"Scrawl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rejected. A few days ago there came to the writer an old forgotten beginner's attempt by himself. Whence it came, who sent it, he knows not; he had forgotten its very existence. He read it with curiosity; it was written in a very much better hand than his present scrawl, and was perfectly legible. But readable it was not. There was a great deal of work in it, on an out of the way topic, and the ideas were, perhaps, not quite without novelty at the time of its composition. But it was cramped and thin, ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... leave here for Norfolk for a long while to come. The odd part is, that he does not know George. But he said he would gladly take charge of it and remember the address, which Lilly told him was Richmond. Well! if the Yankees get it they will take it for an insane scrawl. I wanted to calm his anxiety about us, though I was so wildly excited that I could only say, "Don't mind us! We are safe. But fight, George! Fight for us!" The repetition was ludicrous. I meant so much, too! I only wanted him to understand ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... shouts and hammering of gavels by the judge and clerk had partially restored to order the chaos begotten by this scene, when a bit of paper was slipped from behind into Bruce's hand. He unfolded it with trembling fingers, and read in a disguised, back-hand scrawl: ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... He went for the bit of stamped-paper left by the bailiff, and gave it to Pons. Pons read the scrawl through with close attention, then he let the paper drop and lay quite silent for a while. A close observer of the work of men's hands, unheedful so far of the workings of the brain, Pons finally counted out the threads of the plot woven about him by La Cibot. The artist's ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... that his friend Raids did not make his appearance with the brig, though I think that he might as well have spoken with us in or off Zante, to give us a gentle hint of what we had to expect. Excuse my scrawl, on account of the pen and the frosty ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Pancha, going home on the car, thought about her father. She felt guilty, for of late she had rather forgotten him and this was something new and blameworthy. Now she remembered how long it was since she had seen him and that his last letter had come over a month ago. It was a short scrawl from Downieville and had told her that the sale of his prospect hole—he had hoped to sell it sometime early in September—had fallen through. He had ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... "Excuse my scrawl: you must guess more than the half of it, but I know no help for this. I am obliged to write to you hastily while everyone is asleep here: but be easy, I take infinite pleasure in my watch; for I cannot sleep like ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... draw lots for one of us to stay home and sign in for all twelve. You see, he'd sit there reading, and when one of us came in, just shove the wax at us, with his nose in a text on cosmic dust, never looking up. So the one who stayed home would scrawl a name on it, walk out the back door, come around and sign in again. When there were twelve signed in, of course, the old chap would go up to bed, and late that night the one who stayed in would sneak down and ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... this easily worded scrawl to make an ordinarily normal heart beat faster, yet the heart of this simple child of the gods, gifted with genius and deprived of worldly wisdom as all such divine children are, throbbed uneasily, and her eyes were wet. ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... way. Curiously, as I look back upon my brief career, it all seems to tend to this consummation. It has its graceful curves and crooks, indeed, and here and there a passionate tangent; but on the whole, if I were to unfold it here a la Hogarth, what better legend could I scrawl beneath the series of pictures than So-and-So's Progress ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... sister back, she groped her way upstairs. Inside her room, when she had locked the door, she stood a moment upright with the letter in her hand,—the blotted incoherent scrawl, where Langham had for once forgotten to be literary, where every pitiable half-finished sentence pleaded with her—even in the first smart of her wrong—for pardon, for compassion, as towards something maimed and paralysed from birth, unworthy even of her contempt. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... this note for you," and he handed her an envelope with her own name written on it in an uneven, uncertain scrawl. She ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... your joking did last night!" She handed him the slip of paper. He, too, chuckled tenderly, for the scrawl ran: "What I want for Chrismas: Pictures, pretty ones, Picture frames, Chairs, Plates for dinner, Knives, Spoons, Anything for a flat." A little space followed as if the author had hesitated before he had added in heavier writing that ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... roses at graduation; a little silver ring marking a childish romance; a flattened and much-dried chocolate drop with tender associations; dance-favors, clippings, photographs, theater programs, each illumined and emphasized by a line or two of sentiment or of nonsense in Jean's girlish scrawl. ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... curse upon his head Who dares insult the noble dead, And basely scrawl his worthless name Upon the records of their fame! Nelson, arise! thy country gave A heartfelt tear, a hallow'd grave: Her eyes are dry, her recreant sons Dare to profane thy mould'ring bones! And you, ye heroes of the past, Who serv'd your country to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... and threw on the table three small sheets of paper, covered with a hurried pencil scrawl, all from Varvara Petrovna. The first letter was dated the day before yesterday, the second had come yesterday, and the last that day, an hour before. Their contents were quite trivial, and all referred to Karmazinov ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... phrenoia^. writer, scribe, amanuensis, scrivener, secretary, clerk, penman, copyist, transcriber, quill driver; stenographer, typewriter, typist; writer for the press &c (author) 593. V. write, pen; copy, engross; write out, write out fair; transcribe; scribble, scrawl, scrabble, scratch; interline; stain paper; write down &c (record) 551; sign &c (attest) 467; enface^. compose, indite, draw up, draft, formulate; dictate; inscribe, throw on paper, dash off; manifold. take up the pen, take pen in hand; shed ink, spill ink, dip one's pen in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... half-believing, half-doubting kind of way, on the probability of a life to come, and ends by speaking of or rather apostrophizing Jesus Christ in a strain which would seem to savour of Socinianism. This letter he calls "a distracted scrawl which the writer dare scarcely read." And yet it appears to have been deliberately copied with some amplification from an entry in his last year's commonplace book. Even the few passages from his correspondence already given are enough to show that there was ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... The scrawl was taken to her by a discreet official, and this time she received the letter, pressed it to her heart, and then slipped it into the bodice of her gown. But this time, as before, she ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... tough fiber of the envelope, drew forth the enclosed sheet and unfolded it. In the middle of the top was a replica of the wood cut upon the outside, only minus the "If not delivered in five days return to." Then Payson read in his father's customary bold scrawl the simple inscription, doomed to haunt him sleeping and waking for ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... softly and picked up the sheets. There are two communications, one in a large scrawl written by a woman—I believe, it is Penelope's mother. The other is in a small regular hand with quick powerful strokes, evidently a man's writing. There! You see the handwriting ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... letter that Mrs. Willoughby wrote: "I had to scrawl so hurriedly yesterday to catch the first mail that I couldn't begin at the beginning, or get to the point, or anything. I'll try now, though, as for the beginning, it's like going back to the dark ages, it all seems so ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... that he was a long time writing it, and wrote it in a tremulous scrawl at last. It was a cheque for one hundred pounds. He folded it up, put it in Young john's hand, and pressed the hand ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... heralds the approach of a nervous curlew, running and pausing, and stamping, its script—an erratic scrawl of fleurs-de-lis—on the easy sand. Halting on the verge of the water, it furtively picks up crabs as if it were a trespasser, conscious of a shameful or wicked deed and fearful of detection. It is not night nor yet quite day, but this keen-eyed, suspicious ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... all monsters, except MD's;" "I ought to read these letters I write after I have done. But I hope it does not puzzle little Dingley to read, for I think I mend: but methinks," he adds, "when I write plain, I do not know how, but we are not alone, all the world can see us. A bad scrawl is so snug; it looks like PMD." Again: "I do not like women so much as I did. MD, you must know, are not women." "God Almighty preserve you both and make us happy together." "I say Amen with all my heart and vitals, ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... pocket-hole I found, my Love, a hurried scrawl Meant not for me," at length said I; "I glanced thereat, and let it lie: The words were three ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... men and worst of correspondents, Robert Narramore had as yet sent no reply to the letters in which Hilliard acquainted him with his adventures in London and abroad; but at the end of July he vouchsafed a perfunctory scrawl. "Too bad not to write before, but I've been floored every evening after business in this furious heat. You may like to hear that my uncle's property didn't make a bad show. I have come in for a round five thousand, and am putting it into brass bedsteads. Sha'n't be able to get away until the ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... cottages in this part of Cumberland partake of the rudeness which characterises those of Scotland. The outside of the house promised little for the interior, notwithstanding the vaunt of a sign, where a tankard of ale voluntarily decanted itself into a tumbler, and a hieroglyphical scrawl below attempted to express a promise of 'good entertainment for man and horse.' Brown was no fastidious traveller: he stopped and entered the ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... head against the slanting rafters just above him, he was brought to a painful realization of where he was. He turned, scowling, and the first thing he saw was a piece of brown wrapping paper held down by a shoe and covered with a clumsy scrawl. ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... home he was somewhat pre-occupied—as much, that is to say, as he was in the habit of allowing. The pencil scrawl supplied food enough for conjectural thought. The writing was undoubtedly fresh, and this was the 26th of the month. Some appointment was made for midnight by the words pencilled on the boat, and the journalist determined that he would be there to see. The question was, should he go alone? He ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... been dragged by five Mohammedan survivors. They had gained an outpost fort where, ever since, Parr had lain hovering between life and death, not only crippled by his wounds, but also stricken with the black-water fever. Then, at last, he had gathered strength enough to scrawl these lines. ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... of your editorial: to say that I shall give my mind at once to the Murder. But I bethink me you can say so much and convey my sense of the liberality of our Cousins, without exhibiting this scrawl. So I may go on to tell you that I have at last found a publisher as eager to publish, as I am to write a Hazlitt. Bentley is the Boy; and very liberal, at least, as per last advices; certainly very friendly and eager, which makes ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cousin, and late guardian, Major Talbot-Lowry, had found it hard to forgive him. The business had been arranged while Larry was in Paris, and the expostulations that might have prevailed if delivered viva voce, failed of their effect when presented on foreign paper, in Cousin Dick's illegible scrawl. It was all very fine for Larry, ran the illegible scrawl, to talk of selling at such a price, but he ought to see what a hole his doing so put his neighbours in! Larry hadn't a squad of incumbrances, and ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... scrawl of a letter, on the roughest of copy paper, and so crumpled that he must have been quite familiar with it, but ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... open, but Philip was already on his feet, and with quick, clumsy steps he reached the writing-table, seized the pen Perez had thrown down, and began to scrawl words rapidly in his great angular handwriting. He threw sand upon it to dry the ink, and then poured the grains back into the silver sandbox, glanced at the paper and held it out to Dolores without a word. His other hand slipped along the table to a silver bell, used for calling ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... Douglas but a few minutes to read the scrawl, and grasp the meaning. It told of failure in the city, and that she was coming home to the care of her parents. It was easy for Douglas to read between the lines, and he knew that more was contained there than appeared ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... are weary of these hills of purple vines, These crooked groves of olive trees that scrawl the crooked lanes The walnuts shoulder weakly round the tall Italian pines, That whisper like the waves of ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... letter—lying on his table. The brief epistle which conveyed to him the regrets of the new female college building committee, that his plans were too elaborate and costly, and must therefore be declined, really demanded no reply, and would probably never have one. It was the hurried scrawl from his friend Wilberforce which claimed of his sense of honor an answer by the next mail. The letter from Wilberforce was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... the envelope slowly and clumsily with her stiff fingers, and held up the letter so the light struck it. She could not read strange writing easily, and this was a nearly illegible scrawl. However, after the first few words, she seemed to absorb it by some higher faculty than reading. In a short time she had the gist of the letter. It was from a lawyer who signed himself Daniel Tuxbury. He stated formally that Thomas Maxwell was dead; that he had ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... some manuscript in Arthur's handwriting. How different from the careless scrawl of Horace Endicott this clear, bold, dashing script, which ran full speed across the page, yet turned with ease and leisurely from the margin. What a pity Edith could not see with her own eyes these silent witnesses to the truth. Beyond the study was a music-room, where hung his violin ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... affection is to be withheld from him. It is to be done frankly and impressively, and when the time comes—" I can hardly write this, but the memory of the wonderful though fanatic light in Jane's eyes makes me able to scrawl it—"that you feel the mating instinct in you move towards any man, I charge you that you are to consider it a sacred obligation to express it with the same honesty that a man would express the same thing to you, in like case, even if he has shown no sign of that impulse toward ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... female amanuenses are busy with friends, and I fear this scrawl will give you much trouble to ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... to write this scrawl to you on a round milk container in a camp near London. We are not permitted ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... proof that the lower classes wrote Latin for all sorts of purposes. Had they known Celtic well, it is hardly credible that they should not have sometimes written in that language, as the Gauls did across the Channel. A Gaulish potter of Roman date could scrawl his name and record, Sacrillos avot, 'Sacrillus potter', on the outside of a mould.[1] No such scrawl has ever been found in Britain. The Gauls, again, could invent a special letter Eth to denote a special Celtic sound and keep ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... scrap-book; he kept a paper scrap- book, too. Into these he would put whatever he cared to keep— poetry, history, funny sayings, fine passages. He had a scrap-book for his arithmetic "sums," too, and one of these is still in existence with this boyish rhyme in a boyish scrawl, underneath one of his tables ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... old papers with seals on them, and on one I saw the date, June Sixteenth, Seventeen Hundred Sixty-eight—the whole document written out in the hand of John Adams, beginning very prim and careful, then moving off into a hurried scrawl as spirit mastered the letter. There is a little hair-covered trunk in the corner, studded with brass nails, and boots and leggings and canes and a jackknife and a bootjack, and, on the window-sill, a friendly snuffbox. ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the side of the bed a taper Shall ever with matches be, A pencil and piece of paper, To note what occurs to me. * * * * * Since then I have tried, but the late joke, As seen in my bedside scrawl, Is always so poor,—that the great joke, I'm sure, was no joke ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various
... reading the letter twice. "What will he say when he hears that Larry is missing? If Larry doesn't show up, it will break his heart, and it will break mine, too!" And he brushed away the tears that sprang up in spite of his efforts to keep them down. Then he turned to the heavy, twisted scrawl from ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... one who could claim the property, what would be the consequence? She felt herself in a mist of ignorance and perplexity; dreading the consequences, yet feeling as if her own removal might leave her fortune free to make up for them. She tried to scrawl an explanation; but mind and fingers were alike unequal to the task, and she desisted just as fresh torture began at the doctor's hands—torture from which they sent her mother away, and that left her exhausted, and despairing of holding out through ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... scrawl hastily with a dry pen that he had not time to dip in the well of ink. The shadow of the Lord Cromwell's silent return was cast upon them ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... Duncan of the same city: I don't think he would plume himself much upon my progress. However, I wrote much better then than I have ever done since. Haste and agitation of one kind or another have quite spoilt as pretty a scrawl as ever scratched over a frank. The grammar-school might consist of a hundred and fifty of all ages under age. It was divided into five classes, taught by four masters, the chief teaching the fourth and fifth himself. As in England, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... she showed him the anonymous scrawl which had kindled her fury against him. He turned it listlessly over in his hand. "I guess I know who it's from," he said, giving it back to her, "and I guess you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... inventor of "larnin'." The result was that Joss learned to read and write before the voyage was over. It is true there were few people outside the forecastle that could tell what it was all about, unless they studied very closely his eccentric pronunciation and the wild scrawl of his writing. He never went far enough to get even a second mate's certificate. He thought it an unnecessary waste of time, seeing that he intended to leave the sea as soon as he could attain a pilot's branch. This he succeeded in doing, and had a ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... I must thus dismiss the subject, for I dare not trust myself further with it for your sake, or for my own. I shall endeavour to see you as soon as it may not appear intrusive. Pray excuse the levity of my yesterday's scrawl—I little thought under what circumstances it ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... stiff lips, and tried to write his name on the cover of a magazine. The scrawl was so undecipherable that he rose from the table and walked up and down the room in acute distress, holding his right hand at the wrist and limbering it. "If I sign," he presently bargained as he ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... to herself, almost with tears, that it was altogether unworthy of him to whom it was to be sent. It was the first love letter she had ever written,—probably the first letter she had ever written to a man, except those short notes which she would occasionally scrawl to Father Marty in compliance with her mother's directions. The letter to Fred was ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... pulled out the drawer, and there, side by side, lay two neat but far from voluminous manuscripts, each weighted down by the unused portion of the scratch pad from which the written sheets had been torn. One was in the bold, superior scrawl of a boy, the other ineffably feminine in its painstaking regard ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... my hand something like your's—which, by the bye, you neglect rather too much: but, as what you write is good sense, every body will forgive the scrawl. ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... dwellings in Arizona) on which she gazed in ecstasy, silent till she suddenly discovered that this effigy meant a cow, then she cried out, "tee dee moomo!" with a joy which afforded me more satisfaction than any acceptance of a story on the part of an editor had ever conveyed. Each scrawl was to her a fresh revelation of the omniscience, the magic of her father—therefore I drew and drew while her recreant mother sat on the other side of the fire and watched us, a wicked smile of amusement—and ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... very noble, talented man, and I know of no one who writes a more beautiful letter.' I am sending you a long letter, Lizzie, but I rely a great deal on your indulgence. My fear is that you will not be able to decipher the scrawl written ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... lost State, station, heaven, mankind's, my own esteem, And yet can not regret what it hath cost, So dear is still the memory of that dream; Yet, if I name my guilt, 't is not to boast, None can deem harshlier of me than I deem: I trace this scrawl because I cannot rest— I 've nothing to reproach, or ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... and, by the light of a match read the scrawl upon it. The writing had evidently been done in haste, but its ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... a deep breath and took up his fountain pen. He signed with a rapid, illegible scrawl that toward the end of the pile became a mere hieroglyphic. Jonas put his black face in at the door just ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... scrawl; he was dying, and signed your—your husband; he had been stricken down by fever; your name was ever on his lips; he said you loved Paris, and he would be buried there; he had loved you all his life; he was glad to go; you were not ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... his promise. He found, however, that his head was in a perfect whirl, and that his hand was so unsteady as to make the accomplishment of the task almost an impossibility; but he managed, in an almost illegible scrawl, to inform her of his safe arrival. He asked her to excuse the brevity of his communication, as he was still suffering from the effects of his stormy voyage across the lake, which had shattered, for the time being, his nervous ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... mine—very bad manners, to put any one—especially a Lady—to the trouble and pain of deciphering. I hope all about Donne is legible, for you will be glad of it. It is Lodging- house Pens and Ink that is partly to blame for this scrawl. Now, don't answer till I write you something better: but believe ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... clerk was robbing them right and left and running a business of his own with their money, under a fictitious name. They had implicit confidence in his honesty, and the only action they took was to hand the scrawl to him with a remark that they hoped he would discover and ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... the pleasure of Mr. Marcus Gard's company at dinner"—the usual engraved invitation, with below a girlish scrawl: "You'll come, won't you? It's my very last dinner ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... say what the matter might be, and he went away, only to return in a few moments bearing a scratchy note from his master, badly blotted and still wet; and Leila, with a shrug of resignation, took the blotched scrawl daintily between thumb and forefinger and unfolded it. Behind her, the maid, twisting up the masses of dark, fragrant hair, read the note very easily over her mistress' shoulder. It ran, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... for the dregs of men, And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, And mingle among the jostling crowd, Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud— I often come to this quiet place, To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face, And gaze upon thee in silent dream, ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... fanciful initials, the standing of a house may be gauged by the handwriting, the titles of the larger monasteries being given in bold letters, while those of the smaller form an almost illegible scrawl. The greater houses would have been in a position to support a competent scribe—not so the lesser; and this is believed to have been the ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... bit of blank paper. Then with trembling fingers she lighted a lamp and held the little piece of paper over the chimney—carefully. When the paper was warm she raised it up to the light and read the scrawl that the sympathetic ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... "What, not one despairing scrawl, one cherished miniature, one faded floweret, etc., etc.? I can't believe it, Cousin," and he shook his ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... lingering over it and scrutinizing the writing in a way that was not his wont. How characteristic, was his thought, as he studied the boyish scrawl—clear to read, painfully, clear, but none the less boyish. The clearness of it reminded him of her face, of her cleanly stencilled brows, her straightly chiselled nose, the very clearness of the gaze of her eyes, the firmly yet delicately moulded lips, and the throat, neither fragile nor ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... must say!" remarked Jack, after perusing the scrawl a second time. "Evidently the writer ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... We put our heads together for an excuse. The address was Paddington, she was to say she waited an hour at the station, then made a mistake, and went to Islington, and not finding the street there came to Paddington. The excuse turned out good, Paddington and Islington looked much alike on the scrawl. ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... the Morning Report, found Perkins seated in the same place. Perkins signed the book in a sprawling scrawl, and the sergeant went his way. The Chino cook brought the meals, and then came and took them off again. The day dragged through, the gray evening fell; the rain streamed down; and still the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... casual visitors from the world of business, or young men and women fresh from school, or even children writing in round text,—all these classes may be represented in a single week's work; and the papers sent in will vary in elaborateness from a scrawl on a post-card to a magazine article or treatise. I have received an exercise of such a character that the student considerately furnished me with an index; I remember one longer still, but as this hailed ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... to appear at once before the court of assizes," said la Peyrade, after reading a few lines of the sheriff's scrawl. ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... hasty lines from the great Collingwood himself. That brave heart, in the midst of the din of victory, had found time to scrawl a word to his old schoolmate, and tell him that his boy had died like a hero, and that he regretted him like ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... she took up a pen, and upon a quarto page, already half filled with Leroux's small, neat, illegible writing, began to scrawl a message, bending down, one hand upon the table, and ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... which is almost always excellent, but there is a ready apprehension of the meaning of any point clearly put before them, which is very satisfactory. I am now thinking of the twenty or thirty best among our 145 scholars. This is a confused, almost unintelligible scrawl; but I am busy, and not very fresh ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ne'er cut their names on doors or rock-heads, But leave the task to scribblers and to blockheads; Pert, trifling folks, who, bent on being witty, Scrawl on each post some fag-end of a ditty, Spinning, with spider's web, their shallow brains, O'er wainscots, borrowed books, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... some letters: we sha'n't interrupt each other—don't disturb yourself:" and Ferrers seated himself at the writing-table, dipped a pen into the ink, arranged blotting-book and paper before him in due order, and was soon employed in covering page after page with the most rapid and hieroglyphical scrawl that ever engrossed a ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... characteristic scrawl from Philippa, full of Alec and Alonzo, what they said and what they did, and how they looked when ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Burke, taking it up again. 'Not even the civility to write with his own hand!—only his signature to the scrawl—looks as if it was written by a drunken man, does not it, Mr. Evans?' said she, showing the letter to Lord Colambre, who immediately recognised the ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... the midst of our desolateness, just as we had let the daylight in again upon our diminished numbers round the table, came a letter from Hong-Kong, addressed to me in Lawrence Frith's writing, and the first thing I saw was a scrawl, as follows:- ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in a stiff female scrawl, and Leonard observed that two or three mistakes in spelling had been corrected, either in another pen or in ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a letter that was brought to Spencer's room before dinner, the telegram would not have been written. Mackenzie, rather incoherent with indignation, sent a hurried scrawl. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... such a scrawl," he said, "that no one could tell what the name really was. I guessed at you but I seem ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... course which it has in fact triumphantly taken. That was in the days when Kolniyatsch was still alive. His recent death gives the cue for the boom. Out of that boom I, for one, will not be left. I rush to scrawl my name, large, on the ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... You are. Come over here and we'll have some tea and work it out together." And before protest could be made they were in a hotel across the street and at a table on which a shaded light permitted a closer examination of the penciled scrawl which went for writing. Slowly he ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... to scrawl something on the slate, hiding the words from the girl. But she was not backward this time. She begged ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of these very models whose names are chalked up here over your fireplace?—Delightful! Glorious! Drawing from the life—just the very thing I long for most. Hullo!" exclaimed Zack, reading the memoranda, which it was Mr. Blyth's habit to scrawl, as they occurred to him, on the wall over the chimney-piece—"Hullo! here's a woman-model; 'Amelia Bibby'—Blyth! let me dash at once into drawing from the life, and let me ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... that strange one to which you have been transplanted, I feel some compunctious visitings at my long silence. But, indeed, it is no easy effort to set about a correspondence at our distance. The weary world of waters between us oppresses the imagination. It is difficult to conceive how a scrawl of mine should ever stretch across it. It is a sort of presumption to expect that one's thoughts should live so far. It is like writing for posterity; and reminds me of one of Mrs. Rowe's superscriptions, "Alcander to Strephon, in the shades." Cowley's Post-Angel ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... stop one moment now, and look at this note. Is it your son's writing?" And Plummer produced the crumpled page while Feeny held the light. Feverishly Harvey examined the scrawl, his hand trembling so hard he could not steady ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... and saw a boy whom she recognized as a waiter at the hotel kept by Piney's father. He was holding a note in his hand, and staring intently at the house and garden. Seeing Cissy, he transferred his stare to her. Snatching the note from him, she tore it open, and read in Piney's well-known scrawl, "Dad won't let me come to you now, dear, but I'll try to slip out late to-night." Why should she want to come? She had said nothing about coming NOW—and why should her father prevent her? Cissy crushed the note between her fingers, ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... young man, and somewhat more curious in feminine handwriting than I am now. There was one family in particular, whom I had never seen, but with whose signatures I was perfectly familiar—clear, delicate, and educated, very unlike the miserable scrawl upon other letter-bills. One New Year's-eve, in a moment of sentiment, I tied a slip of paper among a bundle of letters for their office, upon which I had written, "A happy New Year to you all." The next evening brought me a return of my good wishes, signed, as I guessed, ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... to scrawl, but whether In rhyme, or prose, or baith thegither; Or some hotch-potch that's rightly neither, Let time mak proof; But I shall scribble down some blether Just ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... at that house. And, now she thought of it, what a queer burglary it had been! The thieves must certainly have known something about Mrs. Ellsworth, or else, in helping themselves to her valuables, it would not have occurred to them to scrawl a sarcastic message. ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... which puts a spirit of joy into green field and hedgerow is awful to look upon in Paris. You leave the train half-frozen, to find the porters red-eyed from their watch. The customs officials, in a kind of stupor, scrawl cabalistic signs upon your trunk. You get outside the station, to find a few scattered cabs, their drivers asleep inside, their lamps ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... Francois had brought him. Unmarked by postal indications, the missive had evidently been intrusted to a private messenger of the governor whose seal it bore. Dated about three years previously, it was written in a somewhat illegible, but not unintelligible, scrawl, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... I am running on at a tremendous rate, and quite forget that I have traveled upward of forty miles to-day, and that I promised my mother, whenever I could, to go to bed early. Good-by, my dear Mrs. Jameson. I hope you will be able to make out this scrawl, and to decipher ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... reverse side of an invitation to take tea at Merrion—a vague some-day-when-you're-passing sort of invitation, in Neeld's eyes plainly and merely a pretext for writing and an opportunity of conveying the urgent little scrawl on the other side. It arrived at mid-day; in the afternoon Duplay had come and was now ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... talk!" laughed Avdeyev: "Signed it, indeed! They used to bring the accounts to my shop and I signed them. As though I understood! Give me anything you like, I'll scrawl my name to it. If you were to write that I murdered someone I'd sign my name to it. I haven't time to go into it; besides, I can't see ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... so. It was a veritable scrawl, madam, running something like this: 'I return your daughter to you. She is here. Neither she nor you will ever see me again. Remember ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... a crumpled sheet of note paper before us on which was written something in a trembling scrawl. "For instance, here's a letter I received ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... oft while all is calm without The stormy spirit wars with endless doubt; This is the mocking spectre, scarce concealed Behind tradition's bruised and battered shield. He sees the sleepless critic, age by age, Scrawl his new readings on the hallowed page, The wondrous deeds that priests and prophets saw Dissolved in legend, crystallized in law, And on the soil where saints and martyrs trod Altars new builded to the Unknown God; His shrines imperilled, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... at least amusement in the race: Laugh when I laugh, I seek no other fame, The cry is up, and scribblers are my game: Speed, Pegasus!—ye strains of great and small, Ode! Epic! Elegy!—have at you all! I, too, can scrawl, and once upon a time I poured along the town a flood of rhyme, A schoolboy freak, unworthy praise or blame; I printed—older children do the same. 50 'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A Book's a Book, altho' there's nothing in't. Not that ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... buried races that live beneath the rivers and mountains. He writes of amazing crimes he has committed, of weird longings that will not let him sleep. And, too, he writes of strange gods which man should worship. He pours out his soul in a fantastic scrawl. He says: "One is all. God looked down and saw ants. The wheel of life turns seven times and you can see between. You will sometime understand this. But now you have curtains on ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... but the day before he was to sail an envelope with Billie Brookton's pretty scrawl on it was put into his hand. He opened it carefully, because it seemed sacrilege to tear what she had touched, or break the purple seal, with the two bees on it, which she used instead of initials or a monogram. The perfume which came from ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... its own excuse, and that it will tend to show my endeavour to make the most of the time allotted. I wish I had known it months ago, for in that case I had not left one line standing on another. I always scrawl in this way, and smooth as much as I can, but never sufficiently; and, latterly, I can weave a nine-line stanza faster than a couplet, for which measure I have not the cunning. When I began 'Childe Harold,' I had never ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... every finger of his right hand was sore. He spoke to worried doctors and frantic hospital administrators and hysterical nurses. His firm, fine penmanship deteriorated to a barely legible scrawl as writer's cramp knotted his hand and arm. His voice burned down to a rasping whisper. But columns climbed up his rough chart and broken lines ...
— The Plague • Teddy Keller
... really a great comfort. I am writing with my new one, so this letter won't, I hope, be such a puzzle to decipher as my pencil scrawl. ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... imertatin' her handwritin' lately," said Tad, "and I've got so I can scrawl jest like her. Old Scotch and Jenks ain't never run onto each other at our house, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... writing, scribbled with blue pencil, a pencil which must have been rather blunt, because the marking was heavy, though it showed signs of haste. No one familiar with Eagle March's hand could have failed to recognize it as his, rough and hurried as was the scrawl. ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... paper, looked at the scrawl of the Adamses, and scratching out his subscription, put two thousand where there had been one thousand. He showed it to Brotherton, and added ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... up. The young soldier-officers bawl for him with expletives; but he says, with a snigger, to me, 'They'll just wait till their betters, the ladies, is looked to.' I will write again some day soon, and take the chance of meeting a ship; you may be amused by a little scrawl, though it will probably be very stupid and ill-written, for it is not easy to see or to guide a pen while I hold on to the table with both legs and one arm, and am first on my back and then on my nose. ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... this note in to Daphne as she dressed for dinner. It was only a hurried scrawl on a leaf torn from a memorandum book, and, having read it, she ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... and be very grateful for it, for I do not bear this mountain traveling very well. If you find him, give him this scrawl and tell him where ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... other letters, all from friends at home. One, in a great square envelope, addressed with an English scrawl, she dreaded, and she kept it for the last. When she did tear it open her face grew quite pale. There was much in it about duty and consecration, and much concerning two lives sacrificed to the same great ideal. It breathed thoughts of denial and of annihilation of self, and,—yes, ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... his feeble fingers. He could scarcely write; but he managed to scrawl his name at the bottom of the paper on which his confession was recorded, and two of the persons present signed their names ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... to the letter came, the Prince gave it to her to read. It was very short, a mere scrawl of scarlet ink on the brown, rough-edged paper that was one ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... broke in, the banner blew, The butler drank, the steward scrawl'd, The fire shot up, the martin flew, The parrot scream'd, the peacock squall'd, The maid and page renew'd their strife, The palace bang'd, and buzz'd and clackt, And all the long-pent stream of life Dash'd downward ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... Garman in a clear feminine hand, and it read: "Garman: Am at the cottage on Palm Island; come to-night. Annette." At the bottom in a huge masculine scrawl, were three words; ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... for it is long and diffuse and probably useless. Natures opposed on certain points understand each other with difficulty, and I am afraid that you will not understand me any better today than formerly. However, I am sending you this scrawl so that you can see that I am occupied with you almost as much ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... so little rife, Though bearable, seem hardly worth This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth; Yet, Fausta, the mute turf we tread, The solemn hills around us spread, This stream which falls incessantly, The strange-scrawl'd rocks, the lonely sky, If I might lend their life a voice, Seem to bear rather than rejoice. And even could the intemperate prayer Man iterates, while these forbear, For movement, for an ampler sphere, Pierce ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... my wife had permitted me to say in her charge to me, and the incident ought to have been closed, as far as we were concerned. But Tedham's not speaking threw me off my guard. I could not let the matter end so bluntly, and I added, in the same spirit one makes a scrawl at the bottom of a page, "Of course, it's for you to decide ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... Never before had she so favourable an opportunity to study her rival. She scrutinised her hair, her nose, her mouth; held the photograph at a distance, and then brought it closer again. And, finally, with compressed lips, she read on the back of it, in a big, ugly scrawl: "Louise, to her friend, Florent." This quite scandalised her; to her mind it was a confession, and she felt a strong impulse to take possession of the photograph, and keep it as a weapon against her enemy. However, she slowly ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... Jerry's optimistic conjecture that the "inside" was all right. Judging from Peggy's crestfallen air, it was all wrong. The note was not written in Lucy's usual regular hand. The letters straggled, the lines zig-zagged across the page, and the name signed was almost an unintelligible scrawl. But Peggy thought less of these superficial matters than ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... long, incoherent scrawl. How did you like Erewhon? It's pretty near closing time and I must say grace over ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... time, seemed to show by contrast with the dull hue of the page even more clearly than it could have done when first written. The paper proved to be a will, drawn up in legal form and signed with the peculiar scrawl of which you hold a tracing. It purported to have been made and published in December, 1789, at Lancaster, in the State of Pennsylvania, and to have been witnessed by James Adiger and Johan Welliker of ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... there was in the letters; Deena's had three pages of pretty handwriting; Stephen's six of closely written scrawl. In Deena's the ideas barely flowed to the ink; in Stephen's they flowed so fast they couldn't get themselves written down—he used contractions, he left out whole words; he showed the interest he felt in the work he left ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... early muses who employed flint implements and arrow-heads for records, and neglected to clear away the remains of prehistoric meals in caverns. Others preferred to write their chronicles upon pots, urns and tombs or to scrawl placid monosyllables upon polygonal walls. But with all their industry the muses have never been able to keep pace with the material that has accumulated round the dwellings of men and women. They have done their best and, when their mother Mnemosyne began to fail ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... and wrote a note to the watchman, telling him that the bearer, Richard Townsend, had come to look over the property and that his orders must be accepted, and signed it with his hard-driven scrawl. He handed it up to Dick without rising from his seat, and said: "That'll fix ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... greatly we depend upon them for some of the quietest pleasures of our lives. But that is the way of human nature, isn't it? We rarely value anything until we lose it; we sigh most ardently for the thing which is beyond our reach, we count our happiest days those across the record of which we now must scrawl, "Too late!" That is why I always feel so infinitely sorry for the blind. The blind can so rarely get away from themselves, and, when they do, only with that effort which in you and me would demand some bigger result than merely to lose remembrance of ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... wasn't even thinking of that. I was thinking of Eunice, and of that round, childish scrawl of a diary upstairs in the attic trunk. And I was picturing Eunice, in the years to come, writing her diary; and I thought, what if she ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... somebody's name?" She had evidently never speculated on the meaning of the scrawl ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... Butler I am now writing with the gold pen he gave me before I left England, which is the reason my scrawl is more unintelligible than usual. I have been at Athens, and seen plenty of these reeds for scribbling, some of which he refused to bestow upon me, because topographic Gell had brought them from Attica. ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... and struck a match to read the scrawl which Poltavo had written. Fortunately there was nothing in it which betrayed the great secret of the house, but it was enough, as he realized, to awaken the dormant suspicion, even supposing it was dormant, ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... bluff, but his engaging manner carried him through. When he went away to the state university he made Fanny solemnly promise to write; to come down to Madison for the football games; to be sure to remember about the Junior prom. He wrote once—a badly spelled scrawl—and she answered. But he was the sort of person who must be present to be felt. He could not project his personality. When he came home for the Christmas holidays Fanny was helping in the store. He dropped in ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... I,—but, by the angry devil of the duel, you answer me, either sword point to sword point; or from the pointing pistol, that shall speak both sharp and decisive, and the dotting bullet, perhaps, put a period to your proud life's scrawl. But no; I am grown too old to have recourse to violence. Away, go, go; but, mind you, do not breathe this calumny into a human ear,—no, not into the air. Shame, shame! you are no noble minded man, to villify ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... voting strength of Little Poland was no longer to be counted in his column—he had thought and fought that out in the small hours; but he did need and pounced upon the statement that Little Poland's master would be out of town the greater part of election day. The scrawl ended with an appointment for a clandestine meeting at eleven o'clock, toward which he now bent his ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... imagine that we were a nation of poets; machines, at least, containing poetry, which the motion of a journey emptied of their contents. Is it from the vanity of being thought geniuses, or a mere mechanical imitation of the custom of others, that we are tempted to scrawl rhyme upon such places?" ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... in the act of writing to you," said she, "but now my scrawl may go into the basket;" and she raised the sheet of gilded note-paper from off her desk as though to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... a name in a private, modest way to walls already so crowded, is allowable; but to scrawl one's name, place of birth, and country, half across a wall, covering scores of names under it, is an operation which speaks for itself. No one would ever want to know more of a man than to see ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... dollar cheque which Lily received with a blotted scrawl from Gus Trenor strengthened her self-confidence in the exact degree to which ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... one could see the outline of a gloomy shore. The thin paper, a leaf torn from a book, had print on the reverse side, and the letters showed through in grayish flecks and gave the curious impression as of clouds in the sky. And that little drawing, with less form than a school-boy's blackboard scrawl, was completely transfigured by those gray spots, and because of them it took on for me a deep and dreadful significance. Aided by the dim light in the room the pictured scene became a vision that faded away into the distance like the pale surface of the sea. I was terrified ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... her hand for the paper. When Si was gone she sat gazing at it, trying in her ignorance to pick from the, to her, senseless scrawl those last words. Ben ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... certainly done under circumstances which are apt to have a disturbing effect upon the literary style. "Excuse this scrawl," writes one soldier, "the German shells have interrupted me six times already, and I had to dash out with my bayonet before I was able to finish it off." Another concludes: "Well, mother, I must close now. The bullets are a bit too thick ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... any true Protestant, "as I am well assured the proprietor of this house is a stanch and worthy friend to the cause." But there were plenty of houses where neither fear nor fanaticism displayed blue banner or chalked scrawl, houses whose owners boasted no safeguard signed by Lord George Gordon, and with these the mob busied themselves. The description in the "Annual Register" is so striking that it deserves to be cited; it is probably from the pen of Edmund Burke: "As soon {205} as the day was drawing towards ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... had lied for a purpose. A purpose that he could very well conceive. But if she lied for that purpose she would have given importance and prominence to her lie. She wouldn't have hidden it away in an almost invisible scrawl ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... sank back into her chair and tore open the envelope. The inclosure was a dingy sheet of cheap notepaper covered with a penciled scrawl. With trembling fingers she unfolded the paper and read what was written there. Then she leaned back in the chair and put her ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln |
