"Scrawl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... day while Vickers Price was "selling nails," as he still expressed his business career, there came in his mail a queer little scrawl, postmarked Pittsburg. It was from Delia Conry, and ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... cares, and love secrets; her doubts, and hopes, and fears, equal to those of any heroine of romance, and ten times as sincere. And then, too, there is her secret hoard of love documents;—the broken sixpence, the gilded brooch, the lock of hair, the unintelligible love scrawl, all treasured up in her box of Sunday finery, ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... space to lie for lying's sake. If she had lied, then, she had lied for a purpose. A purpose that he could very well conceive. But if she lied for that purpose she would have given importance and prominence to her lie. She wouldn't have hidden it away in an almost invisible scrawl ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... street, the boys were pelting each other with snowballs, just as this John had done in the clay-paths. But for nearly two hundred years his bones had been crumbled into lime and his flesh gone back into grass and roots. Yet here he was, a boy still; here was the old pamphlet and the scrawl in yellowing ink, with the smell about ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... past twelve o'clock. Hiram sat down, and taking up a torn piece of paper, scratched off a blurred and nearly unintelligible scrawl ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... calculations. Then a short paragraph written in Roger Hunter's hurried scrawl. "No doubt now what it is," the words said. "Wish Johnny were here, show him a real bonanza, but he'll know soon ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... it's mighty apt to get a feller into a tarnation snarl. Schoolmaster gumption makes d-d bad niggers; and there's why I say it's best to hang schoolmasters. It's dangerous, 'cos it larns the critturs to writin' a scrawl now and then; and, unless ye knows just how much talent he's got, and can whitewash him yaller, it's plaguy ticklish. When the brutes have larnin', and can write a little, they won't stay sold when ye sell 'em-that is, I mean, white riff-raff stuff; they ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... Marteen requests the pleasure of Mr. Marcus Gard's company at dinner"—the usual engraved invitation, with below a girlish scrawl: "You'll come, won't you? It's my very last dinner ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... blame the poor light—Doctor Pratt's miserable scrawl; but these were but cowardly subterfuges. John knew that he had been able to decipher Doctor Pratt's handwriting well enough, but that he had been thinking of something else while putting up the powders, and so had put ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... envelope slowly and clumsily with her stiff fingers, and held up the letter so the light struck it. She could not read strange writing easily, and this was a nearly illegible scrawl. However, after the first few words, she seemed to absorb it by some higher faculty than reading. In a short time she had the gist of the letter. It was from a lawyer who signed himself Daniel Tuxbury. He stated formally that Thomas Maxwell ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to conceal my handwriting. I'd sign the thing in an awkward scrawl." Krech saw the drift of it now. "And I'd take good care to misspell a bunch of ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... back with a pencilled scrawl from Kress to the effect that Lieutenant Stuyvesant was to be permitted to interview the prisoner Murray outside the guard-house, but sentries must be placed ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... writing of mine—very bad manners, to put any one—especially a Lady—to the trouble and pain of deciphering. I hope all about Donne is legible, for you will be glad of it. It is Lodging- house Pens and Ink that is partly to blame for this scrawl. Now, don't answer till I write you something better: but believe me ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... was very rude, and almost obliterated, for seventeen hundred years had passed over it. It was a husband's lamentation over a dead wife: "O Sophronia! dear Sophronia! thou mayest live?—Thou shalt live!" How eloquently did that rough, faded scrawl, over a long-forgotten grave, speak of the human fear that perhaps his wife was lost to him for ever—"Thou mayest live?" and of the noble faith that triumphed over it—"Thou shalt live!" Nothing affects and ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... the howling sea-wind behind a great boulder of rock. She dreaded his reproaches unspeakably. For the past six weeks she had lived in dread of that moment. Her fingers were shaking as she opened the envelope that bore his boyish scrawl. ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... I snatched up the paper. Vic had said in his note, that he would leave another note for me here. This was it, for in a bold scrawl at the top was my name. And in hardly decipherable script, below, was ...
— The Infra-Medians • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... materials. And as she listened to the director's rough words, she took up a pencil and twisted it nervously in her fingers. Then, with increasing agitation, as she realized that her effort for Lloyd had failed, she began, without thinking, to make little marks on the blotter, and then a written scrawl—all with a singular ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... fourteen, was no better than very vulgar: reading, or rather spelling, an illegible scrawl, and a little ordinary plain work, composed the whole system of it; and then all my foundation in virtue was no other than a total ignorance of vice, and the shy timidity general to our sex, in the tender age of life, when objects alarm or frighten ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... came close up by our vessel, and seemed to have a miserable set on board, amongst others, a worthy pair from Havana, who had just come out of prison, having been accused of murdering a negro. The wind continues contrary. I shall fold up this sea-scrawl, and write no more till we ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... sure-enough trump!" admitted Bluff. "Do you know what he said when he was showing that scrawl to us fellows? I was close enough to get part of it, and I'm dead sure the words 'entering wedge' formed the backbone ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... "Seventy Years on the Frontier," he relates how on every wagon-sheet and wagon-bed, on every tree and barn door, he used to find the name "William F. Cody" in a large, uncertain scrawl. Those were my writing lessons, and I took them daily until I had my signature plastered pretty well over the whole of ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... straggle off, so that the regiments were materially decimated before they reached the field. The leading officers maintained a dignity and a reserve, and reined their horses together in places, to confer. At one time, a private soldier came out to me, presenting a scrap of paper, and asked me to scrawl him a line, which he would dictate. ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... in it. He could not possibly have been so rude. He had been too indifferent. Too indifferent! The repetition of the phrase made him sit straighter. Pshaw! It could not be that. He possessed a little vanity; if he had not, his history would not have been worth a scrawl. But he denied the possession vehemently, as men are wont to do. Strange, a man will admit smashing those ten articles of advisement known as the decalogue and yet deny the inherent quality which surrenders the admission—vanity. However ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... become but a shadow and a name to Cally; she had willed it so, and so it had been. Now, in his own poor scrawl, the ghost of a lover too roughly discarded rose and walked again. And beneath the cheap writing and the unrestrained self-pity, she seemed to plumb for the first time the depths of the boy's present misery. The old story, having ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the Blue Ridge seen dreamily, through an amethyst haze. The men lay among dandelions. Some watched the horses; others read letters from home, or, haversack for desk, wrote some vivid, short-sentenced scrawl. A number were engaged by the rim of the clear pool. Naked to the waist, they knelt like washerwomen, and rubbed the soapless linen against smooth stones, or wrung it wrathfully, or turning, spread it, grey-white, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... the least like it. Mark's was a bold, free hand, and if there was nothing particularly elegant, neither was there anything that could be called vulgar in it. But this was a decidedly villainous scrawl—in fact it was written as a self-educated butcher might pen a bill. There was nothing impressed on the wafer, but a poke of something like the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... run and show him to my mother." At this instant the pigeon spread his wings, and Brian discovered under one of its wings a small and very dirty looking billet. He opened it in his father's presence. The scrawl was scarcely legible; but these words were ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... for a curse upon his head Who dares insult the noble dead, And basely scrawl his worthless name Upon the records of their fame! Nelson, arise! thy country gave A heartfelt tear, a hallow'd grave: Her eyes are dry, her recreant sons Dare to profane thy mould'ring bones! And you, ye heroes of the past, Who serv'd your country ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... to Ninette,'" read Harriet, from the inky scrawl across the picture. "Do you call her Ladybird, Nina? You and she have formed a pretty strong friendship, ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... crumpled sheet of note paper before us on which was written something in a trembling scrawl. "For instance, here's a letter I ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... finger of his right hand was sore. He spoke to worried doctors and frantic hospital administrators and hysterical nurses. His firm, fine penmanship deteriorated to a barely legible scrawl as writer's cramp knotted his hand and arm. His voice burned down to a rasping whisper. But columns climbed up his rough chart and broken lines pointed vaguely ...
— The Plague • Teddy Keller
... sands and yeasty surges mix In caves about the dreary bay, And on thy ribs the limpet sticks, And in thy heart the scrawl shall play.' ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... the paper, looked at the scrawl of the Adamses, and scratching out his subscription, put two thousand where there had been one thousand. He showed it to Brotherton, and added with ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... did last night!" She handed him the slip of paper. He, too, chuckled tenderly, for the scrawl ran: "What I want for Chrismas: Pictures, pretty ones, Picture frames, Chairs, Plates for dinner, Knives, Spoons, Anything for a flat." A little space followed as if the author had hesitated before he had added in ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... Hodges takes us to be in earnest. I can't call to mind any stage row I ever listened to that I shouldn't have spotted the hollowness of in a brace of shakes. At this minute Author summons Actor to Rehearsal. I close up. This Scrawl to tell you I haven't forgotten you. Would have written more, but authority's ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... over it and scrutinizing the writing in a way that was not his wont. How characteristic, was his thought, as he studied the boyish scrawl—clear to read, painfully, clear, but none the less boyish. The clearness of it reminded him of her face, of her cleanly stencilled brows, her straightly chiselled nose, the very clearness of the gaze of her eyes, the firmly ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... bawl for him with expletives; but he says, with a snigger, to me, 'They'll just wait till their betters, the ladies, is looked to.' I will write again some day soon, and take the chance of meeting a ship; you may be amused by a little scrawl, though it will probably be very stupid and ill-written, for it is not easy to see or to guide a pen while I hold on to the table with both legs and one arm, and am first on my back and then on my ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... in a very fine, cramped hand, and there was ample room at the bottom for his own signature and those of the witnesses, although it must be said that the elegant symmetry of the document was destroyed by the bulging scrawl of the bailiff, whose name was Abraham Kosziemanowski and who had to turn the final two syllables down at a sharp angle in order to get the whole of his ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... such a scrawl that my father could not read it, but underneath was printed, "Mayor of Sunchildston, ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... a very different one when I read this scrawl, from that which bewildered and oppressed me on that never-to-be-forgotten night of suffering and distress, both mental and physical. Formed of those elements which readily react, courage and calmness had returned ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... half through the night. And then if you want to be VERY horrid you may tease me for being so slow to see a joke. And then you might take me to see some of the Colleges and things before we go on to lunch at The MacQuern's? Forgive pencil and scrawl. Am sitting up in bed ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... minute." Peter extracted the other paper ball, unfolding it near the orange flame. The inner surface was red, the earthly red of porphyry, and cracked and scarred by the crumpling. Nearly obliterated by the lacework of wrinkles and scratches was a scrawl, evidently scarred into the glazed surface by a knife-point. The upper part was unintelligible. On the lower surface he made out with difficulty the single word, Vandalia. He carried it to the door, slid back the shutter and let the dim, gray light filter upon it. The other words ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... one more seat than the one in which Lucette rowed me over; and not being much in use except on Sunday, is generally half full of water. Lucette insists on doing the bailing. She has very often performed this service, and I have always considered it as included in the curious scrawl of a bill which madame gravely presents at the end of each of my days here, beginning in small printed type with "Francois Laguerre, Restaurant Francais," and ending with ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... interrupted disrespectfully. "We know who wrote this—there is no mistaking Roy's scrawl. ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... altogether unworthy of him to whom it was to be sent. It was the first love letter she had ever written,—probably the first letter she had ever written to a man, except those short notes which she would occasionally scrawl to Father Marty in compliance with her mother's directions. The letter ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... tears and hurried to the Confederate White House to show it to the President. Davis scanned the scrawl with ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... exchanged his bit of broken china for a very much used and tooth-marked lead-pencil, frowned with a whimsical air at the latter before he put it in his pocket. Then he read my hurried scrawl. ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... official scrawl, they made me write in French my name, Christian name, and profession. Then they gave me an extraordinary document on a sheet of rice-paper, which set forth the permission granted me by the civilian Authorities of the Island of Kiu-Siu, to inhabit a house situated in ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... swollen lips. They thought all these things very ugly. The stone carvings of the present day were a great deal better. An inscription in Phoenician characters amazed them. No one could possibly have ever read that scrawl. But Monsieur Madinier, already up on the first landing with Madame Lorilleux, called to them, shouting ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... has made me the happy instrument of destroying the enemy's fleet; which, I hope, will be a blessing to Europe. You will have the goodness to communicate this happy event to all the courts in Italy; for my head is so indifferent, that I can scarcely scrawl this letter. Captain Capel, who is charged with my dispatches for England, will give you every information. Pray, put him in the quickest mode of getting home. You will not send, by post, any particulars of this action; as I should be sorry to have any accounts get home ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... no news is good news was surely concocted by some one who never chafed through day after lengthening day for that which does not come. But in the end it did come, in the form of a scrawl from the Weeping Scion himself. He was mending, but very slowly, and they said it would be a long time—months, perhaps—before he could get back to the front. Meantime, they were still picking odds and ends, chiefly metallic, out of various parts ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... me a singularly adult smile and jotted down a scrawl of symbols and lines. It meant little ...
— Junior Achievement • William Lee
... those shadowy men of the Stone Age who have left us heaps of their implements, but none of their bones. They were not so careful of the bones of horses, which lie in thousands about the precincts of their untidy villages, but not a scrawl on a bit of a mammoth tusk has been found to indicate whether these were ridden and driven, or only ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... sent by messenger; and she knew nothing of the handwriting. When she had opened it she found only one small leaf, and but very few words on that; but these words, few though they were, seemed to take her breath away, and to overwhelm her with overpowering emotion. She sat staring at the miserable scrawl as though the letters were potent with some mighty spell, and then, throwing the paper on the table by her, gave way to ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... must have been rather blunt, because the marking was heavy, though it showed signs of haste. No one familiar with Eagle March's hand could have failed to recognize it as his, rough and hurried as was the scrawl. ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to-night without fail," ran the scrawl; "meet me at the crossroads between Beston Tracey and the Eastbourne Road. I shall be there at eleven o'clock, and, if you want to preserve your life, you had better ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... practise until they can. Incomprehensible writing is as bad as incomprehensible speaking. A clear enunciation is scarcely more important than a plain hand. A lawyer, in speaking, may as well jumble his words so together that not one in fifty can be understood, as in writing to scrawl and run them about so that not one ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... "It's the men who loaf, my dear," she replied. "When you undertake the transcription of an author's scrawl at ninepence the thousand words you have to work hard, especially when, as it is in this case, the thing's practically unreadable. Besides, the woman in it makes me lose my temper. If I'd had a man of the kind described to deal with I'd ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... fountain-pen is really a great comfort. I am writing with my new one, so this letter won't, I hope, be such a puzzle to decipher as my pencil scrawl. ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... with the Morning Report, found Perkins seated in the same place. Perkins signed the book in a sprawling scrawl, and the sergeant went his way. The Chino cook brought the meals, and then came and took them off again. The day dragged through, the gray evening fell; the rain streamed down; and still the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... the writer is, after the most careful study of the Will and of the Deeds, that not one of the five writings is a "signature," or pretends to be a "signature," and that therefore there is a probability, practically amounting to a certainty, that the Stratford Actor could not so much as manage to scrawl his ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... later I received another letter from Bastin which, as a scrawl on the flap of the envelope informed me, he had carried for a week in his pocket and forgotten to post. Except by inference it returned no thanks for my intended benefits. What it did say, however, was that he thought it wrong of me ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... and, by the light of a match read the scrawl upon it. The writing had evidently been done in haste, but ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... consequence as gloomy as Falls-Park had been. He had lost all zest for hunting of late, and had hardly attended a meet that season. Dornell read and re-read Betty's scrawl, and hunted up some other such notes of hers to look over, this seeming to be the only pleasure there was left for him. That they were really in London he learnt in a few days by another letter from Mrs. Dornell, in which she explained that they hoped to be home in ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... age. But he descried a dim tracery of words. A crabbed scrawl, written in blood, hard to read! He held it more to the light, and slowly he ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... they came upon the little chain of pitiful proofs. They found all the little, sweet, white girl-clothes folded neatly by themselves and laid in a pile together, as if on an altar for sacrifice. If the Little Girl had written "Good-bye" in her childish scrawl upon them, the Shining Mother would not have better understood. So many things she was seeing beyond that ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... with all its imperfections, accompanied with this assurance, that, though there may be inaccuracies in the letter, there is not a single defect in the friendship." Occasionally there was, as here, an apology: "I am persuaded you will excuse this scratch'd scrawl, when I assure you it is with difficulty I write at all," he ended a letter in 1777, and in 1792 of another said, "You must receive it blotted and scratched as you find it for I have not time to copy it. It is now ten o'clock at night, after my usual hour for retiring to rest, and the ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... ecstasy, silent till she suddenly discovered that this effigy meant a cow, then she cried out, "tee dee moomo!" with a joy which afforded me more satisfaction than any acceptance of a story on the part of an editor had ever conveyed. Each scrawl was to her a fresh revelation of the omniscience, the magic of her father—therefore I drew and drew while her recreant mother sat on the other side of the fire and watched us, a wicked smile of amusement—and ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... deep breath and took up his fountain pen. He signed with a rapid, illegible scrawl that toward the end of the pile became a mere hieroglyphic. Jonas put his black face in at the door just as ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... The scrawl was taken to her by a discreet official, and this time she received the letter, pressed it to her heart, and then slipped it into the bodice of her gown. But this time, as before, she left ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... their names on doors or rock-heads, But leave the task to scribblers and to blockheads; Pert, trifling folks, who, bent on being witty, Scrawl on each post some fag-end of a ditty, Spinning, with spider's web, their shallow brains, O'er wainscots, borrowed books, or ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... least, the direct lie to this assertion, and this conduct I shall pursue until I receive direct orders to abandon it. I will now conclude by repeating that in a few days you will receive my journal, which will prove more interesting than the above hasty scrawl. ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... the farm, and Helen was coming out of the rough little path that led from the Perkins' home. She was feeling tired and very sad. She had been reading a letter from the husband in prison, a sorrowful pencilled scrawl, pathetically misspelled, but breathing out true sympathy for his wife and children, and the deepest repentance and self-blame. And at the end of every misconstructed sentence like a wailing refrain were the words, "I done wrong and I deserve all I ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... or something like that," answered Pierre. "There were letters also. Two of them were full of harsh words, and these were signed with the scrawl." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... nation of poets; machines, at least, containing poetry, which the motion of a journey emptied of their contents. Is it from the vanity of being thought geniuses, or a mere mechanical imitation of the custom of others, that we are tempted to scrawl rhyme upon ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... up," declared Polly, running back to get into her chair again. "O dear me, what a horrible old scrawl," she cried, with a very red face. "I didn't know it did look so bad" And she tore it clear across the page, and then snipped it into ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... example, is hardly a physical idea at all. Every motion and every arrangement of matter is definitely what it is,—a fog or an irregular scrawl, as much so as a billiard ball or a straight line. Spencer means by definiteness in a thing any character that makes it arrest our attention, and forces us to distinguish it from other things. The word with him has a human, not a physical connotation. Definite things, in his book, finally ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... version of 'Ossian.'" It is probable that the friends visited the house together. At any rate, I care to believe that while Cesarotti sat "composing" his tribute comfortably at the table, Alfieri's impetuous soul was lifting his tall body on tiptoe to scrawl its ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... not write books, He could scrawl the earth with his record: He could make hieroglyphs, Constellations of mounds and animals, Effigies of unnamable things, Monsters, and hybrids unnatural, Bred of grotesque fancies; and man-forms. These last, none of your pigmies A span long in the womb, And six feet, at full growth, out of it— ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that filthy scrawl from Phemy. How can you be so headstrong, child?" cried Diana, snatching the letter from her sister and throwing it from the window. "I declare you are ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... scrawl. The train is packed with wounded, most of whom, including the poor sitting-ups, are now dead asleep from exhaustion. The British Army is fighting and marching all night now. The Clearing Hospitals get 800 in at a time, many with ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... when Saturday night came she could put it off no longer, so, fetching down her writing-case, she spoiled a dozen sheets of paper in the effort to make her news fairly palatable, finally dashing off an unsatisfactory scrawl, badly written and lamely expressed; and, having folded and directed it, she flew out into the yard to find a messenger to take it. The first who presented himself ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... bits o' paper be all she left behind her—yes, keep them, but put back Mark's. Are they all here?—sure?" And the widow, though she could not read her husband's verses, looked jealously at the MSS. written in his irregular large scrawl, and, smoothing them carefully, replaced them in the trunk, and resettled over them some sprigs of lavender, which Leonard ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... to scrawl a short note last night before the mail went. But I wrote to Papa the day ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... goes on to moralize in a half-believing, half-doubting kind of way, on the probability of a life to come, and ends by speaking of or rather apostrophizing Jesus Christ in a strain which would seem to savour of Socinianism. This letter he calls "a distracted scrawl which the writer dare scarcely read." And yet it appears to have been deliberately copied with some amplification from an entry in his last year's commonplace book. Even the few passages from his correspondence already given are enough to show that there was in Burns's ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... crestfallen air, it was all wrong. The note was not written in Lucy's usual regular hand. The letters straggled, the lines zig-zagged across the page, and the name signed was almost an unintelligible scrawl. But Peggy thought less of these superficial matters than ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... scrawl to Milsom next day, by the hands of a stable- boy, inviting that gentleman to a social rubber and a friendly supper in the servants'-hall that evening at ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... about that, and I found out from one of the servants. Sharp found an envelope under the door. It contained a five-dollar bill, and on it was written in a scrawl, 'For ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... she promptly christened "Tippy," also for a reason she could not or would not divulge. But one evening, to her secret amusement, Lilly found a sheet of paper in the litter of the desk, jotted all over with Zoe's joyous scrawl, "Zantippe," in every case the first syllable ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... edge of the bed she regarded the dear scrawl lovingly, savoring it, as is the way of a woman. Then she took a hairpin from the knot of bright hair (also as is the way of woman) and slit the envelope with a quick, sure rip. M-m-m—it wasn't much as to length. Just a scrawled page. Emma McChesney's eye plunged into it hungrily, ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... address you any longer with a blessing. You have become a woman, and the mistress of a house. Still I cannot think of you otherwise than as my younger sister. I have brought you up to womanhood, I taught you your letters; but now when I see your writing I am ashamed to send this scrawl. But of what use to be ashamed? My day is over; were it not so how should I be in this condition? What condition?—it is a thing I cannot speak of to any one; should I do so there will be sorrow ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... handwritin' lately," said Tad, "and I've got so I can scrawl jest like her. Old Scotch and Jenks ain't never run onto each other at our house, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... Author's pleasure feels: Each line detains him; he omits not one, And all the sorrows of his state are gone. - Alas! even then, in that delicious hour, He feels his fortune, and laments its power. Some Tradesman's bill his wandering eyes engage, Some scrawl for payment thrust 'twixt page and page; Some bold, loud rapping at his humble door, Some surly message he has heard before, Awake, alarm, and tell him he is poor. An angry Dealer, vulgar, rich, and proud, ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... scrawl (which contrasted so strongly with Mrs. Clover's neat, clear hand), Gammon discovered the passage which had disturbed his correspondent. "You mustn't expect me to go into black for your husband, for uncle I won't call him. I heard about him ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... open, but Philip was already on his feet, and with quick, clumsy steps he reached the writing-table, seized the pen Perez had thrown down, and began to scrawl words rapidly in his great angular handwriting. He threw sand upon it to dry the ink, and then poured the grains back into the silver sandbox, glanced at the paper and held it out to Dolores without a word. His ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... have seen a letter that was brought to Spencer's room before dinner, the telegram would not have been written. Mackenzie, rather incoherent with indignation, sent a hurried scrawl. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... I made with Wendling, and I can send him the other pieces. It is not surprising that I have been unable to finish them, for I never have a single quiet hour here. I can only write at night, so I cannot rise early; besides, one is not always disposed to work. I could, to be sure, scrawl away all day, but a thing of this kind goes forth to the world, and I am resolved not to have cause to be ashamed of my name on the title-page. Moreover, you know that I become quite obtuse when ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... and then. It was a mere hurried scrawl, saying that Allerdyke was just setting off for Hull, in obedience to a call from the police; as Gaffney had nothing to do, would Appleyard make use of him during ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... that I should just lie here missing Fergus. He always made such a fuss on my birthdays; they were red-letter days to him, and now this friendly message has come to me. Give me my writing-case, Livy. I must scrawl a few lines to your old gentleman," and she refused to ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the use of children under the age of twelve or fourteen. I do not think it advisable to engage a child in any but the most voluntary practice of art. If it has talent for drawing, it will be continually scrawling on what paper it can get; and should be allowed to scrawl at its own free will, due praise being given for every appearance of care, or truth, in its efforts. It should be allowed to amuse itself with cheap colours almost as soon as it has sense enough to wish for them. If it merely daubs the paper with shapeless stains, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... she showed him the anonymous scrawl which had kindled her fury against him. He turned it listlessly over in his hand. "I guess I know who it's from," he said, giving it back to her, "and I guess you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... numbed; my fingers only sensible of so much warmth as enabled me to hold a pen; and that obtained by rubbing the skin off, and by beating with my hands my shivering sides! Kneeling on the hoar moss on one knee, writing on the other, if the stiff scrawl could be called writing! My feet, by the time I had done, seeming to have taken root, and actually unable to support me for some minutes!—Love and rage then kept my heart in motion, [and only love and rage could do it,] or how much more than I did suffer must ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... dead—and upper earth with him has done; He's buried; save the undertaker's bill, Or lapidary scrawl, the world is gone For him, unless he left a German will:[508] But where's the proctor who will ask his son? In whom his qualities are reigning still,[gl] Except that household virtue, most uncommon, Of constancy to a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... receiving this joyful news, that it was with considerable difficulty I could scrawl about two or three lines to inform Lieutenant Maughn of the arrangements I had made. We were all so deeply affected by the gratifying tidings, that we seldom closed our eyes, but continued watching day and night for the boat. On ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... much," said Davenport, taking back the sheet. "You merely describe the handwriting itself. Your characterization, as far as it goes, would fit men who write very differently from this. It fits me, for instance, and yet look at my angular scrawl." He held up a specimen of his own irregular hand, beside the elegant penmanship of the note, and Larcher had to admit himself a humbug as ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... of the yards with some difficulty. They had a spiked switch to look out for, and a missile from an old building smashed the headlight glass. At the limits a man tossed a folded paper into the locomotive cab. It was a poor scrawl containing direful threats to anyone opposing the ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... graphomania[obs3]; phrenoia[obs3]. writer, scribe, amanuensis, scrivener, secretary, clerk, penman, copyist, transcriber, quill driver; stenographer, typewriter, typist; writer for the press &c. (author) 593. V. write, pen; copy, engross; write out, write out fair; transcribe; scribble, scrawl, scrabble, scratch; interline; stain paper; write down &c. (record) 551; sign &c. (attest) 467; enface[obs3]. compose, indite, draw up, draft, formulate; dictate; inscribe, throw on paper, dash off; manifold. take up the pen, take pen in hand; shed ink, spill ink, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... write after I have done. But I hope it does not puzzle little Dingley to read, for I think I mend: but methinks," he adds, "when I write plain, I do not know how, but we are not alone, all the world can see us. A bad scrawl is so snug; it looks like PMD." Again: "I do not like women so much as I did. MD, you must know, are not women." "God Almighty preserve you both and make us happy together." "I say Amen with all my heart and ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... hair, and glanced around the great frescoed room. The maid-servant had said something about the Signora's having left a letter for her; and there it lay on the writing-table, with her mail and Nick's; a thick envelope addressed in Ellie's childish scrawl, with a glaring "Private" dashed ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... Petit-Pot-de-Terre, there is your old mother's letter. If she knew as much as I do about you, scapegrace, she would never trouble herself whether you were dead or alive! Fagotin! Here is a bundle of Paris newspapers for you; they are quite new—only nine months old! Potele! Some woman has sent you a love-scrawl and some tobacco; I suppose she knew your passions all ended in smoke! Rafle! Here is a little money come for you from France; it has not been stolen, so it will have no spice for you! Racoleur! Here ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... his hand. It was sorely tumbled, damp, and covered with a dull, spotted, green mould, in consequence of being kept in a dark locker of the cabin. Of such a letter, Death himself might well have been the post-boy. Can'st not read it? cried ahab. give it me, man. aye, aye it's but a dim scrawl; —what's this? As he was studying it out, Starbuck took a long cutting-spade pole, and with his knife slightly split the end, to insert the letter there, and in that way, hand it to the boat, without its coming any closer to the ship. Meantime, Ahab holding the letter, muttered, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... tired to wonder what his words might portend, returned to the house, and, lingering only to scrawl a note that he was not to be awakened at the usual time, hastened to bed. As he laid his weary head upon the pillow the cold grey of dawn was stealing in at the windows and brushing out the depths ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... been made; yet nothing can be found which clearly refers to the ruins of Machu Picchu. Just when it was first seen by a Spanish-speaking person is uncertain. When the Count de Sartiges was at Huadquina in 1834 he was looking for ruins; yet, although so near, he heard of none here. From a crude scrawl on the walls of one of the finest buildings, we learned that the ruins were visited in 1902 by Lizarraga, lessee of the lands immediately below the bridge of San Miguel. This is the earliest local record. Yet some one must have visited Machu Picchu long before that; because in 1875, as has been ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... deep into your nature will be erased, and His own hand will trace on the page, poor and thin though it be, which has been whitened by His blood, the fair letters and shapes of His own likeness. Do not let your hearts be the devil's copybooks for all evil things to scrawl their names there, as boys do on the walls, but spread them before Him, and ask Him to make them clean and write upon them His new name, indicating that you now belong to another, as a new owner writes his name on a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... live!—and if a life, With large results so little rife, Though bearable, seem hardly worth This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth; Yet, Fausta, the mute turf we tread, The solemn hills around us spread, This stream which falls incessantly, The strange-scrawl'd rocks, the lonely sky, If I might lend their life a voice, Seem to bear rather than rejoice. And even could the intemperate prayer Man iterates, while these forbear, For movement, for an ampler sphere, Pierce Fate's impenetrable ear; Not milder is the general lot Because our spirits ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... attempt this impossible theme? While reflecting on my debt to thee, my heart becomes too big for its mansion. My hand falters, and the characters it traces run into an illegible scrawl. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... men and worst of correspondents, Robert Narramore had as yet sent no reply to the letters in which Hilliard acquainted him with his adventures in London and abroad; but at the end of July he vouchsafed a perfunctory scrawl. "Too bad not to write before, but I've been floored every evening after business in this furious heat. You may like to hear that my uncle's property didn't make a bad show. I have come in for a round five thousand, and am putting it into brass bedsteads. Sha'n't be able to get away until ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... neglect in a husband. The scrawl is in a woman's hand, and beareth on its face the ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the banner blew, The butler drank, the steward scrawl'd, The fire shot up, the martin flew, The parrot scream'd, the peacock squall'd, The maid and page renew'd their strife, The palace bang'd, and buzz'd and clackt, And all the long-pent stream of life Dash'd ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... amanuenses are busy with friends, and I fear this scrawl will give you much trouble to read.—With many ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... to drudge for the dregs of men, And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, And mingle among the jostling crowd, Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud— I often come to this quiet place, To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face, And gaze upon thee in silent dream, For ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... means, and at last wrote a very fine letter of ample explanation, regret, and entreaty, to his right honourable cousin. Neither Lady Russell nor Mr Elliot could admire the letter; but it did all that was wanted, in bringing three lines of scrawl from the Dowager Viscountess. "She was very much honoured, and should be happy in their acquaintance." The toils of the business were over, the sweets began. They visited in Laura Place, they had the cards of Dowager Viscountess Dalrymple, and the Honourable Miss Carteret, to be arranged wherever ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... or the illegible, meaningless ink scrawl upon the sheet within the boldly-addressed envelope would have aroused his suspicions at the outset. So well had Bough, that expert in human frailty, understood his subject, that the letter was ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... it did and envied us the free-masonry it was supposed to cover. A ridiculous make-believe which I rate at its full folly now, but one which cannot fail to arouse a hundred memories in Georgian. We will scrawl it on her door, or rather you shall, and according to the way she conducts herself on seeing it, we shall know in one instant what you with your patience and trust in time may not be able ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... easily worded scrawl to make an ordinarily normal heart beat faster, yet the heart of this simple child of the gods, gifted with genius and deprived of worldly wisdom as all such divine children are, throbbed uneasily, and her eyes were wet. More than this, she touched the signature,—the long-familiar name—with her ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... hexameter of similar import. It is of some interest to remark that, apart from armorial or fanciful initials, the standing of a house may be gauged by the handwriting, the titles of the larger monasteries being given in bold letters, while those of the smaller form an almost illegible scrawl. The greater houses would have been in a position to support a competent scribe—not so the lesser; and this is believed to have been the reason ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... not minded to afford him more entertainment than I need, and bade him begone before I opened the packet. He withdrew reluctantly. Then I unfastened Nell's parcel. It contained ten guineas wrapped in white paper, and on the inside of the paper was written in a most laborious awkward scrawl (I fear the execution of it gave poor Nell much pains), "In pay for your dagger. E.G." It was all of her hand I had ever seen; the brief message seemed to speak a sadness in her. Perhaps I deluded myself; her skill with the ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... anywhere, in any contortion or relaxation he or she wishes. Practically instantaneous is the method adopted by Rodin to preserve the fleeting attitudes, the first shiver of surfaces. He draws rapidly with his eye on the model. It is a mere scrawl, a few enveloping lines, a silhouette. But vitality is in it; and for his purposes a mere memorandum of a motion. A sculptor has made these extraordinary drawings not a painter. It will be well to observe ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the mantelpiece, on Hagar's unopened letters. At first her eyes wandered over the writing on the uppermost envelope mechanically, then a painful recognition came into them. She had seen that writing before, that slow sliding scrawl unlike any other, never to be mistaken. It turned her sick. Her fingers ran up to the envelope, then drew back. She felt for an instant that she must take it and open it as she stood there. What had the writer of that letter to do with George Hagar? She glanced at the ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... sighs, and sent them to my love; I praised that fair that none enough could praise; But plaints nor praises could fair Licia move; Above my reach she did her virtues raise, And thus replied: "False Scrawl, untrue thou art, To feign those sighs that nowhere can be found; For half those praises came not from his heart Whose faith and love as yet was never found. Thy master's life, false Scrawl shall be thy doom; Because he burns, I judge thee to the flame; Both your ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... various deceptions open to an ingenious management; prices were higher here than elsewhere; the coat-rooms were robbers' dens infested by Italian mafiosi; tips were extravagant and amounted in effect to ransom; and each meal-check was headed by an illegible scrawl which masked an item termed "service." The figure opposite would have covered the cost of a repast at Childs's. But New York dearly loves to be pillaged; it cherishes a reputation for princely carelessness of expenditure. It follows that freedom from extortion in places of ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... paper as it fell showed me that it was covered with the same Hebrew-like characters of which I already possessed more than one example. The surprise was acute, but the opportunity which came with it was one I could not let slip. Meeting her eye as the door closed on Nixon, I pointed at the scrawl she had thrown down, and wonderingly asked her if that was what Letty had found pinned to the ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... worth their weight in gold, either for their uniqueness or their beauty, or because they have belonged to illustrious men, and have their autographs in them. The copy of the English translation of Montaigne, containing the strange scrawl of Shakespeare's autograph, is here. Bacon's name is in another book; Queen Elizabeth's in another; and there is a little devotional volume, with Lady Jane Grey's writing in it. She is supposed to have taken it to the scaffold with her. Here, too, I saw a copy, which was printed at a Venetian ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... out came a slip of paper. I glanced at Burbank—he was still busy. I, somewhat stealthily, you may imagine, opened the paper and—well, my heart beat much more rapidly as I saw in a school-girl scrawl: ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... write before the voyage was over. It is true there were few people outside the forecastle that could tell what it was all about, unless they studied very closely his eccentric pronunciation and the wild scrawl of his writing. He never went far enough to get even a second mate's certificate. He thought it an unnecessary waste of time, seeing that he intended to leave the sea as soon as he could attain a pilot's branch. This he succeeded in doing, and had a long and successful career; ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... my hand something like your's—which, by the bye, you neglect rather too much: but, as what you write is good sense, every body will forgive the scrawl. ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... Yard, went over the details of the inquest, and concluded that you were the friend. We made inquiries about you, Mr Hannay, and found you were respectable. I thought I knew the motives for your disappearance—not only the police, the other one too—and when I got Harry's scrawl I guessed at the rest. I have been expecting you any time this past week.' You can imagine what a load this took off my mind. I felt a free man once more, for I was now up against my country's enemies only, and not ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... unprecedented measures to insure his safety, and has wrung from Sybil Lamotte this strangely worded, oddly and ineffectually disguised warning," for Ray, seeing not as the world sees, but with the eyes of love, had recognized in the strange scrawl the hand of the woman ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... nearly the last letter before the Alcestis was heard of at Spithead. Then she sailed; she sent in her letters to Plymouth, and her final greetings by a Falmouth cutter—poor Harry's wild scrawl in pencil ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... at apparently irregular, but probably ordered, intervals. It seemed to be no more than a piece of good luck that let me find him that night in a little room in one of the by-ways of Bloomsbury. He was sprawling angularly on a cane lounge, surrounded by whole rubbish heaps of manuscript, a grey scrawl in a foam of soiled paper. He peered up at me as I stood in ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... the opportunity for an apotheosis of self-sacrifice was past. Nothing remained now but to refuse the proffered bribe of claim and cabin by letter, for he must not wait their return. He tore a leaf from a blotted diary, begun and abandoned long since, and essayed to write. Scrawl after scrawl was torn up, until his fury had cooled down to a frigid third personality. "Mr. John Ford regrets to inform his late partners that their tender of house, of furniture," however, seemed too inconsistent with the pork-barrel table he was writing on; a more eloquent renunciation ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... have passed between business colleagues, who were on terms of close intimacy and easy familiarity. Clarendon's tone is almost uniformly brusque and off-hand, and he must have tried the King's patience terribly by the infamous illegibility of his handwriting. Charles's writing is a schoolboy scrawl, but it is uniformly legible.] and amongst his colleagues Hyde could count some who were his warmest and most trusted friends. They formed an inner circle, with common sympathies at once in their memories and in their aims, and unassailed as yet by the coarse profligacy, the ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... this morning," announced Ted. "I forgot to give them to you." He fished the aforesaid letters out of his pocket and examined them before handing them over. "One is from Dick—the other"—he held the large square envelope off and squinted at it teasingly. "Some scrawl!" he commented. "Reckless display of ink and flourishes, I ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... dollar cheque which Lily received with a blotted scrawl from Gus Trenor strengthened her self-confidence in the exact degree to which it effaced ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... trying to write this scrawl to you on a round milk container in a camp near London. We are not permitted to ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... hand. "For," said he, and confirmed it with an oath, "if I don't see him this very night it will be a pity:" words which were afterwards thought to have been prophetic by the curious in such matters. So Bellaroba entrusted him with her scrawl to "My love Angilotto," and the Captain chewed and swallowed it when she was not looking. Then he lifted her to his horse and rode with her into the green-sheltered Borgo, just as it was settling into twilight. And Olimpia, from her shutter, saw ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... constancy will attend you through life'" she had written in her old-country scrawl; "but in the end will prove your undoing, for you will meet your death at the hands of your ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... face, and feeling both pulse and skin, as well as hearing his story, would go softly with it to Peter's room; and there think and ask herself how her father, whose system she had long quietly observed, would have treated the case. Then she would write an illegible scrawl with a cabalistic letter, and bring it down reverently, and show it the patient, and "Could he read that?" Then it would be either, "I am no reader," or, with admiration, "Nay, mistress, nought ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the letter you expect. Then there was my ignorance and your brother James's ignorance to be thrown into the account. For the drawing, Sisson says Dr. Perelli has the description of it already; however, I have insisted on his making a reference to that description in a scrawl we have with much ado extorted from him. I pray to Sir Isaac Newton that the machine may answer: It costs, the stars know what! The whole charge comes to upwards of threescore pounds! He had received twenty pounds, and yet was so necessitous, that on our hesitating, he wrote ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... which they required Rhodolph to sign, absolving his subjects from their oath of allegiance to him. The degraded king writhed in helpless indignation, for he was a captive. With the foolish petulance of a spoiled child, as he affixed his signature in almost an illegible scrawl, he dashed blots of ink upon the paper, and then, tearing the pen to pieces, threw it upon the floor, and trampled it beneath ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... which you have been transplanted, I feel some compunctious visitings at my long silence. But, indeed, it is no easy effort to set about a correspondence at our distance. The weary world of waters between us oppresses the imagination. It is difficult to conceive how a scrawl of mine should ever stretch across it. It is a sort of presumption to expect that one's thoughts should live so far. It is like writing for posterity; and reminds me of one of Mrs. Rowe's superscriptions, "Alcander ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... a marvel, or the scrawl has no such importance," observed Alida, taking a billet that she now began to repent having ever written. "The language of politeness and female reserve must admit of strange perversions, or all who read are not the ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... show them to you, love,' said he. 'They're hardly fit for a lady's eyes—the most part of them. But look here. This is Grimsby's scrawl—only three lines, the sulky dog! He doesn't say much, to be sure, but his very silence implies more than all the others' words, and the less he says, the more he thinks—and this is Hargrave's missive. He is particularly grieved at me, because, forsooth he had fallen ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... seized the stylus on the lower part of the instrument and wrote in his characteristic scrawl, "All ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... Troy laundry, she taught Miss Anthony to clear-starch and iron them. Each summer she managed to be home long enough to assist with the canning, pickling and preserving. The little journal gives the best glimpses of her daily life, usually only a hasty scrawl of a few lines but containing many flashes of humor and wisdom. Thus ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... epistles of Matthew Haygarth. I felt that these letters had in all probability been carefully numbered by the lady to whom they belong, and that to tamper with them to any serious extent might be dangerous. I have therefore only ventured to retain one insignificant scrawl as an example of Matthew Haygarth's caligraphy and signature. From the rest I have taken copious notes. It appears to me that these letters relate to some liaison of the gentleman's youth; though I ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... all sorts of purposes. Had they known Celtic well, it is hardly credible that they should not have sometimes written in that language, as the Gauls did across the Channel. A Gaulish potter of Roman date could scrawl his name and record, Sacrillos avot, 'Sacrillus potter', on the outside of a mould.[1] No such scrawl has ever been found in Britain. The Gauls, again, could invent a special letter Eth to denote a special Celtic sound and keep it in Roman times. No such letter was ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield |
