"Scantiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the difficulties of the journey, and the scantiness of our food, Shakro, with his rich vitality, could not acquire the lean, hungry look, of which the starving peasants could boast in its fullest perfection. Whenever he caught sight, in the distance, of these latter, he would exclaim: "Pouh! pouh! pouh. Here ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... appearing too lame. The room seemed to me twice as wide to cross as the Champ de Mars, for hardly had I taken a step in its chilly atmosphere—the fire had gone out, it was April, and the chateau overlooked the Loire—when the cold reminded me of the scantiness of my costume. What! to cross the room before that angel, who was doubtless watching me, in the most grotesque of costumes, and with a helpless leg into the bargain! Why had I forgotten my dressing-gown? However, I reached the armchair, into which I sank. I seized my dress-coat which ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... were well. I, myself, became quite sick during our imprisonment here, and continued so for most of the summer. Several others were in the same condition. This was rather an advantage, for when sick we did not so much mind the scantiness of our diet. ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... we suffered most from, the hardship hardest to bear, was hunger. The scantiness of the rations was something fierce. We never got a square meal that winter. We were always hungry. Even when we were getting full rations the issue was one-quarter pound of bacon, or one-half pound of beef, and little over a pint of flour or cornmeal, ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... full-grown man standing upright, the wretched victims, chained to the sides of the ships, lay squeezed together in such numbers, though the whole voyage was within the tropics, that, from the overpowering heat and scantiness of food, it was estimated that two-thirds of each cargo died on the passage. Most fortunately for the credit of England, the fearful trade was brought under the notice of a young member of Parliament singularly zealous in the cause of humanity and religion, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... thousand years Before baptizing. O how far remov'd, Predestination! is thy root from such As see not the First cause entire: and ye, O mortal men! be wary how ye judge: For we, who see our Maker, know not yet The number of the chosen: and esteem Such scantiness of knowledge our delight: For all our good is in that primal good Concentrate, and God's will and ours are one." So, by that form divine, was giv'n to me Sweet medicine to clear and strengthen sight, And, as one handling skillfully the harp, Attendant ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... records of the three incomplete years; but those of the remaining eight are graphically depicted upon Chart 8. The curves speak so plainly for themselves that any comment were almost superfluous, and the concord between the various curves, although, of course, not perfect, is far greater than the scantiness of the data would have justified us in expecting. The curves all agree in pointing to the existence of three well-defined maxima,—viz., in March, June, and September,—these being, therefore, the months in which the sexual instinct is most active; and the later curves show that there ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the paunch, and then he offers them with fire; and the rest of the flesh they eat on that day of full moon upon which they have held the sacrifice, but on any day after this they will not taste of it: the poor however among them by reason of the scantiness of their means shape pigs of dough and having baked them they ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... relief, more particularly as it is proposed to commence their return to-morrow. This determination of so soon retracing their steps, though it cost them much regret, had become indispensable, not only from the extreme scantiness of their remaining supplies, and the certainty of the many difficulties they would have to encounter, but still more so from consideration that the mere circumstance of a fall of rain by swelling the streams, might, in the weak and ill-provided state to which the whole party were reduced, render ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... Gladstone's prowess as a woodcutter, and to some it may even have been matter of surprise to see no scantiness of trees in the Park at Hawarden. It is true that he attacks trees with the same vigour as he attacks abuses in the body politic, {32b} but he attacks them on the same principle—they are blemishes and not ornaments. No one ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone
... protruded his dreadful hip bones. Seurat, as might have been expected, forms the subject of numerous contemporary caricatures; and in one of these, by way of comical contrast, the worthy but corpulent alderman, Sir William Curtis, distinguished by a similar scantiness of attire, figures with the living skeleton in a lively pas de deux. William Heath, in another of contemporary date, represents the fat alderman standing on a map of England, and Seurat on a map of France. Says Sir William: "I say, friend, did you ever eat ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... woman of some sixty years, with a stern handsome face under harsh bands of yellowish gray hair, and a mouth that sank in at one corner where her upper teeth had been drawn. Her figure was erect and flat as a lath, and this flatness was accentuated by the extreme scantiness of her drab calico dress. In her youth she had been beautiful in a hard, obvious fashion, and her eyes would have been still fine except for their bitter and ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... which, from the peculiarity of their soil and situation, exclusively yield wine of a certain flavour, is sold of course at a price very far exceeding the cost of production. And this is owing to the greatness of the competition for such wine, compared with the scantiness of its supply; which confines the use of it to so small a number of persons, that they are able, and rather than go without it, willing, to give an excessively high price. But if the fertility of these lands were increased, so ...
— Nature and Progress of Rent • Thomas Malthus
... Insufficiency. — N. insufficiency; inadequacy, inadequateness; incompetence &c. (impotence) 158; deficiency &c. (incompleteness) 53; imperfection &c. 651; shortcoming &c. 304; paucity; stint; scantiness &c. (smallness) 32; none to spare, bare subsistence. scarcity, dearth; want, need, lack, poverty, exigency; inanition, starvation, famine, drought. dole, mite, pittance; short allowance, short commons; half ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... not been much published on the subject in any form within the reach of most. I have been able to find nothing like an extended systematic treatise on the subject, either among our own or the foreign agricultural literature which has come within my notice. Indeed, from the scantiness of what appears to have been written, coupled with the fact that much knowledge must exist somewhere, one is tempted to believe that not all which might have done so, has yet found its way to printers' ink. That a great deal has been acquired, we know, as we know a tree—by its fruits. That ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... his snuff. The absence of any pocket at all in the usual direction, suddenly recalled to his recollection the fact that he had no waistcoat on; and this leading him to a contemplation of the extreme scantiness of his attire, he shut the door abruptly, and retired ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... would have done credit to men of a far later age. A feature such as this, whatever may have been its object, whether it arose from an effort by means of 'sympathetic magic' to catch animals, as M. Salomon Reinach suggests, or to the mere artistic impulse, is a standing reminder to us of the scantiness of our data for estimating the lines of man's religious and other development in the vast epochs of ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... a notion that what prevented her perhaps from going off in one great, nervous leap, was the scantiness of her attire. The wicker armchair was the most substantial thing about her person. What she had on under that dingy, loose, amber wrapper must have been of the most flimsy and airy character. One could not help being aware of it. It was obvious. I felt it actually ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... privilege to apologize for the scantiness of her fare, and this she did with becoming modesty and regret. She had not expected company; the regular dinner hour was over long ago, and somehow she never could understand why she couldn't get a meal out ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... jerry-builder at Golder's Green, and had ended it a millionaire and a knight. Lady Ranscomb was seated at a little wicker table with her daughter Dorise, a dainty, fair-haired girl with intense blue eyes, who was wearing a rather daring jazzing gown of pale-blue, the scantiness of which a year or two before would have been voted quite beyond the pale for a lady, and yet in our broad-minded to-day, the day of undressing on the stage and in the home, it was nothing more ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... late M. Tenon, with his usual sagacity, recognized the trouble, and put an end to it by a complicated operation, of which M. de Lamarck preserved deep scars. This treatment lasted for a year, and, during this time, the extreme scantiness of his resources confined him to a solitary life, when he had the leisure to devote ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... natives, the seditions of his men, and the suggestions of his own despair. He had, at length, sent a mere tantalizing message, by a man known to be one of his bitterest enemies, with a present of food, which, from its scantiness, seemed intended to mock ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... city. Indeed, their arrival at the place at all seemed very like the crafty design of some persons who were minded to form a city. The aversion was not unnatural, since the majority of the soldiers had not left their homes on so long a voyage from scantiness or subsistence, but attracted by the fame of Cyrus's virtues; some of them bringing followers, while others had expended money on the expedition. And amongst them was a third set who had run away from fathers and mothers; while a different class had left children behind, hoping ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... was inclined to resent her use of the word, though I was by no means sure of the shade of meaning she meant to put into it. I had, indeed, an uneasy sense of the scantiness of my fund of humour to meet and turn such a situation; for I was experiencing, now, with her, the same queer feeling I had known in my youth in the presence of Cousin Robert Breck—the suspicion that this extraordinary person saw through me. It was as though she held up ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... forget the primary object of clothing, and to think of it too much as a means of adornment. This leads to excesses and follies such as tight waists, high-heeled shoes, to the ungainly crinoline or to indecent scantiness of skirts. Direct interference in these matters is badly tolerated, but much may be accomplished both by example and by cultivating a refined and artistic taste in ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... its course never exceeds one mile per hour, but that it is in general much less. At the time of the Major's expedition, the water actually flowing, as seen at one or two shallow places, did not exceed in quantity that which would be necessary to turn a mill. But, with all this scantiness of supply during the dry season then prevailing,[16] the marks of tremendous inundations were plain upon the surface of the country, frequently extending two miles back from the ordinary channel of the waters. And ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... determinate end, and in which nothing of the military art appeared, but the destruction which it caused. Various, on this occasion, were the reverses of fortune, while Stephen, though embarrassed by the weakness of his title, by the scantiness of his finances, and all the disorders which arose from both, supported his tottering throne with wonderful activity and courage; but being at length defeated and made prisoner under the walls of Lincoln, the clergy openly declare for Matilda. The ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... remained in dishonorable tranquillity at home. I have more reason to complain of you than you of me; for you have constantly refused me your approbation and assistance; and even when you have granted succors, you have rendered them fruitless by the scantiness and tardiness of your supplies, and compelled me to dissipate my own revenues, and ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... figure and agile military bearing seemed likely to preserve to him for some time longer. Although he had conquered the difficulty of his gray hair, reducing its silvery reflections by keeping it cut very close, he was less resigned to the scantiness of his moustache, which he wore in youthful style, twirled to a sharp point by means of a Hungarian cosmetic, which also preserved to a certain degree its primitive color. But whoso wants to prove too much proves nothing, and in the black which the colonel used there was noticeably ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... Pampas whispered something to a very small brother beside her, who was remarkable chiefly for the size of his gorgeous eyes and the scantiness of his costume. With ready obedience the urchin unhooked a miniature lasso from the wall, and lassoed a large hen. How the brother and sister executed that hen ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... understand the sort of amazement of the Orientals at the scantiness of the retinue with which an Englishman passes the Desert, for I was somewhat struck myself when I saw one of my countrymen making his way across the wilderness in this simple style. At first there was a mere moving speck on the ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... the convent appeared to be neat and clean, but of coarse materials and rude construction, while its scantiness evinced either the penury of the institution, or the denial which formed part of the monastic discipline peculiar to the order of La Trappe. There might be a third explanation of the ill-lighted bareness ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... death, having taken due care that the money should be ready in his exchequer. For the rest he ordered different times of payment. In some of his bequests he went as far as twenty thousand sesterces, for the payment of which he allowed a twelvemonth; alleging for this procrastination the scantiness of his estate; and declaring that not more than a hundred and fifty millions of sesterces would come to his heirs: notwithstanding that during the twenty preceding years, he had received, in legacies from his friends, the sum of ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... and also of the valley highways of the western Tian Shan. It therefore occupies a location which would make it one of the great emporiums of the world, were it not for the expanse of desert to the west and the scantiness of its local water supply, which is tapped farther upstream for the irrigation of Samarkand. In its bazaars are found drugs, dyes and teas from India; wool, skins and dried fruit from Afghanistan; woven goods, arms, and books from Persia; and Russian wares imported by rail ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... thus established, of the aversion to commerce, immemorially evinced by the southern Singhalese, and of their desire to escape from intercourse with the strangers resorting to trade on their coasts, serves to explain the singular scantiness of information regarding the interior of the island which is apparent in the writings of the Arabians and Persians, between the eighth and thirteenth centuries. Their knowledge of the coast was extensive, they were familiar with the lofty mountain which served as its landmark, they dwell ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... and if any of the many officials and dependents that then, as now, were at Oriental courts, were ill, he stayed there for some time. As a rule he could only get back to his own home in the afternoon, and then he was, as he says himself, "almost dying with hunger." Knowing the scantiness of the Oriental breakfast, we are not surprised. There he found his waiting-room full of patients, "Jews and Mohammedans, prominent and unimportant, friends and enemies," he says himself, "a varied crowd, who are looking for my medical advice. There is scarcely time for me to get down from my ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... destitution, frugality, lack, scantiness, defect, economy, inadequacy, need, shortcoming, deficiency, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... one difficulty lay in the scantiness of her information. She made up her mind, however, like a good general, that the difficulty must somehow be overcome, and accepted without visible hesitation. Before she left the Casino she invited the journalist to call, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... were restored to the people, before the main fulfilment of the promise of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit took place; compare Ps. cvii. 33-42 with Joel ii. 25-27.—The words, "I shall pour out," refer to the rain in ver. 23. The idea of copiousness, opposed to the former scantiness, is indeed implied in it. Yet it must not be exclusively considered; the qualities of the rain alluded to in ver. 24 ff.—viz., the quickening of what was previously dead, the fructifying power—must not be overlooked.—The words, "Upon all flesh," are, by most of the Jewish ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... of the poorer classes seem to be ill-fed, ill-lodged, and worse clothed; yet scantiness in this particular is certainly not always the result of poverty, as the redundance of precious ornaments above mentioned can witness. Neither does the wretched manner in which many belonging to the lower orders of Bombay shelter themselves from the elements appear to be an absolute ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... along the deck of their hulk. In the most good-humoured way possible, they asked their neighbours how many geese and turkeys they had discussed that day. The meagre answer called forth shouts of merriment, and the poor fellows belonging to the other ship were rather unhandsomely taunted with the scantiness of their Christmas fare. "Look at that and weep, you hungry-faced rascals!" exclaimed one of our jolly blades, holding up the drumstick of a goose in one hand and that of a turkey in the other. He was ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... was classic in its scantiness, especially at balls and parties. The fashionable ball dress was of white India crape, and five breadths, each a quarter of a yard wide, were all that was asked for to make a skirt, which only came down to the ankles, and was elaborately trimmed with ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... people with baskets between their legs and papers before their faces; and all showed by some peculiarity of air or dress the excess of heat which they had already borne, and to which they seemed to look forward, and gave by the scantiness of their number a vivid impression of the uncounted thousands within doors prolonging, before the day's terror began, the oblivion ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... bazar. In case of necessity he can transform it into a loin-cloth, or tie up a bundle of grass with it, or tie his lota to it to draw water from a well. 'What can the washerman do in a village where the people live naked?' is a Chhattisgarhi proverb which aptly indicates that scantiness is the most prominent feature of the local apparel. Here a cloth round the loins, and this usually of meagre dimensions, constituted, until recently, the full dress of a cultivator. Those who have ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... with cheap paper; in spite of some painful efforts towards luxury in the way of photographs in frames and a clock with a pair of scissors hanging on the weight the furnishing of the room impressed him by its scantiness. Looking at the furniture, one might have supposed that Father Yakov had gone from house to house and collected it in bits; in one place they had given him a round three-legged table, in another a stool, in a third a chair with a back bent violently ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... concerning his progenitors, and rested well content with the scantiness of his knowledge. The character and condition of his father, of whom alone upon that side of the house he had personal cognizance, did not encourage him to pry into the obscurity behind that luckless rover. He was sensitive on the subject; and when he was applied to for information, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... interested and interesting audience two evil-looking kleptomaniacs, buffalo-herders dressed in next to nothing, who eye my garments drying on the bushes with lingering covetousness. It is scarcely necessary to add that I watch them quite as interestingly myself; for, while I pity the scantiness of their wardrobe, I have nothing that I could possibly spare among mine. A network of irrigating ditches, many of them overflowed, render this valley difficult to traverse with a bicycle, and I reach a large village about noon, myself and wheel plastered ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Early Middle English. Decay of Anglo-Saxon. Early Middle English Literature. Scantiness of its constituents. Layamon. The form of the Brut. Its substance. The Ormulum: Its metre, its spelling. The Ancren Riwle. The Owl and the Nightingale. Proverbs. Robert of Gloucester. Romances. ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... in their too brief records, teeming with interest for all their scantiness, many ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... the proprietors adhered to the Danish party, as that of Wik in Upland, which remained blockaded throughout the whole year. These difficulties were the most formidable where, as at Stockholm, access was open by the sea, of which Severin Norby, with the Danish squadron, was master. The scantiness of the means of attack may be discovered from the circumstance that sixty German spearmen, whom Clement Rensel, a burgher of Stockholm, himself a narrator of these events, brought from Dantzic in July for the service of Gustavus, were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... characteristics possessed in common by the American aborigines are the copper-coloured or rather the cinnamon-coloured complexion, along with the high cheek-bones and small deep-set eyes, the straight black hair and absence or scantiness of beard. With regard to stature, length of limbs, massiveness of frame, and shape of skull, considerable divergencies may be noticed among the various American tribes, as indeed is also the case among the members of the ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... probably as fair as the facts in the compiler's possession could make it; yet it is seriously vitiated by the scantiness of those facts. In answer to one question, for example, we are told that "all agree that the colored troops recruited from Free States are superior to those recruited from Slave States." But only ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... gauntness, spareness, meagerness; tenuity, delicacy, fineness; incompactness; rarity, subtilty, subtilization; inadequacy, sparseness, scantiness. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Flaxman has certainly not given him the look of a large proprietor in his outlines: his toilet is severely scant, and the old gentleman appears to have lost two of his fingers in a chaff-cutter. As for Perses, who is represented as listening to the sage,[A] his dress is in the extreme of classic scantiness,—being, in fact, a mere night-shirt, and a tight ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... for me to recall to the recollection of those around me, the circumstances under which the project of undertaking an overland journey to Port Essington was formed. The smallness of your party, and the scantiness of its equipment, the length and unknown character of the country proposed to be traversed, induced many to regard the scheme as one characterised by rashness, and the means employed as wholly inadequate towards carrying out the object in view. Many withheld ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... circumstances under which the appendices were added to the earlier work. When the book was in press, the publisher discovered that of the three volumes planned, the last two were going to be too thin, and begged for more material to fill out their scantiness. In this perplexity Goethe brought to Eckermann two packets of miscellaneous notes to be edited and added to those two slender volumes. In this way arose the collection of sayings, scraps and quotations "Im Sinne der Wanderer" and "Aus Makariens Archiv." It was ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... allowance of both. Still the crew of the Hawk would only receive the same quantity that we did. The sun rose and set, and again rose, and we sailed on. Mr Hill met us each morning at breakfast, his honest countenance beaming with kindness, and jocularly apologised for the scantiness of the fare. Even he, however, one morning looked grave; the wind had fallen, and we lay becalmed. He had good reason to be grave, for he knew what we did not, that he had only one cask of water left, and provisions scarcely sufficient for a ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... and day on the battlements and ramparts, attended by a band of armed men, boiling over with anger and gnashing his teeth, because, often as he wished to sally forth, he was prevented from taking such a step by the scantiness of the force ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... the scantiness of their costume, which consisted chiefly of a strip of cloth about the waist, and another strip thrown over the shoulder or disposed of in some fantastic way. Their skins were black, though not of the inky, coal-like color of the pure-blooded African negro. ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... the descent of the Holy Spirit in his plenary influences (chap. 2), by the appointment of deacons (chap. 6), and the ordination of elders, though these last are only mentioned incidentally (chaps. 14:23; 20:17), the office being understood of itself from the usages of the Jewish Synagogue. The scantiness of the information which we have on this matter of church organization is a part of the wisdom of the Holy Ghost, and is full of instruction to the church ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... are observed by Dr. Wallis to be irregular only in the formation of the preterit, and its participle. Indeed, in the scantiness of our conjugations, there is scarcely ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... however, and which all believed to have been donned for the occasion, was, on the whole, much approved of, and the wearer, in more than one instance, complimented for his taste in having selected so novel and striking a garb. But even his warmest applauders objected to the scantiness of the kilt, and hinted that, for decorum's sake, this part of his dress should have been carried down to his heels. This improvement on his kilt was suggested, in the most polite terms, to Donald himself, by a ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... has been made in this paper to the subject of slavery, which bulks so large in almost every study of the war. A similar scantiness of allusion to slavery is noticeable in the Memorial volume, to which I have already referred; a volume which was prepared, not to produce an impression on the Northern mind, but to indulge a natural desire to honor the fallen ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... enriched by English and French terms, and have nearly forgotten their old signs. The prevalence of this mongrel speech, originating in the same causes that produced the pigeon-English or lingua-franca of the Orient, explains the marked scantiness of sign language among the ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... region are the Loucheux Indians. Fine grown men of considerable stature, and well-knit frames, they have evidently followed the course of the Mackenzie River, from south to north. These are the Indians of whom from the scantiness of our previous data, information is most valuable. They are reasonably considered to belong to the same family as the Dog-rib, Beaver, Hare, Copper, Carrier, and other Indians, a family which some call Chepewyan, others ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... household of Charles I., is said by his friend Hyde to have turned to devotion after a somewhat libertine life, and died in 1639, before the evil days of triumphant Puritanism, felix opportunitate mortis. He wrote little, and the scantiness of his production, together with the supposed pains it cost him, is ridiculed in Suckling's doggerel "Sessions of the Poets." But this reproach (which Carew shares with Gray, and with not a few others of the most admirable names in literature), unjust as it is, is less unjust than the general ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... ensues, from the absence or scantiness of explicit or systematic information connected with the opening stages of such inquiries as the present, that the student is compelled to draw his own inferences from indirect or unwitting allusion; but so long as conjecture and hypothesis are not too freely indulged, this class of evidence is, ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... my purse; a meagre thing it was. "Five shillings, sir." He took the purse, poured the hoard into his palm, and chuckled over it as if its scantiness amused him. Soon he produced his pocket-book: "Here," said he, offering me a note; it was fifty pounds, and he owed me but fifteen. I told him ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... very low temperatures on the earth under the equator at a height where the barometer stands at about three times as high as on Mars, proves that from scantiness of atmosphere alone Mars cannot possibly have a temperature as high as the freezing-point of water. The combination of these two results must bring down the temperature of Mars to a degree wholly incompatible with the existence ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... with Catalonia in the twelfth century, and it conquered Valencia in the thirteenth. Its long line of coast opened the way to an extensive and flourishing commerce; and an enterprising navy indemnified the nation for the scantiness of its territory at home by the important foreign conquests of Sardinia, Sicily, Naples, and the Balearic Isles. Amongst the maritime states of the Mediterranean Catalonia had been conspicuous. She was to the Iberian ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... world, and in the name of literature, in one memorable satire. I speak of "Flecno, an English Priest in Rome," wherein nothing is spared—not the smallness of the lodging, nor the lack of a bed, nor the scantiness of ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... Rajah, who was a lover of verse, "how true it is that poetry lends an illusive charm to conceptions ordinary in themselves, like a lovely screen which bestows a grace on the scantiness it only half conceals. Poetry ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... proper sphere. She should have made it a point of duty, moreover, to sit endlessly to painters and sculptors, and preferably to the latter; because the cold decorum of the marble would consist with the utmost scantiness of drapery, so that the eye might chastely be gladdened with her material perfection in its entireness. I know not well how to express that the native glow of coloring in her cheeks, and even the flesh-warmth over her round arms, and what was visible of her full bust,—in a word, her womanliness ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... seasons, my experience dictates that during winter storms and March glooms, it had better be dispensed with. However, I pushed on to St. Germain, threaded its long streets, looked down from the height over its magnificent tract of forest and turned westward down the Seine. Owing to the scantiness of villages, I was obliged to walk an hour and a half in the wind and darkness, before I reached a solitary inn. As I opened the door and asked for lodging, the landlady inquired if I had the necessary papers. I answered in the affirmative ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... clever student in the University of Glasgow was met by one of the Professors, who noticing the scantiness of his academical toga, said, "Mr. ——, your gown is very short."—"It will be long enough, sir, before I get another," replied the student. The answer tickled the Professor greatly, and he went on quietly chuckling to himself, when he met a brother Professor, who, noticing ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... There is a public which eats salt beef and horse-radish sauce with relish, and does not care for artichokes and asparagus. Put yourself at its point of view, imagine the grey, dreary courtyard, the educated ladies who look like cooks, the smell of paraffin, the scantiness of interests and tasks—and you will understand N. and his readers. He is colourless; that is partly because the life he describes lacks colour. He is false because bourgeois writers cannot help being false. They are vulgar writers perfected. ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... work, Goldsmith also resumed his medical practice, but with very trifling success. The scantiness of his purse still obliged him to live in obscure lodgings somewhere in the vicinity of Salisbury Square, Fleet Street; but his extended acquaintance and rising importance caused him to consult appearances. ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... filth, such homes as poverty alone could not make. Still less, when we gaze upon some pleasant looking village, fair enough in outward seeming for poets' songs to celebrate, should we expect to find scarcity of fuel, scantiness of food, prevalence of fever, the healthy huddled together with the sick, decency outraged, and self-respect all gone. And yet such sights, both in town and country, if not of habitual occurrence, are at ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... corner of the vault, where I placed three heavy stones upon it. I then took the two leathern pouches I had selected, and stuffed one in each of the pockets of my trousers. The action reminded me of the scantiness of attire in which I stood arrayed. Could I be seen in the public roads in such a plight? I examined my purse, which, as I before stated, had been left to me, together with my keys and card-case, by the terrified persons who had huddled me into my coffin with such scant ceremony. ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... blanket, and stretched towards the feeble flame of the newly-lighted fire, he had a rather patchy air. Shelton, on the other hand, had lost his feeling of fatigue; the strangeness of the place was stimulating his brain; he kept stealing glances at the scantiness around; the room, the parson, the furniture, the very fire, all gave him the feeling caused by seeing legs that have outgrown their trousers. But there was something underlying that leanness of the landscape, something superior and academic, which defied all sympathy. It was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Holt was a striking-looking person, notwithstanding the oddness and shabbiness of her dress. Scantiness is a better word for it than shabbiness, for her dress was of good material, neat and well preserved, but it was without a superfluous fold or gather, and in those days, when, even in country places, crinoline ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... extremely low, by their fatigues and privations, that in all probability none of them would have survived, had their distresses continued only a few days longer. The captain was with difficulty recovered; and the rest were so reduced by labour, the severity of the weather, scantiness of food, and want of all kinds of necessaries, that it was wonderful how they had ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... wrong in the person who bowed, and smiled, and rubbed the palms of his hands in a rotary movement; and being taken up in trying to amalgamate the scantiness of her money, the prices on the carte, and the enormity of her hunger, neither did she notice the burning eyes in the handsome, sensual dark face of a middle-aged native fixed upon her hungrily from behind a half-open door, where he had been hurriedly summoned by the man who ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... obtrusion of them on our sight, it is to be hoped that the pernicious influence of them upon public morals will be diminished also. In those regions where a tropical sun renders clothing cumbersome, and the costume of the ladies of necessity exceeds a little that of ears in transparency and scantiness, familiarity renders it harmless; little or nothing is left for the imagination to feed upon; cheapened by their obviousness, the female charms are rejected by the fancy which loves to dwell on what it only guesses at, or has but rarely seen, and the youthful heart finds its ultimate ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... Scantiness of furniture is certainly a powerful factor in hygiene; here physical and psychical hygiene are at one. In our schools we recommend the use of "light" furniture, which is correspondingly simple, and ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... fens and forests, where nature wages a war even more relentless than man, was not to be thought of. In this perplexity, they decided on the little island of Gallo, as being, on the whole, from its distance from the shore, and from the scantiness of its population, the most eligible spot for them in their ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... hundred thousand lazy warriors with the simple necessaries of life. [36] The Germans abandoned their immense forests to the exercise of hunting, employed in pasturage the most considerable part of their lands, bestowed on the small remainder a rude and careless cultivation, and then accused the scantiness and sterility of a country that refused to maintain the multitude of its inhabitants. When the return of famine severely admonished them of the importance of the arts, the national distress was sometimes alleviated by the emigration ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... or deserts, is the primary source of human sustenance. Without it man would perish miserably; and where it is deficient, he cannot rise to great heights in the scale of civilization. Yet strangely enough the scantiness of the vegetation of the deserts was a great help in the ascent of man. Only in dry regions could primitive man compete with nature in fostering the right kind of vegetation. In such regions arose the nations which first practised ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... were invited to partake of a sumptuous dinner, prepared expressly for the occasion. It was placed on rough tables made of large slabs, supported by small, round legs, set in auger holes; and though there was a scantiness of dishes—and these in the main consisting of a few pewter-plates, several wooden trenchers, with spoons of like material, interspersed with some of horn—and though the scarcity of knives required many of the gentlemen to make use ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... the language which savages employ on any solemn occasion, it appears that man is a poet by nature. Whether at first obliged by the mere defects of his tongue, and the scantiness of proper expressions, or seduced by a pleasure of the fancy in stating the analogy of its objects, he clothes every conception in image and metaphor. "We have planted the tree of peace," says an American orator; "we have buried the axe under its roots: we will henceforth repose under its ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... this narrative of the life of the famous king is the result of a thoughtful study of his character and an earnest effort to be as accurate as the scantiness of material and the ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... prove themselves right. No human authority, however high, can maintain itself against the voice of Nature speaking through experiment. But the voice of Nature may be an uncertain voice, through the scantiness of data. This was the case at the period now referred to, and at such a period, by the authority of Newton, all ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... scanty in its proportions that the wrists of the wearer wholly exposed themselves beneath the short, narrow sleeves, while the skirts only "shadowed not concealed," that part of the body they had been originally intended to cover. A pair of blue pantaloons, perfectly in keeping, on the score of scantiness and age, with the coat, covered the attenuated lower limbs of the wearer, on whose head, moreover, was stuck a conical cap that had all the appearance of having been once a portion of the same uniform, and ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... ride, we turn our horses' heads up some beautiful valley, or deep gorge of a river, in search of the huts of our neighbours' shepherds, that we may tell the men of these services and invite them to attend. As yet, we have met with no refusals, but it will give you an idea of the scantiness of our population when I tell you that, after all our exertions, the "outsiders" only amount to fourteen, and of these at least half are gentlemen from neighbouring stations. With this number, in addition to our own small group, we consider that we form quite a respectable gathering. ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... feet and shook out the folds of her diaphanous gown, daring alike in its shapelessness and scantiness. She lit a cigarette and laid her ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was a good-humored, good-looking man, with immense bushy, red whiskers, a freckled, florid complexion, and sandy hair, rather inclined to scantiness towards the scalp of the head, which garnished the nape of his neck with a ruff of crisp little curls, like the ring on a monk's shaven crown. Notwithstanding this tendency to baldness, Jack could not be more than thirty, though his looks were some five years in advance. ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... ridiculous, mama?" referring anxiously to the scantiness of the skirt and the unblushing exposure ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... comprise this volume[*], one, "The Wizard," a tale of victorious faith, first appeared some years ago as a Christmas Annual. Another, "Elissa," is an attempt, difficult enough owing to the scantiness of the material left to us by time, to recreate the life of the ancient Poenician Zimbabwe, whose ruins still stand in Rhodesia, and, with the addition of the necessary love story, to suggest circumstances such as might have brought about or accompanied its fall at the hands of ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... role of "The Chiffon Girl," the idol of the pit and gallery, Queen regnant over the hearts beating behind the polished shirt-fronts in the stalls, has lived to hear herself pitied—not envied, but commiserated—for the scantiness of the costume in which it is alike her privilege and her joy to trill and caper seven times in the week before her patrons and adorers. Small wonder that she feels her carefully-manicured nails elongating with the desire ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... though the young Henry was of an age to rule according to the ideas of the time,—of the age, indeed, at which his father had begun the actual government of Normandy. But he found himself, as a contemporary called him, "our new king who has nothing to reign over." It is probable, however, that the scantiness of the revenues supplied him to support his new dignity and to maintain his court had more to do with his discontent than the lack of political power. The courtly virtue of "largesse," which his father followed ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... purity, of benevolence; or of fulness, emptiness, scantiness. There is no object or quality in the outside world I can say is goodness, or fulness. But I do see things in the external world through my ideas of goodness or fulness that correspond to these ideas. They have some of the qualities the ideas embrace; and so I point them out and ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... duties had been devolved either on committees of congress, or on boards consisting of several members. This unwieldy and expensive system had maintained itself against all the efforts of reason and public utility. But the scantiness of the national means at length prevailed over prejudice, and the several committees and boards yielded to a secretary for foreign affairs, a superintendent of finance, a secretary of war, and a secretary of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... of power which Providence had placed in this duel, the accused, for lack of conclusive proofs, would in all probability have escaped from the hands of the executioner; but from that very scantiness in the evidence arose an extraordinary opportunity for eloquence, which could not fail to be singularly useful to the ambitious hopes of M. Desalleux. In justice to himself, he could not neglect to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... champaign but actually over the thoroughfares of a capital city, which we could see blackened by day with the moving crowd of the inhabitants, and at night shining with lamps. And lastly, although I was not insensible to the restraints of prison or the scantiness of our rations, I remembered I had sometimes eaten quite as ill in Spain, and had to mount guard and march perhaps a dozen leagues into the bargain. The first of my troubles, indeed, was the costume we were obliged to wear. There is a horrible practice in England ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The scantiness of our acquaintance with Roman Christianity in Britain is the more to be regretted, because it would have been very interesting to compare its manifestations with those of the Church which found refuge in the West during the dark days ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... with very little money, "and a very large assortment of letters of recommendation: whether his relatives intended to compensate for the scantiness of the one by their profusion in the other is uncertain; but he has often been heard to declare that their liberality in the last article was prodigious." The Smolletts were not "kinless loons"; they had connections: but who, in Scotland, had money? ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... this subject, I refer the reader to Mr Suessmilch's tables. The extracts that I have made are sufficient to shew the periodical, though irregular, returns of sickly seasons, and it seems highly probable that a scantiness of room and food was one of the principal causes ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... at the east end of the house had been arranged for the occupancy of the ranch's mistress. When she entered them a slight dismay seized her at their bare appearance and the scantiness of their furniture; but she quickly reflected that the climate was a semi-tropical one, and was moved to appreciation of the well-conceived efforts to conform to it. The sashes had already been removed from the big windows, and white curtains waved in the Gulf breeze ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... commenced our western descent to the Lake, for we were now lower than Magola's by 300 feet. We crossed many rivulets and the Lochesi, a good-sized stream. The watershed parts some streams for Loendi and some for Rovuma. There is now a decided scantiness of trees. Many of the hill-tops are covered with grass or another plant; there is pleasure now in seeing them bare. Ferns, rhododendrons, and a foliaged tree, which looks in the distance ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... to dissemble her feelings, dropped on to the chair by the fireplace. Two tears rose to her eyes, and at once dried away. She looked at Montes, saw the girl, and burst into a cackle of forced laughter. The dignity of the insulted woman redeemed the scantiness of her attire; she walked close up to the Brazilian, and looked at him so defiantly that her ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... had absorbed my every faculty; I had had no time to think of my companions; I had forgotten them. Now in the painful surges of awakening realization, of full human understanding of that inhuman annihilation, I turned to them for strength. Faintly I wondered again at Ruth's scantiness of garb, her more than half nudity; dwelt curiously upon the ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... the scantiness of holy association in our Sunday and week-day worship? . . . Much, I know, has been supplied by our hymnology, which has progressed nobly in proportion as the meagreness of our liturgical provision has been realized. But beyond ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... food, the usual tendency is towards an improper scantiness. Here, too, asceticism peeps out. There is a current theory, vaguely entertained if not put into a definite formula, that the sensations are to be disregarded. They do not exist for our guidance, but to mislead us, seems to be the prevalent belief reduced to its ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer |
