"Scrawl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... scrawl of a note, delivered just after breakfast at Mr. Elton's door, brought Madeline to visit Mrs. Percival, who, like her mother, seemed to be ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... and, by the light of a match read the scrawl upon it. The writing had evidently been done in haste, but its ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... nothing of the tenderest parts in your own little volume, at the end of such a slatternly scribble as this, but indeed they cost us some tears. I scrawl away because of interruptions every moment. You guess how it is in a busy office—papers thrust into your hand when your hand is busiest—and every ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... numerous—vagrants who cannot go abroad without casting shame on the country which bred them; whose vulgarity causes offence in church and picture-gallery; who cannot see a monument or a statue without desiring to chip off a fragment, or at least scrawl ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... thousand dollar cheque which Lily received with a blotted scrawl from Gus Trenor strengthened her self-confidence in the exact degree to ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... years I sat his smoky room in, Pens, paper, ink, and pounce consuming; The fourth, when Epsom Day begun, Joyful I hailed th' auspicious sun, Bade Tewkesbury and Clerk adieu; (Purification, eighty-two) Of both I wash'd my hands; and though With nothing for my cash to show, But precedents so scrawl'd and blurr'd, I scarce could read a single word, Nor in my books of common-place One feature, of the law could trace, Save Buzzard's nose and visage thin, And Hawk's deficiency of chin, Which I while lolling ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... or fourteen. I do not think it advisable to engage a child in any but the most voluntary practice of art. If it has talent for drawing, it will be continually scrawling on what paper it can get; and should be allowed to scrawl at its own free will, due praise being given for every appearance of care, or truth, in its efforts. It should be allowed to amuse itself with cheap colours almost as soon as it has sense enough to wish for ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the note there and then. It was a mere hurried scrawl, saying that Allerdyke was just setting off for Hull, in obedience to a call from the police; as Gaffney had nothing to do, would Appleyard make use of ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... company amuse themselves in catching fish for supper, walking in the woods, swinging, singing, playing on some musical instrument, &c. I have often been on these parties, and never spent my time more to my satisfaction; which is more than you will be able to say of that spent in reading this scrawl from ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... long since become but a shadow and a name to Cally; she had willed it so, and so it had been. Now, in his own poor scrawl, the ghost of a lover too roughly discarded rose and walked again. And beneath the cheap writing and the unrestrained self-pity, she seemed to plumb for the first time the depths of the boy's present ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... face, and feeling both pulse and skin, as well as hearing his story, would go softly with it to Peter's room; and there think and ask herself how her father, whose system she had long quietly observed, would have treated the case. Then she would write an illegible scrawl with a cabalistic letter, and bring it down reverently, and show it the patient, and "Could he read that?" Then it would be either, "I am no reader," or, with admiration, "Nay, mistress, nought can ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... scrawl improves! [more] O come, 'tis pretty plain. Hey! how's this? Dibble!—sure it cannot be! A poet's brief! a poet and ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... struggle, that had taken place. And then under the table he espied a square of heliotrope paper. He picked it up quickly and took it to the light of the window. It was the envelope of the letter he had received from Anastasie Galitzin. And what was this——? A scrawl in Beth's hand, "You left this last night. You'd better go ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... three hasty lines from the great Collingwood himself. That brave heart, in the midst of the din of victory, had found time to scrawl a word to his old schoolmate, and tell him that his boy had died like a hero, and that he regretted him like ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... talk!" laughed Avdeyev: "Signed it, indeed! They used to bring the accounts to my shop and I signed them. As though I understood! Give me anything you like, I'll scrawl my name to it. If you were to write that I murdered someone I'd sign my name to it. I haven't time to go into it; besides, I can't see ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the latest, which was a scrawl in quavering characters over three telegraph forms. It was from Ladcock at Gilgit, saying that he was having a row of his own with the navvies there, and that he could send no reinforcements at present. If he quieted the trouble ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... hauled up on his line and fired a bomb into the mighty creature; it killed it in a few seconds. Then they lay alongside of the floating carcase, spelled half an hour, had something to eat, and then Cheyne, who had a sense of humour, wrote the scrawl to Keller and tied it round ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke
... quietly and suddenly, and left me in profound amazement. 'I wired to you—that chap was a spy.' It was the close association of these two ideas that hit me hardest at the moment. For a second I was back in the dreary splendour of the London club-room, spelling out that crabbed scrawl from Davies, and fastidiously criticizing its proposal in the light of a holiday. Holiday! What was to be its issue? Chilling and opaque as the fog that filtered through the skylight there flooded my imagination a mist of doubt ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... how long an article he should write, but he counted the words in a double-page article in the Sunday supplement of the San Francisco Examiner, and guided himself by that. Three days, at white heat, completed his narrative; but when he had copied it carefully, in a large scrawl that was easy to read, he learned from a rhetoric he picked up in the library that there were such things as paragraphs and quotation marks. He had never thought of such things before; and he promptly set to work writing the article over, referring continually ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... new ones too, there are inscriptions and inscriptions. We are all familiar with the scrawl of the clown, who has handed down to us his unconsecrated name on the title-page or fly-leaf of some volume of ours otherwise irreproachable. Just a step above him is your fellow who writes some objurgatory caveat against the malappropriator, ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... hedge broke in, the banner blew, The butler drank, the steward scrawl'd, The fire shot up, the martin flew, The parrot scream'd, the peacock squall'd, The maid and page renew'd their strife, The palace bang'd, and buzz'd and clackt, And all the long-pent stream of life Dash'd ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... yellow with age. But he descried a dim tracery of words. A crabbed scrawl, written in blood, hard to read! He held it more to the light, and slowly he deciphered ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... so that he was a long time writing it, and wrote it in a tremulous scrawl at last. It was a cheque for one hundred pounds. He folded it up, put it in Young john's hand, and pressed the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... you through life'" she had written in her old-country scrawl; "but in the end will prove your undoing, for you will meet your death at the hands of your ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... it, but there was room in her simple and single-track consciousness for only one engrossing and absorbing affection. She wrote to him every day, bits of her daily living, and mailed a fat letter every week, and every week or oftener came his happy scrawl from Stanford. Things went with him there as they had gone at L. A. High,—something less, naturally, of hero worship and sovereignty, but a steadily rising tide of triumph. He chronicled these happenings briefly and without emphasis. "Skipper dear," he would write in his crude and hybrid ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... love-affair. While still they stared Williams came rushing wildly in. All gave way to him, and the young doctor who followed him was greeted with low words of satisfaction. To his partner, whom he recognized, Haney repeated his command: "Send for Bertie." With a hurried scrawl Williams put down the girl's name and address on a piece of paper, and shouted: "Here! Somebody take this and rush it. Tell her to come quick as the Lord will let her." Then, with the tenderness of a brother, he bent to Haney. ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... beasts, half cats and half women, with death-like faces, attenuated noses, and swollen lips. They thought all these things very ugly. The stone carvings of the present day were a great deal better. An inscription in Phoenician characters amazed them. No one could possibly have ever read that scrawl. But Monsieur Madinier, already up on the first landing with Madame Lorilleux, called to them, ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... his own hand. "For," said he, and confirmed it with an oath, "if I don't see him this very night it will be a pity:" words which were afterwards thought to have been prophetic by the curious in such matters. So Bellaroba entrusted him with her scrawl to "My love Angilotto," and the Captain chewed and swallowed it when she was not looking. Then he lifted her to his horse and rode with her into the green-sheltered Borgo, just as it was settling into twilight. And Olimpia, from her shutter, saw ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the thought had flashed back into his mind while he listened to that fight for the charter to-day. It did not take him long to lay his plot, and to agree with his few fellow-conspirators. Sir Edmund can snatch the government, and scrawl Finis at the foot of the Connecticut records; but that charter he shall never have, nor shall any man again behold it, until years have passed away, and Andros has ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... room to be "all of herself," and then . . . then there was a "wild screech," and when Emmerjane ran upstairs Maggie was stretched out on the floor in a dead faint, clutching in her tight hand the photograph which Owen Owens had returned with the words, written in his heavy scrawl across the ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... meat, only sufficient to allay at first the pangs of hunger. Will having thus executed his commission, sat down and wrote on a scrap of paper these expressive words—"The brock's in the pock!" and sent it with one of his friends to Traquair House. The moment the Earl read the scrawl, he knew that Will had performed his promise, and took a hearty laugh at the extraordinary scheme he had resorted to for gaining his plea. It was not yet, however, his time to commence his proceedings; ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... use except on Sunday, is generally half full of water. Lucette insists on doing the bailing. She has very often performed this service, and I have always considered it as included in the curious scrawl of a bill which madame gravely presents at the end of each of my days here, beginning in small printed type with "Francois Laguerre, Restaurant Francais," and ending ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... are weary of these hills of purple vines, These crooked groves of olive trees that scrawl the crooked lanes The walnuts shoulder weakly round the tall Italian pines, That whisper like the waves of ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... when Cora called the men to breakfast Mose and Jim did not respond. A scrawl from Mose said: "We've gone to the mountains. I'll be back in the spring. Keep my outfit for ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... as though the art he practiced so supremely both exacted much and conferred much. He made a fine and potent figure as he stood, with his back to the bright street and the gutter-child standing beside him like a familiar companion, and read the smudged scrawl of Papa Musard. ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... scrawl the word "Barsanti;" then he wrapped the paper round a small pebble and approached the fountain. By putting one foot on the edge of the stone basin beneath he could reach over to the curved top, and there he managed to drop the missive into some ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... men who loaf, my dear," she replied. "When you undertake the transcription of an author's scrawl at ninepence the thousand words you have to work hard, especially when, as it is in this case, the thing's practically unreadable. Besides, the woman in it makes me lose my temper. If I'd had a man of the kind described to deal ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... jargon, consisting of many words quite unintelligible to the Africans, whether Negroes or Moors, or others. The language of this document, although it has some Arabic words in it, is worse, if possible, than the scrawl in which it is written; neither is it a correct translation of the English which precedes it. But purporting to be a letter issued from the accredited servants of the King of the English, it is certainly a disgrace to the country from whence it issues, ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... detective, every unfamiliar sign or unusual incident meant a clue to some crime or burglary. Remembering this trait of Miss Aleyn's, Britt suddenly realised how full of meaning must have appeared the hasty scrawl he had left on Miss Aleyn s gate-post for the hounds' guidance that afternoon. He startled the maid-servant by a peal of laughter that ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... much blotted and the scrawl characteristic of an office boy's chirography proved that his terms at public school had not done Scorch much good. This ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... clumsy scrawl, their eyes leaping along the lines, striving to grasp the meaning ere it were ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... there, Where all so quiet was before; They say the face has not a care Nor sorrow in it any more— His latest scrawl:—"Forgive me—You Who prayed, 'they know not what they do!'" My tears wilt never let me see This man that ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... Stretched in abandon at my feet, the while, He fanned me idly with his broad-brimmed hat. "Then all young ladies must be formed for that!" He laughed, and said. "Their letters read, and look, As like as twenty copies of one book. They're written in a dainty, spider scrawl, To 'darling, precious Kate,' or 'Fan,' or 'Moll.' The 'dearest, sweetest' friend they ever had. They say they 'want to see you, oh, so bad!' Vow they'll 'forget you, never, never, oh!' And then they tell about a splendid beau— A lovely hat—a charming ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... it down and turned hastily to letters from Harry and Jenny. The first was only a scrawl in pencil, written with that boyish reticence which always overcame Harry when he wrote to one of his family; but beneath the stilted phrases she could read his homesickness and his longing for ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... fortune-telling; in which last was a sheet of foolscap much scribbled and blotted in several fruitless attempts to make a copy of verses in honor of the heiress of Van Tassel. These magic books and the poetic scrawl were forthwith consigned to the flames by Hans Van Ripper, who from that time forward determined to send his children no more to school, observing that he never knew any good come of this same reading and writing. Whatever money the schoolmaster possessed—and ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... nearly the last letter before the Alcestis was heard of at Spithead. Then she sailed; she sent in her letters to Plymouth, and her final greetings by a Falmouth cutter—poor Harry's wild scrawl in pencil ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... his feeble fingers. He could scarcely write; but he managed to scrawl his name at the bottom of the paper on which his confession was recorded, and two of the persons present signed ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... quavering whistle heralds the approach of a nervous curlew, running and pausing, and stamping, its script—an erratic scrawl of fleurs-de-lis—on the easy sand. Halting on the verge of the water, it furtively picks up crabs as if it were a trespasser, conscious of a shameful or wicked deed and fearful of detection. It is not night nor yet quite day, but this keen-eyed, suspicious bird knows all the permanent ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... earth with him has done; He's buried; save the undertaker's bill, Or lapidary scrawl, the world is gone For him, unless he left a German will:[508] But where's the proctor who will ask his son? In whom his qualities are reigning still,[gl] Except that household virtue, most uncommon, Of constancy to a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... he fell into deep ennui, and to beguile himself he rummaged out of the canvas bag an old note-book and a pencil, and began a clumsy and uninstructed effort to sketch the scene before him. The effort proving quite abortive, he began to scrawl beneath it, 'Paul Armstrong.' 'Yours very truly, Paul Armstrong.' 'Disrespectfully yours, Paul Armstrong.' 'Sacred to the memory of Paul Armstrong, who died of boredom in the Rocky Mountains.' 'Paul Armstrong: the ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... arrived, sage, ware, and tried, As e'er scrawl'd jargon in a darken'd room; With heedful glance the Sultaun's tongue they eyed, Peep'd in his bath, and God knows where beside, And then in solemn accent spoke their doom, "His majesty is very far from well." Then each to work with his specific fell; The Hakim Ibrahim ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... flower, had hanged herself in the gaudy apartment of Lola behind the Golden Cloud where the dance-hall woman had peremptorily brought her when they took her off Cleve Whitmore's shoulder. She left a little note for Courtrey, a pathetic short scrawl, which simply reiterated that she had "ben true to him as his shadow," and that if he did no longer want her, she did not ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... within this pocket-hole I found, my Love, a hurried scrawl Meant not for me," at length said I; "I glanced thereat, and let it lie: The words were ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... grief, he steals, And by himself an Author's pleasure feels: Each line detains him; he omits not one, And all the sorrows of his state are gone. - Alas! even then, in that delicious hour, He feels his fortune, and laments its power. Some Tradesman's bill his wandering eyes engage, Some scrawl for payment thrust 'twixt page and page; Some bold, loud rapping at his humble door, Some surly message he has heard before, Awake, alarm, and tell him he is poor. An angry Dealer, vulgar, rich, and proud, Thinks of his bill, and, passing, raps aloud; The elder daughter meekly ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... about the Grubbling domicile, that had been the older child's—Cornelia's—and had descended to Master Herbert, while yet his only pastime in them was to scrawl them full of pencil marks, and tear them into tatters. These, one by one, Glory rescued, and hid away, and fed upon, piecemeal, in secret. She could read, at least—this poor, denied unfortunate. Peter McWhirk had taught his child her ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Swift, said that he knew of "nothing more manly, more tender, more exquisitely touching, than some of these notes." Swift says that when he wrote plainly, he felt as if they were no longer alone, but "a bad scrawl is so snug it looks like a PMD." In writing his fond and playful prattle, he made up his mouth "just as if he ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... was such a scrawl that my father could not read it, but underneath was printed, "Mayor of Sunchildston, formerly ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... few things interest me. These fellows first abused me for being gloomy, and now they are wroth that I am, or attempted to be, facetious. I have got such a cold and headach that I can hardly see what I scrawl:—the winters here are as sharp as needles. Some time ago, I wrote to you rather fully about my Italian affairs; at present I can say no more except that you shall hear further by ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the sum of eight hundred thousand pounds; and appended was the copy of a letter from the Caisse de la Dette granting three-fourths of this sum, and authorising its expenditure. Added to all was a short scrawl from Imshi Pasha himself, beginning, "God is with the patient, my dear friend," and ending with the remarkable statement: "Inshallah, we shall now reap the reward of our labours in seeing these great works accomplished ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... I resolved to find you out—to see what you were driving at, and where. I could only guess a part from your letter to Barnabas, and that costive scrawl with which you honored me. Perhaps, too—and give my friendship credit for the attempt—I came with some hope ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... was no great hand at reading or writing. He could just manage to scrawl his name. He tried to make out what the articles were about, but it was ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... letter up to her bedroom and there read it a number of times. It all seemed wonderful to her, the stamped blue address, the rich white square notepaper, and above all the beautiful handwriting. She thought of her own childish scrawl and blushed, she even sat down, there and then, at her dressing-table and, with a pencil, began to imitate ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... all the gossips in town, and nearly double our next issue," complacently muttered the local editor, as he carried the scrawl at the last ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... reasons may account for the fact that goldsmith's work is so wholesome for young artists: first, that it gives great firmness of hand to deal for some time with a solid substance; again, that it induces caution and steadiness—a boy trusted with chalk and paper suffers an immediate temptation to scrawl upon it and play with it, but he dares not scrawl on gold, and he cannot play with it; and, lastly, that it gives great delicacy and precision of touch to work upon minute forms, and to aim at producing richness and finish of ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... come to King John, who ascended the throne after putting out his nephew's eyes with a pair of curling-irons, and who is the first English Sovereign who attempted to write his own name; for the scrawl is evidently something more than his mark, which is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... impudent on the walls of any exhibition, in any country, as last year in London. It was a daub professing to be a "harmony in pink and white" (or some such nonsense;) absolute rubbish, and which had taken about a quarter of an hour to scrawl or daub—it had no pretence to be called painting. The price asked for it was two hundred and ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... for an apotheosis of self-sacrifice was past. Nothing remained now but to refuse the proffered bribe of claim and cabin by letter, for he must not wait their return. He tore a leaf from a blotted diary, begun and abandoned long since, and essayed to write. Scrawl after scrawl was torn up, until his fury had cooled down to a frigid third personality. "Mr. John Ford regrets to inform his late partners that their tender of house, of furniture," however, seemed too inconsistent ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... tree, and which she had quite forgotten. What did it mean? Was there anything inside it? With a thrill of fear she darted to the window, untwisted the paper, and by the dim light could just make out the following scrawl: "Leeve the en roost oppen nex Munday nite." Mary gazed at it with horror, unable for the first few minutes to take in the sense, but when she did so she sank down on the ground and burst into tears. What wicked, wicked people they were! Not content with ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... the answer to the letter came, the Prince gave it to her to read. It was very short, a mere scrawl of scarlet ink on the brown, rough-edged paper that was one ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... to scrawl something on the slate, hiding the words from the girl. But she was not backward this time. She begged to see. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... diary, too, which I had abstracted, told fearfully against him. But he contrived to escape the gallows; he had managed to conceal poison on his person, and he was found dead in his cell. Mary Simms I never saw again. I once received a little scrawl, "I am at peace now, Master ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and, as long as he lived, he could neither learn to generalize, nor understand that one man, however diligent, could not be minutely acquainted with all the public and private affairs of fifty millions of other men. He was a glutton of work. He was born to write despatches, and to scrawl comments upon those ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... all the claims our times avow, The ancient Sphinx still keeps the porch of shade; And comes Despair, whom not her calm may cow, And coldly on that adamantine brow Scrawls undeterred his bitter pasquinade. But Faith (who from the scrawl indignant turns) With blood warm oozing from her wounded trust, Inscribes even on her shards of broken urns The sign o' the ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... she groped her way upstairs. Inside her room, when she had locked the door, she stood a moment upright with the letter in her hand,—the blotted incoherent scrawl, where Langham had for once forgotten to be literary, where every pitiable half-finished sentence pleaded with her—even in the first smart of her wrong—for pardon, for compassion, as towards something maimed and paralysed from birth, unworthy ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... but mine was a wretched scrawl by the side of yours. I do not know how, with those terrible telegrams beginning to fly round you, you find time to write such letters. I could never have taken the Foreign Office without the heaviest misgiving, and I hope that whenever the Liberals are in, up to the close of my life, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... offer, and be very grateful for it, for I do not bear this mountain traveling very well. If you find him, give him this scrawl and tell him where ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... hermit, sweat-covered and breathless, returned to the rock. For a moment he gazed about, bewildered by the silence. The white card caught his eye. He read its angular scrawl. ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... showed him the anonymous scrawl which had kindled her fury against him. He turned it listlessly over in his hand. "I guess I know who it's from," he said, giving it back to her, "and I guess you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... are busy with friends, and I fear this scrawl will give you much trouble to read.—With ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... forgot to give them to you." He fished the aforesaid letters out of his pocket and examined them before handing them over. "One is from Dick—the other"—he held the large square envelope off and squinted at it teasingly. "Some scrawl!" he commented. "Reckless display of ink and flourishes, I ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... open the envelope slowly and clumsily with her stiff fingers, and held up the letter so the light struck it. She could not read strange writing easily, and this was a nearly illegible scrawl. However, after the first few words, she seemed to absorb it by some higher faculty than reading. In a short time she had the gist of the letter. It was from a lawyer who signed himself Daniel Tuxbury. He stated formally that Thomas Maxwell was dead; ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... scapegrace, she would never trouble herself whether you were dead or alive! Fagotin! Here is a bundle of Paris newspapers for you; they are quite new—only nine months old! Potele! Some woman has sent you a love-scrawl and some tobacco; I suppose she knew your passions all ended in smoke! Rafle! Here is a little money come for you from France; it has not been stolen, so it will have no spice for you! Racoleur! Here is a love-billet from some simpleton, with a knife as a souvenir; ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... races that live beneath the rivers and mountains. He writes of amazing crimes he has committed, of weird longings that will not let him sleep. And, too, he writes of strange gods which man should worship. He pours out his soul in a fantastic scrawl. He says: "One is all. God looked down and saw ants. The wheel of life turns seven times and you can see between. You will sometime understand this. But now you have curtains ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... This scrawl had attracted the attention of fully a score of cadets, and one after another they entered the classroom designated to find out what it meant. When they saw the teeth dangling in the air they set up ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... christened "Tippy," also for a reason she could not or would not divulge. But one evening, to her secret amusement, Lilly found a sheet of paper in the litter of the desk, jotted all over with Zoe's joyous scrawl, "Zantippe," in every case the first syllable ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... it. And when it stopped, I lighted a match and see ... here ... in your mother's very handwriting"—fervently she held the bit of paper up for Sylvia to see. The girl cast a hostile look at the paper and saw that the writing on it was the usual scrawl produced by Cousin Parnelia, hardly legible, and resembling anything rather ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... he drew a paper from his pocket and handed it to Parker. It was a writing giving sole power of attorney to Joshua Ward. The old man pointed to a witnessed scrawl—a shapeless hieroglyph at ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... Renee, "this letter, which, after all, is but an anonymous scrawl, is not even addressed to you, but ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... yesterday, at the hands of Lieutenant Dunn, your letter of December 8d, and last night, at the hands of Colonel Babcock, that of December 6th. I had previously made you a hasty scrawl from the tugboat Dandelion, in Ogeechee River, advising you that the army had reached the sea-coast, destroying all the railroads across the State of Georgia, investing closely the city of Savannah, and had made connection with ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... materials. And as she listened to the director's rough words, she took up a pencil and twisted it nervously in her fingers. Then, with increasing agitation, as she realized that her effort for Lloyd had failed, she began, without thinking, to make little marks on the blotter, and then a written scrawl—all with a singular fixed look ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... Douglass is a very noble, talented man, and I know of no one who writes a more beautiful letter.' I am sending you a long letter, Lizzie, but I rely a great deal on your indulgence. My fear is that you will not be able to decipher the scrawl written so hastily. ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... Joe Baldwin; help him to read it, if necessary, and to answer it by return of post. It is important; therefore, dear aunt, don't delay. I think you know Baldwin's address, as I've been told he lives in the district of the town which you are wont to visit. Excuse this shabby scrawl, and the trouble I ask you to take, and believe me to be your ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... to the ruins of Machu Picchu. Just when it was first seen by a Spanish-speaking person is uncertain. When the Count de Sartiges was at Huadquina in 1834 he was looking for ruins; yet, although so near, he heard of none here. From a crude scrawl on the walls of one of the finest buildings, we learned that the ruins were visited in 1902 by Lizarraga, lessee of the lands immediately below the bridge of San Miguel. This is the earliest local record. Yet some one must have visited Machu Picchu long before that; because in 1875, as has ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... and one day there came to her a single photograph, a still handsomer picture of Mr. Paul Revere Abbot, and a letter in a hand somewhat stiff and cramped, in which the writer apologized for the appearance of the scrawl, explained that his hand had been injured while practising fencing with a comrade, but that having seen her picture in the group he could not but congratulate himself on having received a "Havelock" from hands so ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... assurance, that, though there may be inaccuracies in the letter, there is not a single defect in the friendship." Occasionally there was, as here, an apology: "I am persuaded you will excuse this scratch'd scrawl, when I assure you it is with difficulty I write at all," he ended a letter in 1777, and in 1792 of another said, "You must receive it blotted and scratched as you find it for I have not time to copy it. It is now ten o'clock ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... out Jerry's optimistic conjecture that the "inside" was all right. Judging from Peggy's crestfallen air, it was all wrong. The note was not written in Lucy's usual regular hand. The letters straggled, the lines zig-zagged across the page, and the name signed was almost an unintelligible scrawl. But Peggy thought less of these superficial matters than ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... this strange crime. Whoever the man upstairs might prove to be—the real Cavendish or some impostor—this paper she held in her hands was destined to be a link in the chain. She unfolded it slowly and her eyes traced the written words within. It was a hasty scrawl, written on the cheap paper of some obscure hotel in Jersey City, extremely difficult to decipher, the hand of the man who wrote exhibiting plainly the excitement ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... she had said, laying down her pen, "Suppose he comes, Soames!" in such a strange tone of voice, as if she did not know her own mind. "He won't come," he had answered, "till he's spent his money. That's why we must act at once." Annexed to the copy of that letter was the original of Dartie's drunken scrawl from the Iseeum Club. Soames could have wished it had not been so manifestly penned in liquor. Just the sort of thing the Court would pitch on. He seemed to hear the Judge's voice say: "You took this seriously! Seriously enough to write him as you did? ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... thrust beneath her door by Mrs Farthing, recalled her to the trivialities of everyday life. She picked them up, to see that one was in the well-known writing of the man she loved; the other, a strange, unfamiliar scrawl, which bore the Melkbridge postmark. Eager to open her lover's letter, yet resolved to delay its perusal, so that she could look forward to the delight of reading it (Mavis was already something of an epicure in emotion), she tore open the other, to decipher its contents with ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... endeavour, but the Fates must decide. I can scrawl, or, with pains, I can imitate Miss Fanny; but the other alternative only comes in ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... half-envelope and the bit of blank paper. Then with trembling fingers she lighted a lamp and held the little piece of paper over the chimney—carefully. When the paper was warm she raised it up to the light and read the scrawl that the ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... link they came upon the little chain of pitiful proofs. They found all the little, sweet, white girl-clothes folded neatly by themselves and laid in a pile together, as if on an altar for sacrifice. If the Little Girl had written "Good-bye" in her childish scrawl upon them, the Shining Mother would not have better understood. So many things she was seeing ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... in the clay-paths. But for nearly two hundred years his bones had been crumbled into lime and his flesh gone back into grass and roots. Yet here he was, a boy still; here was the old pamphlet and the scrawl in yellowing ink, with the smell ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... closet, several framed photographs, some college banners, and a score of other articles. On the very top of the heap was a fancy sofa pillow Nellie had given to Tom and to this was pinned a card, on which was written, in a disguised scrawl: ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... will go soon enough, and you will stay long enough." This increased our irritation. Suddenly, on one still and dark November day, parade was sharply cancelled, we clad ourselves in full marching order, there was just a moment to scrawl on a postcard a few last words home, tender words were exchanged with our friends in the billets, and with heavy tread and in solemn silence we marched forth along the Bedford Road. There was a pillar box ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... Committee. The teachers all knew he was a bluff, but his engaging manner carried him through. When he went away to the state university he made Fanny solemnly promise to write; to come down to Madison for the football games; to be sure to remember about the Junior prom. He wrote once—a badly spelled scrawl—and she answered. But he was the sort of person who must be present to be felt. He could not project his personality. When he came home for the Christmas holidays Fanny was helping in the store. He dropped in one afternoon when she ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... to Daphne as she dressed for dinner. It was only a hurried scrawl on a leaf torn from a memorandum book, and, having read it, she ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... of sight without once turning his head, and Kettle glanced down at the screw of paper which lay on his knees, and saw on it a scrawl of writing. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... however, I understand you to be speaking of book-learning; and as to that, it is a simple affair. Most children, seeing books lying about, manage to read by the time they are four years old; though I am told it has not always been so. As to writing, we do not encourage them to scrawl too early (though scrawl a little they will), because it gets them into a habit of ugly writing; and what's the use of a lot of ugly writing being done, when rough printing can be done so easily. You understand that handsome writing we like, and many people will write their books ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... for a reply, and then came a scrawl on a bit of paper signed by Crapsey, stating that he was having trouble of another kind and could not for the present keep on with his negotiations. After that my father inserted another advertisement asking for more information, but ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... all probability been carefully numbered by the lady to whom they belong, and that to tamper with them to any serious extent might be dangerous. I have therefore only ventured to retain one insignificant scrawl as an example of Matthew Haygarth's caligraphy and signature. From the rest I have taken copious notes. It appears to me that these letters relate to some liaison of the gentleman's youth; though I am fain to confess myself surprised to discover ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... drawer and threw on the table three small sheets of paper, covered with a hurried pencil scrawl, all from Varvara Petrovna. The first letter was dated the day before yesterday, the second had come yesterday, and the last that day, an hour before. Their contents were quite trivial, and all referred to Karmazinov and betrayed the vain ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... handkerchief, adjusted a pair of glasses, and blinked at the penciled scrawl. Twice he read it; then, like the full sun breaking through a drizzle—like the glory of a search-light dissolving a sticky fog, the smile of smiles illuminated everything: ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... candlestick which stood near; and then, as his hearers sat expectant, but not impatient, proceeded: "Scrawling on a slate is one thing, Master Chuter: painting and decorating's another. Painting's a trade; and not rightly to be understood by them that's not larned it, nor to be picked up by all as can scrawl a line here and a line there, as the whim takes 'em. Take oak-graining,"—and here Master Linseed paused again, with a fine sense of effect,—"who'd ever think of taking a comb to it as didn't know? And for the ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... do no injury to the property of any true Protestant, "as I am well assured the proprietor of this house is a stanch and worthy friend to the cause." But there were plenty of houses where neither fear nor fanaticism displayed blue banner or chalked scrawl, houses whose owners boasted no safeguard signed by Lord George Gordon, and with these the mob busied themselves. The description in the "Annual Register" is so striking that it deserves to be cited; it is probably from the pen ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... cry—though indeed I have been crying half through the night. And then if you want to be VERY horrid you may tease me for being so slow to see a joke. And then you might take me to see some of the Colleges and things before we go on to lunch at The MacQuern's? Forgive pencil and scrawl. Am sitting up in bed to write.—Your ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... fair-haired man seated opposite him, Mademoiselle Baltz having been given an easy-chair close by Rasputin's table. It was a writing-table, but the scoundrel never wrote. Sometimes he pretended to do so, but the truth was that it was a long and painful procedure with him. He preferred to scrawl his initials to any typewritten letter which ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... poor light—Doctor Pratt's miserable scrawl; but these were but cowardly subterfuges. John knew that he had been able to decipher Doctor Pratt's handwriting well enough, but that he had been thinking of something else while putting up the powders, and so had put too much opium ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... about answering letters, too much so, her friends think, for she is a slave to her correspondence. Sometimes, however, she reaches the point of exasperation, as when she opened eight pages of a faintly written scrawl beginning, "My heart goes out to you in sympathy." "Well, I wish it would go out in blacker ink," she exclaimed, and threw it into the waste-basket. Invitations to lecture and to attend all sorts of gatherings pour in, and she often says to the younger workers, "If I ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... trying to write this scrawl to you on a round milk container in a camp near London. We are ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... reached for her rifle and ran to the door. There was not a sound or sign that was unusual save that the horses had stopped eating and with ears thrown forward were looking down the gulch. She picked up the paper that lay on the floor, struck a match and read a scrawl by its flare: ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... to moralize in a half-believing, half-doubting kind of way, on the probability of a life to come, and ends by speaking of or rather apostrophizing Jesus Christ in a strain which would seem to savour of Socinianism. This letter he calls "a distracted scrawl which the writer dare scarcely read." And yet it appears to have been deliberately copied with some amplification from an entry in his last year's commonplace book. Even the few passages from his correspondence already given are enough to show that there was ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... showed her the letter Francois had brought him. Unmarked by postal indications, the missive had evidently been intrusted to a private messenger of the governor whose seal it bore. Dated about three years previously, it was written in a somewhat illegible, but not unintelligible, scrawl, the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham |
