"Meager" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in Carthage—except Mrs. Ulysses S. G. Budlong—celebrates Christmas behind closed doors. People find it easier to rhapsodize when the collateral is not shown. It is amazing how far a Carthaginian can go on the most meager donation. The formula is usually: "We had Such a lovely Christmas at our house. What did I get? Oh, so many things I ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... Skidmore, R.L. Jennings, and L. Byllesby preaching thoroughgoing Socialism. In 1829 these men and others were exercising a notable and considerable influence upon American thought. In vain shall we search their writings and the meager accounts of their lives for any trace or suggestion of ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... what corresponded to a day, for they had lost all track of time, Andy Sudds arose from the stone bench on which their meager meal had been served. He started from the restaurant where they had ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... the rural districts of Missouri recently made his first visit to New York. Shortly after his arrival he went into a restaurant and ordered what seemed to him like a rather meager meal. When the bill was presented it totaled $8.35. The Missourian looked at the amount twice to make sure his eyes were not deceiving him. Then he smiled. "Waiter," he called, "you've made a mistake. I've got more money ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... gasps of fury, he twisted his meager arms tightly round Errington, and thrust him fiercely with all his might towards the edge of the Fall. For one second Philip strove against him—the next, he closed his eyes—Thelma's face smiled on his mind in that darkness as though in white farewell—the surging blood roared in his ears with ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... single scene to this entire sleep walking including the grounds for it, and he has said as little of Lady Macbeth's childhood as of her sexual erotic life. Our knowledge of Shakespeare's life is above all so meager, if we turn from the case to the poet himself, that the difficulties tower in our way almost mountain high. The reader will in this case, which presents itself so unfavorably, have to expect neither that certainty nor even ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... disappeared the jailer turned to Desmond, and, taking him by the sleeve, led him across the courtyard into the palace. Here, in a little room, he was given a meager breakfast of rice; after which he was taken to another room where he found Angria in company with a big Maratha, who had in his hand a long bamboo cane. The Pirate was no longer in durbar {council, ceremonial} array, but was clad in a long yellow ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... orders under the new Constitution were unique. Precedents, those charts and lighthouses of the judicial mariner, were lacking. Progress was tentative and groping. Little wonder therefore that at first the business of the Court was meager and membership in its body seemed less attractive than membership in the judiciary of a state. Robert Hanson Harrison, one of President Washington's original appointees to the Supreme bench, declined to serve, preferring to accept a state judicial office. John Rutledge, ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson
... He had always despised them, except the largest of them, which was the home of his henchman, Charlie Johnson. The Johnsons had originally owned a lot three hundred feet wide, but they had sold all of it except the meager frontage before the house itself, and five houses were now crowded into the space where one used to squire it so spaciously. Up and down the street, the same transformation had taken place: every big, comfortable old brick house now had two ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... add some instances from Shakespeare's works of serious and estimable behavior on the part of individuals representing the lower classes, or of considerate treatment of them on the part of their "betters," but I have been unable to find any, and the meager ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... and shall see more before they die. Two captains ride before them on shaggy ponies, the taller in armor, stained and rusted with many a storm and fray, the other in brilliant inlaid cuirass and helmet, gaudy sash and plume, and sword hilt glittering with gold, a quaint contrast enough to the meager garron which carries him and his finery. Beside them, secured by a cord which a pikeman has fastened to his own wrist, trots a bare-legged Irish kerne, whose only clothing is his ragged yellow mantle, and the unkempt "glib" of hair, through which his eyes peer out, right and left, in ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... Poisoned," was the great, staring title. The details were meager; brutally meager. They were to the effect that some one had gained access to the Waterbury stable and ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... midst of our perusal, we were interrupted by the arrival of a visitor. He was a slight-built, slope-shouldered young fellow, in prison garb, with a meager visage heavily furrowed with sickness and suffering—he had tuberculosis, chronic bronchitis, and the indigestion with which all prisoners who eat the regular prison fare are afflicted. Not that Ned ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... ever, and the raft still motionless. The rays of the sun penetrate even through the shelter of our tent, where we sit literally gasp- ing with the heat. The impatience with which we awaited the moment when the boatswain should dole out our meager allowance of water, and the eagerness with which those lukewarm drops were swallowed, can only be realized by those who for themselves have endured the agonies ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... early part of September, the air was warm and balmy, and barn-yard fowls were clucking and scratching about the rather meager soil ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... is a most precious fluid and there is none to waste. Our oceans evaporated ages ago, and outside of the precipitation of moisture at the poles in the form of snow, none is to be had anywhere else on the planet except in very meager quantities. ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... historical as biographical. Each name is linked with some conspicuous problem in statesmanship, and the endeavor has been to set forth the work as well as the workman. It is hoped that the library notes appended to each chapter will be of assistance to the earnest student, in supplementing the meager outlines of this volume with the abundance of personal detail and wealth of dramatic incident which give ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... getting a sufficient return for their products, largely because they lack the facilities for marketing them properly. By cooperation they will be placed upon an equal footing with the large producers and small investments that heretofore have given but a meager return will become profitable. ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... do in the way of self-adornment, Happy Jack went out again into the hot afternoon. At his best, Happy Jack could never truthfully be called handsome; just now, clothed inadequately in gray Stetson hat and two meager sheepskins, ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... tree-fern attains a height of stem of 25 to 30 feet, with fronds spreading out into a crest 26 feet in diameter. These plants are among the most beautiful of all vegetable productions, and in their gigantic forms indicate, in a meager degree, the extraordinary beauty of the vegetation on the globe previous to the ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... and eccentric Philadelphia merchant, financier, philanthropist and the founder of Girard College, was born near Bordeaux, France, in 1750, the son of a sea captain. He lost the sight of his right eye when eight years old and had only a meager education. Beginning a seafaring life as a cabin boy, he in time became master and part owner of a small vessel trading between New York, New Orleans and Port au Prince. In May, 1776, he was driven into the port of Philadelphia by a British fleet and settled there as a merchant. Gradually ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... him the meager information that Pasco was a little railroad junction town in Franklin County, Washington, on the Columbia River. "The old man must have been delayed on his way ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... of Virginia was a mammoth undertaking even though launched by a daring and courageous people in an expanding age. The meager knowledge already accumulated was at hand to draw on and England was not without preparation to push for "its place in the sun." There was a growing navy, there was trained leadership, there was capital, there was organization and there were men ready to make the gamble for ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... folded her meager wardrobe and placed it in the Herr Doktor's American trunk: a marvel, that trunk, so firm, so heavy, bound with iron. And with her own clothing she packed Stewart's, the dress-suit he had worn once to the Embassy, a hat that folded, strange American ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... very tired and must have shown it, when, with the first rays of a very meager sun, Miss Grey softly unclosed her eyes and found me looking at her, for her smile had a sweet compassion in it, and she said ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... had a little sister with a remarkably level head and good common sense. I am glad that you recognize the awful inflation of prices during the war period, and how I have had to skimp and scheme and save in order to make ends meet and to keep us going on Papa's meager income." ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... almost constant toil, and very meager schooling,—only a few weeks each year,—James Garfield excelled all his companions in the log schoolhouse. Besides solving at home in the long winter evenings, by the light of the pine fire, all the ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... one certain means of restraint on an act of vandalism. The picture now stood between Trenholme and the scoffing multitude. It was his buckler against the shafts of innuendo. Rather than lose it before his actions were vindicated he would suffer the depletion to the last penny of a not altogether meager bank account. ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... degrees F. below zero, and in 1910 it was 10 degrees F. below. Both these years Emerald Bay froze over. Perhaps the reason for this is found in the fact that the entrance to the bay is very shallow, and that this meager depth is subject to change in surface temperature, becoming warmer in summer and colder in winter. This narrow ridge once solidly frozen, the warmth of the larger body of water would have no effect ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... is their use throughout many centuries. Until very recent times the burning splinter has been in use in Scotland and in other countries, and it is probable that at present in remote districts of highly civilized countries this crude device serves the meager needs of those whose requirements have been undisturbed by the progress of civilization. Scott, in "The Legend of Montrose," describes a table scene during a feast. Behind each seat a giant Highlander stood, holding a blazing ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... line of flight and making it stay there took a lot longer than Johnny counted on. With no other manual purchase than that afforded by his own lesser mass, the job proved almost impossible and he had to use his suit motor. This caused some concern over his meager fuel supply since his plan called for some flat-out jetting later on. In the frantic flurry of bending, twisting, over and under—controlling, the veneer of aplomb began to wear. Johnny was sweating freely by the time he had the cylinder stabilized as best he could ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... of St. Johns; Land Purchased by Mormons; Wild Celebration of St. John's Day; Disputes Over Land Titles; Irrigation Difficulties and Disaster; Meager Rations at Concho; Springerville and Eagar; A Land of Beaver and Bear; Altitudinous Agriculture at Alpine; In Western New Mexico; New ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... them by producing a car with five? What does your scholar think when he is told what to study, how to interpret it, and then what to write? What does your worker think when he sees the bureaucrat living in luxury while his wage is a comparatively meager one? What do your young people think in their continual striving for a greater degree of freedom than was possessed by their parents? What does your painter think? Your poet? ...
— Revolution • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... either of them. Practically, too, any serious design of that nature would never be permitted to come to his knowledge. Supplement these literal negations and restrictions by the unrecorded verbal explanations and comments said to have been made by Major Buell, by his disapproval of the meager defensive preparations which had been made, such as his declaration that a few loop-holes "would have a tendency to irritate the people," and we can readily imagine how a faithful officer, whose reiterated calls for help had been refused, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... awake or sleeping, The captive, the poor captive still was there. The rain seemed but his tears; his hopeless groans Spoke in each hollow wind; his nights of anguish Robbed mine of rest; or, if I slept, my dreams Showed his pale wasted form, his beamless eye Fixed on the moon, his meager hands now folded In dull despair, now rending his few locks Untimely gray; and now again in frenzy Dreadful he shrieked; tore with his teeth his flesh; 'Gainst his dark prison-walls dashed out his brains, And died despairing! From my couch ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... by sight, knew of him further by repute as an impulsive, violent, warm-hearted and learned pundit who, for a typically meager recompense, furnished sundry classes of young gentlemen with amusement, alarm and instruction, in about equal parts, through the medium of lectures at the Metropolitan University. During vacations the professor pursued, with some degree of passion, experiments ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... fierce sparkels; which flying forth, shone, and made a sound in the aire." I should like to explain to him about the motions of the seven planets which are the seven governours of the world, and how Saturn "causeth a complexion of colour between blacke and yeallowe, meager, distorted, of an harde skinne, eminent vaines, an hairie bodie, small eies, eie brows joyned together &c.," and how "he maketh a man subtle, wittie, a way-layer, and murtherer;" how, again, Jupiter is "magnipotent, good natured, fortunate, sweete, pleasant, the best wel-willer, honest, ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... but that prodigy, that uncanny apparition that had come and gone so suddenly—that weird strange thing that was so soft-spoken and so gentle of manner and yet had shaken them up like an earthquake with the shock of its gruesome aspect. At last a cold little shudder quivered along down the widow's meager frame and she ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... though important events are looked for speedily. It is time. If our coat-tails were off, we should, in nine cases out of ten, be voted a nation of sans cullottes. We are already meager and emaciated. Yet I believe there is abundance of clothing and food, held by the extortioners. The government should wage war upon the speculators—enemies ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... ghosts of murdered hours, As they flit past in countless throngs, They taunt me with their meager powers, ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... Robson take meager and colorless realities and expand them into things of blossoming promise. She was almost creative in the artistry she brought to these transmutations. In the end she convinced herself of their existence and she was quite sure that Mrs. Finnegan shared equally ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... and scenes in pantomime. Many ancient clocks reflected this childish taste by having attached to them all sorts of figures representing the hours, days of the week, or feasts of the Church. Probably one reason for this was that as the education of the populace was too meager to give them much knowledge of numerals, and as they had but little business of importance to transact, they were far less interested in the time than in the dumb show gone through with by the little carved dolls. Furthermore, having no calendars, these figures served the purpose ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... and, taking his blanket, sought a favorable spot upon which to spread it. Then he helped Mrs. Austin to her feet—her muscles had stiffened until she could barely stand—after which he fetched his saddle for a pillow. He made no apologies for his meager hospitality, nor did ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... world as being the father of his son, was a poor man, depending for support upon his meager salary as bandmaster to a regiment of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... hand at the police courts to give straw bail for his customers or establish an alibi for them in case they had been beating anybody to death on his premises. Consequently he presently became a political leader, and was elected to a petty office under the city government. Out of a meager salary he soon saved money enough to open quite a stylish liquor saloon higher up town, with a faro bank attached and plenty of capital to conduct it with. This gave him fame and great respectability. The position of alderman was forced upon him, and it was just the same as presenting ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... doubtful if the world ever can run along without the work of women but the time will surely come when society will be so constituted that no woman in the first flush of her youth will be forced to squander it on the meager temporary reward, and forfeit her birthright. If she wants to, well and good. No one need be deeply concerned for those that launch out into life because they like it. Women in civilized countries are at liberty to make their own lives; that is the supreme privilege of democracy. ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... and violence; Bangladesh protests India's attempts to fence off high-traffic sections of the porous boundary; dispute with India over New Moore/South Talpatty/Purbasha Island in the Bay of Bengal deters maritime boundary delimitation; Burmese Muslim refugees strain Bangladesh's meager resources ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... portions must be above the rest, which is an advantage. The only practical level, if {286} level there must be, is that of mediocrity, if not of absolute worthlessness: any attempt to secure equality of strength will result in equality of weakness. Efficient development may be cut down into meager brevity, and in this way only can apparent equality of plan be secured throughout. It is far preferable to count upon differences of execution, and to proceed upon the acknowledged expectation that the prominent merits of the work will be settled by the accidental ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... of the children, his mind being naturally active; but he had little disposition for study and very meager opportunities, for "school kept" only a few weeks in a year. At the time of this story he had just passed his majority, was somewhat above medium height, solidly built, with broad, square shoulders. His brown hair hung several inches below ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... rewrite stories must be printed on the same facts before another message brings later news and additional details. An example of this is the treatment of the first few stories of the wreck of the White Star liner Titanic. The story was a big one, but the first dispatches were very meager and many rehashings of these few facts had to be printed before later and more definite ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... the dirty glass partition, but the tall meager form of the old merchant was nowhere visible. Mr. Shrimplin advanced yet farther into the room and urged by his sense of duty and his public spirit, he directed his steps toward the office, treading softly as one who fears to come upon the unexpected. Once he paused, ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... laurels, established himself in the meager fashion which he thought the government would approve; and his brother, finding neither duties nor salary attached to his secondary position, devoted himself mainly to the study of human nature as exhibited ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... further fact now established, that arts extend beyond the boundaries of linguistic stocks, the most fundamental divisions we are yet able to make of the peoples of the globe, we may more properly conclude that this field promises but a meager harvest; but the origin and development of arts and industries is in itself a vast and profoundly interesting theme of study, and when North American archaeology is pursued with this end in view, ...
— On Limitations To The Use Of Some Anthropologic Data - (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (pages 73-86)) • J. W. Powell
... stepmother quickly perceived the superior aptitudes and abilities of Abraham. She became very fond of him, and in every way encouraged his marked inclination to study and improve himself. The opportunities for this were meager enough. Mr. Lincoln himself has drawn a vivid outline of ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... journeyman had left, the meals had become more meager than ever. The masters had not had enough money in the spring to buy a pig. So there was no one to consume the scraps. Now they had to eat them all themselves. Master Andres was never at the table; he took scarcely any nourishment nowadays; a piece of bread-and-butter now and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... and this decision was carried through for the entire four and one half months of suspension. A more difficult problem, however, confronted the brokerage houses. Many of these firms had very heavy office rents and fixed charges of various kinds; their business had been showing meager profits and even losses for some years and, the length of the period of closing being impossible to forecast, they did not dare to undertake burdens that might get them into difficulties. The result was that a few strong houses, with philanthropic ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... it aroused all her natural honesty and serious nobleness of character, which lay deep under the almost hoydenish levity usually observable in her manner. Crude as her sense of life's larger significance was, and meager as had been her experience in the things which count for most in the sum of a young girl's existence under fair circumstances, she grasped intuitively ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Philadelphia, to whom I sent specimens for identification, writes me that the beetle is Corthylus punctatissimus, Zim, and that nothing is known of its habits. I take pleasure, therefore, in contributing the present account, meager as it is, of its operations, and have illustrated it with a few rough sketches that are all of the natural size, excepting those of the insects themselves, which are ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... room fixed before I go," and with his own hands Hugh split and prepared the wood which was to kindle Adah's fire, then with Aunt Eunice's help sundry changes were made in the arrangement of the rather meager furniture, which never seemed so meager to Hugh as when he looked at it with Adah's eyes and wondered ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... writes himself Mat Meager, complains, that whereas he constantly used to Breakfast with his Mistress upon Chocolate, going to wait upon her the first of May he found his usual Treat very much changed for the worse, and has been forced to feed ever ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... understand what had happened to him—everything looked so different today. It was as if his eyes had been rubbed with some wonderful ointment; even the meager lands of the Crow's Nest looked beautiful and promising. A new day had dawned ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... they encountered Sam—Sam of the rolling eye, the genial grin, the deft hand. Sam was known to every hardened traveler as the porter de luxe of the road. Sam was a diplomat, a financier, and a rascal. He never forgot a face. He never forgave a meager tip. The passengers who traveled with him were at once his ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... was little time for intimacy or confidential talks between Mary and Cousin Patty. And since Mary would not ask questions about Roger, and since Cousin Patty seemed to have certain reserves in his direction, it was only meager information which trickled out; and with this Mary ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... in 1800 say the average depth of snow was never, previous to 1830, more than knee-deep to an ordinary man, while it was breast-high all that winter. It became crusted over, so as, in some cases, to bear teams. Cattle and horses perished, the winter wheat was killed, the meager stock of provisions ran out, and during the three months' continuance of the snow, ice and continuous cold weather the most wealthy settlers came near starving, while some of the poor ones actually did. It was in the midst of such ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... with a small piece of pork, six pounds of pemmican, tea and a bit of tobacco was all that we had left in the way of provisions. The Eskimos had eaten everything that they had brought, and it now devolved upon us to feed them also from our meager store, which at the start only provided for Easton and me for ten days, as that had been considered more than ample time for the journey. I limited the rations at each meal to a half of one of my cakes for each man. Potokomik agreed with me that this was a wise ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... know that I could improve on an arrangement that doesn't cost any money," Lyman answered. He sat looking about the room, at the meager furniture and the thin array of books. "We've got a start, anyway, and I don't think Webster could have done anything without a start. ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... minute or two to cut away a section of this protecting pipe. In doing so, he exposed to view the many wires making up an astonishingly substantial cable, for so meager an office building. He then turned back to his tool-case and lifted therefrom, first a Bunnell sounder, and then a Wheatstone bridge, of the post-office pattern, a coil of KK wire, a pair of lineman's pliers, ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... in the wood: one yellow-haired, lean and eager; the other redhaired, heavy and pondering; and if it be true that two heads are better than one, it is truer that four hands are better than two. In any case, their united and repeated efforts bore fruit at last, if anything so hard and meager and forlorn can be called a fruit. It weighed loosely in the net as it was lifted, and rolled out on the grassy edge of the well; it was ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... This was the reason that he did not obtain the liberal education that he should have had; besides that on account of weakness and delicate health, his mother would not let him exert himself, and his teachers forbore to urge him. He was meager and sickly from the first, and hence had his nickname of Batalus, given him, it is said, by the boys, in derision of his appearance; Batalus being, as some tell us, a certain enervated flute-player, in ridicule of whom Antiphanes wrote a play. Others speak ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... on the "Aussage'' (Test VI) was very meager. She only recalled 10 details of the picture. On cross- examination she gave correctly 14 more items and was wrong on 3 of them. She accepted only 2 out of 5 suggestions offered and these were the most ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... hickory splints which did its work to perfection, and Ree sharpened up his knife and carved from a whitewood block several plates and trays to add to their meager collection of dishes. Both boys improved the opportunity also, while shut in, to give their wardrobes attention, making themselves stout moccasins, ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... morning after Kid Wolf's arrival in the town, the old padre was astonished to find a package of money inside his door. It was addressed simply: "For the poor." It was a windfall and a much-needed addition to the mission's meager finances. ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... industries practiced by primitive woman he brought all his technological skill and a part of his technological interest to bear on the new problems. Women had been able to thrust a stick into the earth and drop the seed and await a meager harvest. When man turned his attention to this matter, his ingenuity eventually worked out a remarkable combination of the animal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms: with the iron plow, drawn by the ox, he upturned the face of the earth, and produced food ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... the imagination misleads, with them as with us, and consequently they must have books of some kind—which implies a written or printed language. It is probable that this language does not correspond with the very meager one of which we occasionally hear them pronounce a few words. The latter is, I am convinced, used only for names and interjections, and sometimes to call the attention of the person addressed, while the former must be a rich and carefully elaborated system of literary ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... both much to tell each other. But I wish to hear your story first. Remember, Claudia, those alarming letters you sent me were very meager in their details. Tell me everything, my child; everything from the time you left me until the time you met ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... of all led the old woman to where the others were making as comfortable a camp as the meager conditions allowed. It turned out that the little lame girl, Mabel French, knew her very well, and addressed her as Mrs. Jacobus. She took occasion to tell Max aside that the old lady had lived alone for many years, but that instead of being poor as she ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... or even a Count St. Germain. Many take for their ideal Margrave with his ever-renewing youth, and care little for the soul as the price paid for it. Not a few, mistaking "Witch-of-Endorism" pure and simple, for Occultism—"through the yawning Earth from Stygian gloom, call up the meager ghost to walks of light," and want, on the strength of this feat, to be regarded as full blown Adepts. "Ceremonial Magic" according to the rules mockingly laid down by Eliphas Levi, is another imagined alter ego of the philosophy ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... more color was now perceptible; distances were extending; lines of meager flowers, crimson and blue as well as white, showed in a border of the kitchen garden; and the sky, seeming to lift and brighten, was a faint orange above the horizon and a most delicate rose tint toward the zenith—so that till half-past eight, or later, one had the ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... father. The son, Philip the Second, was a small, meager man, much below the middle height, with thin legs, a narrow chest, and the shrinking, timid air of a habitual invalid. He seemed so little upon his first visit to his aunts, the Queens Eleanor and Mary, accustomed to look upon proper men in Flanders and Germany, that ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... its victories no less renowned than war, it is said; and peaceable folk of a patriotic temper have learned to make the best of their meager case and have found self-complacency in these victories of the peaceable order. So it may broadly be affirmed that all nations look with complacency on their own peculiar Culture—the organised complex of habits of thought and of conduct by ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... were meager and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson
... except the enterprise of distributing products made by the toil and skill of millions of workers the world over. But while the workers made these products their sole share was meager wages, barely sufficient to sustain the ordinary demands of life. Moreover, the workers of one country were compelled to pay exorbitant prices for the goods turned out by the workers of other countries. The shippers who stood as middlemen between the workers of the different ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... sottana of violet he looked strangely diminutive and feminine; his pale skin and mild eyes, and the soft white hair like a fringe beneath his velvet cap—all gave an impression of great gentleness, an impression heightened by contrast with the bare, white-washed walls and rigorously meager furnishing of the cell-like room. With the courteous manner of all southern countries, the archbishop placed the best chair for ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... their new friend weary with suspense and their long inactivity. All longed for a stroll in the open air, a chance to stretch their legs, and an unlimited supply of water to drink. It almost seemed that their meager allowance of a pint and a half each for the twenty-four hours did little more than increase their thirst. They could not safely alter their unpleasant situation, however, and they wisely made the best of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... who practised idolatry. Nebuchadnezzar becomes his foe. He besieges Jerusalem, and surrounds the walls. The city is stuffed full of men. Brisk is the skirmish. Seven times a day are the gates assailed. For two years the fight goes on, yet the city is not taken. The folk within are in want of food. Meager they become. For so shut up are they that escape seems impossible. But on a quiet night they steal out, and rush through the host. They are discovered by the enemy. A loud alarm is given. They are ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... brighter intelligence; and in all such instances it has been assumed that federation and union grew out of that conformity in mode of thought which is characteristic of peoples speaking identical or closely related tongues. Accordingly, while the grouping of eastern tribes rests in part on meager testimony and is open to question at many points, it is perhaps the best that can be devised, and suffices for convenience of statement if not as a final classification. So far as practicable the names adopted for the tribes, confederacies, ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... Observing her arms still clasped upon her bosom, and that something seemed hidden under the rags there, a thought crossed my mind, which impelled me forcibly to withdraw her hands for a moment; when I caught a glimpse of a meager little babe—the lower part of its body thrust into an old bonnet. Its face was dazzlingly white, even in its squalor; but the closed eyes looked like balls of indigo. It must have been ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... but meager accommodations, and they were glad that they had brought along some supplies. There was, to be sure, plenty of mutton, but who wanted to eat that all ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... facts, bare, meager facts, verified by books and figures, and of which there can be no doubt. I must not confuse them with experiences which will have to rest on my own observation, or my memory of them. Last evening when the Count came from his room he began ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... those days; in fact, there are very few names known in connection with the buildings themselves. The word architect was little used until after the Renaissance. The owner and the "surveyor" were the people responsible, and the plans, directions and details given to the workmen were astonishingly meager. ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... thereto;—namely, the habit of work. They have inherited a certain rugged integrity from their mothers and a gift of vision from their fathers which, when combined with the habit of work—forced upon them by their family's meager income—means power. Integrity is a dry seed until put in the ground of faith and allowed to grow. But ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson
... value to the store, at even that meager salary. He was no good at driving bargains or at palavering with the trade. He tried to keep out of sight as much as possible among the boxes and shelves. His clothing was poor and shabby, his hair and beard ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... It is obvious that the banian or meager days, still continued in the British navy, are a remnant of the meager days of the Roman catholic times, when it was deemed a mortal sin to eat flesh. Stock-fish are, however now abandoned, having been found to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... the last is more than 2,000 years, in fact considerably longer than from the beginning of the Christian era until now. The explanation is easy to find. In the first place, the incitations upon the side of sense perception were comparatively meager. Neither in sonority nor in delicacy of tonal resource were the Egyptian instruments a tenth part as stimulating as those of to-day. Moreover, we have here to deal with childlike intelligences, slow perceptions, ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... and very creditable, specimen of his future talent, though obliged, by extreme need, to enter government service at the age of fourteen, at his father's death. He filled several positions in different places at a very meager salary, until the death of his mother (1788), when he resigned and determined to devote himself exclusively to literature. He engaged in journalistic work, became an editor, and soon published a paper of his own. But his ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... water by the tent flap. Philip painfully made a meager toilet, glanced doubtfully at the coarse cotton garment which by one of the mystifying events of the previous night had replaced the silk shirt he had worn from Sherrill's, and ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... point of crude oil is the temperature at which it gives off inflammable gases. While information on the actual flash points of the various oils is meager, it is, nevertheless, a question of importance in determining their availability as fuels. In general it may be stated that the light oils have a low, and the heavy oils a much higher flash point. A division is sometimes made at oils having a specific gravity of 0.85, with a statement that ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... small in dimensions, so meager in population, so deficient, compared to the leading nations of Europe, in material and financial strength, had already her great future swelling in her heart. Intellectually and morally she was taking the lead ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... admired, was well in keeping with the strength and grasp of his masterly mind. Without the privilege of a day's instruction in the schoolroom, he acquired a fund of useful knowledge that would put to shame the meager attainments of many a college graduate. His speeches and writing are models of a pure English style, and are characterized by simplicity, clearness, directness, ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... eight o'clock, and the sun had disappeared. The heat was as intolerable as before, but he inhaled the dusty, fetid, infected town air with greediness. And now his head began to spin round, and a wild expression of energy crept into his inflamed eyes and pale, meager, wan face. He did not know, did not even think, what he was going to do; he only knew that all was to be finished "to-day," at one blow, immediately, or he would never return home, because he had no desire to live thus. How to finish? ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... never yet suffered from the lack of a single necessary; not the less they frayed their mornings, wore out their afternoons, scorched their evenings, and consumed their nights, in scraping together provision for an old age they were destined never to see. They were a small meager pair, with hardly a smile between them. One waited and the other cooked. The one that waited had generally her chin tied up with a silk handkerchief, as if she had come to life again, but not quite, and could not ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... them of the welcome which the Chief Beralsea extended to them the second night after their arrival at Venture Island. Besides the clams referred to there was an abundance of fish, several varieties, besides game and meats, and the only thing which they seemed to lack, or which was rather meager in ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... meager light of the tiny lamp they labored sedulously at the rope-ladder until Iris's eyes were closing with sheer weariness. Neither of them had slept much during the preceding night, and they ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... of romantic splendor surrounds the first voyage of Sebastian Cabot. A meager extract from an old Bristol record: "In the year 1497, June 24, on St. John's Day, was Newfoundland found by Bristol men in a ship called the Matthew"—a few dry statements such as might be found in the note-book of any intelligent sea captain—these are ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... be impossible to outline each one of these religions in detail at this time and to reconstruct their history, because our meager information would not permit it, but we can indicate, in a general way, how they penetrated into the Occidental countries at various periods, and we can try to define their common characteristics by showing what new elements ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... them all I can each day. My power, even like that of the Infinite, is limited by conditions. It is not my pleasure ever to have them go unrefreshed; but how much better for them, could they be content with whatever comes each day, though sometimes meager. How it cheers me to see those who have come in good courage and faith, not knowing that the feast was here. Eat and give thanks," he said; while a band played ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... literature—is its glory in the eyes of God; for the Bible is its literature. Its work has been done chiefly among and through the common people. At the end of the century it numbered among its adherents more than a million and a quarter. While sectarian churches numerically much stronger report meager increases and even decreases, it reports an average of over forty thousand increase for ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... now over, the strangers requested to be shown to their place of repose. The old people would gladly have talked with them a little longer, and have expressed the wonder which they felt, and their delight at finding the poor and meager supper prove so much better and more abundant than they hoped. But the elder traveler had inspired them with such reverence that they dared not ask him any questions. And when Philemon drew Quicksilver aside, and inquired how under the sun a fountain of milk could have got into an old earthen ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... to the actual comfort of her family, they were looked upon as being quite wealthy and aristocratic by those who saw nothing of their inner life—who knew nothing of the many shifts and turns in the kitchen to save money for the decoration of the parlors, or of the frequent meager meals eaten from the pantry shelf, in order to make amends for the numerous dinner and evening parties which Eugenia and Alice insisted upon giving, and which their frequent visits to their friends rendered necessary. Extensive servant-hire was of course ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes |
