"Scrawl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his eyes on the wax, and with difficulty deciphered the clumsy scrawl in which Alexander had noted down the following lines, which he had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... her handkerchief, because she happened to have it in her hand—a dainty thing with lace on the edge and her name written in tiny script by her mother's careful hand on the narrow hem. And then after a little, as soon as she could scrawl it without being noticed, she wrote a note which she twisted around the neck of a red chessman, and left behind her. After that scraps of paper, as she could reach them out of the bag tied on behind her saddle; then a stocking, a bedroom slipper, more chessmen, and so, ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... supremely both exacted much and conferred much. He made a fine and potent figure as he stood, with his back to the bright street and the gutter-child standing beside him like a familiar companion, and read the smudged scrawl ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... Folding up the hurried scrawl, she was conscious of a strong sense of dissatisfaction, but she would not reopen it. There was nothing more ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... to scrawl hastily with a dry pen that he had not time to dip in the well of ink. The shadow of the Lord Cromwell's silent return was cast upon them ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... measure of respect. As we sat under the awning in opposite corners of the cockpit, he braiding hairs from dead men's chins, I forming runes upon a sheet of folio paper, he would nod across to me as one Tahuku to another, or, crossing the cockpit, study for a while my shapeless scrawl and encourage me with a heartfelt 'mitai!—good!' So might a deaf painter sympathise far off with a musician, as the slave and master of some uncomprehended and yet kindred art. A silly trade, he doubtless considered ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... property of any true Protestant, "as I am well assured the proprietor of this house is a stanch and worthy friend to the cause." But there were plenty of houses where neither fear nor fanaticism displayed blue banner or chalked scrawl, houses whose owners boasted no safeguard signed by Lord George Gordon, and with these the mob busied themselves. The description in the "Annual Register" is so striking that it deserves to be cited; it is probably from the ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... puts a spirit of joy into green field and hedgerow is awful to look upon in Paris. You leave the train half-frozen, to find the porters red-eyed from their watch. The customs officials, in a kind of stupor, scrawl cabalistic signs upon your trunk. You get outside the station, to find a few scattered cabs, their drivers asleep inside, their lamps blinking in ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... forces descending the Mississippi and those that had just achieved the conquest of New Orleans and were now ascending the river to co-operate with the northern column. Thus it was that a single word, daubed in a rude scrawl upon the walls of the custom-house, meeting the eyes of Paine's men after they had made a way into the building with their axes, gave to Butler the first intelligence of the desperate battle of the 6th and 7th of April, on which the fate of the whole Union campaign in the ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... about that, and I found out from one of the servants. Sharp found an envelope under the door. It contained a five-dollar bill, and on it was written in a scrawl, 'For ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... his drop; E'en Radcliffe's doctors travel first to France, Nor dare to practise till they've learn'd to dance. Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile? (Should Ripley[150] venture, all the world would smile) But those who cannot write, and those who can, All rhyme, and scrawl, and ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... rest off to-day from all but letters. Fanny is quite done up; she could not sleep last night, something it seemed like asthma - I trust not. I suppose Lloyd will be about, so you can give him the benefit of this long scrawl. Never say that I CAN'T write a letter, say that I don't. - Yours ever, my ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for Stampoff. Having a minute to spare, he obtained a newspaper, took a seat voucher for the first dinner, lighted a cigarette, entered his reserved compartment, arranged his luggage, and burnt General Stampoff's scrawl just as the train moved out ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... "You are heavenly restful and comforting. You—" he checked himself and got up. "Then I'm to write, and you are to make out as much of my scrawl as you can and answer. Is ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... will eat no more. No one in the house is to eat anything at all. Uncle Liedenbrock is going to make us all fast until he has succeeded in deciphering an undecipherable scrawl." ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... have lost State, station, heaven, mankind's, my own esteem, And yet can not regret what it hath cost, So dear is still the memory of that dream; Yet, if I name my guilt, 't is not to boast, None can deem harshlier of me than I deem: I trace this scrawl because I cannot rest— I 've nothing to reproach, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... letter—lying on his table. The brief epistle which conveyed to him the regrets of the new female college building committee, that his plans were too elaborate and costly, and must therefore be declined, really demanded no reply, and would probably never have one. It was the hurried scrawl from his friend Wilberforce which claimed of his sense of honor an answer by the next mail. The letter from Wilberforce was dated Philadelphia, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... it touches your cheek and sends the blood leaping in glad life. You love water and fire and wind, elemental things, and you love them with fervor and passion. All this to the world! Much more intimate to me, who can read the letters you scrawl for the impudent, careless world. For deep down in the core of that rose there lies a soul that permeates it all—a longing, restless soul, one moment revealing a heaven that the next is shut out in ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... and then at her right hand. It held a stylograph and had been resting on some scattered sheets of foolscap that Ian had left there in the morning. She had certainly been scrawling on it a little, but she was not aware of having written anything. Yet the scrawl, partly on one sheet and partly on another, was writing, very bad and broken, but still with a resemblance to her own handwriting. She pored over it; then looked Ian in the eyes, her own eyes large with a bewilderment ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... a crumpled sheet of note paper before us on which was written something in a trembling scrawl. "For instance, here's a letter I ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... I am off for the great field of performance, south and southwest. You shall hear of me, perhaps may wish to hear FROM me. Here is my address, meanwhile, in Alabama. I shall advise you of my further progress, and shall esteem highly a friendly scrawl from you. If you write, do not fail to tell me what you may hear of Mr. Latour Cleveland, and how he got down from the muck-heap. Write me all about it, Clifford, and whatever else you can about our fools and knaves, for though I leave them without a tear, yet, d—n ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... the anonymous scrawl which had kindled her fury against him. He turned it listlessly over in his hand. "I guess I know who it's from," he said, giving it back to her, "and I guess you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... scrawl that my father could not read it, but underneath was printed, "Mayor of Sunchildston, formerly ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... hermit, sweat-covered and breathless, returned to the rock. For a moment he gazed about, bewildered by the silence. The white card caught his eye. He read its angular scrawl. ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... remains, as he remained from the beginning, beyond all hope of description—as it might be, a visible god sitting in the garden of a world made new. They sell photographs of him with tourists standing on his thumb nail, and, apparently, any brute of any gender can scrawl his or its ignoble name over the inside of the massive bronze plates that build him up. Think for a moment of the indignity and the insult! Imagine the ancient, orderly gardens with their clipped trees, shorn turf, and silent ponds smoking in the mist that the hot sun soaks up after rain, ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... wrong with bitter misery whelms thee, Thou thy sad tear-scrawl'd letter, a mark to the storm, Send'st, and bid'st me to succour a stranded seaman of Ocean, Toss'd in foam, from death's door to return thee again; Whom nor softly to rest love's tender sanctity suffers, 5 Lost on a couch of lone slumber, unhappily ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... to drudge for the dregs of men, And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, And mingle among the jostling crowd, Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud— I often come to this quiet place, To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face, And gaze upon thee in silent dream, For in thy lonely and lovely ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... and the money-market may govern the world. The Minister may be in doubt as to his scheme of finance till he has been closeted with the Jew. A congress of sovereigns may be forced to summon the Jew to their assistance. The scrawl of the Jew on the back of a piece of paper may be worth more than the royal word of three kings, or the national faith of three new American republics. But that he should put Right Honourable before his name would be the most ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was in fact a singular scrawl. It consisted of all kinds of crooked characters, disposed in columns, and had evidently been prepared by some person who had before him at the time a book containing various alphabets. Greek and Hebrew letters, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... will refrain from discussing them, but will refer my readers to Colombo. The only exception is a portrait of one of the Scarrognini family which is seen on the right-hand wall above the door, the fact of the portraiture being attested by a barbarous scrawl ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... to write this scrawl to you on a round milk container in a camp near London. We are not ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... myself about the matter I left the gardens to walk elsewhere. The day after next, just as I was going to get into my carriage, a man of evil aspect gave me a paper and asked me to read it. I opened it, but finding it covered with an illegible scrawl I gave it him back, telling him to read it himself. He did so, and I found myself summoned to appear before the commissary of police to answer to the plea which the midwife (whose name I forget) brought ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... feet, the while, He fanned me idly with his broad-brimmed hat. "Then all young ladies must be formed for that!" He laughed, and said. "Their letters read, and look, As like as twenty copies of one book. They're written in a dainty, spider scrawl, To 'darling, precious Kate,' or 'Fan,' or 'Moll.' The 'dearest, sweetest' friend they ever had. They say they 'want to see you, oh, so bad!' Vow they'll 'forget you, never, NEVER, oh!' And then they ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the inscription, which was written in a round boyish scrawl, "Isabel Douglas Herbert, from her loving ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... has one more seat than the one in which Lucette rowed me over; and not being much in use except on Sunday, is generally half full of water. Lucette insists on doing the bailing. She has very often performed this service, and I have always considered it as included in the curious scrawl of a bill which madame gravely presents at the end of each of my days here, beginning in small printed type with "Francois Laguerre, Restaurant Francais," and ending ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... He himself never volunteered to tell, and in all his bills and accounts used only the initial "T." Some of his employees favored Tyrus, others Titus. One in a wild flight of fancy suggested Ticonderoga. But the mystery remained unsolved, and, after all, as the checks that bore the scrawl, "T. Grimshaw," were promptly honored at the ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... and looking on the letter, in trembling but almost certain hope of seeing a known hand, it was my lot to find, on the contrary, an autograph for the moment deemed unknown—a pale female scrawl, instead of a firm, masculine character. I then thought fate was too hard for me, and I said, audibly, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... he could not write books, He could scrawl the earth with his record: He could make hieroglyphs, Constellations of mounds and animals, Effigies of unnamable things, Monsters, and hybrids unnatural, Bred of grotesque fancies; and man-forms. These last, none of your pigmies A span long ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... then, she had lied for a purpose. A purpose that he could very well conceive. But if she lied for that purpose she would have given importance and prominence to her lie. She wouldn't have hidden it away in an almost invisible scrawl ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... not laughed since he had left Mortehoe Church, neither had he smiled at any time upon the boat, or upon anybody except the children; and now he laughed, all on account of an atrocious scrawl on many sheets of thin paper which he started ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... stare at the leaf. It had been scratched or rather written upon with a sharp tool, such as a nail, and wherever this instrument had touched it, the acid juice oozing through the outer skin had turned a rusty blood colour. Presently I found the beginning of the scrawl, and read this in English, and covering the surface of the leaf and of two others that ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... scrawl was finished, and looking up from the writing table he saw Joan Devereux passing through the hall. He got up and hurried after her. "Would you mind addressing this for me?" He held out the envelope. "I've managed to spoil the paper inside, but ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... and be very grateful for it, for I do not bear this mountain traveling very well. If you find him, give him this scrawl and tell him where ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... sure-enough trump!" admitted Bluff. "Do you know what he said when he was showing that scrawl to us fellows? I was close enough to get part of it, and I'm dead sure the words 'entering wedge' formed the backbone of ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... went back to the sitting-room and sat down at her desk. When that letter was written, carefully, and in her best style, she dashed off three notes in an almost unreadable scrawl, to Mollie and Fay and Kell, telling them of her invitation and the delight it gave her. Then she wandered back to the bedroom where Eliot sat mending, and wandered restlessly around ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... worked in the Troy laundry, she taught Miss Anthony to clear-starch and iron them. Each summer she managed to be home long enough to assist with the canning, pickling and preserving. The little journal gives the best glimpses of her daily life, usually only a hasty scrawl of a few lines but containing many flashes of humor and wisdom. Thus ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... on the door. Claude lifted the model, moved on tiptoe, and placed it softly under the bed. As he rose and turned again with reddened face, a card was slipped under the door. He took it and read, in a pencil scrawl,— ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... fortune-telling; in which last was a sheet of foolscap much scribbled and blotted in several fruitless attempts to make a copy of verses in honor of the heiress of Van Tassel. These magic books and the poetic scrawl were forthwith consigned to the flames by Hans Van Ripper, who from that time forward determined to send his children no more to school, observing that he never knew any good come of this same reading and writing. Whatever money the schoolmaster possessed—and he had received ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... epistles of Matthew Haygarth. I felt that these letters had in all probability been carefully numbered by the lady to whom they belong, and that to tamper with them to any serious extent might be dangerous. I have therefore only ventured to retain one insignificant scrawl as an example of Matthew Haygarth's caligraphy and signature. From the rest I have taken copious notes. It appears to me that these letters relate to some liaison of the gentleman's youth; though I am fain to confess myself surprised to discover that, even in a period notorious for looseness ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... shelter from the howling sea-wind behind a great boulder of rock. She dreaded his reproaches unspeakably. For the past six weeks she had lived in dread of that moment. Her fingers were shaking as she opened the envelope that bore his boyish scrawl. ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... dollar cheque which Lily received with a blotted scrawl from Gus Trenor strengthened her self-confidence in the exact degree to which it ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... frontiers of every department. My baggage being once searched at Calais, experienced no other visit; but, at the upper town of Boulogne, a sight of my travelling passport was required; by mistake in the dark, I gave the commis a scrawl, put into my hands by Ducrocq, containing an account of the best inns on the road. Would you believe that this inadvertency detained us a considerable time, so extremely inquisitive are they, at the present moment, respecting all papers? At Calais, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... his handkerchief, adjusted a pair of glasses, and blinked at the penciled scrawl. Twice he read it; then, like the full sun breaking through a drizzle—like the glory of a search-light dissolving a sticky fog, the smile of smiles illuminated everything: ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... be so! May there be nothing worse than this! If the sick man—see, Arthur, how my hand trembles. Can you read this scrawl? What is always bad, my fears make worse ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... heard precisely; though I made inquiries about him from some of our return passengers who, wandering about to "see the country" during the ship's stay in port, had come upon him here and there. At last we sailed, homeward bound, and still not one line was added to the careless scrawl of the many pages which poor Jacques had had the patience to read with the very shadows of Eternity gathering already in the hollows ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... small leaf, and but very few words on that; but these words, few though they were, seemed to take her breath away, and to overwhelm her with overpowering emotion. She sat staring at the miserable scrawl as though the letters were potent with some mighty spell, and then, throwing the paper on the table by her, gave way to a ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... book, had print on the reverse side, and the letters showed through in grayish flecks and gave the curious impression as of clouds in the sky. And that little drawing, with less form than a school-boy's blackboard scrawl, was completely transfigured by those gray spots, and because of them it took on for me a deep and dreadful significance. Aided by the dim light in the room the pictured scene became a vision that faded away into the distance like the pale surface of the sea. I was terrified at ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... wrote my sighs, and sent them to my love; I praised that fair that none enough could praise; But plaints nor praises could fair Licia move; Above my reach she did her virtues raise, And thus replied: "False Scrawl, untrue thou art, To feign those sighs that nowhere can be found; For half those praises came not from his heart Whose faith and love as yet was never found. Thy master's life, false Scrawl shall be thy doom; Because he burns, I judge thee to the flame; Both your attempts deserve no ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... the sheet, and, by the light of a match read the scrawl upon it. The writing had evidently been done in haste, ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... nothing, but the boys and girls we associated with thought it did and envied us the free-masonry it was supposed to cover. A ridiculous make-believe which I rate at its full folly now, but one which cannot fail to arouse a hundred memories in Georgian. We will scrawl it on her door, or rather you shall, and according to the way she conducts herself on seeing it, we shall know in one instant what you with your patience and trust in time may not be able to arrive ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... to the letter came, the Prince gave it to her to read. It was very short, a mere scrawl of scarlet ink on the brown, rough-edged paper that was one of ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... that he had no habits? Every day, when he was away from her, he wrote a letter to his mother, and no swift scrawl at that, for, no matter how crowded and eventful the day, he wrote her the best letter that he could write. That was the only habit he had. He was ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various
... This scrawl had attracted the attention of fully a score of cadets, and one after another they entered the classroom designated to find out what it meant. When they saw the teeth dangling in the air ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... of destroying the enemy's fleet; which, I hope, will be a blessing to Europe. You will have the goodness to communicate this happy event to all the courts in Italy; for my head is so indifferent, that I can scarcely scrawl this letter. Captain Capel, who is charged with my dispatches for England, will give you every information. Pray, put him in the quickest mode of getting home. You will not send, by post, any particulars ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... note for you," and he handed her an envelope with her own name written on it in an uneven, uncertain scrawl. She tore ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... the note when they started to lift her from the chest. A hasty scrawl, it lay beneath ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... sort of fist is this you've given me, you bird of blackness! where got you this vile scrawl?—faugh! you've had it in your jaws, you raven, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... romance; a flattened and much-dried chocolate drop with tender associations; dance-favors, clippings, photographs, theater programs, each illumined and emphasized by a line or two of sentiment or of nonsense in Jean's girlish scrawl. ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... calmly. The fear in her heart had, as the brown man had anticipated, blinded her to the fact that this was not her father's characteristic blunt scrawl. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... that one finds here and there in Brooke's work is not wholly amiss nor unintelligible. Like all young men of quick blood he seized gaily upon the earthy basis of our humanity and found in it food for purging laughter. There was never a young poet worth bread and salt who did not scrawl ribald verses in his day; we may surmise that Brooke's peers at King's would recall many vigorous stanzas that are not included in the volume at hand. The few touches that we have in this vein show a masculine ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... a half-believing, half-doubting kind of way, on the probability of a life to come, and ends by speaking of or rather apostrophizing Jesus Christ in a strain which would seem to savour of Socinianism. This letter he calls "a distracted scrawl which the writer dare scarcely read." And yet it appears to have been deliberately copied with some amplification from an entry in his last year's commonplace book. Even the few passages from his correspondence already given are enough to show that there was in ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... foreign letter came for him to the Lodge. It was not addressed in Mark Wylder's hand—not the least like it. Mark's was a bold, free hand, and if there was nothing particularly elegant, neither was there anything that could be called vulgar in it. But this was a decidedly villainous scrawl—in fact it was written as a self-educated butcher might pen a bill. There was nothing impressed on the wafer, but a poke of something like the ferrule ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... unpleasant contrast to those of our kind old friend Katcherofsky. Although this natural prison had no bolts and bars or other evidences of a penal system, the very air seemed tainted with mystery and oppression, and the melancholy row of huts to scrawl the word "captivity" across the desolate landscape. Even the ispravnik's room, with its heavy black furniture and sombre draperies, was suggestive of the Inquisition, and I searched instinctively around me for the ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... feet are weary of these hills of purple vines, These crooked groves of olive trees that scrawl the crooked lanes The walnuts shoulder weakly round the tall Italian pines, That whisper like the waves of wheat ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... well and correct, and in a pleasing style, is another part of polite education. Every man who has the use of his eyes and his right hand, can write whatever hand he pleases. Nothing is so illiberal as a school-boy's scrawl. I would not have you learn a stiff formal hand-writing, like that of a school-master, but a genteel, legible, and liberal hand, and to be able to write quick. As to the correctness and elegancy of your writing, attention to grammar does the one, and ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... eastward—a crinkled line drawn faintly with a fine blue pencil, showing as an artistic scrawl on the canvass of the low clouds—we could hardly claim when the sketch of the distant land faded from view, that we had seen Japan. When Hongkong, of sparkling memory, was lost to sight, the guardian walls that secluded her harbor, closing ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... held in his hand for several seconds unopened. The envelope was a large one and stiff, as if it contained cardboard. It was directed in an irregular, childish scrawl. Mordaunt, sitting at his writing-table, with his back to his guest, studied it gravely, thoughtfully. Finally very quietly he broke ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... scribe, amanuensis, scrivener, secretary, clerk, penman, copyist, transcriber, quill driver; stenographer, typewriter, typist; writer for the press &c (author) 593. V. write, pen; copy, engross; write out, write out fair; transcribe; scribble, scrawl, scrabble, scratch; interline; stain paper; write down &c (record) 551; sign &c (attest) 467; enface^. compose, indite, draw up, draft, formulate; dictate; inscribe, throw on paper, dash off; manifold. take up the pen, take pen in hand; shed ink, spill ink, dip one's pen in ink. Adj. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... not reply, but made the usual scrawl in his book, while the squatter hastened to agree with the fat man. "I like to see a bit of ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... Clancy's departure that Solomon handed me a pale blue envelope bearing in the upper left-hand corner the device of the Post-Dispatch. I laughed as I ripped it open; I had almost forgotten Terry's existence. It contained a characteristic pencil scrawl slanting across a sheet of yellow ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... United States is the present situation of your unworthy but constant and affectionate daughter. I pretend not to justify or even to palliate my clandestine elopement. In hopes of pacifying your mind, which I am sure must be afflicted beyond measure, I write you this scrawl. Conscious of not having thus abruptly absconded by reason of any fancied ill treatment from you, or disaffection toward any, the thoughts of my disobedience are truly poignant. Neither have I a plea that the insults of man have driven me hence: and let this be your ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... the utmost care, confessing to herself, almost with tears, that it was altogether unworthy of him to whom it was to be sent. It was the first love letter she had ever written,—probably the first letter she had ever written to a man, except those short notes which she would occasionally scrawl to Father Marty in compliance with her mother's directions. The letter to ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... letters forwarded to him by Tresten during his absence were consequently stabs already promising to heal. They were brutal stabs—her packet of his letters and presents on his table made them bleed afresh, and the odd scrawl of the couple of words on the paper set him wondering at the imbecile irony of her calling herself 'The child' in accompaniment to such an act, for it reminded him of his epithet for her, while it dealt him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... last letter before the Alcestis was heard of at Spithead. Then she sailed; she sent in her letters to Plymouth, and her final greetings by a Falmouth cutter—poor Harry's wild scrawl in pencil looking ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... native ability, and the circumstances and customs of his country, had given a place among its rulers. But, on the coarse and dingy paper before us, the effect is very much inferior; the direction, all except the signature, is a scrawl, large and heavy, but not forcible; and even the name itself, while almost identical in its strokes with that of the Declaration, has a strangely different and more vulgar aspect. Perhaps it is all right, and typical of the truth. If we may trust tradition, ...
— A Book of Autographs - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... should have been in such a dangerous state. Much occasion for thankfulness is there that it has not been worse with you. Pray write, or make somebody write frequently. I feel myself a good deal stronger to-day, not withstanding the scrawl. God bless you, my dear Temple! I ever am your old and affectionate friend, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... scrawl, but never mind, quantity wins the day, quality nowhere. You see I am taking the subjects of your letter and answering them as I go along. So far from having had to dip into my money for Henry, I left him with fifty odd clear dollars in his pocket; this came ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... upon them for some of the quietest pleasures of our lives. But that is the way of human nature, isn't it? We rarely value anything until we lose it; we sigh most ardently for the thing which is beyond our reach, we count our happiest days those across the record of which we now must scrawl, "Too late!" That is why I always feel so infinitely sorry for the blind. The blind can so rarely get away from themselves, and, when they do, only with that effort which in you and me would demand some bigger result than merely to lose remembrance of our minor ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... carelessness," she said. "I must have caught up a scrawl of the baby's in taking this from ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... was but a poor scholar, and the handwriting was deplorable. Undotted "i's" travelled incognito through the scrawl, and uncrossed "t's" passed themselves off unblushingly as "l's." After half an hour's steady work, his imagination excited by one or two words which he had managed to decipher, he abandoned the task in despair, and stood moodily looking out of the window. His gaze fell upon Mr. William Russell, ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... 'twas autumn,) I mark'd at the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier; Mortally wounded he and buried on the retreat, (easily all could understand,) The halt of a mid-day hour, when up! no time to lose—yet this sign left, On a tablet scrawl'd and nail'd on the tree by the grave, Bold, cautious, true, and my ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... sheet of this Latin done at that time, in a cramped, schoolboy hand, starting very bold and plain, and running off into a tired blot and scrawl. On the bottom of the page is a picture, and under this is a line written by the father: "This is drawn by Joshua in school out of pure idleness." The Reverend Samuel had no idea that his own name would live in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... at the irregular up-and-down scrawl on the paper, while he rang up the Homicide Bureau of the Central Office and left word for O'Connor to call him up the first ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... consuming; The fourth, when Epsom Day begun, Joyful I hailed th' auspicious sun, Bade Tewkesbury and Clerk adieu; (Purification, eighty-two) Of both I wash'd my hands; and though With nothing for my cash to show, But precedents so scrawl'd and blurr'd, I scarce could read a single word, Nor in my books of common-place One feature, of the law could trace, Save Buzzard's nose and visage thin, And Hawk's deficiency of chin, Which I while lolling at my ease Was wont to draw ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... dint of great interest, in procuring a situation in the Sham-Post. The duties, here, are simple, and not altogether unprofitable. For example:—very early in the morning I had to make up my packet of sham letters. Upon the inside of each of these I had to scrawl a few lines on any subject which occurred to me as sufficiently mysterious—signing all the epistles Tom Dobson, or Bobby Tompkins, or anything in that way. Having folded and sealed all, and stamped them with sham postmarks—New Orleans, Bengal, Botany ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... that he could hardly write any more to his wife; still, in a quivering scrawl, he bade her address her answer not to London, but to a city on the way home, for he is starting homeward—homeward at last! But he is not coming home through Paris, as he ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... finished my translation of the Choephoroe of AEschylus. I dreamt a dream about your being before Parnassus upon your trial for sedition and contumacy. I thought Thalia, Clio, &c. addressed you. Their speeches shall be nonsensified into rhyme, and shall be part of some other scrawl from your ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... The scrawl was taken to her by a discreet official, and this time she received the letter, pressed it to her heart, and then slipped it into the bodice of her gown. But this time, as before, she ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... scrawl: "Monsieur, where are ye going? It is done. I have seen him dead. If you enter the Louvre you will not escape ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... labour I have undergone. It has neither been of a slight nor an agreeable kind. I made it a rule to read everything that has been written respecting Napoleon, and I have had to decipher many of his autograph documents, though no longer so familiar with his scrawl as formerly. I say decipher, because a real cipher might often be much more readily understood than the handwriting of Napoleon. My own notes, too, which were often very hastily made, in the hand I wrote in my youth, have sometimes ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... write, but he counted the words in a double-page article in the Sunday supplement of the San Francisco Examiner, and guided himself by that. Three days, at white heat, completed his narrative; but when he had copied it carefully, in a large scrawl that was easy to read, he learned from a rhetoric he picked up in the library that there were such things as paragraphs and quotation marks. He had never thought of such things before; and he promptly set to work writing the article over, referring continually to the pages ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... said; and Daphne read a badly spelled, badly written scrawl, in the writing of an old woman unused to holding ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... is good news was surely concocted by some one who never chafed through day after lengthening day for that which does not come. But in the end it did come, in the form of a scrawl from the Weeping Scion himself. He was mending, but very slowly, and they said it would be a long time—months, perhaps—before he could get back to the front. Meantime, they were still picking odds and ends, chiefly ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... take something from under his head and I helped him. I found a scrawl saying, 'Look on ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... King John, who ascended the throne after putting out his nephew's eyes with a pair of curling-irons, and who is the first English Sovereign who attempted to write his own name; for the scrawl is evidently something more than his mark, which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... room for the living." It seemed then a foolish memorandum to write, and now, as I look at the half-effaced pencil lines, I wonder why I was not ashamed to write it. Yet there it is before me, a witness to my sensations at the time, and the scrawl has even now the power to bring up to me an unpleasantly vivid memory of that first ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... a knock at the door; Jimmy Benyon went and opened it; he came back holding a note, and gave it to May; it was addressed to her husband in a pencil scrawl. "A congratulation for you," she said to Quisante. He glanced carelessly and languidly at it, murmuring, "Read it to me, please," and she broke open the sealed envelope. Inside the writing was as negligent a scribble as on the outside, the writing ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... 'A vile greasy scrawl, indeed; and the letters are uncial or semi-uncial, as somebody calls your large text hand, and in size and perpendicularity resemble the ribs of a roasted pig; I can ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... ware, and tried, As e'er scrawl'd jargon in a darken'd room; With heedful glance the Sultaun's tongue they eyed, Peep'd in his bath, and God knows where beside, And then in solemn accent spoke their doom, "His majesty is very far from well." Then each to ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... wrought by simple, willing grave-diggers, illiterate craftsmen, with the clumsy handiwork of the decline and fall. Proof thereof was furnished by the inscriptions and emblems on the marble slabs. They reminded one of the childish drawings which street urchins scrawl upon ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... night came she could put it off no longer, so, fetching down her writing-case, she spoiled a dozen sheets of paper in the effort to make her news fairly palatable, finally dashing off an unsatisfactory scrawl, badly written and lamely expressed; and, having folded and directed it, she flew out into the yard to find a messenger to take it. The first who presented himself was ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... ever to prevent her having access to him; otherwise she might easily contrive to revive all those impressions in his mind which we are so anxious to avoid. What confidence can be placed in any promise to reform on her part, the impertinent scrawl I enclose will best prove [in reference, no doubt, to an enclosed note]. I send it merely to show you how fully I am justified in the precautions I have already adopted with regard to her. On this occasion, ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... Arabic scrawl under a paperweight. He was a man who plumed himself on a gift of accurate divination. Such a belief is fatal. For the third time that day, he misunderstood the ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... tell you? It was found under your door before I went away." She suddenly produced from her pocket a folded paper and handed it to him. It was a misspelt scrawl, and ran as follows:— ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... as she finished reading the hurried scrawl, 'she is pining to come and join us; she says she is much better, but so lonely and homesick that she feels it will be impossible for her to get well until she is ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... summer. Cold is the speciality of the North, and all its sports and gayeties take thence their tone. The houses are built to shut out the demon of Frost, and protect one from his assaults of ice and snow. Let him howl about your windows and scrawl his wonderful landscapes on your panes and pile his fantastic wreaths outside, while you draw round the blazing hearth and enjoy the artificial heat and warm in the social converse that he provokes. Your punch is all the better for his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... young man, and somewhat more curious in feminine handwriting than I am now. There was one family in particular, whom I had never seen, but with whose signatures I was perfectly familiar—clear, delicate, and educated, very unlike the miserable scrawl upon other letter-bills. One New Year's-eve, in a moment of sentiment, I tied a slip of paper among a bundle of letters for their office, upon which I had written, "A happy New Year to you all." The next evening brought me a return of my good wishes, signed, as I guessed, by three sisters ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... consideration, opened the tin of biscuits and, munching, he wrote a note. Having no paper, he tore a wrapper from one of the boxes. He had the stub of a pencil, and the result was a scrawl. ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... and left me, I felt as if it might be for the last time; other voices, other letters might reach him; and then all my previous conduct would rise up in judgment against me. What he might once have thrown aside as the scrawl of a madman, would now appear to him in the form of an explanation. I rang the bell with violence; and when my maid came, I desired her to find Henry and send him ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... scribble on your books, How disgustable it looks! Here a word, and there a scrawl, Silly pictures over all! Take a paper, or a slate, If you ...
— More Goops and How Not to Be Them • Gelett Burgess
... she thought of it, what a queer burglary it had been! The thieves must certainly have known something about Mrs. Ellsworth, or else, in helping themselves to her valuables, it would not have occurred to them to scrawl a sarcastic message. ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... cottages in this part of Cumberland partake of the rudeness which characterises those of Scotland. The outside of the house promised little for the interior, notwithstanding the vaunt of a sign, where a tankard of ale voluntarily decanted itself into a tumbler, and a hieroglyphical scrawl below attempted to express a promise of 'good entertainment for man and horse.' Brown was no fastidious traveller: he stopped and entered the cabaret. [Footnote: ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... her hand for the paper. When Si was gone she sat gazing at it, trying in her ignorance to pick from the, to her, senseless scrawl those last words. Ben ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar |
