"Famine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attacked them, and put them all to the sword, leaving only the captain alive for the ransom that they can get for him. For two years there have been such droughts in the Malucas Islands that many clove-trees have been destroyed, causing a great famine. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... radicals with his calm and pitying air. "We most of us want a good many things that we are not likely to get; but if we start with the tone you propose to adopt, the government is very likely not to begin any relief measures at all till there is actual famine. If we could only induce the ministry to make an inquiry into the state of the crops it would be ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... understand. "I have been snowed on with snow," it said, "I have been beaten with the rain, I have been drenched with the dew, long have I been dead." It spoke of kings whose names he had never heard, and of the darkness gathering about the Norland, and famine and awe stalking ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... cause, whichever be effect, always go together. There has been, as is well known, a failure of the potato-crop, and consequently a famine, in the West Highlands and Hebrides. In the island of Mull, about L.3000 of money raised in charity was spent in the year ending October 10, 1848, for the eleemosynary support of the people. In the same space of time, the expenditure of the people on whisky was L.6009! We do not know ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... front of him and a doubtful friend behind: he was now at the entrance to the mountains, and as his army had no store of provisions and only lived from hand to mouth, a forced delay, however short, would mean famine. In front of him was Fivizzano, nothing, it is true, but a village surrounded by walls, but beyond Fivizzano lay Sarzano and Pietra Santa, both of them considered impregnable fortresses; worse than this, they were coming into a ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... don't speak," answered Charley, for though he was burning to learn if the sufferer was Jack Askew, he saw that he was in so weak a state from famine and sickness that any agitation might prove fatal. Suppressing therefore his curiosity, his great wish was to get him on board the Good Hope, where such food as was best fitted for his weak state could be procured. Still it seemed very important to give him some hot food before ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... answer them; he would have liked to triumph over the mendacious theories which they still dared to assert even in their hour of defeat. To fear that the earth might become over-populated, that excess of life might produce famine, was this not idiotic? Others only had to do as he had done: create the necessary subsistence each time that a child was born to them. And he would have pointed to Chantebled, his work, and to all the corn growing up under ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... the more remote and solitary cries of the pewit and the curlew! Then, to think of the coach-horse, urged on his sultry stage, or the plough-boy and his teem, plunging in the depths of a burning fallow, or of our ancestors, in times of national famine, plucking up the wild fern-roots for bread, and what an enhancement of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... time, but only in those of conditions. When the strength of the nations is spent, when the slain totals appalling numbers, when few homes of high or low degree are without their terrible sacrifice, when the heart of the race is filled with anguish, when famine and disease have done their awful work, and humanity fully realizes what the reaction from greed, lust, cruelty and revenge actually means, the world will be ready to listen as it never listened before, and after that we may reasonably expect the ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... leaves when the wind moved them lightly from time to time. He was at ease in the great night-world, and master of many a secret that sleepy-eyed day-folk never guess. As he shook out his loose, soft coat and breathed the cool air, he felt the pleasant tang of a hunger that has with it no fear of famine. ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... than has his white and civilized (!) brother who worries, for he says: Change what can be changed; bear the unchangeable without a murmur. With this philosophy he braves the wind and the rain, the sand, and the storm, the extremes of heat and cold, the plethora of a good harvest or the famine of a drought. If he complains it is within himself; and if he whines and whimpers no one ever hears him. His face may become a little more stern under the higher pressure; he may tighten his waist belt a hole or two to stifle the complaints ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... the soil. Small wonder, I think, that, when in the square quarter-mile between my acre and Elm Street fifty-three dwellings and three short streets took the place of an old farm, my grove, by sheer water famine, lost several of its giant pines. Wonder to me is that the harm seems at ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... at this distant period, to reflect without horror on the miseries of that year known in Lower Volga by the name of the "Famine Year." I remember the summer, whose scorching heats had dried up all the fields, and the drought had no relief but from the tears of ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the streets of Denver," Mr. Mendenhall amplified, "and of Los Angeles, and—why, two years ago, in the horse-famine, we shipped twenty carloads of four-year geldings to Chicago, that averaged seventeen hundred each. The lightest were sixteen, and there were matched pairs up to nineteen hundred. Lord, Lord, that was a year for horse-prices—blue sky, and ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... protected by the inhabitants, he sat down before Sai with his army, and surrounded the town with the trenches I had now seen. After a siege of two months, the townspeople became involved in all the horrors of famine; and whilst the king's army were feasting in their trenches, they saw with pleasure the miserable inhabitants of Sai devour the leaves and bark of the Bentang tree that stood in the middle of the town. Finding, however, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... the keel, as by a giant's hand, Is drawn unto that mockery of a land, And presently unto its sides doth cleave; When if they 'scape swift death, yet none may leave The narrow limits of that barren isle, And thus are slain by famine in a while Mocked, as they say, by night with images Of noble castles among groves of trees, By day with ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... interests of the patrons of the paper, one may be sure of its cordial reception. If turkeys take the roup six weeks before Thanksgiving, or taxes promise a drop with the new year, or pork volplanes two or three cents, or an ice famine is threatened, or styles promise coats a few inches shorter or socks a few shades greener, the readers are eager to know and will applaud the vigilance of the editors. For this reason, a reporter can often pick up an extra story—and reporters are judged by the extra ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... person rejects this explanation in regard to all classes of phenomena of which the laws have been fully ascertained; though some have not yet reached the point of referring all phenomena to the idea of Law, but believe that rain and sunshine, famine and pestilence, victory and defeat, death and life, are issues which the Creator does not leave to the operation of his general laws, but reserves to be decided by express acts of volition. M. Comte's theory is the negation of ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... of the fire, which terrified every heart, disarmed the crowd in a certain measure. After the fire might come famine and disease; and to complete the misfortune the terrible heat of July had appeared. It was impossible to breathe air inflamed both by fire and the sun. Night brought no relief, on the contrary it presented a hell. During daylight an awful and ominous spectacle met the eye. ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... holiness, his almighty power, and his absolute supremacy over the nations of the earth, not only to the covenant people, but also to the surrounding heathen world. Had the Canaanites perished by famine, pestilence, earthquake, or fire from heaven, it might have remained doubtful to the heathen by whose anger their destruction had been effected, that of the Canaanitish gods, or of the God of Israel. But now that God went forth with his people, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... also a Roman Catholic colony and church. The latter stands in a large garden, celebrated for its quinces and apricots. Lastly, the English Church Missionary Society have an establishment here under the direction of the Rev. Dr. Bruce, whose good deeds during the famine are not likely to be forgotten by the people of Ispahan and Djulfa, whatever their creed or religion. The trade of Djulfa is insignificant, although there is a large amount of wine and arak manufactured there, and sold "under the rose" to the Ispahanis. ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... In famine, sickness, hunger, thirst, The two were still but one, Until the strong man drooped the first, And felt his labours done. Then to a trusty friend he spake, "Across the desert wide, O take this poor boy for my sake!" And kissed the ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... blind. But hatred is as bad. In Antoine Sebastian hatred of Napoleon had not only blinded eyes far-seeing enough in earlier days, but it had killed many natural affections. Love, too, may easily die—from a surfeit or a famine. Hatred never ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... proof of their gratitude to the Supreme Being was a kind of test of devotedness and obedience to the theocracy; and these sacrifices by obliging them to raise more produce and provide more cattle than were essential to their ordinary support, preserved them from the danger of famine, as in case of a dearth it was easy for the priests under the divine permission to apply those offerings to the necessities of the people. All the pure parts of the faith which had descended from Abraham to David were preserved by Jesus Christ; but the ceremonial religion ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... the niggard cost In time and coin and gear Of succoring the under-dog, How often have ye seen a hog, Establishing his glutton boast, Survive a famine year? Fast ye have kept, feast ye have made; Vain were the deeds and doles If it was fear that ye obeyed To ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... the assassination, the more imposing and tremendous the event becomes. The destruction of a city is a large event, but it is one which repeats itself several times in a thousand years; the destruction of a third part of a nation by plague and famine is a large event, but it has happened several times in history; the murder of a king is a large event, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... I somewhat dread to see them, and their rags and their misery and the weals of their stripes. It irked me to see Dallach when he first fell to his meat last night, how he ate like a dog for fear and famine. How shall it be, moreover, when we have them in the Dale, and they fall to the deed of kind there, as they needs must. Will they not bear ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... noble abbey was more celebrated for its charitable deeds than any other of that order in Wales. And as a reward for that abundant charity which the monastery had always, in times of need, exercised towards strangers and the poor, in a season of approaching famine their corn and provisions were divinely increased, like the widow's cruse of oil." Two centuries later we find the Pope bearing witness to the well-known and universal hospitality of the Abbey of Margam. It ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... we should have preferred, if possible, to have taken the story of his expedition into the South Seas, in which, under circumstances of singular difficulty, he was deserted by Candish, under whom he had sailed; and after inconceivable trials, from famine, mutiny, and storm, ultimately saved himself and his ship, and such of the crew as had chosen to submit to his orders. But it is a long history, and will not admit of being mutilated. As an instance of the stuff of which it was composed, he ran ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... service—the I.C.S., the Army, the Forest Service, the Indian Police. Wherever there's a bit of a scrap, whether it's Dacoits or Pathans, wherever there's a catastrophe which wants tidying up, whether it's plague, or famine, or earthquake, there you will find one of Peter's family in the midst of it. One of his uncles, who is a Major in the R.F.A., saved a battery at X—— Y——. Another is the chief of the most mysterious of our public services—a ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... all his short life, and in his childhood had been caressed and applauded on all sides, it was a hard trial to have the whole of that little world turn against him for naught. Especially hard in that bleak, snow-bound, famine-stricken winter-time, when the only light and warmth there could be found abode beside the village hearths and in the kindly greetings of neighbors. In the winter-time all drew nearer to each other, all to all, except to Nello and Patrasche, with whom none now would have anything ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... living. And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey to a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. And when he came to ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... was no work or power of thought left in him for the time. He pawned the dressing-case old Darco had given him and the dress-suit which he had not worn for four years, and he had his meals, such as they were, at a cabman's restaurant, and his last penny went, and tobacco famine set in; and his landlord, who was a maudlin man with a cultured turn for drink, would come in at night to his sitting-room and cry, and say that the water-rates were going to cut the supply; and the butcher had said, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... the economic loss involved in illness and infirmity must be shifted from the shoulders of the individual to those of society at large. There was but little realization of this obligation in the nineteenth century. Only in the sensational moments of famine, flood or pestilence was a general social effort called forth. But in the clearer view of the social bond which the war has given us we can see that famine and pestilence are merely exaggerated forms of what is happening every day ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... in the little cabin on the lake near Chicago River. He sought to impart moral ideas by the old Roman fables and German folk-lore stories. He often told the tale of the poor girl who went out for a few drops of water for her dying mother, in the water famine, and how her dipper was changed into silver, gold, and diamonds, as she shared the water with the sufferers on her return. But neither AEsop nor fairy lore so influenced the Indian boys as his story of the Indiana boy who defended the turtles and pitied the ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... cries Western, "you shall ha'un." This he bound by an oath too shocking to repeat; and after many violent asseverations, concluded in these words: "I am resolved upon the match, and unless you consent to it I will not give you a groat, not a single farthing; no, though I saw you expiring with famine in the street, I would not relieve you with a morsel of bread. This is my fixed resolution, and so I leave you to consider on it." He then broke from her with such violence, that her face dashed against the floor; and he burst directly out of the room, leaving poor Sophia prostrate ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... day went by, and still the town was standing. Every day the ramparts gaped with cannon-shot; but every night, as if by miracle, they rose again. The defenders suffered from wounds, pestilence, and famine; but Bayard had put every man on oath to eat his horse, and then his boots, before he would surrender. Three weeks passed; and when at last the king arrived with forces to relieve the town, he found a few gaunt spectres still glaring defiance from the battered ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... by the name of Rogers had a large family of children dependent on her for support. By practising the greatest economy, they were able to live for several years. At last there came a famine, when provision of every kind was so scarce that this poor family were reduced to the verge of starvation. Twenty-four hours had passed without one mouthful of food, and the widow knew not where to obtain any; when, hearing a faint scratching at the door, she went to ...
— Minnie's Pet Cat • Madeline Leslie
... is nothing in these explanations which is not fully borne out by the facts? Surely, the principles involved in them are now admitted among the fixed beliefs of all thinking men? Surely, it is true that our countrymen are less subject to fire, famine, pestilence, and all the evils which result from a want of command over and due anticipation of the course of Nature, than were the countrymen of Milton; and health, wealth, and well-being are more abundant with us than with them? But no less certainly is the difference due to the improvement ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... had suffered from a famine of knowledge. He could read passably well, write a little, was good at reckoning, and the little he knew excited a craving for more. Public addresses had always moved him deeply, and the living truths of the gospel, ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... was in their true spirit. One of the waiters told me with an air of great wisdom, that the Tribune never took up military men except to set them down with bruises. This waiter was a gifted Irishman, and a great politician. During a sweet little touch of a rebellion, or a famine (which are about the same) in his country, he had read the Tribune twice a day to his wife, Biddy Regan, who expressed herself delighted at the forked lightning style it then kept up in defense of the rights of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... persuasion and there was nothing in the temper of the Church for more than a thousand years afterward to greatly modify it. Indeed the temper of the Church rather strengthened it. Origen believed that demons produce famine, unfruitfulness, corruptions of the air and pestilences. They hover concealed in clouds in the lower atmosphere and are attracted by the blood and incense which the heathen offered ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... matter how, he sinned; the sin was the one terrible fact: moral evil was brought into the world by the only creature who was capable of committing it. Sin entered in, and death by sin; death and disease, storm and pestilence, earthquake and famine. The imprisoned passions of the wild animals were let loose, and earth and air became full of carnage: worst of all, man's animal nature came out in gigantic strength—the carnal lusts, unruly appetites, jealousies, hatreds, rapines, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... suck the blood and gold of the country. Paris and the maritime towns taxed; the rural districts ruined and laid waste by the soldiers and other agents of the Cardinal; the peasants reduced to feed on animals killed by the plague or famine, or saving themselves by self-banishment—such is the work of this new justice. His worthy agents have even coined money with the effigy of the Cardinal-Duke. Here are some ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... a famine country, an almost unpoliced area, and weapons had been as familiar to his hands as fingers since he had passed twelve. And when, as a steel-worker, he had been one of the first settlers in the foundry towns of the Asteroid Belt, he had ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... us examine the situation in which we are placed. Our country is under the pressure of a currency famine. Industries, great and small, all suspended by the owners, not because they cannot sell their products, but because they cannot get the money to pay for raw material and the wages of their employees. Banks conducted fairly ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... sanctimonious pride and Pharisaical aristocracy of his hosts. He, also, and the sisters when they were in the city, attended a colored church, which, however, became to Sarah, at least, a place of such "spiritual famine" ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... to-morrow, the day after?" said he, smiling faintly and shrugging his shoulders. "A sudden shot, steel i' the back—'tis better than death by famine in an open boat. You, Senor, have saved me alive yet a little, doubtless for your own ends, but my death walketh yonder as I know, death in form shapely and fair-seeming, yet sure and ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... future. We see throughout the pages of sacred history a perpetual succession and change of consolations and afflictions. Joseph in Egypt keeps alive his parents and his brethren when divinely visited by famine. After this, when these people were oppressed by wicked kings, they were again delivered from their cruel bondage. And Cyrus delivers them when captives in Babylon. When God permits his own people to be oppressed by the violence and guile of the devil and the world, he always lifts ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... in London, and get a practical notion of how our system works. Examine the footprints of our august aristocracy; see how they walk in blood, crushing hearts as they go. Just put your head in at English cottage doors; get a glimpse of Famine crouched torpid on black hearthstones; of Disease lying bare on beds without coverlets, of Infamy wantoning viciously with Ignorance, though indeed Luxury is her favourite paramour, and princely halls are dearer ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... or threatened, pleased or made angry, their actions were regarded as beyond prediction or control. The procession of the seasons, the routine of day and night, the placid appeasement of the rains, the devastating roar of storms, the shining of the rainbow, the bubbling of springs, the terrors of famine and pestilence; all these—the varying environment which makes or mars human life—were regarded as inevitable and capricious. The whole progress of physical science has been attended with a gradual elimination of these supernatural agencies and with a continual replacement ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... his wife alive, or had they perished, like numbers of their fellow-countrymen, by famine or by fire, or amid the numerous ills of a captured city? This was a problem not to be solved for many long years. Nothing could be heard of them, so Catharine left her native place with her kind friend ...
— Catharine's Peril, or The Little Russian Girl Lost in a Forest - And Other Stories • M. E. Bewsher
... pouring into Canada. Like herds of buffaloes they press through the forests, making paths for themselves. Were it not for these supplies, the British forces in Canada would soon be suffering from famine."[408] The British commissary at Prescott wrote, June 19, 1814, "I have contracted with a Yankee magistrate to furnish this post with fresh beef. A major came with him to make the agreement; but, as he was foreman of the grand jury of the court in which the Government prosecutes ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... Imperialists out of Silesia, and marching south, struck such fear into them that Tilly was obliged to weaken his army to send reinforcements to that quarter. By the order of Gustavus he left Silesia and marched to Magdeburg. He had now but 3500 men with him, 2700 having died from pestilence, famine, and disease. He assisted General Banner in blockading the Imperialist garrison of Magdeburg, and his losses by fever and pestilence thinned his troops down to two small regiments; these were incorporated with the force of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and the Marquis of Hamilton joined the staff of ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets. Of the combination of causes which first converted a dead organic compound into the living progenitors of humanity, science, indeed, as yet knows nothing. It is enough that from such beginnings famine, disease, and mutual slaughter, fit nurses of the future lords of creation, have gradually evolved, after infinite travail, a race with conscience enough to feel that it is vile, and intelligence enough to know that it is insignificant. . . . We sound the future, ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... "fearing a famine" is applied to people gulping down solid vivers without a word, as if the ten lean kine ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... After the removal of the capital to Moscow, that city was besieged and ravaged by Tamerlane, and suffered from time to time during every succeeding century all the horrors of war, fire, pestilence, and famine, till 1812, when it was laid in ashes by the Russians themselves, who by this great national sacrifice secured the destruction of the French ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... found something, for he suddenly held his peace and ran away swiftly up the stairs, holding in his hands a large paper parcel of a greasy aspect. Such was the crowd assembled there, to stare through the lighted windows upon the guests assembled around that famine-stricken table d'hote, that the manufacturer was obliged to make vigorous play with his elbows, and was frequently driven back by some wild rush of the mob and lost all the distance, and more, that he had just gained. In the Grande ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... show incontestably that no such result has followed the adoption of this policy. On the contrary, notwithstanding the repeal of the restrictive corn laws in England, the foreign demand for the products of the American farmer has steadily declined, since the short crops and consequent famine in a portion of Europe have been happily replaced by full crops and comparative ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... existing as natural consequents of the belief that disease has a supernatural origin. We see it in both the teaching and practice of the early Christian Church. That great father of the Church, Origen, says: "It is demons which produce famine, unfruitfulness, corruption of the air, and pestilence." St. Augustine said that "All diseases of Christians are to be ascribed to demons." The Church of England still retains in its Articles an authorisation for the expulsion of demons; and a number of charms yet in wide use amongst civilised ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... bright and cheerful. But it was hard to be brave and strong while his dear mother was suffering for lack of the delicacies which he longed to provide for her, but could not. He had not tasted food all day himself. How he could drive away the gaunt, hungry wolf, Famine, that had come to take up its abode with them, was the thought that haunted him as he tried to sing a little song he himself had composed. He left his place by the invalid, who, lulled by his singing, had fallen into a light sleep. As he looked listlessly out of the window, he noticed a man putting ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... the fact remains that after the battle Wellington's position was easily turned, and he was compelled to fall back. He retreated upon the famous lines of Torres Vedras, before which Massena sat helplessly for months, until famine forced him to break up his camp. Ney was intrusted with the command of the rear-guard, and the universal opinion of military critics is that his management of this retreat was one of his most splendid ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... perfect! I approve it greatly; only you will frighten them, and half of them will remain outside to take us by famine. What we want, my good friend, is the entire destruction of the troop; a single man ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... the consideration of measures of improvement, of measures to combat famine and disease. In Carrier's view there was only one way of accomplishing this—the number of mouths to be fed must be reduced, the diseased must be eliminated. It was the direct, the radical, the ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... When came the famine in stock-cars on the Montana Central, and the Flying U herd had grazed for two days within five miles of Dry Lake, waiting for the promised train of empties, Chip Bennett, lately promoted foreman, felt that he had trouble a-plenty. When, short-handed as he was, two of his cowboys went a-spreeing ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... the explanation of this prophetic passage Gramberg has rightly had recourse to the narrative of 2Samuel xi. 1-14. "Upon Saul and upon his house lies blood-guiltiness, for having slain the Gibeonites" is announced to David as the cause of a three years' famine. When asked how it can be taken away, the Gibeonites answer, "It is not a matter of silver and gold to us with respect to Saul and his house; let seven men of his family be delivered to us that we may hang them up unto the Lord in Gibeah of Saul upon the mountain ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... they require but little food; but as every sunny day revives and prompts them to exercise, a small supply is necessary on these occasions. Many hives of bees which are supposed to have died of cold, have in reality perished by famine, especially when a rainy summer prevented them from collecting a sufficient store of provision. Hence the hives should be carefully examined in autumn, and ought then to weigh at least eighteen pounds ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... terrible famine settled over the Tanana Valley. The moose departed from the gulches and the caribou melted from the hills like mist. The dogs grew gaunt and howled all night, the babies cried, the ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... boys of mine! They'll be the death of me, what with the things they won't do, and the things they WILL do. They're trying now to create a water famine for the jumpers, and they're making their own mother swim for the good of the cause." Phoebe held out a plump hand, moist and cold from lifting cool crocks of milk, and ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... eat some animals, and reject others; and as the principle is not evident, it is not uniform. That which is selected as delicate in one country, is by its neighbours abhorred as loathsome. The Neapolitans lately refused to eat potatoes in a famine. An Englishman is not easily persuaded to dine on snails with an Italian, on frogs with a Frenchman, or on horseflesh with a Tartar. The vulgar inhabitants of Sky, I know not whether of the other islands, have not only eels, but pork and bacon in abhorrence, and accordingly I never ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... which, if there was no actual malevolence, there was at least not the slightest indication of friendliness or good will. Taking from my haversack a box of the cigarettes with which I had provided myself in anticipation of a tobacco famine among the Spanish sailors, I sprang over the bulwark, and, with as cordial a smile of comradeship as I could give him, I placed it in his hand. For an instant he stared at it as if stupefied with amazement. ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... practised on himself, his carriage to others was most mild and humane. It was usual with him to say, that of two extremes, he chose rather to offend by tenderness, than a too rigid severity. In a great famine in 1006, his liberality to the poor was by many censured as profuse; for he melted down the sacred vessels and ornaments, and sold the gold crown S. Henry made a present of to that abbey, to relieve their necessities. He accompanied that prince in his journey to Rome ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... sleeps and the master lies awake thinking how he is to feed him, advance him, and reward him. The distress of seeing the sky turn brazen, and withhold its needful moisture from the earth, is not felt by the servant but by the master, who in time of scarcity and famine must support him who has served him in times of ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Stephen said. He drew Shylock out of his own long pocket. The son of a maltjobber and moneylender he was himself a cornjobber and moneylender, with ten tods of corn hoarded in the famine riots. His borrowers are no doubt those divers of worship mentioned by Chettle Falstaff who reported his uprightness of dealing. He sued a fellowplayer for the price of a few bags of malt and exacted his pound of flesh in interest for every money lent. How else ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... merchant was lucky if he could make a contract for delivery of grain at four gulden a measure. Then came a wet summer—for sixteen weeks it rained every day; the corn rotted on its stem. In places reputed as a second Canaan, famine set in, and in autumn the price of grain rose to twenty gulden a measure: and even so there was none to be had, for the ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... on the eve of St. John at a pastoral fete in the garden of Mr. Little. This gentleman, who rendered great service to the Canarians during the last famine, has cultivated a hill covered with volcanic substances. He has formed in this delicious site an English garden, whence there is a magnificent view of the Peak, of the villages along the coast, and the isle of Palma, which is bounded by the vast expanse of the Atlantic. I cannot compare this ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... in my opinion, the happiest circumstance in the whole narrative was, that Bligh, who was no delicate man either, had solemnly placed it on record therein that he was sure and certain that under no conceivable circumstances whatever would that emaciated party, who had gone through all the pains of famine, have preyed on one another. I cannot describe the visible relief which this spread through the boat, and how the tears stood in every eye. From that time I was as well convinced as Bligh himself that there was no danger, and that this phantom, ...
— The Wreck of the Golden Mary • Charles Dickens
... precious light in the horn lantern of human theory, and the lantern casts such shadows on the path to the kingdom as seem to dim eyes insurmountable obstructions. For the sake of what they count revealed, they refuse all further revelation, and what satisfies them is merest famine to the next generation of the children of the kingdom. Instead of God's truth they offer man's theory, and accuse of rebellion against God such as cannot live on the husks they call food. But ah, home-hungry soul! thy God is not the ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... in 1890 by Messrs Chatto & Windus, the firm who have published all the essays, is a collection of very interesting narrative poems. The first two, 'Rahero, a Legend of Tahiti' and 'The Feast of Famine, Marquesan Manners,' deal with native life in the sunny islands of the tropics, and show, with the same graphic and powerful touch as his South Sea tales do, that human life, love, hatred, and revenge are as fierce and as terrible there as in the sterner ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... the future, while they live, will be charmed by my remarkable merits." And another: "I have not oppressed any widow; no prisoner languished in my days; no one died of hunger. When there were years of famine, I had my fields ploughed. I gave food to the inhabitants, so that there was no hungry person. I gave the widow an equal portion with the married; I did not prefer the rich ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... eat six times the minimum and twice the optimum quantity of food per day. For every one who starves, hundreds gorge themselves to death. "Food kills more than famine", and the poor, who eat sparsely from necessity, suffer far less from gout, cancer, rheumatism and other food-aggravated diseases ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... concerning the miracles, and appearances among men, of the most holy gods of whatever land he had come from. And the captain answered that he came from fair Belzoond, and worshipped gods that were the least and humblest, who seldom sent the famine or the thunder, and were easily appeased with little battles. And I told how I came from Ireland, which is of Europe, whereat the captain and all the sailors laughed, for they said, 'There are no such places in all the land of dreams.' When they had ceased to mock me, I explained that my fancy ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... they think that "yonder," in the House, in the Town Hall, in the Committee of Public Safety, their welfare is being considered. But "yonder" they are discussing everything under the sun except the welfare of the people. In 1793, while famine ravaged France and crippled the Revolution; whilst the people were reduced to the depths of misery, although the Champs Elysees were lined with luxurious carriages where women displayed their jewels and splendour, Robespierre ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... hymns of the Marquesans, when human victims were offered, frequent allusions were made to 'the red apples eaten in Naoau,' ... and to the 'tabooed apples of Atea,' as the cause of death, wars, pestilence, famine, and other calamities, only to be averted or atoned for by the sacrifice of human victims. The close connection between the Hawaiian and the Marquesan legends indicates a common origin, and that ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... promise was soon afflicted with a grievous famine, in consequence of which, he was necessitated to provide for the subsistence of his family by removing into Egypt. This was a new trial to his faith; for by what possible means could a land at present so impoverished, become a place of plentiful subsistence to his posterity, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... that wretched summer, scorching drought alternating with cloud-bursts vied with each other in blasting the hopes of the farmers, and premature frost destroyed the few remaining stalks of corn, so that when the winter snows came, gaunt famine stared our family fiercely in ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... his influence in favour of Scotchmen with so little moderation that he raised a prejudice against the whole nation, which found a vent in Wilkes's North Briton and Churchill's bitter and powerful satire, "The Prophecy of Famine."] ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... bright sword of some great battle, or like the onset and withdrawal of Atlantic surges. He can at need be beautifully tender and quiet. Who that has read his tale of the young Finn and the Seven Ancients will forget the weeping of Finn over the kindness of the famine-stricken old men, and their wonder at his weeping, and the self-forgetful pathos of their meditation unconscious that it was their own sacrifice called forth the tears of Finn. "Youth," they said, "has many sorrows that ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... always had been going on in India. Cakes of cocoanuts are given away in solemn fashion; and as the villagers were afraid to keep them or eat them, the circulation went on to the end of the chapter. Then, again, holy men and prophets have always been common in India. They foretell pestilence and famine: the downfall of British rule, or the destruction of the whole world. They are often supposed to be endowed with supernatural powers and to be impervious to bullets; but these phenomena invariably disappear whenever they come in contact with Europeans, especially as all ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... possible to exaggerate the wretched state of the sister isle, where fires of recent hate were still smouldering, and where the poor inhabitants, guilty and guiltless, were daily living on the verge of famine, over which they were soon to be driven. Their ill condition much aggravated by the intemperate habits to which despairing men so easily fall a prey. The expenditure of Ireland on proof spirits alone had in the year 1829 attained ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... loath the hated name, Famine's metropolis, the sink of shame, A nauseous sepulchre, whose craving womb Hourly inters poor mortals in its tomb; By ev'ry plague and ev'ry ill possessed, Ev'n purgatory itself to thee's a jest; Emblem of hell, nursery of vice, Thou crawling ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... dare thus to offer outrages to the gods?" she cried. "Be warned lest we bring death and famine upon you all. Men shall be offered up to us no more. ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... moment to be in such a devout frame of mind that they may the better praise him in their prayers, and that all the works which they do may be most agreeable to God. You know that there have been no wars in our time, and that our neighbours have been terribly afflicted both by pestilence and famine. Whilst others have been cast down, we have nothing to complain of, and we must own that God has preserved us. There is good reason that we should acknowledge that this is not due to our own virtues, but to the great and liberal mercy of our Blessed Redeemer, who cries, calls, ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... till they have materially reduced the larks also, as they have long since reduced the quail, and let them have to depend solely upon occasional dead lambs and sheep, and they will find a certain rather formidable natural enemy called Famine rise slowly but inexorably against them and slaughter them wholesale. The first proposition then to which I demand your assent is that all plants and animals tend to increase in a high geometrical ratio; that they all endeavour to get that which is necessary for their ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... fear, and God their trust, When plagues or famine spread, His watchful eye secures the just ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... of the sea's hoarse wave, Scorch'd on the rock, or shivering in the cave, Long, long I stay'd: Fate yet prolong'd my day, And Grief and Famine spared their willing prey. A roving bark at length approach'd, and bore The suppliant stranger ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... honorable surname than his, of Cocles, or the one-eyed; and though his lameness prevented him from ever being a Consul, or leading an army, he was so much beloved and honored by his fellow citizens, that in the time of a famine each Roman, to the number of 300,000, brought him a day's food, lest he should suffer want. The statue was shown even in the time of Pliny, 600 years afterwards, and was probably only destroyed when Rome was sacked ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... know what those straps are called, round their waists, Wilmot?" said Swinton. "They are called the belts of famine. All the natives wear them when hard pressed by hunger, and they say that they are a great relief. I have no doubt ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... consequence, have I, the ally and friend of the Roman people, been besieged with an armed force; neither the remembrance of my father Micipsa's benefits, nor your decrees, are of any avail for my relief; and whether I am more closely pressed by the sword, or by famine, I ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... Misanthropic Parent or The Guarded Secret (1807), by Miss Smith, deserts her real father—a worthy farmer—to look for more aristocratic parents. As he is not picturesque enough for a villain, she repudiates him with scorn: "Have you the gaunt ferocity of famine in your countenance? Can you darken the midnight with a scowl? Have you the quivering lip and the Schedoniac contour? In a word, are you a picturesque villain full of plot and horror and magnificent wickedness? Ah! no, sir, you are only a sleek, good-humoured, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... her. But it is not common for young couples to have their own homes; hence the dwellings in the native quarters are packed with several generations of the same family, and that makes the occupants easy prey to plagues, famine and other agents of ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... not probable that the London spectators went the lengths which our outsiders go in trying to verify an English duke who is about to marry an American heiress. The London vulgar, if not better bred than our vulgar, are better fed on the sight of social grandeur, and have not a lifelong famine to satisfy, as ours have. Besides, whatever gulf birth and wealth have fixed between the English classes, it is mystically bridged by that sentiment of family which I have imagined the ruling influence in England. In a ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... military, Imperial and Colonial—required adjustment to a nicety at every turn, it was wonderful that so much was done so well with means which were far from being adequate. War prices of course ruled in the British camp. But they compared very favourably with the famine prices in Quebec, where most 'luxuries' soon became unobtainable at any price. There were no canteen or camp-follower scandals under Carleton. Then, as now, every soldier had a regulation ration of food and a ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... signed "John Pemberton," declaring their attachment to the British government.* These men are continually harping on the great sin of our bearing arms, but the king of Britain may lay waste the world in blood and famine, and they, poor fallen souls, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... recovered in due time, the officers remaining in exile, but the crews only too glad to return to their allegiance to Parliament. On the same day the town of Colchester, after a siege of more than six weeks, during which the most hideous extremities of famine had been endured by the poor townsmen, surrendered at mercy to Fairfax. Above 3,000 soldiers, with their officers, thus became prisoners. Two of the chief officers, Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, selected ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... contrarie to the order taken in the parlement; and when the meat was set before him, he was forbidden once to touch it; yea, he was not permitted so much as to smell to it, and so he died of forced famine. ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed
... considered of much wider distribution for the mild forms of malnutrition associated with a deficiency in the "B" vitamine are less acute manifestations of this disease. The disease is not likely to become marked in well nourished districts in its acute form, but in famine districts its incidence is always possible. It would be more than possible were it not for the fact that famine tends to eliminate the highly milled cereals and throw the people back on to the whole grain, peas and beans, which are rich in the preventive ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy
... "Strange, horrible, and foul! "By what deep Guilt belongs "To the deaf Synod, 'full of gifts and lies!' "By Wealth's insensate Laugh! By Torture's Howl! "Avenger, rise! "For ever shall the bloody Island scowl? "For aye unbroken, shall her cruel Bow "Shoot Famine's arrows o'er thy ravag'd World? "Hark! how wide NATURE joins her groans below— "Rise, God of Nature, rise! ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... potatoes or that cheese from any shopkeeper's cellar. But, in the store-places of the railway company to which I belong, there are tons and tons of provisions, including both cheese and potatoes, for which the consignees never apply, preferring, as they do, to leave them there until famine prices are reached. Well, I have helped myself to just a few things, so as to give Blanchard a good dinner this evening. As for the leg of mutton, I bribed the butcher—not with money, he might have refused it—but with ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... of spirits, to give his angels charge over him while he slumbereth and sleepeth. For if by these preventing powers the devil was not restrained, the earth would be subjected to dearth, droughts, and famine; the air infected with noxious fumes; and, in a word, mankind would be utterly destroyed, which might oblige our Maker (if I may be allowed the expression) to the necessity of a new fiat, or else have no more creatures to honour ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... him plenty of time to pay. Everyone lent him assignats which he repaid with some loads of wood; the vast farms of the estate furnished food for the college and, lacking money, Dom Ferlus paid the external teachers in provisions, which suited them very well at a time when famine was rife ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... acquiesce, and to depart: they follow the traces of the elk, the buffalo, and the beaver, and are guided by those wild animals in the choice of their future country. Properly speaking, therefore, it is not the Europeans who drive away the native inhabitants of America; it is famine which compels them to recede; a happy distinction, which had escaped the casuists of former times, and for which we are indebted ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... engraven upon man, if he degenerate not, unto whom the conservation of duty to the public ought to be much more precious than the conservation of life and being; according to that memorable speech of Pompeius Magnus, when being in commission of purveyance for a famine at Rome, and being dissuaded with great vehemency and instance by his friends about him, that he should not hazard himself to sea in an extremity of weather, he said only to them, Necesse est ut eam, non ut vivam. But it may be truly affirmed that there was never ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... places, and it was the sister boat which in the summer of 1906 was attacked by pirates on one of her trips and all of the officers and first class passengers killed while at dinner. The cause of this attack, it is said, or the excuse for it, was threatened famine resulting from destructive floods which had ruined the rice and mulberry crops of the great delta region and had prevented the carrying of manure and bean cake as fertilizers to the tea fields in the hill lands beyond, thus bringing ruin to three of the great staple crops of the region. To avoid ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... state of commercial legislation of Great Britain as it bears upon our interests. It excludes with interdicting duties all importation (except in time of approaching famine) of the great staple of production of our Middle and Western States; it proscribes with equal rigor the bulkier lumber and live stock of the same portion and also of the Northern and Eastern part of our Union. It refuses even the rice of the South unless aggravated with a charge ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams
... floating Hell with joy, but alas, our joy was of short duration. Cold and famine were now our destiny. Not a pane of glass, nor even a board to a single window in the house, and no fire but once in three days to cook our small allowance of provision. There was a scene that truly tried body and soul. Old ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... sufferings of famine-stricken Poland, ravaged already three or four times in the last two years ...
— NEVER AGAIN • Edward Carpenter
... my orders. Nothing was done, however, to make it more possible for me to remain in the island. I had, in the second year of the war, determined to resign on account of the pecuniary difficulties of my position. We were living in a besieged town, with all necessaries of life at famine prices, and, since my brother's death, I had no fund to draw on for my excessive expenses. The Cretan committee in Boston, considering my resignation probably fatal to the insurrection, had promised that they would be responsible for any expenses ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... no use for it; they have a separate cellar for emeralds and a separate cellar for sapphires; they have filled a hole with gold and dig it up when they need it. And the only use that is known for their ridiculous wealth is to attract to their larder a continual supply of food. In times of famine they have even been known to scatter rubies abroad, a little trail of them to some city of Man, and sure enough their larders would soon be ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... apart from the chance of seeing the Vendange the route de Burgoyne was far the more picturesque. Smollett's portraiture of the peasantry in the less cultivated regions prepares the mind for Young's famous description of those "gaunt emblems of famine." In Burgundy the Doctor says, "I saw a peasant ploughing the ground with a jackass, a lean cow, and a he-goat yoked together." His vignette of the fantastic petit-maitre at Sens, and his own abominable rudeness, is worthy of the master hand that drew ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... fourteenth century a colony of Waldensians had settled in some villages upon the coast. They preserved their peculiar beliefs and ritual, and after three centuries numbered about 4000 souls. Nearly the whole of these, it seems, were exterminated by sword, fire, famine, torture, noisome imprisonment, and hurling from the summits of high cliffs. A few of the survivors were sent to work upon the Spanish galleys. Some women and children were sold into slavery. At ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... temperament was naturally pacific, Timour carried on no military operations, and the thirteen years of his reign were marked by almost unbroken peace. But peace did not bring prosperity in its train, for a considerable part of China suffered from the ravages of famine, and the cravings of hunger drove many to become brigands. Timour's anxiety to alleviate the public suffering gained him some small measure of popularity, and he also endeavored to limit the opportunities of the Mongol governors to be tyrannical by taking away ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... test for his devotion to social justice. In the summer of 1902 the coal-miners of Pennsylvania stopped working. Early in September the public awoke with a start to the realization that a coal famine threatened the country. In the Eastern States, in New York, and Pennsylvania, and in some of the Middle Western States, a calamity threatened, which would be quite as terrible as the invasion of an enemy's army. For ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... the water failed to rise to the required height, and the horrors of starvation becoming the inevitable result, it was the custom of the people to nail to these crosses symbolical personifications of the Demon of Famine. To indicate the sterility of the domain over which he reigned, he was represented by the figure of a lean and haggard man, with a crown of thorns upon his head; a reed cut from the river's bank was placed in his hands, as his unreal sceptre; and, considering the inhabitants ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... to abandon the quantitative and qualitative regulation of the procreation of children to natural selection—that is to say to brutal chance, disease, famine or infanticide—at a time of human evolution when science contends with the greatest success against accident, disease, infant ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... procured excellent winter quarters for his army in Philadelphia. Here they spent the winter within the splendid mansions of that city, feasting upon the best the country afforded; while the American army were suffering in their mud huts, half clothed, with famine staring them in the face. Many of the soldiers were seen to drop dead with cold and hunger; others had their bare feet cut by the ice, and left their tracks in blood. The American army exhibited in their quarters at Valley Forge such examples ...
— Reminiscences of the Military Life and Sufferings of Col. Timothy Bigelow, Commander of the Fifteenth Regiment of the Massachusetts Line in the Continental Army, during the War of the Revolution • Charles Hersey
... Degema district, is a Priest-King, elected for a term of seven years. "The whole prosperity of the town, especially the fruitfulness of farm, byre, and marriage-bed, was linked with his life. Should he fall sick it entailed famine and grave disaster upon the inhabitants." So soon as a successor is appointed the former holder of the dignity is reported to 'die for himself.' Previous to the introduction of ordered government it is admitted that at any time during his seven years' term of office the Priest might ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... valleys, lay basking in his glory. The hot air quivered all over the wide landscape. From the flight of steps in front of the church they looked down on the streets of the town, and beyond them into space. It looked the best of all possible worlds—as neither plague, famine, pestilence, earthquakes, nor human wrongs, persuade me it is not, judged by the high intent of its existence. When a man knows that intent, as I dare to think I do, then let him say, and not till then, whether it be a good world or not. That in the midst of the ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... too must slay a whole Herd, where before they killed but two or three. We'll soon be all gone—we, who are the meat food of these Redmen, we'll soon be all gone, and then what will they do, A'tim? Will they kill each other, as your people do when the famine gets into their hearts? Or will they just lie down and die, as my people do when the White Storm blots ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... hardened; they will not give us if we beg at their doors. If we steal, the Law will end our lives. Divers of the poor are starved to death already; and it were better for us that are living to die by the Sword than by the Famine. And now we consider that the Earth is our Mother; and that God hath given it to the children of men; and that the Common and Waste Grounds belong to the poor; and that we have a right to the common ground both from the Law of the Land, Reason and ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens |
