"Scant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... greeted the newcomer, all unaware of the picture she made, tall and straight and pliant in her simple blue cotton, under the wonderful blue-and-white sky and the passionate purple pink of the blossoms, with the scant folds of her frock outlining the rounded young body, its sleeves rolled up on her fine arms, its neck folded away from the firm column of her throat, the frolic wind ruffling the dark locks above her shadowy eyes. There were strange gleams in ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... robbers left them without even provaunt or camels or other riding-cattle, and they ceased not to fare on afoot, till they came to a copse, which was an orchard of trees on the ocean shore.[FN510] Now the road which they would have followed was crossed by a sea-arm, but it was shallow and scant of water; wherefore, when they reached that place, the king took up one of his children and fording the water with him, set him down on the further bank and returned for his other son, whom also he seated by his brother. Lastly, returning for their mother, he took ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... him plant them on a neighboring grave, newly dug, the poor grave of some poor creature, without any border and having no other memorial over it than a piece of wood stuck in the ground and surmounted by a crown of flowers in blackened paper, the scant offering of some pauper's grief. Jacques left the cemetery in quite a different frame of mind to what he had entered it. He looked with happy curiosity at the bright spring sunshine, the same that had so often gilded Francine's locks ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... Though Crabbe showed scant sympathy with the delicate sensibilities of girls who hung enraptured over the high-pitched heroics and miraculous escapes of Clementina and her kindred, he found pleasure in a robuster school of romance—the adventures of mighty Hickathrift, Jack the Giant-killer, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... in the sand. The four cans were bent with gaping seams, and their sides were scored with the prints of William's hoofs. In a corner of one of them Casey found a scant half-cup of water, which he drank greedily. It could no more than ease for a moment his parched throat; it ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... ridicule. It rapidly passed through numerous editions. To say that of all the books, pamphlets, and broadsheets thrown out by the combatants on both sides, it is by far the one of the greatest merit, would be scant justice, when it might almost be said that it is the only one of them that can now be read by a gentleman without a sense of annoyance and disgust. There is no point of view from which the medical profession ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... asylums. This would leave, out of the number of idiots reported by the census, about 18,000 with their friends or boarded out, or 18,900 at the present time, in consequence of the increase of population. We have, however, but scant faith in the correctness of these relative amounts. All we really know is the number receiving definite teaching or training, and an approximation—nothing more—to the gross number of idiots and imbeciles in ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... was a shovel, a pair of tongs and one bar of iron.[155] Efforts were made later to repair the havoc wrought by the Indians and to reestablish the works, but they came to nothing. Not until the time of Governor Spotswood were iron furnaces operated in Virginia, and even then the industry met with a scant measure of success. ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... rain; Castle Island lay in the misted water, faint and grey, reminding me of what a splendid burial I might have if the law did not intervene to prevent me. And as we followed the straggling grey Irish road, with scant meagre fields on either side—fields that seemed to be on the point of drifting into marsh land—past the houses of the poor people, I tried to devise a scheme for the safeguarding of the vase. But Rameses ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... interior was scrupulously clean, but there was only one chair. A small kitchen stove at which the sick man sat was the only means of warmth. There were no carpets and, if I was not mistaken, the bed coverings were scant. The evidence of extreme poverty was everywhere manifest. I never felt meaner in my life, as I accepted the blessings that belonged to the other man. Mr. Forbes, who was too ill to sit at the table, reclined on a rude lounge near the kitchen stove. Just as dinner ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... boys called the boat by name, knowing her voice: "It's the Bessie May Brown!" They started on a run to the bluff overlooking the river, their short legs making a full mile of the scant furlong. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... was a meagre matron of forty-five, or thereabouts. Her dark scant hair was smooth, and divided down the middle. Acerbity spoke in every line of her face, which was of a dusky yellow, where it did not rather verge on the faint hues of a violet past its prime. She wore thread gloves, and she carried a battered reticule of early Victorian ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... finger. The Whoop Up trail, a brown streak against the vivid upland green, dipped down the hillside to our right, down to the sage-grown flat, and into the river by the great boulders that gave the ford its name. The blue ridge up the river I gave scant heed to; the Writing-Stone was only a name to me, for I'd never seen the place. My attention was all for the scene at hand. The patch of soft green that I knew for the cottonwoods Rutter had spoken of drew my roving gaze whether I would or no. I have ridden on pleasanter missions ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... in the balance and threw their fresh strength into the ranks of freedom in time to turn the whole tide and sweep of the fateful struggle—turn it once for all, so that thenceforth it was back, back, back for their enemies, always back, never again forward! After that it was only a scant four months before the commanders of the Central Empires knew themselves beaten; and now their ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... circumstances are slightly different. Will Cadwallader is no horseman, having had but scant practice—a fact patent to all—Inez as the others. Besides, the mid is dressed in a pea-jacket; which, although becoming enough aboard ship, looks a little outre in the saddle, especially upon a prancing ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... was no grain to be had for them. They had been starving for a month, for the Indians had burned the grass before us wherever we went, and here in the pine-covered hills what grass could be found was scant and wiry,—not the rich, juicy, strength-giving bunch-grass of the open country. Of my two horses, neither was in condition to do military duty when we got to Whitewood. I was adjutant of the regiment, and had to be bustling around a good deal; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... children weighing her down in the fierce struggle for existence, rendered tenfold fiercer after the industrial crisis preceding and following the War of 1812. Then it was that she was forced to supplement her scant earnings with refuse food from the table of "a certain mansion on State street." It was Lloyd who went for this food, and it was he who had to run the gauntlet of mischievous and inquisitive children whom he met and who longed for a peep into his tin pail. But ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... apace, and there were scant hands for the work. Around about the fishers, in the immense depths, a transformation scene was taking place. The grand opening out of the infinitude, that great wonder of the morning, had finished, and the distance seemed to diminish and ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... turnpike elbowed sharply from the outskirts. For a demure girl her smile was mischievous. Walking her wiry little pony till the footfalls of Shelby's chestnut cob beat the 'pike a scant hundred yards behind, she flicked her animal ever so lightly with her riding crop. The man saw a puff of dust, a twinkle of little hoofs, and a lithe figure outlined for an instant against the autumn sky as it ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... Quincey set down anything in malice. He called his literary idol, Wordsworth, "inhumanly arrogant." Does anybody—not being a Wordsworthian and therefore out of reach of reason—doubt that Wordsworth's arrogance was inhuman? He, not unprovoked by scant gratitude on Coleridge's part for very solid services, and by a doubtless sincere but rather unctuous protest of his brother in opium-eating against the Confessions, told some home truths against that ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... pieces at chicken-pie suppers held in the basement of the Presbyterian church. Her mother had been a silly, idle woman addicted to mother hubbards and paper-backed novels about the house. Her one passion was the theatre, a passion that had very scant opportunity for feeding in Wapello, Iowa. Josie's piece-speaking talent was evidently a direct inheritance. Some might call it ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... hunter now busied himself making ready their scant supplies. He took a little bag of flour, with some salt, one or two of the cooked fish which remained, and a small piece of bacon. These he rolled up in a piece of canvas, which he placed on his pack-straps. He asked the boys if they thought they could get on with a single ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... save those who could accept his claim to god-ship—believing that he would go to sit at the right hand of God to judge the world. But look—an engineer out here the other day died a horrible death to save the lives of a scant fifty people—their mere physical lives—died out of that simple sense of oneness which makes us selfishly fear for the suffering of others—died without any hope of superior exaltation hereafter. Death of this sort is common. I would not belittle him you call the Saviour—as a man ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... of scrub, that it took them three days to accomplish fifty miles, and after being four days and three nights without water for the horses, they reached a rugged granite hill, called Mount Riley, where they got a scant supply. From here, their journey to the Russell Range, fifty miles away, was but a repetition of their former hardships. Nothing but continuous scrub; sometimes the thickets were too dense to attempt a passage, even with the axes, and ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... often passing into verrucose and chinky conditions, but scarcely ever areolate, sometimes scant and evanescent; apothecia usually minute or small, and commonly adnate, exciple weak and often becoming covered; hypothecium and hymenium passing from pale through shades of brown, the former becoming darker than ...
— Ohio Biological Survey, Bull. 10, Vol. 11, No. 6 - The Ascomycetes of Ohio IV and V • Bruce Fink and Leafy J. Corrington
... point exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the mainland by a scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh-hen. The vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of any magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort Moultrie stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings, tenanted during summer by the fugitives from Charleston dust and fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly palmetto; ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... know not aught within the universe More slight, more pitiful than you, ye Gods! Who nurse your majesty with scant supplies Of offerings wrung from fear, and mutter'd prayers, And needs must starve, were't not that babes and beggars ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... perils by sea and land; endured toil, was near starving, ate horse-flesh at Munster; and all to quell that man, who now smileth in peace at those that did hazard their lives to destroy him. Essex took me to Ireland, I had scant time to put on my boots; I followed with good will, and did return with the lord-lieutenant to meet ill-will; I did bear the frowns of her that sent me; and were it not for her good liking, rather than my good deservings, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... used to treat him with scant ceremony. Since she was of the opinion that he ought to feel flattered by our invitations, she thought it only right and proper that he should never come to see us in summer without a basket of peaches or raspberries from his garden, and that from each of his visits to Italy he should bring back ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... together myself," she used to laugh. "That's my gift. Helene says I have genius. I don't mean that I sit and sew. I have a little slave woman who does that by the day. She admires me and will do anything that I tell her. Things are so delightfully scant and short now that you can cut two or three frocks out of one of your old petticoats—and ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in the forecastle of the old Kut Sang, putting down the names of streets in Boston and Bangor and San Francisco, and making our wills—which we did when we found the space at our disposal getting scant, although I had little enough to give or bequeath, chiefly a pair of Chinese jingals and a good pair of riding-boots with ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... room in the left wing, as far removed from her own apartments as possible, and transferring all details of his care to Misery Agnew, the old housekeeper. Misery endeavored to "do her duty" by the boy, but appreciating the scant courtesy with which he was treated by her mistress, it is not surprising the old woman regarded him merely as a dependent and left him mostly to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... spirit is clearly seen in the character of parliamentary legislation. The laws enacted during this period were distinctly undemocratic. While the interests of the land-holding aristocracy were carefully guarded, the well-being of the laboring population received scant consideration. The poor laws, the enclosure acts and the corn laws, which had in view the prosperity of the landlord, and the laws against combination, which sought to advance the interests of the capitalist at the expense of the ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... received was of a clean, straight-limbed, clear-eyed fellow, who, if he had worked with his hands, had won with his brain. He looked a little older than his twenty-eight years warranted, and a little taller than his scant five-feet-eleven proved. Above all, he appeared healthful, alert, capable, and kindly. He made friends at sight with men, children, and dogs and wore his friendships as easily as he wore his clothes. The West puts an indefinable ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... unknown, That swingeth the slow earth before the embannered Throne? Or is't the Season under all these shrouds Of light, and sense, and silence, makes her known A presence everywhere, An inarticulate prayer, A hand on the soothed tresses of the air? But there is one hour scant Of this Titanian, primal liturgy; As there is but one hour for me and thee, Autumn, for thee and thine hierophant, Of this grave ending chant. Round the earth still and stark Heaven's death-lights kindle, yellow spark by spark, Beneath the ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... unkindly treated by her had some powerful friend in the background? It would not be very pleasant if there should be such a friend, and he or she should learn all the truth about the thin, shabby clothes, the scant food, the hard work. She felt queer indeed and uncertain, and she gave a ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... general exodus the moment she appeared. The Richmond yokels did not like the look of that reticule. They felt that sufficient demand had already been made upon their scant purses, considering the meagerness of the entertainment, and they dreaded being lured ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... back from the river, on top of the level gravelly earth which stretched for miles on either side of the river clear to the mountains. This earth and gravel mixture was so firmly packed that even the cactus had a scant foothold. The town interested me for one reason only, this being, that I could get my meals for the evening and the following morning, instead of having to cook them myself. After I had eaten them, however, there was a question in my mind if my own cooking, bad as it was, would not have answered ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... moment that they did it, on such guidance of uncertain reports, and many a traveller answering with mere fictions to please them, and get off.' (De Bello Gallico, iv. 5.) Nineteen hundred years; and good Dampmartin, wayworn, in winter frost, probably with scant light of stars and fish-oil, still perorates from the Inn-window! This People is no longer called Gaulish; and it has wholly become braccatus, has got breeches, and suffered change enough: certain fierce German Franken came ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... purchasable with thirteen dollars a month and rations, plumps into the rump of his unhappy pony, and the Stoic of the woods is unhorsed. Reared on horseback, and weak in the legs from long addiction to that mode of locomotion, this is a casus omissus in Lo's tactics. Scant time, however, has he for reflection. He gathers up himself and his drapery as well as circumstances will allow, and scuttles hurriedly off, a fluttering chaos of rags and feathers. It is too late. Heaven is on the side of the best artillery. A few minutes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... hand! Strength of the strong! to whom the nations kneel! Stay and destroyer, at whose just command Earth's kingdoms tremble and her empires reel! Who dost the low uplift, the small make great, 5 And dost abase the ignorantly proud, Of our scant people mould a mighty state, To the strong, stern,—to Thee in meekness bowed! Father of unity, make this people one! Weld, interfuse them in the patriot's flame,— 10 Whose forging on Thine anvil was begun In blood late shed to purge the common shame; That ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... gets from poor Woebegone, the bankrupt, on a loan to keep Woebegone's family from starvation; what is that ruinous discount but a Fast-Fish? What is the archbishop of Savesoul's income of 100,000 pounds seized from the scant bread and cheese of hundreds of thousands of broken-backed laborers (all sure of heaven without any of Savesoul's help) what is that globular 100,000 but a Fast-Fish? What are the Duke of Dunder's hereditary towns and hamlets but Fast-Fish? ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... along somehow," said Mrs McQueen. "We always have, though 'tis true it's been scant fare ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... went out into the fish-laden atmosphere of the cannery. Walking down the aisles, flanked on both sides by huge vats and silent conveyers, they came upon a number of dark-skinned laborers whiling away the time with a scant pretense of work. Stung into a semblance of action by the sudden appearance of the boss, the men abruptly postponed their conversation and tardily plied their scrubbing brooms, meanwhile eying the newcomer ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... Will but evidently older. Somewhat narrow of build and thin, he looked delicate, though in reality wiry and sound. He was dark of complexion, wore his hair long for a cottager, and kept both moustache and beard, though the latter was very scant and showed the outline of his small chin through it. A forehead remarkably lofty but not broad, mounted almost perpendicularly above the man's eyes; and these were large and dark and full of fire, though marred ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... novelists and asserted that "Kings in Exile" comes "very near to being a masterpiece." M. Jules Lemaitre tells us that Daudet "trails all hearts after him,—because he has charm, as indefinable in a work of art as in a woman's face." M. Ferdinand Brunetiere, who has scant relish for latter-day methods in literature, admits ungrudgingly that "there are certain corners of the great city and certain aspects of Parisian manners, there are some physiognomies that perhaps no one has been able to render so well as Daudet, with that infinitely ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... graith I nill to gather But ane kirk scant coverit with hadder, For I of lytil wald ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... through which we get a glimpse of the disconsolate moon. We all know the new people, who have come to keep the new hotel, and who wish they had never come, and who (inevitable result) wish WE had never come. We all know how much too scant and smooth and bright the new furniture is, and how it has never settled down, and cannot fit itself into right places, and will get into wrong places. We all know how the gas, being lighted, shows maps of Damp upon the walls. We all know how the ghost ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... overhead, dazzlingly white where the sunbeams strike them, and below is a green line of narrow valley. A tinkling of bells comes from the stony sides of the gorge, where sheep are browsing the scant herbage and young shoots of southern-wood; and from the curving fillet of meadow, where the grass seems to grow while the eye watches it, rises the shrill little song of the stream hurrying over its yellow bed, which may be dry again to-morrow. This Alzou is no more ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... moment her eyes beheld Miss Owen she was disarmed. The dark-eyed, black-haired, modestly-attired, and even sober-looking girl, who put out her hand with a very simple movement, and spoke, with considerable self-possession truly, but certainly not with an impudent air, bore but scant resemblance to the "brazen hussey" who had haunted Miss Jemima's mind for the ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... musquetoe biers otherwise it would be impossible for them to exist under the fatiegues which they daily encounter without their natural rest which they could not obtain for those tormenting insects if divested of their biers. timber still extreemly scant on the river but there is more in this valley than we have seen since we entered the mountains; the creeks which fall into the river are better supplyed with this ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... advantages that fairly grow out of our favored position as a nation. Our form of government, with its incident of universal suffrage, makes it imperative that we shall save our working people from the agitations and distresses which scant work and wages that have no margin for comfort always beget. But after all this is done it will be found that our markets are open to friendly commercial exchanges of enormous value to the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... to his soul.[353] Yet, fearful lest He should prove to be a prophet with power, such as no living priest or rabbi even professed to be, they timidly asked for credentials of His authority—"What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things?" Curtly, and with scant respect for this demand, so common to wicked and adulterous men,[354] Jesus replied: "Destroy this temple and in three days ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... OF BLOOD.—In a pale, delicate girl or wife, who is laboring under what is popularly called poverty of blood, the menstrual fluid is sometimes very scant, at others very copious, but is, in either case, usually very pale—almost as colorless as water, the patient being very nervous and even hysterical. Now, these are signs of great debility; but, fortunately for such an one, a medical man is, ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... trusty King Orontes, in AEneas' sight a toppling wave o'erhung, And smote the poop, and headlong rolled, adown the helmsman flung; Then thrice about the driving flood hath hurled her as she lay, The hurrying eddy swept above and swallowed her from day: And lo! things swimming here and there, scant in the unmeasured seas, The arms of men, and painted boards, and Trojan treasuries. And now Ilioneus' stout ship, her that Achates leal 120 And Abas ferried o'er the main, and old Aletes' keel The storm hath overcome; and all must drink the baneful stream ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... be a new rule to fit the case of Senators, the same will prob'bly be handed to me as soon as Senators are common on the calling-list." He put up a hand in front of the colonel's face—a broad and compelling hand. "Now I'm going along on the old orders and the clock tells ye that ye have a scant twinty minutes to wait. And if I do any more talking, of the kind that ain't necessary, I'll break a rule. Be aisy, Colonel Shaw!" He resumed his ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... seen these graves by the roadside going east you will hardly go a mile in two hundred which has not its graves. From the environs of Meaux, a scant twenty miles from Paris, to the frontier at the Seille, beyond Nancy, there are graves and more graves, now scattered, now crowded together where men fought hand to hand. Passing them in a swift-moving auto, they seem to march by you; there is the illusion of an army advancing on the hillside, ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... at last they were free to roam according to their desire, the travelers rode gaily along the paths, taking but scant heed of their way. ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... their victuals fail them, and all their water is scant, and they have determined to lay hands upon their cattle, and purposed to consume all those things, that God hath forbidden them to eat by ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... flat, and as Wunpost rode in he looked it over critically, though with none too friendly eyes. Being laid out in a land of magnificent distances, there was plenty of room between the houses, and the broad main street seemed more suited for driving cattle than for accommodating the scant local traffic. There had been a time when all that space was needed to give swing-room to twenty-mule teams, but that time was past and the two sparse rows of houses seemed dwarfed and pitifully few. Yet there were new ones going up, and ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... the history of that country which can be regarded as securely established, it was preceded by a long series of generations of migration and warfare, the confused and fragmentary record of which historians have tried—hitherto with scant success—to unravel. To develop such a culture as that of the Aztecs out of an antecedent culture similar to that of the Iroquois must of course have ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... good show.—Again, you know the difficulties of the political situation. The aristocracy has to be rehabilitated in the face of a very strong force of the third estate. The King's idea—and France does him scant justice—is to create a peerage as a national institution analogous to the English peerage. To realize this grand idea we need years—and millions.—Noblesse oblige. The Duc de Navarreins, who is, as you know, first gentleman of the Bedchamber to the King, does not repudiate his debt; ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... this book is rank melodrama. It has scant literary quality. It is not planned to edify. Its only mission is to entertain you and,—if you belong to the action-loving majority, to give you ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... middle of the 19th century, our knowledge of the religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians was exceedingly scant. No records existed that were contemporaneous with the period covered by Babylonian-Assyrian history; no monuments of the past were preserved that might, in default of records, throw light upon the religious ideas and customs that once prevailed ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... ken they scorn my low estate, But that does never grieve me; For I'm as free as any he; Sma' siller will relieve me. I'll count my health my greatest wealth, Sae lang as I'll enjoy it; I'll fear nae scant, I'll bode nae want, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... all very strong and entirely normal. He is himself, however, delicate, overgrown, with a narrow chest, a small head, and babyish features, while mentally he is backward, with very defective memory and scant powers of assimilation. He is intensely nervous, peevish, and subject to fits of childish rage. He takes violent fancies to persons of his own sex. But he appears to have only one way of obtaining sexual excitement and gratification. It is his custom ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... burly farmer, in fur coat and cap, sat in wooden-like stillness; but Caius was like a man in a fever, restless in his suspense. The candle, which he had put upon the floor, cast up a yellow light on all the scant furniture, on the two men as they thus talked to each other, with pale, tense faces, and threw distorted shadows high up ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... admit, gave scant attention to the new career upon which her old sweetheart seemed to be entering. She was in politics, and was playing the game as became the daughter of a local politician. The reader must not by this term get the impression that Colonel Woodruff was a man ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... warrior sternly; "and if thou dost not hold thy peace, scant shall be thy welcome. I am Arthur's porter every New Year's Day, and that is why I 5 am ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... gentle, but firm. Teach him to obey the slightest touch of rein, to stand when you throw your bridle on the ground, to come at your whistle. Always remember this. He's a desert-bred horse; he can live on scant browse and little water. Never break him of those best virtues in a horse. Never feed him grain if you can find a little patch of browse; never give him a drink till he needs it. That's one-tenth as often as a tame horse. Some day you'll be caught in the ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... here. Who now shall pay thy Tombe with such a Verse As thou that Ladies didst, faire Rutlands Herse? A Monument that will then lasting be, When all her Marble is more dust than she. In thee all's lost: a sudden dearth and want Hath seiz'd on Wit, good Epitaphs are scant; We dare not write thy Elegie, whilst each feares He nere shall match that coppy of thy teares. Scarce in an Age a Poet, and yet he Scarce lives the third part of his age to see, But quickly taken off and only known, Is in a minute shut as soone as showne. Why ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... washing them, he put them to broil over his smoky fire of green twigs. The "cutlets" came off, one half raw and the other half burned to a crisp. But he had not eaten since the early forenoon. He devoured the mess without salt, ravenously. He topped off with the scant swallow of brandy left ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... very base, and the rock rocked. I threw myself upon my face, and clung to the scant herbage in ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... trouble ourselves about this. It is the same with the good and the useful in every age. A few names are preserved, but the great multitude are forgotten. Earth keeps scant record of its benefactors. But there is a place where every smallest kindness done in the name of Christ is recorded ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... lying in smooth ribbons along the level shore, and in scollops round the promontories where the hills come down into the lake. The forest on these hills, or mountains—for they are part of the Sierra del Cristal—is very dark in colour, and the undergrowth seems scant. We presently come to a narrow but deep channel into the lake coming from the eastward, which we go up, winding our course with it into a valley between the hills. After going up it a little way we find it completely fenced across with stout stakes, a space being left ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... himself, would have gladly taken a passage with us to England. At sunset, being the length of the south point of Bolabola, we shortened sail, and spent the night making short boards. At day-break, on the 8th, we made sail for the harbour, which is on the west side of the island. The wind was scant, so that we had to ply up, and it was nine o'clock before we got near enough to send away a boat to sound the entrance, for I had thoughts of running the ships in, and anchoring ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... the voices, Maud Barrington, who may have felt it incumbent on her to show him some scant civility, turned towards him as she said, "I am afraid our conversation will not appeal to you. Partly because there is so little else to interest us, we talk wheat throughout ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... hurriedly, between jumps fore and aft. Chafi Three, while they were still in the control cubicle, threw the ship out of hyperdrive within scant miles of the neighboring sun's single planet. Chafi Four, on the next jump, scanned the ship's charts and identified the system through which ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee
... will undertake the enterprise?—What, all silent? are ye knights? are ye men? do I reign over christian warriors, valiant captains who have been sworn to protect beauty in distress; or are ye like the graceless dogs of Mahomed, insensible to female honour?" "My ranks are wonderous scant," returned Milo Fitzwalter, "I may not reckon twenty men at arms in the whole train, and varlets have I none; but it boots not to number spears when danger presses; so to horse and away. Beshrew me, were it the termagant Queen Maude herself, I'd do my best to rescue her in this extremity."—"Thou ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various
... the failure of the plan to capture a city in the northwest in February with irritation, but without discouragement. They had acted prematurely there and without sufficient secrecy. That was all. The plan in itself was right. And he had watched the scant reports of the uprising in the newspapers with amusement and scorn. The very steps taken to suppress the facts showed the uneasiness of the authorities and left the nation with a ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... yet there was no need of them. The crowd was made up, for the most part, of healthy, full-blooded boys, fresh from weeks of training, strong of body, and with stomachs like galvanized iron. They showed scant evidence of intoxication. As for the weakest member of the party, it had long been known that one drink made Higgins drunk, and all further libations merely served to maintain him in status quo. Exhaustive experiments had ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... with ribbons, and one artillerist's uniform coat and hat, which probably Captain Clark will never wear again. We have to depend entirely upon this meagre outfit for the purchase of such horses and provisions as it will be in our power to obtain—a scant dependence, indeed, for such a ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... were in a rather savage temper just then. The English, especially, had but scant courtesy to expect at their hands. It was plain, however, that the cadaverous gentleman who had just apostrophized the heraldry of the Count's carriage, with such mysterious acrimony, had not intended any of his malevolence ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... unpainted red-wood boards of Roscommon's grocery and tavern, and a tendency of the warping floor of the veranda to curl up beneath the feet of the intruder. A few mules, near the watering trough, had shrunk within the scant shadow of ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... all were merely lads; not one was able To earn the crust of bread, Though scant it might be, coarse and black and humble, With which ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... A scant five yards ahead of the snapping jaws, Brand reached his goal, the dome, and clambered over its curved, metal roof away from ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... of the conquest as being purely a Virginian affair. It was conquered by Clark, a Virginian, with some scant help from Virginia, but it was retained only owing to the power of the United States and the patriotism of such northern statesmen as Jay, Adams, and Franklin, the negotiators of the final treaty. Had Virginia ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... their unmatched physiognomies—the one lean and jovial, the other plump and resigned—alight with the same smile of welcome. Father Abella mentioned them as his coadjutor Father Martin Landaeta, and their guest Father Jose Uria of San Jose; and then the three, with the scant rites of genuine hospitality, applied themselves to the tickling of palates long unused to ambrosial living. Responding ingenuously to the glow of their home-made wines, they begged Rezanov to accept the Mission, burn it, plunder it, above all, to ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... child of his first marriage. It was into his ear that the dying man had poured the wretched tale of his repentance for the life he had lived and the state in which he was leaving his affairs with such scant provision for his sons. For Oliver he had no fear. It was as if with the prescience that comes to men in his pass he had perceived that Oliver was of those who must prevail, a man born to make the world his oyster. His anxieties were all for Lionel, whom he also judged with that same penetrating ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... from Fernlands to meet the radiant lady whose great gray eyes, Uncle Noah now recalled, had had the Verney look which endeared the owner of Fernlands to all who knew him, seemed to the watching negro a direct interposition of Providence. A scant mile of cottonfields lay between the two plantations, and, Christmas over, Uncle Noah had but to trudge across the fields to deliver himself to the ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... near to wrecking their friendship. Garrick loved books with the chilly yet imperative love of the collector. Johnson loved them as he loved his soul. Garrick took pride in their sumptuousness, in their immaculate, virginal splendour. Johnson gathered them to his heart with scant regard for outward magnificence, for the glories of calf and vellum. Garrick bought books. Johnson borrowed them. Each considered that he had a prior right to the objects of his legitimate affection. We, looking back with softened hearts, are fain ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... doctor with scant courtesy. "But she is well scared, thank God. I hardly think she will interfere much in future with young Frank. And by the looks of him, the boy's father has had his ...
— Old Mr. Wiley • Fanny Greye La Spina
... scant heed to the natural features of the place. His glance passed from a great antelope hide, drying on a frame, to the bamboo racks on which sun-seared strips of flesh were curing over a smudge fire. Looking to his left, he saw a hut hardly larger ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... almost a deadlock between the legislative and executive departments. Governor Bernard addressed the representatives in a supercilious and dogmatic manner, which they for their part resented with scant courtesy. ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... the ranch house Lowell was relieved to find that Helen was not at home. Wong, who opened the door a scant six inches, told him she had taken the white horse and gone ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... contrives, by keeping perfectly still—added to the circumstance of its being a shapeless sort of mass—ofttimes to elude the eye of the most vigilant hunter. Though Karl and Caspar could scarcely credit him, Ossaroo expressed his belief, not only that the elephant might be hid in the scant jungle they were talking about, but that it ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... followed by officers with Khosrove. The officers fall back, leaving the captive before Semiramis. He is stripped of all armor, and clothed in a scant tunic revealing a figure of marked strength and grace. He stands erect, but with head bowed, and his arms bound to ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... as his God, abhorrs them; but they are to be found in the house of evil doers, {109b} such as Mr. Badmans is. Are there, saith the Prophet, yet the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked, and the scant measure that is abomination? {109c} Are they there yet, notwithstanding Gods forbidding, notwithstanding Gods tokens of anger against those that do such things? O how loth is a wicked man to let goe a sweet, a gainful sin, when he hath hold of it! They hold fast deceit, ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... generally are inferior. Our supplies of ash, black walnut and hickory, once abundant, are now seriously limited. Formerly, these mixed forests covered vast stretches of country which today support only a scant crop of young trees which will not be ready for market for many years. These second-growth stands will never approach in value or quality the original forests. Over large areas, poplar, white birch, and Jack pine trees now predominate ...
— The School Book of Forestry • Charles Lathrop Pack
... it, despatches of a similar nature had been following or preceding him these past three months, a fact certainly not uncomplimentary to an officer who had been out of the academy a scant ten years, ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... ostracism. This, although their former parsonic lodger had vanished from the scene on the day following his threatened immersion—a half-hearted proposition on his part of "facing out the undeserved obloquy, living down the coarse persecution" meeting with as scant encouragement from his ecclesiastical superior, the vicar, as from themselves. Theresa—it really was hard on her—shared their eclipse. Hence the humble obscurity of the free seats, where she sniffed, dabbed her eyes and ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... thing for him to do; not that they had any quarrel, though sometimes David thought a quarrel would be better than the scant and almost sad intercourse their once tender love had fallen into. By some strange mental sympathy, hardly sufficiently recognized by us, John was thinking of his nephew when he entered. He greeted him kindly, and pulled a chair close, ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... deep-intrenched, and all beneath it spread With massy fragments riven from its top. 100 Amidst the crags, and scarce discerned so high, Hangs here and there a sheep, by its faint bleat Discovered, whilst the astonished eye looks up, And marks it on the precipice's brink Pick its scant food secure:—and fares it not Ev'n so with you, poor orphans, ye who climb The rugged path of life without a friend; And over broken crags bear hardly on, With pale imploring looks, that seem to say, My mother! she is buried, and at rest, 110 Laid in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... quoth the Caliph to himself, "I was not content with platter licking, which now appeareth to me a mighty pleasant calling but e'en I must become a broker and die sus. per coll. This be for that tit for tat; how ever, scant blame to the Time which hath charged me with this work." Now when they brought him to the hanging place and threw the loop around his neck and fell to hoisting him up, as he rose from the ground his eyes were opened and he found himself emerging from the chauldron, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... To your great country that, with scant delay, You must, perforce, ease them in their sore need: We know that nearer first your duty lies; But—is it much to ask that you let plead Your loving kindness with you—wooing wise— Albeit that aught you owe and must repay No man ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... charge of that now," Braceway said to the chief. They each grasped one of the prisoner's arms and hustled him with scant ceremony to his bedroom. Bristow removed his trousers and, unbuckling the belt and straps of the steel brace, took off ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... a forced march with scant supplies, suffered greatly from thirst, but volunteers, taking buckets, slipped down to the river, at the imminent risk of torture and death, and brought them back filled for their comrades. It was done more than a dozen times, and Dick himself ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... numbers which exceed the record of any similar district anywhere on the face of the globe; murders by the score, shooting and stabbing affrays by the hundred, assaults, burglaries, and robberies by the thousand—such is the crime record each year for this festering place of evil which lies a scant mile from ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... might have given them food, were now their enemies. They indeed now and again brought scant supplies of fish to the starving men. But they demanded so much for it that soon the colonists were bare of everything they had possessed. They bartered the very shirts from their backs for food. And if they complained of the heavy price ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... that Herbert came up to the scratch is to do scant justice to the testimony which he gave and to the manner in which he gave it. He swore to Berry: he swore to me: and in all honesty he swore to the car. For this, since Ping and Pong were duplicates, he may be forgiven. He described the morning's incident with a wealth ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... of Homburg, our most valiant cousin, Who these three days has pressed the flying Swedes Exultant at the cavalry's forefront, And scant of breath only today returned To camp at Fehrbellin—your order said That he should tarry here provisioning Three hours at most, and move once more apace Clear to the Hackel Hills to cope with Wrangel, Seeking to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... being obeyed. They were the first orders I had ever given, and, oh, they were sweet in my mouth! Think of it, my last ship I had been ordered about by the foc'sle cock. I had gone to the galley at command and fetched the watch's food. Now, scant days after, I, a fledgling able seaman, was lording it over the foc'sle of the hottest ship on the high seas, and ordering another man to go after the supper. And he went. I think I grew an inch during that dog-watch; I know my voice gained a mature ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... two-wheeler, with a buggy top and poles for the biped horse to trot between, from Nagasaki to a fishing village over the mountains, five miles away, passing at the start through the Japanese quarter, long streets of shops, populous and busy, many diligent in light manufacturing work, and all scant in clothing—the journey continuing in sharp climbs alongside steep places and beside deep ravines, the slopes elaborately terraced, and again skirting the swift curves of a rapid brook from the mountains, that presently gathered and spread ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... know, those gray old wives, The sights we see in our daily drives Shimmer of lake and shine of sea, Brown's bare hill with its lonely tree, (It wasn't then as we see it now, With one scant scalp-lock to shade its brow;) Dusky nooks in the Essex woods, Dark, dim, Dante-like solitudes, Where the tree-toad watches the sinuous snake Glide through his forests of fern and brake; Ipswich River; its old stone bridge; Far off Andover's Indian Ridge, And many a scene where ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... on board are men who are leaving wife and children behind them. How sad has been the separation! what longing, what yearning, await them in the coming years! And it is not for profit they do it. For honor and glory then? These may be scant enough. It is the same thirst for achievement, the same craving to get beyond the limits of the known, which inspired this people in the Saga times that is stirring in them again to-day. In spite of ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... servants who enter. A nobleman sleeps here to-night—see that 260 All is in order in the damask chamber— Keep up the stove—I will myself to the cellar— And Madame Idenstein (my consort, stranger,) Shall furnish forth the bed-apparel; for, To say the truth, they are marvellous scant of this Within the palace precincts, since his Highness Left it some dozen years ago. And then His ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... vain to persuade her to wait a few minutes. Phoebe brushed the young diplomat aside with scant ceremony. ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... proper survey of so grave a question, and bringing it to a practical and satisfactory solution. Some people are beginning to ask, whether it would not be better, with the proceeds of poor-rates, to send paupers to colonies which are scant of labourers, rather than to expend the money in keeping them at home. The Academie of Literature, too, has offered a prize for an essay on the parliamentary eloquence of England—a significant ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... the first sign of dawn, hurried through his scant and salty breakfast, quenched his thirst with rain water scooped out of depressions in the rock, and started on. Knowing the trail at this point, he rode straight out along the platform, and came in half a minute to the spot where the wall of rock was broken down into a clutter of ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... optical philosophy, which could readily be expounded of such as were learned in it; and for the men in armour, when he saw them he would believe them." Dr Thorpe considered the wonderful sights omens of coming ill, but from Esther they won very scant respect. ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... varied than the fauna. The forests of the coastal region eastward from Cook Inlet, and particularly in south-eastern Alaska, are of fair variety, and of great richness and value. The balsam fir and in the south the red cedar occur in scant quantities; more widely distributed, but growing only under marked local conditions, is the yellow or Alaska cedar, a very hard and durable wood of fine grain and pleasant odour. The Oregon alder is fairly common. Far the most ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the tourney," cried Hagen. "It were well that these women and these knights saw how we can ride. They give Gunther's men scant praise." ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... one arose, and from his pack's scant treasure A hoarded volume drew, And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure, To ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... is to say clere, darke plentuous or scant, whiche is to understande quadri-partite, cest a dire clere, obscure habondante et ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous |
