"Meager" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Telephone system: meager telephone service; principal switching center is Asuncion domestic: fair microwave radio relay network international: satellite ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... at all because now he was sure he was right. The natives had given him the animal for a purpose. Their own existence was meager, near the edge of extinction. They could not afford to keep something that wasn't useful. And this creature was useful. Tiny blue sparks crackled from the fur as it rubbed against him in the darkness. It was not whining. It rumbled and purred as ...
— Bolden's Pets • F. L. Wallace
... J. nigra tree on the station farm that has consistently shown symptoms of the disease during the past eight years, and in 1950 only a few limbs are affected. On the basis of the admittedly meager information reported here, it can be stated that the black walnut varieties used in these experiments are more resistant to the bunch disease than are varieties and seedlings of heartnut and butternut. That this is generally true is also borne ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... Spanish rule. In this uprising a certain portion of the population, and indeed that which had the most valid claim to aboriginality, the so-called Negritos, were not involved. Their isolation, their lack of every sort of political, often indeed of village organization, also their meager numbers, render it conceivable that the greatest changes might go on among their neighbors without their taking such a practical view of them as to lead to their engaging in them. Thus it can be understood how they would take no interest in the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... a single element is omitted that is the only difference, and in some cases the result is worse than where no plant food is supplied. It seems to hurt the plant worse to throw its food supply completely out of balance than to leave it with nothing except what it draws from the meager store in the seed planted. Of course all the pots were planted with the same kind of seed at the same time, and they were all watered uniformly ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... of hickory splints which did its work to perfection, and Ree sharpened up his knife and carved from a whitewood block several plates and trays to add to their meager collection of dishes. Both boys improved the opportunity also, while shut in, to give their wardrobes attention, making themselves stout moccasins, ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... By the meager light of the tiny lamp they labored sedulously at the rope-ladder until Iris's eyes were closing with sheer weariness. Neither of them had slept much during the preceding night, and they were ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... conclude that the whole business was a wretched mistake; that Lincoln found married life intolerable because of the fussily dictatorial self-importance of his wife. But the authority for all these tales is meager. Not one is traceable to the parties themselves. Probably it will never be known till the end of time what is false in them, what true. About all that can be disengaged from this cloud of illusive witnesses is that Springfield wondered why Mary Todd married Lincoln. He was still poor; so ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... and when it comes 'by-low' time, there is a grand transformation scene," she answered, laughing; and, although he joined in her laughter, there was sadness in his heart as he realized the import of the meager accommodations. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... the morning after Kid Wolf's arrival in the town, the old padre was astonished to find a package of money inside his door. It was addressed simply: "For the poor." It was a windfall and a much-needed addition to the mission's meager finances. ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... blue or snowy gray, Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meager sheaves; That spring, briefer than apple-blossom's breath, Summer, so much too beautiful to stay, Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves, And sleepy winter, like the ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie
... temperature is as high as ever, and the raft still motionless. The rays of the sun penetrate even through the shelter of our tent, where we sit literally gasp- ing with the heat. The impatience with which we awaited the moment when the boatswain should dole out our meager allowance of water, and the eagerness with which those lukewarm drops were swallowed, can only be realized by those who for themselves have endured ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... up with water and poured into the hot pan when the pork was done. He watched it until it hardened a little on one side, when he flung it up into the air and caught it in the pan again. There is an art in making palatable flapjacks out of nothing but flour and water. When the meager breakfast was ready, he awakened Grenfell, who ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... have both much to tell each other. But I wish to hear your story first. Remember, Claudia, those alarming letters you sent me were very meager in their details. Tell me everything, my child; everything from the time you left me until the ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... early part of September, the air was warm and balmy, and barn-yard fowls were clucking and scratching about the rather meager soil around the ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... of their children. They could neither establish schools nor employ teachers; they could give only such instruction as the limitations of their poverty, their misery, and their fear permitted. Consequently, only the most meager training could be secured, and that ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... unfortunately say little about the State of California. For with the exception of a few short trips away from San Francisco, and one meager few days' trip into the South, I have never explored it. Nobody warned me of the danger of such a proceeding, and so I innocently went straight to San Francisco the first time I visited the coast. Stranger, let me warn you now. If ever you start for ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... have merit. The work cannot be judged entirely by tallying its meager number of editions, its lack of thoroughness, or its artificial divisions. Its signal contribution rests upon the fact that it is a pioneering effort at permitting the figures to march, for the first ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry
... a nutshell. diminish &c. (decrease) 36; (contract) 195. Adj. small, little; diminutive &c. (small in size) 193; minute; fine; inconsiderable, paltry &c. (unimportant) 643; faint &c. (weak) 160; slender, light, slight, scanty, scant, limited; meager &c. (insufficient) 640; sparing; few &c. 103; low, so-so, middling, tolerable, no great shakes; below par, under par, below the mark; at a low ebb; halfway; moderate, modest; tender, subtle. inappreciable, evanescent, infinitesimal, homeopathic, very small; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the meager income derived from the husband's insignificant appointments. Two children had been born of the marriage, and the earlier condition of the strictest economy had become one of quiet, concealed, shamefaced misery, the poverty of a noble ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Queene, That dranke her Husbands neuer sundred heart. If that I dye, yet will it glad my soule, Which then shall feede on those Elisian ioyes, That in the sacred Temple of thy breast, My liuing memory shall shrined bee. But if that enuious fates should call thee hence, And Death with pale and meager looke vsurpe, Vpon those rosiate lips, and Currall cheekes, Then Ayre be turnde, to poyson to infect me, 450 Earth gape and swallow him that Heauens hate, Consume me Fire with thy deuouring flames, Or Water drowne, ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... acted as judges and directed affairs in general. For a while they probably held the power of life and death over their own people, but the capital cases were punished later by authority of Babylon (Jer. 29:22.) (4) Their religion. Here also the information is meager and must be gathered from statements and inferences found in several books. Several things are certain: (a) For the most part they preserved their genealogies, thus making possible the identity of the Messiah as ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... they leaned to each other, and the duet of their merriment ran ahead of them down the meager street and found out ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... studying some of the New York magazines, going rather hungrily through their advertisements where such lovely layettes are described. My poor little Dinky-Dink's things are so plain and rough and meager. I envy those city mothers with all those beautiful linens and laces. But my little Spartan man-child has never known a single day's sickness. And ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... give him careful attention, even the Dominican. The jeweler was a tall, meager, nervous man, very dark, dressed in the English fashion and wearing a pith helmet. Remarkable about him was his long white hair contrasted with a sparse black beard, indicating a mestizo origin. ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... he had embarked on a wild goose chase; for, even if the fugitives had made their way to Mrs. Malplaquet's (which was more than doubtful) he imagined they would take care to lie very low so that his chances of coming across any of them were of the most meager. ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... broke into heavy, silent sobs. The one grief of her girlhood had been the waywardness of her only brother. From childhood she had stood between him and blame, shielding him, helping him, loving him. She had fought valiantly against his weakness, but her meager strength had been pitted against the accumulated intemperance ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... side of the enemy. And since he did not know who was the enemy, or where he was, nor why he was an enemy, nor when he would attack, he proposed to find out these things for himself preparatory to making the said enemy as uncomfortable as his meager resources would permit, when eked out ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... although slight, her body was delicately full, and that her shoulders held a droop which somehow resembled the shadow on her voice. She bore an unmistakable refinement of being, strange in that locality of meager humanity. Her speech totally lacked the unintelligible, ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... stepmother quickly perceived the superior aptitudes and abilities of Abraham. She became very fond of him, and in every way encouraged his marked inclination to study and improve himself. The opportunities for this were meager enough. Mr. Lincoln himself has drawn a vivid ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... custodian of the law had asserted his first duty was generally to preserve the peace; afterward, he would attend to Barnes' particular grievance. Obliged to content himself as best he might with this meager assurance, the manager, at his wit's end, had accompanied the party whose way had led them in the direction the carriage had taken, and whose final destination—an unhoped-for consummation!—had proved the ultimate ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Ulysses S. G. Budlong—celebrates Christmas behind closed doors. People find it easier to rhapsodize when the collateral is not shown. It is amazing how far a Carthaginian can go on the most meager donation. The formula is usually: "We had Such a lovely Christmas at our house. What did I get? Oh, so many things ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... sudden fate. If the young warriors broke before the guns of the pony-soldiers, worse yet might overtake them, though the windswept table lands dismayed them equally with the bullets. Munching their horse-meat, clutching their meager garments, they elbowed about the fires saying little. In their homeless helplessness their souls deadened. They could not divine the immediate future. Unlike the young warriors whose fires flashed brighter as the talons of Death reached most fiercely for them, they ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... Cain and Ham, and Pope and Turk, who are as father and son to each other, can afford to despise the judgment of the true Church on the strength of fleeting and meager successes in this life, why can not we afford in turn to despise their power and censure, on the strength of the everlasting blessings which we possess? Ham was not moved by his father's curse. Full of anger against him, and despising him as a crazy old man, he goes ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... an unshaken conviction that the highest art of the teacher is manifested in the awakening of such an interest that the pupil shall forever after be an eager learner. Am I wrong in hoping that no one, though with but a meager knowledge of literature, can read these sketches without a desire to know more of the men and women who are the glory of England and America? Here is but a taste of a more ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... arms from exercise show a full spring and play of the muscles, is a beautiful sight, and he, likewise, is best fitted as a combatant. Thus the true species is never without its utility, as even a meager ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... building, and only a few of the early comers possessed such a luxury as an old army blanket or a knife, cup, and tin plate. As a rule, the prisoner, by the time he reached Libby, found himself devoid of earthly goods save the meager and dust-begrimed summer garb in which he ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... brightest of the children, his mind being naturally active; but he had little disposition for study and very meager opportunities, for "school kept" only a few weeks in a year. At the time of this story he had just passed his majority, was somewhat above medium height, solidly built, with broad, square shoulders. His ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... various contributions, was best pleased with the last. The money he must carry to the padrone. The apple he might keep for himself, and it would vary agreeably his usual meager fare. ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... is linked with some conspicuous problem in statesmanship, and the endeavor has been to set forth the work as well as the workman. It is hoped that the library notes appended to each chapter will be of assistance to the earnest student, in supplementing the meager outlines of this volume with the abundance of personal detail and wealth of dramatic incident which give life and ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... "nursed" as the engineer described it for the day. The river had begun to widen and the bank to fall to almost a dead level just before reaching Circle the night before, and they now entered upon a dreary expanse of tundra or flat marsh land covered with a meager growth of willow and stunted birch. The river spread out to a width of nearly a dozen miles, dividing into many channels surrounding small bushy islands and rendering navigation very difficult. The wheelman, who was an old river pilot, was thoroughly acquainted with ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... of a hard materialist. But when he stepped back to take the chair which Guinea had brought I saw that he moved easily, that he was cool and knew well how to handle himself. And this drove away the meager joy of my ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... take meager and colorless realities and expand them into things of blossoming promise. She was almost creative in the artistry she brought to these transmutations. In the end she convinced herself of their existence and she was quite sure that Mrs. Finnegan shared equally ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... riders; at the rear by a number of others and by Lawler, Blackburn; the "chuck-wagon" driven by the cook—a portly, solemn-visaged man of forty with a thin, complaining voice; the "hoodlum" wagon, equipped with bedding and a meager stock of medicines and supplies for emergencies—driven by a slender, fiercely mustached man jocosely referred to as "Doc;" and a dozen horses of the remuda, in charge of the horse-wrangler ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... because every side-show of the carnival company had insisted on occupying space around the court-house, and because this space was meager, that the country folk and excursionists and townsmen showed in such compressed numbers at every turn. In reality, however, they were by no means countless; and if Robert's eagle glance continued to travel from face to face, with that ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... the same kind of ominous voice; but these men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies. They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to them, an insoluble mystery from over the sea. All their meager breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter one of the reclaimed, ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... King had been a long time among the most earnest of workers. Born in New York City, December 17, 1824, of English and German ancestry, son of a Universalist Minister who was compelled to struggle along on a very meager salary, the lad felt very early in life labor's stern discipline. At fifteen he was obliged to leave school that by daily toil he might help to support his now widowed mother and five younger brothers and sisters. Brief as was his record in school, ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... their true contours. Carvers call this process "throwing about," i.e., making the leaves, etc., appear to rise from the background and again fall toward it in all directions. The phrase is a very meager one, and but poorly expresses the necessity for intimate sympathy between each surface so "thrown about." It is precisely in the observance of this last quality that effects of richness are produced. You can hardly have too much monotony of surface, ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... the night, awake and ready; the indifference with which he buttons his coat whilst hearing the snow he has just escaped snarl threateningly against the window. "Whist!" says Molly, hesitating to tell the reason for her coming at that hour, lest it shock or frighten him. But the bearing of the meager boy and the level glance of the untamable blue eyes once more assure her that he has not been sent here from beyond Turntable to fail ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... She thought, modestly, that she was fitted for a woman's place in life. And that which she learned first from the world into which she had gone was this: that her knowledge of life was very, very, meager; that there were many, many, things about men and women ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... I could improve on an arrangement that doesn't cost any money," Lyman answered. He sat looking about the room, at the meager furniture and the thin array of books. "We've got a start, anyway, and I don't think Webster could have done anything without a start. ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... three pupils, one of whom was David Garrick, afterward the celebrated actor. In 1737, he removed to London, where he lived for most of the remainder of his life. Here he entered upon literary work, in which he continued, and from which he derived his chief support, although at times it was but a meager one, His "Vanity of Human Wishes" was sold for ten guineas. His great Dictionary, the first one of the English language worthy of mention, brought him 1575 Pounds, and occupied his time for seven years. Most of the money he received for the ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the extreme advance of the army; nothing between them and the enemy but detached pickets of cavalry, at long distances apart, to fly back with the report of the least signs made by the rebels. These meager groups were forbidden fires, or any evidence of their presence that might guide hostile movement, and the infantry outposts felt that they were really the guardians of the sleeping thousands a mile or so behind them. No one minded the cold water and hard ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... and solitude to dreams and formless craving, this girl of the hills. What things of vigor her life had known were cruel: a passionate shrinking from her uncle, a fear for the brother who had hotly rebelled at the meager life around him, a loneliness aloof from her kind and a vague hunger for some fuller, sweeter life beyond the hills. And with a blast of a horn the ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... used to boast that he had been wounded in every country in Europe and in Asia and Africa as well. He had been hit more times than any soldier high or low in the army. He had distinguished himself by valor, and, but for his humble extraction and meager education, might have risen to a high command. As it was, he was personally known to the Emperor, and was accounted as one of the favorite soldiers of ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... shirt and pulled out a meager and ill-printed sheet which told the most epochal news that this or any country has known—the midwinter discovery of ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... release Saxon completed her meager preparations to receive him. She was without money, and, except for her resolve not to offend Billy in that way again, she would have borrowed ferry fare from Maggie Donahue and journeyed to San Francisco to sell some of her personal ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... the welcome which the Chief Beralsea extended to them the second night after their arrival at Venture Island. Besides the clams referred to there was an abundance of fish, several varieties, besides game and meats, and the only thing which they seemed to lack, or which was rather meager in ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... Mr. Fenshawe had to raise his hand as high as his own forehead to reach Dick's back. His eyes were shrewd and keen, with the introspective look of the student. Though it was more than probable that he was very wealthy, judging from the meager details within Royson's ken, he had the semblance of a university ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... poverty-stricken community struggling for a bare subsistence after the ravages of war. But Lee devoted himself body and soul to the work, living in the simplest possible fashion. Indeed, he refused to accept an increase in his meager salary, which would have provided him with some of the ordinary comforts of life, on the ground that the institution needed every penny of its funds for its development. But though the work was hard he took ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... at sea, they endeavored to conquer on land. They forced their way to Hungary, and had taken possession of eight provinces, when Emperor Charles VII sent an army against them under the command of Prince Eugene. This army was composed of only seventy thousand men. With this meager force Prince Eugene defeated two hundred thousand Turks and laid siege ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... numbers, their remoteness from lines of travel, and their unwarlike character the Ad['a]i have cut but a small figure in history, and accordingly the known facts regarding them are very meager. The first historical mention of them appears to be by Cabeca de Vaca, who in his "Naufragios," referring to his stay in Texas, about 1530, calls them Atayos. Mention is also made of them by several of the early French explorers of the ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell
... about his work, and I must admit that in so far as appearances went he did extremely well with the meager tools and assistance at his command. We had only two short axes and our hunting-knives; yet with these we hewed trees, split them into planks, surfaced ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... devoted himself to the new study with that peculiar intensity of application which always remained his most valuable faculty, and soon knew all that can be known about it from rules. He seemed surprised, as others have been, at the meager dimensions of the science he had acquired and the ease with which it yielded all there was of it to the student. But it seemed no slight achievement to the New Salemites, and contributed not a little to the prevalent impression of ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... few of these chapters are to be found in the oldest copies and editions of the Treatise on Painting, and although the material they afford is but meager and the connection between them but slight, we must still attribute to them a special theoretical value as well as practical utility—all the more so because our knowledge of the theory and use of colours at the time of the ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... the only measure of the man, Solomon. If anybody can talk to me and be unaware that they are conversing with a gentleman, all I can say is their experience has been as pitiable as their intelligence is meager. But it hurts me when you intimate that I stand in the way of the ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... connection with the buildings themselves. The word architect was little used until after the Renaissance. The owner and the "surveyor" were the people responsible, and the plans, directions and details given to the workmen were astonishingly meager. ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... seemingly more successful attempt had been made to produce glass that would leave no secondary spectrum, and that Dr. Zeiss, the famous Jena optician, had constructed some new improved objectives from it. But the somewhat meager description of these objectives, as given by an English microscopist, did not seem fit to excite much enthusiasm here as to their superiority over what had already been done in this country. Besides this, the report said that the new objectives were five system, and also that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... millionaires created nothing except the enterprise of distributing products made by the toil and skill of millions of workers the world over. But while the workers made these products their sole share was meager wages, barely sufficient to sustain the ordinary demands of life. Moreover, the workers of one country were compelled to pay exorbitant prices for the goods turned out by the workers of other countries. The shippers who stood as ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... the condition of his own body. Slipping out of the big shirt once more, and borrowing Cis's mirror, he contrived, by skewing his head around, chinning first one shoulder, then the other, to get a meager look at his back. He appraised his spindling arms and legs. He thumped ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... Handicap Poisoned," was the great, staring title. The details were meager; brutally meager. They were to the effect that some one had gained access to the Waterbury stable and ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... constant toil, and very meager schooling,—only a few weeks each year,—James Garfield excelled all his companions in the log schoolhouse. Besides solving at home in the long winter evenings, by the light of the pine fire, all the knotty problems in ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... should Rene prove permanently fickle. The thought of it aroused all her natural honesty and serious nobleness of character, which lay deep under the almost hoydenish levity usually observable in her manner. Crude as her sense of life's larger significance was, and meager as had been her experience in the things which count for most in the sum of a young girl's existence under fair circumstances, she grasped intuitively ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... rolled up his blankets and tied them and his meager pack together, then climbed out to look for his horse. He saw him, presently, a little way off in the sage, and went to fetch him. In that country, where every rider boasted of a fine mount and was eager for a race, where thoroughbreds ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... Cossacks as it did the mounted Huns, energizes its sons by its dry bracing air, toughens them by its harsh conditions of life, organizes them into a mobilized army, always moving with its pastoral commissariat. Then when population presses too hard upon the meager sources of subsistence, when a summer drought burns the pastures and dries up the water-holes, it sends them forth on a mission of conquest, to seek abundance in the better watered lands of their agricultural neighbors. Again and again the productive valleys of the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... I, our guns resting on the already cooling earth, beside the pool that forms the center of the meager oasis, hidden behind a kind of hedge of alfa. The setting sun was reddening the stagnant ditches which irrigate the poor garden plots of the ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... Correspondents, who writes himself Mat Meager, complains, that whereas he constantly used to Breakfast with his Mistress upon Chocolate, going to wait upon her the first of May he found his usual Treat very much changed for the worse, and has been forced to feed ever ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... out, sor," explained Muldoon, and, upon the lieutenant's departure, was seen retreating in the direction of the cook-tent, with the meager and expectant Scrap ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... leave his home, willing to live without one single luxury, denying himself all that is not necessary to actual health. Have you ever denied yourself anything? Here is a man who spends his whole living all that he has on what he believes to be the truth. What meager tithe do you bestow upon the religion of which you speak so much? Here is a man who dares to stand up alone in defense of what he holds true, a man who never flinches. How far are you brave in the defense of your faith? Do you never keep a ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... deserves to be called a distinct order. Its only peculiar feature is the capital; otherwise it agrees with the Ionic order. The Corinthian capital is said to have been invented in the fifth century; and a solitary specimen, of a meager and rudimentary type, found in 1812 in the Temple of Apollo at Bassae, but since lost, was perhaps an original part of that building (about 430 B. C). At present the earliest extant specimens are from the interior of a round building of the fourth century near Epidaurus ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... expectations, be meager and thin, not plump! Thoughtful women and women with a purpose are never plump! And she will be black and pale, all eyes, with a nose which is not the noble nose of our race. She will be religious and it will not make her happy. She will realize her value to her husband and he will not be permitted ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... was meager, narrow, and self-contradictory; and just because his ideas prevailed, while Hamilton toward the end of his life lost his influence, the consequences of Jefferson's imperfect conception of democracy have been much more serious than the ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... some instances from Shakespeare's works of serious and estimable behavior on the part of individuals representing the lower classes, or of considerate treatment of them on the part of their "betters," but I have been unable to find any, and the meager list must end here. ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... envies the rich. For they, ignorant and arrogant, may purchase his services, his brains and self-sacrifice and buy these ingredients of himself with the air of one purchasing a machine. So the idealist finds himself condemned to a meager life, unless his idealism brings him wealth, and he drifts in spirit away from the character of his youth. It is the strain of life, the fear of old age and sickness, the silent pressure of the deprivations of a man's beloved ones, the ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... his imagination with visions of illimitable power and peace and rest. "Gold! Lost gold!" it would whisper as he sat by the meager flame. Then he would tremble and draw nearer the warmth. "Where?" he would ask, tempting the darkness as a child, fearfully ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... Aleck watched her as she told her tale, the flush of happiness and joy still lighting up his face. As she finished relating the meager facts which to her denoted so many heart-throbs, a sob drowned her voice. As Aleck followed the ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... gazed straight into Satish's eyes. He flushed with emotion, lowering his gaze in silent repentance. When we were served a lavish meal, including out-of-season mangoes, I noticed that my brother-in-law's appetite was meager. He was bewildered, diving deep into the ocean of thought. On the return journey to Calcutta, Satish, with softened expression, occasionally glanced at me pleadingly. But he did not speak a single word after the moment the priest had appeared to invite ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... had always been lamentably meager, and more than once I had brought the laugh upon myself by my ignorance. So I forbore to predict what would be his ultimate form ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... about them. They hated the "Nawth" and cursed the Yankees, and honestly believed that the leanest of them was a match for any half a dozen of the bulkiest of Northerners. I must also do them the justice to say that they were quite as ready to fight as to brag, which, by the way, is no meager statement. With these gentry—for whom I retain a respect which filled me with regret at the recent course of events—I spent a good deal of my large leisure. The more studious of both sections called us a hard crowd. What we did, or how we did it, little concerns me here, except that, owing to ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... bullet mold, and a nightcap; a tomahawk, a paper of nails, a scrubbing-brush, a hammer, and an old gridiron. Having emptied the sack, Mat took up the buffalo hide, and spread it out on his bed, with a very expressive sneer at the patchwork counterpane and meager curtains. He next threw down the bear skins, with the empty sack under them, in an unoccupied corner; propped up the leather bag between two angles of the wall; took his pipe from the floor; left everything else ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... turned his head the other way. It hurt. He caught himself thinking, as he saw them, of Stock Exchanges, two-penny-tubes, Belgravia dinner parties, private views, "small and earlies," musical comedy, and all the rest of the dismal and meager program. These harmless little modern uniforms were worse than ludicrous, for they formed links with the glare and noise of the civilization he had left behind, the smeared vulgarity of the big cities where men and women live in their possessions, wasting life ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... capture—or at least some definite clue, some shred of information. But the plane, still towing its glider, had gone on and on, steadily, imperturbably. And we dared not open fire and attempt to bring it down for fear of destroying our one meager chance of following ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... though important events are looked for speedily. It is time. If our coat-tails were off, we should, in nine cases out of ten, be voted a nation of sans cullottes. We are already meager and emaciated. Yet I believe there is abundance of clothing and food, held by the extortioners. The government should wage war upon the speculators—enemies as mischievous as ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... much of them as we had hoped; but I remember some pleasant walks and talks with Lord Acton, and especially the vehement advice he gave us, when my husband joined us and we started on a short, a very short, flight to Italy—for my husband had only a meager holiday from the Times: "Go to Rome! Never mind the journeys. Go! You will have three days there, you say? Well, to have walked through Rome, to have spent an hour in the Forum, another on the Palatine; to have seen the Vatican, the ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... day when the assembled throng of underwriters and brokers had been thrown into an uproarious panic by the Crier's announcement that the great Titan was destroyed, and the papers of Europe and America were issuing extras giving the meager details of the arrival at New York of one boat-load of her people, this office had been crowded with weeping women and worrying men, who would ask, and remain to ask again, for more news. And when it came—a later cablegram,—giving the story of ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... Pugh drove by, returning from district school. Miss Mattie had taught at Clark's Crossing for seventeen years, had grown meek and meager and hopeless. Heavens! thought Una, would she have to be shut into the fetid barn of a small school ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... of the Guion house it was considered as the beginning of a glorious epoch; but, looking back now, Olivia could see how meager the results had been. Since those days a brilliant American society had sprung up on the English stem, like a mistletoe on an oak; but, while Henry and Charlotta Guion would gladly have struck their roots into that sturdy trunk, they lacked the money essential to parasitic ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... their descriptions of accidents hastily and often from meager data, and in the attempt to make them vivid they sometimes make them ridiculous; for example, a New York City paper a few days ago, in describing a collision between a train and a motor bus, said: ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... of crude oil is the temperature at which it gives off inflammable gases. While information on the actual flash points of the various oils is meager, it is, nevertheless, a question of importance in determining their availability as fuels. In general it may be stated that the light oils have a low, and the heavy oils a much higher flash point. A division ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... when the faithful Miss Mason arrived, her mild eyes almost youthful with enthusiasm. Prom a black satin reticule of dimensions beyond all proportion to her meager self she drew a list of names on which she discoursed volubly while Mary finished ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... he had returned them to the full management of the old tenants at the end of the harvest. He had then studied the possibilities of enlarging their only other business, a small pulp plant, but after satisfying himself that the meager water power was being fully utilized and that the location of the mill at Crampville precluded competition with those more favorably located that were operated with steam power, he had abandoned the project. For a month he had been seeking outlet ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... greatly increased now. Their architecture, social organization, and general enlightenment could be perceived by the conquering Spaniards, and our information in regard to the same should have been full and complete. We have seen, however, how meager it is. The only light thrown on these disputed points is the result of the labors of modern scholars. When we were made acquainted with some of the first principles of Indian society, we could read with profit the accounts ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... searched for an undeveloped valley—for the sort of valley it would be worth his while to take in hand, and two years ago he had found it and invaded it. His equipment for its conquest had been meager—some fifty dollars in money and a head filled from ear to ear and from eyebrows to scalp lock with shrewdness. His progress in twenty-four months had been notable, for he was sole proprietor of a profitable hardware store in Coldriver village, and controlled the upper stretches of Coldriver ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... also manufactured the sword with which to combat the evil genius. The experimental tests thus far have not tended to lessen the merits of Koch's remedy. Added applications have resulted in additional success. The investigations are not yet complete; only meager particulars have thus far been given to the public from authorized sources. To guard against misleading representations the translator has undertaken to give to the American public only what has actually been achieved. He felt himself ...
— Prof. Koch's Method to Cure Tuberculosis Popularly Treated • Max Birnbaum
... prowling near a village one evening met a Dog. It happened to be a very lean and bony Dog, and Master Wolf would have turned up his nose at such meager fare had he not been more hungry than usual. So he began to edge toward the Dog, while ...
— The AEsop for Children - With pictures by Milo Winter • AEsop
... a Jew comes next, meager of frame, round-shouldered, and wearing a coarse brown robe; over his eyes and face, and down his back, hangs a mat of long, uncombed hair. He is alone. Those who meet him laugh, if they do not worse; for he is a Nazarite, one of a despised sect which rejects ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... de Haan, was as glad to see me as a banker away from home is to see a copy of The Wall Street Journal. I brought him a whiff of that great outside world from which he was an exile, with whose doings he kept in touch only through the meager despatches in the papers brought by the fortnightly mail-boat from Java, or through occasional travelers like myself. Dutch officials in the Indies can obtain leave only once in ten years and Monsieur de Haan had not visited the mother country ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... around." Mr. Heatherbloom, having transferred their meager possessions to the tent, now addressed Miss Dalrymple, or Sonia Turgeinov, or an indefinite space between them. "Better stay right here while I'm gone." His tones had a firm accent. "Sorry there are only biscuits for breakfast, but perhaps there'll be better fare before long. If you should move ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... indicative of ideation of a high order, and possibly of reasoning. I do not wish to exaggerate the importance of my results, for as contrasted with what might be obtained by further study, and with what must be obtained if we are adequately to describe the mind of the orang utan, they are meager indeed. ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... stowed what was left of his meager supper into his blouse and strolled out. Once clear of the house, he ran swiftly to the edge of the village, and from the end of a hollow log drew forth a canvas bag. He inspected the contents, which included a knife, some string, a clean pair of stockings and one change of underwear. He had picked ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... account of the Jewish spiritual movement at a time of great spiritual awakening is meager, the picture of Herod's great buildings, despite occasional confusion and vagueness, is full and valuable. He gives us an excellent description of Caesarea and Sebaste, the two cities which the king established as a compliment to the Roman Emperor, and an account of ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... he was going home on furlough. As I then suspected and afterward learned, he was deserting, while I was escaping. A fellow-feeling, though at first unconfessed to each other, drew us together, and at length I learned his whole history. My greater caution and accustomed reticence, gave him but a meager idea of my adventures or purposes. His story, reaffirmed to me when near death some weeks later, is worth recital, especially as it illustrates both the strength of the Rebel Government, and the desperate lengths to which they go in pressing ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... he overhauled his suit and patched it. He got fresh oxygen and bought a meager supply of food. He had one more good meal and started out south again with the single ...
— The Wealth of Echindul • Noel Miller Loomis
... we could be with our meager equipment. The camp was in a state of siege. The cliff-lights were extinguished: the interior lights were dim, save in the workshops of the main building, where the final assembling of Snap's other flying platforms and their insulated protective ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... department stores of a large city. It seems a young girl from the country applied for a position in one of the stores, but upon hearing of the small wages paid, said, "How can I live on that? It would not provide even the most meager of board and the smallest room." The employer asked in reply, "But have you not a gentleman friend?" That reply, repeated to a social worker, started an investigation which resulted in startling revelations. It was found that many of the stores paid such small salaries that ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... yellow-haired, lean and eager; the other redhaired, heavy and pondering; and if it be true that two heads are better than one, it is truer that four hands are better than two. In any case, their united and repeated efforts bore fruit at last, if anything so hard and meager and forlorn can be called a fruit. It weighed loosely in the net as it was lifted, and rolled out on the grassy edge of the ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... gallant Bridegroomes, and your lovely Brides, That have ingeminate in endlesse league Your troth-plight hearts, in your nuptial vowes Tyed true love knots that nothing can disolve Till death, that meager pursevant of Jove That Cancels all bonds: we are to [sic] clowdie, My spirit a typtoe, nothing I could chid so much As winged time, that gins to free a passage To his current glasse and crops our day-light, That mistie night will summon ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... D'Artagnan made every preparation for the journey, and took the greatest care that the military household of the king, as yet very inconsiderable in numbers, should be well officered and well disciplined in its meager and limited proportions. The result was that, through the captain's arrangements, the king, on arriving at Melun, saw himself at the head of both the musketeers and Swiss guards, as well as a picket of the French guards. It might almost have been called a small army. M. Colbert ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... fence off high-traffic sections of the porous boundary; dispute with India over New Moore/South Talpatty Island in the Bay of Bengal prevents maritime boundary delimitation; Burmese Muslim refugees strain Bangladesh's meager resources ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... do to say that Peter Cooper was exactly disgusted with the public-school system of New York, for he, more than any other one man, had evolved it and carried it forward from very meager beginnings. Democracy is a safeguard against tyranny, but it often cramps and hinders the man of genuine initiative. If the entire public-school system of the State had been delegated to Peter Cooper in Eighteen Hundred Fifty, he as sole ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... a respectable letter. His thoughts outrun his hand, and by the time the first labored sentence is written his ideas have fled and he must begin again. Is it any wonder that his sentences are disconnected, his thought meager? ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... taste by having attached to them all sorts of figures representing the hours, days of the week, or feasts of the Church. Probably one reason for this was that as the education of the populace was too meager to give them much knowledge of numerals, and as they had but little business of importance to transact, they were far less interested in the time than in the dumb show gone through with by the little carved dolls. Furthermore, ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett |
