"Scant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saluting and bowing low, conducted the other dignitary to the cabin, with the officers trailing after them. For the moment, Major Starland found his situation a trifle embarrassing. General Yozarro scowled savagely at him, but the others paid scant attention. There was some crowding, for it will be remembered that the apartment was of slight size. The American waited till a lull came in the conversation and then, with an ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... sealed again by the frosty breath of night, that creek will be reduced to a trickling rill. His horse's feet brushed through the delicate asplenium, the Venus'-hair of Australia; the sarsaparilla still hung in scant purple tufts on the golden wattle, and the scarlet correa lurked among the ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... bustle of return was heard; Sister Constance came in, kissed Geraldine, and helped her down that she might be with Edgar, who was to return with the cousin, whispering to her by the way that it had been very beautiful. It was a day of bright sunshine, high wind, and scant sparkling feathery stars of snow, that sat for a moment shining in their pure perfectness of regularity on the black, and then vanished. 'So like himself,' ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was the effect of the vote just given upon the political fortunes of Henry Clay. His high character and distinguished public services were scant protection against the clamor that immediately followed his acceptance of the office of Secretary of State tendered him by President Adams. "Bargain and Corruption" was the terrible slogan of his enemies in his later ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... of Massachusetts effaced the last vestige of State ownership by giving the Vanderbilts a perpetual lease of this richly profitable railroad for a scant two million dollars' payment a year. During the debate over this act Representative Dean charged in the Legislature that "it is common rumor in the State House that members are receiving $300 apiece for their votes." The acquisition of this railroad enabled the New York Central to make direct ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... although she had enemies and rivals, the daughter of the dead Baaltis, Mesa by name, was considered to be certain of election at the poll of the priests and priestesses. This ceremony was to take place within two days. Nothing discouraged, however, by the scant time at his disposal or other difficulties, without her knowledge or that of her father, Metem began his canvass on ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... power. Graceful in tone and expression his outlook was the philosophical, possibly over-tolerant for the exigencies of the situation, although upon occasion his judgment proved a valuable counterweight to the hasty enthusiasm of Lloyd George. But Balfour, like Lansing, was sometimes treated with scant consideration by his chief and by no means exercised the influence which his experience and capacity would lead ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... Lake Erie was no town at all, but a scant cluster of shack-like buildings at the crossing of two roads, which were hardly roads at ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... away and the indirect danger to it in any finicky growth of law and order. Still he had a keen sense of justice, and he knew that Dave had not told all the story, and from him Dave, to his wonder, got scant comfort—for another reason as well: with a deal pending for the sale of his lands, the shrewd old man would not risk giving offence to Hale—not until that matter was settled, anyway. And so June was safer from interference just then than she knew. But Dave ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... effects of several fevers that I felt myself utterly incapable of supporting my rifle for a steady aim. But my surprise was great when I cautiously laid it against the tree, and then directed its muzzle to the spot where I had seen him stand. Looking further away—to where the grass was thin and scant—I saw the animal bound along at a great rate, and that it was a lion: the noble monarch of the forest was in full flight! From that moment I ceased to regard him as the "mightiest among the brutes;" or his roar as anything more fearful in broad ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... cosy, counterfeit money, crazy (dilapidated), crone, crook, croon, cross-grained, cross-patch, cross purposes, cuddle, to cuff (to strike), cleft, din, earnest money, egg on, greenhorn, jack-of-all-trades, loophole, settled, ornate, to quail, ragamuffin, riff-raff, rigmarole, scant, seedy, out of sorts, stale, tardy, trash. How Halliwell ever came to class these words as archaic I cannot imagine; but I submit that any one who sets forth to write about the English of England ought to ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... of his fifty years he had been a seaman, and the marks of a sailor's life were stamped hard on his face. His weathered cheeks were plowed by wrinkles that stretched, deep furrowed, from his red-gray hair to the corners of his mouth. From under scant brows he peered out on the world with near-sighted eyes; but whenever a smile broadened his wide mouth, his eyes would ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... That weak men found it easier to believe Than the invention; while the bad in heart, By true worth most offended, felt relief, Protesting still they wish'd it were not so, With that lean babble, custom's scant half-mask, Worn uselessly by hatred. Think me not Of these—nor yet too rash in sympathy. I would reflect well ere I draw the sword To fling the sheath away; I bid you ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... been despatched from Vienna nominally to explain away at Erfurt the Austrian armaments; in reality, to observe what was going on. Although he found no difficulty in winning the versatile Talleyrand to his cause, he was treated with scant courtesy by Napoleon, and sent back with a letter from him to Francis containing bitter reproaches and menaces. Stein, after his withdrawal, found, like Hardenberg, a refuge in Vienna. There he formed one of an influential coterie composed of Alexander's envoy, Pozzo di Borgo, and others of like ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Eschenhagen entered the great city park, which, he had just declared to his uncle, he would explore for himself. This extensive, well-wooded park, which lay before the city's very doors, was well worth a visit, but Willibald took scant notice of its beauties as he hurried on in the keen November morning. He glanced neither to the right nor to the left, but strode on, striking into this path and now into that, frequently re-treading the very ground which he had left but ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... other hand, a custom grew up in the tenth and early eleventh century of placing whole groups of shires under the government of great earls or viceroys, whose subjection to the central government of the king was but scant. Church bodies and others who had received large grants of land from the king were also coming to exercise over their tenants judicial, fiscal, and probably even military powers, which would seem more properly to belong to government officials. ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... for beneficent ends need not, nay, ought not to be the same for every one; and while we hold in the highest admiration those who make the entire surrender of all that they have and are to the service of mankind, we have no reason to scant our esteem for those who are simply kind and generous, while they at the same time labor, spend, or save for their own benefit. Indeed, the world has fully as much need of the latter as of the former. Were the number of self-devoting philanthropists over-large, a great deal of the necessary business ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... much as follows: matrimony came from Paradise and leads to it. I never was half so happy before I was a married man as I am now. When you are married, your bliss begins. I have no doubt that where there is much love there will be much to love, and where love is scant faults will be plentiful. If there is only one good wife in England, I am the man who put the ring on her finger, and long may she wear it. God bless the dear soul, if she can put up with me, she shall never be ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... stand in his own cceite: & if it be tak[en] away, he angerly axeth for it again. Howe shall he beyng old hate dr[un]kennes, whych when he is an inft is taught to loue wine? They teach them by lytle and lytle suche filthy wordes whych are scant to be suffered, as sayth Quintilian, of the delicious Alexandrians. And if the child speake any suche after them, they kysse hym for hys laboure. Iwarant you they know their yong, growynge nothynge out of kynde, ...
— The Education of Children • Desiderius Erasmus
... account it will be easy to understand how Persia Proper acquired and maintained the character of "a scant land and a rugged," which we find attaching to it in ancient authors. The entire area, as has been already observed was about 100,000 square miles—little more than half that of Spain, and about one fifth of the area of modern Persia. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... down their arms, upon condition that a treaty should be made between them and the Genoese, having for guarantee the Emperor." Hostages were sent by the islanders, to whom the Republic was inclined to show but scant respect. In fact, the Emperor's consent to their execution had been almost obtained, when the Prince of Wirtemberg, the commander of the imperial forces in Corsica, sent an express to Vienna, "with a very ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... have done but scant justice to this subject, but we assure our readers that this question has been but little studied in this country. Referring all relics of stone to the Indians, our scholars have been slow to recognize traces of an earlier race in America. Our sources of information are as yet but few, ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... stronger preyed upon the weaker, and even the sick who were unable to defend themselves were robbed of their scanty supplies of food and clothing. Dark stories were afloat, of men, both sick and well, who were murdered at night, strangled to death by their comrades for scant supplies of clothing or money. I heard a sick and wounded Federal prisoner accuse his nurse, a fellow-prisoner of the United States Army, of having stealthily, during his sleep inoculated his wounded arm with gangrene, that ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... Life was scant at Samarra, as poor as it had been abundant at Sannaiyat. The crested larks were of a new species. Owls nested in the old wells; and most units were presently owning their owlets or kestrels or speckled kingfishers, miserable-looking birds. ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... in a jesting tone, and laughed loudly, but the look in his eyes told more than his words, and I guessed that for all his play my cousin would show me but scant mercy. Still, he was pleasant enough, and I passed a very ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... of Thee I thirst! fulfil my hope; Augment in me Thine own celestial flame! For love of Thee I thirst! too scant earth's scope: The glorious Vision of ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... are usually more or less "scant of breath." Accumulations of fatty material, or changing of muscle into fat, cause this, especially if about the chest and heart. To reduce the fat, and grow healthy muscle instead, will perfectly cure the difficulty ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... medical papers upon the subject, he was never apt at stating his views with his pen, and he left, I am sure, a very confused idea on the minds of his readers as to what it was that he was driving at. Again, as he was a mere student without any letters after his name, he got scant attention, and I never heard that he gained over ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... often been pictured as the land of the aristocratic planter, the owner of thousands of acres and hundreds of slaves. Scant attention has been paid to the far more numerous middle class. Yet this class was the backbone of the colony. It is true that most of the leaders came from the aristocracy, but it was the small farmer who owned the bulk ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... end of it. The man left with scant ceremony, I guiding him down the creek to the main trail. He did not open his mouth until I parted ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... rapidly thinner. So scant was it on the exposed Upsala plain that we fully expected being obliged to leave our sleds on the way. Even before reaching Upsala, our postillions chose the less-travelled field-roads whenever ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... support, you look down upon a green, translucent pool, lying below rocks thickset with hardy shrubs and trees, up to the narrow fall that hurls itself down the cleft which it has grooved, concentrated and alert at first, then wavering out with little tremors into the scant sunshine, and meeting the waters beneath to rebound with many a spring of surge and spray. A strange freak of the water-nymphs it is that has fashioned this wild gulf and gorge, softened it with the waving of verdure, and inspirited ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... He had scant time to mourn. Scarcely had he seated himself at his desk when an emergency call came snapping in; a call of such import that his secretary's usually calm voice trembled as she ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... it is my affair and you must let Theo's father and Hetty's father, and Harry Warrington's father's old friend say how it is my affair." Here the Colonel drew a packet out of his pocket, whereof the lappets and the coat-tails and the general pocket accommodations were much more ample than in the scant military garments of present warriors. "Look you, Harry. These trinkets which you sent with the kindest heart in the world to people who love you, and would cut off their little hands to spare you needless pain, could never be bought by a young fellow with two ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... evening, off they would go with a squeak and a bounce. Near at hand they only excited my pity. One evening one sat by my door two paces from me, at first trembling with fear, yet unwilling to move; a poor wee thing, lean and bony, with ragged ears and sharp nose, scant tail and slender paws. It looked as if Nature no longer contained the breed of nobler bloods, but stood on her last toes. Its large eyes appeared young and unhealthy, almost dropsical. I took a step, and lo, away it scud with an elastic spring over the snow-crust, straightening its body and ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... sleepless people staring in helpless terror at the incandescent sky; and then, low and growing, came the murmur of the flood. And thus it was with millions of men that night—a flight nowhither, with limbs heavy with heat and breath fierce and scant, and the flood like a wall swift and white behind. And ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... and I have volunteered as a scout of three," I said, "but Colonel Sheldon has declined our services with scant politeness." ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... than most men. Into Fleet Street, each day brings an endless stream of "news items," not only from all parts of the world, but from every town and city in the kingdom. And your journalist, though he may have scant leisure for its digestion, absorbs the whole of this mass of intelligence each day in the process of conveying one-tenth part of it, in tabloid form, ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... Ashmole made Masonry—as if any one man made Masonry! 'Tis surely strange, if this be true, that only two entries in his Diary refer to the order; but that does not disconcert the theorists who are so wedded to their idols as to have scant regard for facts. No, the circumstance that Ashmole was a Rosicrucian, an Alchemist, a delver into occult lore, is enough, the absence of any allusion to him thereafter only serving to confirm the fancy—the theory being that a few adepts, ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... endless tables, the latter strolling away to carry home their first impressions of their invaders. Then one group of masters and servants set to work to sort the luggage which cumbered the platform, while others received it at the hotel door, and distributed it to the various billets. Light was scant, hands were not too numerous, and the work was not done without some confusion. But it was done; and the tired workers went to their beds, thankful for what was finished, and full of good hopes for the work which was ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... was born and his father's servant, Edward Thompson, died. Dorothy May Bradford, the girl-wife of the later Governor of the colony, was drowned during his absence. There were murmurings and threats against the leaders by some of the crew and others who were impatient at the long voyage, scant comforts and uncertain future. Possibly some of the complaints came from women, but in the hearts of most of them, although no women signed their names, was the resolution that inspired the men who signed that compact in the cabin of The Mayflower,—"to promise all due submission and ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... I was on the porch, waiting for my coffee, and my thought seemed to be shared by Jim, my bony young setter, who, being but a scant year old, had not yet forgotten the lesson of Greek art. Over the grassy stretch before the porch he chased robins tirelessly, though with indifferent success. His was a spirit truly Greek. I knew it by reason of his inexhaustible enthusiasm for this present sport after a ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... a public that was beginning to tire of the favourite players and to betray a fondness for operatic and spectacular productions rather than the "legitimate." Christopher Rich, the manager of the theatre, was, like many of his kind, more given to considering the weight of his purse than the scant supply of sentiment with which nature might originally have endowed him, and so he tried to do two characteristic things. The salaries of his faithful employes should be reduced and the older members of the company retired into the background ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... topmost floor, I had my bedroom, with two beds and bare floor and scant furniture. I looked down at the river far below, at the covered bridge, at the far lights on the hill above, opposite. Strange to be here in this lost, forgotten place, sleeping under the roof with tramps and beggars. I debated whether ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... trees, rising singly or in clumps over the wavy surface of the grass. Here and there projected at a considerable distance from each other acacias yielding gum, with coral-hued trunks, umbrella-like, but with scant foliage and affording but little shade. Among the white-ant hillocks shot upwards here and there euphorbias, with boughs like the arms of a candle-stick. In the sky vultures soared, and lower there flew from acacia to acacia ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... shrimp, that wither'd imp, Wi' a' his noise and caprin, And tak a share wi' those that bear The budget and the apron. And by that stoup, my faith and houp, An' by that dear Kilbaigie,[5] If e'er ye want, or meet wi' scant, May I ne'er weet my craigie. An' by that ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... displayed in the solitudes the writers have left at home, breathes through its pages like wholesome village air; and though a circulating library is a favourable school for the study of such topics, it has very scant allusion to fine clothes, fine marriages, fine houses, or fine life. Some persons might object to the papers being signed occasionally with rather fine names, but this is an American fashion. One of the provinces of the state legislature of Massachusetts ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... man stroked his scant gray beard with his huge, steady hand, apparently not greatly concerned ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... constitution should thereafter be modified only with the express approval of the people.[447] These reforms, however, were belated. They came only after the popularity of the Emperor had been strained to the breaking point, and by reason of the almost immediate coming on of the war with Prussia there was scant opportunity for the ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... is to say clere, darke plentuous or scant, whiche is to understande quadri-partite, cest a dire clere, obscure habondante et ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous
... For a year she had been making plans, eager to make this convention a landmark in the history of women's labor. But in November she was in bed by the little grate fire in the family sitting-room. And when convention week came with its meetings a scant three blocks from her home, she could be there in spirit only; she waited restlessly for the girls to slip in after the daily sessions and live them over ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... trade; But dirt, and damp, and defective drainage will raise that ghost on a world afraid; And at thirty years our strength is sapped by insidious siege of the stifling fume, Or what if we linger a little longer? Scant rays of comfort such ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... the sombre browns and greens of the solitary moorland, at the black rocks jutting out here and there from the scant grass, at the silent and gloomy ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... size, they were struck by a squall and blown so far that they found it easier to put in for shelter near the home of Lo-Lale than to return to Maui. The storm, the spray, the chilling gusts, compelled Kelea to sit close in the shelter of Kalamakua's sturdy form. He levied on the scant draperies of his crew for cloth to keep her warm, and all the men dined scantily that she might be fed. It is not strange that a friendship was born on that voyage between the two people who had been so oddly introduced. Lo-Lale had never heard ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... the complaints of the colonists, although supported by the Whigs and by Chatham, received scant courtesy in England. The Grafton Ministry showed nothing but an irritated intention to maintain imperial supremacy by insisting on the taxes and demanding submissiveness on the part of the assemblies. ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... had put on a dress of sober tint, and scant circumference, contrasting in a marked manner with the mode then prevailing. A very plain collar encircled her neck. Her hands were incased in brown silk gloves, while her husband wore black kids. Her bonnet was exceedingly plain, and her whole ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... chair close beside her. Bacon, with scant regard for elegance, seated himself on the edge of the table ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... the smallest possible stream. Above, some water carriers were slowly filling their casks, while the mules patiently waited for their burdens; below, was a throng of washerwomen, beating their clothes upon the stones, just moistened by the scant water which flowed over them, and interchanging Spanish Billingsgate with each other and ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... houseless child of want, Our doors are open still; And though our portions are but scant, We give them ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... immediately poor Rod was roughly dragged to the ground. "Take them into the waiting-room, and see that they don't escape while I examine the car. There may be more of the gang hidden in there," commanded the station agent. So to the waiting-room the prisoners were hustled with scant ceremony. As yet no one knew what they had done, nor even what they were charged with doing; but every one agreed that they were two of the toughest looking young villains ever seen in that ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... talaris was a tunic reaching to the feet; the palmata was a state tunic, embroidered with palms, which ornamentation was often found in other parts of dress. The lacerna, loena, cucullus, chlamys, sagum, paludamentum, were upper garments, more or less coarse, either full or scant, and usually short, and were analogous to our cloaks, mantles, &c., and were made both with and without hoods. There were many varieties of the tunic and cloak invented by female ingenuity, as well as of other articles ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... struck the base of a long incline of rocky ground that led up to the slope of the foothill. Here rocks and gravel gave place to black cinders out of which grew a scant bleached grass. This desert verdure was what lent the soft gray shade to the foothill when seen from a distance. The slope was gentle, so that the ascent did not entail any hardship. Carley was amazed at the length of the slope, and also to see how high over the desert she was getting. She felt ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... completed the furnishing. In inclement weather, it was not possible to conduct services here, but occasionally showers came in the midst of the service and the audience calmly hoisted umbrellas or papers and with such scant ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... OF BLOOD.—In a pale, delicate girl or wife, who is laboring under what is popularly called poverty of blood, the menstrual fluid is sometimes very scant, at others very copious, but is, in either case, usually very pale—almost as colorless as water, the patient being very nervous and even hysterical. Now, these are signs of great debility; but, fortunately for such an one, a medical man is, in the majority of ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... level shore, and in scollops round the promontories where the hills come down into the lake. The forest on these hills, or mountains—for they are part of the Sierra del Cristal—is very dark in colour, and the undergrowth seems scant. We presently come to a narrow but deep channel into the lake coming from the eastward, which we go up, winding our course with it into a valley between the hills. After going up it a little way we find it completely ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... is rank melodrama. It has scant literary quality. It is not planned to edify. Its only mission is to entertain you and,—if you belong to the action-loving majority, to give ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... Europe and North Africa, giving a hint of the flood to follow, I congratulated myself on the foresight which led to our retrenchment, for I know these ravening hordes would have devoured the property of Consolidated Pemmican with as little respect as they did the scant store of Ah Que, Ram Singh or Mohammed Ali. My chief concern was now to keep my industrial and organizational machinery intact against the day when a stable market could again be established. To this end I kept our vast staff of researchworkers—exempt from the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... In a paltry generation of superficial thinking the subject was one for jest, but there is far more in it than jesters are likely to discover. Mocking laughter never discovered anything except the vacuous fool. The appearances of spiritual beings give but scant opportunity for examination but serious investigation has now taken the place of cheap sneering. After all religion is founded upon a philosophy of apparitions. The vision of angels at Mons is no new thing. Catholicism is founded on such visions and no religion ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... scant and uncertain evidence, Ales Hrdlicka, of the Smithsonian Institution, speaking of a single locality, says, "Near Lyons, France, the skeletons of 200,000 prehistoric horses are scattered. In one cave in Moravia, there are ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... direct counter evidence, treat statements made in a fictitious or half-fictitious narrative as if made in what professed to be a sober autobiography. Dickens, I repeat, seems to have acquired a very scant amount of classic lore while under the instruction of Mr. Jones, and not too much lore of any kind. But if he learned little, he observed much. He thoroughly mastered the humours of the place, just as he had mastered ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... as far removed from her own apartments as possible, and transferring all details of his care to Misery Agnew, the old housekeeper. Misery endeavored to "do her duty" by the boy, but appreciating the scant courtesy with which he was treated by her mistress, it is not surprising the old woman regarded him merely as a dependent and left him mostly to his ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... word but they were twins, and thus introduced to me by a large incoherent boy who brought them to the kindergarten. He was in a hurry and left them at my door with scant ceremony, save the frequent repetition of ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Garrick loved books with the chilly yet imperative love of the collector. Johnson loved them as he loved his soul. Garrick took pride in their sumptuousness, in their immaculate, virginal splendour. Johnson gathered them to his heart with scant regard for outward magnificence, for the glories of calf and vellum. Garrick bought books. Johnson borrowed them. Each considered that he had a prior right to the objects of his legitimate affection. We, looking ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... indistinguishable, yet this was sufficient to convince me that I was on the right trail. The two were together, and here was an opportunity for me to reach them unobserved. Slowly, using every precaution to avoid noise, I turned the knob, and opened the intervening door a scant inch. I could hear the voice now plainly, but my view was blocked by a heavy curtain. Breathless, I drew a fold aside, and caught ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... Ruby Lee hung bleeding-hearts over the dining-room door. Aunt Nancy resurrected from the bottom of her trunk a white lace cap with a rakish-looking pink bow for an adornment, and fastened it to her scant gray hairs in honor of the occasion. Blossy turned her pink china pig, his lid left ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... was going on, and the scouts were all feeling most happy that with but scant warning a discomforting element was suddenly injected into Camp Content. Moving figures, harsh voices, together with the half strangled barks of dogs held in leash startled the seated campers. Two rough-looking men, evidently a farmer and his hired man, armed with guns, and holding a ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... Grecians, the Romanes, and other nations, to eat but once a day. But now many would thinke they should in a short time be halfe famished, if they should eat but twice a day; nay, rather whole dayes and nights bee scant sufficient for many to continue eating and quaffing. Wee may ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... recruiting officer for colored troops was by no means a sinecure; on the contrary, it was attended with hardships, annoyances and difficulties without number. Moving about from place to place; often on scant rations, and always without transportation, save what could be pressed into service; sleeping in barns, out-houses, public buildings,—wherever shelter could be found, and meeting from the people everywhere opposition ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... annuity, paid her quarterly by a very honest company, that would have been ruined with many such venerable clients. On pleasant days she crept about the town to do her meagre marketing, or crawled to the paupers' pew in the old brick meeting-house. During the warm summer weather her scant life was somewhat cheered, and a faint attempt at joyousness sometimes winked in her old eyes, but with the winter's cold came the cruel cramps and rheumatism, the sleepless nights and painful days. Then Mrs. Marjoram frequently drove to her door, carrying medicines ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... barberry bushes arch with the weight of clusters of beautiful bright berries in September, every one must take notice of a shrub so decorative, which receives scant attention from us, however, when its insignificant ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... mother greeted them very kindly, and, no doubt, looked with gentle pity upon them. They were barefooted; their scant clothing was little more than rags and tatters; they did not look much like her own happy children, whom she had ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin
... Agnes sobbing under breath. The room was small and very hot; the table was warped so badly that the dishes had a tendency to slide to the center; the walls were bare plaster grayed with time; the food was poor and scant, and the flies absolutely swarmed upon everything, like bees. Otherwise the room ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... fever," he said. He stripped off some of his clothes and began chafing his body; then he lay back and flexed his arms and legs in the scant room of the pocket. After a half-hour of this he could feel the blood flowing through ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... best way of doing business. These floods go back largely if not wholly to the policy of the Chinese in stripping the forests. If you were to see the big coffins they are buried in and realize the large part of China's scant forests that must go into coffins you would favor a law that no man could die until he had planted a tree for his coffin and ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... wish the kingdom, brother, to pass into strange hands, and our father's wealth to be made a prey rather than thyself return to enjoy it? Come back home with me, and cease to punish thyself. It is scant gain, this obstinacy. Why seek to cure evil by evil? Mercy, remember, is by many set above justice. Many, also while pushing their mother's claims have forfeited their father's fortune. Power is a slippery thing—it has many suitors; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... than him that'll be strung up," growled a grizzled old trooper in an undertone. "The gang that murdered Pat Donovan will find scant mercy in ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... you twain and —— Pathic Aurelius! Furius, libertines! Who durst determine from my versicles Which seem o'er softy, that I'm scant of shame. For pious poet it behoves be chaste 5 Himself; no chastity his verses need; Nay, gain they finally more salt of wit When over softy and of scanty shame, Apt for exciting somewhat prurient, In boys, I say not, but ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... rudely that I had to hold on the pack with one hand from Cheylard to Luc; and second, my road lay through one of the most beggarly countries in the world. It was like the worst of the Scottish Highlands, only worse; cold, naked, and ignoble, scant of wood, scant of heather, scant of life. A road and some fences broke the unvarying waste, and the line of the road was marked by upright pillars, to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and then he considered the possibility of its having been his own animal, somehow freed of the rope and frightened by the same thing that had frightened him. But when with the first light he went outside, his horse, securely hobbled, was grazing on the scant pasture ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... immediately dazzling than the the one, the remembrance of which he thus cherished. He had been present at many a scene of carnage, where blood flowed in deluges, compared with which the libations of slaughter poured out at Valmy would have seemed scant and insignificant. But he rightly estimated the paramount importance of the battle with which he thus wished his appellation while living, and his memory after his death, to be identified. The successful resistance, which the new Carmagnole levies, and the disorganized relics of the old monarchy's ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... men with scant hospitality, thrusting them down here, wet and hungry," she observed to him, in an angry tone. "Conduct them up to my room, and I will inquire whence they come, and how they happened to be cast on the shore. Send, also, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... picturesque group of persons, all of whom, with a single exception, vanished like a covey of quail at the approach of the stranger. The man who stood his ground was a truly sinister being. He was tall, thin and angular; his clothing was scant and ragged, his face bronzed with exposure to the sun. A thin moustache of straggling hairs served rather to exaggerate than to conceal the vicious expression of a hare-lipped mouth. He stood with his elbow ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... a startled remonstrance. "I would not blame him for that, Cornal," he said: "that was what the Sheriff calls damnum fatale. Upon my word, though Gilian has been something of a heart-break to myself, I must say you give him but scant ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... the English landscapes, and one would have a poor appreciation of these to dash along at forty or even twenty-five miles per hour. There were many places at which we did not stop at all, and which were accorded scant space in the guide-books, that would undoubtedly have given us ideas of English life and closer contact with the real spirit of the people than one could possibly get in ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... Fred noticed that Gabe Werner and Bill Glutts were in their usual places in the company ahead of them. Once or twice they caught the ex-lieutenant and his crony gazing at them furtively, but to this they paid scant attention. Both were satisfied that these two unworthies were ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... social improvement, and all the lights of Middlemarch only three miles off. As to the facility with which mortals escape knowledge, try an average acquaintance in the intellectual blaze of London, and consider what that eligible person for a dinner-party would have been if he had learned scant skill in "summing" from the parish-clerk of Tipton, and read a chapter in the Bible with immense difficulty, because such names as Isaiah or Apollos remained unmanageable after twice spelling. Poor Dagley read a few verses sometimes on a Sunday ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... of the storm, it might be days before anyone could climb the mountain. True, the Indians were not far off, but like as not they would remain in their wigwam until the sun came forth again. In the matter of food there was a scant supply, but probably enough to tide them over until communication could ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... "They ain't pulled any guns to-night. But I come away, though. Some of 'em's making up pretty free to Mrs. Lusk. It ain't suitable for me to see too much. Lusk says he's after you," he mentioned incidentally to Lin. "He's fillin' up, and says he's after you." McLean nodded placidly, and with scant politeness. He wished this visitor would go. But Judge Slaghammer had noticed the whiskey. He filled himself a glass. "Governor, it has my ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... trimmed life down to the essentials, and he had long ago impressed it upon her that if she could not shoot quickly, and hit where she aimed, there was not much use in her attempting to shoot at all. Jean proved by her scant interest in the hawk how well she had learned the lesson, and how sure she was of hitting where ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... slightest compensation or security. The Indians, Lewis and Salvador, would assist in caring for the pack-animals, and would also be efficient guides. Without Stanton's aid the entire party would have been lost; not a single soul would have escaped. The provisions, though scant, were sufficient to entirely alter the situation of affairs. Had the party pressed immediately forward, they could have passed the summits before the storms began. For some cause, however, it was ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... especially the nose. Her hair was black, her complexion dark, and the hands, which lay folded upon her bosom, showed marks of toil, for they were rough and unshapely, though smaller in proportion than the other members of her body. Her woollen dress of grayish blue was short and scant; her knit stockings were black and thick, and her leather shoes were designed fur use rather than ornament. A wide white apron was tied around her waist, and she wore a small black and white plaided shawl ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... a convict tried a shot at a crack between the posts barricading the window. The bullet passed through, missing Ritter's head by a scant two inches. The former outlaw never winced but began singing mockingly, "Teasing, teasing, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... as blonde as she, almost, ruddy, lithe, but somehow old. He did not smile at her greeting, he merely nodded. She gestured again, so imperiously that he obeyed, but with scant courtesy, and he did not look at all overjoyed at meeting the illustrious Mr. Graemer. He sat down however, ordered his luncheon and listened gravely enough to ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... and on hands and knees, with drawn revolvers, we began a detour of the nests. I was keeping my direction by compass every foot of the way. We had been going a scant ten minutes when shots from a light Maxim and rifles broke out in front. I thought we had been spotted, but after a wait, when we started again, we crawled within a few feet of the real target, now lifeless; he was in khaki and apparently he had strayed from his outfit. During our wait we saw a boche ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... weeks were long ones to Philip, who had scant patience with the querulous old aunt. But Amanda, since she had glimpsed the girlhood romance of the woman, had a kindlier feeling for her and could smile at the faultfinding or at least run away from it without retort ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... Love you? Why, bless my soul, sir, she's been thinking of nothing else for the past two or three days but the coming of the postman, expecting a letter from you, not considering that you didn't know where to address her, or that it was rather scant time for a letter to come from La Guayra, where Captain Stearns would take you if he ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... suggested that she was rather absorbed in her own thoughts, and giving but scant heed to the words of ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... To find out that, good Shepherd, I suppose, In such a scant allowance of Star-light, Would overtask the best Land-Pilots art, Without the sure ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... to whom he had paid such scant attention, resumed his seat, and there followed a pause and an intense silence which was broken only by the pattering of the rain against the big windows. The directors turned expectantly to Ryder, waiting for him to speak. What could the ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... come to an arrangement. The barn behind the house had been remodeled so that it contained several bedrooms. Into one of these Yeager was to move his scant effects ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... from serious consideration. Anyhow, in spite of the perfection of his manner, Arnaud's careless dress displeased her: his shoes and the shoulders of his coat were perpetually dusty, and his hair, growing scant, was always ruffled. Linda understood that he was highly intellectual, and frequently contributed historical and genealogical papers to societies and bulletins, but compared with Dodge Pleydon's brilliant personality and reputation, Pleydon surrounded by the Susanna Nodas of life, Arnaud ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Surely that old man was on the square. He couldn't be otherwise with her beside him, believing in him; and a suspicion of deeper plots behind these actions was groundless. So far, all was legal, he supposed, with his scant knowledge of law; though the methods seemed unreasonable. The men might be doing what they thought to be right. Why be the first to resist? The men on the mines below had not done so. The title to this ground was capable of such easy proof that he and Dex need have ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... was that for the first time he fully realised how strongly the trade wind was really blowing, for, close-hauled as the catamaran was, she felt the full strength of the breeze. It piped through her scant rigging with the clamour of half a gale, and poured into her canvas with a savageness of spite that threatened to tear the cloths clean out of the bolt-ropes, while it careened the craft until the lee gunwale was completely buried in the hissing turmoil of foaming yeast that roared out from under ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... foul; fair is more comprehensive than large, since it includes about 16 points, whereas large is confined to the beam or quarter, that is, to a wind which crosses the keel at right angles, or obliquely from the stern, but never to one right astern. (See LARGE and SCANT.)—Fair, in ship-building, denotes the evenness or regularity of a curve or line.—To fair, means to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... recollections of the man which would now be of such exceeding interest to us all. An authentic life-size portrait of Ephraim McDowell, as he was seen in his daily walk among men, can not now be made. The materials are too scant; the time to collect them has gone by. A profile, a mere outline drawing, is all that is possible to-day. The picture I have attempted, therefore, will be found deficient in many details which have passed ...
— Pioneer Surgery in Kentucky - A Sketch • David W. Yandell
... trying conditions of climate and environment. During several months of the year everything is dried up and parched. The brilliant sun of the tropics, burning mercilessly through the rarefied air, causes the scant vegetation to wither. Then come torrential rains. I shall never forget my first experience on Lake Titicaca, when the steamer encountered a rain squall. The resulting deluge actually came through the ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... Suif flushed crimson to the ears, and the three married women felt unutterably humiliated at being met thus by the soldier in company with the girl whom he had treated with such scant ceremony. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... a pair of tongs and one bar of iron.[155] Efforts were made later to repair the havoc wrought by the Indians and to reestablish the works, but they came to nothing. Not until the time of Governor Spotswood were iron furnaces operated in Virginia, and even then the industry met with a scant ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... down in the ravine, the horses were placidly nibbling at the scant herbage, or lazily sprawling in the sun, each animal securely hoppled, and all carefully guarded by the single trooper, whose own mount, ready saddled, circled within the limits of the stout lariat, looped about his master's wrist. All spoke of caution, of lively sense of danger and responsibility, ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... lasted only until one o'clock; newspapers by the noon-day mail occupied their time for but a scant hour more, and an attempted game of cribbage speedily dropped by unspoken but ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... please," he interrupted, "he is a stranger in a strange country, with not a friend to minister to his need or comfort; and, if I am not mistaken, he has only a scant supply ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... succeeds, but her levity and her disregard of appearances force him to think her unworthy of his attentions. Meanwhile her guardian's wife, Lady Mellasin, has been turned out of the house for an egregious infidelity, and Betsy is left to her own scant discretion. After somewhat annoying her brothers by receiving men at her lodgings, she elects under family pressure to marry a Mr. Munden, who quickly shows himself all that a husband should not be. Eventually ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... feel what he would feel, aspire to what he would aspire. Her earnest wish was to see things as they were, and not to be romantic. By dint of effort she contrived to get a glimpse of the light of truth here and there, and hoped that scant ray ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... hands of its clever manager the most popular of all Parisian play-houses, with no well-defined speciality but providing a little of all sorts, from the spectacular fairy-play which exhibits the women in scant attire, to the great modern drama which does the same for our morals. Cardailhac was especially bent upon justifying his title of "manager of the Nouveautes,"[9] and since the Nabob's millions had been behind the undertaking, he had striven ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... dog's. His threadbare clothes, made in the fashion of a dozen years before, had been decently mended in many places. A paste pin in a faded cravat, and a jaunty cane with a pinchbeck top, betrayed that he was still somewhat of a beau. His scant gray hair was tied behind with a piece of black ribbon, and he carried his hat under his arm, after the fashion of Elliston and the Prince Regent, as one sees them in the colored prints of ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... winter; veal should be avoided in summer for sanitary reasons; and even our staples, beef and mutton, vary in quality. The flesh of healthy animals is hard and fresh colored, the fat next the skin is firm and thick, and the suet or kidney-fat clear white and abundant; if this fat is soft, scant and stringy, the animal has been poorly fed or overworked. Beef should be of a bright red color, well marbled with yellowish fat, and surrounded with a thick outside layer of fat; poor beef is dark red, ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson
... rode over the mountains with mysterious speed. It seemed to her frantic brain that the gap between crimson sunset and pallid twilight could have been spanned by a scant five minutes. And now, when she found herself at the foot of the last slope, it was the utter dark, and above her head the white stars were rushing past the treetops. The slope was killing the mare. She fell from her labored gallop to a trot, from the trot ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... tried to dress a child, and this first experience was not a pleasing one. The child's toes persisted in catching in the tops of the stockings, the little waist seemed to her unaccustomed eyes to be constructed upside down, and the scant little skirt went on hind side before. In spite of shrill protestations, she braided up the lanky hair and scoured a patch of skin in the very middle of the child's face, and at last the toilet was complete. Breakfast ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... corner of a small room, on a truckle-bed, with scant bedding, lay the emaciated form of John Shanks, alias Stumps, alias James Gibson. He had raised himself on one elbow, and was gazing with great lustrous invalid eyes at the door, when his old comrade entered, for he had been watching, and heard the first sound ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... befallen during my absence at Gradiska? The familiars of the Inquisition have been seeking you here—you, the last person whose name I should expect to hear in such mouths. Alarm me it did not; for well I know that you are too scant of energy and settled purpose to be mixed up ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... vigilance alone can save us from a flood of Asiaticism, with its weak womanhood, its men of scant chivalry, its polluting vices and its brothel slavery. Bubonic plague in San Francisco and Seattle was alarming. Mongolian brothel slavery, the Black Death ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... generally received maxim, that if you want a truth to be accepted you must repeat the same in season and out, whenever you have the opportunity," said the Marchesa. "The particular truth I have now in mind is the fact that Italian cookery is the cookery of a poor nation, of people who have scant means wherewith to purchase the very inferior materials they must needs work with; and that they produce palatable food at all is, I maintain, a proof that they bring high intelligence to the task. Italian culinary methods have been ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... meagre matron of forty-five, or thereabouts. Her dark scant hair was smooth, and divided down the middle. Acerbity spoke in every line of her face, which was of a dusky yellow, where it did not rather verge on the faint hues of a violet past its prime. She wore thread gloves, and she carried a battered reticule of early Victorian ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... Haggai and Zechariah than in Ezra, and can discern the outline of a strong, bold, prompt nature. He had a hard task, and he did it like a man. Patient, yet vigorous, glowing with enthusiasm, yet clear-eyed, self-forgetful, and brave, he has had scant justice done him, and ought to be a very much more familiar and honoured figure than he is. 'Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain.' Great mountains only become plains before men of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... not better than the simple drum and fife of a common training-day? The "full brass band," we must recollect, is too expensive a luxury except for the most extraordinary occasions, and even then we run the risk of hearing "Highland Mary" repeated all day long, so scant is the repertoire. The regiment, headed by the cavalry and the music, passes the colonel and his staff. The music wheels out of the line, gives "three cheers," and remains at the colonel's side till the regiment has returned to its place. A hollow square is formed, in imitation of the great Napoleon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... not sure but some of us regard 'Aunt Hannah' with scant favor, occasionally," he laughed; "something as if she were the dragon that guarded the princess, you know. Miss Billy IS popular with the men, and she has suitors enough to turn any ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... thy tongue, with a wanion!" said the monk; while in the same breath the Fleming exclaimed, "Beware the cucking-stool, Dame Scant-o'-Grace!" while he conducted the noble youth across the court. "Let my good horse be cared for," said the cavalier, as he put the bridle into the hand of a menial; and in doing so got rid of some part of his female retinue, who began ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... of the hills was rough with outcropping rock. In some great stress of nature the trees had been destroyed utterly, and only a scant growth of weeds and wild flowers remained. The place suggested a battle-ground for the winds, where they might meet and struggle in wild combat; or more practically, it was large enough for the evolutions of a squadron ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... them have the four and a half per cents. at par, as some had been put to the people at that. I desired a premium of three per cent. They finally met me half way, and gave one and a half premium. In short, we get a very little scant of 103 currency for those bonds, for the syndicate pays over to us the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... like a huge prairie, with no shade from the heat or shelter from the thunderstorms. On the western side it is very different. Great hills run roughly parallel to the river course, but leave a wide plain between themselves and it. They are clothed with a few scant bushes, out of which their tops rise bare and rocky; but in the shady hollows and gorges the low thorn-trees (mimosas) grow thickly, and over the plain that stretches to the river their grey foliage gathers into thick ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... occupation, to that of fighting his continental foes, The McTavish was to be found ever in the foremost ranks of British men-of-war, joyously doing battle for his clan and for his king, who, if the truth were told, he regarded with scant loyalty. Like so many of the old timers in western Canada, this particular McTavish had been at one time a servant of the Hudson Bay Company and as such had done his part in the occupation, peaceful and otherwise, of the vast territories administered by that great trading company. In his fiery fighting ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... electric lights, steam trains or automobiles, and so often this doctor was away from home for two or three days attending the people who needed his help. His trips took him into little villages where there were only a few hundred poor people who made a scant living from farming and sheep raising, but he knew them so well that he became very fond of them, and he shared their sorrows and joys. When he returned home he would tell his little daughter, who was Johanna Spyri, about what he had seen and heard. She became very ...
— Erick and Sally • Johanna Spyri
... He'll take a scant piece of coarse sense and stretch it on the tenterhooks of half-a-score rhymes, until it crack that you may see through it and it rattle like a drumhead. When you see his verses hanged up in tobacco-shops, you may say, in defiance of the proverb, ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... man, for he, as his God, abhors them; but they are to be found in the house of evil doers, such as Mr. Badman's is. 'Are there,' saith the prophet, 'yet the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked, and the scant measure that is abominable!' (Micah 6:10). Are they there yet, notwithstanding God's forbidding, notwithstanding God's tokens of anger against those that do such things! O how loth is a wicked man to let go a sweet, a gainful sin, when he hath hold of it! They hold fast ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... so far as Werper could discover, as to where he was or whence he came. He wandered aimlessly about, searching for food, which he discovered beneath small rocks, or hiding in the shade of the scant brush ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to see his little hat, With such a narrow brim; They laugh'd to note his dapper coat, With skirts so scant and trim. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... that one would notice it even in a crowd, but overshadowed by an expression of care far too heavy for her baby years. Her eyes were large, dark and unusually lustrous, while her wavy brown hair fell about her face and neck in rich profusion. Her clothing was scant and old, but clean and very neatly mended. The whole appearance of the child was so pathetically irresistible that I went and sat down by her side, taking her cold little ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright
... sleeves, but their unmatched physiognomies—the one lean and jovial, the other plump and resigned—alight with the same smile of welcome. Father Abella mentioned them as his coadjutor Father Martin Landaeta, and their guest Father Jose Uria of San Jose; and then the three, with the scant rites of genuine hospitality, applied themselves to the tickling of palates long unused to ambrosial living. Responding ingenuously to the glow of their home-made wines, they begged Rezanov to accept the Mission, burn it, plunder it, above all, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... fears even these late successes; it were best to veil their heads. The strong as such had ever been against her and hers. The father came again; noted the boy's growth. Manliest of men, like Hercules in his cloak of lion's skin, he has after all but scant liking, feels, through a certain meanness of soul, scorn for the finer likeness of himself. Might this creature of an already vanishing world, who for all his hard rearing had a manifest distinction of character, one day become his rival, full ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... gathered in confused masses along the foot of the slope, jabbering shrilly to each other and making insolent gestures toward the silent company at the top. The hair of their heads was stringy, coarse and scant, and of an inky blackness, in contrast to the abundant locks of the Hillmen, which were for the most part of a dark brown or ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... personage does, to drink a cup of tea with Mrs. Agassiz in the stately old parlour, where Mrs. Whitman's famous portrait of the president of Radcliffe College vies in attractiveness with the living reality graciously presiding over the Wednesday afternoon teacups. As it happened, there was a scant attendance at the tea on this day of Duse's visit. She had not been expected, and so it fell out that some two or three girls who could speak French or Italian were privileged to do the honours of the occasion to the great actress whom they ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... who are said to have been enthusiastic over the success of their experiments. Several years ago a piano was lowered into the cave for use on a special occasion, and still occupies a position on the dancing platform, where it will probably remain indefinitely under the scant protection of a small ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... people, must have been rougher and fiercer and deadlier than it was with Greely's people: because Hudson's crew was of a time when sea-men, for cause, were called sea-wolves; while Greely's crew was the better (yet exhibited scant evidence of it) by an additional two centuries and a half of civilization, and was made up (though with little to show for it) of ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... undoubtedly, were used countless times at Jamestown by unknown "chirurgions," doctors of "physickes," and apothecaries—men who tried to keep the colonists well with their limited medical equipment and scant ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... malice to the officer who supplanted him and condemned him to death. But what Lizarraga did was done in compliance with the King's will. At the same time there could be no doubt that Santa Cruz was treated with scant courtesy after all he had accomplished, and had a right to feel himself ill-used, and the victim of jealous rivalry. He said that he was prepared, any day the King permitted him, to traverse the four provinces, and hold his enemies in terrorem with ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... the invasion of Soho by the girl-clerk and the book-keeper, one cannot but love it. I love it because, in my early days of scant feeding, it was the one spot in London where I could gorge to repletion for a shilling. There was a little place in Wardour Street, the Franco-Suisse—it is still there—whose shilling table d'hote was a marvel: And I always ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke |
