"Meagre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... de Choiseul, who was a remarkably meagre-looking man, came to London to negotiate a peace, Charles Townsend, being asked whether the French government had sent the preliminaries of a treaty, answered, "he did not know, but they had sent the ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... submarines might seek to destroy, when no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and care taken that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. The precautions taken were meagre and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... thirst for learning was not to be satisfied with the meagre knowledge furnished in the miserable schools he was able to attend at long intervals. His step-mother says: "He read diligently. He read everything he could lay his hands on, and when he came across ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... help ne'er fails us in our time of need, For Thou canst quell the lions' rage, and feed Our hungry spirits with celestial fare: And if some soul no meagre taste would gain Of that repast, but thirstily is fain Full measure of ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... age of eleven years, he found himself free, bereft of parents, completely dependent upon his own resources. His early life, therefore, was one of great trials and sacrifices. Possessed, however, of a determination to live and learn, young Murray availed himself of every opportunity to improve his meagre stock of knowledge. So well did he succeed that his first day in school was spent as teacher rather than student. In later life, he acquired a good education, entered into the service of the public schools of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... not feel at all comfortable. I was, notwithstanding, just about to nestle myself up again in the corner, and once more close my eyes, when they lighted on two, tall, meagre forms, whom I immediately recognised by their garb as chairmen. There was something mysterious in their movements, as if they were consulting on matters of grave import—of their discourse I could understand nothing—and their voices sounded to me, in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... been apparent to me had it not obtruded itself in the form of a hindrance to social and economic progress.[9] In the Irish love of home, as in the larger national aspirations, the ideal has but a meagre material basis, its appeal being essentially to the social and intellectual instincts. It is not the physical environment and comfort of an orderly home that enchain and attract minds still dominated, more or less unconsciously, by the associations and common interests of the primitive clan, but ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... of salvation was widely disseminated in the land during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and we cannot know that Shakespeare did not accept the atonement of Christ in simple faith before he came to die.' The concession will today seem meagre to gay and worldly spirits, but words cannot express how comfortable it was to me. I gazed at my Father with loving eyes across the cheese and celery, and if the waiter had not been present I believe I might have ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... truly in saying this about Tartarin, who carried in his frame the soul of Don Quixote, the same chivalric impulses, heroic ideal, and crankiness for the grandiose and romantic; but, worse is the luck! he had not the body of the celebrated hidalgo, that thin and meagre apology for a body, on which material life failed to take a hold; one that could get through twenty nights without its breast-plate being unbuckled, and forty-eight hours on a handful of rice. On the contrary, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... is a hard mattress stretched on the floor, and sleep brings him only a meagre respite from the ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... This large army, set free for production, not only increases the volume of wealth produced, but makes possible a reduction of the hours of work. These people are to-day more or less parasites: they are supported by the work of others: in many instances they must toil diligently in return for a meagre existence. In Socialist society they are superfluous as merchants, hosts, brokers and agents. In lieu of the dozens, hundreds and thousands of stores and commercial establishments of all sorts, that to-day every community ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... of spirit and considerable power. The shock of Frederic's military successes made him suddenly drop the pen with which he had been inditing Anacreontics, and weak, rhymeless Horatian moods. His grenadier-songs, though often meagre and inflated, and marked with the literary vices of the time, do still account for the great fame which they acquired, as they went marching with the finest army that Europe ever ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... I am altogether at my ease when I see anywhere in my path that meagre, squalid, famine-faced spectre, Poverty; attended as he always is, by iron-fisted oppression, and leering contempt; but I have sturdily withstood his buffetings many a hard-laboured day already, and still ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... you see John the Baptist baptizing Christ in the Jordan, denotes that you will have a desperate mental struggle between yielding yourself to labor in meagre capacity for the sustenance of others, or follow desires which might lead ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... and the sane common-sense with which life was regarded, the simplicity of its faith and the patience with which trials were borne. The lessons he learned in it had more practical influence in his life than all the books he read. Nor were his opportunities for the study of character so meagre as the limit of one family would imply. As often happens in New England households, individualities were very marked, and from his stern uncle and his placid aunt down to the sweet and nimble-witted Alice, the family had developed traits and even eccentricities enough to make it a sort ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the beach until he reached the open door of the cabin and looked in. He found it deserted as he had expected. He went in and hunted about among its meagre belongings and came back to the boys, triumphant, bringing with him a hatchet, an axe and a large, keen-bladed knife that was used by Mark ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... a bust, this uncouth and slovenly thing would never have been ascribed to him. It is a reliquary, the crown of the head being detachable, and the head can also be separated from the bust. It is heavily gilded and minutely chased with the trivial work of some meagre craftsman; the eyes seem to have been enamelled. It is merely interesting as a school-piece. Speaking generally, Donatello's portraits are less important as busts than when they are portions of complete statues. Excluding Niccolo da Uzzano and the old man ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... that Las Cases was busily employed, and obtained a sight of his journal, with which he was not displeased. He, however, noticed that some of the military details and anecdotes gave but a meagre idea of the subject of war: This first led to the proposal of his writing his own Memoirs. At length the Emperor came to a determination, and on Saturday, the 9th of September he called his secretary into his cabin and dictated to him some particulars of the siege of Toulon. On approaching ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... season the beasts are half-starved. Their "kitchen" is a meagre ration of bruised beans, and their daily bread consists of the dry leaves of thorn trees, beaten down by the Makhbat, a flail-like staff, and caught in a large circle of matting (El-Khasaf). In Sinai the vegetation fares even worse: the branches are rudely lopped off to feed ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... 1837 went to Fredericton to obtain an appointment from the Hon. Thomas Baillie, then Surveyor-General of the Province. Mr. Baillie complimented him on his attainments, but refused to appoint him to the office. When Mr. Monro got back to St. John he had but two shillings in his pocket, and with this meagre sum he started on foot for home. Before he had gone far he found a job of masonry work and earned fifteen shillings. With this money he returned to St. John, and purchased Gibson's "Land Surveying" and some cakes for lunch, and set out again for Westmoreland. On the way he worked a day at digging ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... organised, and nearly all the members of the post and families interested would join together and go off on an excursion of several days to places where the berries were abundant, and thus secure large quantities, which were an acceptable addition to their rather meagre bill of fare. ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... night, after the challenge of the forged finger print, he continued at work, endeavoring to extract a clue from the meagre evidence—the bit of cloth and trace of poison already obtained from other cases, and now added the strange succession of events that surrounded the ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... addressed Amine was a little meagre personage, dressed in the garb of the Dutch seamen of the time, with a cap made of badger-skin hanging over his brow. His features were sharp and diminutive, his face of a deadly white, his lips pale, and his hair of a mixture between red and white. He had very little show of beard—indeed, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to give to Christ; yet it is a comfort to know that our friendship really is precious to him, and adds to his joy, poor and meagre though its best may be—but he has infinite blessings to give to us. "I call you friends." No other gift he gives to us can equal in value the love and friendship of his heart. When Cyrus gave Artabazus, one of his courtiers, a gold cup, he gave Chrysanthus, his favorite, ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... voyaging, the port of his destination heaves in sight. For months he has been penned up on shipboard, the subject of a discipline more strict than that in any way of life ashore. The food, poor in quality, and of meagre allowance at the best, has become doubly distasteful to him. The fresh water has nearly run out, and the red rusty sediment of the tank bottoms has a nauseating effect and does little to assuage the thirst engendered by salt rations. Shipmates have told and retold their yarns, discussions ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... that he did not obtain the liberal education that he should have had; besides that on account of weakness and delicate health, his mother would not let him exert himself, and his teachers forebore to urge him. He was meagre and sickly from the first, and hence had the nickname of Batalus, given him, it is said, by the boys, in derision of his appearance; Batalus being a certain enervated flute-player, in ridicule of ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... fell with a force that was passionate. There was violence in the grip of his hands. His light eyes were ablaze. His whole meagre body quivered as though galvanized by some vital, electric current more potent than ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... Bavaria as the subject in which to make her debut. She waited with considerable tact till she was approaching those scenes in which the mob triumph over order; and then, pretending to discover a cabal in the meagre applause she was receiving, she stopped in the middle of her acting, and, her eyes flashing fire, her face beaming brass, and her voice wild with well-assumed indignation, she cried—"I'm anxious to do my best to please the company; but if this cabal continues, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Thrown o'er your heads, from under which ye both Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a match Over a mine of Greek fire, did ye know! He holds on firmly to some thread of life— (It is the life to lead perforcedly) Which runs across some vast distracting orb 180 Of glory on either side that meagre thread, Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet— The spiritual life around the earthly life: The law of that is known to him as this, His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here. So is the man perplext ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... Day. That festive season of the year is not less marked and honoured in the Great Nor'-west than it is in civilised lands, though there are comparatively few to honour it, and their resources are somewhat meagre. These facts do not however, diminish the hearty zeal of the few—perchance they ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... at one o'clock Stuart's messenger arrived with a meagre account, having left Paris on the night of the 29th. The tricoloured flag had been raised; the National Guard was up, commanded by old Lafayette (their chief forty years ago), who ruled in Paris with Gerard, Odier, Casimir Perier, Lafitte, and one or two more. The Tuileries and the Louvre ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... there will be nothing left except the lying dreams of history, the miserable wreckage of our museums and picture- galleries, and the carefully guarded interiors of our aesthetic drawing-rooms, unreal and foolish, fitting witnesses of the life of corruption that goes on there, so pinched and meagre and cowardly, with its concealment and ignoring, rather than restraint of, natural longings; which does not forbid the greedy indulgence in them if it can but be ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... complete squadrons and a part of a fourth which constituted the force sent to France at the outbreak of war. The value of General Henderson's work lies in the fact that, in spite of official stinginess and meagre supplies of every kind, he built up a skeleton organisation so elastic and so well thought out that it conformed to war requirements as well as even the German plans fitted in with their aerial needs. On ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... either side were now playing eagerly with dice, diving from time to time for small silver pieces into heavy leathern purses, that seemed to have been destined for sums very different from what their present meagre contents represented. So many debased, avaricious countenances as he saw around him he had never imagined that it would be possible to collect in one spot, and he made up his mind to have no more to do with them than he could possibly help. He might congratulate ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... the New World the wealth of wit and imagination which has so long delighted us in the stories of Herakles, Perseus, Hermes, Sigurd, and Indra. The mythic lore of the American Indians is comparatively scanty and prosaic, as befits the product of a lower grade of culture and a more meagre intellect. Not only are the personages less characteristically pourtrayed, but there is a continual tendency to extravagance, the sure index of an inferior imagination. Nevertheless, after making due allowances for differences in the artistic method of treatment, ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... was left quite a stock of rare old plates and dishes which could be used as occasion demanded. The blue-and-white crockery which must serve a part of the time was pretty meagre, the supply of antique silver good as far as it went; it did ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... our human love, meagre and fluctuating as it is, for God's gift of holy love—of divine reciprocity, and with the presentation of this divine gift immediately we find ourselves in possession of a new set of desires, which for the first time in our experience of living prove themselves completely ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley
... wrote and destroyed. The floor became littered with torn papers. Then he enveloped a meagre result. Parker had ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... Too meagre a force to embrace the opportunity, there was nothing to do but to return to Panama. There it was agreed that Pizarro, with De Candia, should go over to Spain, taking with him Peruvians and treasures, tell what he had seen, and secure the royal countenance and support for their future undertaking, ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the insufficient eyebrows, they symbolized, as it were, a meagre and restricted life, vaguely acknowledged as the dispensation of an obscurely hostile but consistent Providence; a Providence far too awful and exalted—as well as hostile—to interest itself benignantly in so small and neutral a personality as stared ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley
... seeds has already been declared. They must not only grow, but grow into what we have bought them for—be true to name. Without the latter quality we cannot be sure of good gardens, and without the former they will not be full ones. A meagre "stand" from seeds properly sown is a rather exasperating and discouraging experience to encounter. The cost for fertilizing and preparing the land is just as much, and the cost of cultivating very nearly as much, when the rows are full of thrifty plants or strung ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... into this gloomy and distressed home brought with it a sudden gleam of happiness, the great question as to how they were to live had still to be solved. They were absolutely without means, and they could only hope to meet their meagre expenses by the sale of the house in which ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... rich. Whatever may have been the merits of this policy, which made some commotion for a few years, we can easily understand that it appealed to the imagination of young Lincoln at a time of keen political energy on his part of which we have but meagre details. ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... announcement of a grand cockfight between two persons of honour, and an advertisement offering a reward for a strayed dog. The whole made up two pages of moderate size. Whatever was communicated respecting matters of the highest moment was communicated in the most meagre and formal style. Sometimes, indeed, when the government was disposed to gratify the public curiosity respecting an important transaction, a broadside was put forth giving fuller details than could be found in the Gazette: but neither ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... female, on seeing the house in such a crowded state, started, paused, and glanced with some terror at the persons assembled. Her dress was not altered since her last visit; but her countenance, though more meagre and emaciated, expressed but little of the unsettled energy which then flashed from her eyes, and distorted her features by the depth of that mysterious excitement by which she had been agitated. Her countenance ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... gloom: no Love was left; All earth was but one thought—and that was Death, Immediate and inglorious; and the pang Of famine fed upon all entrails—men Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh; The meagre by the meagre were devoured, Even dogs assailed their masters, all save one, And he was faithful to a corse, and kept The birds and beasts and famished men at bay, Till hunger clung them,[57] or the dropping dead 50 Lured ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... Independence and an equal proportion of our generals, statesmen and presidents have been members of that denomination. As the sources of information regarding the religious views of most prominent Americans are shamefully meagre, I was inclined to regard Rector Reed's sermon as a historical document of inestimable value. Being prone, however, to act upon the advice of St. Paul and "prove all things," I began a cursory investigation. ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... fresh from the gorgeous coast of Italy to be in ecstasies with the meagre villages and villas that, more or less, lined the bay of New-York; but when they reached a point where the view of the two rivers, separated by the town, came before them, with the heights of Brooklyn, heights comparatively ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... manifold. In them we first begin to become really acquainted with ancestors of the people of to-day, even though we may have read in the pages of earlier writers of alien descent much that is of great concurrent interest. Through the medium of the native saga, epic, and meagre chronicle, we see for the first time their real though dim outlines, moving in and out of the mists that obscure the dawn of history; and these outlines become more and more distinct as the literary remains of succeeding periods become more abundant ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... have parents or relatives engaged in the same business, who require them to bring in a certain sum of money at the end of the day, and if they do not make up the amount they are received with blows and curses, and are refused the meagre suppers of which they are so much in need, or are turned into the streets to pass the night. The poor little wretches come crowding into the Five Points from nine o'clock until midnight, staggering under their heavy harps, those who have not made up the required ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... "bold discoverer in an unknown sea" found herself presented an appearance far from cheerful or attractive. It was of small dimensions, but too large for the meagre supply of furniture it contained. The unpapered walls displayed a monotonous surface of bare whitewash in urgent need of renewal. In one corner was an impoverished looking bed, on which reposed an infant of a few months old. At the foot of the ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... Cardan's life for the next two years is a meagre one. His rest was constantly disturbed either by the machinations of his foes or by the dread thereof, the evil last-named being probably the more noxious of the two. As long ago as 1557 he had begun the treatise De Utilitate ex Adversis Capienda, a work giving ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... at a length for which we must apologise to our readers; and yet this is but a meagre sketch of the contents of a book which deals with a very large proportion of the subjects that occupy the thoughts and move the feelings of religious men. We will attempt to sum up in a few words the ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... hard of flesh and tense of muscle, with his scant rations and meagre covering in the cold nights, with his long marches and fruitless risks and futile fightings, when he is shot down, has little consolation, save in the fact that the thing he and his comrades and the regiment and the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Orange had faced the desolate road before him it was as though men ploughed into his heart and left it mangled. Submission to the severities of God whatever they might be, obedience to authority, a companionless existence—these were the conditions, he knew, of the meagre joy permitted to those who, full of intellect, feeling, and kindness, undertook the rigorous discipline of a solitary journey. The world seldom takes account of the unhappy sensitiveness in devout souls; it thinks them insensible not only because they know how to ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... opposite. The Puritans admitted incessantly that they were exceedingly bad. The records sustain them.... The Puritans wallowed in every known form of wickedness to a disgusting degree. Considering the extremely meagre population of the early colonies, they were appallingly busy in evil. I do not refer to the doctrinal crimes that they artificially construed and dreaded and persecuted with such severity that England had to intervene: the crimes of being a Quaker, a Presbyterian, ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... grander estate than was ever conquered by sword, purchased by gold, or bequeathed by the laws of descent. There are homes for privacy, for the sanctities of love and friendship; but the wealth of life is common to all. Instead of elegant houses, and a meagre, inferior public life, as in the great cities of the world, there are modest homes and a noble common life. If the houses in our cities were simple and home-like in their appointments, and all their treasures of art and beauty were lodged in ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Take the fire; All that thou canst; by Roman hand at least Enkindled. And should Fortune grant return To loved Hesperia's land, not here shall rest Thy sacred ashes; but within an urn Cornelia, from this humble hand received, Shall place them. Here upon a meagre stone We draw the characters to mark thy tomb. These letters reading may some kindly friend Bring back thine head, dissevered, and may grant Full funeral honours to thine ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... satisfied with the very meagre information he had received, and directly he got a favourable opportunity, he besieged Mrs. Mittens, the old housekeeper, with questions concerning the new relation who was coming to make her home with them, and of ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... the corner of the street on which, halfway down the block, fronted Chang Foo's tea-shop. A glance in that direction, and Jimmie Dale drew a breath of relief. A patrol wagon was backed up to the curb, and a half dozen officers were busy loading it with what was evidently Chang Foo's far from meagre stock of gambling appurtenances; while Chang Foo himself, together with Sam Wah and another attendant, were in the grip of two other officers, waiting possibly for another patrol wagon. There was a crowd, too, but the crowd was at a respectful ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... that he was a bank clerk; it had a poor and meagre sound. It was not for him that she had been trained. She had been made to slave for herself, and was to make a "continental" marriage with the highest bidder. Eve's heart had been pretty well schooled out of her, and yet, ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... was for a time tearful in her forebodings that Harry would be starved, for in those days it was a matter of national opinion that our neighbours across the Channel fed on the most meagre of diet; but she was not in the habit of disputing her husband's will, and when the letter of acceptance had been sent off, she busied herself in preparing Harry's clothes for ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... rattling," said this strange girl; whose position, my Eleanor, in this house causes your Catherine some natural perplexity. When we had reached my chamber, "Be silent, silent as death," said Miss Eyre, her finger on her lip and her meagre body convulsed with some mysterious emotion. "Speak not of what you hear, do not remember what you ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... found herself possessed of what is colloquially termed a swivel eye (derived from her father), which she might perhaps have declined if her sentiments on the subject had been taken. She was not otherwise positively ill-looking, though anxious, meagre, of a muddy complexion, and looking as old again as ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... while Miss Blackley renders that of Benvenuto Cellini. Mrs. McCunn, as already said, compiled from the sources indicated the Adventures of Prince Charles, and she tells the story of Grace Darling; the contemporary account is, unluckily, rather meagre. Miss Alleyne did 'The Kidnapping of the Princes,' Mrs. Plowden the 'Story of Kaspar Hauser.' Miss Wright reduced the Adventures of Cortes from Prescott, and Mr. Rider Haggard has already been mentioned in connection ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... same sort in his 'Personal Narrative,' and forthwith wrote the worst description of the capital and the 'Pike' of Tenerife that any traveller has ever written of any place. He confesses to having kept a meagre diary, not intending to publish a mere book of travels, and drew his picture probably from ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... to Castlewood—you were all eyes, like a young crow. We intended you should be a priest. That awful Father Holt—how he used to frighten me when I was ill! I have a comfortable director now—the Abbe Douillette—a dear man. We make meagre on Fridays always. My cook is a devout pious man. You, of course, are of the right way of thinking. They say the Prince of ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... out by force of logic and analogy an extensive system of private law from the meagre fabric of the Twelve Tables, so under the lead of American lawyers American judges have applied the processes familiar in the development of unwritten law to the development of our written law, both ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... I had inserted an account in the Newgate Lives and Trials; it was bare and meagre, and written in the stiff, awkward style of the seventeenth century; it had, however, strongly captivated my imagination and I now thought that out of it something better could be made; that, if I added to the adventures, and purified the style, I might fashion out of it a very ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... peculiar representative in the southern States, of the genius of partizan warfare, we are surprised, when we would trace, in the pages of the annalist, the sources of this fame, to find the details so meagre and so unsatisfactory. Tradition mumbles over his broken memories, which we vainly strive to pluck from his lips, and bind together in coherent and satisfactory records. The spirited surprise, the happy ambush, the daring ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... heard but the sharp whistle of the silk and the rush of the water. It seemed a long time that they had stood there, when suddenly the colonel created a commotion by hooking and hauling forth a trout of meagre proportions. Unheeding Rex's brutal remarks, he silently inspected his prize dangling at the end of the line. It fell back into the water and darted away gayly upstream, but the colonel was not in the least disconcerted and strolled off after ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... into various cottages, where they were being rubbed with ice to draw the frost out of them. The farmer-boys were allowed no share in all this excitement, for the fisher-boys, who went in and out and saw everything, drove them away if they approached—and sold meagre information ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Massachusetts, August 24th, 1808. His father was a farmer in narrow circumstances, who, owing to the loss of property, was able to bestow upon his children only such an education as could be obtained in the district schools of a purely agricultural district. Books were scarce, and as poor in quality as meagre in quantity; but being a lad with literary tastes, a desire for information, and an omnivorous appetite for reading, every book that fell in the way of young Otis was eagerly seized and its contents ravenously devoured. The life of a poor farmer, with its ceaseless drudgery and petty needs, was ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... I required, and the chatib seconded me, though not with the zeal that I might have wished. To my demand for permission to travel no answer was returned, and the iniquitous despot, who had received from me no less than the value of about 750 piastres in goods, condescended to give me twenty meagre oxen, worth about 120 piastres. The state of my purse would not permit me to refuse even this mean return, and I bade adieu to El-Fascher ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... I know it. But promise." And Olive drew the girl nearer to her, flinging over her with one hand the fold of a cloak that hung ample upon her own meagre person, and holding her there with the other, while she looked at her, suppliant but ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... demands little. She was capable of immolation. Janet was by no means ungrateful for the warmth of such affection, though in moments conscious of a certain perplexity and sadness because she was able to give such a meagre return for the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was mine; I did not understand. So now is music prisoned in her cave, Save where some ebbing desultory wave Frets with its restless whirls this meagre strand. And in the withered hollow of this land Hath Summer dug herself so deep a grave, That hardly can the leaden willow crave One silver blossom ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... name, Hungry, meagre, slender, and lean, To show my body I have great shame, For hunger I feel so great teen; {88c} On me no fatness will be seen, Because that pasture I find none, Therefore I am ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... with a singular devotedness to the interests of the United States, and with a warm and undeviating attachment to the rights and liberties for which they were contending. Congress seem not to have well understood the extent or merits of his labors. He was obliged often to complain of the meagre compensation he received, and of the extreme difficulty with which he and his small family contrived to subsist on it. Both Mr Adams and Dr Franklin recommended him to Congress as worthy of better returns, but with little effect. This indifference to his worth and his services while living renders ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... compilation must be pronounced to be on the whole near to it. The book, of course, is not in the modern sense strictly critical, though it must be remembered that the authorities for at least the earlier history of Scotland are so exceedingly few and meagre, that criticism of the saner kind has very little to fasten upon. But in this book eminently, in the somewhat later compilation for Lardner's Cyclopaedia to a rather less degree, this absence of technical criticism ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... scene is, in my eyes, the daring juxtaposition of large simple masses of positive colour. There are none of the misty enamelled tones of Lynmouth, or the luscious richness of Clovelly. The forms are so simple and severe, that they would be absolutely meagre, were it not for the rich colouring with which Nature has so lovingly made up for the absence of all softness, all picturesque outline. One does not regret or even feel the want of trees here, while the eye ranges down from that dappled cloud- world above, over that ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... be seen in country places at certain times of the year. The very meagre celebrations of May Day, which can be seen in London even now, are a survival of the ancient customs with which the Morrice-Dance was always associated. Hawkins gives this account of the Morris; "there ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... came, with the nurse, before the story was ended, and then it had to be begun and told all over again,—the old, old story of a quarrel between the father and the "baby" of his family, of the hasty leaving home of the boy, of the meagre news of his early marriage, and lastly of the years that were empty of tidings. These Polly was able to fill up in part, when the story-teller turned listener, with interest almost as great ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... a balance in her hand, Which o'er and o'er she tries, and finds it true: From either side, conducted full in view, A man comes forth, of figure strange and queer; We now and then see something like them here. The first[313] was meagre, flimsy, void of strength, But Nature kindly had made up in length What she in breadth denied; erect and proud, A head and shoulders taller than the crowd, 120 He deem'd them pigmies all; loose hung his skin O'er his bare bones; ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... they had shared the meagre lunch of the noble French army surgeon, who had conceived such an ardent admiration for the trio of young Americans. Josh was already heard saying that he felt as hungry as a tramp who had been walking the railroad ties from early morning; and ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... Giotto and a Raphael, the sculpture of a Michael Angelo, the music of a Palestrina, and our politician might then ask himself which he thought had been the more beneficial as a social force. There still remain as our meagre heritage from these times of "faith," on the one hand the orthodoxy of the Nicene Creed, on the other certain festivals and celebrations in the cathedral of a small Bavarian town, little known, scarcely noticed, but still in the full glory ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... it, but I am certain of it—soon he will be incapable of work. I can see his poor hands tremble now. He will not even have a right to a pension. If he could not continue to work in the office he could hardly obtain a meagre relief, and that by favor only. And for long years I can only hope for an insufficient salary. Oh! to think that the catastrophe draws near, that one of these days he may fall ill and become infirm, perhaps, and that we shall be almost needy and I shall ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... ceased every sound Of war triumphant, and of love's sweet song, And all was silent—Creeping slow along, With eager eyes, that wandered round and round, Wild, haggard mien, and meagre, wasted frame, Bow'd to the earth, pale, starving Av'rice came: Clutching with palsied hands his golden god, And tottering in the path the others trod. These, one by one, Came and were gone: And after them followed the ceaseless stream Of worshippers, who, with mad shout and scream, ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... through foreign lands, especially in the East, the English or American traveler is constantly amazed to observe upon what meagre diet the natives exist. Accustomed to meat at every meal, he sees thousands of people who eat meat perhaps not once a year; used to an abundance of vegetables and fruits of infinite variety, he ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... continent. It was 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 the sea. All their meagre 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 ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... were naked, and Stanton, who had thought of him as meagre and shrunken, was amazed at their sinewy strength. He remembered that he had once heard of him as a village Hercules. The President was unconscious, but some tortured nerve made him moan like an animal in pain. It was a strange sound to hear from one who had been wont to suffer with tight lips. ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... The old view that savages have degenerated from a higher level of culture, on which their forefathers once stood, is destitute alike of evidence and of probability. On the contrary, the information which we possess as to the lower races, meagre and fragmentary as it unfortunately is, all seems to point to the conclusion that on the whole even the most savage tribes have reached their low level of culture from one still lower, and that the upward movement, though so slow as to be almost ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... uncomprehending, she has incomparably more protection than the girl who is living in the city without home ties. Such girls form sixteen per cent. of the working women of Chicago. With absolutely every penny of their meagre wages consumed in their inadequate living, they are totally unable to save money. That loneliness and detachment which the city tends to breed in its inhabitants is easily intensified in such a girl into isolation and a desolating feeling of belonging nowhere. All youth resents the sense of the ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... effort at a fresh start tried to explain everything rather one-sidedly out of the meagre knowledge of the body. Spinoza had said in his remarkable Ethics (III, Prop. II, Schol.): "Nobody has thus far determined what the body can do, i.e., nobody has as yet shown by experience and trial what the body can do by the laws of nature alone in so far as nature ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... the Fall River and the New Bedford High Schools. And within a few years regattas and cricket-matches have become common events. Still, these public exhibitions are far from being a full exponent of the athletic habits of our people; and there is really more going on among us than this meagre "pentathlon" exhibits. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... luxury advanced more upon the model of the ancients than in this: the dinners (cn) of the Romans were even more luxurious, and a thousand times more costly, than our own; but their breakfasts were scandalously meagre; and, with many men, breakfast was no professed meal at all. Galen tells us that a little bread, and at most a little seasoning of oil, honey, or dried fruits, was the utmost breakfast which men generally allowed themselves: some indeed drank wine after it, but ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... companions; I would cheerfully live with him under the tents; I would knowingly explain all the manoeuvres of war, and all the details of the life military. As it is, the reader must please, out of his experience and imagination, to fill in the colours of the picture of which I can give but meagre hints and outlines, and, above all, fancy Mr. Harry Warrington in his new red coat and yellow facings, very happy to bear the King's colours, and pleased to learn and perform all the duties of his ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... service had been detached in one half from the army of the Rhine; the other half had served under Napoleon in his first foreign campaign, viz., the Italian campaign of 1796, which accomplished the conquest of Northern Italy. Those from Germany showed, by their looks and their meagre condition, how much they had suffered; and some of them, in describing their hardships, told their Irish acquaintance that, during the seige of Metz, which had occurred in the previous winter of 1797, they had slept in holes ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... surveying the stall. Something very like homesickness was in his heart. He had almost fancied for a minute that he was back once more in Athens. He raised his eyes and gave a quick, deep glance up and down the street—soot and dirt and grime, frowning buildings and ugly lines, and overhead a meagre strip of sky. Over Athens the sky hung glorious, a curve of light from side to side. His soul flew wide to meet it. Once more he was swinging along the "Street of the Winds," his face lifted to the Parthenon on its Acropolis, his nostrils breathing the clear air. ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... mortal make, she evinceth withal a trembling sensibility, a yielding infirmity of purpose, a quick susceptibility to reproach, and all the train of diffident and blushing virtues, which for their habitation usually seek out a feeble frame, an attenuated and meagre constitution. With more than man's bulk, her humors and occupations are eminently feminine. She sighs,—being six foot high. She languisheth,—being two feet wide. She worketh slender sprigs upon the delicate muslin,—her fingers being capable of moulding a Colossus. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... the top of the mountain, they saw before them two dark spots in a little hollow, and when they reached it, there was the wolf, dead in a mass of frozen blood and trampled snow. It was a huge, gaunt, gray, meagre carcass, with the foam frozen about its jaws, and stabbed in many places, which showed the fight had been a close one. All the snow was beaten about, as if with many feet, which showed still more plainly what a tussle it had been. A little farther on lay Alister, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... went up to its top, where it is stony. Though there is earth enough for plants, yet they are so thin sown, that hardly two hundred could be found on an acre of ground. Trees are also very rare on that spot, and these poor, meagre, and cancerous. The stones I found there are all fit ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... Arabian Al-rami), to the southward of which is another kingdom named Sumoltra, and not far from thence a large island named Java. His account, which was delivered orally to the person by whom it was written down, is extremely meagre and unsatisfactory. ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... to the men, and they had sworn to stick together to the last, they had only made journeys of about a mile in length through the dense jungle. The guide was still delirious, and half the men down with sickness or wounds. Food they had had of the most meagre description, and that principally the birds they had shot. Their ammunition was fast failing, and the time seemed to have come that evening to lie down and die, so weak were they, and so pertinacious were the attacks of the enemy—when a thrill of joy ran through every breast as ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... release (he would have called it so) Made half an inch of news, there were no tears That are recorded. Women there may have been To wish him back, though I should say, not knowing, The few there were to mourn were not for love, And were not lovely. Nothing of them, at least, Was in the meagre legend that I gathered Years after, when a chance of travel took me So near the region of his nativity That a few miles of leisure brought me there; For there I found a friendly citizen Who led me to his house among the trees That were above a railroad and a river. Square ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... back to her own street again before anyone else noticed her; then she met a very large important-looking gentleman, with a lady at his side—a small, thin, meagre woman, with a dried yellow face, wearing spectacles. The lady stopped very deliberately before Fan, ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... that swept rooms and spread new rushes. Upon the whole, the cooks blessed the Queen, along with all them that had to do with feeding and the kitchens. They thanked God for her because she had brought back the old fasts. For, as they argued, your fast brings honours to cooks, since, after a meagre day, your lord cometh to his trencher with a better appetite, and then is your cook commended. The Archbishop's cooks were the hottest in this contention, for they had the most reason to know. The stablemen, palfreniers, and falconers' mates were, most part of them, politicians more than ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... volume. Probably the Ameer, had he desired, would not have dared to concede such demands on any terms, no matter how full of advantage. But the terms which Lord Lytton was instructed to tender as an equivalent were strangely meagre. The Ameer was to receive a money gift, and a precarious stipend regarding which the new Viceroy was to 'deem it inconvenient to commit his government to any permanent pecuniary obligation.' The desiderated ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... and take all my powers under Thy control. I called to see Mr. Spence; his natural powers decline, but heaven beams on his countenance. He said, while he was putting on his neckcloth, in the morning, he had been struck with the meagre and ghastly appearance he presented in the glass; but the sweet serenity of his soul compelled him to exclaim, 'Welcome old man! welcome declining age! welcome death!'—I spoke at the Prayer Leaders' lovefeast, but the enemy troubled me much afterward: however, ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... their contents but because they are our earliest examples of the Overture fashioned in complete Sonata form. Originally the Overture had been a prelude to the opening of a play, a prelude of the lightest and most meagre nature. Examples, beginning with Monteverde, abound in all the early Italian opera composers.[129] Lully of the French school and Alessandro Scarlatti of the Italian were the first to amplify these beginnings and to ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... Council Board; and the plea was not without foundation, for his digestive organs had some morbid peculiarities which puzzled the whole College of Physicians; his complexion was livid; his frame was meagre; and his face, handsome and intellectual as it was, had a haggard look which indicated the restlessness of pain as well as the restlessness of ambition, [580] As soon, however, as he was once more minister, he applied himself strenuously to business, and toiled every day, and all day long, with ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... reached Sacramento via Salt Lake City, almost from a due easterly direction. On account of its location this route or trail could be easily controlled by the North in case of war. It had received very meagre support from the Government, and carried as a rule, only local mail. While the most direct route to San Francisco, it had been rendered the least important. This was not due solely to Congressional manipulation. Because of its northern latitude and the numerous high mountain ranges ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... paint, but went on the stage with their natural complexion. He instances this paragraph from Cibber: "The first thing that enters into the head of a young actor is that of being a heroe: In this ambition I was soon snubb'd by the insufficiency of my voice; to which might be added an uniform'd meagre person (tho' then not ill-made) with ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... This necessarily meagre account of a life which deserves more ample commemoration may be fitly closed by a few words concerning the relatives and descendants of ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... but indifferently upon this meagre regimen, but beyond all other evils a true Spaniard of the poorer sort dreads obesity. During the darkest night of the season he will get up at an absurd hour and stab his best friend in the back ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... broken sconce, a mirror crack'd, With table underpropp'd, and chairs new back'd; A marble side-slab with ten thousand stains, And all an ancient Tavern's poor remains. With much entreaty, they your food prepare, And acid wine afford, with meagre fare; Heartless you sup; and when a dozen times You've read the fractured window's senseless rhymes, Have been assured that Phoebe Green was fair, And Peter Jackson took his supper there; You reach a chilling chamber, ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... money and fame; they think there is no difficulty in the art. The novel will afford them an opportunity of bringing in a variety of scattered details; scraps of knowledge too scanty for an essay, and scraps of experience too meagre for independent publication. Others, again, attempt histories, or works of popular philosophy and science; not because they have any special stores of knowledge, or because any striking novelty of conception urges them to ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... gray. The sea here is not amusing itself; it has a busy and serious air, like an Englishman or a Dutchman. Neither polyps nor jelly-fish, neither sea-weed nor crabs enliven the sands at low water; the sea life is poor and meagre. What is wonderful is the struggle of man against a miserly and formidable power. Nature has done little for him, but she allows herself to be managed. Stepmother though she be, she is accommodating, subject to the occasional destruction of a hundred thousand ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... perches on the shoulders of the sentry in the sentry-box: she whispers the porter sleeping in his arm-chair: she glides up the staircase, and lies down between the king and queen in their bed-royal: this very night I daresay she will perch upon poor old Goody Twoshoes' meagre bolster, and whisper, "Will the gentleman and those ladies ask me again! No, no; they will forget poor old Twoshoes." Goody! For shame of yourself! Do not be cynical. Do not mistrust your fellow-creatures. What? Has the Christmas morning dawned upon thee ninety times? For four-score and ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... of the muddy and unwholesome kind which tells a tale of bad health, late hours and penury, and almost always of a bad disposition. The best description of him may be given in two familiar expressions—he was sharp and snappish. His cracked voice suited his sour face, meagre look, and magpie eyes of no particular color. A magpie eye, according to Napoleon, is a sure sign of dishonesty. "Look at So-and-so," he said to Las Cases at Saint Helena, alluding to a confidential servant whom he had been obliged to dismiss for malversation. "I do not know how ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... Napoleon received a letter fortnightly, in which epistle she communicated to him her opinions and observations upon politics and current events. Upon the return to power of the Orleans family, she was put off with a meagre pension. Like many other French women, she became more and more melancholy and misanthropic. She was unable to control her wrath against the philosophers and some of the contemporary writers, such as Lamartine, Mme. de Stael, Scott, and Byron. Her death, in 1830, was announced ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... merely that the latter devoured men's flesh in the shape of cotton, sugar, gold. And the native discrimination was not altogether unpraiseworthy, if the later French missionaries can be exonerated from national prejudice, when they declare that the Caribs said Spaniards were meagre and indigestible, while a Frenchman made a succulent and peptic meal. But if he was a person of a religious habit, priest or monk, woe to the incautious Carib who might dine upon him! a mistake in the article of mushrooms were not more fatal. Du Tertre relates that a French priest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... virtuoso is the reverent possessor of a genuine "Cremona." He consents to take for his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for technique, but not the soul of an artist. The youth has led the happy, careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American and he cannot, with his meagre past, express the love, the passion and the tragedies of life and all its happy phases as can the master who has lived life in all its fulness. But a girl comes into his life—a beautiful bit of human driftwood that his aunt had taken into her heart and home, and ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... patiently waiting the leisure of their beasts, sighing, and cursing, and complaining by turns, for want of more suitable recreation. The night was dreary, and the spreading branches of the tree under which our friends had taken shelter, afforded but a meagre accommodation. If their lodgings were comfortless, the supper which they could expect was still more humble and hermit-like;—the bill of fare consisted of some green grass, which though abundantly supplied, presented a most provoking and unrelishing want of variety. We would not venture ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... 'Hard-favour'd tyrant, ugly, meagre, lean, 931 Hateful divorce of love,'—thus chides she Death,— 'Grim-grinning ghost, earth's worm, what dost thou mean To stifle beauty and to steal his breath, Who when he liv'd, his breath and beauty set Gloss on the rose, smell to the ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... Besides these, we gathered great quantities of fruit that resembled the cranberry, and the leaves of a shrub somewhat like our thorn, which were remarkably sour. When we arrived, all our people began to look pale and meagre; many had the scurvy to a great degree, and upon others there were manifest signs of its approach; yet in a fortnight there was not a scorbutic person in either of the ships. Their recovery was effected by their being on shore, eating ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... of the towns was a very pleasing garden, as has been said, the Christians settled in them; each one in the place that fell to his share or, (as they say,) was committed to his charge; each one carried on his own cultivation, supporting himself with the meagre provisions of the Indians, thus robbing them of their private lands and inheritances, by which they maintained themselves. 8. In this wise the Spaniards kept within their own houses all the Indian ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... venture to think they will nevertheless maintain their ground, and that they can only be met by the discovery of new facts or new laws, of a nature very different from any yet known to us. I can only hope that my treatment of the subject, though necessarily very meagre, has been clear and intelligible; and that it may prove suggestive, both to the opponents and to the upholders of the theory ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... territories. But our people have pronounced against it. All who voted for Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Douglas —over three million three hundred thousand citizens—voted against this claim. Less than a million voted for it. Should the great majority yield to a meagre minority, especially under threats of disunion? This minority demand that slavery be protected by the constitution. Our fathers would not allow the word 'slave' or 'slavery' in the constitution, when all the states but one were slaveholding. Shall ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... walls—cheap, but, on the whole, well selected. The rugs were in subdued brown tints that matched well the pretty wall paper. To the cattleman, it was pathetic that the girl had done so much with such frugal means to her hand. For plainly her meagre efforts were circumscribed by ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... have given close attention to statistics which seemed to indicate that the yield per acre, of the wheat fields in all countries, is steadily decreasing. Decreasing to such an extent as to make it probable, that in the near future, the yield on a large proportion of these lands, will become too meagre to pay the cost of cultivation. A long series of carefully conducted experiments demonstrated the truth of ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... a young man with a meagre wife And two pale children in a Midland town; He showed the photograph to all his mates; And they considered him a decent chap Who did his work and hadn't much to say, And always laughed at other people's jokes Because he hadn't any ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... this kind would hardly warrant us in assuming its necessary non-existence at the time. The works ascribed to him at his death are fixed in the same approximate fashion through the edition published by his fellow-actors. Beyond these meagre facts and our knowledge of the publication of a few of his dramas in his lifetime all is uncertain; and the conclusions which have been drawn from these, and from the dramas themselves, as well as ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... you the most meagre information," said Mr. Farrington. He was white and shaky, a natural state for a law-abiding man who had witnessed wilful murder. "I heard voices and went down to the door, thinking I would find a policeman—then I heard ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... detecting about her some odour of the worm, with the feeling that here was rather ghost than woman. And yet I can hardly convey to you the why of this, except by dry details as to the contours of her lofty brow, meagre lips, pointed chin, and ashen cheeks. She was tall and deplorably emaciated, her whole skeleton, except the thigh-bones, being quite visible. Her eyes were of the bluish hue of cigarette smoke, and had in them the strangest, feeble, unearthly gaze; while at ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... given way to her imagination—from the first moment of her imprisonment. Inclined to be very musical, her ear had become keen in the silence, and on this background of silence, out of the meagre bits of reality, the footsteps of the guards in the corridors, the ringing of the clock, the rustling of the wind on the iron roof, the creaking of the lantern—it created complete musical pictures. At first Musya was afraid of them, ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... exposition of clauses of Bill. Just the same kind of pompous platitude conveyed in turgid phraseology, at which, in old times, Members used to laugh and run away. But CHAPLIN had them now. Like the wedding guest whom the Ancient Mariner button-holed—though as PLUNKET reminds me, the A.M. was meagre in frame, and CHAPLIN is not—the House could not help but hear. Once, when the orator dropped easily into autobiographical episode, described himself strolling about the fields of Lincolnshire, turning up a turnip here, drawing forth a casual ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... miserably supplied with household goods that even a rash and optimistic man would hesitate before offering a sovereign for an entire home, yet pawnshops flourish exceedingly, although the people possess nothing worth pawning. Children are half fed, for the earnings of parents are too meagre to allow a sufficient quantity of nourishing food; but public-houses do a roaring trade on the ready-money principle, while the chandler supplies scraps of food and half-ounces of tea on ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... a shocked voice; she knew very well who was meant. Joe was the ne'er-do-well of a son-in-law whose iniquities had transformed the young and comely Priscilla into the meagre and colourless Mrs. Baxter. 'He has no right to trouble her!' she ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and the grandchildren, whose photographs hung on the walls; and the long letters her mistress was always writing in a beautiful, fine hand, beginning, "My darling Sybil," "My darling Reggie," and ending always "Your devoted mother," seemed to a warm and simple heart but meagre substitutes for flesh-and-blood realities. But as Madame would inform her—they were too busy doing things for the dear soldiers, and working for the war; they could not come to her—that would never do. And to go to them would give so much trouble, when the railways were ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... shattered planks and timbers torn out of the "gripes." The crew of the ship had, for safety's sake, assembled aft on the full poop; and among them could be seen a female figure crouching down under the meagre shelter of the cabin skylight evidently in ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... trouble your mind so; you think about it all day. I can keep you, Cythie, in a plain way of living. Twenty-five shillings a week do not amount to much truly; but then many mechanics have no more, and we live quite as sparingly as journeymen mechanics... It is a meagre narrow life we are drifting into,' he added gloomily, 'but it is a degree more tolerable than the worrying sensation of all the world being ashamed of you, which we experienced ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... of the above drama was suggested by two or three rather meagre pages of the 'Islendingasaga' of Sturla Thordsson (ed. Vigfusson, ch. 146). To my notion, the poet has succeeded admirably in reproducing the cool coloring, the ironic-pessimistic attitude, that uncompromisingly masculine sentiment we know ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... you," exclaimed Fannie. She indicated a stout man in shirt-sleeves. He had his coat over one arm, his collar and necktie protruding from the breast pocket. His wife, a meagre woman, panted at his side. She carried two heavy children, one of them ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... lives in the most beautiful of towns. Their habitations are decayed; their taxes heavy; their pockets light; their opportunities few. One receives an impression, however, that life presents itself to them with attractions not accounted for in this meagre train of advantages, and that they are on better terms with it than many people who have made a better bargain. They lie in the sunshine; they dabble in the sea; they wear bright rags; they fall into attitudes ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... even, of such indifferent food, being thus really more than would be sufficient for the cultivation of the earth according to the more provident arrangements of civilised men. Yet in a land affording such meagre support the Australian savage is not a cannibal: while the New Zealander, who inhabits a much more productive region, notoriously feasts on ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... Guides, under Lumsden, were hastening down from Lahore to give Edwardes that invaluable support which, however meagre in numbers, stout hearts, whose loyalty is above suspicion, afford to a harassed commander. Joyfully were they welcomed, as one sweltering day in June the Guides joined the little force which was besieging an army of equal or perhaps greater strength ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... happened, Jean-Baptiste has been looking forward to a visit to Valenciennes which Antony Watteau had proposed to make. He hopes always—has a patient hope—that Antony's former patronage of him may be revived. And now he is among us, actually at his work-restless and disquieting, meagre, like a woman with some nervous malady. Is it pity, then, pity only, one must feel for the brilliant one? He has been criticising the work of Jean-Baptiste, who takes his judgments generously, gratefully. Can it be that, after all, he despises and ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... days; but useful still, going through its own daily work,—as some old fisherman beaten grey by storm, yet drawing his daily nets: so it stands, with no complaint about its past youth, in blanched and meagre massiveness and serviceableness, gathering human souls together underneath it; the sound of its bells for prayer still rolling through its rents; and the grey peak of it seen far across the sea, principal of the three ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... these meagre details of objective life. The master had taken a bel appartement. There were curtains to his bed. Food was dear in Paris. They had been to Fontainebleau. Narcisse had stolen the sausages of the concierge. The Master was always talking of me and of the great future for which ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... incalculable value. For that such men were well qualified to give an exact account of facts is beyond doubt. But the exclusive importance attached to active life made them indifferent to such memorials, and they were content with the barren and meagre notices of the pontifical annals and the yearly registers of magistrates in the temple of ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... On October 13, Mr. Moore, of Middelburg, which is another town here, died of a pestilential disease, which prevailed in several of our English towns and in New England. He left a widow with seven or eight children. A year before, being dissatisfied with the meagre and irregular payments from his hearers, he went to Barbadoes, to seek another place. Mr. Richard Denton, who is sound in faith, of a friendly disposition, and beloved by all, cannot be induced by us to remain, although we have earnestly tried to do this in various ways. He first went to Virginia ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... as if it were "the rule of life" to Christians, I saw to be a glaring mistake, intensely opposed to the Pauline doctrine. This discovery, moreover, soon became important to me, as furnishing a ready evasion of objections against the meagre or puerile views of the Pentateuch; for without very minute inquiry how far I must go to make the defence adequate, I gave a general reply, that the New Testament confessed the imperfections of the older dispensation. I still presumed the Old to have been perfect for its own objects ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... tulip become striped with many colours, the plant loses almost half of its height; and the method of making them thus break into colours is by transplanting them into a meagre or sandy soil, after they have previously enjoyed a richer soil: hence it appears, that the plant is weakened when the flower becomes variegated. See note on Anemone. For the acquired habits of ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... strength of that rule. Oudh still sends many recruits to the native army, though the young men no longer enjoy the advantage of a training in 'bhumiawat'. An occasional gang-robbery or bludgeon fight is the meagre modern substitute. The Rajputs or Thakurs of Bundelkhand and Gwalior still retain their old character for turbulence, but, of course, have less scope for what the author calls their 'sporting propensities' than they had in ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Good Cheer, the Sullen Month will die, And a young Moon requite us by and by: Look how the Old one, meagre, bent, and wan With age and Fast, ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... after night Merryon lay on his veranda, smoking his pipe in stark endurance while the dreadful hours crept by. Sometimes he held a letter from his wife hard clenched in one powerful hand. She wrote to him frequently—short, airy epistles, wholly inconsequent, often provocatively meagre. ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... dead! That, as Bunyan justly says, would be to make a new Bible, to improve the finished salvation. No, if they will not hear Moses and the prophets, our Lord and his apostles, they must all likewise perish. This is a very meagre outline of this solemn treatise; it is full of striking illustrations, eminently calculated to arouse the thoughtless, and to convey ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... same breath. On the right, stood a bulky figure, with a broken rattle hanging out of his great-coat pocket, who held up a lantern to his battered countenance to prove to the spectators that both his orbs of vision were darkened: on the left, a meagre constable had divested himself of his shirt, to bind up with greater convenience a gaping cut in ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... churches. But in our faithless, loveless, selfish, sin-drowned century, such an attempt at community of goods would not only annihilate all morality completely, but absolutely degrade us back from civilisation and modern Catholicism into the rudest and most meagre barbarism. The apostles of such doctrines now must speak, though perhaps unconsciously, from the sole inspiration of Satan, like Sidonia. The progress of humanity is not to be furthered by such means. Let our merchants no longer ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... directing a single person to institute any search, she simply took some refuse twigs, and making up a few mace, she despatched them with the meagre message that they had been sent by madame Wang, and that there was, in fact, no more; subsequently reporting to madame Wang that she had asked for and obtained all there was and that she had collected as much as two taels, and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... there is a possibility of a movement which, carried out legitimately, should command the fullest sympathy of every Christian heart, degenerating into the rejection of all the supernatural elements in the nature and work of our Lord, and leaving us with a meagre human Christ, shrunken and impotent. The Christ of the Gospels, by all means; but let it be the whole Christ of all the Gospels, the Christ over whose cradle angels sang, by whose empty grave angels watched, whose ascending form angels beheld and proclaimed ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren |
