"Scanty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pressed on till mid-afternoon, only stopping once when he came upon some pears growing upon a stunted tree by the roadside. They were small, crabbed, and stony; but the hungry Prince was glad enough to gather a number and eat them seated in the pear-tree's scanty shade. As to the Court, it was quite a relief to Vance to remember that the peasants at the fair had provided the baby-house with cakes and bonbons enough ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... creator of agricultural wealth lived perpetually on the verge of starvation, beggared not only by extortionate rents, partly worked out in virtually forced labour, but by extortionate tithes paid to the alien Anglican Church, in addition to the scanty dues willingly contributed to the hunted priests of his own prescribed religion. His resident upper class—though we must allow for many honourable exceptions—was the Squirearchy, satirized by Arthur Young as petty despots ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... eyes strayed from the palace, he glanced up a long vista between leafless trees and muddy grass-plats. A familiar figure in a battered straw hat and scanty green cloak was advancing in his direction; the wind, blowing back the fringe of disfiguring short hair, disclosed a pure unbroken line of delicate profile, strangely simple, and recalling the profiles in Botticelli's lovely fresco in the Louvre. Miss Price, for it was she, carried a painting-box, ...
— Different Girls • Various
... (Lang after kend on Carrick shore; For mony a beast to dead she shot, And perish'd mony a bonnie boat, And shook baith meikle corn and bear, And kept the country-side in fear), Her cutty sark, o' Paisley harn, That while a lassie she had worn, In longitude tho' sorely scanty, It was her best, and she was vauntie.— Ah! little kend thy reverend grannie, That sark she coft for her wee Nannie, Wi' twa pund Scots ('twas a' her riches), Wad ever grac'd a dance ...
— Tam O'Shanter • Robert Burns
... innocent, but he could not wholly acquit himself of complicity in the poor old woman's fate. Mr. Benny had a troublesome and tender conscience in all matters that concerned his duty towards his neighbour. The School Board was driving Mrs. Butson out of employ, taking away her scanty earnings; and he was Clerk to the School Board. To be sure, if he resigned to-morrow, another man would take his place, and Mrs. Butson be not one penny the better. Mr. Benny saw this, yet it did ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... greatest tree of that variety I had ever seen, a hundred feet high and spreading like a giant oak. In the topmost branches was the tottering beldame I had saluted, and in both her hands the staff, a dozen feet long. She was threshing the fruit from the tree with astounding energy and agility, her scanty rags blown by the wind, and her emaciated, naked figure in its arboreal surroundings like that ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... of rooms was scanty, and embroidered hangings, cushion and stool covers provided the necessary notes of colour and comfort; the wall hangings of the 13th century were of coarse canvas decorated with a design executed ...
— Jacobean Embroidery - Its Forms and Fillings Including Late Tudor • Ada Wentworth Fitzwilliam and A. F. Morris Hands
... published but two volumes, and these met with scanty sale. Since his death ten volumes have been issued from his manuscripts and letters, and his fame has ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... degree from the bleakness of its aspect. The house was of one story only, with a window on either side of the door, and no other appeared in sight; but a little smoke rising from the chimney seemed to promise a better reception than the desolate landscape and the girl's scanty dress had led us ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... loathsome dropsical swellings, called basal, soon cripple the strongest limbs; but a Malay cannot live on rice alone, and the sour jungle fruits, and other vegetable growths, with which he ekes out his scanty meals, wring his weakened stomach with constant pangs and aches. All these things Wan Bong now experienced, as he daily shifted his camp, from one miserable halting-place to another; but a greater pain than all the rest was soon to be added to his cup of bitterness. He was an opium ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... polished, are innocent of patches. I am told that the suit which he wears during his daily excursions of fifteen minutes is not the one that he wears at home. Like everything else that he has, this is provided and kept in repair by the wife, and is renewed as frequently as her scanty means permit. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... piers of alabaster. The whole was buried in a rectangular mass of masonry and revetted internally with alabaster, but was wholly destitute internally as well as externally of decoration or even of mouldings. With the exception of scanty remains of a few of the pyramid-temples or chapels, and the temple discovered by Petrie in Meidoum, it is the only survival from the temple architecture of ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... comparing the situation of the convicts there and in this settlement, where their gardens had not that fertility to boast of, and where the ration from the store was with too many hastily devoured, and with most derived but an uncertain and scanty aid from any other source, determined, and about the middle of the month announced his determination, to detach thither a large body of convicts, male and female, together with two companies of the marines. Some immediate advantages were expected to be derived from this measure; ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... birds have rather short, conical beaks, and red-rimmed eyelids; they can be knocked over with little difficulty. As for the vegetable kingdom in the New South Orkneys, it is represented only by grey lichen and some scanty seaweeds. Mussels are found in great abundance all along the rocks; of these ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... The tea-gown was of a light brown; the make was poor, but it was warm and comfortable, although nothing could be more trying to Leucha's appearance. Holly could have worn it, as she could wear anything with effect; but Leucha, with her pale eyes and scanty locks, was a different sort of being. The brown tea-gown certainly did not suit her. Hollyhock, who was wearing a dress of soft silk and brightest crimson in colour, looked a magnificent young figure beside ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... To these scanty means of improvement she added others. Her sister Fanny, having a great desire to learn dancing, the Child of the Marshalsea persuaded a dancing-master, detained for a short time, to teach her. And ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... mercy we were not swamped, so we ought not to complain in regard to other matters," answered Mr Bollard. "We have, however, but a scanty supply of water, and that poor young gentleman and several others have been crying out for more than I could venture to give them. Our provisions, too, are nearly all wet—the ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... Madame said nothing about it. Creline's son had left his master and gone North. Creline herself had asked and obtained scanty wages for her work. A little black boy across the street had been sentenced to receive twenty-five lashes for some trifling fault, and they had just begun to whip him in the yard, when a Union officer stepped up and stopped them. A little girl, not a quarter ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... trousers, rehumped my back over the tub, scrubbed industriously until the trousers in turn were white and once more dashed roofwards. I have always been absent minded, but never to such an appalling extent as to appear clad only in my scanty underwear in the midst of a mixed throng of ladies, gentlemen and children. This I did. Some venturous souls had claimed the roof as their own during my absence so that when I sprang from the final step to claim my place in the sun I found myself by no means alone. With a cry of horror ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... the sex, with such persons as labor under a superabundant venereal heat; from this source are to be traced the origins of certain diseases of the body and distempers of the mind, not to mention unknown evils, which are not to be named; it is otherwise with those whose love of the sex is so scanty that they can resist the sallies of its lust; also with those who are at liberty to introduce themselves into a legitimate partnership of the bed while they are young, without doing injury to their worldly fortunes, thus under the first favorable ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Sir John Savile sold Poolham to George Bolles, Esq. Of the Bolles family I have been able to find but scanty mention. Among Lincolnshire Gentry who supplied demy-lances and light horse, at the Louth Sessions, March, 1586–7, Charles Bolles is named as “Captaine,” furnishing “ij. horse”; and Richard Bolles “ij launces” and “ij ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... possesses a roughly-made cart on two or four wheels, and as their belongings were very scanty, these, as a rule, sufficed to hold all their property. The greater portion of the fugitives had passed out of the city at two o'clock in the afternoon, and shortly afterwards Murat with his cavalry passed across the river by a ford and entered the town. A few desperate ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... arose from the scanty crew ranged at wide intervals along the schooner's port rail, that being the side which the natives were approaching. But before anything more could be said, a loud shout—in a voice the tones of which seemed somehow familiar to me—arose from one of the canoes, and was instantly answered ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... a meagre little man about thirty-five. A high and prominent forehead rose above a small pointed face, and a scanty growth of blonde beard and moustache did not conceal the receding chin nor the red sealing-wax lips. His faded yellow hair was beginning to grow thin, and his threadbare frock-coat hung limp from sloping shoulders. But these disadvantages were compensated by a clear bell-like ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... together under military discipline, either behind the lines or on the outskirts of Paris, herded in barns, empty factories, thousands sleeping without shelter of any sort. Straw for the most part composed their beds, food was coarse and scanty; they were so wretched and uncomfortable, so exposed to the elements, and without care of any sort, that their slight ailments developed not infrequently into serious and sometimes fatal cases of bronchitis, ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... haggard face of the duchesse, revealing every feature but too clearly. Aramis fixed a long ironical look upon her pale, thin, withered cheeks—her dim, dull eyes—and upon her lips, which she kept carefully closed over her discolored scanty teeth. He, however, had thrown himself into a graceful attitude, with his haughty and intelligent head thrown back; he smiled so as to reveal teeth still brilliant and dazzling. The antiquated coquette understood the trick that had been played her. She was standing immediately ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sisters to dismount; and taking the bridles from the mouths, and the saddles off the backs of the jaded beasts, he turned them loose, to glean a scanty subsistence among the shrubs and meager herbage of that ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... does not pay the debt. What have they done for the world to bring it into their debt? The world owes every man a living when he earns it by honest toil, and not before. Those who sow with a stingy hand may expect to reap a scanty harvest. You should, therefore, in whatever vocation you may elect, strive to succeed on this principle; otherwise ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... think of the great barnlike room on the top floor where all slept together in wooden cots, and he heard in memory the clamour of the cruel bell that woke them on winter mornings at five o'clock and summoned them to the stone-flagged Waschkammer, where boys and masters alike, after scanty and icy washing, ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... the moderately well-to-do, who built small and inexpensive houses with say three fireplaces, while the rich owners of older and more pretentious dwellings were often rated for fewer. [y] Money was scarce, rich men rare. So also was great poverty. There was a scanty living for the majority. Trades were few, wages low. A farm-hand averaged three shillings a day, paid in provisions. Women of all work drudged for two shillings and sixpence per week, while a farm overseer ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... was yet a little lad, his father departed for unknown lands to seek fame and fortune, leaving the boy and his mother to eke out a scanty existence as ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... Indeed, over a period of long weeks I caught but one mink, two weasels and three coyotes. The Parson kindly said the country was trapped out; still, I suspected my lack of skill was responsible for my scanty catch. ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... flood which had destroyed the road had left the town marooned and the inhabitants had gone out over the rocks; until now only Cole Campbell, the owner of the Homestake, stayed on to do the work on his claims. In this valley far below he had made his home for years, diverting the creek to water his scanty crops; while in season and out he labored on the road which was to connect up his ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... the altar must have rested; perhaps for his sleepy congregation there was the same glimpse of ivy tendrils creeping in under the eaves, and on drowsy afternoons in May the same chatter and hiss of nesting starlings. From the scanty scraps of the paintings on the wall you can only guess vaguely at the texts of the old Sunday sermons: manna falls in the wilderness; Moses brings water out of the rock; probably the congregation listened with most eagerness to the ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... blue paper, giving scanty details, and a spanking total. Simple Citizen pays, and tries to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... nothing new, and did no work for the warehouses; fear had entered into them. All who had put out their feelers drew them back; they were frostbitten, so to speak. The earth had withdrawn its sap into itself and had laid a crust of ice over all; humanity did the same. The poor withdrew their scanty blood into their hearts, in order to preserve the germ of life. Their limbs were cold and bloodless, their skin gray. They withdrew into themselves, and into the darkest corners, packed closely together. They spent nothing. And many of those who had enough ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... judgment than that of his own, and that was none other but such an one as was false. So then, the Pharisee is by this time quite out of doors; his righteousness is worth nothing, his prayer is worth nothing, his thanks to God are worth nothing; for that what he had was scanty, and imperfect, and it was his pride that made him offer it to God for acceptance; nor could his fawning thanksgiving better his case, or make his matter at all ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to me that in all discussions upon this subject the capacities of the English language have received but scanty justice. The intellectual tendencies of our race have always been somewhat conservative, and its standards of literary taste or belief, once set up, are not varied without a struggle. The English ear is suspicious of new metres and ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... had been robbed, when they were captured, of every thing except the clothes they wore. Their allowance of provisions was scanty and poor. They were confined in the third story of a lofty prison. Time rolled away; no prospects appeared of their liberation, either by exchange or parole. Some of the prisoners were removed, as new ones were introduced, to other places of confinement, ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... price for them, and the Prince had no money in his coffer. He lived from hand to mouth, and was obliged to borrow from every private individual who had anything to lend. Merchants, nobles, official personages, were all obliged to assist in eking out the scanty ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... appearance of rain. We tried some green hide that we were reserving for camel's boots in our soup of this morning, and being pickled in salt when taken from the bullock it imparted quite an agreeable flavour to our scanty meal and we all enjoyed it much. Some of the party put up badly with this short diet and appear to get quite dispirited, although at sight of the tracks yesterday they are quite elated, but it was only for a short time to become further depressed after. Horses all about amongst the ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... treatment of a scanty formation of milk, one of the best measures which can be resorted to is the frequent application of the child to the breast. In addition, the flow may be increased by milking the breasts by means of the thumb and finger, suction through a tobacco-pipe, or the breast-pump, ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... neighbourhood, inhabited by a vast number of mechanics and poor people, a few shops are open at an early hour of the morning; and a very poor man, with a thin and sickly woman by his side, may be seen with their little basket in hand, purchasing the scanty quantity of necessaries they can afford, which the time at which the man receives his wages, or his having a good deal of work to do, or the woman's having been out charing till a late hour, prevented their procuring over-night. ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... April, in the same year, that they arrived at the place appointed to meet the Chippeways, near the east branch of the Chippeway river, about thirty miles northeast of Lac qui parle. The women raised the teepees, six in number, and prepared the scanty portion of food for their families. Here they remained, until their patience was almost exhausted, constantly expecting Hole-in-the-Day to appear; but day after day passed, and they were still disappointed. ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... be more simply furnished than that of Sister Agatha. It seemed as if she wished to excel in her avoidance of anything like unnecessary ornament or comfort. Three chairs, a table, an old-fashioned sofa, a writing-desk, and a chest of drawers formed the scanty furniture. The walls were whitewashed and bare, while at the windows were hung plain white curtains. Above the desk was placed the solitary ornament of the room, the watchword for the day. These "watchwords" are texts of Scripture printed on cards, one ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... hand, he wore heavy, coarse shoes; his clothes, though well brushed, were visibly threadbare, and his clean white stock was frayed at the edge and almost worn out. He had taken off his three-cornered hat, and his high peaked head was barely covered with scanty silver-grey hair. When he dropped his paper and looked about him for the waiter, evidently wishing to pay for his coffee, he showed a face sufficiently remarkable to deserve description. The prominent feature was the enormous, beak-like nose—the nose ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... whoever he might be, was a striking-looking fellow in a dirty brown cloth caftan and an enormous sash wound round his middle. A pointed cap with some tawdry gold lace on it covered his head, and greasy black love-locks writhed filthily over his high cheek bones and into his scanty tangled beard; a suspicious hilt bound with brass wire reared its snake-like head from the folds of his belt, and his legs, terminating in thick-soled native shoes, reminded one of a tarantula in boots. He salaamed awkwardly with a tortuous grin, and addressed ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... prevented our making a pilgrimage to it, nor was it alone a peculiar fondness for rain which induced us to persist in walking in the storm. Our feeble pockets, if they could have raised an audible jingle, would have told another tale. Our scanty allowance was dwindling rapidly away, in spite of a desperate system of economy. We left Ulm with a florin and a half apiece—about sixty cents—to walk to Heidelberg, a distance of 110 miles. It was the evening of the third day, and this was ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... it was scarcely equal to the bang with which, instantly after, Peterkin bounded from the bower, in scanty costume, his eyeballs starting from his head with surprise and terror. One gaze he gave, one yell, and then fled into the bushes like a wild cat. The next moment Jack went through exactly the same performance, the only difference being ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... words, a sympathy with beauty, a tenderness of feeling, or seriousness in reflection, which render their works, although never perhaps attaining that loftier and finer excellence here required,—better worth reading than much of what fills the scanty hours that most men spare for self-improvement, or for pleasure in any of its more ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... palace, or prison, of Constantinople, the successor of Augustus demolished the vacant houses for winter fuel, and stripped the lead from the churches for the daily expense of his family. Some usurious loans were dealt with a scanty hand by the merchants of Italy; and Philip, his son and heir, was pawned at Venice as the security for a debt. [49] Thirst, hunger, and nakedness, are positive evils: but wealth is relative; and a prince who would be rich in a ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... hardly finished eating with a good appetite his rather scanty meal, when the guard again entered and loosened his bonds, and he was led forth from the hut for the first time since his arrival in the village. Guarded by a tall warrior on either side, he was forced to head a sort of triumphal procession, and, accompanied ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... where did you come from?" I heard Sam demand of the huddled bundle as he lifted it off the wall. It was attired in scanty night-drawers and a short coat, and shivered as it stood, first on one foot ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... sail, We merrily scud before the gale, And reach the sound Where we were bound. And now our ship, so gay and grand, Glides past the green and lovely land, And at the isle Moors for a while. Our horse-hoofs now leave hasty print; We ride—of ease there's scanty stint— In heat and haste O'er Gautland's waste: Though in a hurry to be married, The king can't say ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... and hoped that Miriam might have charmed it. What we may have been, Alroy, is a bright dream; and what we may be, at least as bright a hope; and for what we are, thou art my brother. In thy love I find present felicity, and value more thy chance embraces and thy scanty smiles than all the vanished splendour of our race, our gorgeous gardens, and our ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... with a friend, on some of these weavers: one, an intelligent man, with the prevailing Scotch type of face. We found him, accompanied by a sickly wife, sitting by a scanty fire, ragged enough. This man for his last web was paid at the rate of twopence a yard for weaving linen with twenty hundred threads to the inch, but out of this money he had to buy dressing and light, and have some one, the sickly wife I suppose, ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... ragged grey beard and scanty white hair; he was clad in poor clothes, and had tramped on foot all the way from London to Babbicombe, where Jack used to practice. But Jack saw at once under this rough exterior he had the voice and address of a cultivated ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... gold a pattern in 1901, now costs six and nine dollars. Exquisite embroideries on pina, which is thinner than bolting cloth, have quadrupled their prices, but the provincial women servants, who weave the jusi and do the embroidering, still work for a few cents a day and two scanty meals. ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... much in this scanty collection, the loss of which we need lament; nor does it inspire us with a very high notion of the learning of the monks of Depying Priory. Yet how cheering it is to find that the Bible was studied in this little ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... about a thousand times apiece, and practised their inflection and phrasing in as many ways as she could think of, but she had neglected to memorize her cues. Not altogether, of course; she thought she'd learned them, but they were terribly scanty little cues anyway, just a single word, usually, and never more than two, and nothing short of absolutely automatic memorization was any good. So she sat serene through a five-second stage wait while Quan frantically spun the pages of his book to find the place—he ought ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... as he confesses himself, at the time of an earlier edition, edited once more the poems, employing an original MS. presented to him by Mr. Murray. In a note in Woodstock, Sir Walter sums up the information he had procured concerning the author, which, scanty as it is, is not without interest. "Of Carey," he says, "the second editor, like the first, only knew the name and the spirit of the verses. He has since been enabled to ascertain that the poetic cavalier was ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... are many other London boys, was exposed to temptations of all sorts; often when almost starving, without a roof to sleep under, or a friend to whom he could appeal for help, his shoes worn out, his clothing too scanty to keep him warm; but, ever recollecting his mother's last words, he resisted them all. One day, having wandered farther east than he had ever been before, he found himself in the presence of a press-gang, who were carrying off a party of men and boys to the river's ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... cretonne. Olivia had already received her Christmas presents, and had nothing to expect. Her new outfit, and Dot's pelisse, and Martha's wages were all birthday and Christmas gifts. Nevertheless when Marcus came on Christmas Eve to hang up their scanty store of holly, he was met by ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... other side of the bay, and was obliged to drop anchor. Six thousand bushels of barley were found on board her, which was of inestimable value to the inhabitants, who were now suffering extremely; as were also the wives and children of the soldiers, whose rations—scanty for one—were wholly insufficient for the wants of a family. Fowls had now risen to eighteen shillings a couple, eggs were six pence each, and small cabbages fetched ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... area that was faintly illuminated. The momentary view of the footgear, together with the maddening plop plop it made upon the rock, raised an insane idea within my brain that we were chasing a pair of bewitched shoes that were enticing us into the very heart of the mountain. The scanty diet and the happenings of the two preceding days had left me light-headed. The race was unreal. I had an idea that the shoes would run on forever, and that every yard they covered took me farther ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... it is the setting of the subject which gives them the most trouble. The portraitist deals with but a single figure, yet this, in combination with its scanty support, provokes this ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... little skill and learning, plunged in constant war and rapine, full of insubordination, disturbing public rule and private peace. For waving pendants, flowing draperies, brilliant colours, eagles' feathers, herons' plumes, feasts or festivals so splendid in imagination, let naked limbs, scanty, sombre garments to elude discovery by the foe, bits of heath stuck in bonnets if they had them, precarious sustenance, abject humility and all those hardships inseparable from uncultivated tribes and countries be instituted as a juster portrait of ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... of the room that was the headquarters of his business of paper-hanging and decorating as well as the office of his detective business, and opened the door a crack. It was still early in the morning, but Mr. Gubb was a modest man, and, lest any one should see him in his scanty attire, he peered through the crack of the door before he stepped hastily into the hall and captured his copy of the "Riverbank Daily Eagle." When he had secured the still damp newspaper, he returned to his cot bed and spread himself out ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... she had come from a seaport town in Maine, to better their fortunes. High wages tempted him to remain through the summer; but as late as October he fell a victim to yellow fever. He had sent most of his surplus funds home, and his widow soon exhausted her scanty supply of money. Instead of applying to the American consul, she went to live with an English family as a nurse. But there she was taken sick herself, and was sent away from her comfortable home to a boarding-house, lest she should ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... exhibition, and sell ornaments of base metal. In Raipur the men take about performing monkeys and the women do tattooing, for which they usually receive payment in the shape of an old or new cloth. A few have settled down to cultivation, but as a rule they are wanderers, carrying from place to place their scanty outfit of a small tent and mattress, both made of old rags, and a few vessels. They meet at central villages during the Holi festival. The family is restricted to the parents and unmarried children, separation usually ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... was reached soon after 10 o'clock. Then, General Toral introduced General Shafter and the other officials to various local dignitaries and a scanty luncheon, was brought. Coffee, rice, wine and toasted cake were ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... admonition—"Hide not your candle under a bushel," but "let your light shine before men." I could name half a dozen dukes that I guess are a devilish deal worse employed: nay, I question if there are half a dozen better: perhaps there are not half that scanty number whom Heaven has favoured with the tuneful, happy, and, I will ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... dark grey trousers had been creased in two places, and there were little spots of blood on his high white collar because he had cut himself shaving. His complexion was of the same old suppressed purple, but his little eyes were bright and shining and active; they danced towards Maggie. His scanty locks had been carefully brushed over his bald head, and his hands, although they were still puffed and swollen, were whiter than Maggie had ever ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... smoke. At last, perseverance conquered, and the fire began to burn cheerily. Then Amaretta, our cook,—a neat-looking black woman, adorned with the gayest of head-handkerchiefs,—made her appearance with some eggs and hominy, after partaking of which we proceeded to arrange our scanty furniture, which was soon done. In a few days we began to look civilized, having made a table-cover of some red and yellow handkerchiefs which we found among the store-goods,—a carpet of red and black woollen plaid, originally ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... degraded position in the presence of the white population: a mere outcast, obliged to beg a little bread. In his native woods, the "noble savage" knows no such degrading necessity.—All there participate in, and have a share of, Nature's gifts. These, scanty though they be, are open to all. Experience here has proved, and the history of the aborigines of other countries has shown, the absurdity of expecting that any men, "as free as Nature first made man," will condescend to leave their woods, and come under all the restraints ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... vegetable world. The accounts given by native writers respecting the productive qualities of Judea are not in any degree opposed even by the present aspect of the country. The case is exactly the same with some islands in the Archipelago; a tract, from which a hundred individuals can hardly draw a scanty subsistence, formerly maintained thousands in affluence. Moses might justly say that Canaan abounded in milk and honey. The flocks of the Arabs still find in it a luxuriant pasture, while the bees deposite in the holes of the rocks their delicious stores, which ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... picture is painted in these verses! The dreary wilderness stretches before us, monotonous, treeless, in some parts bearing a scanty vegetation which flourishes in early spring and dies before fierce summer heats, but for the most part utterly desolate, the sand blinding the eyes, the ground cracked and gaping as if athirst for the rain that will not fall; ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... been inexhaustible in stories of this kind. But, after the twenty-four years of vile enjoyments, the hour of retribution came at last. According to our scanty historical notices, Faustus died an unnatural death: he was found dead in his bed, at his birthplace, Kundlingen, with his neck twisted. How such a death must have confirmed all the superstitious rumors about him the reader will easily conceive. But, according to the popular legend, his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... to have another instance out of all history, of probability, however strong, being deemed sufficient to convict a person of unsurpassed treachery and stupidity combined, when the direct evidence, which is not scanty, fails to support the charge and ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... foremost amongst these scanty festivities came Mrs. Desmond's dance. It was a grown-up affair, and she had sent printed invitations to Egbert, Athelstane and Quenrede. The latter, who only knew the Desmonds slightly and was always overwhelmed in their presence, developed ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... worship is not wholly distinguishable from that of the fields, the state-cult is, as we have seen, very largely a replica of the other two. The evidence for the domestic and agricultural cults is in itself very scanty, and we shall frequently have to draw inferences from their counterparts in the state. Above all, it is not to be supposed that any hard and fast line between the three existed in the Roman's mind; but ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... Spain, "between that obtained by washings and that which had been accumulated for ages in the hands of the natives, who were pillaged at will." He inclines, however, to the opinion, that a scientific system of mining would renew the supply of gold, which may not be represented by the scanty washings that have been occasionally tried in Hayti and Cuba. In Hayti, "as well as at Brazil, it would be more profitable to attempt subterraneous workings, on veins, in primitive and intermediary soils, than to renew the gold-washings which were abandoned ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... furnished, they seem to have been too unimportant to attract official attention, though they were destined to have a mighty influence on the future of China. One of them was kept by a Dane, who sold foreign toys, notions, dry-goods and groceries such as might please the Chinese or be of use to the scanty European population of the great capital. By chance some of the eunuchs from the imperial palace, wandering about the city in search of something to please little Tsai Tien, dropped into this store on Legation Street and ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... bridle-path wound up from the road, the country grew more rugged, the vegetation more scanty, and the stones more plentiful. It was a wilderness of rocky desolation; as far as one could see there was no sign of humanity, not a soul upon the solitary road, not a living thing upon the desolate hills that rose on either side in jagged points to the sky. Corona ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... of these books casts a broad light upon that interval between the Vedic and epic periods wherein it is customary to imagine religion as being, in the main, cult or philosophy. Nor does the interest cease with the yield of necessarily scanty yet very significant facts in regard to eschatological and cosmogonic views. The gods themselves are not what they are in the rites of the cunning priests or in the dogmas of the sages. In the Hindu law there is a reversion to Vedic belief; or rather not a reversion, ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... a hot day, and the water seemed to be blistering about the dory. So, too, the stretching sand of the shore, as one raised the eyes painfully against the direct noon-light, was as if it smoked. The low, gray palmetto leaves were curled and faint. Scanty spots of shade beneath sickly trees seemed to gasp upon the hot ground, like creatures that had thrown themselves down to get cool. The outlines of the town beyond had a certain horrible distinctness, as if of a sight that should but could not be veiled. Overhead, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... Dionysiaca of Nonnus, a writer of the fourth century; and the imagery has to be put back into the shrine, bit by bit, and finally incomplete. Its central point is the picture of the rending to pieces of a divine child, of whom a tradition, scanty indeed, but harmonious in its variations, had long maintained itself. It was in memory of it, that those who were initiated into the Orphic mysteries tasted of the raw flesh of the sacrifice, and thereafter ate flesh no more; and it connected itself with that strange object in the ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... teachers, the principals—petty officers of a petty tyranny in which too often seethed gossip, scandal, intrigue. There were the "soft places"; the deceitful, the easy, the harsh principals; the teachers' institutes to which the poor teacher was forced to pay her scanty dollars. There were bulletins, rules, counter-rules. As she talked, Sommers caught the atmosphere of the great engine to which she had given herself. A mere isolated atom, she was set in some obscure corner of this intricate machine, and she was compelled to revolve with the rest, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... I reached one dying autumn-tide My uncle's dwelling near the forest-side, And saw the land so scanty and so bare, And all the hard things men contend with there, A little and unworthy land it seemed, And yet the more of Asagard I dreamed, And worthier seemed the ancient ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... discovery of the gold and diamond mines assisted the government, both in Brazil and in the mother country, to make a stand in the midst of the eminent peril which threatened, in consequence of the losses sustained in the east, while at home there was a scanty and impoverished population, ruined manufactures, and, above all, a neglect of agriculture, that rendered Portugal dependent on foreigners for corn. Every thing was wanted; there was nothing to return; and at the beginning of the ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... boils up with deafening roar around the boulders which obstruct its course. The wildness of the whole scene was very impressive. As far as the eye could see, stretched range after range of wooded hills and scores of miles of beautiful wilderness, inhabited only by scanty tribes of wild Indians. In the midst of such a solitude, the roar of the cataract ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... steady trot for a long hour, Helen's roving eyes were everywhere, taking note of the things from near to far—the scant sage that soon gave place to as scanty a grass, and the dark blots that proved to be dwarf cedars, and the ravines opening out as if by magic from what had appeared level ground, to wind away widening between gray stone walls, and farther on, patches of lonely pine-trees, two ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... and late, washing, ironing, milking, churning, baking, nursing the younger children, sharing her mother's labors, and paid as her mother was—with her board and a scanty, grudgingly given wardrobe. She was now twenty-four, and had never had a five-dollar bill to spend as she pleased in her life—for that matter, neither had the mother. There are many Mr. Stillmans, "Are they honest men?" If father and son ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... one room, for life was harder than ever. Emma's illness had been the beginning of a dark and miserable time. Whilst she was in the hospital her sister took the first steps on the path which leads to destruction; with scanty employment, much time to kill, never a sufficiency of food, companions only too like herself in their distaste for home duties and in the misery of their existence, poor Kate got into the habit of straying aimlessly about the streets, and, the inevitable ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... the cavity of the body (fig. 2). Each consists of a prolongation of the syncytial material of the proboscis skin, penetrated by canals and sheathed with a scanty muscular coat. They seem to act as reservoirs into which the fluid of the tense, extended proboscis can withdraw when it is retracted, and from which the fluid can be driven out when it is wished to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... granted from their wretched appearance that poverty and destitution formed one of the sources of their affliction. One of the party, at least, seemed in the very depths of misery. "Can it be possible," said I to myself, "that this poor creature has only these scanty ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... reasonably inferred that immense bodies like the planets, some of which exceed this earth in magnitude, are not empty masses created merely to be borne through space and to be carried around the sun, and to shine with their scanty light for the benefit of a single earth, but must have a more important use. He that believes, as everyone must believe, that the Divine created the universe for no other end than that the human race might exist, and heaven therefrom, ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... tall, thin man, very pale, and completely bald, except two very scanty tufts of black hair, most carefully gathered from behind, and laid flat on his forehead; his face, wrinkled and furrowed by hard study, expressed intelligence ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... miles behind, and the earth over which they flew began to take on the shape of an island. Water appeared beyond it, and innumerable small islands. Bell began to rack his brain for the infinitesimal scraps of knowledge he had about this section of the world. It was pitifully scanty. Punta Arenas was the southernmost point of the continental mass. All about it was an archipelago and a maze of waterways, thinly inhabited everywhere and largely without any inhabitants at all. The only solid ground between Cape Horn and the Antarctic ice pack was Diego Ramirez ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... means which are thus adopted to stimulate the growth of the crops are naturally employed to ensure the fruitfulness of trees. In some parts of Amboyna, when the state of the clove plantation indicates that the crop is likely to be scanty, the men go naked to the plantations by night, and there seek to fertilise the trees precisely as they would impregnate women, while at the same time they call out for "More cloves!" This is supposed to make the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... menstrual flow may not appear for some years after it is normally due; or the flow may cease after some months or years of continuance; or the flow may be abnormally scanty or even absent. ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... regular annuitant, receiving a trifle once a year, in lieu of giving them a benefit, as he terms the filling of his voracious paunch. A story is told of his father, who is said to have kept a very scanty table, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... hitherto seen, was rolling his loose-knit body up and down the platform, smiling at the people and mopping a great bony skull, on which, low down, a few scanty wisps of colourless hair ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... always moping. Look here now. What with the poor, scanty fare the deacon's wife doles out to you and your constant grieving, you will soon die, and then your face will assume an expression of perfect peace. A peaked nose, and all around, stretching in every direction, a vast ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... is hard to follow in detail, since datable evidence is scanty. In general, however, the instances of really native fashions or speech which are recorded from this or that province belong to the early Empire. To that age we can assign not only the Celtic, Iberian, and Punic inscriptions which we find occasionally ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... of an educational institution, particularly if that institution had its birth in struggling pioneer days. It is a period in university life which sees, as a rule, an undreamed of growth and development from small beginnings to unlimited influence, from scanty resources and great disappointments to a large if not always adequate endowment and equipment, from a merely local service to a national and even a world educational power. This is distinctly true of the century of McGill University's ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... long looked forward, and now, when but half an hour ago he had so rejoiced in his assignment to the regiment of his choice—now must come this cloud upon his young life, his and blithe-hearted Bud, who so adored him. She knew well that his first act would be to set aside a certain portion of his scanty pay for her use, and for her own part she would not so ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... Her history was simple enough: she was going into the mill to support a helpless father and mother; it was a common story; she had given up much for them;—other women did the same. He gave her scanty praise. Two years ago (he had keen, watchful eyes, this man) he had fancied that the homely girl had a dream, as most women have, of love and marriage: she had put it aside, he thought, forever; it was too expensive a luxury; she had to begin the life-long ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... is to lay stress on ideas and tendencies that have to be understood and appreciated, rather than on facts that have to be learned by heart. Many authors are not mentioned and others receive scanty treatment, because of the necessities of this method of approach. The book aims at dealing with the matter of authors more than with their lives; consequently it contains few dates. All that the reader need require to help him have been ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... inform us of the existence of this tract in Thevenot, or in the collection of Astley. This journey throws some light on the interior part of Tartary, or Central Asia; and is therefore an important addition to our scanty knowledge of that little known and interesting country, the real storehouse of nations, and the scourge, during many centuries, of all the surrounding countries, from the sea of Japan to the Baltic, and from the Frozen Ocean, to the seas ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... that Shirai Gompachi, who was living under the protection of Chobei, the Father of the Otokodate, was in love with Komurasaki, the beautiful courtesan who lived at the sign of the Three Sea-shores, in the Yoshiwara. He had long exhausted the scanty supplies which he possessed, and was now in the habit of feeding his purse by murder and robbery, that he might have means to pursue his wild and extravagant life. One night, when he was out on his cutthroat business, ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... disappointment at the reality of Captain Stokes' "Plains of Promise," compared to what he had been led to expect. The successful conclusion of this expedition, which had covered nearly five thousand miles, proves Gregory an explorer of undoubted qualifications, and it is to he regretted that so scanty a record of his travels has ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... had for her an indescribable charm. It was wonderful how, with the apparently scanty means of acquiring knowledge which the common school histories afforded, together with here and there a stray book borrowed for her by her young companions from their home libraries, and questions ...
— Honor O'callaghan • Mary Russell Mitford
... incorruptible integrity, but certainly for no other appropriate quality discernible on the surface. He was an arid, sandy man, who, if he had been put into a grinding-mill, looked as if he would have ground immediately into high-dried snuff. He had a scanty flat crop of hair, in colour and consistency like some very mangy yellow fur tippet; it was so unlike hair, that it must have been a wig, but for the stupendous improbability of anybody's voluntarily sporting such a head. The little play of feature that ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... published in the spring of 1786 by Charles Dilly, the poem went through three editions in the same year. Its popularity was determined less by Courtenay's poetic talent than by public interest in the Johnsoniana that flooded the market. Courtenay's literary output, though scanty, was diverse; he wrote light verse, character sketches, and essays, including two controversial pieces in support of the French Revolution.[1] It is apparent, however, that for him writing was hardly ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... understanding, are equally stunted, for parents are often only in quest of the cheapest school, and the master could not live, if he did not take a much greater number than he could manage himself; nor will the scanty pittance, allowed for each child, permit him to hire ushers sufficient to assist in the discharge of the mechanical part of the business. Besides, whatever appearance the house and garden may make, the children do not enjoy the comforts of either, for they are ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... George the First. He returned shortly afterward to the continent; shifting about from place to place, and died in Venice, in 1729. His wife and daughter, accustomed to live with the prodigality of princesses, could not conform to their altered fortunes, but dissipated the scanty means left to them, and sank into abject poverty. "I saw his wife," says Voltaire, "at Bruxelles, as much humiliated as she had been haughty and triumphant in Paris." An elder brother of Law remained in France, and was protected by the Duchess of Bourbon. His ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... millstone of Assyria on the north, and the under one, Egypt, on the south. But circumstances are never the cause, though they may afford the excuse of rebellion against our Helper, God; and all the modern talk about environments and the like, is merely a cloak cast round, but too scanty to conceal the ugly fact of the alienated will. All the excuses for sin, which either modern scientific jargon about 'laws,' or hyper-Calvinistic talk about 'divine decrees,' alleges, are alike shattered against the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... scanty allowance of coffee thirstily, and then asked, in a timid voice, if she could have a little more. Madame's eyes glared upon her, and her voice snapped out an answer; while the English girls looked frightened, and drew ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... accordingly. Even their common treatment of them is cruel. For, though the toil and hazard of procuring food lies entirely on the women, yet they are not suffered to touch any part of it, until the husband is satisfied; and then he assign them their portion, which is generally very scanty, and such as he has not a ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... Portus Caietae and at Formiae[1] proper, and the emperors certainly possessed property at both places. After the destruction of Formiae in A.D. 847 it became one of the most important seaports of central Italy (see GAETA). In the town are scanty remains of an amphitheatre and theatre: near the church of La Trinita, higher up, are remains of a large reservoir. There are also traces of an aqueduct. The promontory (548 ft.) is crowned by the tomb of Munatius Plancus, founder of Lugudunum (mod. Lyons), who died ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... of indefinable color, always changing, and veiled behind golden-rimmed spectacles. His hands were soft and smooth, with moist palms and closely cut nails—vicious hands, made to take cunningly what they coveted. He had scanty hair, of a pale yellow, parted just above the ear, so as to enable him to brush it over the top of his head. This personage, clad in a double-breasted surtout, over a white waistcoat, and wearing a many-colored rosette, was called ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... young naval officer, against the advice of the friends of both. One of her near relatives said to me, "Of all the young girls I have ever known, she is the least fitted for a poor man's wife." Yet from the very moment of her marriage she brought their joint expenses within his scanty pay, and even saved a little money from it. Everybody knows such instances. We hear men denounce the extravagance of women, while those very men spend on wine and cigars, on clubs and horses, twice what ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... saw no human being [see note above], so scanty was the population of these plains. Game, however, was abundant. Deer sprang from the tall reed grass of the river bottoms; buffalo tramped by in ponderous columns, or dotted the swells of the distant prairie with their grazing thousands; antelope approached, with the curiosity ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... natives were seen in the interior, that those extensive regions can scarcely be described as inhabited; some scattered families comprise the entire population, and the scanty remarks we were enabled to make satisfied us of the strict identity of this race of human beings with those of the coast. The same method of procuring their food, the same arms and utensils, are common to both. This remarkable similarity in the natives of different ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... counter to British theory and practice, Great Britain would have bound herself beforehand to acquiesce. The only quasi-legislative body by which the ratio decidendi of such a decision could be disallowed would be an international gathering in which British views might find scanty support. The development of a system of national law by national Judges offers no analogy to the working of an international Court, empowered, at its free will and pleasure, to disregard the views of a sovereign Power as to the proper rule to be applied in cases as to which international ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... at Orchis, because the truth was, that until the lucky prize came to him, Orchis had gone under the nickname of Doleful Dumps, he having been beforetimes of a hypochondriac turn, so much so as to save up and put by a few dollars of his scanty earnings against that rainy day he used to groan so ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... pillars, resembling those which we find in Gothic churches. From hence we proceeded to the subterranean chapel, where are seen those prodigious columns upon which the weight of the whole building reposes. The scanty light, which glimmers among these enormous shafts, is just sufficient to discover their magnitude to the eye, and to enable one to find his way among them. Having crossed this chapel, we entered the quadrangular court, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... Furneaux sat beside Mr. Fowler. A stranger, whom Grant did not recognize, proved to be the County Chief Constable. There was a strong muster of police, and the representatives of the press completely monopolized the scanty accommodation for the public. To Grant's relief, Doris Martin was ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... 'If without having to associate with a wicked friend, a man cooks scanty vegetables in his own house at the eight or the twelfth part of the day, there can be nothing happier than that.[49] He in whose case the day is not counted is not called voracious. And, O Maghavan, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... squires' pews still exist in some churches, but "restoration" has paid scanty regard to old-fashioned notions and ideas, and the squire and his family usually sit nowadays on benches similar to those used by ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... occupying trees next each other, two land-lookers came along and camped for the night between them. Earlier in the day the men had crossed the trail of a pack of wolves, and they talked of it as they cut their firewood, and, with all the skill of the voyageurs of old, cooked their scanty supper, and made their bed of balsam boughs. The half-breed was much afraid that they would have visitors before morning, but the white man only ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... find Burton writing to thank Dr. Charles Tuckey for the gift of a copy of his Psycho-Therapeutics. "An old pupil of Dr. Elliotson," [607] he says, "I am always interested in these researches, and welcome the appearance of any addition to our scanty knowledge of an illimitable field. Suggestion (what a miserable name!) perfectly explains the stigmata of St. Francis and others without preter-natural assistance, and the curative effect of a dose of Koran (a verset written upon a scrap of paper, and given ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... first day or two, at Middleton, he did not join his noble host's party till after dinner, but took his scanty repast of biscuits and soda water in his own room. Being told by somebody that the gentleman above mentioned had pronounced such habits to be "effeminate," he resolved to show the "fox-hunter" that he could be, on occasion, as good a bon-vivant as himself, and, by his prowess at the claret ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... awaited with inquiring aspect the address of this equivocal personage. The stranger eyed old Jack for a moment, so portly in his dimensions, and decked out in gorgeous apparel; then cast a glance upon his own threadbare and starveling condition, and the scanty bundle which he held in his hand; then giving his shrunk waistcoat a twitch to make it meet his receding waistband; and casting another look, half sad, half humorous at the sturdy yeoman, "I suppose," said he, "Mr. Tibbets, you have forgot old times ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... the flesh is close-grained, having but few streaks of fat running through it, and is of a pale red color, and covered with a rough, yellowish skin. Poor beef is dark red, gristly, and tough to the touch, with a scanty layer of soft, oily fat. Buy meat as cheap as you can, but be sure it is fresh; slow and long cooking will make tough meat tender, but tainted meat is only fit to throw away. Never use it. You would, ...
— Twenty-Five Cent Dinners for Families of Six • Juliet Corson
... 1522, the Trinity, commanded by Gonzala Gomez de Espinosa, another of the ships of Magellan, sailed from Tidore for New Spain. And, as the wind was scanty, they steered towards the N. E. in lat. 16 deg. N. where they found two islands, which they named the Islands of St John. In lat. 20 deg. N. they came to another island, which they called la Griega, where some of the simple natives came on board, whom they kept to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... rendered his position untenable, and, finding his exertions unavailing, he resigned his command and retired to his island of Caprera. Two disasters completed the overthrow of France. Bourbaki's army, 85,000 strong, became shut in, with scanty food and ammunition, among the snow-covered valleys of the Jura, and to save the disgrace of capitulation it took refuge on the neutral soil of Switzerland; and the strong fortress of Belfort, which had been defended with the utmost courage against its besiegers, finally yielded, ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... life was a scanty wardrobe, a small apartment, a remarkably limited income, and a tender, religious spirit. From this it will be seen that she was rich as ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... both hands, and let it descend without force, almost mechanically, on the old woman's head. But directly he had struck the blow his strength returned. According to her usual habit, Alena Ivanovna was bareheaded. Her scanty gray locks, greasy with oil, were gathered in one thin plait, which was fixed to the back of her neck by means of a piece of horn comb. The hatchet struck her just on the sinciput, and this was partly owing to her small stature. She scarcely uttered ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... was found wanting, had Germany any permanent safeguard in the rival Protestant State. Prussia, the second great German Power and the ancient enemy of Austria, had been raised to an influence in Europe quite out of proportion to its scanty resources by the genius of Frederick the Great and the earlier Princes of the House of Hohenzollern. Its population was not one-third of that of France or Austria; its wealth was perhaps not superior to that of the Republic of Venice. That a State so poor in men and money should play ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... military. Should Mr. Luriottis be enabled and disposed to furnish this information, it may always be communicated through you, and will be received with satisfaction here. The public accounts from that quarter have been of late very scanty, and we shall be glad to obtain any authentic particulars, which may come to your knowledge from this, or through any ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... is not only contemptible but criminal, when contrasted with the kind fellowship of Washington for his men,—his solicitude for their sufferings at Valley Forge,—Putnam sharing his scanty meals with privates of his command,—Napoleon learning the wants of his veterans from their own lips, and tapping a Grenadier familiarly upon the shoulder to ask the favor of a pinch from his snuff-box. Those worthies may rest assured that marquees pitched at Regulation distance, ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... 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 great critic, seems scanty applause for the chef d'oeuvre of Dryden's dramatic works. The reader will be disposed to look for more unqualified praise, when such a poet was induced, by every pressing consideration, to combine, in one effort, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... As now, of the great SUN, serene to weave Thy fragrant chaplets; in poetic state To call the jocund Hours on thee to wait, Bringing each day, at morn, at noon, at eve, His mild illuminations.—Nymph, no more Is thine to mourn beneath the scanty shade Of half-blown foliage, shivering to deplore Thy garlands immature, thy rites unpaid; Meads dropt with [1]gold again to thee belong, Soft gales, luxuriant bowers, and ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... proportion to the meanness of their fundamental principle, and looked for no greater happiness than can be attained by human prudence (including temperance and moderation of the inclinations), and this as we know would be scanty enough and would be very different according to circumstances; not to mention the exceptions that their maxims must perpetually admit and which make them incapable of being laws. The Stoics, on the contrary, had chosen ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... yet reach. Bumblebees are the flower's chief benefactors. Game fowl, especially grouse, but many other birds too, and various animals which are glad to add the clusters of smooth red bearberries to their scanty winter menu, however insipid and dry they may be, have distributed the seed from Labrador across Arctic America to Alaska, southward to Pennsylvania, Illinois, Nebraska, and California. How plants do compel insects, birds, and beasts to ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... for that anxious reminder, he swore horribly in the direction of her shrinking person. In her scanty nightdress, and barefooted, she recalled a mediaeval penitent being reproved for her sins in blasphemous terms. Those lethal weapons were always present to Schomberg's mind. Personally, he had never seen them. His part, ten days after his guests' arrival, had been to lounge in manly, ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... to give the varied and interesting details of his presidential life. To this institution he freely gave the wealth of his well stored and acute mind, his tried experience, and his cheerful, patient resolution. The trials were sometimes great, the laborers few, the support scanty, and there were times when it seemed as if the one man only stood between the life of the college and its death. As one of the Trustees wrote, "Life was already nearly extinct, and death would have soon followed, had not the president given himself wholly to the work with a faith that ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... thin, of medium height, with enormously long arms. His head was on crooked, his jaw awry, and he squinted. A blue blouse, as long as a shirt, hung down to his knees, and his yellow hair, which was scanty and plastered down on his head, gave his face a worn-out, dirty look, a dilapidated look that was frightful. He had been nicknamed "the cure" because he could imitate to perfection the chanting in church, and even the sound of the serpent. This talent attracted ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... winter, killed the pig,—not to eat, but to sell,—and reduced the flock of hens and turkeys; but Waitstill was always as busy in the barn as in her own proper domain. Her heart yearned for all the dumb creatures about the place, intervening between them and her father's scanty care; and when the thermometer descended far below zero she would be found stuffing hay into the holes and cracks of the barn and hen-house, giving the horse and cow fresh beddings of straw and a mouthful of extra food between the slender meals ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... now fully made up his mind to go into the church. While yet thinking of high academical honours, and the brighter paths of ambition, he also had dreamed of the bar. All young men I believe do, who have high abilities, a taste for labour, and scanty fortune. Senior wranglers and double-firsts, when not possessed of means for political life, usually find their way to the bar. It is on the bench of judges, not on the bench of bishops, that we must look for them in after life. Arthur, therefore, had thought of the ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope |
