"Scrubby" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this is talking no how. Do you think a man of substance, that's got above the world, is to be treated like a little scrubby apprentice? Let every man have his own, that's always my way of thinking; and this I can say for myself, I have as good a right to shew my head where I please as ever a member of parliament in all England: and I wish every body here could ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... turned away with a shudder of disgust. There was nothing to be got now out of a prolonged interview with his captured foe. He had seen him: that was sufficient. He had seen the super-exquisite Sir Percy Blakeney locked up in a common cell with some of the most scrubby and abject rogues which the slums of indigent Paris could yield, having apparently failed in some undertaking which had demanded for its fulfilment not only tattered clothes and grimy hands, but menial ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... river, in the present county of Birtie, in consideration of which they relinquished all claims of any other land in the province, butted and bounded as follows, viz.: Beginning at the mouth of Quitsnoy swamp, running up the said swamp four hundred and 35 poles, to a scrubby oak near the head of the swamp, by a great spring; then north ten degrees east, eight hundred and fifty poles, to a persimmon tree on Raquis swamp; then along the swamp and Pacosin main course north fifty-seven degrees west, ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... man of forty, with coarse black hair and scrubby moustache, not of the type that readily appreciates the delicacies of a situation. Paul conceived a ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... of brush and scrubby timber separated the camp from the actual work. From the water's edge to the donkey engine was barely four hundred yards. From donkey to a ten-foot jump-off on the lake shore in a straight line on a five per cent. gradient ran a curious roadway, ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... A stooping figure in a shabby, black frock-coat, the figure of a man who wore a dilapidated bowler pressed down upon his ears, who had a greasy, Semitic countenance, with a scrubby, curling, sandy colored beard, sparse as the vegetation of a ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... neglect, he strapped and locked the trunk, glanced at his watch and took up his hat. He passed out through the immaculate kitchen, odorous of soapsuds and sunlight, and down through the orchard, which Zenas Third with his saw and shears had converted from a neglected and scrubby riot into a spruce and orderly parade. Unconsciously his feet led him over the same course he had taken on that first walk of his, which ended in an unintentional and disconcerting visit to The Cedars. As before, he followed the brook, much less a brook now than then ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the threshold, a man of middle age, with white drawn face and scrubby beard. His clothes were in rags, his hair unkempt, and his light grey eyes ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... molting severely and was almost denuded as to tail feathers, would attempt to emulate his display, and would follow him closely, his wattles swelling and reddening with fancied success, making all this fuss about what had been a fine array, but now was reduced to five scrubby, ragged, very dirty remnants of feathers. He fancied himself equally fine, and ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... up, are they?" Warble sniffed. "Looking at me through the footle, distorted little microscope of their own silly scrubby little souls! Pooh, they couldn't, one of them, make ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... of cultivation. I have often been struck with the great general similarity between the barren and sandy tracts of this district, and many parts of New South Wales, where sandstone is the prevailing rock. In both countries there are the same low scrubby bushes, at the Cape consisting of Heaths and Proteae, and in Australia of Epacridae and Banksiae—the last the honeysuckles of the Colonists. Even the beautiful sunbirds of the Cape, frequenting especially the flowers of the Proteae, are represented by such of the Australian ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... Spalding, in Lincolnshire; at Downington-in-Holland, in the same county; at Brockley Woods, near Bristol;[11] at Brownsea Island, near Poole, in Dorsetshire; and, in Scotland, Colonel Montagu mentions one in a small island, in a lake, where, there being only a single scrubby oak, much too scanty to contain all the nests, many were placed on the ground.[12] Besides these, we are acquainted with a small one in the parish of Craigie, near Kilmarnock, in Ayrshire.[13] We have little doubt but there are several more unrecorded, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... find him quite so scrubby as he sounds. He's very proper and clean-shaven, with a good pair of dark, Dutch eyes, which he gets from his mother; and I wish he had got her business ability with them, and her horse sense, if the lady will excuse me. She runs the property and he spends it, as far as ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... "shure, it was not me, plase your honour, only the parrot, Captain." "What parrot, you lying rascal?" "There, Captain, Sir, look forenenst you." The captain did look up, and saw me perched on the branch of a scrubby hawthorn-tree. Surprised and amused, he exclaimed, "By Jove! how odd! What a magnificent bird! Why Poll, what the deuce brought you here?" "Eh, sirs," I replied at random, "it was aw' for the love of the siller." The captain, and his little groom Midge, who had picked ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... canon. We could not follow the stream any farther, as there was no path by the channel. It would be necessary to pass over the ridge that formed the southern jaw of the chasm. There was a plain trail among scrubby pines; and, following our guide, we commenced ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... Plaza, since called Portsmouth Square. At that time it was a wind-swept, grass-grown, scrubby enough plot of ground. On all sides were permanent buildings. The most important of these were a low picturesque house of the sun-dried bricks known as adobes, in which, as it proved, the customs were levied; a frame two-story structure ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... the middle which overlooked the woods. I had one fair view of the country before the sun went down, but I was too thirsty to waste any light in viewing the prospect, and set out directly to find water. First, going down a well-beaten path for half a mile through the low scrubby wood, till I came to where the water stood in the tracks of the horses which had carried travellers up, I lay down flat, and drank these dry, one after another, a pure, cold, spring-like water, but yet I could not fill my dipper, though I contrived ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... from risk of meeting natives, and we were now getting so near the shore that we could hear the beat of the waves upon a reef that lay off our hut, and sheltered the boat from being washed about, when all of a sudden, as we were traversing some low, scrubby bushes which were more thorny than was pleasant, Ebo suddenly struck us both on the shoulder, forcing us down amongst the leaves and twigs, and on looking sharply round we saw that he had dropped our splendid specimens, and, wild-eyed and excited, ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... first recollection of life. I was barely three. I can remember the majestic gum-trees surrounding us, the sun glinting on their straight white trunks, and falling on the gurgling fern-banked stream, which disappeared beneath a steep scrubby hill on our left. It was an hour past noon on a long clear summer day. We were on a distant part of the run, where my father had come to deposit salt. He had left home early in the dewy morning, carrying me in front of him on a little brown pillow ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... across a rising plain, very wild and scrubby, as I imagine, by the frequent deviations of our beast, and then through a forest of cork oaks, which keep their leaves all the year through, and here, by reason of the great shade, we went, not knowing whither, as if blindfold, only we were conscious of being on rough, ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... to the left, so as to get nearer to the snow, and where it seems easy walking we'll take to it; but for the most part I shall keep to the division-line between the snow and the scrubby growth. It will be rough travelling; but we shall not have to cut our way through briars. I'll lead ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... petty yet so spiteful! All along, Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it; Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit Of mute despair, a suicidal throng: The river which had done them all the wrong, Whate'er that was rolled ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... basilica of the Sacred Heart; but to reach the house itself one had to skirt the wall and climb to the Place du Tertre, where one found the facade and the entrance. Some children were playing on the Place, which, planted as it was with a few scrubby trees, and edged with humble shops,—a fruiterer's, a grocer's and a baker's,—looked like some square in a small provincial town. In a corner, on the left, Guillaume's dwelling, which had been whitewashed during the previous spring, showed its bright frontage and ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... see, we haven't money, and there's little chance of our getting any. That scrubby old uncle won't leave anything to us; I feel too sure of it. I often feel disposed to go and beg him on my knees to think of us in his will.' She laughed. 'I suppose it's impossible, and would be ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... he said, drawing Nan's advertisement from his pocket; "we had come down here to surprise you girls, and to have a little fun and tennis; and I meant to have treated you to the public ground at the hotel, as I knew you had only a scrubby little bit of lawn; and this is what has met my eyes this morning! You have deceived mother and me; you have let us enjoy our holiday, which I didn't a bit, for I had a sort of nasty presentiment and a heap of uncomfortable thoughts; and all the while you were slaving away at this hideous ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... and was never opened except when he thought a rabbit was about to jump into a net. The other was but half open, and so overhung with a thick grey eyebrow as to be barely visible. His cheeks were the hue of clay, his chin scrubby, and a lanky black forelock depended over one temple. A battered felt hat, a ragged discoloured slop, and corduroys stained with the clay of the banks completed his ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... not been able yet, during the several hours of their journey, to take any pleasure in the scenery or in her mount. For in the first place there was nothing to see but scrubby little gnarled cedars and drab-looking rocks; and in the second this Indian pony she rode had discovered she was not an adept horsewoman and had proceeded to take advantage of the fact. It did not help Carley's predicament to remember that ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... Stevenson was to write to me, I recall—and precisely on the occasion of The Tragic Muse—that he was at a loss to conceive how one could find an interest in anything so vulgar or pretend to gather fruit in so scrubby an orchard; but the view of a creature of the stage, the view of the "histrionic temperament," as suggestive much less, verily, in respect to the poor stage per se than in respect to "art" at large, affected me in spite of that as justly tenable. An objection of a more ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... that horse,' said Mr. Petulengro, coming after me; 'the dook tells me that in less than three months he will be sold for twice seventy.' 'I will have nothing to do with him,' said I; 'besides, Jasper, I don't like his tail. Did you observe what a mean scrubby tail he has?' 'What a fool you are, brother,' said Mr. Petulengro; 'that very tail of his shows his breeding. No good bred horse ever yet carried a fine tail—'tis your scrubby-tailed horses that are your out-and-outers. Did you ever hear of Syntax, brother? That ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... Manawagonish Cove and marched through the woods to the St. John river above the falls, crossing in canoes to the east side of the river and landing at what is now Indiantown. Proceeding on through scrubby woods and over rough limestone they reached Portland Point undiscovered and took William Hazen and James White prisoners. James Simonds and Israel Perley had accompanied Col. Goold to Halifax, and in this way Mr. Simonds escaped capture, but it seems that a little later ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... altogether into the wooded moorland. Cultivation returned at intervals, then vanished again. I was upon an undulating plateau with far-off higher hills closing the horizon all around. The reclaimed land was in the hollows or upon the surrounding slopes; but here, too, the scrubby forest might be seen stretching for miles without a break. The heat was intense, and the sky ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... alone. For Joses had thrown down his blanket, and laid his rifle upon it carefully, while over the lock he had placed his broad Spanish hat to keep off the moisture of the night air. Then he had gone silently off at a trot over the short and scrubby ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... you see where it got my poor boy. A man's a right," said the old fellow in deadly earnest, "to marry a girl he's growed up with—stead of tryin' to get above his raisin'. See where it got my poor boy," he repeated. The troubled eyes sought the neglected grave in the scrubby orchard far below. ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... everything to say respecting the relative standing of the individual among the members of his kind—whether or not he shall be a blighted or a perfect specimen. A fine, sweet, juicy crabapple is more desirable than a scrubby, diseased Jonathan. ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... by Herr Liebert that goes straight up towards the forest above us. It had been made to go to a clearing, where ambitious agricultural operations were being inaugurated, when Herr Liebert hurt his foot. Up this we go, it is semi-vertical while it lasts, and it ends in a scrubby patch that is to be a plantation; this crossed we are in the Urwald, and it is more exquisite than words can describe, but not good going, particularly at one spot where a gigantic tree has fallen down across a little rocky ravine, and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... of the second day Stair was finding himself unfit for human society, because he had not been able to shave since he left the prison. Of course he had brought nothing with him. There was no time. His hand went unconsciously every other minute to his scrubby chin. In truth, his Norse blondness did not allow it to show as much as he supposed. But that did not detract from the pervading sensation ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... light between the stars over Bulwan, those few who had stayed the night under roofs began creeping away to the holes in the river bank or the rough, scrubby ground at the foot of the hills south-west of the town, where the Manchesters guard the ridge. Then we all waited, silent with expectation. The clouds turned crimson. At five the sun marched up in silence. Not a gun was heard. "They will begin at six," we said. Not a sound. "They are having a ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... I noticed where the Mercutian Light had burned off the scrubby desert vegetation. As we got closer I could see it now in the sunlight, standing vertically up in the air, motionless. There were signs all about now where the light had burned. We were passing along a little gully—the country here was somewhat rough and broken up—when something ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... the valley beyond, similar in character, had yet more of gloom at the time of which I write. In the higher part there were large plantations of firs, set too closely to attain any size, and remaining stunted in height and scrubby in appearance. Indeed, many of the smaller and more weakly had died, and the bark had fallen down on the brown soil neglected and unnoticed. These trees had a ghastly appearance, with their white trunks, seen by the dim light ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... thus engaged I thought I heard a sound of crying. We both listened, and it came again. Leaving our tasks we followed the sound and behind a scrubby willow tree came upon a most beautiful young woman crouched on the ground weeping and moaning, and at the same time digging into the earth with a small wand as if in search of something. She did not appear ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn
... occasionally to cry pity for his friend's verses, given up to such ferocious executioners. But these literary murderers, ready to destroy a comrade's book, are more pitiless than the Inquisition. There were two inquisitors more relentless than the others; first, the little scrubby fellow who claimed for his share all the houris of a Mussulman's palace; another, the great elegist from the provinces. Truly, his heartaches must have made him gain flesh, for very soon he was obliged to let out ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... climbed the fence where the two men had climbed it he could see them in the pallid light, far away across the level, scrubby meadow land, walking toward a ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... for that phenomenon—being, beyond all comparison the most faithful, attached, and affectionate animal that I have ever known; and that is saying much. He seems to think it necessary to atone for his ugliness by extra good conduct, and does so dance on his lame leg, and so wag his scrubby tail, that it does any one, who has a taste for happiness, good to look at him—so that he may now be said to stand on his own footing. We are all rather ashamed of him when strangers come in the way, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... grown when I first laid my eyes upon him. He was sitting in the sun, on top of a rail fence, blinking at me consideringly. The fence skirted a little trail that led from my back yard down to Calapooia Creek. It seemed trying to push back a fringe of scrubby underbrush which ran down a hillside; a fringe which was, in truth, but a feeler from the great forest of Douglas fir which one saw marching, file upon file, row upon row, back and back to the ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... built, broad-shouldered man of about fifty, with a massive jaw, covered with a scrubby beard; the face of a bulldog; a grim, masterful man, who never speaks except when he has to. He enters and seats himself in a chair by the table.] Will you have a cigar? [Grimes takes a cigar, without comment, and chews on it; sits, ...
— The Machine • Upton Sinclair
... for the harmony of the entire illusion. Had the panorama been invented in the time of Pope Leo X., Raffael would still, I doubt not, have smiled in contempt at the regret, that the broom-twigs and scrubby bushes at the back of some of his grand pictures were not as probable trees as those ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... low ridge, it became evident to Major-General Babington that the Highlanders not only had failed to carry the Magersfontein heights, but that they required instant reinforcement. He accordingly desired Major R. Bannatine-Allason, the battery commander, to move north-east over the scrubby ground, and not to come into action until he was stopped by the bullets or could get a clear view of what was going on at the front. The battery, with an escort of 12th Lancers and mounted infantry, advanced at a trot, and its commander, having obtained ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... interesting journey to us, who knew only the Western Desert, to note the difference between it and Sinai. To our eyes Sinai did not appear to be a desert at all, as there were scrubby bushes of sorts growing in nearly every hollow, various kinds of camel grass, and even a few flowers—such as poppies and one or two species of lilies. After the waste of misshaped lumps of limestone and volcanic looking boulders, which were the only decoration of the Western Desert, this sort of ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... day they had an addition to their small family. A little, wiry-haired, scrubby, melancholy Irish terrier followed O'Connell for miles. He tried to drive him away. The dog would turn and run for a few seconds and the moment O'Connell would take his eyes off him he would run along and catch him ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... pair of nesting birds have been broken up once or twice during the season, they become almost desperate, and will make great efforts to outwit their enemies. A pair of brown thrashers built their nest in a pasture-field under a low, scrubby apple-tree which the cattle had browsed down till it spread a thick, wide mass of thorny twigs only a few inches above the ground. Some blackberry briers had also grown there, so that the screen was perfect. My dog first started the bird, as I was passing near. By stooping low and ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... note of the poor mother. The male birds, however, of this species did not show any marital concern for their partners. They were usually seated near the nests, but at once took to flight upon our approach. Further on, among a thicket of scrubby vegetation, we found a rookery of many thousands of the superb red-tailed tropic bird (Phaeton phoenicurus), also engaged in incubation. Their nests were mere circular excavations in the sand, under the shade of the bushes of the thicket. Each nest contained an egg of pure white, dotted ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... because of its eccentric and clownish markings, streaks and spots of black, white, buff, gray and chestnut. It is met with in small flocks on the mountains and less frequently in the valleys. It frequents scrubby wooded places rather than open hill sides and is very easy to approach and kill; this confidence or stupidity together with its clownish appearance are the reasons for its commonly used local name. Their nests are hollows in the ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... considerable portions of ironstone in it. A few small tea-trees of the colonists grew in the sand that formed the dry bed of the stream. Our course continued afterwards uninterrupted, over a gradually rising plain, of a sandy scrubby nature, until reaching the foot of Mount Fairfax, when we crossed another small watercourse, trending South by West where, for the first time, we noticed a solitary stunted casuarina. Mount Fairfax is the southern and most elevated part of an isolated block, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... in a crevasse blown almost clean of snow, well above the tree-line, where only scrubby unkillable thornbushes clustered. We tore down some of them and piled them up as a windbreak, and bedded beneath it; but we all thought with aching regret of the comfort of the camp gear we'd abandoned. The going had ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... opened and swallowed him up. Wondering what it all could mean, the boy rose to his feet, and peered out, parting the bushes still more and advancing a little from his concealment. The ground was quite level, covered here and there with boulders and a scrubby undergrowth, but there was nothing to be seen of the warrior. During the second or two occupied in lowering the hammer of his rifle, the Apache had disappeared, flashing out, so to ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... March in the year 1815. The picture of life and color, breaking on a scene of wintry grandeur and solitude, rises before my eyes. I see the frozen, snow-covered waste of the Lake of the Woods, the surrounding evergreen forests and towering hills, the low leaden sky overhead. Along the edge of the scrubby-timbered shore, five husky dogs come at a trot, harnessed in single file to a sledge. The dogs are short-legged and very hairy, with long snouts, sharp-pointed ears, and the tails of wolves; the sledge is a simple toboggan ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... incredible. The great barrier of mountain-range, that cut it off from the rest of the world, seemed also to cut it off from light and air. The atmosphere hung lifeless, the occasional bellow of range-cattle sounded far-off and muffled. Vegetation was scant, the sage-brush grew close and scrubby, even the brilliant cactus flowers seemed to have abandoned the valley to its fate. A lone group of dead cotton-woods grew like sentinels close to the rocky walls. Their twisted branches, gaunt and bare, writhed upward as if in dumb supplication. There was about them a something that made ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... past a safe reach of marsh, while our assailants were riding by cross-paths to attack us at the next bluff. It was Reed's Bluff where we were first attacked, and Scrubby Bluff, I think, was next. They were shelled in advance, but swarmed manfully to the banks again as we swept round one of the sharp angles of the stream beneath their fire. My men were now pretty well imprisoned below in the hot and crowded ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... wastes are covered by a scrubby plant known as mountain sage. It rises from a tough gnarled root in a number of spiral shoots, which finally form a single trunk, varying in circumference from six inches to two feet. The leaves are grey, with a strong offensive smell resembling true sage. In other places there ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... bodies, it is true, but where were their manes and tails? A scrubby, pickety ridge along the neck, and a bare stump projecting behind, were all that remained of the flowing honors with which they had come gallivanting down to "bear away the bell" at Hickory Creek, or, in ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... Pemberton's. He's got a tan shirt on, plaited in front, and every time Aunt Anne moves he's up like a jumping-jack till she gets sat down again. He says 'My word!' and 'in the States'—like that. He's got a mustache the color of your hair, Split, a scrubby, stiffy little mustache. His eyes are little twinkling things, and I believe—" she paused in her indictment to give the criminal the benefit of the doubt—"I do believe he had gloves on when he first came! I won't be sure; ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... cocoa-nut and bread-fruit trees, extends as far as Tangalle, fifty miles. A few miles beyond this village the wild country begins, and Hambantotte is the next station, nearly ninety miles from Yalle. The country around Hambantotte is absolutely frightful-wide extending plains of white sand and low scrubby bushes scattered here and there; salt lakes of great extent, and miserable plains of scanty herbage, surrounded by dense thorny jungles. Notwithstanding this, at some seasons the whole district is alive with game. January and February are the best months for elephants ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... I said. "We have been driving through lanes lined by dogwood and yet that little tree below and the scrubby bit of hillside make a more perfect picture than any ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... in the evanescent night. She went out for a moment on to the balcony. It was a wonder-world: the moon over the snow heights, the pallid valley-bed away below; the river hoarse, and round about her, scrubby, blue-dark foothills with twiggy trees. Magical it ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... two sisters; of the Hoopers even. About them, his new tone was no doubt a trifle patronising, but still, quite tolerable. Ewen Hooper, he vowed, was "a magnificent scholar," and it was too bad that Oxford had found nothing better for him than "a scrubby readership." But "some day, of course, he'll have the regius professorship." Nora was "a plucky little thing—though she hates me!" And he, Falloden, was not so sure after all that Miss Alice would not land her Pryce. "Can't we bring ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... closed his desk. The thin man with an eloquent gesture turned and rushed out of the office, past Isabelle, who caught a glimpse of a white face working, of teeth chewing a scrubby mustache, of blood-shot eyes. John locked his desk, took down his hat and coat, and came into the outer office. He kissed his wife, and they went to drive behind the Kentucky horses, talking of pleasant matters. After a time, Isabelle ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... such was the desolating and depressing influence of the weather and the landscape, that we reached Civita Vecchia as undecided as we had left Rome. On the one hand, there had been the land, soaked and sodden,—wild, shagged with scrubby growths of timber and brooded over by sullen clouds, and visibly inhabited only by shepherds, leaning upon their staves at an angle of forty-five degrees, and looking, in their immovable dejection, with their legs wrapped in long-haired goat-skins, like satyrs that had been converted, and ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... in June a rickety buck-board rattled up to Morrison's and inquired the way to Big Shanty. The passenger was short and broad-shouldered; wore a derby hat shading a pair of crafty eyes as black as his thick, scrubby beard. In his hand he carried a small ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... that if her mother were cast upon a desert island, she would thank God for her deliverance, make a garden, and find something to preserve. Preserving was almost a mania with Mrs. Bergson. Stout as she was, she roamed the scrubby banks of Norway Creek looking for fox grapes and goose plums, like a wild creature in search of prey. She made a yellow jam of the insipid ground-cherries that grew on the prairie, flavoring it with lemon peel; and she made a ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... lightnin' struck at the runnin' herd With a crack like the stroke of a cowboy's lash. Thar! I could see it; I tell ye, pard, Things seem'd whittl'd down sort of fine— We wasn't five hundred feet from the gulch, With its mean little fringe of scrubby pine. ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... on her head a fantastic cap or turban;"—by No. 11, a bearded man, "wearing a conical Phrygian cap, his mouth wide open," and his expression "obstreperously animated;"—and by No. 12, "a middle-aged or old man, with a snub nose, high forehead, and thin, scrubby hair," we will go on to the fairer examples of Divine heads ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... away. "Buy that horse," said Mr. Petulengro, coming after me; "the dook tells me that in less than three months he will be sold for twice seventy." "I will have nothing to do with him," said I; "besides, Jasper, I don't like his tail. Did you observe what a mean scrubby tail he has?" "What a fool you are, brother," said Mr. Petulengro; "that very tail of his shows his breeding. No good bred horse ever yet carried a fine tail—'tis your scrubby-tailed horses that are your out-and-outers. Did ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... and called Jung Frau; but lo, a spring is touched, she seizeth the poor wretch with iron arms, and opening herself, hales him inside her, and there pierces him through and through with two score lances. Secondly, in all great houses the spit is turned not by a scrubby boy, but by smoke. Ay, mayst well admire, and judge me a lying knave. These cunning Germans do set in the chimney a little windmill, and the smoke struggling to wend past, turns it, and from the mill a wire runs through the wall and ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... utilize the forces of nature and thus shorten time and ignore space? Whence comes the improvement of live-stock in this country? Compare the cattle of early New England with those on modern farms. Was the little scrubby stock of our forefathers replaced by large, sleek, well-bred cattle through accident? No, it was by the discovery of investigators and its practical adaptation by breeders. Compare the vineyards and the orchards of the early ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... 8.8 a.m.; passed through long dry grass with scrubby box; then flooded box flats to Paul Cooroogannie and reached depot at 6.5 p.m. It blew quite a gale of wind during the day from south-south-west with dust and a ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... dense thickets and scrubby clumps of trees, lay below in plain sight. Once hidden there, I would be hard to find. Picking up my rifle, I ran swiftly along the base of the slope and soon gained the cover ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... his close, scrubby beard, and bared his teeth viciously. Behind him, from the distant sandbank, the rebel bullets rapped unceasingly at the launch's iron plating. "But I am the senior in rank," he repeated again. "Officially I could not resign the ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... fitters from the railway workshops. This image fixed his wavering purpose. He would try to find old Giorgio if he could. God knows what might have happened to him! He made a few steps, then stopped again and shook his head. To the left and right, in front and behind him, the scrubby bush ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... it in his mind to protest against this material interpretation of his disreputable state; but the sight in the mirror of his ignominiously scrubby and battered appearance silenced him. The barber's explanation was as good as any, seeing that he himself could give no satisfactory account of the circumstances which had reduced him to his sorry pass. So Desmond held ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... dear, remember what we've just heard. He's been used to comfort and to having someone to look after him. How long do you think it'll be before he gets tired of a scrubby room in a scrubby hotel? Besides, he hasn't any money. He ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... time the land here was cleared, but being stony and rough it had been used for pasture, and was partly overgrown with bushes. There were thousands of young wild apple-trees here, scrubby and thorny, where ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... the beasts to Dracontius, and bade him lead the way to his racecourse. He merely waved his hand and pointed to where they were standing, and said, "There, this ridge is just the place for running, anywhere, everywhere." "But how," it was asked, "will they manage to wrestle on the hard scrubby ground?" "Oh! worse knocks for those who are thrown," the president replied. There was a mile race for boys, the majority being captive lads; and for the long race more than sixty Cretans competed; there was wrestling, boxing, and the pankration (7). Altogether it was a beautiful spectacle. ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... did then, he usually resented advice. The mouth of the bay grew wider, until Carroll could see most of the forest-girt shore on one side of it; but the surf upon the point was growing unpleasantly near. Wisps of spray whirled away from it and vanished among the scrubby firs clinging to the fissured crags behind. The sloop, however, was going to windward, for Vane was handling her with nerve and skill. She had almost cleared the point when there was a rattle and a bang inside ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... at any rate been no hostilities to-day, but from Captain Lambton's Battery on Junction Hill, where the naval 4.7-inch quick-firing gun is being mounted, we have by the aid of the signalman's powerful telescope watched a significant Boer movement going on for hours. We can see them among the scrubby trees between Lombard's Kop and Umbulwaana (or Bulwaan as it is more generally called), and hurrying off behind that hill along the road that leads southwards. That road cuts the railway not more than six or seven miles out, and their movement threatens our line ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... with just enough slope to give root-hold to giant furze bushes, its summit a series of rocky and boggy terraces, trending down at one end into a ravine, and at the other becoming merged in the depths of an aboriginal wood of low scrubby oak trees. It seemed as feasible to ride a horse over it as over the roof of York Minster. I hadn't the vaguest idea what to do or where to go, and I clave ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... led the attack, supported by first-line troops and strong reserves, thanks to this intricate system of galleries on Sabotino's crest. The attack was watched by countless observers, who, on other mountains, were hanging breathless on the result of this hour's work. Innumerable patches of scrubby undergrowth had been set on fire by the Italians to prevent their serving Austrian snipers and were now wrapped in low-hanging clouds of black smoke. Between these black patches the Italians crept ahead ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... opinion that LaHume followed and spied upon us on the occasion of our second trip, and very likely on the succeeding one. I am sure I saw someone raise his head above a scrubby knoll to the south, and am reasonably certain I recognised LaHume's gray cap. He was not about the club that evening until after our return, and the same thing happened on the following evening. His manner led me to believe he knew more than he cared to tell. He was ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... the view which met their eyes as they rounded the turn at the top of the canyon. Turning, the narrow trail wound its way around the mountainside until one looked down upon the tops of foothills, green with scrubby vegetation. Then it stretched in an irregular line down the mountainside, to disappear in their midst. Beyond lay ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... cold and still over the Base. Floodlights spilled brilliance over the dunes and the scrubby earth, high fences casting laced shadows across the burning ...
— The Hills of Home • Alfred Coppel
... made good time, and as we descended into the desert, the air became warmer, the scrubby cedar growth began to fail, and the bunches of sage were few and far between. I turned often to gaze back at the San Francisco peaks. The snowcapped tips glistened and grew higher, and stood out in startling ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... girl had traversed the place several times that day, so was quite sure of her way. Nevertheless, she glanced somewhat anxiously around as she hurried onward, especially so where the bushes and scrubby trees stood the thickest. ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... his head-quarters—and Park's Mill was a marge of firm soil, along which a column could pass, in scrubby country, and between the bogs was a sort of bridge of dry land. By these two avenues the English might assail the Scottish lines. These approaches Bruce is said to have rendered difficult by pitfalls, and even by caltrops ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... gone a hundred yards they heard shoutings, and guessed that they were being followed. Just here the road crossed a ravine full of boulders and rough scrubby growth, whereas beyond it was bare and open. Peter seized Castell and dragged him up this ravine till they came to a place where, behind a great stone, there was a kind of hole, filled with bushes and tall, dead grass, into which ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... until they reached the wood and flung themselves panting under the shade of a scrubby ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... proceeding. Nearly from the Falls of St. Anthony to the Rum river, the Mississippi is a continued chain of rapids, with eddies, formed by winding channels. The land, on both sides, consists of Prairie, with scarcely any timber, except small groves of scrubby oaks. Not far from this spot is Red Cedar lake, the grounds in the vicinity of which are considered, by the Indians, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... my instigation. You were very active then; and so few faces did you see (though a considerable town was within a few hundred yards), that the appearance of one made you rush about and bark tremendously. Cross a field, pass through a hedgerow of very scrubby and stunted trees, cross a railway by a path on the level, go on by a dirty track on its further side; and you come upon the sea-shore. It is a level, sandy beach; and for a mile or two inland the ground is level, and the soil ungenial. There are sandy downs, thinly covered ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... as he approached Tim, who was gazing intently at a patch of low scrubby trees a short distance ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... itself and that something had crawled under his bed and out of the door, that had roused the suspicions of the men in the house—and he slept at night on the coal in the cellar. He was actually tearful when he rubbed his hand over his scrubby chin, and said he hadn't had a shave for a week. He took somebody's razor, he said, but he couldn't get hold of a portable mirror, and every time he lathered up and stood in front of the glass in the dining ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 201. impalpable, intangible, evanescent, imperceptible, invisible, inappreciable, insignificant, inconsiderable, trivial; infinitesimal, homoeopathic[obs3]; atomic, subatomic, corpuscular, molecular; rudimentary, rudimental; embryonic, vestigial. weazen|!, scant, scraggy, scrubby; thin &c. (narrow) 203; granular &c. (powdery) 330; shrunk &c. 195; brevipennate[obs3]. Adv. in a small compass, in a nutshell; on a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... reeds, with the breakers playing about them, while the distant sea stretches out to a horizon, with dark, stormy clouds brooding over the solitary waste. A remarkable union of the beauty of land and water is produced by a foreground of brilliant fancy flowers relieved by a scrubby tree in the background, with the faint responsive touch of yellow in the clouds over a calm sea, where gentle motion is only indicated by the little ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... did apparently exist a handful of artistes to whom Miss Verepoint had no objection, and these—a scrubby but confident lot—were promptly engaged. Sallow Americans sprang from nowhere with songs, dances, and ideas for effects. Tousled-haired scenic artists wandered in with model scenes under their arms. A great cloud of chorus-ladies settled ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... fortifications would inspire less apprehension anywhere in France, where there was at least an army always ready to take the field. But cold, cramped quarters in foggy little Louisbourg, between the estranging sea and an uncouth land of rock, bog, sand, and scrubby vegetation, made all the world of difference in the soldier's eyes. Add to this his want of faith in works which he saw being scamped by rascally contractors, and we can begin to understand why the general ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... see at first; the banks are lined by scrubby bushes, and on them, in a sandy open patch, we see a man falling and bowing at his evening devotions; a few camels pass along the raised bank, looking like gigantic spiders against the illuminated sky, and there comes faintly to us the distant bark ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... footpath where it dipped down into the park and followed the rim to the left, passing through a heavy growth of manzanita to a bare hill dotted with scrubby sage, at the other side of which was a small gulch of aspens straggling down into the valley. Back of these a log cabin squatted on the slope. One had to be almost upon it before it could be seen. Its back door looked down upon the entrance to a canon. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... of Martian fizz, suddenly very depressed. He didn't really want the false papers. He just wanted to get away from the deadly humdrum existence on Spaceman's Row. He walked wearily back to his scrubby little bedroom to wait for night to come. He hated to go back to the room, because he knew he would think about Tom and Astro and the Space Academy. Now he couldn't allow himself to think about it any more. It was ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... clank of the hoofs behind. I stepped over the horse, and drew my sword. A short distance ahead was a clump of scrubby pines; there I would turn and make ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... watched the big mill foreman as he walked down the trail to the mill. Then, as was his custom when perturbed in mind, Pierre crossed the dusty waggon trail and seated himself on a boulder, leaning his back against a scrubby spruce. He let his eyes rest contentedly on a big, square-faced building. Rough stone steps led up to a broad veranda, from which rose, in barbaric splendour, great sheets of shining plate-glass, that gave an unimpeded view of a long mahogany bar backed by tiers of glasses and ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... country retains individuality, and yet puts on romance, especially the rough, shaggy region between Port Arthur and Winnipeg. For four hundred miles there is hardly a sign that humanity exists on the earth's face, only rocks and endless woods of scrubby pine, and the occasional strange gleam of water, and night and the wind. Night-long, dream and reality mingle. You may wake from sleep to find yourself flying through a region where a forest fire has passed, a place of grey pine-trunks, stripped of foliage, ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... sort of young man's neck that has two great flutings down the back, here and here—so! And a little, meanish head with scrubby hair—And rather bad ears. Shoulders bad, narrower than the hips; turn-down collar, ready-made short jacket, trousers baggy and a little frayed at the heels. That's how he took me. I came very quietly up the staircase. I did not carry a light, you know—the candles are on the landing ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... of the furnace. Details began to emerge. One was a fat man, another was a gaunt man, a third was a little man—all smooth of face. Then there was a man with a scrubby beard. And there was another smooth-faced man, riding a little apart from the others, a little more alert, perhaps, his garments not their garments, his horse a little rounder of outline, a little more graceful of movement. They might have been in conversation, these riders out of the ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... first light of dawn that we saw, close on board, the metropolitan island of Hawaii. We held along the coast, as near as we could venture, with a fresh breeze and under an unclouded heaven; beholding, as we went, the arid mountain sides and scrubby cocoa-palms of that somewhat melancholy archipelago. About four of the afternoon we turned Waimanolo Point, the westerly headland of the great bight of Honolulu; showed ourselves for twenty minutes in full view; and then fell again to leeward, and put in the ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... united in passionate admiration for Grant. Cheering crowds followed him in the streets. Fools and wise men alike were eager to know him, to boast that they had spoken to him or touched his hand. Yet at first sight Grant seemed to have little of the hero about him. He was an "ordinary, scrubby looking man, with a slightly seedy look," said one who saw him in those days. "He did not march nor quite walk, but pitched along as if the next step would bring him to his nose." But his eye was clear and blue, he ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... artist who secretly entertained his sister in his studio grew with the minutes. It would be his privilege very shortly to read that scrubby dauber a lesson in deportment ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... name of Mrs. B., it seems, wants a teacher. I wish she would have me; and I have written to Miss W. to tell her so. Verily, it is a delightful thing to live here at home, at full liberty to do just what one pleases. But I recollect some scrubby old fable about grasshoppers and ants, by a scrubby old knave yclept AEsop; the grasshoppers sang all the summer, and starved ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... scrubby, littery; ill-tilled, scratched rather than ploughed; physiognomic of Czech Populations, who are seldom trim at elbows: any beauty it has is on the farther side of the Dobrowa, which does not concern Prince Leopold, Prince Karl, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... could float some logs down the creek," said Rob, "and maybe pick up some drift-wood on the beach and tow it around with the dory. And there's some drift right here at the mouth of our creek. We could build it over there just back of those scrubby trees, and with the cover of those and the tall grass no one could see it from the water unless he looked mighty close. And, as John says, it might save us a walk ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... Colard, brushing his scrubby moustache from his lips, replied that he and Missonier had been in Rose Feral's tavern, alongside the Bancal house, that night. "Had I heard a noise, sir," he said boastfully, "I should have gone to the rescue, for ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... serrated ridge of highlands beyond which the surveyor has never yet run his lines,—beyond which the surveyor's lines would be superfluous, indeed, and futile; for the soil is of the barren, rocky kind, and the timber of the scrubby. Not quite so savage is this frontier, indeed, as the wild precincts described by the Nebraska editor, whose meditations for a leader used to be cut short, occasionally, by the bellowing of the shaggy bison at his window, or the incursion of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... could water without bogging. The bed of the Finke is the most boggy creek-channel I have ever met. As we had travelled several miles in the morning to the pillar, and camped eighteen beyond it, it was late in the afternoon when we encamped. The country we passed over was mostly scrubby sandhills, covered with porcupine grass. Where we struck the channel there was a long hole of brine. There was plenty of good grass on the river flat; and we got some tolerably good water where we fixed our camp. When we had finished our evening meal, the shades of night ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... on a few steps—then stopped a second time, and made a sign for Leon to come up. Without speaking, he pointed to a little thicket of scrubby bushes, through the leaves of which they could just make out some large brown object perfectly at rest. That was the tapir ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... to the right of Byrsa Cottage, as you look down the hollow of the ground toward the sea, a ridge of high scrubby land runs up to a forefront of bold cliff, indented with a dark and narrow bay. "Goyle Bay," as it is called, or sometimes "Basin Bay," is a lonely and rugged place, and even dangerous for unwary visitors. For at low spring tides a ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... along. The road was stony and deserted. On either side the rocky cliffs, with their scrubby growth, were beginning to rise from the fields, and before them ranged the bluish rocky landscape of the heath or moorland. "As soon as we've been home, I shall travel; I must cross the sea and find out what they do really intend there," ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... had passed out of sight, Cynthia came from the kitchen with an armful of wet linen and began spreading it upon some scrubby lilac bushes in a corner of the yard. After fifteen years it still made her uncomfortable to have Christopher around when she did the family washing, and when it was possible she waited to dry the clothes until he had gone back ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... of Pampus Rock." Thence we entered Alligator River, a broad lagoon, the Raphael Creek of Maxwell's map, not named in the hydrographic chart of 1859. Leading south with many a bend, it is black water and thick, fetid mud, garnished with scrubby mangrove, where Kru-boys come to cut fuel and catch fever; here the dew seemed to fall in cold drops. After nine miles we reached a shallow fork, one tine of which, according to our informants, comes from the ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... across country, but the time would have passed less pleasantly on the road. The winding yellow line, however, appeared again, and I had to tramp upon it. And a hot, toilsome trudge it was, through that long narrow valley with scrubby woods reaching down to the road, but with no habitations and no water. It was the desert. The afternoon was far advanced when the country opened and I saw a village of coquettish appearance, for most of the houses had been washed with red, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... swayed balancing against the jolting, while, with thickly-gloved hands, he grasped the wooden ledge on which he sat. In front O'Shea was like an image carved of the same wood as the cart, so firmly he held to it. Well, such hours pass. After a while they came out upon the soft, dry sand beyond the scrubby flat, and the horse, ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... one lone, scrubby little lilac bush that has a dozen blossoms, and it doesn't take much mental work to connect lilacs with mother. Then, too, the distant whistle of a train 'way down the valley reminds me of how you would listen for the whistle of the Montreal train on Saturday ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... sportsman experiences in discovering that his cover hack—an animal not worth twenty pounds—was a capital fencer; that a beast only destined to the commonest of uses should actually have qualities that recalled the steeplechaser—that the scrubby little creature with the thin neck and the shabby quarters should have a turn of speed and a 'big jump' in him, was something scarcely ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... I jumps out before closin' time and mingles with the Jersey commuters in a lovely hot ride across the meadows. It's a scrubby station where I gets off, too; one of these fact'ry settlements where the whole population answers the seven o'clock whistle every mornin'. There's a brick barracks half a mile long, where they make sewin' machines or something, and snuggled close up around it is hundreds of these ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... slope straight against the face of the crag. They reached the heap of rocks, and crept in amongst them by means of another narrow passage, close to the inner end of which the fire was, and this is what they saw through the twigs of a scrubby ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... main ranges, and then took up our quarters for the night. We were now in the republic of Mendoza. The elevation was probably not under 11,000 feet, and the vegetation in consequence exceedingly scanty. The root of a small scrubby plant served as fuel, but it made a miserable fire, and the wind was piercingly cold. Being quite tired with my days work, I made up my bed as quickly as I could, and went to sleep. About midnight I observed the sky became suddenly clouded: I awakened the arriero to know if there was ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... and as many yards across, completely encircled the Island, which was not a quarter of a mile in diameter. Inside this regular ridge was a small sandy plain. The encircling ridge was occupied by a belt of small trees, while on the plain grew only a short scrubby vegetation, a foot or two in height. Some vegetable soil was found, a few inches in thickness, the result of the decomposition of vegetable matter and birds' dung. On the weather side of the island was a coral reef of two miles in diameter, enclosing a shallow lagoon. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... exclaimed Joe, his superstition vanishing as he anticipated some sport; and, gliding quickly to Glenn's side, he beheld, under the branches of a low scrubby oak tree, the head and ears of a large doe. It was intently watching our pedestrians, and stood motionless in the ambush, on which it vainly relied to obscure it from the ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... regions and the torrid Kalahari plains, down to the 34th parallel at Cape point, a great diversity of climatic conditions is met with. To the north and north-east are the steaming, death-breeding low lands, abounding with dank virgin forests and scrubby stretches; and to the north-west extend the arid, sandy, and stony levels. There are the temperate and fruitful inland reaches along the southern and south-eastern littoral, and again further inward the vast plateaux at 2,000 to 6,500 feet elevation, which represent nearly one-half of the sub-continent ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... wherever the Dragon-fly dances or the Butterfly flits. As a rule, because of the greater abundance of game, she spreads her toils across some brooklet, from bank to bank among the rushes. She also stretches them, but not assiduously, in the thickets of evergreen oak, on the slopes with the scrubby greenswards, dear ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... attention to my feeble wants, without an idea of how long it might be my pleasure to sit there. It was not long, however it may have seemed to him, before we heard wagon-wheels booming down a little side-canon between the hills. The team had managed to drag the wagon up through a scrubby gulch that looked like no thoroughfare, but which opened into a very fair way out ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... needed, some one had to make a trip across a small pasture-field from which the scrubby timber had not been cleared. Will had hitched a team of young mules to one of the wagons and gone on this errand. The mules were frisky fellows and enlivened this little journey by running away. Wilbur got them under control with little trouble, but it was noticed afterward ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... far back in a recess not unlike a kiosk, was opened by a man-servant who might easily have been mistaken for a waiter from Delmonico's or Sherry's. He did not have the air or aplomb of a butler, nor the smartness of a footman. On the contrary, he was a thick-set, rather scrubby sort of person with all the symptoms of cafe servitude about him, including the never-failing doubt as to nationality. He might have been a Greek, a Pole, an Italian or ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... otherwise make too great an impression for the harmony of the entire illusion. Had the panorama been invented in the time of Pope Leo X., Raffael would still, I doubt not, have smiled in contempt at the regret, that the broom twigs and scrubby bushes at the back of some of his grand pictures were not as probable trees as those ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... upon the top of a low knoll rounded like a skull, and dry, dusty, and without vegetation, except some scrubby hyssop. The boundary of the space was a living wall of men, with men behind struggling, some to look over, others to look through it. An inner wall of Roman soldiery held the dense outer wall rigidly to its place. A centurion kept eye upon the soldiers. Up to the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Few people passed along, only folks in a hurry, who swiftly crossed the Boulevards. And on the broad, dark, deserted footway, where the sound of the revelry died away, women were standing and waiting. They remained for long intervals motionless, patient and as stiff-looking as the scrubby little plane trees; then they slowly began to move, dragging their slippers over the frozen soil, taking ten steps or so and then waiting again, rooted as it were to the ground. There was one of them with a huge body and insect-like arms and legs, wearing ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... Representative, as he chewed a tack awhile, thinking it was a clove. 'I want to find a boarding house where the proprietress was an orphan found in a livery stable, whose father was a dago from East Austin, and whose grandfather was never placed on the map. I want a scrubby, ornery, low-down, snuff-dipping, back-woodsy, piebald gang, who never heard of finger bowls or Ward McAllister, but who can get up a mess of hot cornbread and Irish stew ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... uninstructed eye was—now in April—but a wilderness of scrubby stunted thorns. In the midst of it he found Mrs Bosenna, gloved, armed with a pair of secateurs, and engaged in cutting the thorns back to ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... grub was dere, suah," put in the negro cook, with great dignity. "I'se feel mean as a pore white if yer was ebbah come to my galley an' fin' sich a scrubby lot tings! Dere was nuffin' fit fo' a decent culler'd pusson ter eat—dat feller ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... it to our aristocracy to take up his other ideas, or reject them on pain of the forfeiture of their caste and headship with the generations to follow, and a total displacing of them in history by certain notorious, frowzy, scrubby pamphleteers and publishers, Lord Ormont thought amazingly comical. English nobles heading the weavers, cobblers, and barbers of England! He laughed, but he said, 'Charlotte would listen ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... at the end of a trolley line; it is their Arcadia. Picture it! A few yellow sand hills with clusters of pine trees and some scrubby undergrowth; a more desolate, arid, gloomy pleasure ground cannot be conceived. On Sundays the trolleys bring those who are not too tired to so spend the day. On Sundays the mill shanties are full ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... must be his idea of the planet on which he moves! How much must his horizon be cabined, cribbed, confined by the frost and snow, the gloom and poverty, of the bare land around him! He lives in a dark cold world of scrubby vegetation and scant animal life: a world where human existence is necessarily preserved only by ceaseless labour and at severe odds; a world out of which all the noblest and most beautiful living creatures have been ruthlessly pressed; a ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Sounds, and the inlets to the southward. We examined with considerable care those localities where yellow cedar had been reported, crossing on foot from Athlow to Skaloo Inlet, finding small bodies of scrubby growth on the shores of each, also on Tattoo Inlet, but much the largest quantity on ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden |
