"Sparse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or passageway, extending toward the after part of the vessel. The roof, formed of the upper deck, was low, upheld by immense timbers, and the apartment, nearly square, was dimly flooded by the sparse light sifting down through the single hatch-opening above, so that, in spite of its large dimensions, it had a cramped and stuffy appearance. The vast butt of the mainmast arose directly in front of me, and, upon a narrow bench surrounding it, a dozen soldiers were lounging, while ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... of the limbs vary from pale yellowish-white to a rich rufous orange; the basal portion of the hairs of the under-parts is dark brown or black, and the ventral area has frequently a dull hue where the yellow tips are sparse; the coats of these squirrels are generally sleek, glossy and deep black, and while in this condition the under surface is most brilliant, especially at its line of junction with the black, along the sides of the body ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... at the front door—a man with a quick, nervous manner. He wore clothes that were unmistakably English, and pince-nez from which hung a narrow black ribbon. And he carried a cane. As he took off his derby to greet the landlady with studied courtesy, his hair showed sparse across the top of his head. His mustache worn short, ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... perfect autarchy existing there, grave economic problems never really arise. Nowhere else, during the whole course of my various diplomatic wanderings, have I ever seen a happier people, who looked more cheerfully into the future. In view of the comparatively sparse population of the country, intensive agricultural production has only become necessary in a few isolated districts; there are always purchasers in plenty for the rich surplus of raw materials available, ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... Givers, I look along the years And see the flowers you threw... Anemones And sprigs of gray Sparse heather of the rocks, Or a wild violet Or daisy of a daisied field... But ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... misnomer, a very different scene stretched away before us clad in the silver robe of the moonlight. We were camped—Harry and I, two Kaffirs, a Scotch cart, and six oxen—on the swelling side of a great wave of bushclad land. Just where we had made our camp, however, the bush was very sparse, and only grew about in clumps, while here and there were single flat-topped mimosa-trees. To our right a little stream, which had cut a deep channel for itself in the bosom of the slope, flowed musically on between banks green ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... approval, and a fierce ambition to be worthy of it, for which she would have sacrificed herself or the other miserable retainers about her, as a matter of course. She had driven Waya and the other squaws far along the sparse tableland pasture in search of missing stock; she herself had lain out all night on the rocks beside an ailing heifer. Yet, while satisfied to earn his praise for the performance of her duty, for some feminine ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... bedroom, at the front of the house, Hilda looked westwards up toward the slopes of Chatterley Wood, where as a child she used to go with other children to pick the sparse bluebells that thrived on smoke. The bailiwick of Turnhill lay behind her; and all the murky district of the Five Towns, of which Turnhill is the northern outpost, lay to the south. At the foot of Chatterley Wood the canal wound in large curves on its way towards the ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... in a rough sort of column, the old timers riding ahead in a group of their own. No injunction had been laid as to keeping quiet; nevertheless, conversation was sparse and low voiced. The men mostly rode in silence smoking their cigarettes. About half way the leaders summoned me, and I trotted ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... I listened to an increasingly delightful commentary upon the islands, some of them barren rocks, or at best giving sparse pasturage for sheep in the early summer. On one of these an eager little flock ran to the water's edge and bleated at us so affectingly that I would willingly have stopped; but Mrs. Todd steered away from ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Cristofano detto Buffalmacco pittore Fiorentino, il qual fu discepolo d' Andrea Tafi, e come uomo burlevole celebrato da Messer Giovanni Boccaccio nel suo Decamerone, fu come si sa carissimo compagno di Bruno e di Calendrino pittori ancor essi faceti e piacevole, e, come si puo vedere nell' opere sue sparse per tutta Toscana, di assai buon giudizio nell' arte ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... say!" He must protest, but if he failed to convince, how could he explain that part of his high mission to the ports of the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom was to sweep from the Adriatic the Confederate privateers which Great Britain was then fitting out to prey upon our sparse commerce there? As a matter of fact he had eventually to do little or no sweeping of that sort; for no privateers came to interrupt the calm in which he devoted himself, unofficially, to writing a book about the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... our marine service. His woollen cap, pitched forward at an acute angle with his nose, showed the back part of a head thatched with short yellow hair, which had broken into innumerable curls of painful tightness. On his ruddy cheeks a sparse, sandy beard was making a timid debut. Add to this a weak, good-natured mouth, a pair of devil-may-care blue eyes, and the fact that the man was very drunk, and you have a pre-Raphaelite portrait—we may as well say at once—of ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... south. This stream, assisted by the Peace, is fast filling up with detritus the western portion of Lake Athabasca. There is a marked contrast between the upper and lower coasts of the lake. The north shore consists of Laurentian gneiss with a sparse wood growth; the south bank for the most part is low, the formation being a cretaceous sandstone. Ice holds fast this beautiful sheet for six months every year. As we puff along the surface of its incomparable blue it is hard to realise that, although the Peace and Athabasca Rivers open ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... back into her kitchen and Barney turned and limped across the yard to the tractor shed. He pulled the brim of his sweat-stained Stetson over his eyes and squinted south over the heat-dancing sage and sparse grasslands of Circle T range. Dust devils were pirouetting in the hazy distance towards the mountains forming a corridor leading to the ranch. A dirt road led out of the yard and crossed an oiled county road about five miles south of the ranch. The county road was now the only ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... of Bertie in the interval as a successful debutante as a reader of Shakespeare, and had received her sparse and sparkling letters confirming report, truly "angel ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... ancient, stalwart he-goat came prancing through the bracken. He was an old acquaintance of theirs, and he enjoyed lying beside them to have his forehead scratched with a piece of sharp stick. His forehead was hard as rock, and the hair grew there as sparse as grass does on a wall, or rather the way moss grows on a wall—it was a mat instead of a crop. His horns were long and very sharp, and brilliantly polished. On this day the he-goat had two chains around his neck—one was made of butter-cups and the other was made of daisies, ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... on the Missouri border, where the pro-slavery party was strong, the work of both was exceedingly imperfect, and in many instances with notorious discrimination against free-State voters. While the disfranchised counties had a comparatively sparse population, the number of voters in them was too considerable to be justly denied their due representation.[5] The apportionment of delegates was based upon this defective registration and census, and this alone would have given the pro-slavery party a ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... to a walk, de Marmont keeping close behind him, and in silence the two men rode up the incline toward Notre Dame de Vaulx. On ahead the pines and beech and birch became more sparse, disclosing the great patches of moss-covered rock upon the slopes of Pelvoux. On Taillefer the eternal snows appeared wonderfully near in the brilliance of this early spring atmosphere, and here and there on the roadside bunches of wild crocus and of ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... of stone just as another volley was fired, apparently from the mule-track high above him; and half-unconsciously, in the confusion and excitement of the moment, he lay perfectly still, cowering amongst the sparse growth in the hope that he might not be seen from the shelf-like mule-track above, though expectant all the while that the next shot fired would ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... faint stirring of pleasure in the thought that she was doing something against his wish on this anniversary. Deliberately, she sat alone by the river, waiting for the pageant of sunset to pass; and when she reached home the moon was up, a great white moon that turned the waving waste of pale, sparse grasses to a ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... from the dead body. True that the science of American linguistics is still in its infancy, and that a proper handling of the materials it even now offers involves a more critical acquaintance with its innumerable dialects than I possess; but though the gleaning be sparse, it is enough that I break the ground. Secondly, religious rites are living commentaries on religious beliefs. At first they are rude representations of the supposed doings of the gods. The Indian ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... defiance. Stealthily he landed his men on the other side of the island opposite to the Bugis camp, and led them across. After a short but quite silent scuffle, Cornelius, who had tried to slink away at the moment of landing, resigned himself to show the way where the undergrowth was most sparse. Brown held both his skinny hands together behind his back in the grip of one vast fist, and now and then impelled him forward with a fierce push. Cornelius remained as mute as a fish, abject but faithful to his purpose, whose accomplishment loomed before him dimly. At the edge of the patch ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... the sparse little village I told him of the Dartons. I had had no news of them for the past four years, and inquiries among the neighbors left me only the more at sea. Lisbeth they seldom saw, they said; she never went to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... cheerful meal, and they were three very much worried boys. They said little while partaking of the bacon, bread and coffee, the horses cropping the sparse grass near by. But, in a little while, ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... be very different from those of the individual soldiers. But there is no need of illustrations. In our inquiries into the nature and rise of rent, we traced the very thing to which I allude. Where population is sparse, land has no value; just as men congregate together, the value of land appears and rises—a clearly distinguishable thing from the values produced by individual effort; a value which springs from association, which increases as association grows greater, and disappears ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... spoke with deep feeling. 'There was no better bed in Paris. Had he not himself put clean sheets on it that day?' He turned from the window, and with the hand of an expert displayed the beauties of the sparse blankets, the cotton sheets, and the ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... at the strange combination of instruments on the page in his own nervous handwriting. How came the cataclysm? Vainly the composer scanned the various clefs, vainly he strove to endow with significance the sparse bunches of notes scattered over the white ruled paper. He saw the violins in the highest, most screeching position; saw them disappear like a battalion of tiny balloons in a cloud. No, it was not by the violins the dread enigma was solved. But there were few other instruments on the leaf except ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... was, I believe, given to them because when they set out on their periodical migration to the plains they left their villages unguarded, and found their property safe on their return. I suppose this resulted partly from an unwritten—may I say?—honourable understanding, that as in their sparse and widely-scattered population it was well-nigh impossible to guard their goods, the rights of property should be respected; and partly from the circumstance that there was little left behind in the villages which could be carried away. So far as others, especially ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... blackened rafters—a haunted-looking abode. One would suppose that there had been a special object in setting the houses down at weary distances from each other. Few as they are, they are not all inhabited at this season, and all that can be seen is grey sand, sparse grass, and a few ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... this man who had prodded me, with a long, pale face and pale eyes, a long reddish beard, and hair rather darker, both hair and beard being sparse. He was a fidgety person, always twitching with his hands, and he walked with something of a strut, as though the earth belonged to him. He snapped-to the case of his binoculars as though he ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... generally excluded from our common schools, in consequence of the prejudices of teachers and parents. In some of our cities there are schools exclusively for their use, but in the country the colored population is usually too sparse to justify such schools; and white and black children are rarely seen studying under the same roof; although such cases do sometimes occur, and then they are confined to elementary schools. Some colored young men, who could bear the expense, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... have said in the ear, so to deliver them to whom it is requisite; but not enjoining us to communicate to all without distinction what is said to them in parables. But there is only a delineation in the memoranda, which have the truth sown sparse and broadcast, that it may escape the notice of those who pick up seeds like jackdaws; but when they find a good husbandman, each of them will germinate and will ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... spring dusk. She chose the road towards Barnham Wood because it was lonely there and the hedges were thin; you could feel the breath of the sea as it blew across the sparse fields. The hush of an English Sunday evening enfolded the road, the wood, the fields. The sun was very low and the saffron light penetrated the dark lines of the hedges and hung like a curtain of misty gold before the approaches ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... crawled the lizard and the rattlesnake; and there was no music to the desolation save the petulant chirp of the cricket. At the sides an occasional stream tumbled out of the mountains to be all but drunk away at once by the thirsty sands. Along the banks of these was the only green to be found, sparse fringes of willow and wild rose. On the borders of the valley, where the steeps arose, were little patches of purple and dusty brown, oak-bush, squaw-berry, a few dwarfed cedars, and other scant growths. At long intervals ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... way to the final cause of distrust—the fashion of the man himself. He was unprepossessing in every line. His thin, pale face widened rapidly, like a top, to a broad and shining pate, which looked not so much bald as half naked below its sparse covering of reddish hair. His eyes were glimmering and of an indeterminate colour. Yet his voice was not unattractive in its persuasive intonation, and his manner was friendly almost to the verge of effusiveness. Whatever might be his ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... utmost the resources of the young country. The shores of the lakes as far west as Detroit were open to the attacks of the enemy, and, although part of the territory of the United States, were really more accessible to the invaders than to the American defenders. The population was sparse, and the means of transportation very primitive. Before the days of railroads, canals, or even well-kept turnpikes, troops, seamen, ordnance, and all munitions of war could only be transported from the cities on the seacoast by the most laborious hauling over roads ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... willing, give, To feed an alien foe, The substance, all too poor and sparse, Our stinted fields ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... smooth peduncle, usually open and stiff; branches are usually many, sub-solitary or fascicled, spreading or suberect, capillary, stiff, again branching from near the base and about 3 inches long; rachis is angular, with glands and tufts of sparse white hairs at the ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... dreariness is not our desert," she explained eagerly to the girl, as the horses dragged the carriage over the sandy earth, through whose hard brown surface the harsh, colourless blades of drinn pricked like a few sparse hairs on the head of a shrivelled old man. "In the Sahara, there are four kinds of desert, because Allah put four angels in charge, giving each his own portion. The Angel of the Chebka was cold of nature, with no kindness in his heart, and was jealous of the others; so the Chebka is desolate, ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... military fugitives from Longwi. Wayworn, dusty, disheartened, these poor men enter the Legislative, about sunset or after; give the most pathetic detail of the frightful pass they were in:—Prussians billowing round by the myriad, volcanically spouting fire for fifteen hours: we, scattered sparse on the ramparts, hardly a cannoneer to two guns; our dastard Commandant Lavergne no where shewing face; the priming would not catch; there was no powder in the bombs,—what could we do? "Mourir! Die!" ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... area, and the great numbers of the laboring class. The number to the square mile is greater than in China, averaging eight hundred. This fact alone placed a much greater power in the masters' hands after emancipation, as the competition of labor must be so much more severe than with a more sparse population. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... moved in a higher sphere, and who, looking with contempt on vulgar fisticuffs and gouging, settled their difficulties satisfactorily according to the established rules of the DUELLO with sword, pistol, or rifle. Hostile meetings on the levee, below the city, where the population was sparse, and no impertinent interruptions could be apprehended, were frequent. Indeed, the intelligence, some pleasant morning, that a duel had just been fought, and one of the parties lamed in the sword arm, or scientifically ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... two hours before the hunter stopped and then they stood on a low hill covered but thinly with the dwarfed trees of that region. The night was lightening a little, a pallid moon and sparse stars creeping out in the heavens. By the faint light young Clarke saw only a wild and rugged country, low hills about them and in the north the blur that he ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... sat down in her rocking-chair by the window and looked out. Her eyry was high above all the other buildings, and she could look across some low roofs opposite and see the further end of Tompkins Square, with its sparse spring green showing faintly through the dusk. The eternal roar of the city floated up to her and vaguely troubled her. She was a country girl; and although she had lived for ten years in New York, she had never grown used to that ceaseless murmur. To-night ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... movement to begin in the morning. One of the first questions a soldier asks in regard to his camping-place is, Where is water to be got? One's first impression would be that on this flat tongue of sand covered only with a sparse growth of pines and scrub live-oak, with the ocean on one side and a tidal river on the other, fresh water would be scarce and brackish. But we were agreeably disappointed to find that near us, in the middle of the sands, was ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... the Pass more wild and grim if possible, filling it with gray, drifting ghosts: ghosts of the murdered clansmen; ghosts disappearing into dark, open doorways of rock castles, or falling on the green floor of the glen, to weep on the dim, faded purple of the sparse heather. The river into which the weeping cataracts shed their tears was black at first; but suddenly, though the rain did not stop, the sun tore a hole through a cloud, and shot a huge rainbow into the rushing water. It split into a thousand fragments, still gleaming under the ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... mature reflection will always remain a mystery. Every such case is a law unto itself, and neither science nor poetry is ever able to analyze and explain its causes and effects. The conflicting stories then current, and the varying traditions that yet exist, either fail to agree or to fit the sparse facts which came to light. There remains no dispute, however, that the occurrence, whatever shape it took, threw Mr. Lincoln into a deeper despondency than any he had yet experienced, for on January 23, 1841, he wrote to his law ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... sparse yellow sage led to the first almost imperceptible rise of the valley floor on that side. The distant cedars beckoned to Slone. He was not patient, because he was on the trail of Wildfire; but, nevertheless, the ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... ran the post had made away with himself; "because of the rigours of the place," said the assistant, who still remained; though the Toyaats, by their fires, had another version. The assistant was a shrunken-shouldered, hollow-chested man, with a cadaverous face and cavernous cheeks that his sparse black beard could not hide. He coughed much, as though consumption gripped his lungs, while his eyes had that mad, fevered light common to consumptives in the last stage. Pentley was his name—Amos Pentley—and Bonner did not like him, though ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... influence would be powerful enough to win the men to sobriety and virtue. Alas! how mistaken they have been! What they have endured! Of such was this woman! There she stood, the embodiment of woe. A tall, refined woman, her clothing poor and sparse, her ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... casts those spots of greenery, a species of transition between the plant and animal, where life makes haste to come in flowers and insects, floating there like worlds in ether:—be it a cottage with its garden of cabbages, its vineyards, its hedges overhanging a bog, surrounded by a few sparse fields of rye; true image of many humble existences:—be it a forest path like some cathedral nave, where the trees are columns and their branches arch the roof, at the far end of which a light breaks through, ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... this foodful little pine is the commonest tree, and the most important. Nearly every mountain is planted with it to a height of from 8000 to 9000 feet above the sea. Some are covered from base to summit by this one species, with only a sparse growth of juniper on the lower slopes to break the continuity of its curious woods, which, though dark-looking at a distance, are almost shadeless, and have none of the damp, leafy glens and hollows so characteristic ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... hut of a fisherman is outlined on the grassy slope. Below it, crowding reeds rustle in the current; and where they are more sparse they fashion concentric orbs upon the gleaming, fleeing water. The landscape has something exotic or antique about it. You are no matter where in the world or among the centuries. You are on some corner of the eternal earth, where men and women are drawing near to each other, and cling ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... body maintained its perfect proportions. It was that of an elderly man clad simply in a gray business suit. The face was kind, its clear-chiselled features indicating fine spiritual strength; on the white forehead beneath the sparse gray hair were deep-sunken lines which spoke ...
— A Scientist Rises • Desmond Winter Hall
... continued plumb; some bobbed forward, others tipped backward, while a few seemed disposed to fall apart; all had a compost of earth, brought from heaven knows where, in the nooks and crannies hollowed by the rain, in which the spring-tide brought forth fragile flowers, timid creeping plants, and sparse herbage. Moss carpeted the roof and draped its supports. The corner pillar, with its composite masonry of stone blocks mingled with brick and pebbles, was alarming to the eye by reason of its curvature; it seemed on the point of giving way under the weight ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... they will often start off in terror at the ill-defined outlines of each other. The springbuck, possessing this feeling in an intense degree, and being eminently gregarious, becomes uneasy as the grass of the Kalahari becomes tall. The vegetation being more sparse in the more arid south, naturally induces the different herds to turn in that direction. As they advance and increase in numbers, the pasturage becomes more scarce; it is still more so the further they go, until they are at last obliged, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... struck forcibly now upon his nostrils. The grass beneath his feet had become more sparse and more coarse. The moisture which clung to his face had a taste of salt in it. Obviously he was quite close to the edge ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... Anthony descended from the platform and gave his arm to Mrs. Boyce. Lady Fenimore still clung to Boyce. Winterbotham came next, bearing the two caskets, which had been lying neglected on the table. The sparse company followed down the empty hall. Marigold signalled to the porter and they hoisted down my chair. Betty, who had lingered during the operation, walked by my side. Being able now to propel myself, I dismissed Marigold to a discreet position ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... heard the mandolins on the little balconies play an old refrain and the university cheering afterward; saw the old professor he had cared for most of all, with the thin white hair straggling over his silken hood, following the band in the sparse ranks of his class. And he saw his own Commencement Day—and the station at the junction where he stood the morning after, looking across the valley at the old towers for the last time; saw the broken groups ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... pebble and the thumb nail or the blade of the battle-ax and the bulb of the thumb are frequently used as forceps; they never cut the hair of the face. It is common to see men of all ages with a very sparse growth of hair on the upper lip or chin, and one of 50 years in Bontoc has a fairly heavy 4-inch growth of gray hair on his chin and throat; he is shown in Pl. XIII. Their bodies are quite free from hair. There is none on the breast, and seldom any on the legs. The pelvic growth is ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... strange contrast, the one tall, grave, white, and emotionless, the other noisy and pompous, with protuberant military chest and rubicund features. They had one common characteristic, however. From under the shaggy eyebrows of the merchant and the sparse light-coloured lashes of the major there came the same keen, restless, shifting glance. Both were crafty, and each was keenly on his guard against ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tiny villages scattered over the area once so populous. The mud huts which constituted the dwelling-places of by far the greater portion of the inhabitants have disappeared, and their materials overlie the rocky plain and form the support of a scanty and sparse vegetation. But the old water-channels remain, and by their aid the hollows and low ground have been converted into rich gardens and fields, bearing full crops of waving rice and sugar-cane. Vijayanagar has disappeared as a city, and a congeries of small hamlets with an industrious and contented ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... left me, or I ceased to notice it, and seeing a little way before me a bank above the road, and a fine grove of sparse and dominant chestnuts, I climbed up thither and turned, standing to ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... solid and sparse and all in a shape and largely very largely. Interleaved and successive and a sample of smell all this makes a certainty ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... path that led up over another little hill winding through clumps of hazel brush and a sparse growth of oak and beech. From the summit of this they could see the gypsy camp below them, in an open glade by the roadside. It was as the Wilbur twin had said: there were gayly-painted wagons—houses on ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... Grande on the west, and from the Gulf of Mexico on the south and east to the territory of the United States and New Mexico—another Mexican state at that time—on the north and west. An empire in territory, it had but a very sparse population, until settled by Americans who had received authority from Mexico to colonize. These colonists paid very little attention to the supreme government, and introduced slavery into the state almost from the start, though the constitution ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... were no houses near it, no cattle grazed about its foot; it was a dead thing in a dead landscape. To the left, but separated from it by a wide and slimy dyke, whence in times of flood the thick, brackish water trickled to the plain, stretched an arid area of sand-dunes, clothed with sparse grass, that grew like bristles upon the back of a wild hog. Beyond these dunes the ocean roared and moaned and whispered hungrily as the wind and weather stirred its depths. In front, not fifty paces away, ran the big dyke like a raised road, secured by embankments, and discharging day by day its ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... 0% permanent crops: 0% other: 100% (largely covered by permanent ice and snow with some sparse vegetation consisting of grass, ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... creatures, on their island hill, took fire; and every man vowed he wished he had gone to sea, before it was too late, or even to California, when the gold craze was on. Johnnie had the tongue of the improvisator, and he loved a listener. He liked to sit out on a log, in the sparse shadow of the one little grove the hill possessed, and, with the whispering leaves above him tattling uncomprehended sayings brought them by the wind, gather the old men about him, and talk them blind. As he sat there, Mary came walking swiftly by, a basket in her ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... by a poor and sparse population. It needed a fortuitous combination of circumstances to relieve them from their poverty-stricken condition—either a war, which would bring into prominence their strategic positions; or the establishment of markets, such as those of Syene and Elephantine, where ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... and likely a shelter for a shipwrecked soul as could be found, at once a hiding-place and a sanctuary. Sparse grass grew among the rocks, but no tree or shrub of any kind at that time. The ruins of the holy place alone spoke ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... intelligence. The whole country is full of enterprise. Our common schools are diffusing intelligence among the people and our industry is fast accumulating the comforts and luxuries of life. This is in part owing to our peculiar position, to our fertile soil and comparatively sparse population; but much of it is also owing to the popular institutions under which we live, to the freedom which every man feels to engage in any useful pursuit according to his taste or inclination, and to the entire confidence that his person and property will be protected by ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Millard Fillmore • Millard Fillmore
... pitch dark in that part of the camp. The electric lights had a sparse reddish glow. Fuselli kept straining his eyes, expecting to see a wharf and the masts of a ship at the end of every alley. The line filed into a dim mess hall, where a thin stew was splashed into the mess kits. Behind the counter ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... was familiar to O'Neill; to him, as to many another young painter of that time, it was an upstanding landmark on the road of art. He looked at it now, in the sparse light from the bedside lamp, with a fresh interest in its significance. He saw with new understanding the conventionalism of the pose—hip thrust out, arm akimbo, shoulder cocked—contrasted against the dark vivacity of the face and all ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... to several hundred pounds in gold, and in this service I penetrated to the remotest parts of the principality until I reached the Turkish posts in Old Servia, countries of the wildest character, with a very sparse population; and, though it was known that I carried those sums, I was never molested, though I had only one man for escort. And during the two campaigns which I made with the Prince, living in a tent, on the pole of which hung my dispatch-bag containing my store of small money (it being impossible ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... CIVILIZATION. In the course of the seventeenth century a sparse European population bad settled along the western Atlantic coast. Attracted by the cod-fishery of Newfoundland, the French had a little colony north of the St. Lawrence; the English, Dutch, and Swedes, occupied the shore of New England and the Middle States; some Huguenots were living in the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... Still it was only wise to leave the track which I would be assumed to have taken, for Laputa would guess I had fled back the way to Blaauwildebeestefontein. I turned into the bush, which here was thin and sparse ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... seemed singularly out of keeping with his rather heavy build, Tom shinnied down the side of the tree farthest from the brook, and lying almost prone upon the ground began wriggling his way through the sparse brush, quickening his progress now and again whenever the diverting roar of distant artillery or the closer report of rifles and machine guns enabled him to ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... this benevolent despotism gave the valley into the keeping of an individualism even purer and less restrained than that which it succeeded, for the sparse pioneer transmontane settlements were practically governed at first by only the consciences or whims of the inhabitants, instructed of parental commandments learned the other side of the mountains, and by their love of forest and ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... cartridge-cases intensifies the length of his body and of his face. He has all the medals there are, but only wears two, a Vladimir Cross at the centre of his collar, like a brooch, and a Georgian on his chest. His head is long, and his cheeks seem to curve inwards from his temples. There is sparse grey hair on his whitish scalp, and lifting his full-sleeved arm he scratched his head with an ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... accompaniment of the polite jeers of two long-suffering friends, I proclaimed "Here shall I live! On this spot shall stand the probationary palace!" and so saying fired my rifle at a tree a few yard's off. But the stolid tree—a bloodwood, all bone, toughened by death, a few ruby crystals in sparse antra all that remained significant of past life—afforded but meagre hospitality to the, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... make the body subservient to the spirit. Elijah was able to live on the sparse food brought by ravens, or provided from the meal barrel of the widow, was able to outstrip the horses of Ahab's chariot in their mad rush across the valley of Jezreel; and after a brief respite, given to sleep and food, went in the strength of it for forty days and nights, through ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... and to mingle with other thoughts; the beech alley was transformed to a path between ilex-trees, and here and there a vine climbed from bough to bough, and sent up waving tendrils and drooped with purple grapes, and the sparse grey-green leaves of a wild olive-tree stood out against the dark shadows of the ilex. Clarke, in the deep folds of dream, was conscious that the path from his father's house had led him into an undiscovered country, and he was wondering at the strangeness of it all, when suddenly, in place ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... master, a worthy man, so far as I ever saw of him, was Goth, Vandal, Hun, Visigoth, all in one. The ship was damp, dark, dirty, old, and cold. She was not warmed by steam, and the fire could not be lighted because of a smoky chimney. There were no lamps, and the sparse candles were obviously grudged. The stewards were dirty and desponding, the serving inhospitable, the cooking dirty and greasy, the food scanty, the table-linen frowsy. There were four French and two Japanese male passengers, who sat ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... the world, and he wanted one. Nobody could tell what might not have happened to Tommy Simmons if there had been no Mrs. Simmons to take care of him. He was a meek and quiet man, with a boyish face and sparse, limp whiskers. He had no vices (even his pipe departed him after his marriage), and Mrs. Simmons had ingrafted on him divers exotic virtues. He went solemnly to chapel every Sunday, under a tall hat, and put a penny—one returned to him for the purpose out of his week's wages—in the plate. ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... warm nights came and when she was big with him she went to the fields. The heads of little stones stuck out of the ground like the heads of buried children. The field, washed with moonlight, sloped gradually downward to a murmuring brook. A few sheep went among the stones nibbling the sparse grass. ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... for territory—for "room?" Look at your country, extending from the Alleghany Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, capable itself of sustaining in comfort a larger population than will be in the whole Union for one hundred years to come. Over this vast expanse of territory your population is now so sparse that I believe we provided, at the last session, a regiment of mounted men to guard the mail from the frontier of Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia; and yet you persist in the ridiculous assertion, "I want room." ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... the valley of the On, he having been of late a frequent attendant at Mr. Price's church. The vicar was much beloved by all his parishioners, beloved and respected by high and low, but still his congregation was sparse and uncertain, so that every new member was quickly noticed and welcomed by him—more especially any stray sheep from the dissenting fold possessed for him all the interest of the sheep in the parable, for whose sake the ninety and nine were left in the wilderness. Will had gone off ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... weeks my husband returned from the west, and with many pleasant recollections of Battleford, we left for our own home, which I had pictured in my mind with joyous anticipation, as the place of our continued happiness: a beautiful oasis, in that land of prairie and sparse settlement, and with a buoyancy of spirit which true happiness alone can bring, I looked forward with anticipated pleasure, which made that little log house appear to me, a palace, and we its ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... has been most striking, from a sparse Indian population of hunters into that of the present inhabitants of the United States and Canada; the former of these, with its total of fifty millions inhabitants, already contains more than forty-three millions of whites, chiefly ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... the second son of William Adam of Maryburgh, in Fife, and the most celebrated of four brothers, John, Robert, James and William Adam, was born at Kirkcaldy in 1728. For few famous men have we so little biographical material, and contemporary references to him are sparse. He certainly studied at the university of Edinburgh, and probably received his first instruction in architecture from his father, who gave proofs of his own skill and taste in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary (now demolished). ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... system: 822,000 telephones; excellent domestic and international service in the north, sparse in the south local: NA intercity: 12 domestic satellite links; 20 additional satellite links are planned international: 5 submarine cables; microwave radio relay to Italy, France, Spain, Morocco, and Tunisia; coaxial cable to Morocco and Tunisia; 2 INTELSAT (1 Atlantic Ocean ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... have not had for a long time," said Briest. Then Effi arose from her seat and stroked back the sparse hairs from his forehead. But beautiful as everything seemed from the point of view of Effi's health, it was all illusion, for in reality the disease was gaining ground and quietly consuming her vitality. Effi again wore, as on the day of her betrothal to Innstetten, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... nuts, such as make one of the charms of Northern forests. On the ground is no rich, springing sod of emerald green, fragrant with the elusive sweetness of white clover, and dainty flowers, but a sparse, wiry, famished grass, scattered thinly over the surface in tufts and patches, like the hair ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... middle height and spare figure, nearly sixty years old, by constitution rather delicate in health, but wiry and active for his age. A sparse and straggling beard and mustache did not conceal a thin but kindly mouth; his eyes were keen and pleasant; his sharp nose and narrow jaw gave him very much the air of a priest, and this impression was helped by his commonplace ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... and an abrupt hillside, where scattered dwellings and sparse trees and ground were coated with a soft monotony of rose-brown dust, the mills were jumbled in mile-long perspectives. Above the immediate noise of the train he could hear the sullen, blended roar ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... ample that it swept the ground. Her turban was twice as large as the largest of any of the others; her eyebrows met, her nose was rather flat, her mouth was large but with ruddy lips, and her teeth, of which at times she allowed a glimpse, were seen to be sparse and ill-set, though as white as peeled almonds. She carried in her hands a fine cloth, and in it, as well as I could make out, a heart that had been mummied, so parched and dried was it. Montesinos told me that ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... stony coast. The stones were covered with sparse lichen. The tide was already ebbing, leaving uncovered the sandy bottom of a sort of beach strewn with black blocks, resembling ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... the camels were turned out at once to graze off the unappetizing-looking thorns, sparse and dusty, that peppered the field of view like scabs on a yellow skin. There was no fear of their wandering too far, for if the camel ever was wild, as many maintain that he never was, that was so long ago that the whole species ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... somehow, the impression of the ardent heat of a thousand suns. His large gray eyes were mainly responsible for this feeling, and they blazed out feverishly from what was almost a death's-head, so thin was the face, the skin of which was a ghastly, dull, dead white. Not more than fifty, thatched with a sparse growth of iron-gray hair, he looked several times the age of Dowsett. Yet Nathaniel Letton possessed control—Daylight could see that plainly. He was a thin-faced ascetic, living in a state of high, attenuated calm—a molten planet under a transcontinental ice ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... whole course of their lives. Accordingly, with the Union of Kilkeel, which comprises the Mourne district, I have compared the Union of Trim, which comprises some of the richest grazing land in Ireland. Travellers have noted that population always grows thick on rich lands, while it is sparse on poor lands. No one requires to be ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... cattle, and meandered away between the timbered slopes to lose itself in a green curve. A singular feature of this canyon was that a heavy growth of spruce trees covered the slope facing northwest; and the opposite slope, exposed to the sun and therefore less snowbound in winter, held a sparse growth of yellow pines. The ranch house of Colonel Jorth stood round the rough comer of the largest of the three canyons, and rather well hidden, it did not obtrude its rude and broken-down log cabins, its squalid surroundings, its black mud-holes ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... isolated part of barren country, where the grass was sparse and coarse, the soil poor and stony, and the timber stunted and scraggy; where, in fact, everything for which the white man had neither use nor need was to be found, and where nothing existed that he or his stock could utilize—a ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... capable of everything, so much so that the stalk yields to the grower's suggestions and becomes fleshy and swells into an ellipse similar to the turnip, of which it possesses all the merits of corpulence, flavour and delicacy; only the strange product serves as a base for a few sparse leaves, the last protests of a real stem that refuses to lose its attributes ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... then borne a few nuts each year, but the crop is not heavy enough to recommend them for planting in our climate. While the wood suffers no winter injury, the catkins for the most part get winter killed and, consequently, there is a very sparse crop. What is needed for northern latitudes is a filbert that will ripen in our fairly short growing season, and whose catkins are immune to winter kill. The Winkler seems to be more hardy than the others, but the nuts do not ripen. This year even the Winkler catkins were killed, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... advantage and descend upon the lower Valley; but had they done so there could scarcely have been a greater panic among the Palatines. All during the year there had been seen at times, darkly flitting through the woods near the sparse settlements, little bands of hostile Indians. It was said that their purpose was to seize and abduct Sir William; failing in this, they did what other mischief they could, so that the whole Valley was kept in constant alarm. ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... indefinably a little gayer than you did. He was tall, thin—even gaunt, perhaps—and his face was long, rather pale, and shrewd and gentle; something in its oddity not unremindful of the late Sol Smith Russell. His hat was tilted back a little, the slightest bit to one side, and the sparse, brownish hair above his high forehead was going to be gray before long. He looked ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... and thoughtful forehead, large hazel eyes within a singularly large orbit of brow; a straight, thin, slightly aquiline, well-cut nose—such features were at open variance with the broad, thick-lipped, sensual mouth, the heavy pendant jowl, the sparse beard on the glistening cheek, and the moleskin-like moustachio and chin tuft. Still, upon the whole, it was a face and figure which gave the world assurance of a man and a commander of men. Power and intelligence were stamped upon him from ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... upward cleft of the hills. He walked now into the thick night of a close-grown clump of dwarf-oaks, which weaved so dense a thatch above his head that he knocked against the boles. The trees thinned, he crossed here and there a dimpled lawn in the pure starshine, he traversed a sparse grove of larches in the dreamy twilight, he came out again upon the grassy lip of a mountain torrent which henceforth kept him company, and which, speaking with many voices, seemed a friend trying to catch his mood. For here it leaped over an edge of rock, and here ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... the ancient, wealthy, thickly settled, and firmly governed coast of India, the settlers were only a few servants of the company. If, on the other hand, the region for which the monopoly of the company was granted was a broad and temperate tract, occupied by a sparse population of savages, and offering only such objects of trade or profit as could be collected slowly or wrested by European labor from, the soil or the forest, the quickest way to a commercial profit was the establishment on the distant ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... different, too. Gray, lean, hard-bitten faces, their eyebrows so light and sparse that it seemed their eyes were hard stones which never seemed to shift their straight-ahead gaze. Yet each man in the tonneau and the orderly beside the driver on the front seat saluted the Red Cross girl as she ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... it was pre-eminently the home of wandering, nomadic tribes. This wild, treeless region is divided by rocky ranges running from east to west. Parallel to these are deep, hot and for the most part waterless valleys. In the springtime these valleys are covered by a sparse vegetation; from a few perennial springs flow waters that irrigate the immediately surrounding land; but they soon lose themselves in the thirsty desert. During the summer the vegetation disappears almost entirely, and the struggle for subsistence becomes intense. ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... came up the steps, and they went in to a rather dreary evening service with a sparse congregation and a bored-looking choir, who passed notes and giggled during the sermon. Allison and Leslie sat and wondered what kind of a shock it would be to them all if the Great Companion should suddenly become visible in the room. If ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... the United States, have been furnished with arms and munitions of war by persons dwelling in conterminous foreign territory, and are thereby enabled to prosecute their savage warfare upon the exposed and sparse settlements ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... in the East entitle them to be called mountains. Every such tract was riven in all directions by deep chasms and narrow ravines, whose sides sometimes rolled off in gentle slopes, but far more often rose as sheer cliffs, with narrow ledges along their fronts. A sparse growth of grass covered certain portions of these lands, and on some of the steep hillsides, or in the canyons, were scanty groves of coniferous evergreens, so stunted by the thin soil and bleak weather that ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... cause apprehension—especially to one journeying alone. On all sides extended a vast plain of sterile soil—the brown earth but thinly covered with a growth of cactus and wild aloes, under the shadow of which appeared a sparse herbage, wild, and of yellowish hue. The aspect was monotonous and dreary beyond expression; while here and there vast clouds of dust rose in whirlwinds, and moved like spectres over the plain. The straggling huts encountered ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... old—so old that he seemed to be falling to pieces as he tottered forward. His skin was yellow and shrivelled, his mouth sunken, his hair sparse and grey; and from this weird face peered strange ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... to three inches long and one inch thick, short, equal, hollow. The taste is acrid and the milk sparse, white, quickly changing to sulphur-yellow. The spores are .0003 of an inch ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... to follow their movements—attack anywhere they saw fit, and disappear as suddenly. There was, of course, a considerable force of troops and police to suppress these insurgents, but the whole country was so roadless, so unexplored, such a tangled labyrinth of hill and forest, dotted with sparse villages, that it was often quite impossible to trace the bands who committed these attacks; and to the sick and weary pursuers it sometimes seemed as if we should never restore peace ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... repressed magnetic excitement in gatherings of familiar faces, fellow-beings bound by the same convention to the same kind of behaviour, is precious in communities where the human interest is still thin and sparse. It is valuable in itself, and it produces an occasional detached sensation. There was the case, in Dr Drummond's church, of placid-faced, saintly old Sandy MacQuhot, the epileptic. It used to be a common regret ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... population was somewhat sparse at Oldfield. There were a few Eton boys, and one or two in that delightful transition age when youth is most bashful and uninteresting,—a sort of unfledged manhood, when the smooth boyish cheek contradicts ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... other portions of the vast area known under the general name of the Louisiana Territory. You must bear in mind that there were thousands of square miles that had not been trodden by a white man, and so sparse were the Indian villages that large portions of the country remained to be visited ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... well for three days and they had a long day's work and a long night's work still before them. A large number of people had by this time assembled, and from time to time more arrived. Throughout the sparse grove which surrounded us, little temporary corrals and huts of boughs were going up in every direction. In more secret spots in the rugged walls of a cañon, about half a mile from the medicine lodge, other shelters were erected, where visiting performers were to prepare themselves on the ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... fringe of trees, sparse in some places and thicker in others. It was Chester's plan to wheel the gun in among the trees at the proper moment and open on the foe when ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... Should I drop on my knees and crawl through the long grass, snooping round the beanpoles and taking the devoted block-house in flank? I swallowed my stiff-necked English pride and began to crawl. Then I saw a better plan. I slipped through the sparse line of dwarf oaks smothered with crimson poison-ivy that bordered the forest path and crept as silently as I could towards the street until I was abreast of the stump. As I paused Beppo was making his round of the ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... a sparse crop of brown grass growing on the grave to which he led his companion. A cracked wooden head-board, already tilting rakishly, marked Henry's devotion. It had been white-washed and the inscription done in black letters, now partly washed away by the ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... place in the chief saloon, which was contiguous to the ball-room, and which was nearly as full of guests. Endymion, moving in the opposite direction, entered another drawing-room, where the population was sparse. It consisted of couples apparently deeply interested in each other. Some faces were radiant, and some pensive and a little agitated, but they all agreed in one expression, that they took no interest whatever ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... had not fully recovered from the effect of the spirit of disloyalty which culminated in the expulsion of the Acadians, although there followed a period of peace, but despite the efforts of the Government in making roads, and instituting public works, the settlements were sparse, and the Indian was still in the land. There was only one minister in the county, the Rev. John Eagleson, who had been sent out in 1769 by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, while in ...
— William Black - The Apostle of Methodism in the Maritime Provinces of Canada • John Maclean
... for she was choked by her sobs. The whole valley was deserted and silent in the dazzling light and the overwhelming heat, and only the grasshoppers uttered their shrill, continuous chirp among the sparse yellow grass on both sides ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... we wanted. Upon the top of Pap's head the sparse grey hairs bristled ominously. His teeth clicked; his eyes snapped. He was furiously angry—as I had ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... visit repeated itself; but repeated itself with this difference—that it was no longer undisturbed. The possibility of a revolution in the Highlands had now become a matter of audible discussion even in the remote Macdonald country. The temper of the sparse population was there, indeed, not very violent, but the thought that some sort of disaffection was even there actually alive would often disturb my previous sense of peace, while the Glasgow and Edinburgh newspapers, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... peculiar to lovers, Matthew Maltboy immediately recognized in Mr. Chiffield a rival—and a dangerous one. Having seen much of society, Maltboy was well aware that Mr. Chiffield's mature age, his grim appearance, his sparse whiskers, and even the bald spot on the top of his head, were eminent advantages with which youth and bloom, and a full head of hair could not cope—unless with the aid of that fascination which Matthew ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Pratts, on the contrary, well caparisoned by their man milliner, well groomed, well curled, were a marked feature of the sparse congregation. The spectator of so many points, all made the most of, unconsciously felt with a sense of oppression that everything that could be done had been done. No ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... between the different denominations ran high, and the middling good folk who did not go to church counted those who did. In the Established Church there was a sparse gathering, who waited in vain for the minister. After a time it got abroad that a flag of distress was flying from the manse, and then they saw that the minister was storm-stayed. An office-bearer offered to conduct service; but the others ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... service was over, and the sparse congregation had dwindled away, she went round to the vestry and asked Jarper, the cross old verger, if she could see Mr Pendle. Jarper, who took a paternal interest in the curate, and did not like Miss Mosk over much, since ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... of about thirty with sparse reddish hair, perspiration glistening on his upper lip, stood at the mouth of a narrow way like the one Brett had come through. He wore a grimy pale yellow shirt with a wide-flaring collar, limp and sweat-stained, dark ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... a lace-curtain-cleaning establishment. It was cruder and rougher than anything she had yet encountered; a white-pine table with a washbowl and a toothbrush mug, and a black iron bed that at first glance had sent darting through her a sinking sense of institution. But it was clean, and a sparse Irish landlady with a moist pink presence that steamed hot suds had left her without question and one week's advance payment tucked into ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... land: 0% permanent crops: 0% other: 100% (mostly rock with sparse scrub oak, few trees, some commercial ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... of green water-meadow through which a chalky trout-stream wandered, and the red roof of an old mill showed through a group of silvery poplars and willows. On the other side of the road were undulating fields that dwindled from sparse cultivation to bare down-land. There was no sign of any house except the distant mill, but directly over the summit of the hill, happily hidden, an ugly little red-brick mushroom of a town asserted itself, overgrowing in its unbeautiful growth the ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... end. The weary time of waiting and preparation was almost over. Sparse news filtered through that the northward advance towards Palestine had already begun; that there had been heavy fighting at Katia, where the Turks, under cover of a desert mist, surprised and cut up—but failed to defeat—our ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... their necessity as ephemeral, and I think that under a proper public sentiment they will soon pass away. They cannot stand,—such has been the experience in Massachusetts,—they cannot stand by the side of a good system of public education. Yet where the population is sparse, where there is not property sufficient to enable the people to establish a high school, then an endowed school may properly come in to make up the deficiency, to supply the means of education to which the public wealth, at the present moment, is unequal. Endowed institutions ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... friend in the Chamber,—a deputy newly elected for Deux-Sevres, named M. Sarigue, a poor fellow not unlike the inoffensive, ignoble animal whose name he bore,[2] with his sparse, red hair, his frightened eyes, his hopping gait in his white gaiters. He was so shy that he could not say two words without stammering, almost tongue-tied, incessantly rolling balls of chewing-gum around in his ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... when Don Antonio reached it, was rather better; the furnishings, though sparse, were massive and imposing; the tapestries on the walls, if old, were rich and choice. But everywhere the ill-assorted marriage of pretentiousness and neediness was apparent. The floors of hall and living-room were strewn with fresh-cut rushes, an obsolescent ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... He wore sparse, sandy whiskers, now fast turning gray. The outthrust of the lower part of his face was as sharp as that of a fox, and he really looked like a fox. She was sure of his identity before uncle Henry wheeled ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... rivers full of tumbled and dishevelled logs; forests in green, in which the crimson maple leaf burns brightly; vast amphitheatres of cliff-like hills; mounds of the stark Laurentine rock pushing up through trees like bald heads through the sparse covering of departing hair; miles of blanched trees and black trees standing like skeletons or strewn all-whither, like billets of stick—acres of murdered stumps, where evil forest fires have swept along; and we had even an occasional glimpse of that scourge of Canada seen smoking ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... metropolis of the northern provinces of Mexico—for the most part built of mud—standing in the midst of vast barren plains, o'ertopped by bold porphyritic mountains—plains with a population sparse as their timber—in the old city of Chihuahua lies the first scene of ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... went by. Then two other uniformed figures appeared at the opening to the hall, a sparse elderly man, a blond girl. They stood there talking earnestly together for some seconds, then came slowly down the aisle toward Quillan. It appeared to be an argument about some detail of her work. The girl frowned, stubbornly shaking her head. Near Quillan ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz
... the whole surface crust of earth had been burned to a white heat ages ago. Low hills with clifflike faces; shallow nullahs used only a month or two a year to carry the monsoon deluges to the Nerbudda; the stones of the river bottoms bone-white—everywhere sparse and scrubby foliage with dust-covered leaves. There was no turf in this stony world except the sand of the hollows and the wind eddied most of these spaces like water, quickly covering all tracks. It was toward the end of the afternoon that Nels ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost |
