"Scarcely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fine film of mud. People were about, and London was arousing itself to meet the new day. Harry knew that he was near his journey's end. Tired as he was, he was determined to make his report before he thought of sleep. And then, suddenly, around a bend, came a sight that brought Harry to his feet, scarcely able to believe his eyes. It was Graves, on a bicycle. At the sight of Harry on the truck he stopped. Then ...
— The Boy Scout Aviators • George Durston
... hotels alone, the five-story Brunswick rooming-house at Sixth and Howard streets, it is believed that 300 people perished. The building had 300 rooms filled with guests. It collapsed to the ground entirely and fire started amidst the ruins scarcely five minutes later. ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... even the extremity of his impudence could scarcely hardly withstand the cold look of utter contempt with which Nigel received his proposal, returning it with a simple, "I only play where I know my company, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... with hardly an exception, have not remarked the periods of the other stars, and they have no name for them, and do not measure them against one another by the help of number, and hence they can scarcely be said to know that their wanderings, being infinite in number and admirable for their variety, make up time. And yet there is no difficulty in seeing that the perfect number of time fulfils the perfect year when all the eight revolutions, ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... although the vermis, or worm, which is so pernicious to shipping in tropical climates, and the termite, possess so many destructive qualities, yet these very properties serve the most important purposes and designs. Scarcely any thing perishable on land escapes the termite, or in water, the worm; and it is from thence evident, that these animals are designed by nature to rid both of incumbrances, which in tropical climates would be ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... scarcely reassuring. Not that superstition lent its terrors to the lonely scene, but that through the blank panes of the window, alternately appearing and disappearing from view as the shutter pointed out by Uncle David blew to and fro in the wind, I saw, or was persuaded that I saw, a beam of ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... H. Lindsay and his numerous staff occupy almost the entire floor. In one corner, however, a small room embedded in the heavy cornice is rented by a dentist, Dr. Ephraim Leonard. The dentist's office is a snug little hole, scarcely large enough for a desk, a chair, a case of instruments, a "laboratory," and a network of electric appliances. From the one broad window the eye rests upon the blue shield of lake; nearer, almost at the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... good concerts that offered, he made a fortnightly visit to the art stores, and he patronized (so far as he could endure them) the theatres—the chief and final resource of the town. But the concerts were a factor far from constant; and the theatres offered scarcely once a month a play that a person of taste and intelligence cared to sit through. Abroad he had been a valiant first-nighter; but he learned presently that at home the house for a premiere was composed largely of people whose tickets ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... His blood began to pound through his veins and to rush along under the surface of his skin like a sheet of fire. Waves of fury surged into his brain, making him dizzy, confusing his sight—he could scarcely refrain from grinding his teeth. He descended to the basement, ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... than other people could grant Repeating Represent, but do not pronounce Rochefoucault Rough corners which mere nature has given to the smoothest Scandal: receiver is always thought, as bad as the thief Scarcely any body who is absolutely good for nothing Scrupled no means to obtain his ends Secrets Seeming frankness with a real reserve Seeming openness is prudent Self-love draws a thick veil between us and our faults Serious without being dull Shakespeare Shepherds and ministers ...
— Widger's Quotations from Chesterfield's Letters to his Son • David Widger
... was life become, in the land of which Pliny had spoken as scarcely dry land at all. And, in truth, the sea which Sebastian so much loved, and with so great a satisfaction and sense of wellbeing in every hint of its nearness, is never far distant in Holland. Invading ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... this kind we should form the habit of avoiding; for they may seriously annoy at a time when we dream not that they are thought of for a moment. Think how, just as you had seated yourself at the table, tired and hungry, you would like to be called away, your food scarcely tasted, to perform some task, the urgency of which to you, at least, was ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... out, but scarcely passed the doorway when the lost musicians appeared, under the guidance of Maurice and Henry Scott. They were not, perhaps, quite beyond suspicion as to sobriety, but there was no fear of their being unable ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... in thinking of you. Do you, my husband, think as frequently of your Theo., and wish for her? Do you really feel a vacuum in your pleasures? As for your wife, she has bid adieu to pleasure till next October. When, when will that month come? It appears to me a century off. I can scarcely yet realize to myself that we are to be so long separated. Do not imagine, however, that I mean to beg you to join me this summer. No, my husband, I know your reasons, and approve them. Your wife feels a consolation in talking ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... different times, and thus destroy the sharpness and distinctness of the sound. This may be proved by many striking facts. If we put a bell in a receiver containing a mixture of hydrogen gas and atmospheric air, the sound of the bell can scarcely be heard. During a shower of rain or of snow, noises are greatly deadened, and when sound is transmitted along an iron wire or an iron pipe of sufficient length, we actually hear two sounds, one transmitted more rapidly through the solid, and the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... Mentor, more obedient than a servant, and as silent as a statue; and this strange guardian, who had formerly fought side by side with Schamyl, and cut down the Circassians with the sang-froid of a butcher's boy wringing the neck of a fowl, and who now scarcely dared to open his lips, as if the entire police force of the Czar had its eye upon him; this old soldier, who once cared nothing for privations, now, provided he had his chocolate in the morning, his kummel with his coffee at breakfast, and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... said the princess. "I scarcely closed my eyes all night long. Goodness knows what was in my bed. I lay upon something hard, so that I am black and blue all over. It is ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... be even said from his days of boyhood, Napoleon felt an inward presentiment that he was not destined to live in mediocrity. This persuasion soon taught him to treat others with disdain, and to entertain the highest opinion of himself. Scarcely had he obtained a subaltern command in the artillery, when he considered himself as the superior of his equals, and the equal of his superiors. In his 20th year he was placed at the head of the army of Italy. Without appearing to be in the slightest degree surprised by his elevation, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... sympathetically at the palpably frightened little figure. It was the feeling of standing there facing all eyes that unnerved poor Bess. For a second or two her hand trembled so greatly that she could scarcely hold her bow. Then by a sudden inspiration she looked over the heads of the congregation to the west window, where the sunset light was gleaming through figures of crimson and blue and gold. Down all the centuries music ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... "It is her own. It concerneth me not how she useth it. Scarcely did I win her pardon. And now I ask not how she divideth her jewels and ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... about two o'clock, having climbed to the top with considerable puffing of the engine but otherwise almost imperceptibly to the passengers. When we were halted, upon the crown, at Sherman Station, to permit us to alight and see for ourselves, I scarcely might believe that we were more than eight thousand feet in air. There was nothing to indicate, except some little difficulty of breath; not so much as I had feared when in Cheyenne, whose six thousand feet gave me a ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... drew forth a paper and unfolded it. Scarcely had he unfolded it than he attempted to replace it in his pocket, but General Leydet threw himself upon him and seized his arm. Several Representatives leant forward, and read the order for the expulsion of the Assembly, signed "Fortoul, Minister ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... sentiments which they expressed were so entirely swept away by the tide of reckless fury which soon afterward impelled an armed invasion of the South, that (with a few praiseworthy but powerless exceptions) scarcely a vestige of them was left. Not only were they obliterated, ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... sermon (which would scarcely cause surprise to-day if preached by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Chapel Royal), the incumbent got up at the altar and declared his belief that great part of the doctrine of the sermon was ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... failing was plain. Scarcely had one scarred victim of London's unkindness passed through before the bell would ring; the office boy, who, in the intervals of frowning sternly on the throng, as much as to say that he would stand no nonsense, would cry, "Next!" and another dull-eyed wreck would drift through, to be followed ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... was all that could be wished in the way of heat and bright sunshine, so the ladies came to the garden seat. Robinette was looking out for them, and could scarcely wait for the older lady to be settled among the cushions and wrapped up in the rugs by her daughter. There are treacherous draughts under trees, and Polly was very careful of her mother. At last all arrangements were complete, and Mrs. Lewis ...
— The Story of a Robin • Agnes S. Underwood
... transactions had given a spirit to trade and industry, and only for a system of government, which, as far as any government can do, crushed enterprise and fettered trade, both provinces would have so flourished immediately after the war that the reaction which the withdrawal of a few troops produced would scarcely have been felt. As matters stood the provinces were already flourishing, and schemes of improvement were everywhere in contemplation. Steam navigation, which had proved so useful on the St. Lawrence, and had, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... on the stores consisted in bringing thirteen loads over a total distance of nine and a half miles. First of all, the cases had to be dug out of the snow-drifts, and loading and unloading the sledges was scarcely less arduous. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... cathedral library at Siena, at the great series of frescoes illustrative of the life of Pope Pius the Second. It had been a brilliant personal history, in contact now and again with certain remarkable public events—a career religious yet mundane, you scarcely know which, so natural is the blending of lights, of interest in it. How unlike the Peruginesque conception of life in its almost perverse other-worldliness, which Raphael now leaves behind him, but, like a true ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... drains it. For land, water, vegetation, wildlife, minerals, and men's habits are not separable from one another in the natural frame. So that if the early planters, using methods of hoe tillage scarcely less primitive than those of the Indians, mined the Tidewater soils for tobacco production in a way that required new fields every few years, one result was that those soils tired and thinned and finally stopped supporting ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... court looked upon him as his equal, Schiller, too modest to suppose he had earned such favors, was filled with a new zeal, and his poetical genius displayed for a time an almost inexhaustible energy. Scarcely had his "Wallenstein" been finished, in 1799, when he began his "Mary Stuart." This play was finished in the summer of 1800, and a new one was taken in hand in the same year,—the "Maid of Orleans." In the spring of 1801 the "Maid of Orleans" appeared ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... 240 tons burthen; very fleet, and had a flush deck; and her cabins were fitted up with every possible attention to convenience, and with great elegance; and had she been intended as a war craft, she could scarcely have been more powerfully armed, for she carried four brass deck-guns—two six-pounders and two four-pounders—mounted on carriages resembling dolphins, four two-pounder rail guns—two on each side—and ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... to the jail, and demanded to see his steward; the jailer hesitating at first, at length granted his permission. He found Manuel locked up in a little, unwholesome cell, with scarcely a glimmer of light to mark the distinction of day and night; and so pale and emaciated, that had he met him in the street he should scarcely have recognised him. "Gracious God! What crime could have brought such an excess of punishment ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... tax on a commodity, almost always diminishes the demand more or less; and it can never, or scarcely ever increase the demand. It may, therefore, be laid down as a principle, that a tax on imported commodities, when it really operates as a tax, and not as a prohibition, either total or partial, almost always falls ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... lowered his right hand when he led with his left; and he felt the gentle pressure of Joe Bevan's glove less frequently. At no stage of a pupil's education did Joe Bevan hit him really hard, and in the first few lessons he could scarcely be said to hit him at all. He merely rested his glove against the pupil's face. On the other hand, he was urgent in imploring the pupil to hit him as ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... persisting in her sarcastic nickname for Rhoda's chosen hero, and letting off little shafts against him, more smart than nattering. On Mrs Darcy she called perpetually, perhaps with a view to meet him at her house; but all Mr Welles' alleged devotion to his dear Aunt Eleanor scarcely ever seemed to result in his going to see her at the Maidens' Lodge. When Rhoda met him, which she very often did, it was either by his calling at the Abbey, or by an accidental rencontre—if accidental it were—in some secluded glade ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... and scarcely had he spoken when there was a blinding flash of light. Almost at the same instant came a deafening peal of thunder. The sky directly overhead seemed to open up and down came ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... complained of feeling poorly. A small stream had to be crossed. The sight of the stream brought the strange water delirium to Richmond, when he begged his attendants to take him quickly to Montreal. It need scarcely be explained here that hydrophobia {420} is not caused by lack of water, but by contagious transmission. The feeling passed, as the first terrors of the disease are usually spasmodic, and the Governor was proceeding through the woods with ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... from Philadelphia leaving Mr. Cramer there. He can describe our new house to you when he returns. My health is good but I find so much to do that I can scarcely keep up with public business, let alone answering all the private letters I receive. My going to Philadelphia and spending half my time there as I hope to do, will give me some leisure. I attend to public business there by telegraph and avoid numerous calls taking up ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... Johns," declared Captain Westfield, scarcely less excited. "There's no other river ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... Scarcely had Berkeley and his adherents departed on their flight from Jamestown, when some of the disaffected citizens of the town, seeing the lights in the palace so suddenly extinguished, shrewdly suspected their design. Without staying to ascertain ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... on the bed's edge and laughed until he could scarcely see the man, who observed him in patient annoyance. And every time Berkley looked at him he went into another fit of uncontrollable laughter, as he realised the one delightful weakness in this thorough-paced rogue—pride in the lustre cast upon himself by the immaculate appearance of ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... which you do me the honour to ask my opinion respecting the pedigree of your island goblin, le feu follet Belenger; that opinion I cheerfully give, with a promise that it is only an opinion; in hunting for the etymons of these fairy names we can scarcely expect to arrive ...
— Letters to his mother, Ann Borrow - and Other Correspondents • George Borrow
... second team arrived and was drawn up aside the former. No inquiry was made as to the ownership of the latter. Everybody recognized it as the turnout of Larry Stivers. But the most remarkable feature of the proceeding, that excited curiosity, was the slight construction of the sleighs. It could scarcely be conceived that they would stand the trying test of the proposed race. But they did. Each driver having purchased a bundle of whips, jumped into his seat. The word was given. Off they went at full ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... longer think clearly. But blindly, stubbornly, doggedly, he fought the flames. His movements became mechanical. Sometimes his descending bough hit the fire and sometimes it struck the unignited leaves. Charley was fast nearing the point of exhaustion. He could scarcely control his movements. Yet he tried valiantly to hold himself to his task. He thought of the turtle-dove on the burning stump and for a moment the thought seemed to give him new strength. But the inspiration was only momentary. Blindly now he staggered ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... looking back, some of them told us, as we walked about with a French officer who was our guide. Eighteen months of it! Summer wasn't quite so bad. One can always bear hardships when weather, at least, is kind. But the winters! It is those winters that scarcely bear thinking of, ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... so frightened that she could scarcely find strength to talk. When she finally got control of herself again she began: "He came here on the first of November and rented this room for himself. But he was here only twice before he brought the lady and left her alone here. She was very ill when ...
— The Case of The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... great humility to the curate of San Piero each year in Lent, but he would never admit it to any one else. Indeed, if any of his family ever suggested that he was somewhat hasty, he flew into such an ungovernable rage in proving the contrary that it was scarcely wise to stay in the house while the fit lasted. Marietta alone was safe. As for her brothers, though the elder was nearly forty years old, it was not long since his father had given him a box on the ears which made him see simultaneously all the colours of all the glasses ever ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... for the gradations by which an organ in any species has been perfected, we ought to look exclusively to its lineal ancestors; but this is scarcely ever possible, and we are forced in each case to look to species of the same group, that is to the collateral descendants from the same original parent-form, in order to see what gradations are possible, and for the chance ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... the freedom of women was scarcely launched when the long-threatened Civil War broke forth and precipitated the struggle for the liberty of another class whose slavery seemed far more terrible than the servitude of white women. The five years' ordeal which ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... in whispers, but the young leader himself said scarcely anything, his mind being occupied with deep and intense thought. He knew that the venture in search of an Indian canoe would be accompanied by most imminent risks, the vigilance and skill of Shif'less Sol and himself would be ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... settlements were few at first and then wanting altogether. Early in October the drenched portagers were already sleeping in their frozen clothes. The boats began to break up. Quantities of provisions were lost. Soon there was scarcely anything left but flour and salt pork. It took nearly a fortnight to get past the Great Carrying Place, in sight of Mount Bigelow. Rock, bog, and freezing slime told on the men, some of whom began to fall sick. Then came ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... strange what plaints are brought us every day Of men made miserable by marriage; So that, amongst a thousand, scarcely ten Have not some grievous actions 'gainst ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... it happen," said Mary, when her cousin's transports had a little subsided, "that you, who are in such ecstasies at the idea of seeing your brother, have scarcely mentioned his ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... bright light, which did not show through the curtain at all, and which seemed almost dazzling enough to be Calcium or Drummond, shed its rays directly upon her side-face, throwing every feature, from brow to chin, into bold relief, and making every fold of her dark dress visible. But I scarcely saw the dress, the face being so remarkable beyond any thing I had ever witnessed. I had looked to see an old, wrinkled hag—it being the general understanding that all witches and fortune-tellers must be long past the noon of life; ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... excellence of librarians could tell us, and though his knowledge of the age of MSS. was admirable, he was remarkably uncommunicative regarding their pedigree, meagre in his descriptions, and apparently insensible to paleographic beauty. There is scarcely, in the whole British Museum, a less satisfactory book than his catalogue of the Royal library. Thus, the student is hampered by the want of a guide, and must hew paths for himself through the luxuriant growth and accumulations of many centuries. ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... making skirts; they talked and laughed and sang at will. Mothers nursed their babes in the dwelling and under its projecting roof. Budding girls patted and loved and dimpled the cheeks of the squirming babes of more fortunate young women, and there was scarcely a child that passed in or out of the house, that did not have to steady itself by laying a hand on the lap of the corpse. All seemed to understand death. One, they say, does not die until the anito calls — and then one always goes into a goodly life which the old men ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... I should be wrong in saying that one of the principal reasons which makes this so desirable a port for navy ships is the advantages presented by the sand-bar at the mouth of the harbour for shore evolutions? This may or may not be so; but scarcely a week passed without our captain taking us ashore to play at soldiers, and sometimes two or even three times a week. The bar has many qualities suitable for military operations; a rocky grass-covered ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... and once more to Chicago, where, as was often the case, she was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Fernando Jones; from here across to Painesville and other towns in northern Ohio; then on to numerous places in western New York, and finally home to Rochester, April 25, having slept scarcely two nights in the same ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... silence? I will not upbraid you, because I tremble when I think what may perhaps have occasioned it. Mamma has become almost as anxious as myself, therefore, as soon as you can, pray write, if it be but one line to say you are well and at peace, I do not, will not ask more. I scarcely like to write on indifferent subjects in this letter, but yet as you have given me nothing to answer, I must do so to fill up my paper; for if what I dread be not the case, you will not thank me for an epistle containing but a dozen lines. London ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... a new wife, chose to remember Lady Tressady's existence for the first time for many months, and to bestow some of his carefully adapted conversation upon her. While, last of all, Edward Watton came up to her with a cousinly kindness she had scarcely yet received from him, and, drawing a chair beside her, overflowed with talk about George, and the Bill, and the state of things at Market Malford. In fact, it was soon clear even to Letty's bewildered sense that till her husband should arrive she was perhaps, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... drop her on the way, if that's what you're thinking of. I'm not that kind of man at all, and I am particularly fond of the child. I scarcely ever complain when she keeps me awake at night, though many men I know would want to smother her. She and my wife are stopping with my mother-in-law in Rathmines. I'm going down for a fortnight's yachting with the Major. I might persuade him to give you a day's sailing, perhaps, if he doesn't find ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... corridors that switched off at right angles; facing the window stood a dark walnut sideboard whose shelves were laden with porcelain, glassware and cups and glasses in a row. The centre table was so large for such a small room that when the boarders were seated it scarcely left space for passage at ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... King's consent for her to go to St. Denis had been brought to her while I was reading; she prided herself, and with reason, upon having returned to her closet without the slightest mark of agitation, though she said she felt so keenly that she could scarcely regain her chair. She added that moralists were right when they said that happiness does not dwell in palaces; that she had proved it; and that, if I desired to be happy, she advised me to come and enjoy a retreat in which the liveliest imagination might find full exercise in the contemplation ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... hitch rails before the post and crowded in. A few paused along the counters of merchandise that flanked the left side of the big room while the rest headed straight for the long bar that extended the full length of the opposite side. The Three Bar men had scarcely tossed off their first drink before there sounded a clatter of hoofs outside and twelve men from ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... well made, with a singularly grave, thoughtful expression, and a rare but most winning smile; and Anne was overflowing with affectionate gladness at intercourse with one who belonged to the golden age of her childhood. I could scarcely believe but that in the friction of the parting the spark would be elicited, and I should even have liked to kindle it for them myself, being tolerably certain that warm-hearted, unguarded Parson Frank would forget ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the coal dust had coated his face, and the sweat from his exertions was running in streaks. He dropped his burden in the corner by the stove and wiped his face on a coarse bandana handkerchief. I could scarcely accept the verdict of my senses. The Bishop, black as a coal-heaver, in a workingman's cheap cotton shirt (one button was missing from the throat), and in overalls! That was the most incongruous of all—the ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... women, and they promised to use them if the need came. Meanwhile the flight went on, and the farther it went the sadder it became. Children became exhausted, and had to be carried by people so tired that they could scarcely walk themselves. There was nobody in the line who had not lost some beloved one on that fatal river bank, killed in battle, or tortured to death. As they slowly ascended the green slope of the mountain ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Tourainese to the slowness with which population increases. In the commune of Tocqueville the births are only three to a marriage, but both Monsieur and Madame de Tocqueville think that the number of children here is still less. I scarcely meet any. ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... awoke he staggered suddenly to his feet. The smart of his back and legs recalled him, after a few moments of bewilderment, to a mental torture he had scarcely yet had time to feel. He—David Grieve—had been beaten—thrashed like a dog—by Jim Wigson! The remembered fact brought with it a degradation of mind and body—a complete unstringing of the moral fibres, which made even revenge seem an impossible output of energy. A nature of this sort, with such ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his forehead was never absent from his mind, and through all the ceaseless rumble around him he could hear the dull thud of the stone upon the hard skull. The efforts which he made to throw off these horrible weights that crushed him were like those of a man awakening from a nightmare. He scarcely dared to speak for fear of uttering words which would betray him and which seemed to tremble on his lips. Had he been on shore he would have fled to the solitude of a forest; but here he was resistlessly impelled ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... every agent of the Committee. He was an ex-soldier who had been crippled years ago by the loss of one arm, and had held the post of concierge in a house in the Ruelle du Paradis ever since. His name was Grosjean. He was very old, and nearly doubled up with rheumatism, had scarcely any hair on his head or flesh on his bones. At this moment he appeared to be suffering from a cold in the head, for his eyes were streaming and his narrow, hooked nose was adorned by a drop of moisture ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... Mahomet corrupted. God is known, with that solid and general knowledge which founds a settled doctrine and a form of worship, under the influence of this tradition and nowhere else. We assert this as a simple fact of contemporary history; and there is scarcely any fact in ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... place his left arm around your father's neck, and with his right hand press on the nape of the neck just above his collar. 'Here!' your father cried out, thinking it was a joke, 'what's the game?' But the last word was scarcely audible, for he collapsed across the table. I stood there aghast. Howell, suddenly noticing me, told me roughly to clear out, as I was not wanted. I demanded to know what had happened, but I was told that it did not concern me. My idea was that Mr. Henfrey had been drugged, for he was still ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... it is almost impossible to penetrate into the forest. Flocks of paroquets and cockatoos, of most brilliant plumage, hover above them, while the blue-ringed tomtits sport beneath their branches. The sea was almost calm, and scarcely ruffled by the passage of the innumerable black swans continuously ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... present time, only to point a camera at a crowd to procure its instant dispersion. When a copy of the face of a person is made and taken away from him, a portion of his life goes with the picture. Unless the sovereign had been blessed with the years of a Methusaleh he could scarcely have permitted his life to be distributed in small pieces together with the coins of ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Palestine and Syria withheld their bushels of corn, their three oxen or their twenty sheep; or perhaps they were so sparing of bakshish that the tribute itself was swallowed up and vanished entirely from the accounts. It was scarcely possible to take costly measures to punish such delinquents, so the business was turned over to some kind neighbour of the recalcitrant chief, and a little war was soon fairly ablaze. But when direct commands of royal ambassadors were treated ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... and sinister time of July 28, 1914, when one of the oldest, feeblest, and least capable of living men, the Emperor of Austria, under the pretence of avenging the death of the heir-presumptive to his throne, signed with his trembling hand, which could scarcely hold the pen, the first of his many proclamations of war, and so touched the button of the monstrous engine that set ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... deficiencies in the Begum's affairs, finding the Nabob's allowance totally squandered, that the most sacred pensions were left unpaid, that nothing but disorder and confusion reigned in all his affairs, that the Nabob's education was neglected, that he could scarcely read or write, that there was scarcely any mark of a man left in him except those which Nature had at first imprinted,—I say, all these abuses being produced in a body before them, they thought it necessary to send up to inquire into them; and a considerable deficiency or embezzlement appearing ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Scarcely more than a week had passed when another messenger came to old John Thornton, and one so peremptory that he rose and followed it in the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... dignified, it has been demeaned. No other honest work in the country so belittles a woman socially as housework performed for money. It is the only field of labor which has scarcely felt the touch of the modern labor movement; the only one where the hours, conditions, and wages are not being attacked generally; the only one in which there is no organization or standardization, no training, no ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... ostensible aim of the book, however, has been kept steadily in view; which is to furnish the best possible exercises for practice in Rhetorical reading. To this end, the greatest variety of style and sentiment has been sought. There is scarcely a tone or modulation, of which the human voice is capable, that finds not here some piece adapted precisely to its best expression. There is not an inflection, however delicate, not an emphasis, however slight, however strong, that does not ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... "Childhood in Literature and Art" (350), dealing with it as found in Greek, Roman, Hebrew, Early Christian, English, French, German, American, literature, in mediaval art, and in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales. Of Greek the author observes: "There is scarcely a child's voice to be heard in the whole range of Greek poetic art. The conception is universally of the child, not as acting, far less as speaking, but as a passive member of the social order. It is not its individual so much as its related life which is contemplated." The ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... to an enemy who is not materially weaker in numbers and who has 500 quite fresh troops, is one that cannot be decided by pursuing an analysis further, we must here rely upon experience, and there will scarcely be an officer experienced in War who will not in the generality of cases assign the advantage to that side which ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... by-and-bye) would be astonished at the quantity of physic dispensed by the doctor. My constitution is a strong one, and a dyspeptic old friend used to envy my "treble-distilled gastric juice." Before I went to Holloway Gaol I scarcely knew, except inferentially, that I had a stomach; and while I was there I scarcely knew I ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... our sicknesses, infirmities, sins, curse, death, and the wrath that was due to man. And all this he did for a base, undeserving, unthankful people; yea, for a people that was at enmity with him. "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more, then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... exclusively to him, but this he would not have. Very slowly, very painfully, he had struggled out of his Slough of Despond, and what that struggle had meant to him none but himself would ever know. And now that he had made it, and in a measure succeeded, he suffered scarcely less than before. His strength was undoubtedly greater, his spirits were more even; but these were the only visible signs of improvement. The long, sleepless nights with spells of racking pain continued. Perhaps they ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... prominently or proudly in its early annals. In 1834, forty-three years ago, Mr. Dodson came to dispute with the aboriginal Pottawatomies the possession of the Fox River valley. White faces were rare in those days, and scarcely a squatter's cabin rose among the Indian lodges. The Captain built the first saw-mill on the river, and he and Col. Lyon were the hardy spirits about whom the early settlers ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... fashion. By the morning he grew calm through exhaustion, and went into a wretched tavern in the outskirts, asked for a room and sat down on a chair before the window. He was overtaken by a fit of convulsive yawning. He could scarcely stand upright, his whole body was worn out, and he did not even feel fatigue, though fatigue began to do its work; he sat and gazed and comprehended nothing; he did not understand what had happened to him, why he found himself alone, with his limbs stiff, with a taste ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... The birds scarcely know the forest so well as he did. When he was a tiny baby,—a fat, brown, little pappoose,—his mother used to bundle him up in skins, strap him to a board, and carry him on her back when she went to gather the bark of the young basswood tree for twine. As the strong young ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... then in my dream, that they went till they came into a certain country, whose air naturally tended to make one drowsy, if he came a stranger into it. And here Hopeful began to be very dull and heavy of sleep; wherefore he said unto Christian, I do now begin to grow so drowsy that I can scarcely hold up mine eyes, let us lie down here ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... I have scarcely mentioned Leslie's sons yet. George, the future Academician, was an intimate friend of mine in those days. He was a clever talker, and he had the advantage—often precious to a taciturn companion like me—of never allowing the conversation to flag for a single ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... have, at last, the whip-poor-will, an American bird, and not the conventional lark or nightingale, although the elves of the Old World seem scarcely at home on the banks of the Hudson. Drake's memory has been kept fresh not only by his own poetry, but by the beautiful elegy written by his friend Fitz-Greene Halleck, the first stanza ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... such a dependable size-up can scarcely be over-estimated. It is not easy to gain the initial chance to present your capabilities to the one man with whom you have chosen to be associated. But it would be tremendously harder to win a second opportunity ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... bear them children, thus aiding in the war upon progress. One is often astonished to discover that the wife of some sordid and prosaic manufacturer or banker or professional man is a woman of quick intelligence and genuine charm, with intellectual interests so far above his comprehension that he is scarcely so much as aware of them. Again, there are the leading feminists, women artists and other such captains of the sex; their husbands are almost always inferior men, and sometimes downright fools. But not paupers! Not incompetents ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... problem how most effectively to obtain that great desideratum—a complete separating and saving operation—is one which taxes the skill and evokes the ingenuity of scientific men all over the world. The difficulty is that as scarcely any two gangues, or matrixes, are exactly alike, the treatment which is found most effective on one mine will often not answer in another. Much also depends on the proportion of gold to the ton of rock under treatment, as the most scientific and perfect processes of lixiviation ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... cup, they held it, with tempting smiles, toward Marian. She was very pale, though composed; and her hand shook not, as, smiling back, she gracefully accepted the crystal tempter, and raised it to her lips. But scarcely had she done so when every hand was arrested by her piercing exclamation ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... the bluff until noon; and near dusk the wind got up and the snow began to fall. It got thicker, and I could not sit still. I went out now and then and called, and was driven back, almost frozen, by the storm. I could scarcely see the lights a few yards away; the house shook. The memory of that awful night will haunt me all ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... performed a daring feat on the night of May 30, 1916, running into the harbor at Trieste and sinking a large transport believed to have many soldiers aboard. Scarcely a soul was saved, current report stated. The raider crept out to sea again and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... Scarcely was he settled on the throne when the Tartar invasions began. Their raids were repelled, but they instigated Taitsong to an important measure. It had always been evident that the Chinese troops, hitherto little more than a raw militia, were unable ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... carriage wheels to roll on, and not for the foot passengers, who must keep within the space that lies between the trottoirs and line of houses. With the exception of the Piazza del Duomo there is scarcely anything that can be called a piazza in all Milan, unless irregular and small open places may be dignified with that name; the houses and buildings are extremely solid in their construction and handsome in their appearance. A canal runs thro' the city and leads to Pavia; on this canal are stone ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... the very midst of bandboxes, portmanteaus, packing-cases, and travelling trunks. I scarcely ever knew a mind so sluggish as not to feel a certain degree of rapture, at the thoughts of travelling. It should seem as if the imagination frequently journeyed so fast as to enjoy a species of ecstasy, when there are any hopes of dragging the cumbrous ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... period, what one would scarcely expect to find is intellectual ambition on a very extensive scale and great variety in the branches of knowledge and in the scope of ideas. And yet it is in the thirteenth century that we meet for the first time in Europe and in France with the conception and the execution of a vast ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the problems of the time, and throwing search-lights into every corner of its own passionate heart. He had attained, after much struggling, to a glowing faith, and he described the process in characteristic and drastic similes from Nature, which are scarcely suitable for translation. ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... stood was illuminated by the moon, that had now risen, though all around was dark. Hence his features and person were easily distinguished. His hands hung at his side. His eyes were downcast, and he was motionless as a statue. My last words seemed scarcely to have made any impression on his sense. I had no need to provide against the possible suggestions of revenge. I felt nothing but the tenderness of compassion. I continued, for some time, to observe him in silence, ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... United States, whose rich territory on the Pacific is for the ordinary purposes of commerce practically cut off from communication by water with the Atlantic ports, the political and commercial advantages of such a project can scarcely be overestimated. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Chester A. Arthur • Chester A. Arthur
... more, and the two children stood with the rain drenching their hair and clothes, and almost blinding them, as in silence they unfastened the chain that held Vulcan to his kennel. The dog was scarcely able to believe his senses when he felt the little soft hands pawing at his neck, and as soon as he was free he jumped on them wildly, embracing them with his hairy arms and ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... wheeled round, with a prodigious clatter on the pavement, and rumbled up the street, disappearing in the twilight, while the ear still tracked its course. Scarcely was it gone, when the people began to question whether the coach and attendants, the ancient lady, the spectre of old Caesar, and the Old Maid herself, were not all a strangely combined delusion, with some dark purport in its mystery. The whole town was astir, so ...
— The White Old Maid (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 1814. The audience, when the case came on, was therefore small, consisting chiefly of legal men, the lite of the profession throughout the country. Mr. Webster entered upon his argument in the calm tone of easy and dignified conversation. His matter was so completely at his command that he scarcely looked at his brief, but went on for more than four hours with a statement so luminous, and a chain of reasoning so easy to be understood, and yet approaching so nearly to absolute demonstration, that he seemed to carry with him ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick |
