"Scarcity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on, with one change and another; and we gathered all our harvest in; and Parson Bowden thanked God for it, both in church and out of it; for his tithes would be very goodly. The unmatched cold of the previous winter, and general fear of scarcity, and our own talk about our ruin, had sent prices up to a grand high pitch; and we did our best to keep them there. For nine Englishmen out of every ten believe that a bitter winter must breed a sour summer, and explain away topmost prices. While according to my experience, more often it would ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Richborough, Reculver, and Lymne, and numberless contributions scattered over the journal of the Society of Antiquaries, the Archaeologia Cantiana, and other publications. He was an enthusiastic Shakespearean, the author of the Rural Life of Shakespeare, and of a little work on The Scarcity of Home-Grown Fruits. He also published two volumes of Retrospections: Social and Archaeological, and was engaged at his death in completing the third volume. He contributed many articles to Dr. William Smith's Classical Dictionaries, and ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... was a scarcity of water, only a pint a day could be supplied to each prisoner. Of this they could not complain, as the ship's company had but a pint and a half. Still, ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... attainments, and the best of judges) herald forth as undeniable truth—a politician, sir, of great depth and exceeding cunning—a rare combination, philosophers tell us. What a humbug this whole greenback question is! Why, sir, it is to that very element of scarcity over which they howl, that money, or anything else, owes its commercial value. Diminish the general scarcity of anything on earth to the point of a full supply for everybody and the commercial value at once becomes nil. There is nothing of more ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... far as she could see everything was going smoothly. Already the children gave promise of becoming fine fliers, taking as naturally to the air as ducks to water. And it was a great year for grasshoppers; so Bobby Bobolink couldn't be worrying about a scarcity of food. ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... abundance, which we retain the right of shooting; and sheep on the hills, which, as my father does not attempt any new-fangled plans for improving the condition of the people, are allowed to exist; and there are praties in the fields, and fruit and vegetables in the garden; but there is a scarcity of flour and groceries, and instead of the claret which, in the good old days, flowed freely at table, we are reduced to drink whisky, of which the excise has not always had an opportunity of taking due cognisance. My father does not ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... Government, the writer continues, "Our kangaroo cats are like mutton but much leaner and there is a kind of chickweed so much in taste like spinach that no difference can be discerned. Something like ground ivy is used for tea but a scarcity of salt and sugar makes our best meals insipid...Everyone is so taken up with their own misfortunes that they have no pity to bestow on others."* (* To-day Sydney is the seventh city of the Empire.) What was written of Sydney may be said to have been true of all the settlements. ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... of the art of hunting more difficult than ever before, one that needed a new development of courage, cunning, alertness, and endurance, the scarcity of animals obliging him to make long journeys and attack the strongest creatures. Whether or not he possessed the poisoned arrow, which the Pygmies now find so effective, cannot be said, but in all probability he was forced to invent new and more destructive weapons, a necessity that gave ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... and humid soils. In humid regions plants cover the soil thickly; in arid regions they are bunched scantily over the surface; in the former case the decayed remnants of generations of plants form a large percentage of humus in the upper soil; in the latter, the scarcity of plant life makes the humus content low. Further, under an abundant rainfall the organic matter in the soil rots slowly; whereas in dry warm climates the decay is very complete. The prevailing forces in all countries of deficient rainfall ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... rapid in their flow when filled by rains or melting snow: during these periods they are impracticable for boats. They are, moreover, much exhausted by being drained off, bled, for the purposes of artificial irrigation. The scarcity of rain in the central table-lands is much against a regular supply of water to the springs of the rivers: the water is soon sucked up by a parched, dusty, and thirsty soil, or evaporated by the dryness of the atmosphere. Many of the sierras are ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... the price of transportation, reduces the price of the commodity transported. Whatever reduces the traveller's time, reduces his claim for compensation, and (competition being always at work) he is content with a smaller profit upon his merchandise. If a scarcity of any article occurs at one point of the kingdom, the monopolist there cannot continue his increased price for any duration of time. Commerce may, in this respect, be resembled to water, for, if not obstructed, it will always circulate till it finds its level. An ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various
... and turning them into potatoes, or whatever might be the fashionable food at the moment; every grumbler who imagined that every rise in prices must be entirely due to the malignity of men and not to the scarcity of the article; every politician with a grudge to satisfy or an axe to grind—all these pounced upon Lord DEVONPORT as a victim made ready to their hands, and gave him a time which can only be described as a very bad one. Add to this the mistakes almost necessarily made by an office which ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... about it. Now there is something of this in these objects which we are naturally delighted with. All at least that they want the apprehension supplies, and this draws the heart forcibly after them, as it were, with out previous advisement. Yet because of the limitation, emptiness, and scarcity of these things, commonly the desires of men are contracted much within themselves, and run towards a monopoly of those things. They are so poor and narrow, that they cannot be enjoyed of more, without division, and the dividing them cannot be without diminution of each man's contentment, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... village of Rigoulette. But he had always been disappointed. Either his goods were not in demand, or those who desired them had nothing to offer in exchange but fish, which he did not care to take. And always he was told of a scarcity of food still farther north. So the voyage had been continued in that direction along a coast that ever grew wilder, grander, and ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... have noticed a change in me, but she could not discover the cause, as she did not know where I had spent most of my time, thinking, that I as formerly, went out in the woods botanizing, though she must have wondered at the scarcity of my collections. ...
— The Beautiful Eyes of Ysidria • Charles A. Gunnison
... the host replied. "There is no scarcity of rooms, though there is of good fare; a party of soldiers from Ghent paid a visit to us yesterday, and have scarce left a thing to eat in the village. However, I suppose we ought to feel thankful that they did ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... is comparatively little known, is that of carrying its young in order to remove them from danger. So many trustworthy naturalists maintain this to be true that it must be accepted as characteristic of this interesting bird. She takes her young from place to place in her toe grasps as scarcity of food or ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... of being tedious when I wrote the above, I said nothing on the methods for paying the interest for the first two or three years, until a certain revenue can be established, for considering the present depreciated state of our currency, and the scarcity of specie, it cannot be instantly expected. I take therefore the liberty of suggesting two methods, one of which will most certainly answer the purpose. The first is to borrow of France or Spain, the interest money for the first three years, by which, the interest punctually paid, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... half-pence and farthings were anciently made of silver, which is more evident from the Act of Parliament of Henry the IVth. chap. 4, by which it is enacted as follows: Item, for the great scarcity that is at present within the realm of England of half-pence and farthings of silver, it is ordained and established that the third part of all the money of silver plate which shall be brought to the bullion, shall be made in half-pence and farthings. This shows that by the words half-penny and farthing ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... It had not justified its survival in our efficient days, it had held out—thanks to Perry—with absurd and anachronous persistence against the inevitable consolidation. Mr. Tallant's newspaper had published many complaints of the age and scarcity of the cars, etc.; and alarmed holders of securities, in whose vaults they had lain since time immemorial, began to sell.... I saw little of Perry in those days, as I have explained, but one day I met him in the Hambleton ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... increasing importance of the fugitive problem to the slaveholding group. It is noticeable that from the year 1798 until 1835 there was not sufficient pressure upon the State legislature to increase the reward to the captor of a runaway. It is further evident from the scarcity of contemporary advertisements that there were comparatively few Negroes who ventured forth from the neighborhood of their masters. But with the rise of the anti-slavery movement in the North and the growth of abolition sentiment as expressed ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... consumed their winter store of dryed fish and that those of the present season had not yet arrived. I could not learn wheather they took the Sturgeon but presume if they do it is in but small quantities as they complained much of the scarcity of food among them. they informed us that the nations above them were in the same situation & that they did not expect the Salmon to arrive untill the full of the next moon which happens on the 2d of May. we did not doubt ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... an army and the incessant reluctance of the battle to be met will try a sinner; but a scarcity of tobacco and constantly wet feet will try a saint. Aladdin was somewhat of both. But in the fidgety gloom which presently settled upon man and beast, his, great Irish gift of cheerfulness shone like a star. He even gave up longing for promotion, ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... failed, and more than half the dogs in Kamchatka starved. The following year there was a bountiful supply, which the priests of Petropavlovsk commemorated by erecting a cross near the entrance of the harbor. The supply is always larger after a scarcity ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... voluntarily abandoned by cultivators. Displacement of tillage due to an internal cause precedes displacement of tillage for sheep pasture. The process of withdrawing land from cultivation began independently of the scarcity of labor caused by the Black Death and independently of any change in the price of wool; the continuation of this process in the fifteenth century is not likely to depend entirely upon a rise in the price of wool. That the enclosures of the fifteenth century were ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley
... prodigious scarcity of wit Did the new authors starve the hungry pit! Infected by the French, you must have rhyme, Which long to please the ladies' ears did chime. Soon after this came ranting fustian in, And none but plays upon the fret were seen, Such daring bombast stuff which fops would praise, Tore our best actors' ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... worst manifestation was in the employment of the meanest type of attendant—men willing to work for the paltry wage of eighteen dollars a month. Very seldom did competent attendants consent to work there, and then usually because of a scarcity of profitable employment elsewhere. Providentially for me, such an attendant came upon the scene. This young man, so long as he remained in the good graces of the owner-superintendent, was admittedly one of the best attendants he had ever had. ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... same Tale told us in so many different papers, and if occasion requires in so many Articles of the same Paper; notwithstanding a Scarcity of Foreign Posts we hear the same Story repeated, by different Advices from Paris, Brussels, the Hague, and from every great Town in Europe; notwithstanding the Multitude of Annotations, Explanations, Reflections, and various ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... trial of this method; such strong growers as the Concord and Norton's Virginia could never be kept within the proper bounds, and it would be useless to try it on them. It might be of advantage on poor soil, where there is at the same time a scarcity of timber. Figure 17 shows an old vine pruned after ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... going to dance. Hear the fiddles! It is one of the great amusements up there," indicating the North with his head. "Only half the time you dance with boys—young fellows;" and he gave a chuckling laugh. "You see there is a scarcity of women. The Indian girls stand a good chance. Only a good many of the men have left wives ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... are shedding tears. But they are all hopeful. They have heard that in the promised land there is plenty of work, high wages, enough to eat, and, what is far better, opportunity to rise. In Italy there is scarcity of work, low wages, a chunk of black bread, and nothing better to look forward to in ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... which are at par or 4s. 6d. making 2-3/4 in my favour. Went to the auction and am told that the greatest part of British goods are disposed of in this way; when once advertised they must be sold as people will not lose their time in inspection; all depends on the scarcity with regard to pieces, therefore requires great care in watching the turns of the market. Took a glass of soda-water made palatable with sweet lemon juice. Arranged matters in my portmanteau. Dined with upwards of 70 persons of both sexes. All sorts ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... of his king and accepted Pedrarias as his superior. The fifteen hundred new men landed in that pestilential climate, in the unhealthy season, paid bitterly for their imprudence. A violent disease attacked them; scarcity of provisions made it worse; and within a month more than six hundred of them had died, while others hastened away from ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... cushion, he said, "Out with thy tale, O Jamil!" and the poet begun:—Know, O Commander of the Faithful, I was desperately in love with a girl and used often to visit her, because she was my desire and delight of all the things of this world. After a while, her people removed with her, by reason of scarcity of pasture, and I abode some time without seeing her, till I grew restless for desire and longed for her sight and the flesh[FN128] urged me to journey to her. One night, I could hold out no longer; so I rose and saddling my she-camel, bound on my turban ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... Most of the hordes known in the colony by the name of Bushmen are now entirely destitute of flocks or herds, and subsist partly by the chase, partly on the wild roots of the wilderness, and in times of scarcity on reptiles, grasshoppers, and the larvae of ants, or by plundering their hereditary foes and oppressors, the frontier Boers. In seasons when every green herb is devoured by swarms of locusts, and when the wild game in consequence desert the pastures ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... reason for the beavers scarcity and wariness! Few were the chances they gave me, on my early rambles, to observe their habits. But just when it seemed they were doomed to suffer the fate of the buffalo, Colorado and a few other states woke up to the fact that beavers were threatened ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... emigration inundate the frontier, with an amount of consumers disproportioned to the supply of grain, the facility of raising the Indian corn, and its early maturity, gave promise and guarantee that the scarcity would be temporary and tolerable. Did the safety of the frontier demand the services of every adult militiaman, the boys and women could themselves raise corn, and furnish ample supplies of bread. Did an autumnal intermittent confine the whole family, ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... of us were sitting around the feeble camp-fire the desert scarcity of fuel permits, smoking our pipes. We were all contemplative and comfortably silent with the exception of one very youthful person who had a lot to say. It was mainly about himself. After he had bragged awhile without molestation, one of the ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... ye know the sarcumstances. Travelled last night good twelve miles before I could light on this here cretur. Never seed such a scarcity o' fowl. Farmers above tending sich like things now-a-days, dom pride! ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... its supply of Hemp, on the production of Mason county, of which Maysville is the market;—this season they have not been able to get a supply at Maysville, and it is a remarkable fact in the history of the Hemp manufactories in Kentucky, that this company, owing to the scarcity and high prices of Hemp in Kentucky, has imported this season 354,201 ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... commanded the English. A heavy snow had fallen and the weather was intensely cold; but on December 19, the English reached the fort and, by reason of their scarcity of provisions, resolved to attack at once. The New Englanders were unacquainted with the situation of the Indians, and, but for an Indian who betrayed his countrymen, there is little probability that the English would have effected anything against the fort. The stronghold ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... have despoiled no widow; I have driven away no tiller of the soil; I have taken no workmen away from their foreman for the public works; none have been unfortunate about me, nor starving in my time. When years of scarcity arose, as I had cultivated all the lands of the nome of the Gazelle to its northern and southern boundaries, causing its inhabitants to live, and creating provisions, none who were hungry were found ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... not include extraordinary development of powers adapted to merely aggressive ends; and yet it is rather through these than through any others that Western individuality most commonly and readily manifests itself. Now there is, as yet, a remarkable scarcity in Japan, of domineering, brutal, aggressive, or morbid individuality. What does impress one as an apparent weakness in Japanese intellectual circles is the comparative absence of spontaneity, creative thought, original perceptivity ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... doors and blind partitions; but as their fear of death increased and the chorus of their despair mounted higher there came another pounding, nearer, louder—the sound of splitting wood and of rending metal. To escape was impossible; to remain was madness; of hiding-places there was a fearful scarcity. ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... the men had landed they began to work with zeal, for houses had to be built, game caught, skins tanned, and land prepared for crops. They suffered much from scarcity of food and clothing the first winter, but managed to exist. The women, however, had bountiful crops, and all through the late fall and winter could be heard revelling in great delight, feasting daily and dancing much of the time to the music of songs sung by the four old cripples. The following ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... value, but so equally distributed that they may be easily attainable when needed. Every change in their value is a virtual change in the value of the vast variety of obligations which are measured and liquidated by them; and every apprehension of their scarcity or disappearance, by whatever cause excited, is an apprehension of embarrassment on the part of all those who have debts ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... my Grasshopper-cages the savagery which is so common in the Praying Mantis, who harpoons her rivals and devours her lovers; but, if some weakling succumb, the survivors hardly ever fail to profit by his carcass as they would in the case of any ordinary prey. With no scarcity of provisions as an excuse, they feast upon their defunct companion. For the rest, all the sabre-bearing clan display, in varying degrees, a propensity for filling their ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... told that they are still deep in debt to their master, and that they will have to pay off by working for some time longer. The poor fellows stay on and on, continue to drink, are never out of debt, and never see their homes again. This practice has developed of late years in consequence of the scarcity of labour, and is nothing but slavery. It might easily be abolished by a slight effort on the part of the Government, but there is hardly any supervision over French plantations outside Port Vila, and in many plantations conditions ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... it is fortunate that the scarcity of gorillas puts them out of the reach of all but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... calculation applied to the labor employed in the various processes of a manufactured article gives its price relatively to other articles. Besides the cost of production and transportation, the factor of scarcity affects the prices of some commodities. As regards the great staples of life, of which an abundance can always be secured, scarcity is eliminated as a factor. There is always a large surplus kept on hand from which any fluctuations of demand or supply can be corrected, ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... harassed to yield provision for the army and large towns; already their best horses had been taken for the siege-trains and the forage-waggons; already their ploughshares were perforce idle, and their children cried because of the scarcity of nourishment; already the iron of war had ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... occasionally by some local engagement like this we dragged through the hot, fly-pestered days and cold, drafty, vermin-infested nights of September and early October. By the middle of October, 1915, disease and scarcity of water had depleted our ranks; instead of having four days on the firing-line and eight days' rest, we were holding the firing-line eight days and resting only four. In my platoon, of the six non-commissioned officers who started with us, only two corporals were left, I and ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... and troubled; he always did when scarcity of money was brought home to him, but Julia regarded ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... that time even the Home Government had to import many essential requirements, such as searchlights), but from England itself. No further example of this need be quoted than the one given by me with reference to the scarcity of small-arm ammunition at the time of the declaration of war ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... conveyance of timber, baggage, and the like, however inconvenient to the proprietor, upon paying him a settled price. A prerogative, which prevailed pretty generally throughout Europe, during the scarcity of gold and silver, and the high valuation of money consequential thereupon. In those early times the king's houshold (as well as those of inferior lords) were supported by specific renders of corn, and other victuals, from the tenants of the respective demesnes; and there was also ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... XII. were inconsiderable. Since then the burden has continually been growing heavier, and the price of provisions has proportionately increased—nay, the advantage accruing from the exportation of corn to France and rye to Germany will probably produce a scarcity in both Sweden and Norway, should not a peace put a stop to it this autumn, for speculations of various kinds have already ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... traditions a stream of Rhenish which plays almost as important a part in them as the Rhine itself. We are told that the Emperor Wenzel sold his crown for a quantity of wine; in the tale connected with Thann, in Alsace, mortar is mixed with wine instead of water, because of the scarcity of the latter commodity during the building of a steeple; while in the legends of "The Devil's Vineyard," and "The Cooper of Auerbach" the vintage of Rhineland provides the main interest of the plot. The following quaint little story, attaching to the castle of Heidelberg, is a 'Rhenish' tale ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... it a difficult matter to keep pleasantly and profitably employed during the long winter months, and I have often wondered how it would be with ourselves. So far, there seems to be no scarcity of employment for all hands, neither is there any prospect of it. For the men there is always the beach-wood to collect, haul and saw up into firewood, not to mention the splitting with an axe, which is, I believe, as ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... niente whilst we talked about the affairs of the settlement. The conversation was growing rather wearisome anent the Spanish priest having ordered huts to be built without giving materials, about the scarcity of palm-leaves in the neighbourhood, and so forth, so I bade them farewell and went on to another hut. Here the inmates were numerous—four women, three or four men, and two rather pretty male children, with their heads shaven so as to leave ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... upon the psyche of the criminal by passion, the accidental criminal, but even the recidivist who would be expected to feel less keenly the painful loss of freedom, falls a prey to the deleterious effects of prison life. The unfavorable hygienic surroundings which are found in most prisons, the scarcity of air and exercise, readily prepare the way for a breakdown, even in an habitual criminal. Above all, however, it is the emotional shock and depression which invariably accompany the painful loss of freedom, the loneliness and seclusion, which force ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... as I could observe and learn from them. For they spend the winter now in one place and now in another, according as they find the best hunting, by which they live when urged by their daily needs, without laying up any thing for times of scarcity, which ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... a fog. Lakes. Circular Lake of Boga. Clear grassy hills. Natives on the lake. Scarcity of fuel on the bank of a deep river. Different character of two rivers. Unfortunate result of Piper's interview with the natives of the lake. Discovery of the Jerboa in Australia. Different habits of the savage and civilized. A range visible in the south. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... and indeed the whole of France was retarded continually by famine, fourteen seasons of scarcity happening in the course of twenty-three years; in fact, from 843 to 899 such was often the state of desolation, that hunger impelled human beings to murder each other to feed upon the flesh of their bodies, which in many instances were sold, and bought with eagerness by those who were ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... water journey. Below the fierce rapids the current was still swift, but there were places where the stream widened, and here the scenery was very fine, although the leaves looked more or less parched on account of the scarcity of rain during the summer ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... if by magic, the enthusiasm of the English; how one fortune after another has been swallowed up in the dark, deep gulf of speculation; how expectations have been disappointed; and how the great cause of this is the scarcity of quicksilver, which has been paid at the rate of one hundred and fifty dollars per quintal in real cash, when the same quantity was given at credit by the Spanish government for fifty dollars; how heaps of silver lie abandoned, because the expense ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... heard them, I hear with redoubled suspicion of the assertions, that Jacobinism is extinct. By what softer name shall we characterise the attempts to connect the war by false facts and false reasoning with accidental scarcity? By what softer name shall we characterise appeals to the people on a subject which touches their feelings, and precludes their reasoning? It is this, Sir, which makes me say, that those whose eyes are now open to the horrors and absurdities ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... old, they are content if they have but panem et circenses, which a Frenchman would render by spectacles et de quoi manger. However divided its inhabitants may be on political subjects, on the score of amusement at least the Republic is one and indivisible. In times of the greatest scarcity, many a person went dinnerless to the theatre, eating whatever scrap he could procure, and consoling himself by the idea of being amused for the evening, and at the same time saving at home the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... son was tempted, during a year of scarcity and agricultural hardship, to enter into the service of one of the small craft that plied on a neighboring river. He had not been long in this employ, when he was entrapped by a press-gang, and carried off to sea. His parents received tidings of his seizure, but ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... 450,000 colliers belonging to the Miners' Federation should cease work for a week or a fortnight. This, it is said, is regarded as an "amicable" Strike, not against the Masters, but to raise the price of coal by producing an artificial scarcity, and thus avoiding a threatened reduction of wages consequent upon over-production. This the Miners ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... he says, "many other creatures in the sea which it is not possible to arrange in any class from their scarcity" (Creswell, loc. cit., ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... breeding, kindness, and the substantial virtues.'[17] Or again, heat instead of cold may drive man to the utmost limit of his natural affections. In the deserts of Central Australia, where the native is ever threatened by a scarcity of food, his constant preoccupation is not how to prey on his companions. Rather he unites with them in guilds and brotherhoods, so that they may feast together in the spirit, sustaining themselves with the common hope and mutual ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... the astronomer said to her "Now tell me what will occur if New Year's day fall on Third Day (Tuesday)." She replied, "That is Mars' day and portendeth death of great men and much destruction and deluge of blood and dearness of grain; lack of rain and scarcity of fish, which will anon be in excess and anon fail. Lentils and honey in this year will be cheap and linseed dear and only barley will thrive, to the exception of all other cereals: great will be the fighting ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... and the hour of it might have been chosen. With a scarcity of food for the morrow, with dark fears for her sister, suffering incessantly on the children's account, Emma might have been pardoned if she had taken the helping hand. But the temptation, though it unsteadied her ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... a growing scarcity of provisions, decided the voyagers to turn back. Early in August they ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... Captain Witham in several places again to look for oats for Tangier, and among other places to the City granarys, where it seems every company have their granary and obliged to keep such a quantity of corne always there or at a time of scarcity to issue so much at so much a bushell: and a fine thing it is to see their stores of all sorts, for piles for the bridge, and for pipes, a thing I never ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Jeanne Falla, and George Hamon. And if I needed further company, I could people the grim stockade with old friends out of those four most wonderful books of my grandfather's. And very grateful was I now for the insistence which had made me read them times without number, and for the scarcity which had limited me to them till I knew parts of them ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... volume appeared in 1920 (including the Crossways, The Bielokonsky Estate, The Snow Wind, A Year of Their Lives, and A Thousand Years). These volumes attracted comparatively little attention, though considering the great scarcity of fiction in those years they were certainly notable events. But Ivan-da-Marya and The Bare Year, published in 1922, produced a regular boom, and Pilniak jumped into the limelight of all-Russian celebrity. The cause of the success of these volumes, or rather the attention attracted by them, ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... specialty with our ancestors if they ever lived a monkey-like life in the trees. The baby that could cling best to its mother as she used hands, feet, and tail to flee in the best time over the trees, or to get at the more inaccessible fruits and eggs in time of scarcity, would be the baby that lived to bequeath his traits to his descendants; so that to this day our housed and cradled human babies would keep in their clinging powers a reminiscence of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... think that all the inconveniences this will produce are yet observed; for, as they sell the cattle dear, so, if they are consumed faster than the breeding countries from which they are brought can afford them, then the stock must decrease, and this must needs end in great scarcity; and by these means, this your island, which seemed as to this particular the happiest in the world, will suffer much by the cursed avarice of a few persons: besides this, the rising of corn makes all people lessen their families as much as they ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... Wind Southerly and fair weather in the Forenoon, but in the Afternoon Showers. We have had a Scarcity of all sorts of Fruit for these 2 days past, which we immagine to be owing ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... to the senators. Two days after that—there having been a very heavy rise in the price of corn, and great crowds having flocked first to the theatre and then to the senate-house, shouting out, at the instigation of Clodius, that the scarcity of corn was my doing—meetings of the senate being held on those days to discuss the corn question, and Pompey being called upon to undertake the management of its supply in the common talk not only of the plebs, but of the aristocrats ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... nest of comfort like a bird, to shelter itself from inclement weather; if it could dam up a river like the beaver, to store water for the annual drought; if it could only, like the ordinary squirrel or field mouse, make a store for a season of scarcity, how marvellous we should think this creature, simply because it is so huge! It actually does nothing remarkable, unless specially instructed; but it is this inertia that renders it so valuable to man. If the elephant were to be continually exerting its natural intelligence, ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... or scarcity of facts and observations as to varieties occurring among wild animals, this argument has had great weight with naturalists, and has led to a very general and somewhat prejudiced belief in the stability of species. Equally general, ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... though none of his work after 1848 is worthy of his reputation. "The Black Prophet" was published in 1847, and Carleton believed rightly that it was his best work. It was written in a season of unparalleled scarcity and destitution, and the pictures and scenes represented were those which he himself witnessed in 1817 and 1822. Many of Carleton's novels have been translated into French, German, and Italian, and they will always stand ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... conversions are comparatively rare. The fewness of holy, consecrated, spiritual Christians, devoted to the service of God and their fellowmen, is felt everywhere. The power of the Church for the preaching of the gospel to the heathen is paralysed by the scarcity of money and men; and all owing to the lack of the effectual prayer which brings the Holy Spirit in power, first on ministers and believers, then on missionaries and the heathen. Can we deny it that the lack of prayer is the sin on account ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... time there was some appearance of a scarcity in England; and many farmers set an unusual quantity of potatoes, in hopes that they would bear a high price the ensuing season. Goodenough, who feared and hated every thing that was called a speculation, declared that, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... England, on April 10, 1829, and was left, at thirteen, the only son of a widowed and impoverished mother. His father had been one of those builders of houses who so rapidly rose in those days to wealth, but who, largely employing borrowed capital, often found themselves in any time of general scarcity reduced to poverty. ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... thousand myriads. [And the emperor was not unwilling to effect a reconciliation, both for the reasons mentioned and because his soldiers were extremely restive,—a condition due to their having been away from home an unusual length of time, as well as to the scarcity of food. No supplies were to be had from stores, since there were no stores ready, nor from the country itself, because part had been devastated and part was controlled by forts. Macrinus, however, did not forward an exact account of all their proceedings to the senate and consequently ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... York, was that of an intelligent and skilful dressmaker, who was found in the garret of a cheap boarding-house, out of work, and nor are such instances unfrequent. The small remuneration which these workwomen receive keeps them living from hand to mouth, so that, in case of sickness, or scarcity of work, they are sometimes left literally ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... On account of the scarcity of fodder, people interested in agriculture and cattle rearing have very often imported foreign grasses and fodder plants into this country, but so far no one has succeeded in establishing any one of them ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... morning. At any time of the night might be seen pieces of the most delicate and choicest meat, roasting on sticks around the fire. With pleasant weather, and no enemy to fear, an abundance of the most excellent meat and no scarcity of bread or tobacco, they were enjoying an oasis of a ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... had a desire to leave camp during the fourth day. Trapping was exceptionally good now on account of the scarcity of animal food and since the big storm they had captured a wolf, two lynx, a red fox and eight mink. But as Mukoki's absence lengthened their ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... scarcity of hazardous waste disposal facilities; rural to urban migration; natural fresh water resources scarce and polluted in north, inaccessible and poor quality in center and extreme southeast; raw sewage and ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... men. The individuals in whom these attacks predominate are men in the prime of life, ranging from 25 to 35 years of age. These people are polygamous and as it is the custom for the old men to marry young girls, thus leaving the old women to the younger men, which in many instances causes a scarcity of women, it ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Bigbear Gully they found the condition of the people most deplorable, owing to scarcity of provisions, prevailing sickness, and the total absence of physic or medical attendance. To make matters worse, there were indications that the rainy season was about to set in; an event that would certainly increase the violence ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... which I could snap the old monster out of her course for a generation or so?" Now for the parallel case from De Quincey. It is from his paper on "California," a politico-economical treatise. The author's object is to illustrate the fact that scarcity of gold is not due to its non-existence, but to the difficulty of obtaining it. "Emeralds and sapphires," says he, "are lying at this moment in a place which I could indicate, and no policeman is on duty in the whole neighborhood to hinder me or the reader from pocketing as many as we please. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... advice," he said, "you will grant them a reprieve, and make a scarcity of yourself. There is a train for Glasgow which you can just catch. I wouldn't distress the Mater and Governor by any farewells, ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... at querulous declamations against the age, on account of luxury,—increase of London,—scarcity of provisions,—and other such topicks. 'Houses (said he,) will be built till rents fall: and corn is more plentiful now ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... docks and nettles which they fed on; two or three, sometimes more, on a car, going to the grave for want of bearers to carry them, and many buried only in the fields and ditches where they perished. The universal scarcity was followed by fluxes and malignant fevers, which swept off multitudes of all sorts, so that whole villages were laid waste. If one for every house in the kingdom died—and that is very probable—the loss must be upward of four hundred ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... received strong stimulus also from the ravages of the terrible Black Death, a pestilence which, sweeping off at its first visitation, in 1348, at least half the population, and on two later recurrences only smaller proportions, led to a scarcity of laborers and added strength to their demand for commutation of personal services by money-payments and for higher wages. This demand was met by the ruling classes with sternly repressive measures, and ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... power which grazing animals possess, enabling them to lay by a store of the superfluous food which they take for seasons of cold or scarcity. It collects round the angular bones of the animal, and gives the appearance of rotundity; hence the tendency to deposit fat is indicated, as has been stated, by a roundness of form, as opposed to the ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... his house, that once had been part of some great stone building of the ancients, and still remained far larger than he could use, for this pair had no children, we were given two good rooms. Here we dwelt in comfort, since, notwithstanding the scarcity of the times, Marcus was richer than he seemed and lived well. As for the village of Kurna, its people all told did not amount to more than thirty souls, Christians every one of them, who were visited from time to time by a Coptic priest from some ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... promises to pay, and without them there would not have been sufficient currency for the transaction of business. The copper coins of Charles II. were intended to put a stop to this unofficial sort of money, but towards the end of the eighteenth century there was such a scarcity of copper currency that local shopkeepers and bankers defied the law and again began to issue their own coins. I have in my possession what looks like a George III. shilling, with the King's head on one side and, on the other, ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... national industry had produced its natural fruit in a distressing scarcity of employment, and in 1778, though it was a year of plenty, and meal was at its cheapest, many thousands of the population were starving because they had not the means to buy it; the farmers were unable to pay their rents because they got such poor prices; processions of unemployed ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... under the building, and leave the front part perfectly dry. It was, therefore, very easy for one or more persons to crawl along the rough gulf which the water coursed over, and stopping under the former, kindle a fire that would give us great difficulty to extinguish in the absence of engines and scarcity of water. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... impudent of men. He adds further, "Those men to whom the lands have been given which he himself and Dolabella distributed, are to retain them." This is the Campanian and Leontine district, both which our ancestors considered a certain resource in times of scarcity. ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... predatory instincts and laziness continue to exist among the bees as well, and reappear each. time that their growth is favoured by some circumstances. It is well known that there always are a number of bees which prefer a life of robbery to the laborious life of a worker; and that both periods of scarcity and periods of an unusually rich supply of food lead to an increase of the robbing class. When our crops are in and there remains but little to gather in our meadows and fields, robbing bees become of more frequent ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... fact; already there were few fit men to be seen out of uniform. David Linton looked forward to a time when shortage of labour, coupled with the deadly work of the German submarines, should mean a shortage of food; and he and Norah set themselves to provide against that time of scarcity. Miss de Lisle and Philip Hardress entered into every plan, lending the help of brains as well as hands. The farm was put under intensive culture, and the first provision made for the future was that of fertilizers, which, since most of them came from abroad, were certain to be scarce. Mr. ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... gathered in farm-fields, where it had been turned up under the plough one piece at a time. All parts of the United States are represented, but some regions more plentifully than others, not only because one district may contain more persons interested in the matter, but because of the comparative scarcity of relics in some parts. One of the most densely populated districts in the whole Union in Indian life was the Atlantic slope of the Alleghanies; and the valleys of the fishing-rivers draining this slope have yielded ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... place or event. It is only by twisting everything that any part of Chaucer's story can be brought into relation with any part of Polo's. To do this might be allowable, if any rational explanation could be given for Chaucer's supposed treatment of his 'author,' or if there were any scarcity of sources from which Chaucer might have obtained as much information about Tartary as he seems really to have possessed; but such an explanation would be difficult to devise, and there is no such scarcity. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... we made up our minds for a plunge into the plains again and a forced march to Lahore, being rather expedited in the determination by hearing that several travellers had been recalled from leave in consequence of there being a scarcity of officers ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... "There was a scarcity of gangways to the boats, and the only means of boarding them was by narrow planks sloping at dangerous angles. Up these the fugitives struggled, and the strong elbowed the weak out of their way in a mad ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... land-hungry farmer has taken ten times as much land as he needs for farming. In the hope of a rise that often does not come, nearly all have bought more land than they can take good care of with limited capital and scarcity of help. ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... value of gold is as a medium of exchange, and its high appreciation is due, first, to the fact that it is in almost universal request; and, secondly, to its comparative scarcity; yet, oddly enough, with the exception of that humble but serviceable metal iron, gold is the most widely distributed metal known. Few, if any, countries do not possess it, and in most parts of the world, civilised and uncivilised, ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... perforce to banish dulness from the lives of their entertainers. 'Twas a gay town, indeed, for some folk, despite the vast ugly blotches wrought upon its surface by two great fires since the war had come, and despite the scarcity of provisions and the other inconveniences of a virtual state of siege. Tom and I saw much of that gaiety, for indeed at that time our duties were not as active as we wished they might be, and they left us leisure enough to spend in ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... attended the supplies of coal heretofore brought to New York from Richmond and Liverpool. Lead, in like manner, was procured under additional disadvantages. These attempts of the enemy to frustrate the design, were vain and impotent. All the obstacles were surmounted. Scarcity of the necessary woods and metals were overcome by strenuous exertions; and all the blockading squadron could achieve, was not a disappointment in the undertaking, but merely an ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle
... the Pastor, "except that Nissen's description is defined by our traditions in Jutland to be a little fellow with sharp cat-formed ears, and to have fingers only, and no thumb. He is supposed to inhabit particular farm-houses and their range of buildings, and, when there is a scarcity of fodder, will steal from another farm; and if there be another Nissen there, they will fight each for the interests of the farm he frequents. He will play tricks on the people working at the farms, particularly so if every Thursday night ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary |
