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More "Scantiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and solitude—in the face of the world, and in the name of literature, in one memorable satire. I speak of "Flecno, an English Priest in Rome," wherein nothing is spared—not the smallness of the lodging, nor the lack of a bed, nor the scantiness of clothing, nor ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... in the valley, he is full of memories of it, and especially early memories; recalling the comparative scantiness of its population when he was a boy, and the great extent of the common; and the warm banks where hedgehogs abounded—hedgehogs which his father used to kill and cook; and the wells of good water, so few ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... aught that I know, innumerable sorts of ideas or sensations, as different from one another, and from all that I have perceived, as colours are from sounds. But, how ready soever I may be to acknowledge the scantiness of my comprehension with regard to the endless variety of spirits and ideas that may possibly exist, yet for any one to pretend to a notion of Entity or Existence, abstracted from spirit and idea, from perceived and ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... single glance, and the two seemed to him to be of a piece. The former—and he knew instinctively that it was Miss Grayson—was meager of visage and figure, with high cheek bones, thin curls flat down on her temples, and a black dress worn and old. The room exhibited the same age and scantiness, the same aspect of cold poverty, with its patched carpet and the slender fire smouldering on ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... the role of "The Chiffon Girl," the idol of the pit and gallery, Queen regnant over the hearts beating behind the polished shirt-fronts in the stalls, has lived to hear herself pitied—not envied, but commiserated—for the scantiness of the costume in which it is alike her privilege and her joy to trill and caper seven times in the week before her patrons and adorers. Small wonder that she feels her carefully-manicured nails elongating with the desire ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... curious Roll of Cookery, and I trust with some Interest, not full I confess nor legal, but the utmost which your Debtor, from the scantiness of his ability, can at present afford. Indeed, considering your respectable situation in life, and that diffusive sphere of knowledge and science in which you are acting, it must be exceedingly difficult for any one, how well furnished soever, completely to answer your just, or ...
— The Forme of Cury • Samuel Pegge
... very melancholy little figures, and might have gone near to make one sad, even if they had not been constantly imperilling their lives. Thanks to its being summer-time, it did not much matter about the scantiness of their clothing, but their squalor was depressing, it seemed, even to themselves, for they were a mournful-looking set of children, and in their dangerous sports trifled silently and almost gloomily with ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... is really astounding, when we consider the scantiness of the means. No pig's or sheep's pepsin can rival that of the worm. I have a bottle of pepsin that comes from the School of Chemistry at Montpellier. I lavishly powder some pieces of hard-boiled white of egg with the potent drug, just as I did with the eggs ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... generation of painters who, owing to the scantiness of their studies, must needs live up to the beauty of gold and azure, and with supreme folly declare that they will not give good work for poor payment, and that they could do as well as others if they were well paid. Now consider, foolish people! Cannot such men reserve some ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... the inlet, and this, when the ship passed in, was found to be sufficiently the case to keep all her canvas full. The passage to the anchorage occupied a considerable time, in consequence of the scantiness of the wind as soon as the ship passed in under the lee of the cliffs, and under other circumstances it might have been tedious; but in the present case it was quite the reverse, the unaccustomed sight of the lofty ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... the sanctifying operations of the Holy Spirit, appears to have met with still worse treatment. It would be to convey a very inadequate idea of the scantiness of the conceptions on this head, of the bulk of the Christian world, to affirm merely, that they are too little conscious of the inefficacy of their own unassisted endeavours after holiness of heart and life, and that they are not daily employed in humbly and diligently using the appointed ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... almost literally transcribed by Bede, which confirm the brief statements of the "Saxon Chronicle" (7). But there is, throughout, such a want of precision and simplicity, such a barrenness of facts amidst a multiplicity of words, such a scantiness of names of places and persons, of dates, and other circumstances, that we are obliged to have recourse to the Saxon Annals, or to Venerable Bede, to supply the absence of those two great lights of history—Chronology ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... knew that he was painting with every nerve tense and eager, in oblivion to all but his work and the face that inspired it. Elfrida, he told her, was to give him three sittings a week, of an hour each, and he complained of the scantiness of the dole. She could conjure up those hours, all too short for his delight in his model and his work. Surely it would not be long now! Elfrida cared, by her own confession—Janet felt, dully, there ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... quiet, honest people! fear not: your poverty, the treasury of your simple virtues, will not be envied you by the world, nor will your valleys be invaded by it.—Nature! in the midst of thy disorders, thou art still friendly to the scantiness thou hast created: with all thy great works about thee, little hast thou left to give, either to the scythe or to the sickle;—but to that little thou grantest safety and protection; and sweet are the dwellings ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... was asked, May I not do what I will with my own? there was the brief answer, No man may do what is wrong, either with that which is his own or with that which is another's. Workmen were not allowed to take advantage of the scantiness of the labour market to exact extravagant wages. Capitalists were not allowed to drive the labourers from their holdings, and destroy their healthy independence. The antagonism of interests was absorbed into a relation of ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... enchanted. The one difficulty lay in the scantiness of her information. She made up her mind, however, like a good general, that the difficulty must somehow be overcome, and accepted without visible hesitation. Before she left the Casino she invited the journalist to call, with the intention of pumping him, as he seemed ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... intolerable. The allowance of water was so deficient, that the slaves were frequently found gasping for life, and almost suffocated. The pulse with which they had been said to be favoured, were absolutely English horse-beans. The legislature of Jamaica had stated the scantiness both of water and provisions, as a subject which called for the interference of parliament. As Mr. Norris had said, the song and the dance were promoted, he could not pass over these expressions without telling the house what they meant. It ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... sphere. She should have made it a point of duty, moreover, to sit endlessly to painters and sculptors, and preferably to the latter; because the cold decorum of the marble would consist with the utmost scantiness of drapery, so that the eye might chastely be gladdened with her material perfection in its entireness. I know not well how to express that the native glow of coloring in her cheeks, and even the flesh-warmth over her round arms, and what was visible of her full bust,—in a word, her womanliness ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... door was thrown wide open and inquisitive faces were peering in at it. Coarse laughing faces with pipes and cigarettes and heads wearing caps thrust themselves in at the doorway. Further in could be seen figures in dressing gowns flung open, in costumes of unseemly scantiness, some of them with cards in their hands. They were particularly diverted, when Marmeladov, dragged about by his hair, shouted that it was a consolation to him. They even began to come into the room; ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... not haul to land' was often made in a night. Pigeons were a plague, alighting in vast flocks in the newly planted gardens. If the economic progress of the country had been slow, the reason had lain, not in any poverty of natural resources, but in the scantiness of the population, the neglect of the home government, the incessant turmoil within, and the ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... along the path. There I remained, sunk in contemplation, and reveling in remembrances, till the sun was almost dipping behind the snow-clad tops of Nivolex. I did not wish to cross the lake, or enter the town by daylight, as the homeliness of my dress, the scantiness of my purse, and the frugality of life to which I was constrained, in order to live some months near Julie, would have seemed strange to the inmates of the old doctor's house. They formed too great a contrast with my elegance in dress and habits of life during the preceding season. ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... situation, exclusively yield wine of a certain flavour, is sold of course at a price very far exceeding the cost of production. And this is owing to the greatness of the competition for such wine, compared with the scantiness of its supply; which confines the use of it to so small a number of persons, that they are able, and rather than go without it, willing, to give an excessively high price. But if the fertility of these lands were ...
— Nature and Progress of Rent • Thomas Malthus
... of taste are so many and so considerable, that it seemeth strange to see the matter treated of both by philosophers and physicians with so much scantiness and defect: for the subject is not barren, but yieldeth much and pleasant variety, and doth also appear to be of great importance."—From Dr. GREW'S Anat. of Plants, fol. 1682, p. 286. The Dr. enumerates sixteen simple tastes: however, it is difficult to define more than ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... should be acknowledged that in many criticisms passed on the English law the manner in which it has been enunciated seems to have been lost sight of. The hesitation of our courts in declaring principles may be much more reasonably attributed to the comparative scantiness of our precedents, voluminous as they appear to him who is acquainted with no other system, than to the temper of our judges. It is true that in the wealth of legal principle we are considerably poorer than several modern European nations, But they, it must be remembered, took the Roman ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... Incognita of the Lower Mackenzie, that have been published. The occupants of this region are the Loucheux Indians. Fine grown men of considerable stature, and well-knit frames, they have evidently followed the course of the Mackenzie River, from south to north. These are the Indians of whom from the scantiness of our previous data, information is most valuable. They are reasonably considered to belong to the same family as the Dog-rib, Beaver, Hare, Copper, Carrier, and other Indians, a family which some call Chepewyan, others Athabascan, but which the present work designates ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... with a stern handsome face under harsh bands of yellowish gray hair, and a mouth that sank in at one corner where her upper teeth had been drawn. Her figure was erect and flat as a lath, and this flatness was accentuated by the extreme scantiness of her drab calico dress. In her youth she had been beautiful in a hard, obvious fashion, and her eyes would have been still fine except for ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... Middle English. Decay of Anglo-Saxon. Early Middle English Literature. Scantiness of its constituents. Layamon. The form of the Brut. Its substance. The Ormulum: Its metre, its spelling. The Ancren Riwle. The Owl and the Nightingale. Proverbs. Robert of Gloucester. Romances. Havelok the Dane. King Horn. The prosody of ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... was the sandfly known in Canada by the name of the brulot. To such annoyance all travellers must submit, and it would be unworthy to complain of that grievance in the pursuit of knowledge which is endured for the sake of profit. This detail of it has only been as an excuse for the scantiness of our observations on the most interesting part of the country ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... Ashbourne; where I found my friend's schoolfellow living upon an establishment perfectly corresponding with his substantial creditable equipage: his house, garden, pleasure-grounds, table, in short every thing good, and no scantiness appearing. Every man should form such a plan of living as he can execute completely. Let him not draw an outline wider than he can fill up. I have seen many skeletons of shew and magnificence which excite at once ridicule and pity. ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... student in the University of Glasgow was met by one of the Professors, who noticing the scantiness of his academical toga, said, "Mr. ——, your gown is very short."—"It will be long enough, sir, before I get another," replied the student. The answer tickled the Professor greatly, and he went on quietly chuckling to himself, when he met ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... wages a war even more relentless than man, was not to be thought of. In this perplexity, they decided on the little island of Gallo, as being, on the whole, from its distance from the shore, and from the scantiness of its population, the most eligible spot for them in their ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... cars that slowly tinkled up and down were rows of people with baskets between their legs and papers before their faces; and all showed by some peculiarity of air or dress the excess of heat which they had already borne, and to which they seemed to look forward, and gave by the scantiness of their number a vivid impression of the uncounted thousands within doors prolonging, before the day's terror ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... abandoned their immense forests to the exercise of hunting, employed in pasturage the most considerable part of their lands, bestowed on the small remainder a rude and careless cultivation, and then accused the scantiness and sterility of a country that refused to maintain the multitude of its inhabitants. When the return of famine severely admonished them of the importance of the arts, the national distress was sometimes alleviated by the emigration of a third, perhaps, or a fourth part of their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... pond of fresh water was not far distant; a sea-pie and a gull were also shot, and a few small fish caught alongside. These constituted everything like refreshment obtained here, and the botanists found the scantiness of plants equal to that of the other productions; so that there was ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... Phil to offer to loan him something, but the scantiness of his own resources warned him that it would not be prudent, so he ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... looks ridiculous, mama?" referring anxiously to the scantiness of the skirt and the unblushing ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... of goodness, or purity, of benevolence; or of fulness, emptiness, scantiness. There is no object or quality in the outside world I can say is goodness, or fulness. But I do see things in the external world through my ideas of goodness or fulness that correspond to these ideas. They have some of the qualities the ideas embrace; and so I point them out and say, ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... you remember that the Russian private is allowed only one cent a day, that the Belgian soldier receives only four cents a day, the French private five cents, the German six cents, and the English soldier twenty-five cents a day, most of which has to go for supplementary food to make up for the scantiness of the rations supplied, you realize what it means for the American soldier to be paid from one to three dollars a day, in addition to clothing, expenses, and the best rations of ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... notion that what prevented her perhaps from going off in one great, nervous leap, was the scantiness of her attire. The wicker armchair was the most substantial thing about her person. What she had on under that dingy, loose, amber wrapper must have been of the most flimsy and airy character. One could not help being aware of it. It was obvious. I felt it actually embarrassing at ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... only that, having passed the three score years and ten usually allotted to man's strength, and being unaccustomed to write for publication, I might well distrust my ability to complete the work, but that I also knew the extreme scantiness of the materials out of which it must be constructed. The grave closed over my aunt fifty-two years ago; and during that long period no idea of writing her life had been entertained by any of her family. Her nearest relatives, far from making provision for such a purpose, had actually ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... dare to confess it, in the persons of such of my dear countrywomen as I now occasionally met, a certain meagreness, (Heaven forbid that I should call it scrawniness!) a deficiency of physical development, a scantiness, so to speak, in the pattern of their material make, a paleness of complexion, a thinness of voice,—all of which characteristics, nevertheless, only made me resolve so much the more sturdily to uphold these fair creatures as angels, because ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... honest people, fear not! Your poverty, the treasury of your simple virtues, will not be envied you by the world, nor will your values be invaded by it. Nature, in the midst of thy disorders, thou art still friendly to the scantiness thou hast created; with all thy great works about thee little hast thou left to give, either to the scythe or to the sickle, but to that little thou grantest safety and protection, and sweet are the ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... by forty Portuguese officers. The men are under severe discipline, are tolerably well dressed, and make a soldierly appearance. It is said that a St. Jago soldier formerly wore only a cocked hat, being otherwise in a state of nature; but I cannot pretend to have seen any instance of this extreme scantiness of equipment. ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... Nature, especially, require time and culture before man can enjoy them. To rude races her processes bring only terror, which is very slowly outgrown. Humboldt has best exhibited the scantiness of finer natural perceptions in Greek and Roman literature, in spite of the grand oceanic anthology of Homer, and the delicate water-coloring of the Greek Anthology and of Horace. The Oriental and the Norse sacred books are full of fresh and beautiful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... because of the scantiness of provisions among the robbers—for behold, they had nothing save it were meat for their subsistence, which meat they did ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... to the scantiness of forks. "And when your justice of peace is knuckle-deep in goose, you may without disparagement to your blood, though you have a lady to your mother, fall very manfully to your woodcocks."— Decker's GULS HORN BOOK, 1609, ed. ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... of the natives, the seditions of his men, and the suggestions of his own despair. He had, at length, sent a mere tantalizing message, by a man known to be one of his bitterest enemies, with a present of food, which, from its scantiness, seemed intended ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... we must look to his means, to the difficulties that surrounded him, to the scantiness of his resources. We see a man without rank, wealth, or friends, raising himself to the head of a popular government in the metropolis of the Church—in the City of the Empire. We see him reject any title save that of a popular magistrate—establish at one stroke a free constitution—a ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... true London species, in whom excess of woollen comforter made up for any marked scantiness in the rest of his attire, came trotting the pavement, pouring one of the favourite tunes of his native metropolis through the tube of a penny-whistle, from which it did not issue so disguised but that attentive ears might pronounce it the royal march of the Cannibal Islands. A placarded ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... earlier days, obtained a place in the household of Charles I., is said by his friend Hyde to have turned to devotion after a somewhat libertine life, and died in 1639, before the evil days of triumphant Puritanism, felix opportunitate mortis. He wrote little, and the scantiness of his production, together with the supposed pains it cost him, is ridiculed in Suckling's doggerel "Sessions of the Poets." But this reproach (which Carew shares with Gray, and with not a few others of the most admirable names in literature), unjust as it is, is less ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... the temples hereto belonging, ch. 15. But note, that what Josephus here says of the original scantiness of this Mount Moriah, that it was quite too little for the temple, and that at first it held only one cloister or court of Solomon's building, and that the foundations were forced to be added long afterwards by degrees, to render it capable ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... fact, Mr. Darwin made no such admission. What he says in effect is, not that palaeontological evidence is against him, but that it is not distinctly in his favour; and, without attempting to attenuate the fact, he accounts for it by the scantiness and the imperfection ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... and the scantiness of the vicar's leisure occupied the remainder of the interview, and Oleron thanked the vicar, took his leave, and walked ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... which is about the paunch, and then he offers them with fire; and the rest of the flesh they eat on that day of full moon upon which they have held the sacrifice, but on any day after this they will not taste of it: the poor however among them by reason of the scantiness of their means shape pigs of dough and having baked them they offer these as ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... town; built, as is universally the case in these countries, with the streets running at right angles to each other, and having in the middle a large plaza or square, which, from its size, renders the scantiness of the population more evident. It possesses scarcely any trade; the exports being confined to a few hides and living cattle. The inhabitants are chiefly landowners, together with a few shopkeepers and the necessary tradesmen, such as blacksmiths and carpenters, who do nearly all ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... latitude, and our voyage was limited to six, since we had not taken provisions for a longer time. In consequence of fogs and storms, we had not been able to go farther than Mallebarre, where we waited several days for fair weather, in order to sail. Finding ourselves accordingly pressed by the scantiness of provisions, Sieur de Monts determined to return to the Island of St. Croix, in order to find another place more favorable for our settlement, as we had not been able to do on any of the coasts which we had ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... hostess rattled on cheerfully while Wilhelmine divested herself of the cloak and hood. She realised that Madame de Ruth intended to remain, curious to see the contents of the travelling-basket; but this was precisely what the guest did not desire, for she had no wish to expose the scantiness of her wardrobe to her new friend. She sat down on one of the wooden chairs opposite her hostess, and listened to the voluble talk. Both women knew exactly what the other wanted, and both were equally determined not to be beaten; also ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... feet and very quickly dried. The calves of our legs, however, being left bare, we were obliged, for state occasions at least, to retain and utilize the upper portion of our old stockings. It was owing to this scantiness of wardrobe that we were obliged when taking a bath by the roadside streams to make a quick wash of our linen, and put it on wet to dry, or allow it to flutter from the handle-bars as we rode along. It was astonishing even to ourselves how little a man required when ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... small and red at the lids, and absolutely void of expression; yet they fatigued the observer by their insupportable restlessness. A few straight hairs shaded his forehead, which receded like that of a greyhound, and through their scantiness barely concealed his long ugly ears. He was very comfortably dressed, clean as a new franc piece, displaying linen of dazzling whiteness, and wearing silk gloves and leather gaiters. A long and massive gold chain, ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... at a glance, and permit the immediate recognition of the least strange object. If you consult the remains of antique monuments you will see that the beauty of Greek and Roman apartments sprang principally from the purity of their lines, the clear sweep of their walls and scantiness of furniture. The Greeks would have smiled in pity, if they had seen the gaps which our closets ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... enable them to realize for the general use nearly the result of which the territory is capable, while at the same time the redundant energies of civilized states, both government and peoples, are finding lack of openings and scantiness of livelihood at home, that there now obtains a condition of aggressive restlessness with ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... actually over the thoroughfares of a capital city, which we could see blackened by day with the moving crowd of the inhabitants, and at night shining with lamps. And lastly, although I was not insensible to the restraints of prison or the scantiness of our rations, I remembered I had sometimes eaten quite as ill in Spain, and had to mount guard and march perhaps a dozen leagues into the bargain. The first of my troubles, indeed, was the costume we were ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Scantiness of furniture is certainly a powerful factor in hygiene; here physical and psychical hygiene are at one. In our schools we recommend the use of "light" furniture, which is correspondingly simple, and economical in the extreme. If it be washable, ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... writing his compositions on the back of letters, as may be seen in the remaining copy of the Iliad, by which, perhaps, in five years five shillings were saved; or in a niggardly reception of his friends, and scantiness of entertainment, as, when he had two guests in his house, he would set at supper a single pint upon the table; and, having himself taken two small glasses, would retire, and say, "Gentlemen, I leave you to your wine." Yet he tells his friends, that "he has ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... This scantiness of dress became the subject of protest, of justification, of discussion in press, in public and ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... of his first patron. This resolution, however, was one which it required more tact and self-government than he yet possessed to reduce to practice, and accordingly the quick eye of Richelieu soon detected in the decreased respect of his bearing, and the scantiness of his communications, the nature of the feelings by ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... east end of the house had been arranged for the occupancy of the ranch's mistress. When she entered them a slight dismay seized her at their bare appearance and the scantiness of their furniture; but she quickly reflected that the climate was a semi-tropical one, and was moved to appreciation of the well-conceived efforts to conform to it. The sashes had already been removed from the big windows, ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... promote their strength and render them men of vast stature of body. And to such a habit have they brought themselves, that even in the coldest parts they wear no clothing whatever except skins, by reason of the scantiness of which a great portion of their body is bare, and besides they bathe in ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... usual sagacity, recognized the trouble, and put an end to it by a complicated operation, of which M. de Lamarck preserved deep scars. This treatment lasted for a year, and, during this time, the extreme scantiness of his resources confined him to a solitary life, when he had the leisure to ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... to recover my canoe at the western end of the island, which I reached in three days, but suffering severely from the soreness of my feet, and the scantiness of provisions. This island is not so plentifully stored as Roatan, so that during the five or six days of my residence, I had difficulty in procuring subsistence; and the insects were, besides, infinitely more numerous and harassing than at my old habitation. These circumstances ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... light little room with a clay floor and walls covered with cheap paper; in spite of some painful efforts towards luxury in the way of photographs in frames and a clock with a pair of scissors hanging on the weight the furnishing of the room impressed him by its scantiness. Looking at the furniture, one might have supposed that Father Yakov had gone from house to house and collected it in bits; in one place they had given him a round three-legged table, in another a stool, in a third ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the variety of the feast, extorting from the faithful Ned the flattering compliment 'b' gollies, Boss, you is the best shot I ever see'd.' Preparation is rapidly advancing, and so is the appetite of the longing expectants. But such preparation was not the work of a moment, especially, from the scantiness of Lucy's cooking utensils. So the guests thought they would withdraw for a time in order to relieve the busy cook of all ceremony, and at the same time relieve themselves of the uncomfortable reflection of three blazing fires in the chimney place. After ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... his conversations with Goethe[69] relates the circumstances under which the appendices were added to the earlier work. When the book was in press, the publisher discovered that of the three volumes planned, the last two were going to be too thin, and begged for more material to fill out their scantiness. In this perplexity Goethe brought to Eckermann two packets of miscellaneous notes to be edited and added to those two slender volumes. In this way arose the collection of sayings, scraps and quotations ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... anti-historical monstrosities that a vain imagination could suggest. Here we have the other method of making the past a living reality; for historical data subjective fancies are substituted, whose merit is measured by their boldness—that is, the scantiness of the particulars on which they are based and the peremptoriness with which they contravene the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... the sort of amazement of the Orientals at the scantiness of the retinue with which an Englishman passes the Desert, for I was somewhat struck myself when I saw one of my countrymen making his way across the wilderness in this simple style. At first there was a mere moving speck on the horizon. My party of course became all ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... narrow limits. Thus amongst democratic nations ambition is ardent and continual, but its aim is not habitually lofty; and life is generally spent in eagerly coveting small objects which are within reach. What chiefly diverts the men of democracies from lofty ambition is not the scantiness of their fortunes, but the vehemence of the exertions they daily make to improve them. They strain their faculties to the utmost to achieve paltry results, and this cannot fail speedily to limit ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... winter storms and March glooms, it had better be dispensed with. However, I pushed on to St. Germain, threaded its long streets, looked down from the height over its magnificent tract of forest and turned westward down the Seine. Owing to the scantiness of villages, I was obliged to walk an hour and a half in the wind and darkness, before I reached a solitary inn. As I opened the door and asked for lodging, the landlady inquired if I had the necessary papers. I answered in the affirmative and was admitted. While I ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... either on committees of congress, or on boards consisting of several members. This unwieldy and expensive system had maintained itself against all the efforts of reason and public utility. But the scantiness of the national means at length prevailed over prejudice, and the several committees and boards yielded to a secretary for foreign affairs, a superintendent of finance, a secretary of war, and a secretary of marine. But so miserably defective was the organization ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... N. insufficiency; inadequacy, inadequateness; incompetence &c (impotence) 158; deficiency &c (incompleteness) 53; imperfection &c 651; shortcoming &c 304; paucity; stint; scantiness &c (smallness) 32; none to spare, bare subsistence. scarcity, dearth; want, need, lack, poverty, exigency; inanition, starvation, famine, drought. dole, mite, pittance; short allowance, short commons; half rations; banyan day. emptiness, poorness &c adj.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... dishonorable tranquillity at home. I have more reason to complain of you than you of me; for you have constantly refused me your approbation and assistance; and even when you have granted succors, you have rendered them fruitless by the scantiness and tardiness of your supplies, and compelled me to dissipate my own revenues, and injure ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... the Pampas whispered something to a very small brother beside her, who was remarkable chiefly for the size of his gorgeous eyes and the scantiness of his costume. With ready obedience the urchin unhooked a miniature lasso from the wall, and lassoed a large hen. How the brother and sister executed that hen was ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... went in 1739, with very little money, "and a very large assortment of letters of recommendation: whether his relatives intended to compensate for the scantiness of the one by their profusion in the other is uncertain; but he has often been heard to declare that their liberality in the last article was prodigious." The Smolletts were not "kinless loons"; they had connections: but who, in Scotland, had money? Tobias had passed his medical ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... beside Harmony Peter slid his long figure, and met a tremulous bow and silence. From the head of the table Frau Schwarz was talking volubly—as if, by mere sound, to distract attention from the scantiness of the meal. Under cover of the Babel Peter spoke to the girl. Having had his warning his tone was friendly, without a hint of the ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... from strangers, then the average full life of aged parents should be added, or say sixty years more, making a total of at least one hundred and forty years since the immigration. Something might, it is true, be allowed for a sojourn at intermediate points: and the scantiness of the remarks is also to be remembered. But there remains to account for the considerable population which had grown up in the land from apparently one centre. If the original intruders were four hundred, for example, then in doubling every twenty years, ...
— Hochelagans and Mohawks • W. D. Lighthall
... proprietor in his outlines: his toilet is severely scant, and the old gentleman appears to have lost two of his fingers in a chaff-cutter. As for Perses, who is represented as listening to the sage,[A] his dress is in the extreme of classic scantiness,—being, in fact, a mere night-shirt, and a tight fit ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... growth, and the monsoon rainfall in this part of the province is sufficient to encourage an easy, but very precarious, cultivation of autumn millets and pulses. The great Thal desert to the south of the Salt Range between the valleys of the Jhelam and the Indus has a similar soil, but the scantiness of the rainfall has confined cultivation within much narrower limits. Between the Sutlej and the Jhelam the uplands between the river valleys are known locally as Bars. The largest of the truly indigenous trees of the Panjab plains are ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... each, had carried off so many senators. Manius Pomponius, the praetor, as the dictator was now gone to the army after the loss of Casilinum, at the earnest request of all, brought in a bill upon the subject. When Spurius Carvilius, after having lamented in a long speech not only the scantiness of the senate, but the fewness of citizens who were eligible into that body, with the design of making up the numbers of the senate and uniting more closely the Romans and the Latin confederacy, declared that he strongly advised that the freedom ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... survive the death of this excellent woman. According to the judgment of our poet, his father was a man of strong character and understanding. Banished from his native country, and engaged in providing for his family, he was prevented by the scantiness of his fortune, and the cares of his situation, from rising to that eminence which he might have otherwise attained. But his admiration of Cicero, in an age when that author was universally neglected, was a proof of his ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... lamentable as the darkest regions of the East, and the blame of this rests entirely upon the Greek hierarchy, who discountenance all attempts to the spiritual improvement of the people, who, poor things, are exceedingly willing to receive instruction, and, notwithstanding the scantiness of their means in general for the most part, eagerly buy the tracts which a few pious English Christians cause to be printed and hawked in the neighbourhood. But no one is better aware, Sir, than yourself that without the Scriptures men can never be brought to a true sense ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... the several tribal possessions and to indicate the proper boundary lines between individual tribes and linguistic families is a work of great difficulty. This is due more to the imperfection and scantiness of available data concerning tribal claims than to the absence of claimants or to any ambiguity in the minds of the Indians as to the ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... commitment. He said, "I go to Him that sent me;" "I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also." The references to locality are vague and mysterious. The nature of his words, and their scantiness, are as if he had said, We shall live hereafter; we shall be with the Father; we shall be together. All the rest is mystery, even to me: it is not important to be known, and the Father hath concealed it. Such, almost, are his very words. "A little while, and ye ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... audience two evil-looking kleptomaniacs, buffalo-herders dressed in next to nothing, who eye my garments drying on the bushes with lingering covetousness. It is scarcely necessary to add that I watch them quite as interestingly myself; for, while I pity the scantiness of their wardrobe, I have nothing that I could possibly spare among mine. A network of irrigating ditches, many of them overflowed, render this valley difficult to traverse with a bicycle, and I reach ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... deplores the fashions of his day, alluding to the "sinful costly array of clothing, namely, in too much superfluity or else indisordinate scantiness!" Changing fashions have always been the despair of writers who have tried to lay down rules for aesthetic effect in dress. "An Englishman," says Harrison, "endeavouring some time to write of our attire... when he saw what a difficult piece of work he had taken in hand, he gave ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... fortunes of the conflict, with impatience, with perplexity, but with no loss of confidence in the ultimate success of Britain. The country was still swarming with troops, and still under summer sunshine. A second hay harvest redeemed the scantiness of the first, the wheat crops were wonderful, and the great fig tree at the corner of the Dower House had never borne so bountifully nor such ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... the lapse of nearly five centuries, between Uccello and Castagno, and to determine the precise share each had in the formation of the Florentine school, is already a task fraught with difficulties. The scantiness of his remaining works makes it more than difficult, makes it almost impossible, to come to accurate conclusions regarding the character and influence of their somewhat younger contemporary, Domenico Veneziano. ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... was in this scantiness of intermediate types is amply met by the fact that every fresh decade of search in the geological tombs brings some to light. We have seen many instances of this—the seed-bearing ferns and flower-bearing cycads, for example, ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... stepmother, however, had thoroughly enjoyed herself since the discovery that no accompaniment presented any difficulty to Cecilia. It saved her a world of trouble in practising; moreover, when standing, it was far easier to let herself go in the affecting passages, which always suffered from scantiness of breath when she was sitting down. Therefore she would stand beside Cecilia, pouring forth song after song, with her head slightly on one side, and one hand resting lightly on the piano—an attitude which, after experiment with a mirror, ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... the difficulties of a position embroiled with divers worries, and in spite of the scantiness of the financial means, we ought to stick to our affirmative position and not in the least ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... of the river Wollondilly which waters Goulburn plains, I was surprised to see its waters extremely low and not even flowing. The poor appearance of the woods also struck me, judging by comparison with the land in the south; and although the scantiness of grass, also observable, might be attributed to the great number of sheep and cattle fed there, I was not the less sensible of the more parched aspect of ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... years. For dropsy of the belly and legs, and scantiness of urine, of several weeks standing, took three grains of the powder twice a day, and was quite restored in ten days. She took many medicines ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... slaves as a mark of my poverty, rather than for considering three freed men as a proof of my wealth? Poor Aemilianus, you have not the least idea how to accuse a philosopher: you reproach me for the scantiness of my household, whereas it would really have been my duty to have laid claim, however falsely, to such poverty. It would have redounded to my credit, for I know that not only philosophers of whom I boast myself a follower, but also ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... paper and said there was a messenger waiting to see him. The paper was the pass given the day before to Valetta Joe; its bearer was a nondescript-looking ruffian, in a long shaggy cloak of camel's hair, whose open throat and bare legs hinted at a great scantiness of wardrobe beneath. He wore an old red fez, stained purple, on the back of his bullet-head; he had a red, freckled face, red eyebrows, red eyes, red hair, and a pointed red beard, both of which were very ragged ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... the scantiness of their costume, which consisted chiefly of a strip of cloth about the waist, and another strip thrown over the shoulder or disposed of in some fantastic way. Their skins were black, though not of the inky, coal-like ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... the usual tendency is towards an improper scantiness. Here, too, asceticism peeps out. There is a current theory, vaguely entertained if not put into a definite formula, that the sensations are to be disregarded. They do not exist for our guidance, but to mislead us, seems to be the prevalent belief reduced to its naked form. It is a grave ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... cases somewhat bare of ornament, pleasing rather by happy proportions and effective vaulting or rich flat ceilings, panelled, painted and gilded, than by elaborate architectural detail. Asimilar scantiness of ornament is to be remarked in the exteriors, excepting the faades, which were sometimes highly ornate; the doorways, with columns, pediments, sculpture and carving, receiving especial attention. High external domes did not come into general use until the next period. In Milan, Pavia, and ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... night and day on the battlements and ramparts, attended by a band of armed men, boiling over with anger and gnashing his teeth, because, often as he wished to sally forth, he was prevented from taking such a step by the scantiness of the force which he had ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... Mr. Gladstone's prowess as a woodcutter, and to some it may even have been matter of surprise to see no scantiness of trees in the Park at Hawarden. It is true that he attacks trees with the same vigour as he attacks abuses in the body politic, {32b} but he attacks them on the same principle—they are blemishes and not ornaments. No one more scrupulously respects a sound and shapely ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone
... murder rests upon the testimony of only a very few original authorities, but this is simply owing to the scantiness of contemporary historians. It is true, also, that of these there are two who only mention it as a report; but it must be observed that neither of them expresses the smallest doubt of its truth, and one of them more than hints that he believes it as a fact. How, indeed, could there possibly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... other, of course, charged. My father put up two or three small log-houses which were tenanted by very poor people whose labour he required. From one of these houses my mother hired a nurse, Poll Spragge, who was a merry, laughing, 'who-cares' sort of girl. Upon my mother remarking the scantiness of her wardrobe, which was limited to one garment, a woollen slip that reached from the throat to the feet, Poll related a misfortune which had befallen her a short time before. She then, as now, had but the one article of dress, and it was made ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... completed. Yet when, in reply to the demand of the squire as to what was the meaning of this arrival, it was briefly explained to him that his daughter had attempted to elope with his guest, he descended to the porch without regard to scantiness of clothing. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... stretched towards the feeble flame of the newly-lighted fire, he had a rather patchy air. Shelton, on the other hand, had lost his feeling of fatigue; the strangeness of the place was stimulating his brain; he kept stealing glances at the scantiness around; the room, the parson, the furniture, the very fire, all gave him the feeling caused by seeing legs that have outgrown their trousers. But there was something underlying that leanness of the landscape, something superior and academic, which defied all ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... form within the reach of most. I have been able to find nothing like an extended systematic treatise on the subject, either among our own or the foreign agricultural literature which has come within my notice. Indeed, from the scantiness of what appears to have been written, coupled with the fact that much knowledge must exist somewhere, one is tempted to believe that not all which might have done so, has yet found its way to printers' ink. That a great deal has been acquired, ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... hosts marching, and mighty walls glittering with spears, and the banners of a great King displayed; and Jack of the Tofts and his champions and good fellows seemed but a frail defence against all that, when once the hidden should be shown, and the scantiness of the woodland should cry on the abundance of ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... to find fault with. Dolly waited. The stillness grew dreadful. To seventeen years old the first trouble comes hard; albeit seventeen years old has also a great fund of spirit and strength to meet and conquer trouble. But what was the trouble here? It was not the unusual scantiness of means; that could soon be made right, if other things were not wrong which wrought to cause it. On the other hand, if her father had fallen irreparably into bad habits—Dolly would not admit the "irreparably" into her thoughts. But it ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... attend to the language which savages employ on any solemn occasion, it appears that man is a poet by nature. Whether at first obliged by the mere defects of his tongue, and the scantiness of proper expressions, or seduced by a pleasure of the fancy in stating the analogy of its objects, he clothes every conception in image and metaphor. "We have planted the tree of peace," says an American orator; "we have buried the axe under its roots: ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... thousand less than one half of the entire number of free-born white children in the United States between the ages of five and fifteen years. This leaves two millions of children uninstructed. We shall have a more just view of the scantiness of our provisions for adequate national education if to this number, appalling as it is, we add the total number of those attending under five and over fifteen in various portions of ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... matter of little importance and considerable labour to trace the Castle of Blarney from one possessor to another. The genealogical table in Keating's "History of Ireland" will enable those addicted to research to follow the Mac Carty pedigree; but a tiresome repetition of names, occasioned by the scantiness of them in an exceedingly numerous family, present continual causes of perplexity to the general reader. The names of Donough, Cormac, Teague, Florence, Dermot, Owen, and Donnel, constitute almost the whole catalogue used by the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 396, Saturday, October 31, 1829. • Various
... the pump are more serviceable as models than any of their sister itinerants. They have symmetrical forms, which are partially revealed through the scantiness of their clothing. Their coffee-coloured features are, besides, regular and not ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... intensely exasperated by the exactions of the Shah's revenue collectors. Macnaghten summoned the chiefs to Cabul. They came, they did homage to the Shah and swore allegiance to him; they went away from the capital pledging each other to his overthrow, and jeering at the scantiness of the force they had seen at Cabul. Intercepted letters disclosed their schemes, and in the end of September Sale, with a considerable force, marched out to chastise the disaffected Kohistanees. The fort of Tootundurrah fell without resistance. Julgah, however, the next fort assailed, stubbornly ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... the territory and the scantiness of the population forced the men of law, like the religious leaders, to travel about rather than stay permanently fixed in any one place. In a few towns there were lawyers and clergymen who had permanent homes; but ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... would only receive the same quantity that we did. The sun rose and set, and again rose, and we sailed on. Mr Hill met us each morning at breakfast, his honest countenance beaming with kindness, and jocularly apologised for the scantiness of the fare. Even he, however, one morning looked grave; the wind had fallen, and we lay becalmed. He had good reason to be grave, for he knew what we did not, that he had only one cask of water left, and provisions scarcely sufficient for a couple ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... might in many cases be considered handsome, were it not for the malignant and ferocious expression, which marks them, in common with the Berrebber tribes in general, but which is particularly striking in the eye of an Errifi. They also possess that marked feature of the Berrebber tribes, a scantiness of beard; many of the race, particularly in the south, having only a few straggling hairs on the upper lip, and a small tuft on the chin. They are incessantly bent on robbery and plundering, in which they employ either open violence or cunning and treachery, as the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... in homeopathic doses. We continually suffered with hunger while we were well. I, myself, became quite sick during our imprisonment here, and continued so for most of the summer. Several others were in the same condition. This was rather an advantage, for when sick we did not so much mind the scantiness ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... fabrication;—an inordinate love of riches, more devouring in his breast than his next strongest passion, love of knowledge, was sufficient to egg him on to it. Throughout life, his moral conduct was unfavourably influenced by the scantiness of his means. It was to beguile the anxiety occasioned by his narrow circumstances that he devoted himself to intense study, from knowing that superior attainments combined with splendid talents would secure for him great offices of trust and profit: he saw ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... he had resolved with regard to the effect of water upon his own skin; and having found the result a little surprising, he soon got into the habit of daily and thorough ablution. But many animals that never wash are yet cleaner than some that do; and, what with the scantiness of his clothing, his constant exposure to the atmosphere, and his generally lying in a fresh lair, Gibbie had always been comparatively clean. Besides, being nice in his mind, he was naturally nice ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... three stories that comprise this volume[*], one, "The Wizard," a tale of victorious faith, first appeared some years ago as a Christmas Annual. Another, "Elissa," is an attempt, difficult enough owing to the scantiness of the material left to us by time, to recreate the life of the ancient Phoenician Zimbabwe, whose ruins still stand in Rhodesia, and, with the addition of the necessary love story, to suggest circumstances such as might have brought about ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... however, saw nothing wrong in the person who bowed, and smiled, and rubbed the palms of his hands in a rotary movement; and being taken up in trying to amalgamate the scantiness of her money, the prices on the carte, and the enormity of her hunger, neither did she notice the burning eyes in the handsome, sensual dark face of a middle-aged native fixed upon her hungrily from behind a half-open door, where he had been ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... scantiness of her vocabulary, but through her mind still whirled wordless outcries of rebellion. Her one brief visit to the city rose before her with all the horror of the inexplicable, strange, and repellent ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... expatiate upon the masterly execution of the Life of DRYDEN, which we have seen[158] was one of Johnson's literary projects at an early period, and which it is remarkable, that after desisting from it, from a supposed scantiness of materials, he should, at an advanced age, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... registers tell us in their too brief records, teeming with interest for all their scantiness, many a tale ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... she, 'long beheld with compassion the wretched fate of those women, who from scantiness of fortune, and pride of family, are reduced to become dependent, and to bear all the insolence of wealth from such as will receive them into their families; these, though in some measure voluntary slaves, ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... characteristics possessed in common by the American aborigines are the copper-coloured or rather the cinnamon-coloured complexion, along with the high cheek-bones and small deep-set eyes, the straight black hair and absence or scantiness of beard. With regard to stature, length of limbs, massiveness of frame, and shape of skull, considerable divergencies may be noticed among the various American tribes, as indeed is also the case among the members of the white ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... constant obtrusion of them on our sight, it is to be hoped that the pernicious influence of them upon public morals will be diminished also. In those regions where a tropical sun renders clothing cumbersome, and the costume of the ladies of necessity exceeds a little that of ears in transparency and scantiness, familiarity renders it harmless; little or nothing is left for the imagination to feed upon; cheapened by their obviousness, the female charms are rejected by the fancy which loves to dwell on what it only guesses at, or has but rarely seen, and the youthful heart finds its ultimate safety in the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... but that it is in general much less. At the time of the Major's expedition, the water actually flowing, as seen at one or two shallow places, did not exceed in quantity that which would be necessary to turn a mill. But, with all this scantiness of supply during the dry season then prevailing,[16] the marks of tremendous inundations were plain upon the surface of the country, frequently extending two miles back from the ordinary channel of the waters. And everywhere the banks ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... invited to partake of a sumptuous dinner, prepared expressly for the occasion. It was placed on rough tables made of large slabs, supported by small, round legs, set in auger holes; and though there was a scantiness of dishes—and these in the main consisting of a few pewter-plates, several wooden trenchers, with spoons of like material, interspersed with some of horn—and though the scarcity of knives required many of the gentlemen to make use of those carried in their belts—yet the food itself was ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... and temporary waters cannot be expected to produce many fish. The rapidity of the wintry deluge sweeps them away, and the scantiness of the summer stream would hardly sustain them above the ground. This is the reason why in fording the northern rivers, no fishes are seen, as in England, wandering ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... had seen carry his good friends, Dave and Jarvis, away from the mines, some weeks before. They had made the journey in safety. Twice they had been obliged to land to escape the fury of a storm. Wild reindeer had made up for the scantiness of their food supply. Now they were about to alight and enter the city ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... The scantiness of the Bharia's dress is proverbial, and the saying is 'Bharia bhwaka, pwanda langwata', or 'The Bharia is verily a devil, who only covers his loins with a strip of cloth.' But lately he has assumed more clothing. Formerly an iron ring ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... is richer than that of the cow, but not yielded in equal quantity. What these latter produce is also very small compared with the dairies of Europe. At Batavia, likewise, we are told that their cows are small and lean, from the scantiness of good pasture, and do not give more than about an English quart of milk, sixteen of which are required to ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... descent to the Lake, for we were now lower than Magola's by 300 feet. We crossed many rivulets and the Lochesi, a good-sized stream. The watershed parts some streams for Loendi and some for Rovuma. There is now a decided scantiness of trees. Many of the hill-tops are covered with grass or another plant; there is pleasure now in seeing them bare. Ferns, rhododendrons, and a foliaged tree, which looks in the distance ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... a slice of bread and butter, with cheese. If Trudie could have seen it, she would have fainted. In the "citizen's class," such and such a sub-class, according to Pennewip, is found a certain scantiness that does not obtain in the common laboring class. In the matter of eating, laborers, who do not invest their money in Geneva, are not troubled so much by "good form" as people who give their children ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... destitution, frugality, lack, scantiness, defect, economy, inadequacy, need, shortcoming, deficiency, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... to procure would be as limited in their extent as burdensome in their conditions. They would be made upon the same principles that usurers commonly lend to bankrupt and fraudulent debtors, with a sparing hand and at enormous premiums. It may perhaps be imagined that, from the scantiness of the resources of the country, the necessity of diverting the established funds in the case supposed would exist, though the national government should possess an unrestrained power of taxation. But two considerations will serve to quiet all apprehension ...
— The Federalist Papers
... and green lights, like the dog-star on a frosty night in January. And I knew her mother well. When Julia Lonergan put her hands on her hips, and threw back her head, the air became sulphurous and blue. I determined not to mind the scantiness of the drapery, though I should not like to see any of my own little children in such a state. Whilst I was meditating thus, she came to the end of her song; and then let a yell out of her that would startle ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... involuntary fasts and oftimes go hungry, in fact are always hungry, but they suffer less and are healthier than those who are stuffed and pampered and sated. The joy of eating when food comes compensates for the previous scantiness of the fare. There are deaths from insufficient alimentation; ten to one are the deaths traceable to over-feeding. There is suffering for lack of food. There is ten to one more suffering by gouty and dyspeptic gourmands. The beggar shivers in the cold ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... had begun life as a small jerry-builder at Golder's Green, and had ended it a millionaire and a knight. Lady Ranscomb was seated at a little wicker table with her daughter Dorise, a dainty, fair-haired girl with intense blue eyes, who was wearing a rather daring jazzing gown of pale-blue, the scantiness of which a year or two before would have been voted quite beyond the pale for a lady, and yet in our broad-minded to-day, the day of undressing on the stage and in the home, it was nothing ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... evidence in Art will be found in whatever evidence remains respecting the lives of great Italian painters, though, unhappily, in eras of progress, but just in proportion to the admirableness and efficiency of the life, will be usually the scantiness of its history. The individualities and liberties which are causes of destruction may be recorded; but the loyal conditions of daily breath are never told. Because Leonardo made models of machines, dug canals, built fortifications, and dissipated half his art-power in capricious ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... addressing the jackal-like individual, and intending to account for the scantiness of ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... to the feet. The sleeves were short, only just covering the shoulder. Down to the waist, the dress closely fitted the form, resembling, so far, a modern jersey; below this there was a slight expansion, but still the scantiness of the robe is very remarkable. It had no folds, and must have greatly interfered with the free play of the limbs, rendering rapid movements almost impossible. A belt or girdle confined it at the waist, which was always patterned, sometimes elaborately. [PLATE CXXXV., Fig. 1.] If a sword was ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... of the remaining eight are graphically depicted upon Chart 8. The curves speak so plainly for themselves that any comment were almost superfluous, and the concord between the various curves, although, of course, not perfect, is far greater than the scantiness of the data would have justified us in expecting. The curves all agree in pointing to the existence of three well-defined maxima,—viz., in March, June, and September,—these being, therefore, the months in which the sexual instinct is most active; and the later curves show that there is also ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... incomprehensible to this lady, and de Vasselot was still explaining with much volubility, and a wealth of gesture, that the man he sought wore a tonsure, when Clement himself, affable and supremely indifferent to the scantiness of his ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... The other strong points in his work are its sense of narrative, its freedom from hero-worship, its independence of conventional views of Northern leaders. As to the South, it suffers from a certain Narrowness of vision due to the comparative scantiness of the material used. The same may be ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... charms, or perhaps hid them quite from view. 'Such tyrannies,'** says the modest Governor, 'occasioned many offences against God, and frequent illnesses and epidemics.' The sentence is a little doubtful in its meaning, for if a scantiness of women's dress occasioned illnesses and epidemics amongst the population of a town, Belgravia and Mayfair should surely be the most unhealthy spots on earth; though even there, I verily believe, no ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... style most frequently required, are ease and simplicity, an even flow of unlaboured diction, and an artless arrangement of obvious sentiments. But these directions are no sooner applied to use, than their scantiness and imperfection become evident. Letters are written to the great and to the mean, to the learned and the ignorant, at rest and in distress, in sport and in passion. Nothing can be more improper than ease and laxity of expression, when the importance of the subject impresses solicitude, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Nutka, &c., but now enriched by English and French terms, and have nearly forgotten their old signs. The prevalence of this mongrel speech, originating in the same causes that produced the pigeon-English or lingua-franca of the Orient, explains the marked scantiness of sign language among the tribes ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... and the exchange of its surplus. Hence, the division of labor may be carried farthest in the case of those products which are most easily transported from place to place, and which, at the same time, possess the utility that is most widely recognized. The smallness of the market may depend upon the scantiness of the population, or upon its scattered condition;(364) upon their smaller ability to pay, or upon the bad means of communication at their disposal.(365) Hence it is, that in villages, small cities, and still more on isolated farms, many branches of business are carried ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... the absence or scantiness of explicit or systematic information connected with the opening stages of such inquiries as the present, that the student is compelled to draw his own inferences from indirect or unwitting allusion; but so long as conjecture and hypothesis are not too freely indulged, ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... subject, I refer the reader to Mr Suessmilch's tables. The extracts that I have made are sufficient to shew the periodical, though irregular, returns of sickly seasons, and it seems highly probable that a scantiness of room and food was one of the principal causes that ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... blockaded throughout the whole year. These difficulties were the most formidable where, as at Stockholm, access was open by the sea, of which Severin Norby, with the Danish squadron, was master. The scantiness of the means of attack may be discovered from the circumstance that sixty German spearmen, whom Clement Rensel, a burgher of Stockholm, himself a narrator of these events, brought from Dantzic in July for the service of Gustavus, were regarded as a reenforcement ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... was a striking-looking person, notwithstanding the oddness and shabbiness of her dress. Scantiness is a better word for it than shabbiness, for her dress was of good material, neat and well preserved, but it was without a superfluous fold or gather, and in those days, when, even in country places, ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... find their homes dreary, comfortless, deformed with filth, such homes as poverty alone could not make. Still less, when we gaze upon some pleasant looking village, fair enough in outward seeming for poets' songs to celebrate, should we expect to find scarcity of fuel, scantiness of food, prevalence of fever, the healthy huddled together with the sick, decency outraged, and self-respect all gone. And yet such sights, both in town and country, if not of habitual occurrence, are at any rate sadly too numerous ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... and fully reflect the poet's own nature and his circumstances. They are, as it were, fine spiritual diaries, refined self- portraitures. Horace's description of his own famous fore-runner, quoted at the head of this memoir, applies excellently to Spenser. On this account the scantiness of our external means of knowing Spenser is perhaps the less to be regretted. Of him it is eminently true that we may know him from his works. His poems are his best biography. In the sketch of his life to be given here his poems shall be our ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... very low temperatures on the earth under the equator at a height where the barometer stands at about three times as high as on Mars, proves that from scantiness of atmosphere alone Mars cannot possibly have a temperature as high as the freezing-point of water. The combination of these two results must bring down the temperature of Mars to a degree wholly incompatible with ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... saw reasons for declining the attempt. It was not only that, having passed the three score years and ten usually allotted to man's strength, and being unaccustomed to write for publication, I might well distrust my ability to complete the work, but that I also knew the extreme scantiness of the materials out of which it must be constructed. The grave closed over my aunt fifty-two years ago; and during that long period no idea of writing her life had been entertained by any of her family. Her nearest relatives, ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... little figures, and might have gone near to make one sad, even if they had not been constantly imperilling their lives. Thanks to its being summer-time, it did not much matter about the scantiness of their clothing, but their squalor was depressing, it seemed, even to themselves, for they were a mournful-looking set of children, and in their dangerous sports trifled silently and almost gloomily with death. There were none of them above eight or nine years of age, and most ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... it should be acknowledged that in many criticisms passed on the English law the manner in which it has been enunciated seems to have been lost sight of. The hesitation of our courts in declaring principles may be much more reasonably attributed to the comparative scantiness of our precedents, voluminous as they appear to him who is acquainted with no other system, than to the temper of our judges. It is true that in the wealth of legal principle we are considerably poorer than several modern European nations, But they, it ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... and for a moment she could not seem to comprehend her situation. She looked at me and then turned and glanced at my arm about her, and then she seemed quite suddenly to realize the scantiness of her apparel and drew away, covering her face with her palms and blushing furiously. I drew her back toward me and kissed her, and then she threw her arms about my neck and wept softly in mute surrender ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... limited to six, since we had not taken provisions for a longer time. In consequence of fogs and storms, we had not been able to go farther than Mallebarre, where we waited several days for fair weather, in order to sail. Finding ourselves accordingly pressed by the scantiness of provisions, Sieur de Monts determined to return to the Island of St. Croix, in order to find another place more favorable for our settlement, as we had not been able to do on any of the coasts which we had ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... and the monsoon rainfall in this part of the province is sufficient to encourage an easy, but very precarious, cultivation of autumn millets and pulses. The great Thal desert to the south of the Salt Range between the valleys of the Jhelam and the Indus has a similar soil, but the scantiness of the rainfall has confined cultivation within much narrower limits. Between the Sutlej and the Jhelam the uplands between the river valleys are known locally as Bars. The largest of the truly indigenous trees of the Panjab ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... general much less. At the time of the Major's expedition, the water actually flowing, as seen at one or two shallow places, did not exceed in quantity that which would be necessary to turn a mill. But, with all this scantiness of supply during the dry season then prevailing,[16] the marks of tremendous inundations were plain upon the surface of the country, frequently extending two miles back from the ordinary channel of ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... certain generation of painters who, owing to the scantiness of their studies, must needs live up to the beauty of gold and azure, and with supreme folly declare that they will not give good work for poor payment, and that they could do as well as others if they were well paid. Now consider, foolish people! Cannot such men reserve some good work ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... taken due care that the money should be ready in his exchequer. For the rest he ordered different times of payment. In some of his bequests he went as far as twenty thousand sesterces, for the payment of which he allowed a twelvemonth; alleging for this procrastination the scantiness of his estate; and declaring that not more than a hundred and fifty millions of sesterces would come to his heirs: notwithstanding that during the twenty preceding years, he had received, in legacies from his friends, the sum ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... of religion, which served at least to heal the imagination, and restore the hopes, of the multitude. The public defence had been long neglected, not from the presumption of peace, but from the distress and poverty of the times. As far as the scantiness of his means and the shortness of his leisure would allow, the ancient walls were repaired by the command of Leo; fifteen towers, in the most accessible stations, were built or renewed; two of these commanded on either side of the Tyber; and an iron ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... but travelled from mouth to mouth, as it does in the Orient to-day, this fact must have been realized—that, in the short-story, plot is superior to style. Among modern writers, however, there has been a growing tendency to make up for scantiness of plot by high literary workmanship; the result has been in reality not a short-story, but a descriptive sketch or vignette, dealing chiefly with moods and landscapes. So much has this been the case that the writer of a recent Practical Treatise on the Art of the ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... inclined to resent her use of the word, though I was by no means sure of the shade of meaning she meant to put into it. I had, indeed, an uneasy sense of the scantiness of my fund of humour to meet and turn such a situation; for I was experiencing, now, with her, the same queer feeling I had known in my youth in the presence of Cousin Robert Breck—the suspicion that this extraordinary person ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... us in their too brief records, teeming with interest for all their scantiness, many a tale ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... was so deficient, that the slaves were frequently found gasping for life, and almost suffocated. The pulse with which they had been said to be favoured, were absolutely English horse-beans. The legislature of Jamaica had stated the scantiness both of water and provisions, as a subject which called for the interference of parliament. As Mr. Norris had said, the song and the dance were promoted, he could not pass over these expressions without telling ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... asks the king to command the religious orders to send no more friars to that country. The trade with China is falling off, mainly because the Portuguese of Macao have absorbed much of it. Cerezo recommends that their trade with Manila be prohibited. He comments on the scantiness of the male population; commends the administration of Rojas, the royal inspector; and makes some ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... that comprise this volume[*], one, "The Wizard," a tale of victorious faith, first appeared some years ago as a Christmas Annual. Another, "Elissa," is an attempt, difficult enough owing to the scantiness of the material left to us by time, to recreate the life of the ancient Poenician Zimbabwe, whose ruins still stand in Rhodesia, and, with the addition of the necessary love story, to suggest circumstances such as might have brought about or accompanied its fall at the hands of ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... witnessed since the time of Luther. The recent Colenso controversy in England was but a gentle breeze compared to it. Press and pulpit swarmed with "refutations," in which weakness of argument and scantiness of erudition were compensated by strength of acrimony and unscrupulousness of slander. Pamphlets and sermons, says M. Fontanes, "were multiplied, to denounce the impious blasphemer, who, destitute alike ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... unwholesome fens and forests, where nature wages a war even more relentless than man, was not to be thought of. In this perplexity, they decided on the little island of Gallo, as being, on the whole, from its distance from the shore, and from the scantiness of its population, the most eligible spot for them in their forlorn and ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... observed by Dr. Wallis to be irregular only in the formation of the preterit, and its participle. Indeed, in the scantiness of our conjugations, there is scarcely any other ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... stillness grew dreadful. To seventeen years old the first trouble comes hard; albeit seventeen years old has also a great fund of spirit and strength to meet and conquer trouble. But what was the trouble here? It was not the unusual scantiness of means; that could soon be made right, if other things were not wrong which wrought to cause it. On the other hand, if her father had fallen irreparably into bad habits—Dolly would not admit the "irreparably" into her thoughts. But it was bitter to her that children ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... was no idea. To the question, if ever it was asked, May I not do what I will with my own? there was the brief answer, No man may do what is wrong, either with that which is his own or with that which is another's. Workmen were not allowed to take advantage of the scantiness of the labour market to exact extravagant wages. Capitalists were not allowed to drive the labourers from their holdings, and destroy their healthy independence. The antagonism of interests was absorbed into a relation of which equity was something more than the theoretic principle, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... baseness of fabrication;—an inordinate love of riches, more devouring in his breast than his next strongest passion, love of knowledge, was sufficient to egg him on to it. Throughout life, his moral conduct was unfavourably influenced by the scantiness of his means. It was to beguile the anxiety occasioned by his narrow circumstances that he devoted himself to intense study, from knowing that superior attainments combined with splendid talents would secure for him great offices of ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... the fireplace. Two tears rose to her eyes, and at once dried away. She looked at Montes, saw the girl, and burst into a cackle of forced laughter. The dignity of the insulted woman redeemed the scantiness of her attire; she walked close up to the Brazilian, and looked at him so defiantly that her eyes glittered ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... about the paunch, and then he offers them with fire; and the rest of the flesh they eat on that day of full moon upon which they have held the sacrifice, but on any day after this they will not taste of it: the poor however among them by reason of the scantiness of their means shape pigs of dough and having baked them they offer these ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... did, we must look to his means, to the difficulties that surrounded him, to the scantiness of his resources. We see a man without rank, wealth, or friends, raising himself to the head of a popular government in the metropolis of the Church—in the City of the Empire. We see him reject any title save that of a popular magistrate—establish at one stroke a free constitution—a ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... formed a notion that what prevented her perhaps from going off in one great, nervous leap, was the scantiness of her attire. The wicker armchair was the most substantial thing about her person. What she had on under that dingy, loose, amber wrapper must have been of the most flimsy and airy character. One ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... went away chilled and baffled, and he had not come again. She knew that he was painting with every nerve tense and eager, in oblivion to all but his work and the face that inspired it. Elfrida, he told her, was to give him three sittings a week, of an hour each, and he complained of the scantiness of the dole. She could conjure up those hours, all too short for his delight in his model and his work. Surely it would not be long now! Elfrida cared, by her own confession—Janet felt, dully, there could now be ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... assured that we might travel anywhere in that region as officers of the Rebel army, without the slightest suspicion of our real character. They treated us courteously, and prevailed upon us to join them at dinner. Many apologies were given for the scantiness of the repast. Corn-bread, bacon, and potatoes were the only articles set before us. Our host said he was utterly unable to procure flour, sugar, coffee, or any thing else not produced upon his plantation. He thought the good times would return when the war ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... the language which savages employ on any solemn occasion, it appears that man is a poet by nature. Whether at first obliged by the mere defects of his tongue, and the scantiness of proper expressions, or seduced by a pleasure of the fancy in stating the analogy of its objects, he clothes every conception in image and metaphor. "We have planted the tree of peace," says an American orator; "we ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... association with the fictions and annals of times past inspires. It would seem, that France should be especially rich in the relics of that feudalism of which for a long time it was the chief seat, but a reason for their scantiness may be found in the policy which caused Louis XI., and which was subsequently pursued by Richelieu, and completed by Louis le Grand, to call the nobles from their estates, where they exercised almost sovereign authority, to the capital, and convert them into mere hangers on of the court—in ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... yourself to an experienced practitioner, as with the art of war In the grammar schools, as we may call them, the course was purely literary and humanistic, and it was conducted both in Greek and Latin, but chiefly in Greek, as a natural result of the comparative scantiness of Latin literature.[287] Homer, Hesiod, and Menander were the favourite authors studied; only later on, after the full bloom of the Augustan literature, did Latin poets, especially Virgil and Horace, take a place of almost equal importance. ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... piece. The former—and he knew instinctively that it was Miss Grayson—was meager of visage and figure, with high cheek bones, thin curls flat down on her temples, and a black dress worn and old. The room exhibited the same age and scantiness, the same aspect of cold poverty, with its patched carpet and the slender fire ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... apt to forget the primary object of clothing, and to think of it too much as a means of adornment. This leads to excesses and follies such as tight waists, high-heeled shoes, to the ungainly crinoline or to indecent scantiness of skirts. Direct interference in these matters is badly tolerated, but much may be accomplished both by example and by cultivating a refined and artistic ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... excellent woman. According to the judgment of our poet, his father was a man of strong character and understanding. Banished from his native country, and engaged in providing for his family, he was prevented by the scantiness of his fortune, and the cares of his situation, from rising to that eminence which he might have otherwise attained. But his admiration of Cicero, in an age when that author was universally neglected, was a ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... and not easily digested. There is a public which eats salt beef and horse-radish sauce with relish, and does not care for artichokes and asparagus. Put yourself at its point of view, imagine the grey, dreary courtyard, the educated ladies who look like cooks, the smell of paraffin, the scantiness of interests and tasks—and you will understand N. and his readers. He is colourless; that is partly because the life he describes lacks colour. He is false because bourgeois writers cannot help being false. They are vulgar writers perfected. The vulgarians sin together ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... over the Hindu Kush and Pamir. Bukhara is the remoter focus of all these routes, and also of the valley highways of the western Tian Shan. It therefore occupies a location which would make it one of the great emporiums of the world, were it not for the expanse of desert to the west and the scantiness of its local water supply, which is tapped farther upstream for the irrigation of Samarkand. In its bazaars are found drugs, dyes and teas from India; wool, skins and dried fruit from Afghanistan; woven goods, arms, and books from Persia; and Russian ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... rose to her feet and shook out the folds of her diaphanous gown, daring alike in its shapelessness and scantiness. She lit a cigarette and laid her hand ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... supplied his claret; Fortnum and Mason furnished the condiments and foreign rarities which were essential for his breakfast-table. There seemed never any lack of money, or only when Clarissa ventured to hint at the scantiness of her school-wardrobe, on which occasion Mr. Lovel looked very grave, and put her off with two or three pounds to spend at the ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... of power which Providence had placed in this duel, the accused, for lack of conclusive proofs, would in all probability have escaped from the hands of the executioner; but from that very scantiness in the evidence arose an extraordinary opportunity for eloquence, which could not fail to be singularly useful to the ambitious hopes of M. Desalleux. In justice to himself, he could not neglect to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... could do for the man who had manifested JESUS to them. And when that is the spirit, the liberality will often be surprising. Not long ago in one of our North American missions a small meeting of poor Christian Indians apologized for the scantiness of their collection for missionary objects; it was worth only L7; they would do ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... prisoners on board. There were no berths or seats, to lie down on, not a bench to sit on. Many were almost without cloaths. The dysentery, fever, phrenzy and despair prevailed among them, and filled the place with filth, disgust and horror. The scantiness of the allowance, the bad quality of the provisions, the brutality of the guards, and the sick, pining for comforts they could not obtain, altogether furnished continually one of the greatest scenes of human distress and misery ever ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... prepared a slice of bread and butter, with cheese. If Trudie could have seen it, she would have fainted. In the "citizen's class," such and such a sub-class, according to Pennewip, is found a certain scantiness that does not obtain in the common laboring class. In the matter of eating, laborers, who do not invest their money in Geneva, are not troubled so much by "good form" as people who give their children ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... also deplores the fashions of his day, alluding to the "sinful costly array of clothing, namely, in too much superfluity or else indisordinate scantiness!" Changing fashions have always been the despair of writers who have tried to lay down rules for aesthetic effect in dress. "An Englishman," says Harrison, "endeavouring some time to write of our attire... when he saw what a difficult piece of work he had taken in hand, he gave over ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... of all the difficulties of the journey, and the scantiness of our food, Shakro, with his rich vitality, could not acquire the lean, hungry look, of which the starving peasants could boast in its fullest perfection. Whenever he caught sight, in the distance, of these latter, he would exclaim: "Pouh! pouh! pouh. Here they are again! ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... of the brulot. To such annoyance all travellers must submit, and it would be unworthy to complain of that grievance in the pursuit of knowledge, which is endured for the sake of profit. This detail of it has only been as an excuse for the scantiness of our observations on the most interesting part of the ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... said to her daughter. Camilla had submitted with compressed lips and a slight nod of her head. She had worked very hard, but her day of reward was coming. It was impossible not to perceive,—both for her and her mother,—that the scantiness of Mr. Gibson's attention to his future bride was cause of some weak triumph to Arabella. She said that it was very odd that he did not come,—and once added with a little sigh that he used to come in former days, alluding ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... — N. insufficiency; inadequacy, inadequateness; incompetence &c. (impotence) 158; deficiency &c. (incompleteness) 53; imperfection &c. 651; shortcoming &c. 304; paucity; stint; scantiness &c. (smallness) 32; none to spare, bare subsistence. scarcity, dearth; want, need, lack, poverty, exigency; inanition, starvation, famine, drought. dole, mite, pittance; short allowance, short commons; half rations; banyan day. emptiness, poorness &c. Adj.; depletion, vacancy, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and were moving about the underwood in parties of three to five. The nest was near the top of an oak-sapling in a dense coppice, placed close against the stem in a bunch of leaves at the top. The only difficulty in finding it lay in the scantiness of the structure rather than in the concealment by the foliage. The bird was on the nest and only moved off about 3 feet, sitting close by and chattering indignantly during my inspection. They are noisy birds, constantly on the move, and their notes, though rather ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... the wind manifested a tendency to draw up the inlet, and this, when the ship passed in, was found to be sufficiently the case to keep all her canvas full. The passage to the anchorage occupied a considerable time, in consequence of the scantiness of the wind as soon as the ship passed in under the lee of the cliffs, and under other circumstances it might have been tedious; but in the present case it was quite the reverse, the unaccustomed sight of the lofty verdure-clad hills and cliffs, ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... would have done credit to men of a far later age. A feature such as this, whatever may have been its object, whether it arose from an effort by means of 'sympathetic magic' to catch animals, as M. Salomon Reinach suggests, or to the mere artistic impulse, is a standing reminder to us of the scantiness of our data for estimating the lines of man's religious and other development in the vast epochs ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... believed to have been donned for the occasion, was, on the whole, much approved of, and the wearer, in more than one instance, complimented for his taste in having selected so novel and striking a garb. But even his warmest applauders objected to the scantiness of the kilt, and hinted that, for decorum's sake, this part of his dress should have been carried down to his heels. This improvement on his kilt was suggested, in the most polite terms, to Donald himself, by a Spanish gentleman, who spoke a little English, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... only a few. The stage would have been her proper sphere. She should have made it a point of duty, moreover, to sit endlessly to painters and sculptors, and preferably to the latter; because the cold decorum of the marble would consist with the utmost scantiness of drapery, so that the eye might chastely be gladdened with her material perfection in its entireness. I know not well how to express that the native glow of coloring in her cheeks, and even the flesh-warmth over her round arms, and what was visible of her full bust,—in a word, her womanliness ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to Phil to offer to loan him something, but the scantiness of his own resources warned him that it would not be prudent, so ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... because of the inconceivableness of something they find in one, throw themselves violently into the contrary hypothesis, though altogether as unintelligible to an unbiassed understanding. This serves not only to show the weakness and the scantiness of our knowledge, but the insignificant triumph of such sort of arguments; which, drawn from our own views, may satisfy us that we can find no certainty on one side of the question: but do not at all thereby help us to ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... richer than that of the cow, but not yielded in equal quantity. What these latter produce is also very small compared with the dairies of Europe. At Batavia, likewise, we are told that their cows are small and lean, from the scantiness of good pasture, and do not give more than about an English quart of milk, sixteen of which are required to make ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... is when the supply furnished by the mother is scanty. There may be two causes of the scantiness of this supply; 1st, the want of suitable nourishment by the mother; and, 2dly, a feeble constitution, or bad health. In the former case, it should be her first object, as it undoubtedly will be that of her physician, ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... And because of the scantiness of provisions among the robbers—for behold, they had nothing save it were meat for their subsistence, which meat they did obtain in ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... O how far remov'd, Predestination! is thy root from such As see not the First cause entire: and ye, O mortal men! be wary how ye judge: For we, who see our Maker, know not yet The number of the chosen: and esteem Such scantiness of knowledge our delight: For all our good is in that primal good Concentrate, and God's will and ours ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... the weakest portions of the walls carefully strengthened, Julian was seen night and day on the battlements and ramparts, attended by a band of armed men, boiling over with anger and gnashing his teeth, because, often as he wished to sally forth, he was prevented from taking such a step by the scantiness of the force ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... of Nature, especially, require time and culture before man can enjoy them. To rude races her processes bring only terror, which is very slowly outgrown. Humboldt has best exhibited the scantiness of finer natural perceptions in Greek and Roman literature, in spite of the grand oceanic anthology of Homer, and the delicate water-coloring of the Greek Anthology and of Horace. The Oriental and the Norse sacred ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... Shah's revenue collectors. Macnaghten summoned the chiefs to Cabul. They came, they did homage to the Shah and swore allegiance to him; they went away from the capital pledging each other to his overthrow, and jeering at the scantiness of the force they had seen at Cabul. Intercepted letters disclosed their schemes, and in the end of September Sale, with a considerable force, marched out to chastise the disaffected Kohistanees. The fort of Tootundurrah fell without resistance. Julgah, however, ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... relates the circumstances under which the appendices were added to the earlier work. When the book was in press, the publisher discovered that of the three volumes planned, the last two were going to be too thin, and begged for more material to fill out their scantiness. In this perplexity Goethe brought to Eckermann two packets of miscellaneous notes to be edited and added to those two slender volumes. In this way arose the collection of sayings, scraps and quotations "Im Sinne der Wanderer" and "Aus Makariens ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... what reason have you for regarding three slaves as a mark of my poverty, rather than for considering three freed men as a proof of my wealth? Poor Aemilianus, you have not the least idea how to accuse a philosopher: you reproach me for the scantiness of my household, whereas it would really have been my duty to have laid claim, however falsely, to such poverty. It would have redounded to my credit, for I know that not only philosophers of whom I boast myself a follower, but also ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... accomplished society of Clarendon's earlier days, obtained a place in the household of Charles I., is said by his friend Hyde to have turned to devotion after a somewhat libertine life, and died in 1639, before the evil days of triumphant Puritanism, felix opportunitate mortis. He wrote little, and the scantiness of his production, together with the supposed pains it cost him, is ridiculed in Suckling's doggerel "Sessions of the Poets." But this reproach (which Carew shares with Gray, and with not a few others ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... fulfilment of the promise of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit took place; compare Ps. cvii. 33-42 with Joel ii. 25-27.—The words, "I shall pour out," refer to the rain in ver. 23. The idea of copiousness, opposed to the former scantiness, is indeed implied in it. Yet it must not be exclusively considered; the qualities of the rain alluded to in ver. 24 ff.—viz., the quickening of what was previously dead, the fructifying power—must not be ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... inquisitive faces were peering in at it. Coarse laughing faces with pipes and cigarettes and heads wearing caps thrust themselves in at the doorway. Further in could be seen figures in dressing gowns flung open, in costumes of unseemly scantiness, some of them with cards in their hands. They were particularly diverted, when Marmeladov, dragged about by his hair, shouted that it was a consolation to him. They even began to come into the room; at last a sinister shrill outcry ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... causes have led mankind, or rather a portion of them, to abandon magic as a principle of faith and practice and to betake themselves to religion instead. When we reflect upon the multitude, the variety, and the complexity of the facts to be explained, and the scantiness of our information regarding them, we shall be ready to acknowledge that a full and satisfactory solution of so profound a problem is hardly to be hoped for, and that the most we can do in the present state of our knowledge ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Catalonia in the twelfth century, and it conquered Valencia in the thirteenth. Its long line of coast opened the way to an extensive and flourishing commerce; and an enterprising navy indemnified the nation for the scantiness of its territory at home by the important foreign conquests of Sardinia, Sicily, Naples, and the Balearic Isles. Amongst the maritime states of the Mediterranean Catalonia had been conspicuous. She was to the Iberian ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... sanctioned by experience all the great executive duties had been devolved either on committees of Congress or on boards consisting of several members. This unwieldy and expensive system had maintained itself against all the efforts of reason and public utility. But the scantiness of the national means at length prevailed over prejudice, and the several committees and boards yielded to a secretary for foreign affairs, a superintendent of finance, a secretary of war, and a secretary of marine. But so miserably defective was the organization ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... farthest in the case of those products which are most easily transported from place to place, and which, at the same time, possess the utility that is most widely recognized. The smallness of the market may depend upon the scantiness of the population, or upon its scattered condition;(364) upon their smaller ability to pay, or upon the bad means of communication at their disposal.(365) Hence it is, that in villages, small cities, and still ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... a striking-looking person, notwithstanding the oddness and shabbiness of her dress. Scantiness is a better word for it than shabbiness, for her dress was of good material, neat and well preserved, but it was without a superfluous fold or gather, and in those days, when, even in country places, crinoline was beginning ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... emaciation, slenderness, gauntness, spareness, meagerness; tenuity, delicacy, fineness; incompactness; rarity, subtilty, subtilization; inadequacy, sparseness, scantiness. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... privation cheerfully; but, in addition to a good deal of this, Leonard had to bear a sense of disgrace attaching to him and to the creature he loved best; this it was that took out of him the buoyancy and natural gladness of youth, in a way which no scantiness of food or clothing, or want of any outward comfort, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and reveling in remembrances, till the sun was almost dipping behind the snow-clad tops of Nivolex. I did not wish to cross the lake, or enter the town by daylight, as the homeliness of my dress, the scantiness of my purse, and the frugality of life to which I was constrained, in order to live some months near Julie, would have seemed strange to the inmates of the old doctor's house. They formed too great a contrast with my elegance ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... that we suffered most from, the hardship hardest to bear, was hunger. The scantiness of the rations was something fierce. We never got a square meal that winter. We were always hungry. Even when we were getting full rations the issue was one-quarter pound of bacon, or one-half pound of beef, and little over a pint of flour or cornmeal, ground with the cob on it, we used to think—no ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... Germans abandoned their immense forests to the exercise of hunting, employed in pasturage the most considerable part of their lands, bestowed on the small remainder a rude and careless cultivation, and then accused the scantiness and sterility of a country that refused to maintain the multitude of its inhabitants. When the return of famine severely admonished them of the importance of the arts, the national distress was sometimes alleviated by the emigration of a third, perhaps, or a fourth ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... 36 years. For dropsy of the belly and legs, and scantiness of urine, of several weeks standing, took three grains of the powder twice a day, and was quite restored in ten days. She took many medicines ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... gorge of a river, in search of the huts of our neighbours' shepherds, that we may tell the men of these services and invite them to attend. As yet, we have met with no refusals, but it will give you an idea of the scantiness of our population when I tell you that, after all our exertions, the "outsiders" only amount to fourteen, and of these at least half are gentlemen from neighbouring stations. With this number, in addition to our own small group, we consider that we form quite a respectable gathering. The congregation ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... really noteworthy in itself, acquires a certain preciousness by its being the only one transmitted to us of that period of Chopin's existence. But this scantiness of information need not cause us much regret. During the first years of a man's life biography is chiefly concerned with his surroundings, with the agencies that train his faculties and mould his ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... side of footlights, a gown quite so daring as that which revealed the admirably turned person of the lady who named herself Liane. There was so little of it that, he reflected, its cost must have been something enormous. But in vain that scantiness of drapery: the white body rose splendidly out of its ineffective wrappings only to be overwhelmed by an incredible incrustation of jewellery: only here and there did bare hand's-breadths of flesh unadorned succeed in ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... food, the usual tendency is towards an improper scantiness. Here, too, asceticism peeps out. There is a current theory, vaguely entertained if not put into a definite formula, that the sensations are to be disregarded. They do not exist for our guidance, but to mislead us, seems to be the prevalent belief reduced to its naked form. It is a grave error: we ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... characteristics. And why should paradoxes be denied that collective importance, paltry as many of them may individually be, which is accorded to moths, beetles, or butterflies? Mr. Reddie himself sees that "there is a method in" my "mode of dealing with paradoxes." I hope I have atoned for the scantiness of my former article, and put the demonstrated impossibility of gravitation on that level with Hubongramillposanfy arithmetic and inhabited atoms which the demonstrator—not quite without ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... of the Pampas whispered something to a very small brother beside her, who was remarkable chiefly for the size of his gorgeous eyes and the scantiness of his costume. With ready obedience the urchin unhooked a miniature lasso from the wall, and lassoed a large hen. How the brother and sister executed that hen ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... the ladies was classic in its scantiness, especially at balls and parties. The fashionable ball dress was of white India crape, and five breadths, each a quarter of a yard wide, were all that was asked for to make a skirt, which only came down to the ankles, and was elaborately trimmed with a dozen or more rows ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... grasslands, or deserts, is the primary source of human sustenance. Without it man would perish miserably; and where it is deficient, he cannot rise to great heights in the scale of civilization. Yet strangely enough the scantiness of the vegetation of the deserts was a great help in the ascent of man. Only in dry regions could primitive man compete with nature in fostering the right kind of vegetation. In such regions arose the nations which first practised agriculture. There man became comparatively civilized while his ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... 1739, with very little money, "and a very large assortment of letters of recommendation: whether his relatives intended to compensate for the scantiness of the one by their profusion in the other is uncertain; but he has often been heard to declare that their liberality in the last article was prodigious." The Smolletts were not "kinless loons"; they had connections: but who, in Scotland, had money? Tobias had passed his medical examinations, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... dancers—the strangest group was collected. Squatting down on the floor, in every ungraceful attitude imaginable, sat about a dozen Indian women, dressed in printed calico gowns, the chief peculiarity of which was the immense size of the balloon-shaped sleeves, and the extreme scantiness, both in length and width, of the skirts. Coloured handkerchiefs covered their heads, and ornamented moccasins decorated their feet; besides which, each one wore a blanket in the form of a shawl, which they put off before standing ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... Goldsmith also resumed his medical practice, but with very trifling success. The scantiness of his purse still obliged him to live in obscure lodgings somewhere in the vicinity of Salisbury Square, Fleet Street; but his extended acquaintance and rising importance caused him to consult appearances. He adopted an expedient, then very common, and still practiced in London ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... Belgian soldier receives only four cents a day, the French private five cents, the German six cents, and the English soldier twenty-five cents a day, most of which has to go for supplementary food to make up for the scantiness of the rations supplied, you realize what it means for the American soldier to be paid from one to three dollars a day, in addition to clothing, expenses, and the best rations ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... had been to the economical scantiness of my uncle's table, I was both surprised and delighted with the luxurious abundance that greeted me on sitting down to dinner at Mrs. Romaine's. I was equally well pleased with the sprightliness, intelligence and good-humor of the conversation ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... him in prison, is remarkable for its reserve and its scantiness of all semblance of ornament in its literary style. Messer Marco evidently did not greatly affect the arts and graces of fine writing. Like most of the Italian gentlefolk of his day and generation, he held the business of writing in low esteem. Some of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... uncertainty, exposed to the hostilities of the natives, the seditions of his men, and the suggestions of his own despair. He had, at length, sent a mere tantalizing message, by a man known to be one of his bitterest enemies, with a present of food, which, from its scantiness, seemed ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... the garden to some order. They had been obliged to contrive some temporary seats for their visitors, for the old furniture had not yet been brought up from the cinder-hill cabin; and the only painful thoughts Martha had were the misgiving of its extreme scantiness in their house with six rooms. The pasture before the cottage was now securely enclosed, and the wild ponies neighed over the hedge in vain at the sight of the clear, cool pool where they had been used to quench their thirst; and behind the house ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... purity, of benevolence; or of fulness, emptiness, scantiness. There is no object or quality in the outside world I can say is goodness, or fulness. But I do see things in the external world through my ideas of goodness or fulness that correspond to these ideas. They have some of the qualities the ideas embrace; and so I point them out and say, "This ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... remaining eight are graphically depicted upon Chart 8. The curves speak so plainly for themselves that any comment were almost superfluous, and the concord between the various curves, although, of course, not perfect, is far greater than the scantiness of the data would have justified us in expecting. The curves all agree in pointing to the existence of three well-defined maxima,—viz., in March, June, and September,—these being, therefore, the months in which the sexual instinct is ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... on this subject, I refer the reader to Mr Suessmilch's tables. The extracts that I have made are sufficient to shew the periodical, though irregular, returns of sickly seasons, and it seems highly probable that a scantiness of room and food was one of the principal causes ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... any one might have been accustomed to distress and privation among the Spanish peasantry, it was impossible not to be struck with the evidence of poverty in the house of the good priest. The nakedness of the walls, and scantiness of the furniture, were the more apparent, from a certain air about them of better days. Senora Margarita had just prepared for her master's supper an olla podrida, which notwithstanding the sauce, and high sounding name, was nothing more than the remains of his ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... excellent substitute, being light and soft on the feet and very quickly dried. The calves of our legs, however, being left bare, we were obliged, for state occasions at least, to retain and utilize the upper portion of our old stockings. It was owing to this scantiness of wardrobe that we were obliged when taking a bath by the roadside streams to make a quick wash of our linen, and put it on wet to dry, or allow it to flutter from the handle-bars as we rode along. It was astonishing ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... been made in this paper to the subject of slavery, which bulks so large in almost every study of the war. A similar scantiness of allusion to slavery is noticeable in the Memorial volume, to which I have already referred; a volume which was prepared, not to produce an impression on the Northern mind, but to indulge a natural desire to honor the ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... GENITALIA even when bathing in the company of his fellows, but, if necessary, uses his hands as a screen. The bearing of the women is habitually modest, and though their single garment might be supposed to afford insufficient protection, they wear it with an habitual skill that compensates for the scantiness of its dimensions; they bathe naked in the river before the house, but they slip off their aprons and glide into the water deftly and swiftly; and on emerging they resume their garments with equal skill, so that they cannot ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... warning those inclined to be disorderly, of the danger of carrying their boisterousness or ruffianism too far. On the walls are black engravings of the French school, fit ornaments for the place. But, while we are taking this casual survey, one of the attendant nymphs, with great scantiness of clothing, affording display for bare shoulders and not unhandsome ankles, appears, and in a voice of affected sweetness wholly at variance with her brazen countenance and impertinent air, requests us to be seated, and asks what we'll have. We modestly ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... terror, she answered him that the rascal should be in the shed by the stables, where it was his wont to sleep. Out into the rain, despite the scantiness of his attire, went Charlot, followed closely by La Boulaye and one or two stragglers. The shed proved empty, as Caron could have told him—and so, too, did the stables. Here, at the spot where Madame de Bellecour's ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... from the absence or scantiness of explicit or systematic information connected with the opening stages of such inquiries as the present, that the student is compelled to draw his own inferences from indirect or unwitting allusion; but so long as conjecture and hypothesis are not too freely indulged, ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... end, the advent of the mighty figure of Aristotle (384-322) stayed the tide for a time. Yet the writer on Greek Biology remains at a disadvantage in contrast with the Historian of Greek Mathematics, of Greek Astronomy, or of Greek Medicine, in the scantiness of the materials for presenting an account of the development of his studies before Aristotle. The huge form of that magnificent naturalist completely overshadows Greek as it does much ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... various movements, were the three mids,—still stripped to their shirts,—and the old man-o'-war's-man, clad with like scantiness; since the only garment that clung to his sinewy frame was a pair of cotton drawers neither very clean nor very sound at ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... from the peculiarity of their soil and situation, exclusively yield wine of a certain flavour, is sold of course at a price very far exceeding the cost of production. And this is owing to the greatness of the competition for such wine, compared with the scantiness of its supply; which confines the use of it to so small a number of persons, that they are able, and rather than go without it, willing, to give an excessively high price. But if the fertility of these lands were increased, so as very considerably to increase the produce, this produce ...
— Nature and Progress of Rent • Thomas Malthus
... not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the scantiness of my resources and the difficulties of my life. I know that if a shilling or so were given me by any one, I spent it in a dinner or a tea. I know that I worked, from morning to night, with common men and boys, a shabby child. I know ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... England; and he left the duke of Exeter, his uncle, governor of Paris during his absence. The authority which naturally attends success, procured from the English parliament a subsidy of a fifteenth; but, if we may judge by the scantiness of the supply, the nation was nowise sanguine on their king's victories; and in proportion as the prospect of their union with France became nearer, they began to open their eyes, and to see the dangerous consequences with which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... hoped that the pernicious influence of them upon public morals will be diminished also. In those regions where a tropical sun renders clothing cumbersome, and the costume of the ladies of necessity exceeds a little that of ears in transparency and scantiness, familiarity renders it harmless; little or nothing is left for the imagination to feed upon; cheapened by their obviousness, the female charms are rejected by the fancy which loves to dwell on what it only guesses at, or has but ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... the very low temperatures on the earth under the equator at a height where the barometer stands at about three times as high as on Mars, proves that from scantiness of atmosphere alone Mars cannot possibly have a temperature as high as the freezing-point of water. The combination of these two results must bring down the temperature of Mars to a degree wholly incompatible with the existence of ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... full life of aged parents should be added, or say sixty years more, making a total of at least one hundred and forty years since the immigration. Something might, it is true, be allowed for a sojourn at intermediate points: and the scantiness of the remarks is also to be remembered. But there remains to account for the considerable population which had grown up in the land from apparently one centre. If the original intruders were four hundred, for example, then in doubling ...
— Hochelagans and Mohawks • W. D. Lighthall
... men are deterred from becoming Dry Agents by thinking of the comparative scantiness of the monetary rewards. This difficulty is only an imaginary one—for, luckily, as soon as a man's code of honor has been elevated to the extent that it permits him to take up a career of pussy-footing there is generally eliminated ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... there ever was in this scantiness of intermediate types is amply met by the fact that every fresh decade of search in the geological tombs brings some to light. We have seen many instances of this—the seed-bearing ferns and flower-bearing cycads, for example, found in the last decade—and will see others. But ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... foreign potentates. I, it is true, married a subject, and see all the troubles that have sprung from my boyish passion! No, no! Go to Bretagne. The duke hath a fair daughter, and we will make up for any scantiness in the dower. Weary me no more, George. ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... English. Decay of Anglo-Saxon. Early Middle English Literature. Scantiness of its constituents. Layamon. The form of the Brut. Its substance. The Ormulum: Its metre, its spelling. The Ancren Riwle. The Owl and the Nightingale. Proverbs. Robert of Gloucester. Romances. Havelok the Dane. King Horn. The prosody of the modern languages. Historical retrospect. ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... given him the look of a large proprietor in his outlines: his toilet is severely scant, and the old gentleman appears to have lost two of his fingers in a chaff-cutter. As for Perses, who is represented as listening to the sage,[A] his dress is in the extreme of classic scantiness,—being, in fact, a mere night-shirt, and a tight fit ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... little town; built, as is universally the case in these countries, with the streets running at right angles to each other, and having in the middle a large plaza or square, which, from its size, renders the scantiness of the population more evident. It possesses scarcely any trade; the exports being confined to a few hides and living cattle. The inhabitants are chiefly landowners, together with a few shopkeepers and the necessary tradesmen, ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... a haunting, almost a morbid feeling that a lifetime had passed since last his car had turned out of the station gates and he had seen the moorland unroll itself before his eyes. There was a new pungency in the autumn air, an unaccustomed scantiness in the herbiage of the moor and the low hedges growing from the top of the stone walls. The glory of the heather had passed, though here and there a clump of brilliant yellow gorse remained. The telegraph posts, leaning away from the wind, seemed somehow scantier; the road stretched between ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... twelve hundred," said Richard, affecting the indifference of his companion, but feeling privately humbled by the scantiness of his resources. ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... of amazement of the Orientals at the scantiness of the retinue with which an Englishman passes the Desert, for I was somewhat struck myself when I saw one of my countrymen making his way across the wilderness in this simple style. At first there was a mere moving speck on the horizon. My party of course became all alive with ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... his usual sagacity, recognized the trouble, and put an end to it by a complicated operation, of which M. de Lamarck preserved deep scars. This treatment lasted for a year, and, during this time, the extreme scantiness of his resources confined him to a solitary life, when he had the leisure to ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... catch such as 'ten men could not haul to land' was often made in a night. Pigeons were a plague, alighting in vast flocks in the newly planted gardens. If the economic progress of the country had been slow, the reason had lain, not in any poverty of natural resources, but in the scantiness of the population, the neglect of the home government, the incessant turmoil within, and the devastating raids of ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... compositions on the back of letters, as may be seen in the remaining copy of the Iliad, by which, perhaps, in five years five shillings were saved; or in a niggardly reception of his friends, and scantiness of entertainment, as, when he had two guests in his house, he would set at supper a single pint upon the table; and, having himself taken two small glasses, would retire, and say, "Gentlemen, I leave you to your wine." Yet he ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... of the Hawk would only receive the same quantity that we did. The sun rose and set, and again rose, and we sailed on. Mr Hill met us each morning at breakfast, his honest countenance beaming with kindness, and jocularly apologised for the scantiness of the fare. Even he, however, one morning looked grave; the wind had fallen, and we lay becalmed. He had good reason to be grave, for he knew what we did not, that he had only one cask of water left, and provisions scarcely sufficient for a couple ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... or another of the Indian tribes. To determine the several tribal possessions and to indicate the proper boundary lines between individual tribes and linguistic families is a work of great difficulty. This is due more to the imperfection and scantiness of available data concerning tribal claims than to the absence of claimants or to any ambiguity in the minds of the Indians as to the boundaries of ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell
... one difficulty lay in the scantiness of her information. She made up her mind, however, like a good general, that the difficulty must somehow be overcome, and accepted without visible hesitation. Before she left the Casino she invited the journalist to call, with the intention of pumping ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... any other method of treating the same subject. The qualities of the epistolary style most frequently required, are ease and simplicity, an even flow of unlaboured diction, and an artless arrangement of obvious sentiments. But these directions are no sooner applied to use, than their scantiness and imperfection become evident. Letters are written to the great and to the mean, to the learned and the ignorant, at rest and in distress, in sport and in passion. Nothing can be more improper than ease and laxity of expression, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... region are the Loucheux Indians. Fine grown men of considerable stature, and well-knit frames, they have evidently followed the course of the Mackenzie River, from south to north. These are the Indians of whom from the scantiness of our previous data, information is most valuable. They are reasonably considered to belong to the same family as the Dog-rib, Beaver, Hare, Copper, Carrier, and other Indians, a family which some call Chepewyan, others Athabascan, but which the present work designates as Tinne. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Boss, you is the best shot I ever see'd.' Preparation is rapidly advancing, and so is the appetite of the longing expectants. But such preparation was not the work of a moment, especially, from the scantiness of Lucy's cooking utensils. So the guests thought they would withdraw for a time in order to relieve the busy cook of all ceremony, and at the same time relieve themselves of the uncomfortable reflection of three blazing fires in the chimney place. ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... American frigate, and the Perseverance, Lord Cochrane would have very poor provision for his undertaking. "I have this moment received a letter from his lordship," wrote M. Eynard to Mr. Hobhouse on the 12th of January, 1827, "wherein he appears rather disappointed with respect to the scantiness of the forces and the means placed at his disposal. He informs me that he has no officers, few sailors; and that, in case the steamers should not arrive, he will not feel qualified to encounter the Turkish and Egyptian naval forces, as ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... might be able to procure would be as limited in their extent as burdensome in their conditions. They would be made upon the same principles that usurers commonly lend to bankrupt and fraudulent debtors, with a sparing hand and at enormous premiums. It may perhaps be imagined that, from the scantiness of the resources of the country, the necessity of diverting the established funds in the case supposed would exist, though the national government should possess an unrestrained power of taxation. But two considerations will serve to quiet all apprehension on this head: ...
— The Federalist Papers
... party, as that of Wik in Upland, which remained blockaded throughout the whole year. These difficulties were the most formidable where, as at Stockholm, access was open by the sea, of which Severin Norby, with the Danish squadron, was master. The scantiness of the means of attack may be discovered from the circumstance that sixty German spearmen, whom Clement Rensel, a burgher of Stockholm, himself a narrator of these events, brought from Dantzic in July for the service ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
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