagre." When we went ashore and tried the spring balance (which every angler ought to carry with him, as an aid to his conscience), the guides guess usually proved to be within an ounce or two of the fact. Any one of the senses ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... into his bunk he rested while George prepared the meagre meal of brown beans, fried salt pork, and sour-dough bread. The excellence of this last, due to the whaler's years of practice, did much to mitigate the unpleasantness of the milkless, ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... Rice is rather meagre in nutriment; it contains but little phosphorous matter, with less carbon than other cereals, and is best and most generally employed as a diet in ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... day, when my wife and I were laughing and arguing over some little domestic detail of our meagre establishment—so soon are great griefs forgotten in an overwhelming joy, of a sudden I saw her face change, and asked what was ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... foreigners who are led into their dressing-rooms while sumptuous and significant vestments are being donned; but I must confess to feeling it for them, and if my impressions of the S. Croce sacristy are meagre and confused it is because of a certain delicacy that I experienced in intruding upon their rites. For on both occasions when I visited the sacristy there were several priests either robing or disrobing. ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... circumstances which gave pleasure or profit to them; and turned his youth into a long period of mental weakness and suffering, from which he recovered, indeed, by a system of moral and intellectual cold water, meagre diet, and excessive exercise, but only to remain for the rest of his days in a condition of character absolutely analogous to the bodily condition of those self-martyring invalids, who keep the gout down by taking exhausting walks, eating next ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... of household goods and chattels, the property of Simonds and White, was a very meagre one indeed. The more common and necessary articles of furniture such as bedsteads, tables, benches, etc., were probably manufactured on the premises by means of the carpenter's axe, adze, hammer and saw. In addition they had a ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... but very bright blue eyes; they were fixed now earnestly on his niece. He took a glance round the little parlor where they sat. He was an old Australian, accustomed to bush life, but even he noticed how threadbare was the carpet, how poor and meagre the window curtains. Charlotte herself, too, how thin and worn she was! Could those pale and hollow cheeks ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... a dreary little procession that wound in the drizzle from Kenmuir to the little Dale Church. At the head stalked James Moore, and close behind David in his meagre coat. While last of all, as if to guide the stragglers in the weary road, come ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... of the sound views which Spencer set forth with great detail in his essay on "Physical Education." The instruction given in schools and colleges on the care of the body and the laws of health is still very meagre; and in certain subjects of the utmost importance no instruction whatever is given, as, for example, in the normal methods of reproduction in plants and animals, in eugenics, and in the ruinous consequences of disregarding sexual purity and honour. In one respect ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... and meagre; free speech was impossible over a lodging-house telephone set in the public hall. Amy, who knew little of Cope's immediate surroundings at the moment, went on in accents of protest and of grievance, and Cope went on replying in a half-hushed ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... 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 ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... children, fresh from romping in the bracing prairie air, were favored with a ravenous appetite, she had little. Tom understood all this; for, constituted like her, he, too, felt the deprivations of the table, although in a less degree, and much did he worry about her meagre diet. ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... the union of those who have loved here will in the next world amount to perfect identity, that they will look back on the expressions of affection here as mere meagre strugglings after and approximation to the union which then will be ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... Shall draw me to disown them, or forsake The meagre wandering herd that lows for help— And needs me for its guide, to seek my pasture Among the well-fed beeves that graze at will. Because our race has no great memories, I will so live, it shall remember me For deeds of such divine beneficence As rivers have, that teach, men what ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... reminded me of gorillas. Their bodies were small, ill- shaped, and squat. There were no swelling muscles, no abundant thews and wide-spreading shoulders. They exhibited, rather, an elemental economy of nature, such as the cave-men must have exhibited. But there was strength in those meagre bodies, the ferocious, primordial strength to clutch and gripe and tear and rend. When they spring upon their human prey they are known even to bend the victim backward and double its body till the back is broken. They possess ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... My life's the destined mark. The poison'd shaft has drank my spirits deep.— Is't come to this? Conspire with rebels! Ha! I've served you, madam, with the utmost peril, And ever gloried in th' illustrious danger, Where famine faced me with her meagre mien, And pestilence and death brought up her train. I've fought your battles, in despite of nature, Where seasons sicken'd, and the clime was fate. My power to parley, or to fight, I had From you; the time and circumstance did call ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... 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 ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... 11-xxiii.3 is indeed repeated verbatim in 2Chronicles xxxiv. 19-32, but the incomparably more important section connected with it (xxiii. 4-10), giving a detailed account of Josiah's vigorous reformation, is omitted, and its place taken by the meagre remark that the king removed all abominations out of Israel (xxxiv. 33); in compensation his passover feast is described all the more fully (chap. xxxv.). In recording also the finding and publication of the Law, Chronicles fails to realise that this document begins now ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... changes, 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
... proceeding was repeated at intervals of a day or two, and finally led to the conclusion that the farmer was living from hand to mouth certainly, and in all probability on charity. Besides, the "new hands" felt a growing indisposition, owing to the meagre supplies on the table, to allow themselves any latitude in the matter of eating. So they resolved to try the good old plan of days gone by, and send out a foraging party. The plans were discussed at length, and ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... ten minutes after this brief conversation, and within a quarter of an hour of the time at which the train was due at Rugby, when the carriage, which had rocked a good deal from the first, began to oscillate very violently. One meagre little elderly traveller turned rather pale, and looked nervously at his fellow-passengers; but the young man who had spoken to Henry Dunbar, and a bald-headed commercial-looking gentleman opposite to him, went on reading their newspapers as coolly as if the rocking of the carriage had been ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Edmee's private apartments, and filled the post of companion in the drawing-room. Perhaps she had received orders from her mistress not to leave us. Certain it is that she took her place by the side of the invalid's chair in such a way as to present to my disappointed gaze her own long, meagre back, instead of Edmee's beautiful face. Then she took some work out of her pocket, and quietly began to knit. Meanwhile the birds continued to warble, the chevalier to cough, Edmee to sleep or to pretend to sleep, while I remained at the other end of the room with ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... from his meagre supply of contraband, ate two large cloves, and went formally to call on her. He remained an hour, and by exercise of the most finished diplomacy, he succeeded in building up the situation exactly as he had planned it. The note ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... been printed, giving a list of employments suitable for women, but meagre in practical suggestions how to secure them. It was thought that the war would bring about a brisk demand for female labor, as great armies cannot be collected without causing a corresponding drain from many occupations into which women would thus find admission. But the melancholy facts already ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... to the sergeant, who happened to belong to the same part of the country as himself. But the sergeant, after shrugging his meagre shoulders once, paid no further attention to the deep murmuring voice at his back. It was indeed strange that Gaspar Ruiz should desert. His people were in too humble a station to feel much the disadvantages of any form of government. There was no reason why Gaspar Ruiz should wish to uphold ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... Thayer felt a passing dislike of the gorgeousness and glare and frivolity of the dinner. He was the last man to assert that good art can only associate itself with homely origins, that prosperity is a deadly foe to its growth. Nevertheless, he was fully conscious that Arlt in his meagre surroundings was much nearer to his own ideals than were the immaculate guests of the evening. Thayer loved luxury; but it must not be ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... were themselves idealists of a sort, entangled in the vehicles of perception, and talking about sensations and ideas, pleasures and pains, as if these had been the elements of human nature, or even of nature at large: and only the most meagre of verbal systems, and the most artificial, can be constructed out of such materials. Moreover, they spoke much of pleasure and happiness, and hardly at all of misery and pain: whereas it would have been wiser, and truer to their real inspiration, to have laid all the emphasis ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... Since the coming of the new editor, Tillman's one daily had contrived to worry along without the assistance of a patent inside, for he was an ambitious young fellow with a knack for writing snappy editorials, and he made the most of the meagre ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... say that the incident, as in the case of Hawthorne's Tales, is so meagre and the language so exquisite, that the telling seems to be quite inadequate and inferior to the reading of the story. In such cases, variety may be afforded by reading, but generally speaking, it is more effective ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... proposed to her that she should come to the yacht, and indeed leave Brookfield to go on board. But Mrs. Chump was in that frame of mind when, shamefully wounded by others, we find our comfort in wilfully wounding ourselves. "No," she said (betraying a meagre mollification at every offer), "I'll not stop. I won't go to the yacht—unless I think better of ut. But I won't stop. Ye've hurrt me, and I'll say good-bye. I hope ye'll none of ye be widows. It's a crool thing. And when ye've got no children of your own, and feel, all your inside risin' to another ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the Singhalese species. It is more than probable therefore, considering the period at which M. BOSC wrote, that he obtained his information from travellers to the further east, and has connected with the habitat universally ascribed to them from old KNOX'S work (Part 1. chap. vi.) a meagre description, more properly belonging to the land leech of Batavia or Japan. In all likelihood, therefore, there may be a H. Boscii, distinct from the H. Ceylanica. That which is found in Ceylon ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... had never known the meaning of fear his dread became tenfold appalling. He must see her—and perhaps for the last time in his life. This interview might well terminate once and for all every thought of earthly happiness, and fling him back upon the meagre solace of a wilderness, which now, without ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... Lady Crawley sits. She is the second Lady Crawley, and mother of the young ladies. She was an ironmonger's daughter, and her marriage was thought a great match. She looks as if she had been handsome once, and her eyes are always weeping for the loss of her beauty. She is pale and meagre and high-shouldered, and has not a word to say for herself, evidently. Her stepson Mr. Crawley, was likewise in the room. He was in full dress, as pompous as an undertaker. He is pale, thin, ugly, silent; he has thin legs, no chest, hay-coloured ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... so that on both girls and boys a desire to provide for their own wants in an honest way shall be officially inculcated. There is a Government Reformatory School, and industrial and family schools for both girls and boys are scattered over the islands. The supply of literature in the vernacular is meagre, and few of the natives have any intelligent ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... at the magnificence as well as the evident antiquity of the ruins, and spent many days of actual pleasure wandering among them. They had read of similar remains having been found in Europe; but these were rendered vague in outline by distance, and meagre in description by their utter impossibility to comprehend the actual appearance of things, the like of which they had never seen. These were more tangible. They saw and felt them; ascended and descended ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... provisions began to fail, and they eked out their meagre supply by butchering the horses taken at Port Royal. At length they came within sight of Fayal, when a new terror seized the minds of the two Jesuits. Might not the Englishmen fear that their prisoners would denounce them to the fervent Catholics of that island as pirates and sacrilegious ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... diction, Dr Johnson has said, with meagre commendation, that it has "some sentiments which leave a strong impression," and "others of excellence, universally acknowledged." This, even when the admiration of the scene betwixt Dorax and Sebastian has been sanctioned by that ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... nothing but the heaviest storms will stop them. They will be small and difficult to hit, and very difficult to damage, and their range of operations will be very large.' Colonel Capper acted on this belief, and during his time at the factory did what he could with meagre funds to encourage aviation. The policy which, in the spring of 1908, he recommended to the War Office was to buy any practicable machines that offered themselves in the market, and at the same time not to relax effort at the factory. The attempts of Lieutenant Dunne ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... subtracting one jot or tittle from a grateful appreciation of their hardships and bloodshed; neither do they dare to question the wisdom of the statesmen who directed that the war should be fought mainly by the army. Their sole intention is to point out that, if a meagre naval force could produce so great an effect against a country mainly agricultural, a very powerful naval force, blockading effectively the principal ports of a manufacturing country, would have an effect so great that ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... square stuccoed building, plain and without decoration either interior or exterior. This was used as a nunnery until about three years ago, and the wall decorations in the room used by the nuns as a chapel are still quite fresh. This room is ugly and meagre, and without attractiveness. It has a fine garden at the back, stretching out parallel to that of its neighbour, and the two together embrace an area of close upon four acres, which will make a fine playground for the projected school. These gardens are at present neglected tangles of evergreen ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... the bulk of inland commerce was still being drawn by horses along the country roads. Yet Gourlay was the only carrier in the town. The wonder is diminished when we remember that it had been a decaying burgh for thirty years, and that its trade, at the best of times, was of meagre volume. Even so, it was astonishing that he should be the only carrier. If you asked the natives how he did it, "Ou," they said, "he makes the one hand wash the other, doan't ye know?"—meaning thereby that he ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... beginning of the War, that every German waiter was an emissary of the KAISER, only awaiting "The Day" when he should return to take a full revenge for meagre gratuities, still subsists in certain minds. Mr. BROOKES was manifestly disappointed when Dr. MACNAMARA assured him that the aeronaut captured in the recent raid was not, as he supposed, one of these returned Ganymedes, but was making his first ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... the people is as simple as their houses, and as inexpensive. A Japanese family it has been calculated can live on about L10 a year. A little fish, rice, and vegetables, with incessant tea, is the national dietary. The people living on this meagre fare are, on the whole, a strong and sturdy race, but it is questionable if the national physique would not be vastly improved were the national diet also. I have touched on this matter elsewhere, ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... 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
... object of the enterprise, and but little versed in science, or curious about matters not immediately bearing upon their interest, and as they were written often in moments of fatigue or hurry, amid the inconveniences of wild encampments, they were often meagre in their details, furnishing hints to provoke rather than narratives to satisfy inquiry. I have, therefore, availed myself occasionally of collateral lights supplied by the published journals of other travellers ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... per cent. of the people were just making ends meet. Another 40 per cent. were always dogged by poverty. Millet was the food of 10 per cent. of the farmers; millet, salted vegetables and bean soup were the meagre diet of 5 per cent; the staple food of the remainder was barley and rice. There are few temples in Iwate compared with the rest of Japan. "Education is more backward than in other prefectures," someone said. "The farmers ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... party will continue to be a factor in Canadian politics is for the future to decide. The net result of the general election of 1921 was the almost complete disappearance of the Coalition party and the meagre election of the out and out Liberals under the Hon. William Lyon Mackenzie King, who had been a minister in Sir Wilfrid's cabinet some ten years previously. The number of Progressives elected did not come up to the general expectation, but they represent a considerable number, in fact ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... work—the Lord's work!" repeated Fleetword,—"then go forth; why didst thou not confirm me that before? and I would have hastened, not retarded thee; for, of a verity, my outward man warreth with the inward, and these supporters of the flesh," pointing with his forefinger to the thin and meagre limbs that scarcely merited the compliment, "grow weary ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... displeasure against foolish men, That live an atheist life; involves the heaven In tempests; quits his grasp upon the winds, And gives them all their fury; bids a plague Kindle a fiery boil upon the shin, And putrefy the breath of blooming health. He calls for famine, and the meagre fiend Blows mildew from between his shrivelled lips, And taints the golden ear. He springs his mines, And desolates ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... thinking to encrease the Joys of Life, Marries a Beautiful young Buxom Wife; But soon he finds himself grow cloy'd and weak, Nor can he give her half those Joys she'd take, He now Consumptive, Pale and Meagre grows, While she complaining to her Parents goes; Says she can't Love him, such a one as he. And now desires she may live sep'rately. The poor fond Parents to him trudge in haste, And reprimand him soundly for what's past. He knows no Cause—Nor thinks he is to blame, They ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... made the round of the company to collect their offerings. The crowd melted like magic, leaving him solitary, hat in hand, and with only a few sous in it for his pains. With a resigned air, the man pocketed his meagre takings, then, pushing the accordion up on his back where it was held in place by a strap, he walked, bent, staggering, towards the gate. He passed through ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... investigated thoroughly the whole subject of those blockade runners, and I believe the prospect of success is worth a giant effort for the recovery of some of that money from the sea. There must be untold quantities of it lying there, inviting even a meagre attempt to get it. The boats can be chartered cheaply; and I have learned that the necessary divers can be secured on an equitable division of the spoils. There are many details of the organization of the enterprise which I ...
— Money Island • Andrew Jackson Howell, Jr.
... spasmodically dull. Prince ARTHUR could not lift it out of the rut, nor GRANDOLPH either. Only Mr. G. shone with effulgent light through gloom of evening. Principal result of manoeuvre, beyond giving fillip to majority, is that a day will be filched from meagre holidays, and House must needs ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... at every great festival; and while his heart warmed at your brilliant success, he absolutely dreaded your coming home. 'Poor fellow,' he would say, 'what a change for him, to leave the splendor and magnificence of his Prince's board for our meagre fare and altered fortunes! And then,' he added, 'as for me—God forgive me!—I can go now; but how should I bear to part with him if he comes back to me.' And now," said the count, when he had concluded a detailed history ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... because she is willing to bear them. No, her point of view will be the opposite of this. "How much," she will ask, "can I do for my mother? Is there nothing in which I can relieve her from her toils? The utmost I can render her is but a meagre compensation for her countless sacrifices for ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... whole, however, during these pre-accession years, only glimpses of Prince William's character and doings are obtainable, but, though meagre, they are sufficient to suggest that in his case, too, if we extend the saying to cover the entire period of youth, the child was father to the man. The chief, almost the only, reliable authorities for the inner history of the time are the memoirs and notes left by ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... demands a word or two of explanation; as the reader will else find it difficult to understand upon what principle of translation three 'thick set' German volumes can have shrunk into two English ones of somewhat meagre proportions. ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... Gilbert Hawkesby's niece, was a young woman of some little importance in the world. The patrons of the circulating libraries knew her as Ena Dunkeld, and shook their heads over her. The gentlemen who add to the meagre salaries they earn in Government offices by writing reviews knew her under both her names, for no literary secrets are hid from them. They praised her novels publicly, and in private yawned over her morality. Many people, her aunt Lady Hawkesby ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... marking of red dirt on them. Helen merely knew that her father had more than once climbed up here, though she had laughed at him for seeking gold upon the exalted heights. To know anything beyond this meagre and unsatisfying data, they must await ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... Greeks hailed the sea, we are told, with a mighty shout. But to them Thalassa was merely a way-mark, a sign that they were nearing home. To Kettle it was more, far more, although he could not define the relationship. He had dwelt upon the sea the greater part of his days; he had got his meagre living from her; and although at all times she had been infinitely hard and cruel to him, and he had cursed her day in and day out with all a seaman's point and fluency, she had wrapped herself into his being in a ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... to the whole. In rendering German music Italians often fail through want of discipline, or through imperfect sympathy with a style they will not take the pains to master. Nor, when the curtain lifted and the play began, was the vocalisation found in all parts satisfactory. The Contessa had a meagre mezza voce. Susanna, though she did not sing false, hovered on the verge of discords, owing to the weakness of an organ which had to be strained in order to make any effect on that enormous stage. On the other hand, the part of Almaviva was played ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... 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 a large fur ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... and what little he did accomplish, a vexation; while the confinement of the counting-room, with its prosaic duties, would be the worst form of slavery for the musician, his work inferior, his capacity limited, his situation intolerable but for the meagre ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... richer, but they were poorer. There began to be talk of Debs, the leader of a great labor machine. The A. R. U. had fought one greedy corporation with success, and intimidated another. Sometime in June this Debs and his lieutenant, Howard, came to Chicago. The newspapers had little paragraphs of meagre information about the A. R. U. convention. One day there was a meeting in which a committee of the Pullman strikers set forth their case. At the close of that meeting the great boycott had been declared. "Mere bluff," ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... thought of Bosinney. Since the dinner at Swithin's he had made enquiries, the result of which had been meagre, but encouraging: "One of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Goethe's Wilhelm Meister are the three greatest tendencies of the age. Whoever is offended at this juxtaposition, and whoever can deem no revolution important which is not boisterous and material, has not yet risen to the broad and lofty viewpoint of the history of mankind. Even in our meagre histories of culture, which, for the most part, resemble a collection of variant readings accompanied by a running commentary the classical text of which has perished, many a little book of which the noisy rabble took scant notice in its ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... dined, and were preparing to sally forth on a walk up Broadway, when I saw a meagre, care-worn, bilious-looking sort of a person enter the house, and proceed towards the bar, evidently with an inquiry concerning some of the inmates. The bar-tender pointed at once to me, when the stranger approached, and with a species of confidence that seemed to ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... heared, which, if you listened more attentively, sounded like the rattling of chains; at first it seemed at a distance, but approached nearer by degrees; immediately afterward a spectre appeared, in the form of an old man, extremely meagre and ghastly, with a long beard and dishevelled hair, rattling the chains on his feet and hands.... By this means the house was at last deserted, being judged by everybody to be absolutely uninhabitable; so that ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... somewhere beyond the mountains; and that he sometimes crossed, searching for stray cattle. That is the history of my sketch, and since I am indebted to you for its recovery, I regret for your sake that it is so meagre." ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Sister Scudder is a crispy little body, in spectacles. Her features are extremely sharp, and her countenance continually wears a wise expression. As for her knowledge of scripture, it is truly wonderful, and a decided improvement when contrasted with the meagre set-out of her table. Tea time having arrived, Lady Swiggs is invited down to a cup by a pert Irish servant, who accosts her with an independence she by no means approves. Entering the room with an air of stateliness she deems necessary to the position she desires to maintain, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... polished to the highest degree. I was astonished to see this magnificent fellow rapidly divest himself of all his clothing—turban, tunic, knickerbockers, putties—there would have been nothing left, except that a Hindu wears beneath his uniform the meagre garments which suffice for everyday life, so that when he had got rid of everything which appertained to him as a policeman he was still fit to go into Indian society. The ordinary garments of an ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... lady was for a time tearful in her forebodings that Harry would be starved, for in those days it was a matter of national opinion that our neighbours across the Channel fed on the most meagre of diet; but she was not in the habit of disputing her husband's will, and when the letter of acceptance had been sent off, she busied herself in preparing Harry's ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... poverty still hanging about her. His worries exasperated her, and the slightest attempt to control her proceedings resulted in a charge of "grumbling." Why couldn't he be nice— as he used to be? And Coombes was such a harmless little man, too, nourished mentally on Self-Help, and with a meagre ambition of self-denial and competition, that was to end in a "sufficiency." Then Jennie came in as a female Mephistopheles, a gabbling chronicle of "fellers," and was always wanting his wife to ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... section is a meagre reminiscence of Plato's discussion in Repub. viii. The interest in politics and government had died out with the loss of ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... a couple of coarse articles of clothing, and uttered a grunt. His next grasp brought up a brilliant article of apparel. He raised it to examine it at the window. The garment shone even in the meagre light. It was a waistcoat of flowered silk, sown with seed-pearls. The ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... at in this volume. I have, therefore, taken in hand a short sketch-history of mine, published some six months ago, have cut out some of it and have revised the rest, and blended it with the material of the following chapters, of which it forms nearly one-third. The result is something not quite so meagre in quantity or staccato in style, though even now less full than I should have liked to make it, had it been other than the work of an unknown writer telling the story of a small archipelago which is at once the most distant and well-nigh the youngest of English states. I have done my ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... the world under the weight of a cruel indignity, and she had been so gracefully, modestly thankful for the rest she found there. She had joined that simple circle over the way; she had mingled in its plain, provincial talk; she had shared its meagre and savorless pleasures. She had set herself a task, and she had rigidly performed it. She had conformed to the angular conditions of New England life, and she had had the tact and pluck to carry it off as if she liked them. Acton felt a more downright need than he had ever felt before to tell ...
— The Europeans • Henry James |
