"Scanty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gangsman all things were reputedly lawful, some things were by no means expedient. He could with impunity deprive almost any ablebodied adult of his freedom, and he could sometimes, with equal impunity, add to his scanty earnings by restoring that freedom for a consideration in coin of the realm; but when, like Josh Cooper, sometime gangsman at Hull, he extended his prerogative to the occupants of hen-roosts, he was apt to find himself ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... obedience in their early youth. They were highly regarded in the Egyptian home, and were brought up in an atmosphere of love and filial respect. The day of a child's birth was regarded as determining its destiny. The child was brought up on the simplest food, and furnished with scanty clothing, in order that its body might be ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... skin was so scanty, inspired you with a strong desire to relieve his sufferings by cutting a slit somewhere. He at once remembered Augustin, who had been his parents' coachman, and who had given ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... angry jet from a side of the pan. By prodding a prong of the fork under the kidney he detached it and turned it turtle on its back. Only a little burnt. He tossed it off the pan on to a plate and let the scanty brown gravy ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... "north-west coast" were suddenly destroyed. A cripple, in a strange land, without money or friends, a cloud seemed to rest on my prospects. During the remainder of the day and the succeeding night I suffered much from "the blues." My spirits were out of tune. The scanty hospital fare that was offered me I sent away untouched, and sleep refused to bury my senses in forgetfulness until long after the midnight hour. This, however, might have been partly owing to the involuntary ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... 'Collision. Just ahead of us. Mr. Symons saw it.' A push made him stagger against the mizzen-mast, and he caught hold of a rope. The old training-ship chained to her moorings quivered all over, bowing gently head to wind, and with her scanty rigging humming in a deep bass the breathless song of her youth at sea. 'Lower away!' He saw the boat, manned, drop swiftly below the rail, and rushed after her. He heard a splash. 'Let go; clear the falls!' He leaned over. The river alongside seethed in frothy streaks. The cutter ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... lose now. He pulled out the hatchet, raised it with both hands, and let it descend without force, almost mechanically, on the old woman's head. But directly he had struck the blow his strength returned. According to her usual habit, Alena Ivanovna was bareheaded. Her scanty gray locks, greasy with oil, were gathered in one thin plait, which was fixed to the back of her neck by means of a piece of horn comb. The hatchet struck her just on the sinciput, and this was partly owing to ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... years,—ten-elevenths of His life. He knew temptation, cunning, subtle, stormy, persistent. He knew the inner longings of a nature awakening, and yet what it meant to be held down by outer circumstances. He knew the sharp test of waiting, long waiting. He knew hunger and bodily weariness, and the pinch of scanty funds. He was homeless at a time when a home would have been most grateful. He knew what it meant to have the life-plan broken, and something else, a bitter something else thrust ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... astronomers in general the amount of careful attention that it deserves; perhaps because so little can really be made of it as far as explanation is concerned. I have referred to the restraint that scientific writers apparently feel in speaking of it. The grounds for speculation that it affords may be too scanty to lead to long discussions, yet it piques curiosity, and as we shall see in a moment has finally led to a most interesting theory. Once it was the subject of an elaborate series of studies which carried the observer all round the world. That was in 1845—46, during the United ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... but the nights were exceedingly cold, and the dew heavy. Having lost our blankets, we passed miserable nights. There was no fuel with which we could light our fire; even the dung of animals was so scarce, that we could not, during seven days, afford to cook our scanty meals more than thrice, and the four last grouse that ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... have allowed him to sit there all night, each was willing to wait yet a while, in the hope that somebody else's humanity would give in first, and save her from the necessity of offering him a seat by the fireside, and a share of the oatmeal porridge which probably would be scanty enough for her own household. For it must be borne in mind that all the houses in the place were occupied by poor people, with whom the one virtue, Charity, was, in a measure, at home, and amidst many sins, cardinal and other, managed to live in ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... the wane, and a cooler air came in stronger puffs, and made a view of Epinal, which was fastened to the wall by two pins, flap up and down, the scanty window curtains, which had formerly been white, but were now yellow and covered with fly-specks, looked as if they were going to fly off and seemed to struggle to get away, like ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... this, the Greeks ceased not to attack them, by this gate and by others, and held them so short that six or seven times a day the whole host was forced to run to arms. Nor could they forage for provisions more than four bow-shots' distance from the camp. And their stores were but scanty, save of flour and bacon, and of those they had a little; and of fresh meat none at all, save what they got from the horses that were killed. And be it known to you that there was only food generally ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin
... was his need,— And dashed the rowels in his steed, Like arrow through the archway sprung, The ponderous gate behind him rung; To pass there was such scanty room, The bars, ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... abode in rude hovels or caves by the road-side, and sally forth in all their hideousness to beset the traveller with piteous cries for assistance. Some of these poor lepers are loathsome in appearance to the last degree; their scanty coverings of rags and tatters conceals nothing of the ravages of their dread disease; some sit at the entrance to their hovels, stretching out their hands and piteously appealing for alms; others drop down exhausted in the road while endeavoring ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... "my greatest cause of difference with the democrats is their laying, and causing people to lay, so great a stress on the concerns of this world as to occupy their whole minds and hearts, and to leave a few scanty and lukewarm thoughts for the heavenly treasure." Zachary Macaulay, who never canted, and who knew that on the 16th of August the Manchester Magistrates were thinking just as much or as little about religion as the Manchester populace, none the less took the same side as Wilberforce. ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... Oft he turned the treasure over, Counting fondly and recounting; And he joyed to hear the jingle Of the yellow coins he counted. Threescore years had been devoted, Scraping of this gain together. He had fed on scanty portion, Grudging sorely every morsel; And had clothed himself in raiments Which a beggar scarce would stand in. He had never fed the hungry, And had never clothed the naked, That he might increase ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... Carrick shore; For mony a beast to dead she shot, And perish'd mony a bonnie boat, And shook baith meikle corn and bear, And kept the country-side in fear), Her cutty sark, o' Paisley harn, That while a lassie she had worn, In longitude tho' sorely scanty, It was her best, and she was vauntie.— Ah! little kend thy reverend grannie, That sark she coft for her wee Nannie, Wi' twa pund Scots ('twas a' her riches), Wad ever ...
— Tam O'Shanter • Robert Burns
... food supplies for the most part confiscated. Most of the people were old men, women, and children. They were thus placed in hopeless imprisonment, without shelter or food. There was no work for them in the cities to which they were driven. They were left with nothing to depend upon except the scanty charity of the inhabitants of the cities and with slow starvation their ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... to men that are awake in their souls, than to have wrong thoughts of God—thoughts that are narrow, and that pinch and pen up his mercy to scanty and beggarly conclusions, and rigid legal conditions; supposing that it is rude, and an intrenching upon his majesty to come ourselves, or to invite others, until we have scraped and washed, and rubbed off as much of our dirt from us as we think ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... rest of the congregation kept this fast I do not know. But it was a dreadful day for us. I was awakened in the pitchy night to go off with my Father to the Room, where a scanty gathering held a penitential prayer-meeting. We came home, as dawn was breaking, and in process of time sat down to breakfast, which consisted—at that dismal hour—of slices of dry bread and a tumbler of cold water ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... you be so kind as to show me just how it goes, please?" Miss Twining was shaking down her scanty locks. ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... but honest pair, and laboured hard to make ends meet. William Lockwood, his father, was a cloth-dresser, and worked on Almondbury common, about a mile from his home, earning but a scanty living for the family. In those days, when machinery was almost unknown in the manufacture and finish of cloth, the men had to work harder and longer and earned much less than now. Those were the times when hard-working men thought that the introduction of machinery into cloth mills would take ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... a remarkable unanimity of thought, as, for the past fortnight, they had been steadily drawing out their thousands. Wild railroad-speculations, immense mortgages on real estate that now lay flat and dead: scanty available assets that would hardly pay twenty cents on ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... days after this Miss Bennett had her secret work, which she carefully hid when she saw Hetty coming. Slowly, in this way, she made a pretty needle-book, a tiny pincushion, and an emery bag like a big strawberry. Then from her own scanty stock she added needles, pins, thread, and her only pair of small scissors, scoured to the last ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... inhabited by a vast number of mechanics and poor people, a few shops are open at an early hour of the morning; and a very poor man, with a thin and sickly woman by his side, may be seen with their little basket in hand, purchasing the scanty quantity of necessaries they can afford, which the time at which the man receives his wages, or his having a good deal of work to do, or the woman's having been out charing till a late hour, prevented their procuring over-night. The coffee-shops ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... common European currency) of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), but Denmark has decided not to join 12 other EU members in the euro; even so, the Danish krone remains pegged to the euro. Growth in 2004 was sluggish, yet above the scanty 0.3% of 2003. Because of high GDP per capita, welfare benefits, a low Gini index, and political stability, the Danish people enjoy living standards topped by no other nation. A major long-term issue will be the sharp decline in the ratio ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... behind, though not all our own people. We saw them on every side, but they were a mere handful in the midst of a strange people in a strange land, where man and nature presented entirely new aspects. The look of the people, the exceedingly scanty dress of the labouring class, and the long flowing robes of those in better circumstances, the marks on the foreheads and arms of the Hindus, showing the gods whose worshippers they were, their processions with noisy, unmusical music, the public buildings of the people, the mosques of the Muhammadans, ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... belonged to Voltaire he gently evicted a cat, so that I might occupy the chair next to him, and said, in the language of Brummell's time, that he was "monstrous glad to see me." He pointed to objects of interest which adorned his walls and tables, such as old French fashion-plates of ladies in very scanty raiment; to musical clocks, of which several were presents from crowned heads; to sketches by d'Orsay, and to framed tickets for Almack's. "Whenever the dear lady next door," he said, with a glance at the seminudities of the French fashion-plates, and alluding to Miss ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... laws. The injunctions of their scriptures have always sufficed to maintain the poor, particularly their religious mendicants. The mendicants themselves are restrained from disturbing the householders often. None again save the well-to-do were to be visited by the mendicants, so that men of scanty means might not be compelled to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... gist of it was this; Carrie had been very imprudent; she would not let well alone, or be content with a sufficient round of duties. She worked hard with her pupils all day, and besides that she had a district and Sunday school; and now Mrs. Smedley had persuaded her to devote two evenings of her scanty leisure to the ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... western Europe, chiefly depended for their subsistence on potatoes—the most uncertain and the least nutritious of the crops used for human food. Many hundred thousands of them had no employment in their own country and no means of livelihood except the produce of the scanty patches around their own turf cabins. Tens of thousands flocked to England annually seeking harvest work, and a small number emigrated to Canada or the United States, the passage money for an emigrant being then almost ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... who attend the meetings are disposed to support Peel. Stanley securing them as his adherents, and placing himself at their head, must in fact subscribe to their opinions and disposition; and as men are more inclined to join a numerous than a scanty sect, fresh adherents may repair to that standard. Eventually he will join the Government, and the best chance of weathering the storm will be through ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... came the full realization of her scanty dress, her pitiful little hat and ribbon, her big, heavy shoes, her ignorance of where to go or what to do; and from a sickening wave which crept over her, she felt she was going to become very ill. Then out of the mass she saw a pair of big, brown boy eyes, three seats from her, and there was ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... A scanty train, In that far age, approach'd the wide domain; The wide domain, with game and fruitage crown'd, Supplied their food uncultured from the ground. By nature form'd to rove, the humankind, Of freedom fond, will ramble unconfined, Till all the region fills, ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... hands on her stomach and twirled her thumbs. A red spot was in each coffee-coloured cheek, and the mole in her scanty eyebrow jerked ominously. Her lips were set in a taut line, and her angry little eyes were fixed upon a girl who sat by the window strumming a guitar, her chin raised with an air of ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... the two I was lost in amazement. Could those minute, caterpillar-like objects, covered with scanty and scattering hairs, lying side by side in the bottom of their miniature cradle, be the offspring of the winged sprites of the bird-world? Would those short, wide, duck-like beaks ever become the needle-shaped probers of flowers? Would ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... worth watching. The adversaries were just the same height and differed little in weight. Capito seemed more compact and steady; Commodus more lithe and agile. Capito was a handsome man and made a fine figure in his scanty, leek-green fencing tunic. Commodus, always vain, of his good looks, delighted in exhibiting himself totally nude, not only because he loved to shock elderly noblemen imbued with old-fashioned ideas of propriety, but also ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... frock came wandering carelessly through the aisle toward him, her hands clasped behind her back, her eyes searching the crowd sitting about her. Her figure was short and pudgy and so violently compressed into her crimson gown that she seemed to be oozing out of a scanty chalice. She was singing a most provocative song and, catching sight of Joe as he struggled along, face uptilted, and, looking into his eyes most impudently, let him have the full import of ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... So scanty was her allowance of food, that more than once the thought, crossed her, whether or not, death by famine would be her allotted doom; and human nature shuddered, but the spirit did not quail! Hour ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... Orchis, because the truth was, that until the lucky prize came to him, Orchis had gone under the nickname of Doleful Dumps, he having been beforetimes of a hypochondriac turn, so much so as to save up and put by a few dollars of his scanty earnings against that rainy day he used to groan so ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... his first imprisonment. Even then 'twas a sorry offence, which merited no more than a month, so that he returned to freedom and his fiddle with his character unbesmirched. Serious as ever in pious exercises, he gained a scanty living as strolling musician. There was never a tavern in Sheffield where the twang of his violin was unheard, and the skill wherewith he extorted music from a single string earned him the style ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... not been an hour together, A scanty hour or so, When Mehtab Singh rose in his place And turned about ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... that we parade; and not to nursemaids only is the soldier irresistible. The glamour of romance hangs round him. Terrible with knife and spike and pellet he stalks through this puddle of a world, disdainful of drab mankind. Multitudes may toil at keeping alive, drudging through their scanty years for no hope but living and giving life; he shares with very few the function of inflicting death, and moves gaily clad and light of heart. "No doubt, some civilian occupations are very useful," said the author of an old drill-book; I think it was Lord Wolseley, and it was ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... But she had only scanty opportunities of working upon her father in this or in any way; Mr. Copley's visits to Brierley, always short, began now to be ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... period when some of the most decisive successes over the Dutch were won. It is to be observed, however, that a vigorous military government, such as Cromwell's was, can assert itself in the fleet as well as in the army, creating an effective organization out of scanty materials, especially when at war with a commercial state of weak military constitution, like Holland. It was the story of Rome and Carthage repeated. Louis XIV. for a while accomplished the same. But under the laxity of a liberal popular government, which England increasingly enjoyed after the ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... secret by which metals may be transmuted is not, as the old alchemists seem to imply, identical with that by which the elixir of life is extracted. He had only been enabled to discover, in the niggard strata of the lands within range of his travel, a few scanty morsels of the glorious substance. From these he had extracted scarcely enough of the elixir to fill a third of that little glass which I have just drained. He guarded every drop for himself. Who that holds healthful life as the one boon above all price ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... perihelion always turns his south pole towards the sun and therefore towards the Earth. We see that between the dates June 3rd to August 3rd—or in two months—the polar snow had almost completely vanished. This denotes a very scanty covering. It must be remembered that Mars even when nearest to the sun receives but half our supply of ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... is based on service activities connected with the country's strategic location and status as a free trade zone in northeast Africa. Two-thirds of the inhabitants live in the capital city; the remainder are mostly nomadic herders. Scanty rainfall limits crop production to fruits and vegetables, and most food must be imported. Djibouti provides services as both a transit port for the region and an international transshipment and refueling ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... autumn of 1530 on to the end of 1533 Michelangelo worked at the Medicean monuments. His letters are singularly scanty during all this period, but we possess sufficient information from other sources to enable us to reconstruct a portion of his life. What may be called the chronic malady of his existence, that never-ending worry with the tomb of Julius, assumed an acute form again in ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... innocent, but he could not wholly acquit himself of complicity in the poor old woman's fate. Mr. Benny had a troublesome and tender conscience in all matters that concerned his duty towards his neighbour. The School Board was driving Mrs. Butson out of employ, taking away her scanty earnings; and he was Clerk to the School Board. To be sure, if he resigned to-morrow, another man would take his place, and Mrs. Butson be not one penny the better. Mr. Benny saw this, yet it did ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... woe from grandeur springs, And learn to pity, not to envy kings! The villager, born humbly and bred hard, Content his wealth, and Poverty his guard, In action simply just, in conscience clear, By guilt untainted, undisturb'd by fear, 120 His means but scanty, and his wants but few, Labour his business, and his pleasure too, Enjoys more comforts in a single hour Than ages give the wretch condemn'd to power. Call'd up by health, he rises with the day, And ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... here that Bill complained of the scanty allowance of his rations to an officer, when plum pudding was served ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... A scanty garment rudely made of sacks Hangs from their loins; bright blankets drape their backs; About their necks are twisted tangled strings Of gaudy beads, while tinkling wire and rings Of yellow brass on wrists and fingers glow. Thus, to assuage the anger of the foe The cunning Indians decked ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... home to the very marrow of your bones. In winters past the poor had come from miles round to Rowallan, where a boiler full of soup was never off the kitchen fire. This winter, driven by want, some of those who remembered the old days had come back once more, and Lull, out of her scanty store, had filled once more the big boiler. On this Monday evening, as she stirred the soup, she mourned for the good ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... can no longer be felt in the lower abdomen, when the lochia has passed through the three changes already mentioned, and the flow is whitish or yellowish, scanty and odorless, the patient may sit up in a chair increasingly each day. Such conditions are usually found anywhere from the tenth to the fifteenth day. The patient first sits up a little in a chair—she has already been exercising some in bed—and this enables her to sit ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... he dwells in the region of the direct categorical proposition and the unambiguous term; so long as he does not deny the rightly drawn conclusion after accepting the major and minor premisses. This may seem a scanty virtue and very easy grace. Yet experience shows it to be too hard of attainment for those who tamper with disinterestedness of conviction, for the sake of luxuriating in the softness of spiritual transport without interruption from a syllogism. It is true that there are now and then in life ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... those creatures that a man meets with sometimes—creatures who are for ever on the watch to pounce, and who are incapable of making allowances for any male frailty—smooth, smiling creatures, with thin lips, hair a little scanty at the front, and a quietly omniscient 'don't-tell-me' tone. Mrs. Alice Challice had a mouth as wide as her ideas, and a full underlip. She was a woman who, as it were, ran out to meet you when you started to cross the dangerous roadway ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... slave in Virginia. He rented a house in Richmond and lived in it with his wife Sarah Holloway. Harris was a painter and gave the greater part of his earnings to his master. The wife earned money by washing and gave to her mistress part of her scanty earnings. The wife's second name was that of her master Major Halloway in whose house she had been married in 1825 to Harris by the Reverend Richard Vaughan, a Baptist minister, a free man. The couple had ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... assemblage there congregated, and the most shy, and yet he had the satisfaction of frequently seeing six or eight of them displaying their beautiful necks as they were perched within a few feet of him. He states that the scanty supply of water remaining in the cavity must soon have been exhausted by the thousands of birds that daily resorted to it, if the rains which had so long been suspended ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... When their scanty meal was ended, Mrs. Ferguson ordered them to go out and help Sandy Ferguson, her husband, who was waiting outside for them. At first Elsie felt disposed to refuse, but on second thoughts, she obeyed. Sandy Ferguson was on the spot, his wife in the kitchen, with the cottage ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Among the somewhat scanty congregation which had remained after the usual morning service, sat Sir Arthur Maxwell. A year ago he would have been inclined to laugh at the idea of his son sacrificing all his brilliant worldly prospects to enter the Church. He was, ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... thy scanty mantle clad, Thy snowy bosom sunward spread, Thou lifts thy unassuming head In humble guise; But now the share uptears thy bed, ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... tender-hearted over it yet, and believe that it was, after all, not so bad as it might have been. At any rate, it enabled me to find some relief from my passionate unrest in occupation, and even my own high-sounding phrases may have taught me some scanty heroism. After all, if one fights one's own battle bravely, does it make so much matter about other things? Our battles to-day, like the rest of those fought since creation, show poor cause if regarded from any other ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... its peculiar shortcomings and virtues. It was for the most part stony and unfertile. Only a shallow layer of good soil covered a part of its hard foundation rock, which often in turn lay bare on the surface. The Athenian farmer had a sturdy struggle to win a scanty crop, and about the only products he could ever raise in abundance for export were olives (which seemed to thrive on scanty soil and scanty rainfall) and honey, the work ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... man owes its great misery to its cause. He who makes himself a beggar, by having made himself a brute, is miserable indeed. He who has no solace, who has only agonizing recollections and harrowing remorse, as he looks on his cold hearth, his scanty table, his ragged children, has indeed to bear a crushing weight of woe. That he suffers, is a light thing. That he has brought on himself this suffering by the voluntary extinction of his reason, that is the terrible ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... of food to the colony, these runagates had devoured perforce the provisions that should have victualed the Fortune on her return voyage, and the colonists were forced for humanity's sake, to supply her out of their own scanty stock. ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... information as they got on the door-step of 911 Bernard Street was scanty and useless. The house was a typical Bloomsbury lodging-place, let off in floors and rooms. Its proprietor, summoned from a neighbouring house, recollected, with considerable difficulty and after consultation of a penny pocket-book, ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... aspect. The house was of one story only, with a window on either side of the door, and no other appeared in sight; but a little smoke rising from the chimney seemed to promise a better reception than the desolate landscape and the girl's scanty dress had led ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... situated in the Argilian country on high ground across the river, not far from Amphipolis, and commanding a view on all sides, and thus made it impossible for Cleon's army to move without his seeing it; for he fully expected that Cleon, despising the scanty numbers of his opponent, would march against Amphipolis with the force that he had got with him. At the same time Brasidas made his preparations, calling to his standard fifteen hundred Thracian mercenaries and all the Edonians, ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... sacrificed ambition, and buried talents? Is humility to be rewarded only with mortification? Is obscurity and retirement the favourite scene of uneasiness, ingratitude, and impertinence? They shall be no longer my torment. In no scene can I meet with a more scanty success." ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... Lizzie Stitch by name, sobbing over the cinders in her sitting-room grate. The besmirched little face, like a sodden little pudding, had been covered with grimy hands, and the thin little chest had heaved under the scanty cotton blouse and the stress of the tale of betrayal ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... gale, And reach the sound Where we were bound. And now our ship, so gay and grand, Glides past the green and lovely land, And at the isle Moors for a while. Our horse-hoofs now leave hasty print; We ride—of ease there's scanty stint— In heat and haste O'er Gautland's waste: Though in a hurry to be married, The king can't ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... the hunting-grounds; besides that, white soldiers had fought them if they moved to their old haunts, sacred for their use and bequeathed to them by their ancestors. In dead of Winter, when the snows lay deep and they were in their teepees, crouching around the scanty fire, soldiers had charged on horseback through the villages, shooting into the teepees, killing women ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... to glow, Humblest of all the rock's cold daughters, No blossom bowed its stalk to show Where stole thy still and scanty waters. ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... the means and scanty was the allowance, yet they came in the hour of need as manna in the wilderness, ofttimes wet with the dews of heavenly love; and ever, in my laborious pilgrimage, I have been allowed to stand ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... a pace or so, about the scanty wall of shrubbery. He pulled back a bit of old and faded silk, a woman's garment of years ago, from the face of that something which lay there, on a tiny cot, scarce larger than ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... a novel experience, I was unconsciously preparing myself for a great surprise. Whatever there might be of poverty in the condition of the few dozens of human beings who there forced a scanty subsistence from the sea, I was to discover one person in the place who did in no way share it,—who, born as it might seem to different destinies, yet, voluntarily choosing wild Nature for companionship, and rising superior to the forbidding climate and the general desolation, rejoiced ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... these closing days of his life must resolve itself almost wholly into a "history of opinion,"—an attempt to reanimate for ourselves that life of perpetual meditation which Coleridge lived, and to trace, so far as the scanty evidence of his utterances enables us to do so, the general tenor of his daily thoughts. From one point of view, of course, this task would be extremely difficult, if not impossible; from another comparatively easy. It ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... dirty rags, tied about their waists. Their skins, from constant exposure to the weather, had become hard, crusty, and seamed, resembling the coarse black covering of some beast, or like that of an elephant, a wrinkled hide scattered with scanty hairs. On contemplating their persons, you saw them with a physical organization resembling beings of a grade below the rank of man; long projecting heels, the gastronymic muscle wanting, and no calves to their ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... could possibly be dispensed with to be destroyed immediately, as the little army was going by forced marches in pursuit of the enemy. The troops accordingly marched seventeen successive days, from five o'clock in the evening to eight or nine the following morning, oftentimes with a very scanty allowance, or no provisions, as it was through an exhausted country, without bread, (as the corn mills had been rendered unserviceable,) except some Indian corn used by the cattle, and this corn was taken from the fields. The troops were without tents or any covering to shelter ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... right way or the wrong way of conducting affairs at the front. When a man feels that his feet are freezing, when he is standing in heavy rain for a whole night with no shelter, and when next morning he tries to cook a piece of scanty food over the scanty flame of a brazier in the mud, he perhaps sits down for a few minutes in the day's dawn and takes up an old newspaper, and finds speeches and leading articles from time to time which tell ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... haggard. Like a wounded bird Easily caught, ensnare him, O ye Nymphs, Ye Oreads chaste, ye dusky Dryades! And you, ye Earth-winds! you that make at morn The dew-drops quiver on the spiders' webs! You, O ye wingless Airs! that creep between The rigid stems of heath and bitten furze, Within whose scanty shade, at summer-noon, The mother-sheep hath worn a hollow bed— Ye, that now cool her fleece with dropless damp, Now pant and murmur with her feeding lamb. Chase, chase him, all ye Fays, and elfin Gnomes! With prickles sharper than his ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... many respects a nobler conception of medicine has been developed. Formerly medical practice was almost exclusively a personal service to the sick individual, and measures looking toward the general relief of disease and its prevention received scanty consideration. The idea of a wider service to the city, to the state, to the nation, to humanity rather than the personal service to the individual, is becoming dominant in medicine. This is seen in the establishment of laboratories ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... throbbing in sultry summer, and their white fires sparkled, flared as if blown by interstellar storms. The large family of Lazarus huddled over dying embers on darkening hearths, and shivered under scanty shreds of covering; but the house of Dives was alight with the soft radiance of wax candles, fragrant with the warm aroma of multitudinous exotics, and brimming with waves of riotous music, on which merry-hearted favorites of fashion swam in measured ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... had heard of the caravan, came on four sledges to the camp. They were entertained with tea. The conversation, carried on in Samoyede, was about the health of the reindeer, our journey, and the way to Yugor Strait. When the scanty news of the tundra had been well discussed ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... is great on head, heart, and voice. In the afternoon the spacious floor, well known to many who attend the workers' meetings, is filled by adult classes of women. At the close an address is given, often by a returned missionary, and many among these very poor of the flock bring their offerings, scanty in themselves, but surely much prized in the sight of Him whose love has constrained them; twice over has a precious offering been given to me for the Punrooty Mission—once from the adult classes, ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... water, as there were ranges visible to the north, which had the appearance of being stony. A north-east by north course was first taken for about seven miles in order to avoid them. The whole of this distance was over alluvial earthy plains, the soil of which was firm, but the vegetation scanty. ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... question: What words significant of definite periods of time were in use, and consequently at the writer's command, at this time? No language is very rich in such words; but in the early Hebrew they seem to have been very scanty. The day, week, month, year, and generation (this last usually implying the time from the birth of a man to that of his son, but possibly in Gen. xv. 16, a century) are all that we find. These in their literal sense were ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... possessed of any large fortune. Politics, as a profession, was, therefore, of importance to him. He had in early life married a sister of Mr. Sowerby; and as the lady was some six or seven years older than himself, and had brought with her but a scanty dowry, people thought that in this matter Mr. Harold Smith had not been perspicacious. Mr. Harold Smith was not personally a popular man with any party, though some judged him to be eminently useful. He was laborious, well-informed, and, on the whole, honest; but he ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... travelers and the public fountain, a gilded lion was erected by the ever-assaulted gate of this Govardhana, also another [lion] by the ferry-boat, and another by Ramatirtha. Various kinds of food will always be found here by the scanty flock; for this flock more than a hundred kinds of herbs and thousands of mountain roots are stored by this generous giver. In the same Govardhana, in the luminous mountain, this second cave was dug by the order of the same beneficent ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... now Wife, that ever Man was bless'd with; yet when he reflected, he should have children by her, and these and she should come to want, (he having been magnificently Educated, and impatient of scanty Fortune) he laid it to Heart, and it gave him a thousand Uneasinesses in the midst of unspeakable Joys; and the more be strove to hide his Sentiments from Isabella, the more tormenting it was within; he durst not name it to her, so insuperable a Grief it would cause in her, to hear him complain; ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... in the street, With tender shock her eye descried A little child, with naked feet And scanty dress, that, hollow-eyed, Looked up and ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... it possible to consider Mr. Meredith—whose total yield of verse has been so scanty and the most of it so 'harsh and crabbed,' as not only 'dull fools' suppose—beside the great poets who have been his contemporaries, and to feel no impropriety in the comparison? That was the question X and I found ourselves discussing, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... had been educated in the enjoyment of ease and luxury, discovered how little is requisite to supply the demands of nature, and lavished their unavailing treasures of gold and silver to obtain the coarse and scanty sustenance which they would formerly have rejected with disdain. The food the most repugnant to sense or imagination, the aliments the most unwholesome and pernicious to the constitution, were eagerly devoured, and fiercely ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... hope and charity, and I sometimes wonder whether they are any better now in his parish than they were under his predecessor, a man who smoked and drank beer from Monday morning to Saturday night, never did a stroke of work, and often kept the scanty congregation waiting on Sunday afternoons while he finished his postprandial nap. It is discouraging enough to make most men give in, and leave the parish to get to heaven or not as it pleases; but he never seems discouraged, and goes on sacrificing the best part of his ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... bought from the departing rancher, had their corrals and scanty pastures far from the house, but the cowboys' quarters were near, and Annesley never tired of seeing the laughing young men mount and ride ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... In those days it presented a somewhat different appearance from the present, being more closely printed, finer type used, and the illustrations (with the exception of small, black, silhouette cuts, after the style of those in similar French publications), were comparatively scanty. Soon, however, "Punch" throve apace, amply meriting its success. To Henning's drawings (mostly those of a political nature), were added those of Leech, Kenny Meadows, Phiz (H. K. Browne), Gilbert, Alfred Crowquill (Forrester), ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the great barnlike room on the top floor where all slept together in wooden cots, and he heard in memory the clamour of the cruel bell that woke them on winter mornings at five o'clock and summoned them to the stone-flagged Waschkammer, where boys and masters alike, after scanty and icy washing, ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... women back of the persons who lost their heads, set seriously to work to see that we did whatever was necessary, and made the job a thorough one. The young men swarmed to enlist. In time of peace it had been difficult to fill the scanty regular army and navy, and there were innumerable desertions; now the ships and regiments were over-enlisted, and so many deserters returned in order to fight that it became difficult to decide what to do with them. England, and to a less degree Japan, were friendly. The great powers ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... defied him, who refused to pay the scanty rent which he asked for their humble cabins, should go out; they should, in short, be evicted. The other men had submitted to the Squire's iron dictation. They had struggled to put their pence and shillings together, and with some difficulty ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... that Shirai Gompachi, who was living under the protection of Chobei, the Father of the Otokodate, was in love with Komurasaki, the beautiful courtesan who lived at the sign of the Three Sea-shores, in the Yoshiwara. He had long exhausted the scanty supplies which he possessed, and was now in the habit of feeding his purse by murder and robbery, that he might have means to pursue his wild and extravagant life. One night, when he was out on his cutthroat business, his fellows, who had long suspected that he was after ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... White might have been spared for at least a short period." This expedition was far from being a failure, for the Indians lost all their provisions, camp equipage and a few animals. Many of these savages ran away leaving behind them everything they possessed in the world, except the scanty amount of clothing they ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... who had benefited greatly, although indirectly, by the enterprising valour of the Uzcoques, neglected to give them the smallest assistance in their hour of peril. After an heroic defence, Clissa fell into the hands of the Turks, and a scanty and disheartened remnant of its brave defenders fled northward to seek some new place of refuge. This they found in the fortress of Segna, then belonging to a Count Frangipani, who allowed them to occupy it; and, at the same time, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... should have been safe to get it; for that is the advantage of serving good masters, that out of the servants' hall men come to be ancients or captains, or get a good pension. But I, to my misfortune, always served place-hunters and adventurers, whose keep and wages were so miserable and scanty that half went in paying for the starching of one's collars; it would be a miracle indeed if a page volunteer ever got anything ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... away in turn, but Cyril would not allow her. So she moistened her mouth with those scanty last drops, and turned towards ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... returned, not, I think, improved in temper. She walked about the room, hustling the scanty furniture hither and thither as she encountered it. She kicked her empty box out of her way, with a horrid crash, and a curse in French. She strode and swaggered round the room, muttering all the way, and turning the corners of her course with a furious whisk. At last, out of the door she ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... to eat," he said, joyfully, and indeed the turtles formed a welcome food supply. Some fish were caught, and some clams were cast up by the tide, all of which eked out the scanty food supply that remained. The two ladies suspected the truth now and they, ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... keeping large stocks of the same plant, are generally far more successful than amateurs in raising new and valuable varieties. A large number of individuals of an animal or plant can be reared only where the conditions for its propagation are favourable. When the individuals are scanty all will be allowed to breed, whatever their quality may be, and this will effectually prevent selection. But probably the most important element is that the animal or plant should be so highly valued by man, that the closest attention ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... the circle of our nearest relatives to the small and comparatively scanty group that is represented by the sub-order of the Catarrhines; and we are in a position to answer the question of man's place in this sub-order, and say whether we can deduce anything further from this position as ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... honey-coloured sand. Yet to each man the pace seemed always as slow as a funeral. A mountain would lift itself above the rim of the horizon at sunrise, and for the whole livelong day it stood before their eyes, and was never a foot higher or an inch nearer. At times, some men tilling a scanty patch of sorghum would send the fugitives' hearts leaping in their throats, and they must make a wide detour; or again a caravan would be sighted in the far distance by the keen eyes of Abou Fatma, and they made their camels kneel ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... would have starved. "Ye overwise philosophers," he exclaimed, in his "Tertius Interveniens;" "ye censure this daughter of astronomy beyond her deserts! Know ye not that she must support her mother by her charms? The scanty reward of an astronomer would not provide him with bread, if men did not entertain hopes of reading the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... on he decided to be a musician, and he lived on two scanty meals a day in order to ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... desolate. There was no sign of life, and not a sound save the occasional cawing of a rook. Advancing towards the abbey, they passed a pile of buildings that, in the summer, might be screened from sight by the foliage of a group of elms, too scanty at present to veil their desolation. Wide gaps in the roof proved that the vast and dreary stables were no longer used; there were empty granaries, whose doors had fallen from their hinges; the gate of the courtyard was prostrate on ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... length in a narrow and secluded cleuch, or deep ravine, which ran down into the valley, and contributed a scanty rivulet to the supply of the brook with which Glendearg is watered. Up this he sped with the same precipitate haste which had marked his departure from the tower, nor did he pause and look around until he had reached the fountain from which ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... among the foremost of the distinguished men by whose talents and energy the Church of Scotland was delivered from prelatic despotism. Yet, although greatly admired by all his compeers during his brilliant career, so very little has been recorded respecting him, that we can but glean a scanty supply of materials, from a variety of sources, out of which to construct a ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... and carries the soul to other thoughts; the tree-tops are bare and twisted; the heath with its monotony of tint stretches away into the distance; at every step the granite protrudes from a soil too scanty to cover it; a sea that is almost always sombre girdles the horizon with eternal moaning. The same contrast is manifest in the people: to Norman vulgarity, to a plump and prosperous population, happy to live, full of its own interests, egoistical as are all these who make a habit ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... incomprehensible) any better than she did? The whole thing struck Francie herself as infinitely less lurid than Mme. de Brecourt's account of it, and the part about her own situation and her beautiful picture seemed to make even less of the subject than it easily might have done. It was scanty, it was "skimpy," and if Mr. Waterlow was offended it wouldn't be because they had published too much about him. It was nevertheless clear to her that there were a lot of things SHE hadn't told Mr. Flack, ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... more room in the way to life, because it leads to that immense universal good, it expatiates towards the All fulness of God, yet to the flesh how narrow and strait is it, because it cannot admit of these inordinate lusts, that have swelled so immeasurably towards narrow and scanty things! The true latitude of the way of the flesh is not great, for it is all enclosed within poor, lean, narrow, created objects, but because the imagination of men supplies what is wanting really, and fancies an ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... with Cludde and Punchard, all three of us at our wit's end. With only eight muskets we could not fire fast enough to keep the deck clear of men, and our store of ammunition was scanty; further, I doubted whether the negroes were sufficiently practised with firearms to make good marksmen. It seemed that we should ere long see the buccaneer vessel ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... to-morrow; else had I time enough; and I would have made the house trim with the new green boughs, and dighted our bed with rose blooms; and I would have done on me my shining gown that the wood-wife gave me. For indeed she was but clad in her scanty smock and ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... more, Neighbor Tanner," said Master Richard Burbage, "had Carew's daughter not sixpence to her name, we vagabond players, as ye have had the scanty grace to dub us, would have cared for her for the honour of the craft, and reared her gently in some quiet place where there never falls even the shadow of such evil things as have been the end of many a right good fellow beside old Kit Marlowe ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... here and there by the cracks covered the crazy wall, against which rested the bed; scanty curtains, running upon an iron rod, concealed the windows; the brick floor, not polished, but often washed, had preserved its natural color. At one end of this room was a round iron stove, with a large pot for culinary purposes. On the wooden ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... are always moping. Look here now. What with the poor, scanty fare the deacon's wife doles out to you and your constant grieving, you will soon die, and then your face will assume an expression of perfect peace. A peaked nose, and all around, stretching in every direction, a vast expanse of peace. Can't you get ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... keeps it with his white buckskin shoes, red sash, and only embroidered shirt, in the solitary trunk with cyclopean lock and antediluvian key, which goes so far, in Central American economy, to make up the scanty list of domestic furniture. The youngest of our hosts was the owner of one of these instruments, of European manufacture, which had cost him, I dare say, many a load of maize, wearily carried on his naked back down to the port. As the evening advanced, he produced ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... Hell.—In this primitive monotheism, of which only scanty, but no doubt genuine, records remain, no place was found for any being such as the Buddhist Mara or the Devil of the Old and New Testaments. God inflicted His own punishments by visiting calamities on mankind, just as He bestowed His own rewards by sending bounteous harvests in due season. ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... his name—was a meagre little man about thirty-five. A high and prominent forehead rose above a small pointed face, and a scanty growth of blonde beard and moustache did not conceal the receding chin nor the red sealing-wax lips. His faded yellow hair was beginning to grow thin, and his threadbare frock-coat hung limp from sloping shoulders. But these disadvantages ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... marked their second landing on the Roman coast were so appalling that the whole of Europe was shaken with terror. Having failed in his attempt to secure help from Charles the Bald, John placed himself at the head of such scanty forces as he could gather from land and sea, under the pressure of events. Ships from several harbors in the Mediterranean met in the roads of Ostia; and on hearing that the hostile fleet had sailed from the ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... found Beaton. He sat looking at the doorway as Fulkerson entered, and Fulkerson naturally came and took a place at his table. Something in Beaton's large-eyed solemnity of aspect invited Fulkerson to confidence, and he said, as he pulled his napkin open and strung it, still a little damp (as the scanty, often-washed linen at Maroni's was apt to be), across his knees, "I was looking for you this morning, to talk with you about the Christmas number, and I was a good deal worked up because I couldn't find you; but I guess I might as well ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... better off than his neighbours from a worldly point of view, in that he had not a large family as most of them were blessed with; for children are a blessing, a gift and heritage that cometh of the Lord, even when they cluster round a cold hearth and a scanty board. But Gray had only two sons, the elder of whom, Tom, we have seen at Zoe's christening, and who had been at work four years, having managed at twelve to scramble into the fifth standard, and at once left school triumphantly, and now can neither read ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... rounds. The principal collections of the wounded were in the churches. Boards were laid over the tops of the pews, on these some straw was spread, and on this the wounded lay, with little or no covering other than such scanty clothes as they had on. There were wounds of all degrees of severity, but I heard no groans or murmurs. Most of the sufferers were hurt in the limbs, some had undergone amputation, and all had, I presume, received such attention ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... now see the garden gate of Mary's cottage through the boughs of the great chestnut tree, which at this season was nearly stripped of all its leaves, and which stood like a lonely forest king with some scanty red and yellow rags of woodland royalty about him, in solitary grandeur at the bending summit of the hill. And while they were yet walking the few steps which remained of the intervening distance, Mary herself came out to the gate, and, leaning one ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... Christ's Hospital, a presentation having been given to his father, for the son's benefit. He entered that celebrated school on the 9th of October, 1782, and remained there until the 23d November, 1789, being then between fourteen and fifteen years old. The records of his boyhood are very scanty. He was always a grave, inquisitive boy. Once, when walking with his sister through some churchyard, he inquired anxiously, "Where do the naughty people lie?" the unqualified panegyrics which he encountered on the tombstones doubtless suggesting the inquiry. ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... but a very scanty description of the system pursued at Ralahine. The arrangements were in most respects admirable, and reflected the greatest credit upon Mr. Craig as an organiser and administrator. To his wisdom, energy, tact, and forbearance the success of his experiment was ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... that had lain in Silvey's back pocket until he had forgotten it—else the coin had gone the way of many another that had purchased peppermints at the school store. John surrendered a penny that had been given him the night before for a perfect spelling paper. They viewed the scanty hoard on the sun-bleached ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... bed. The light, which would otherwise have disturbed him, was excluded from his chamber by means of closed wooden shutters. At first, it appeared so totally dark, that Ben could not distinguish any object in the room. By degrees, however, his eyes became accustomed to the scanty light. ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the same time exceedingly amused with the countenance of an old prude in the next box, who seemed to look upon the wholemagic show, with such feelings as Michal, Saul's daughter, experienced, when she looked from her window and saw King David dancing and leaping with his scanty garments. ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... overhang from the perpendicular; a mass of bald granite, steep cliff, with glacial ice and perpetual snow lurking in its crevasses. Upon its lower slopes the forest ran up, a green mantle with ragged edges. From the forest upward the wind wafted seeds to every scanty patch of soil. They took root, became saplings, grew to substantial trees. And every winter the snow fell deep on that mountain, piling up in great masses delicately poised, until a mere nothing—a piece of stone ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... important and most interesting characteristics, to its working up, to that extraordinary development which in a bare half-century (and half a century, though a long time now, was a very short one seven hundred years ago) evolved almost a whole library of romance from the scanty faits et gestes of Arthur as given by Geoffrey,—then I must confess that I can see no evidence of Celtic forces or sources having played any great part in the matter. If Caradoc of Lancarvan wrote the Vita Gildae—and it is pretty certainly not later than his day, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... while she followed. Her attitude pleased him, because he had no desire for philandering, although he was content to act as protector and guide. Still, while he adapted his pace to the girl's he thought about her. Her rather shabby attire and scanty baggage hinted that she had not been used to affluence; but she showed signs of possessing a vigorous, well-trained mind, and he decided that she must have ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... sloops, and several bomb-vessels, carrying eight hundred and eighteen guns, (besides those in the bomb-ships.) Admiral Duckforth sailed through the Dardanelles on the 19th of February, 1807, with little or no opposition. This being a Turkish festival day, the soldiers of the scanty garrison were enjoying the festivities of the occasion, and none were left to serve the few guns of the forts which had been prepared for defence. But while the admiral was waiting on the Sea of Marmora for the result of negotiations, or for a favorable wind to make the attack upon Constantinople, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... prostitutes also there were in some ancient cults; but information about such persons is scanty, and they seem not to have been numerous.[1946] The most definitely named case is that of the Hebrew official class called kedeshim, that is, persons devoted to the service of the deity and therefore sacred[1947] (as it is said in Zech. xiv, 20 ff., that bells on horses and temple-vessels shall ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... revolutionary stock, born in 1812, and had been a widow for nearly twenty-five years. Though possessed of but little property, she had for many years been the friend and helper of the poor, attending them in sickness, and from her scanty purse and by her exertions, securing to them a decent and respectable Christian burial when they were called to die. At the very commencement of the War, she entered into the Refreshment Saloon enterprise with a zeal and perseverance that never flagged. She was ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... he met with no people, and could find but one house that was inhabited: A bread-fruit and a half, a few Ahees, and some fire, were all that it afforded; upon which, with a duck or two, and a few curlieus, we made our supper, which, if not scanty, was disagreeable, by the want of bread, with which we had neglected to furnish ourselves, as we depended upon meeting with bread-fruit, and took up our lodging under the awning of a canoe belonging ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... the survivors, and telegraphed at once by Franz to his uncle. As one boat-load was safe, there was hope that others might also escape, though the gale had sent two to the bottom. A swift-sailing steamer had brought these scanty news, and happier ones might come at any hour; but kind Franz had not added that the sailors reported the captain's boat as undoubtedly wrecked by the falling mast, since the smoke hid its escape, and the gale soon drove all far asunder. But this sad rumour ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... state. Your thought of clothing the militia in the 41st cast-off clothing proved a most happy one, it having more than doubled our own regular force in the enemy's eye. I am not without anxiety about the Niagara with your scanty means for its defence, notwithstanding my confidence in your vigilance and admirable address in keeping the enemy so long in ignorance of my absence and movements, etc. (Signed) ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... Enthroned and some Angels," and, on the central ceiling of the transept, the "Four Evangelists with Angels." Many other works in both the lower and the upper church have been ascribed to Cimabue, but with very scanty evidence; even the above-named can be assigned to him only as matter of probability. Numerous others which he indisputably did paint have perished,—for instance, a series (earlier in date than the Rucellai picture) in the Carmine ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... this country has disappeared; and in place of them may be seen flashy silks or equally flashy chintzes or delaines, all the product of foreign looms. Every dollar they may have thus far earned has been spent in personal adornment. At home, extremely low wages and scanty employment made money comparatively unattainable. Here, high wages and an active competition for their services have put money into their hands so plenteously as to open to them a new life. They see that American women generally ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... fall, as it were, naturally, into a distinct and harmonious order; and, from the exuberant richness of the materials, less is left to the ingenuity of the artist. But the Latin language is comparatively weak, scanty, and unmusical; and requires considerable skill and management to render it expressive and graceful. Simplicity in Latin is scarcely separable from baldness; and justly as Terence is celebrated for chaste and unadorned diction, yet, even he, compared ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... and of upholstery we enjoyed, it appears to me pathetic; and yet, I am not sure that it was not the wisest way to live. I know that we had compensation in things not purchasable here for money. If the furniture of the principal bedroom was somewhat scanty, its dimensions were unstinted the ceiling was fifteen feet high, and was divided into rich and heavy panels, adorned each with a mighty rosette of carved and gilded wood, two feet across. The parlor had not its original decorations in our time, but it had once had so noble a carved ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... was partly bald, his red hair having died away from the fore part of his crown; his forehead was high, his eyebrows scanty, his eyes, grey and sly, with a downward tendency, his nose was slightly aquiline, his mouth rather large—a kind of sneering smile played continually on his lips, his complexion ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... of the sparest, and his habits were simple to the verge of austerity. Save for the occasional use of cocaine he had no vices, and he only turned to the drug as a protest against the monotony of existence when cases were scanty and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... sort of thing caused some distress Among the members of his mess. He often took the Colonel's chair; He often flourished in the air His water-glass (when wine was scanty), And shouted, "Cheero, Adjutanty!" You see, he simply had no sense Of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... each end of my bag." Later on he repeated: "I do not see how it could have been done better. I am sure it was right. If I had yielded to that storm and dismissed Seward, the thing would all have slumped over one way, and we should have been left with a scanty handful of supporters." Undoubtedly he had managed very skillfully a very difficult affair, but he ought never to have been compelled to arrange such quarrels in the camp ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... I have done with verse-making,—not that I relish other people's poetry less: theirs comes from 'em without effort; mine is the difficult operation of a brain scanty of ideas, made more difficult by disuse. I have been reading "The Task" with fresh delight. I am glad you love Cowper. I could forgive a man for not enjoying Milton; but I would not call that man my friend who should be offended with the ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... before lying down, was looking about for signs of snakes, the only living things that he feared, and uttering various ejaculations of disgust, at finding several suspicious-looking holes close to the cart. I sat leaning against the wheel in a scanty strip of shade, making a pair of hobbles to replace those which my contumacious steed Pontiac had broken the night before. The camp of our friends, a rod or two distant, presented the same ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... our poor Champagne By foes was overrun, He seemed alone to hold his ground; Nor dangers would he shun. One night—as might be now—I heard A knock—the door unbarred— And saw—good God! 'twas he, himself, With but a scanty guard. 'Oh, what a war is this!' he cried, Taking this very chair." "What! granny, granny, there he sat? What! granny, he ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... We had a scanty breakfast, as the whole of the village was on short commons. We hoped before long to get some venison, on which we could feast before taking to flight. When, however, the prince saw what we were about, with ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... looked out of the window into the darkness of the night. He could only distinguish the faint outline of the landscape as the train swept on upon its way, past low meadows, where the snow lay white and stainless, unsullied by a passing footfall; and scanty patches of woodland, where the hardy firs looked black against the glittering ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... of the writers of whom I regret my inability to give a sufficient account; the intelligence which my inquiries have obtained is general and scanty. He was the son of the Rev. Dr. West; perhaps him who published "Pindar" at Oxford about the beginning of this century. His mother was sister to Sir Richard Temple, afterwards Lord Cobham. His father, purposing to educate ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... period, made them little sensible of the change of dynasties and religions. But the tempest gradually gathered. As the Goths grew stronger, persecution became more bold. Where the Jewish population was scanty they were deprived of their privileges, or obliged to conform under the title of 'Nuevos Christianos.' At length the union of the two crowns under Ferdinand and Isabella, and the fall of the last Moorish kingdom, brought the crisis of their fate both to the New Christian and the nonconforming ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... fillet of goat's hair ... about a yard or a yard and a half in length, wound round the head." This style of head-dress seems to be very ancient in India, and in the Sanchi sculptures is that of the supposed Dasyas. Something very similar, i.e. a scanty turban cloth twisted into a mere cord, and wound two or three times round the head, is often seen in the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa |
