"Meagre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... To a comparison of scene with scene, Bent overmuch on superficial things, Pampering myself with meagre novelties Of colour and proportion; to the moods Of time and season, to the moral power, The affections, and the spirit of the ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... the skeleton itself should be torn asunder. Nor could the invading populace have been disappointed of their expectations: they found numberless things of immense value in their eyes, and great use in their meagre economy. For years, I might say centuries after, pieces of furniture and panels of carved oak, bits of tapestry, antique sconces and candlesticks of brass, ancient horse-furniture, and a thousand things besides of endless interest, were to be found scattered in farm-houses and cottages ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... during several months of the year. It is rocky, and huge and rugged stones lie strewn over the surface of the ground in many places, and one must struggle hard for a livelihood there, especially with the poor and meagre tools possessed by my people. My country is not like yours, diversified by rolling and gentle hills, covered the year round with a thick carpet of green grass, and where every plant sprouts up and grows to maturity as if by magic, and where one may enrich himself ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... Meagre and cold was the sympathy which a transgressor might expect from the assembly at the pond. The women mingled freely with the crowd and appeared to take a peculiar interest in the punishment about to be inflicted. The age had not so much refinement, that any sense of ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... this is enough, of itself, to make an Arab think it beautiful and blessed. Water is scarce in blistered Syria. We run railways by our large cities in America; in Syria they curve the roads so as to make them run by the meagre little puddles they call "fountains," and which are not found oftener on a journey than every four hours. But the "rivers" of Pharpar and Abana of Scripture (mere creeks,) run through Damascus, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... your majesty. War is inevitable, and we must risk our meagre forces against the two hundred thousand ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... Toyl or Pastime, within Doors,—washing, brewing, baking, pickling, and preserving; to say Nought of the Dairy, which supplies us with endless Variety of Country Messes, such as Father's Soul loveth. 'Tis well we have this Resource, or our Bill of Fare would be somewhat meagre; for the Butcher kills nothing but Mutton, except at Christ-mass. Then, we make our own Bread, for we now keep strict Quarantine, the Plague having now so much spread, that there have e'en been one or two Cases in Chalfont. The only One to seek for Employment ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... ground for them and the tending of such poor cattle as were left in their desolate fields. He and Margot and Reine Allix, between them, fed many mouths that would otherwise have been closed in death by famine, and denied themselves all except the barest and most meagre subsistence, that they might give away ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... and definitely installed as the singer of Adelaide. The story is improbable, as the troubadour's rewards naturally depended upon the favour of his patrons to him personally; it is probably an instance of the manner in which the biographies founded fictions upon a very meagre substratum of fact, the fact in this instance being a passage in which Arnaut declares his timidity in singing the praise of so ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... John Shakespeare, in which he lived and carried on his business, still stands on Henley Street, in Stratford, much the same as it was four hundred and fifty years ago. It is a paltry hovel of two low stories, half timbered, with meagre windows, and must have been a squalid abode even in its prime. It is built flush with the sidewalk, having neither vestibule nor entry, and the rough broken pavement of the kitchen is sunken a step lower than the street. A huge open fireplace of unhewn gray stones yawns ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... them as Adam and Eve, for both were beginning a world that contained neither friends nor kin. Both had very white hands and very short hair. The man was tall and meagre, with a receding forehead and a sandy complexion that should have been freckled, but was not. He had a trick of half-closing his eyes when he looked at anything, not screwing them up as seamen do, but appearing rather to drop a film over them like the inner eyelid of a bird. The woman's ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... devotional mien, and Goethe with eager curiosity, who, unobserved, stood like a suppliant at the door of the obscure little room, the shabby furniture of which betrayed the narrow circumstances of the German poetess. It harmonized with the occupant, a little, bony, meagre figure, wearing a tight-fitting blue-flowered chintz dress. Upon the gray hair, which, parted in the middle, encircled the low forehead, was a cap, which had lost its whiteness and was, therefore, more in harmony with the ruff about her yellow, thin neck. Her sharp, angular features were ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... force that was passionate. There was violence in the grip of his hands. His light eyes were ablaze. His whole meagre body quivered as though galvanized by some vital, electric current more potent ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... two men had dragged a meagre corpse out of the snow heap. A rough worn old pilot-coat, a shabby pair of corduroy trousers, and two broken boots through which the toes could be seen peeping ruefully, were all the visible raiment of the body. The clothes lay in heavy swathes and folds over the miserable bag of bones ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... it out of the rut, nor GRANDOLPH either. Only Mr. G. shone with effulgent light through gloom of evening. Principal result of manoeuvre, beyond giving fillip to majority, is that a day will be filched from meagre holidays, and House must needs ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... feeble plants are planted indiscriminately, cultivation and pruning are omitted or not done thoroughly, resulting in broken and irregular lines. When more care is given, the hedge is nearly spoiled by being pruned too wide at the top, the heavy shade above causing meagre growth and openings below. It should be pruned in wedge shape, but shearing is objectionable as causing a thick and short growth of leaves at the exterior, excluding light from the inside and causing bare branches there. Cutting ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... or three ragged, super-annuated soldiers, dozing on a stone bench, the successors of the Zegris and the Abencerrages; while a tall, meagre valet, whose rusty-brown cloak was evidently intended to conceal the ragged state of his nether garments, was lounging in the sunshine and gossipping with the ancient sentinel on duty. He joined us as we entered ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... acumen of a financier, "it will come sometime. But we are none of us ready. We must delay it as long as we can." So she and the like-minded drove into the country round and talked about preventing the extension of the suffrage to women until hard-working, meagre-living people who had not begun to think much about votes, save as a natural prerogative of man, thought about them a great deal, and incidentally learned to organise and lobby, and got a very good training for suffrage when it should come. It did ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... time he emerged into a more commodious avenue. When within a few yards of the corner he perceived, through a window, that a small confectionary of mean appearance was set in the angle. His same glance that estimated its meagre equipment, its cheap soda-water fountain and stock of tobacco and sweets, took cognizance of Captain Peek within lighting a cigar at a ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... known her better than I. I wish that these recollections of a time when I knew her better than you, were not so meagre. If we were not thousands of miles apart, and I could talk with you, instead of writing to you, perhaps they would not appear quite so unsatisfying. Yet, trivial as they are, I send them, in the persuasion that ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... was talking with. But I have investigated thoroughly the whole subject of those blockade runners, and I believe the prospect of success is worth a giant effort for the recovery of some of that money from the sea. There must be untold quantities of it lying there, inviting even a meagre attempt to get it. The boats can be chartered cheaply; and I have learned that the necessary divers can be secured on an equitable division of the spoils. There are many details of the organization of the enterprise which ...
— Money Island • Andrew Jackson Howell, Jr.
... slaves; their homes were generally in the hills and poor country; their facilities for educating their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre—what there was, if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too needed emancipation. Under the old regime they were looked down upon by those who controlled all the affairs in the interest of slave-owners, as poor white trash who were allowed the ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... which life was regarded, the simplicity of its faith and the patience with which trials were borne. The lessons he learned in it had more practical influence in his life than all the books he read. Nor were his opportunities for the study of character so meagre as the limit of one family would imply. As often happens in New England households, individualities were very marked, and from his stern uncle and his placid aunt down to the sweet and nimble-witted Alice, the family had developed traits and even eccentricities ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Pelops Shoulder! Fame and honour, Me thinks, from hence, as from a Promontory Pointed in heaven, should clap their wings, and sing To all the under world the Loves and Fights Of gods, and such men neere 'em. Palamon Is but his foyle, to him a meere dull shadow: Hee's swarth and meagre, of an eye as heavy As if he had lost his mother; a still temper, No stirring in him, no alacrity, Of all this sprightly sharpenes not a smile; Yet these that we count errours may become him: Narcissus was a sad Boy, but a heavenly:— Oh who can finde the bent of womans fancy? ...
— The Two Noble Kinsmen • William Shakespeare and John Fletcher [Apocrypha]
... judgment by far the best history of England that has yet been published. The other books in the field are either too meagre or too advanced. This book is just what has long been needed, and ought to be largely introduced."—Professor Richard Hudson, University of Michigan, Ann ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... was short of stature, was brown, meagre, and poor-looking. So said Harry Clavering to himself. Her small band, though soft, lacked that wondrous charm of touch which Julia's possessed. Her face was short, and her forehead, though it was broad and open, had none of that feminine command which Julia's look conveyed. ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... of Languedoc, in Southern France, charlatans were liable to be summarily dealt with. For when any mountebank appeared in the city of Montpellier, the magistrates were empowered to set him astride of a meagre, miserable ass, with his face to ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... accepting the investment, struck out right and left from day to day, by skirmishing and reconnoitring parties; the Boers on the 9th of November delivered an assault described as determined in character, which will be more particularly mentioned later, but concerning which details are singularly meagre. This no doubt is owing, partly, to the habitual reticence of the Boers concerning {p.178} their reverses, and partly to the isolation of the British garrison and correspondents until a time when nearer and more exciting events engrossed the columns of ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... genteel females with slender appetites, or stout people upon diets. It was almost inconceivable how Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela, with no actual consultations to that end, practised economies and maintained luxuries. They seemed to move with a spiritual unity like the physical one of the Siamese twins. Meagre meals served magnificently, the most splendid conservatism with the smallest possible amount of comfort, ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... meagre facts, we know nothing of Marvell's boyhood at Hull. His clerical foe, Dr. Parker, afterwards Bishop of Oxford, writes contemptuously of "an hunger-starved whelp of a country vicar," and in another passage, which undoubtedly refers to Marvell, he speaks of "an unhappy education among ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... genuine "Cremona." He consents to take for his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for technique, but not the soul of an artist. The youth has led the happy, careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American and he cannot, with his meagre past, express the love, the passion and the tragedies of life and all its happy phases as can the master who has lived life in all its fulness. But a girl comes into his life—a beautiful bit of human driftwood that his aunt had taken into her heart and home, and through his ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... assumed by some of those actinic clouds, as I propose to call them, in consequence of rotations and other motions, due to differences of temperature, are perfectly astounding. I content myself here with a meagre description ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... call was so meagre that he began to mistrust his countrymen, and he asked if, in case he lost his ship, the town would reimburse him, considering that he was risking his all in their defence. After much debate the townsmen ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... a young American woman, one of a large family of daughters, who, some years since, migrated from her meagre country home to one of the northern cities, to gain her own support. She soon became an expert seamstress, but finding the employment too confining for health and comfort, she went boldly to work for others, to house-keep, cook, clean, &c. After trying several places, she fell upon one where ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... improve himself off the face of the earth, and he should therefore have been thankful to retain a foothold, even in a loose-jointed, rush-roofed cabin away at stony Lisconnel. Whether thankful or no, there, at any rate, he presently found himself established with all his family, and the meagre remnant of his hastily sold-off gear, and the black doors of the "house" seeming to loom ahead whenever he ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... upon mental vision. My intellectual horizon is infinitely wide. The universe it encircles is immeasurable. Would they who bid me keep within the narrow bound of my meagre senses demand of Herschel that he roof his stellar universe and give us back Plato's solid firmament of glassy spheres? Would they command Darwin from the grave and bid him blot out his geological time, give us back a paltry few thousand years? Oh, the supercilious doubters! ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... mercy of heaven the swarm of gossips and of theorists has passed her by. She has no legend or hardly any. So completely has she been passed over that when Madame Duclaux came to write the Life of Emily Bronte she found little to add to Mrs. Gaskell's meagre record beyond that story, which she tells with an incomparable simplicity and reticence, of Emily in her mortal illness, sitting by the hearth, combing her long hair till the comb slips from ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... turned the shooting rights to some account by dividing them into shares of five hundred francs value, which his friends eagerly purchased. The income derived from this source was, however, but a meagre one. Apart from the woods there was only uncultivated land on the estate, marshes, patches of sand, and fields of stones; and for centuries past the opinion of the district had been that no agriculturist could ever turn the expanse to good account. The defunct army contractor alone had been able ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... for a law-writer. In its development he will be thrown, to a great extent, upon his own resources in collating and unfolding the topics, for the literature upon the subject existing in our own language is so meagre that the form of its presentation has not been cast in any conventional mould. We have heretofore had no American treatise whatever upon the general subject, and the English bar has furnished us only with that of Gale ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... their beautiful comrades attempted to explain the eugenistic principles—to point out that the very essence of the entire cult lay in non-reproduction by the physically unfit, and in the ultimate extinction of the thin, bald, and meagre among ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... university, and the poet had always been one of his idols—the man of all others he wanted most to know. Poe's former room opening into the corridor had invariably attracted him. He had frequently looked about its bare walls wondering how so great an inspiration could have started from such meagre surroundings. He had, too, with the romantic imagination of a boy, pictured to himself the kind of man he was, his looks, voice, and manner, and though he had never seen the poet in the flesh, somehow the tones of Richard's ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... published about Oscar as a schoolboy are sadly meagre and insignificant. Fortunately for my readers I have received from Sir Edward Sullivan, who was a contemporary of Oscar both at school and college, an exceedingly vivid and interesting pen-picture of the lad, one of those ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Pedro with a judicial frown. Then he stuck out a finger at the horse, keeping the thumb hooked in his pocket. So meagre a gesture was felt by the ruffled Shorty to be no just way to point at Pedro. "What's the matter with that ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... read each other's thoughts. She made no comment; there was nothing to say to this, nor did she show surprise or repugnance at the dark shadow his answer had flung across the meagre picture. ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... sportsmen as are interested in the subject. I have shown that the tail is not trustworthy as a proportional part of the total length; but from such calculations as I have been able to make from the very meagre materials on which I have to base them, I should allow one 2.50th part of the total length of skeleton for curves ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... as the youngest man, and the one on whom the labouring oar ought to fall, now took the key, applied it to the lock, turned it without difficulty, and then lifted the lid. Disappointment appeared on every face but that of the deacon, at the meagre prospect before the company. Not only was the chest more than half empty, but the articles it did contain were of the coarsest materials; well worn sea-clothes that had seen their best days, and which had never been more than the coarse common ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... wedding what Private Ortheris called "eeklar." It fell in the heart of the hot weather, and, after the wedding, Slane was going up to the Hills with the Bride. None the less, Slane's grievance was that the affair would be only a hired-carriage wedding, and he felt that the "eeklar" of that was meagre. Miss M'Kenna did not care so much. The Sergeant's wife was helping her to make her wedding-dress, and she was very busy. Slane was, just then, the only moderately contented man in barracks. All the rest were more ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... night in the monastery if I wished to do so. The porter led me through a great farmyard, then through a doorway into a room, in the centre of which was a large table, and in the corners were four very small and low wooden bedsteads with meagre mattresses, a couple of sheets, and a ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... degrade it as was done by the poets they patronized and the actors they applauded. On the one side, extravagant and absurd dramas in great numbers, full of low buffoonery, were offered; on the other, meagre, sentimental comedies, and stiff, cold translations from the French, were forced, in almost equal numbers, upon the actors, by the voices of those from whose authority or support they could ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... ambitious, unselfish boy. He supports his mother and sister on meagre wages earned as a shoe-pegger in John Simpson's factory. Tom is discharged from the factory and starts overland for California. He meets with many adventures. The story is told in a way which has made Mr. Alger's name a household word in ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... garnishing. Page after page, for tens and hundreds of feet together, repeat the same wonderful story. The great Alexandrian library, with its tomes of ancient literature, the accumulation of long ages, was but a meagre collection—not less puny in bulk than recent in date—compared with this marvellous library of ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... which Servia has won from the Turks in the neighborhood of Nisch, and the quaint old city of Nisch itself, were no meagre prizes, and ought to content the ambition of the young prince for some time. It was righteous that the Servians should possess Nisch, and that the Turks should be driven out by violence. The cruel and vindictive barbarian had done everything ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... and children—survived altogether.[45] Within a very short time the cabins which he erected were ready to fall and the palisades could not keep out hogs. A tract of land called the "company's garden" yielded the company L300 annually, but this was a meagre return for the enormous suffering and sacrifice of life.[46] Dale took Pocahontas with him to England, and Lady Delaware presented her at court, and her portrait engraved by the distinguished artist Simon de Passe was a popular curiosity.[47] While ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... now the meagre yet certain fruits of our long analysis. We have attained the idea either of a fatal accident under the roof of Madame Deluc, or of a murder perpetrated, in the thicket at the Barrire du Roule, by a lover, or at least by an intimate and secret ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... envy viewed? Where now thy might which all those kings subdued? No martial myriads muster in thy gate; No suppliant nations in thy temple wait; No prophet bards, thy glittering courts among, Wake the full lyre, and swell the tide of song: But lawless force and meagre want are there, And the quick-darting eye of restless fear, While cold oblivion, 'mid thy ruins laid, Folds its dank wing beneath ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... deposited weekly on the mantel-piece, joined to Malaga's meagre salary, gave her the means of sumptuous living compared with her former poverty. Wonderful stories went the rounds of the Circus about Malaga's good-luck. Her vanity increased the six thousand francs which Paz had spent on her furniture ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... longer in proportion to their weight than trout, and a novice almost always overestimates them. But the guides were not deceived. "This one will weigh four pounds and three-quarters, and this one four pounds, but that one not more than three pounds; he is meagre, M'sieu', BUT he is meagre." When we went ashore and tried the spring balance (which every angler ought to carry with him, as an aid to his conscience), the guides guess usually proved to be within an ounce or two of the fact. Any one of the senses can be educated to do the work of the ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... training to Padua, it is impossible to regard him as what is called a Squarcionesque—one among the artistic hacks formed and employed by the Paduan impresario of third-rate painting. No other eagle like to him was reared in that nest. His greatness belonged to his own genius, assimilating from the meagre means of study within his reach those elements which enabled him to divine the spirit of the antique and to attempt its reproduction. In order to facilitate the explanation of the problem offered by his early command of style, it has ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... Gellius is meagre: why not? He who lives with so good a mother, so healthy and so beauteous a sister, and who has such a good uncle, and a world-*full of girl cousins, wherefore should he leave off being lean? Though he touch naught save what is banned, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... Catholic; and he forgot his present errand in the excitement of his rustic loyalty. Raising his bonnet, he cried loudly Vive le Roi!—cried it more than once. There were six in the coach, but Henry, whose pale meagre face with its almond eyes and scanty beard permitted no mistake, remarked the salutation and the giver, and his look cast the young man into a confusion which nearly cost him dearly; for it was only as the guards closed round the ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... tyranny over men who have no votes, utterly unknown to Turkish despotism. Mr. Flood's motion was lost by a majority of only four votes; but this triumph of humanity and republicanism was as transient as it was meagre. The next day, the House, by a large majority, resolved: "That the blacks and mulattoes who may be residents within this State, have no constitutional right to present their petitions to the General Assembly for any purpose whatsoever, and that any reception of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... every color and form that can be named. Some had saddles, some blankets, some bridles, some halters, some with stirrups, some with none. The riders also were various and grotesque in their appearance. Some were old, some young, some hale, respectable looking men; others were pale, meagre, and shabbily dressed. Some had great coats,—others had blankets on their shoulders. The countenance of some was downcast, melancholy, dejected; that of others, stern, indignant, manifesting that ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... the Vesteras Recess. By this decree the delegates asserted, every one of them, that they would do their utmost to punish all conspiracies against the king. They declared, moreover, that as the royal incomes were but meagre, the monasteries and churches must come to the relief, and, to prevent all danger, no bishop should keep up a larger retinue than the king allowed. All bishops and cathedrals, with their chapters, must hand over to the king all income not absolutely necessary for their ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... he smokes, and laughs at merry tale, Or pun ambiguous, or conundrum quaint. But I, whom griping penury surrounds, And Hunger, sure attendant upon Want, With scanty offals, and small acid tiff, (Wretched repast!) my meagre corpse sustain: Then solitary walk, or doze at home In garret vile, and with a warming puff Regale chill'd fingers: or from tube as black As winter-chimney, or well-polish'd jet, Exhale mundungus, ill-perfuming ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Death that came into the hall, With visage wan and grim, And throwing off his sickly pall, Disclos'd each meagre limb. ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... Vega recounted the meagre and conflicting rumours which had reached California, but, not being a prophet, could not tell them that they would be the first to see the red-white-and-blue fluttering on the mountain before them. He refused to rest more than an hour, but mounted the ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... trace in the unused portion of those left behind him much of the progress of his work, and the shapes which much of it went through. The Advancement itself is the filling-out and perfecting of what is found in germ, meagre and rudimentary, in a Discourse in Praise of Knowledge, written in the days of Elizabeth, and in some Latin chapters of an early date, the Cogitationes de Scientia Humana, on the limits and use of knowledge, and on the relation of natural history to natural philosophy. These ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... commander as to whether or not Cervera was in the latter port; nor was there then known reason to censure the decision of the officer on the spot, whose information, dependent upon despatch vessels, or upon local scouting, was necessarily, in some respects, more meagre than that of the Department, in cable communication with many quarters. Nevertheless, he was mistaken, and each succeeding hour made the mistake more palpable and more serious to those in Washington; not, indeed, that demonstrative ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... allowance of solids, and perhaps with a trifle too much of fluids, came singing and capering along the deck of their hulk. In the most good-humoured way possible, they asked their neighbours how many geese and turkeys they had discussed that day. The meagre answer called forth shouts of merriment, and the poor fellows belonging to the other ship were rather unhandsomely taunted with the scantiness of their Christmas fare. "Look at that and weep, you hungry-faced rascals!" exclaimed one of our jolly blades, holding ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... with the fat neck and Spanish affiliations, the poor confused, inert, over-fed marshal caged in Metz by the Red Prince, harassed, bewildered, stunned by the clashing of politics and military strategy, which his meagre brain was unable to reconcile or separate—this unfortunate incapable was deserving of pity, perhaps of contempt. His cup was to be bitterer than that—it was to be drained, too, with the shouts of "Traitor" stunning ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... his utterance was a culmination of the two preceding centuries. An entire side of the richly endowed human nature to which we owe the high qualities of New England,—a nature which is often so easily disposed of as meagre, cold, narrow, and austere,—this side, long suppressed and thrown into shade by the more active front, found expression at last in these pages so curiously compounded of various elements, answering to ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... such cheering as I shall never forget, her crew jumped out. Forty men of them there were, strong, stalwart, strapping fellows, looking very different from our own poor lads, who were pinched and thin from long watching, and meagre fare. Their leader was Sir Alexander Ramsay of Dalhousie, one of the bravest of Scottish knights, and most chivalrous of men, who had risked his life, and the lives of his men, in ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... Sheppard and his comrades had warned Drury Lane against the infamous thief-catcher. And so anxious, on the other hand, was the law to be quit of their too zealous servant, that an Act of Parliament was passed with the sole object of placing Jonathan's head within the noose. His method, meagre though masterly, lulled him too soon to an impotent security. She, with her larger view of life, her plumper sense of style, was content with nothing less than an ultimate sovereignty, and manifestly ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... She turned, her meagre dress flapping about her knees like a flag. But at the foot of the rickety outer steps that ran across the bare front of the shack crookedly, like a broken arm, I ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... others. It is not detracting from the merits of any one to assert that, without frontiers-men like Kit Carson, the numerous scientific expeditions which have been sent out by the United States Government to explore the far West would have returned but sorry and meagre records for their employers. After reading some of the many printed accounts which parties of a more recent date have gathered from their experience while making their way overland to the Pacific, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... acre, of the wheat fields in all countries, is steadily decreasing. Decreasing to such an extent as to make it probable, that in the near future, the yield on a large proportion of these lands, will become too meagre to pay the cost of cultivation. A long series of carefully conducted experiments demonstrated the truth of ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... by ten years of heroic work. Balzac appears not to have been extravagant; he had neither wife nor children (unlike many of his comrades, he had no illegitimate offspring), and when he admits us to a glimpse of his domestic economy, we usually find it to be of a very meagre pattern. He writes to his sister in 1827 that he has not the means either to pay the postage of letters or to use omnibuses, and that he goes out as little as possible, so as not to wear out his clothes. In 1829, however, we find him ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... no evil thing that walks by night, In fog, or fire, by lake or moorish fen, Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, No goblin, or swart fairy of the mine, Hath hurtful power o'er true ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field—that, of course, they are many in number,—or, that, after all, they are other than the little, shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... of all men, dying rich—actually rich. The professor pulls his beard, and involuntarily glances round the somewhat meagre apartment, that not all his learning, not all his success in the scientific world—and it has been not unnoteworthy, so far—has enabled him to improve upon. It has helped him to live, no doubt, and distinctly ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... east, on the old Turtle Mountain trail, stands the weather-beaten schoolhouse where Martha Perkins got her meagre education, and where Bud, her brother, was now attending. The schoolhouse is bare and unlovely, without tree or flower. The rain and the sun, the scorching winds of spring and winter's piercing blizzards have had their way with it for many years, and now it defies them all, ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... although not usually deem'd an Actor of the first Rank, yet the Characters allotted him were such, that none besides, then, or since, ever topp'd; for his Figure, which was diminutive and mean, (being Round-shoulder'd, Meagre-fac'd, Spindle-shank'd, Splay-footed, with a sour Countenance and long lean Arms) render'd him a proper Person to discharge Jago, Foresight and Ma'lignij, in the Villain.—This Person acted strongly with his Face,—and (as King Charles said) ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... before it. But Alfred Parsons may be pointed to as one who has made the luxuriant and lovable things of his own country almost as "serious" as those familiar objects—the pasture and the poplar—which, even when infinitely repeated by the great school across the Channel, strike us as but meagre ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... her soft, fervid bosom the Lovely found determination, even on hest of Necessity, to cut-asunder these so blissful bonds.' He even appears surprised at the 'Duenna Cousin,' whoever she may have been, 'in whose meagre, hunger-bitten philosophy, the religion of young hearts was, from the first, faintly approved of.' We, even at such distance, can explain it without necromancy. Let the Philosopher answer this one ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... why he had thought of Bosinney. Since the dinner at Swithin's he had made enquiries, the result of which had been meagre, but encouraging: "One of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 'Hard-favour'd tyrant, ugly, meagre, lean, 931 Hateful divorce of love,'—thus chides she Death,— 'Grim-grinning ghost, earth's worm, what dost thou mean To stifle beauty and to steal his breath, Who when he liv'd, his breath and beauty set Gloss on the rose, smell ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... gentleman was smarting under a disappointment in the sale of a volume of sermons, whence he had expected great things, from the publication of which I had vainly endeavored to dissuade him, and whose meagre proceeds fully justified my forebodings. The mention of my work naturally recalled this afflictive dispensation, and hinc illae lacrimae. Reading his mind, I answered, therefore, as gently as ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Quincy, Ill., but our happiness was of short duration, as my husband was killed in the explosion of the steamboat Edward Bates, on which he was employed. To my mind it seemed a singular coincidence that the boat which bore the name of the great and good man, who had given me the first joy of my meagre life—the precious boon of freedom—and that his namesake should be the means of weighting me with my first great sorrow; this thought seemed to reconcile me to my grief, for that name was ever sacred, and I could not speak ...
— From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or Struggles for Freedom • Lucy A. Delaney
... portion of the history gathers about the monarch in whose person the empire terminated; and instead of the ample details which have crowded upon us now for many consecutive reigns, we shall be reduced to a meagre outline, partly resting upon conjecture, in our ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... owl in an ivy bush; a simile for a meagre or weasel-faced man, with a large wig, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... Easter festival at Canterbury at the Archbishop's expense. In consequence of John's frequent quarrels with his nobles the attendance at his Christmas feasts became smaller every year, until he could only muster a very meagre company around his festive board, and it was said that he had almost as many enemies as there were ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... in keeping with the meagre legal attainments of those who frequented them. Rude frame, or log houses served the purposes of bench and bar. The judge sat usually upon a platform with a plain table, or pine board, for a desk. A larger table below accommodated ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... to satisfy myself on these points; but could never learn any thing farther, than that they imagined we came from some country where provisions had failed; and that our visit to them was merely for the purpose of filling our bellies. Indeed, the meagre appearance of some of our crew, the hearty appetites with which we sat down to their fresh provisions, and our great anxiety to purchase, and carry off, as much as we were able, led them, naturally enough, to such a conclusion. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... likewise excellent pork, and delicate lamb; but the mutton is indifferent. Piedmont, also, affords us delicious capons, fed with maize; and this country produces excellent turkeys, but very few geese. Chickens and pullets are extremely meagre. I have tried to fatten them, without success. In summer they are subject to the pip, and die in great numbers. Autumn and winter are the seasons for game; hares, partridges, quails, wild-pigeons, woodcocks, snipes, thrushes, beccaficas, and ortolans. Wild-boar is sometimes found in the mountains: ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... as a region of fine scenery. The few lakes I have since become acquainted with, as that near Bala, near Beddkelert, and beyond Machynleth, are not attractive either in their forms or in their accompaniments; the Bala Lake being meagre and insipid, the others as it were unfinished, and unaccompanied with ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... from out its meagre store A bright and precious stone; Heaven could not be so rich before, ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... these savages, who wished him dead, would take measures to kill him when they saw that he was going to recover. As he leaned against the bed, he noticed that the door had no fastening. There was a rude latch, but neither lock nor bolt. The furniture of the room was of the most meagre description, clumsily made. He staggered to the open window, and looked out. The remnants of the disastrous gale blew in upon him and gave him new life, as it had formerly threatened him with death. He saw that he was in ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... frequented by European fishermen at a very early period, certainly within the decade after its discovery by John Cabot in 1497. But the Basques, Bretons, and Normans, [29] who visited these coasts, were intent upon their employment, and consequently brought home only meagre information of the country from whose shores they yearly bore away ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... success in nut-growing, brought about by our activities, when we compare nut-growing in our field with pecan-growing in the South, and with walnut, almond, and perhaps filbert-growing, on the Pacific Coast, our results are meagre indeed. Of course commercial production, the building of a new industry of food supply for the people, is our ultimate goal. Why are our results in this direction, after fourteen years of effort, so small? Is it because we have devoted ourselves ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... In the meagre statements of this and the next chapter, interposed as they are among chapters of detail unusually ample for Polo, there is nothing to lead us to suppose that the Traveller ever personally visited the countries of which these two chapters treat. I believe we have ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... heaviest storms will stop them. They will be small and difficult to hit, and very difficult to damage, and their range of operations will be very large.' Colonel Capper acted on this belief, and during his time at the factory did what he could with meagre funds to encourage aviation. The policy which, in the spring of 1908, he recommended to the War Office was to buy any practicable machines that offered themselves in the market, and at the same time not to relax effort at the factory. The attempts of Lieutenant Dunne ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... to give to the meagre and narrow hearts of men such enlargement? How to make them capable of a universal sympathy? Christ believed it possible to bind men to their kind, but on one condition—that they were first bound fast to himself. He stood ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... meagre meal at 'the doctor's' (that gentleman eked out a dull practice among his neighbors by a sharp practice on his guests,) we again mounted the stage. We had proceeded to within eighteen miles of Newbern, when suddenly, as the Squire ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of reasoning depends very closely upon our language. But every significant word that we use has a distinct meaning in the mind of the individual, depending altogether upon his experience. As the experience of the child is very meagre, compared to that of the grown-up person, it is no wonder that our everyday remarks are constant sources of ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... orient beams had chased the dewy night From earth and heaven; all nature stood disclosed: When, looking on the neighbouring woods, we saw The ghastly visage of a man unknown, 30 An uncouth feature, meagre, pale, and wild; Affliction's foul and terrible dismay Sat in his looks, his face, impaired and worn With marks of famine, speaking sore distress; His locks were tangled, and his shaggy beard Matted with filth; in all things else a Greek. He first advanced in haste; ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... It was a meagre room into which they gazed, a room the chief furniture of which seemed to be babies. Two little ones sprawled on the floor. A third tiny tot lay in a broken-down carriage beside the door. A pale, ill-looking woman was running ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown |
