"Scanty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... impulse to the drama would naturally show itself in him would be the desire to act; for the outside relations would first operate. As to the degree of merit he possessed as an actor we have but scanty means of judging; for afterwards, in his own plays, he never took the best characters, having written them for his friend Richard Burbage. Possibly the dramatic impulse was sufficiently appeased by the writing of the play, ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... manner. One very remarkable circumstance is the rapidity with which the brimming rivulets pass in the estuaries, enabling them to carry the trading vessels, sometimes even ships, into a main stream (if the expression may be allowed), while the scanty contributions of their kindred streams on the northern side have scarcely acquired the importance of a mill-brook. These waters, from their breadth, look like little rivers, although in reality they consist of only a brook, up to the foot of the mountain, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... put BALBUS and THE ELDER TRAVELLER slightly below the other three—BALBUS for defective reasoning, the other for scanty working. BALBUS gives two reasons for saying that addition of marks is not the right method, and then adds "it follows that the decision must be made by multiplying the marks together." This ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... altogether agree with the writer in the importance which he attaches to the special movement at Brook Farm. We have never professed to be able to represent the idea of Association with the scanty resources at our command; nor would the discontinuance of our establishment, or of any of the partial attempts now in progress, in the slightest degree weaken our faith in the associative system or our conviction ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... he resumed, in a yet lower voice, "and indeed until quite recently, there were but few reliable European medical men in Cairo, and during the summer of 1902 an outbreak of cholera temporarily depleted their already scanty ranks. It happened then that one night, whilst I sat in the huge, lofty room, once the principal harem apartment of the house, which I had appropriated as a study, Cassim, my Nubian servant, communicated to me (by means of a sign-language which I had taught him) some startling ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... quibble, an esoteric phrase, the expression of a vague mysticism—these would suffice to call forth reams of exposition. It has been the favorite pastime of historians to weave their own anachronistic theories upon the scanty woof of the half-remembered thoughts of the ancient philosophers. To make such cloth of the imagination as this is an alluring pastime, but one that must not divert us here. Our point of view reverses that of the philosophers. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... those who reached New York or other American ports, many had fled in such haste as to leave their baggage behind. Numbers of the poorer travelers had exhausted their scanty stores of cash in the effort to escape from Europe and reached port utterly penniless. The case was one that called for immediate and adequate solution and the governmental and moneyed interests on this side did their utmost to cope with the situation. Vessels ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... end they agreed to let him go, and, as he had none, even provided money for his faring out of their scanty, secret store, trusting that he might find opportunity to repay ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... caught, ensnare him, O ye Nymphs, Ye Oreads chaste, ye dusky Dryades! And you, ye Earth-winds! you that make at morn The dew-drops quiver on the spiders' webs! You, O ye wingless Airs! that creep between The rigid stems of heath and bitten furze, Within whose scanty shade, at summer-noon, The mother-sheep hath worn a hollow bed— Ye, that now cool her fleece with dropless damp, Now pant and murmur with her feeding lamb. Chase, chase him, all ye Fays, and elfin Gnomes! ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... off; Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and started up from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker's shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomics in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... and his friends. Perhaps some day this wish may find its satisfaction. It is an innocent one, and the public may even be said to have a kind of right to know as much as can be told it of the personalities which move and stir it. At present the biographical material available is extremely scanty, and if it were not for the kindness of M. Scherer, who has allowed the present writer access to certain manuscript material in his possession, even the sketch which follows, vague and imperfect as it necessarily is, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to Levin. Thought, till then locked up, began to stir in Levin's head, but he made haste to drive it away. "It will come right somehow," he thought, and went towards the altar-rails. He went up the steps, and turning to the right saw the priest. The priest, a little old man with a scanty grizzled beard and weary, good-natured eyes, was standing at the altar-rails, turning over the pages of a missal. With a slight bow to Levin he began immediately reading prayers in the official voice. When he had finished them he bowed down to the ground and turned, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... with mingled dread and shyness, as well as sadness and a sense of desertion, as they took their seats in the train which was to convey them to Dorsham. In the luggage van were two small trunks containing their four scanty wardrobes, and all their toys and other treasures. In her hand Esther carried a large old purse of her mother's, containing their four tickets, and a sovereign which her mother had at the last moment given her to provide them all with stamps and notepaper and pocket-money ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... were completely without any food or water and our ammunition was almost exhausted. During the night, here and there daring men would rush through the space swept by the Russian gun fire, which was kept up constantly, trying to bring us what scanty supplies they could procure from neighboring trenches better provided than we were, but the little they brought was ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... benediction before every meal and every drink of water, grace after every meal and a prayer before going to sleep, I would mentally plead for the safety of the ship and for a speedy sight of land. My scanty luggage included a pair of phylacteries and a plump little prayer-book, with the Book of Psalms at the end. The prayers I knew by heart, but I now often said psalms, in addition, particularly when the sea looked ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... between the upper millstone of Assyria on the north, and the under one, Egypt, on the south. But circumstances are never the cause, though they may afford the excuse of rebellion against our Helper, God; and all the modern talk about environments and the like, is merely a cloak cast round, but too scanty to conceal the ugly fact of the alienated will. All the excuses for sin, which either modern scientific jargon about 'laws,' or hyper-Calvinistic talk about 'divine decrees,' alleges, are alike shattered ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... ever difficult to sleep in a strange bed. I found myself opening my eyes and looking up at my oil-sheet roof. So scanty was it that it left apertures, through which I could see the stars shining in a perfect sky. I shut my eyes and gave rein to my thoughts, gradually elaborating the wild dream of a thinker who was unaware that he had at last dropped off to sleep. It seemed to me that the ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... to reinstate Mrs. Montgomery in her home. It was his expert hands that set up the cracked and rusted kitchen stove, and arranged the scanty and battered furniture in the several rooms. Nor was he satisfied to do merely this, for he presently despatched Arthur into town after an excellent assortment of groceries. All the while, however, he neglected no opportunity to elaborate for Nellie's benefit his opinions concerning ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... champs the bit in fury when curbed by a timid rider: how he then resembles the man who feels wings that could bear him into light, yet who is kept down in the dark abyss! Faustus, thou art one of those fiery spirits who are not contented with the scanty meal of knowledge which Omniscience has set before them. Great is thy strength, mighty is thy soul, and bold thy will; but the curse of finite reason lies upon thee, as it does upon all. Faustus, thou art as great ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... remains of ancient habitations, checks or destroys vegetation, and renders the site of Babylon a naked and a hideous waste. Owls [which are of a large gray kind, and often found in flocks of nearly a hundred] start from the scanty thickets, and the foul jackal skulks through the furrows."—"Discoveries Among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon," chap. 21, ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... I sat thus, studying this meaningless jumble of words, I of a sudden espied a man below me on the reef, a wild, storm-tossed figure, his scanty clothing all shreds and tatters, and as he went seeking of shell-fish that were plenteous enough, I knew him for my sworn comrade, Nick Frant. And then, Martin, I did strange thing, for blood-brothers though we were, I made haste (and all ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... is hardly fair to Sir Aymer or to me," said the Countess quickly. "You draw his scanty compliments from him like an arrow from a ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... GDP; scanty rainfall limits crop production to mostly fruit and vegetables; half of population pastoral nomads herding goats, sheep, and camels; imports bulk ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... complete suit of dainty white, topped off with a broad-brimmed flower-bedecked hat that, under other circumstances, would doubtless have graced some Valparaiso belle. Dick carried two bottles of champagne—the last of their scanty stock—in his hand, one of them being devoted to the christening ceremony, while the other was to be consumed in drinking ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... poor man heart-opprest Betakes him to his evening rest, And worn with labour thinks in sorrow Of the labor of to-morrow; When sadly musing on his lot He hies him to his joyless cot, And loathes to meet his children there, The rivals for his scanty fare: Oh give to him the flowing bowl, Bid it renovate his soul; The generous juice with magic power Shall cheat with happiness the hour, And with each warm affection fill The heart by want ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... "When he restored many of the planters to their estates, there was no restoration of their former property in human beings. No human being was to be bought or sold. Severe tasks, flagellations, and scanty food were no longer to be endured. The planters were obliged to employ their laborers on the footing of hired servants." "And under this system," says Lacroix, "the colony advanced, as if by enchantment towards ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... is a large extent of country in the high latitudes of North America, Asia, and South America, where the climate is too severe and the herbage too scanty to serve the needs of our ordinary cattle, in which a hardy feeder with a well-clad body such as the buffalo might do well, it seems most desirable to essay the experiment of domesticating the bison before it is too late, before the brutal ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... English authors (Terminal Essay, p. 220), and all praised the free use of it in Eastwick's "Gulistan." Torrens, Lane and Payne deliberately rejected it, each for his own and several reason; Torrens because he never dreamt of the application, Lane, because his scanty knowledge of English stood in his way; and Payne because he aimed at a severely classical style, which could only lose grace, vigour and harmony by such exotic decoration. In these matters every writer ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... The scanty vegetation which covered the plains they were crossing was again becoming parched by the sun, after the winter rains; and the dry grass harboured innumerable grasshoppers whose shrill note was heard incessantly, ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... if not an "Apostle." Charles Buller's, like Hallam's, was to be an "unfulfilled renown." Of Hallam, whose name is for ever linked with his own, Tennyson said that he would have been a great man, but not a great poet; "he was as near perfection as mortal man could be." His scanty remains are chiefly notable for his divination of Tennyson as a great poet; for the rest, we can only trust the author of In Memoriam and the ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... prayers ascended to God for the sufferer. Her little vials of camphor and other restoratives, provided by charitable neighbors, were emptied for his relief. She took from her scanty store, bandages for his head, which was shockingly mangled and bleeding; and she herself, forgetful of all but his sufferings, sat down and tenderly bathed his hands and his forehead, while some of the boys ran for the surgeon, ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... been more strongly marked in Table 9/G, in which the plants of one set were derived from self-fertilised parents, than in Table 9/F, in which flowers on the parent-plants were self-fertilised for the first time. But this is not the case, as far as my scanty materials allow of any judgment. There is therefore no evidence at present, that the fertility of plants goes on diminishing in successive self-fertilised generations, although there is some rather weak evidence that this does occur with respect to their height or growth. But ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... was right. When the grab was overhauled, the men on board, dark-skinned Marathas with very scanty clothing, made signs that they ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... hands gleefully. From the moment the curtain rose, Tadeo had been heedless of the music. He was looking only for the prurient, the indecent, the immoral in actions and dress, and with his scanty French was sharpening his ears to catch the obscenities that the austere guardians of ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... and consumption could not stretch beyond the bounds of our jealousies. God has given the earth to the children of men, and He has undoubtedly, in giving it to them, given them what is abundantly sufficient for all their exigencies: not a scanty, but a most liberal, provision for them all. The Author of our nature has written it strongly in that nature, and has promulgated the same law in His written word, that man shall eat his bread by his labor; and I am persuaded that no man, and no combination of men, for their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... length our poor Champagne By foes was overrun, He seemed alone to hold his ground; Nor dangers would he shun. One night—as might be now—I heard A knock—the door unbarred— And saw—good God! 'twas he, himself, With but a scanty guard. 'Oh, what a war is this!' he cried, Taking this very chair." "What! granny, granny, there he sat? What! granny, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... corn will be found thin, "scrawley," and "broken-kneed," with poor, shrivelled ears; and the alternating green crops will also suffer in their way. In an orchard it is still worse; I had several at one time surrounded by Blenheim apples, which were always small, scanty, and colourless. Eventually, I cut the elms down, the biggest, carrying perhaps 100 cubic feet of timber at 9d. a foot at the time, was only worth 75s., though it must have destroyed scores of pounds worth of fruit during its many years of growth. The elm seems ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... victuals, Bailly says, was so scanty, that the lives of the inhabitants of Paris depended on the somewhat mathematical precision of our arrangements. Having learnt that a barge with eighteen hundred sacks of flour had arrived at Poissy, I immediately despatched a hundred wagons from Paris to ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... women—were ignorant to the last degree, possessing little if any sense of delicacy or refinement, and were utterly uncouth. For the most part, they lived in miserable hovels, were clothed in a most meagre and scanty way, and were little better than those beasts of burden which are compelled to do their master's bidding. Among these people, rights depended quite largely upon physical strength, and women were generally misused. To the lord of the ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... center bench, and discoursed very instructively to his friends,—a stout, fat-faced young man in a white cravat, whose voice was at once loud and melodious, and whom our manly Oxford student set down as a man who had just rubbed through the university, and got into a scanty living. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... cultivation of the plant, now about to be attempted under the able management of Dr. Jamieson. Should it prove successful, the benefits it will confer on the country will be enormous. Tea is a favorite beverage everywhere with the natives: at present their supplies come in scanty measure and bad condition, at extravagant ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... watches a Comforter, And scatters manna daily for thy food, And bids the smitten rocks that barrier The arid track, well out with gurgling flood, And oft to shade of green oasis leads, And, from pursuer thirsting for thy blood, Such scanty shelter as is thine provides: And though full oft that shelter fails, and though Its torn defence demoniac glee derides, Yet not for this the cheerful faith forego, That memory of uncounted benefits And conscious instinct's still, small tones bestow. Charge not thy God with aught ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... pictures of as far back as she could remember came to her, and she saw again their poor lodgings in the cheap foreign towns and their often scanty fare. And with a fresh burst of love and pride in him, she remembered her father's invariable cheerfulness—cheerfulness and gayety—in such poverty! And after he had been used to—this! For all the descriptions of Captain ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... Winter decks his few grey hairs Thee in the scanty wreath he wears; Spring parts the clouds with softest airs, That ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... true. But what labourer, let us ask, with a full conception of the circumstances, would blame him? Here there was nothing but hard and scanty fare, no heat, no light, nothing to cheer the heart, nothing to cause it to forget the toil of the day and the thought of the morrow, no generous liquor sung by poets to warm the physical man. But only a few yards farther down the road there was a great house, with ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... stuffs, weakened by aniline dyes and stiffened with Chinese clay, permit of no such exhaustive research. It must be remembered that the lady passengers on board the Sirdar were dressed to suit the tropics, and the hard usage given by Iris to her scanty stock was never contemplated by the Manchester or Bradford looms responsible for the durability of ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... and the sky was everywhere gray and threatening. The fields of uncut corn were bent, like the waves of the sea, and the yellow leaves came down from the trees in showers. Piled up masses of black clouds were driven across the sky. Scanty drops of rain kept falling, an earnest of what was to come as soon as the wind should fail. Duncombe had almost to fight his way along until, through a private gate, he entered Runton Park. The house lay down in the valley about a mile away. ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... rugged and moss-grown, with little patches of herbage here and there, or an occasional stunted pine growing out of an almost imperceptible fissure. The only signs of life in this wild spot consisted of a diminutive musk-ox here and there cropping the scanty herbage half-way up the apparently inaccessible height in spots from which it appeared equally impossible for the creature to advance ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... few facts are known, and Christina Rossetti, one of her many admirers, was obliged, in 1883, to relinquish the plan of writing her biography, because the materials were so scanty.[35] From the memoir prefixed to the posthumous volumes, published in 1826, containing Gaston de Blondeville, and various poems, we learn that she was born in 1764, the very year in which Walpole issued The Castle ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... now-a-days the ruin of half the young couples in the middle rank of life. Let any man observe, as I so frequently have, with delight, the excessive fondness of the labouring people for their children. Let him observe with what pride they dress them out on a Sunday, with means deducted from their own scanty meals. Let him observe the husband, who has toiled all the week like a horse, nursing the baby, while the wife is preparing the bit of dinner. Let him observe them both abstaining from a sufficiency, lest the children should feel the pinchings of hunger. ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... she proved herself very wicked and unwomanly, no doubt. But neither womanly virtues nor Christian graces are wont to flourish in the school in which Diana Paget had been reared. She obeyed Valentine Hawkehurst to the letter, without any sentimental lamentations whatever. Her scanty possessions were collected, and neatly packed, in little more than an hour. At three o'clock she lay down in her tawdry little bed-chamber to take what rest she might in the space of two hours. At six she stood by Valentine Hawkehurst on the platform ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... your book is not a masterpiece," replied Porchon, with scanty civility, "but we only deal in books that are ready printed. Go and see somebody that buys manuscripts. There is old Doguereau in the Rue du Coq, near the Louvre, he is in the romance line. If you had only spoken sooner, you might have ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... them, unaltered, save that his scanty beard had grown somewhat longer. They had seen nothing of him since their trip to Norway, and they greeted him now with unaffected heartiness, glad of the distraction his ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... wood-mice. While the ram was lying down they came out of their secret holes and played about securely, seeming to realize that the big animal's presence was a safeguard to them. But when he moved, and they saw the rope trail sinuously behind him through the scanty grass, they were almost paralyzed with panic. Such a snake as that would require all the wood-mice on Ringwaak to assuage his appetite. They fairly fell backward into their burrows, where they crouched quivering ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... wholesome, happy youth, having due thought for others and for his own walk and conversation, but without touch of formal piety. When I was initiated into the Hasty Pudding Club, I recognised in a tall fiend whose trouser legs were very apparent beneath the too scanty black drapery which enveloped him, no other than Phillips Brooks. He was one of the most vociferous of the imps who tossed me in the blanket, and later, when the elaborate manuscript I had prepared was brought forth, was conspicuously ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... off than his neighbours from a worldly point of view, in that he had not a large family as most of them were blessed with; for children are a blessing, a gift and heritage that cometh of the Lord, even when they cluster round a cold hearth and a scanty board. But Gray had only two sons, the elder of whom, Tom, we have seen at Zoe's christening, and who had been at work four years, having managed at twelve to scramble into the fifth standard, and at once left school triumphantly, and now can neither read nor write, having ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... undergrowth of shrubs give it an air of desolation, not to say danger. It is certainly not the place that a professional man would choose to be abroad in after dark. The inhabitants, living, so it is said, on their scanty dividends and on such parts of their income as our taxation is still unable to reach, are not people that one would care to fall ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... at this disadvantage, that Hanson has not yet made anything but the most scanty of statements. Fearing for his life, since this gang will stick at nothing, he has been closely guarded by the police from the moment he made his preliminary statement. Every effort which has been ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... endured; Think of the miserable life I led, The toil and blows to which I was inured, My wretched lodging in a windy shed, My scanty fare so grudgingly procured, The damp and musty straw that formed my bed! But, having done this penance for my sins, My life as man and monk ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... sufficiently, Riccabocca shut up his Machiavelli, and hunted out of his scanty collection of books, Buffon on Man, and various other psychological volumes, in which he soon became deeply absorbed. Why were these works the object of the sage's study? Perhaps he will let us know soon, for it is clearly a secret known ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tapering; contraction &c 195. V. be narrow &c adj.; narrow, taper, contract &c 195; render narrow &c adj.; waste away. Adj. narrow, close; slender, thin, fine; thread-like &c (filament) 205; finespun^, gossamer; paper-thin; taper, slim, slight-made; scant, scanty; spare, delicate, incapacious^; contracted &c 195; unexpanded &c (expand) &c 194 [Obs.]; slender as a thread. [in reference to people or animals] emaciated, lean, meager, gaunt, macilent^; lank, lanky; weedy, skinny; scrawny ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... reproduce. He is a house-agent as well as a draper, and went on to tell us that when he had a cottage he could rent in no other way he planted plenty of creepers in front of it. "The baker's hoose is no sae bonnie," he said, "and the linen and cutlery verra scanty, but there is a yellow laburnum growin' by the door: the leddies see that, and forget to ask aboot the linen. It depends a good bit on the weather, too; it is easy to let a hoose when the sun shines ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... filled quickly, as if by a stroke of magic. Remarkable costumes were on exhibition. There were bodices three inches wide, with skirts of as many yards. Voluptuous bosoms hovered between chin and girdle. Scanty sleevelets did not know whether they were to cover arms or shoulders. The ladies wore kid gloves reaching to their armpits, and on their heads were turbans and flower-gardens. The uniforms of the gentlemen were even more conspicuous. Those shakos! The enemy would ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... our desperate circumstances, we discovered that there was not a drop of water in the corral. The thirst that follows a fight had exhausted the scanty supply of our canteens, ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... and Caps.—There is no perfect head-dress; but I notice that old travellers in both hot and temperate countries have generally adopted a scanty "wide-awake." Mr. Oswell, the South African sportsman and traveller, used for years, and strongly recommended to me, a brimless hat of fine Panama grass, which he had sewn as a lining to an ordinary wide-awake. I regret I have had no opportunity of trying this combination, but ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... in spite of the precautions they take to keep this hour for private intimacies and affections, a good many great and little people manage to infringe upon it. Business itself will, as at this moment, thrust itself in the way of their scanty comfort. ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... or wood-hens, about as large as sparrows . . . were esteemed a valuable addition to our scanty supper." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... titles which to ourselves may appear incongruous and obscure, but which were in tolerable keeping with the financial and commercial organisation of the period, with a restricted currency, a revenue chiefly payable in kind, scanty facilities for transit, and an absence of trading centres. These steward-ships, butler-ships, and cook-ships, in the hands of the most trusted vassals of the Crown, constituted a rudimentary vehicle for in-gathering the dues of all kinds renderable by the king's ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... less capacious than a thousand years. But what is time? What outward glory? neither A measure is of Thee, whose claims extend Through "heaven's eternal year." [B]—Yet hail to Thee, 15 Frail, feeble, Monthling!—by that name, methinks, Thy scanty breathing-time is portioned out Not idly.—Hadst thou been of Indian birth, Couched on a casual bed of moss and leaves, And rudely canopied by leafy boughs, 20 Or to the churlish elements exposed On the blank plains,—the coldness ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... dry, after the long dry period that had been prevailing, if the cold of the season had not covered it with a film of moisture. This did not render the ground slippery, however, but rather firm and resilient so that the children made good progress. The scanty grass still standing on the meadows and especially along the ditches in them bore the colors of autumn. There was no frost on the ground and a closer inspection did not reveal any dew, either, which signifies rain, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... over these scanty items of news as she sat at her solitary tea an hour later. Elma was well; Elma had returned home. A dog-cart from the Manor had been observed waiting outside the gate of The Holt that morning. A dog-cart! Imagination failed to picture the picturesque figure of Madame perched on the high ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... more important adjunct of spiritual regeneration. They were not converted men, as the sequel will plainly show. The salary allowed them was usually small; and this is the apology pleaded for them by their friends; but scanty salaries are the outgrowth of scanty ministerial piety. The people, in no age of the world, have refused a proper and sufficient support to a ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... commanded the father, and the boy reluctantly began to peel off his scanty garments one by one, till he stood naked on the bare floor. He was glad that no one except the baby was in to see his humiliation, his brothers and sisters being all out ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... head and shaded by thick, black brows. His dress consisted of a rough doublet, with lappet sleeves, carried down to a point, tight leggings, broad shoes and the puffed upper hose; the entire raiment frayed and worn; his flesh, or, rather, his bones, showing through the scanty covering for his legs, while his feet were no better protected than those of a trooper who has been long on the march. He displayed no fear or enmity; on the contrary, his manner was rather friendly than otherwise, as though he failed to understand the enormity of his offense and the position in ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... in the country, totally removed from poets and literati, except the small coterie of Miss Seward, at Litchfield. The lives of poets would be the most amusing of all biography, if the materials were less scanty: it is strange that so few of them have left any ample records of themselves; of many not even a letter or fragment of memorials is preserved. None of Cowley's letters, a mode of composition in which he is said to have eminently ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... refused his brethren alms, he asked him only to give him a loaf; and, having received it, he divided it among his religious, and directed them to say the Lord's Prayer and the Evangelical Salutation three times, for the person who had given it. Their scanty meal was scarcely finished, when this man came to ask forgiveness for the harshness he had shown them, and he was, after that, the best friend of their convent, so good an idea of their Institution had the saint impressed ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... upon and destroys itself. Carried to its last implication, it holds that women are all Donna Juanitas, and that if they put off their millinery and cosmetics, and abandoned the shameless sexual allurements of their scanty dress, men could not ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... deposit of wreck, to be occasionally flooded to a certain extent. Here are several extensive salt marshes, which Mr. Fraser thinks are admirably adapted for the growth of cotton. The hills, though scanty of soil, are covered with an immense variety of plants; among others, a magnificent species of Angophera occupied the usual place of the Eucalyptus, which, however, here as on the eastern side, generally forms the principal feature in the botany of the country, accompanied ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 368, May 2, 1829 • Various
... battailous array display'd, On sounding wings, and screaming in their ire, The cranes rush onward, and the fight require. The pigmy warriors eye with fearless glare The host thick swarming o'er the burden'd air; 130 Thick swarming now, but to their native land Doom'd to return a scanty straggling band.— When sudden, darting down the depth of heaven, Fierce on the expecting foe the cranes are driven, The kindling frenzy every bosom warms, The region echoes to the crash of arms; Loose feathers from the encountering armies fly, And in careering whirlwinds ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... was not hard to see that they would have been glad to get certain news of Andrew's death. This made their coming hateful to us; but the house not being our own, we could not shut them out. We did what we could to get news of Andrew; but there was small comfort in the scanty intelligence we could glean, since it all pointed to his having indeed gone up to London, and having preached woe and judgment on his ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... with leaves. Here, on the contrary, I saw meadows tinged by the drought with a reddish hue, pastures grazed to the roots of the grass, and trees spreading what seemed to me a meagre shade. Yet the harvests of wheat, and even of hay, in western New York, are said to be by no means scanty. ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... with unabated fury, and the stinging cold air penetrated to the cabin. The boys plugged up the hole, and then sat down to the scanty repast, ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... ordinarily so noiseless and submissive, yield to the contagion and add their share to the uproar. Each man carries a few pounds of baggage in bundles or packs or valises, and these scanty belongings ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... buildings we were once so famous for? Would it not be of some use once for all, and with the least delay possible, to set on foot an association for the purpose of watching over and protecting these relics, which, scanty as they are now become, are still wonderful treasures, all the more priceless in this age of the world, when the newly-invented study of living history is the chief joy of so many of our lives? Your paper has so steadily and courageously ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... a Sense, confused and dim, Dawns in a shape of nobler mould, Less beast, scarce human; uncontrolled, With free fierce life in every limb; A savage youth, in painted gear, Foot fleeter than the summer wind; Scant speech for scanty needs designed, Content with ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... the sofa, as the only bed in the establishment belonged to Paragot. The next morning I took my scanty belongings to my old attic, which fortunately happened to be unlet, and left my master in undisturbed possession of his apartment. In the evening, calling to make polite inquiries as to his health, I found him still in bed looking grimier and ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... brilliant power of description, by which the other writings of that gifted author are distinguished. If he would make as good use of the vast collection of papers which, under the able auspices of Sir George Murray, have now issued from the press, as he has of the more scanty materials at his disposal when he wrote his account of Marlborough, he would write the history of that hero, and supersede the wish even ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... of which some few scanty ruins remain, was built by the Bishop Henry of Blois about 1138, and no doubt it served its purpose in the anarchy of Stephen's time, but thereafter it seems to have become rather a palace than a fortress. The manor of Merdon had always belonged to the See of Winchester, ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... without intermission till the night of the 5th, and during that time the crew of the Proserpine were suffering much from the want of necessary food, clothing, &c. Provisions were so scarce that they were all put upon short allowance; and their scanty store being nearly exhausted, it became absolutely necessary that part of them should proceed ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... wandering life, which was new to them. The Hurons lived by agriculture; their fields and crops were destroyed, and they were so hunted from place to place that they could rarely till the soil. Game was very scarce; and, without agriculture, the country could support only a scanty and scattered population like that which maintained a struggling existence in the wilderness of the lower St. Lawrence. The mortality among the exiles ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... in which too often seethed gossip, scandal, intrigue. There were the "soft places"; the deceitful, the easy, the harsh principals; the teachers' institutes to which the poor teacher was forced to pay her scanty dollars. There were bulletins, rules, counter-rules. As she talked, Sommers caught the atmosphere of the great engine to which she had given herself. A mere isolated atom, she was set in some obscure corner ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... a year I had exhausted La Tribu's scanty library, and was unhappy for want of further amusement. My reading, though frequently bad, had worn off my childish follies, and brought back my heart to nobler sentiments than my condition had inspired; meantime disgusted with all within my ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... testified that his endeavors to tempt them to speculation on games of chance had met with no very marked success as yet. Gambling for stakes of moment is not a popular amusement in that country; where the soil demands his best from every man in return; for the scanty dollars it yields him, but the gamester had chosen his time well, and the men who had borne the dreary solitude of winter in outlying farms, and now only saw another adverse season opening before them, were for once in the mood to clutch ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... blocks the entrance to the central lagoon. Here we lay "off and on" for a couple of days, while foraging parties went ashore, returning at intervals with abundance of turtle and sea-fowls' eggs. But any detailed account of their proceedings must be ruthlessly curtailed, owing to the scanty limits of space remaining. ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... the false woman who ensnared two such noble hearts, it is lost for ever, let us hope, in a deserved oblivion. The scanty data that we have given here are about all that can be accepted without wrenching history and poetry from their proper sphere. But so long as the spirit is more than the letter, so long will the Sonnets of Shakespeare be read by all true lovers of true ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... Talbot and Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire at the head of their scanty band were just passing. They took off their hats, and swept a low bow to the great chief who sat silently on his white horse within a few yards of them. Then, side by side, they rode upon the shaking bridge, ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... conversation has fallen to a very low ebb; there is, in particular, much complaint of the conversation of girls whose education is supposed to have been careful. The subjects they care to talk of are found to be few and poor, their power of expressing themselves very imperfect, the scanty words at their command worked to death in supplying for all kinds of things to which they are not appropriate. We know that we have a great deal of minted gold in the English language, but little of it finds its way into ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... trousers had been creased in two places, and there were little spots of blood on his high white collar because he had cut himself shaving. His complexion was of the same old suppressed purple, but his little eyes were bright and shining and active; they danced towards Maggie. His scanty locks had been carefully brushed over his bald head, and his hands, although they were still puffed and swollen, were whiter than ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... a few fish (in my case, I mean, of course, that the fish caught themselves); but they were scanty in number and light in weight. Whether it was the presence of the miller's foreman—a gloomy personage, who stood staring disastrously upon us from a little flower-garden on the opposite bank—that cast adverse influence over ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... much reproach is brought upon the beneficed, and much oppression upon the unbeneficed, clergy, by curates accepting too scanty salaries ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... spite of its scanty population, was better equipped for war than was any of the English colonies. The French were largely explorers and hunters, familiar with hardship and danger and led by men with a love of adventure. The English, on the other hand, were chiefly traders and farmers who disliked and dreaded ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... which are on their way to being something else? But there are reasons to be given on this ground which make the subject a less definite one for treatment. It is said, for example, that in the fossil rocks we have only such scanty and fragmentary records, that it is not possible to draw a complete inference, and that there is always the possibility of fresh discoveries being made. Such discoveries have, it is asserted, already ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... humble roof, the garden's scanty line, Ill suit the genius of the bard divine; But fancy now assumes a fairer scope, And Stanhope's plans unfold the soul ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... was undoubtedly a chance that the sea ice would break up and drift away in this high wind. Had that happened we should have been left to starve on the tiny island. The position was not an enviable one. We got back into our bags, which were, as stated, wet and beastly, after a scanty supper and tried to sleep, but our feet were wet too, and cold, so that few of us could do more than close our eyes. The night passed slowly enough, and we turned out at 7 a.m. to cook what remained of our food before attempting to make Cape Evans. We were glad that it had stopped snowing and, ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... the ground being partially covered with a very thin pasture, with little appearance of verdure. The trees nearly all belong to one family, and mostly have their leaves placed in a vertical, instead of as in Europe, in a nearly horizontal position: the foliage is scanty, and of a peculiar pale green tint, without any gloss. Hence the woods appear light and shadowless: this, although a loss of comfort to the traveller under the scorching rays of summer, is of importance to the farmer, as it allows ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... gentlemen, dressed with singular independence of style. From one point of view they looked like actors, bearing about them signs of fatigue, as if from heavy night work. Observed again, they resembled young lawyers of indolent habits and scanty practice, who had just dropped in to watch ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... falling; grass seemed to have sprung up from the sun-baked soil in the night and the slant-set leaves of the five gums smiled as they slid big drops on to their roots. The leaves of the wonga-vine that sheltered the rather scanty beds of the food-garden looked riotously alive and green; nasturtiums and sunflowers sent out by the uncle in England glowed like little gold lamps ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... the palace, he glanced up a long vista between leafless trees and muddy grass-plats. A familiar figure in a battered straw hat and scanty green cloak was advancing in his direction; the wind, blowing back the fringe of disfiguring short hair, disclosed a pure unbroken line of delicate profile, strangely simple, and recalling the profiles in Botticelli's lovely fresco in the Louvre. Miss Price, for it ...
— Different Girls • Various
... live on it somehow," said Francis. "My coats were very threadbare and my meals scanty, but I weathered these three years, and then I got a good step, and crept up gradually. I have been now in this same bank for seventeen years, and am at present in the receipt of 250 pounds a year, thinking myself rich and fortunate;—now I am rich and unfortunate. Why did not my father leave ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... the nineteenth century, festers within the crazy and tumble-down tenements. Colored cotton handkerchiefs wrapping woolly heads, and shoes slouched at the heel furnishing doubtful covering to feet redolent of filth and crippled by disease—alternate with the scanty habiliments of black and white children, brought up in the kennel and reduced by blows, mud and exposure to a woful similarity of hue. The whiskey bottle generally accompanies the basket with a quart of decayed potatoes, ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... invitation reached me to take command of a regiment of Kalmuck Tartars, it could hardly have been more unexpected. I had always looked for the arming of the blacks, and had always felt a wish to be associated with them; had read the scanty accounts of General Hunter's abortive regiment, and had heard rumors of General Saxton's renewed efforts. But the prevalent tone of public sentiment was still opposed to any such attempts; the government kept very shy of the experiment, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... they did not approach within four or five feet. How grateful I felt towards them! One man and his sweetheart, a fine southern girl with dark eyes and sun-browned cheeks, sat down near me on one of the scanty seats provided. The man put his umbrella and his hat on the seat beside him. What could be more natural? No one else was there, and there was room for three more couples. Instantly an official—an ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... eaten in the Brinker cottage that night would have dreamed of the dainty repast hidden away nearby. Hans and Gretel looked rather wistfully toward the cupboard as they drank their cupful of water and ate their scanty share of black bread; but even in thought they did not rob ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... hospital itself was soon surrounded by supplicants for food. The distress, at last, became so excessive, that it amounted to agony. Emaciated figures of both sexes stole or forced their way into the building, to beg our rations, or snatch them from our feeble hands; and I often divided my scanty meal with individuals who had once been in opulent trade, or been ranked among the semi-noblesse of the surrounding country. Sometimes I missed faces to which I had been accustomed among those unfortunate beings, and I heard a still more unhappy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... success, naturally gave rise to a great degree of enthusiasm and excitement. Soon, however, more sober thoughts prevailed, when we reflected on the time this proceeding would consume, on account of the tortuous* course of the river: time which we could, with our scanty stock of provisions, ill spare. At Port Essington it was possible we should be able to get a supply of both, as a ship might have arrived during our absence. Moreover it was highly important, that we should make known without delay, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... found no room; a scanty bed they made: Soon a Babe from Mary's womb was in the manger laid. Forth He came as light through glass: He came to save us all, In the stable ox and ass before their Maker fall. Sing high, sing ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... sandy man, not hitherto seen, was rolling his loose-knit body up and down the platform, smiling at the people and mopping a great bony skull, on which, low down, a few scanty wisps of colourless hair ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... academical course, for making further progress in studies suited to their profession. The cares of a family (for marriage must indispensably precede ordination in the Russian church), their labours among their flocks, the scanty support which most of them receive, together with their isolated situation in country villages, where few traces of education and civilized life have yet entered, ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... realisation of what He has done for us, are sure to open the deep fountains of the heart, and to secure abundant streams. If we can tap these perennial reservoirs they will yield like artesian wells, and need no creaking machinery to pump a scanty and intermittent supply. We cannot trust this deepest motive too much, nor appeal to it ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... be gracious unto thee,' answered the oldest woman, in a solemn voice, as she looked upon my father's white beard; 'but,' she quickly added, 'there is scanty cheer in this place for ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... proof of his disinterested and self-sacrificing generosity is about to be displayed. PUNCHINELLO has been pained to notice the wretched material with which, for want of a well-posted New York correspondent, the country editor of the period (amusing sui generis) is forced to fill his scanty columns under the much-displayed caption, "Our New York Letter.—From Our Own Correspondent." To obviate this difficulty, the following interesting and important items of New York news, which are believed to have never before been published, are ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... a maim on his limbs, that disabled him from following the more laborious branches of country drudgery, got, by making nets, a scanty subsistence, which was not much enlarged by my mother's keeping a little day-school for the girls in her neighborhood. They had had several children; but none lived to any age except myself, who had received from nature ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... than support my family. This it seemed to me, afforded an excellent opportunity of laying up a little something which might render me secure in the event of a sudden attack of sickness. I had but about two hundred dollars, however, and from so scanty an investment I could not, of course, expect a large return; accordingly I went to Squire Conant; you remember ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... on the other, the crew had exhibited such numerous signs of mutiny, that he could hardly rely upon its discipline and good will. Nevertheless, although the English were often obliged to content themselves with scanty rations, they did not, owing to the arrival of great numbers of birds, pass a very distressing winter. But, on the return of spring, as soon as the ship was prepared to resume her route to England, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... only, and at this rate of increase, about one hundred and sixty years will be required for the augmentation of the capital to the maximum contemplated by existing laws. But the educational wants of the state are such that even this scanty supply must soon cease. It is then due to the magnitude of the proposition for the considerable and speedy increase of the school fund, that its necessity, if possible, or its utility, at least, should be satisfactorily demonstrated; and it is for this purpose that I have already presented ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... little folk to feed, so we seated ourselves on the fungus log, and waited for him to point one out. He did. He could not resist giving that delicate morsel to his first-born. With many wary approaches, he dropped at last into the scanty undergrowth, and there, a foot above the ground, we saw the young tanager. He was a little dumpling of a fellow, with no hint in his baby-suit of the glory that shall clothe him by and by. But where was the mother? and where had they nested? But for ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... our stock of water would not last as to the Cape of Good Hope, without putting the people to a scanty allowance, I resolved to stop at St Jago for a supply. On the 9th, at nine o'clock in the morning, we made the island of Bonavista, bearing S.W. The next day, we passed the isle of Mayo on our right; and the same evening anchored in Port ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... That great house of cards, the new Cursaal, had not yet arisen; and its table-d'hote, reading-room, and profane mysteries of roulette and rouge-et-noir, found temporary domicile in a narrow, disreputable-looking den in the main street, where accommodation of all kinds, but especially for dinner, was scanty in the extreme. The public tables at the hotels were consequently thronged, and there acquaintances were soon made. The day of my arrival at Homburg I was seated next to Van Haubitz; his manner was off hand and frank, we entered into conversation, took our after-dinner cigar ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... Arab, looking as if he had stepped from the pages of the "Arabian Nights," but a kind of little brown monster with an overhanging forehead and ugly, scanty hair. ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... yesterday I wrote her some verses for the occasion. The work at the Hippodrome took a great deal of my time, and there is a poor homeless fellow now at work in my garden, whom it was my privilege to lead to Christ there, and who touched me not a little this morning by bringing me three plants out of his scanty earnings. He has connected himself with our Mission and ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss |
