"Scanty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you and I came to the river-bank with the same purpose, that of fishing up the object which Bresson got rid of, did we not? I, for my part, had made an appointment to meet a few friends and I was on the point, as my scanty costume shows, of effecting a little exploration in the depths of the Seine when my friends gave me notice of your approach. I am bound to confess that I was not surprised, having been kept informed, I venture to say, hourly, of the progress of your inquiry. ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... was received with the greatest rejoicing. Thanks to the care with which the provisions had been husbanded, and to the manner in which the officers and volunteers had from their private means supplemented the scanty stores, there was still a week's provisions on board, and this, it was hoped, would suffice for their needs. The scanty supply of ammunition was a greater source of anxiety; but they hoped that fresh supplies would be forthcoming, now that even the queen could no longer ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... written in Christiania during 1894, and published in Copenhagen on December 11 in that year. By this time Ibsen's correspondence has become so scanty as to afford us no clue to what may be called the biographical antecedents of the play. Even of anecdotic history very little attaches to it. For only one of the characters has a definite model been suggested. Ibsen himself told his French translator, Count Prozor, that the original ...
— Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen
... every halting-place; and while the law forbids him to seek any other shelter than that of his Herberge, it leaves it to the mercy of his host to yield him the worst fare, spread for him the vilest litter, and to filch him of his scanty savings in the bargain. What, in Heaven's name! are the accommodations for which we in the Schuster-gasse are called upon to pay? There is the common room with its rude benches and tables; a stone-paved court-yard with offices, doubtless ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... the hunting-grounds; besides that, white soldiers had fought them if they moved to their old haunts, sacred for their use and bequeathed to them by their ancestors. In dead of Winter, when the snows lay deep and they were in their teepees, crouching around the scanty fire, soldiers had charged on horseback through the villages, shooting into the teepees, killing women ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... the permission to reoepen the Polish theater, and indeed the caprice which was before violent against it, was now exceedingly favorable, but of course not without collateral purposes. The scanty theater on the Krasinski place, which was alone in Warsaw, except the remote circus and the little theater of King Stanislaus Augustus, was given up, and the sum of four millions of florins ($1,600,000) devoted to ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... journey's end as quickly and bravely as one can. And even then, even if we do call life a journey, and death the inn we shall reach at last in the evening when it's over; that, too, I feel will be only as brief a stopping-place as any other inn would be. Our experience here is so scanty and shallow—nothing more than the moment of the continual present. Surely that must go on, even if one does call it eternity. And so we shall all have to begin again. Probably Sabathier himself.... But there, what on earth are we, Herbert, when all is said? Who is it has—has ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... cups were gone too, all except one horn mug; but two knives and some spoons were extracted from the ashes. Furniture was much more scanty everywhere than now. There was not much to lose, and of that they had lost less than ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rusty, formed his main hope. Ashmun at once set to work, and with daily drills and unremitting labor in clearing away the forest and throwing up earthworks, succeeded at last in putting the settlement in a reasonable state of defense. It was no easy task. The fatiguing labor, incessant rains, and scanty food predisposed them to the dreaded fever. Ashmun himself was prostrated; his wife sank and died before his eyes; and soon there was but one man in the colony who was not on the sick-list. At length the long-expected assault was made. Just before daybreak on the ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson
... Dutton, as I shall call him, at an early period of life, when my present scanty locks of iron-gray were thick and dark, my now pale and furrowed cheeks were fresh and ruddy, like his own. Time, circumstance, and natural bent of mind, have done their work on both of us; and if his course of life has been less equable than mine, it has been chiefly ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... it is just the same thing as turning out an old horse. Their children, or other near relations, if living in the neighborhood, take it by turns to go at night with a supply saved out of their own scanty allowance of food, as well as to cut wood and fetch water for them: this is done entirely through the good feelings of the slaves, and not through the masters' taking care that it is done. On these ...
— Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America • Moses Grandy
... be quite a party to dinner to-night,' said Sir Thomas to me presently. 'Of course you must expect scanty fare, as we are carrying out the rationing order to the very letter. But it's an important occasion all the same. Lord Carbis is coming by the next train. Please don't say anything about it. No one knows ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... far surpasses them in extent and importance, and is the great model of them all. Indeed, its influence has not been limited to India; all the poetical and scientific works of Asia, China, and Japan included, have borrowed largely from it, and in Southern Russia the scanty literature of the Kalmucks is derived entirely from Hindu sources. The Sanskrit literature, known to Europe only recently, through the researches of the English and German orientalists, has now become the auxiliary and foundation ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... the cavity of the body (fig. 2). Each consists of a prolongation of the syncytial material of the proboscis skin, penetrated by canals and sheathed with a scanty muscular coat. They seem to act as reservoirs into which the fluid of the tense, extended proboscis can withdraw when it is retracted, and from which the fluid can be driven out when it is ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... pollute the lovely view; Unseen is Yanina, though not remote, Veiled by the screen of hills: here men are few, Scanty the hamlet, rare the lonely cot: But, peering down each precipice, the goat[fc] Browseth; and, pensive o'er his scattered flock, The little shepherd in his white capote[24.B.] Doth lean his boyish form along the rock, Or in his cave ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... heterogeneous an assemblage of human passions, interests, dialects, wishes, and opinions, as any admirer of diversity of character could desire. There were several small traders, some returning from adventures in Germany and France, and some bound southward, with their scanty stock of wares; a few poor scholars, bent on a literary pilgrimage to Rome; an artist or two, better provided with enthusiasm than with either knowledge or taste, journeying with poetical longings towards skies and tints of Italy; a troupe of street jugglers, who had been turning ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... no more to you than a bone to a dog? Was it not enough? We spent eternity together; and you ask me for a little lifetime more. We possessed all the universe together; and you ask me to give you my scanty wages as well. I have given you the greatest of all things; and you ask me to give you little things. I gave you your own soul: you ask me for my body as a plaything. Was it not ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... the bygone ages. The soil, as so often happens in the West, was fertile to the very edge of the Frying-pan and young pinons and bushes had taken root there and managed to keep themselves alive with the snow-moisture of winter, in spite of the scanty rainfall the rest of ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... right information. True; but he would find that the small portion of knowledge which an ignorant people did really possess, could be of little avail. It is not only that, from the narrowness of its scope, knowledge so scanty as to afford no principles directly adapted for application to a vast number of matters of judgment and conduct, would of course be of small use, though it were efficient as far as it reached—of small use though it did produce that very ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... lay, face downwards, in the coarse and scanty grass. One arm was bent beneath his forehead, the other was outstretched, the hand clenched. It was the attitude of one who has flung himself down in dumb, despairing misery. As they looked, he gave a long gasping sob that shook his ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... a dog, old, lame, and lean; He once had been a noble hound; And day by day he lay and starv'd, Or gnaw'd some bone that he had found. They shar'd with him the scanty crust, That barely foil'd starvation's pain; He'd wag his feeble tail and turn To gnaw that polish'd bone again. Vogue la galere! why don't ye greet My tale with laughter, ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... received a maim on his limbs, that disabled him from following the more laborious branches of country drudgery, got, by making nets, a scanty subsistence, which was not much enlarged by my mother's keeping a little day-school for the girls in her neighborhood. They had had several children; but none lived to any age except myself, who had received from nature a ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... poor, high and low, rushed to buy shares in the Company. The street in Paris where the offices of the Company were was choked from end to end with a struggling crowd. The rich brought their hundreds, the poor their scanty savings. Great lords and ladies sold their lands and houses in order to have money to buy more shares. The poor went ragged and hungry in order to scrape together a few pence. Peers and merchants, soldiers, priests, fine ladies, servants, statesmen, labourers, ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... a vast service," Van Artevelde said, as they joined him, "for it will not be needful to break in this evening upon our scanty store, and this is of vital importance, since we must perforce wait until the earl and the men of Bruges come out to attack us. Your men said that it was some fifteen sacks of ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... less than one-thirtieth part of the time of man in general is consumed in productive pursuits, yet some people toil diligently three-fifths of their time and receive only a scanty living. To assist in making clear the road to private and national prosperity is therefore the motive which actuates me in ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... wintry crown of stars burned with silvery lustre, unlike the golden glow of constellations throbbing in sultry summer, and their white fires sparkled, flared as if blown by interstellar storms. The large family of Lazarus huddled over dying embers on darkening hearths, and shivered under scanty shreds of covering; but the house of Dives was alight with the soft radiance of wax candles, fragrant with the warm aroma of multitudinous exotics, and brimming with waves of riotous music, on which merry-hearted favorites ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... happened to be present. The manner in which the Andante of the symphony was played, and the effect it produced was altogether surprising. Who has not, in his youth, admired this beautiful piece, and tried to realize it in his own way? In what way? No matter. If the marks of expression are scanty, the wonderful composition arouses one's feelings; and fancy supplies the means to read it in accordance with such feelings. It seems as though Mozart had expected something of the kind, for he has given but few and meagre indications of the expression. So we felt free to ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... with my scanty space, now discuss the belief; but I will seek to indicate how it must have commended itself, I think, to George Sand. I have somewhere called France "the country of Europe where the people is most ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... after all, not so bad as it might have been. At any rate, it enabled me to find some relief from my passionate unrest in occupation, and even my own high-sounding phrases may have taught me some scanty heroism. After all, if one fights one's own battle bravely, does it make so much matter about other things? Our battles to-day, like the rest of those fought since creation, show poor cause if regarded from any other standpoint ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... admonitions of Master Hymn-of-Praise made but a scanty impression on the young girl's mind, for she regarded him with a mixture of amusement and contempt as she shrugged her plump shoulders and said ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... to cheer the heart of her worshipper who, on his pilgrimage to her loftiest shrines, and most majestic temples, spared not to stoop his head below the lowest lintel, and held all men his equal who earned by honest industry the scanty fare which they never ate without those holy words of supplication and thanksgiving, "Give us this day our ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... small but regular income. He gave too much attention to these unremunerative studies of types she never met in actual life. She was proud of the reviews, and pasted them neatly in a big book, but his help and advice on the practical details of the children's clothing and education were so scanty. Hers ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... her natural shrewdness and common sense made her perceive that her one claim to the scanty attentions she did receive was her money. Her money had bought her Peter, and a pleasant future for her children; it had converted a Dobbs into an Estcourt; it had given her everything she had that was worth anything at all. Once she had thoroughly realised this, she began to attach a tremendous ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... looked round and motioned her onward. She followed without a word, holding the trim silver mounted umbrella, and I mechanically brought up the rear. It had all happened so quickly that I too was confused. The scanty populace in the rain-filled street stared and gaped. A shambling fellow in corduroys bawled an obscene jest. Pasquale put down ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... beaver-skins from the Indians. Pease were reduced to flour first by mortars and later by hand-mills constructed for the purpose, and made into a soup to add flavor to other less palatable food. Thus economising their resources, the winter finally wore away, but when the spring came, their scanty means were entirely exhausted. Henceforth their sole reliance was upon the few fish that could be taken from the river, and the edible roots gathered day by day from the fields and forests. An attempt was made to quarter some of the men upon the friendly Indians, but with little success. Near ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... to hide his own deficiencies, having generally in his employ some college graduate, whose poverty compelled him to accept the scanty wages which Socrates doled out to him. These young men were generally poor scholars in more than one sense of the word, as Mr. Smith did not care to pay the high salary demanded by a first-class scholar. Mr. Smith was shrewd enough not to attempt to instruct the classes in advanced ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... where I was accustomed to linger for a few minutes, sometimes for half an hour or so, during my daily walks. Here at the foot of the low bank on the treeless side of the stream there was a scanty patch of sedges, a most exposed and unsuitable place for any bird to breed in, yet a venturesome moorhen had her nest there and was now sitting on seven eggs. First I would take a peep at the eggs, for the bird always quitted the nest on my approach; then I would gaze into the dense tangle of ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... to it; and being, moreover, exceedingly active and abundant in all shady places in summer—making life a misery to careless human beings—it must be very much more dangerous to birds than the larger sedentary Ixodes. The bete-rouge invariably lodges beneath the wings of birds, where the loose scanty plumage affords easy access to the skin. Domestic birds suffer a great deal from its persecutions, and their. young, if allowed to run about in shady places, die of the irritation. Wild birds, however, seem to be very little troubled, and ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... I discovered that Tardif led a somewhat solitary life himself, even in this solitary island, with its scanty population. There was an ugly church standing in as central and prominent a situation as possible, but Tardif and his mother did not frequent it. They belonged to a little knot of dissenters, who met for worship ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... Vail's attention became attracted to my telegraph, I depended upon my pencil for subsistence. Indeed, so straitened were my circumstances that, in order to save time to carry out my invention and to economize my scanty means, I had for months lodged and eaten in my studio, procuring my food in small quantities from some grocery, and preparing it myself. To conceal from my friends the stinted manner in which I lived, I was in the habit of bringing my food to my room in the ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... ignorance among the Saxons may be imagined from the fact that Alfred was twelve years old before he could get a master capable of teaching him the alphabet, and even after the invention of paper in the eleventh century books were very scarce. The cause of the scanty supply of literature was not only the general destruction which had taken place, but also that there was no demand for it. Archbishop Lanfranc, with a view to improve education in England, directed in 1072 that a book should be given to each of the monks, who ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... stationary or declining; or to require an increasing, stationary, or declining population, regulates the subsistence of the labourer, and determines in what degree it shall be either liberal, moderate, or scanty. The ordinary average price of provisions determines the quantity of money which must be paid to the workman, in order to enable him, one year with another, to purchase this liberal, moderate, or scanty subsistence. While the demand for the labour and the price of provisions, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... bloom, High as the highest peak of Furness fells, Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells: In truth the prison unto which we doom Ourselves no prison is: and hence for me, In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground; Pleased if some souls (for such there needs must be) Who have felt the weight of too much liberty, Should find brief solace ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... other base of supplies could be found. The straitness of the situation is shown by the fact that Jervis, after he had held on to the last moment in San Fiorenzo Bay, sailed for Gibraltar with such scanty provisions that the crews' daily rations were reduced to one-third the ordinary amount; in fact, as early as the first of October they had been cut down to two-thirds. Whether, therefore, the Government was right in ordering the withdrawal, or Nelson in his condemnation ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... was color in the dress, there was emaciation in the figure,—thin features, thin limbs, and flat chests being the prevailing type, a fair indication that their scanty supply of food does not furnish them sufficient nutrition. Northern India is the so-termed "famine district," and the famine of one year is said to have destroyed over four millions of people; pestilence is always threatening these natives, and besides, the demands for tribute ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... that would serve me any better. It would serve young men who are not landholders better; but I don't think it would serve landholders better than to allow the price to lie, and to settle once in a season, because sometimes our crops are so scanty that we have only perhaps two parts or three-fourths of a regular supply of meal for our living; and if I got the price of my fish paid to me every time when I came ashore, or on the Saturday night, we might perhaps live comfortably ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... an account of his journey: A Tour through Sicily and Malta in a Series of Letters to William Beckford, Esquire, of Somerly, in Suffolk, from Patrick Brydone, F.R.S. Near Catania he saw some lava covered with a scanty soil, incapable of producing either corn or vines; he imagined from ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... against attempting to continue down to the outbreak of the war (October 11th) the historical sketch given in Chapters II to XII. The materials for the historian are still scanty and imperfect, leaving him with data scarcely sufficient for judging the intention and motives with which some things were done. Round the acts and words of the representatives of the three governments concerned, ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... the required course, orders were conferred upon him; but Valladolid offering to him no prospect of advancement, he retired to the little pueblo of Uruapam, where for a time he subsisted upon the scanty means supplied by ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... fig-leaves to hide his transgressions before, but that being found too scanty and short, he now trieth what he can do with arguments. Indeed he acknowledgeth that he did eat of the tree of which he was forbidden; but mark where he layeth the reason: Not in any infection which was centred in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to its pickets were tied the horses of officers, quartermasters, baggagemasters, and orderlies, and the flowers were trampled into light dust. The provisions in the house had been eaten by hungry travellers, who were supplied with very scanty fare, and were thankful to get that. The old woman, having dealt out to us the little she had left, for which she demanded most abundant compensation, amused us with her tales. Her house had been alternately the home of Unionists and rebels. It was not many days ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the convent, where she was already held in such high esteem, was cordial in the extreme. The scanty income she had saved from her mother's property rendered it necessary for her to live with the utmost frugality. She determined to regulate her expenses in accordance with this small sum. Potatoes, rice, and beans, with a little salt, and occasionally the luxury of a little butter, were her ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... spare olives cast their shadows on the lower slopes; here and there a copse of oakwood and acacia marks the course of some small rivulet; rye-fields, grey beneath the wind, clothe the hillsides with scanty verdure. Every knoll is crowned with a village—brown roofs and white house-fronts clustered together on the edge of cliffs, and rising into the campanile or antique tower, which tells so many stories of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the mountains among which he now found himself, was widely different from the picturesque oak forests of the Gutchevo range, which he had traversed in the early part of his tour. "Tall cedars replaced the oak and beech; the scanty herbage was covered with hoar-frost; the clear brooks murmured chillingly down the unshaded gullies; and a grand line of sterile peaks to the south showed me that I was approaching the backbone of the Balkan. There is a total want of arable land in this part of Servia, and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... door and window, the house was finished, they stood in the centre and admired. It was absolutely the product of their own labour, applied to such scanty resources as the prairie provided. But it was warm and snug, and, as they later on learned, the wall and roof of sod were almost perfect non-conductors of either heat or cold. The floor was of earth, but Mary Harris knew the difference between earth and dirt, although the words are frequently ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... their products, being left wholly inadequate to take those products out of the market, there naturally followed a great struggle between the capitalists engaged in production and distribution to divert the most possible of the all too scanty buying each in his own direction. The total buying could not of course be increased a dollar without relatively, or absolutely increasing the purchasing power in the people's hands, but it was possible by effort to alter the particular directions in which it should be ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... itself a sufficient portion of authority to prevent them from injuring it; it must establish prudent checks: it must cautiously divide the power it confers, because re-united, it will by such reunion be infallibly oppressed. The slightest reflection, the most scanty review, will make men feel that the burthen of governing and weight of administration, is too ponderous and overpowering to be borne by an individual; that the scope of his jurisdiction, that the range of his surveillance, and multiplicity of his duties must always ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... Rawlinson and followed by the admiring glances of the other cowboys, the girls were introduced to the interior of the bunk houses which, with their rude wooden cots built into the side of the walls, their scanty and rather severe furniture, and the romantic looking trophies fastened to the bare boards of the walls, filled the ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... lived, solitary and sad, but forgiven and cherished by his friends, till the day he died. That part of the journal which contained a description of this journey is mostly destroyed. Here and there is a fragment. I cannot select, for the pages are very scanty; but I do not withhold the following fragments, because they indicate a better and more cheerful frame of mind ...
— Fragments From The Journal of a Solitary Man - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... those captains who were to remain in India. His intention was to have come to anchor in the harbour of Paniani, on purpose to visit the rajah of Tanor; but from foul weather, and bad pilots, the fleet could not make that port, and was driven to Calicut and Pandarane. Being off these ports and with a scanty wind, the admiral detached Raphael and Perez with their caravels, to examine if there were any ships of the Moors at anchor. While on this service, ten paraws came off to attack them, and an engagement ensued. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... the river, where I intended to camp for the night, I noticed a prahu halting at the rough landing place of a ladang, and as we passed it the rain poured down. When the single person who was paddling arose to adjust the scanty wet clothing I perceived that it was a woman, and looking back I discovered her husband snugly at ease under a palm-leaf mat raised as a cover. He was then just rising to walk home. That is the way the men of Islam treat their women. Even one of the Malay paddlers saw the humour ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... only four or five eyes; and though the subject of poverty is too serious to joke on, the withered and stunted appearance of the country people exactly corresponded to that of these dry pollards. I trust that we were in some degree deceived by their natural ugliness, and that hard labour and scanty profits are not the only reasons which render their tout ensemble such a contrast to the healthy robust looks of the Normans and Picards, whose very horses show the effects of their ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... fatigue, induced us to stop. The creek changed its character every quarter of a mile, forming now a broad sandy or pebbly bed, then a narrow channel between steep banks; and again several channels, either with fine water-holes, or almost entirely filled up and over-grown with a scanty vegetation. On the banks, thickets alternated with scrubs and open country, and, lower down, the country became very fine and open. Early in the morning of the 30th, we started again, and arrived at the camp after a long ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... "dim and dark." Even after Chaucer had showed that the despised language was capable of grace and charm, the writer of less genius must often have felt that beside the more sophisticated Latin or French, English could boast but scanty resources. ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... men tramped methodically along, paying little attention to their surroundings. Game dozed everywhere beneath the scanty shade, sometimes singly, sometimes in twos or threes, sometimes in herds. Motionless they stood; and often, were it not for the switch of a tail, they would have remained unobserved. Even the sentinel hartebeestes, posted atop high ant hills on the outskirts ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... down-jaw esophageal forceps. The dropping jaw is useful for reaching backward below the cricopharyngeal fold when using the esophageal speculum in the removal of foreign bodies. Posterior forceps-spaces are often scanty in cases of foreign bodies lodged just ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... the full realization of her scanty dress, her pitiful little hat and ribbon, her big, heavy shoes, her ignorance of where to go or what to do; and from a sickening wave which crept over her, she felt she was going to become very ill. Then out of the mass she saw a pair of big, brown boy eyes, three seats from her, and there was a ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... sires had dared to leave Less scanty measure of those graceful rites And usages, whose due return invites A stir of mind too natural to deceive; Giving the memory help when she could weave A crown for Hope!—I dread the boasted lights That all too often are but fiery blights, Killing ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... expected and calculated, is to the astronomer. They prove that there is natural order in language, and that by a careful induction laws can be established which enable us to guess with great probability either at the form or meaning of words where but scanty fragments of the tongue itself ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... British and Imperial Granaries, Limited, were four vacant chairs and four unoccupied desks, each of the latter piled with a mass of letters. Outside was disquietude, in the street almost a riot. Callers were compelled to form themselves into a queue,—and left with scanty comfort. Wingate, by what seemed to be special favour, was passed through the little throng and ushered by Harrison himself into ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with alms, and conceded the site. Various oppositions were encountered against that foundation, but they were conquered, although with difficulty, by constancy. The religious passed many days of poverty on that site, being uncomfortable and with scanty subsidies, until the very pious and noble gentleman, Don Bernardino de el Castillo Rivera y Maldonado, a native of the City of Mexico, master-of-camp of the royal regiment, castellan of the fort of Santiago, and regidor of the city—moved likewise by the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... careful inspection of his rifle lock and saw a broad man filling his doorway. A broad, noiseless, slow-moving man, sunburned almost to the brown of Vandyke. A man of forty-five, neatly clothed in homespun, with scanty light hair, a close-clipped brown-and-gray beard and pale-blue eyes expressing mildness ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... which I have already sufficiently discussed, and the obvious inconveniences of a scanty supply of charcoal, of fuel, and of timber for architectural and naval construction and for the thousand other uses to which wood is applied in rural and domestic economy, and in the various industrial processes of civilized life, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... into the larder and see if your Missis left any of that cold chine of pork last night—and hear, bring the cold goose, and any cold flesh you can lay hands on, there are really no wittles on the table. I am quite ashamed to set you down to such a scanty fork breakfast; but this is what comes of not being master of your own house. Hope your hat may long cover your family: rely upon it, it is cheaper to buy your bacon than to keep a pig". Just as Jorrocks uttered these last words the side door opened, and without either "with your leave or by ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... economy is based on service activities connected with the country's strategic location and status as a free trade zone in northeast Africa. Two-thirds of the inhabitants live in the capital city, the remainder being mostly nomadic herders. Scanty rainfall limits crop production to fruits and vegetables, and most food must be imported. Djibouti provides services as both a transit port for the region and an international transshipment and refueling center. It has few natural resources and little industry. ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... German Realm. For Gottlieb was a money-lender and an honest man in one body. He laid out for the plenteous harvests of usury, not pressing the seasons with too much rigour. 'I sow my seed in winter,' said he, 'and hope to reap good profit in autumn; but if the crop be scanty, better let it lie and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his friends thus politely. Got into his skiff, the full moon shining brightly, By the light of whose beam, He soon spied on the stream A dame, whose complexion was fair as new cream, Pretty pink silken hose Cover'd ankles and toes, In other respects she was scanty of clothes; For, so says tradition, both written and oral, Her ONE garment was loop'd up with ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... striding up and down the studio, and speaking with great animation. "I believe, as regards the men and women of Holbein's time, that their faces were more lined than ours; their eyes, as a rule, smaller—their mouths wider—their eyebrows more scanty—their ears larger—their figures more ungainly. And in like manner, I believe the men and women of the seventeenth century to have been more fleshy than either Holbein's people or ourselves; to have had rounder cheeks, eyes more prominent and heavy-lidded, shorter noses, more prominent chins, ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... of any connexion between Lord Carteret and him. I am sorry you have him on your hands. He quite mistakes his province: an adventurer should come hither;(810) this is the soil for mobs and patriots it is the country of the world to make one's fortune - with parts never so scanty, one's dulness is not discovered, nor one's dishonesty, till one obtains the post one wanted-and then, if they do not come to light-why, one slinks into one's green velvet bag,(811) and lies so snug! I don't approve of your hinting ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... lived farther out of the town, but drove in now and then to look at this little mansion of hers at the end of a courtyard behind wrought-iron gates. It was built in the days before the Revolution, when it was dangerous to be a fine lady with the name of Rochefoucauld. The furniture was rather scanty, and was of the Louis Quinze and Empire periods. Some portraits of old gentlemen and ladies of France, with one young fellow in a scarlet coat, who might have been in the King's Company of the Guard about the time when ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... what part did the Church play? Was it that of the man clad in camel's skin, living on locusts and wild honey, and calling on the generation of revellers to flee from the wrath to come? No; but that of the lover of cakes and ale. The records of this period are few and scanty, but they are full enough to show that some of the clergy of the Athols knew more of backgammon than of theology. While they pandered to the dissolute Court they lived under, going the errands of their ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... a wonder that even these scanty garments were not taken from them; considering the eagerness with which they had been ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... can aid. These flowers to market off she takes, And many pence by them she makes; You surely, therefore, would not strive Of this advantage to deprive The grateful child, who takes such pains, To help her parents' scanty gains. But come, my love, we must not stay, That show'r will reach us on our way; Come, Fanny, come,"—"Mamma, I will," But Fanny staid and linger'd still; Each plant and flower at length being view'd, Her way she thoughtfully pursu'd. A week had pass'd, ...
— The Keepsake - or, Poems and Pictures for Childhood and Youth • Anonymous
... have heard of you from the marshal's despatches, and were glad to see that your regiment bore itself as well in the field of battle as in the park of Versailles. What news do you bring? Nothing of importance, I hope, for there can hardly be good news when the marshal has so scanty a force with which to ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... were, as their name suggested, but two—the northern one was much the smaller, embracing perhaps an acre of rough soil, covered with a stunted grass, and dotted here and there with red cedars. The southern one, on the other hand, covered also with a scanty vegetation and scattered trees, broadened out so as nearly to land-lock the cove behind it, and cause its waters to rush in or out, according to the tide, through an exceedingly contracted passage at its extreme southwestern end, popularly ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... other hand, was a very retiring woman. Her husband, a subordinate government official, had died so early that her pension extremely scanty. She came of a good family, and had learned nothing in her girlhood except to Play the piano. This accomplishment she had long ceased to practise, and in the course of time had become exceedingly religious.——"Look here, now, my dear fellow, ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... to grow monotonous. The Indians—probably because they knew they were only wasting their scanty ammunition—had ceased firing, and were evidently calling to one another and signaling from behind the rocks and trees where they had taken refuge. So long as they remained down there in front Pike had no possible concern. His only fear, as has been said, was that they should make a combined ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... to themselves, as it were in the past, amongst their ancient ancestry (putting one in mind of Mr. and Mrs. German Reed's entertainment of "Ages Ago") rather than in the present and with the people surrounding them. They are reputed to be excessively mean and close, but perhaps they have but a scanty allowance to support their nobility, and therefore, by necessity, it is half starved. A friend who has resided at Malta many years, related to me a little incident of his own experience. For once breaking through ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... displaying the reflection of a large lake, with its irregular outline, and even showing with marvellous vividness the ruffled surface of the water. At some distance we observed several Bedouins, and not far from us some of their women, most of whom were engaged in leading black goats to their scanty pasturage. ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... to prefix lives to the works which the booksellers chose to publish; he was, therefore, confined to a task, at which he more than once expressed his repugnance to Boswell. It should also, in fairness to his memory, be borne in mind, that he wrote, as he confesses in his preface, from scanty materials, and on various authors. It was very easy, therefore, for each successive biographer, who devoted his time to the collection of memoirs for some single individual, to point out inaccuracies in Johnson's general ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... to be erected over the grave where they had been lying for two decades, and for masses to be said for the repose of the souls of his murdered relatives. Paris was full of returning royalists. Banished exiles with grand old names, who had been earning a scanty living by teaching French and dancing in Vienna, London, and even in New York, were hastening to Paris for a joyful Restoration; and Louis XVIII., while Russian and Austrian troops guarded him on the streets of his own capital, was freely talking ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... in appearance, could fail to become interesting at the hands of the painter. It is fair to remember, too, in defence of the Spanish attitude, that the years were given not to the arts of peace but to those of war; that leisure was scanty, intrigue unceasing, and the austerity of life was made greater by the strong and merciless grip of the Church. Formality and superstition marched hand in hand in a court whose ruler, if we may judge by his portraits, had forgotten how to ...
— Velazquez • S. L. Bensusan
... people, as was said, being few and poor, he was at this time exposed to great hardships. I have been assured that he and his family have lived for a great while together without tasting animal food, and with but a scanty pittance of other provision." ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... express, Though in strange uncouth postures, and uncomely dress; So when Cartesian artists try To solve appearances of sight In its reception to the eye, And catch the living landscape through a scanty light, The figures all inverted show, And colours of a faded hue; Here a pale shape with upward footstep treads, And men seem walking on their heads; There whole herds suspended lie, Ready to tumble down into the sky; Such are ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... can no longer be felt in the lower abdomen, when the lochia has passed through the three changes already mentioned, and the flow is whitish or yellowish, scanty and odorless, the patient may sit up in a chair increasingly each day. Such conditions are usually found anywhere from the tenth to the fifteenth day. The patient first sits up a little in a chair—she has already been exercising some in ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... form the central market of a large neighbourhood, inhabited by a vast number of mechanics and poor people, a few shops are open at an early hour of the morning; and a very poor man, with a thin and sickly woman by his side, may be seen with their little basket in hand, purchasing the scanty quantity of necessaries they can afford, which the time at which the man receives his wages, or his having a good deal of work to do, or the woman's having been out charing till a late hour, prevented their procuring over-night. The coffee-shops too, at which clerks ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... thy storehouse Or thy handful still renew; Scanty fare for one will often Make a royal feast ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... a full-sized man, John, people might take notice of your scornful meanings. But your growing up was such a scrimped and scanty business that really a woman couldn't feel hurt if you were to spit fire and brimstone itself at her. Here," she added, holding out a spar-gad to one of the workmen, from which dangled a long black-pudding—"here's something for thy breakfast, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... would have been insufficient for an existence of partial decency. But in Chicago, with its forbidding rents, the increasing cost of all necessaries, and all of the other expenses incident to life in a large city, their wages were notoriously scanty. ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... taken from 22 mounds on the Range Reserve vary in weight from 5 to 4,127 grams (more than 9 pounds). This is exceeded by one lot from New Mexico, which totaled 5,750 grams (12.67 pounds). It is fairly evident that in seasons of scanty forage for stock the appropriation of such quantities of grass seeds and crowns and other grazing materials by numerous kangaroo rats may appreciably reduce the carrying capacity of the range. Studies of cheek-pouch contents and food stores taken from dens show ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor
... gained has been preserved and improved even to the present moment. Some of the finest corn-crops in the world are now grown upon lands which, before the introduction of the turnip husbandry, produced a very scanty supply of grass for a few lean and half-starved rabbits. Mr. Colquhoun, in his "Statistical Researches," estimated the value of the turnip crop annually grown in this country at fourteen millions; but when we further recollect that it enables the agriculturist ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction - Vol. X, No. 289., Saturday, December 22, 1827 • Various
... February 18th rose bright and clear over a ruined city. About half of it was in ashes and in smouldering heaps. Many of the people were houseless, and gathered in groups in the suburbs, or in the open parks and spaces, around their scanty piles of furniture. General Howard, in concert with the mayor, did all that was possible to provide other houses for them; and by my authority he turned over to the Sisters of Charity the Methodist College, and to the mayor five hundred beef-cattle; to help feed the people; ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... cover of the night and the next morning hired a fisherman to bring me here in his boat, thinking that the island was inhabited only by a few poverty-stricken wretches who gained a scanty subsistence from the sea. On my arrival I was filled with terror at beholding your magnificent palace, which I was told belonged to a great lord. I naturally imagined that no one could inhabit such a dwelling save some high official of the Greek Government, and, without ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... He pulled out the hatchet, raised it with both hands, and let it descend without force, almost mechanically, on the old woman's head. But directly he had struck the blow his strength returned. According to her usual habit, Alena Ivanovna was bareheaded. Her scanty gray locks, greasy with oil, were gathered in one thin plait, which was fixed to the back of her neck by means of a piece of horn comb. The hatchet struck her just on the sinciput, and this was partly owing to her small ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... to be seen cleaning the tandem harness, suspended from the bough of a tree, and occasionally casting an eye in the direction of the sheep, for whose safety he was responsible. By the river side, our bullocks were busily engaged picking the scanty herbage. The sea-breeze blowing steadily up the river cooled the air, and seemed to bear health ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... a proposition, which, I think, may be regarded as certain, that it is only from the selfishness and confined generosity of men, along with the scanty provision nature has made for his wants, that justice derives its origin. If we look backward we shall find, that this proposition bestows an additional force on some of those observations, which we have already made on ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... however, to have been abandoned in the deserted kitchen-garden; and where cabbages, carrots, radishes, pease, and melons had once flourished, a scanty crop of lucerne alone bore evidence of its being deemed worthy of cultivation. A small, low door gave egress from the walled space we have been describing into the projected street, the ground having been abandoned as unproductive by its various renters, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... scanty cut and open foliage is sometimes of importance, according to whether the location, season and other conditions make it desirable that the foliage protect the fruit from the sun or admit the sunlight, with as little obstruction as possible, to the center of the plant. In different sorts, we have ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... himself more openly. "Our peril," said he, "exceeds all that past ages have witnessed. The country is in danger, not because we are in want of troops, not because those troops want courage, or that our frontiers are badly fortified, and our resources scanty. No, it is in danger, because its force is paralysed. And who has paralysed it? A man—one man, the man whom the constitution has made its chief, and whom perfidious advisers have made its foe. You are ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... certain periods through the establishment of towns almost full-grown. The earliest towns of Greece and Italy were, through sheer necessity, small. They could not grow beyond the steep hill-tops which kept them safe, or house more inhabitants than their scanty fields could feed.[3] But the world was then large; new lands lay open to those who had no room at home, and bodies of willing exiles, keeping still their custom of civil life, planted new towns throughout the Mediterranean lands. The process was extended by state ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... with many other obstacles, not the least of which was the difficulty of meeting the expense of remaining in Washington and urging his invention upon the Government. Still he persevered, although it seemed to be hoping against hope, as the session drew near its close, and his scanty stock of money grew daily smaller. On the evening of the 3d of March, 1843, he returned from the Capitol to his lodgings utterly disheartened. It was the last night of the session, and nothing had been done in the matter of his petition. He sat up late into the night arranging ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... the roof, and wide Branch the vast rain-bow ribs from side to side. While from above descends in milky streams One scanty pencil of illusive beams, Suspended crags and gaping gulphs illumes, 100 And gilds the horrors of the deepen'd glooms. —Here oft the Naiads, as they chanced to play Near the dread Fane on THOR'S returning day, Saw from red altars streams of guiltless blood Stain their green reed-beds, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... consequently the sovereign of the house. He was robust and well-made, and had a tutor. I, puny and even sickly, was sent at five years of age as day pupil to a school in the town; taken in the morning and brought back at night by my father's valet. I was sent with a scanty lunch, while my school-fellows brought plenty of good food. This trifling contrast between my privations and their prosperity made me suffer deeply. The famous potted pork prepared at Tours and called "rillettes" and "rillons" was the chief feature of their mid-day ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... Caligula was in one of his maddest moods; his hollow eyes glowed with unnatural fire, his scanty, light-coloured hair stood up around his head like the bristly mane of a hyena. Up and down the room he stamped with heavy feet; his robe, weighted with precious stones, striking out around him as he trod the smooth surface of silken ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... they themselves, their cattle, and their crops are mysteriously bound up with their divine king, so that according as he is well or ill the community is healthy or sickly, the flocks and herds thrive or languish with disease, and the fields yield an abundant or a scanty harvest. The worst evil which they can conceive of is the natural death of their ruler, whether he succumb to sickness or old age, for in the opinion of his followers such a death would entail the most disastrous consequences on themselves and their possessions; fatal ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer |
