"Sketchy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fair girlish faces into a region of pure poetry. These frescoes are superior to Sodoma's work in the Farnesina. Impressed, as all artists were, by the monumental character of Borne, and fired by Raphael's example, he tried to abandon his sketchy and idyllic style for one of greater majesty and fulness. The delicious freshness of his earlier manner was sacrificed; but his best efforts to produce a grandiose composition ended in a confusion of individually beautiful ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... by bailiffs without, until death came to his relief. A corner of the Morning Post noticed his death, generously adding, that his manner displayed considerable genius, though his style was rather sketchy; and referred to an advertisement, which announced that Mr. Varnish, a well-known printseller, had still on hand a very few drawings and painings by Richard Tinto, Esquire, which those of the nobility and gentry who might wish to complete their collections of modern art were ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... with precision, taking nothing for granted, leaving nothing to the imagination. That cookery articles, even if read, are certainly not acted upon, is proved by the monotony of the suburban dinner. And they are not acted upon because the reader finds them incomplete, "sketchy," and superficial. ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... a thorough education," was the answer, "whether or not you ultimately become a writer. This education is indispensable for whatever career you select, and it must not be slipshod or sketchy. You should go ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Dutch figure, ugly as the one of Potiphar's wife (in an etching by Rembrandt), and no deliverer is in sight. The flesh tones are rather cold, a cadaverous white, but it is a Rembrandt white. The picture as a whole is sketchy and without charm or mystery. Nevertheless, the lion's paws are there. The other shows us a woman reading at a table. The colouring is warm and the still-life accessories are richly and minutely painted. Not a likely Rembrandt, either in theme or notably so in treatment. We must bow, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... learning to ride. He said that a friend had lent it to him—a man in Hanbridge whose mother had given up riding on account of stoutness—but who exactly this friend was Rachel knew not, Louis' information being characteristically sketchy and incomplete; and with his air of candour and good humour he had a strange way of warding off questions; so that already Rachel had grown used to a phrase which she would utter only in her mind, "I don't ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... The sketchy nature of Japanese poetry, especially in this five-line stanza, may be illustrated further by two poems quoted by Prof. B. H. Chamberlain in his "Things Japanese" ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... placed myself on record, I began to examine the other decorations. There were heads and faces, and architectural scraps, trees and animals, and bits of landscape and ships that pass in the night. Most of the work was decidedly sketchy, but some of the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... gale like that which swept from the open river would have frozen through arctic furs. Notwithstanding all this, his spirits were lighter than usual. The scene he had left at home floated on before his eyes, and transfused itself with the black, sketchy trees against the sky and blent with the ragged barbs of smoke that depended from cottage chimneys. The wind had been boisterous enough, and would have torn it away on a cantering jaunt not many minutes ago, but, surcharged as it was now with blinding snow, it had its own liberty ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... car to-day, as he occasionally liked to do, then asked, why was a Settlement? And as well as she could Carlisle retailed her rather sketchy information: how "they" planned to buy the deserted Dabney House, make it the headquarters for all the organized charities of the city, and use the rest of the great pile for working-men's clubs, night classes, lodgings, gymnasiums and so forth. Thanks to the influence of Rev. Mr. Dayne, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... I said, "that I like all those blanks. It's a good model, of course, but it's just a bit too sketchy." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... sketchy picture of religious life in India so far as it can be gathered from the older Brahmanic books has reference mainly to the kingdoms of the Kuru-Pancalas and Videha in 800-600 B.C. Another picture, somewhat ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... pieced together a few sketchy fragments of Miss Terroll's biography, just enough to make the wish for fuller knowledge tantalizing. That was her maiden name, also used as a stage name, but she had been married when just out of Wellesley. She spoke little of that episode. Her ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... dictated the painter; "execution sketchy; coloring quiet, to be in keeping with the place and subject, but pure. You know the scene better than I, so work away, Giotto. Motto—'Will ye pay or toll it, mother?' Price twenty-five guineas. Take it to What's-his-name's, and ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... very sketchy analysis of German femininity in the war, I reiterate views expressed on previous visits to Germany, that German women are not standing the anxiety of the war as well as those ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... temperamental and sketchy. The boards which formed the floor were never even nailed down; they were fine, wide planks without a knot in them, and they looked so well that we merely fitted them together as closely as we could and light-heartedly let them go at that. Neither did we properly chink the house. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... of Robert Clutterbuck, Esq." There are so many smooth and soft pictures at the exhibitions which we must look at very near, that the habit is acquired of seeing all in that manner. To those who should so see this of Mr Linnell, it will appear odd, sketchy, unfinished—recede, and it is of very great power, and comes out wonderfully with all the truth of nature. It is an out-of-door scene. The children in most natural positions, and separate from the background, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... brilliant, can sustain its energy when the demands upon it are constant, and all legitimate support and food withdrawn. I do not recollect in any, even of the most important of Cattermole's works, so much as a fold of drapery studied out from nature. Violent conventionalism of light and shade, sketchy forms continually less and less developed, the walls and the faces drawn with the same stucco color, alike opaque, and all the shades on flesh, dress, or stone, laid in with the same arbitrary brown, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... of them came filing in, bronzed, rugged, radiating a beauty of youth and health that no sketchy exigence of apparel could obscure, some one already seated at the table would put a foot on a chair opposite him and send it spinning out into the middle of the floor as a hint to the new-comer that that was his reserved seat. And the cow-puncher, sheep-herder, prospector, or man about ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... alone, she might die. He knelt by her side, and chafed her hands; but it was of no avail. Just then a thought came into his mind. He would paint her as she slumbered in that death-like swoon. He seized his brushes, and quickly wrought a picture—sketchy, but true—and when it was drawn he called it 'Death.' Then came signs of awakening. Tears flowed from the half-opened eyes, and rushes of colour, like the morning sunrise, stole over her cheeks. Then the mists cleared away, and she saw Chios kneeling before her, and, with a wild, ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... "you have given a somewhat sketchy outline of a minister's life; but my question remains yet,—what is the business of his life. You would not say that planing and sawing are the business ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... effort has been given in the pleasant pastime of writing these rambling and sketchy pages of reminiscences is dedicated to those who in the hours of trial and tribulation felt with Sir Philip Sidney, "Honor is the idol of man's mind" and determined to do that which honor demanded knowing that if they lost their honor they ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks
... on the top floor in the back, and gaining it, he jerked up the shade and looked out. Formerly a row of dreary yards extended to the houses in the rear. Now the frame of the new building filled them in, projecting in sketchy outline to the end of the lots. Disturbed he studied it—four stories, a hotel, apartments, or offices. Whatever it was it would be bad for him, bringing men so close ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... seemed to be black metal came out, with a silvery-white stylus attached to it. The pilot sat down the instant they stopped and began to draw in white lines on the black surface. He drew a picture of a man and an angular flying machine, and then a sketchy, impressionistic outline of a city's towers. He drew a circle to enclose all three drawings and indicated himself, the machine, and the distant city. Tommy nodded comprehension as the pilot looked up. Then came a picture of a half-naked ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... (2 vols., 1903), gives the New England Republican point of view; Rollo Ogden, Life and Letters of E.L. Godkin (2 vols., 1907); G.F. Parker, Recollections of Grover Cleveland (1909), is useful, but sketchy, there being as yet no thorough biography of Cleveland; T.C. Platt, Autobiography (1910), interestingly portrays the philosophy of a machine politician, but should be read with care; John Sherman, Recollections of Forty Years ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... well understood; likewise the general conditions of sedimentation are reasonably clear,—but the close interpretation of these conditions, to enable us to predict the extent of one of these deposits, or to explain its presence in one place and absence in another, is in an early and sketchy stage. ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... shall perhaps see it our duty ultimately to deposit these Six Paper-Bags in the British Museum, farther description, and all vituperation of them, may be spared. Biography or Autobiography of Teufelsdroeckh there is, clearly enough, none to be gleaned here: at most some sketchy, shadowy fugitive likeness of him may, by unheard-of efforts, partly of intellect, partly of imagination, on the side of Editor and of Reader; rise up between them. Only as a gaseous-chaotic Appendix to that aqueous-chaotic Volume can ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... and apparently pagan, way of stating the case; they will be considered in due time. The reader is asked to refrain from parting company with the writer, if his prejudices are aroused, until the consonance of this sketchy account of the basis of morality with Christianity and all idealism ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... query came back, the old need to know what he had been before putting on this present very casual body. Was his present state a reward or a penance? From the time of leaving the office to the last item in that sketchy dinner, he had been put upon by persons and circumstances. It was time to know what life ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... belied the annoyance. Phil surmised that she had enjoyed the experience; but Lois added no details to her hasty picture. Lois did not trouble herself greatly with details; everything with her was sketchy and impressionistic. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... body; but no! ingrate that I am, to-day I should be content—simply to be; even a cabbage ought to be happy in such perfect summer weather. T. B. Aldrich is in—as much as he ever is supposed to be; but I recall now that I read his sketchy book the other night, while I was brushing my hair, giving it a sort of 'good time generally,' letting it run wild a little before going to sleep. I read 'Pierre Antoine's Date Tree' quite through, and liked—the last part very much indeed. There are some people whom I am always very glad ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... foregoing pages of this chapter the authors have endeavored to present very briefly a sketchy notion of the astounding range of Edison's practical ideas, but they feel a sense of impotence in being unable to deal adequately with the subject in the space that can be devoted to it. To those who, like the authors, have had the privilege of examining the voluminous records which show the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... ami. It is inevitable that Turkey fights if Germany goes to war. England, France, Russia know it. Ask yourself, then, how enormous to us the value of those plans—tentative, sketchy, perhaps, yet the inception and foundation of those German-made and German-armed fortifications which today line the Dardanelles and the adjacent waters within ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... a scrap, apparently, was left over to cover, decently, the rest of the earth's surface—of that one was quite certain in looking at this vast inverted cup overflowing with ether. What there was of land was a very sketchy performance. Opposite ran the red line of the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... these waspish women by creating a court of every eligible man in the place. It was not a healthy thought, but it was the offspring of sheer vexation, and Helen experienced her second temptation that day when de la Vere, the irresistible "Reginald" of Mrs. Vavasour's sketchy reminiscences, came and asked ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... Pantalis. Nilsson had fixed the ideal of Helen in Europe and New York, and it is she, I believe, who started the questionable practice of having one performer impersonate both Marguerite and the classic Queen. Boito has given us so little of Goethe's Gretchen in his delightful, but sketchy, opera that it does not make much difference how the part is acted; but Helen is a character that seemed cut to the very form of Nilsson—regal in beauty and carriage, soul-moving in voice, serene in pose and gesture. ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... he spoke proved incomprehensible to Matthews. Luckily it was not altogether so to Abbas, that underling long resigned to the eccentricities of the Firengi, whose accomplishments included even a sketchy knowledge of his master's tongue. It appeared that the law of Bala Bala forbade the door of the Father of Swords to open before sunrise. But the tall-hatted one offered the visitor the provisional hospitality of a black tent, of a refreshing drink of goats' buttermilk, and of a comfortable ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... should have him warm to his work, and lay it down to Haxard in good round fashion, against his theory of accident. He could prove to the satisfaction of everybody that the man who was last seen with the drowned man—or was supposed to have been seen with him—according to some very sketchy evidence at the inquest, which never amounted to anything—was the man who pushed him off the bridge. He could gradually work up his case, and end the argument with a semi-jocular, semi-serious appeal to Haxard himself, like, 'Why, suppose it was your own case,' and ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... few, So easily and swift I drew, Sufficed for my design; My sketchy, superficial hand Drew solids at a dash—and spanned A surface with ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... went rushing past. Enticing odours arose from the kitchen. The grocery wagon came, and came again. The girls went home. A sketchy lunch was eaten off the kitchen table, and father stayed down town. The girls reappeared. They overran the kitchen, peeling oranges and pineapples and bananas for "heavenly hash." Marguerite grew cross. The Baby, who missed his nap, grew ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... not often send out a new volume, but when she does it is always a literary event.... Her previous books were sketchy and slight when compared with the finished and trained power evidenced in 'An Utter Failure.'"—New ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... Adj. incomplete; imperfect &c. 651; unfinished; uncompleted &c. (see complete &c. 729); defective, deficient, wanting, lacking, failing; in default, in arrear[obs3]; short of; hollow, meager, lame, halfand-half, perfunctory, sketchy; crude &c. (unprepared) 674. mutilated, garbled, docked, lopped, truncated. in progress, in hand; going on, proceeding. Adv. incompletely &c. adj.; by halves. Phr. caetera ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... vaguely debated plans for a self-mutilation such as would make his appearance as the Child Sir Lancelot inexpedient on public grounds; it was a heroic and attractive thought, but the results of some extremely sketchy preliminary experiments caused him ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... Codrington when he led his forlorn hope to the right and found that the Riet had to be crossed. 'I was given to understand that the Modder was fordable everywhere,' says Lord Methuen in his official despatch. One cannot read the account of the operations without being struck by the casual, sketchy knowledge which cost us so dearly. The soldiers slogged their way through, as they have slogged it before; but the task might have been made much lighter for them had we but clearly known what it was that we were trying to do. On the other hand, it is but fair to Lord Methuen to say ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... meat had a taste of flannel, Durtal had nodded a sketchy affirmative, knowing full well that if he ventured on the least comment he would have to endure an incoherent harangue on all the butchers ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Telegraph Hill, the newest and the most squalid part of town. The shallow water was in slow process of being filled in by sand from the grading uptown and with all sorts of miscellaneous debris, Pending solidity, this sketchy real estate swarmed with squatters. There were lots sunken below the street level, filled with stagnant water, discarded garments, old boxes, ashes, and rubbish; houses huddled closely together with stale water beneath; there were muddy alleys; murderous ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... occasionally and had bestowed a critical nod upon the one "blocked-in" countenance, or had drawn her brows together questioningly over a study in which the nose had a startlingly finished appearance in a still sketchy environment, but not until she had successfully avoided the last easel, planted at an erratic angle just where the unwary would be sure to stub his toe, did she make ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... have been written of late years about Japan have either been compiled from official records, or have contained the sketchy impressions of passing travellers. Of the inner life of the Japanese the world at large knows but little: their religion, their superstitions, their ways of thought, the hidden springs by which they move—all these are ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... semblance. Native to the mesa meadows is a pale iris, gardens of it acres wide, that in the spring season of full bloom make an airy fluttering as of azure wings. Single flowers are too thin and sketchy of outline to affect the imagination, but the full fields have the misty blue of mirage waters rolled across desert sand, and quicken the senses to the anticipation of things ethereal. A very poet's flower, I thought; not fit for gathering up, and proving a nuisance in the ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... full page reproduction, he glanced at first casually over the dozen or more sketches and studies on the succeeding pages. Many of them represented studies of women's heads and figures, with little or no attempt to obtain a likeness. Some were half-draped, showing in a sketchy way the long graceful lines of the half-nude figure, of bare shoulders and breasts, of gauze-like fabrics that but illy concealed impressive charms. Suddenly his eyes narrowed and a sharp exclamation fell from his lips. He bent closer to the pages and studied the drawings ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... publication of the first edition of this work, the figure in question has appeared from the pencil and burin of Mr. Cotman; of which the only fault, as it strikes me, is, that the surface is too rough—or the effect too sketchy.] ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... and 'loyal' seeker," Gravener said. "It was a sketchy design of her late husband's, and he handed it on to her; setting apart in his will a sum of money of which she was to enjoy the interest for life, but of which, should she eventually see her opportunity—the ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... In this sketchy portrait I must not forget one of the finest of this composer's gifts—his talent as a teacher of music. Everything has fitted M. d'Indy for this part. By his knowledge and his precise, orderly mind he must be a perfect teacher of composition. If I submit some ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... edition—whether a single story or a collection of stories—which has been reproduced from a magazine or magazines, is treated as if it were a novelty. It is a sound and benevolent convention, because the stuff of magazines only receives at best a very sketchy notice. Miss May Sinclair, however, is apparently prepared; to risk the loss of any advantage to be derived from it, for her collection of short and middle-sized stones republished under the title of the first of them, The Judgment of Eve (Hutchinson), is prefaced by an article in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... had been living in those days when it first beamed upon mankind that the earth was round, I am sure I should have said, "We know now the bounds of the earth: there are no interminable plains joined to the regions of the sun, allowing of indefinite sketchy outlines at the edges of maps. That little creature man will immediately begin to think that his world is ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... Rubens' method, and which strictly belongs to his colouring, from which arises what may be not improperly designated flimsiness, that is, the leaving too much of the first getting in of his picture, the first transparent sketchy brown. If in some respect this gives force to the more solid parts, by the contrast of the transparent with the opaque, yet is it rather a flashy force, in which the means become too visible; an entire substance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... in a sketchy manner. Determine on the place to begin your drawing and then use a continuous, easy line, without lifting the chalk from the paper, except when necessary to start in a ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... scope of this book to enter into a detailed account of the tiger, discussing his structure, habits, and characteristics, it may aid the reader if I give a sketchy general outline of some of the more prominent points of interest connected with the monarch of the jungle, the cruel, cunning, ferocious king of the cat tribe, the beautiful ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... was reviewed along with Leland's "English Gypsies" and Dr. Miklosich's "Dialects and Migrations of the Gypsies in Europe," and he was attacked for his derivations, his ignorance of philology and of other writers on his subject, his sketchy knowledge of languages, his interference with the purity of the idiom in his Romany specimens. His Gypsy songs were found interesting, his translations, of course, bad. The final opinion of the book as a book on the Gypsy language ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... no discussion. At once we turned our faces to the land scheme. Very sketchy; how could it be otherwise? On the German system plans for a landing on Gallipoli would have been in my pocket, up-to-date and worked out to a ball cartridge and a pail of water. By the British system (?) I have been obliged to concoct my own plans in a brace ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... prints of architectural subjects which are to be picked up in the stores. There is a good deal of choice among these. We have ourselves published one or two, from originals by Mr. Botch, which will answer as well as anything we know, being admirable in color and architectural feeling, and just sketchy enough. Pains should generally be taken not to make an elaborate picture of an architectural sketch, and the processes preliminary to making a highly-finished water-color painting, such as laying a ground-color of neutral orange, and sponging it partly out, cutting out foreground lights with ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... pere, Raymer was able to recall the date, approximately, and together they turned the file of the Pioneer Press until they came to the number containing the Associated Press story of the crime. It was fairly circumstantial; the young woman at the teller's window figured in it, and there was a sketchy description of the robber. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... NEWMAN and BRINE, were my earliest Artists. HENNING drew the first Cartoon, whilst NEWMAN and BRINE, and, later, HINE, between them, were responsible for most of the smaller cuts, head-and-tail-pieces, pictorial puns, and sketchy silhouettes, wherewith Punch's ...
— Punch, Volume 101, Jubilee Issue, July 18, 1891 • Various
... will be true, but it is liker a fiction than any of the true stories I have told you: but if you are patient with an old woman's stories, and are willing to begin with the beginning, I will try to be as sketchy as possible." ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... of these sketchy studies of fishing in Norway has been fairly warned already not to expect exciting records of slaughter amongst salmon. Of course, no angler would be at a loss to explain away his poor bags; his excuses are proverbial, ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... the Greatest Novelist of the Day: but I will go on a little further. Oh for some more brave Trollope; who I am sure conceals a much profounder observation than these Dreadful Denners of Romance under his lightsome and sketchy touch, as ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... the great republic across the sea was at this period of his life a little sketchy. He knew that there had been unpleasantness between England and the United States in seventeen-something and again in eighteen-something, but that things had eventually been straightened out by Miss ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... illustrations already given. Their study will, I believe, give some insight into the mental characteristics of the Chiriquians. That their art, so far as these figures are concerned, was not serious is indicated by the sketchy, unsystematic nature of the work, and more especially by the grotesque and occasionally amusing representation of ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... is but little similarity between the above sketchy trifle and the celebrated "Moon-Story" of Mr. Locke; but as both have the character of hoaxes (although the one is in a tone of banter, the other of downright earnest), and as both hoaxes are on the same subject, the moon—moreover, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... were thoroughly broken up in an astonishingly brief time. The real significance of their great career is that they called to the attention of the better class of citizens the necessity for at least a sketchy form of government and a framework of law. Such matters as city revenue were brought up for practically the first time. Gambling-houses were made to pay a license. Real estate, auction sales, and other licenses were also taxed. One of the ships ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... of drawings. The ones for us can be sketchy, and need not have too much exactitude of design. We know what we're doing—at ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... to emphasise the beauty and the sovereignty of that one central Figure on which all lights are concentrated, and on which the painter has lavished all the resources of his art. So God— for God is the Author of the Bible—on this great canvas has painted much in sketchy outline, and left much unfilled in, that every eye may be fixed on the central Figure, the Christ of God, on whose head comes down the Dove, and round whom echoes the divine declaration: 'This is My Beloved Son, in whom I am ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... information about the country is as sketchy and inaccurate as can be," I protested. "No one knows anything about it really. Here's the file of the United Services Institute. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... swift illumination up above—a rocket. The scene in which I am stranded is picked out in sketchy incipience around me. The crest of our trench stands forth, jagged and dishevelled, and I see, stuck to the outer wall every five paces like upright caterpillars, the shadows of the watchers. Their rifles are revealed beside them by a few spots of light. The trench is ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... pipe, and his face wore a sinister look as he took down a rather sketchy map of the wilds beyond the prairie belt. After studying it keenly, he sank into an attitude of concentrated thought. The stove crackled, its pipe glowing red; driving snow lashed the shiplap walls; ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... and apart like marionettes on the wires of the wind, he continued to wonder where he could have seen her. He had immediately classed her as a compatriot; her small nose, her clear tints, a kind of sketchy delicacy in her face, as though she had been brightly but lightly washed in with water-colour, all confirmed the evidence of her high sweet voice and of her quick incessant gestures. She was clearly an American, but with the loose native quality strained through a closer woof of manners: the ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... was sketchy, but in his own fashion he had acquired a range of knowledge which would have surprised many of the authorities who had had to deal with him. All the wealth of a big city library had been his to explore, and he had ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... electric dishwasher, depending, of course, on whether the family considers its benefits equal to the expense involved. If mother is to do the work, it may be warranted; but where her efforts are limited to one or two sketchy meals on Thursdays and Sunday evenings, one might well interview the person who is monitor of the service wing the bulk of the time. Dishwashers, cake mixers, complicated fruit juice extractors, and similar gadgets are all excellent but they are not essential. Many servants do not even ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... ideas about the new countries are pretty sketchy," he said. "People always talk to me about the fearfully hot climate of Australia, and seem mildly surprised if I remark that we have about a dozen different climates, and that we have snow and ice, and very decent winter sports, in Victoria. I don't think they believe ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... library window, Mr. Carrington saw that her ladyship's back was turned, and he then gave this candid, if somewhat sketchy, account of his interview ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... removed to Paris. He belongs to no school, and such art as he produces is peculiarly his own, save a leaven of influences from Velasquez and the Japanese. His art is the perfection of delicacy, both in color and in line. Apparently very sketchy, it is in reality the maximum of effect with the minimum of display. It has the pictorial charm of mystery and suggestiveness, and the technical effect of light, air, and space. There is nothing better produced in modern painting than his present work, and in earlier years he painted ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... is to be brought out in London. It will not stand the ghost of a chance unless well mounted. Music light and sketchy; remarkable for a Chorus of Fishermen, well known ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... them put their trust in the horsemen rather than the airmen in the break-through. As for "tanks," he offers the alternative of organised world control or a new warfare of mammoth landships, to which the devastation of this War will be merely sketchy; but I doubt if he quite makes his point here. And finally this swift-dreaming thinker proclaims a vision which he has seen of a new world-wide interrelated republicanism founded on a recognition of the over-lordship of God.... You put ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 28, 1917 • Various
... Zelma first revealed her tragic power. In her fitful tenderness, in the passionate reproaches which she stormed upon him, in her entreaties and imprecations, she was the poet's ideal, and more. She dashed into the crude and sketchy character bold strokes of Nature and illuminative gleams of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... really fit for the stage, and may be read with pleasure to-day. Neither of these compliments can fairly be paid to The Natural Son and The Father of the Family. Diderot's plays ought to be looked upon merely as sketchy illustrations of a favourite theory; as the rough drawings on the black board with which a professor of the fine arts may accompany a lecture on ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... return, sat around with expectant faces while he got out his tobacco and laid a sheaf of papers on the table, and waited while their envoy, laying Bassett's map on the table, proceeded carefully to draw in a continuation of the trail beyond the pass, some sketchy ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... began, still smiling, "the report is rather sketchy. I would like to see more information before ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... after a charge, as I found out later on. There were some three hundred men newly drafted into the Third Battalion; there were some three hours in which we had to get our equipment and learn to adjust it. As it was, many of the extreme greenhorn type marched away garbed in most sketchy fashion. Some had parts of their equipment in bags; others utilized their pockets as holders for unexplained, and to them inexplicable, parts of the ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... it sketchy," says she. "In the first place, when I landed here in New York about a year and a half ago, I'd made up my mind to connect with big money. I didn't know exactly how; the stage, maybe. Anyway, I knew the coin was here, and that it ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... which, except in the way of sketchy suggestion, there can no history be given—lasted less than four years; and is now coming to an end, unexpectedly soon. A pleasant Arcadian Summer in one's life;—though it has not wanted its occasional ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... like Keats. He is the most lyrical of the younger Frenchmen; the flash and sparkle of his pictures is the wonderfully close expression of a tremblingly delighted sensibility. Yet there is nothing sketchy about them. Consider his landscape (No. 65), and you will be astonished to find what a solid, self-supporting design these delicately graded tones and ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... said, and it's a good one, too. I read an account of it in an aviation paper; but the description was too sketchy for me to see how the ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... constructive quality. They are not particularly interesting in colour; as a matter of fact they are very monochromatic. Their appeal is based on an intensely serious quality of studious experimentation, which a very sketchy technique cannot hide. To the left of the three Mancinis hangs a simple picture of large proportions called "Maternity," by Pietro Gaudenzi. This is one of those modern interpretations of the birth of Jesus which appeals by the individualistic note. ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... week. Doubtless he would have made a desperate struggle, but it would have been useless. Not even conversion can make new habits overnight, and in his first two years at college Joe had been known to teachers and students alike as distinctly a sketchy student, wholly inexpert ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... come. Nothing happened at all. In three days there were sketchy communications almost everywhere outside that monstrous circle of silence. But nothing came out ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... proposed), and it was beautiful; pale violet silk muslin, trimmed with violets and their leaves. Then violet and silver livery was ordered in a great hurry for the four footmen—to be worn on one afternoon, and no more! But these things were mere sketchy details, compared ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Our sketchy tour of Windsor Castle has hitherto been told in visits far between, perhaps, if not few, for the interesting character of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... that he had abundant, though unavailable, resources during the period of his perdition. For one or the other of these reasons—orthographical inability, or Irish pride—the half is never told; therefore, as a rule, the reading public is acquainted only with sketchy and fallacious pictures of that continuous, indurating hardship which finally sends reluctant Hope after her ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... way through the streets of Cynthiana, where the acrid smoke of burning caught at throats, adding to the torturous thirst which dried a man's mouth when he tore cartridge paper with his teeth. Drew and Croxton took sketchy orders from Captain Quirk, their eyes red-rimmed with fatigue above their powder-blackened lips and chins. Fan out, be eyes and ears for the column moving ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... greater perfection; he was therefore always ready and at hand when the publishers needed larger and smaller copper-plates for any work: thus the vignettes to Winckelmann's first writings were etched by him. But he often made only very sketchy drawings, to which Geyser knew very well how to adapt himself. His figures had throughout something general, not to say ideal. His women were pleasing and agreeable, his children /naive/ enough; only he could not succeed with the men, who, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Two hours later—after a sketchy meal served by trembling-handed servants—the trio were seated in the music-room. Over and over, a dozen times, they had reviewed their position, from all angles. And they had come to the conclusion ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... imagination returned with undiminished delight. It has been our aim to endeavour, in our translation, to give an echo, however feeble and imperfect, of the wild and airy freedom of the versification which distinguishes these spirited stanzas. The picture which they contain, rough, sketchy, and unfinished, as it may appear, bears every mark of being a faithful copy from nature—a study taken on the spot; and will therefore, we trust, be not unacceptable to our readers, as calculated to give an idea not only of the vigorous and rapid handling of the poet's pencil, but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... slovenliness, are, we should suspect, in those parts merely sketched in—a method agreeable to his practice, which was to work upon and upon, glazing, and heaping colour—a method which required, in the first instance, a loose and undefined sketchy manner. Some few years ago there was a picture by him exhibited at the Institution, Pall-Mall—dead game, wonderfully painted, and evidently unfinished; a boy in the background was, as we might term it, daubed in in a very slovenly manner, and with a greenish ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... From even this sketchy outline of the literature on the subject, it should be fairly evident that there has been available to the mechanician an enormous quantity of information about mechanical linkages and other devices. Whatever one may think of the quality of the literature, it has undoubtedly ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... awoke the day was already breaking, and the electric light burned dimly in the general wash of grayness. About him the atmosphere had a strangely sketchy effect, as if it had been laid on crudely with a few strokes ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... typesetter, had gone home and we were alone, Ida Mary and I. We built up a hot fire in the monkey-stove, which sat in the middle of the store building and was used for heating both store and print shop. From canned goods on the shelf, baked beans and corned beef, we prepared a sketchy supper, and ate on ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... captain, he had been for years in coasters, then in the Mediterranean, and last in the West Indian trade. He had never been round the Capes. He could just write a kind of sketchy hand, and didn't care for writing at all. Both were thorough good seamen of course, and between those two old chaps I felt like a small boy ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... do not exact a woman's privileges—the privileges of inaccuracy, of weakness, of the muddle-head. Submit yourselves to the rules of business, as men do, by which alone you can make God's business succeed. For he has never said that he will give his blessing to sketchy, unfinished work. And I would especially guard young ladies from fancying themselves like Lady Superiors, with an obsequious following of disciples, if they undertake any great work. I would only say, Work, work, in silence at first, in silence for years. It will not be time wasted. ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... de Montleon, I., 282, 309.—Buchez et Roux, XXVIII, 356, 357 (Journal de Lyon Nos. 223 and 224.) "The acceptance of the Constitution was neither entire nor very sincere; people took credit to themselves for accepting a vicious and sketchy production." Meillan, "Memoires," 120. (In July he leaves Caen for Quimper). "Although we were assured that we should pass only through Maratist towns, we had the satisfaction of finding nearly all the inhabitants regarding Marat with horror. They had indeed accepted ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the old topographers doubtless thought there was nothing out of which to make a map, for except by the sides of the high-road, and in the detached villages of Brompton, Earl's Court, and Little Chelsea, there were only fields. Faulkner's 1820 map is very slight and sketchy. He says: "In speaking of this part, proceeding down Earl's Court Lane [Road], we arrive at the village of Earl's Court." The 1837 Survey shows a considerable increase in the number of houses, though Earl's Court is still a village, connected with Kensington by a lane. Daw's map ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... England, considered politically, is a subject too broad, too wide, and too deep for us, we most readily confess; nor is it exactly proper for a work of a sketchy nature, in which we only skim lightly along the surface of society, picking up any little curiosity as we go along, but without dipping deep into motives or habits of thought or action, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... forgotten, very carefully extricated himself from among the slumberers and followed. He congratulated himself upon the fact that his preparations for the night had been extremely sketchy, had in fact consisted merely in removing his coat and riding-boots. Once safe outside the cabin, he pulled on the boots, smoothed his hair with his fingers, knotted the handkerchief more becomingly about his throat, and went in ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... a lot of seafaring out of Konassa, and there are several other busy seaports we know of. But no one in any of them ever heard of navigation out of sight of land, let alone trying it. There's nothing but pilotage, and even that's pretty sketchy. And, there's this thing." He crossed to the workbench, picked up the ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... field of conventionalised fleur-de-lis of so large a pattern as not to interfere with the details thrown against it. Scenes are divided by slender Gothic columns, and other architectural features are tessellated floors and a sketchy sort of brick-work that appears wherever a limit-line is needed. It is the charming naivete of its drawing that delights. Border there is none, but its lack is never felt, for the pictures are of such interest that the eye needs no barrier to keep it from wandering. Whatever ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... present instance Rose had only to dispatch Edwin to the grocery for eggs and cheese, and send Myrna next door to borrow a chafing-dish, and, while these errands were being accomplished, to complete her own sketchy toilet. Rose was an impressionist when it came to dress. She got the desired effect with the least possible effort, as was evinced now by the way she was whirling two coils of chestnut hair, from ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... bring, the people who will live then will take them in a matter-of-fact way. Their conversation will be cigarettes, "sag-paste," drinks, women. References to the scientific marvels around them will be casual and sketchy. How many million words of an average car owner's conversation would you have to report to give a visitor from 1700 an idea of internal combustion engines? The author, if skillful, can convey that information in other ways. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... was finishing a somewhat hurried and sketchy luncheon a telegram was handed to him. It was from Max Wisler, the San Francisco detective, and it said laconically, "Don't let A. ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... roving scents, as if the earth exhaled the sweetness of hidden flowers. In the apple orchard the young grass was powdered with gold, and the long grey shadows of the trees barred the ground like the sketchy ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... as soon as it was light enough to see their compass. They slept at two villages; and early the third day came out of sketchy mountains into full view of the great Grass Jungle itself. In long low waves, it billowed away from them to the dim rugged line of Vindha against the sky. It looked like massed plumes ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... thirst. His fingers grew numb as he worked, and moment by moment the sense of utter hopelessness grew stronger in his mind. Tiger worked stolidly across the table from him, inexpert help at best because of the sketchy surgical training he had had. Even his solid presence in support here did not lighten the burden for Dal. There was nothing that Tiger could do or say that would help things or change things now. ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... and, craning my head to the left, I saw a lithe, black-clad form, surmounted by a Yellow face, sketchy in the moonlight, pressed against ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... henceforth hardly dares even to read history, to say nothing of writing it. Perhaps I draw too harsh a picture, but the truth is that I did, as a very young man, with no training except that provided by a sketchy knowledge of the classics, once attempt to write an historical biography. I shudder to think of my method and equipment; I skipped the dull parts, I left all tiresome documents unread. It was a sad farrago of enthusiasm and ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... him a quick but rather sketchy list. "And your own overcoat and sweater—or I won't let you go. Promise." Her fingers turned in his ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... biographer. The hero of his narrative makes his entrance at once in his character as the shipwright of Saardam, on the occasion of a visit of the great Duke of Marlborough. The portrait instantly arrests attention. His ideal personages had been drawn in such a sketchy way, they presented so many imperfectly harmonized features, that they never became real, with the exception, of course, of the story-teller himself. But the vigor with which the presentment of the imperial ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... with cotton-wool," said a Midshipman whose acquaintance with the classics was still a recent, if sketchy acquisition. ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... wadis in between, and each company was given a hill which formed an isolated post. Touch even between companies was very difficult to maintain at night, and touch with the units on either flank was found impossible and had to be abandoned. So sketchy was our line that we sometimes discovered in the morning a miserable Turk or Arab well inside our lines trying to desert but finding no one to whom to surrender. When "captured" their joy was complete. Miserable, half-starved, ill-clad wretches, ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... more than a skit, and the plot—if the thin, sketchy incident that stood in its place may be called one—served only as an excuse for a continuous fusillade of local hits, often of a personal character. These not only kept the audience in a fever of merriment, ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... the Grand Cyrus), the handling is so preposterously long and the reliefs of dialogue and other things frequently managed with so little skill, that, except for sheer passing of time, the books have been found difficult to read. The present writer's knowledge of Spanish is too sketchy to enable him to read them in the original with full comfort. Amadis and Palmerin are legible enough in Southey's translations, made, as one would expect from him, with all due effort to preserve the language of the old English versions ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... on! Not too much furniture, and not too much symmetry either. An agreeable and original higgledy-piggledyness! The room was lighted by a fairly large oil-lamp, with a paper shade hand-painted in a design of cupids—delightful personal design, rough, sketchy, adorable! She had ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... happened to him that can happen to an automobile except an absolute smash. He punctured his tires, had a big hole in his reservoir, his steering gear bent, his bougies always doing something they oughtn't to. He dined and slept at Falaise; rather a sketchy repast, but as he told us he could always get along with poached eggs, could eat six in an ordinary way and twelve in an emergency, we were reassured; for one can always get eggs and milk in Normandy. He arrived in a perfectly good ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... layers of tissue he had begun to take on; plain solid food finished the job of unlarding his frame. Shortly he was Corporal Ginsburg—a trim upstanding corporal. Then he became Sergeant Ginsburg and soon after this was Second Sergeant Ginsburg of B Company of a regiment still somewhat sketchy and ragged in its make-up, but with promise of good stuff to emerge from the mass of its material. When his regiment and his division went overseas, First Sergeant Ginsburg ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... almost instantly he visioned in their completeness unextinct ichthyosauri of business. By day he fairly consumed old Bronson; he read dry books far into the night. Thus he rapidly filled the holes in the walls of his knowledge, and strengthened its rather sketchy foundation. Of course he realized that what he was learning was in a sense academic; it had to be tested and developed and made flexible by experience; but then much of it became instantly a living enlargement of the things of which he ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... rather sketchy description of his imaginary home in Fleming County, Kentucky—a none too convincing description. Then he tried to change the subject by asking her if she had ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... wriggled uneasily in his seat. "And then," resumed the condemned, "came the final discomfiture. In our village we had a modest little debating club, and I remembered having promised, chiefly, I suppose, to please and impress the doctor's wife, to give a sketchy kind of lecture on the Balkan Crisis. I had relied on being able to get up my facts from one or two standard works, and the back-numbers of certain periodicals. The prosecution had made a careful note of the circumstance that the man whom I claimed to be—and ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... hear something of what this restless speculative scientific generation is thinking and doing. But I can't read with much pleasure the fragmentary review literature of the day. The "Cornhill" and that class of books I can't stand, and sketchy writings. The best specimens of light reading I have seen of late are Charlotte Yonge's "Pupils of St. John the Divine," ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... delicate features, those shades, and airy tints which he had copied, and which his brush had annihilated. Engrossed with them, he put the portrait on one side and hunted up a head of Psyche which he had some time before thrown on canvas in a sketchy manner. It was a pretty little face, well painted, but entirely ideal, and having cold, regular features not lit up by life. For lack of occupation, he now began to tone it up, imparting to it all he ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... it happened," mused David. Delicacy forbade him to ask further questions. He understood, as did the others, that Grace's explanation had been purposely sketchy. "Personally, I'm not sorry it's now generally known. It may be the means of bringing Tom into the land of the living again. I don't mean that I think he's dead. I can't and won't ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... Sketchy, because in this case, "O. Henry" leaders are the important thing—and they give sufficient clue ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... preserves; so poor Monte was perforce shut up, away from the house, where Bear and his companions could not take exception to the presence of an interloper. The late afternoon and evening were chiefly spent in having warm baths, which were most grateful after the, of necessity, somewhat sketchy ablutions of the past three days. Now that the safe arrival of the luggage was an accomplished fact, and the travellers clothed and fed, there seemed little reason for late hours, and it was not long after dinner ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... "Albert the Good," who wanders through the play as a detective in disguise, and appears in his own person at the close to discharge in full the general and particular claims of justice and philanthropy. The whole work is slight and sketchy, primitive if not puerile in parts, but easy and amusing to read; the confidence reposed by the worthy monarch in noblemen of such unequivocal nomenclature as Lord Proditor, Lussurioso, and Infesto, is one of the signs that ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of the drive they saw Geoffrey's bicycle leaning against the porch. "I expect she's in the drawing-room with her grandfather. There seem to be lights everywhere. Well, I'm going to make a bee-line for the dining-room for grub. We had a very sketchy lunch, no tea, and no dinner, so ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... description and meditation that Byron excelled. "Description," as he said in Don Juan, "was his forte." His manner is indeed peculiar, and is almost unequalled; rapid, sketchy, full of vigour; the selection happy, the strokes few and bold. In spite of the reverence which we feel for the genius of Mr. Wordsworth we cannot but think that the minuteness of his descriptions often diminishes their effect. He has accustomed himself to gaze on nature ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... she said, while her eyes narrowed and her upper lip shortened into a delightful smile. "You were born to be a schoolmaster, a veritable pedagogue and terror of illiterate youth. You love to correct. And my rather sketchy English gives you an opportunity of which I observe you are by no means slow to take advantage. You care infinitely more for the manner of saying, than for the thing said. Whereas I"—she broke off abruptly, and her ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... nothing at all, he was altogether pasty and badly seated; the only really good bit of work about him was his hand. In the background the two little wrestlers—the fair and the dark one—had remained too sketchy, and lacked substance; they were amusing only to an artist's eye. But he was pleased with the trees, with the sunny glade; and the nude woman—the woman lying on the grass appeared to him superior to his own powers, as if some one else had painted her, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... very important that we should present a substantial unity to India. This is upon the question of either House considering a Bill like the Bill that is now on the Table—a mere skeleton of a Bill if you like. I see it has been called vague and sketchy. It cannot be anything else, on the broad principle set out by ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... daughter had escaped much trouble, as in 1836 the Balzac family threatened M. de Montzaigle with a lawsuit on the subject of his son, who was left to wander about Paris without food, shoes, or clothes. We cannot suppose that any one with such sketchy views of the duties of a father could have been a particularly satisfactory husband; but perhaps Laurence died before she had time to discover M. de ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... common-weal, of "Wealth against Commonwealth," that went with that. While most men had to go propertyless in a world that was privately owned, the assertion of equality was an empty lie. For the rest, primordial Socialism was entirely sketchy and experimental. It was wild as the talk of school-boys. It disregarded the most obvious needs. It did not provide for any principle of government, or for the maintenance of collective thought and social determination, it offered no safeguards and guarantees for even ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... much to learn before he could meet such a situation with Van Rycke's unfailing patience and aplomb. The Cargo-master seemed in nowise tired by his wasted day and Dane knew that Van would probably sit up half the night, going over for the hundredth time Traxt Cam's sketchy recordings in another painstaking attempt to discover why and how the other Free Trader had succeeded where the Queen's men were up ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... of Charles Kingsley has been rather declining, the credit of his brother Henry has been gradually rising. Those who have complained of something rather shallow and sketchy in some of his former books will find far more solid and faithful work in this. Indeed, he undertakes rather more than he can carry through, and the capacious plot, well handled at first, gets into some confusion and ends in a rather feeble result. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... way about half-past eight, after a wretched and sketchy breakfast, and after saying good-bye to one of our friends ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... independence which they brought with them and illustrated, has never ceased to work powerfully among our people. Why not bring the children into direct contact with these characters in the intermediate grades, not by short and sketchy stories, but by full life pictures of these men and their surroundings? We have not been wholly lacking in literary artists who have worked up a part of these materials into a more durable and acceptable form for our schools. We need to make an abundant use of ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... stood in the doorway looking well about him before he lifted a loosened plank in the flooring and took from beneath it the grand old weapon of the Williams family. Nor did his eye lighten with any pleasurable excitement as he sat himself down in a shadowy corner and began some sketchy experiments with the mechanism. The allure of first sight was gone. In Mr. Williams' bed-chamber, with Sam clamoring for possession, it had seemed to Penrod that nothing in the world was so desirable ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... of our passage through this upper end of Red Canyon we refer to our journal: sketchy notes jotted down, usually in the evening just before retiring, by the light of a camp-fire, or the flickering flame of a candle. Under the date of Friday, September the 15th, we find ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... skilful in estimating the changes in colors. These who are working beside us are doing the finest sort of porcelain decoration—faces, figures, and flowers. Those across the aisle are doing a vastly different type of work. They are putting coarse, sketchy flowers on the cheaper ware. Some of them, you will observe, are filling in designs that have either first been printed, or transferred by the decalcomania process, and must afterward be finished by hand. The girls supply the dabs of color that are ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... what you mean. Like the statuary of Rodin or Epstein. One sees really only half the form, as if growing out of the sketchy sculpture. And then there's another thing—I ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... reader may expand these sketchy outlines to his heart's content by following the chapters in The Innocents Abroad, which is very good history, less elaborated than might be supposed. But on the other hand, the next letter adds something of interest to the book-circumstances which a modest ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Claridge's, of which sketchy tidings were being conveyed to the two occupants of Crawshay's flat by Henshaw, was settling down, so far as the two men were concerned, into a cheery enough meal. There had been a little strangeness at first, but Jocelyn ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... trying one, variously computed at from twenty-one to twenty-three miles. Whatever its exact length may have been is immaterial; it was the method in which it was conducted that was so desperately trying. After the usual sketchy apology for a breakfast, the column moved off with the Somersets as advance-guard, and 'F' and 'G' company of the Dublins as rearguard. From a variety of causes the progress was uncommonly slow, and, no halt being made ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... given up chiefly to Alson Clark's over-sketchy and intemperately colored Panama pictures. The most interesting thing here is Ernest Lawson's "Beginning of Winter," on wall B, a representative work by one of the most successful ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... Freda's opinion that spite had actuated the circulation of the damaging paper, she and her chums had exhibited an admirable restraint concerning it. They had evidently accepted Adrienne's sketchy explanation of it ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... species, like others of his kindred. He does not, in fact, mimic the set songs of others, although he often introduces notes and phrases borrowed from other species into his own performance. He sings in a sketchy way all the year round, but in spring has a fuller unbroken song, emitted with more power and passion. For the rest of the time he sings to amuse himself, as it seems, in a peculiarly leisurely, and one may say, indolent manner, perched on a bush, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... or to Louis Moore or M. Paul. He is an unfinished sketch rather than a portrait, but a sketch that would not too shamefully have discredited Mr. Henry James. For there is a most modern fineness and subtlety in Emma; and, for all its sketchy incompleteness, a peculiar certainty of touch, an infallible sense of the significant action, the revealing gesture. With a splendid economy of means, scenes, passages, phrases, apparently slight, are charged with the most intense psychological suggestion. When Mr. Ellin, summoned on urgent ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... consumed cocktails and saw back in his life to Alaska, and lived over the grim years in which he had battled for his eleven millions. For a while murder ate at his heart, and wild ideas and sketchy plans of killing his betrayers flashed through his mind. That was what that young man should have done instead of killing himself. He should have gone gunning. Daylight unlocked his grip and took out his automatic pistol—a big Colt's .44. He released the safety catch with his ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... plot is weak and meagre—but it is still simple and natural, and has not borrowed any of those adventitious aids to which we have alluded above. It bears throughout an air of probability, untinctured by romance, and has the strong impress of truth and fidelity to nature. Sketchy and vivacious, always humorous and sometimes witty; it has many scenes and portraits, which in terseness and energy, will compare with any of its predecessors; and occasionally there are touches of genuine sentiment ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various |
