"Meagre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have followed a life of able, honest, unselfish, heroic labour. The colony was still small in numbers, the acres subdued and brought into cultivation were few, and the aggregate yearly products were meagre. But it is to be observed that the productiveness of capital and labour and talent, two hundred and seventy years ago, cannot well be compared with the standards of to-day. Moreover, the results of Champlain's career are insignificant rather ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... began to circulate in the markets. Madame Lecoeur and La Sarriette were in their own fashion keeping the oaths of silence they had taken. For her own part, Mademoiselle Saget warily held her tongue, leaving the two others to circulate the story of Florent's antecedents. At first only a few meagre details were hawked about in low tones; then various versions of the facts got into circulation, incidents were exaggerated, and gradually quite a legend was constructed, in which Florent played the part of a perfect bogey man. He had killed ten gendarmes at the barricade ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... force as coming in from Nature to the service of man, a conception the Utopian proposal of a coinage based on energy units would emphasise, arise profound contrasts between the modern and the classical Utopias. Except for a meagre use of water power for milling, and the wind for sailing—so meagre in the latter case that the classical world never contrived to do without the galley slave—and a certain restricted help from oxen in ploughing, and from ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... two nurses, and so Juno took to the outside work up and down the river, up every little creek, and out in the hills. All day and far into the night she was gone. Sometimes she did not for days come back to the Mission. Her face grew white and drawn, and her cheeks hollow from poor food, meagre snatches of sleep, and untiring work. The doctor warned her, St. Hilda warned her, she got anxious warning letters from her husband, but on she went. ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... scratching his head beneath his skull cap. He would see what he could screw out of the funds of the Obreria; if just at first nothing could be managed, as the revenues of the Primacy were meagre and at their lowest ebb, no doubt something ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of not a few distinguished families; but the old castles where they lived are, without exception, the most meagre ruins; of one, indeed (Tullibardine), not a stone remains ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... affected for centuries the happiness of mankind." [History of the later Roman Commonwealth, vol ii. p. 317.] In fact, the more we test its importance, the higher we shall be led to estimate it; and, though the authentic details which we possess of its circumstances and its heroes are but meagre, we can trace enough of its general character to make us watch with deep interest this encounter between the rival conquerors of the decaying Roman empire. That old classic world, the history of which occupies so large a portion of our early studies, lay, in the eighth century of our era, ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... keeping in close touch with Seward, the relations between England and America at London were exceedingly meagre. All that the American Minister Dallas knew of Russell's intentions is summed up in his despatches to Seward of March 22 and April 9, 1861[102]. On the former date, he gave an account of an interview with Russell in which the latter ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... dwells, By grots and caverns shagged with horrid shades, She may pass on with unblenched majesty, Be it not done in pride, or in presumption. Some say 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 faery of the mine, Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity. Do ye believe me yet, or shall I call Antiquity from the old schools of Greece To testify the arms of chastity? Hence had the ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... my directions, and we found his skill in this way by no means despicable. Such are the trifles which must fill up my journal, for did I only write what was fit for grave divines, or the scrutinizing eye of philosophy to read, I fear I should have but a few meagre sheets to present you on my return, and perhaps not a single ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... am dreadful; I know it. But promise." And Olive drew the girl nearer to her, flinging over her with one hand the fold of a cloak that hung ample upon her own meagre person, and holding her there with the other, while she looked at her, suppliant but half hesitating. ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... English opinion. Not, indeed, that the new dynasty was popular. It had nothing of that romantic glamour of a lost cause so imperishably recorded in Scott's pages. The first Georges were heavy and foreign and meagre-souled; but at least they were Protestant, and, until the reign of George III, they were amenable to management. In the result, an opposition in the classic sense was hardly needed; for the only question to be considered was the personalities who were to share in power. The dominating ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... the meagre British line That northern ocean press'd; But we never knew how few Were we who held the crest! While within the curtain-mist dark shadows loom Making the gray more gray, Till the volley-flames betray With one flash the long array: And then, ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... for Liszt's letters, meagre would be the information regarding Cosima before her marriage to Wagner. But by going over his voluminous correspondence and picking out references to her here and there, I am able to give at least some idea of ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... Strange's table took a far wider range than my meagre notes would intimate, and we sat so long that it was almost eleven before the men joined the ladies in the drawing-room. You will hardly conceive of remaining two, three, or four hours at dinner, as one often does here, in society; out of society the meals ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... behind the legend for the history. Is it presumptuous to ask our readers to try to understand the thirteenth century and love St. Francis? They will be amply rewarded for the effort, and will soon find an unexpected charm in these too meagre landscapes, these incorporate souls, these sickly imaginations which will pass before their eyes. Love is the true key ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... say that the incident, as in the case of Hawthorne's Tales, is so meagre and the language so exquisite, that the telling seems to be quite inadequate and inferior to the reading of the story. In such cases, variety may be afforded by reading, but generally speaking, it is more effective to ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... places which seemed best fit for them, and which the men turned over to them because the work appeared to be of a character suitable to the feminine sex. But the modern woman has had enough of the meagre salary which is to be obtained by means of needle-work, and she has invaded the shop, the office, the desks of the banks and post office. In industry also she has taken her place by the side of the working-man, who has made room ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... the low regular dwarfs are the great wine-givers. 'Walk and gaze, until you come to the most shabby, stunted, weazened, scrubby, dwarfish, expanse of snobbish bushes, ignominiously bound neck and crop to the espaliers like a man on the rack—these utterly poor, starved, and meagre-looking growths, allowing as they do the gravelly soil to shew in bald patches of gray shingle through the straggling branches—these contemptible-looking shrubs, like paralysed and withered raspberries, it is which produce the most priceless, and the most ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... to finish it. Mr. and Mrs. S. spent most of last evening with us. They shouted over my ferrotypes. Mr.—— also called and expressed as much surprise at your having gone to Europe as if the sky had fallen. I read my sea-journal to the children last evening, and though it is very flat and meagre in itself, H., to whom it was all brand new, thought it ought to be published forthwith. No time for another word but love to all the S.'s, big and little, high and low, great and ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... of Joe H—- had cleared the farm, and while the soil was new it gave good crops; but as the rich surface, or "black muck," as it is called, became exhausted by continual cropping, nothing but a poor, meagre soil remained. ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... wondered how much she held within her to give in answer to this cry to her of self-confident Nature. Was it only a little? She did not know. Perhaps she was too tired to know. But however much it was it must seem meagre. What is even a woman's heart given to the desert or a woman's soul to the sea? What is the worship of anyone to the sunset among the hills, or to the wind that lifts all the clouds from before the face ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... 400 ewes, and some fatting sheep. All, except the fatting sheep, were folded on the stubbles, and allowed a daily run on the park of about an hour for each flock. The freshest grass was reserved for the ewes, and a very meagre bite remained for the lambs; in fact, except for a few weeks in autumn, the parks afforded them little or nothing except ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... people have pronounced against it. All who voted for Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Douglas —over three million three hundred thousand citizens—voted against this claim. Less than a million voted for it. Should the great majority yield to a meagre minority, especially under threats of disunion? This minority demand that slavery be protected by the constitution. Our fathers would not allow the word 'slave' or 'slavery' in the constitution, when all the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... favorable results for Science; nay, more mature views excited an eager desire to become acquainted with similar or still greater visitations among the ancients, but, as later ages have always been fond of referring to Grecian antiquity, the learned of those times, from a partial and meagre predilection, were contented with the descriptions of Thucydides, even where nature had revealed, in infinite diversity, the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... dripping coat and crossed the room to hang it on a chair-back. The stranger drover followed the meagre, shirt-clad figure with shifty eyes; then he buried his face in ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... thicker than the meteors fell towards the earth; east, west, north, south, it was the same." In 1866 the shower was again heavy and brilliant, but at the end of the nineteenth century, when the swarm should have returned, the display was meagre and ineffective. ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... and the increased usefulness of Sweet Peas have necessitated a revolution in the methods of culture. The freer growth and more robust habit demand greater space than was formerly allowed. Instead of crowded rows of attenuated plants, producing a meagre return of small flowers, poor in colour, it is now the practice to prepare the ground by deep trenching and liberal manuring, and to give every plant ample space for full development both in rows and in clumps. In the ensuing paragraphs we outline the ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... me." He would have spoken truly in saying this about Tartarin, who carried in his frame the soul of Don Quixote, the same chivalric impulses, heroic ideal, and crankiness for the grandiose and romantic; but, worse is the luck! he had not the body of the celebrated hidalgo, that thin and meagre apology for a body, on which material life failed to take a hold; one that could get through twenty nights without its breast-plate being unbuckled, and forty-eight hours on a handful of rice. On the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... devoted all his time to study and travel. He wrote forty-seven books, and those on geography were very valuable; for he wrote from his own observation, though sometimes he is very full, at others very meagre. He is regarded as by no ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... riddled your patience through and through; to put up with him was hard, to put him down was impossible, (your long tolerated nuisance of fifty is always incorrigible.) His bore was surprising considering the smallness of his calibre; like a meagre gimlet, he would drill a small hole in some unimportant statement, and then gather up his opima spolia, and march off to the sound of his own trumpet. For instance, on convicting you of assigning a fine picture to a wrong church or gallery, he denied all your pretensions to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... came out of heaven; that he had not been bad, and was not to go in the pit; but that he allowed himself to be killed; and when he died, God shut up the pit; so the people were spared. This seemed to myself too strange, vague, meagre, to convey any definite idea to the boy's mind; but how effectual does the Lord make our poorest efforts when HE wills to work! After a few moments' deep thought, Jack astonished me by an objection that proved he saw the grand ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... time quite dry, feeling much refreshed and in every way considerably the better for our bath. Our next business was to go to breakfast, but our bread was by this time so completely destroyed as to be quite uneatable. We therefore threw it overboard, and made a meagre and unpalatable meal off more raw salt beef, washed down ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... ended one month before he was sixteen years of age. Mr. Hobby and Mr. Williams were his only teachers, except his parents. "Not very rare opportunities," the reader will say. No larger opportunities for mental culture now would be considered meagre indeed. But he made the most of what he had, so that his small advantages did more for him than the best opportunities do for ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... favour with her lord. The charms she used were evident enough, for Nature had been lavish with the kind to meet his lordship's wishes. How was it their own parents had spawned such incapacity? "Deign, O'Shimo Dono, to teach the art so sadly lacking. How bring to prominence such meagre gifts of proportion as one does possess? In turn shall be taught the art of the hanaike—the arrangement of flowers, of the koto and the biwa in accompaniment of old songs of heroes and their ladies, ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... though not with the zeal that I might have wished. To my demand for permission to travel no answer was returned, and the iniquitous despot, who had received from me no less than the value of about 750 piastres in goods, condescended to give me twenty meagre oxen, worth about 120 piastres. The state of my purse would not permit me to refuse even this mean return, and I bade adieu to El-Fascher ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... French accounts of the Neapolitan wars of Louis XII. are extremely meagre, and few in number. The most striking, on the whole, is D'Auton's chronicle, composed in the true chivalrous vein of old Froissart, but unfortunately terminating before the close of the first campaign. St. Gelais and Claude Seyssel touch very lightly on this part ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... greatest tendencies of the age. Whoever is offended at this juxtaposition, and whoever can deem no revolution important which is not boisterous and material, has not yet risen to the broad and lofty viewpoint of the history of mankind. Even in our meagre histories of culture, which, for the most part, resemble a collection of variant readings accompanied by a running commentary the classical text of which has perished, many a little book of which the noisy rabble took scant ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... in his hand, he put in practice a much easier exercise: he made the round of the company to collect their offerings. The crowd melted like magic, leaving him solitary, hat in hand, and with only a few sous in it for his pains. With a resigned air, the man pocketed his meagre takings, then, pushing the accordion up on his back where it was held in place by a strap, he walked, bent, staggering, towards the gate. He passed through it ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... is a very difficult and complicated one at times," said the man in the corner, leisurely pulling off a huge pair of flaming dog-skin gloves from his meagre fingers. "I have known experienced criminal investigators declare, as an infallible axiom, that to find the person interested in the committal of the crime is to ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... Association. This is ungenerous, and unfortunate, as the records of anthropology are rich in unexamined materials of psychical research. I am unacquainted with any work devoted by an anthropologist of renown to the hypnotic and kindred practices of the lower races, except Herr Bastian's very meagre tract, 'Ueber psychische Beobachtungen bei Naturvoelkern.'[7] We possess, none the less, a mass of scattered information on this topic, the savage side of psychical phenomena, in works of travel, and in Mr. Tylor's monumental 'Primitive Culture.' Mr. Tylor, however, as we ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... degree of freedom in the use of the broad expanse of ground in which they and their forefathers have loved to sequester their residences. The figure kept on, showing more and more distinctly the tall, meagre, not unvenerable features of a gentleman in the decline of life, apparently in ill-health; with a dark face, that might once have been full of energy, but now seemed enfeebled by time, passion, and perhaps sorrow. But it was strange ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the Netherland schools are meagre, so it is to Italy that we must turn for the earliest examples of skilled women composers. The first great name is that of Maddalena Casulana, who was born at Brescia about 1540. Her published compositions took the shape ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... however, upon this, as other occasions in life, rallied himself to make the best of it; and by short excursions within certain prescribed limits along the river side, contrived to shoot and fish enough to get through the day, and improve the meagre fare of his mess-table. Malone never appeared before dinner—his late sittings at night requiring all the following day to recruit him for a new ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... the Devil Legion raves, And meagre Critics mutter in their caves: (Such Critics of necessity consume All Wit, as Hangmen ravish'd Maids at Rome.) Names he a Scribler? all the world's in arms, Augusta, Granta, Rhedecyna swarms: The ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... winked at him as though it were aware of the absurdity of anything so trivial being held in such high esteem. More of the "calico," which really was an inexpensive but tasteful chintz, hung against the wall and served to hide from prying eyes the child's meagre wardrobe, and a bow of it was perkily tied to the back of ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... such an appalling and tropical luxuriance of these ornaments as to despair at last altogether of even a representative selection. "They do not curse," he says, "at door-handles, and shirt-studs, and such other trifles as will draw down the meagre discharge of an Occidental, but when ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... of Independence and an equal proportion of our generals, statesmen and presidents have been members of that denomination. As the sources of information regarding the religious views of most prominent Americans are shamefully meagre, I was inclined to regard Rector Reed's sermon as a historical document of inestimable value. Being prone, however, to act upon the advice of St. Paul and "prove all things," I began a cursory ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... case. At that time, the great mass of the people in Europe—men and women—were ignorant to the last degree, possessing little if any sense of delicacy or refinement, and were utterly uncouth. For the most part, they lived in miserable hovels, were clothed in a most meagre and scanty way, and were little better than those beasts of burden which are compelled to do their master's bidding. Among these people, rights depended quite largely upon physical strength, and women were generally misused. To the ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... of the home before going out, while similar duties claimed her at night. Though naturally bright and refined in disposition she was at this time almost wholly uneducated. From the factory schools she had brought only a meagre knowledge of reading and arithmetic, and she had read little save the books obtained from the library of the Sunday School. But her mind was opening, she was becoming conscious of the outer world and all its interests and wonders, and she was eager to know and ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... of other matters,—of what things should be carried back to France. And as the strength and energy of the American girl seemed to have gone—owing, perhaps, to a too meagre diet—the Princess insisted upon having her own maid sent up to pack the trunks. Jacques departed on this errand, and to get one or two men. He soon returned with them, and accompanied by the Archbishop. With a half-suspicious interest His Grace studied this young woman, ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... the doorways in the screen, and glided towards the upper table, attracting general attention and misgiving as he proceeded. His countenance was cadaverous, his lips livid, and his eyes black and deep sunken in their sockets, with a bistre-coloured circle around them. His frame was meagre and bony. What remained of hair on his head was raven black, but either he was bald on the crown, or carried his attention to costume so far as to adopt the priestly tonsure. His forehead was lofty and sallow, and seemed stamped, like his ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... being distasteful to the listener by the fact that it was given with a melancholy despairing gesture, which to a less serious person than Ringfield might have been amusing. But his sense of humour, originally meagre, was not developing at St. Ignace as fast as it might, and he saw nothing humorous in this view of madame's immunity from disease. Before he could frame a ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... appears to be from Tusculum, because Cicero asks for a letter every day, which he could hardly expect if he were farther off. This year Cicero was much away from Rome, and yet his correspondence is meagre compared with other years. So far as this is not due to accident in the preservation of his letters, it may be accounted for by the fact that he was working at his de Oratore—so hard, that even his brother Quintus had scruples ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... my lord's the forest was my lord the king's; neither of them for this poor Jacques. If he thought to eke out his meagre way of life by some petty theft of wood for the fire, or for a new roof-tree, he found himself face to face with a whole department, from the Grand Master of the Woods and Waters, who was a high-born lord, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... or translated all these letters for the blind man. He would not be discouraged at the meagre indications sent him. ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... with the Nation, especially with Paris. For in such universal panic of doubt, the opinion that is sure of itself, as the meagrest opinion may the soonest be, is the one to which all men will rally. Great is Belief, were it never so meagre; and leads captive the doubting heart! Incorruptible Robespierre has been elected Public Accuser in our new Courts of Judicature; virtuous Petion, it is thought, may rise to be Mayor. Cordelier Danton, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... cloud went off from the pilgrim's brow, As a small and meagre book, Unchased by gold or diamond gem, From his folding robe he took. Here, lady fair, is the pearl of price;— May it prove as such to thee! Nay, keep thy gold—I ask it not; For the Word of God ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... him in the wilds of Gaul and Britain. As aide-de-camp, or orderly, for such a position he probably held, his place was by Caesar's side. They forded the rivers together, walked or rode through woodland or open side by side, shared the same meagre rations, and lay in the same tent at the end of the day's march, ready to spring from the ground at a moment's warning to defend each other against attack from the savage foe. Caesar's narrative of his campaigns in Gaul is a soldier's ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... am altogether at my ease when I see anywhere in my path that meagre, squalid, famine-faced spectre, Poverty; attended as he always is, by iron-fisted oppression, and leering contempt; but I have sturdily withstood his buffetings many a hard-laboured day already, and still my ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... quantity of silver, together with a silver-hafted knife, and had absconded with his pillage." Here you see, gentlemen, the murder is plain, and the manner of it. It was L.M. who murdered Spinosa for his money. Poor S. was an invalid, meagre, and weak: as no blood was observed, L.M., no doubt, threw him down and smothered him with pillows,—the poor man being already half suffocated by his infernal dinner. But who was L.M.? It surely never could be Lindley Murray; for ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... balanced that they recovered their equilibrium, after surprises, before she had time for manifestations. There was a curious healthfulness about the slender, wiry little creature who was overworked and under-fed, a healthfulness which seemed to result from the action of the mind upon a meagre body. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the Labadist sect who came over to this country in order to find a location for the establishment of a community has served to throw a flood of light upon what otherwise might have been a lost chapter in the history of Maryland. For so meagre are the sources of ready availability for a knowledge of the Labadist colony which was effected in Maryland that without this account the story of the first communal sect in America might have failed of ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... industrious little coral insect. The lime with which their cellular beds are composed being favourable to vegetable growth, leaves it no wonder that the higher grounds and dryer lands are thus so densely clothed. The few villages there are, bordering on the coast, are poor and meagre-looking, but their inhabitants were very hospitable, especially where there were any Banyans. Nothing could exceed the mingled pride and yearning pleasure these exotic Indians seemed to derive from having us ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... other room. A stove stood in the southwest corner, but it was not black and shining; it was rust-red and ash-littered, and the ashes had overflowed the hearth and spilled to the unswept floor. A dented lard-pail without a handle did meagre duty as a teakettle, and balanced upon a corner of the stove was a dirty frying pan. The fire had gone dead and the room was chill with the rising of the wind. The table was filled with empty cans and tin plates and cracked, oven-stained bowls and iron-handled knives and forks, and the ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... brittle stems over me, swaying gently to and fro in the gentle wind,—the tiny scarlet cups of moss that held a little drop of dew brimming over their rims of fire, a spark in the ashy gray moss-beds where they stood,—the shrinking and wan wood-asters, branched out widely, but set with meagre bloom,—every half-tint of the lichens, that scantily fed from the relentless granite rock, yet clung to its stern face with fearless persistence,—the rough seams and velvet green moss-tufts of the oak-trunks,—the light that pierced the dingy hue of oak-leaves with vivid and informing ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... brilliant clearness of her dark complexion. You might almost fancy that you could see into it so as to read the different lines beneath the skin. She was somewhat tall, though by no means tall to a fault, and was so thin as to be almost meagre in her proportions. She always wore her dress close up to her neck, and never showed the bareness of her arms. Though she was the only woman so clad now present in the room, this singularity did not specially strike one, because ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... that these four kinds of proposition recognised by Formal Logic constitute a very meagre selection from the list of propositions actually used in ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... horizon,— which he did in the midst of a thin, smoky haze, through which the rayless luminary glowed like a ball of red-hot iron,—I descended to the deck and forthwith set to work to prepare myself such a supper as the meagre resources of the felucca permitted; after discussing which, as the stars were shining brilliantly overhead, and the little craft was steering herself, I again stretched myself out on deck to snatch ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... well-known compiler of these books had kept them in demand, the one for thirty and the other for fifteen years, but later information had discounted some of their historic and biographical matter, and, while many of the monographs were too meagre, others were unduly long. Besides, the Story of the Tunes, so far from being the counterpart of the Story of the Hymns, bore no special relationship to it, only a small portion of its selections answering to any in the hymn-list of the latter book. For a personal friend and practically ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... 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 ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... enrichment of Temples and other public buildings, the State having indefinite and almost unlimited power over the property of all wealthy citizens. The public surroundings of an influential Athenian were therefore in direct contrast to the simplicity of his home, which contained the most meagre supply of chairs and tables, while the chef d'oeuvres of Phidias adorned the Senate House, the Theatre, and ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... like startled deer at the sound of his voice. The alertness of fear was in their faces, and they turned, in a panic, to run. He called to them to come back, and one boy lagged behind reluctantly, his meagre little frame portraying in pantomime the struggle within him between fear and reason. He wanted to come back. His intelligence and past experience told him that to come back was a lesser evil than to run on; but lesser evil that it ...
— The Road • Jack London
... nights, always cool in that region, began to menace frost; and the signs of the decline of the year that come so much later in more temperate climates, began to make themselves apparent here. It is true, that of vegetation there was so little, and that little so meagre and of so hardy a nature, that in this respect the progress of the seasons was not to be particularly noted; but in all others, Roswell saw with growing uneasiness that the latest hour of his departure ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... bookseller, with a meagre terrified countenance, that looks as if he had written for himself, or were resolved to turn author, and bring the rest of his brethren into the same condition. And lastly, in the form of a worn-out punk, with verses in her hand, which her vanity had preferred to settlements, ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... of vigour immediately following each foreign conquest (such as the Mongol conquest in the Thirteenth Century and the Manchu in the Seventeenth) not only has there never been any absolutism properly so-called in China, but that apart from the most meagre and inefficient tax-collecting and some rough-and-ready policing in and around the cities there has never been any true governing at all save what the people did for themselves or what they demanded of the officials ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... blue eyes and gold lashes— Made in the mold of the Saviour, they say! Drink deep of my bosom, my starved, meagre bosom, That—keeps you ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... literary and political career, his speeches, and the more fugitive productions of his pen, were recoverable from public sources; but his personal and private side, as it showed itself to the few close intimates who still survive, must have remained to myself and others meagre, superficial, disappointing, without Madame Novikoff's ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... two expeditions Grey had faced death in every shape, and shown great powers of endurance, but the results of all his toil were but meagre, and of no very great importance. He had crossed and named the rivers running into the west coast, between where he abandoned his boats and the Moore River, but in the state he was in he knew little more than the fact that they were there, having neither ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... Crags. This led him close to the booth where the sports were proceeding. He heard, as he passed, the gurgling laugh with which the dalesfolk received the peddler's story of how he saw Paul Ritson at Hendon. A minute afterward he encountered Hugh Ritson on the road. There was only the most meagre pretense at greeting when these men came face ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... waves of her hair like foam, and setting her teeth firmly, as if thereby locking the door against all compassionating compunctions. Electra left the park and turned into a cross-street, on which was situated an establishment where bouquets were kept for sale. The assortment was meagre at that late hour, but she selected a tiny bunch of delicate, fragrant, hot-house blossoms, and, shielding them with her shawl, hastened home. The studio was brilliant with gas-glare and warm with the ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... alone are of interest to the antiquary and I have failed to discover either. The remainder is the story of a school, which has always had a reputation in the educational world and at the same time has left only the most meagre records of itself. The gentry of the neighbourhood were its scholars, but few have made their fame in the world without. Headmasters and Ushers have passed their lives here, but few were ambitious. Giggleswick was their haven of old age. Customs grew up, ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... Beauty Smith. But he was anything save a beauty. To antithesis was due his naming. He was pre-eminently unbeautiful. Nature had been niggardly with him. He was a small man to begin with; and upon his meagre frame was deposited an even more strikingly meagre head. Its apex might be likened to a point. In fact, in his boyhood, before he had been named Beauty by his fellows, he ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... leaving Santa Fe, we entered the wretched little pueblo of Parida. It was my intention to have remained there all night, but it proved a ruffian sort of place, with meagre chances of comfort, and I moved on to Socorro. This is the last inhabited spot in New Mexico, as you approach the terrible ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... to history. The yoke of the Presbyterians and Independents had been a hard one, and the Church Restored was the outward sign of release from bondage to those whom that yoke had galled. Her dignitaries had suffered the direst straits of poverty, and her clergy had sought a meagre livelihood in menial employment, or had lived in dependence upon the secret benevolence of impoverished loyalists, in whose households they were often well-loved inmates. They had full need of money, not only for their own subsistence, but to repair their ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... I to have continued but one week more in the way I was in when I wrote the latter part of it, I should have been confined, and in straw, the next; for I now recollect, that all my distemper was returning upon me with irresistible violence—and that in spite of water-gruel and soup-meagre. ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... as opinion went, and would have no fear as to expressing his opinion to his brother clergyman. So she sent for Mr. Crawley. In appearance he was the very opposite to Mark Robarts. He was a lean, slim, meagre man, with shoulders slightly curved, and pale, lank, long locks of ragged hair; his forehead was high, but his face was narrow; his small grey eyes were deeply sunken in his head, his nose was well-formed, his lips thin, and his mouth expressive. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... German people did not understand the case because they purposely had been left in the dark by the Government. He said, among other things, that his countrymen were in no position to understand the feeling of resentment in the United States, because the meagre reports permitted in the German Press never described such details as the death agonies of women and children struggling ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... some phantom's wound.[ld] Herself would question, and for him reply; Then rising, start, and beckon him to fly From some imagined Spectre in pursuit; Then seat her down upon some linden's root, And hide her visage with her meagre hand, Or trace strange characters along the sand— 1270 This could not last—she lies by him she loved; Her tale untold—her truth ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... haggard faces, lank and bony figures, boys of stunted growth, and others whose long and meagre legs would hardly bear their stooping bodies. Faces that told of young lives which from infancy had been one horrible endurance of cruelty and neglect. Little faces that should have been handsome, darkened with the scowl of sullen, dogged ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... aim then at fulness of life; not at husbanding our resources with meagre economy, but at spending generously and fearlessly, grasping experience firmly, nurturing zest and hope. The frame of mind we must be beware of, which is but a stingy vanity, is that which makes us say, "I am sure I should not like that person, ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... drafts, which upon the whole she approves, but she cannot help feeling that the main draft, that for communication to the American Government, is somewhat meagre. She should have liked to have seen the expression of a hope that the American captain did not act under instructions, or, if he did, that he misapprehended them—that the United States Government must be fully aware that the British Government could not allow its flag ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... would have guillotined her father, a boy of fourteen: that he escaped to Prussia, to Belgium, to England; for six years always a wanderer and a fugitive: that he was wrecked on this dear coast and, penniless, started life anew here on his little accomplishments: that he made out a meagre existence, and late in the order of years (he was fifty) married an expatriated countrywoman, who died—George, my mother died when I was seventeen months old—and that is where I stop. My good, big father—so lonely, ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... thing to increase our expenses than to reduce them. We get used to a certain free way of living, and it is one of the most difficult things in the world to give up this little luxury, and that pleasant indulgence, and come right down to the meagre necessaries of life. This fact was soon apparent to Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm; but they were in earnest in what they were about, and practised the required self-denial. Their expenses were kept within the limits of seven hundred dollars, the lowest ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... that tower which you could see from the summit of the Elm-tree Hill topping the sky-line to the west, in order to complete his education as an engineer before his meagre capital was exhausted, Drake had enjoyed little opportunity of acquiring knowledge of London; and those acquaintances of his who travelled thither with their shiny black bags every morning, seemed to him to know even less than ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... meagre, and he was just losing himself again in contemplation of the upturned face, whose fixed mouth and haunting expression told such a story of suffering and determination, when there came from the dim recesses above his head a cry, which, forming itself into two ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... convinced that the women of the lower races do not "as a rule" enjoy the liberty of choice, we need only contrast the meagre results obtained by Darwin and Westermarck with the vast number of races and tribes whose customs indicate that women are habitually given in marriage without being consulted as to their wishes. Among these customs are infant marriage, infant betrothal, capture, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... lands which are now leased for terms of years, and covered with buildings, were occupied as suburban gardens at trifling rents. Eventually the Birmingham Free School will enjoy an income equal to the wants of a university as well as a school. Meagre accounts of the income and expenditure of this noble foundation are published annually, under the regulations of an Act of Parliament passed in 1828; but no report of the number of scholars, or the sort of education communicated, ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... mirror above her plain prim dressing-table: just such a meagre concession to the weakness of the flesh as every old-fashioned house in Wentworth counted among its relics. The face reflected in this unflattering surface—for even the mirrors of Wentworth erred on the side of depreciation—did not seem, at first sight, a suitable theatre for the display of ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... the systematic use of the Old Testament by the Puritans, as if it were "the rule of life" to Christians, I saw to be a glaring mistake, intensely opposed to the Pauline doctrine. This discovery, moreover, soon became important to me, as furnishing a ready evasion of objections against the meagre or puerile views of the Pentateuch; for without very minute inquiry how far I must go to make the defence adequate, I gave a general reply, that the New Testament confessed the imperfections of the older dispensation. I still presumed ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... wondered that the technique of art should have so meagre a literature. Its philosophy and poetry have employed many pens, and been exhaustively analyzed, but this has been mostly the work of outsiders—of critics devoid even of the qualification laid down by Disraeli of having failed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... worse with him than with his horses, who ate good oats, and were regularly changed and relieved, for he grew pale and meagre by reason of his continual working and toiling. His wife and children had no longer any comfort for him. He never went to the ale-house or to the club. He withdrew himself from every one, and scarcely ever spoke a single ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... deed had been done at the cost of a gallant life. England was thrilled because the hero happened to be the son of a popular Minister. The name of Desmond rang through the Empire. John bought every paper and devoured the meagre lines which left so much between them. It seemed that a certain position had to be taken—a small hill. For the hundredth time in this campaign too few men were detailed for the task. The reek of that awful slaughter on Spion Kop was still strong in men's nostrils. Beauregard and his soldiers halted ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... Schumann's works living; and if the love she has obtained for him is not as universal, it is just as fervent. Many silent and holy hours have I sat communing, through her, with him whom the Germans love to call their Tone-Poet; and the music remained to clothe with the full vesture of romance the meagre paragraphs of the journals which hinted his love, his sorrow, and at length his insanity and death. More, however, I longed to know of him,—of the wedlock of these Brownings of music; and more I came to know, in the way which, with this preface, I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... life I had inserted an account in the Newgate Lives and Trials; it was bare and meagre, and written in the stiff, awkward style of the seventeenth century; it had, however, strongly captivated my imagination, and I now thought that out of it something better could be made; that, if I added to the adventures, and purified the style, I might fashion out of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... features of Slaavic Turkey, from those of the Arabic provinces in which I so long resided. The flat roofs, the measured pace of the camel, the half-naked negro, the uncouth Bedouin, the cloudless heavens, the tawny earth, and the meagre apology for turf, are exchanged for ricketty wooden houses with coarse tiling, laid in such a way as to eschew the monotony of straight lines; strings of primitive waggons drawn by buffaloes, and driven by Bulgarians with black woolly caps, real genuine grass ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... has luxury advanced more upon the model of the ancients than in this: the dinners (cn) of the Romans were even more luxurious, and a thousand times more costly, than our own; but their breakfasts were scandalously meagre; and, with many men, breakfast was no professed meal at all. Galen tells us that a little bread, and at most a little seasoning of oil, honey, or dried fruits, was the utmost breakfast which men generally allowed ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Christianity, a religion which, however, was for some time longer to remain unknown to the Picts generally in the north. But, as Professor Hume Brown also tells us in the first of the three entrancing volumes of his History, "In Scotland, if we may judge from the meagre accounts that have come down to us, the Roman dominion hardly passed the stage of a military occupation, held by an intermittent and precarious tenure." What concerns dwellers in the extreme north is that although the Romans went into Perthshire and may have temporarily ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... along the walls, were ranged narrow wooden cots, with their straw beds and coverings of coarse cotton check. And close together on those contracted couches—the meagre causeway from which many of these poor creatures were lifted to a pauper's grave, the patients were huddled, suffering in all the stages of that fierce and terrible disease, ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... not to the credit of the English nation that so little has been done in connection with Turkish bath building for the people. The attention given to the question of supplying bath-houses of any kind is of the most meagre character. The provisions of the Public Baths and Wash-houses Act are entirely inadequate. In these matters the German nation is far ahead of us. Fortunately for the general health, the Englishman is renowned for his morning "tub." But the cold tub is merely ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... are half-starved. Their "kitchen" is a meagre ration of bruised beans, and their daily bread consists of the dry leaves of thorn trees, beaten down by the Makhbat, a flail-like staff, and caught in a large circle of matting (El-Khasaf). In Sinai the vegetation fares even worse: the branches are rudely lopped off to feed the flocks; only ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... New York are rather meagre," he said; "but I'll find a hansom first, and then we'll invent something." He led her through the throng of returning holiday-makers, past sallow-faced girls in preposterous hats, and flat-chested women struggling with paper bundles and palm-leaf fans. Was it possible that she belonged ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... silent and submissive slaves to surround him. The Duchess showed herself docile to Courtin's advice, and passed in profound obscurity the many long years which, remained to her of existence. Saint-Simon and Dangeau say nothing more about her, save to enregister the meagre favours which the Court measured out with an avaricious hand, and that woman, to whom was owing the signature of the Treaty of Nimeguen, was reduced in 1689 to solicit a pension of 20,000 livres, which was considerably diminished when the disasters soon afterwards happened ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... be content to inherit the honours of that Athenian law-giver whose edicts were said to be written not in ink but in blood. But suppose it passed; suppose one of these men, as I have seen them,—meagre with famine, sullen with despair, careless of a life which your Lordships are perhaps about to value at something less than the price of a stocking-frame; —suppose this man surrounded by the children for whom he is unable to procure bread ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... to bring the sense of this real continuity into the divisions which I must impose on Mr. Browning's work; and thus also to infuse something of his life into the meagre statement of contents to which I am forced to reduce it. The few words of explanation by which I preface each group may assist this end. At the same time I shall resist all temptation to "bring out" what I have ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... reliable data to go upon; but I hope in time to get some from such 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
... touring in England, he came with it if his health allowed, to watch the performances in London, Manchester or Edinburgh, wherever they might be. His life was always mainly within himself; the record of these years is very meagre, all that can be said of them is that he passed them mostly in Ireland, writing and re-writing, in failing health and with increasing purpose. His general health was never robust, and for at least the last six years of ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... for learning were not so good as mine; indeed, I was her principal teacher. As I have told you, I went to school very little as a child, and the village school at Vermont gave only the most meagre and elementary instruction, but I was always an eager reader of whatever came in my way, as well as an attentive listener, and thus I contrived while in the woods to pick up considerable information. I remember seeing at that time in a neighbor's ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... who, while receiving a salary of fifteen hundred francs a year, spent a couple of thousand, and utilized his wits in defending his meagre salary from his creditors. On perceiving Chupin, he made a wrathful gesture, and his first words were: "I haven't ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... thinking of the threatened cut in the already meagre salaries of his missionaries, rendered necessary by the disproportion between the growth of the funds and the expansion ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... of Esquimaux dogs. In another moment they dashed into the midst of a snow village, and were immediately surrounded by the excited natives. For some time no information could be gleaned from their interpreter, who was too excited to make use of his meagre amount of English. They observed, however, that the natives, although much excited, did not seem to be so much surprised at the appearance of white men amongst them as those were whom they had first met with near the ship. In a short time Meetuck apparently ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... foe have swept through the place again and again, and both Boer and Briton have paid the shops a visit. At the hotel I managed to get a dinner of bread and dripping, washed down with a cup of coffee, guiltless of both milk and sugar. But, if the bill of fare was meagre, the bill of costs made up for it in its wealth of luxuriousness. If I rose from the table almost as hollow as when I sat down, I only had to look at the landlord's charges to fancy I had dined like one of the blood royal. Opposite the hotel stands the church, a dainty piece ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... expedition moved slowly along, awaiting the return of the courier. He soon came back with a very indefinite response, and with a present of two curiously carved stone cups, and some perfumery. The guarded reply and the meagre present excited some alarm in the Spanish camp. It was very evident that the expedition was not to anticipate a very cordial reception at the Peruvian court. Pizarro was much alarmed. He was quite confident that the Inca was trying to lure them on to their ruin. Having called ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... in Swedish history as 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 support. Since many ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... their feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know not how to express the result of the process in words. Fearful, however, of losing this first and only opportunity of relieving my grief by imparting it, I, after a disturbed pause, contrived to frame a meagre, though, as far as it ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... Humphrey and Julian, fully equipped with instructions, introductions, money and other necessaries, left the city, ready for their homeward voyage; and in another week the small but hardy band of Rangers, with their plain and meagre outfit, but with stout hearts and brave resolves, said adieu to those they left behind, and started westward for that debatable ground upon which a bloody warfare had to be fought to the ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... content in our northern states even during the most severe winters and leaves us early in the spring for his breeding grounds farther north. They are usually found in company with Chickadees and, like them, may be seen hanging to twigs in all sorts of positions as they search for their meagre fare. Their nests are large, round structures of green moss, bark strips and fine rootlets, very thickly lined with soft feathers; these are placed in forks or partially suspended among the branches of spruce trees, usually high above the ground. During ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... of plants adapted by selection for semi-arid agriculture. The Professor believes that the great areas of high plain country to be found from Canada to Mexico can be made more productive through planting crop varieties that have been bred to withstand the existing conditions which produce meagre returns from the vast expanse of territory under the ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... Neela Deo, most exalted King of all elephants, came a runner at the end of his last strength. Stripped naked, but for his meagre loincloth, the oils of his body ran thick down all his limbs and his splitting veins shed blood from his nostrils and from his mouth. In the market-place he fell and with his last breaths ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... you have 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 ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... 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 ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... travelling thus far afield in quest of feathered specimens to enrich the aviaries of a bird-collecting Balkan King. On the previous evening, while shrugging his shoulders and unloosing his vocabulary over the meagre accommodation afforded by the native rest-house, he had been enchanted by receiving an invitation to transfer his quarters to the house on the hillside, where he found not only a pleasant-voiced hostess and some drinkable wine, but three ...
— When William Came • Saki
... 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 outside the line ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... cats, with staring eyes and tails like strings, kept near at hand, and seemed ready to commit any crime for the smallest particle of goose. String-tailed, goggle-eyed, meagre cats that seize your dinner if you do not keep watch over it, and when caressed promptly respond by scratching and swearing, appear to be held in high favour throughout this district. They are expected to live upon rats, and it is this that makes them so disagreeable, for although they kill ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... the entrance to its grounds. Between the gate and the house he passed through a young plantation of larches and other firs for a quarter of a mile, and so came to an old wall with an iron gate in the middle of it, within which the old house, a gaunt meagre building—a bare house in fact, relieved only by four small turrets or bartizans, one at each corner—lifted its grey walls, pointed gables, and steep roof high into the pale blue air. He rode round the outer wall, seeking a back entrance, and arrived at a farm yard, where a boy ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... Turks had broached me upon a spit all larded like a rabbit, for I was so dry and meagre that otherwise of my flesh they would have made but very bad meat, and in this manner began to roast me alive. As they were thus roasting me, I recommended myself unto the divine grace, having in my mind the good St. Lawrence, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... shall be officially inculcated. There is a Government Reformatory School, and industrial and family schools for both girls and boys are scattered over the islands. The supply of literature in the vernacular is meagre, and few of the natives have any intelligent comprehension ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird |
