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More "Meagre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... longer in proportion to their weight than trout, and a novice almost always overestimates them. But the guides were not deceived. "This one will weigh four pounds and three-quarters, and this one four pounds, but that one not more than three pounds; he is meagre, M'sieu', BUT he is meagre." When we went ashore and tried the spring balance (which every angler ought to carry with him, as an aid to his conscience), the guides guess usually proved to be within an ounce or two of ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... reason to rejoice, to see so many of its half-starved manufacturers amply provided for; and the whole tribe of meagre incurables would probably shout for joy, at being delivered from the tyranny and garrets of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... breakfast the next morning we had the newspaper, the 'Alta California.' It gave a meagre outline of the address, but praised it warmly, and closed with the following observations: 'All left the church feeling that an elegant tribute had been paid to the creative genius of the Great First Cause, and that a masterly ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... convinced me that it would be impossible to extract from them their religious beliefs by direct questioning. I adopted, therefore, a different system of tactics. From meagre replies already received I had discovered that their doctrine had at least a superficial resemblance to Presbyterianism, and from former experience I was aware that the curiosity of intelligent Russian peasants is easily excited by descriptions of foreign countries. On these ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... medicinal plants, so important in the rustic materia medica of New England—such as pennyroyal, for example—are generally much less aromatic and powerful when cultivated in gardens than when self-sown on meagre soils. On the other hand, the cinchona, lately introduced from South America into British India and carefully cultivated there, is found to be richer in quinine than ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... dire quinsy choked his guiltless breath, And o'er his face the blackening venom stole, Festus disdained to wait a lingering death, Cheered his sad friends and freed his dauntless soul. No meagre famine's slowly-wasting force, Nor hemlock's gradual chillness he endured, But like a Roman chose the nobler course, And by one blow his liberty secured. His death was nobler far than Cato's end, For Caesar to the last was ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... graduation came, and the two friends parted to pursue their separate ways. Silverthorn had a widowed mother living at a distance in the country, whose income had barely enabled her to send him through college on a meagre allowance. He went home to visit her for a few days, and then promptly took his place on a daily newspaper in Boston, where he spent six months of wretched failure. He had great hopes of achieving in a short time some prodigious triumph in writing, but at ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... he is more especially the man who in his youth had eaten roast dog in the depths of a gloomy forest of snow-loaded pines. My memory cannot place him in any remembered scene. A hooked nose, some sleek white hair, an unrelated evanescent impression of a meagre, slight, rigid figure militarily buttoned up to the throat, is all that now exists on earth of Mr. Nicholas B.; only this vague shadow pursued by the memory of his grandnephew, the last surviving human being, I suppose, of all those he ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... uncertainty of its commander as to whether or not Cervera was in the latter port; nor was there then known reason to censure the decision of the officer on the spot, whose information, dependent upon despatch vessels, or upon local scouting, was necessarily, in some respects, more meagre than that of the Department, in cable communication with many quarters. Nevertheless, he was mistaken, and each succeeding hour made the mistake more palpable and more serious to those in Washington; not, indeed, that ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... the top of the Fourteen Hundreds—the border had grown wider, had left its meagre allowance of three or four inches, and was fast acquiring a foot in width. This meant more detail, a broader design, coarser flowers, bigger fruit, and these spraying over the galloon, and all but invading the picture. It was ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... own disposition, what through the prayers of his mother Edith, attached, like most ladies, (of the period,) to the clerical order, had terminated in his keeping the Abbot and his monks in the dungeons of Coningsburgh for three days on a meagre diet. For this atrocity the Abbot menaced him with excommunication, and made out a dreadful list of complaints in the bowels and stomach, suffered by himself and his monks, in consequence of the tyrannical ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... loud, nor so discordant seemed Tarpeia, when was ta'en from it the good Metellus, wherefore meagre ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... ghost story short, without adding another chapter, Mr. Aveling, on looking into the dark chasm by the meagre light of the lowered candle, beheld, to his amazement, the reflection of his own face in the water of a large cistern underneath the staircase, the house having formerly been supplied from the "large ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... upon the wall, and the celestial and terrestrial globes in the windows, were waxy with cold. Here he produced a decanter of curiously light wine, and a block of curiously heavy cake, and administered instalments of those dainties to the young people: at the same time sending out a meagre servant to offer a glass of "something" to the postboy who answered that he thanked the gentleman, but, if it was the same tap as he had tasted before, he had rather not. Master Scrooge's trunk being ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... omitted or not done thoroughly, resulting in broken and irregular lines. When more care is given, the hedge is nearly spoiled by being pruned too wide at the top, the heavy shade above causing meagre growth and openings below. It should be pruned in wedge shape, but shearing is objectionable as causing a thick and short growth of leaves at the exterior, excluding light from the inside and causing bare branches there. ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... such a bill must be content to inherit the honours of that Athenian lawgiver whose edicts were said to be written not in ink but in blood. But suppose it past; suppose one of these men, as I have seen them,—meagre with famine, sullen with despair, careless of a life which your Lordships are perhaps about to value at something less than the price of a stocking-frame;—suppose this man surrounded by the children for whom he is unable to procure ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... affected for centuries the happiness of mankind." [History of the later Roman Commonwealth, vol ii. p. 317.] In fact, the more we test its importance, the higher we shall be led to estimate it; and, though the authentic details which we possess of its circumstances and its heroes are but meagre, we can trace enough of its general character to make us watch with deep interest this encounter between the rival conquerors of the decaying Roman empire. That old classic world, the history of which ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... uphill, and he saw to his right a small hamlet. It lay some distance off his road, but he was sharp- set, for the shepherd's fare had been meagre; and so turned aside in the hope of an ale-house. There was no side road visible, and he struck across the dank, marshy fields until he lighted on a rude track which led to the group of cottages. The place struck him as strangely quiet; no smoke rose from the chimneys; no dogs rushed ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... is launched in English society of an intellectual order, and mighty dull he finds it. During two hours of desultory conversation and rather meagre refreshments, the only bright spot is his meeting with Charles Honeyman, his dead wife's brother, whom he was mighty glad to see. Except for this meeting there was little to entertain the Colonel, and as soon as possible he and Honeyman walked away together, the ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century, developing the meagre suggestions of Byzantine decoration, incorporating the richer inventions of the bas-reliefs of the Pisan sculptors and of the medallions surrounding the earliest painted effigies of holy personages, produced a complete ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... interference of heat, the triple constitution of the solar ray, the identity of magnetism and electricity, the polar nature of chemical affinity, the optical polarities of crystals, and the interaction of magnetism and light. Since then the once meagre and fragmentary science of physics has become one of the grandest and richest departments of human thought; and the illustrious names of Helmholtz, Joule, and Mayer, of Grove, Faraday, and Tyndall, may be fitly named beside those of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... The cracking had been that of the window shutter downstairs, which the maid-servant was opening to let in the day, now slowly increasing to Nature's meagre allowance at this sickly time of the year. "O that I had seen his face!" she said again. "'Twas meant ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... man Peregil, patiently waiting the leisure of their beasts, sighing, and cursing, and complaining by turns, for want of more suitable recreation. The night was dreary, and the spreading branches of the tree under which our friends had taken shelter, afforded but a meagre accommodation. If their lodgings were comfortless, the supper which they could expect was still more humble and hermit-like;—the bill of fare consisted of some green grass, which though abundantly supplied, presented a most provoking and unrelishing want of variety. We ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... Hungary and Transylvania by the victorious armies of the Turks, it was not likely that this emperor would entertain the idea of violating the religious peace, and thereby destroying his own painful work. The heavy expenses of the perpetually recurring war with Turkey could not be defrayed by the meagre contributions of his exhausted hereditary dominions. He stood, therefore, in need of the assistance of the whole empire; and the religious peace alone preserved in one body the otherwise divided empire. Financial necessities ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... form that can be named. Some had saddles, some blankets, some bridles, some halters, some with stirrups, some with none. The riders also were various and grotesque in their appearance. Some were old, some young, some hale, respectable looking men; others were pale, meagre, and shabbily dressed. Some had great coats,—others had blankets on their shoulders. The countenance of some was downcast, melancholy, dejected; that of others, stern, indignant, manifesting that they thought themselves undeserving such treatment. Two Philadelphia horsemen rode in front and ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... likely that Longstreet should have broken off fragments of stone with so plain a marking of red dirt on them. Helen merely knew that her father had more than once climbed up here, though she had laughed at him for seeking gold upon the exalted heights. To know anything beyond this meagre and unsatisfying data, they must await ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... ladies may taste the meagre liquid, and pronounce it agreeable to their gustative inclinations; but something more than an agreeable titilation of the palate is required to keep up that manufactory of blood, bone, and muscle which constitutes the ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... did need all that while to save it up. For beauty-loving Berta with her eternally slim purse and hopelessly meagre account-book, the plan at first seemed only a vision of the moment. Nobody can save out of nothing, can she? Robbie Belle, however, had a stubborn fashion of clinging to an idea when once it became fixed. Her ideas, furthermore, were apt to be clean-cut and definite. This is how ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... said to have occupied eight presses, or sets of shelves, set against the east and west walls, but our information on the subject of the fittings is provokingly meagre. It is chiefly contained in the following passage of a description written by Bernardino Baldi, and dated 10 June, 1587. Baldi, as a native of Urbino, and in later life attached to the service of the Duke, must have been well acquainted with the ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... connection. The old 'meeting-house' (for the Puritans used the word church only in a spiritual sense) stood fronting the site of the present enormous edifice. It was torn down in 1812. Here for nearly a quarter of a century the tall form, and face pale and meagre from intense thinking, appeared each Sabbath before a people among whom his recluse habits rendered him almost a stranger. Here, having rested upon the desk, upon the elbow of his left arm, whose hand held a tiny book of closely written MS., he read with stooping form and low tones those solemn ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... easier thing to increase our expenses than to reduce them. We get used to a certain free way of living, and it is one of the most difficult things in the world to give up this little luxury, and that pleasant indulgence, and come right down to the meagre necessaries of life. This fact was soon apparent to Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm; but they were in earnest in what they were about, and practised the required self-denial. Their expenses were kept within the limits of seven hundred dollars, the lowest sum that ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... full historical memoir of him within the limited space of this volume is impossible. All that can be attempted is to present a sketch of the man with a few of his more prominent surroundings against a very meagre and insufficient background of the history of the times. So it may be permissible to begin with a general outline of his figure, to be filled in, shaded, and colored as we proceed. At best our task is much more difficult of satisfactory ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... them ventured to join the funeral procession of their only brother. He had three sons, Louis, Philip, and Charles. Philip was king of Spain. Louis and Charles were at home. But they kept at a safe distance, as did the king his father, from the meagre funeral procession which bore, with indecent haste, the remains of the prince to the ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... Mind, that all that could be said of him, had no Influence upon him, to make him doubt of the Matter; and he dreamt of nothing but Spectres and Devils: The very Habit of his Mind was got into his Face, that he was so pale, and meagre and dejected, that you would say he was rather a Sprite than a Man: And in short, he was not far from being stark mad, and would have been so, had it not been ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... old people and to children. Again and again he came into contact with conditions which annoyed and bewildered him. People were all bearing their crosses. Some were hopelessly ill, waiting for death to relieve them, or they were old and quite useless. And all were horribly poor, casting about for meagre food and simple clothing which seemed beyond their reach. They were lonely, ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... left the artist free to choose his subject anywhere, and to deal with it according to the laws of good society, without local or national restrictions. But the earlier work of this modern enlightenment in the Middle Ages was generally very formal, very meagre in imagination. The progress of literature was to fill out the romantic forms, and to gain for the new cosmopolitan schemes of fiction the same sort of substantial contents, the same command of human nature and its variety, as belong (with local or national restrictions) ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... and as the notches in their trunks were freshly cut, Dol followed the track without any difficulty for twenty minutes. He had a suspicion that he was nearing the end of it; though he was still in forest gloom, with light coming in meagre, ever-lessening streaks through the pine-tufts above. Then he started more violently than when the deer snorted ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... his curiosity, had not a seeing eye in his head, was able to supply nothing but meagre generalities, which ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the rising of the slaves?" asked Torith. "We have just had meagre reports of some ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... After a meagre dinner, given by Desroches who boarded his head-clerk, the two lawyers put the political convict in the diligence, and wished ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Duke de Choiseul, who was a remarkably meagre-looking man, came to London to negotiate a peace, Charles Townsend, being asked whether the French government had sent the preliminaries of a treaty, answered, "he did not know, but they had sent the ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... convert for baptism was often very slight. A dying Algonquin, who, though meagre as a skeleton, had thrown himself, with a last effort of expiring ferocity, on an Iroquois prisoner, and torn off his ear with his teeth, was baptized almost immediately. [ 1 ] In the case of converts in health there was far more preparation; ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... vision, in pitiful array, came that unhappy procession of hacks that files, day in and day out, along Newspaper Row, drawn by every instinct to the arena that holds nothing for them but a meagre, uncertain pittance, dwindling ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... how to appreciate Chaucer best, who has come down to him the natural way, through the meagre pastures of Saxon and ante-Chaucerian poetry; and yet, so human and wise he appears after such diet, that we are liable to misjudge him still. In the Saxon poetry extant, in the earliest English, and the contemporary Scottish poetry, there is less to remind the reader of the rudeness ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... the half-starved militia suffered intensely. Six field-pieces, with their ammunition, had been sent ashore; but they were nearly useless, as there were no means of moving them. Half a barrel of musket powder, and one biscuit for each man, were also landed; and with this meagre aid Walley was left to capture Quebec. He might, had he dared, have made a dash across the ford on the morning of Thursday, and assaulted the town in the rear while Phips was cannonading it in front; but his courage was not equal to so desperate a venture. The ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... trees being small and low, the foliage of the olive thin and pale, the leaves of the fig broad and few, and the soil appearing everywhere at their roots, as well as between the rows of vines, the vegetation, when viewed from a little distance, has a meagre and ragged appearance. The whiteness of the hills, which the eye can hardly bear to rest upon at noon, the intense blue of the sea, the peculiar forms of the foliage, and the deficiency of shade and verdure, made me almost fancy myself in a ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... of their misfortunes the routine of the McTeagues was as follows: They rose at seven and breakfasted in their room, Trina cooking the very meagre meal on an oil stove. Immediately after breakfast Trina sat down to her work of whittling the Noah's ark animals, and McTeague took himself off to walk down town. He had by the greatest good luck secured a position with ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... could understand why Maignan should prefer to keep his charge outside the walls until he heard from me, but not why he should postpone a meeting so long. The message, too, seemed unnecessarily meagre, and I began to think Simon was ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... female, on seeing the house in such a crowded state, started, paused, and glanced with some terror at the persons assembled. Her dress was not altered since her last visit; but her countenance, though more meagre and emaciated, expressed but little of the unsettled energy which then flashed from her eyes, and distorted her features by the depth of that mysterious excitement by which she had been agitated. Her countenance was still muffled as before, the awful protuberance ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... food to George Balt; no man dares to give him a bed, no cannery will let him work. He has to take a dory to Dutch Harbor to get food. He doesn't dare leave the country and abandon the meagre thousands he has invested in buildings, so he has stayed on living off the country like a Siwash. He's a simple, big-hearted sort of fellow, but his life is centred in this business; it's all he knows. He considers himself ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... or a hymn-book under his arm whenever he walked the street, and most exemplary in his attendance at sermon and lecture. For the rest, a singularly unobtrusive personage, twenty-seven years of age, low of stature, meagre, mean-visaged, muddy-complexioned, and altogether a man of no account—quite insignificant in the eyes of all who looked upon him. If there were one opinion, in which the few who had taken the trouble to think ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... brave, ambitious, unselfish boy. He supports his mother and sister on meagre wages earned as a shoe-pegger in John Simpson's factory. Tom is discharged from the factory and starts overland for California. He meets with many adventures. The story is told in a way which has made Mr. Alger's name a household word ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... name at least, the deliberations of Congress at this time were secret. Historically, even the Journal which they kept gives little light as to their true proceedings. An American gentleman, who has studied that document with care, laments that it is painfully meagre, the object being apparently to record as little as possible." (Life of President Reed, by Mr. William ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... of the hue of brown parchment, over his shoulders and down his back below the middle, in witch-like locks, fell a covering of sun-scorched hair. His eyes were burning-bright. All his right side was naked, and of the color of his face, and quite as meagre; a shirt of the coarsest camel's-hair—coarse as Bedouin tent-cloth—clothed the rest of his person to the knees, being gathered at the waist by a broad girdle of untanned leather. His feet were bare. A scrip, also of untanned leather, was fastened to the girdle. He used a knotted ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... education, there is no class of allusions from which we can draw to lighten or strengthen ordinary speech unless we turn to the Bible. This deprives conversation of much of its colour and renders it rather commonplace and meagre. Unfortunately, among many of our young people, the Bible seems to be a book to be avoided or to be treated in a rather "jocose" manner. To raise a laugh on the vaudeville stage, a Biblical quotation has only to be produced, and the weary comedian, when he is at a loss to ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... acquiesced; but without directing a single person to institute any search, she simply took some refuse twigs, and making up a few mace, she despatched them with the meagre message that they had been sent by madame Wang, and that there was, in fact, no more; subsequently reporting to madame Wang that she had asked for and obtained all there was and that she had collected as much as two taels, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... now fairly in the "horse latitudes," and, much to our relief, the rain came down in occasional deluges, permitting us to wash well and often. I suppose the rains of the tropics have been often enough described to need no meagre attempts of mine to convey an idea of them; yet I have often wished I could make home-keeping friends understand how far short what they often speak of as a "tropical shower" falls of the genuine article. The nearest I can get to it is the idea of an ocean suspended ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... since the white man first beheld the mist-veiled face of Niagara. The facts lost nothing of their due effect as Basil, in the ramble across Goat Island, touched them with the reflected light of Mr. Parkman's histories,—those precious books that make our meagre past wear something of the rich romance of old European days, and illumine its savage solitudes with the splendor of mediaeval chivalry, and the glory of mediaeval martyrdom, —and then, lacking this light, turned upon them the feeble glimmer of the guide-books. He and Isabel ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the journal, which was meagre in detail, and kept in the dry form of a log-book, spoke of having reached a far northern settlement. Reference was also made to a wife and family, leading to the conclusion that the seaman had permanently cast in his lot with the savages, and given up all ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... deserve serious attention. His chief speculative performance was an essay upon Beauty contributed to the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' of which his biographer says quaintly that it is 'as sound as the subject admits of.' It is crude and meagre in substance. The principal conclusion is the rather unsatisfactory one for a professional critic, that there are no particular rules about beauty, and consequently that one taste is about as good as another. Nobody, however, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Meagre and pale, with a worn, anxious face as one who had suffered much, the friar, holding aloft two pieces of wood from the Mount of Olives tied together in the form of a cross, harangued the crowd. His words poured forth in a fiery stream, kindling the hearts, and stirring ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... to the house, and was cordially welcomed by the Squire. When mutual greetings were over, "This is a bad business," continued the host, unfolding the meagre, greyish-looking newspaper. "I feared it would come to this, ever since that affair of the Little Belt and President last year. There is nothing John Bull is so sensitive about as his ships, and he can't stand ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... Made half an inch of news, there were no tears That are recorded. Women there may have been To wish him back, though I should say, not knowing, The few there were to mourn were not for love, And were not lovely. Nothing of them, at least, Was in the meagre legend that I gathered Years after, when a chance of travel took me So near the region of his nativity That a few miles of leisure brought me there; For there I found a friendly citizen Who led me to his house among the trees That ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... words GREAT CLAIMS, he gave a slight glance with his eye downwards upon the sleeve of his tunic: —I felt the full force of the appeal—I acknowledge it, said I: —a coarse habit, and that but once in three years with meagre diet,—are no great matters; and the true point of pity is, as they can be earn'd in the world with so little industry, that your order should wish to procure them by pressing upon a fund which ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... maintained it with considerable ability. But he grew restless under restraint; and at length, taking advantage of the managing editor's absence, he published articles on prohibited subjects, which lost the paper half its subscribers, and him his situation. When next heard of, he was gaining a meagre subsistence by writing theatrical puffs,—employment for which he was indebted to the kindness of a certain influential actress ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... charged with watery vapour, or on being contrasted with previous excessive heat—such air must, nevertheless, be rarefied to the full extent indicated by the mercurial thermometer, and give us, therefore, our supply of vital oxygen in a very diluted form, and of a meagre, unsupporting, and unsatisfying consistence.... The sine qua non, therefore, for healthy and robust life in tropical countries, is air cold and dry—cold to the thermometer and dry to the hygrometer; or, in other words, dense, and containing ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... righteousness, or of religion—is one which is very scantily explained by the commentators. In fact, the only explanation they give is that all the man's past karma of good gathers over him, and pours down upon him a rain of blessing. Let us see if we cannot find something more than this meagre interpretation. ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... answer. "A most just man. His books have been denounced to the Congregation of the Index. They may, perhaps, contain some bold opinions, but there is no comparison between the deep, burning piety of Selva's works and the cold and meagre formalism of certain other books, which are more often found in the hands of the clergy than the Gospels themselves. Holy Father, the condemnation of Selva would be a blow directed against the most active and vital energies of Catholicism. The Church tolerates thousands of stupid, ascetic ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... of the Jews could not guarantee to us the value of the writings. Consequently, such books as Ruth and Esther, (the latter indeed not containing one religious sentiment,) stood forth at once in their natural insignificance. Ecclesiastes also seemed to me a meagre and shallow production. Chronicles I now learned to be not credulous only, but unfair, perhaps so far as to be actually dishonest. Not one of the historical books of the Old Testament could approve itself to me as of any high antiquity or of any spiritual authority; and in the New Testament ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... a theory, is absolutely nothing new—only the assertion that new species originate always in sports, for which the evidence adduced is the most meagre and inconclusive of any ever set forth with such pretentious claims! I hope you will ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... of sun through the western window and open door lengthened across the meagre collection of dusty fonts of type, the small press, the piles of papers. The black-fingered, red-haired boy setting type among them reflected that it must be nearly dinner-time, and turned to see how far in the hot strips had crept—turned, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... was completed, the Government schooner arrived from Port Jackson, and King sent ten ringleaders of the mutiny to Sydney for trial, pardoning ten others. The vessel was despatched in a hurry, and King sent a very meagre letter to Grose, leaving a lieutenant of the corps in charge of the guard sent with the mutineers to ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... hospitality, was a French naturalist, travelling thus far afield in quest of feathered specimens to enrich the aviaries of a bird-collecting Balkan King. On the previous evening, while shrugging his shoulders and unloosing his vocabulary over the meagre accommodation afforded by the native rest-house, he had been enchanted by receiving an invitation to transfer his quarters to the house on the hillside, where he found not only a pleasant-voiced hostess and some drinkable wine, but three brown- skinned English ...
— When William Came • Saki
... obey his yoke— I saw the sad reverse that lovers own, I heard the slaves beneath their bondage groan; I saw them sink beneath the deadly weight And the long tortures that forerun their fate. Sad disappointments there in meagre forms Were seen, and feverish dreams, and fancied harms; And fantoms rising from the yawning tomb Were seen to muster in the gathering gloom Around the car; and some were seen to climb, While cruel fate reversed their steps sublime. And empty notions in the port were seen, And baffled ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... Cardan's life for the next two years is a meagre one. His rest was constantly disturbed either by the machinations of his foes or by the dread thereof, the evil last-named being probably the more noxious of the two. As long ago as 1557 he had ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... the Noble Lords, did not, it must be confessed, surmount this difficulty very skilfully. The assertion of the Prince's consistency was confined to two meagre sentences, in the first of which His Royal Highness was made to say:—"With respect to the proposed limitation of the authority to be entrusted to me, I retain my former opinion:"—and in the other, the expression of any decided opinion upon the Constitutional ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... the lack of appreciation for the comforts of a home, which might never have been apparent to me had it not obtruded itself in the form of a hindrance to social and economic progress.[9] In the Irish love of home, as in the larger national aspirations, the ideal has but a meagre material basis, its appeal being essentially to the social and intellectual instincts. It is not the physical environment and comfort of an orderly home that enchain and attract minds still dominated, more or less unconsciously, by the associations and common interests of the primitive clan, ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... in full force for three days and three nights—for Willy was roused up five or six times every night to administer the doses of mulled claret which Mr Bullock had prescribed for himself, who seemed, thin and meagre as he was, to be somewhat like a bamboo in his structure (i.e. hollow from top to bottom), as if to enable him to carry the quantity of fluid that he poured down his throat during the twenty-four hours. As for intoxicating him, that appeared to be impossible: from ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... a shocked voice; she knew very well who was meant. Joe was the ne'er-do-well of a son-in-law whose iniquities had transformed the young and comely Priscilla into the meagre and colourless Mrs. Baxter. 'He has no right to trouble her!' she went ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... rosy limbs, and blue eyes and gold lashes— Made in the mold of the Saviour, they say! Drink deep of my bosom, my starved, meagre bosom, That—keeps ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... ab-oral region still remains the predominant part of the body and retains its cup-like or calyx-like form. The Comatulae are not abundant, and though represented by a number of Species, yet the type as it exists at present is meagre in comparison to its richness in former times. Indeed, this group of Echinoderms, which in the earliest periods was the exponent of all its kind, has dwindled gradually, in proportion as other representatives of the Class have come in, and there exists only one species now, the Pentacrinus of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... white man in sixteen days, an intelligent man of meagre education, with a great bent for versifying. A courteous approval of one set of verse brought upon us the accumulated output of years in the wilderness without much opportunity of audience, as one supposes, and most of the afternoon and evening ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... Granny had a little garden at the back of the house, where she raised, with little Gretchen's help, a few potatoes and turnips and onions. These she carefully stored away for winter use. To this meagre supply, the pennies, gained by selling the twigs from the forest, added the oatmeal for Gretchen and a little black coffee for Granny. Meat was a thing they never thought of having. It cost too much ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... toiled on westward through miles and miles of swamp intersected by streams flowing southward to the Zambesi basin. One day Livingstone's ox, Sindbad, threw him, and he had to struggle wearily forward on foot. His strength was failing. His meagre fare varied by boiled zebra and dried elephant, frequent wettings and constant fever, were reducing him to a mere skeleton. At last on 26th March he arrived at the edge of the high land over which he had so long been travelling. "It is so steep," he ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... But it proved meagre enough. Her mother died when Mary Ann was a child; her father when she was still a mere girl. His affairs were found in hopeless confusion, and Mary Ann was considered lucky to be taken into the house of the well-to-do Mrs. Leadbatter, of London, ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... his horse and inclined his head sideways on seeing the old major step out, very tall and meagre, in a straight narrow coat coming down to his ankles as it were the casing of the regimental colours rolled ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... was found. He became the butt of Hugo's splendid ridicule. He was the god of plaster that could not hear or speak or feel, but which fools had worshipped; a god easy to break to pieces. His austerity—for them without fullness—his meagre output, his solemn reiterated code of "perfect taste," moved them to a facile but intense aggression. He it was that had turned to fossil stone the living matter of the sixteenth century: He that had stifled and killed the ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... a particular hurry, and still feeling the effects of my recent illness, I resolved to stay for the night at Aviers, a village about thirty miles from Aunay. The inn was dirty, the accommodation meagre, and the landlord a surly boor, who behaved as if we had done him a grievous injury by stopping at his house. After providing a feed for the horses, his resources appeared to be exhausted, and, but for Pillot, I should doubtless ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... communicated with herself. Muriel accomplished an upright little letter to Mrs. Churchley—her eldest sister neither fostered nor discouraged the performance—to which Mrs. Churchley replied, after a fortnight, in a meagre and, as Adela thought, illiterate fashion, making no allusion to the approach of any closer tie. Evidently the situation had changed; the question of the marriage was dropped, at any rate for the time. This idea gave our young ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... Turks had broached me upon a spit all larded like a rabbit, for I was so dry and meagre that otherwise of my flesh they would have made but very bad meat, and in this manner began to roast me alive. As they were thus roasting me, I recommended myself unto the divine grace, having in my mind the good St. Lawrence, and always ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... understand the case because they purposely had been left in the dark by the Government. He said, among other things, that his countrymen were in no position to understand the feeling of resentment in the United States, because the meagre reports permitted in the German Press never described such details as the death agonies of women and children struggling ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... longer. The journey ends with daybreak, and leaning from the car window, worn out by the long watch of the night, I look out upon the country that surrounds us: a succession of chalky plains, closing in the horizon, a band of pale green like the color of a sick turquoise, a flat country, gloomy, meagre, ...
— Sac-Au-Dos - 1907 • Joris Karl Huysmans
... pages of Prescott, and pronounce them as fascinating as any romance. Stranger still, these modern historians excel their predecessors as much in learning and depth of research as in dramatic power, artistic arrangement and construction, and beauty and picturesqueness of style. Compare the meagre array of references in the foot-notes of Watson's "History of Philip the Second" with the multitude of authorities cited by Mr. Prescott. It may be doubted, whether any printed book, however rare or little known, which could throw the least glimmer of light upon his subject, has been ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... box was on the floor against the foot of the farthest wall, and on the box, in a long dressing gown of rich faded stuff, the silk and gold in which shone feebly in the dim light, stood the tall meagre form of the earl, with his back to the door, his face to the wall, close to it, and his arms and hands stretched out against it, like one upon a cross. He stood without moving a muscle or uttering a sound. What could it mean? Donal gazed in a ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... errand boy, he was obliged to be often in the streets; and then the pleasure he enjoyed in standing before the windows of the picture-shops, made him forget the tears which he so often shed under his master's caning, his mistress's continual fault-finding, and his meagre fare. Sometimes, while gazing on the works of art, so entrancing to a child with the soul of a painter, he also forgot how the time passed, and, having far exceeded that demanded by his errand, was on his return accused of playing the idler, and received ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... had several falls of snow, the heaviest two and a half inches, and on the coldest night, on January 10th, the thermometer went down to 6 deg. F. As the rays of the sun partly melted the snow in the course of the day, the animals could at least get a meagre meal. On January 15th a cup of water froze inside of my tent, but during the day ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... the leaden skies, his right foreleg upheld, part of it dangling in a very unnatural manner. A pang of compassion for the dumb unfortunate stirred in my breast, but I sat still and watched. He tried to walk, but the effort was a failure, and again he sat down and howled, this time with his meagre face upturned to my window. The street was empty, as far as I could see, for twilight was almost come, and cheery firesides were more tempting than slippery pavements and stinging winds. The muffled tones of distress became weaker and more despairing, ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... be said, is but a meagre outcome. Can the long records of humanity, with all its joys and sorrows, its sufferings and its conquests, teach us more than this? Let us approach the ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... and Julian, fully equipped with instructions, introductions, money and other necessaries, left the city, ready for their homeward voyage; and in another week the small but hardy band of Rangers, with their plain and meagre outfit, but with stout hearts and brave resolves, said adieu to those they left behind, and started westward for that debatable ground upon which a bloody warfare had to be fought to ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... are so miserably supplied with household goods that even a rash and optimistic man would hesitate before offering a sovereign for an entire home, yet pawnshops flourish exceedingly, although the people possess nothing worth pawning. Children are half fed, for the earnings of parents are too meagre to allow a sufficient quantity of nourishing food; but public-houses do a roaring trade on the ready-money principle, while the chandler supplies scraps of food and half-ounces of tea on very ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... received Coke's message sent nearly an hour later, and he assumed that the latter indicated the existing hopeful situation with which he had to deal. Of the physical features of the Spion Kop position he knew little more than what his telescope told him, and he read optimistically the meagre, inconsistent, and misleading reports which reached him occasionally from the summit. He hoped during the night to place some naval guns on the plateau: he was informed that an accessible spring of water had been discovered: reinforcements were ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... Damascus has plenty of clear, pure water in it, though, and this is enough, of itself, to make an Arab think it beautiful and blessed. Water is scarce in blistered Syria. We run railways by our large cities in America; in Syria they curve the roads so as to make them run by the meagre little puddles they call "fountains," and which are not found oftener on a journey than every four hours. But the "rivers" of Pharpar and Abana of Scripture (mere creeks,) run through Damascus, and so every house ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... substantial downfall of the posts in the West, where its great strength was at first, the history of the early years of the order is left in much uncertainty. But the organization had in the western states a wild, riotous growth; the meagre reports extant naming two hundred thousand as the membership in 1867; but the utter lack of organization, and the intrusion of politics, left the order, almost as speedily as it had sprung into existence, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... the following day, when my wife and I were laughing and arguing over some little domestic detail of our meagre establishment—so soon are great griefs forgotten in an overwhelming joy, of a sudden I saw her face change, and asked what ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... father, that you are alluding to the labours of missionaries in foreign lands?" I observed. "But I have heard it said, that in spite of all the money expended, their preaching produces but meagre results. In India, for instance, the Company will not admit them. In Africa, the climate destroys them. The fanatical Turks and other Mohammedan nations will not listen to their message; and it would be but time ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... the post and families interested would join together and go off on an excursion of several days to places where the berries were abundant, and thus secure large quantities, which were an acceptable addition to their rather meagre ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... Theatre Company was touring in England, he came with it if his health allowed, to watch the performances in London, Manchester or Edinburgh, wherever they might be. His life was always mainly within himself; the record of these years is very meagre, all that can be said of them is that he passed them mostly in Ireland, writing and re-writing, in failing health and with increasing purpose. His general health was never robust, and for at least the ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... phraseology, at which, in old times, Members used to laugh and run away. But CHAPLIN had them now. Like the wedding guest whom the Ancient Mariner button-holed—though as PLUNKET reminds me, the A.M. was meagre in frame, and CHAPLIN is not—the House could not help but hear. Once, when the orator dropped easily into autobiographical episode, described himself strolling about the fields of Lincolnshire, turning up a turnip here, drawing forth a casual carrot there, meditating ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... financier, "it will come sometime. But we are none of us ready. We must delay it as long as we can." So she and the like-minded drove into the country round and talked about preventing the extension of the suffrage to women until hard-working, meagre-living people who had not begun to think much about votes, save as a natural prerogative of man, thought about them a great deal, and incidentally learned to organise and lobby, and got a very good training ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... shores of the Adriatic, just as were those of Greece on the shores of the Black Sea. The Albanians even, descendants of the ancient Illyrians, were affected by the supremacy of the Latin language, from which no less than a quarter of their own meagre vocabulary is derived; though driven southwards by the Romans and northwards by the Greeks, they have remained in their mountain fastnesses to this day, impervious to any of the civilizations to ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... officers, and several officers with their wives, about eight or nine in all, and we could have had a merry time enough but for the awful heat, which destroyed both our good looks and our tempers. The fare was meagre, of course; fresh biscuit without butter, very salt boiled beef, and some canned vegetables, which were poor enough in those days. Pies made from preserved peaches or plums generally followed this delectable course. ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... poor relation I fear her display of wedding gifts would have been but a meagre one. As it was, perhaps St. Nivel's terse comment on the "show," as he called it, was ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... or horse family, into two genera—the horse and the ass—the principal points of distinction being, that animals of the horse kind have long flowing manes, full tails, and warty callosities on both hind and fore limbs; while asses, on the contrary, have short, meagre, and upright manes, tails slender and furnished only with long hairs at the extremity, and their hind limbs wanting the callosities. These, however, are found on the ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... for books such as I expected to find, recording the phenomena consequent on these domestic and political events, I was disappointed to discover that they were few in number and generally meagre in information. Major FORBES, who in 1826 and for some years afterwards held a civil appointment in the Kandyan country, published an interesting account of his observations[1]; and his work derives value from the attention which the author had paid to the ancient records of the island, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... This meagre result from the historians seems to me to be most unfortunate. Even when the testimony of early writers is accepted, it is accepted without the necessary filling in which such an acceptance warrants. Bare acceptance does not tell us much. Each recorded fact ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... meant it, but at that moment, slim and elegant, he seemed a mere bundle of nerves himself, with the flitting expressions on his thin, well-bred face, with the restlessness of his meagre brown hands amongst the objects on the table. With some pipe ash amongst a little spilt wine his forefinger traced a capital R. Then he looked into an empty glass profoundly. I have a notion that ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... even during the most severe winters and leaves us early in the spring for his breeding grounds farther north. They are usually found in company with Chickadees and, like them, may be seen hanging to twigs in all sorts of positions as they search for their meagre fare. Their nests are large, round structures of green moss, bark strips and fine rootlets, very thickly lined with soft feathers; these are placed in forks or partially suspended among the branches of spruce trees, usually high above the ground. During June they ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... around them as they sat down at one of the small tables, and Scanlon looked about. Some patrons of both sexes were already there; the women were dejected, or hard; here and there were seen a few who were merely vacant. The men were of the meagre, pallid type, nervous of action and furtive of eye. Stoical Chinamen, with ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... particulars respecting the knowledge of the ancients in geography: but these particulars, as must be obvious from the preceding part of this volume, are ascertained only after considerable difficulty; and when ascertained, are for the most part meagre, if not obscure. In the history of Herodotus, we, for the first time, are able to trace the exact state and progress of geographical knowledge; and from his time, our means of tracing it become more accessible, as well as productive of more satisfactory results. Within one hundred ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... This news, though meagre, restored hope to the hearts of the sailors, and Jean Cornbutte had no difficulty in persuading them to advance farther in ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... clothing from the rubber bags was put on, the limited bacon was sending its fragrance into the troubled air, the bread took on a nice deep brown in the Dutch oven, the coffee's aromatic steam drifted from the fire, and warm and comfortable we sat down to the welcome though meagre meal. The rule was three little strips of bacon, a chunk of bread about the size of one's fist, and coffee without stint for each man three times a day. Sugar was a scarce article, and I learned to like coffee without it so well that I have never taken it with sugar since. ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... the celestial and terrestrial globes in the windows, were waxy with cold. Here he produced a decanter of curiously light wine, and a block of curiously heavy cake, and administered instalments of those dainties to the young people: at the same time sending out a meagre servant to offer a glass of "something" to the postboy who answered that he thanked the gentleman, but, if it was the same tap as he had tasted before, he had rather not. Master Scrooge's trunk being by this time tied ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... abasement of poor Starbuck's fortitude, scarce might I have the heart to write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose the fall of valour in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... loophole Father Robineau watched his chapel burning, with its meagre enrichments, added year by year. But this was nothing, when his eye dropped to the two or three figures lying face downward on the road. He turned himself toward the wailing of ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... journal, which was meagre in detail, and kept in the dry form of a log-book, spoke of having reached a far northern settlement. Reference was also made to a wife and family, leading to the conclusion that the seaman had permanently cast ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... to the meagre story which is supplied to us by the early years of Japanese history, it will be well to glean from the myths and legends which tradition has preserved the lessons which they contain. Although we may be unable to ...
— Japan • David Murray
... screen man from many of the ills of which the tropics are profuse; and the repeating rifle multiplied the power of the white man in his conflicts with savage peoples. When all the advantages of the present generation are weighed in the balance against the meagre equipment of the earlier discoverers, the nineteenth century has scant claim for boasting over the fifteenth. In truth, its great achievements in this sphere have been practical and political. It has only fulfilled the ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... that the incident, as in the case of Hawthorne's Tales, is so meagre and the language so exquisite, that the telling seems to be quite inadequate and inferior to the reading of the story. In such cases, variety may be afforded by reading, but generally speaking, it is more effective to tell ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... was a farmer, but lacked judgment; could not look ahead; thought if he gave his note a debt was canceled, and went on piling up other indebtedness. He had a very meagre schooling, but was apt at witty remarks. He was temperate; was much given to reading "The Signs of the Times," like his father before him. He married and had five children. For many years previous to his death he lived at the homestead, dying there in his eightieth year, in the summer ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... in some disputed questions of inheritance and upon her arrival, it immediately put to sea on July l0th. The new Bishop, with his faithful companion Ladrada and forty-five Dominican friars, embarked on the San Salvador. On that same date he entered into possession of his meagre episcopal revenues, for an ordinance that had been passed to oblige the bishops of American dioceses to stay in them, established that their incomes should begin from the date ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... about us root, how rankly grow Those subtle weeds no man has need to tend, That flourish through neglect, and soon must send Perfume too sweet upon us and overthrow Our steady senses; how such matters go We are aware, and how such matters end. Yet shall be told no meagre passion here; With lovers such as we forevermore Isolde drinks the draught, and Guinevere Receives the Table's ruin through her door, Francesca, with the loud surf at her ear, Lets fall the colored book ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... language that has been fused in the furnace of so strong a sorrow and silence has little of the dross of common speech—the unmeaning, misleading, unnecessary elements: his veritable memory and thought and feeling were painted by his meagre tale. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... through imperfect sympathy with a style they will not take the pains to master. Nor, when the curtain lifted and the play began, was the vocalisation found in all parts satisfactory. The Contessa had a meagre mezza voce. Susanna, though she did not sing false, hovered on the verge of discords, owing to the weakness of an organ which had to be strained in order to make any effect on that enormous stage. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... Seville, chance made us acquainted with a highly extraordinary individual, a tall, bony, meagre figure, in a tattered Andalusian hat, ragged capote, and still more ragged pantaloons, and seemingly between forty and fifty years of age. The only appellation to which he answered was Manuel. His ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... Breakfast was meagre, it was true. The "candy butcher," who sold popcorn and sandwiches as well, was bought out at an exorbitant price by two traveling men, who distributed what they had secured with liberal hand. Bess, more cautious than usual, hid ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... a close. They ate their supper, without appetite—which was a pity, since the meagre store of food in the mess had been recklessly ransacked, to give them a good send-off. Then another hour—muttering good-byes now and then, as they prowled about; and finally, to bed, to lie there for hours of darkness and silence. Gradually the noise of the camp died down. From the guard-room ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... A very meagre and inadequate interpretation of this sublime text. The philosophy of life, which will be the 'corona et finis coronans' of the sciences of comparative anatomy and zoology, will hereafter supply a fuller ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... the cave. They could occupy these at a moment's warning. They stood under the shadow of the rocks, keeping watch down the ravine. They knew they might be a long time on their vigil, and they made themselves as comfortable as possible by consuming the meagre stock of provisions which the cibolero had left in the cave. The mulatto, to keep out the cold, had thrown the newly appropriated blanket upon his shoulders. A gourd of chingarito, which they had ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... their nags in the stable, and their equipages in the salle. One traveled with a lackey, undoubtedly a person of consideration;—two Perche mares, sleek, sound beasts, were suitable means of locomotion. The other, a little fellow, a traveler of meagre appearance, wearing a dusty surtout, dirty linen, and boots more worn by the pavement than the stirrup, had come from Nantes with a cart drawn by a horse so like Furet in color, that D'Artagnan might have gone a hundred ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... reasoning depends very closely upon our language. But every significant word that we use has a distinct meaning in the mind of the individual, depending altogether upon his experience. As the experience of the child is very meagre, compared to that of the grown-up person, it is no wonder that our everyday remarks are constant sources ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... all, selecting certain dresses, hats, stockings, etc., each of which she laid carelessly aside: an imposing pile of many hues, all bright and gay and glittering. In another heap she laid the sombre things of black: a meagre assortment as ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... within her. She sat Like some poor player, gazing dejectedly at The insignia of royalty worn for a night; Exhausted, fatigued, with the dazzle and light, And the effort of passionate feigning; who thinks Of her own meagre, rush-lighted garret, and shrinks From the chill of the change ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... nearly an hour later, and he assumed that the latter indicated the existing hopeful situation with which he had to deal. Of the physical features of the Spion Kop position he knew little more than what his telescope told him, and he read optimistically the meagre, inconsistent, and misleading reports which reached him occasionally from the summit. He hoped during the night to place some naval guns on the plateau: he was informed that an accessible spring of water had been discovered: reinforcements were at ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... employments. The chief of these were the Fairies, concerning whom the reader will find a long dissertation, in Volume Second. The Brownie formed a class of beings, distinct in habit and disposition from the freakish and mischievous elves. He was meagre, shaggy, and wild in his appearance. Thus, Cleland, in his satire against the Highlanders, compares ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... worthy of a great, if not a musical, cause. From dawn to dusk, and day by day, did she keep those three keys clicking and clittering, as if her life depended on the result; and so in truth it did, to some extent, for her bread and butter depended on her performances on that very meagre piano. ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... trickles down the sides of the hills; this water partakes of the taste of glauber salts and slightly of allumn.- while the party halted to take dinner today Capt Clark killed a buffaloe bull; it was meagre, and we therefore took the marrow bones and a small proportion of the meat only. near the place we dined on the Lard. side, there was a large village of burrowing squirrels. I have remarked that these anamals generally celect a South Easterly exposure for their ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... they recovered their equilibrium, after surprises, before she had time for manifestations. There was a curious healthfulness about the slender, wiry little creature who was overworked and under-fed, a healthfulness which seemed to result from the action of the mind upon a meagre body. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to the dining-room not knowing whether she were wanted or not, but feeling quite assured when it was ascertained that neither sugar nor teaspoons had been provided. The little feast looked somewhat meagre, and the doctor spoke irreverently of his housekeeper and proceeded to abstract a jar of her best strawberry jam from the convenient store-closet, and to collect other articles of food which seemed to him to be inviting, however inappropriate to the occasion. The guest would have none of the ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... that throughout them there shines with gentle radiance the unconscious record of a pure and never-dying neighborliness, the neighborliness of an upright and reserved but deeply tender Christian. No thoughtful person can read the simple and meagre, but wholly self-forgetful entries which reveal this trait of character without a feeling of profound respect and even affection for Sewall. He was the richest man in town, and one of the most dignified of citizens, a busy man full of many cares and plans. But he watched by the bedside of ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... me and smiled, while the men pulled again, and we went merrily along, getting a shot now and then, but the result for the game-bag was very meagre indeed, at which I was not surprised on my own account, but I fully expected Mr Brooke to ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... have continued but one week more in the way I was in when I wrote the latter part of it, I should have been confined, and in straw, the next; for I now recollect, that all my distemper was returning upon me with irresistible violence—and that in spite of water-gruel and soup-meagre. ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Arabian, on the plain beyond the Armenian cemetery, in the suburbs of Constantinople. The rider was dressed in the plainest attire of a quiet citizen, though the material of his clothes and the few ornaments that were visible about his person indicated their owner to be one who was no meagre possessor of the riches of this world. Both rider and horse were as still as though they had been carved in marble instead of being living objects, save the quick, nervous motion, now and then, of ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... God!" The poor man sighed to find that it was impossible to enjoy his fill of both worlds, and "went away sorrowing." If he ever afterwards cast a thought towards the Happy land, it was only to regret that the road which led to it was too narrow to admit any but the meagre children of want, who were not so encumbered by wealth as to be too big for the passage. Had he read on, he would have seen that "with God all ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... The cathedral was at this time an open book, with its walls covered with painted stories. The reredos, the stalls of the canons, as well as the walls, were rich with colour. Now all has gone except a meagre, faded scrap under the arch from the present library into the transept, and one or two other slight remnants. Sherburne also had some large pictures painted by the Bernardis. They represented the kings of England and the bishops of Chichester, and used to hang upon the west ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... (sometimes called the College Mazarin or des Quatre Nations—upon the whole, a magnificent pile) discharge a good large mouthful of water— instead of the drivelling stream which is for ever trickling from their closed jaws. Nothing can be more ridiculous than the appearance of these meagre and unappropriate objects: the more to be condemned, because the French in general assume great credit for the management of their fountains. Of the four great buildings just noticed, that of the Mint, or rather its facade, pleases me most. It is a beautiful ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... pauses he seized Peter's hand. And Peter was forthwith given the meagre details of a story, neither the beginning nor the end of which he would ever know. It was the cross-section of a tale of intrigue, of cold-blooded killings that chased the thrills up and down his spine; a tale of loot, of gems that had vanished, of ingots and kernels ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... mental vision, in pitiful array, came that unhappy procession of hacks that files, day in and day out, along Newspaper Row, drawn by every instinct to the arena that holds nothing for them but a meagre, uncertain pittance, dwindling ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... published about Oscar as a schoolboy are sadly meagre and insignificant. Fortunately for my readers I have received from Sir Edward Sullivan, who was a contemporary of Oscar both at school and college, an exceedingly vivid and interesting pen-picture of the lad, ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Feuillantines (a late Order of Ascetic Nuns) amongst other Mortifications, made Trial upon the Leaves of Plants alone, to which they would needs confine themselves; but were not able to go through that thin and meagre Diet: But then it would be enquir'd whether they had not first, and from their very Childhood, been fed and brought up with Flesh, and better Sustenance till they enter'd the Cloyster; and what the Vegetables ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... habitations are decayed; their taxes heavy; their pockets light; their opportunities few. One receives an impression, however, that life presents itself to them with attractions not accounted for in this meagre train of advantages, and that they are on better terms with it than many people who have made a better bargain. They lie in the sunshine; they dabble in the sea; they wear bright rags; they fall into attitudes and harmonies; they assist at an eternal conversazione. It is not easy ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... forest; where open, the distant horizon was always skirted with wood (chiefly pines and firs, intermixed with beech, birch, and small oaks). The occasional breaks presented some pasture- ground, with here and there a few meagre crops of corn. The natives were poorer, humbler, and more miserable than any people we had yet observed in the course of our travels: whenever we stopped they flocked around us in crowds; and, asking for charity, used the most abject gestures....The Polish peasants ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... threads like glass, formed of fluid lava, fell like rain upon the island. The crater was again boiling with lava which overflowed the back of the volcano. The torrent flowed along the surface of the hardened tufa, and destroyed the few meagre skeletons of trees which had withstood the first eruption. The stream flowing this time towards the south-west shore of Lake Grant, stretched beyond Creek Glycerine, and invaded the plateau of Prospect Heights. ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... young man with a meagre wife And two pale children in a Midland town; He showed the photograph to all his mates; And they considered him a decent chap Who did his work and hadn't much to say, And always laughed at other people's jokes Because he ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... the girls?" he asked even before kissing her, for the most casual eye must be informed by the blank look of the table that instead of being laid for half a dozen as usual, it was prepared for a meagre two. ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... wondered how much she held within her to give in answer to this cry to her of self-confident Nature. Was it only a little? She did not know. Perhaps she was too tired to know. But however much it was it must seem meagre. What is even a woman's heart given to the desert or a woman's soul to the sea? What is the worship of anyone to the sunset among the hills, or to the wind that lifts all the clouds from before the ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... which they were hastening. The dark trunks of the trees rose from the pure white of the snow in regularly formed shafts, until, at a great height, their branches shot forth horizontal limbs, that were covered with the meagre foliage of an evergreen, affording a melancholy contrast to the torpor of nature below. To the travellers there seemed to be no wind; but these pines waved majestically at their topmost boughs, sending forth a dull, plaintive sound that was ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Irene's features, rather meagre and elongated, continued motionless; her paleness increased their formality. But as time passed, weariness settled the more deeply on her drooping eyelids. Whenever she passed a window of the drawing-rooms, the pin in her hair east quick, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... the door. "Adesso," after I have bled this gentleman. Such are all the interiors where Salassatore is written over the door; they bleed and they shave indifferently, and doing either, talk of the last take of thunny, the opera that has been or is to be, and the meagre skimmings of their permitted newspaper, which begins probably with the advertisement of a church ceremony, and ends always with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... and blue eyes and gold lashes— Made in the mold of the Saviour, they say! Drink deep of my bosom, my starved, meagre bosom, That—keeps you alive ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... some Blue Beard's castle. "Hurry, hurry, I hear the chains rattling," said this strange girl; whose position, my Eleanor, in this house causes your Catherine some natural perplexity. When we had reached my chamber, "Be silent, silent as death," said Miss Eyre, her finger on her lip and her meagre body convulsed with some mysterious emotion. "Speak not of what you hear, do not remember what you see!" and ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... prayer. His house, on the other hand, will not be so well known. For it was less a house than a hut—a hut hidden away out of sight and back behind Mr. Wet-eyes' hut. Mr. Desires-awake's cottage was so mean and meagre that no one ever came to visit him unless it was his next-door neighbour. They never left their cottages, those two poor men, unless it was to see one another; or, strange to tell, unless it was to go out at the city gate to see and to ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... the woman with a good deal of curiosity, wanting—as I did—to see some likeness to the dead man. But there was no likeness to be seen, for whereas Gilverthwaite was a big and stalwart fellow, this was a small and spare woman, whose rusty black clothes made her look thinner and more meagre than she really was. All the same, when she spoke I knew there was a likeness between them, for her speech was like his, different altogether from ours ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... of the Dukes of Burgundy, published in 1824, gives a somewhat meagre and uninteresting account of Joan of Arc. In 1821 appeared a Life of the heroine, by Jollois, under whose direction the little monument was placed at Domremy in ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... conversation flagged, and the air growing keener, the flaps of the leather side curtains were battened down. Masterton gave himself up to conflicting reflections. The information that he had gathered was meagre and unsatisfactory, and he could only trust to luck and circumstance to fulfill his mission. The first glow of adventure having passed, he was uneasily conscious that the mission was not to his taste. The pretty, ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... agreeably: we treated the men, on that day, with the best the establishment afforded. Although that was no great affair, they seemed well satisfied; for they had been restricted, during the last few months, to a very meagre diet, living, as one may say, on sun-dried fish. On the 27th, the schooner having returned from her second voyage up the river, we dismantled her, and laid her up for the winter at the entrance of ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... coffee-houses, where the Wits gathered under the presidency of Addison or Swift. The professional critic has appeared who will make it his regular business to give an account of all new books, and though his reviews are still comparatively meagre and apt to be mere analyses, it is implied that a kind of public opinion is growing up which will decide upon his merits, and upon which his success or failure will depend. That means again that the readers to whom he is to appeal are mainly the ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... the Ferrier influence had ignored him, the Darcy influence had not troubled itself to do much for him. That he had claims could not be denied. So this very meagre bone had been flung him. But if he had refused it, he would have got ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was so meagre that he began to mistrust his countrymen, and he asked if, in case he lost his ship, the town would reimburse him, considering that he was risking his all in their defence. After much debate the townsmen replied, through their officials, that they were not in a position to make good his ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... of the Grammar School life are meagre, but we can readily understand that to a lad of Borrow's temperament the routine of a well-ordered school was naturally distasteful, though he loved to gain knowledge from any unconventional source open to him. So we ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... was for a day or two the most popular man in town; even the three pastors of the trio of churches of Bowerton did not consider it beneath their dignity to join the little groups which were continually to be seen about the person of the landlord, and listening to the meagre intelligence he ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... river, up every little creek, and out in the hills. All day and far into the night she was gone. Sometimes she did not for days come back to the Mission. Her face grew white and drawn, and her cheeks hollow from poor food, meagre snatches of sleep, and untiring work. The doctor warned her, St. Hilda warned her, she got anxious warning letters from her husband, but on she ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... repeated Fleetword,—"then go forth; why didst thou not confirm me that before? and I would have hastened, not retarded thee; for, of a verity, my outward man warreth with the inward, and these supporters of the flesh," pointing with his forefinger to the thin and meagre limbs that scarcely merited the compliment, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... latest authorities[2] on anthropology has told us that 'to develop soul is progress', and he has followed the clue through the meagre relics of Palaeolithic and Neolithic man. So does the last science of the nineteenth century throw light on the dim recesses of the past. For unquestionably psychology is the characteristic science added to the hierarchy in our period; it has crowned biology and is exercising a profound influence ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... but a meagre account of the murder. It bears date but two days subsequent, and must have been issued subsequent to Mrs Clancy's death, as it speaks ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... Matt expressed, and he wished to give him much more money than the fellow would take, to carry on those researches which he made in his travels. When he came back and published his monograph on work and wages in Europe, Hilary paid the expense, and took as unselfish an interest in the slow and meagre sale of the little book as if it had ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... little one drags by thee bare-footed, Cold is the baby that hangs at thy bending back Meagre and ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... fig, and pomegranate trees. The trees being small and low, the foliage of the olive thin and pale, the leaves of the fig broad and few, and the soil appearing everywhere at their roots, as well as between the rows of vines, the vegetation, when viewed from a little distance, has a meagre and ragged appearance. The whiteness of the hills, which the eye can hardly bear to rest upon at noon, the intense blue of the sea, the peculiar forms of the foliage, and the deficiency of shade and verdure, made me almost fancy myself ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... been the home of not a few distinguished families; but the old castles where they lived are, without exception, the most meagre ruins; of one, indeed (Tullibardine), not a stone remains to mark ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... nature and flavour of meat gravy, more than any vegetable juice, and is the superlative substitute for it: in meagre soups and extempore gravies, the chemistry of the kitchen has yet contrived to agreeably awaken the palate, and ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... last year terrified the imaginations of those who had lived through it. "Gentlemen" having again predominated in reinforcements sent from England, the crops planted and gathered in Smith's absence had been meagre, while rats brought over in one of the vessels had wrought havoc with stored grain. Like an angel of mercy was the apparition of Pocahontas, at the head of a "wild train" of Indians laden with corn and game, approaching the fort. "Ever ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... charged with re-establishing slavery and the slave trade at St. Domingo; who suppressed the slave trade at the Congress of Vienna only in stipulating its continuance for some years; who carried into our discussions on the right of search, a very meagre interest for the victims of the slavers; we, whose consciences are burdened with these misdeeds, are bound to use indulgence towards the ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... shot, McKay stepped forward and jerked open the man's pack. And the man neither stirred nor spoke. For a few minutes McKay remained busy with the pack, turning out packets of concentrated rations of American manufacture, bits of personal apparel, a meagre company outfit, spare ammunition—the dozen-odd essentials to be always found in an American ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... Spurzheim are sustained by positive science. In the further development of the subject, hereafter, the true value and proper position of the discoveries of Ferrier, and the continental vivisectionists will be explained, though but meagre contributions to psychology, they furnish very valuable additional information as to the functions of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... Blood stain'd her cheeks, and from her mouth there came 150 Blue steaming poisons, and a length of flame. From every blast of her contagious breath Famine and drought proceed, and plagues and death. A robe obscene was o'er her shoulders thrown, A dress by Fates and Furies worn alone. She toss'd her meagre arms; her better hand In waving circles whirl'd a funeral brand: A serpent from her left was seen to rear His flaming crest, and lash the yielding air. But when the Fury took her stand on high, 160 Where vast Cithaeron's top salutes the sky, A hiss from all the snaky tire went round: ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... London, had begun to understand it was possible for beautiful Englishmen to be husbands now and then, and that the term is not necessarily synonymous with "bore" and "duty"—as she had always thought it from her meagre experience. ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... game brought in was a couple of marmots (prairie dogs), that would not have been sufficient for the supper of a cat. They were not enough to give each of the party a taste, so we were compelled to go without supper. Having had but a meagre breakfast and no dinner, it will not be wondered at that we were by this time as hungry as wolves; and we began to dread that death by starvation was nearer than we thought of. Buffaloes—several small gangs of them—had been seen during the day, ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... patrician beauty, such elegance of form and bearing, such witchery of simple attire, and such un-Italian yet Latin type, in this antique Creole, modernly Italianized quarter—who and what, so early in the day, down here among the shops, where so meagre a remnant of the old high life clung on in these balconied upper stories—who, ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... least, in the finer shading of that adjective; aside from the usual assortment of self-contained fellow-travellers in the third-class carriage, he had no company other than his thoughts; a gray and meagre crew, if that pathetic face of middle-age furnished trustworthy reflection of his mind.... So absolute was the submergence of that ardent adventurer who, overnight, had lain awake for hours, a dictograph receiver glued ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... Mrs. Penniman surveyed her cashmere in the glass. Then, "How is your father?" she asked in a moment, with her eyes on her niece. "Your letters were so meagre—I could never tell!" ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... he had read the poets, and he grew disgusted, nauseated. He was dying with desire to get away, and the princess suspected it. She kept him always in sight, she held him close, she paid him quarterly, shilling by shilling, his meagre allowance. She said to herself: 'So long as he has nothing, he cannot escape.' She mistook; he did escape, and he was so afraid of being retaken that for some time he hid like a criminal, pursued by the police. He fancied that this woman was always on his track. It was then, for the first ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... now over, the strangers requested to be shown to their place of repose. The old people would gladly have talked with them a little longer, and have expressed the wonder which they felt, and their delight at finding the poor and meagre supper prove so much better and more abundant than they hoped. But the elder traveller had inspired them with such reverence, that they dared not ask him any questions. And when Philemon drew Quicksilver aside, and inquired how under the sun a fountain of milk could have got into an old earthen ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... on westward through miles and miles of swamp intersected by streams flowing southward to the Zambesi basin. One day Livingstone's ox, Sindbad, threw him, and he had to struggle wearily forward on foot. His strength was failing. His meagre fare varied by boiled zebra and dried elephant, frequent wettings and constant fever, were reducing him to a mere skeleton. At last on 26th March he arrived at the edge of the high land over which he had so long ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... antechamber, and came into the presence in a little wainscoted drawing-room, beyond a dimly-lit salon. The carved woodwork, in the taste of the eighteenth century, had been painted gray. There were monochrome paintings on the frieze panels, and the walls were adorned with crimson damask with a meagre border. The old-fashioned furniture shrank piteously from sight under covers of a red-and-white check pattern. On the sofa, covered with thin mattressed cushions, sat Mme. de Bargeton; the poet beheld her by the light ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... story "of man's first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste brought death into the world and all our woe." It is only when we review the strangely mingled elements which make up the poem that we realize the genius which fused them into such a perfect whole. The meagre outline of the Hebrew legend is lost in the splendour and music of Milton's verse. The stern idealism of Geneva is clothed in the gorgeous robes of the Renascence. If we miss something of the free play of Spenser's fancy, and yet ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... propitious for the attack. There was no moon—only a meagre starlight when they set forth from Chaussey. The journey was made in little more than an hour, and Rullecour himself was among the first to see the shores of Jersey loom darkly in front. Beside him stood the murderous pilot who was leading in the expedition, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... neighborhood and the stranger a certain degree of freedom in the use of the broad expanse of ground in which they and their forefathers have loved to sequester their residences. The figure kept on, showing more and more distinctly the tall, meagre, not unvenerable features of a gentleman in the decline of life, apparently in ill-health; with a dark face, that might once have been full of energy, but now seemed enfeebled by time, passion, and perhaps sorrow. But it was strange to see the ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... careers of these picturesque if, I must admit, often unseemly persons. There are, of course, to be found a few pirates with household names such as Kidd, Teach, and Avery. A few, too, of the buccaneers, headed by the great Sir Henry Morgan, come in for their share. But I compare with indignation the meagre show of pirates in that monumental work with the rich profusion of divines! Even during the years when piracy was at its height—say from 1680 until 1730—the pirates are utterly swamped by the theologians. ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... ancient lawgiver they call the Public will say when it sees me, after slumbering so many years in the silence of oblivion, coming out now with all my years upon my back, and with a book as dry as a rush, devoid of invention, meagre in style, poor in thoughts, wholly wanting in learning and wisdom, without quotations in the margin or annotations at the end, after the fashion of other books I see, which, though all fables and profanity, are so full ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... chateau was my lord's, the forest was my lord the king's; neither of them for this poor Jacques. If he thought to eke out his meagre way of life by some petty theft of wood for the fire, or for a new roof-tree, he found himself face to face with a whole department, from the Grand Master of the Woods and Waters, who was a high-born ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of all by the unimpaired simplicity of heart with which his mother could take up past relations, and open her meagre life to the high visitations of grace and fashion, without a tinge of self-consciousness or apology. "I shall never be as genuine as that," he thought, remembering how he had wished to have Mrs. Westmore know that he was of her own class. How ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... sanctimonious, [3] Their rigs prove to judge that their phiz is erroneous. [4] Twig lank-jaws, the miser, that skin-flint old elf, From his long meagre phiz, who'd think he'd the pelf. ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... Aunt Kathryn pass in before me, which she did without a word. We both stood before the fire, holding out gloved hands to the meagre blaze, while little Airole ran about, whimpering and examining everything ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... expected in the interest of personal freedom, and it came very naturally from Greek influences. The Roman could not contemplate the exuberant development of Greek thought, art, literature, society, without bitterly feeling how confined was his own range, how meagre and empty his own life. Hence, very early, Roman society began to be Hellenized, but especially after the unification of Italy. To quote Mommsen once more: "The Greek civilization was grandly human and cosmopolitan; and Rome not only was stimulated by ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... has won from the Turks in the neighborhood of Nisch, and the quaint old city of Nisch itself, were no meagre prizes, and ought to content the ambition of the young prince for some time. It was righteous that the Servians should possess Nisch, and that the Turks should be driven out by violence. The cruel and vindictive barbarian had done everything ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... double postponement, indeed, had the effect of gratifying his vanity: for his own name was returned three times first of the list of eight. His praetorship (B.C. 66) passed without any startling event. The two somewhat meagre letters which remain belonging to this year tell us hardly anything. Still he began more or less to define his political position by advocating the lex Manilia, for putting the Mithridatic war into the hands of Pompey; and one of his most elaborate ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... others in their places for ever."(1044) Within the last few years the City Chamberlain's accounts—touching "the lands of Mr. John Carpenter, sometyme commen clarke of this cittie"—have been brought to light, and serve to supplement in a small way Stow's meagre but valuable statement. The rental or amount with which the Chamberlain charged himself for the year 1565 or 1566 is there set down as L41 0s. 4d., and the discharge—embracing a quit rent due to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, and expenses incurred in overseeing, clothing ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... detracting from the merits of any one to assert that, without frontiers-men like Kit Carson, the numerous scientific expeditions which have been sent out by the United States Government to explore the far West would have returned but sorry and meagre records for their employers. After reading some of the many printed accounts which parties of a more recent date have gathered from their experience while making their way overland to the Pacific, and also the sad fate of some brave men ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... shrieked the shells; bullets imbedded themselves in its walls. To and fro went Martha Stevens, doing what she could, bandaging hurts till the bandages gave out. She tore into strips what cloth there was in the little meagre house—her sheets, her towels, her tablecloths, her poor wardrobe. When all was gone she tore her calico dress. When she saw from the open door a man who could not drag himself that far, she went and helped him, with as little reck as may be ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... they had returned with more gold in their faces than in their pockets. In short, the skepticism of the public seemed now quite in proportion to its former overweening confidence; and the returns were so meagre, says Bernaldez, "that it was very generally believed there was little or no gold in the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... of the absurdity of anything so trivial being held in such high esteem. More of the "calico," which really was an inexpensive but tasteful chintz, hung against the wall and served to hide from prying eyes the child's meagre wardrobe, and a bow of it was perkily tied to the ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... fifty-one, and to this total Wraysford was the only player who made anything like good scoring. Oliver got out for six, Ricketts for nine, and Tom Senior and Braddy both for a "duck's-egg." Altogether it was a meagre performance, and things looked very gloomy for the Fifth when, for a second time, their adversaries took ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... no especial encouragement at first, although she had chosen her own career in Bavaria as the subject in which to make her debut. She waited with considerable tact till she was approaching those scenes in which the mob triumph over order; and then, pretending to discover a cabal in the meagre applause she was receiving, she stopped in the middle of her acting, and, her eyes flashing fire, her face beaming brass, and her voice wild with well-assumed indignation, she cried—"I'm anxious to do my best to please the company; but if ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... view of the long line of art unfolding as a river flows, in winding course from meagre sources, and through untoward obstructions into a natural bed which awaits it, now deep and swollen, now slender, now graceful, now turbid, here breaking into smaller threads stretching into opposed directions, here again ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... pp. 158-161.—Some meagre information of this person is given by Nic. Antonio, whose biographical notices may be often charged with deficiency in chronological data; a circumstance perhaps unavoidable from the obscurity of their subjects. Biblioteca Vetus, tom. ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... this privilege to Benjamin, unless he understands that books were far from being abundant then. The bookstores, instead of being furnished with thousands of volumes to suit every taste in the reading world, offered only a meagre collection of volumes, such as would hardly be noticed at the present time. There were no large publishing houses, manufacturing many books in a year, and scattering them over the land, as is the ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... cheap boarding house before they moved in. They had bought some furniture in Stamton, mostly second-hand, but with new cheap cutlery and china and linen, and they had supplemented this from the Fishbourne shops. Miriam, relieved from the hilarious associations of home, developed a meagre and serious quality of her own, and went about with knitted brows pursuing some ideal of "'aving everything right." Mr. Polly gave himself to the arrangement of the shop with a certain zest, and whistled a good deal until Miriam appeared and said that it went through her head. So soon as ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... To a comparison of scene with scene, Bent overmuch on superficial things, Pampering myself with meagre novelties Of colour and proportion; to the moods Of time and season, to the moral power, The affections, and the spirit of the ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... the skeleton itself should be torn asunder. Nor could the invading populace have been disappointed of their expectations: they found numberless things of immense value in their eyes, and great use in their meagre economy. For years, I might say centuries after, pieces of furniture and panels of carved oak, bits of tapestry, antique sconces and candlesticks of brass, ancient horse-furniture, and a thousand things besides of endless interest, were to be found scattered in farm-houses and cottages ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... during several months of the year. It is rocky, and huge and rugged stones lie strewn over the surface of the ground in many places, and one must struggle hard for a livelihood there, especially with the poor and meagre tools possessed by my people. My country is not like yours, diversified by rolling and gentle hills, covered the year round with a thick carpet of green grass, and where every plant sprouts up and grows to maturity as if by magic, and where one may enrich himself ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... this is enough, of itself, to make an Arab think it beautiful and blessed. Water is scarce in blistered Syria. We run railways by our large cities in America; in Syria they curve the roads so as to make them run by the meagre little puddles they call "fountains," and which are not found oftener on a journey than every four hours. But the "rivers" of Pharpar and Abana of Scripture (mere creeks,) run through Damascus, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... your majesty. War is inevitable, and we must risk our meagre forces against the two hundred thousand ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... Toyl or Pastime, within Doors,—washing, brewing, baking, pickling, and preserving; to say Nought of the Dairy, which supplies us with endless Variety of Country Messes, such as Father's Soul loveth. 'Tis well we have this Resource, or our Bill of Fare would be somewhat meagre; for the Butcher kills nothing but Mutton, except at Christ-mass. Then, we make our own Bread, for we now keep strict Quarantine, the Plague having now so much spread, that there have e'en been one or two Cases in Chalfont. The only One to seek for Employment ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... ground for them and the tending of such poor cattle as were left in their desolate fields. He and Margot and Reine Allix, between them, fed many mouths that would otherwise have been closed in death by famine, and denied themselves all except the barest and most meagre subsistence, that they might give away ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... and definitely installed as the singer of Adelaide. The story is improbable, as the troubadour's rewards naturally depended upon the favour of his patrons to him personally; it is probably an instance of the manner in which the biographies founded fictions upon a very meagre substratum of fact, the fact in this instance being a passage in which Arnaut declares his timidity in singing the praise of so ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... John Shakespeare, in which he lived and carried on his business, still stands on Henley Street, in Stratford, much the same as it was four hundred and fifty years ago. It is a paltry hovel of two low stories, half timbered, with meagre windows, and must have been a squalid abode even in its prime. It is built flush with the sidewalk, having neither vestibule nor entry, and the rough broken pavement of the kitchen is sunken a step lower than the street. A huge open fireplace of unhewn gray stones yawns ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... them as Adam and Eve, for both were beginning a world that contained neither friends nor kin. Both had very white hands and very short hair. The man was tall and meagre, with a receding forehead and a sandy complexion that should have been freckled, but was not. He had a trick of half-closing his eyes when he looked at anything, not screwing them up as seamen do, but appearing rather to drop a film over them like the inner eyelid of a bird. The woman's ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... devotional mien, and Goethe with eager curiosity, who, unobserved, stood like a suppliant at the door of the obscure little room, the shabby furniture of which betrayed the narrow circumstances of the German poetess. It harmonized with the occupant, a little, bony, meagre figure, wearing a tight-fitting blue-flowered chintz dress. Upon the gray hair, which, parted in the middle, encircled the low forehead, was a cap, which had lost its whiteness and was, therefore, more in harmony with the ruff about her yellow, thin neck. Her sharp, angular features were ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... force that was passionate. There was violence in the grip of his hands. His light eyes were ablaze. His whole meagre body quivered as though galvanized by some vital, electric current more potent ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... two men had dragged a meagre corpse out of the snow heap. A rough worn old pilot-coat, a shabby pair of corduroy trousers, and two broken boots through which the toes could be seen peeping ruefully, were all the visible raiment of the body. The clothes lay in heavy swathes and folds over the miserable bag of bones ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... it out of the rut, nor GRANDOLPH either. Only Mr. G. shone with effulgent light through gloom of evening. Principal result of manoeuvre, beyond giving fillip to majority, is that a day will be filched from meagre holidays, and House must needs ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... feeble plants are planted indiscriminately, cultivation and pruning are omitted or not done thoroughly, resulting in broken and irregular lines. When more care is given, the hedge is nearly spoiled by being pruned too wide at the top, the heavy shade above causing meagre growth and openings below. It should be pruned in wedge shape, but shearing is objectionable as causing a thick and short growth of leaves at the exterior, excluding light from the inside and causing bare branches there. Cutting ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... or three ragged, super-annuated soldiers, dozing on a stone bench, the successors of the Zegris and the Abencerrages; while a tall, meagre valet, whose rusty-brown cloak was evidently intended to conceal the ragged state of his nether garments, was lounging in the sunshine and gossipping with the ancient sentinel on duty. He joined us as we entered ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... acumen of a financier, "it will come sometime. But we are none of us ready. We must delay it as long as we can." So she and the like-minded drove into the country round and talked about preventing the extension of the suffrage to women until hard-working, meagre-living people who had not begun to think much about votes, save as a natural prerogative of man, thought about them a great deal, and incidentally learned to organise and lobby, and got a very good training for suffrage when it should come. It did ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... time he emerged into a more commodious avenue. When within a few yards of the corner he perceived, through a window, that a small confectionary of mean appearance was set in the angle. His same glance that estimated its meagre equipment, its cheap soda-water fountain and stock of tobacco and sweets, took cognizance of Captain Peek within lighting a cigar at a ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... known her better than I. I wish that these recollections of a time when I knew her better than you, were not so meagre. If we were not thousands of miles apart, and I could talk with you, instead of writing to you, perhaps they would not appear quite so unsatisfying. Yet, trivial as they are, I send them, in the persuasion that ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... was talking with. But I have investigated thoroughly the whole subject of those blockade runners, and I believe the prospect of success is worth a giant effort for the recovery of some of that money from the sea. There must be untold quantities of it lying there, inviting even a meagre attempt to get it. The boats can be chartered cheaply; and I have learned that the necessary divers can be secured on an equitable division of the spoils. There are many details of the organization of the enterprise which ...
— Money Island • Andrew Jackson Howell, Jr.
... slaves; their homes were generally in the hills and poor country; their facilities for educating their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre—what there was, if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too needed emancipation. Under the old regime they were looked down upon by those who controlled all the affairs in the interest of slave-owners, as poor white trash who were allowed the ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... which life was regarded, the simplicity of its faith and the patience with which trials were borne. The lessons he learned in it had more practical influence in his life than all the books he read. Nor were his opportunities for the study of character so meagre as the limit of one family would imply. As often happens in New England households, individualities were very marked, and from his stern uncle and his placid aunt down to the sweet and nimble-witted Alice, the family had developed traits and even eccentricities ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Pelops Shoulder! Fame and honour, Me thinks, from hence, as from a Promontory Pointed in heaven, should clap their wings, and sing To all the under world the Loves and Fights Of gods, and such men neere 'em. Palamon Is but his foyle, to him a meere dull shadow: Hee's swarth and meagre, of an eye as heavy As if he had lost his mother; a still temper, No stirring in him, no alacrity, Of all this sprightly sharpenes not a smile; Yet these that we count errours may become him: Narcissus was a sad Boy, but a heavenly:— Oh who can finde the bent of womans fancy? ...
— The Two Noble Kinsmen • William Shakespeare and John Fletcher [Apocrypha]
... judgment by far the best history of England that has yet been published. The other books in the field are either too meagre or too advanced. This book is just what has long been needed, and ought to be largely introduced."—Professor Richard Hudson, University of Michigan, Ann ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... was short of stature, was brown, meagre, and poor-looking. So said Harry Clavering to himself. Her small band, though soft, lacked that wondrous charm of touch which Julia's possessed. Her face was short, and her forehead, though it was broad and open, had none of that feminine command which Julia's look conveyed. ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... of Languedoc, in Southern France, charlatans were liable to be summarily dealt with. For when any mountebank appeared in the city of Montpellier, the magistrates were empowered to set him astride of a meagre, miserable ass, with his face to ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... accepting the investment, struck out right and left from day to day, by skirmishing and reconnoitring parties; the Boers on the 9th of November delivered an assault described as determined in character, which will be more particularly mentioned later, but concerning which details are singularly meagre. This no doubt is owing, partly, to the habitual reticence of the Boers concerning {p.178} their reverses, and partly to the isolation of the British garrison and correspondents until a time when nearer and more exciting events engrossed the columns of ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... genteel females with slender appetites, or stout people upon diets. It was almost inconceivable how Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela, with no actual consultations to that end, practised economies and maintained luxuries. They seemed to move with a spiritual unity like the physical one of the Siamese twins. Meagre meals served magnificently, the most splendid conservatism with the smallest possible amount of comfort, ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... meagre facts, we know nothing of Marvell's boyhood at Hull. His clerical foe, Dr. Parker, afterwards Bishop of Oxford, writes contemptuously of "an hunger-starved whelp of a country vicar," and in another passage, which undoubtedly refers to Marvell, he speaks of "an unhappy education among ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... genuine "Cremona." He consents to take for his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for technique, but not the soul of an artist. The youth has led the happy, careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American and he cannot, with his meagre past, express the love, the passion and the tragedies of life and all its happy phases as can the master who has lived life in all its fulness. But a girl comes into his life—a beautiful bit of human driftwood that his aunt had taken into her heart and home, and through his ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... assumed by some of those actinic clouds, as I propose to call them, in consequence of rotations and other motions, due to differences of temperature, are perfectly astounding. I content myself here with a meagre description ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... call was so meagre that he began to mistrust his countrymen, and he asked if, in case he lost his ship, the town would reimburse him, considering that he was risking his all in their defence. After much debate the townsmen ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... a young American woman, one of a large family of daughters, who, some years since, migrated from her meagre country home to one of the northern cities, to gain her own support. She soon became an expert seamstress, but finding the employment too confining for health and comfort, she went boldly to work for others, to house-keep, cook, clean, &c. After trying several places, she fell upon one where ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... improve himself off the face of the earth, and he should therefore have been thankful to retain a foothold, even in a loose-jointed, rush-roofed cabin away at stony Lisconnel. Whether thankful or no, there, at any rate, he presently found himself established with all his family, and the meagre remnant of his hastily sold-off gear, and the black doors of the "house" seeming to loom ahead whenever he ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... upon mental vision. My intellectual horizon is infinitely wide. The universe it encircles is immeasurable. Would they who bid me keep within the narrow bound of my meagre senses demand of Herschel that he roof his stellar universe and give us back Plato's solid firmament of glassy spheres? Would they command Darwin from the grave and bid him blot out his geological time, give us back a paltry few thousand years? Oh, the supercilious doubters! ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... mercy of heaven the swarm of gossips and of theorists has passed her by. She has no legend or hardly any. So completely has she been passed over that when Madame Duclaux came to write the Life of Emily Bronte she found little to add to Mrs. Gaskell's meagre record beyond that story, which she tells with an incomparable simplicity and reticence, of Emily in her mortal illness, sitting by the hearth, combing her long hair till the comb slips from ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... turned the shooting rights to some account by dividing them into shares of five hundred francs value, which his friends eagerly purchased. The income derived from this source was, however, but a meagre one. Apart from the woods there was only uncultivated land on the estate, marshes, patches of sand, and fields of stones; and for centuries past the opinion of the district had been that no agriculturist could ever turn the expanse to good account. The defunct army contractor alone had been able ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... for a law-writer. In its development he will be thrown, to a great extent, upon his own resources in collating and unfolding the topics, for the literature upon the subject existing in our own language is so meagre that the form of its presentation has not been cast in any conventional mould. We have heretofore had no American treatise whatever upon the general subject, and the English bar has furnished us only with that of Gale ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... their beautiful comrades attempted to explain the eugenistic principles—to point out that the very essence of the entire cult lay in non-reproduction by the physically unfit, and in the ultimate extinction of the thin, bald, and meagre among ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... university, and the poet had always been one of his idols—the man of all others he wanted most to know. Poe's former room opening into the corridor had invariably attracted him. He had frequently looked about its bare walls wondering how so great an inspiration could have started from such meagre surroundings. He had, too, with the romantic imagination of a boy, pictured to himself the kind of man he was, his looks, voice, and manner, and though he had never seen the poet in the flesh, somehow the tones of Richard's ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Pedro with a judicial frown. Then he stuck out a finger at the horse, keeping the thumb hooked in his pocket. So meagre a gesture was felt by the ruffled Shorty to be no just way to point at Pedro. "What's the matter with that ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... read each other's thoughts. She made no comment; there was nothing to say to this, nor did she show surprise or repugnance at the dark shadow his answer had flung across the meagre picture. ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... sportsmen as are interested in the subject. I have shown that the tail is not trustworthy as a proportional part of the total length; but from such calculations as I have been able to make from the very meagre materials on which I have to base them, I should allow one 2.50th part of the total length of skeleton for curves ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... as the youngest man, and the one on whom the labouring oar ought to fall, now took the key, applied it to the lock, turned it without difficulty, and then lifted the lid. Disappointment appeared on every face but that of the deacon, at the meagre prospect before the company. Not only was the chest more than half empty, but the articles it did contain were of the coarsest materials; well worn sea-clothes that had seen their best days, and which had never been more than the coarse common ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... wedding what Private Ortheris called "eeklar." It fell in the heart of the hot weather, and, after the wedding, Slane was going up to the Hills with the Bride. None the less, Slane's grievance was that the affair would be only a hired-carriage wedding, and he felt that the "eeklar" of that was meagre. Miss M'Kenna did not care so much. The Sergeant's wife was helping her to make her wedding-dress, and she was very busy. Slane was, just then, the only moderately contented man in barracks. All the rest were more ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... night in the monastery if I wished to do so. The porter led me through a great farmyard, then through a doorway into a room, in the centre of which was a large table, and in the corners were four very small and low wooden bedsteads with meagre mattresses, a couple of sheets, and a ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... degrade it as was done by the poets they patronized and the actors they applauded. On the one side, extravagant and absurd dramas in great numbers, full of low buffoonery, were offered; on the other, meagre, sentimental comedies, and stiff, cold translations from the French, were forced, in almost equal numbers, upon the actors, by the voices of those from whose authority or support they could ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... ambitious, unselfish boy. He supports his mother and sister on meagre wages earned as a shoe-pegger in John Simpson's factory. Tom is discharged from the factory and starts overland for California. He meets with many adventures. The story is told in a way which has made Mr. Alger's name a household word in ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... garnishing. Page after page, for tens and hundreds of feet together, repeat the same wonderful story. The great Alexandrian library, with its tomes of ancient literature, the accumulation of long ages, was but a meagre collection—not less puny in bulk than recent in date—compared with this marvellous library of ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... which Servia has won from the Turks in the neighborhood of Nisch, and the quaint old city of Nisch itself, were no meagre prizes, and ought to content the ambition of the young prince for some time. It was righteous that the Servians should possess Nisch, and that the Turks should be driven out by violence. The cruel and vindictive barbarian had done everything ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... and children—survived altogether.[45] Within a very short time the cabins which he erected were ready to fall and the palisades could not keep out hogs. A tract of land called the "company's garden" yielded the company L300 annually, but this was a meagre return for the enormous suffering and sacrifice of life.[46] Dale took Pocahontas with him to England, and Lady Delaware presented her at court, and her portrait engraved by the distinguished artist Simon de Passe was a popular curiosity.[47] While ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... now the meagre yet certain fruits of our long analysis. We have attained the idea either of a fatal accident under the roof of Madame Deluc, or of a murder perpetrated, in the thicket at the Barrire du Roule, by a lover, or at least by an intimate and secret ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... envy viewed? Where now thy might which all those kings subdued? No martial myriads muster in thy gate; No suppliant nations in thy temple wait; No prophet bards, thy glittering courts among, Wake the full lyre, and swell the tide of song: But lawless force and meagre want are there, And the quick-darting eye of restless fear, While cold oblivion, 'mid thy ruins laid, Folds its dank wing beneath ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... deposited weekly on the mantel-piece, joined to Malaga's meagre salary, gave her the means of sumptuous living compared with her former poverty. Wonderful stories went the rounds of the Circus about Malaga's good-luck. Her vanity increased the six thousand francs which Paz had spent on her furniture ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... training to Padua, it is impossible to regard him as what is called a Squarcionesque—one among the artistic hacks formed and employed by the Paduan impresario of third-rate painting. No other eagle like to him was reared in that nest. His greatness belonged to his own genius, assimilating from the meagre means of study within his reach those elements which enabled him to divine the spirit of the antique and to attempt its reproduction. In order to facilitate the explanation of the problem offered by his early command of style, it has ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... Gellius is meagre: why not? He who lives with so good a mother, so healthy and so beauteous a sister, and who has such a good uncle, and a world-*full of girl cousins, wherefore should he leave off being lean? Though he touch naught save what is banned, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... Catholic; and he forgot his present errand in the excitement of his rustic loyalty. Raising his bonnet, he cried loudly Vive le Roi!—cried it more than once. There were six in the coach, but Henry, whose pale meagre face with its almond eyes and scanty beard permitted no mistake, remarked the salutation and the giver, and his look cast the young man into a confusion which nearly cost him dearly; for it was only as the guards closed round the ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... tyranny over men who have no votes, utterly unknown to Turkish despotism. Mr. Flood's motion was lost by a majority of only four votes; but this triumph of humanity and republicanism was as transient as it was meagre. The next day, the House, by a large majority, resolved: "That the blacks and mulattoes who may be residents within this State, have no constitutional right to present their petitions to the General Assembly for any purpose whatsoever, and that any reception of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... every color and form that can be named. Some had saddles, some blankets, some bridles, some halters, some with stirrups, some with none. The riders also were various and grotesque in their appearance. Some were old, some young, some hale, respectable looking men; others were pale, meagre, and shabbily dressed. Some had great coats,—others had blankets on their shoulders. The countenance of some was downcast, melancholy, dejected; that of others, stern, indignant, manifesting that ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... the Vesteras Recess. By this decree the delegates asserted, every one of them, that they would do their utmost to punish all conspiracies against the king. They declared, moreover, that as the royal incomes were but meagre, the monasteries and churches must come to the relief, and, to prevent all danger, no bishop should keep up a larger retinue than the king allowed. All bishops and cathedrals, with their chapters, must hand over to the king all income not absolutely necessary for their ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... he smokes, and laughs at merry tale, Or pun ambiguous, or conundrum quaint. But I, whom griping penury surrounds, And Hunger, sure attendant upon Want, With scanty offals, and small acid tiff, (Wretched repast!) my meagre corpse sustain: Then solitary walk, or doze at home In garret vile, and with a warming puff Regale chill'd fingers: or from tube as black As winter-chimney, or well-polish'd jet, Exhale mundungus, ill-perfuming ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Death that came into the hall, With visage wan and grim, And throwing off his sickly pall, Disclos'd each meagre limb. ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... Vega recounted the meagre and conflicting rumours which had reached California, but, not being a prophet, could not tell them that they would be the first to see the red-white-and-blue fluttering on the mountain before them. He refused to rest more than an hour, but mounted the ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... trace in the unused portion of those left behind him much of the progress of his work, and the shapes which much of it went through. The Advancement itself is the filling-out and perfecting of what is found in germ, meagre and rudimentary, in a Discourse in Praise of Knowledge, written in the days of Elizabeth, and in some Latin chapters of an early date, the Cogitationes de Scientia Humana, on the limits and use of knowledge, and on the relation of natural history to natural philosophy. These ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... commander as to whether or not Cervera was in the latter port; nor was there then known reason to censure the decision of the officer on the spot, whose information, dependent upon despatch vessels, or upon local scouting, was necessarily, in some respects, more meagre than that of the Department, in cable communication with many quarters. Nevertheless, he was mistaken, and each succeeding hour made the mistake more palpable and more serious to those in Washington; not, indeed, that demonstrative ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... allowance of solids, and perhaps with a trifle too much of fluids, came singing and capering along the deck of their hulk. In the most good-humoured way possible, they asked their neighbours how many geese and turkeys they had discussed that day. The meagre answer called forth shouts of merriment, and the poor fellows belonging to the other ship were rather unhandsomely taunted with the scantiness of their Christmas fare. "Look at that and weep, you hungry-faced rascals!" exclaimed one of our jolly blades, holding ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... with the fat neck and Spanish affiliations, the poor confused, inert, over-fed marshal caged in Metz by the Red Prince, harassed, bewildered, stunned by the clashing of politics and military strategy, which his meagre brain was unable to reconcile or separate—this unfortunate incapable was deserving of pity, perhaps of contempt. His cup was to be bitterer than that—it was to be drained, too, with the shouts of "Traitor" stunning ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... his utterance was a culmination of the two preceding centuries. An entire side of the richly endowed human nature to which we owe the high qualities of New England,—a nature which is often so easily disposed of as meagre, cold, narrow, and austere,—this side, long suppressed and thrown into shade by the more active front, found expression at last in these pages so curiously compounded of various elements, answering to ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... such cheering as I shall never forget, her crew jumped out. Forty men of them there were, strong, stalwart, strapping fellows, looking very different from our own poor lads, who were pinched and thin from long watching, and meagre fare. Their leader was Sir Alexander Ramsay of Dalhousie, one of the bravest of Scottish knights, and most chivalrous of men, who had risked his life, and the lives of his men, in ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... Sheppard and his comrades had warned Drury Lane against the infamous thief-catcher. And so anxious, on the other hand, was the law to be quit of their too zealous servant, that an Act of Parliament was passed with the sole object of placing Jonathan's head within the noose. His method, meagre though masterly, lulled him too soon to an impotent security. She, with her larger view of life, her plumper sense of style, was content with nothing less than an ultimate sovereignty, and manifestly ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... She turned, her meagre dress flapping about her knees like a flag. But at the foot of the rickety outer steps that ran across the bare front of the shack crookedly, like a broken arm, I ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... others. It is not detracting from the merits of any one to assert that, without frontiers-men like Kit Carson, the numerous scientific expeditions which have been sent out by the United States Government to explore the far West would have returned but sorry and meagre records for their employers. After reading some of the many printed accounts which parties of a more recent date have gathered from their experience while making their way overland to the Pacific, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... acre, of the wheat fields in all countries, is steadily decreasing. Decreasing to such an extent as to make it probable, that in the near future, the yield on a large proportion of these lands, will become too meagre to pay the cost of cultivation. A long series of carefully conducted experiments demonstrated the truth of ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... by ten years of heroic work. Balzac appears not to have been extravagant; he had neither wife nor children (unlike many of his comrades, he had no illegitimate offspring), and when he admits us to a glimpse of his domestic economy, we usually find it to be of a very meagre pattern. He writes to his sister in 1827 that he has not the means either to pay the postage of letters or to use omnibuses, and that he goes out as little as possible, so as not to wear out his clothes. In 1829, however, we find him ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... no evil thing that walks by night, In fog, or fire, by lake or moorish fen, Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, No goblin, or swart fairy of the mine, Hath hurtful power o'er true ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field—that, of course, they are many in number,—or, that, after all, they are other than the little, shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... of all men, dying rich—actually rich. The professor pulls his beard, and involuntarily glances round the somewhat meagre apartment, that not all his learning, not all his success in the scientific world—and it has been not unnoteworthy, so far—has enabled him to improve upon. It has helped him to live, no doubt, and distinctly ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... east, on the old Turtle Mountain trail, stands the weather-beaten schoolhouse where Martha Perkins got her meagre education, and where Bud, her brother, was now attending. The schoolhouse is bare and unlovely, without tree or flower. The rain and the sun, the scorching winds of spring and winter's piercing blizzards have had their way with it for many years, and now it defies them all, ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... although not usually deem'd an Actor of the first Rank, yet the Characters allotted him were such, that none besides, then, or since, ever topp'd; for his Figure, which was diminutive and mean, (being Round-shoulder'd, Meagre-fac'd, Spindle-shank'd, Splay-footed, with a sour Countenance and long lean Arms) render'd him a proper Person to discharge Jago, Foresight and Ma'lignij, in the Villain.—This Person acted strongly with his Face,—and (as King Charles said) ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... before it. But Alfred Parsons may be pointed to as one who has made the luxuriant and lovable things of his own country almost as "serious" as those familiar objects—the pasture and the poplar—which, even when infinitely repeated by the great school across the Channel, strike us as but meagre ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... her soft, fervid bosom the Lovely found determination, even on hest of Necessity, to cut-asunder these so blissful bonds.' He even appears surprised at the 'Duenna Cousin,' whoever she may have been, 'in whose meagre, hunger-bitten philosophy, the religion of young hearts was, from the first, faintly approved of.' We, even at such distance, can explain it without necromancy. Let the Philosopher answer this one ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... why he had thought of Bosinney. Since the dinner at Swithin's he had made enquiries, the result of which had been meagre, but encouraging: "One of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 'Hard-favour'd tyrant, ugly, meagre, lean, 931 Hateful divorce of love,'—thus chides she Death,— 'Grim-grinning ghost, earth's worm, what dost thou mean To stifle beauty and to steal his breath, Who when he liv'd, his breath and beauty set Gloss on the rose, smell ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... gentleman was smarting under a disappointment in the sale of a volume of sermons, whence he had expected great things, from the publication of which I had vainly endeavored to dissuade him, and whose meagre proceeds fully justified my forebodings. The mention of my work naturally recalled this afflictive dispensation, and hinc illae lacrimae. Reading his mind, I answered, therefore, as gently as ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Quincy, Ill., but our happiness was of short duration, as my husband was killed in the explosion of the steamboat Edward Bates, on which he was employed. To my mind it seemed a singular coincidence that the boat which bore the name of the great and good man, who had given me the first joy of my meagre life—the precious boon of freedom—and that his namesake should be the means of weighting me with my first great sorrow; this thought seemed to reconcile me to my grief, for that name was ever sacred, and I could not speak ...
— From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or Struggles for Freedom • Lucy A. Delaney
... portion of the history gathers about the monarch in whose person the empire terminated; and instead of the ample details which have crowded upon us now for many consecutive reigns, we shall be reduced to a meagre outline, partly resting upon conjecture, in our ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... owl in an ivy bush; a simile for a meagre or weasel-faced man, with a large wig, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... Easter festival at Canterbury at the Archbishop's expense. In consequence of John's frequent quarrels with his nobles the attendance at his Christmas feasts became smaller every year, until he could only muster a very meagre company around his festive board, and it was said that he had almost as many enemies as there were ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... in keeping with the meagre legal attainments of those who frequented them. Rude frame, or log houses served the purposes of bench and bar. The judge sat usually upon a platform with a plain table, or pine board, for a desk. A larger table below accommodated ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... to satisfy myself on these points; but could never learn any thing farther, than that they imagined we came from some country where provisions had failed; and that our visit to them was merely for the purpose of filling our bellies. Indeed, the meagre appearance of some of our crew, the hearty appetites with which we sat down to their fresh provisions, and our great anxiety to purchase, and carry off, as much as we were able, led them, naturally enough, to such a conclusion. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... likewise excellent pork, and delicate lamb; but the mutton is indifferent. Piedmont, also, affords us delicious capons, fed with maize; and this country produces excellent turkeys, but very few geese. Chickens and pullets are extremely meagre. I have tried to fatten them, without success. In summer they are subject to the pip, and die in great numbers. Autumn and winter are the seasons for game; hares, partridges, quails, wild-pigeons, woodcocks, snipes, thrushes, beccaficas, and ortolans. Wild-boar is sometimes found in the mountains: ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... as a region of fine scenery. The few lakes I have since become acquainted with, as that near Bala, near Beddkelert, and beyond Machynleth, are not attractive either in their forms or in their accompaniments; the Bala Lake being meagre and insipid, the others as it were unfinished, and unaccompanied with ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... from out its meagre store A bright and precious stone; Heaven could not be so rich before, ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... these savages, who wished him dead, would take measures to kill him when they saw that he was going to recover. As he leaned against the bed, he noticed that the door had no fastening. There was a rude latch, but neither lock nor bolt. The furniture of the room was of the most meagre description, clumsily made. He staggered to the open window, and looked out. The remnants of the disastrous gale blew in upon him and gave him new life, as it had formerly threatened him with death. He saw that he was in ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... frequented by European fishermen at a very early period, certainly within the decade after its discovery by John Cabot in 1497. But the Basques, Bretons, and Normans, [29] who visited these coasts, were intent upon their employment, and consequently brought home only meagre information of the country from whose shores they yearly bore away ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... success in nut-growing, brought about by our activities, when we compare nut-growing in our field with pecan-growing in the South, and with walnut, almond, and perhaps filbert-growing, on the Pacific Coast, our results are meagre indeed. Of course commercial production, the building of a new industry of food supply for the people, is our ultimate goal. Why are our results in this direction, after fourteen years of effort, so small? Is it because we have devoted ourselves ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... In the meagre statements of this and the next chapter, interposed as they are among chapters of detail unusually ample for Polo, there is nothing to lead us to suppose that the Traveller ever personally visited the countries of which these two chapters treat. I believe we have ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... heaviest storms will stop them. They will be small and difficult to hit, and very difficult to damage, and their range of operations will be very large.' Colonel Capper acted on this belief, and during his time at the factory did what he could with meagre funds to encourage aviation. The policy which, in the spring of 1908, he recommended to the War Office was to buy any practicable machines that offered themselves in the market, and at the same time not to relax effort at the factory. The attempts of Lieutenant Dunne ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... to give to the meagre and narrow hearts of men such enlargement? How to make them capable of a universal sympathy? Christ believed it possible to bind men to their kind, but on one condition—that they were first bound fast to himself. He stood ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... of reasoning depends very closely upon our language. But every significant word that we use has a distinct meaning in the mind of the individual, depending altogether upon his experience. As the experience of the child is very meagre, compared to that of the grown-up person, it is no wonder that our everyday remarks are constant sources of ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... orient beams had chased the dewy night From earth and heaven; all nature stood disclosed: When, looking on the neighbouring woods, we saw The ghastly visage of a man unknown, 30 An uncouth feature, meagre, pale, and wild; Affliction's foul and terrible dismay Sat in his looks, his face, impaired and worn With marks of famine, speaking sore distress; His locks were tangled, and his shaggy beard Matted with filth; in all things else a Greek. He first advanced in haste; ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... It was a meagre room into which they gazed, a room the chief furniture of which seemed to be babies. Two little ones sprawled on the floor. A third tiny tot lay in a broken-down carriage beside the door. A pale, ill-looking woman was running ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... full length on the grey sand, making a pillow of the low bushes. But they prefer to stand; and you may see them, reclining against a third pole stuck in the ground at the rear, contentedly knitting stockings, keeping the while one eye upon the flock of sheep anxiously nibbling at the meagre grass. ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... are now permitted by the experts to be called Giorgione's is so small, that we may learn more about him as an influence on the work of other painters—especially Titian—than from the meagre materials available for his own biography. The only unquestioned examples of his work are three pictures at the Uffizi, The Trial of Moses, The Judgment of Solomon, and The Knight of Malta; the Venus at Dresden; The Three Philosophers at Vienna; and ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... have drunk in the beauties of nature; the images retained in his mind became, like words to the ordinary man, the signs by which he thought, and, as such, formed an important element in the power of his thinking. I have seen his Astronomical Discourses disparagingly dealt with by a slim and meagre critic, as if they had been but the chapters of a mere treatise on astronomy—a thing which, of course, any ordinary man could write—mayhap even the critic himself. The Astronomical Discourses, on the other hand, no one could have written save Chalmers. Nominally a series of sermons, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... message, and we instantly edged towards it; but when we drew nearer, we found to our unspeakable joy that it was our own cutter. While she was still at a distance, we imagined that she had been discharged out of the port of Acapulco by the governor; but when she drew nearer, the wan and meagre countenances of the crew, the length of their beards, and the feeble and hollow tone of their voices, convinced us that they had suffered much greater hardships than could be expected from even the severities of a Spanish prison. They were obliged to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... struck out right and left from day to day, by skirmishing and reconnoitring parties; the Boers on the 9th of November delivered an assault described as determined in character, which will be more particularly mentioned later, but concerning which details are singularly meagre. This no doubt is owing, partly, to the habitual reticence of the Boers concerning {p.178} their reverses, and partly to the isolation of the British garrison and correspondents until a time when nearer and more exciting events engrossed the columns ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... said to have written his adventures in Calais. As I entered the town, instantly the works of Hogarth appeared before me, for who is there that does not remember his excellent representation of the Gates of Calais, with the meagre sentinel and still more skinny cook bending under the weight of a dish crowned with an enormous sirloin of beef, no doubt intended to regale some newly-arrived John Bull, whilst a fat monk scans it ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... him to sit down in a chair close by him; 'Well, Natura,' said he, 'you have been disobedient to an excess; I wish it were possible for your distresses to have given you a remorse in proportion;—I am still a father, if you can be a son.'—He would have proceeded, but was not able:—the meagre aspect, dejected air, and wretched appearance of a son so dear to him, threw him into a condition which destroyed all the power of maintaining that reserve which he ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... FAT, conceived in the cube by their planner, and outlines of buildings invented flat on paper, with the aid of ruler and compass. These remain skinny and emaciated even when set up in stone and mortar, and the outline already suggests that result. An outline in itself is meagre, truly, but it does not necessarily suggest a meagre thing. It is the essential meagreness of WHAT IS SUGGESTED by the usual rationalistic philosophies that moves empiricists to their gesture of rejection. The case of Herbert Spencer's system is much to the point ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... particular hurry, and still feeling the effects of my recent illness, I resolved to stay for the night at Aviers, a village about thirty miles from Aunay. The inn was dirty, the accommodation meagre, and the landlord a surly boor, who behaved as if we had done him a grievous injury by stopping at his house. After providing a feed for the horses, his resources appeared to be exhausted, and, but for Pillot, I should doubtless have gone to ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... and intersected by four broad streets in the form of a cross. This square also is decorated by a monument standing in the midst, and representing Frederick V. In another fine square, the "Nytorf" (New Market), there is a fountain. Its little statue sends forth very meagre jets of water, and the fountain is merely noticeable as being the only one I ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... dealing faithfully with my soul—searching and sifting it, revealing it somewhat to itself and preparing it for the indwelling of Christ. This I do heartily desire. Oh, God! search me and know me, and show me my own guilty, poor, meagre soul, that I may turn from it, humbled and ashamed and penitent, to my blessed Saviour. How very, very thankful I feel for this seclusion and leisure; this quiet room where I can seek my God and pray and praise, unseen by any human eye—and which sometimes seems like ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... integrity, your goodness of heart, and high principle which I never thought I could feel for a man of whom I know so little,' began Lady Maulevrier, gravely. 'All I know of you or your antecedents is what my grandson has told me—and I must say that the information so given has been very meagre. And yet I believe in you—and yet I am going to trust you, wholly, blindly, implicitly—and I am going to give you my granddaughter, ever so much sooner than I intended to give her to you. Soon, very soon, if ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... advanced more upon the model of the ancients than in this: the dinners (caenae) of the Romans were even more luxurious, and a thousand times more costly, than our own; but their breakfasts were scandalously meagre; and, with many men, breakfast was no professed meal at all. Galen tells us that a little bread, and at most a little seasoning of oil, honey, or dried fruits, was the utmost breakfast which men generally ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... had been meagre and our accommodation indifferent at Nazareth and Jerusalem, did we find every thing here excellent. In an elegant dining-room stood a large table covered with a fine white cloth, on which cut glass and ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... shorn lamb, what is the provision of Nature which enables so tender a thing as a young bird, a mere helpless ball of creamy fluff, to withstand the frizzling heat with which the sun bleaches the broken coral? Many do avail themselves of the meagre shadow of shells and lumps of coral, but the majority are exposed to the direct rays of the sun, which brings the coral to such a heat that even the hardened beachcomber walks thereon with "uneasy steps," ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... twinkling from Ebenezer Brown's dining room out into the night a few evenings subsequently to Desmond O'Connor's visit to Grey Town. A meagre attempt at hospitality had been made for the visitors, a scanty supply of water biscuits, a few apples of an antique appearance, with a bottle of limejuice and water. But not one of the guests was sufficiently hungry ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... withstood frosts that killed the flowers and buds of all other kinds of pears. Wheat, which is grown over so large a portion of the world, has become adapted to special climates. Wheat imported from India and sown in good wheat soil in England produced the most meagre ears; while wheat taken from France to the West Indian Islands produced either wholly barren spikes or spikes furnished with two or three miserable seeds, while West Indian seed by its side yielded an enormous harvest. The orange was very tender when first introduced into Italy, and continued ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... herself docile to Courtin's advice, and passed in profound obscurity the many long years which, remained to her of existence. Saint-Simon and Dangeau say nothing more about her, save to enregister the meagre favours which the Court measured out with an avaricious hand, and that woman, to whom was owing the signature of the Treaty of Nimeguen, was reduced in 1689 to solicit a pension of 20,000 livres, which was considerably ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... sadly changed from what it had been in old times; but then so was 'Sieur George. Close and dark it was, the walls stained with dampness and the ceiling full of bald places that showed the lathing. The furniture was cheap and meagre, including conspicuously the small, curious-looking hair-trunk. The floor was of wide slabs fastened down with spikes, and sloping up and down in one or two broad undulations, as if they had drifted far enough down the current of time to ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... naturally have ascribed that sound of harping which began to chime and echo in my ears, an accompaniment to which that imagery added something ethereal and sublime. One of these passages of Bergotte, the third or fourth which I had detached from the rest, filled me with a joy to which the meagre joy I had tasted in the first passage bore no comparison, a joy which I felt myself to have experienced in some innermost chamber of my soul, deep, undivided, vast, from which all obstructions and partitions seemed to have been swept ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... net, in that dark closet, he did not know; but now he felt that his last hour was come. His little strength was completely worn out in efforts to disentangle himself. Once a day a door opened, and Herr Hippe placed a crust of bread and a cup of water within his reach. On this meagre fare he had subsisted. It was a hard life; but, bad as it was, it was better than the horrible death that menaced him. His brain reeled with terror at the prospect of it. Then, where was Zonla? Why did she not come to his rescue? But she was, perhaps, dead. The darkness, too, appalled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... huge, bright orange-tinted fruit of the species known as Odoratissimus is highly attractive in appearance, and to the uninitiated offers pleasing hopes and delicious expectations. It is, however, delusive, being constituted of woody drupes in close clusters collected into a globular head, with meagre yellow pulp at the base of each group, the pulp having an aromatic and unsatisfactory flavour. Each drupe contains an oblong oval kernel, pleasant to the taste, but so trivial in size as to be hardly worth the trouble of extraction unless ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... of ten the friends the newly-arrived wife is surest to fancy in garrison are not those whose praises her lord has been sounding for six months ahead. Of the hops and dances and drives that had preceded this eventful evening he had as yet, mirabile dictu, heard nothing beyond Mira's own meagre account. In fact, he had no ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... thirty take place chez nous. Society is established with us on a wider and more splendid scale. The weekly soirees, on the other hand, which properly represent the society of this place, are dull, meagre, and formal to the last degree of formality. There is no brilliant point of reunion as at Almack's,—no theatre uniting, like our Italian Opera, the charm of the best company, the best music, and the best dancing. Of the thousand and one theatres boasted ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... long lance. An iron skull-cap, none of the brightest, bore for distinction a sprig of the holly, which was Avenel's badge. A long two-edged straight sword, having a handle made of polished oak, hung down by his side. The meagre condition of his horse, and the wild and emaciated look of the rider, showed their occupation could not be accounted an easy or a thriving one. He saluted Dame Glendinning with little courtesy, and the monk with less; for the growing, disrespect to the religious ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... proceeding. He heard, as he passed, the gurgling laugh with which the dalesfolk received the peddler's story of how he saw Paul Ritson at Hendon. A minute afterward he encountered Hugh Ritson on the road. There was only the most meagre pretense at greeting when these ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... struck with the grandeur of the objects around, gradually yielded to delightful impressions. The road now descended into glens, confined by stupendous walls of rock, grey and barren, except where shrubs fringed their summits, or patches of meagre vegetation tinted their recesses, in which the wild goat was frequently browsing. And now, the way led to the lofty cliffs, from whence the landscape was seen extending in all ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... of hard work and considerable privation. When he first went to New York his salary was but thirty dollars a week, and while he remained on The Evening Sun never over fifty dollars, and the prices he received for his first short stories were extremely meagre. During the early days on The Evening Sun he had a room in a little house at 108 Waverly Place, and took his meals in the neighborhood where he happened to find himself and where they were cheapest. He usually ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... is not confined to Europe, though the accounts we have of it elsewhere are meagre. It is found, as we shall see further on, in China. It is found also among the natives of the Pacific slopes of North America, where it is death to the mother to suckle the changeling. Dorman, ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... and form that can be named. Some had saddles, some blankets, some bridles, some halters, some with stirrups, some with none. The riders also were various and grotesque in their appearance. Some were old, some young, some hale, respectable looking men; others were pale, meagre, and shabbily dressed. Some had great coats,—others had blankets on their shoulders. The countenance of some was downcast, melancholy, dejected; that of others, stern, indignant, manifesting that they thought ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... and the young warriors, who made but a slight resistance; of annexing the attractive ladies as wives and the fat cattle as prized booty, and then of retreating again south of the mighty river without fear of reprisals. For this reason there was, in 1903, a very meagre population for many hundreds of miles north of the Zambesi in this direction; and of cattle, for which there is pasture in abundance, there was hardly one to be seen. One has to travel much farther north and west to find the densely ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... Constantine. It may fairly be concluded, from the language which he had into the mouth of Maecenas, that Dion was an enemy to all innovations in religion. (See Gibbon, infra, note 105.) In fact, when the silence of Pagan historians is noticed, it should be remembered how meagre and mutilated are all the extant ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... provincial presses of this period is very meagre. Mr. Allnutt, to whose valuable papers in the second volume of Bibliographica I am indebted for the following notes, expresses the belief that in several cases local knowledge would show that ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... saluted by the well-known bark of a pack of Esquimau dogs. In another moment they dashed into the midst of a snow village, and were immediately surrounded by the excited natives. For some time no information could be gleaned from their interpreter, who was too excited to make use of his meagre amount of English. They observed, however, that the natives, although much excited, did not seem to be so much surprised at the appearance of white men amongst them as those were whom they had first met with near the ship. In a short time Meetuck, apparently, had expended all ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... very long face. It is difficult to trace the workings of such a man's mind, or to calculate the meagre chances on which he is too often driven to base his hopes of success. He feared that he could not show his face in Kimberley, unless as the representative of the whole old Stick-in-the-Mud. And with that object he had declared himself in London to have the actual power of disposing ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... Abbey Theatre Company was touring in England, he came with it if his health allowed, to watch the performances in London, Manchester or Edinburgh, wherever they might be. His life was always mainly within himself; the record of these years is very meagre, all that can be said of them is that he passed them mostly in Ireland, writing and re-writing, in failing health and with increasing purpose. His general health was never robust, and for at least the last six years ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... crimson stream, as if flowing from the dark-tinted rose, tinged her fair hand with the purple current. This circumstance set the whole company in commotion; and court- plaster was called for. A quiet, elderly man, tall, and meagre- looking, who was one of the company, but whom I had not before observed, immediately put his hand into the tight breast-pocket of his old-fashioned coat of grey sarsnet, pulled out a small letter- case, opened it, and, with a most ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... The meagre information we have as to the life and habits of Shakespeare would seem to make it an almost hopeless task now to discover the causes of his insomnia. He wrote a marvellous body of literature, and it might be thought this labor itself would ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... about the world for ever—at least, I cannot, bound as I am; not that I repent that;" and then it was that he sighed. Nevertheless he did roam about for three years longer; and then his health giving way, he was obliged to return to England, and arrived at his sister's house, a bronzed, meagre, bearded traveller, with his youth gone for ever, and years of life, and adventure, and toil separating him from the lad who had first ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... which have come down to us, meagre though they are, it ought to be possible to arrive at some conclusions regarding the nature of the plague of the fourteenth century which, for the pathologist, would amount to certainties. The wonder is that such men as Dr. Hecker and his learned translator should have ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... eyes from a mouth that was set half-open. Indeed, it was as though the man were pondering something of annoyance, so that presently he would make shift to deliver himself of a final and urgent injunction. The blue smoke of a meagre candle quivered meanwhile, over his head, though the wick diffused so feeble a light that the death blurs under the eyes and in the cheek furrows lay uneffaced, and the dark hands and wrists, disposed, lumplike, on the front of the greyish-blue shroud, seemed ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... to Susie, that with her mother's death all the world had come to an end for her. Undemonstrative as they were, and meagre as had been any spoken words of affection, the bond of natural love between them had seemed strong and unbreakable until Smith's coming. They had been all in all to each other in their unemotional way; and now this unexpected tragedy seemed to crush the child, because ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... legal voters of the South were men who owned no slaves; their homes were generally in the hills and poor country; their facilities for educating their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre—what there was, if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too needed emancipation. Under the old regime they were looked down upon by those who controlled all the affairs in the interest of slave-owners, as poor white trash who were allowed the ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... eves, Or Fridays, from the pens, and raise his breath 'Gainst cattle days and death,— Answer'd by Mellish, feeder of fat beeves, Who swore that Frenchmen never could be eager For fighting on soup meagre— "And yet, (as thou would'st add,) the French have seen ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... of America was made near this Peninsula, and the accounts of early Spanish voyagers contain meagre but still valuable descriptions of the country, as it appeared at the time it was first visited by Europeans. It may be interesting to call to mind some of the circumstances connected with their voyages, ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... public, the Senor's journal, fragmentary throughout, is especially meagre concerning the incidents of travel between the capital of Vera Paz and Santa Cruz del Quiche. At this period he appears to have left the task of recording them almost entirely to his two friends, whose memoranda, in all probability, are forever ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... assuaged; Eda's was the love content to pour out, that demands little. She was capable of immolation. Janet was by no means ungrateful for the warmth of such affection, though in moments conscious of a certain perplexity and sadness because she was able to give such a meagre return for the wealth of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... man's pack. And the man neither stirred nor spoke. For a few minutes McKay remained busy with the pack, turning out packets of concentrated rations of American manufacture, bits of personal apparel, a meagre company outfit, spare ammunition—the dozen-odd essentials to be always found in an ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... lands, especially in the East, the English or American traveler is constantly amazed to observe upon what meagre diet the natives exist. Accustomed to meat at every meal, he sees thousands of people who eat meat perhaps not once a year; used to an abundance of vegetables and fruits of infinite variety, he encounters people who live on two or three ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... teachings and works, was found by Luther in his own persevering study of Holy Writ. In this also he was encouraged by Staupitz, who must, however, have been amazed at his indefatigable industry and zeal. For the interpretation of the Bible the means at his command were meagre in the extreme. He himself explored in all cases to their very centre the truths of Christian salvation and the highest questions of moral and religious life. A single passage of importance would occupy ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... testimony for spirituality of worship; and it is undeniable that some of the greatest reforms which have characterised the century recently closed have found their foremost advocates and apologists from their somewhat meagre ranks. Those who wait on God renew their strength. The world ignores them, scorning to reckon their tears and toils amid its renovating energies; but they refuse to abate their endeavours and sacrifices on its behalf. They repay its neglect by more assiduous exertions, its ingratitude ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... of news, there were no tears That are recorded. Women there may have been To wish him back, though I should say, not knowing, The few there were to mourn were not for love, And were not lovely. Nothing of them, at least, Was in the meagre legend that I gathered Years after, when a chance of travel took me So near the region of his nativity That a few miles of leisure brought me there; For there I found a friendly citizen Who led me to his house among the trees That were above a railroad ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... delegates to the Continental Congress. He lingered long enough to make a few preparations at Mount Vernon. He wrote another letter to Fairfax, interesting to us as showing the keenness with which he read in the meagre news-reports the character of Gage and of the opposing people of Massachusetts. Then he started for the North to take the first step on the long and difficult ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... was waiting for him below. She grumbled at his unpunctuality, as he entered. He made no answer, but sat down to his meagre meal. The flies buzzed round the table, and crawled over the stained cloth. Through the rumble of omnibuses, and the clatter of street-cabs, he could hear the droning voice devouring each minute that was left ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... history, the miserable shortcomings of their home, the girl's scanty education both of intellect and morals—that we could but attribute their faults to sheer worldliness combined with the evils of their bitter poverty. Jack and myself, at least, with the most meagre excuse readily forgave Georgy everything. She was so beautiful, so radiant in all the phases of her dingy life, so good-natured even in her contempt of our stupidity and dulness, so eager to find enjoyment in everything, that we were willing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... the scene is, in my eyes, the daring juxtaposition of large simple masses of positive colour. There are none of the misty enamelled tones of Lynmouth, or the luscious richness of Clovelly. The forms are so simple and severe, that they would be absolutely meagre, were it not for the rich colouring with which Nature has so lovingly made up for the absence of all softness, all picturesque outline. One does not regret or even feel the want of trees here, while the eye ranges down from that dappled cloud- world above, over that sheet of ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... mine; I did not understand. So now is music prisoned in her cave, Save where some ebbing desultory wave Frets with its restless whirls this meagre strand. And in the withered hollow of this land Hath Summer dug herself so deep a grave, That hardly can the leaden willow crave One silver blossom from keen ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... for money and was happy enough so long as he could smoke his old meerschaum pipe and draw the bow across the cherished violin held lovingly to his cheek. Then hard times came a-knocking at the door. The meagre account in the savings-bank grew smaller and smaller. The landlord, the doctor and the grocer had to be paid. One night Bott laid down his pipe and, taking his wife's wrinkled ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... trifling advantages to local traffic, and they may even in time become the channels of a more extended commerce. Yet I have never been thoroughly satisfied either of the necessity or expediency of projects promising such meagre results to the great body of our people. But with regard to the transcendent merits of the gigantic enterprise contemplated in this bill I never entertained the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... that this law was aimed at the life, liberty, and happiness of the poor and least-privileged portion of our people—a class whom the laws should befriend, protect, and raise up. What is the true character of a law, whose working, whose fruits are such as this meagre outline of its history shows? Is it fit that such deeds and such a law should have your sanction and support? Will you remain in a moment's doubt whether to be a friend or a foe to such a law? Will you countenance or support the man, in the church ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society
... and he could see even more of the relief she was taking from him. His presence, his face, his voice, the old rooms themselves, so meagre yet so charged, where Kate had admirably been to him—these things counted for her, now she had them, as the help she had been wanting: so that she still only stood there taking them all in. With it however popped up characteristically a throb of her conscience. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... volume. Probably the Ameer, had he desired, would not have dared to concede such demands on any terms, no matter how full of advantage. But the terms which Lord Lytton was instructed to tender as an equivalent were strangely meagre. The Ameer was to receive a money gift, and a precarious stipend regarding which the new Viceroy was to 'deem it inconvenient to commit his government to any permanent pecuniary obligation.' The desiderated recognition of Abdoolah Jan as Shere Ali's successor was promised with the ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... the stairs to his room and found Ling Chu polishing the meagre stock of silver which Tarling possessed. Ling Chu was a thief-catcher and a great detective, but he had also taken upon himself the business of attending to Tarling's personal comfort. The detective spoke no word, out went straight ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... unutterable anguish in his countenance, holds out his hand and bows his head as we pass, and groans audibly the very instant we are within earshot of a groan; which is a distance of about ten inches in a London atmosphere. Now an old, old man, tall, meagre, and decrepit, with haggard eye and moonstruck visage, bares his aged head to the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... officers at the head of the column and to intercede for my sick, perhaps to prevent intrusion into the wards. To my almost wild delight, the torch-light revealed the dear old gray uniforms. It was a portion of Wheeler's Cavalry sent to reinforce Roddy, whose meagre forces, aided by the volunteers from Newman, had held the Federals in check until now, but were anxiously ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... come to you, of course," I interrupted. "I've the right to know the meaning of this infernal nonsense." In the half light of the room, which was greenish, because of the tree-tops screening the window, I saw him writhe his meagre shoulders. It came into my head, as disconnected ideas will come at all sorts of times into one's head, that this, most likely, was the very room where, if the tale were true, Falk had been lectured by Mr. Siegers, the father. Mr. Siegers' (the son's) overwhelming voice, in ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... habitue of Wall street, Front street, and Coenties Slip, that even now, when wandering along those thoroughfares, we almost momently expect to meet him. We can not but think that at the next turn we shall see that shrunken and diminutive form, that meagre, hungry-looking countenance, and that timid, nervous eye, which indicated the fear of loss or the dread approach of charity. His office was held for years in the second story of a warehouse in Front street, a spot in whose ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Dyer, "I have hesitated as to how much of my meagre salary I can afford to spend. But I think I can handle five ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... our ghost story short, without adding another chapter, Mr. Aveling, on looking into the dark chasm by the meagre light of the lowered candle, beheld, to his amazement, the reflection of his own face in the water of a large cistern underneath the staircase, the house having formerly been supplied from the "large brewery" a short distance off. ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... sucking babe might have posed him. What was it then? Was he rich? Alas, no! Thomas Tame was very poor. Both he and his wife looked outwardly gentlefolks, when I fear all was not well at all times within. She had a neat meagre person, which it was evident she had not sinned in over-pampering; but in its veins was noble blood. She traced her descent, by some labyrinth of relationship, which I never thoroughly understood,—much less can explain with any heraldic ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... more, the jailer went away, and Bumpus, after heaving two or three very deep sighs, attempted to partake of his meagre breakfast. The effort was a vain one. The bite stuck in his throat, so he washed it down with a gulp of water, and, for the first time in his life, made up his mind to go without ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... which seemed to extinguish his thin form, Joe Pillin entered. It was snowing, and the cold had nipped and yellowed his meagre face between its slight grey whiskering. He ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of his sister's house; and, as the street and the avenue corroborated the numbered information, he mounted the doorstep, rang, and leisurely examined four stiff box-trees flanking the ornate portal—meagre vegetation compared to what he had been accustomed to ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... the night, after the challenge of the forged finger print, he continued at work, endeavoring to extract a clue from the meagre evidence—the bit of cloth and trace of poison already obtained from other cases, and now added the strange succession of events that surrounded the tragedy we ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... Mikina early, November 23d, and started out upon another great snowy plain, where there was no vegetation whatever except a little wiry grass and a few meagre patches of trailing-pine. ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... spider's web across the face, had not the master, according to a little affectation of the times, promoted him to be his game-keeper. Many a day did these two living magazines of wrath spend together in the dismal swamps and on the meagre intersecting ridges, making war upon deer and bear and wildcat; or on the Mississippi after wild goose and pelican; when even a word misplaced would have made either the slayer of the other. Yet the months ran smoothly round and the wedding night drew nigh[3]. A goodly company had assembled. ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... prices advertised by fur dealers for first-class skins; but when the furs are sent, only a few are selected as "prime," the rest being rejected as worthless, or perhaps meeting with a meagre offer far below the regular rates. In this way the dealers have the opportunity of choice selection without incurring any risk. Many a young trapper has been thus disappointed, and has seen his small anticipated fortune dwindle ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... widely-circulated language is known to but few in this country. If this meets the eye of one who is acquainted with it, will he kindly direct me whither I may find notices of it and its literature? Father Aucher's Grammar, Armenian and English (Venice, 1819), is rather meagre in its details. I have heard it stated, I know not on what authority, that Lord Byron composed the English part of this grammar. This grammar contains the two Apocryphal Epistles found in the Armenian Bible, of the Corinthians to ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 39. Saturday, July 27, 1850 • Various
... lack of victuaill and fourrage, having abused him sufficiently with this treaty eight or ten dayes: the sayd queene mother ... refused utterly the condicions before accorded." Forbes, State Papers, ii. 226. It is not strange that the ambassador, after the meagre results of the past five weeks, "could not hope of any great good to be done, until he saw it;" although he was confident that "if matters were handled stoutly and roundly, without delay," the prince might constrain his enemies to accord ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... throne have ever stood, The source of evil one, and one of good; From thence the cup of mortal man he fills, Blessings to these, to those distributes ill; To most he mingles both: the wretch decreed To taste the bad unmix'd, is cursed indeed; Pursued by wrongs, by meagre famine driven, He wanders, outcast both of earth and heaven. The happiest taste not happiness sincere; But find the cordial draught is dash'd with care. Who more than Peleus shone in wealth and power What stars concurring bless'd his ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... had faced death in every shape, and shown great powers of endurance, but the results of all his toil were but meagre, and of no very great importance. He had crossed and named the rivers running into the west coast, between where he abandoned his boats and the Moore River, but in the state he was in he knew little more than the fact that they were there, having neither strength nor resources ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... well known fact that the records of the services of the North Carolina soldiers who took part in the Revolutionary War are very meagre. Of the private, and other officers of leaser rank, this is especially true. Therefore, it is not surprising that a search through the Colonial Records for a statement of the services rendered his country by John Koen, a brave soldier ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... scruples and sanctity, he cared very little. He was content with simple fare, and he would forget to eat and drink for days amid the press of work. His friends wondered how such a portly frame could be consistent with such a very meagre diet, and not one of his hostile contemporaries has ever been able to allege against him that he had belied by his own conduct the zeal with which he inveighed against the immoderate eating and drinking of his fellow-Germans; but he preserved his Christian liberty in this matter. In the evenings ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... however, he looked neither at chin nor at any other feature, but at once donned his flower-embroidered slippers of morroco leather (the kind of slippers in which, thanks to the Russian love for a dressing-gowned existence, the town of Torzhok does such a huge trade), and, clad only in a meagre shirt, so far forgot his elderliness and dignity as to cut a couple of capers after the fashion of a Scottish highlander—alighting neatly, each time, on the flat of his heels. Only when he had done that did he proceed ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... brought him back panting in another minute. The coach-lamps were not much wider apart. Stingaree awaited him, also on foot, and quicker than the telling Oswald was ensconced on high where he could see through the meagre drooping leaves with very little danger ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... I'm a beggar: Undone by fortune, and in debt to thee. Want, worldly want, that hungry, meagre fiend, Is at my heels, and chases me in view. Canst thou bear cold and hunger? Can these limbs, Fram'd for the tender offices of love, Endure the bitter gripes of smarting poverty? When banish'd by our miseries abroad (As suddenly we shall be) to seek out In some ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... last few weeks at The Pines, comprehending at last the gracious influence which, entering into his barren, meagre life, had rendered it so inexpressibly rich and sweet and complete. Ah, how blind! to have walked day after day hand in hand with Love, not knowing that ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... endured these last eight or nine years. My person was well made, though short; my disorder has shortened it still more by a foot. My head is a little broad for my shape; my face is full enough for my body to appear very meagre; I have hair enough to render a wig unnecessary; I have got many white hairs, in spite of the proverb. My teeth, formerly square pearls, are now of the colour of wood, and will soon be of slate. My legs and thighs first formed an ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... this be so, what's the use of your petty criticism? If this marvel, before whose spell all men, even you yourselves, must bow, has a "rigidity of outline," an "air of littleness and luxury," a "poverty of relief," and if "the inlaid work has been vulgarly employed," and the patterns are "meagre in the extreme," wasn't it the highest aim that its builder could probably have had in view, to entrance the world and give to it a thing of beauty which is indeed a joy forever? and doesn't the Taj do this so far beyond all other ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... There were no swelling muscles, no abundant thews and wide-spreading shoulders. They exhibited, rather, an elemental economy of nature, such as the cave-men must have exhibited. But there was strength in those meagre bodies, the ferocious, primordial strength to clutch and gripe and tear and rend. When they spring upon their human prey they are known even to bend the victim backward and double its body till the back is broken. They possess ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... fours and hurried back to camp, where he demolished everything of Pedro's meagre outfit, not forgetting to tear his coat to shreds. This done to his evident satisfaction, he obeyed the call from the deep woods, that had been so insistent in his ear all that spring and summer, and shuffled away ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... holding the book upon her lap, her eyes seldom moving from a point directly before her. Wilfrid glanced at her frequently. He was more observant now of the traces of bodily weakness in her; he saw how meagre she had become, how slight her whole frame was. At moments it cost him a serious effort to refrain from leaning to her and whispering words—he knew not what—something kind, something that should change her fixed ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... they ought to have been driven 'ome. Not much class there!" the cabman soliloquised as he flicked his whip over his horse's ears and turned across towards Piccadilly. He was, perhaps, naturally disgusted at the meagre results of a job for which he had expected three or four shillings at the ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... got from the meat man a piece of salt pork, which it was obvious to the meanest intelligence was for his Sunday baked beans. From his purchase of flour and baking powder it was reasonably inferred that he now and then made himself hot biscuit. Beyond these meagre facts everything was conjecture, in which the local curiosity played somewhat actively, but, for the most part, with a growing acquiescence in the general ignorance none felt authorized to dispel. There had been a time when some fulfilled a fancied duty to the solitary in trying to see him. But ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... for our chief data on what Casley, the "dry as dust" pay excellence of librarians could tell us, and though his knowledge of the age of MSS. was admirable, he was remarkably uncommunicative regarding their pedigree, meagre in his descriptions, and apparently insensible to paleographic beauty. There is scarcely, in the whole British Museum, a less satisfactory book than his catalogue of the Royal library. Thus, the student is hampered by the want of a guide, and must hew paths for himself through the luxuriant growth ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... trivial act of the daily life of some men has a unique interest, independent of idle curiosity, which dissatisfies us with the meagre food of date, place, and pedigree. So in the "Cartas de Indias" was published, two years ago, in Spain, a facsimile letter from Cervantes when tax-gatherer to Philip II., informing him of the efforts he had made to collect the ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... not lift it out of the rut, nor GRANDOLPH either. Only Mr. G. shone with effulgent light through gloom of evening. Principal result of manoeuvre, beyond giving fillip to majority, is that a day will be filched from meagre holidays, and House must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... his bunk he rested while George prepared the meagre meal of brown beans, fried salt pork, and sour-dough bread. The excellence of this last, due to the whaler's years of practice, did much to mitigate the unpleasantness of the milkless, ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... was yawning by the small fire in the grate. She was a meagre little woman of about forty, tired and energetic. The Mintos' flat, although very bare, was very clean. Even when there was nothing to eat, there was water for scouring; and Mrs. Minto's hands were a sort of red-grey, hard and lined, all the little folds of the ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... is it that little men always select the very tallest women they can find? You would think that a man would hesitate to show off his meagre inches to such bad advantage. But these pigmies appear to enjoy the contrast. It is evidently ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... was away there in Montreal waiting for the New Yorkers to take it—if they could. They were a sorry rabble, for they rushed on La Prairie, that meagre place,—massacred and turned tail." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Amine was a little meagre personage, dressed in the garb of the Dutch seamen of the time, with a cap made of badger-skin hanging over his brow. His features were sharp and diminutive, his face of a deadly white, his lips pale, and his hair of a mixture ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to neglect. The framers of such a bill must be content to inherit the honours of that Athenian law-giver whose edicts were said to be written not in ink but in blood. But suppose it passed; suppose one of these men, as I have seen them,—meagre with famine, sullen with despair, careless of a life which your Lordships are perhaps about to value at something less than the price of a stocking-frame; —suppose this man surrounded by the children for whom he is unable to procure bread at the hazard of his existence, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... relatives engaged in the same business, who require them to bring in a certain sum of money at the end of the day, and if they do not make up the amount they are received with blows and curses, and are refused the meagre suppers of which they are so much in need, or are turned into the streets to pass the night. The poor little wretches come crowding into the Five Points from nine o'clock until midnight, staggering under their heavy harps, those who have not made up the required sum sobbing bitterly ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... examine the contents of the baskets, she was somewhat disappointed at the mess of pottage for which she had half bartered herself. Though every article the commissary had enumerated was to be found, it was in meagre quantities, and the girl was shrewd-witted enough to divine the giver's intention,—that she should be quickly forced again to appeal to him. Her mother's requirements and her own hunger, however, ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... musician an impossibility, and what little he did accomplish, a vexation; while the confinement of the counting-room, with its prosaic duties, would be the worst form of slavery for the musician, his work inferior, his capacity limited, his situation intolerable but for the meagre salary it might afford. ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
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