"Sparse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... freaks among the sand rocks. The yellow grass sloped away from his feet mile after mile to the timber, and beyond that to the prismatic mountains. The variegated lodges of the Chis-chis-chash village dotted the plain near the sparse woods of the creek-bottom; pony herds stood quietly waving their tails against the flies or were driven hither and yon by the herdboys—giving variety to the tremendous ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... are capable of everything, so much so that the stalk yields to the grower's suggestions and becomes fleshy and swells into an ellipse similar to the turnip, of which it possesses all the merits of corpulence, flavour and delicacy; only the strange product serves as a base for a few sparse leaves, the last protests of a real stem that refuses to lose its attributes entirely. This ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... will not, willing, give, To feed an alien foe, The substance, all too poor and sparse, ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... long it lasted! A whole eternity before they could deal with those two men! From the roots of Sarvoelgyi's sparse hair hot beads ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... convoked to meet at Trent in March 1545, and Cardinals del Monte, Reginald Pole, and Marcello Cervini were appointed to represent the Pope. When the day fixed for the opening ceremony arrived, a further adjournment was rendered imperative owing to the very sparse attendance of bishops. The First Session was held on the 13th December 1545, and the second in January 1546. There were then present in addition to the legates and theologians only four archbishops, twenty-one bishops, and five generals of ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... gaunt man of about thirty with sparse reddish hair, perspiration glistening on his upper lip, stood at the mouth of a narrow way like the one Brett had come through. He wore a grimy pale yellow shirt with a wide-flaring collar, limp and sweat-stained, dark green ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... atoms and molecules. In gas the particles are distant from each other, like gnats flying in the air; in liquids, distant as men passing in a busy street; in solids, as men in a congregation, so sparse that each can easily move about. The congregation can easily disperse to the rarity of those walking in the street, and the men in the street condense to the density of the congregation. So, matter can change in going from ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... sparse cover they will manage to lie up. So admirably do their stripes mingle with the withered and charred grass-stems and dried up stalks, that it is very difficult to detect the dreaded robber when he is lying flat, extended, close to the ground, so still and ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... was old—so old that he seemed to be falling to pieces as he tottered forward. His skin was yellow and shrivelled, his mouth sunken, his hair sparse and grey; and from this weird face peered strange eyes—the eyes ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... and curtained windows of the Anglo-Southern Steamship Company's office did not invite any Mr. Wrenns to come in and ship, nor did the hall porter, a beefy person with a huge collar and sparse painfully sleek hair, whose eyes were like cold boiled mackerel ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... though certainly managed with wonderful skill, can never seem quite fair to one brought upon the English notions of "off-side." The concerted cheering of the students of each university, led by a regular fugle-man, marking time with voice and arms, seems odd to the spectator accustomed to the sparse, spontaneous, and independent applause of an ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... who moved in a higher sphere, and who, looking with contempt on vulgar fisticuffs and gouging, settled their difficulties satisfactorily according to the established rules of the DUELLO with sword, pistol, or rifle. Hostile meetings on the levee, below the city, where the population was sparse, and no impertinent interruptions could be apprehended, were frequent. Indeed, the intelligence, some pleasant morning, that a duel had just been fought, and one of the parties lamed in the sword arm, or scientifically run through the body with ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... his headset, disarranging his sparse gray hair. His face was tired and worn but his ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... learning and studies of those days are to be derived from any other source than from a comparison of the few catalogues of contemporary libraries remaining to us; and these help to show that the century was approaching its close before a few sparse rays of the first dawn of the Italian Renascence reached England. But this ray was communicated neither through the clergy nor through the Universities; and such influence as was exercised by it ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... behind Talbot Potter, and he turned to stare at a little figure in black—she had come so quietly out of the shadows of the scenery into Miss Lyston's place that no one had noticed. She was indefinite of outline still, in the sparse light of that cavernous place; and, with a veil lifted just to the level of her brows, under a shadowing black hat, not much was to be clearly discerned of her except that she was small and pale and had bright eyes. But even the two words she spoke proved the peculiar ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... the same day. The best spare room was already swept and garnished, and nothing remained but to take counsel with Heap the cook, and draw out a menu of a dinner which could most successfully combat the strain of waiting. The spinster's own appetite, though sparse, was fastidious, and Heap was a mistress of her art, so that between the two a dainty little meal was arranged, while Mason, not to be outdone, endeavoured to impart an extra polish to her already highly-burnished silver. ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... in north but sparse in south; domestic satellite system with 12 earth stations (20 additional domestic earth stations are planned) international: 5 submarine cables; microwave radio relay to Italy, France, Spain, Morocco, and Tunisia; coaxial cable to Morocco ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... having considerably more than one hundred inches of rain annually are very apt to be forest-covered, and therefore to be deficient in food-producing plants. Such localities have usually a sparse population, in spite of the profusion of vegetation. In some parts of India, lands that have been left idle for a few seasons produce such a dense jungle of wild vegetation that to reclaim them for ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... Cloud came up the steps, and they went in to a rather dreary evening service with a sparse congregation and a bored-looking choir, who passed notes and giggled during the sermon. Allison and Leslie sat and wondered what kind of a shock it would be to them all if the Great Companion should suddenly become visible in the room. If all that about His being always ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... passed occasional baobabs, with trunks fifteen or twenty feet thick and offshoots covering a quarter of an acre. Then the trees thinned out to the sparse and shriveled all-but-dead things that struggle for existence on the border-lines between man's land and desolation. At last we drew down the smoked panes over the window to escape the glare and sight of ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... hills. He walked now into the thick night of a close-grown clump of dwarf-oaks, which weaved so dense a thatch above his head that he knocked against the boles. The trees thinned, he crossed here and there a dimpled lawn in the pure starshine, he traversed a sparse grove of larches in the dreamy twilight, he came out again upon the grassy lip of a mountain torrent which henceforth kept him company, and which, speaking with many voices, seemed a friend trying to catch his mood. For here it leaped over an edge of rock, and here in a tiny waterfall, ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... mile, however, above the head of the narrow pond, the ardent explorer came upon a level of sparse alder swamp. Here he found the stream just beginning to spread over its low banks. The cause of this spreading was a partial obstruction in mid-channel—what looked, at first glance, like an accidental accumulation of brush and stones and ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... months after the demise of Blakeville's leading apothecary. She ordered a life-size portrait of her husband, to be hung in the store, and they wept together over the prescription—that is to say, over the colour of the cravat and the shade of the sparse thatch that covered the head of the departed. Mrs. Davis never was to forget his sympathetic attitude. She never quite got over explaining the oversight that had deprived him of the distinction of being ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... known Aunt Sarah all his life and that she was an old woman when he was a small boy. Small in stature, about five feet tall, Aunt Sarah is rathered rounded in face and body. Her milk-chocolate face is surmounted by short, sparse hair, almost milk white. She is somewhat deaf but understands questions asked her, responding with animation. She walks with one crutch, being lame in the right leg. On events of the long ago her mind is quite ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... the camels were turned out at once to graze off the unappetizing-looking thorns, sparse and dusty, that peppered the field of view like scabs on a yellow skin. There was no fear of their wandering too far, for if the camel ever was wild, as many maintain that he never was, that was so long ago that the whole species has forgotten it, and he wouldn't know what to do without his ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... Geography-note: sparse bunch grass, prostrate vines, and low-growing shrubs; primarily a nesting, roosting, and foraging habitat for seabirds, shorebirds, ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... however, one friend in the Chamber,—a deputy newly elected for Deux-Sevres, named M. Sarigue, a poor fellow not unlike the inoffensive, ignoble animal whose name he bore,[2] with his sparse, red hair, his frightened eyes, his hopping gait in his white gaiters. He was so shy that he could not say two words without stammering, almost tongue-tied, incessantly rolling balls of chewing-gum around ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... saw of him, was Goth, Vandal, Hun, Visigoth, all in one. The ship was damp, dark, dirty, old, and cold. She was not warmed by steam, and the fire could not be lighted because of a smoky chimney. There were no lamps, and the sparse candles were obviously grudged. The stewards were dirty and desponding, the serving inhospitable, the cooking dirty and greasy, the food scanty, the table-linen frowsy. There were four French and two Japanese male passengers, who sat at meals in top-coats, comforters, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... afterward the little party were comfortably ensconced in the shade of the sand hill whose sparse grasses grew ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... short ranges of the Great Basin, this foodful little pine is the commonest tree, and the most important. Nearly every mountain is planted with it to a height of from 8000 to 9000 feet above the sea. Some are covered from base to summit by this one species, with only a sparse growth of juniper on the lower slopes to break the continuity of its curious woods, which, though dark-looking at a distance, are almost shadeless, and have none of the damp, leafy glens and hollows so characteristic of other pine woods. Tens of thousands of acres occur in continuous belts. Indeed, ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... reports from certain of my agents," said Gallo, fingering his various papers, "that there is and has been for some time a subversive movement amongst the sparse population ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... vasta. Spade fosilo. Spade (at cards) piko. Spain Hispanujo. Spangle briletajxo. Spanish-fly kantarido. Spare (extra) ekstra. Spare indulgi. Sparing, to be sxpari. Sparing (saving) sxparema. Spark fajrero. Sparkle brili. Sparrow pasero. Sparrow-hawk akcipitro. Sparse maldensa. Spasm spasmo. Spatter sxprucigi (sur). Spawn fisxsemo. Speak paroli. Speak through the nose nazparoli. Speaker parolanto. Spear lanco. Special speciala. Specialise specialigi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... sum to his credit at the provincial bank, and an intense desire to make himself useful in this time of sore need. Mr. Carter was a tall, thin, austere-looking man; one, seemingly, who had macerated himself inwardly and outwardly by hard living. He had a high, narrow forehead, a sparse amount of animal development, thin lips, and a piercing, sharp, gray eye. He was a man, too, of few words, and would have been altogether harsh in his appearance had there not been that in the twinkle of his eye which ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... very generally excluded from our common schools, in consequence of the prejudices of teachers and parents. In some of our cities there are schools exclusively for their use, but in the country the colored population is usually too sparse to justify such schools; and white and black children are rarely seen studying under the same roof; although such cases do sometimes occur, and then they are confined to elementary schools. Some colored young men, who could bear the expense, have obtained in European seminaries the education ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... it ran, raced along the edge. Higher they went, until Ridley and Rachel walked behind; next they turned along a lane scattered with stones, where Mr. Pepper raised his stick and silently indicated a shrub, bearing among sparse leaves a voluminous purple blossom; and at a rickety canter the last stage of the ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... stages. Between the great towns and in other places where the population is dense stages are preferred because they afford an additional opportunity to make a profit from passengers; but where the population is sparse and on crossroads it is generally carried on horseback. Unconnected with passengers and other objects, it can not be doubted that the mail itself may be carried in every part of our Union with nearly as much economy and greater dispatch on ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... was of a most rudimentary description. It will be difficult for the modern English mind to grasp the parish of Newcastle, New Brunswick, in the 'eighties—sparse patches of cultivation surrounded by the virgin forest and broken by the rush of an immense river. For half the year the land is in the iron grip of snow and frost, and the Miramichi is frozen right down to its estuary—so that "the rain ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... this mighty work, it would brace us for larger efforts, and fit us for larger results. It would simplify and deepen our motives, and thus evolve from them nobler deeds and purer sacrifices. To all objections from so-called prudence, to all calculations from sparse results, to all cavils of onlookers who may carp and seek to hinder, we should have one all-sufficient answer. It is not for us to bandy arguments on such points as these. We care nothing for difficulties, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... short. His face was beardless, lemon-coloured, and anxious-looking. It was disfigured by a number of longitudinal ruts, a quarter of an inch deep, the cavities of which seemed clogged with ancient dirt. The hair of his head was black and sparse. Instead of the twin membranous organs of Spadevil, he possessed but one; and this was in the centre of ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... at last, but still he drove steadily on through the sparse settlements. Just at nightfall we came to a beautiful little stream, and stopped to let the horses drink. I heard its rippling, reassuring song on the pebbles. Thereafter all is dim and vague to me until my mother called out sharply, "Wake ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... rural subjects: "A la campagne," says one of their poets, "ou chaque feuille qui tombe est une elegie toute faite." Through an avenue of scraggy poplars we approach a dilapidated chateau, whose owner is playing dominoes at the cafe of the nearest provincial town, or exhausting the sparse revenues of the estate at the theatres, roulette-tables, or balls of Paris. People leave these for a rural vicinage only to economize, to hide chagrin, or to die. So recognized is this indifference to Nature and inaptitude for rural life in France, that, when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... turned my head to see and listen. The speaker, who wore a sergeant's chevron and carried one arm in a sling was a tall, loosely made person, with a pale face, light eyes of a washed-out blue tint, and very sparse yellow whiskers. His mouth was weak, both lips being almost alike, so that the organ might have been turned upside down without affecting its expression. His forehead, however, was high and thinly covered with sandy hair. ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... bony elbows more comfortably, fanned himself until his sparse locks waved gently to and fro, and, nodding, spoke ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... left her to a delightful memory of him, a warm sense of his approval, and a fierce ambition to be worthy of it, for which she would have sacrificed herself or the other miserable retainers about her, as a matter of course. She had driven Waya and the other squaws far along the sparse tableland pasture in search of missing stock; she herself had lain out all night on the rocks beside an ailing heifer. Yet, while satisfied to earn his praise for the performance of her duty, for some feminine reason she thought more frequently of a casual remark he had made on his last visit: ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... weaknesses so properly handled before. But they had, nevertheless, to go round the people and tell them that what the Doctor had said was to be understood spiritually, and chiefly as a warning to other denominations, else there had been a thin kirk and but one sparse table instead of the usual four or five, on the day of high communion in the Cairn ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... shallow cove that faced them, but a few more steps showed him that just here the point of land curved around this cove, which swept far inland, and broadened out wonderfully into several acres of meadow-hay dotted with sparse, stunted cedars. ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... as the wheel-grating did he look up. She was hidden from him by the back of her deck-chair; but he had the view of the owner of the thin, aged legs seated on the skylight, his clean-shaved cheek, his thin compressed mouth with a hollow in each corner, the sparse grey locks escaping from under the tweed cap, and curling slightly on the collar of the coat. He leaned forward a little over Mrs Anthony, but they were not talking. Captain Anthony, walking with a springy hurried gait on the other side of the poop from end to ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... graduates trotting about arm in arm, and singing; he heard the mandolins on the little balconies play an old refrain and the university cheering afterward; saw the old professor he had cared for most of all, with the thin white hair straggling over his silken hood, following the band in the sparse ranks of his class. And he saw his own Commencement Day—and the station at the junction where he stood the morning after, looking across the valley at the old towers for the last time; saw the broken groups of his class, standing upon the platform on the other side of the tracks, waiting ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... pre-eminently the home of wandering, nomadic tribes. This wild, treeless region is divided by rocky ranges running from east to west. Parallel to these are deep, hot and for the most part waterless valleys. In the springtime these valleys are covered by a sparse vegetation; from a few perennial springs flow waters that irrigate the immediately surrounding land; but they soon lose themselves in the thirsty desert. During the summer the vegetation disappears almost entirely, and the struggle for subsistence becomes intense. The ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... amphitheatre of sand, falling in irregular gradations; and at the foot of all lay the lake, calmly azure, with its horizon, whether near or far for it was almost impossible to say— mystically vague. On either hand rose other hills of sand, set with sparse pines and covered, in patches, with growths of wild grape, the fruit half ripened. Within the amphitheatre, at various levels, rose grimly a few stumps and shreds of cedars long dead and long indifferent to the future ravages of the enemy. The whole ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... or rain. We spent nearly a week in that region, and were quite bewildered by the fabulous tales of recent discoveries, which at the time were confined to the several forks of the American and Yuba Rivers.' All this time our horses had nothing to eat but the sparse grass in that region, and we were forced to work our way down toward the Sacramento Valley, or to see our animals perish. Still we contemplated a visit to the Yuba and Feather Rivers, from which we had heard of more wonderful ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... in the silver robe of the moonlight. We were camped—Harry and I, two Kaffirs, a Scotch cart, and six oxen—on the swelling side of a great wave of bushclad land. Just where we had made our camp, however, the bush was very sparse, and only grew about in clumps, while here and there were single flat-topped mimosa-trees. To our right a little stream, which had cut a deep channel for itself in the bosom of the slope, flowed musically on between banks green with maidenhair, ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... served a term in state prison for house-breaking, dropped casually into the bank and asked the cashier to "back a letter" for him, since writing was not one of his own strong points. The cashier was obliging, and in as much as gossip was usually sparse in that community went on the while chatting with the president of the institution, who had ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... suspended its twinkling drops from the decorated vault. They looked round them confusedly, made shy for the moment by Benyon's having struck a note more serious than any that had hitherto souuded between them, looked at the sparse furniture, draped in white overalls, at the scagiiola floor, in which the great cluster of crystal pendants seemed to ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... church, by the feature that the clergyman couldn't get to his own desk without going through the clerk's, or couldn't get to the pulpit without going through the reading-desk—I forget which, and it is no matter—and by the presence of this personage among the exceedingly sparse congregation. I doubt if we were a dozen, and we had no exhausted charity school to help us out. The personage was dressed in black of square cut, and was stricken in years, and wore a black velvet cap, and cloth shoes. He was of a staid, wealthy, and dissatisfied ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... and crawl through the long grass, snooping round the beanpoles and taking the devoted block-house in flank? I swallowed my stiff-necked English pride and began to crawl. Then I saw a better plan. I slipped through the sparse line of dwarf oaks smothered with crimson poison-ivy that bordered the forest path and crept as silently as I could towards the street until I was abreast of the stump. As I paused Beppo was making his round of the fort and espied me. Instantly ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... silhouettes against a sky of blue. Between these mountain ranges lies everywhere the great prairie; a monotonous waste to the stranger's eye, but not without its charm. It is brown and bare; for, except during a few short weeks in spring, the sparse bunch-grass is sear and yellow, and the silver gray of the wormwood lends an added dreariness to the landscape. Yet this seemingly desert waste has a beauty of its own. At intervals it is marked with green ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... greenery, a species of transition between the plant and animal, where life makes haste to come in flowers and insects, floating there like worlds in ether:—be it a cottage with its garden of cabbages, its vineyards, its hedges overhanging a bog, surrounded by a few sparse fields of rye; true image of many humble existences:—be it a forest path like some cathedral nave, where the trees are columns and their branches arch the roof, at the far end of which a light breaks through, mingled with shadows or tinted with sunset reds athwart ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... in a blissful dream and watched my road unfold. The sun set the pine-boles aflare where the hedge is sparse, and stretched the long shadows of the besom poplars in slanting bars across the white highway; the roadside gardens smiled friendly with their trim-cut laurels and rows of stately sunflowers—a seemly proximity ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... his description, his teeth were large and yellow, while the two eye-teeth, larger than their fellows, showed under his lean lips like fangs. His eyes were yellow and muddy, as though Nature had run short on pigments and squeezed together the dregs of all her tubes. It was the same with his hair, sparse and irregular of growth, muddy-yellow and dirty-yellow, rising on his head and sprouting out of his face in unexpected tufts and bunches, in appearance like clumped and ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... lay in the bowels of a hollow. The hollow was crowded with spruce, a low, sparse-growing scrub, and mosquitoes. Its approach was a defile which suggested a rift in the hills at the back. Its exit was of a similar nature, except that it followed the rocky bed of a trickling mountain stream. A mile or so further on this gave on to the more gracious ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... and there entered a middle-aged, rather grizzled man, with shaggy eyebrows, sparse beard, and bent shoulders. He glanced in hesitatingly, his eyes wandering ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... steady eye were not inviting for personal arbitration of the matter in hand. He put up his two pairs of shears, put on his coat, and walked out of the shed. The time was passed when Red Bill or Terrible Dick (ruffians whom a sparse labour-market rendered necessary evils) would have flung down his shears upon the floor and told the manager that if he didn't like that shearing he could shear his———sheep himself and be hanged to him; or, on refusal of instant payment, would have proposed to bury ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... small enclosure where thin trees were planted among sparse grass all brown and withered by the sun, they paused, and Stahl pointed to a mound, marked at either end by rough stone boulder. A date was on it, but no name. O'Malley calculated the difference between the Russian Calendar ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... itself, first ahead of the train, then alongside and then behind, became speedily but 'a dot in the distance,' to use Bob's words over again; the snugly secluded seats of the county gentry, the scattered villages and sparse red-roofed farmhouses, with their outposts of hayricks and herds of cattle and other stock, that one moment appeared and the next disappeared from view behind masses of foliage, all dancing a wild Sir Roger de Coverley sort of country ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... led up over another little hill winding through clumps of hazel brush and a sparse growth of oak and beech. From the summit of this they could see the gypsy camp below them, in an open glade by the roadside. It was as the Wilbur twin had said: there were gayly-painted wagons—houses on wheels—and a campfire and tethered horses and the lolling gypsies themselves. ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... readers almost unabridged, in view of the singular delicacy and pure-mindedness of the Jurgen mythos: in all, not more than a half-dozen deletions have seemed expedient (and have been duly indicated) in order to remove such sparse and unimportant outcroppings of mediaeval frankness as ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... looks so sure, that what Australia wants and has not it seems self-evident in a little while she will have. And so she might if she would go the right way for it, and instead of keeping three-quarters of her sparse inhabitants in towns, would take the work that lies before her nose and subdue the land and replenish it; and instead of shutting the gates deliberately on rival labour, would draw the stranger to her coasts ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... note: dominates North Atlantic Ocean between North America and Europe; sparse population confined to small settlements along coast, but close to one-quarter of the population lives in the capital, Nuuk; world's second ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... living soul, not from the dead body. True that the science of American linguistics is still in its infancy, and that a proper handling of the materials it even now offers involves a more critical acquaintance with its innumerable dialects than I possess; but though the gleaning be sparse, it is enough that I break the ground. Secondly, religious rites are living commentaries on religious beliefs. At first they are rude representations of the supposed doings of the gods. The Indian rain-maker mounts ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... interior, he spent some time on the larger islands at the mouth of the Amazon, on one of which he immediately noticed the scarcity of trees, while "the abundance of every kind of animal life crowded into a small space was here very striking, compared with the sparse manner in which it is scattered in the virgin forests. It seems to force us to the conclusion that the luxuriance of tropical vegetation is not favourable to the production of animal life. The plains are always more thickly ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... an appeasing tone. "I should have made the approach with more finesse. Abruptness is one of my defects. But now that I've blundered in, I'd just as well finish. You don't belong out here in the wide open spaces, in these sparse settlements. You belong in the congested areas, where big things are being done, where there's planning, execution, accomplishment. Why, you've taken over both ends of a little hoss trade, laid out all the plans, ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... sparse little village I told him of the Dartons. I had had no news of them for the past four years, and inquiries among the neighbors left me only the more at sea. Lisbeth they seldom saw, they said; she never went to church or meetings; and, especially since her mother, in an unprecedented ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... apartment with two outer walls. Gordon opened the door softly and entered with James behind him. The bed stood between the two west windows. It was a northwest room. The afternoon sun had not yet reached it. It was furnished after the usual fashion of country hotel bedrooms. It was clean and sparse, and the furniture had the air of having a past, of having witnessed almost everything which occurs to humanity. It seemed battered and stained, though not with wear, but with humanity. The old-fashioned black walnut bedstead in which the sick man lay seemed to have a thousand voices ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... given by the sparse reports from the eastern army to the question of the entire foreign press: "Where has Hindenburg been keeping himself?" Wishes and speculations may thus busy themselves as much as they like with the answering of that question. In the Russian version ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... them, the innocent man was sure to suffer for the misdeeds of the guilty, unless both joined together for defence, the former had no alternative save to make common cause with the latter. Moreover, in a sparse backwoods settlement, where the presence of a strong, vigorous fighter was a source of safety to the whole community, it was impossible to expect that he would be punished with severity for offences ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... built, with a kind of elastic grace in his disjointedness. When he smiled he was positively handsome; in repose his features were nearly plain, the lips too indecisive, and the eyes lacking in lustre. A sparse tuft of beard at his chin—he was otherwise smoothly shaven—lengthened the face. There was, when he willed it, something very ingratiating in his manner—even Clara admitted that—a courteous and unconventional sort of ease. In all these surface characteristics he ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Scarce conscious of aught in the earth or the sky, In a swoon of the heart, all her senses have reeled,— But she prays for endurance,—for here is the field. The flight and pursuit, so harassing, so hot, Have drifted all combatants far from the spot: And through the sparse woodlands, and over the plain, Lie gorily scattered, the wounded and slain. Oh! the sickness,—the shudder,—the quailing of fear, As it leaps to her lips,—"What if ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... of the Peace, was sitting in the office of the Golden Age when we found him, reading the exchanges and offering gratuitous advice to the editor. He was a shortish man, thick in body, with sparse hair and hay-colored, ragged mustache. His face was florid, his pale eyes protruded. He was a wise-looking man, excellently well suited in appearance for the office which he filled. We explained to him our errand. ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... ancient Sicani are seen arriving and driven, like all doomed races, south and west out of the land, and in their place the Siculi flourish, and a Samnite colony voyages over the straits from Italy and joins them. Here for three centuries these sparse communities lived along these heights in fear of the sea pirates, and warred confusedly from their mainhold on Mount Taurus, or the Bull, so called because the two summits of the mountain from a distance resemble a bull's horns; and they left ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... stood was a sizable village, or young town, big enough to have traffic signs and parking zones and a main street and a movie show and such like pretentious things. Between this town and the shore were a few outlying houses, but mostly sparse woodland. To the north ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... are beautiful, fertile to the tops, covered with the richest sward of bluegrass and white clover, the inclosed fields waving with the natural growth of timothy. The inhabitants are few and population sparse. This is a magnificent grazing country, and all it needs is labour to clear the mountain-sides of its great growth of timber. There surely is no lack of moisture at this time. It has rained, I believe, some portion of every day since ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... mingle with other thoughts; the beech alley was transformed to a path between ilex-trees, and here and there a vine climbed from bough to bough, and sent up waving tendrils and drooped with purple grapes, and the sparse grey-green leaves of a wild olive-tree stood out against the dark shadows of the ilex. Clarke, in the deep folds of dream, was conscious that the path from his father's house had led him into an undiscovered country, and he was wondering at the strangeness of it all, when ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... of bone and sparse of flesh in the mountain-desert. It was the more surprising to Pierre to see this young fellow with the marvelously delicate-cut features. By some freak of nature here was a place where the breed ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... care would be required in Noah's time, with his fine alluvial flats, and sparse population, but in Malthus's time the command could not be fully carried out without labour, ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... voices chimed in, and at last there was an outburst of applause, sparse and feeble, it ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... climate are unsuited to the growth of large trees, but adapted to scrub jungle of a drought-resisting type, which at one time covered very large areas from the Jamna to the Jhelam. The soil on which this sparse scrub grew is a good strong loam, but the rainfall was too scanty and the water-level too deep to admit of much cultivation outside the valleys of the rivers till the labours of canal engineers carried their waters to the uplands. East of the Sutlej ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... set the candlestick on the mantel-shelf, and threw some pine-knots on the fire, which immediately broke into a blaze, and showed him to be a lank, narrow-chested man, past sixty, with sparse, steel-gray hair, and small, deep-set eyes, perfectly round, like a fish's, and of no particular color. His chief personal characteristics seemed to be too much feet and not enough teeth. His sharply cut, ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... look along the years And see the flowers you threw... Anemones And sprigs of gray Sparse heather of the rocks, Or a wild violet Or daisy of a daisied field... But ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... silk, trimmed with black fur, which showed here and there a few worn-out, defective spots. A small green velvet cap, the shape of which reminded the beholder of the cap of the learned Melancthon, covered his expansive, intellectual forehead, which was shaded by sparse light-brown hair. ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... leading thither was not absolutely barren, but it was scrawny and dismal. A coarse sand alternated with chunks of black asphalt. A few trees managed to find a foothold here and there, and there was sparse vegetation in patches. ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... forehead, large hazel eyes within a singularly large orbit of brow; a straight, thin, slightly aquiline, well-cut nose—such features were at open variance with the broad, thick-lipped, sensual mouth, the heavy pendant jowl, the sparse beard on the glistening cheek, and the moleskin-like moustachio and chin tuft. Still, upon the whole, it was a face and figure which gave the world assurance of a man and a commander of men. Power and intelligence were stamped upon him from ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... another. The great autumnal military manoeuvres were in progress, and a merry party, including a number of ladies, were riding home from the mimic battlefield. We passed through a narrow lane, bordered on each side by groups of stunted willows and birch trees, under the sparse shadow of which nestled a few cottages painted in blue, pink, or yellow, in true Polish fashion. Suddenly our progress was arrested by terrifying screams proceeding from one of these hovels. Several of us were ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... 4,000 persons were there, digging for gold with great success. By July, 1849, it is thought, 15,000 had arrived. Nearly all were forced to live in booths, tents, log huts, and under the open sky. The sparse population previously on the ground left off farming and grazing and opened mines. People became insane for gold. Immigrants soon came in immense hordes. In 1846, aside from roving Indians, California had numbered not much over 15,000 inhabitants. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... was incorporated in 1788. The village bearing the name was formed in 1799 (incorporated as a city in 1854), and soon became the center of a large trade running in long lines east and west from the river. Dutchess County had at this time but a sparse population. There was a post-road from New York to Albany; but the building of the Dutchess Turnpike from Poughkeepsie to Sharon, Conn., connecting with one from that place to Litchfield, which took place in 1808, was a capital event in its history. This made a considerable strip of western Connecticut ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... him fifty yards to where he lay dead. He was a fine trophy, and we at once set the boys to preparing it and taking the meat. In the meantime we sauntered down to look at the stream. It was a small rapid affair, but in heavy papyrus, with sparse trees, and occasional thickets, and dry hard banks. The papyrus should make a good lurking place for almost anything; but the few points of access to the water failed to show many interesting tracks. Nevertheless we decided ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... hunt and the murder of Siegfried is quite matter-of-fact and sparse as to scenery: 'By a cold spring he soon lost his life ... then they rode from there into a deep wood ... there they encamped by the green wood, where they would hunt on the broad mead ... one ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... pulled out. A small pebble and the thumb nail or the blade of the battle-ax and the bulb of the thumb are frequently used as forceps; they never cut the hair of the face. It is common to see men of all ages with a very sparse growth of hair on the upper lip or chin, and one of 50 years in Bontoc has a fairly heavy 4-inch growth of gray hair on his chin and throat; he is shown in Pl. XIII. Their bodies are quite free from hair. There is none on the breast, and seldom any on the legs. The pelvic growth is ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... on this anniversary. Deliberately, she sat alone by the river, waiting for the pageant of sunset to pass; and when she reached home the moon was up, a great white moon that turned the waving waste of pale, sparse grasses to ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... that they had amassed immense fortunes in the exercise of their infamous calling. The entries in the books seized at their house, though sparse, would have led, if made public, to scandals, involving many in high places; it was therefore judged best to limit the accusation to the two deaths by blood-poisoning of Angelique ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... as we have said, of very rude construction—such a one as could only spring up in so remote a region, and among so sparse a population. With the exception of the roof, the frame-work of which had been covered with raw buffalo hides, it was built wholly of rough logs, notched at the ends in a sort of dove-tail fashion, and when not lying closely, filled in with chunks of wood, over which a rude plaster of mud had ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... two thousand miles from Earth there had still been enough hydrogen traces in the ether to give purchase to the explosions of their water-motor. At six hundred miles from the moon they had run into a sparse gaseous belt that had enabled them to change direction and slow their speed. They had hoped to find hydrogen at a thousand or twelve hundred miles ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... into the valley of a winter stream, now filled with patches of sparse wheat, just beginning to ripen. The mountains grew more bleak and desolate as we advanced, and as there is a regular descent in the several ranges over which one must pass, the distant hills of the lands of Moab and Ammon were always in sight, rising like ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... said she; "there wasn't any card with them." As she spoke she seemed to see the face of the young history teacher, Mr. Latimer, with his sparse, sandy beard, and she felt how very distasteful he was to her, even if gilded, so ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... changing the nature of the environment in cheese by washing the curds on the racks with warm water. In this way the sugar and most of the ash were removed. Under such conditions the character of the bacterial flora was materially modified. While the liquefying type of bacteria was very sparse in normal cheddar, they developed luxuriantly in the washed cheese. The flavor at the same time was markedly affected. The control cheddar was of good quality, while that made from the washed curds was decidedly off, and in the course of ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... man whose coat did not fit, and whose hair was sandy and sparse, and who had keen, twinkling blue eyes which managed to see a great deal more than one would suspect from the rest of his face. He pumped the Little Doctor's hand up and down three times and called her "My dear young lady." After the first ten minutes, the Little Doctor's spirits rose considerably ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... tramp his escort marched unmoved along. Max marched in the middle, unbound like a prisoner of war rather than the miscreant he had been called. Once away from the governor's palace the people were sparse—ones and twos and a few groups here and there—until the gates of the Durend works ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... wires thrummed, thrummed, thrummed above them; the rails were glaring hard lines; the goldenrod smelled dusty. Across the track was a pasture of dwarf clover and sparse lawn cut by earthy cow-paths; beyond its placid narrow green, the rough immensity of new stubble, jagged with wheat-stacks ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... the rattlesnake; and there was no music to the desolation save the petulant chirp of the cricket. At the sides an occasional stream tumbled out of the mountains to be all but drunk away at once by the thirsty sands. Along the banks of these was the only green to be found, sparse fringes of willow and wild rose. On the borders of the valley, where the steeps arose, were little patches of purple and dusty brown, oak-bush, squaw-berry, a few dwarfed cedars, and other scant growths. At ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... but she laughed as a friend should, and, taking his arm, showed him through vast rooms where ivory-panelled walls and trim window hangings were reflected dimly in dark, rugless floors, and the sparse furniture showed that Lucy had been "collecting" with a long purse. "By Jove!" he said. "You have been going it! Fanny tells me you had a great 'house-warming' dance, and you keep right on being the belle of the ball, not any softer-hearted than you ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... shall blossom, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and the caperberry shall burst: the three are linked together as being images from natural objects, not because of their symbolising similar things. The blossoming of the almond tree probably refers to the sparse white hairs of age. The name of this tree in Hebrew is founded on the fact that it is the first to blossom; though not strictly white, its blossoms may be called whitish: the whitish blossoms, solitary while all is bare around, just yield ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... anciently a dependency of the Sultanate of Brunei (Borneo), hence the dominion over this island of the Sultan of Sulu as suzerain lord of Brunei. At the beginning of the 18th century Spaniards had already settled in the north of it. It had a very sparse population, and a movement was set on foot to subjugate the natives. In order to protect the Spanish settlers from Mahometan attacks a fort was established at Labo. However, the supplies were not kept up, and many ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... be internal colonization. There are considerable tracts of land in what once was Russian Poland, the population of which, owing to the havoc of war, is abnormally sparse. Some districts, like that of the Pripet marshes, which even at the best of times had but five persons to the kilometer, are practically deserts. For the Russian army, when retreating before the Germans, drove before it a huge population computed at eight millions, who inhabited the territory ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... feet above the sea, called La Burons, and I passed just in time to see a sheep fall with a plunge and splash into the sea, shot by a man in a boat. This appeared to be the local way of slaughtering the sheep which are put on the rocks to crop the sparse herbage which grows above high-water mark. After a fortnight among the rocks sheep will get so agile and surefooted, that a man has no chance with them in running or climbing, hence the rifle has to ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... sunshine. They had delayed longer than they had intended to in making their start and already most of the other prospective contestants had concluded testing their engines or giving a final look over to brace wires and turn-buckles. A sparse sprinkling of spectators from the village was already on the grounds, early as ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton |
