"Scanty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... city in which he delighted to watch the humours of simple folk (the highest life being in his opinion 'much the dullest'), that Fielding found his wife. Doubtless his six years about town, as hackney author, with his good birth, his brilliant wit, and his scanty means, had made him well acquainted with every phase of society, "from the Minister at his Levee, to the Bailiff at his spunging-house; from the Duchess at her drum, to the Landlady behind her bar"; but it was in the rural seclusion of an old cathedral town that he wooed ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... to be his own biographer, our materials become exceeding scanty. This is the less to be lamented when we reflect that the history of his "hidden life" is already told. The processes have now been related which formed and developed the inner man; and the few external events that ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... inclined to silence, and paid more attention to the landscape than she did to the conversation, which was mostly about range conditions, and the scanty water ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... indeed, in much resembled that of the Spartan in Greece. He had forced a settlement with scanty numbers in the midst of a subjugated and sullen population, surrounded by jealous and formidable foes. Hence sobriety was a condition of his being, and the policy of the chief lent a willing ear to the lessons ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... particularly if that institution had its birth in struggling pioneer days. It is a period in university life which sees, as a rule, an undreamed of growth and development from small beginnings to unlimited influence, from scanty resources and great disappointments to a large if not always adequate endowment and equipment, from a merely local service to a national and even a world educational power. This is distinctly true of the century of McGill University's story. It began as a College, intended to minister to ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... breathing-spell; and the women, often pregnant, or nursing infants, work in the same way. The toil is intense and incessant. All work to the extreme bounds of their strength, and expend in this toil, not only the entire stock of their scanty nourishment, but all their previous stock. All of them—and they are not fat to begin with—grow gaunt after the ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... roads and haul-downs, locating yards; his short-handled ax was in his belt, his lank haversack flapped on his back; he carried his calipers in one hand; with the other hand he fed himself raisins from his trousers pocket, munching as he went along. He had eaten the last of his scanty supply of biscuits and bacon; but, like other timber cruisers—all of them must travel light—he had his raisins to fall back on, doling them one by one, masticating them thoroughly and finding the ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... the twentieth century remnants of Portugal's colonial empire. The greater part of it fell away between 1580 and 1640, when Portugal was under Spanish rule. But her own system of colonial administration, or rather exploitation, was if possible worse than Spain's. Her scanty resources of man power were exhausted in colonial warfare. The expulsion of Protestants and Jews deprived her of elements in her population that might have known how to utilize wealth from the colonies to build up home trade and industries. Her situation was too distant from the European ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... years of age Veronique's hair was scanty and already whitening. Her thinness was alarming. In spite of her doctor's advice she insisted on suckling her son. The doctor triumphed in the result; and as he watched the changes he had foretold in ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... "You are very fond of music, Madame," and would probably have continued the conversation, had not Lucien interrupted. Madame Recamier confessed that she was prepossessed by Napoleon at this interview. She was evidently gratified by his attentions, scanty and slight as they seem to us. Indeed, his whole conduct during the dinner and concert was decidedly discourteous, if not positively rude. Madame Lenormant attributes Napoleon's subsequent attempt to attach Madame Recamier to his court to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... hope, indeed, as he learned the next moment, was not unjustified. Cautiously he was lowering himself over the edge, feeling for the scanty and elusive foothold, when all at once the air was filled with a rush of mighty wings, which seemed about to overwhelm him. A rigid wing-tip buffeted him so sharply that he lost his hold on the ledge. With a yell of consternation, ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... was born, no children having been vouchsafed to my parents in the early stages of their union. Yet even at the present day, now that years threescore and ten have passed over her head, attended with sorrow and troubles manifold, poorly chequered with scanty joys, can I look on that countenance and doubt that at one time beauty decked it as with a glorious garment? Hail to thee, my parent! as thou sittest there, in thy widow's weeds, in the dusky parlour in the house overgrown with the lustrous ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Charlottetown. They spoke respectively on the finance, the general parliament, and the constitutional structure of the proposed federation. These subjects contained the germs of nearly all the difficulties. When the delegates reassembled a month later at Quebec, it is clear, from the allusions made in the scanty reports that have come down to us, that the leading phases of the question ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... shod and water-proofed, tramped about with rod and creel and returned for luncheon where their blunt criticisms on the fishing aroused Portlaw's implacable resentment. For they sneered at the trout, calling them "char," patronised the rather scanty pheasantry, commented on the kennels, stables, and gardens in a manner that brought the red into Portlaw's face and left ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... surrounding themselves with the majesty of darkness. And in a religion like the Pagan, so deplorably meagre and starved as to most of the draperies connected with the mysterious and sublime, we must not seek to diminish its already scanty wardrobe. But let us pass from speculation to illustrative anecdotes. We have imagined several cases which might seem fitted for giving a shock to the general Pagan confidence in ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... admissible, with the day going down upon it: a few birds wheeling here and there: and solitude and silence reigning paramount around. But the grass was not yet high; there were bare black patches on the ground; and the few wild flowers that the eye could see, were poor and scanty. Great as the picture was, its very flatness and extent, which left nothing to the imagination, tamed it down and cramped its interest. I felt little of that sense of freedom and exhilaration which a Scottish heath inspires, or even our English ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... constantly to be met with in the pages of art-lovers, but a sympathetic study of a single work is rarely found. General comment of a given artist's work is also plentiful, while discriminating praise of individual canvases is scanty. The literary selection has, therefore, involved a ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... not be easy, from such scanty information as the Noble Rhymester has as yet given to the public, to say precisely what sort of a play this promised comedy, "half in prose, half in blank verse," will prove itself to be; but it is to be hoped with The Promise of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... beauty! come, my desert darling! On my shoulder lay thy glossy head! Fear not, though the barley-sack be empty, Here's the half of Hassan's scanty bread. ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... British army in South Carolina and Georgia was 7,000 strong. Help must come from without. And help was coming. Washington detached from his scanty army 2,000 Maryland troops and the Delaware regiment—all veterans—and sent them south under De Kalb, a brave officer of German blood, who had seen long service in France. Virginia, though herself exposed, nobly contributed ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... keep his Word, I should make a better Choice, not that I would change this noble Frame of mine, cou'd I but meet my Match, and keep up the first Race of Man intire: But since this scanty World affords none such, I to be happy, must be new created, and then shall ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... are very mountainous and craggy, so that only a few vallies among the hills and the flat grounds near the shore are susceptible of cultivation. On this scanty cultivable ground, there are forty-one settlements, called pueblas or townships, in the isla grande, or large island of Chiloe. There is one road indeed across the mountains, but the whole interior of the island is uninhabited. The isle of Quinchau has six pueblas; Lemui and Llaicha each four, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... thus falteringly was a little fellow in white gaiters, with an albino's face and scanty hair that stood erect in bunches. But that tactless friend's interruption simply furnished Le Merquier with a pretext for an immediate and natural transition. A hideous smile parted his flabby lips. "The honorable Monsieur Sarigue refers to the Caisse Territoriale; ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... evident that this continent extended an indefinite distance south-wards, and that there was no hope of discovering the end of it, or of discovering a strait; that a hard winter was setting in, and that several men had already died through scanty food and the hardships of the voyage; that they would not long be able to endure that restriction of provisions which he had enacted; that the emperor never intended that they should obstinately persevere in attempting to do ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... the quadrupled elevation of the nave, the lightness, which might otherwise have been marred, being preserved through the employment of a series of simple lancets in the clerestory of the choir. Rearward of the south transept are the chapter-house and the scanty remains of a Gothic cloister, where a somewhat careworn combination of the forces of nature and art have culminated in giving an unusually old-world charm to this apparently neglected gem, as well representative of early French Gothic ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... and that was none other but such an one as was false. So then, the Pharisee is by this time quite out of doors; his righteousness is worth nothing, his prayer is worth nothing, his thanks to God are worth nothing; for that what he had was scanty, and imperfect, and it was his pride that made him offer it to God for acceptance; nor could his fawning thanksgiving better his case, or make his matter at all good ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... passed quietly. Edmund spent most of his time in hunting, being generally accompanied by Egbert. The Saxon was an exceedingly tall and powerful man, slow and scanty of speech, who had earned for himself the title of Egbert the Silent. He was devoted to his kinsmen and regarded himself as special guardian of Edmund. He had instructed him in the use of arms, and always accompanied him when he went out to hunt the ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... struck me that this wedded couple present, even in the scanty notices that we have of them, some interesting points which may be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... said nothing of sending for the wife. In 1861 the war broke out, and the poor clerk saw the one sober crown of his life put off still a year. He was yet more than a thousand dollars short. He was coming back on a Sound steamer, thinking of this, wondering how he could bear this last delay,—his scanty bag of high-priced gold crowded into a pocket,—reading his New Orleans paper carelessly (save only the births and deaths), when his eye caught a name. Jamie knew there was a war; and the article was all about some ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... Governor took him, guardedly enough, into his confidence. With a thousand convicts, most of them utter ruffians, guarded by a scanty force or marines, the news of gold having been found would, he was sure, have a disastrous effect, and lead to open revolt. The few small merchant ships which were in port were partly manned by convict seamen, and there ...
— John Corwell, Sailor And Miner; and, Poisonous Fish - 1901 • Louis Becke
... man, with scanty white hair, but he was very clean, and neatly dressed in a white smock, mended all over, but beautifully worked over the breast and cuffs, and long leather buskins. He was very civil, too. He took off his old straw hat, and rose slowly by the help of his stout stick, though the ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were enacted while the professor was trading for his desired ethnological material. With inexhaustible patience and imperturbable countenance, he sat on a log, surrounded by yelping dogs, and by children and papooses of more or less tender ages and scanty raiment, playing on ten cent harmonicas that had for a time served as a staple of trade, struggling with the dogs and with their equally excited mothers and sisters for a sight of the wonderful basket from whose apparently ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... themselves in the forests and valleys of what has come to be called the Scandinavian Peninsula. That children of the South should have sought out so inclement a habitation may excite surprise; but it must always be remembered that they were, probably, a comparatively scanty congregation, and that the unoccupied valleys of Norway and Sweden, teeming with fish and game, and rich in iron, were a preferable region to lands only to be colonised ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... grow monotonous. The Indians—probably because they knew they were only wasting their scanty ammunition—had ceased firing, and were evidently calling to one another and signaling from behind the rocks and trees where they had taken refuge. So long as they remained down there in front Pike had no possible ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... than thirty, and possessed an uncomely aspect unpleasing to male eyes. Her own were of a cold grey, her lips were thin, her waist pinched in, and—as the natural consequence of tight lacing—her nose was red. Her scanty hair was drawn off her high forehead very tightly, and screwed into a cast-iron knob at the nape of her long neck; and she smiled occasionally in an acid manner, with many teeth. She wore a plainly-made green dress, with a toby frill; and a large silver cross dangled ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... hung aloft the empty winds among; 740 And some, their stain of wickedness amidst the water's heart Is washed away; amidst the fire some leave their worser part; And each his proper death must bear: then through Elysium wide Are we sent forth; a scanty folk in joyful fields we bide, Till in the fulness of the time, the day that long hath been Hath worn away the inner stain and left the spirit clean, A heavenly essence, a fine flame of all unmingled air. ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... and at the end of that time his father, as one means of adding something to his scanty resources, obtained the job of hauling a quantity of iron ore from the ore beds near Little York to a forge and furnace at Fullerville. Willard with an ox-team and his uncle Henry with a span of fine horses, were employed for the most part ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... uncommon story in this New England of ours. Many and many a farm-house could tell a similar tale of thrift, hard work, and parental love. The bare rocky acres are made to yield their uttermost, the cows to do their full duty, the scanty apples of the "off year" are carefully harvested, every pullet and hen is laid under contribution for the great need of the moment,—the getting the boys through college. It is both beautiful and pitiful, as all sacrifices must be; but the years of ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... the sincere believers in the witchcraft delusion were very scanty. The vast majority of the people were simply victims of moral and physical cowardice. They feared to exchange views with one another frankly, lest their interlocutor turn out an informer. They repeated, parrot-like, the conventional ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... canal winds on through the same flat landscape, low-lying, water-logged, with small farmhouses and scanty trees, and in the distance, on the few patches of higher ground, the churches of Oostkerke and Westcapelle. At last, soon after passing the Dutch frontier, the canal ends in a little dock with gray, lichen-covered sides; and this is Sluis, ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... driven, sworn at, from morning to night, could now, in those scanty moments allowed him to swallow his rough food, or before his tired eyes closed in sleep, still more vividly picture ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... the scanty wood, where we saw about twenty tents erected. A bustling landlord came up, and offering us some glasses of bad milk, said that every year a fair is held in the Bush for three weeks, or rather, on three successive Sundays, for during the week days the booths ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... becomes calloused and tough. The hands become claws or talons—broken and disfigured. The muckers laughed at us. They saw we were concerned about trifles. Bloody sweat and hot oil held the red dust around us like a tight-fitting garment. Our scanty clothing was glued to our bodies. Our shoes were filled with water, but that was ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... sounds a little like a joke, but I believe it was meant in all seriousness. He had observed that men with a very strong growth of beard were more liable to go bald early than those who had the hair on the face thin and scanty. He described this as a kind of landslip, I remember, and his idea was that human beings could only have a small crop of hair, and that a good crop on the chin meant a failure higher up. And that, he thought, accounted for the fact that ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... recovered sufficiently to be able to show the police the different rooms, and to explain to them which was which. The inspector examined the scanty furniture of ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... received, not with applause, but horror! He was accused of robbery, was threatened with Solomonic penalties, was finally condemned to penance at a side-table upon dry bread and water, while his innocent brothers and sisters were regaling upon chickens and custards. He was edified over his scanty meal by melting descriptions of the mother-bird returning to the desolated home, of her positive sorrow and her probable pining to death. And the same little boy, looking out through the prison-bars of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... effect, I believe, on our own people, and will somewhat alleviate the nervousness of our public opinion and of our bankers and editors. I hope you will be relieved when you realize that after this increase, and from the very moment this bill is signed and published, the men will be ready. A scanty supply of arms for them might even now be at hand, but we must secure better ones, for if we form an army of triarians, of the best human material which we have among our people, men over thirty years of age and fathers of families, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... of a sincere religious penitent. And did a British audience endure all this?—They received it with plaudits, which, but for the rivalry of the carts and hackney coaches, might have disturbed the evening- prayers of the scanty week day congregation at ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... sixty acres near Dingle, and gave my entire time to it, an assiduity I have compared in my mind to that of the Norwegian reclaiming the little arable spots on the mountain. We both worked pretty hard for very scanty results. I did not even live on my tiny property, but with my mother—my father had died after I returned from my English schools and before ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... followed the development of the Government policy in regard to Russia and the Afghans with extreme interest. He looked with contempt upon the various fluctuations of popular sentiment at the period of the Bulgarian atrocities, and during the Russian war with Turkey; and he expresses very scanty respect for the policy of the English Government at that period. He was occasionally tempted to take to his old warfare in the press; but he had resolved to give up anonymous journalism. He felt, too, that such articles would give the impression that they were inspired by the ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... came across from Carmignano to beg a pumpkin-gourd or two; he got a scanty living by rubbing them up and selling them to the fishermen down on the Arno. Bruno gave them. He had known the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... of them had those loose kind of great-coats on which I have heard called wrap-rascals, with gold-laced hats, slouched in humble imitation of stage-coachmen; others aspired at being grooms, and had dirty boots and spurs, with black caps on, and long whips in their hands; a third sort wore scanty frocks, with little, shabby hats, put on one side, and clubs in their hands. My aunt whispered me that she never saw such a set of slovenly, unmannerly footmen sent to keep places in her life, when, to her great surprise, she saw those fellows, at the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... and others of the same class, yet its appearance in Europe is half a century earlier than the translations by which these other products of the East became part of the popular literature of the Western world. At the least, then, the "Book of Delight" is an important addition to the scanty store of the folk-lore records of the early part of the thirteenth century. The folk-lore interest of the book is, indeed, greater than was known formerly, for it is now recognized as a variant of the Solomon-Marcolf legend. On this more will be ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... wheat and seeds did not mature well. Soon, as Bradford says in his now famous Log-Book, in his picturesque and forcible English, "the grim and grizzled face of starvation stared" at them. The readiest supply to replenish the scanty larder was fish, but the English made surprisingly bungling work over fishing, and soon the most unfailing and valuable supply was the native Indian corn, or "Guinny wheat," or "Turkie wheat," as it was ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... hands over her apron—hands so small and thin that they looked like those of an old woman. Her hair was light and scanty, her complexion sallow, and her eyes a palish gray; but her features were delicate and pretty. She ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... own castle was somewhat of a perplexity to him, for though his lady had once been quite sufficient captain for his scanty garrison, she was in too uncertain health, and what was worse, too much broken in spirit and courage, to be fit for the charge. He therefore decided on leaving Cuthbert Ridley, who, in winter at least, was scarcely as capable ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... how far the world's leaders in thought and action were great readers is not quite an easy one to answer, partly because the sources of information are sometimes scanty, and partly because books themselves have been few in number. If we could prove that since the days of Caxton the world's total of original thought declined in proportion to the increase of published works, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... elder England has been so fully written of, and in such an engaging manner for youthful readers, in the late Sir Francis Palgrave's "History of the Anglo-Saxons," that it would have been superfluous to expand the very scanty Cameos of that portion of our history. The present volume, then, includes the history of the Norman race of sovereigns, from Rollo to Edward of Carnarvon, with whose fate we shall pause, hoping in a second volume to go through the French wars and the wars of the Roses. Nor have we excluded the ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the Maltese had risen of their own accord, had contended for it in defiance of death and danger, had fought bravely, and endured patiently. Without undervaluing the military assistance afterwards furnished by Great Britain (though how scanty this was before the arrival of General Pigot is well known), it remains undeniable, that the Maltese had taken the greatest share both in the fatigues and in the privations consequent on the siege; ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... in disorder and in a kind of mutiny against him. For the eldest of his sons, Xanthippus by name, being naturally prodigal, and marrying a young and expensive wife, was highly offended at his father's economy in making him but a scanty allowance, by little and little at a time. He sent therefore, to a friend one day, and borrowed some money of him in his father Pericles's name, pretending it was by his order. The man coming afterward to demand the debt, Pericles was so far from yielding to pay it, that he entered an ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... having to associate with a wicked friend, a man cooks scanty vegetables in his own house at the eight or the twelfth part of the day, there can be nothing happier than that.[49] He in whose case the day is not counted is not called voracious. And, O Maghavan, happiness is even ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the past may have its bright side, after all, though to speak truthfully, it did show a too scanty knowledge of national history. But if one must forget, it is as well to begin with the wrongs of far-off years, those 'done to your ancient name or wreaked ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... slaves were in the habit of spending a part of their nights and Sundays in fishing for oysters, and in this way made up the deficiency of their scanty allowance. An old man belonging to Colonel Lloyd, while thus engaged, happened to get beyond the limits of Colonel Lloyd's, and on the premises of Mr. Beal Bondly. At this trespass, Mr. Bondly took offence, and with ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... to flee from Mont-Dore in the month of August. In the deep gorges of the Dordogne and its tributaries, the snow rarely lies more than a few days upon the ground, whereas upon the wind-swept plateau above the scanty population have to contend with the rigours of that French Siberia which may be said to commence here on the west, and to extend eastward over the whole mass of metamorphic and igneous rocks, which is termed the great central plateau of France, although ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Taylor was born in Virginia in 1784 Soon after his birth his parents removed to Kentucky. His means of education were extremely scanty, and until he was twenty-four years of age he worked on his father's plantation. Madison, who was a relative and at that time Secretary of State, then secured for him an appointment in the army as lieutenant. From this he rose by regular ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... Sea That gave them scanty bread, They lied about the Earth beneath, The Heavens overhead, For they had looked too often on Black rum when that ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... to be a low one, not more than four miles in length by about half a mile in breadth, on which nothing grew except a few cocoa-nut palms. These afforded the wrecked crew a scanty supply of food, which, with the provisions they had brought, enabled them to live, but the prospect of a residence on such a spot was so hopeless, that they would have left it immediately had not an accident happened which deprived them of ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... when I reached one dying autumn-tide My uncle's dwelling near the forest-side, And saw the land so scanty and so bare, And all the hard things men contend with there, A little and unworthy land it seemed, And yet the more of Asagard I dreamed, And worthier seemed the ancient ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... are descended by cuttings from the Holy Thorn still exist in and about Glastonbury. One of them, of somewhat scanty and straggling growth, occupies the site of the original thorn, on the summit of Weary-all Hill. Another, a much finer tree, compact and healthy, stands on private premises, near the entrance of a house ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... 1857-8, $1,843.68. With this resource only, and at this rate of increase, about one hundred and sixty years will be required for the augmentation of the capital to the maximum contemplated by existing laws. But the educational wants of the state are such that even this scanty supply must soon cease. It is then due to the magnitude of the proposition for the considerable and speedy increase of the school fund, that its necessity, if possible, or its utility, at least, should be satisfactorily ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... investigation had begun, the deed was as clear as day; but the evidence concerning the perpetrator was so scanty that, although all circumstances pointed strongly towards the "Blue Smocks," nothing but conjectures could be risked. One clue seemed to throw some light upon the matter; there were reasons, however, why but little dependence ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... his natural frank self with her. In her presence he was always at a disadvantage. She seemed to take stock of his learning and to mock at the idea of his pastoral claims. It was not the first time she had called herself a black sheep, or had spoken of her scanty attendances at church. But as yet he had not dared to rebuke her; he had a feeling that she might fling back his rebuke with a jest, and his dignity forbade this. Some day he owed it to his conscience to speak a word to her,—to tell her of the evil effects ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... them, was known as "L'homme a la tete de cire." The Lancet gives his history briefly as follows: During the Franco-Prussian War, he was horribly wounded by the bursting of a Prussian shell. His whole face, including his two eyes, were literally blown away, some scanty remnants of the osseous and muscular systems, and the skull covered with hair being left. His wounds healed, giving him such a hideous and ghastly appearance that he was virtually ostracized from the sight of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... arranged that his wages were to be one leaf-plate full of rice a day: and that if he threw up the service he was to lose a piece of his skin a span long. After a short time the prince who had been brought up in luxury found the work so hard and the food so scanty that he resolved to leave the mahajan: but before he went he had to submit to a piece of skin being cut off, in terms of the agreement. The prince then went to the barber and told him how ill he had fared. The barber vowed that he should be avenged. So he ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... any food or water and our ammunition was almost exhausted. During the night, here and there daring men would rush through the space swept by the Russian gun fire, which was kept up constantly, trying to bring us what scanty supplies they could procure from neighboring trenches better provided than we were, but the little they brought was nothing compared to ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... fear of an enemy: the convenience of feeding their cattle was even a sufficient motive for removing their seats: and as they were ignorant of all the refinements of life, their wants and their possessions were equally scanty and limited. [FN [a] ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... escape whither they could. They reached Naples, {104} and their piteous plight and the news they brought helped to direct the attention of the imperial power to its lost heritage. [Sidenote: The Vandal persecution.] Meanwhile the suffering Church, enjoying now a scanty toleration, now suffering a severer persecution, continued to make converts and to produce martyrs. In 477 Gaiseric died. A year before his death he had allowed the Catholics to reopen their churches and to bring back their bishops and clergy from exile. And ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... only drink The acrid milk of camels, and their wells. 125 And then a swarm of wandering horse, who came From far, and a more doubtful service own'd; The Tartars of Ferghana, deg. from the banks deg.128 Of the Jaxartes, deg. men with scanty beards deg.129 And close-set skull-caps; and those wilder hordes 130 Who roam o'er Kipchak deg. and the northern waste, deg.131 Kalmucks deg. and unkempt Kuzzaks, deg. tribes who stray deg.132 Nearest the Pole, and wandering Kirghizzes, ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... been established and correlated with the gravel terraces of existing rivers, and even with the deposits of rivers no longer existing and with certain glacial deposits. But with all of these the actual bodily remains of man are comparatively scanty. From this it may be concluded that primitive methods of burial were such as to be unfavourable to the actual preservation of human remains. Attempts have also been made to prove the existence of man in pre-glacial times, but hitherto none of these have met with general acceptance, since in no ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... overtaking even the lingering northern twilight. The angry clouds had dropped lower on the moors; a few sheep beside the glimmering stone trough showed dimly white; the night wind was sighing through the untenanted valley and the scanty branches of the thorn. White mists lay along the hollow of the dale; they moved weirdly under the breeze. She could have fancied them a troop of wraiths to whom she had flung her warm crushed heart, and who were bearing it ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of naked forms they passed, dealing to each one a ration of bread and meat, scanty and coarse enough, yet sufficient to sustain life. Then half a pint of water was served out ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... enough to tell us how much he doted on finery and fashionable raiment in those bills from his tailor, which to the very last remained unpaid. Filby could afford the loss. It will be gathered from all this that with a change in fortune there had also been a departure from those scanty quarters in Green Arbour Court. His new apartments in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, were not elaborately furnished, nor dignified in themselves or their situation, but they were the sign of better days. For all Fame brings its rich rewards. For Goldsmith ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... and sadly weeping; Dreading still, with anxious gaze, Icy fetters round thee creeping; O'er the cheerless, withered plain, Woefully and hoarsely calling; Pelting hail and drenching rain On thy scanty vestments falling. Sad and mournful are thy ways, ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... that broke out of the base of a rock some forty or fifty feet in elevation, as a place well suited to the wants of his herds. The water moistened a small swale that lay beneath the spot, which yielded, in return for the fecund gift, a scanty growth of grass. A solitary willow had taken root in the alluvion, and profiting by its exclusive possession of the soil, the tree had sent up its stem far above the crest of the adjacent rock, whose peaked summit had once been shadowed by its branches. But its loveliness ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... spread out with care the scanty table-cloth, got two knives and two forks out of the table drawer, and suddenly stopped in her ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... the rocks push out like architectural adornments. Streamlets issue from the fissures, where the roots of stunted trees are nourished. Farther on, a few rocky slopes, less perpendicular than the rest, afford a scanty pasture for the goats. On all sides heather, growing from every crevice, flings its rosy garlands over the dark, uneven surface of the ground. At the bottom of this vast funnel the little river winds through meadows that are always cool and ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... proceeded to the Saltmarket; when my friend, who, by the way, had now told me that his name was Lancaster, conducted me up a dark, dirty-looking close, and finally into a house of anything but respectable appearance. The furniture was scanty, and what was of it much dilapidated: half the backs of half the chairs were broken off, the tables were dirty and covered with stains and the circular marks of drinking measures. A tattered sofa stood at one end of the apartment, the walls were ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... a tall and very thin man, meanly dressed in a short, scanty jacket and well-darned hose. Unable, for some reason, to bend his neck, he carried his head with a ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... Canada and Australasia, that the swelling millions peopling eastern Asia should be encouraged to expand westwards into the rich but sparsely populated regions lying north of Mongolia, rather than that they should be seeking to expand across the Pacific Ocean. As it was, Japan received scanty encouragement, and only received it after procrastination had been ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... remark the scanty accommodation afforded to the numerous visitors. To see the number of people riding and walking round the Newera Ellia plain, it appears a marvel how they can be housed in the few dwellings that exist. There is an endless supply of fine ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... rewarded only with mortification? Is obscurity and retirement the favourite scene of uneasiness, ingratitude, and impertinence? They shall be no longer my torment. In no scene can I meet with a more scanty success." ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... days and his keen eyes, so observant of material matters, noted that the colony was not doing well for the time, the drought having almost ruined the crops and there was full promise of scanty food and a hard winter. Now came his opportunity. He had looked upon his month in the forest as in part a holiday, and he never intended to throw aside all responsibility for others, roving the wilderness absolutely free from care. He knew that he would have work to do, he felt that ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... great respect, and were regarded as the equals of men. They ruled their households. The rich were hospitable, and delighted to give feasts, at which were dancers and musicians. They possessed chariots and horses, and were indolent and pleasure-seeking. The poor people toiled, with scanty ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... of every free and thinking mind to scorch and scar! And now, my friends - my labouring friends, for I rejoice and triumph in that stigma - my friends whose hard but honest beds are made in toil, and whose scanty but independent pots are boiled in hardship; and now, I say, my friends, what appellation has that dastard craven taken to himself, when, with the mask torn from his features, he stands before us in all his native deformity, a What? A thief! A plunderer! A proscribed fugitive, ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... the Portuguese missions remains to be considered. In our present comparative ignorance of Japanese social history, it is not easy to understand the whole of the Christian episode. There are plenty of Jesuit-missionary [331] records; but the Japanese contemporary chronicles yield us scanty information about the missions—probably for the reason that an edict was issued in the seventeenth century interdicting, not only all books on the subject of Christianity, but any book containing ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... not to encounter the new reinforcement; but speeding across the plain, was soon seen rallying his own scattered cavalry, and pouring them down, in one general body, upon the scanty remnant ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... flower-seeds and a little weeding in the spring make it, all summer, an object which everybody stops to look at. Her aesthetic soul was at first greatly tried with the water-barrel which stood under the eaves spout,—a most necessary evil, since only thus could her scanty supply of soft water for domestic purposes be secured. One of the Graces, however, suggested to her a happy thought. She planted a row of morning-glories round the bottom of her barrel, and drove a row of tacks around the top, and strung her water-butt ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... that island (seven miles long, a mile or so broad) is familiar now; but it is almost ludicrous to recollect with what anxiety we pored over the hydrographic charts and sailing instructions of the various nations, to find some information, however scanty, about the spot which was to be our home for nearly a month. All that was known was that this island had formerly been occupied as a guano station. There was ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... the enemy should relax in their efforts immediately on learning the death of their general and of the numerous chiefs who surrounded him. On perceiving that they began to retreat, we forgot our hunger, thirst, fatigue, and wounds, and thought of nothing but victory and pursuit. Our scanty cavalry followed them up close, dealing destruction around them on every side; and our faithful allies fought like lions, mowing down all before them with the arms which the enemy threw away to facilitate their flight. On the return of our cavalry from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... anecdotes of authors. Thus, in the letter just quoted, she says: "Lord Byron protests his wife was a fortune without money, a belle without beauty, and a blue-stocking without either wit or learning." But her literary information grew scanty as she grew old: "The literary world (she writes in 1821) is to me terra incognita, far more deserving of the name, now Parry and Ross are returned, than any part of the polar regions:" and her opinions of the rising authors are principally valuable as indications of the obstacles which budding ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... cool his heels in the road; but not alone, for Mr. Dryland came out of the cottage. The curate was a big, stout man, with reddish hair, and a complexion like squashed strawberries and cream; his large, heavy face, hairless except for scanty red eyebrows, gave a disconcerting impression of nakedness. His eyes were blue and his mouth small, with the expression which young ladies, eighty years back, strove to acquire by repeating the words prune and prism. He had a fat, full voice, with unctuous modulations ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... friend, have steeled my heart Boldly to choose the better part, To leave the beaten ways of art, And wholly free To dare, beyond the scanty ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... our long and fatiguing marches, dying almost from want, harassed incessantly by the enemy, did Riley carry the boy's knapsack for miles, and many a crust for the poor wretch was saved from his scanty allowance. But Frank Lilly's resolution was once the cause of saving the whole detachment. The American army was encamped at Elizabethtown. The soldiers stationed about four miles from the main body, near the bay that separated the continent from Staten-Island, ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... spoke, he examined the poor little studio, with its bare walls, its scanty furniture, the brand-new photographic apparatus, the little Prussian fireplace, new also and never yet used for a fire, all forced into painfully clear evidence beneath the direct light falling from the glass roof. The drawn face, the scanty ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... by the magistrate; it rested solely on the belief of its followers, and it may have merged into Christianity the faster for the greater number of truths which were contained in it than in the paganism of other nations. The scanty hieroglyphical records tell us little of thoughts, feelings, and opinions. Indeed that cumbersome mode of writing, which alone was used in religious matters, was little fitted for anything beyond the most material parts of their mythology. Hence ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Drake Reviv'd" (first published in 1626), by Philip Nichols, Preacher, helped, no doubt, by Drake himself and some of his company. 2. The scanty notice of the raid given in Hakluyt. 3. The story of Lopez Vaz, a Portuguese, also ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... and Fanny had finished their breakfast, Wahena was unbound and permitted to eat all he wanted. His appetite did not seem to be at all impaired by his imprisonment, for he ate with a greediness which threatened to make serious inroads upon the scanty stock of provisions. While he was thus occupied, Fanny sang one of her Sunday school hymns, a sad and plaintive air, which not only moved Ethan to the depths of his heart, but visibly affected the little savage. Noticing the effect, she followed up the impression until she was surprised ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... soon after 10 o'clock. Then, General Toral introduced General Shafter and the other officials to various local dignitaries and a scanty luncheon, was brought. Coffee, rice, wine and toasted cake were the ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... was not the case. At that time, the great mass of the people in Europe—men and women—were ignorant to the last degree, possessing little if any sense of delicacy or refinement, and were utterly uncouth. For the most part, they lived in miserable hovels, were clothed in a most meagre and scanty way, and were little better than those beasts of burden which are compelled to do their master's bidding. Among these people, rights depended quite largely upon physical strength, and women were generally misused. To the lord of the manor it was a matter ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... heart of hearts began almost to wish for that retirement to which he had occasionally alluded as a distant Elysium which he should never be allowed to reach. He was beginning to have the worn look of an old man. His scanty hair was turning grey, and his long thin cheeks longer and thinner. Of what he did when sitting alone in his chamber, either at home or at the Treasury Chamber, she knew less and less from day to day, and she began to think ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... PLUMMER was a native of Philadelphia, of revolutionary stock, born in 1812, and had been a widow for nearly twenty-five years. Though possessed of but little property, she had for many years been the friend and helper of the poor, attending them in sickness, and from her scanty purse and by her exertions, securing to them a decent and respectable Christian burial when they were called to die. At the very commencement of the War, she entered into the Refreshment Saloon enterprise with a zeal and perseverance that never ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... altogether to the public service. I have, what is commonly expected of men who represent Massachusetts in the Senate, delivered a good many literary and historical addresses, and have taken part in political campaigns, and have occasionally eked out a scanty salary by some professional work in the vacations. But I think I may fairly claim that I have done my share of the work of the Senate and of the House to the best of my ability. Senator Edmunds when he left the Senate was kind enough to compliment me by saying that ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... fragments from an eating cloth, he advanced, and gathering them up, sat down in a corner, and gnawed the bones and half-eaten morsels with eagerness; after which, lifting up his eyes towards heaven, he thanked God for his scanty meal. The servant, who had observed his motions, was surprised and affected at his wretched condition and devotion, of which he informed his master; who, being a charitable man, took from his purse ten sherifs, which he ordered the servant ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... hardly liked to break in upon his scanty hoard, but the morning air had sharpened his appetite, and he felt that he must have something to eat. Besides, he remembered one thing which fortunately Mr. Holden did not know, that in addition to the five dollars which Dr. ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... than their evening costume; for the feast was not to end with a single evening, like a paltry town entertainment, where the whole supply of eatables is put on the table at once, and bedding is scanty. The Red House was provisioned as if for a siege; and as for the spare feather-beds ready to be laid on floors, they were as plentiful as might naturally be expected in a family that had killed its own geese ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... you how, when I beheld young men still free and happy, married, fathers of children, cheerfully toiling at their work, my heart reproached me with the greatness and vanity of my unhappy sacrifice. I will not describe to you how, worn by poverty, poor lodging, scanty food, and an unquiet conscience, my health began to fail, and in the long nights, as I wandered bedless in the rainy streets, the most cruel sufferings of the body were added to the tortures of my mind. These things are not ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... the stomach and bowels had remained unimpaired; but at this period, (September 1833,) the former became irritated, and the latter obstructed. Tonics and gentle purgatives were administered, and continued for a considerable time. The urinary secretion was all along scanty and high coloured; but, as the disease advanced, the quantity became exceedingly small, (almost none was voided for days together,) for which he was taking diuretics; and on examining it with the application ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... defence was without final result, however, as he was at last compelled to surrender Seville in 1091, after a stubborn resistance. Aben Abed was exiled, with his wife and daughters, and was sent to the castle of Aginat, in Africa, to live his life away. There, if the reports be true, their food was so scanty that the ladies of the family had to spin to get enough for them all to eat, while the despondent emir tried to beguile the weary hours with poetry. The hardships of their life were so great that finally the emir was left alone in his captivity, and it was ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger |
