"Sparse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... minor chiefs is extended, rather than decreased by the changed circumstances, they are well content, for they rule now over their districts, not only as Irish chieftains, but as English lieutenants. You have seen, as you journeyed here, how sparse is the population of our hills, and how slight would be the opposition which we could offer, did the Earl of Ulster sweep down upon us ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... very generally excluded from our common schools, in consequence of the prejudices of teachers and parents. In some of our cities there are schools exclusively for their use, but in the country the colored population is usually too sparse to justify such schools; and white and black children are rarely seen studying under the same roof; although such cases do sometimes occur, and then they are confined to elementary schools. Some colored young men, who could bear the expense, have obtained in European seminaries ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... typical Southerner. He was of medium height and loosely built, with a kind of elastic grace in his disjointedness. When he smiled he was positively handsome; in repose his features were nearly plain, the lips too indecisive, and the eyes lacking in lustre. A sparse tuft of beard at his chin—he was otherwise smoothly shaven—lengthened the face. There was, when he willed it, something very ingratiating in his manner—even Clara admitted that—a courteous and unconventional sort of ease. ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... shores of the Gulf of St Lawrence and of Chaleur Bay. The seigneury of Sorel was well peopled, for each grantee received only sixty acres and a town lot, taking the rest of his allotment in some of the newer settlements. The settlement in the Gaspe peninsula was more sparse; the chief centre of population was the tiny fishing village of Paspebiac. In addition to these settlements, some of the exiles took up land on private seigneuries; these, however, were not many, for the government discouraged the practice, and refused ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... urged Mrs. Yu, "be sparse in what you tell her lady ship so as not to frighten an ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... we have come from the south. This stream, assisted by the Peace, is fast filling up with detritus the western portion of Lake Athabasca. There is a marked contrast between the upper and lower coasts of the lake. The north shore consists of Laurentian gneiss with a sparse wood growth; the south bank for the most part is low, the formation being a cretaceous sandstone. Ice holds fast this beautiful sheet for six months every year. As we puff along the surface of its incomparable blue it is hard to realise that, although ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... the preceding chapter occurred one autumn, many years ago. In the spring succeeding this autumn, a company of settlers, with their loaded teams, and unwieldy baggage, were making their slow way through the labyrinths of an Ohio forest to a sparse settlement buried many miles ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... we wanted. Upon the top of Pap's head the sparse grey hairs bristled ominously. His teeth clicked; his eyes snapped. He was furiously angry—as I had expected him ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... her?" interrogated Marrineal. "Do you really think—" His uplifted brows, sparse on his broad and candid forehead, consummated ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... in an otherwise {flat} entity which is not actually present. For example, some Unix filesystems can store large files with holes so that unused regions of the file are never actually stored on disk. (In techspeak, these are referred to as 'sparse' files.) As another example, the region of memory in IBM PCs reserved for memory-mapped I/O devices which may not actually be present is called 'the I/O hole', since memory-management systems must skip over this area when ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... of colour. A drapery of crimson and gold endued the maples; the wild bines and briars were covered with orange and scarlet berries; the black-plumed pine trees rose solemnly behind. A flat country, for the most part; and, as the travellers slowly receded westward, settlements became sparse and small; the grand forests closed more densely round them; solitary clearings broke ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... when it was literally a strand, that is, a low-lying road by the side of the Thames, stretching from Temple-bar to Charing Cross. On the south side of the thoroughfare were the mansions of bishops and nobles dotted at sparse intervals; on the north was open country. To-day there are even fewer survivals of the past than might have been seen thirty years ago. The wholesale clearance of Holywell Street and the buildings to the north has completely ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... who might be expected to reserve a whole compartment for himself. He was small and thin, and weedy, with little blinking, pink-rimmed eyes of the kind which ought to have had white lashes instead of the sparse, jet black ones that rimmed them. His forehead, though narrow, suggested shrewdness, as did the expression of those light coloured eyes of his, which were set close to the sharp, slightly up-turned nose. His hair was so black that it made his skin seem singularly ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... thousand miles from Earth there had still been enough hydrogen traces in the ether to give purchase to the explosions of their water-motor. At six hundred miles from the moon they had run into a sparse gaseous belt that had enabled them to change direction and slow their speed. They had hoped to find hydrogen at a thousand or twelve hundred ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... fosilo. Spade (at cards) piko. Spain Hispanujo. Spangle briletajxo. Spanish-fly kantarido. Spare (extra) ekstra. Spare indulgi. Sparing, to be sxpari. Sparing (saving) sxparema. Spark fajrero. Sparkle brili. Sparrow pasero. Sparrow-hawk akcipitro. Sparse maldensa. Spasm spasmo. Spatter sxprucigi (sur). Spawn fisxsemo. Speak paroli. Speak through the nose nazparoli. Speaker parolanto. Spear lanco. Special speciala. Specialise specialigi. Specialist specialisto. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... individuals, it may be a helpful movement, since individuals unsuited to rural life may find themselves adapted to some type of urban life. When unneeded and unhelpful individuals are removed from the country, the rural population may be more efficient and more prosperous, even though relatively more sparse. ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... tall savages were advancing through the somewhat sparse scrub. Yielding to a first impulse of self-preservation, Laurence, quick as thought, stepped behind the stem of the ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... was at the head of a flight of steps leading up from the office. It had only a single window, but it commanded a partial view of several roads leading into the village, and a sparse row of houses on the opposite side of the street. In front of the stable stood a blacksmith shop, and next to it, on the right, the only store in the village. The store building had two rooms, the front being used for dry-goods, groceries, and country produce, the one in ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... the spring dusk. She chose the road towards Barnham Wood because it was lonely there and the hedges were thin; you could feel the breath of the sea as it blew across the sparse fields. The hush of an English Sunday evening enfolded the road, the wood, the fields. The sun was very low and the saffron light penetrated the dark lines of the hedges and hung like a curtain of misty gold ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... still unknown and not even guessed at, it is evident that many mistakes must have been made, and that many an instance, which until now has been considered reliable proof of a so-called single variation, is in fact only a case of vicinism. In reading the sparse literature on sports, numerous cases will be found, which cannot stand this test. In many instances crossing must be looked to as an explanation, [215] and in other cases the evidence relied upon does not suffice to exclude this ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... and State or local fishing access points are sparse, so that for the most part the Basin's main flowing streams remain a closed book for people who lack the time, youth, equipment, or inclination to come at them by canoeing or some other more or less arduous ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... is derived from a native word meaning "red" and was given to the mountain people because in their attacks upon the lowlanders they wore, as a distinguishing mark, red trousers or a dash of red colour elsewhere about their sparse clothing. They raided coast towns and did immense damage before they were finally brought under control. It should be remembered that these conditions were allowed to arise by a Filipino provincial governor, and by Filipino municipal ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... as we have said, of very rude construction—such a one as could only spring up in so remote a region, and among so sparse a population. With the exception of the roof, the frame-work of which had been covered with raw buffalo hides, it was built wholly of rough logs, notched at the ends in a sort of dove-tail fashion, and when not lying closely, filled in with chunks of wood, over which a rude plaster of mud had ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... ungainly, the sleeves of his tunic far above the bony wrist, as though his tailor in cutting the garment had repudiated as fantastic the evidence of his measurements. Yet, when one might have expected to find hands of a talon-like knottiness, to correspond with the sparse rugosity of his person, one found to one's astonishment the most delicately shaped hands in the world, with long, sensitive, nervous fingers, like those of the thousands of artists who have lived and died without being able to express themselves in any artistic ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... a log he rested his chin in his hands. Below him twinkled the sparse lights of the Flat; shouts and singing rose from the circus.—And so John would have been willing to go surety for him! Let no one say the unexpected did not happen. All said and done, they were little more than strangers to each other, and John had no notion what his money-making capacities ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... old-fashioned, sloping-topped, shallow desk covered with green baize, on high legs, so that like a soldier too he could stand as he wrote (Crozier had made that high stand for the desk himself). That was what the room conveyed to her—the spirit of the soldier, bare, clean, strong, sparse: a workshop and a chamber of sleep in one, like the tent of an officer on the march. After the feeling had come to her, to heighten the sensation she espied a little card hung under the small mirror on the wall. There ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... winter we have not had for a long time," said Briest. Then Effi arose from her seat and stroked back the sparse hairs from his forehead. But beautiful as everything seemed from the point of view of Effi's health, it was all illusion, for in reality the disease was gaining ground and quietly consuming her vitality. Effi again wore, as on the day of her betrothal to Innstetten, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... there in the foothills, and the rushing noise of the small mountain river that hurled itself down upon Millings, ran through it at frenzied speed, and made for the canon on the other side of the valley. Below him Millings twinkled with a few sparse lights, and he could, even from here, distinguish the clatter of Babe's voice. But when he came to the top, Millings dropped away from the reach of his senses. Here was dazzling space, the amazing presence of the mountains, the pressure of the starry sky. Far off already ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... box of a garage had been one of the "all modern conveniences" so fervidly painted in the real estate agent's advertisement, the Crowes had no car. It was the last house on Undercliff Road that had any pretense to sparse grass and a stubbly hedge—beyond it were sand-dunes, delusively ornamented by the signs of streets that as yet only existed in the brain of the owner of the "development," and, a quarter of a mile away, the long blue ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... reply, pushing Gootes aside with one plump hand while with the other he tidied the sparse black hairs of his mustache, which was trimmed down to an eyebrow shading his lip. After inspecting and rejecting several identical bucketseats he found one less to his distaste than the others and stowed his equipment, which was ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... grower's suggestions and becomes fleshy and swells into an ellipse similar to the turnip, of which it possesses all the merits of corpulence, flavour and delicacy; only the strange product serves as a base for a few sparse leaves, the last protests of a real stem that refuses to lose its attributes entirely. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... was sparse, and the movement of so large a number of men along a certain route completely exhausted all the resources of the inhabitants; and although willing to pay for all that his men required, the Earl of Evesham had frequently to lie down on the turf ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... glad to find a refuge from a fate more cruel than death; a fate from which I was rescued by the intervention of my dear dead friend, Thomas Anderson. I was born on a lonely plantation on the Mississippi River, where the white population was very sparse. We had no neighbors who ever visited us; no young white girls with whom I ever played in my childhood; but, never having enjoyed such companionship, I was unconscious of any sense of privation. Our parents spared no pains to make the lives of their children (we were three) ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... culminated in the expulsion of the Acadians, although there followed a period of peace, but despite the efforts of the Government in making roads, and instituting public works, the settlements were sparse, and the Indian was still in the land. There was only one minister in the county, the Rev. John Eagleson, who had been sent out in 1769 by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, while in the province there were a few Anglican, Congregational, Presbyterian ...
— William Black - The Apostle of Methodism in the Maritime Provinces of Canada • John Maclean
... a clear melody in the dream. Thoughts began to go astray and to mingle with other thoughts; the beech alley was transformed to a path between ilex-trees, and here and there a vine climbed from bough to bough, and sent up waving tendrils and drooped with purple grapes, and the sparse grey-green leaves of a wild olive-tree stood out against the dark shadows of the ilex. Clarke, in the deep folds of dream, was conscious that the path from his father's house had led him into an undiscovered country, and he was wondering at the strangeness of it all, when suddenly, ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... this man who had prodded me, with a long, pale face and pale eyes, a long reddish beard, and hair rather darker, both hair and beard being sparse. He was a fidgety person, always twitching with his hands, and he walked with something of a strut, as though the earth belonged to him. He snapped-to the case of his binoculars as though he had sheathed ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... its sparse wave of hair from the forehead, was repeated in grotesque exaggeration on the wall at her back. The iron will in her lent a certain metallic hardness to her features, and her shadow resembled in outline the head on some ancient coin that had lain ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... Legislative, about sunset or after; give the most pathetic detail of the frightful pass they were in:—Prussians billowing round by the myriad, volcanically spouting fire for fifteen hours: we, scattered sparse on the ramparts, hardly a cannoneer to two guns; our dastard Commandant Lavergne no where shewing face; the priming would not catch; there was no powder in the bombs,—what could we do? "Mourir! Die!" answer prompt voices; (Hist. Parl. xvii. 148.) and ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... left the sand and sagebrush, cacti and sparse bunch-grass was bounded by the horizon; behind him, in front of him, it was the same; only on the right was the monotony broken by foothills and beyond, a range of purple snow-covered peaks. From the ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... and perhaps the hills ahead, but for the most part enfolding even the road and ourselves in its maudlin affection. We pull steadily on through the morning, over a good road and up through a still dreary region of moist, sparse turf and shaly slopes of slate and rock and profitless debris. The occupants of the landau, as they look down toward us at times from the turn next above, wave dry and encouraging greetings, through the open windows; and we wave back damper but equally encouraging greetings in ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... who carried the economy of his race even to the extent of flesh, of which he was sparse, greeted the reproof by casting down his eyes into the empty can ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... The next event in her calendar, and Johnny's, was the blooming of the fruit trees. She had seen hillside orchards in the west country break into a foam of flower—a sight perhaps as beautiful as any England has to show. But, to her mind, it did not compare with the sparse white bloom which lay like a first hoar frost on her crooked trees and showed cold and delicate against the pale blue sky. After that, nearly every day, there was something fresh and interesting for Mr. Gillat and Julia, so that the March wind was forgotten, ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... lectures, 'The Harmonious Blacksmith.' My dear one had a great favour for this honest Darwin always; many a road to shops, and the like, he drove her in his cab, in those early days when even the charge of omnibuses was a consideration, and his sparse utterances, sardonic often, were a great amusement to her. 'A perfect gentleman,' she at once discerned him to be, and of sound worth and kindliness, in the most unaffected form." He died in 1881, aged ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... not going to the bowwows. I'm all right. I'm a decent citizen. I awake in the rosy dawn with a song on my lips; I softly whistle rag time as I button my collar; I warble a few delicious vagrant notes as I part my sparse hair; I'm not murderous before breakfast; I go down town, singing, to my daily toil; I fish for fat contracts in Georgia marble; I return uptown immersed in a holy calm and the evening paper. I offer myself a cocktail; I bow and ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... respects what people call "a character," and seemed to fancy himself to have in some degree proprietary rights over the three celebrated Tuscan monasteries, Vallombrosa, Camaldoli, and La Vernia. He was well known to the friars at each of these establishments, and indeed to all the sparse population of that country-side. He was a very good and competent guide and courier, possessed with a very amusingly exaggerated notion of his own importance, and rather bad to turn aside from his own preconceived and predetermined methods of doing everything that had ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Thevenin was old—so old that he seemed to be falling to pieces as he tottered forward. His skin was yellow and shrivelled, his mouth sunken, his hair sparse and grey; and from this weird face peered strange ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... who had walked to Castell On, which was three miles away up the valley of the On, he having been of late a frequent attendant at Mr. Price's church. The vicar was much beloved by all his parishioners, beloved and respected by high and low, but still his congregation was sparse and uncertain, so that every new member was quickly noticed and welcomed by him—more especially any stray sheep from the dissenting fold possessed for him all the interest of the sheep in the parable, for whose sake the ninety and nine were left in the wilderness. Will had gone off with ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... half-mile the way was easy, and by moving slowly he suffered less pain than he had expected. Around him the frost-smitten aspens were shivering in the wind, their sparse leaves dangling like coins of red-and-yellow gold, and all the billowing land below, to the west, was iridescent with green and flame-color and crimson. A voiceless regret, a dim, wide-reaching, wistful sadness came over him, but did not shake his resolution. ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... whole of the known world was covered with their settlements, in constant communication with one another through itinerant merchants, who effected an exchange of learning as well as of wares; while the other nations grew more and more isolated, and shut themselves off from even the sparse opportunities of mental ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... air. The little girl looked round to see where they came from, but everything looked just the same. Hundreds of ants, of all kinds and sizes, were hurrying to their nests; a few lizards were scuttling about amongst the dry twigs and sparse grasses; there were some grasshoppers, and in the trees birds fluttered to and fro. Then Dot knew that she was hearing, and understanding, everything that was being said by all the insects and creatures ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... reduction, this revolution, in freights, will that not hurt the railroads? Ask the railroads whether they make their profit on the long or the short haul. Ask them whether high rates and sparse population or dense population and low rates pay the better dividends! Compare New York Central traffic receipts and Southern Pacific on the average per mile! Now ships that are to use Panama plan pouring twenty million ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... all the rest of his unconscious and smashed body was hidden beneath the rugs. The automobile vanished, and so did my peace of mind. It seemed to me tragic that that burly infant under the rugs should have been martyrized at a poor little morning match in front of a few sparse hundreds of spectators and tens of thousands of unresponsive empty benches. He had not had even the glory and meed of a great multitude's applause. When I last inquired about him, at the end of the day, he was still unconscious, and that was all that ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... who, looking with contempt on vulgar fisticuffs and gouging, settled their difficulties satisfactorily according to the established rules of the DUELLO with sword, pistol, or rifle. Hostile meetings on the levee, below the city, where the population was sparse, and no impertinent interruptions could be apprehended, were frequent. Indeed, the intelligence, some pleasant morning, that a duel had just been fought, and one of the parties lamed in the sword arm, or scientifically ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... and there was Lupin. But again how changed! The clothes of the Duke of Charmerace littered the floor; the kit-bag was open; and he was wearing the very clothes of Chief-Inspector Guerchard, his seedy top-hat, his cloak. He wore also Guerchard's sparse, lank, black hair, his little, bristling, black moustache. His figure, hidden by the cloak, seemed to have shrunk to the ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... were turned out at once to graze off the unappetizing-looking thorns, sparse and dusty, that peppered the field of view like scabs on a yellow skin. There was no fear of their wandering too far, for if the camel ever was wild, as many maintain that he never was, that was so long ago that the whole species has forgotten it, and he wouldn't ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... sharply. He found that they had left the heath, and were riding down a smooth grassy place into a deep valley. The decline was dotted with young oak-trees, sparse at the top but thickening in clusters and ranks lower down. Between the stems, but at some distance, he could see a herd of deer feeding on the rank grass by a brook at the bottom. Beyond the brook again the wood grew still thicker with holly trees ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... the Dobrava. The southern slopes of Tzer are less abrupt than those on the north and descend gradually into the Leschnitza Valley, out of which rise the lesser heights of the Iverak Mountains. Both these ranges are largely covered by prune orchards, intersected with some sparse timber. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... thrummed, thrummed, thrummed above them; the rails were glaring hard lines; the goldenrod smelled dusty. Across the track was a pasture of dwarf clover and sparse lawn cut by earthy cow-paths; beyond its placid narrow green, the rough immensity of new stubble, jagged with wheat-stacks like ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... mice that attain adulthood acquire at least three distinct types of pelage in sequence in the course of their development. The first of these, the juvenal pelage, is short, relatively sparse, and characteristically grayish brown. The molt (post-juvenal molt) from juvenal pelage to subadult pelage seemingly occurs at an early age, perhaps frequently before the young leave the nest, as individuals ...
— Geographic Variation in the Harvest Mouse, Reithrodontomys megalotis, On the Central Great Plains And in Adjacent Regions • J. Knox Jones
... and comfortable mediocrity. She had made her flight—like the queen bee she had soared once into the farthest, bluest reaches of her heaven, and henceforth she was quite content to relapse into the utter commonplaces of the hive. Her yellow hair grew sparse and flat and streaked with gray, her pink-rose face became over plump and mottled across the nose, and her mind turned soon as flat and unelastic as her body; but she was perfectly satisfied with ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... great surprise, after journeying a half-mile or so, the character of the country underwent a great change. The ground became more level, and they found themselves traveling among stunted trees and sparse vegetation. The moon did not rise until quite late, so that until then they could barely see each other's bodies as they moved along. This made them uncertain as to whether they were following the right course; but they were greatly pleased to find ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... beautiful, fertile to the tops, covered with the richest sward of bluegrass and white clover, the inclosed fields waving with the natural growth of timothy. The inhabitants are few and population sparse. This is a magnificent grazing country, and all it needs is labour to clear the mountain-sides of its great growth of timber. There surely is no lack of moisture at this time. It has rained, I believe, some portion of every day since I left Staunton. Now it is pouring, and the wind, having ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... copious, though still very sparse notices of them I have run across, are those given by Thomas Gage, an English Catholic educated in Spain, who, in the twenties and thirties of the seventeenth century, lived as a priest in the then city of Guatemala, nowadays called Antigua, and in some Indian villages not ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... of the Napo were both numerous and powerful. That was while they were under the superintendence of those active apostles, the Jesuit fathers; but most of their settlements have long ago disappeared; and now only a few sparse stations exist along the ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... heather belong to other Surrey hills; but Chobham Common has its own features of sandy hillocks topped by clumps of pines, which set an austere gauntness on the place unlike the rolling flanks and ridges by Frensham and Hindhead. In May the heather is dark and dry; there are sparse patches of gorse scattered about the slopes, and looking across at a group of pines edging the horizon you sometimes get a setting of black, yellow, and blue, which belongs peculiarly to this corner ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... having considerably more than one hundred inches of rain annually are very apt to be forest-covered, and therefore to be deficient in food-producing plants. Such localities have usually a sparse population, in spite of the profusion of vegetation. In some parts of India, lands that have been left idle for a few seasons produce such a dense jungle of wild vegetation that to reclaim them for cultivation ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... wooded ridge. They were standing in the marshy bottom of a natural hollow amidst a sparse scattering of pine and attenuated spruce. Beyond the ridge lay the waters of the cove. And to the left the broad waters of the river mouth flowed by. It was a desolate, damp spot, but its significance to the two men ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... farmers, dwellers in tiny villages scattered over the area once so populous. The mud huts which constituted the dwelling-places of by far the greater portion of the inhabitants have disappeared, and their materials overlie the rocky plain and form the support of a scanty and sparse vegetation. But the old water-channels remain, and by their aid the hollows and low ground have been converted into rich gardens and fields, bearing full crops of waving rice and sugar-cane. Vijayanagar has disappeared as a city, and a congeries of small hamlets with an industrious and ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... so sparse that there is not one person for every 20,000 acres; and most of these people live on the coast. Consequently, the vast interior could not be used for food supplies in any case. Besides, ever since the white man occupied the coast, the immediate ...
— Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... the journey to Fort Bent had been one of toil and hardships, of burning suns, and the fatigue of endless dreary miles. The wagon-trains were often far in advance and food at times grew scanty, while the scarcity of fuel made it difficult to warm their sparse supplies. During part of the journey they were drenched by heavy rains. To these succeeded days of scorchingly hot weather, bringing thirst in its train and desert mirages which cheated their suffering souls. When at length the Arkansas River was reached, men and animals alike rushed madly ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... of the occupancy of two-sous chairs within the charmed circle of Guignol and of Gringalet. I suppose I should have blushed to confess it, but Polichinelle and his puppets, in the afternoons, under an umbrage sparse till evening fell, had still their spell to cast—as part and parcel, that is, of the general intensity of animation and variety of feature. The "amusement," the aesthetic and human appeal, of Paris had ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... all. They trusted to the parson and the clerk, who did their best with unfamiliar names. Even now old people in rural districts may find half a dozen orthographic variants of their own names among the sparse documentary records of their lives. Dugdale the antiquary is said to have found more than 130 variants of Mainwaring among the parchments of that family. Bardsley quotes, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... feet, the President had never answered so quickly before. He faced the screen on the wall to his right and saluted, amazed once again at how old the man looked. Sparse white hair criss-crossed haphazardly over the President's head, his face was lined with deep trenches that not even the most charitable could call wrinkles, and the faded eyes that stared from deep caverns no longer ...
— Alien Offer • Al Sevcik
... baobabs, with trunks fifteen or twenty feet thick and offshoots covering a quarter of an acre. Then the trees thinned out to the sparse and shriveled all-but-dead things that struggle for existence on the border-lines between man's land and desolation. At last we drew down the smoked panes over the window to escape the glare and ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... animals abounded in the section, as they were found in hundreds of other portions of the vast area known under the general name of the Louisiana Territory. You must bear in mind that there were thousands of square miles that had not been trodden by a white man, and so sparse were the Indian villages that large portions of the country remained to be ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... have passed, for beyond them were the radiant mists of the pit of the city, and through this precipitous gateway filtered the enveloping luminosity. On each side of us uprose gradually converging and perpendicular scarps along whose base huddled a sparse foliage. ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... Worte turned her sparse face toward the down-town tide and against a light wind that tasted of rain and napped her skirts ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... the matter was that Mme Lerat was beginning to feel anxious at the painful way her niece doled out the sparse, occasional francs destined to pay for little Louis's board and lodging. Doubtless she was willing to make sacrifices and to keep the child by her whatever might happen while waiting for more prosperous times, but the thought that Fontan was preventing ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... a young woman with thin, sparse, gold-glinting hair, with face pallid and rounded, with broad forehead and gray eyes of remarkable clarity. She was slim, dressed in a little brown coat and a short brown skirt. She came forward, trembling, as if overcome by the audience. ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... and down, till he was brought up short by a great mossy block of stone just as another volley was fired, apparently from the mule-track high above him; and half-unconsciously, in the confusion and excitement of the moment, he lay perfectly still, cowering amongst the sparse growth in the hope that he might not be seen from the shelf-like mule-track above, though expectant all the while that the next shot fired ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... tropics. So much of his food is necessarily converted into heat that he cannot afford to lead so active a life; but he also, like him of the tropics, partakes with his surroundings in color. The one, living amid snowclad scenery, where the sparse vegetation is gray and grayish-green, and the birds and animals almost as white as the snow over which they wander, is pale, etiolated. The other, under a vertical sun, surrounded by a lush and lusty growth, whose flowers for variety and intensity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... character to cause apprehension—especially to one journeying alone. On all sides extended a vast plain of sterile soil—the brown earth but thinly covered with a growth of cactus and wild aloes, under the shadow of which appeared a sparse herbage, wild, and of yellowish hue. The aspect was monotonous and dreary beyond expression; while here and there vast clouds of dust rose in whirlwinds, and moved like spectres over the plain. The straggling huts encountered at long intervals on the way were all empty—apparently ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... old dog as other children had been rough. She loved to cuddle down close beside him, her arms around his shaggy neck; and croon queer little high-voiced songs to him; her thin cheek against his head. She used to save out fragments from her own sparse lunch to give to him. She was inordinately proud to walk at his side during Lad's rare rambles around the Place. Child and dog made a pretty picture of ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... and a glass door, with a sham air of a villa. He asks for a bath, and while it is being prepared he smokes his cigar at the window, with the noise of the water behind him, looks at the flower-bed of sparse lilac, and the high walls ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... main lines increased in the last few years to a little more than 2,000,000, but only about two-thirds of these have subscribers; much of the infrastructure is outdated and inefficient domestic: good service in north but sparse in south; domestic satellite system with 12 earth stations (20 additional domestic earth stations are planned) international: 5 submarine cables; microwave radio relay to Italy, France, Spain, Morocco, and Tunisia; coaxial cable to Morocco and Tunisia; participant in Medarabtel; ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... crooked and twisty. As it grows and branches under the cultivation and guidance of the orchardist, it maintains a lusty, hearty aspect, its yellowish, reddish or brownish twigs—again according to variety—spreading out to the sun and the air freely. A decade passes, and the sparse showing of bloom that has decorated it each spring gradually gives place to a great glory of flowers. The tree is about to bear, and it assumes the character of maturity; for while it grows on soberly for many years, there is now a spreading, a sort of relaxation, very different from the vigorous ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... life of the undergraduate body. His desire for an immediate theological campaign was merely that passion for doing things and for self-expression which were always conspicuous traits. His intense ambition as a boy is still remembered in this sleepy little village. He read every book in the sparse college library; he talked to his college mates and his professors on every imaginable subject; he led his associates in the miniature parliament—the Franklin Debating Society—to which he belonged; he wrote prose and verse at ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... the mangy Cats of Amochol trim my hatchet-sheath. When the young men ask me what this sparse and sickly fur may be, I shall strip it off and cast it at their feet, saying it is but ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... of ghastly white fungus. Overhead, from the wooden roof, which formed the floor of the shop, hung innumerable spider's webs thick with dust. The floor was of large flags cracked in many places, and between the chinks in moist corners sprouted sparse, colorless grass. In the centre was a deal table, scored with queer marks and splotched with ink. Over this flared two gas-jets, which whistled shrilly. Against the wall, which was below the street, were three green painted safes fast ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... rock where ancient waters' rise and dip, Recoil and plunge, eddy, and oscillant tide, Had worn and worn, while races lived and died, Involved channels. Where the sea-weed's drip Followed the ebb, now crumbling lichens sip Sparse dews of heaven that down with sunset slide. I sat long-gazing southward. A dry flow Of withering wind sucked up my drooping strength, Itself weak from the desert's burning length. Behind me piled, away and up did go Great sweeps ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... lands, so many grinning corpses on battle-fields, that no physiognomies repel them; and Gouraud began to cast his eyes on the old maid's fortune. This imperial colonel, a short, fat man, wore enormous rings in ears that were bushy with tufts of hair. His sparse and grizzled whiskers were called in 1799 "fins." His jolly red face was rather discolored, like those of all who had lived to tell of the Beresina. The lower half of his big, pointed stomach marked the straight line which characterizes a cavalry officer. Gouraud had commanded the ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... landmarks have been swept away by the fateful hand of time and fire, the town impresses you as a very old town, especially as you saunter along the streets down by the river. The worm-eaten wharves, some of them covered by a sparse, unhealthy beard of grass, and the weather-stained, unoccupied warehouses are sufficient to satisfy a moderate appetite for antiquity. These deserted piers and these long rows of empty barracks, with ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the most important of the Outposts is Sumatra, an island four-fifths the size of France, as potentially rich in mineral and agricultural wealth as Java, but with a sparse and intractable population, certain of the tribes, notably the Achinese, who inhabit the northern districts, still defying Dutch rule in spite of the long and costly series of wars which have resulted from Holland's ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... overlooked the starlit bay, nearly ringed with a sparse fence of palms, and on its roof, a little scarlet figure on the white rugs, Incarnacion sat waiting till Scott should come. Below her, the reeking city was hushed to a murmur, through which there sounded from the Praca a far throb of drums ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... shortly after the McKee prolonged breakfast was over, a small man of perhaps fifty, with iron-gray hair and a sparse goatee, made his way along the Street. He moved with the air of one having a definite destination but a by ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... other side was a very old man, gray as a ghost, who showed no sign of knowing that he had a new neighbour. Everything about him was gray: his thin, concave face, his expressionless eyes, his sparse hair and straggling moustache, his clothes, and his hands, knotted on the back like the roots of trees. His grayness and the bleak remoteness of his air made him seem unreal as a spirit come back to haunt the scene of long-ago triumphs or defeats. Mary could almost ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... chaque feuille qui tombe est une lgie toute faite." Through an avenue of scraggy poplars we approach a dilapidated chteau, whose owner is playing dominoes at the caf of the nearest provincial town, or exhausting the sparse revenues of the estate at the theatres, roulette-tables, or balls of Paris. People leave these for a rural vicinage only to economize, to hide chagrin, or to die. So recognized is this indifference to Nature and inaptitude for rural life in France, that, when we desire ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of Keighley never quite melts into country on the road to Haworth, although the houses become more sparse as the traveller journeys upwards to the grey round hills that seem to bound his journey in a westerly direction. First come some villas; just sufficiently retired from the road to show that they can scarcely belong to any one liable to be summoned in a ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... minute!" panted Madaline. "You have almost murdered us as it is," she proclaimed in her excitement, which always banished her ordinarily sparse ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... time you receive this we shall already perhaps have had our 'bapteme de feu'. We have been engaged in the hardest kind of hard work — two weeks of beautiful autumn weather on the whole, frosty nights and sunny days and beautiful coloring on the sparse foliage that breaks here and there the wide rolling expanses of open country. Every day, from the distance to the north, has come the booming of the cannon around Reims and the lines along the Meuse. . . . But imagine how thrilling ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... the more decided the result. If performed before puberty the secondary sexual characteristics fail to develop. The voice does not change in the male; the development of hair is more sparse; the general physical development is less masculine; and mentally the individual is less aggressive. Most pertinent of all as bearing upon the question under review, sexual desire and capacity do not develop, either at all, or at any rate, not to the same degree as in ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... appropriations and private subscriptions, statues and other monuments have at different times been erected; and many others doubtless will be erected in them hereafter. Some of them are in secluded situations, where for many mites the population is sparse, and the few people that live near them cherish tenderer recollections of the "Lost Cause" than of that which finally won. But such of them as are contiguous to cities are places of interest to more or less of the ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... Krakatau, though the vast rent in the cloven pyramid must materially diminish the power of any future eruption, and Nature's busy hand already covers the torn side of the precipitous cone with a green veil of sparse vegetation. A curious marine growth of weed and moss rooted itself on Krakatau three years after the phenomenal eruption, from seeds floating on the tide or carried by the wind. The thin soil formed by these decaying plants, and enriched by the chemical ingredients of disintegrating ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... company of Germans, employed in an optical shop; there also arrived a party of clerks from the fish and gastronomical store of Kereshkovsky, and two young people very well known in the Yamas—both bald, with sparse, soft, delicate hairs around the bald spots: Nicky the Book-keeper and Mishka the Singer—so were they both called in the houses. They also were met very cordially, just like Karl Karlovich of the optical shop and Volodka of the fish store—with raptures, cries ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... yuh're ferchunit t' have all seeh new-fangled idees in the house! It clean locoes me t' think Ah'm livin' wid sech fine contraptions." And Sary pressed her large freckled, hands over her sparse red hair to signify how "locoed" her ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... Then she sat down in her rocking-chair by the window and looked out. Her eyry was high above all the other buildings, and she could look across some low roofs opposite and see the further end of Tompkins Square, with its sparse spring green showing faintly through the dusk. The eternal roar of the city floated up to her and vaguely troubled her. She was a country girl; and although she had lived for ten years in New York, she had never grown used to that ceaseless murmur. To-night she felt the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Bergeret exclaimed: "Zoe! we have forgotten 'Yellow hair and sparse beard.' Let us ...
— Putois - 1907 • Anatole France
... pictured the heavy, gloomy, lethargic life within. The slatternly servants pottering about the bases of the sooty buildings sickened and saddened him. A solitary Earl's Court omnibus that lumbered past with its sinister, sparse cargo seemed to be a spectacle absolutely tragic—he did not know why. The few wayfarers were obviously prim and smug. No joy, no elegance, anywhere! Only, at intervals, a feeling that mysterious and repulsive wealth was hiding itself like an ogre in the eternal twilight ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... Maryburgh, in Fife, and the most celebrated of four brothers, John, Robert, James and William Adam, was born at Kirkcaldy in 1728. For few famous men have we so little biographical material, and contemporary references to him are sparse. He certainly studied at the university of Edinburgh, and probably received his first instruction in architecture from his father, who gave proofs of his own skill and taste in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary (now demolished). His mother was the aunt of Dr W. Robertson, the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... branches, crashing through a covert with closed eyes and warding arm, they fled, now and then pausing for a quick change of hands on the box or the sweep of a sleeve across a dripping brow. Nearly a half hour from the time they had started they emerged into brighter light, the trees growing sparse, the earth moist, a soft coolness rising—the creek's ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... of one instance of a white man falling a victim to a veld fire. I forget this individual's name, although I knew him well. He, seeing the flames approaching, reached what he thought was a place of safety, for the grass was very sparse, and he reckoned on being able to beat out the fire as it approached him. But he had not taken into account the contingency of the wind freshening and flinging forward sheets of flame from the places where the grass was longer. This actually happened. He got badly, but ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... room, with doors of all sizes opening in every direction, while I could perceive a narrow entry, or passageway, extending toward the after part of the vessel. The roof, formed of the upper deck, was low, upheld by immense timbers, and the apartment, nearly square, was dimly flooded by the sparse light sifting down through the single hatch-opening above, so that, in spite of its large dimensions, it had a cramped and stuffy appearance. The vast butt of the mainmast arose directly in front of me, and, upon a ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... Joel's presence on these occasions added in any marked degree to the general hilarity, but Celia's satisfaction was unmistakable. She always sat beside him with an air of proprietorship, digging her sharp little elbow into the sparse cushioning of his lean thighs or when weary, dropping her frowsy head against his shoulder with an engaging certainty that it was there for that very purpose. Like many another who has defied capture till after middle life, Joel atoned ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... torrent below to the great Eiger rock-mountain, and through its heart to the glacier beyond, more than 10,000 feet above sea-level. On the way back I left the train at the foot of the Eiger glacier, and walked down with my companion amongst the rocks of the moraine and over the sparse turf of these highest regions of life. Everywhere was a profusion of gentians, the larger and darker, as well as the smaller, bluest of all blue flowers. The large, plump, yellow globe-flowers (Trollius), the sulphur-yellow ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester |
