"Eke out" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could insure, by the payment of higher prices for better qualities of goods, the extermination of the sweating trades. This low, degraded and degrading work enables large numbers of poor inefficient workers to eke out a bare subsistence. If it were taken away, the direct result would be an accession of poverty and misery. The demand for skilled labour would be greater, but the unskilled labourer cannot pass the barrier and compete for this; ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... musicians, not having been born with genius. Some of these unfortunates spend years of time and thousands of dollars in money attempting to fit themselves for careers, only to end in utter failure. Some, even after they have made a comparative failure of their education, eke out a tortured existence, hoping against hope for the golden crown of ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... flood tide, spring tide; fill, load, bumper, bellyful^; brimmer^; sufficiency &c 639. V. be complete &c adj.; come to a head. render complete &c adj.; complete &c (accomplish) 729; fill, charge, load, replenish; make up, make good; piece out [Fr.], eke out; supply deficiencies; fill up, fill in, fill to the brim, fill the measure of; saturate. go the whole hog, go the whole length; go all lengths. Adj. complete, entire; whole &c 50; perfect &c 650; full, good, absolute, thorough, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and the souls he died to save. With her has been associated from the first Mr. Joe Dun, a most faithful and efficient helper. He was converted in our Marysville Mission, and has been a steadfast Christian for many years. He accepts less than half pay in these times of straitness, and tries to eke out a support for himself and those dependent upon him by attention to business in a small and, I fear, far from lucrative way, but gives his heart to mission work. I feel guilty every time I make a remittance to Watsonville because the pittance we allow him is so small as compared with the work he ...
— American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 3, March, 1896 • Various
... tide; fill, load, bumper, bellyful[obs3]; brimmer[obs3]; sufficiency &c. 639. V. be complete &c. adj.; come to a head. render complete &c. adj.; complete &c. (accomplish) 729; fill, charge, load, replenish; make up, make good; piece out[Fr], eke out; supply deficiencies; fill up, fill in, fill to the brim, fill the measure of; saturate. go the whole hog, go the whole length; go all lengths. Adj. complete, entire; whole &c. 50; perfect &c. 650; full, good, absolute, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... possessed some kind of claim, and from that time till his death, lived entirely alone. He managed to cultivate a small portion of the land, which supplied him with provisions, and he at times followed the trade of a cooper, to eke out his slender means. His family troubles had broken his spirits, and destroyed his ambition, and for years he lived a lonely dispirited man. He was possessed of sound common sense and had also received a tolerable education, to which ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... we need feel no surprise on being told that the Zuni Indians require "much facial contortion and bodily gesticulation to make their sentences perfectly intelligible;" that the language of the Bushman needs so many signs to eke out its meaning, that "they are unintelligible in the dark;" and that the Arapahos "can hardly converse with one another in ...
— On Limitations To The Use Of Some Anthropologic Data - (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (pages 73-86)) • J. W. Powell
... plaster vases filled with colored fruit. The carpet was a very pretty Brussels, but it did not quite cover the floor on either side. It was a small pattern, and on this account had been offered a shilling cheaper a yard, and so the economical Mrs. Markham had bought it, intending to eke out the deficiency with drugget of a corresponding shade; but the merchant did not bring the drugget, and the carpet was put down, and time went on, and the strips of painted board were still uncovered, save by the straight row of ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... not always easily done during the first eight months of that year, and I will confess to buying 640 pounds to eke out the supply for the colony; but after the young heifers came in, there was no trouble, and the purchased butter was more than made up ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... the white folks say it is ever full of black criminals,—the black folks say that only colored boys are sent to jail, and they not because they are guilty, but because the State needs criminals to eke out its income by ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the force of legislative and popular opinion, to overrule its decision. Calmer counsels prevailed, however, and plans were initiated to get over the difficulty by a constitutional amendment. Meanwhile, steps were taken to eke out the national revenue by various excise taxes, notably the so-called Federal Corporation Tax. This novel tax, which was thought by many to involve a very serious encroachment by the Federal Government on the powers of the states, will be discussed ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson
... many persons living have heard their grandfathers speak of, were no mere tradition, but a stern hard fact, and whenever, in that terribly anxious spring time of 1801, the poor could get a scrap of bacon, a dish of tops of slinging nettles was by no means an uncommon resort to eke out the means of a precarious existence. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the harvest of 1801 was looked forward to with as great a degree of anxiety as ever the children of Israel looked for a sight of the ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... held,—and he now resided in a more 'respectable' quarter of the city, in such sober, yet distinctive fashion as became one who was a friend of the King's, and who was likely to be a Minister some day, when he had further proved his political mettle. So that Sholto had no longer any need to try and eke out a scanty subsistence by letting rooms to revolutionists and 'suspects' generally,—and Thord himself had helped him to make a change for the better, as ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... the little meadow-side cottage of Mrs. Vennard, Ray's maternal aunt, a quiet widow, who was glad to receive her dying sister in her house a year and a half ago, as she had often received her boys before, and who was still willing to eke out her narrow income with the board of one nephew and any summer guest; and as that summer guest, owing to an old family-friendship that overlooked differences of rank and wealth, Vivia had, for many a season, been established. Here, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... interests of society more than when it goes to work with pseudo-scientific tools. Its most repellent form, that of sheer spiritualism, has in recent years declined somewhat, and the organizations for antilogical, psychical research eke out a pitiable existence nowadays. But the community of the silent or noisy believers in telepathy, mystical foresight, clairvoyance, and wonder workers seems ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... contrived to save even a few sous daily, out of her own wages, to add to her grandmother's stock. This she could not have done, but for the circumstance of there being so much in the house of their early stores, to help eke out the supplies of the moment. But, at the end of a fortnight, Adrienne found herself reduced to her last franc, including all her own savings. Something must be done, and that without delay, or Madame de la Rocheaimard would be ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... throughout that last Irish Campaign, in which the unhappy King James made so desperate an effort to regain his crown. When King William and the Marshal Duke of Schomberg had made an end of him, and the poor dethroned Monarch had gotten away to St. Germains-en-Laye, there to eke out the remains of his days as a kind of Monk, Millwood's Foot was sent back to England, and put upon the Peace Establishment. That is to say the officers got half pay, and the private men were told that for the next eighteen months they should have ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... tongue, which has solved the secret of perpetual motion. Had it kept silent even for a few seconds at lunch time today, that sharp-eyed and rabbit-eared detective would never have known of the second picture—your picture—because I can eke out my exhibits by a half finished sketch of the lake and a pencil note of the gates. But putting the bits of the puzzle together afterwards, I came to the conclusion that Mary, our kitchen maid, passed my room, saw the picture on the easel and was scandalized. She of course told Eliza, who went ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... blundering old woman who had incoherence to bestow upon him, and readily received the Boffins. He was quite a young man, expensively educated and wretchedly paid, with quite a young wife and half a dozen quite young children. He was under the necessity of teaching and translating from the classics, to eke out his scanty means, yet was generally expected to have more time to spare than the idlest person in the parish, and more money than the richest. He accepted the needless inequalities and inconsistencies of his life, with ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... recapitulations from which the perfectly unconventional form adopted by Wagner is free. On the whole, there is more scope for both repetition and convention in the old form than in the new; and the poorer a composer's musical gift is, the surer he is to resort to the eighteenth century patterns to eke out his invention. ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... classes for clothes was almost equal to their other wants. The stores had been long exhausted, and winter was at hand. Nothing more ludicrous can be conceived than the expedients of substituting, shifting, and patching, which ingenuity devised, to eke out wretchedness, and preserve the remains of decency. The superior dexterity of the women was particularly conspicuous. Many a guard have I seen mount, in which the number of soldiers without shoes exceeded that which had ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... of acres of woodland still, though much had been "deforested"; but I didn't know it hid many beautiful villages, and even towns. It's a heavenly place for motoring, but I'm not sure it wouldn't be even better to walk, because you could eke out the joy of it longer. I should like a walking honeymoon (a whole round moon) in the New Forest—if it were with just ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... very long time M. Chebe had sought a place which would enable him to eke out their slender income. But he sought it only in what he called standing business, his health forbidding any occupation that required him ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... referring to a mother and three daughters who live in the Friary and eke out a scanty income by taking in dressmaking, I am happy to say I know them well," went on Archie. "My sister and I visit at the cottage, and they attend my church; and, as Miss Milner can tell you, they work hard enough all the six days of ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... Brewster's offices at 83 Broadway in no way differed from the offices of ten thousand other lawyers who strive to eke out a difficult living in the most overcrowded of all the professions. They consisted of a modest suite of rooms on the sixth floor. There was a small outer office with a railed-off inclosure, behind which sat a half dozen stenographers ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... and burdensome taxation without upsetting the industries of the country—with all its grandiloquent exhibition of happiness and prosperity, the laboring classes of the country starve to death, or eke out an existence still ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... adhered to them for long, seem vital in her eyes, and they usually are so. To Great Britain, whose major policy is that she must be mistress of the seas, it is vital that she should be. Her people are surrounded by the ocean, and unless they are willing simply to eke out an agricultural existence, it is essential that she should be able to manufacture articles, send them out in ships to all parts of the world, and receive in return money and the products of other lands. In order that she ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... the Christmas customs of which I had been trying for years to surprise. They are Indians, a handful of Mohawks and Iroquois, whom some ill wind has blown down from their Canadian reservation, and left in these West Side tenements to eke out such a living as they can, weaving mats and baskets, and threading glass pearls on slippers and pin-cushions, until, one after another, they have died off and gone to happier hunting-grounds than Thompson Street. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... monotony of the time; and even the two hours' trick at the wheel, which came round to each of us, in turn, once in every other watch, was looked upon as a relief. Even the never-failing resource of long yarns, which eke out many a watch, seemed to have failed us now; for we had been so long together that we had heard each other's stories told over and over again, till we had them by heart; each one knew the whole history of each of the others, and we were ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... intention to leave her. He ordered her to go home to his mother. When Helena heard this unkind command, she replied, "Sir, I can nothing say to this, but that I am your most obedient servant, and shall ever with true observance seek to eke out that desert, wherein my homely stars have failed to equal my great fortunes." But this humble speech of Helena's did not at all move the haughty Bertram to pity his gentle wife, and he parted from her without even the common civility of a ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... thought, was discarded only by the rational sciences, which tend to depth. Aesthetic certainly is subjective. It is satisfied with authority or with an appeal to great men. We are so feeble that Aesthetic must eke out our thoughts. Aesthetic is a vehicle of Logic. But there are logical truths which are not aesthetic. We must exclude from philosophy exclamations and other emotions, which belong to aesthetic truth. For Kant, poetry is the harmonious ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... of Europe in the seventeenth century, which jealously sought to keep all specie within her borders, produced a general dearth of the precious metals in the currency of the New World, and all kinds of shifts were made to eke out the scanty supply. Corn, wheat, oats, peas, poultry and the like sufficed to satisfy any obligation. But then, though answering well in cases of barter, where two mutual desires met, were far too bulky and unwieldy for general use. Naturally then ...
— Wampum - A Paper Presented to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society - of Philadelphia • Ashbel Woodward
... of the sort that make up the great throng of fourth-raters in the world to-day, drifting here and there; or settling down with a family on his hands and a little two-by-four job to eke out a bare living. And you fellows may as well face this fact: you've got to stint, if you're going to pull off a stunt. No stint, no stunt. Stinting is only another name for work and patience and economy combined, and it ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... jury fore-topmast for the present; and so we stood away for the isle of Trinidad, where, though there were Spaniards on shore, yet we landed some men with our boat, and cut a very good piece of fir to make us a new topmast, which we got fitted up effectually; and also we got some cattle here to eke out our provisions; and calling a council of war among ourselves, we resolved to quit those seas for the present, and steer away for ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... sad disappointment to him. It was in 1893, when I saw him for the last time, that I found it out, by a chance remark he dropped when sitting with my first book, "How the Other Half Lives," in his hand, and also the sacrifice he had made of his own literary ambitions to eke out by hack editorial work on the local newspaper a living for his large family. As for me, I would have been repaid for the labor of writing a thousand books by witnessing the pride he took in mine. There was at last a man of letters in ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... suddenly appeared, alone, in the schoolroom, where I was taking a class in geometrical drawing. I must explain that, at this time, to eke out my ridiculous salary and, at all costs, to provide a living for myself and my large family, I was a mighty pluralist, both inside the college and out. At the college in particular, after two hours of physics, chemistry or natural history, came, without respite, another two hours' lesson, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... Cambridge; and after travelling abroad, married the daughter of Sir Thomas Owthorp in Nottinghamshire, who does not appear to have lived long. His extravagance keeping him poor, he was compelled to eke out his means by translating works from the French and Italian, including those of a spirit somewhat kindred to his own—Montaigne. At the age of forty, he obtained a captain's commission in the army, and went to Ireland. There he met with his second wife, Mary, Countess Dowager of Ardglass, the ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the Colonel's keepers under fifty had gone to fight; and there was left only an old head keeper, with one decrepit helper, who shot the scanty game which still survived on strict business principles, to eke out the household rations of the big house. The Ipscombe woods were rarely visited. They were a long way from the keeper's cottage, and the old man, depressed by the difference between war and pre-war conditions, found it quite enough to potter round the stubbles and turnips of the home farm when game ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... many things that savoured of scandal during our visit to the country, but this was one thing which it was impossible to ignore. So wretched indeed is the pay of the State teachers that they push on the children of those parents who give them employment as private tutors in order to eke out a livelihood, to the neglect of ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... forage away from head-quarters next time. General Kimball was a rigid disciplinarian, but withal a very kind-hearted man. He no doubt paid for those chickens rather than have one of his boys suffer for his foraging escapade. Perhaps I ought to say a word about these foraging expeditions to eke out the boys' larder. These men were not thieves in any sense and very few attempted this dubious method, but the temptation was almost beyond the power of resistance. The best way to test this temptation is to diet yourself on ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... works of art has never been niggardly. This sort of help, the encouragement to work, is exactly what makes progress possible to a young and independent artist; it is better for him than fortuitous exhibition triumphs—much better than the hack-work which many have to undertake, to eke out their livelihood. And the mere fact of being bought by the eminent art-critic was ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... fellow, though amusingly ignorant of affairs in general. His chief employment was acting the part of a scarecrow by frightening birds from the cornfields, and running on errands into Bideford for any of the neighbours, by which means he enabled his mother to eke out her scanty pittance. I used to share with him my school pasty, and now and then I saved a piece of bread and cheese, or I would bring him a cake or a roll from Bideford. He never failed to carry a portion to his mother, sharp-set as he always was himself. The poor fellow soon conceived a strong ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... to the number of about thirty, in a huge cavern, which faced down the mountain, and had a slightly upward sloping floor, so that the water did not enter. Here, by careful economy, they were able to eke out their provisions until the sky cleared, after which the men, being used to outdoor labor and hunting, contrived to supply the wants of ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... the Star-chamber seems to have been twofold: first, to inure men's minds to an authority more immediately connected with the crown than the ordinary courts of law and less tied down to any rules of pleading or evidence; secondly, to eke out a scanty revenue by penalties and forfeitures. Absolutely regardless of the provision of the Great Charter, that no man shall be amerced even to the full extent of his means, the counsellors of the Star-chamber inflicted such fines as no court of justice, even in the present reduced ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... invite promiscuous or casual acquaintances to call. It is even less the custom there than it is with us. A book about Cuba, published a few years ago, gives a somewhat extended account of what is called "home life," but it is the home life of workmen and people who do laundry work to eke out a meagre living. It is not even the life of fairly paid artisans, or of people of modest but comfortable income. It is no more a proper description of the domestic life of the island than would be a presentation of the life in the palaces of the wealthy. Such attempts at ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... out with the "irrepressible conflict," the Beecher family, with the Stowes, came North in 1850, Mr. Stowe accepting a professorship at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine. A few boarders were taken into the family to eke out the limited salary, and Mrs. Stowe earned a little from a sketch written now and then for the newspapers. She had even obtained a prize of fifty dollars for a New England story. Her six brothers had fulfilled their mother's dying wish, and were all in the ministry. She was ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... against great odds, he returned to Glasgow when his trade was mastered, and began to make mathematical instruments, for which, however, he found little sale. Then, to help eke out a living, he began to make and mend other instruments,—fiddles, guitars, and flutes,—and finally built an organ,—a very superior one, too,—with several additions of his ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... Singers; Aren't you ashamed to employ such white fingers? Delicate hands, unaccustom'd to reels, To set 'em working a poor body's wheels? Why they came down is to me all a riddle, And left Hallelujah broke off in the middle: Jove's Court, and the Presence angelical, cut— To eke out the work of a lazy young slut. Angel-duck, Angel-duck, winged and silly, Pouring a watering-pot over a lily, Gardener gratuitous, careless of pelf, Leave her to water her lily herself, Or to neglect it to death if she chuse it: Remember ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... discharged were often to be seen roaming about the country and were allowed a great deal of licence in consequence of their weak-mindedness. Accordingly, the impostors above mentioned, who used generally to eke out the gifts of the charitable by stealing, when detected in their theft, would plead, as a rule, lunacy as an excuse ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... deformity. Gentlemen marry only small-footed women, and their child might make a good match. If large-footed, this would be impossible; but such hopes are sometimes doomed to disappointment, or after marriage reverses may ensue; and so it happens that many small feet stamp about in poverty and try to eke out a living under disadvantages from which their less genteel neighbors are free. The most remarkable feature in the streets is the total absence of women of any class except such as drudge alongside of men, and even these are not numerous, for man appears to monopolize most of the work, at ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... base his defence of that eminently empirical product, the British Constitution, upon some show of a philosophical groundwork. He had used the vague conception of a 'social contract,' frequently invoked for the same purpose at the revolution of 1688, and to eke out his arguments applied the ancient commonplaces about monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. He thus tried to invest the constitution with the sanctity derived from this mysterious 'contract,' while appealing also to tradition or ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... of a pretty actress, and people would only smile knowingly. But let a hint of his betrayal of Etta Stampa and its attendant circumstances reach the ears of those who hated him, and he would sink forthwith into the slough of rich parvenus who eke out their lives in vain efforts to enter the closely guarded circle from which he had ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... and which their blood cemented together? Their masters took their farms, converted the small fields into great, slave-worked estates, and drove the husbandmen into the alleys and tenements of the city where they might eke out an existence as best they could. The rank-and-file Roman derived the same advantage from the Roman Empire that the rank-and-file Briton has derived from the ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... old-time dinner, at least, that Antonio provided; but, alas! those others were not there to eke out the illusion of the past. To each name, as I uttered it, Antonio added an epitaph. This one had gone to bury himself in the Abruzzi hills. That one had become a professor at Bologna. Others, in vanishing, had left ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... coaxing. He would preserve the deed for the purpose of kindling the wood; and the fire, as his only luxury, he would postpone until he needed it more sorely. In the end the table and the chairs—or all but one—should eke out his fuel, and he ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... I accepted the living, I promised him that I would give you three hundred and fifty pounds out of the proceeds; and so I will. Adela and I will be very poor, but I shall endeavour to eke out our income; that is, of course, if she ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... To eke out the salt meat that was reserved for the military, two Cape cows, which would not breed, were killed and served out to them during ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... barometrical readings. What is more interesting at sea than the charts of ocean depths, currents, winds, salinity, and temperature! If you go too fast to touch on Plankton, Nekton, and Benthos, at least let the poor first class passengers have a compass, if not a barograph and a thermometer, to eke out conversations on the weather, the day's run, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... Spiritualists commonly employ. Also we must not ignore, what revelation tells us, of an "enemy," a "father of lies," who "changes himself into an angel of light," and who is ever ready, so far as it is permitted him, to eke out curiosity, folly, and credulity, such as he ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... it for the Glasgow market, intending to make his fortune with it. It was emptied at an earlier date, in shorter time, and by customers who proposed to themselves a much longer credit than he anticipated. There was enough in it to furnish every mess in the division something to eke out a Christmas ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... waiting at dinner—for a hot plate. At that the Editor turned to his knife and fork with a grunt, and the Silent Man followed suit. The dinner was resumed. Conversation was exclamatory for a little while, with gaps of wonderment; and then the Editor got fervent in his curiosity. 'Does our friend eke out his modest income with a crossing? or has he his Nebuchadnezzar phases?' he inquired. 'I feel assured it's this business of the Time Machine,' I said, and took up the Psychologist's account of our ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... no means so firm as its name sounded. Mr. Dodge's hopes for it were unfulfilled. It was very little indeed that could now be wrung from it. The Fidelity was for Mother—with a margin, scant enough, to eke out the young Sturgises' income. There was the bill for carting, other bills, daily expenses. Felicia, reading over Ken's shoulder, ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... rest, ranging from 25l. down to as low as 12l. per annum. Of course the priests could not subsist on these incomes without some other aid, and this was obtained by taking small farms, from which they endeavoured to eke out a living. ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... an abnormal strength. But afterwards the Commissioners were left to their intrinsic weakness. There were members for all the localities, but there were none for them. There were members for every crotchet and corrupt interest, but there were none for them. The rural guardians would have liked to eke out wages by rates; the city guardians hated control, and hated to spend money. The Commission had to be dissolved, and a Parliamentary head was added; the result is not perfect, but it is an amazing improvement on what would have happened in the old system. ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... the future welfare of the country, demanded a large draft of men, there were they to be seen as they had never been seen before, even in their own country, where all labor was reduced to the individual efforts of each, just sufficient to eke out a miserable life. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... struck his sails, and forced the little boat to bend to its power in passing; "well do I know you, with your fresh-water flavour and your smell of the land! Would to God you had blown your fill upon the lakes, without coming down to drive many a weary seaman back upon his wake, and to eke out a voyage, already too long, by your bitter colds ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... chateau was my lord's the forest was my lord the king's; neither of them for this poor Jacques. If he thought to eke out his meagre way of life by some petty theft of wood for the fire, or for a new roof-tree, he found himself face to face with a whole department, from the Grand Master of the Woods and Waters, who was a high-born lord, down to the common sergeant, who was a peasant ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the forest, clearly to be seen from her window, there stood a tiny cottage, in which lived an aged woman who was known amongst the poor folks of the neighbourhood as the "Three-legged Wood-wife." This was because of a wooden staff on which she leaned to eke out the failing strength of her own limbs. The wood-wife was both feared and hated by the people, amongst whom she bore the character of a very malicious witch. The king's daughter hated not only her, but her tumble-down house, and ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... argued that "many Lords have not so much to spend" as the preachers; and this was not denied (if the preachers were paid), but it was said the Lords had other industries whereby they might eke out their revenues. Many preachers, then or later, were driven also to other industries, such as keeping public-houses. {211a} Knox, at this period, gracefully writes of Mary, "we call her not a hoore." When she scattered his party after ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... the day is done, E'en stars are setting one by one; Nor torch nor taper longer may Eke out the pleasures of the day; And since, in social glee's despite, It needs must be, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... can personally testify—his hands would cure headache and drive out ill-humors. And I will even believe that there was of this divinity in Rabbi Baer. But whereas the Baal Shem veiled his divinity in his manhood, Baer strove to veil his manhood in his divinity, and to eke out his power by arts and policies, the better to influence men and govern them, and gain of their gold for his further operations. Yet the lesson of his history to me is, that if Truth is not great enough to ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... that we are not pushing him beyond this position; and that, in fact, our judgment is rather against his going beyond it. If he can only maintain this position, without more, this rebellion can only eke out a short and feeble existence, as an animal sometimes may with a thorn in ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... been for the parcels of food that we received from friends at home and from the Red Cross we would certainly have starved. We were able to eke out our prison fare by carefully husbanding the food that ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... neighbours. One might have imagined that Serbia, being well known as a land of small peasant proprietors—where there is even a law which forbids a peasant's house from being sold over his head; he is, under any circumstances, assured of so much as will enable him to eke out a livelihood—one would have thought that the Albanian [vc]if[vc]ija, who is nothing more than a slave of the feudal chief, would have rejoiced at the arrival of a liberator; and indeed, while the Serbian ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... gain it? Thou, that mayest not even await the desire of pleasure, but, or ever that desire springs up, art already satiated; eating before thou hungerest, and drinking before thou thirsteth; who to eke out an appetite must invent an army of cooks and confectioners; and to whet thy thirst must lay down costliest wines, and run up and down in search of ice in summer-time; to help thy slumbers soft coverlets suffice not, but couches and feather-beds must ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... little farms inside the factory districts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, on which the country hand-loom weavers eke out a miserable livelihood by cultivating patches of grass land, there is distress more acute than ever was known in a Dorset village. But in Northumberland, by exception, there is a decent country life. 'What I saw of the northern ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... not part with property for what they do not deem a valuable consideration. Many at this time surrendered their castles, their lands, their cottages, to "leave all and follow Him." Small sums sufficient to eke out the alms of the pilgrimage, were accepted as pay, and, if not forthcoming, the property was abandoned to him who might remain to use it. It seemed as if all Europe ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... and then his conscience smote him, he felt shamefaced before his deacons, but Evelina kept her first claim. He resolved that another year he would hire a piece of land, and combine farming with his ministerial work, and so try to eke out his salary, and get a little more money to beautify his poor home for ...
— Evelina's Garden • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... person, who had come to the village a young man, yet had never really entered into its life. For instance, he neither held nor would accept any public office. At first, people wondered how he contrived to eke out a living, but this puzzle was solved by his admitted possession of ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... hordes of educated men in the middle classes who could beat him at every point on his own ground, except in carriage and appearance, and whom no one regarded as specially gifted. Still, in his own county, among his own friends, and in a society where education and culture eke out a precarious, interloping existence, and are regarded with distrustful curiosity, Lord Wilfrid Maine lived and died, and was ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... inferred that the old soldier was labouring under some mistake; but Johnstone's address soon evinced that he was not in the least mistaken. "He wished to be acquainted with me," he said. "It was all nonsense for us to be bothering one another, when we had no cause to quarrel." He used occasionally to eke out his pension, and his scanty allowance as forester, by catching a basket of fish for himself from off the rocks of the Hill; and he had just discovered a projecting rock at the foot of a tall precipice, which would prove, he was sure, one of the best fishing platforms in the Firth. But then, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... thing working itself out in one case known to me. A young man had a gift of mental healing; I know, because I saw it work; but it did not always work, and that was annoying. He was penniless and had a taste for power, and to eke out his erratic endowment he got himself books of Eastern lore, and day by day as I watched him I could see him becoming more and more impressive, mysterious and forbidding. Today he is a full-fledged wonder-worker, ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... sort of sick love bound them to their unfortunate homes, and like a curse it rested on each who was born in the valley—that he could not free himself from it and that until the end of his days he must eke out ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... Bellerstown, though a step in William Douglas' professional progress, yielded too scanty a revenue to admit of matrimony; but the talents, respectability, and prepossessing manners of the chaplain made him a favourite at the castle, and rendered it practicable to eke out the slender living by the addition of a small farm, at what was called a moderate rent. But this appendage, too, was held by the same precarious tenure—Lord Bellersdale's will. The probationer was inducted as pastor of the Bellerstown chapel, according to the rules of the church; ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... behind again vegetable dishes two abreast, borne by the lesser lights of the staff (lids off, of course: none of our glory was to be hidden under covers); tailing along with the rejected and gravy boats came laden soup-plates to eke out the supply of vegetable dishes; and, last of all, that creamy delight of bread sauce, borne sedately and ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... portraits of the great writers on the newly-papered walls: on one side an office-desk, on the other a work-table. The unpretending shelter of a newspaper hack, who lives a jour la journee, and whose wife must achieve wonders in the way of domestic economy in order to eke out his ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... number of hanks of the leaf so many segars are to be produced, and if the water is used for any other than the specified purpose, no more can be procured. They are said to resort to many ingenious expedients to eke out the allowance. From eight to ten women are employed together, squatted at a low table; and there are double rows of these tables, leaving a space to pass through the centre of the room. At each table the entire process of making the cheroot is performed. The leaf is untwisted ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... archbishops, bishops, priests, and deacons were drawn from all ranks of life. No special training at first was considered necessary to fit them for their duties, though the more celebrated ministers were often highly educated. To eke out their salaries the clergy sometimes carried on business as farmers and shopkeepers. Where, however, a church had sufficient funds to support its bishop, his engagement in secular affairs was discouraged and finally prohibited. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... Company in which, through my mother, I possess shares. I shall stay here till responsible persons take it over and I shall resume possession of the appartement that belonged to my mother." Meantime, would Madame Trouessart engage a few stout wenches to eke out the scanty hotel staff, most of which being German had already commenced its flight back to the fatherland with all the plunder it could carry off. The soldier-ex-hotel-waiter was provisionally engaged to remain, as long as the Belgian Government allowed ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... every village is a self-contained little commune. All trades necessary to supplying the wants of the villagers are represented in it. Besides the profits from his actual calling, nearly every man except the daily labourer, has a little bit of land which he farms, so as to eke out his scanty income. All possess a cow or two, a few goats, and probably a ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... probably that they had gone down to the shore to try and catch fish, or collect mussels, or anything that might have been thrown up. He and his companions were searching about for the same object, that they might eke out the diminishing store of their more nutritive food, and give the captain a larger supply. Peter, when not thus employed, read to the captain, as also to the other men, and Bill and the black were well pleased to listen, as were the captain and Hixon. Indeed, the light of God's blessed truth ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... solitudes of the forest. They put rude honey boxes up in the trees to serve as beehives, and it is from this honey and from the game that they kill with their bows and arrows and traps and spears that they manage to eke out a meager living. ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... sought to sell at an advance; merely in one case it was shares, in the other merchandise. Of course it was foolish for inexperienced country folk with small means to dabble in stocks and bonds, but why should not city people who were clever and had clever friends in the business eke out the cost of living by shrewd investments? In an old-fashioned sense it might be considered gambling; but, if it were true, as Wilbur and Mr. Williams both maintained, that the American people were addicted to speculation, was not the existence ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... Mabie as they came filing in. "Back already, and only out two hours? Got some meat, too, I see. That's good. Such appetites as you boys are developing threaten to eat us out of house and home soon, unless we eke out with game. ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... 'Political Songs'. One of the causes of the grievous scarcity of labour is believed to have been that nobles and others, under the pretence of husbandry, kept in their pay able-bodied dependants who, rather than eke out a miserable existence on the land, preferred ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... extensive use of sun-dried bricks of adobe has grown up within quite recent times. It is apparent, however, that the Zui builders preferred to use stone; and even at the present time they frequently eke out with stonework portions of a house when the supply of adobe has fallen short. An early instance of such supplementary use of stone masonry still survives in the church building, where the old Spanish adobe has been repaired and filled ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... clothes, and borrow their newest words—for they are ever inventing some cant phrase to startle dulness—and we make our language a foreign farrago. Why, here is even plain John Evelyn, that most pious of pedants, pleading for the enlistment of a troop of Gallic substantives and adjectives to eke out our native English!" ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... little into debt, in order to eke out their little ready money until the longed-for letters of credit should come from England; but at the end of six months credit and cash were ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... dissention among their neighbours.— Louvois supplied the Protestants in the Low Countries with money, while he persecuted them in France. The agents of the republic, more oeconomical, yet directed by the same motives, eke out corruption by precepts of sedition, and arm the leaders of revolt with the rights of man; but, forgetting the maxim that charity should begin at home, in their zeal for the freedom of other countries, they leave no portion of ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... anxiety to Ernest, for it was gone into with scrupulous care, and he was a good deal cross-examined about it. He would sometimes "write in" for articles necessary for his education, such as a portfolio, or a dictionary, and sell the same, as I have explained, in order to eke out his pocket money, probably to buy either music or tobacco. These frauds were sometimes, as Ernest thought, in imminent danger of being discovered, and it was a load off his breast when the cross-examination ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... its mood of moral horror. Sincerity bars out no themes; it only demands that the dramatist's moods and visions should be intense enough to keep him absorbed; that he should have something to say so engrossing to himself that he has no need to stray here and there and gather purple plums to eke out what was intended to be an apple tart. Here is the heart of the matter: You cannot get sincere drama out of those who do not see and feel with sufficient fervour; and you cannot get good sincere drama out of those who will not hoe their rows ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... It would be an interesting thing to analyze this sentiment, to trace it to its roots: it was so universal among successful sea-faring men that it must have had its origin in some trait distinctively peculiar to their profession. All the other women in the town or the village might eke out the family incomes by whatever devices they pleased; but the captains' wives were to be ladies. They were to wear silk gowns brought from many a land; they were to have ornaments of quaint fashion, picked up here and there; they were to have money enough in the bank ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... is growing in proportions and value. He also has time for the best literature of the world. It is his own fault if he remains akin to the clod he turns. Is it not more manly to co-work with Nature for a livelihood than to eke out a pallid, pitiful existence behind a counter, usurping some ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... hundred years ago, when America was chiefly inhabited by Indians two brothers, in England, John and Lawrence Washington, resolved to remove hither. As they were not poor, doomed to eke out a miserable existence from a reluctant soil, it is supposed that politics was the immediate cause of their removal. It was during the reign of Cromwell, and he made it hot for his enemies. In 1655 a general insurrection was attempted, and the vengeance of Cromwell descended upon ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... forget what I were a-talking about. But I don't forget, sonny! Look at me, I says, and see what I've come to, with my forty year o' sailorin' all about the world an' furrin parts—a poor rhumenaticky chap as is half a cripple, forced to eke out his miserable pension of a bob an' a tanner a day by pulling a rotten old tub of a boat back'ards and forruds, up and down Porchm'uth Harbo'r, a-tryin' to gain an honest livin', an' jest only arnin' bread an' ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... write musing epitaphs at every wind-beaten dwelling, whence the wretched denizens had fled in cold and poverty to a doubtful hospitality in the far South. Fences there were none, nor any living animals save the braying hybrids which limped across the naked plains to eke out existence upon some secluded patches of grass. These had been discharged from the army, and they added rather than detracted from the lonesomeness of the wild. Their great mournful eyes and shaggy heads glared from copses, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... the earth was thrown up on both walls from the intervening space, as well as on the exterior wall from the outside. Each of the walls runs completely round the enclosure, except where the steep bank of the little stream was utilized to eke out the inner wall for five or six rods on the west side, as shewn on the plan. Opposite the south end of this gap was the original entrance through the outer wall. The walls have been cut through in one or two other places, doubtless by settlers hauling ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne
... shooting matches, dog or rooster fights, and other activities of a similar character. He was, above all things, a good judge of whiskey. When not engaged in judging one thing or another, he managed to eke out a comfortable though sometimes perilous living by trading horses,—a profession which made him an almost infallible judge of men, notwithstanding two or three instances where he had erred with painful results to his person. Notably, the prodigious thrashing Jake Miller ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... wondering if you hadn't better come back to Baltimore with me," mused Jason. "I can eke out a living somehow for the ...
— Benefits Forgot - A Story of Lincoln and Mother Love • Honore Willsie
... the more serious fact that she had crept into his heart, which for the first time was active and demanding its share in his being. Then arose the horror that it was repelled by what it found in his imagination, cold, solitary, tortured souls, creatures who should be left to eke out their misery in private solitude, who had nothing to justify their exhibition to the world, who shamelessly reproached their fellows for the results of their own weakness, wretched clinging women, men hard as iron in their egoism.... ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... earnest, I assure you,' cried Goldthorpe cheerily. 'You see I'm tolerably well dressed still, but I've precious little money, and I want to eke out the little I've got for about three months. I'm writing a book. I think I shall manage to sell it when it's done, but it'll take me about three months yet. I don't care what sort of place I live in, so long as it's quiet. Couldn't we come ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... what a discovery it is! How you try to fight it off until the last moment! But it comes upon you surely and crushingly, and, cut, bruised, wounded, you slip away from the face of the world. If you are a brave man, you say boldly to yourself, 'I will eke out an existence in some humble way,' and you go away to a life of longing and regret. If you are a coward, you either leap over the parapets of life to hell, or go creeping back and fall at the feet of the thing that has damned you, willing to be third-rate, anything; for you are stung with ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... during the year past, but could hardly claim to be acquainted with him. I usually bought my morning paper of him during the cold weather, and I knew that his father was killed by a blasting accident some years before. Ben was the only child of his widowed mother, who managed to eke out a subsistence somehow with the aid of the little fellow, who was ever ready ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... haughtily; but looked at the old Squire and grew patient. She even tried to eke out the flagging conversation, and luckily remembered the news which Duke Dugdale had that morning ridden over to communicate. She could not help thinking it very odd that no one in the house had hitherto mentioned Mr. Brian ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... his reasons. If he be a minister, he sees in his offices some hundred clerks, belonging to the middle class. He knows that these active and intelligent, but underpaid men, are for the most part obliged to eke out a livelihood by secretly following some other occupation: one keeps the books of a land-steward, another those of a Jew. Whose fault is it? They well know that neither excellence of character nor length of service are carried to the credit of the civil functionary, and that, after ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... were still few and indigent, they could not afford a suitable support for all entrusted with the performance of ecclesiastical duties. Hence, before the recognition of Christianity by Constantine, even bishops in some countries were permitted by trade to eke out a scanty maintenance. "Let not bishops, elders, and deacons leave their places for the sake of trading," says a council held in the beginning of the fourth century, "nor travelling about the provinces let them be found dealing in fairs. However, to provide ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... other white or yellow roses not very fully blown—and your handy Meta would wind wet rags about their stalks and put them in an empty coffee-tin and despatch them by parcels post to Miss Gatty, Ecclesfield Vicarage, Sheffield, Yorks, they would be greatly welcomed to eke out the white decorations of my Mother's grave for the wedding-day. I am wildly watering my Paris Daisies—and hope to get some wild Ox-eye daisies also—as her name was Margaret (and her pet name Meta!). I am applying prayers and slopwater in equal proportions—like ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... friends. They had often enjoyed reading the account of John Gilpin's in America, and now thought that, as they were in England and near enough, they would celebrate theirs also at "the Bell at Edmonton." I accompanied them with "a little foot-page," to eke out the train, pretty and graceful and playful enough for the train of a princess. But our excursion turned out somewhat of a failure, in an opposite way to Gilpin's. Whereas he went too fast, we went too slow. First we took coach and went ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... whom he has trust. For the gulling, tell me, is it humane to talk so to this poor old man? Granting that his dependence on my medicine is vain, is it kind to deprive him of what, in mere imagination, if nothing more, may help eke out, with hope, his disease? For you, if you have no confidence, and, thanks to your native health, can get along without it, so far, at least, as trusting in my medicine goes; yet, how cruel an argument to use, with this afflicted one here. Is it not for all the world as if some brawny pugilist, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... Boufflers is ill of a fever, and the Duchess de Biron(806) goes next week to Switzerland:—mais qu'est que cela vous fait? I must eke out this with a few passages that I think will divert you, from the heaviest of all books, Mr. Malone's Shakspeare, in ten thick octavos, with notes, that are an extract of all the opium that is spread through the works of all the bad playwrights of that age. Mercy on the poor gentleman's patience! ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... now almost-forgotten race—the Saracen—are still to be found on the northern seaboard of Africa, in the kingdom called Morocco, where they strive to eke out a scant existence from the arid plains of that ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... variety of character, runaway boys, truant apprentices, drunken mechanics and broken-down mankind generally. Among these are men who have seen better days. They are decayed gentlemen who appear regularly in Wall street, and eke out the day by such petty business as they may get hold of, and are lucky if they can make enough to carry them through the night. In all lodging houses the rule holds good 'first come, first served,' and the last man in the room ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... disinterestedness sits very prettily on the heiress of Ditton-in-the-Dale, Long Netherby, and Waltham Ferrers, three manors, and ten thousand pounds a year to buy a bridegroom! Poor I, with my face for my fortune, must needs make my wit eke out my want of dowry. And I'm not one, I promise you, siss, to choose love in a cottage. No, no! Give me your Lord St. George, and I'll make over all my right and title to poor George Delawarr this minute. Heigho! I believe the fellow ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... state in which we have lived. If our chronometer is anywhere near right, we ought to see the American Isles to-morrow or next day. If there are not there, we have only the chance, for a few days, of a stray ship, for we cannot eke out the provisions more than five or six days longer, and our strength is failing very fast. I was much surprised to-day to note how my legs have wasted away above my knees: they are hardly thicker than my upper arm used to be. Still, I trust in God's infinite mercy, and feel sure he will ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... life of the ship had come to an end. The solidarity of the men had gone. They became indifferent to each other. It was Falk who took in hand the distribution of such food as remained. They boiled their boots for soup to eke out the rations, which only made their hunger more intolerable. Sometimes whispers of hate were heard passing between the languid skeletons that drifted endlessly to and fro, north and south, east and west, upon that ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... training my own perceptions, though I should try to preserve as at present a considerable portion of my time free from the grind of teaching. Then much as I despise the method of rushing into print prematurely in order to achieve a newspaper scientific reputation, I should expect to eke out my income by occasional magazine articles and presently a book. With twenty-five hundred or three thousand a year we ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... trees, outhouses, etc. appearing at the first rays of the spring sun to lay their eggs and die. Others pass through the frost and snow as pupae, bursting their cerements in the sunshine, to live their brief life and perpetuate their race; others eke out a half dormant existence as minute larvae, others pass the winter in the egg state. In fact, each species has its idiosyncrasy. [Footnote: Here, perhaps, I may explode that myth and "enormous gooseberry" of the mild winter or early spring, headed in the newspaper every ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... reconstruct your whole life for you, as far as I know it, from your very childhood. I'm particularly anxious you should not merely be TOLD what took place, but should remember the past. There are gaps in my own knowledge I want you to eke out. There are places I want you to help me myself over. And besides, it'll be more satisfactory to yourself to remember ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... Saul's disposition, which had probably been in his mind all along. It says more for his subtlety than for his truthfulness. With all his nobility, he had a streak of true Oriental craft and stood on the moral level of his times and country, in his readiness to eke out the lion's skin with the fox's tail. It was a shrewd idea to make Saul betray himself by the way in which he took David's absence; but a lie is a lie, and cannot be justified, though it may be palliated, by the straits of the liar. At the same time ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of the doors is the Pauline Chart. Have you never seen the Pauline Chart? It was prepared in colored inks, by Mr. Parker, a theological student with a turn for penmanship, and lithographed, and was sold by him to eke out the avails of what are inaptly termed "supplies." You would find it exceedingly convenient. It shows in a tabulated form, for ready reference, the incidents of Saint Paul's career, arranged chronologically. Thus you can find at a glance the visit ...
— Saint Patrick - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... my little garden, and hope to raise a few vegetables to eke out a miserable subsistence for my family. My daughter Ann reads Shakspeare to me o' nights, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... the seeds of ennui subtly distributed through her frame, to reach a sudden development in the heat of a Californian summer. She longed for the rains to begin, that in their violence and the sound of the wind she might gain a sense of life in action by which to eke out her dull and expressionless days. She was, as Nicky Dyer had said, "a good un to 'old 'er tongue," and therein lay her greatest strength as ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... atones for his dishonesty; and there is about him a strange dislike to conventionality and to law which is so interesting as to make up the balance. I have always regarded your father as a most excellent man, but thoroughly dishonest. He would rob any one,—but always to eke out his own gifts to other people. He has, therefore, to my ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... near the bandstand watching the performance in the ring. Some of the people are already getting up to go out, and stand for this last act, and will not mind the shouts of "Down in front! Down there!" which the boys eagerly join in, to eke out their bliss a little longer by keeping away even the appearance of anything transitory in it. The country-jake comes stumbling awkwardly into the ring, but he is perfectly sober, and he boldly leaps astride the mule, which tries all its arts to shake him off, plunging, kicking, rearing. ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... the lower classes, and tradesmen, and the best people, and good families, as I supposed nobody in this country ever did,—in earnest. To be sure, I have always been reading of characters who had such opinions, but I thought they were just put into novels to eke out somebody's unhappiness,—to keep the high-born daughter from marrying beneath her for love, and so on; or else to be made fun of in the person of some silly old woman or some odious snob; and I could hardly believe at first that our Bostonian was serious in talking ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... the jagged front of a range of heights where occasional clumps of pine and cedar, scrub oak and juniper, seemed the only vegetable products hardy enough to withstand the alternations of intense heat by day and moderate cold by night, or to find sufficient sustenance to eke out a living on so barren a soil. Out to the eastward, stretching away to an opposite range, lies a sandy desert dotted at wide intervals with little black bunches of "scrub mezquite" and blessed with only one redeeming patch ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... counties of England. There, an actual premium was set upon improvidence, if not on vice, by the wholesale practice of giving out-door relief in aid of wages, and in proportion to the number of children in the family, legitimate or illegitimate. The excuse was that it was better to eke out scanty earnings by doles than to break up households, and bring all their inmates into the workhouse. The inevitable effect of such action was that wages fell as doles increased, that paupers so pensioned were preferred ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... of golden simplicity, was passing on that October night of Anne Brinsmade's ball. Those who made merry there were soon to be driven and scattered before the winds of war; to die at Wilson's Creek, or Shiloh, or to be spared for heroes of the Wilderness. Some were to eke out a life of widowhood in poverty. All were to live soberly, chastened by what they had seen. A fear knocked at Colonel Carvel's heart as he stood watching the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... control a mad elephant; You can shut the mouth of the bear and the tiger; You can ride a lion; You can play with the cobra; By alchemy you can eke out your livelihood; You can wander through the universe incognito; You can make vassals of the gods; You can be ever youthful; You can walk on water and live in fire; But control of the mind is ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... was the reason of the heart. She would give a few womanly reasons why she wanted the voters of Michigan to give the ballot to women. The want of the ballot prevents woman from possessing knowledge and power. If a woman performs the most menial services for the sake of her children, to eke out for them a subsistence, she does not do it because the law demands it, but because there is no other way open to her to obtain a livelihood. She did not ask for the ballot because the laws of the State are barbarous. She did not believe that men can make laws that will ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... eke out the little income which is left to you with sufficient for you to live—not as you ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... persistent sheep-counting, much later to sleep, Shelby woke with the morning far advanced and the hour of his departure near. It was necessary to eke out his wardrobe with a purchase or two against the journey with the governor, and between his shopping and his breakfast, the deliberate talk he had meant to have with Mrs. Hilliard bade fair to dwindle to a handshake. As the morning brought no grounds for ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... true observance seek to eke out that Wherein toward me my homely stars have fail'd ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... western portion is principally marshes cut up by numerous creeks. All the sea islands produce the long staple cotton known as sea-island cotton, and before the war a very valuable variety. A few negroes occupy the places abandoned by the proprietor, and eke out a ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... out of their poor wages in Government offices they might keep the woman to whom they owed their being. Always the greater part of the people of Paris lives precariously on the thin edge of a limited income, stinting and scraping, a sou here, a sou there, to balance the week's accounts and eke out a little of that joie de vivre, which to every Parisian is an essential need. Now by the edict of war all life's economies had been annihilated. There were no more wages out of which to reckon the cost of an extra meal, or out of which to squeeze ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... clerk, was almost a power in Sauveterre; and the greatest personages there paid their court to him. His official duties were of very humble nature, and ill paid; but he knew how to eke out his income by other occupations, of which the court took no notice; and these added largely both to his importance in the community and ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... off in the midst, choking with what miserable despair I knew, and shared as well; and throwing himself down in the wet grass, he would eke out the bitter words with such ravings and sobbings as bubble up in sheer ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... his cheery, debonnaire fashion, ever gentlemanly and always indolent. He had taken up his residence in one of the many disused shacks which dotted round the market-place, and there, apparently, sought to beguile the hours and eke out the few remaining dollars which were his. For Lablache, in his sweeping process, had still been forced to hand over some money, over and above his due, as a result of the sale of the young rancher's property. The trifling amount, ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... professions "rolled into one." In the provinces he is a star of the first magnitude, known by the name of Moses Scoffer; in the city a myth known to his pals as Swear 'Em Charley; and in our neighborhood he is a cipher—incog., but perfectly understood. He contrives to eke out a tolerable livelihood: I should say that his provincial blasphemies and his city practise bring him a clear five hundred pounds a year at the least. But is it not the wages of iniquity? He has a few followers here, but only a few. He has recently done a very silly ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... horrible Republican papers here have (AS WE KNOW) already got hold of the unspeakable sheet and are preparing to reproduce the article: that is such parts of it as they may put forward (with innuendoes and sous-entendus to eke out the rest) without exposing themselves to a suit for defamation. Poor Leonie de Villepreux has been with us constantly and Jeanne and her husband have telegraphed that we may expect them day after to-morrow. They are evidently immensely emotionnes, for they almost never telegraph. They wish ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... groups of islands the eastern is the more fertile and the inhabitants are more addicted to agriculture than are the natives of the western islands, who, as a consequence of the greater barrenness of the soil, have to eke out their subsistence to a considerable extent by fishing.[276] And there is other evidence to shew that the Eastern Islanders have attained to a somewhat higher stage of social evolution than their Western brethren;[277] the more favourable natural conditions under which they live may possibly ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... Mr. Lightenhome calculated. He saw that if he were saved the buying of the groceries for himself, he could eke out his small hoard till after Christmas. The poorhouse receded a little from the foreground of his vision as he gazed into the eyes of the boy opposite him at the table. He did not know that his own eyes spoke eloquently of his deliverance, but Elnathan choked ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... to cruise in the Caribbean Sea, out of sight of land for the most part, on the lookout for the plate and bullion galleons from Mexico; and when we finally sail from here I wish to take on board as much fresh meat, fruit, and vegetables as I can, to help eke out the ships' stores. Now I do not want to carry about with me nearly three hundred men who will be of no use to me, and who will only help us to eat up our provisions faster than I wish. Moreover, these men are a constant menace to us ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... among other papers, a half-burnt manuscript was found upon his grate among some exhausted cinders, as if he had been trying to use the unfortunate 'Waif of the Moorland' to eke out his last fire. Moreover, the proprietor of the Politician told Colonel Mohun of having remonstrated with him on the exceeding weakness and poorness of the 'Constantia' poetry, 'which,' as that indignant personage added, 'was evidently done merely as a ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... turned into easy verse would be as light and popular a task as I could possibly select for a commencement. I did not, however, think it prudent to give too many Letters at first and accordingly have been obliged (in order to eke out a sufficient number of pages) to reprint some of those trifles, which had already appeared in the public journals. As in the battles of ancient times, the shades of the departed were sometimes seen among the combatants, so I thought I might ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... broken heart;—and who was to care for the orphan child of the forgotten friendless? An old pauper who lives in that hut, scarcely distinguishable from the shielings of the charcoal-burners, was glad to take her from the parish for a weekly mite that helps to eke out her own subsistence. For two or three years the child was felt a burden by the solitary widow; but ere she had reached her fifth summer, Alice Elleray never left the hut without darkness seeming to overshadow ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... injured her spine, when a small child, she has been unable to walk for years. She cuts and sews carpet rags, given her by friends and neighbors, and from their sale to a carpet weaver in a near-by town, helps her widowed mother eke out her small income." ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... money, and the craftsmen who had depended on them for support were suffering from poverty: the makers of small articles of a religious or funerary character, carvers of wood or stone, joiners, painters of mummy-cases, and workers in bronze, alone managed to eke out a bare livelihood, thanks to commissions still given to them by officials attached to the temples. Theban art, which in its best period had excelled in planning its works on a gigantic scale, now gladly devoted itself to the production of mere knick-knacks, in place of the colossal ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... section of the line, and for this reason and for another it was held by comparatively small numbers. Botha was an acute observer and had learnt the moves of the British autumn manoeuvre opening, a holding attack on the centre not intended to be pushed home in order to eke out paucity of numbers operating on a wide front. Lord Roberts, in spite of his superiority of strength, could not hope to inflict a decisive defeat upon Botha's well-posted commandos, but only to remove them out of striking distance of Pretoria, ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... foresters, shepherds, swineherds, and servants of the household. They either lived under the lord's own roof, or might even have their cottage in the village with its strip of land about it, sufficient, with the provisions and cloth provided them, to eke out a scanty livelihood. Distinct from these three classes and their officials (bailiffs, seneschals, reeves, &c.) were the free tenants, who did no regular work for the manor, but could not leave or part with their land. ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... Unsophisticated, uncultured as he was, he succeeded in grasping the root of the problem—Education. They were living a lie. The very environment conspired to perpetuate that lie. When one among them stood up and averred that Life meant something more than this, that Man was not made to eke out his life in bitter misery, that the result of the toil of the worker was filched by some inexplicable process, he was immediately voted "balmy." They were not ripe for fighting. There was as yet no clearly seen Cause that would rouse ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... have been nailed. In very halt and ill-formed letters a sign announces "The Royal Shop," a title certainly savoring of affluence. But it is a sad commentary upon the prosperity of the Cove that even a Syrian trader has tried the place and failed to eke out a living there. ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick |
