"Scrawl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his orders than to write the letter you expect. Then there was my ignorance and your brother James's ignorance to be thrown into the account. For the drawing, Sisson says Dr. Perelli has the description of it already; however, I have insisted on his making a reference to that description in a scrawl we have with much ado extorted from him. I pray to Sir Isaac Newton that the machine may answer: It costs, the stars know what! The whole charge comes to upwards of threescore pounds! He had received twenty pounds, and yet was so necessitous, that on our hesitating, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... of writing to you,' said she, 'but now my scrawl may go into the basket;' and she raised the sheet of gilded note paper from off her desk as ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... his throne, Dividing the heav'ns, dividing my crown, Into poems and business, my skull's split in two, One side for the lawyers, and t'other for you. With my left eye, I see you sit snug in your stall, With my right I'm attending the lawyers that scrawl With my left I behold your bellower a cur chase; With my right I'm a-reading my deeds for a purchase. My left ear's attending the hymns of the choir, My right ear is stunn'd with the noise of the ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... as he remained from the beginning, beyond all hope of description—as it might be, a visible god sitting in the garden of a world made new. They sell photographs of him with tourists standing on his thumb nail, and, apparently, any brute of any gender can scrawl his or its ignoble name over the inside of the massive bronze plates that build him up. Think for a moment of the indignity and the insult! Imagine the ancient, orderly gardens with their clipped trees, shorn turf, and silent ponds smoking in the mist that the hot sun soaks ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... History of Witchcraft, a New England Almanac, and a book of dreams and fortune-telling; in which last was a sheet of foolscap much scribbled and blotted in several fruitless attempts to make a copy of verses in honour of the heiress of Van Tassel. These magic books and the poetic scrawl were forthwith consigned to the flames by Hans Van Ripper; who, from that time forward, determined to send his children no more to school; observing that he never knew any good come of this same reading and writing. Whatever money the ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... pen is greater than the sword, Of that there is no doubt. The pen for me whene'er I wish An enemy to rout. A pen, a pad, and say a pint Of ink with which to scrawl, To put a foe to flight is all That's ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... the stellar science to its present state of disrepute. Astrology is too vast, both mathematically {FN16-1} and philosophically, to be rightly grasped except by men of profound understanding. If ignoramuses misread the heavens, and see there a scrawl instead of a script, that is to be expected in this imperfect world. One should not dismiss the wisdom with ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... slight nor an agreeable kind. I made it a rule to read everything that has been written respecting Napoleon, and I have had to decipher many of his autograph documents, though no longer so familiar with his scrawl as formerly. I say decipher, because a real cipher might often be much more readily understood than the handwriting of Napoleon. My own notes, too, which were often very hastily made, in the hand I wrote in my youth, have sometimes also ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... do I again attempt this impossible theme? While reflecting on my debt to thee, my heart becomes too big for its mansion. My hand falters, and the characters it traces run into an illegible scrawl. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... my sighs, and sent them to my love; I praised that fair that none enough could praise; But plaints nor praises could fair Licia move; Above my reach she did her virtues raise, And thus replied: "False Scrawl, untrue thou art, To feign those sighs that nowhere can be found; For half those praises came not from his heart Whose faith and love as yet was never found. Thy master's life, false Scrawl shall be thy doom; Because he burns, I judge thee to the flame; Both your attempts ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... Latin for all sorts of purposes. Had they known Celtic well, it is hardly credible that they should not have sometimes written in that language, as the Gauls did across the Channel. A Gaulish potter of Roman date could scrawl his name and record, Sacrillos avot, 'Sacrillus potter', on the outside of a mould.[1] No such scrawl has ever been found in Britain. The Gauls, again, could invent a special letter Eth to denote a special Celtic sound and keep it in Roman ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... down and turned hastily to letters from Harry and Jenny. The first was only a scrawl in pencil, written with that boyish reticence which always overcame Harry when he wrote to one of his family; but beneath the stilted phrases she could read his homesickness and his longing for her ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... anything but the scene before me, when I am from home, I am from home so seldom. If any, the least hint crosses me, I will write again, and I very much wish to read your plan, if you could abridge and send it. In this little scrawl you must take the will for the deed, for I most sincerely ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... this time. Read that." Fitzpatrick handed Cardepie's scrawl to McTavish, and watched keenly as the ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... fluttering dove flew round the shrine, Where the Pope by chance was led, And he let the scribbled parchment fall On his holiness' bald head. Now the Pope was very sore perplex'd, At the words the dove had scrawl'd, For he could not read the pig-squeak tongue, Which is now old English call'd. He questioned the French ambassador, The news of that scroll to speak. Who bowing observed, "it was not French, He never had learn'd the Greek." He ask'd a monk ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... "I have a pencil in my pocket. What shall I do for paper?" She looked eagerly round and spied a small piece which lay among the brushwood. With a cry of joy she picked it out. It was very coarse and very dirty, but she managed to scrawl a few lines upon it, describing her situation and asking for aid. "I will write the address upon the back," she said. "When you get to Bedsworth you must buy an envelope and ask the post-office people to copy the address ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wrote a very fine letter of ample explanation, regret, and entreaty, to his right honourable cousin. Neither Lady Russell nor Mr Elliot could admire the letter; but it did all that was wanted, in bringing three lines of scrawl from the Dowager Viscountess. "She was very much honoured, and should be happy in their acquaintance." The toils of the business were over, the sweets began. They visited in Laura Place, they had the ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... poor laboured scrawl came to an end, save for a few incoherent strokes. David thrust it back into his pocket. His cheek was red; his eyes burnt; he sat for long, with his elbows on his knees, staring at the February river. The choking, passionate impulse to comfort his father ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Melmotte, in his usual hurried way, 'is it your pleasure that I shall sign the record?' Paul Montague rose to say that it was not his pleasure that the record should be signed. But Melmotte had made his scrawl, and was deep in conversation with Mr Cohenlupe before Paul could ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... disrespectfully. "We know who wrote this—there is no mistaking Roy's scrawl. The senders ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... that this scrawl will reach Kingcombe Holm. Possibly, no more news of me may ever reach there.—Yet I fear not, for He who is everywhere is likewise in the wild western prairies; and life is not so sweet that I should ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... excellent, but there is a ready apprehension of the meaning of any point clearly put before them, which is very satisfactory. I am now thinking of the twenty or thirty best among our 145 scholars. This is a confused, almost unintelligible scrawl; but I am busy, and not ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... me to think Saint Paul Such lengthy letters had to scrawl. And so to make his labor lighter I picture ...
— Confessions of a Caricaturist • Oliver Herford
... on the letter, in trembling but almost certain hope of seeing a known hand, it was my lot to find, on the contrary, an autograph for the moment deemed unknown—a pale female scrawl, instead of a firm, masculine character. I then thought fate was too hard for me, and I said, audibly, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... you, for this love have lost State, station, heaven, mankind's, my own esteem, And yet can not regret what it hath cost, So dear is still the memory of that dream; Yet, if I name my guilt, 't is not to boast, None can deem harshlier of me than I deem: I trace this scrawl because I cannot rest— I 've nothing to reproach, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... the door; Jimmy Benyon went and opened it; he came back holding a note, and gave it to May; it was addressed to her husband in a pencil scrawl. "A congratulation for you," she said to Quisante. He glanced carelessly and languidly at it, murmuring, "Read it to me, please," and she broke open the sealed envelope. Inside the writing was as negligent a scribble as on the outside, the writing of a man in bed, with a stump of pencil. ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... talk!" laughed Avdeyev: "Signed it, indeed! They used to bring the accounts to my shop and I signed them. As though I understood! Give me anything you like, I'll scrawl my name to it. If you were to write that I murdered someone I'd sign my name to it. I haven't time to go into it; besides, I can't ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... feeble implement of mind, Wherewith she strove to scrawl her name; But, like a mitcher, left behind No signature, no stroke, no claim, No hint that she ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... postmistress stood staring at the half-envelope and the bit of blank paper. Then with trembling fingers she lighted a lamp and held the little piece of paper over the chimney—carefully. When the paper was warm she raised it up to the light and read the scrawl that the sympathetic ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... a gloomy shore. The thin paper, a leaf torn from a book, had print on the reverse side, and the letters showed through in grayish flecks and gave the curious impression as of clouds in the sky. And that little drawing, with less form than a school-boy's blackboard scrawl, was completely transfigured by those gray spots, and because of them it took on for me a deep and dreadful significance. Aided by the dim light in the room the pictured scene became a vision that faded away into the distance like the pale ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... "It was only a scrawl; he was dying, and signed your—your husband; he had been stricken down by fever; your name was ever on his lips; he said you loved Paris, and he would be buried there; he had loved you all his life; he was glad to go; you were not ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... joking did last night!" She handed him the slip of paper. He, too, chuckled tenderly, for the scrawl ran: "What I want for Chrismas: Pictures, pretty ones, Picture frames, Chairs, Plates for dinner, Knives, Spoons, Anything for a flat." A little space followed as if the author had hesitated before he had added in heavier writing that which told of a longing ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... of the arc light Waco scribbled on the back of the envelope and signed his name. Lorry's companion read the scrawl and handed it back to Lorry. Waco humped his ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... mother's letters, upon one single line, and the spelling much amended; then by a short, very short note, in French; and at last, by a despatch of unquestionable authenticity, all about doves and rabbits,—a holiday scrawl, rambling, scrambling, and uneven, and free from restraint as heart could desire. It appeared but yesterday since Helen Graham was herself a child; and here she was, within two miles of us, a ...
— Country Lodgings • Mary Russell Mitford
... came in after dinner to settle down to work, he would find a piece of paper on his table covered with her schoolgirl scrawl. It would run ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... envelope slowly and clumsily with her stiff fingers, and held up the letter so the light struck it. She could not read strange writing easily, and this was a nearly illegible scrawl. However, after the first few words, she seemed to absorb it by some higher faculty than reading. In a short time she had the gist of the letter. It was from a lawyer who signed himself Daniel Tuxbury. He stated formally that Thomas Maxwell was dead; ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... confidant. He recommended a raw beefsteak with a gravity worthy of a Spanish grandee. He was not allowed to see Lottie, who was kept in seclusion as being half culprit, half invalid, and wholly unpresentable; but as he was going away the servant gave him a little note in Lottie's boyish scrawl: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... the old time, and the ink, though its color had somewhat changed by time, seemed to show by contrast with the dull hue of the page even more clearly than it could have done when first written. The paper proved to be a will, drawn up in legal form and signed with the peculiar scrawl of which you hold a tracing. It purported to have been made and published in December, 1789, at Lancaster, in the State of Pennsylvania, and to have been witnessed by James Adiger and Johan Welliker of ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... small envelope bearing my name on a silver tray by the hatstand and open it suspiciously as my wife is divested of her wraps. Inside is a card bearing in an almost illegible scrawl the words: Mrs. Jones. I hastily refresh my recollection as to all the Joneses of my acquaintance, whether in coal, oil or otherwise; but no likely candidate for the distinction of being the husband of my future dinner companion comes to my mind. Yet ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... electronic shout, the most powerful and tightly-beamed short-wave transmission which men could generate, directed with all the precision which mathematics and engineering could offer. Nevertheless that pencil must scrawl broadly over the sky, and for a long time, merely hoping to write on its target. For when distances are measured in light-weeks, ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson
... him begone before I opened the packet. He withdrew reluctantly. Then I unfastened Nell's parcel. It contained ten guineas wrapped in white paper, and on the inside of the paper was written in a most laborious awkward scrawl (I fear the execution of it gave poor Nell much pains), "In pay for your dagger. E.G." It was all of her hand I had ever seen; the brief message seemed to speak a sadness in her. Perhaps I deluded myself; her skill with ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... back towards the window. The woman stood holding the lamp, and its light was full upon her face. She had read the scrawl, and was gazing out with an expression I shall never forget. Another bound, and we ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... up a pen, and upon a quarto page, already half filled with Leroux's small, neat, illegible writing, began to scrawl a message, bending down, one hand upon the table, and ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... back with a pencilled scrawl from Kress to the effect that Lieutenant Stuyvesant was to be permitted to interview the prisoner Murray outside the guard-house, but sentries must be placed ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... impossibility of being able to render any service to the St. George, even in any way whatever, risk the Cressy as much as I would. I desired them all to consult and let me know their opinion in writing, which they did in the accompanying hasty scrawl: No. 1, delivered about ten o'clock, and No. 2, about quarter before eleven. Their sentiments and opinion being the same as my own on the subject, namely, that we could not be of any service to the St. George or to any person on board, whatever ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... too. Into these he would put whatever he cared to keep— poetry, history, funny sayings, fine passages. He had a scrap-book for his arithmetic "sums," too, and one of these is still in existence with this boyish rhyme in a boyish scrawl, underneath one of his ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... this note in to Daphne as she dressed for dinner. It was only a hurried scrawl on a leaf torn from a memorandum book, and, having read it, she ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... circumstances. My respects to the two colonels, and remembrances to all friends. Tell Ultima Analise[106] that his friend Raids did not make his appearance with the brig, though I think that he might as well have spoken with us in or off Zante, to give us a gentle hint of what we had to expect. Excuse my scrawl, on account of the pen and ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... penman, copyist, transcriber, quill driver; stenographer, typewriter, typist; writer for the press &c (author) 593. V. write, pen; copy, engross; write out, write out fair; transcribe; scribble, scrawl, scrabble, scratch; interline; stain paper; write down &c (record) 551; sign &c (attest) 467; enface^. compose, indite, draw up, draft, formulate; dictate; inscribe, throw on paper, dash off; manifold. take up the pen, take pen in hand; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the anonymous scrawl which had kindled her fury against him. He turned it listlessly over in his hand. "I guess I know who it's from," he said, giving it back to her, "and I guess ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... resignedly, "we were less important to him than we thought. Only a couple of negligible items among many. Entered in his ledger—if we were entered—and now faded away to a dim, rusty, illegible scrawl...." ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... hand at reading or writing. He could just manage to scrawl his name. He tried to make out what the articles were about, but it was more than he ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... envelope, unfolded it and glanced at a word or two that had been written beneath his own scrawl; then he made another penciled addition to the envelope's writing, stuck the twisted paper back into ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... dollar cheque which Lily received with a blotted scrawl from Gus Trenor strengthened her self-confidence in the exact degree to which ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... hasty lines from the great Collingwood himself. That brave heart, in the midst of the din of victory, had found time to scrawl a word to his old schoolmate, and tell him that his boy had died like a hero, and that he regretted him like ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... say when he hears that Larry is missing? If Larry doesn't show up, it will break his heart, and it will break mine, too!" And he brushed away the tears that sprang up in spite of his efforts to keep them down. Then he turned to the heavy, twisted scrawl from his ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... rapidly over the short scrawl, and as he did so his face turned pale and a quick exclamation escaped ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... I had said all that my wife had permitted me to say in her charge to me, and the incident ought to have been closed, as far as we were concerned. But Tedham's not speaking threw me off my guard. I could not let the matter end so bluntly, and I added, in the same spirit one makes a scrawl at the bottom of a page, "Of course, it's for you to decide whether you ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... the Morning Report, found Perkins seated in the same place. Perkins signed the book in a sprawling scrawl, and the sergeant went his way. The Chino cook brought the meals, and then came and took them off again. The day dragged through, the gray evening fell; the rain streamed down; and still ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... it has one more seat than the one in which Lucette rowed me over; and not being much in use except on Sunday, is generally half full of water. Lucette insists on doing the bailing. She has very often performed this service, and I have always considered it as included in the curious scrawl of a bill which madame gravely presents at the end of each of my days here, beginning in small printed type with "Francois Laguerre, Restaurant Francais," and ending ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... while he sat there studying the telegram, his fat forefinger following the scrawl, a crease deepening above his eyebrows, and all the while his lips moved in noiseless repetition of the words he spelled with difficulty and his labored ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... continents to be visited, of trips to the moon and of buried races that live beneath the rivers and mountains. He writes of amazing crimes he has committed, of weird longings that will not let him sleep. And, too, he writes of strange gods which man should worship. He pours out his soul in a fantastic scrawl. He says: "One is all. God looked down and saw ants. The wheel of life turns seven times and you can see between. You will sometime understand this. But now you have ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... the fact and requesting him to send "one hundred bushels per Simmons" (the wagoner usually sent). The correspondent, a plain, uneducated man, had considerable difficulty in deciphering the fashionable scrawl common with merchants' clerks of late years, and the most important word, "cranberries," he failed to make out, but he did plainly and clearly read—one hundred bushels persimmons. As the article was growing all around him, all the boys in the neighborhood were set to gathering it, and the wagoner ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... into her chair and tore open the envelope. The inclosure was a dingy sheet of cheap notepaper covered with a penciled scrawl. With trembling fingers she unfolded the paper and read what was written there. Then she leaned back in the chair and put her ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to the poor. If the title-deeds had been sold to any one who could claim the property, what would be the consequence? She felt herself in a mist of ignorance and perplexity; dreading the consequences, yet feeling as if her own removal might leave her fortune free to make up for them. She tried to scrawl an explanation; but mind and fingers were alike unequal to the task, and she desisted just as fresh torture began at the doctor's hands—torture from which they sent her mother away, and that left her exhausted, and despairing of ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that his translations in verse from Horace and Virgil were often approved by Dr. Adam. One of these little pieces, written in a weak boyish scrawl, within pencilled marks still visible, had been carefully preserved by his mother; it was found folded up in a cover inscribed by the old lady—"My Walter's first ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... his corrections in a neat, pretty little hand, which of itself seemed to reprove the student's awkward scrawl. He turned then to his own studies, which he was pursuing in a tattered volume of Blackstone's Commentaries on the English Common Law. He did not get on very fast with this book, and sometimes he wondered what bearing it could have on the practice of the ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... Renee, "this letter, which, after all, is but an anonymous scrawl, is not even addressed to you, but to ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... puts a spirit of joy into green field and hedgerow is awful to look upon in Paris. You leave the train half-frozen, to find the porters red-eyed from their watch. The customs officials, in a kind of stupor, scrawl cabalistic signs upon your trunk. You get outside the station, to find a few scattered cabs, their drivers asleep inside, their lamps blinking in ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... write well and correct, and in a pleasing style, is another part of polite education. Every man who has the use of his eyes and his right hand, can write whatever hand he pleases. Nothing is so illiberal as a school-boy's scrawl. I would not have you learn a stiff formal hand-writing, like that of a school-master, but a genteel, legible, and liberal hand, and to be able to write quick. As to the correctness and elegancy of your writing, attention to grammar does the one, and to the best ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... crossed, but mine was a wretched scrawl by the side of yours. I do not know how, with those terrible telegrams beginning to fly round you, you find time to write such letters. I could never have taken the Foreign Office without the heaviest misgiving, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... refrain from discussing them, but will refer my readers to Colombo. The only exception is a portrait of one of the Scarrognini family which is seen on the right-hand wall above the door, the fact of the portraiture being attested by a barbarous scrawl ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... hauled up on his line and fired a bomb into the mighty creature; it killed it in a few seconds. Then they lay alongside of the floating carcase, spelled half an hour, had something to eat, and then Cheyne, who had a sense of humour, wrote the scrawl to Keller and tied it round the ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke
... Then a short paragraph written in Roger Hunter's hurried scrawl. "No doubt now what it is," the words said. "Wish Johnny were here, show him a real bonanza, but he'll ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... washed back and forth across the hulks of classic sea mysteries, new and old; of the City of Boston, which went down with all hands, leaving for record only a melancholy scrawl on a bit of board to meet the wondering eyes of a fisherman on the far Cornish coast; of the Great Queensland, which set out with five hundred and sixty-nine souls aboard, bound by a route unknown to a tragic end; of the Naronic, with her silent and empty lifeboats alone left, drifting ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... deep breath and took up his fountain pen. He signed with a rapid, illegible scrawl that toward the end of the pile became a mere hieroglyphic. Jonas put his black face in at the door just as he ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... He smoothed the hurried scrawl out tenderly, feeling as if something hard and cold in his left side had melted with a sudden gush of warmth. Back in three-quarters of an hour! He laughed aloud at the sanguineness of it. Why, it took him forty minutes to go to Mr. Fulton's and back! And the idea of telling him ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... reckoning, and paper and pencil were always in my pocket, in readiness to catch a moment to finish a day's work. I wrote as follows on a piece of paper, therefore, as fast as possible, and dropped the billet on the quarter-deck, by enclosing a copper in the scrawl, cents then being in their infancy. I had merely written—"The brig's forecastle is filled with armed men, hid behind the bulwarks!" Captain Digges heard the fall of the copper, and looking up—nothing takes an officer's eyes aloft quicker than to find anything ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... with him has done; He's buried; save the undertaker's bill, Or lapidary scrawl, the world is gone For him, unless he left a German will:[508] But where's the proctor who will ask his son? In whom his qualities are reigning still,[gl] Except that household virtue, most uncommon, Of constancy to a bad, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... minute." Peter extracted the other paper ball, unfolding it near the orange flame. The inner surface was red, the earthly red of porphyry, and cracked and scarred by the crumpling. Nearly obliterated by the lacework of wrinkles and scratches was a scrawl, evidently scarred into the glazed surface by a knife-point. The upper part was unintelligible. On the lower surface he made out with difficulty the single word, Vandalia. He carried it to the door, slid back the shutter and let the dim, gray light ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... late guardian, Major Talbot-Lowry, had found it hard to forgive him. The business had been arranged while Larry was in Paris, and the expostulations that might have prevailed if delivered viva voce, failed of their effect when presented on foreign paper, in Cousin Dick's illegible scrawl. It was all very fine for Larry, ran the illegible scrawl, to talk of selling at such a price, but he ought to see what a hole his doing so put his neighbours in! Larry hadn't a squad of incumbrances, and ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... the inscription, which was written in a round boyish scrawl, "Isabel Douglas Herbert, ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... as Jane was finishing breakfast. He brought a note from Selma—a hasty pencil scrawl on a sheet ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... be withheld from him. It is to be done frankly and impressively, and when the time comes—" I can hardly write this, but the memory of the wonderful though fanatic light in Jane's eyes makes me able to scrawl it—"that you feel the mating instinct in you move towards any man, I charge you that you are to consider it a sacred obligation to express it with the same honesty that a man would express the same thing to you, in like case, even if he has shown ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... treasure box of many a grandmother is hidden a pathetic scrawl that the baby made for her and called "a letter." To the alien eye, it is a mere tangle of pencil marks, and the baby himself, grown to manhood, with children of his own, would laugh at the yellowed message, which is put away with his christening robe and his first shoes, but ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... in fact a singular scrawl. It consisted of all kinds of crooked characters, disposed in columns, and had evidently been prepared by some person who had before him at the time a book containing various alphabets. Greek and Hebrew letters, crosses and flourishes, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... sum prove insufficient; so the Bohemian household under the shadow of St. Gudule profited by her independence. She sent her brother a good deal of money, and received very cheery letters in acknowledgment of her generosity, with sometimes a little ill-spelt scrawl from Bessie, telling her that Austin was much steadier in Brussels than he had been in Paris, and was working hard for the dealers, with whom he was in great favour. English and American travellers, strolling down the Montagne de la Cour, were caught by those bright "taking" bits, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... got just as much over at Day's. So you see the Trust is a jolly big show. Here are your two pages. That looks just like your scrawl, doesn't it? These would be fourpence in the ordinary way, but you can have ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... pulled out the drawer, and there, side by side, lay two neat but far from voluminous manuscripts, each weighted down by the unused portion of the scratch pad from which the written sheets had been torn. One was in the bold, superior scrawl of a boy, the other ineffably feminine in its painstaking regard for ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... and Professor Raymond knitted their brows as they studied the scrawl. There was absolutely no clue, except that it bore the Green Haven postmark on the envelope, and had been ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... The vindictive scrawl closed with a rude attempt to draw a rope, hanging from a tree, with a man dangling ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... held a stylograph and had been resting on some scattered sheets of foolscap that Ian had left there in the morning. She had certainly been scrawling on it a little, but she was not aware of having written anything. Yet the scrawl, partly on one sheet and partly on another, was writing, very bad and broken, but still with a resemblance to her own handwriting. She pored over it; then looked Ian in the eyes, her own eyes large with a bewilderment touched ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... heralds the approach of a nervous curlew, running and pausing, and stamping, its script—an erratic scrawl of fleurs-de-lis—on the easy sand. Halting on the verge of the water, it furtively picks up crabs as if it were a trespasser, conscious of a shameful or wicked deed and fearful of detection. It is not night nor yet quite day, but this keen-eyed, suspicious bird ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... our kind old friend Katcherofsky. Although this natural prison had no bolts and bars or other evidences of a penal system, the very air seemed tainted with mystery and oppression, and the melancholy row of huts to scrawl the word "captivity" across the desolate landscape. Even the ispravnik's room, with its heavy black furniture and sombre draperies, was suggestive of the Inquisition, and I searched instinctively around me for the rack and thumbscrews. How many a poor wretch had stood in this gloomy apartment ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... hardly keep up with it. And when it stopped, I lighted a match and see ... here ... in your mother's very handwriting"—fervently she held the bit of paper up for Sylvia to see. The girl cast a hostile look at the paper and saw that the writing on it was the usual scrawl produced by Cousin Parnelia, hardly legible, and resembling anything rather ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... overturned the table and did their work. Wallenstein, as usual, was not at the banquet. He was, indeed, in no condition for revelry. Gout had shattered his stately form, reduced his bold handwriting to a feeble scrawl, probably shaken his powerful mind, though it could rally itself, as at Lutzen, for a decisive hour; and, perhaps, if his enemies could have waited, the course of nature might have spared them the very high price which they paid for ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... great agitation of mind; for I have made all inquiries, and greatly fear that this work of ancient art has been mislaid. I labour besides under another perplexity, not unconnected with the first. Pray excuse the inelegance of this scrawl, and believe me yours ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... That sentence had reached him on the reverse side of an invitation to take tea at Merrion—a vague some-day-when-you're-passing sort of invitation, in Neeld's eyes plainly and merely a pretext for writing and an opportunity of conveying the urgent little scrawl on the other side. It arrived at mid-day; in the afternoon Duplay had come and was ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... Among the multitude of the dead there is no room for the living." It seemed then a foolish memorandum to write, and now, as I look at the half-effaced pencil lines, I wonder why I was not ashamed to write it. Yet there it is before me, a witness to my sensations at the time, and the scrawl has even now the power to bring up to me an unpleasantly vivid memory of that first ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... A little scrawl of a note, delivered just after breakfast at Mr. Elton's door, brought Madeline to visit Mrs. Percival, who, like her mother, seemed to be ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... letter!' said Mrs. Burke, taking it up again. 'Not even the civility to write with his own hand!—only his signature to the scrawl—looks as if it was written by a drunken man, does not it, Mr. Evans?' said she, showing the letter to Lord Colambre, who immediately recognised the writing ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... of their official scrawl, they made me write in French my name, Christian name, and profession. Then they gave me an extraordinary document on a sheet of rice-paper, which set forth the permission granted me by the civilian Authorities of the Island of Kiu-Siu, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... scrawl: you must guess more than the half of it, but I know no help for this. I am obliged to write to you hastily while everyone is asleep here: but be easy, I take infinite pleasure in my watch; for I cannot sleep like the others, not being able to sleep ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of it. Otherwise the letter really contained nothing, nothing of what he was doing, not even anything about the Laemkes, also no longing "come back soon"; but it was written carefully, tidily and clearly, not such a scrawl as he usually wrote. And that showed ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... tumbles down anywhere, in any contortion or relaxation he or she wishes. Practically instantaneous is the method adopted by Rodin to preserve the fleeting attitudes, the first shiver of surfaces. He draws rapidly with his eye on the model. It is a mere scrawl, a few enveloping lines, a silhouette. But vitality is in it; and for his purposes a mere memorandum of a motion. A sculptor has made these extraordinary drawings not a painter. It will be well to observe the distinction. He is the most rhythmic sculptor of them all. And rhythm is the ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... deep into your nature will be erased, and His own hand will trace on the page, poor and thin though it be, which has been whitened by His blood, the fair letters and shapes of His own likeness. Do not let your hearts be the devil's copybooks for all evil things to scrawl their names there, as boys do on the walls, but spread them before Him, and ask Him to make them clean and write upon them His new name, indicating that you now belong to another, as a new owner writes his name on a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... her—part of the Plasmoid Project's elaborate security precautions—went over to her mail file and found it empty. Which meant that whatever had come in was purely routine and already being handled by her skeleton office staff. Later in the day she might get a chance to scrawl Ruya Farn's signature on a few dozen letters and checks. Big job! Trigger sat down ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... the Niger on the 27th of June. You must excuse this hasty scrawl, as it is only meant to let you know that I am still alive and going forward in my journey. Please to let Mrs. Dickson know that ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... bad as incomprehensible speaking. A clear enunciation is scarcely more important than a plain hand. A lawyer, in speaking, may as well jumble his words so together that not one in fifty can be understood, as in writing to scrawl and run them about so that not one in ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... there, Where all so quiet was before; They say the face has not a care Nor sorrow in it any more— His latest scrawl:—"Forgive me—You Who prayed, 'they know not what they do!'" My tears wilt never let me see This man that rooms next door ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... indeed! I am sorry to hear it, for I can scarcely scrawl my signature. I should think that Jove himself cared ...
— Ixion In Heaven • Benjamin Disraeli
... it curiously, for it was open at the portrait of Roberts. Underneath the portrait were a few words written in pencil in a clumsy scrawl. I read them over, expecting some ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... furtively watched Mr. Snawley-Grubbs while he perused the pencilled scrawl. That gentleman, however, as Editor and Proprietor of the Snake—a new, but highly successful weekly "society" journal, was far too dignified and self-important to allow his countenance to betray his ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Italy, so with a smile of anticipated amusement she read the letter. It was brief, indeed, but the girl's expression soon changed to a puzzled look, for the scrawl said: ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... would carefully scan his face, and feeling both pulse and skin, as well as hearing his story, would go softly with it to Peter's room; and there think and ask herself how her father, whose system she had long quietly observed, would have treated the case. Then she would write an illegible scrawl with a cabalistic letter, and bring it down reverently, and show it the patient, and "Could he read that?" Then it would be either, "I am no reader," or, with admiration, "Nay, mistress, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... a scrawl that my father could not read it, but underneath was printed, "Mayor of Sunchildston, formerly ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... Wilbert had never had but one letter before in his life, and that was a little boyish scrawl from Clarence, and no wonder he opened the big envelope timidly. The contents began, "Know all men by these presents," and here Wilbert looked again into the envelope to see where the presents it ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... she groped her way upstairs. Inside her room, when she had locked the door, she stood a moment upright with the letter in her hand,—the blotted incoherent scrawl, where Langham had for once forgotten to be literary, where every pitiable half-finished sentence pleaded with her—even in the first smart of her wrong—for pardon, for compassion, as towards something maimed and paralysed from birth, unworthy even of her contempt. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... scrap out of her pocket, smoothed it out carefully, and passed it over to Gail. At the top of the page in Peace's childish scrawl were scribbled these words, "Didn't you reely put that muny in our barn?" Below, in Mr. Strong's firm, flowing handwriting, was the answer, "I reely didn't." "Are you purfickly shure you aint lying just to be plite?" was the next question. "Purfickly shure." "Cross ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... laboriously learning to write, his left hand, all unsuspected, had been picking up the same lesson, and that by taking a pencil in his left hand and writing from right to left, without watching what he was writing, and then examining the scrawl in a mirror, he could reproduce his own handwriting in exact reverse. About three people out of five have this often quite unsuspected ability. He demonstrated his gift, and then Miss Cecily Corner, who had dropped in in a ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... name in a private, modest way to walls already so crowded, is allowable; but to scrawl one's name, place of birth, and country, half across a wall, covering scores of names under it, is an operation which speaks for itself. No one would ever want to know more of a man than to see his name ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... and then. It was a mere hurried scrawl, saying that Allerdyke was just setting off for Hull, in obedience to a call from the police; as Gaffney had nothing to do, would Appleyard make use of him during ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... Osnabruck sends you every day: they sound like the spells of witches to bring up their familiar spirits, or the enchantments "Fecana kageti", &c., which open locks whoever knocks. Poor Latin! it is worse handled than was Regulus by the Carthaginians. Forgive this scrawl: I ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... "Seventy Years on the Frontier," he relates how on every wagon-sheet and wagon-bed, on every tree and barn door, he used to find the name "William F. Cody" in a large, uncertain scrawl. Those were my writing lessons, and I took them daily until I had my signature plastered pretty well over the whole ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... my chicken, I shall scrawl Just what I fancy as I strike it, Fairies and Fusiliers, and all Old broken knock-kneed thought will crawl Across my verse in the classic way. And, sir, be careful what you say; There are old-fashioned folk ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... of mind was a very different one when I read this scrawl, from that which bewildered and oppressed me on that never-to-be-forgotten night of suffering and distress, both mental and physical. Formed of those elements which readily react, courage and calmness had returned to me before I read the oracle of our worthy shipmaster; ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... read a hurried scrawl to the effect that Harvey had just got word that a bank of which he was a director was in trouble, and that he would have to attend a meeting that evening. He had telephoned both to Montague's office and to his hotel, without being able ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... I've done, thank'God, with the long yarns Of the most prosy of ApostlesPaul,1 And now advance, sweet heathen of Monkbarns, Step out, old quizz, as fast as I can scrawl. ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... drop; Even Radcliffe's doctors travel first to France, Nor dare to practise till they've learned to dance. Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile? (Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile;) But those who cannot write, and those who can, All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man. Yet, Sir, reflect, the mischief is not great; These madmen never hurt the church or state: Sometimes the folly benefits mankind; And rarely avarice taints the tuneful mind. Allow him but his plaything of a pen, He ne'er rebels, or ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... brow, a quick smile stirred under his yellow moustache, and his eyes brightened, for a waiter handed him a letter. It lay, address uppermost, on the salver, and bore the Ballydoon postmark, and the handwriting was the disjointed scrawl which he had often ridiculed, but now welcomed ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... fallen on this letter, which I had quite forgotten, or, rather, had fancied I had sent off to you three weeks and more ago. My baggage has just come to hand, and the scrawl turned up in my paper cases. Well, I have plenty to tell you now, at any rate, if I have time to tell it. That 'assembly' which stopped me short sounded in consequence of the arrival of one of the commander-in-chief's ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... will scarcely be able to read this scrawl, but I feel hurried and agitated. Death is not welcome to me. I confess it is ever dreaded. You have made me too fond of life. Adieu, then, thou kind, thou tender husband. Adieu, friend of my heart. May Heaven prosper you, and may we meet hereafter. Adieu; perhaps we may never see ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... time for a scrawl. The train is packed with wounded, most of whom, including the poor sitting-ups, are now dead asleep from exhaustion. The British Army is fighting and marching all night now. The Clearing Hospitals get 800 in at a time, ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... in acknowledgment of your editorial: to say that I shall give my mind at once to the Murder. But I bethink me you can say so much and convey my sense of the liberality of our Cousins, without exhibiting this scrawl. So I may go on to tell you that I have at last found a publisher as eager to publish, as I am to write a Hazlitt. Bentley is the Boy; and very liberal, at least, as per last advices; certainly very friendly and eager, which makes work light, like whistling. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... even thinking of that. I was thinking of Eunice, and of that round, childish scrawl of a diary upstairs in the attic trunk. And I was picturing Eunice, in the years to come, writing her diary; and I thought, what if she should ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... mosquitoes were singing their nightly chorus, and the situation reports were coming in from the battalions in the line. With his hair sizzling in the flame of the candle, the Brigade Orderly Officer who was on duty for the night tried to decipher the feathery scrawl on the pink form. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 28, 1917 • Various
... over it and scrutinizing the writing in a way that was not his wont. How characteristic, was his thought, as he studied the boyish scrawl—clear to read, painfully, clear, but none the less boyish. The clearness of it reminded him of her face, of her cleanly stencilled brows, her straightly chiselled nose, the very clearness of the gaze of her eyes, the ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... another? What were just features, what just dingily represented one, as it were, is forgotten, or rather gets remembered. Of course, the first glimpse is the landscape under lightning as it were. But afterwards isn't it surely like the alphabet to a child; what was first a queer angular scrawl becomes A, and is always ever after A, undistinguished, half-forgotten, yet standing at last for goodness knows what real wonderful things—or for just the dry bones of soulless words? Is that it?' She stole a sidelong glance into his brooding face, leaning ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... it me—a little dirty envelope, with an illiterate scrawl. I opened it carelessly, but as my eye fell on the President's hand, I started in amazement. The note was dated "Saturday—From on board The Songstress," and ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... bear out Jerry's optimistic conjecture that the "inside" was all right. Judging from Peggy's crestfallen air, it was all wrong. The note was not written in Lucy's usual regular hand. The letters straggled, the lines zig-zagged across the page, and the name signed was almost an unintelligible scrawl. But Peggy thought less of these superficial matters than of the unwelcome ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... out. We put our heads together for an excuse. The address was Paddington, she was to say she waited an hour at the station, then made a mistake, and went to Islington, and not finding the street there came to Paddington. The excuse turned out good, Paddington and Islington looked much alike on the scrawl. ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... Norbert Franks. He waited for nearly a month, and was beginning to feel rather hurt at his friend's neglect, perhaps a little uneasy on another score, when there arrived an Italian postcard, stamped Venice. "We have been tempted as far as this," ran the hurried scrawl. "Must be home in ten days. Shall be delighted to see you again." Warburton puckered his brows and wondered whether a previous letter or card had failed to reach ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... Mr. Greeley's characteristic scrawl, and no doubt furnished inspiration for the turnip story in 'Roughing It', also the model for the pretended facsimile ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... curious about that, and I found out from one of the servants. Sharp found an envelope under the door. It contained a five-dollar bill, and on it was written in a scrawl, 'For ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... franklin who had a good horse and knew the border country from end to end, and I bade him ride with all speed to Owen at Norton with the paper. He was to give it into his own hand, and I made shift to scrawl a few words on the outside of it that he might shew to my friend the captain of the guard, and so win speedier entry to the palace. I did not send one of my own men, because he would have been known as coming from me, while this man was often in Norton about cattle and the like, and none ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... note I wish to send," she explained, glancing at the almost illegible scrawl with an expression of doubt. "Couldn't you stop the carriage a moment ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... I left the gardens to walk elsewhere. The day after next, just as I was going to get into my carriage, a man of evil aspect gave me a paper and asked me to read it. I opened it, but finding it covered with an illegible scrawl I gave it him back, telling him to read it himself. He did so, and I found myself summoned to appear before the commissary of police to answer to the plea which the midwife (whose name I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt |
