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More "Scant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that their minds are such a barren soil or moor, that culture would be lost on them; and that they come from a climate, where nature, though prodigal of her bounties in a degree unknown to yourselves, has left man alone scant and unfinished, and incapable of enjoying the treasures she has poured out for him!—An assertion at once impious and absurd. Why do you use those instruments of torture? Are they fit to be applied by one rational being to another? And are ye not struck with shame and mortification, ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... resignation of his thrones (1554-1556) resulted, though far from being so intended, in a confession of his failure. While it was in progress, Julius III died (March 23, 1555), leaving behind him scant evidence to support the rumor of his having indulged, at all events in the last period of his reign, in ideas of church reformation. But the choice of his successor, Marcellus II (April-May, 1555), shows that these ideas were not yet extinct ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... It may be better than my English." But notwithstanding his scant praise, we spoke ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... for shelter. From the depths of a blind alley floated out the discordant strains of a vagabond brass band "blowing in" the yule of the poor. Banished by police ordinance from the street, it reaped a scant harvest of pennies for Christmas cheer from the windows opening on the back yard. Against more than one pane showed the bald outline of a forlorn little Christmas tree, some stray branch of a hemlock picked ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... he enjoy a dinner more than when, in those homeless days of his boyhood, he tore the flakes off a loaf fresh from the baker's oven, and ate them as he walked along the street. The old highlanders of Scotland were trained to think it the part of a gentleman not to mind what he ate—sign of scant civilization, no doubt, in the eyes of some who now occupy but do not fill their place—as time will show, when the call is for men to fight, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... steep ascent to the capital two men galloped their tired horses in stern silence. For twelve hours they had ridden with scant waste of breath in speech. Only at each change, and seven times since break of day, had they changed horses. Prince Ughtred had lit a fresh cigar and asked the same question and ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... can offer are not great, Nor is the accommodation more than scant That falls to me for hospitality; But, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... This was scant encouragement. People began crowding up the companion-way, coughing and wheezing in the steam; and soon the deck, that but a moment before had been almost without an occupant, was crowded with excited human beings in all states of dress ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... thing he usually resents. I know that he was in great pain and feared other unknown tortures. The poor man looked at the tall doctor's big hands as if he deemed them instruments of potential torture. One really couldn't blame him for having scant confidence in a man whose business appears to be the care of this ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... hot, humid summers (southwest monsoon, June to September); less cloudy, scant rainfall, mild temperatures, lower humidity during winter ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... his manhood or youth he had been taught to use it, instead of being required to follow the accepted ways of doing things without having had the experience of trial and error. Schools and factory management give workers scant opportunity to discover whether they have initiative ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... by an expression of care far too heavy for her baby years. Her eyes were large, dark and unusually lustrous, while her wavy brown hair fell about her face and neck in rich profusion. Her clothing was scant and old, but clean and very neatly mended. The whole appearance of the child was so pathetically irresistible that I went and sat down by her side, taking her cold little hand within ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright
... in an unbecoming green cashmere, with the elbows out and the plush torn off in several places, while Judy's exceedingly scant and faded pink zephyr had rents in several places, and the colour was hardly to ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... were both ruddy and brown: they were of more words than the Woodlanders but yet not many-worded. They knew well all those old story-lays, (and this partly by the minstrelsy of the Woodlanders,) but they had scant skill in wizardry, and would send for the Woodlanders, both men and women, to do whatso they needed therein. They were very hale and long-lived, whereas they dwelt in clear bright air, and they mostly went light-clad even in the ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... then, so employed, is addressed by the author directly to ourselves, his possible readers, whom he has to reckon with, at the best, by our English tradition, so loosely and vaguely after all, so little respectfully, on so scant a presumption of exposure to criticism. Strether, on the other hand, encaged and provided for as "The Ambassadors" encages and provides, has to keep in view proprieties much stiffer and more salutary than any our straight and credulous gape are likely to ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... obtained leave, Mr. Williams; I may take your offer!" he exclaimed with scant ceremony, when he found himself in that gentleman's presence, who was at tea with his wife. "Mr. Galloway has authorized me to accept it. How do you ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the terrible contrast between wealth and poverty. In their years of strength the laboring people, cut off from all share in governing the state, derived a scant support from the severest toil, and had no hope for old age but in public charity or death. A grasping ambition had dotted the world with military posts, kept watch over our borders on the northeast, at the Bermudas, in the West Indies, appropriated the gates of the Pacific, ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... is now known as Donner Lake, and there, under circumstances of horror and terror that can never fully be comprehended and appreciated, the devoted men, women and children were imprisoned in the snow until the first relief party reached them, February 19th, with scant provisions, brought in at life's peril on snowshoes. A "Forlorn Hope" had tried to force its passage over the snowy heights. Fifteen brave men and women determined to see if they could not win their ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... worried, no mistake about that. The Sorias had upset his plans exceedingly. He did not want to burden himself with prisoners; his horses, fed only on the scant growth of the land, were in no condition to carry double. He did not want to leave any of his men behind, because he expected to need every one of them in his proposed campaign. On the other hand, he hated to ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... wonder came into the old face—then it began to writhe, and from each eye oozed scant tears, seeking a channel amid the seams and wrinkles of the ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... the counter, or seated at numerous small tables, men were drinking villainous liquor, smoking and talking, and paying but scant attention to the strains of the fiddle or the accordion, save when some well known air was played, when all would join in a boisterous chorus. Some were always passing in or out of a door which led into a room behind. Here there was comparative ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... of the 19th century, our knowledge of the religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians was exceedingly scant. No records existed that were contemporaneous with the period covered by Babylonian-Assyrian history; no monuments of the past were preserved that might, in default of records, throw light upon the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... He never struck one of us in his life—a glance being sufficient to enforce obedience, or subdue the wildest spirits. He was always as particular about the etiquette of the table as though we were served by footmen in livery; and in our poorest days, when cups and saucers were scant and spoons still more so, we were obliged to observe the utmost decorum till we were helped; and any laughing or chatter among the younger ones was immediately quelled by the emphatic descent of father's fork upon the coverless table, with the ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... Boeotia, and knew nothing of the sunny wealth in the south of the peninsula, or of such princely estates as Eumaeus managed in the Ionian seas. Flaxman has certainly not given him the look of a large proprietor in his outlines: his toilet is severely scant, and the old gentleman appears to have lost two of his fingers in a chaff-cutter. As for Perses, who is represented as listening to the sage,[A] his dress is in the extreme of classic scantiness,—being, in fact, a mere night-shirt, and a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... fallen rather mildly, all day, thickened with the coming of night. All the loose wood was now buried under the snow, and it was with difficulty that I gathered a scant supply for the night. My wet rags were freezing hard and stiff. I moved about, half-dazed. I broke only a few branches for my bed, and sat down. Scarcely had I done so when a woman's voice came to me, ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... of laurel bushes close beside the path, a tall, slender form stood forth, the lissome figure of a girl in the budding charm of womanhood. There was a lithe, curving beauty in the lines that the scant homespun gown outlined so clearly. The swift movement by which she revealed herself was instinct with grace. As she rested motionless, with arms extended in a gesture of appeal, there was a singular dignity in the pose, a distinction of personality that was in no wise ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... Tolosa. I could thoroughly understand that the Carlist priest bore malice to the officer who supplanted him and condemned him to death. But what Lizarraga did was done in compliance with the King's will. At the same time there could be no doubt that Santa Cruz was treated with scant courtesy after all he had accomplished, and had a right to feel himself ill-used, and the victim of jealous rivalry. He said that he was prepared, any day the King permitted him, to traverse the four provinces, and hold ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... shorter and shorter, until at last a scant four hours of daylight remained around noon. Even then a lamp was ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... Hebron, to anoint him and be feasted three days,—it is carefully mentioned, however (xii. 40), that they took their provisions up with them. The proper kernel of Israel, Ephraim and Manasseh, is, in comparison with Simeon, Reuben, Gad, Issachar, treated with very scant kindness (vii. 14-29),—a suspicious sign. The list of the families of Manasseh is an artificial rechauffe of elements gleaned anywhere; Maachah passes for the wife as well as the sister of Machir, but being ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... three hundred yards, was a depression of the ground, with a low ascending hill beyond. Shells burst over us, beyond us, in front of us, amongst us, as we marched on at quick time. We reached the hollow and were ordered to lie down. The sun was oppressive. The troops had scant room in the hollow; they hugged the earth thick. Shells would burst at the crown of the low hill ten steps in front and throw iron everywhere. The aim of the Federal gunners was ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... thumped the scant feathers into little heaps, and gave a dismal groan as she laid ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... Dombey, when he was left alone at the dining-table, and mused upon his past and future fortunes: finding no uncongeniality in an air of scant and gloomy state that pervaded the room, in colour a dark brown, with black hatchments of pictures blotching the walls, and twenty-four black chairs, with almost as many nails in them as so many coffins, waiting like mutes, upon the threshold of the Turkey carpet; and two exhausted negroes ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... a long one; in the course of the next ten minutes they drew up at the end of a shallow pocket of a street, a scant half-block in depth; where alighting, Lanyard helped the girl out, paid and dismissed the cocher, and turned to an iron gate in a high stone ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... at no point exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the mainland by a scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh-hen. The vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of any magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort Moultrie stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings, tenanted during summer by the fugitives from Charleston dust and fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... away thy hands, my love, With wind alone the branches move, And though the leaves be scant above The ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... it backward, with a sad low moan and a gurgle. His body made quite a short noise in the air, like a bucket thrown down a well shaft, and I could not tell when it struck the water, except by the echo among the rocks. So wroth was I with the goat at the moment (being somewhat scant of breath and unable to consider), that I caught him by the right hind-leg, before he could turn from his victory, and hurled him after the sheep, to learn how ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... she had left Harrington & Bush, without entering into any explanation except the general one that she had found it impossible to get on with Mr. Bush in her new position. And Jack, being more concerned with her than with her work, gave the matter scant consideration. ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... had scorched Aratus to the bone. O Pan, who hauntest Homole's fair champaign, Bring the soft charmer, whosoe'er it be, Unbid to his sweet arms—so, gracious Pan, May ne'er thy ribs and shoulderblades be lashed With squills by young Arcadians, whensoe'er They are scant of supper! But should this my prayer Mislike thee, then on nettles mayest thou sleep, Dinted and sore all over from their claws! Then mayest thou lodge amid Edonian hills By Hebrus, in midwinter; there subsist, The Bear thy neighbour: and, in summer, range With the far AEthiops ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... scant time for thought. The moment of action was already close at hand. Far below there, hidden by night and dark and mist, Gabriel knew a hundred thousand comrades, of the Fighting Sections, were lying hidden, waiting for the ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... much a son, [Embracing him. And I too little am a father: you, And you alone, have merited Lucretia; 'Tis now my only grief, I can do nothing to requite this virtue: For to restore her to you, Is not an act of generosity, But a scant, niggard justice; yet I love her So much, that even this little, which I do, Is like the bounty of an usurer; High to be priz'd from me, Because 'tis drawn ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... treat him with scant ceremony. Since she was of the opinion that he ought to feel flattered by our invitations, she thought it only right and proper that he should never come to see us in summer without a basket of peaches or raspberries from his garden, and that from each of ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... you are very welcome to our house. It must appear in other ways than words, Therefore I scant this breathing courtesy. ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... Laird's court-day, An' mony a time my heart's been wae, Poor tenant bodies, scant o' cash, How they maun thole a factor's snash He'll stamp an' threaten, curse an' swear, He'll apprehend them, poind their gear; While they maun stan', wi' aspect humble, An' hear it a', an' fear and tremble! I see how folk live that hae riches; But surely ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... sea and land; endured toil, was near starving, ate horse-flesh at Munster; and all to quell that man, who now smileth in peace at those that did hazard their lives to destroy him. Essex took me to Ireland, I had scant time to put on my boots; I followed with good will, and did return with the lord-lieutenant to meet ill-will; I did bear the frowns of her that sent me; and were it not for her good liking, rather than my good ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Litteratur des Schachspiels (Berlin, 1874), has much to say of the origin-theories, nearly all of which he treats as so many myths. He agrees with those who consider that the Persians received the game from the Hindus; but the elaborate chaturanga theories of Forbes receive but scant mercy. Van der Linde argues that chaturanga is always used by the old Indian poets of an army and never of a game, that all Sanskrit scholars are agreed that chess is not mentioned in really ancient Hindu records; that the Puranas generally, though formerly considered to be extremely ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... and to shoot some small deer, as hare or coney, and make a shift to cook the same, since he had with him flint and fire-steel. Moreover the further he went, the surer he was that he should soon come across a dwelling, so smooth and fair as everything looked before him. And he had scant fear, save that he might happen on men who should ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... tall, angular, high-shouldered, and flat-chested woman, dark from exposure to wind, sun, and rain, her hair brown in the neck, but many shades lighter on the crown of her head. Her eyes were of an expressionless gray. A brown calico of scant pattern clung in lank folds to ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... Scant, however, as may be the amount of direct worship accorded to the Supreme God, compared with that received by subordinate spiritual powers, yet it is sui generis, and of an infinitely higher order. The familiar distinction of latria ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... roofs and red brick floors. Many bore scars received in the internecine warfare which has raged in the unhappy country with but brief intervals of peace since the days of Spanish occupation. But most of the houses were of the typical mud-plastered, palm-thatched variety, with dirt floors and scant furniture. Yet even in many of these Jose noted pianos and sewing machines, generally of German make, at which the housewife was occupied, while naked babes and squealing pigs—the latter of scarcely less value than the former—fought for places ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... brethren. This was all forest once. Under the shade of the mighty oaks here those gallant O'Caharneys your ancestors followed the chase, or rested at noontide, or skedaddled in double-quick before those smart English of the Pale, who I must say treated your forbears with scant courtesy.' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... critical inventory of their methods of physical training and their meager accomplishments as a preliminary survey looking to a change in our procedure. We seem to have delegated scientific physical training to athletics and pugilism, with but scant concern for our people as a whole. If pink-tea calisthenics as practiced mildly in our schools has failed to produce robust bodies, then it is incumbent upon us to adopt a regime of beefsteak. What the traditional school has failed to do ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... decent good nature throughout her existence, and had enjoyed her life far too much to admit of any doubt that America was the most perfect country in the world, Americans the cleverest and most amusing people, and that other nations were a little out of it, and consequently sufficiently scant of resource to render pity without condemnation a natural sentiment in connection with one's occasional thoughts ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... down shallow rapids. At the Height of Land, and for some miles beyond, the country is flat and boggy, and sparsely wooded with tamarack and spruce, many of the tall, slender tops of the former being bent completely over by the storms. The spruce was small and scant, increasing in size and quantity as we descended from the highest levels, but nowhere on the northern slope attaining the size reached in the valley of ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... the green man, and came at them like a furious bull. It seemed characteristic of his kind to attack without parley. The torch dropped as he came. There was no resisting that mighty bulk. Unarmed, and with scant room to move backward, the two Americans went down; and that would have been the end of the battle if Ah-eeda, who had shrunk to one side out of the way of the combatants, had not snatched up the still flaming torch and held it against the naked back of the greenish giant. With a scream of anguish ...
— The Heads of Apex • Francis Flagg
... hope. She turned eagerly to examine them. Piles of sombre skirts, blue and black and tan. They were stout and coarse and scant, and not of the latest cut, but what mattered it? She decided on a seventy-five cent black one. It seemed pitiful to have to economize in a matter of twenty-five cents, when she had been used to counting ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... But scant he lays him on the floor, When hollow winds remove the door, A trembling rocks the ground: And (well I ween to count aright) At once an hundred tapers light On ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... biers otherwise it would be impossible for them to exist under the fatiegues which they daily encounter without their natural rest which they could not obtain for those tormenting insects if divested of their biers. timber still extreemly scant on the river but there is more in this valley than we have seen since we entered the mountains; the creeks which fall into the river are better supplyed with this article ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... a pair of scissors, he had trimmed a surprisingly heavy beard Van Dyck fashion, which emphasized his peaked features and a certain consciousness of superiority; while the barber's son sported only a few scraggly hairs. The scant, reddish product of Pilzer's cheeks, leaving bare the liver patch, only accentuated its repulsiveness and a savagery in his voice and look which was no longer latent under the conventional discipline of every-day existence. The company had not been in the first Engadir assault, ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... last rubber or two the thought of Edith had obsessed him, her hand on the rail as he had kissed it, her cool eyes that were at once so wise and so ignorant, her lithe body in the short skirt and middy blouse. He found her more alluring, so attired, than she had been in the scant costume of what to him ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Ibsen's correspondence became very scant, and we have no letters dating from the period when he was at work on The Master Builder. On the other hand, we possess a curious lyrical prelude to the play, which he put on paper on March 16, 1892. It is said to have been his habit, before setting to work on a play, to "crystallise in ...
— The Master Builder • Henrik Ibsen
... Will Sommers, enjoying the disconcerted look of the other jester. "I was at the palace at Hampton, when this scant-witted knave invited me to taste some of his master's wine, and accordingly to the cellar we went. 'This wine will surprise you,' quoth he, as we broached the first hogshead. And truly it did surprise me, for no wine followed the gimlet. So we went on to another, and another, ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... jerked him out with scant ceremony, while Teddy began pulling pieces of the trunk tray ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... As in the case of the Chinese book, it looks superficially like ours; we think it is a tiny quarto until we see that its measure is rather that of an oblong twenty-fourmo; that is, its dimensions are just scant of five inches high and six inches wide. It has thin wooden covers and is, over all, an inch thick; but between these covers is a strip of deerskin twenty-nine feet long and, of course, nearly five inches wide. This is folded in screen or fan fashion, ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... Though not wholly without occasional gleams of light, shed here and there by recorded incident and anecdote upon the strange life of the seamen of that period, the early personal experiences of individuals have had scant commemoration; and with the exception of St. Vincent, who fortunately had a garrulous biographer, we learn little of men like Hawke, Howe, Hood, and Keppel, until, already possessors of naval rank, they stand forth as actors in events rather ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... cupboard upon a square foot, whereupon stood also a round board, in manner of a diamond, broad beneath, and towards the top narrow, and every step rose up more narrow than the other. Upon this cupboard was placed the Emperor's plate, which was so much that the very cupboard itself was scant able to sustain the weight of it. The better part of all the vessels and goblets was made of very fine gold; and, amongst the rest, there were four pots of very large bigness, which did adorn the rest of the plate in great measure, for they were ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... "very near to being a masterpiece." M. Jules Lemaitre tells us that Daudet "trails all hearts after him,—because he has charm, as indefinable in a work of art as in a woman's face." M. Ferdinand Brunetiere, who has scant relish for latter-day methods in literature, admits ungrudgingly that "there are certain corners of the great city and certain aspects of Parisian manners, there are some physiognomies that perhaps no one has been ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Marshall Islands, and the wind falling light, and being surrounded by reefs and low uninhabited coral atolls, Tierney brought to, and anchored for the night. You know the spot, about nine miles due west of Ailuk, and between two sandy atolls covered with a scant growth of cocoanuts and ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... the place of honor on the nursery bookshelf until it falls to pieces from such handling is "Little Miss Weezy's Sister," a simple, yet absorbing story of children who are interesting because they are so real. It is doing scant justice to say for the author, Penn Shirley, that the annals of child-life have seldom been traced with more ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May
... almost a deadlock between the legislative and executive departments. Governor Bernard addressed the representatives in a supercilious and dogmatic manner, which they for their part resented with scant courtesy. ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... already stated, they were first discovered by Europeans about forty years after the war of the conquest swept through that part of the country, and were at that time wholly mysterious to the natives. The monuments seem older than those at Palenque, but we have only scant descriptions of them. They are situated in a wild and solitary part of the country, where the natives "see as little of strangers as the Arabs about Mount Sinai, and are more suspicious." For this reason they have not been very ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... five years old, He fled alone, by many an unknown coast, O'er Aegean Seas by many a Greekish hold, Till he arrived at the Christian host; A noble flight, adventurous, brave, and bold, Whereon a valiant prince might justly boast, Three years he served in field, when scant begin Few golden hairs to ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... to scant our mortal lot, One season ruined of our little store. May will be fine next year as like as not: Oh ay, but then we ...
— Last Poems • A. E. Housman
... on his face through the open window waked the Major to the cool clear morning. Sitting up, he saw Terry sunning himself on the threshold, wrapped in a scant blanket such as Ohto had worn, his hair wet from his bath in the creek which emptied the big spring at the foot of the crag. Even in the stupor in which he woke from his heavy sleep the Major noted the ruddy ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... fair, none else being by, Herself pois'd with herself in either eye: But in that crystal scales let there be weigh'd Your lady's love against some other maid That I will show you shining at this feast, And she shall scant show well that now ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... painter, who desirest to achieve the highest excellence in practice, understand that unless thou build it on the solid foundations of nature, thou shalt reap but scant honour and gain by thy work; and if thy foundation is sound, thy works shall be many and good, and bring great honour to thee, and be ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... the south a succession of his rounded slopes shoulder their way from the woods out to where the road and the brook wind through. They cannot be tilled; the soil is too scant and gravelly; but they are lovely in their gentle forms, and still lovelier in their clumps of mingled cedars and gray birches, scattered dark and sharply pointed on the blue of the sky, and diffuse, and soft, and gleaming white against the ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... had just time to slip into her place again when the strains of the piano began the measured notes of stately Lohengrin. From somewhere Dr. Race and the minister appeared and took their places beneath the canopy of wild roses, but Peace paid scant attention to them. Her eyes were glued upon the other end of the corridor where the bridal procession was already approaching, with Essie Martin in the lead, and—could it be?—yes, it was golden-haired, radiant Allee marching beside her, both scattering rose petals ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... had said this it seemed as if he had fulfilled an important mission. Rosarito, overcome by the violence of her emotion, felt her scant strength suddenly fail her; and, half-fainting, she sank on a stone that in those pleasant solitudes served as a seat. Pepe bent over her. Her eyes were closed, her forehead rested on the palm of her hand. A few moments later the daughter of Dona Perfecta Polentinos gave her cousin, amid happy tears, ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... the whole story in the sand. The four cans were bent with gaping seams, and their sides were scored with the prints of William's hoofs. In a corner of one of them Casey found a scant half-cup of water, which he drank greedily. It could no more than ease for a moment his parched throat; it could not satisfy ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... cattle men, mostly, made up the gathering, with a scant sprinkling of farmers and others unclassified. A big, ill-dressed fellow was repeating the tale of scandal for the benefit of a newcomer; the narrative moving jerkily ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... our credit that we had been enterprising enough to fit out such an effective little flotilla on Lake Erie, and for this Perry deserves the highest praise. [Footnote: Some of my countrymen will consider this but scant approbation, to which the answer must be that a history is not ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... of terra-cotta tiles. This screen was set on the extreme edge of the roof which overhung the banquette and shaded the yellow adobe wall of the house. Low, unpretentious, the latticed shutters of its two windows giving it but a scant air of privacy,—indeed, they were scarred by the raps of careless passers-by on the sidewalk. The two little battened doors, one step up, were closed. I rapped, waited, and rapped again. The musician across the street stopped his fiddling, glanced at me, smiled knowingly at the children; and they ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... at the close of a winter day, after three or four hours of steady reading or writing. The room is full of books—the best books. There is a little fire on the hearth, there is a dingy curtain at the window. It is solitary and still, and when the light gets too scant to let me read any more, I fill my pipe, and go and stand in the window. Outside, there is a row of leafless elms, and beyond that a dim, wide landscape of lakes and hills, and beyond that a red, windy sunset. I can sit in that window ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... made by some of the missionaries in Japan to convert the Ainos to Christianity, but I fear the attempts made in this direction have been attended with a very scant measure of success. A people such as this possesses minds of childlike simplicity, and to endeavour to get it to comprehend the abstruse doctrines and dogmas of Christianity is an almost hopeless task. ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... a little doubtfully, but evidently impressed with the early hours I kept told me that I might try. He waved me to a desk, bidding me wait until he had made out his morning book of assignments; and with such scant ceremony was I finally introduced to Newspaper Row, that had been to me like an enchanted land. After twenty-seven years of hard work in it, during which I have been behind the scenes of most of the plays that go to make ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... all were merely lads; not one was able To earn the crust of bread, Though scant it might be, coarse and black and humble, With which he ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... nod which directed his eyes to the thin woman sitting opposite, to whom Harding Watton, a fashionable and fastidious youth, was paying but scant attention. ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... made answer, "Lady, I can offer you but short thanks for your words, since they savour of scant courtesy. You speak of love as a burgess makes a bargain. Those who desire to get, rather than to give, often find that they have the worser half of the business. There is no lady under heaven—so she be courteous and kind ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life, not death, for which we pant; More life, and fuller, that ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... she well knew that, unless there came an abatement in the fury of the storm, it might be days before anyone could climb the mountain. True, the Indians were not far off, but like as not they would remain in their wigwam until the sun came forth again. In the matter of food there was a scant supply, but probably enough to tide them over until communication could ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... look like a witch's, Missy?" Virgie said, as Vesta took in its not unpicturesque outlines and crude plank carpentry, the weather-rotted roof, the decrepit chimney at the far end, the one garret window in the sharp gable, the scant little windows above stairs, and the doors low ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... the coffee with a piece of ice, glanced from Malemute Kid to her husband, then at the dogs, but vouchsafed no reply. It was such a palpable truism that none was necessary. Two hundred miles of unbroken trail in prospect, with a scant six days' grub for themselves and none for the dogs, could admit no other alternative. The two men and the woman grouped about the fire and began their meager meal. The dogs lay in their harnesses for it was a midday halt, and watched ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... halted while Harris dismounted to examine the trail. It was hard-packed but the scant signs showed that shod horses had come in since ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... you to say so; but 't is a scant covering for the truth. For have I never heard you sing? When I was a little girl, my brothers and I were sent to some springs in the mountains. While we were there, one day a party of people came on horseback. They were very gay, and one of them sang. It has come back to me ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... began at once. The message was received on July fourth, politely, but with scant response to its ideas. During two weeks, while Congress in its fatuousness thought that the battle impending in Virginia would settle things, the majority in Congress would not give assent to Lincoln's view of what the war ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... did for a moment think of rebellion. Could she not be happy at the nice place in Surrey, having, as she would have, a carriage, even though all the de Courcys should drop her? It had been put to her that she would not like to be received at Courcy Castle with the scant civility which would be considered due to a Mrs Mortimer Gazebee; but what if she could put up without being received at Courcy Castle at all? Such ideas did float through ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... reaching to the feet; the palmata was a state tunic, embroidered with palms, which ornamentation was often found in other parts of dress. The lacerna, loena, cucullus, chlamys, sagum, paludamentum, were upper garments, more or less coarse, either full or scant, and usually short, and were analogous to our cloaks, mantles, &c., and were made both with and without hoods. There were many varieties of the tunic and cloak invented by female ingenuity, as well as of other articles of dress, which formed elegant accessories ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... remarked by his neighbours that you met him wandering about lonely places at unholy hours, and that he shunned you, like one with a guilty conscience? Let him advance in years, his face lose its broad colour, his hair grow scant and grey, his figure, per chance, stoop a little, his eyes acquire the malignity of miserly old age—and there you have the hero of a Dunfield legend. Even ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... thoughts in his breast With varying impulse divided and torn, He traversed the scant heath, and reach'd the forlorn Autumn woodland, in which but a short while ago He had seen the Duke rapidly enter; and so He too enter'd. The light waned around him, and pass'd Into darkness. The wrathful, red ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... hundred miles of weary marching before them. Much of the country beyond the Platte was "Bad Lands," where the grass is scant and poor, the soil ashen and spongy, and the water densely alkaline. All this would tell very sensibly upon the condition of horses that all winter long had been comfortably stabled, regularly groomed and grain-fed, and watered ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... the wreck with the crew of one of the boats and succeeded in picking up some of those who had jumped overboard and were swimming about. On his way back to the Carpathia he passed one of the collapsible boats which was on the point of sinking with thirty passengers aboard, most of them in scant night-clothing. They were rescued just in the ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... show.—Again, you know the difficulties of the political situation. The aristocracy has to be rehabilitated in the face of a very strong force of the third estate. The King's idea—and France does him scant justice—is to create a peerage as a national institution analogous to the English peerage. To realize this grand idea we need years—and millions.—Noblesse oblige. The Duc de Navarreins, who is, as you know, first gentleman of the Bedchamber to the King, ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... the boys called the boat by name, knowing her voice: "It's the Bessie May Brown!" They started on a run to the bluff overlooking the river, their short legs making a full mile of the scant furlong. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to cover, the man had fifteen, but she came racing down the bank before he was fairly on the horse, and for a hundred yards the pony bounded in terror while the old Grizzly ran almost alongside, striking at him and missing by a scant hair's-breadth each time. But the Grizzly rarely keeps up its great speed for many yards. The horse got under full headway, and the shaggy mother, falling behind, gave up the chase and returned to ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... seems to have treated his mother with scant courtesy in public but Suarez, a jesuit theologian and Spanish gentleman, has apologized ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... she was the last woman on earth who could be accused of Victorian ways, and to see her in her white lace dress, dark, distinguished, and perfectly mistress of her emotions, was to be bewildered at the memory. She treated the question with scant ceremony, and remarked upon the fact that the night had been hot, and ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... scruff of his neck, he flung that amazed and dignified person with scant ceremony into the study, and shut the door; then, judging by the direction of the sound, hurried out to the front verandah, snatching up a heavy stick as he passed through the hall. Honor, following not far behind, went quickly into ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... it was not until the 22d that they reached the Nez Perce village and joined Captain Clark. Then they, too, almost to a man, suffered severe illness, caused by the unwonted abundance of food. From the high altitudes and the scant diet of horseflesh to the lower levels of the valley and a plentiful diet of fish and camass-root was ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... the English tongue and behaviour, to the great charge of the said houses; that is to say, the woman kind of the whole Englishry of this land, for the more part, in the said nunnery, and the man kind in the other said houses."[35] This petition received but scant consideration, and no wonder; because, although the Archbishop of Dublin had agreed to it, he wrote on the same day to Cromwell asking him for the lands of Grace-Dieu,[36] and, according to a letter ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... the reef. Skipper Zeb's face was tense. He was working like a giant, and Toby, too, was putting all the strength he possessed upon the sculling oar. With a scant margin to spare, they were at last shooting past the outer rocks, when the oar snapped with a report that was heard above the boom ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... saying, 'Peace, peace, peace,' and teachyng many things, which he anon declared to the bishops, and bid the people amend their naughtie living. Being rapt also in spirite, they sayde he behelde the joyes of heaven and sorrowes of hell; for scant were there three in the realme, sayde he, that ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... and over to the Belden, that she had toiled along the same route, laden with screens, rugs and couch-covers, at least a hundred times that afternoon. She was tired and exasperated at this final hitch, and she burst into the room of the fat freshman who had Ermengarde's part with scant ceremony. What was her amazement ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... swirled about like the water in a maelstrom, Sergius found himself close to the consul, with Manlius but a few paces in front. The thin, cruel lips had writhed away from the white teeth, the helmet was gone, and the scant, black hair was dabbled with blood that flowed from a slight cut upon the general's brow; the snake-like eyes sought those of the young patrician with a look wherein exultation and despair ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... town, and still fresh in many minds? but peradventure in none are they more deeply printed than in mine; and while I move my pen I can, as it were, see the great hall of the hunting lodge with my very eyes. Many folks are astir, and all in scant attire and full of eager thirst for tidings. The alarm of fire has brought them from their pillows in all haste, and they press close and gaze through the door, which stands wide open, at the light spot in the sky. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... But, scant though my memories are of the moments there, very full and warm in me is the whole fused memory of the two dear old men that lived there. I wish I had Watts-Dunton's sure faith in meetings beyond ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... of that beautiful interior Pennsylvania city. Altoona first became alarmed by the non-arrival and reported loss of the day express east on the Pennsylvania Railroad Friday afternoon. Soon the station was thronged with an anxious crowd, and the excitement became intense as the scant news came slowly in. Saturday the anxiety was relieved by a telegram from Ebensburg, which a blundering telegraph operator made "three hundred lost," instead of "three thousand." That was soon corrected by later news, ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... There was scant time to speak, or even draw an excited breath after the birds had disappeared, because they were back again, hovering so high that they were changed ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... MRS. STANTON:—Referring, since reading your note, to what I have said of the National Loyalist Convention, held in Philadelphia in 1866, I find that I have done but very scant justice to Anna E. Dickinson and Theodore Tilton. Their courage, skill and sagacity, were never displayed to greater advantage than on that occasion. I have, as you will see, mentioned the main facts, but I have given but a meagre view of the moral conditions surrounding it. Bold and prompt ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... drying up like a leaky pail. There remained only the dregs of the thronging thousands who had chopped its streets to dust beneath their heels; and they were worked out, panned down to scant profit, and growing ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... men and grasping men though they be—men caring more for the getting of money than for the getting of love—loving more the cold grip of gold than the grip of kith or kin, yet bear buried in their hearts the seeds of a nobler manhood, for which, however, the barren soil of their ambition affords scant nourishment. ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... from the waters. Once more, and then he found that he had command of his legs and could dig his feet into the unstable clay. Then, inch by inch, scarce daring to hope, he pulled himself up, up until he was free of the flood and between him and the ground above only a scant yard remained. Below him the rushing torrents roared, as though angry at his escape, and tossed horrid yellow spray ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Fair winds appear to have carried the vessel to port, whereupon Tracy and Thorpe jointly took charge of the plantation, displacing Woodleaf whose services had given dissatisfaction. Beyond this point the records are extremely scant; but it may be gathered that the plantation was wrecked and most of its inhabitants, including Thorpe, slain in the great Indian massacre of 1622. The restoration of the enterprise was contemplated in an after year, but eventually the land was sold ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... Owen she was disarmed. The dark-eyed, black-haired, modestly-attired, and even sober-looking girl, who put out her hand with a very simple movement, and spoke, with considerable self-possession truly, but certainly not with an impudent air, bore but scant resemblance to the "brazen hussey" who had haunted Miss Jemima's mind for the past ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... said little. We had scant time to spare just then; there were so many miles to go to the railway. He was to leave for Oxford that very night. While the carriers were cooking their breakfast he came with me to the grave and knelt at the head, looking northwards. I said nothing ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... type of writer like Meier-Graefe and the daily reporter there is no middle ground. The journalist is frank and says that he doesn't know but that he must write; the other writes books that are well suited for reference purposes, but have scant bearing upon the actual truth in relation to pictures. Are there any critics who attempt seriously to approach the modern theme, who find it worth their while to go into modern esthetics with anything like sincerity or ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... a month or two at Venice, when Mr Dorrit, who was much among Counts and Marquises, and had but scant leisure, set an hour of one day apart, beforehand, for the purpose of holding some conference with ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... rode home to Thrieve to receive the hospitality of the young Earl of Douglas and Duke of Touraine. The castle itself, being no more than a military fortress, containing in addition to the soldiers' quarters only the apartments designed for the family (and scant enough even of those) could not, of course, accommodate ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... iron to become a magnet was known, and the actual magnet, as we make it, had not been made. Morse, in his beginnings, had not money enough to employ a competent mechanic, and was himself possessed of but scant mechanical skill or knowledge of mechanical results. Persistency was the ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... had ever been held. There were, indeed, no representatives of the old regime, and there were few representatives of the Bolsheviki. The former had no place in the new Russia that was struggling for its existence; the repressive measures that had been found necessary accounted for the scant representation ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... amounts to a law, like the attraction of the sexes. Discouraged in some directions, it will out in others, never permanently satisfied. Each age and people must have its own art as well as what remains of the arts of past ages and peoples - in spite of scant patronage, commercial limitation, and critics' hostility. The philosopher tells us that everything has been done, yet we must ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... of Southerners who each moment—as they slid down that hill-side of a river—were taking deeper and stronger drafts of the heady sunshine of their own Southern sun. On the other hand, I am forced to admit that had his motive been pure benevolence his offering would not have been so pitiably scant. ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... six sons, who, however, did scant honor to their father, for they all were idolaters.[310] Abraham, therefore, during his own lifetime, sent them away from the presence of Isaac, that they might not be singed by Isaac's flame, and gave them the instruction to journey eastward as far as possible.[311] There he built ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... And none but he who watches them from birth, The Genius, guardian of each child of earth, Born when we're born and dying when we die, Now storm, now sunshine, knows the reason why I will not hoard, but, though my heap be scant, Will take on each occasion what I want, Nor fear what my next heir may think, to find There's less than he expected left behind; While, ne'ertheless, I draw a line between Mirth and excess, the frugal and the mean. 'Tis ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... power on earth, under majesty itself, was his Honour Mr. Wynn of Dunore, where now, fallen from greatness, the family was considerably larger than the means. The heavily encumbered property had dropped away piece by piece, and the scant residue clung to its owner like shackles. With difficulty the narrow exchequer had raised cash enough to send Robert on this expedition to London, from which much was hoped. The young man had been tolerably well educated; he possessed a certain amount and quality of talent, ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... great bison's horn he hung. Giraffe and elk he left to hold The wilderness of boughs in peace, And trained his youth to pen the fold, To press the cream, and weave the fleece. As shrunk the streamlet in its bed, As black and scant the herbage grew, O'er endless plains his flocks he led Still to new brooks and postures new. So strayed he till the white pavilions Of his camp were told by millions, Till his children's households seven ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... mankind has bestowed the appellation 'snub,' and it was very much turned up at the end, as with a lofty scorn. Upon the upper lip of this young gentleman were tokens of a sandy down; so very, very smooth and scant, that, though encouraged to the utmost, it looked more like a recent trace of gingerbread than the fair promise of a moustache; and this conjecture, his apparently tender age went far to strengthen. He was intent upon his work. Every time he snapped the great pair of scissors, he made a corresponding ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... for the prestige of Thurlow. His legal learning was far from profound, his speeches were more ponderous than powerful, and his attacks were bludgeon blows rather than home thrusts. Of the lighter graces and social gifts he had scant store. Indeed, his private life displayed no redeeming feature. Everyone disliked him, but very many feared him, mainly, perhaps, because of his facility for intrigue, his power of bullying, and his great influence at Court. As we have seen, the conciliatory efforts ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... lymphatic and nervous systems. With negroes, the sanguineous never gains the mastery over the lymphatic and nervous systems. Their digestive powers, like children, are strong, and their secretions and excretions copious, excepting the urine, which is rather scant. At the age of maturity they do not become dyspeptic and feeble with softening and attenuation of the muscles, as among those white people suffering the ills of a defective system of physical education, and a want of ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... securely pinned to your hair, and very loose gloves will complete a dress quite suitable for private lessons, and not so expensive that you need grudge the swift destruction certain to come to all equestrian costumes. Nothing is more ludicrous than to see a rider clothed in a correct habit, properly scant and unhemmed, to avoid all risks when taking fences and hedges in a hunting country, with her chimney-pot hat and her own gold-mounted crop, her knowing little riding-boots and buckskins, with outfit enough for Baby Blake and Di Vernon and Lady Gay Spanker, and to see that young woman dancing ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... Goodwife at last, when they had heard every event of the day twice over, "we must eat, or we shall have scant courage for the duties of the morrow. We have none of us tasted food ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... intelligence and dropping through it. She could scarcely remain in the berth. Listen! Was her mother awake, in the lower one? The boat veered a trifle back northward and suddenly again, hovering over dim water and shore and blazing like a herald angel, was the morning star, a scant point or so to "stabboard." She chuckled, softly, at ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... of music. Some of them still carried their harps; but most of them had stacked them in open spaces the way soldiers stack their rifles. When the robin sank spent to the grass in front of them, they paid him scant attention. When he weakly chirped his question, "Where's God?" they jerked their thumbs, indicating the direction, too listless to waste breath ...
— Christmas Outside of Eden • Coningsby Dawson
... dried up, and there was only scant herbage for my large herd of cattle, the half of which I promised to give Bedden if he would carry our baggage ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... as a man of sound and philosophic thought, of enthusiasm for truth and light—perhaps of genius—a man, too, with human affections and interests, with a history not devoid of romance. There is something touching in Mr. Pattison's affection for those old scholars, to whom the world has done scant justice. His own chief literary venture was the life of one of the greatest of them, Isaac Casaubon. We have in these volumes sketches, not so elaborate, of several others, the younger Scaliger, Muretus, Huet, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... straitened bounds of this scant dwelling-place are inhabited by many nations differing widely in speech, in usages, in mode of life; to many of these, from the difficulty of travel, from diversities of speech, from want of commercial intercourse, the fame not only of individual men, but even of cities, is unable to reach. Why, ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... that in the night time they should issue out of the Tower and enter into the city, and so to slay all these unhappy people, while they were at their rest and asleep; for it was thought that many of them were drunken, whereby they should be slain like flies; also of twenty of them there was scant one in harness. And surely the good men of London might well have done this at their ease, for they had in their houses secretly their friends and servants ready in harness, and also sir Robert Knolles was in his lodging keeping his treasure with ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... feel that I had a more narrow escape by shooting that gun than I had with the Indians. When we returned I had taken nine different scalps. The Crees who had not been scalped had taken refuge in the scant forest, and my father said to quit and go home. So we took pity on the tribe, and let them go, so they could tell the story. I remember that we killed over three hundred, and many more that I cannot remember. ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... his adventures. The spirit of the wanderer is in Meares' blood: he has no happiness but in the wild places of the earth. I have never met so extreme a type. Even now he is looking forward to getting away by himself to Hut Point, tired already of our scant measure of civilization."[141] ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... steel glittered ominously, and the solid earth of the plateau shook under the hoofs of their galloping horses, few in number as they were. As they swept on, coming nearer they discovered that their scant one hundred and fifty were even more fearfully outnumbered than they had at first believed; but no man drew rein and every one grasped the hilt of his blade with a fiercer determination, as he drove the cruel spurs still deeper into the flanks of his flying horse—lacerating the animal ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... the Salzburgers received so much sympathy and kindness in Germany on account of their distress, other exiled Protestants, whose story was no less touching, were being treated with scant ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... instituted then and there that were willing to take the Master's command, take Him as responsible for the authority and for the result. They knew better; they knew Him better; and though they had their little scant loaves that would not give a quarter of a crumb apiece to the great multitude, they said: "That is not our responsibility; ours is to obey. It is His to furnish when the resources fail." Brethren, that is ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... were used that could bee, both to the Mercers, brokers, goldsmiths, goldfiners, & such like, where happily such things doe come to bee solde: but all was in vaine, the onely helpe came by the inuenter of this villanie, who scant sleeping all night, in regard of the brokers extreme gaining, both by him and those of his profession: the next morning he came to the Tailers house, at what time hee espied him with the Ladies seruing-man, comming forth of the doores, and into the tauern he went ...
— The Third And Last Part Of Conny-Catching. (1592) - With the new deuised knauish arte of Foole-taking • R. G.
... though it was quite half an hour earlier than he usually started for school. He felt chilly—chillier than he had ever felt before, though it was not a very cold morning. But going out breakfastless does not tend to make one feel warm, and of this sort of thing Geoff had but scant experience. His bag, too, felt very heavy; he glanced up and down the street with a vague idea that perhaps he would catch sight of some boy who, for a penny or two, would carry it for him to the omnibus; but there was no boy in sight. No one at all, indeed, except a young man, who crossed ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... great noise of trumpets and hautboys and drums, and the great pageant came streaming up towards Ludgate, a troop of Oliver's own Body-guard on iron-grey chargers clearing the way, which they did with scant respect for the lives and limbs of the crowd, and with very little scruple either in bruising the Trainbands with their horses' hoofs and the flat of their broadswords. As Arabella leant forward to see the show approach, something hard, and it would seem of metal, that ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... aware. Perhaps it would be as well to be unhampered by such a forcible reminder of her former state as the child, while she was winning the Cumberland heart and softening the Cumberland prejudice. Cecil, she knew already, regarded the baby with scant favor, and would be unfeignedly rejoiced to be quit of him. On the whole, Nesbit was behaving well to her. She had expected far more difficulty, infinitely more bitterness, for, like the world, she gave her husband credit for the scruples of his father's faith. ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... for our horses for whole weeks at a time; but our horses,—ah, that was different. There was no grain to be had for them. They had been starving for a month, for the Indians had burned the grass before us wherever we went, and here in the pine-covered hills what grass could be found was scant and wiry,—not the rich, juicy, strength-giving bunch-grass of the open country. Of my two horses, neither was in condition to do military duty when we got to Whitewood. I was adjutant of the regiment, and had to be bustling around a good deal; and so it happened that one day the colonel ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... we cry, "to suffer all these pains, and my consent not asked? A poor, sad puppet dancing to a tune I know not the rhythm of. Where is my recompense? And where my wages? I will take all I can of what is offered here, and give no thanks! It is but my scant due for all ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... had passed, she would slyly steal to the red gate in the lichen-covered stone wall, and follow him with her palm- shaded eyes down the lonely road; and it as frequently happened that he would glance back over his shoulder at the nut-brown maid, whose closely clinging, scant drapery gave her a sculpturesque grace to which her unconsciousness of it was ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... occasion, and that she realized the impropriety of her conduct is clear from the reference to the banished monarch. But she was weary, depressed, and ill, and had indeed for months past been racked with incessant pain. An agonizing complication of disorders now gave scant hope of recovery. It is in the highest degree interesting to note that during her last sickness Dr. Burnet, a figure of no little importance at that moment, kindly enquired after the dying woman. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... uncertain reports, and many a traveller answering with mere fictions to please them, and get off.' (De Bello Gallico, iv. 5.) Nineteen hundred years; and good Dampmartin, wayworn, in winter frost, probably with scant light of stars and fish-oil, still perorates from the Inn-window! This People is no longer called Gaulish; and it has wholly become braccatus, has got breeches, and suffered change enough: certain fierce German Franken ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... distracted thoughts. Suddenly, she observed Velmont approaching her. She would have avoided him, but the balustrade that surrounded the terrace cut off her retreat. She was cornered. She could not move. A gleam of sunshine, passing through the scant foliage of a bamboo, lighted up her beautiful golden hair. Some one spoke to ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... silently to the girl's rhapsodies—she suddenly awakened to the realization that he was paying scant attention to her enthusiastic words. She looked at him, her heart-beats quickened, some intuition warned her of the ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... thrown backward. Bound up in her grief and the injured sense of her impotence, she cried long, gently, and monotonously, pouring out all the pain of her wounded heart in her sobs. And before her, like an irremovable stain, hung that yellow face with the scant mustache, and the squinting eyes staring at her with malicious pleasure. Resentment and bitterness were winding themselves about her breast like black threads on a spool; resentment and bitterness toward those who tear a ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... who are needed; for the past year came eighty-odd soldiers, and this year ninety. That is but a scant number for the many men who die here, for our forces are steadily diminishing. I can do no more, for money has not been coined here, nor do the people multiply. I ask, Sire, for what is needed to fulfil my obligations. The viceroy does not send the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... latitude of Boeotia, and knew nothing of the sunny wealth in the south of the peninsula, or of such princely estates as Eumaeus managed in the Ionian seas. Flaxman has certainly not given him the look of a large proprietor in his outlines: his toilet is severely scant, and the old gentleman appears to have lost two of his fingers in a chaff-cutter. As for Perses, who is represented as listening to the sage,[A] his dress is in the extreme of classic scantiness,—being, in fact, a mere night-shirt, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... with scant dismay, Since the memory of this day With me there will ever dwell. Fair Daria, fare thee well, And since now thou knowest who Died for love of thee, renew The sweet vow that in the dell Once thou gav'st me, Him to love After death who ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... approaches to his throne were one-and-twenty of his favourite women, beautifully dressed in feather textures, with the curved neck and head of a bird surmounting their brows. But their costume was scant and simple compared with that of the dancing girls below us. They wore a wonderful head-dress, composed of the entire body of a small peacock. The head and neck were arched over the forehead, the back fitted tightly, like a hat over their head, the drooping wings ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... turn, answered: I should think it best, Ischomachus, to use indifferently the whole sowing season. [5] Far better [6] to have enough of corn and meal at any moment and from year to year, than first a superfluity and then perhaps a scant supply. ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... time in her society, for she was a poor, gentle creature of no spirit, who found little happiness in her lot, since her lord treated her with scant civility, and her children one after another sickened and died in their infancy until but two were left. He scarce remembered her existence when he did not see her face, and he was certainly not thinking of her this morning, ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... ashore a scant six feet above certain death. Fortunately the raft was light and they were able to gain a foothold and lift it from ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... because movable—so that it may be carried from generation to generation, and our sons unborn may be rich in the things that have been, and possess a hope built on an unchangeable foundation.' They said it and they wrought it, though often breathing with scant life, as in a coffin, or as lying wounded amid a heap of slain. Hooted and scared like the unowned dog, the Hebrew made himself envied for his wealth and wisdom, and was bled of them to fill the bath of Gentile luxury; he absorbed knowledge, he diffused it; his dispersed ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... a word at this point as to the general relation of religion and philosophy. We realise the evil which Kant first in clearness pointed out. It was the evil of an apprehension which made the study of religion a department of metaphysics. The tendency of that apprehension was to do but scant justice to the historical content of Christianity. Religion is an historical phenomenon. Especially is this true of Christianity. It is a fact, or rather, a vast complex of facts. It is a positive religion. ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... thou wilt depart with such scant ceremony"—he grumbled peevishly—"get thee thence and find out the road as best thou mayest! ... why should I aid thee? For myself I am well contented here to remain and sleep,—no better couch can the Poet have than this violet-scented moss"—and he waved his arm with a grandiloquent ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... and comprehending mind saw and suffered things that formerly never affected him. The hard and sometimes cruel discipline, toil from sunrise to sunset, scant food, the stifling of ambitions—all these began now to be perceived and felt, and the impression they left sank into the soul of this rebellious boy. He saw a slave killed by an overseer, on no other charge than that of being "impudent." "Crimes" of this nature were committed, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... take seamen from American merchant ships upon the plea of her right to impress British seamen in any place; and, though the claim to detain or search ships of war had been explicitly disavowed after the Chesapeake affair of 1807, scant deference was shown to the vessels of a power so little able to stand up for itself. In a day when most vessels carried some guns for self-defense, it was a simple matter to ignore the national character of an armed ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... for it is strange how people's sympathies veer around on the side of the people who are in power. My father has told me many times how, when he was thought to be the prospective heir of Pennington, people could not make enough of him, while Richard Tresidder had but scant courtesy paid him. When it became known that my father was disinherited, no matter how unjustly, these same folks discovered that Richard Tresidder was a very mine of wit and goodness, while my father was made a butt for ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... I said at the outset, a hard-working amateur in "A Modern Lover"; three years later, in "A Drama in Muslin," he writes with authority and insight; as he does, too, in "Parnell and his Island" (1887), though here with scant sympathy; but it is not until "Evelyn Innes" that he becomes deeply concerned with beauty of subject or beauty of background, or, except at haphazard, possessed of any mastery of style. "Evelyn Innes" is very well written,—in ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... wilderness—lovely asters and abronias on the dusty plains, rose-gardens around the mountain wells, and resiny woods, where all seemed so desolate, adorning the hot foothills as well as the cool summits, fed by cordial and benevolent storms of rain and hail and snow; all of these scant and rare as compared with the immeasurable exuberance of California, but still amply sufficient throughout the barest deserts for a clear ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... laddie"[6] who had taught the boat-master how to build his boats so cunningly below the water-line—above the water-line he had had to use his native wits, and they were scant enough—must surely have been there beforehand, and bidden him both sell it cheaply, so that Elias might get it, and stipulate besides that the boat should not be looked at too closely. In this way it escaped the usual tarring fore ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... physiognomies—the one lean and jovial, the other plump and resigned—alight with the same smile of welcome. Father Abella mentioned them as his coadjutor Father Martin Landaeta, and their guest Father Jose Uria of San Jose; and then the three, with the scant rites of genuine hospitality, applied themselves to the tickling of palates long unused to ambrosial living. Responding ingenuously to the glow of their home-made wines, they begged Rezanov to accept the Mission, burn it, plunder it, above all, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... sand hills and the sea; a vast barren land stretching away in wave-like undulations far as eye can reach; marsh and heath and sand, sand and heath and marsh; here and there a stretch of scant coarse grass, a mass of waving reeds, a patch ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... will see the action and the result of this great law of Co-operative Activities. When I first looked within the lids of that hollyhock, and was incited to read the rudimental lessons of the new leaves that man's art had added to its scant, original volume, I had no thought of finding so much matter printed on its pages. I have transcribed it here in the order of its paragraphs, hoping that some who read them may see in this life of flowers an interest they may have ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... went in, uninvited, and looked about the room. Nothing was changed except the fire, which was lower and feebler; it seemed to Prescott that the two or three lumps of coal on the hearth were hugging each other for scant comfort, and even as he looked at it the timbers of the ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... congregational matters with Morris's father, for Mr. Kohn was one of the early presidents of Kehilath Anshe Ma'arav, Chicago's first synagogue, and one of its most active members. Morris, busy in the next room with his lessons for the next day, had paid scant attention to their conversation, until the words, "Mr. Lincoln," and "flag" caught his ear. Then he closed his geography with a slam, for like every other nine-year-old boy of his day, he had heard much of the "rail splitter from Illinois," ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... speak, but MacNair interrupted her. "I have scant time for parley. I was starting for Mackay Lake, but when Old Elk reported two of yon scum's satellites hanging about, I dropped down the river. By your words it's a school you will be building. If it were a post I would have to take you ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... endeavor to persuade Kara Mustapha first of all to subdue the surrounding country, and to postpone until the following year the attack upon Vienna; his advice was scornfully rejected, and, indeed, the audacity of the Grand Vizier seemed justified by the scant resistance he had met with. He talked of renewing the conquests of Solyman: he assembled, it is said, seven hundred thousand men, one hundred thousand horses, and one thousand two hundred guns—an army more powerful than any the Turks had set on foot since the capture of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... Laurance was a poor man's daughter. She and I were of the same age and did not look unlike each other, although I was not so pretty by half. You can see by the portrait how beautiful she was, and it does her scant justice, for half her charm lay in her arch expression and her vivacious ways. She had her little faults, of course, and was rather over much given to romance and sentiment. This did not seem much of a defect to me then, Amy, for I was young and romantic too. Mother never cared much ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... "Scant haffen mile," put in the blacksmith, "down to a sort of cave, or tunnel, that runs under the mounting—yander—that lets 'em out into ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... he gave his critics no lack of cause. His enterprises were often enough of a hair-raising kind, and he had scant patience with censure. Thus once, when harassed by an Admiralty order purposely issued to annoy him, he wrote back: "The biggest fool can see that to obey would defeat all my plans. I shall not do it. It may suit folk who love loafing about shore, but to an honest man such talk is disgusting, ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... come to see his mother for an old familiar talk, because his wife either comes with him, or expects him to be at home. He has no time for his mother's interests or his mother's friends; there is scant welcome in his home for her, because between them has come an alien presence which ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... persons who walk with drooping shoulders and awkward movements. Coming back to civilisation with fresh impressions of the people of nature, not a few of the so-called superior race appear as caricatures, in elaborate and complicated clothing, with scant attention to poise and graceful carriage. One does not expect ladies and gentlemen to appear in public in "the altogether," but humanity will be better off when healthful physical development and education of the intellect receive equal attention, thus enabling man to ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... into our saddle-bags and separated for the day into two parties, Nimrod and the Horsewrangler, the Host and myself, leaving the Cook to take care of camp. We were hunting for elk, mountain lion, or bear. Nimrod had his camera, as well as his gun, a combination which the Horsewrangler eyed with scant tolerance. ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... against the west wall, near the window, and a little round table, with a white towel and a rosewood box on it, in the corner at the head of the great high-posted bedstead, which filled the rest of the room, with scant passageway at the foot and one side. Ann's little body scarcely raised the patchwork quilt on the bed; her face, sunken in the feather pillows, looked small and weazened as a sick child's in the dim light. She reached out one little bony hand, clutched Jerome's poor jacket, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... antique interiors as a bric-a-brac cabinet. In an upper story of one of these subdivided houses Rob Riley and his wife, Henrietta, have two old-fashioned rooms; the front room is large and airy, with a carved mantelpiece, the back room small and cosy. The furniture is rather plain and scant, for Rob has not yet got to be a great engineer working on his own account. At present he is one of those little fish that the big fish are made to eat—an obscure man whose brains are carried up to ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... written on Spanish travel spoke of the range admiringly. But these authors, we find, invariably, only passed by the eastern extremity, or the western, of the great mountain wall; the mountains themselves they did not visit. Search in the large libraries brings out a few scant volumes of Pyrenean travel, but all, with two or three exceptions, bear date within the first three-fifths of the century. It is with books, often, as with the Furancon, the wine of the Pyrenees, and with certain other vintages: age improves them only up ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... until she was a slender shadow of her former self. She became hard, brown as the rangers, lithe and quick as a panther. She seemed to live on water and the air—perhaps, indeed, on love. For of the scant fare, the best of which was continually urged upon her, she partook but little. She reminded Gale of a wild brown creature, free as the wind on the lava slopes. Yet, despite the great change, her beauty remained undiminished. Her eyes, seeming ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... hours' march they passed this barren land and approached the foot of a hill where the mimosa was plentiful again, and other shrubs were seen, with herbage, scant indeed, but good for camels, who will browse upon what would hardly tempt a donkey. Here a halt was called, and while the men dismounted and lay down, the three officers who were with the company explored the spot. There were two mud-holes which supplied ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... Dolores, still pressing her ear against the tapestry. The murmur of a hundred voices came clearly to her, and above all sounded the high-raised shout of one who harangued the rest. At periods the murmuring became a howl, and the triumphant note in it left scant room for doubt as to the nature of the address. The girl, faced with the responsibility of decided action, no longer able to depend on the wisdom and terrible power of Red Jabez, stepped from the wall with panting heart and parted ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... hither shore Would I be some poor Player on scant hire, Than King among the old, who play no more, - "THIS is the end ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... and Claudet, there was a joyous hurrah of welcome. Justice Destourbet exchanged a ceremonious hand-shake with the new proprietor of the chateau. The scant costume and tight gaiters of the huntsman's attire, displayed more than ever the height and slimness of the country magistrate. By his side, the registrar Seurrot, his legs encased in blue linen spatterdashes, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... was, that so much of their precious time was spent in trying to overcome the numerous difficulties by which they found themselves confronted, that there were scant opportunities for ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... rapping at his door. O'Hana could hear but a whispered consultation going on without the amado. Iemon returned to the room. His face was white; his step tottered. Hastily he donned an outer robe. To her question he made scant reply, so agitated was he. His one idea was to keep from her what he had just heard. In the garden he found his wardsmen assembled. All were dumbfounded and aghast. They looked at each other and then at the broken ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... enthusiastic over the success of their experiments. Several years ago a piano was lowered into the cave for use on a special occasion, and still occupies a position on the dancing platform, where it will probably remain indefinitely under the scant protection ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... through the grace of the owners, and there was forest-reserve grazing besides, which the Sawtooth could have if it chose to pay the nominal rental sum. The Quirt ranch, was almost surrounded by Sawtooth land of one sort or another, though there was scant grazing in the early spring on the sagebrush wilderness to the south. This needed Quirt Creek for accessible water, and Quirt Creek, save where it ran through cut-bank hills, was fenced within the section and a half of the ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... from the W.C.T.U. to the Elks and was a blood-brother of the Tin Horn and the acidulated Elder with the scant Skilligans. ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... the furnishings were scant and poor, and in every way things were vastly different from what we find them in the poorhouse of our modern times. In the main office, where Mr. Engler transacted his business affairs and entertained ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... we were still molested, and no hope remained of any purchase to be had in this place any longer; because we were now so notably made known in those parts, and because our victuals grew scant: as soon as the weather waxed somewhat better (the wind continuing always westerly, so that we could not return to our ships) our Captain thought best to go (3rd November) to the Eastward, towards Rio Grande [Magdalena] long the coast, where we had been before, ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... was dressed. And, lest the custom that he had to steal Might cause him sometime to forget his zeal, He gives his journeyman a special charge That, if the stuff allowed fell out too large, And that to filch his fingers were inclined, He then should put the Banner in his mind. This done, I scant the rest can tell for laughter. A Captain of a ship came three days after, And bought three yards of velvet and three quarters, To make Venetians down below the garters. He, that precisely knew what was enough, Soon ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... example, thrift. It is not possible to expect that large class of workers who depend upon irregular earnings of less than 18s. a week to set by anything for a rainy day. The essence of thrift is regularity, and regularity is to them impossible. Even supposing their scant wage was regular, it is questionable whether they would be justified in stinting the bodily necessities of their families by setting aside a portion which could not in the long run suffice to provide even a bare maintenance for old age ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... just the rude stories one hears In sadness and mirth, The records of wandering years, And scant is their worth Though their merits indeed are but slight, I shall not repine, If they give you one moment's delight, Old comrades ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... empty sky, this ignorance may be excused. In the boyaux, which began where the railroad stopped, that was our position. We walked through an endless grave with walls of clay, on top of which was a scant foot of earth. It looked like a layer of chocolate on the top of ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... trenches, rations are issued, cooked, the bread being baked and the beef boiled, bacon or salt pork is issued raw, the soldiers eating it raw, or boiled on coals, if convenient and the meat not too scant. In permanent camp, the soldiers drew the rations raw or cooked as they preferred almost always each mess preferred to do its own cooking. With us confederates, bread was mostly corn pone, sometimes biscuits, sometimes hard-tack. Cold cornbread or hard-tack crumbled into a tin can and boiled ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little
... thrice, saying, 'Peace, peace, peace,' and teachyng many things, which he anon declared to the bishops, and bid the people amend their naughtie living. Being rapt also in spirite, they sayde he behelde the joyes of heaven and sorowes of hell, for scant were there three in the realme, sayde he, that ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... for the prevailing spirit of romance, even in this woman-forsaken country. A good creature, all limp calico, Roman nose, and sharp elbows, she brought him his breakfast with an ill grace that she had not shown to the others. The men about the table gave him scant greeting, but the absence ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... in the dark a few hours ago are now in the brightest sunshine, while the oracles of yesterday are the meekest disciples to-day. I rode from New-Haven to London in the same car with three Frenchmen and two Frenchwomen, coming up to the Exhibition, with a scant half-allowance of English among them; and their efforts to understand the signs, &c., were interesting. "London Stout," displayed in three-foot letters across the front of a drinking-house, arrested their attention: "Stoot? Stoot?" queried one of them; but the rest were ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... or I might well say the dishonour, that you do put upon Saint Mary the blessed Virgin. Surely, of all that He knew and loved on this earth, she must have been the dearest unto our Lord. Why then thus scrimp and scant the reverence due unto her? Verily, in this matter, the Papists do more ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... of the farmer wore an ominous frown, and his wife, as she distributed to each the scant measure of brown bread and milk remarked, grudgingly, that she should think 'twas 'bout time that her house was cleared of a crowd o' hungry, squallin' young ones; and then Mr. Gubtil took out his account-book and wrote down the name of each child, with an estimate of the amount ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... She could scarcely remain in the berth. Listen! Was her mother awake, in the lower one? The boat veered a trifle back northward and suddenly again, hovering over dim water and shore and blazing like a herald angel, was the morning star, a scant point or so to "stabboard." She chuckled, softly, ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... imprint His Power on all the universe that His Word should not remain in infinite excess.[1] And this makes certain that the first proud one, who was the top of every creature, through not awaiting light, fell immature.[2] And hence it appears, that every lesser nature is a scant receptacle for that Good which has no end and measures Itself by Itself. Wherefore our vision, which needs must be some ray of the Mind with which all things are full, cannot in its own nature be so potent that it may not discern its origin to be far beyond ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... friend who loves her, before the child is born. This is finally satisfactorily arranged. Later, Sanin, not because he disapproves of the libertine officer's affair with his sister, but because he regards the officer as a blockhead, treats him with scant courtesy; and the officer, hidebound by convention, sees no way out but a challenge to a duel. The scene when the two brother officers bring the formal challenge to Sanin is the only scene in the novel marked by. genuine humour, and is also the only scene ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... out from her, ran without ceasing till she came in to the Lady Zubeideh and related to her the story; and the princess said to her, laughing, "Tell it over again to the Khalif, who maketh me out scant of wit and lacking of religion, and to this ill-omened slave, who presumeth to contradict me." Quoth Mesrour, "This old woman lieth; for I saw Aboulhusn well and Nuzhet el Fuad it was who lay dead." "It is thou that liest," rejoined the stewardess, "and wouldst fain ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... The proprietor has a bald head, a long face, and a nose like the beak of a hawk. He sits upon a carpet spread upon the dust; the wall is at his back; overhead hangs a scant curtain, around him, within hand's reach and arranged upon little stools, lie osier boxes full of almonds, grapes, figs, and pomegranates. To him now comes one at whom we cannot help looking, though for another ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... a little and speaking more coldly than at first. "You may see it for yourself. Here are we, a scant threescore souls, not one score grown men, come to people a savage land and make terms with hordes of savage inhabitants. Is it not the clearest, ay, sternest necessity that those of us who are unwived, to our sorrow though it be, should take the women who remain, be they maids or widows, in ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... pleasant in spite of the cramped accommodation, for the little crew were a kindly simple people, whose countenances invited trust, and though the fare on board had been scant, yet it was wholesome and good, as the rest the travellers ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... directly in their faces, they often lost the road, had to stand still at times and look about them to see where they were and gather breath, or turn around to let the strongest gusts go by; it took them three-quarters of an hour to go the scant fifteen minutes' walk to the parsonage. There they first shook off the snow as well as they could, then knocked on the door. But they knocked long in vain; the sound was swallowed up in the howling of the wind, which raged ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... and roots. In the moon of the Frost-Touching-Mildly clouds came up from the south with a great trampling of thunder, and flung out over the Dry Washes as a man flings his blanket over a maiden. But if the Rains were scant for two or three seasons, then there was Hunger, and the dust devils took ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... he would join them in their box at the opera, or when Stafford brought him home to dinner they sat and chatted on all kinds of congenial topics while the husband, wholly absorbed in the business details of a busy day, paid only scant attention to ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... and recreations of a day. Doubtless the routine duties repeated day after day were thought too ordinary to be worth recording. The pleasures were so simple and came so much as a matter of course that they also receive scant mention in the annals of the fort. It is from the General Regulations for the Army that one gets the daily program of a military post; and the few fragmentary pages of Taliaferro's diary and letters, together with the stray remarks of travellers ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... was curiously built. It consisted of two storeys, and formed a main building and one wing, which gave it a peculiarly lop-sided appearance that reminded me somewhat ludicrously of Chanticleer, with a solitary, scant, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... very," he assured her, covering an alarm he felt for the first time. She did appear to be feverish, and the anxiety of her manner deepened as the meal progressed. It developed quickly that she had but scant appetite for the choice food now being served. She could only taste bits here and there. Her plates were removed with their delicacies almost intact. Between courses her hand would seek his, gripping it as if in some nameless ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... join thee in the tourney," cried Hagen. "It were well that these women and these knights saw how we can ride. They give Gunther's men scant praise." ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... penniless poverty. But now to school From the half-yearly holidays returned, 85 We came with weightier purses, that sufficed To furnish treats more costly than the Dame Of the old grey stone, from her scant board, supplied. Hence rustic dinners on the cool green ground, Or in the woods, or by a river side 90 Or shady fountains, while among the leaves Soft airs were stirring, and the mid-day sun Unfelt shone brightly round us in our joy. Nor is my aim neglected if I tell How sometimes, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... miles and miles of moor and fell, to beautiful mills and dells and waterfalls—too many miles for slender Marty or little Chips; or even Bob and Chucker-out—who weigh thirty-two stone between them, and are getting lazy in their old age, and fat and scant of breath. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... over ten thousand dollars remaining for the return match; and this, as Loring pointed out with just indignation, would only put them even. They knew that Wyatt would have at least twice that much with him. So they scurried forth and made such good use of the scant time left them, by borrowing, by squeezing both Bickford and the hard-working bookkeeper, and by resource to certain nest-eggs laid by for case of extreme urgency (known among themselves as "fix money"), they scraped together ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... girl of scant sixteen, who had never seen a slaveholder on his plantation, though I had known these two for years, and loved them dearly, as guests in our Northern home before it was broken up by the death of my mother. Father ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... painful thing for him to do; not that they had any quarrel, though sometimes David thought a quarrel would be better than the scant and almost sad intercourse their once tender love had fallen into. By some strange mental sympathy, hardly sufficiently recognized by us, John was thinking of his nephew when he entered. He greeted him ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... square, two-storied substantial building of stone, but the stone had been liberally oiled to keep out the wet, and the blackness thus produced had not a very cheerful look. Then, on this particular evening the scant bushes surrounding the house hung limp and dark in the rain, and amid the prevailing hues of purple, blue-green and blue the bit of scarlet coping running round the black house was wholly ineffective in relieving the general impression of dreariness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... nodding towards her, much elated. Joe again cleared his throat tentatively, but Margaret ruthlessly corked the bottle, and, assuming her usual frosty air, remarked with somewhat scant politeness that it was time for her to be setting about her business, and there was no need for other folks ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... for the first time he fully realised how strongly the trade wind was really blowing, for, close-hauled as the catamaran was, she felt the full strength of the breeze. It piped through her scant rigging with the clamour of half a gale, and poured into her canvas with a savageness of spite that threatened to tear the cloths clean out of the bolt-ropes, while it careened the craft until the lee gunwale was completely buried in the hissing turmoil of foaming yeast that ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... roommate at college. Jack had the same merry blue eyes and sunny smile as his sister, and Judith forgot to be shy with him. Thomas was a cheery youth, whose chief interest at the dinner-table was the food, and Judith gave him scant attention. But Tim, the elder brother, who had been in the Flying Corps and had several enemy machines to his credit, who still limped from injuries received during an air-fight, and whose grey eyes had the keen, ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... For a moment he stood thinking, while Herzog eyed him with trepidation, and Waldron, almost forgetting to smoke, waited developments with interest. The Billionaire, however, wasted but scant time in consideration. It was not money now, he lusted for, but power. Money was, to him, no longer any great desideratum. At most, it could now mean no more to him than a figure on a check-book or a page of statistics in his private ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... survival.' He made an obvious effort to become more like his usual self. 'It is extremely unfortunate, Atherton, that I should have troubled you with such a display of weakness,—especially as I am able to offer you so scant an explanation. One thing I would ask of you,—to observe strict confidence. What has taken place has been between ourselves. I am in your hands, but you are my friend, I know I can rely on you not to speak of it to anyone,—and, ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... of whom one of the strongest was Falstaffe, who wrote in direct opposition to Steele's "Sir John Edgar", openly attempting to provoke that knight to a journalistic contest. But Edgar gave scant attention to his essays, though they were vigorously written and presented strong arguments in defense of the Lord Chamberlain's intervention in Drury Lane affairs. Steele acknowledged the first number of The Anti-Theatre (it appeared on February 15, 1720) in the fourteenth number of ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... at him, her eyes, though moist, illumined with pleasure inspired by the sympathy in his tones rather than the import of his words. The girl's life heretofore had been as scant of kindness as of cash, and there was a deep sincerity in his voice which was as refreshing to her lonesome heart as it was new to her experience. This man was not so stupid as he had pretended to be. He had accurately divined the inner meaning ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... receive the law of righteousness is, indeed, a rare thing in the world! The wisdom of a master derived from former births, enables him to accept the law with joy: this is not rare; but that a woman, weak of will, scant in wisdom, deeply immersed in love, should yet be able to delight in piety, this, indeed, is very rare. A man born in the world, by proper thought comes to delight in goodness, he recognizes the impermanence of wealth and beauty, and looks upon religion as his best ornament. He feels that this ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... the base of the hill on which the fortress stood. They found that on one side the hill sloped gently toward the city, and on the other toward the sea. The face toward the city, except for some venturesome goats grazing on its scant herbage, was bare and deserted. The side that sloped to the sea was closely overgrown with hardy mesquite bushes and wild laurel, which would effectually conceal any one approaching from that direction. What had been the fortress was now only a broken wall, a few feet in height. It was covered ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... shepherds called their leader King, though his kingship was over but few men. Yet they were such men as begin history, and in the scant company there were all the seeds of empire. First the profound faith of natural mankind, unquestioning, immovable, inseparable from every daily thought and action; then fierce strength, and courage, and love of life and of possession; last, obedience ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... yielding to a vulgar envy of richer women's clothes and jewels. Her dress, with which she had been pleased, looked ordinary beside the creations of great Parisian ateliers, and the few old paste ornaments which were the only jewels she possessed, charming as they were, seemed dim and scant among the crowns and constellations of diamonds that surrounded her. Her pride rebelled against this envy, ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... miles long. Its breadth at no point exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the mainland by a scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh-hen. The vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of any magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort Moultrie[4] stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings, tenanted, during summer, by the fugitives from Charleston ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... and a bounce. Near at hand they only excited my pity. One evening one sat by my door two paces from me, at first trembling with fear, yet unwilling to move; a poor wee thing, lean and bony, with ragged ears and sharp nose, scant tail and slender paws. It looked as if Nature no longer contained the breed of nobler bloods, but stood on her last toes. Its large eyes appeared young and unhealthy, almost dropsical. I took a step, and lo, away it scud with an elastic spring over the snow-crust, straightening ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... was thatched; a new chateau was reared Of stone, as weathered as the church at Caen; Gray blooms were coloured suddenly in red; A flag was flung across the eastern sky.— Nearer at hand, he made me then aware Of peasant women bending in the fields, Cradling and gleaning by the first scant light, Their sons and husbands somewhere o'er the edge Of these green-golden fields which they had sowed, But will not reap,—out somewhere on the march, God but knows where and if they come again. One fallow field he pointed out to me Where but the day before a peasant ploughed, Dreaming of next ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... to Norway, Ibsen's correspondence became very scant, and we have no letters dating from the period when he was at work on The Master Builder. On the other hand, we possess a curious lyrical prelude to the play, which he put on paper on March 16, 1892. It is said to have been his habit, before setting to work on ...
— The Master Builder • Henrik Ibsen
... The breeze continued scant all night, notwithstanding which the Flying Cloud was, at eight o'clock next morning, as close to the French coast as Captain Blyth cared to take her, and she was accordingly hove about, the wind so far favouring her that it was confidently hoped ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... corraled that greatest glory, The State Intercollegiate Football Championship! In Captain Butch's Sophomore year, he had flung his bulk into the fray, training, sacrificing, fighting like a Trojan, only to see the pennant lost by a scant three inches, as Jack Merritt's forty-yard drop-kick for the goal that would have won the Championship struck the cross-bar and bounded back into the field. And the past season-old Bannister could still vision that tragic scene of ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... her Sir Rudiger and all his knightly train To serve her ever truly, and all her rights maintain, Nor e'er of her due honors scant her in Etzel's land. Thereto gave the good margrave th' assurance ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... captured by Indians, who had held them captive for ten months. Indeed, Mr. Atherly, senior, never recovered from the effects of his captivity, and died shortly after Mrs. Atherly had given birth to twins, Peter and Jenny Atherly. This was scant knowledge for Peter in the glorification of his name through his immediate progenitors; but "Atherly of Atherly" still sounded pleasantly, and, as the young lady had said, smacked of old feudal days and honors. It was believed beyond doubt, even in their simple family records,—the ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... Ursula, when Mark gave her the message, and from that moment she was calmer. She did not fret Mark with questions even as much as Annaple did, she tried to prevent her father from raging at the scant information, and she even endeavoured to employ herself with some of her ordinary occupations, though all the time she kept up the ceaseless watch. 'Mr. Dutton would not have said that without good hope,' she averred, 'and I ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a year, she had been obliged to spend nearly five fatiguing hours in being finished as a Queen. How strange it all seems to us American Republicans, who make and unmake our rulers with such expedition and scant ceremony. ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... some of these things because he did not smoke, because he never took off his walking coat and shoes till he went to bed, and because he had an old bath robe made him by her grandmother, very short and very scant (according to her notion at the chance moments when she had surprised him in it), from which neither love nor money could part him; the others she rejected for the reason already assigned. Little or nothing remained, then, but to give him books, and ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... which it suits you should be his property. When it ceases to suit you, it has lost its legality for you, and any absolute right in it you will laugh at."[14] It is always the same tune: "For me there is nothing above myself." But his scant respect for the property of others does not prevent the "Ego" of Stirner from having the tendencies of a property-owner. The strongest argument against Communism, is, in his opinion, the consideration that Communism by abolishing individual property ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... of the sweat-gland ducts, seated upon the face. The lesions may be present in scant numbers or in more or less profusion. They have the appearance of boiled sago grains imbedded in the skin; the larger lesions may have a bluish color, especially about the periphery. It is not common, ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... or soul; and others again ready to burst with rage, if any one but touched his hat to the beautiful Matilda. To all such, the innocent child had not a word to say; for she knew well enough, that scant blessing waits on marriages of such a make. There was but one young fellow who could be said to please her thoroughly, and he was neither rich nor singularly handsome. She had become acquainted with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... Noire, a matter of ten kilometres. It is no hardship, my rounds, not at all, with the ground like a white tablecloth, and this good sun, to me like to my dogs, it is but play." He rose from the table, glad of the excuse to hasten his going, and with scant courtesy Jakapa sped his ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... watched the brilliant figures swimming in the glow of wax candles. Face after face could be singled out as beautiful, and the scant dresses revealed taper forms. Madame de Ferrier's garments may have been white or blue or yellow; I remember only her satin arms and neck, the rosy color of her face, and the powder on her hair making ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Mexico before the Conquest. As in the case of the Chinese book, it looks superficially like ours; we think it is a tiny quarto until we see that its measure is rather that of an oblong twenty-fourmo; that is, its dimensions are just scant of five inches high and six inches wide. It has thin wooden covers and is, over all, an inch thick; but between these covers is a strip of deerskin twenty-nine feet long and, of course, nearly five inches wide. This is folded in screen or fan fashion, the ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... climb lulled his brain, John played with these idle fancies. Barboux, being out of condition and scant of breath, conversed very little. The Indians kept silence ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... relate briefly his experiences at the chateau, thus beguiling the way until the curiously assorted trio reached the Flying Fish, at the vast bulk of which Vasilovich stared in stupefied amazement. His captors, however, afforded him but scant time for indulgence in surprise or conjecture, conveying him forthwith to the tank chamber, wherein they securely locked him, taking the additional precaution of placing his hands and feet in fetters and attaching him thereby to a ring-bolt, thus rendering it absolutely impossible ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... in a shabby, leather-cushioned armchair, sat a little old man with scant gray hair and a fringe of gray throat whiskers. He wore steel-rimmed spectacles and over these ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of the train was very slow, as the soil was soft on the newly made and sandy roads. We progressed but a few miles on our first day's journey, and in the evening parked our train at a point where there was no wood, a scant supply of water—and that of bad quality—but an abundance of grass. There being no comfortable place to sleep in any of the wagons, filled as they were to the bows with army supplies, I spread my blankets on the ground between the wheels of one of them, and awoke in the morning feeling ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... honour means?" retorted Andrew—"but ca' him what ye wull, they're a great convenience in a country-side that's scant o' borough-towns like this Northumberland—That's no the case, now, in Scotland;—there's the kingdom of Fife, frae Culross to the East Nuik, it's just like a great combined city—sae mony royal boroughs yoked on end to end, like ropes of ingans, with their hie-streets and their ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... all women except my mother, and, Catholic as he was, had scant respect for the mendicant orders, hated this dream, hated to be reminded of it, hated the name which he had been persuaded into giving me, and, as a consequence, I believe, never loved me. For unnumbered generations of our family we had been Antonys, Gerards, Ralphs, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... gravely Bright-Wits made reply, "Here you will find the map in proper shape. Scant must be the brains in Parrabang when so simple a task ...
— Bright-Wits, Prince of Mogadore • Burren Laughlin and L. L. Flood
... weak from gloating insolently over the half-shorn strength of the strong, was a thankless, hopeless task. The former masters of the land were peremptorily ordered about, seized and imprisoned, and punished over and again, with scant courtesy from army officers. The former slaves were intimidated, beaten, raped, and butchered by angry and revengeful men. Bureau courts tended to become centres simply for punishing whites, while the regular ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... not only the broadness of Jesus' views and the universality of His love, as well as His courage in defying the hated formalism, even in the palace of its stanchest advocates, but also His attitude toward women. The Jews as a race held women in but scant esteem. They were not deemed worthy to sit with the men in the synagogue. It was deemed unworthy of a man to mention his female relations in general company. They were regarded as inferior in every way to men, and were treated as almost unclean in ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... hardly settled himself before a man stepped from behind a stump and struck out rapidly upon his trail. The man was traveling light, apparently studying the ground as he walked. Wentworth glanced about him and noted that the rocky ridge would give the man scant opportunity for trailing him to his position. The figure was coming up the ridge now. As it passed a twisted pine, Wentworth got a good look into his face, and the sight of it sent cold shivers up his spine that prickled ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... deserted. The Tiber between low, interrupted slopes, some covered with longest most compact green grass, others of brown, unreal tufo, like crumbled masonry, or hollowed into Signorelli-looking grottoes, with deep growths of Judas-tree, broom, and scant asphodels; all green and brown, of such shapes that one wonders whether they also, like so many seeming boulders scattered in their neighbourhood, are not in ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... in the flickering glare I mark me the boughs of my tree, My tree of the years, growing bare. Growing bare with the scant days to be. ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... They dare not sit or lean, But fume and fret and posture And foam and curse between; For being bound to Baal, Whose sacrifice is vain, Their rest is scant with Baal, They glare and pant for Baal, They mouth and rant for Baal, For Baal in ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... of the cloister, it organized a separate company, which we, in its regularly constituted assembly, call a conventicle. Instead of the cowl, it put on its youth a dress like that of the world, but scant and ashen-colored; it substituted for the tonsure closely-cut hair and shaven beard, and it often went beyond the obedience of the monks in its expression of pining humility and prudish composure. Education within such a circle could not well recognize nature and history as manifestations ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... housekeepers, and at last a style was decided upon. Then there was a laying on of patterns, and cutting, and basting, and ripping out, and sewing together, till at last the dress was completed. It is true that it was a little too long on the shoulder, and a little too short under the arm, and a little too scant in the skirt. But it was pretty, and the effect ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... brought in Josephine, and E. W. B. Childers (rather deeply lined in the jaws by daylight), and the Little Wonder of Scholastic Equitation, and in a word, all the company. Amazing creatures they were in Louisa's eyes, so white and pink of complexion, so scant of dress, and so demonstrative of leg; but it was very agreeable to see them crowding about Sissy, and very natural in Sissy to be unable ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... time he had staggered into camp the daylight had come. He glanced about him wearily. Across a tiny ravine the horses dozed, tied each to a short picket rope. Bob was already enough of a mountaineer to notice that the feed was very scant. The camp itself had been made under a dozen big yellow pines. A bright little fire flickered. About it stood utensils from which the men were rather dispiritedly helping themselves. Bob saw that the long pine needles had been scraped together to make ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... level with Amadis, and averring that he knew "no romance and no epic in which suspense is so successfully kept up." Of their successors, the long line of sons, grandsons and nephews, each more valiant and puissant than the last, it must be said that they are as scant of beauty as of grace. In order to keep up the interest of their readers, the authors of the Primaleons and the Polindos—the Florisels and the Florisandos—were compelled to put in wonders on an ascending ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... snow, whether exploring or hunting, was heart-breaking work. The horses suffered most; the extreme toil, and scant pasturage weakened them so that some died from exhaustion; others fell over precipices and the magpies proved evil foes, picking the sore backs of the wincing, saddle-galled beasts. In striving to find some pass for the horses the whole party ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... so small, so scant, Yet somehow oh, so bright and airy. There was a pink geranium plant, Likewise a very pert canary. And in the maiden's heart it seemed Some fount of gladness must be springing, For as alone I sadly dreamed I ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... hedge that even a vigilant scout looking for an enemy might have passed within a dozen feet of him without seeing him. Another drift of snow falling after he had gone to sleep had covered up his footsteps and he was as securely hidden as if he had been a hundred miles, instead of only a scant two miles, from the double French ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... our consorts and which the chase. At this time we could see the Duchess and the chase near together, and the Marquis standing to them with all the sail she could carry. We also made all the sail we could, but being three or four leagues to leeward, and having a very scant wind, we made little way. At noon they bore S.E. from us, being still three leagues right to windward. In the afternoon we observed the Marquis get up with the chase, and engage her pretty briskly; but soon fell to leeward out of cannon shot, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... he trudged along the road. It was a scant three miles to town, and he would rather walk that short distance than to be bothered with a horse. When he took Old Nig, he had to keep to the main-traveled road straight into town, then tie him to a post—and worry ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... of barberry bushes arch with the weight of clusters of beautiful bright berries in September, every one must take notice of a shrub so decorative, which receives scant attention from us, however, when its insignificant ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... epic in which suspense is so successfully kept up." Of their successors, the long line of sons, grandsons and nephews, each more valiant and puissant than the last, it must be said that they are as scant of beauty as of grace. In order to keep up the interest of their readers, the authors of the Primaleons and the Polindos—the Florisels and the Florisandos—were compelled to put in wonders on an ascending ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... in there!" and immediately poor Rod was roughly dragged to the ground. "Take them into the waiting-room, and see that they don't escape while I examine the car. There may be more of the gang hidden in there," commanded the station agent. So to the waiting-room the prisoners were hustled with scant ceremony. As yet no one knew what they had done, nor even what they were charged with doing; but every one agreed that they were two of the toughest looking young villains ever seen in that ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... described as a failure in the role of freeman. The idleness and shiftlessness of certain members of his race—undoubtedly altogether too numerous—are dwelt upon as characteristic of the entire family. Scant praise is given to those members who are doing well, and whose number is encouragingly large. These are as far as possible ignored. The race problem is spoken of as full of increasing difficulties, and as imperatively ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... Jesus' views and the universality of His love, as well as His courage in defying the hated formalism, even in the palace of its stanchest advocates, but also His attitude toward women. The Jews as a race held women in but scant esteem. They were not deemed worthy to sit with the men in the synagogue. It was deemed unworthy of a man to mention his female relations in general company. They were regarded as inferior in every way to men, and were treated ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... lower Illinois through northern Indiana, southwestern Michigan, southern Ontario, central New York and middle New England. As was to have been expected, the blight has wrought its greatest destruction in places of densest representation of the chestnut species. It is in the outlying districts of scant frequency that the danger of infection from chestnut trees from the forest is least to planted trees, and likewise, there it is that combative measures should be most successful. Obviously, the farther from the center of the native range ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... remain on the field amid all the carnage going on around them, helpless and almost hopeless, until the battle is over, and, if still alive, await their turn from the litter-bearers. The bravest and best men dread to die, and the halo that surrounds death upon the battlefield is but scant consolation to the wounded soldier, and he clings to life with that same tenacity after he has fallen, as the man of the world ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... records they have left, impresses the conviction that they were no strangers to the underlying fact that the people are the true source of political power, the evidence whereof is to be found in the scant records of their proceedings—a priceless heritage of all future generations. And first—and fundamental in all legislative assemblies—they asserted the absolute right to determine as to the election and qualification of members. Grants of land were asked, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... Johnnie's notice. Out from the front of his host's throat, to the ruination of such scant good looks as he had, protruded an Adam's apple that was as large and tanned and tough-looking as his nose. On that brown prominence a number of long pale hairs had their roots. These traveled now high, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... a very different account could have been rendered; for with all his rattling, ranting fun around the garrison, he was a gallant and dutiful soldier in the field. It was now after ten o'clock; most of the men, rolled in their blankets, were sleeping on the scant turf that could be found at intervals in the half-sandy soil below the corrals and stables. The herds of the two troops and the pack-mules were all cropping peacefully at the hay that had been liberally distributed among them because there was hardly grass enough for a "burro." ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... the great bison's horn he hung. Giraffe and elk he left to hold The wilderness of boughs in peace, And trained his youth to pen the fold, To press the cream, and weave the fleece. As shrunk the streamlet in its bed, As black and scant the herbage grew, O'er endless plains his flocks he led Still to new brooks and postures new. So strayed he till the white pavilions Of his camp were told by millions, Till his children's households seven Were numerous as the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... rock stand up here and there from the grassy turf, and clumps of heath and gorse weave their tapestry of golden purple garniture on every side. Amidst all these, and winding along between the rocks, is a natural footway worn by the scant, rare tread of the village traveller. Just midway, a somewhat larger stretch than usual of green sod expands, which is skirted by the path, and which is still identified as the legendary haunt of the phantom, by the ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... events connected with this visit to England, want of space precludes us from giving details. A great wave of missionary enthusiasm at that time swept over the country, and Moffat found himself hurried from town to town with but scant opportunities for rest. In May, 1840, he preached the Anniversary Sermon for the London Missionary Society, and, at their Annual Meeting, Exeter Hall was packed so densely that after making his speech in ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... tell about them. The world does not contain a more uninteresting accumulation of men and houses than the great city of New York: it is a place wherein the stranger feels inexplicably lonely. The traveller has no mental property in this city whose enormous growth of life has struck scant roots into the great ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... refused on the grounds that he would be depriving us of our full share—he accepted, and came and joined us. He seemed very reluctant to take much at first, and all through the meal, which consisted of mealie porridge and sugar, cafe sans lait, bread and jam, expressed his appreciation of our scant hospitality. He had joined the Military Police for three ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... or March, had come at last, and Wazeah, the God of Storm, was still angry. Their scant provision of dried meat had held out wonderfully, but it was now all but consumed. The Sioux had but little ammunition, and the snow was still so deep that it was impossible for them to move away to any other region in ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... at once accorded him the hospitality he required, for though he had but scant cheer for himself, and nought of comfort to bestow, he had still some of the feeling of a gentleman ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... Brandon parish we held scant intercourse, except at tithing time, when my father always received him with grim civility and bade him take what the law gave him, since title from the Gospel he had none. Our only friend in the neighbourhood ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... dressed, though he had not bought a suit expressly, like Randolph. He didn't appear to notice Luke's scant suit. Even if he had, he would have been too much of a gentleman to refer ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... was great, but in a military sense the position had defects. If it was difficult to carry, it was easy to blockade: and to be hemmed in on that narrow finger of land were an inglorious posture for the monarch of Samoa. The peninsula, besides, was scant of food and destitute of water. Pressed by these considerations, Brandeis extended his lines till he had occupied the whole foreshore of Apia bay and the opposite point, Matautu. His men were thus drawn out along some three ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... then place it on the back of the stove where it will simmer for ten minutes. Add a dash of cold water; wait a moment, then pour off carefully into silver coffee pot, which has been standing with hot water in it. Filippini's recipe for Black Coffee is as follows: "Take six scant tablespoonfuls of coffee beans and grind them in a mill. Have a well cleaned French coffee pot; put the coffee on the filter with the small strainer over, then pour on a pint and a half of boiling water, little by little, recollecting at the same time that too much care ...
— Favorite Dishes • Carrie V. Shuman
... which lay across the arid plain beneath them like a tape. The country here is barren and stone-ridden, but to the west, where Torrijos gleamed whitely on the plain, the earth was green with lush corn and heavy blades of maize, now springing into ear. Where the two soldiers sat the herbage was scant and of an aromatic scent, as it mostly is in hot countries and in rocky places. That these men belonged to a mounted branch of the service was evident from their equipment, and notably from the great rusty spurs at their heels. They were clad in cotton—dusky white breeches, dusky blue tunics—a ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... providence which rules daily events, had ordained that two or three of the prettiest Court ladies should be present;—Prince Humphry and his two brothers, Rupert and Cyprian, were at table,—and though conversation was slow and scant, the picturesqueness of the scene was not destroyed by silence. The apartment which was used as a private dining-room when their Majesties had no guests save the members of their own household, was in itself a gem of art and architecture,—it had been designed and painted from floor to ceiling ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... to see how things were going. He was a sleek, fat man, and it was amazing to see with what deference his victims treated him. He affected not to have heard what DeLong said, but I could imagine what he was thinking, for I had heard that he had scant sympathy with anyone after he "went broke"—another evidence of the camaraderie and good-fellowship that surrounded ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... Corcyra, spoke thus with her brother: "Dost thou wish the kingdom, brother, to pass into strange hands, and our father's wealth to be made a prey rather than thyself return to enjoy it? Come back home with me, and cease to punish thyself. It is scant gain, this obstinacy. Why seek to cure evil by evil? Mercy, remember, is by many set above justice. Many, also while pushing their mother's claims have forfeited their father's fortune. Power is a slippery thing—it has many suitors; and he ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... in shape and contained an area of three or four acres. Its rocky surface sustained a scant growth of gnarled black spruce and stunted white birch, with here ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... what a generous hand, what an amiable life was that of the noble Sir Walter! I will take another man of letters, whose life I admire even more,—an English worthy, doing his duty for fifty noble years of labour, day by day storing up learning, day by day working for scant wages, most charitable out of his small means, bravely faithful to the calling which he had chosen, refusing to turn from his path for popular praise or princes' favour;—I mean Robert Southey. We have left his old political ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... boom of the river he reflected that the water he had diverted to his own purposes was but a fraction of the whole mighty torrent racing in front of him. Into the scant half mile between shore and shore was forced the escaping flood of the mighty Superior, and such was the compression that, midway, the torrent heaped itself up into a low ridge of broken plunging crests. Just over the ridge he could see the opposite shore line. It ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... of almost every source of intimate knowledge of the boy, who was a mature man at twenty-two, has left the record of the early period curiously scant. Fortunately, there are in his letters and speeches some casual allusions to his childhood and youth, and a few facts and anecdotes of the period from members of his family, from school, college, and early newspaper ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... they slid down that hill-side of a river—were taking deeper and stronger drafts of the heady sunshine of their own Southern sun. On the other hand, I am forced to admit that had his motive been pure benevolence his offering would not have been so pitiably scant. ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... down below!" said Jarette, fiercely; and in a slow surly way first one and then the other was dragged to the hatchway and lowered down, with scant attention to any injuries which ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... all kinds were showered upon him. Many medals were awarded to him, and the grateful miners subscribed from their scant wages enough to present him with a magnificent service of silver worth $12,000. His discovery was hailed from every part of Europe. The Czar Alexander of Russia sent him a beautiful vase, and he was chosen a member of the historic Institute of France; while his own ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... windows in the thatch, into which, as her best, the land-lady ushered me, I certainly found nothing to identify the locale with that chosen by the literary lawyer for his open library. But, according to Ferguson, though "learning was scant, provision was good;" and I dined sumptuously on an immense platter of fried flounders. There was a little bit of cold pork added to the fare; but, aware from previous experience of the pisciverous habits of the swine of a fishing village, I did what ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... said; for she knew as well as he did that for the horse-stealer, in those parts and at that time, there was scant mercy and short shrift: it was danger to be accused, death to ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... adventured perils by sea and land; endured toil, was near starving, ate horse-flesh at Munster; and all to quell that man, who now smileth in peace at those that did hazard their lives to destroy him. Essex took me to Ireland, I had scant time to put on my boots; I followed with good will, and did return with the lord-lieutenant to meet ill-will; I did bear the frowns of her that sent me; and were it not for her good liking, rather than ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... antidote for the prevailing spirit of romance, even in this woman-forsaken country. A good creature, all limp calico, Roman nose, and sharp elbows, she brought him his breakfast with an ill grace that she had not shown to the others. The men about the table gave him scant greeting, but the absence of enthusiasm didn't ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... that wouldn't do, so we used to kick a stone wall till they brightened up. There! there she comes. Humph! stockin's soaked, too. Wish I had some dry ones to lend you. Might give you a pair of mine, but they'd be too scant fore and aft and too broad in the beam, I cal'late. Humph! and your top-riggin's as wet as your hull. Been on your ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Jack. It can be done with any wild creature. Be gentle, but firm. Teach him to obey the slightest touch of rein, to stand when you throw your bridle on the ground, to come at your whistle. Always remember this. He's a desert-bred horse; he can live on scant browse and little water. Never break him of those best virtues in a horse. Never feed him grain if you can find a little patch of browse; never give him a drink till he needs it. That's one-tenth as often as a tame horse. Some day you'll be caught in the ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... looked at him silently for some time. Then the old man pulled a newspaper out of his pocket, unfolded it carefully, and fluttered it above Andrews's eyes. In the scant light Andrews made ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... off Cherbourg, France, which sent to the bottom of the ocean the most destructive cruiser the Southern Confederacy ever launched. And here was the grandson of the hero of that fight, already thirty years of age, with the hair on his crown growing scant. ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... girl innocently exposes more of her body than meets with her modest mother's approval. The scolding is full and positive. Little Miss Apache, sitting in the middle of the blanket with her knees drawn to her chin and with scant skirt now tucked carefully about her feet, looks up with roguish smile, then down at her wiggling toes ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... of August and the first portion of September wore away in this dreary manner, and it was perhaps a week later that Colonel Washington sent me to Frederick to make arrangements for some supplies. The distance, which was a scant fifty miles, was over a well-traveled road, and through a district so well protected that the Indians had not dared to visit it; so I rode out of the fort one morning, taking with me only my negro boy ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... course, in the face of their direct counter evidence, treat statements made in a fictitious or half-fictitious narrative as if made in what professed to be a sober autobiography. Dickens, I repeat, seems to have acquired a very scant amount of classic lore while under the instruction of Mr. Jones, and not too much lore of any kind. But if he learned little, he observed much. He thoroughly mastered the humours of the place, just as he had mastered the humours of the Marshalsea. He had got to know all about the masters, and all ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... Agnes sobbing under breath. The room was small and very hot; the table was warped so badly that the dishes had a tendency to slide to the center; the walls were bare plaster grayed with time; the food was poor and scant, and the flies absolutely swarmed upon everything, like bees. Otherwise the ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... tested by musicians who are said to have been enthusiastic over the success of their experiments. Several years ago a piano was lowered into the cave for use on a special occasion, and still occupies a position on the dancing platform, where it will probably remain indefinitely under the scant protection of a small ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... towards Pillow's column. The Rebels open with a volley of musketry. The fire is aimed at the Eighth and Twenty-ninth Illinois regiments, which, you remember, are on the right of Oglesby's brigade. The men are cold. They have sprung from their icy beds to take their places in the ranks. They have a scant supply of ammunition, and are unprepared for the assault, but they are not the men to run at the first fire. The Rebel musketry begins to thin their ranks, but they do not flinch. They send their volleys into ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... than the the one, the remembrance of which he thus cherished. He had been present at many a scene of carnage, where blood flowed in deluges, compared with which the libations of slaughter poured out at Valmy would have seemed scant and insignificant. But he rightly estimated the paramount importance of the battle with which he thus wished his appellation while living, and his memory after his death, to be identified. The successful resistance, which the new Carmagnole levies, and the disorganized relics of the old ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... seem to lie midway between the grotesquely truthful sketch by Bunbury prefixed in 1776 to the 'Haunch of Venison', and the portrait idealized by personal regard, which Reynolds painted in 1770. In this latter he is shown wearing, in place of his customary wig, his own scant brown hair, and, on this occasion, masquerades in a furred robe, and falling collar. But even through the disguise of a studio 'costume,' the finely-perceptive genius of Reynolds has managed to suggest much that is most appealing in his sitter's nature. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... for the grass, it grew as scant as hair In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood. One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, Stood stupefied, however he came there: Thrust out past service from the ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... but come to me, And thou shalt dwell in Goshen and be nigh me, And with provision there will I supply thee; Both thou and thine, flocks, herds, and all thou hast, (For yet these five years will the famine last) Lest otherwise, provision being scant, Thou and thy family may come to want. Behold, both you and Benjamin my brother Do see that it is I and not another. Go tell my father this amazing story, And bring him hither to behold my glory. Then falling on his youngest brother's neck, And he on his, they o'er ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... from his friend, and soon this too had its house—small, crude, brown, meagre, but not uncomforting to one who looked over the wide land and saw none better than his own. Then, little by little, they got precious coal from the railroad, this land having but scant fuel near at hand, and they built great stacks of the bois des vaches, that fuel which Nature left upon the plains until the railroads brought in coal and wood. Each man must, under the law, live upon his own land, but in practice ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... without pay. They did not look much like soldiers on parade, but were among the bravest and best fighters of the Revolution. Their swords were beaten out of old mill-saws at the country forge, and their bullets were made largely from pewter mugs and other pewter utensils. Their rations were very scant and simple. Marion, their leader, as a rule, ate hominy and potatoes and drank water flavored with a ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... elder: "He is as now in Meadhamstead, and may be in this chamber in scant half an hour." So the King bade send for him, and there was silence in the chamber till he came in, clad in a scarlet kirtle and a white cloak, and with his sword by his side. He was a tall man, bigly made; somewhat pale of face, black and curly ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... unfriendly a sky. His annals are "the short and simple annals of the poor." His home was a log cabin that had but three sides, the fourth one being a buffalo robe, swaying to and fro in the wind. When the biting wind of poverty became unbearable in Kentucky, the scant possessions were loaded upon a horse, carried across the Ohio, and the child walked barefooted through the forests of Indiana, where a new shack was built in the wilderness. There Lincoln's "angel mother" sickened and died—that mother to whom Lincoln said he ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Castle. Under a flag of truce, two of his men were admitted to the grounds. They presented the infamous ultimatum of the Iron Count. In brief, it announced the establishment of a dictatorship pending the formal assumption of the crown by the conqueror. With scant courtesy the Iron Count begged to inform Prince Robin that his rule was at an end. Surrender would result in his safe conduct to America, the home of his father; defiance would just so surely end in death for him and all of his friends. The Prince was given twenty-four ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... early on hand and busily bidding for votes. He had felt so confident of the office in advance of muster-day, that he had rummaged through several country tailor-shops and got a new suit of the nearest approach to a captain's uniform that their scant stock could furnish. So there he was, arrayed in jaunty cap, and a swallow-tailed coat with brass buttons. He even wore fine boots, and moreover had them blacked—which was almost a crime among a ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... behind empty caravans and waggons, skirting booths and tents until we came on one greater than all the rest, a huge canvas structure into which he brought me forthwith. The place was empty except for some scant few persons grouped about a stage whereon two fellows, naked to the waist, their fists swathed in what I believe are termed 'muffles', dodged and ducked, feinted or smote each other with great spirit and gusto until one of them, reeling from a flush hit, sat down with sudden violence ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... high water-table, the alfalfa plant will be shorter lived according to the shallowness of soil above water. One could get very good results at from 4 to 6 feet, whereas at 2 or 3 feet the stand of alfalfa would soon become scant through decay of its fleshy root. Where the water comes very near the surface, a more shallow and fibrous rooting plant, like the Eastern red clover, should be substituted for alfalfa in California. It is ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... worm-eaten, the armory which still suggested the clank of half-armored men, who lived only for the joy of defying death. The factor's house, whence, in the days gone by, the orders for battle had been issued, and the sentence of life and death had been handed out with scant regard for justice. Then there were the ruined walls of the common-room, where the fighting men had caroused and slept. The scenes of frightful orgies held in this place were easy to conjure. All these things counted in a manner which ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... that landscape, to any who loved not Cornwall, would seem ugly indeed, with a grey cottage stuck here and there naked upon the moor, with a bare deserted engine house upon the horizon, with trees, deep in the little valley, but scant and staggering upon the hill—ugly by day but now packed with a mystery that contains everything that human language has no name for, there is nothing to do, on beholding it, but to kneel down and worship God. Mr. Jackson ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... opinions, had never shaken these illusions, it was but natural that they should have done their best to hand them down as sacred heirlooms to their only child. Even Gabriel's four years of hard fighting and scant rations were enkindled by so much of the disinterested idealism that had sent his State into the Confederacy, that he had emerged from them with an impoverished body, but an enriched spirit. Combined ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... widest part. It begins at Chatham Square, which lies on the parallel of the sixth Broadway block above City Hall, and loses its identity at the Cooper Union where Third and Fourth Avenues begin, so that it is a scant mile in all. But it is the alivest mile on the face of the earth. And it either bounds or bisects that square mile that the statisticians say is the most densely populated square mile on the face of the globe. This is the heart ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... close beside her. Bacon, with scant regard for elegance, seated himself on the edge of the ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... Belden, that she had toiled along the same route, laden with screens, rugs and couch-covers, at least a hundred times that afternoon. She was tired and exasperated at this final hitch, and she burst into the room of the fat freshman who had Ermengarde's part with scant ceremony. What was her amazement to ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... guard-house. The trooper's willingness, after eight months hunting Indians, to buy almost anything brought a smile to his lips, and a certain sympathy in his heart. He knew what those eight months had been like; how monotonous, how well endured, how often dangerous, how invariably plucky, how scant of even the necessities of life, how barren of glory, and unrewarded by public recognition. The American "statesman" does not care about our army until it becomes necessary for his immediate personal protection. General Crook knew ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... was different. There was no grain to be had for them. They had been starving for a month, for the Indians had burned the grass before us wherever we went, and here in the pine-covered hills what grass could be found was scant and wiry,—not the rich, juicy, strength-giving bunch-grass of the open country. Of my two horses, neither was in condition to do military duty when we got to Whitewood. I was adjutant of the regiment, and had to be bustling around a good deal; and so it happened that one ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... reduction in competition which is causing some concern among the trading community has not, as it seems to me, gone far enough yet to be a serious danger. The idea that the big banks with offices in London give scant consideration to the needs of their local customers seems to be so contrary to the interests of the banks that they would be extraordinarily bad men of business if those who were responsible for their ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... to stick close to their shanties and fire-places, for their clothing was scant and the weather extremely cold. The division did not remain at North Chickamauga long, for, on the 26th of December, it crossed the Tennessee, taking up camp at McAfee's church, on the left of the Chickamauga battle-field and six ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... a few minutes of a scant quarter-hour to spare, I would not have any one miss seeing the cloister, from which the Catholic Kings used to enter the church by the gallery to those balcony capitals, but which the common American must now see by going outside the ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... army that at last they were to meet the foe, none was so eager for the fray as Dan. In spite of Scotty's admonitions, he went to one of his officers to beg permission to join the advance the next morning. The request was promptly refused, and the volunteer bidden with scant ceremony to go back to his boat and mind his own business. But Mr. Murphy was convinced that his business lay with the front rank of the advancing column. He had not been trained to army discipline and was not minded to lose the glorious chance of participating ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... child—treated him with scant respect, though she never allowed anyone else to be other than polite to him in her hearing. But then she and Nick had been pals from the beginning of things, and this surely entitled her to a certain licence ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... a few minutes when I heard a rustling at the door. I looked up, and beheld Mr. Jaffrey standing on the threshold, with his dress in disorder, his scant hair flying, and the ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... go back now. But as matters are, one would tumble over the other. So forward, whatever it may cost. We are close on their heels. Halt! Halt! That accursed stinging smoke! Wait, you dogs! As soon as the pathway widens, we'll run you down with scant ceremony, and may the gods deprive me of a day of life for each one I spare! Another torch out! One can't see one's hand before one's face! At a time like this a beggar's crutch would be ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... bastion, upon a tall hill of porphyritic trap. We called this remnant of material harder than the rest, Burj el-Dahab—"the Tower Hill of Dahab." I have been minute in describing the Golden Harbour: scant justice has been done to it by the Hydrographic Chart, and it will prove valuable when the Makna' mines are opened. Ahmed Kaptn vainly attempted soundings—he was too ill to work. Wellsted's identification of the site with Ezion-geber (ii. ix.), and ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... stooped still closer; he laid his lips soundlessly, gently upon her hair. And when again he stood up, the look in his eyes boded scant good to anything that might ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... the soul out of him, then he would have forced back the walls again. If only once she had walked by his side through the crowds, then he would have caught their cry in time. The world had narrowed down to a pin prick, but if only she had come a scant two days ago, she would have bent his eye to this tiny aperture as to the small end of a telescope as she did now and made him see big enough to grasp the ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... penitential Foundress regarded as a relaxation. The Sisters, including the saintly woman who founded them, had accustomed themselves to sleep on straw mattresses, with pillows of the same material, to wear none but low shoes; to make their simple dress without plaits, and as scant as convenience for working would allow; not to be ashamed of patches, no matter how numerous or inelegant; to eat only broken bread; in short to live in every respect like the poorest classes of society. These, and innumerable other practices of mortification, ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... Oh, scant is their cheer! All benumb'd is their song in The hedge they are thronging, And for shelter still longing, The mortar[92] they tear; Ever noisily, noisily Squealing ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... one hand. She neither danced, sang, nor acted. But she had her part letter perfect before any of the other principals. She never missed a cue, and though she sang off the top of her voice, and let the confines of a very scant little tailor skirt mark the limits of her dancing, she sang her songs in perfect tempo and always made it completely clear to Galbraith and the musical director, just how much of the stage in every direction, her dances were going to occupy and ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Christmas of the fateful year 1830; as usual, there would be no performance at the theatre on Christmas Eve, but instead a concert for the poor had been organised, which received but scant support. The first item on the programme was called by the exciting title 'New Overture'—nothing more! I had surreptitiously listened to the rehearsal with some misgiving. I was very much impressed by the coolness with which Dorn fenced with the apparent confusion which ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... he could hope for the first returns from his hack-work. Except at such times as he saw Ruth, or dropped in to see his sister Gertude, he lived a recluse, in each day accomplishing at least three days' labor of ordinary men. He slept a scant five hours, and only one with a constitution of iron could have held himself down, as Martin did, day after day, to nineteen consecutive hours of toil. He never lost a moment. On the looking-glass were lists of definitions ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Thee I thirst! fulfil my hope; Augment in me Thine own celestial flame! For love of Thee I thirst! too scant earth's scope: The glorious Vision ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... forth the horse!" Alas! he showed Not like the one Mazeppa rode; Scant-maned, sharp-backed, and shaky-kneed, The wreck of what was once a steed, Lips thin, eyes hollow, stiff in joints; Yet not without his knowing points. The sexton laughing in his sleeve, As if 't were all a make-believe, Led forth the horse, and ...
— The One Hoss Shay - With its Companion Poems How the Old Horse Won the Bet & - The Broomstick Train • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... husbands."[4116] They are obliged to pay for their lodgings, their keepers, and for what they eat; they are robbed at their very doors of the supplies they send for outside; they are compelled to eat at a mess-table; they are furnished with scant and nauseous food, "spoilt codfish, putrid herrings and meat, rotten vegetables, all this accompanied with a mug of Seine water colored red with some drug or other."[4117] They starve them, bully them, and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... in a fashion that none would have believed nor understood, at the blue gleam of her gown and the gold gleam of her little head through the trees of the park, or through the oaken shadows of the hall at Cavendish Court during my scant visits there. No maid of my own age drew, for one moment, my heart away from her. She had no rivals except my books, for I was ever an eager scholar, though it might have been otherwise had the state of the country been different. I can imagine that I might in some severe stress have ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... although he was Captain-Lieutenant of the musketeers, and he did arrest Fouquet and escort him to prison, was far from the dashing hero Dumas made him. As for the other characters, particularly Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, they also appeared in this fictional memoir, and lacking even the scant details about them that subsequent historians have managed to bring to the light of day, Dumas's ever-fertile imagination made them three of the ...
— Dumas Commentary • John Bursey
... A scant black costume and a touch of white apron completed the picture, and Warble played with her as a child ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... Kathryn in her scant gauzy strips of white and silver having drifted towards them at the moment stood looking on with a funny little disturbed expression ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... with its old violence, and there was scant hope of its passing for another twelve hours ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... they are putting on expressional activity as an essential in the process of religious education does seem to indicate that they regard self activity. Wherever the social service was very scant the one reporting felt it his duty to give an apology for the actual conditions and express a hope of better results in the future. This showed that they felt it the vital factor in the progressive socialization of the individuals. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... first dazed days that followed, between the necessary adjustment of matters of state, and the many ceremonies incident upon the King's sudden death, there was scant time to discuss the rapid happenings; even in the court-circle they scarcely knew what was passing—still less how it had come about. It was said that Janus had died of malignant fever, due to the terrible malaria of the coasts where he had been hunting. ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... in battle, had scant notice from his love. 'Yes, I 'm glad,' and she passed him to follow her newly constituted mistress. His pride was dashed, all the foam of the first draw on the top of him blown off, as he figuratively explained the cause of his gloom ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... me over a little doubtfully, but evidently impressed with the early hours I kept told me that I might try. He waved me to a desk, bidding me wait until he had made out his morning book of assignments; and with such scant ceremony was I finally introduced to Newspaper Row, that had been to me like an enchanted land. After twenty-seven years of hard work in it, during which I have been behind the scenes of most of the plays that go to make ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... to carry home their first impressions of their invaders. Then one group of masters and servants set to work to sort the luggage which cumbered the platform, while others received it at the hotel door, and distributed it to the various billets. Light was scant, hands were not too numerous, and the work was not done without some confusion. But it was done; and the tired workers went to their beds, thankful for what was finished, and full of good hopes for the work which was ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... cruelly he has treated me. I have been immured in a desolate old country-house, without friends or companions of my own age or sex, and left to drag on a useless and aimless life. My poor father left me a scant inheritance; but, such as it is, my uncle set his greedy heart upon adding it to his own. To do this, he determined upon marrying me to his only son. My cousin William was his father over again—meaner, more ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... of foreman of the slaves on the plantation, and my mother presided over the kitchen at the big house and my Master's table, and among her other duties were to milk the cows and run the loom, weaving clothing for the other slaves. This left her scant time to look after me, so I early acquired the habit of looking out for myself. The other members of father's family were my sister Sally, about eight years old, and my brother Jordan, about five. My sister Sally was supposed to look after me when ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... off Thirty-Fourth Street. The launch was ready almost as the chain rattled. Blake's big French car was waiting for him at the pier; and, with scant regard for the speed ordinances, it bore him swiftly through the traffic-thronged streets to lower Fifth Avenue, and to the ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... which confronts the solar physicist engaged in the interpretation of the hieroglyphic lines of sun-spot spectra. The colossal whirling storms that constitute sun-spots, so vast that the earth would make but a moment's scant mouthful for them, differ materially from the general light of the sun when examined with the spectroscope. Observing them visually many years ago, the late Professor Young, of Princeton, found among their complex features a number of double lines which he naturally ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... himself, but made him indignant with the Reverend Alexander, as he generally called Alick when he spoke of him wishing to suggest disrespect. He held him as a poacher beating up his preserves; and the gentlemen of England have scant mercy for poachers, conscious or unconscious. Meanwhile, nothing could be more delightfully smooth and successful than the whole thing was on the outside. The women looked nice, the men were gallant, the mature but comely bride was so happy that she seemed to radiate happiness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... late in the day, took the field to man the defenses when Sherman was marching to the sea. They were frequently made up of old men and boys who had been exempt from the regular service, and these were hurried into action with poor equipment and scant preparation. General Toombs, in a letter written to his wife, ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... stronger preyed upon the weaker, and even the sick who were unable to defend themselves were robbed of their scanty supplies of food and clothing. Dark stories were afloat, of men, both sick and well, who were murdered at night, strangled to death by their comrades for scant supplies of clothing or money. I heard a sick and wounded Federal prisoner accuse his nurse, a fellow-prisoner of the United States Army, of having stealthily, during his sleep inoculated his wounded arm with gangrene, that ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... themselves. There wasn't a sound of any sort—least of all of music. Some of them still carried their harps; but most of them had stacked them in open spaces the way soldiers stack their rifles. When the robin sank spent to the grass in front of them, they paid him scant attention. When he weakly chirped his question, "Where's God?" they jerked their thumbs, indicating the direction, too listless to waste breath ...
— Christmas Outside of Eden • Coningsby Dawson
... than herself. Amalu alone berthed forward; the rest occupied staterooms, camped upon the satin divans, and sat down in Grant Sanderson's parquetry smoking-room to meals of junk and potatoes, bad of their kind and often scant in quantity. Hemstead grumbled; Tommy had occasional moments of revolt and increased the ordinary by a few haphazard tins or a bottle of his own brown sherry. But Hemstead grumbled from habit, Tommy revolted only for the moment, and there was underneath a real and general acquiescence ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... tight that the buttonholes were burst out, and it showed white on the shoulders,—while the skirt was so scant that she could not ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... meagre matron of forty-five, or thereabouts. Her dark scant hair was smooth, and divided down the middle. Acerbity spoke in every line of her face, which was of a dusky yellow, where it did not rather verge on the faint hues of a violet past its prime. She wore thread gloves, and she ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... with the cards, or talking with her fellow inmates. And with all this she had always the social quality, was never rudely absent and yet never too seated. She laid down her pastimes as easily as she took them up; she worked and talked at the same time, and appeared to impute scant worth to anything she did. She gave away her sketches and tapestries; she rose from the piano or remained there, according to the convenience of her auditors, which she always unerringly divined. She was in short the most comfortable, profitable, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... the authorities are looking for a law that will deport me. This will suit me, as I will swear that I am a citizen of no man's land. What I really need is not deportation, but solitary confinement, for the sake of my meditations. For even with my scant companionship I feel as if I were a circus animal. I still clutch convulsively to the idea that thought is the only reality and all expression of it merely a grading down of what was most high. If I am shut up I must cease talking and may think about real things, that is, ideal things. That ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... finding Indian arrowheads and hatchets and pestles. He picks full pails of the nicest-looking huckleberries. He is always dressed in clean, tidy clothes, a little scant and well patched. He pats me on the head and says, "Didn't know you were Evelyn's sister; thought it was a little three-year old." About to tell me a sad story he had read in the newspaper, he stops suddenly and says, "Believe I won't tell you, dear!" "Did you hear ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... worried that he gave scant attention to the letters received from Phil Lawrence and Shadow Hamilton, even though those communications contained many matters of interest. He was looking at the Dickley communication for a third time when ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... back to the stage barn. "Certainly looks blue for Henry," muttered Lefever, after he had gone over with Pardaloe and McAlpin all of the scant information that could be gathered. "Bob Scott," he added gloomily, "may find him somewhere ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... rainy, hot, humid summers (southwest monsoon, June to September); less cloudy, scant rainfall, mild temperatures, lower humidity during winter (northeast ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... aunt used to treat him with scant ceremony. Since she was of the opinion that he ought to feel flattered by our invitations, she thought it only right and proper that he should never come to see us in summer without a basket of peaches or raspberries from his garden, and that from each of his visits ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... hostelrie, and died the same day. My brother judged me too young then to quit his roof; and condemned me to bear his humours till, at the age of twenty-three, I could bear no more! So having sold him my scant share in the heritage, and turned, like thee, bad land into good nobles, I joined a party of horse in their journey to London, and arrived yesterday at Master Sackbut's hostelrie in Eastchepe. I went this morning to my Lord of Warwick; ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... my former purpose to fulfil, ' ' And sing the dungeon's praise with honour due- For this angelic tongues were scant of skill. ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... tomato, three pints of milk, a large table-spoonful of flour, butter the size of an egg, pepper and salt to taste, a scant teaspoonful of soda. Put the tomato on to stew, and the milk in a double kettle to boil, reserving however, half a cupful to mix with flour. Mix the flour smoothly with this cold milk, stir into the boiling milk, ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... extensive establishments formed by the Roman Catholic clergy a hundred years ago. There were over a score, San Diego being the oldest. Each mission had its priests, a few Spanish or Mexican soldiers, and scores, hundreds and sometimes thousands of Indian converts who received a scant support and ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... one located in the central part of the State of Pennsylvania. It was perhaps a mile wide and more than that long, and surrounded by mountains and long ranges of hills. At the lower end of the lake was a small settlement of scant importance and at the upper end, where there was a stream of no mean size, was the town of Riverside. At Riverside were situated several summer hotels and boarding houses, and also the elegant mansion in which Ned Talmadge resided, with his parents ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... am relieved for a few minutes that I may have my coffee. Being the last man, I get a bo'sun's share of the grounds. To my protests the cook gives scant heed. ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... the battle's brunt At Queenstown, and at Lundy's Lane: On whose scant ranks but iron front ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... raiment had been donned some distance behind the tool house and unknown to the watchful George. All this had not surprised Gus, but he had been puzzled by the appearance on the hillside of another figure that kept behind the scant bushes much as Gus was doing, except that it was screened against being seen from below and evidently did not know of Gus's presence. Now, however, all attention was given to the altercation before the tool house, around which the ghost had come, evidently to be disappointed at not ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... fray as Dan. In spite of Scotty's admonitions, he went to one of his officers to beg permission to join the advance the next morning. The request was promptly refused, and the volunteer bidden with scant ceremony to go back to his boat and mind his own business. But Mr. Murphy was convinced that his business lay with the front rank of the advancing column. He had not been trained to army discipline and was not ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... book is rank melodrama. It has scant literary quality. It is not planned to edify. Its only mission is to entertain you and,—if you belong to the action-loving majority, to give ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... experience, which, in spite of his soft hat, had left certain marks upon his scalp, had he ever attempted to catch her. Instead, he had borrowed a gun, and a dozen times had fired at her; but although he counted himself a fair shot, he had never made even a scant bit of fur ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... not the district that makes the wine, and our Bohemians accepted as the authentic growth of Ai the liquor that was served out to them in the appropriate glasses, and despite the scant degree of vivacity shown by the cork in popping from its prison, went into ecstacies over the excellence of the vintage on seeing the quality of the froth. Schaunard summoned up all his remaining self-possession to make a mistake as regards glasses, and help himself to that ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... conceal his dejection as he returned. The edge of the Place of Death made a winding line across the scant half mile of valley where the green fields ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... chosen her seat where she could best look out from the scant amount of window. She gazed at the harvest-fields full of sheaves, the orchards laden with ruddy apples, the trees assuming their autumn tints, with lingering eyes, as of one who foreboded that these sights of earth were ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... questions and answers, which may be compared in spirit, though not in actual content, with the questions and answers to be found in Zabara. Marcolf succeeds in thoroughly tiring out the king, and though the courtiers are for driving Marcolf off with scant courtesy, the king interposes, fulfils his promise, and dismisses his adversary with gifts. Marcolf leaves the court, according to one version, with the noble remark, Ubi non est ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... they happened before most of the Newcomes now extant were born, and surely therefore are out of the province of this contemporary biography. Lady Kew was indignant with her daughter (there were some moments when any conduct of her friends did not meet her ladyship's approbation) even for the scant civility with which Lady Anne had received the Duchess's advances. "Leave a card upon her!—yes, send a card by one of your footmen; but go in to see her—because she was at the window and saw you drive up.—Are you mad, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had told his friend how he felt, but not what had happened. Ansell could discuss love and death admirably, but somehow he would not understand lovers or a dying man, and in the letter there had been scant allusion to these concrete facts. Would Cambridge understand them either? He watched some dons who were peeping into an excavation, and throwing up their hands with humorous gestures of despair. These men would lecture next week ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... hauntest Homole's fair champaign, Bring the soft charmer, whosoe'er it be, Unbid to his sweet arms—so, gracious Pan, May ne'er thy ribs and shoulderblades be lashed With squills by young Arcadians, whensoe'er They are scant of supper! But should this my prayer Mislike thee, then on nettles mayest thou sleep, Dinted and sore all over from their claws! Then mayest thou lodge amid Edonian hills By Hebrus, in midwinter; there subsist, ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... as if it were only yesterday. We were at our scant breakfast, I as blue as was ever even twenty-five, she brave and confident. And hers was no mere pretense to reassure me, no cheerless optimism of ignorance, but the through-and-through courage and strength of those who flinch for no bogey that life or death can conjure. Her tone lifted me; ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... a matter of judgment as to how long it is best to hold plants, which are in condition for setting, for favorable weather conditions. They can sometimes be held a few days, by scant watering and full exposure, or in some cases by taking from the bed and heeling in, as nurserymen do trees; but it is better to set when the weather is unfavorable or to run some risk from frost rather than to hold them in this way too long. The wise selection of time for setting ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... that will hold the place of honor on the nursery bookshelf until it falls to pieces from such handling is "Little Miss Weezy's Sister," a simple, yet absorbing story of children who are interesting because they are so real. It is doing scant justice to say for the author, Penn Shirley, that the annals of child-life have seldom been traced with more ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May
... now in a sort of narrow gorge, or gully, with rocky walls on either side, and only scant vegetation on the bottom, where some bunch grass grew. The water seemed to ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... an exalted life; to this Convent of St. Agnes she was peculiarly attached. At the same time, she was well aware, as other letters beside the present show, that even the best of cloisters afforded at this time scant shelter to young girls from emotional temptation, gross or fine. Her warnings to her niece have the authoritative tone of anxiety. Let us hope that Eugenia took them to heart; and that, leading the disciplined life of Catherine's desire, she became not unworthy to receive and apprehend ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... that Mr. Carville displayed no shadow either of reverence or dislike for a place which impressed itself upon me more even than San Francisco or Chicago. It seemed to me strange that a man so sensitive to detail, so conscious of the scant poetry of the commonplace, should have no feeling for that astonishing accident which we call New York City. That he was not aware of her I refused absolutely to credit. If he could feel the beauty of Genoa and the immensity of London, he must necessarily ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... constitution or be able to give an interpretation of it when read to him. As the election officials who would judge the ability of the applicant properly to interpret the constitution would certainly be whites, it was clear that the ignorant black would have scant chance of passing the educational test. Several other states followed in the wake of Mississippi, until in 1898 Louisiana discovered a new barrier through which only whites might make their way to the voting lists. This was the famous "grandfather clause." In brief, it ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... both in the legislature and out of it. The "Double Shuffle" is so typical of this dreary and ignoble warfare and it played so large a part in the political history of the time, that it has been necessary to describe it at some length. But for these considerations, the episode would have deserved scant notice. The headship of one of the ephemeral ministries that preceded confederation could add little to the reputation of Mr. Brown. His powers were not shown at their best in office, and the surroundings of office were ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... But nothing could disguise the firm, erect form, which might have been thought too tall, perhaps, if it had not been round and full in proportion; and the short gown confined at the waist by the long strings of her apron, and the rather scant petticoat of dark winsey that fell beneath it, are not such unbecoming garments as might be supposed by those accustomed to garments ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... not be happy at the nice place in Surrey, having, as she would have, a carriage, even though all the de Courcys should drop her? It had been put to her that she would not like to be received at Courcy Castle with the scant civility which would be considered due to a Mrs Mortimer Gazebee; but what if she could put up without being received at Courcy Castle at all? Such ideas did float through ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... is to a well-known proverb—mandâ hâl wâng Jatt jharî de— as miserable as a Jatt in a shower. Any one who has seen the appearance of the Panjâbî cultivator attempting to go to his fields on a wet, bleak February morning, with his scant clothing sticking to his limp and shivering figure, while the biting wind blows through him, will well understand the ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... now," Braceway said to the chief. They each grasped one of the prisoner's arms and hustled him with scant ceremony to his bedroom. Bristow removed his trousers and, unbuckling the belt and straps of the steel brace, ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... thick-leaved avenue and out over the stubby sand-hills by the sea. Here and there a large mansion crowned the heights, and Andrew was glad to see the traditional cottage in full relief. He paid it scant attention, however. The procession of carriages had already turned, and his faithful guide uttered many a name which sounded like old sweet music in his ears. Some of the younger faces were unfamiliar; but they, too, bore names that ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... you do scant justice to Dover. It is not quite a place to my taste, being too bandy (I mean musical, no reference to its legs), and infinitely too genteel. But the sea is very fine, and the walks are quite remarkable. There are two ways of going to Folkestone, both lovely ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... the vile weather, which had woefully reduced the hospital staff. She seemed to be feverish and ill at ease, and tried to cover the symptoms by a reversion to her old offhand manner. As I was so seldom alone with her I could find scant opportunity for intimate conversation. I thought that she might have regretted the frank exposition of her feelings regarding Leonard Boyce. But she showed no sign of it. She spoke in the most detached way of his blindness and the coming ceremony. Never once, ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... er so along, A-strikin' up a sleighin' song. Tel David laughed and yelled, you know, And jes whirped up and sent the snow And gravel flyin' thick and fast— Last Christmas was a year ago. W'y, that-air seven-mild ja'nt we come— Jes seven mild scant from church to home— It didn't 'pear, that day, to be Much furder railly 'n ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... about them Hawthorne "lived" a scant mile from Emerson; in reality they did not live in the same spheres; the boundaries of their worlds did not overlap, but, like two far-separate stars, each felt the distant attraction and admired the glow of the other, and that was all. The real worlds of Thoreau and Alcott ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... French, the vessel on board which I now found myself could scarcely be other than one of those that we had engaged earlier in the afternoon; and if so, I was in the hands of the enemy—an enemy, be it said, that, if report spoke truly, showed but scant mercy to such of its legalised opponents as happened to fall into his hands. Yet this scarcely tallied with the evident care that had been taken of me, and the exceedingly comfortable—not to say luxurious—quarters wherein I now ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... temptation, William's sober tastes and devout resolutions were strengthened by certain appealing sermons. Here it was at Oxford, the nursery of enthusiasms and holy causes, that he received the impulse which determined all his after life. He spent but a scant two years in college; and the work of the lecture rooms must have suffered seriously during that time from the contention and confusion of the changes then in progress; so that academically the college could not have greatly profited him. The profit ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... all, greased my hair in defiance of my protest against it, rubbed and scrubbed a good deal of it out by the roots, and combed and brushed the rest, parting it behind, and plastering the eternal inverted arch of hair down on my forehead, and then, while combing my scant eyebrows and defiling them with pomade, strung out an account of the achievements of a six-ounce black-and-tan terrier of his till I heard the whistles blow for noon, and knew I was five minutes too late ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... transcendent. By the aid of a microscope, a 'gillyflower' was seen protecting a chrysalis. Warm leaves cherished it, dainty juices aided its digestion, wholesome offshoots nourished it to maturity. Eking out a scant existence between two granite flags, this insignificant waif reared a caterpillar. What man are you, who can say there is ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... to show angles, while great slabs of rock were split from the faces. The sides also became less vertical, and there was an accumulation of detrital fragments about their bases. These heaps of fractured stone had in some cases begun to disintegrate and form soil, on which there was a scant growth of vegetation; but the sides and summits, whose jaggedness increased with their height, were absolutely bare. "Here," said Cortlandt, "we have unmistakable evidence of frost and ice action. The next interesting question is, How ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... nature is necessary to keep the road from burial. To prevent this, tamarisk, wild oats, and desert shrubs are planted along the line, and in particular that strange plant of the wilderness, the saxaoul, whose branches are scraggly and scant, but whose sturdy roots sink deep into the sand, seeking moisture in the depths. Fascines of the branches of this plant were laid along the track and covered with sand, and in places palisades were built, of which only the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... would have to be content in death with a shorter epitaph. In life his neighbours and acquaintances knew him as the toughest old sinner in Bursfield; and indeed his office hours (from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. nominally—but he was an early riser) allowed him scant leisure to practice the Christian graces. Yet though many had occasion to curse Mr. Hucks, few could bring themselves to hate him. The rogue was ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Mr.), daughter and son-in-law to sir Jacob Jollup. Mr. Bruin is a huge bear of a fellow, and rules his wife with scant courtesy.—S. Foote, The Mayor of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... possible to be informed at night of the doings of the day on the other side of the planet, it is hard to realize how little interest was taken a century ago in anything outside of the community in which one lived. This accounts in part, no doubt, for the scant references in this journal to public events. Only very rarely is an election mentioned, even in the writer's own county. Only once is there reference to war, although the war of 1812 and the battle of Waterloo ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... painted in the Corot manner; it is hardly possible that he should not have done so. However this may be, Pissaro did not rid himself for many years of the influence of Corot. His earliest pictures were all composed in pensive greys and violets, and exhaled the weary sadnessof tilth and grange and scant orchard trees. The pale road winds through meagre uplands, and through the blown and gnarled and shiftless fruit-trees the saddening silhouette of the town drifts across the land. The violet spaces between the houses are the very saddest, and the spare ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... repeating rifle multiplied the power of the white man in his conflicts with savage peoples. When all the advantages of the present generation are weighed in the balance against the meagre equipment of the earlier discoverers, the nineteenth century has scant claim for boasting over the fifteenth. In truth, its great achievements in this sphere have been practical and political. It has only fulfilled the rich promise of the age of the great navigators. Where they could but wonderingly ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... Spanish province of Mexico, but even before the overthrow of Spanish rule a thin stream of immigration had begun to run into it from the South-Western States of America. The English-speaking element became, if not the larger part of the scant population, at least the politically dominant one. Soon after the successful assertion of Mexican independence against Spain, Texas, mainly under the leadership of her American settlers, declared her independence of Mexico. The occasion of this secession was the abolition of Slavery ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... luxury and a necessity. Few readers now collect a library, however scant, without including one of some sort. Many of them, even in the absence of all other books, of themselves constitute a complete library. The Britannica, Edinburgh, Metropolitana, English, Penny, London, Oxford, and that of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... thus with her brother: "Dost thou wish the kingdom, brother, to pass into strange hands, and our father's wealth to be made a prey rather than thyself return to enjoy it? Come back home with me, and cease to punish thyself. It is scant gain, this obstinacy. Why seek to cure evil by evil? Mercy, remember, is by many set above justice. Many, also while pushing their mother's claims have forfeited their father's fortune. Power is a slippery thing—it has many suitors; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... that followed, between the necessary adjustment of matters of state, and the many ceremonies incident upon the King's sudden death, there was scant time to discuss the rapid happenings; even in the court-circle they scarcely knew what was passing—still less how it had come about. It was said that Janus had died of malignant fever, due to the terrible ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... I'me too true to honour To scant it in the blazing: though to thee All that report can render ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... below!" said Jarette, fiercely; and in a slow surly way first one and then the other was dragged to the hatchway and lowered down, with scant attention to any injuries ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... sky are singularly beautiful; the days are sunny and bright, and even warm in the noon hours; and if we could be free from the many anxieties that oppress us, even now we would be delighted here; but our provisions are getting fearfully scant. Sleighs arrived with baggage about ten o'clock; and leaving a portion of it here, we continued on for a mile and a half, and encamped at the foot of a long hill on this side ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... general relation of religion and philosophy. We realise the evil which Kant first in clearness pointed out. It was the evil of an apprehension which made the study of religion a department of metaphysics. The tendency of that apprehension was to do but scant justice to the historical content of Christianity. Religion is an historical phenomenon. Especially is this true of Christianity. It is a fact, or rather, a vast complex of facts. It is a positive religion. It is connected with personalities, above all with one transcendent personality, ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... Creek.—M'Nees' Creek, 10 miles (estimated). Water indifferent and uncertain; scant pasture; no wood. Arroyo del la Sena, 2-1/2 miles (estimated). ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... prunes, and lentils swimming in a clear sauce: at these frugal tables, the cook's gridiron hissing near by, and the pot simmering on a fire between two stones, I have seen them ranged by the hundred; consuming, without bread, their scant messes, far too moderate for the keenness of their appetite, and the extent of their stomach.' (Nouveau Paris, iv. 118.) Seine water, rushing plenteous by, will ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... deep-set, steel-blue and keen. He had the fighting nose, over-long and hooked like an eagle's beak. The inexorable character of his features was borne out by the mouth, thin-lipped and firm in its closing. Even his beard, scant and touched with gray, was intractable. Here was an Israelite who was a warrior, a ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... Poleland, which had at the lest fiue hundred horses; their sumptuousnes was aboue measure, not onely in them selues, but also in their horses, as veluet, cloth of golde, and cloth of siluer set with pearles and not scant. What shall I farther say? I neuer heard of nor saw men so sumptuous: but it is no dayly guise, for when they haue not occasion, as I sayd before, all their doing is but meane. And now to the effect of their warres: They are ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... and noble lady, also of Naples, by name Madam Beritola Caracciola. The said Arrighetto, who had the governance of the island in his hands, hearing that King Charles the First[102] had overcome and slain Manfred at Benevento and that all the realm had revolted to him and having scant assurance of the short-lived fidelity of the Sicilians, prepared for flight, misliking to become a subject of his lord's enemy; but, his intent being known of the Sicilians, he and many other friends and servants of King Manfred were suddenly made prisoners and delivered to King Charles, together ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... York toward Mr. Theodore Thomas is a case in point. There is among the works of the Scottish poet Alexander Wilson, better known as the "American Ornithologist," a ballad entitled "Watty and Meg; or, The Wife Reformed." Its moral is for all to read. Watty's measure of domestic felicity was but scant, and when the burden laid upon him became greater than he could bear he determined to leave the cause of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... such diseases, wounds, and injuries as miners are subject to, and he tried his hand at the practical treatment of these conditions, untrammelled by the traditions of a profession in which his training had been so scant. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... counter, or seated at numerous small tables, men were drinking villainous liquor, smoking and talking, and paying but scant attention to the strains of the fiddle or the accordion, save when some well known air was played, when all would join in a boisterous chorus. Some were always passing in or out of a door which led into a room behind. Here there was comparative quiet, ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... country round about. On the farther bank the long lofty ridge of rock, trodden and licked bare of vegetation for ages by the countless passing buffalo; blackened by rain and sun; only the more desolate for a few dwarfish cedars and other timber scant and dreary to the eye. Encircling this hill in somewhat the shape of a horseshoe, a deep ravine heavily wooded and rank with grass and underbrush. The Kentuckians, disorderly foot and horse, rushing in foolhardiness ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... his self-control with the air of one who does it under great provocation, and who has scant respect for those who lose it; but his face was flushed, and his eyes were angry. The strained coldness of his tone and manner were like oil to the flame of his uncle's wrath. The judge's hand went out in a gesture that had almost the force ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... sleeping in their canoes. Every night a sentinel was set to guard against surprise. By the 25th of June they had passed through sixty leagues of solitude. The whole American continent was thinly settled by native tribes, many in name indeed, but of scant numbers. The most dreaded savages in the New World were the Iroquois or Five Nations, living south of Lake Ontario. Yet they were never able to muster more than about ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... surprised to find a surprising lack of docility. I doubt whether the Englishman has the veneration for the abstract idea of Law which is common among Americans. Indeed, he is accustomed to treat most abstractions with scant courtesy. There is nothing quite corresponding to the average American's feeling about a decision of the Supreme Court. The Law has spoken, let all the land keep silent. It seems like treason to criticize it, like ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... to be saved from those who saw the first boat was heartrending. Some of them threatened to jump into the water if we did not take them aboard. But it was impossible with the scant boat supply to ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... the week, when Riverville was the boundary of her interests, a letter from him would have had scant attention. But coming at this time, when a homesick mood brought the old life so vividly before her that it had suddenly become very dear and desirable, she opened it eagerly. It was the first one she had received from him, for she had told him on leaving Lone-Rock that she could not correspond with ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... applause. Indeed, my memory enshrines rather a feeling of regret that so painstaking and able an effort should have met with so chilling a reception, and that an heir-apparent to a peerage, who has had the courage to propose a scheme for the reform of the House of Lords, should receive such scant attention ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... sky to the south a succession of his rounded slopes shoulder their way from the woods out to where the road and the brook wind through. They cannot be tilled; the soil is too scant and gravelly; but they are lovely in their gentle forms, and still lovelier in their clumps of mingled cedars and gray birches, scattered dark and sharply pointed on the blue of the sky, and diffuse, and soft, and gleaming white ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... instinct for all men of family or title to be found among the undergraduates was amazingly extensive and acute; and she had paid much court to Falloden, as the prospective heir to a marquisate. He had hitherto treated her with scant attention, but she was not easily abashed, and she fastened at once on Lady Laura, whom she had seen once at ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "bird-fair" every summer, where jackdaws, starlings, and other birds are sold, with a few rabbits thrown in; but the fair now is chiefly an excuse for a holiday. The church was three hundred feet long, with the convent-buildings to the southward, but only scant ruins remain. Beyond the ruins, at the edge of the greensward, the river glides along under a gray stone bridge. At Howsham, in the neighborhood, Hudson the railway king was born, and at Foston-le-Clay Sydney Smith lived, having for his friends the Earl and Countess of ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... was sufficient to demonstrate how sharp were those savage eyes. No white man in the short half-circle dared to waste a single shot now; all realized that their stock of ammunition was becoming fearfully scant, yet those scheming devils continually baited ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... conservative and enamored of force. In 1830 four-fifths of the population lived by agriculture and the landlord governed his peasants patriarchally. He kept the conservatist spirit of a rustic, a very lively sense of authority and the military instinct. He had scant liking for distant enterprises or adventures. He was at once religious, warlike, and realist, knowing how to nurse his ambitions and to confine his view to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... dwelling, for he had judged his interlocutor to be some rich and eccentric noble, unless he were an erratic scamp. He was somewhat taken aback by the spectacle that met his eyes. The furniture was scant, and all in the style of the last century. The dust lay half an inch thick on the old gilded ornaments and chandeliers. A great pier-glass was cracked from corner to corner, and the metallic backing seemed to be scaling off behind. ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... varying change of toiling Time restore prosperity; often Fortune in broken visits makes man her sport and again establishes him. The Aetolian of Arpi will not help us; but Messapus will, and Tolumnius the fortunate, and the captains sent by many a nation; nor will fame be scant to follow the flower of Latium and the Laurentine land. Camilla the Volscian too is with us, leading her train of cavalry, squadrons splendid in brass. But if I only am claimed by the Teucrians for combat, if that is your pleasure, and I am the barrier to the public good, Victory does ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... capacity for work adapted him for a profession in which mathematical knowledge is of value or for magisterial functions. The misfortunes of our family caused him to follow a different career, and he underwent many hardships with unshaken courage. He never complained of his lot, though life had scant enjoyment save that which is derived from love of home. These joys are, however, ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... first person off the ferry when it came to a stop on the farther side of the river. Ahead of him lay the road through the narrow belt of trees that lined the bank. He knew that a scant hundred yards lay between the river and the open road beyond and yet a vast dread possessed him. He shrank from that black opening in the wall of trees where dead leaves rustled and the wind whispered ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... as gladly and full-fed hath fared Upon a broken crust that two have shared; And from scant wine as glorious dreams drawn up Seeing two lovers kissed ...
— The Dreamers - And Other Poems • Theodosia Garrison
... and shining being of the deep light appeared to me three circles, of three colours and one magnitude; one by the second as Iris by Iris seemed reflected, and the third seemed a fire breathed equally from one and from the other. Oh, but how scant the utterance, and how faint, to my conceit! and it, to what I saw, is such that it sufficeth not to call it little. O light eternal who only in thyself abidest, only thyself dost understand, and to thyself, self-understood, ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... toughest hang-outs in sailor town and play my part in any rough-house that started or call all hands to the bar—I didn't know the first thing I might say or do with this slender little chit of a girl-woman whose scant skirt just reached her shoe-tops and who was as abysmally ignorant of life as I was, or thought I was, ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... reluctance will she follow the raised camp. The friends and relatives of the young mourner will incessantly devise methods to distract her mind from the thought of her lost husband. She refuses nourishment but as nature is exhausted she is prevailed upon to partake of food; the supply is scant, but on every occasion the best and largest proportion is deposited upon the grave of her husband. In the mean time the female relatives of the deceased have according to custom submitted to her charge a parcel made up of different cloths ornamented with ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... artillery—furnished special occasions for organized—or disorganized—upheavals of animal spirits. For these exercises we then had scant respect. They were "soldiering;" and from time immemorial soldier had been an adjective to express uselessness, or that which was so easy as to pass no man's ability. A soldier's wind, for example, was a wind fair both ways—to go and ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... the day, And takes our autumn joys away; When short and scant the sunbeam throws, Upon the weary waste of snows, A cold and profitless regard, Like patron on a needy bard, When silvan occupation's done, And o'er the chimney rests the gun, And hang, in idle trophy, near, The game-pouch, fishing-rod, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... Incas remained huddled together on the ledge without, but they made no effort to attack us. I had been watching perhaps three hours when they began to melt away into the passage. Soon but a scant dozen or so remained. These squatted along the wall just under the lighted urns, evidently ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... Dublin. Mr. —— is a man of aldermanic proportions. He chartered an outside car, t'other day, at Island Bridge Barrack, and drove to the post-office. On arriving he tendered the driver sixpence, which was strictly the fare, though but scant remuneration for the distance. The jarvey saw at a glance the small coin, but in place of taking the money which Mr. ——held in his hands, he busied himself putting up the steps of the vehicle, and then, going to the well at the back of the car, took thence a piece of ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... cold, when a lonely wanderer came down the street. It was a lad, big and strong-limbed, and, judging from the manner in which he pushed his way through the gathering drifts, not unused to battle with the world, but evidently in hard luck. His jacket, white with the falling snow, was scant and worn nearly to rags, and there was that in his face which spoke of hunger and suffering silently endured. He stopped at the gate in the stone fence, and looked long and steadily at the cottage in the chestnuts. No life stirred within, and he walked through the gap with ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... been living on scant rations, corn, watermelon and other vegetables principally, but in spite of this Bob's arm was mending somewhat. He had to sleep with it pillowed on my breast, Jim being also crippled with a wound in his shoulder, and we could not get much sleep. The wound in my thigh ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... then. Some drunken artisan, who faced discharge on the morrow. Ivan turned from the window; but quickly returned to it. Vulgarly drunk the man might be. But even the fires of alcohol form scant protection against such cold as reigned to-day. The man might be frozen ere an officer perceived him. Moreover, as Ivan looked again, something in the recumbent figure suggested the abandon rather of ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... after a choice dinner to hear an act or two of something racy, had become in the hands of its clever manager the most popular of all Parisian play-houses, with no well-defined speciality but providing a little of all sorts, from the spectacular fairy-play which exhibits the women in scant attire, to the great modern drama which does the same for our morals. Cardailhac was especially bent upon justifying his title of "manager of the Nouveautes,"[9] and since the Nabob's millions had been behind the undertaking, he had ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... indicated a chair with his disengaged hand and plunged again into his proof-slips. The stranger surveyed the scant furniture and appointments of the office with a look of grave curiosity, and then, taking a chair, fixed an earnest, penetrating gaze on the editor's profile. The editor felt it, and, ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... M.D. by the paint upon his window, dwelt in the Dabney House; Mr. Heth—pronounced Heath if you value his wife's good opinion—dwelt in the House of his cognomen. Between the two lay a scant mile of city streets. But then this happened to be the particular mile which traversed, while of course it could not ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... turn he offered him passage but Matt preferred to ride the sheriff's horse. He was unable to understand or appreciate any friendly offers from Glen, for he felt that his share in the proceedings had been ludicrous if not contemptible and expected scant mercy from either Glen or Chick-chick. As a matter of fact, Glen would have been very glad to have his company, both that he might repay his good turn and that he might have the advantage of his experience in cycling, for Glen was a rank ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... to make Congress appreciate the probable long duration of the struggle, and he bent every energy to giving permanency to his army, and decisiveness to each campaign. The other idea which had grown in his mind during the weary siege was that the Tories were thoroughly dangerous and deserved scant mercy. In his second letter to Gage he refers to them, with the frankness which characterized him when he felt strongly, as "execrable parricides," and he made ready to treat them with the utmost severity at New York and elsewhere. When Washington ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... appearance of the half-insensible de Courtois than Steingall. He gave him one penetrating glance, and would have known the man again after ten years had they been parted that instant; but, if he favored the Frenchman with scant attention, he made no scruples about examining the documents on the table, though his first care was to thank the workman, and ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... Santa Cruz died, and Spain lost her best and most experienced admiral. King Philip put in his place a great noble, Guzman, Duke of Medina-Sidonia, who pleaded in vain to be excused, frankly declaring to his sovereign that he felt unfit for such high command, as he had scant knowledge of war and no experience of the sea. It is supposed that the King persisted in the nomination because Medina-Sidonia's hereditary rank would place him above the jealousies of the subordinate commanders, and he hoped to supply ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... Mme. Swann, letting trail behind her the long train of her lilac skirt, dressed, as the populace imagine queens to be dressed, in rich attire such as no other woman might wear, lowering her eyes now and then to study the handle of her parasol, paying scant attention to the passers-by, as though the important thing for her, her one object in being there, was to take exercise, without thinking that she was seen, and that every head was turned towards her. Sometimes, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... stems of the rather scant show of carnations and refreshed them with new water. At dinner, her father, still in high spirits, observed that she had again "dressed up" in honour of his second descent of the stairs; and Walter repeated his fragment of objectionable song; ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... the committee persuaded a few colored farmers to try deep plowing on a small scale as an experiment. One of the first of these was a poor man who had had the hardest kind of a struggle scraping a scant existence out of the soil for himself and his large family. He was desperate and agreed to try the new method. He got results the first year, moved on to better land and followed instructions. In a few years he bought 500 acres of land, gave each of his four sons 100 acres, ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... lookest thou one him halfe a scorne I pomise you he is a scant gentylman borne 630 What ...
— The Interlude of Wealth and Health • Anonymous
... rested day or night. He rushed from one end of the country to the other, addressing meetings, fighting elections, stimulating his followers, answering his defamers and all the time exhausting the scant reserves of strength that were ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... showed some wild-horse bands, but not many, for there appeared to be scant grass and water. These horses were going or coming, all on a trot, but when they sighted the hunters they would halt stock-still. Soon a stallion trotted out a hundred paces or more, snorted and whistled, then taking to his heels he led his ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... frontage high into the night. A peculiar object lying stretched upon the lawn for some time baffled his eyesight; but at length he had made it out to be a long ladder, or series of ladders bound into one; and he was still wondering of what service so great an instrument could be in such a scant enclosure, when he was recalled to himself by the noise of some one running violently down the stairs. This was followed by the sudden, clamorous banging of the house door; and that again, by rapid and retreating footsteps in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heels was frequently put in requisition without the slightest ceremony. As might be supposed, the number that finally reached their destination, was distressingly out of proportion to the work to be done; and the Sheriff, after detaining them for a time, was reported to have dismissed them with but scant courtesy. ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb
... some right to pride himself on his personal appearance, for he has a handsome face, with a dark blue eye and a fine intellectual brow. His head is growing scant of hair on the crown, which induces him to be somewhat particular in the management of his locks in that locality, and these are assuming ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... backwoods, until homeless old age had overtaken him. Four years before he had spent a summer at Big Malcolm's, helping perfunctorily in the harvest fields, working little and singing much, and when the first hard frost had set the forest aflame he had gathered his poor, scant bundle of clothes into his carpet-bag preparatory to taking ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... in a low voice, "this is but scant courtesy to your cousin and guest, the Princess ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... stroking my hair. "I know a brave girl who works hard and wears herself out in loving service, who is often tired and never complains, who thinks little of herself, and yet who does much to brighten other lives, and I think you know her too, Esther?" But I would not let her go on; it was scant goodness to love her, and Allan, and Dot. How could any one do otherwise? And what merit ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the dark a few hours ago are now in the brightest sunshine, while the oracles of yesterday are the meekest disciples to-day. I rode from New-Haven to London in the same car with three Frenchmen and two Frenchwomen, coming up to the Exhibition, with a scant half-allowance of English among them; and their efforts to understand the signs, &c., were interesting. "London Stout," displayed in three-foot letters across the front of a drinking-house, arrested their attention: "Stoot? Stoot?" queried one of them; but the rest were as much in the dark as ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... improvement, and all the lights of Middlemarch only three miles off. As to the facility with which mortals escape knowledge, try an average acquaintance in the intellectual blaze of London, and consider what that eligible person for a dinner-party would have been if he had learned scant skill in "summing" from the parish-clerk of Tipton, and read a chapter in the Bible with immense difficulty, because such names as Isaiah or Apollos remained unmanageable after twice spelling. Poor Dagley read a few verses sometimes on a Sunday evening, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... no miracle, As in the ancient days of answering gods. With a long, shuddering sigh he glanced to earth, Finding himself among the Horsel cliffs. Gray, sullen, gaunt, they towered on either side; Scant shrubs sucked meagre life between the rifts Of their huge crags, and made small darker spots Upon their wrinkled sides; the jaded horse Stumbled upon loose, rattling, fallen stones, Amidst the gathering dusk, and blindly fared Through ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... ability and undoubted courage, but he lacked perseverance and was himself responsible for many of his misfortunes. In spite of his inquiring nature and his delight in novelty, he remained a Catholic, and had scant sympathy with the teaching of the reformers. His memory was nevertheless long defamed in the writings of the monks, who placed a malignant inscription over his grave. Agrippa's work, De occulta philosophia, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... told a far different tale,—the shabby furniture, the dismantled walls, the worn carpets, as well as the threadbare coat of Moronval himself, and the shiny scant robe of the little ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... Joe had half forgotten those night birds whose mournful hooting along the trail, a few hours back, had first stirred him to alert suspicion. While he was struggling with Garry Devereau's faltering heart he had had scant leisure to devote to the problem of the other man's identity—that shadowy figure which had come plunging out of the cabin door and gone crashing off into the brush, a noisy but invisible target for his revolver. Now recognition and a light of partial ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... that anomalous schooner was no less curious than herself. Amalu alone berthed forward; the rest occupied staterooms, camped upon the satin divans, and sat down in Grant Sanderson's parquetry smoking-room to meals of junk and potatoes, bad of their kind and often scant in quantity. Hemstead grumbled; Tommy had occasional moments of revolt and increased the ordinary by a few haphazard tins or a bottle of his own brown sherry. But Hemstead grumbled from habit, Tommy revolted only for ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Darling started out in search of a climate. He mounted a bicycle and headed south for the sunlands. Stanford University claimed him for a year. Here he studied and worked his way, attending lectures in as scant garb as the authorities would allow and applying as much as possible the principles of living that he had learned in squirrel-town. His favourite method of study was to go off in the hills back of the University, ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... never was half so happy before I was a married man as I am now. When you are married, your bliss begins. I have no doubt that where there is much love there will be much to love, and where love is scant faults will be plentiful. If there is only one good wife in England, I am the man who put the ring on her finger, and long may she wear it. God bless the dear soul, if she can put up with me, she shall never be put down ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... that of the two fishermen and the dream of the golden fish. Go down to the shore; you will find the old men still at their toil, the same implements, the same poverty, the same sentiment for the heart. Often as I look at them I recall the old words, while the goats hang their heads over the scant herbage, and the blue sea breaks lazily ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... sunshine, and, looking up, she saw Abner Dimock's father, the elder Abner, entering the little wicket-gate of the garden. A strange, tottering old figure, his nose and chin grimacing at each other, his bleared eyes telling unmistakable truths of cider-brandy and New England rum, his scant locks of white lying in confusion over his wrinkled forehead and cheeks, his whole air squalid, hopeless, and degraded,—not so much by the poverty of vice as by its demoralizing stamp penetrating from the inner to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... monarch saw the pair Of mighty brothers standing there, And turned his rapid eye to view The forest trees that near him grew. He saw, not far from where he stood, A Sal tree towering o'er the wood. Amid the thick leaves many a bee Graced the scant blossoms of the tree, From whose dark shade a bough, that bore A load of leafy twigs, he tore, Which on the grassy ground he laid And seats for him and Rama made. Hanuman saw them sit, he sought A Sal tree's leafy bough and brought The burthen, and with meek request Entreated Lakshman, too, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... a hawk pounced on a bird, * A wildling sparrow driven by destiny; And held in pounces spake the sparrow thus, * E'en as the hawk rose ready home to hie:— 'Scant flesh have I to fill the maw of thee * And for thy lordly food poor morsel I. Then smiled the hawk in flattered vanity * And pride, so set ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... the disturbances were confined, in the main, to the wilder spirits, though it may well be that occasionally peaceable persons were sucked into the vortex by the accident of their being abroad at the time, and on the scene of the affray, where their pacific character would receive scant consideration from the angry combatants. Esprit de corps also was a powerful incentive to action, and one from which even Masters were not exempt. To this must be added that the course of study itself seemed expressly devised to foster the belligerent ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... thirty-five dollars a week to one who has endured scant allowances for several years is a demoralising thing. Carrie found her purse bursting with good green bills of comfortable denominations. Having no one dependent upon her, she began to buy pretty clothes and pleasing ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... hopeless character. Great numbers of hawks and several varieties of eagles were hunting above the hill-tops, and sufficiently explained the scarcity of game. The red-legged partridges found little protection in the scant cover afforded by the withered plants, and I saw one captured and carried off by an eagle, who was immediately chased by two others of the same species, in the vain hope that he would give up his prize; he soared high in air with the partridge hanging from his claws. On the ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... artisan, who faced discharge on the morrow. Ivan turned from the window; but quickly returned to it. Vulgarly drunk the man might be. But even the fires of alcohol form scant protection against such cold as reigned to-day. The man might be frozen ere an officer perceived him. Moreover, as Ivan looked again, something in the recumbent figure suggested the abandon rather of despair than of debauchery.—An ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... penmanship. But that same learned instructor would have delighted in the cleverness of the sons and daughters, had he been so fortunate as to direct their studies. True, the poor little Danbys had enjoyed but a scant and broken schooling; but they were sharp little things, and native wit served them whenever reading, writing, and arithmetic failed. Indeed, the very fact of their intercourse with Donald and Dorothy had done much ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... that the soul, to escape degradation, must seek a more remote and difficult privacy. That immemorial right of the soul to make the body its home, a welcome escape from publicity and a refuge for sincerity, must be largely foregone by the actor, who has scant liberty to decorate and administer for his private behoof an apartment that is also a place of business. His ownership is limited by the necessities of his trade; when the customers are gone, he eats and ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... crowded, men pressing upon each other till often one or another would be pushed against the dead line, shot by the guard, and the body left lying till the next morning; even if it had fallen into the water beyond the line, polluting the scant supply left for the living. But the cry of these perishing ones had gone up into the ears of the merciful Father of us all, and of late a spring of clear water bubbles ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... monsoon; cloudy, rainy, hot, humid summers (southwest monsoon, June to September); less cloudy, scant rainfall, mild temperatures, lower humidity during winter (northeast monsoon, December ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... half-naked savage, dress'd only in a strip of sacking that barely reach'd her knees, and a scant bodice of the same, lac'd in front with pack thread, that left her bosom and brown arms free. Yet she appear'd no whit abash'd, but lean'd on the plough-tail and regarded me, easy and frank, as ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... melody or answer (in low octaves of strings) is a scant disguise of the lower tune in the stormy duet of the first movement. Yet all the strains move in the gentle, soothing pace and mood until suddenly awakened ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... examination at the sound of the bell, and had, in fact, been waiting for Miss Rowe to come and fetch her. The latter seemed annoyed. She hurried Patty to her place, and handed her a fresh supply of manuscript paper with very scant ceremony, then, taking up a book, appeared to be preparing some lesson. Patty remembered how Avis had hinted that Miss Rowe was not popular, and she thought she began to understand why. In spite of the urgent necessity of getting on quickly with her sums, she could not help stealing ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... too much a son, [Embracing him. And I too little am a father: you, And you alone, have merited Lucretia; 'Tis now my only grief, I can do nothing to requite this virtue: For to restore her to you, Is not an act of generosity, But a scant, niggard justice; yet I love her So much, that even this little, which I do, Is like the bounty of an usurer; High to be priz'd from me, Because 'tis drawn from such a ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... of its selection, in order that they may survive, it is only because I consider the extremest limits of credibility to have been already passed. But I forget. On reflection I perceive that I am doing scant justice to the elasticity of philosophic belief. How far this is capable of stretching on occasion, let one or ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... well down in the ravine, the horses were placidly nibbling at the scant herbage, or lazily sprawling in the sun, each animal securely hoppled, and all carefully guarded by the single trooper, whose own mount, ready saddled, circled within the limits of the stout lariat, looped about his master's wrist. All spoke of caution, ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... been maist fair, The dust flies highest in the air, And all their faces does begarie. Gif they could speak, they wald them warie...[151] But I have maist into despite Poor claggocks[152] clad in raploch-white, Whilk has scant twa merks for their fees, Will have twa ells beneath their knees. Kittock that cleckit[153] was yestreen, The morn, will counterfeit the queen: And Moorland Meg, that milked the yowes, Claggit with clay aboon the hows,[154] In barn nor byre she will ...
— English Satires • Various
... King Felipe in regard to the proposed route. He gives a brief outline of Urdaneta's opinion that they should sail first to New Guinea. This island he declares "is one that we discovered in the year forty-four." He describes it as a desolate region, with but scant food, and declares that the voyage thither is dangerous and arduous. His own opinion is that the fleet should take the same course as did Saavedra and Villalobos; "and that the fleet should put in at the Filipinas Islands, which are friendly ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... of a sanguine turn of mind, I waited, full of comforting hope. About five, after some scant food, we were told to get up and go downstairs. It was still dark because of the continuous rain and overcast skies. I refused to walk, and was lifted by two men and put in a waggon. A few early idlers were around the door to see us come out. I ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... better in the way of men. I came gladly to look across the table at him while he read in the brief interval between supper and bed, gladly to listen for and to catch the beat of his horse's hoofs coming home at night from his endless riding over the ranch. And his scant praise was praise indeed, that made me tingle with happiness- -yes, Sister Martha, I knew what it was to blush under his precise, just praise for the things I had done ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... five feet, complexion olive yellow, head brachy-cephalous or round, cheek-bones prominent, eyes black and slightly oblique, nose small but not flat, nostrils dilated, hands small and delicate, legs thin and weak, hair black, coarse and lank, beard absent or scant;" but these Indonesians to whom belong most of the indigenous inhabitants of Celebes, are taller and have fairer or light brown complexions and regular features, connecting them with the brown Polynesians of the Eastern Pacific "who may be regarded as their descendants," ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... proper solely to the New York Battery. At that hour of the summer morning when our friends, with the aimlessness of strangers who are waiting to do something else, saw the ancient promenade, a few scant and hungry-eyed little boys and girls were wandering over this weedy growth, not playing, but moving listlessly to and fro, fantastic in the wild inaptness of their costumes. One of these little creatures wore, with an odd, ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... those of the woman; and the day when either party guesses them they take wings to themselves and fly away. Are not such things like the flower of wild fruits, bitter-sweet, grown in the heart of a forest, the joy of the scant sun-rays, the joy, as Canalis says in the "Maiden's Song," of the plant itself whose eyes unclosing see its own ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... a school in the winter time, I had sometimes to go bare-footed and always with scant clothing. Our landlady was very kind in such cases. She would give me clothes that had already been worn by her sons, and in turn I would bring broom straw from the sedges, with which she made her brooms. In this way I usually got enough clothes ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... wanton abuse of the weak, and the weak from gloating insolently over the half-shorn strength of the strong, was a thankless, hopeless task. The former masters of the land were peremptorily ordered about, seized, and imprisoned, and punished over and again, with scant courtesy from army officers. The former slaves were intimidated, beaten, raped, and butchered by angry and revengeful men. Bureau courts tended to become centres simply for punishing whites, while the regular civil courts tended to become solely institutions for perpetuating ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... great forests of pine and plenty of shade. But few cattle range there in comparison to the large numbers that graze on the lower levels further south. What little tree growth there is on the desert is stunted and supplies but scant shade. In the canons some large cottonwood, sycamore and walnut trees can be found; upon the foot hills the live oak and still higher up the mountain the pine. Cattle always seek the shade and if there are no trees they will lie down in the shade of a bush or anything that casts a shadow. The cattle ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... which modern civilisation imposes, almost as much a "necessary of life" as the ability to walk or talk, but also and more especially because it devolves upon the school to do for the citizen in his childhood what life will not do for him in his manhood, or will do for him but in scant measure, to stimulate his vital powers into healthful activity, to foster the growth of his soul. And the more the people in a civilised country are withdrawn from the soil and herded into mines and mills and offices, the more imperative is it that ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... seat-mate was young, probably a scant five and twenty, tall, lean, close-knit of frame with finely chiseled, almost ascetic features, though the vigorous chin and generous sized mouth forbade any hint of weakness or effeminacy. His deep-set, ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... Peel, the reform being fairly forced upon them by the tremendous agitation in its behalf by the eloquent Daniel O'Connell and his comrades of the Catholic Association. To save the nation from civil war the government yielded with scant grace, and O'Connell and his "tail" of Irish Catholics came into Parliament to form a new and perplexing element ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... twigs of barberry bushes arch with the weight of clusters of beautiful bright berries in September, every one must take notice of a shrub so decorative, which receives scant attention from us, however, when its insignificant little ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... with him seven others more wicked than himself, only did so because he found the chamber "swept and garnished," and its owner sitting with folded hands. Had he found it all alive with the "busy hum" of active work, there would have been scant welcome for ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... reverted to her other experience on this savage shore. Ah, if the invincible forest god of that dead past were but with them now. No longer would there be aught to fear from prowling beasts, or from the bestial Russian. She could not well refrain from comparing the scant protection afforded her by Clayton with what she might have expected had Tarzan of the Apes been for a single instant confronted by the sinister and menacing attitude of Monsieur Thuran. Once, when Clayton had gone to the little stream for water, ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... London workwoman buys at a penny a pound, being twelve cents a pound in Paris; and flour, milk, eggs, equally high. Fuel is so dear that shivering is the law for all save the wealthy; and rents are no less dear, with no "improved dwellings" system to give the most for the scant sum at disposal. Bread and coffee, chiefly chiccory, make one meal; bread alone is the staple of the others, with a bit of meat for Sunday. Hours are frightfully long, the disabilities of the French needleworker being in many points the same as those of her English ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... arise capable of taking a proper survey of so grave a question, and bringing it to a practical and satisfactory solution. Some people are beginning to ask, whether it would not be better, with the proceeds of poor-rates, to send paupers to colonies which are scant of labourers, rather than to expend the money in keeping them at home. The Academie of Literature, too, has offered a prize for an essay on the parliamentary eloquence of England—a significant fact in a country where the legislature ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... Richardson's "Clarissa Harlowe," and the like; and imitations of them in Russia. "Sensibility" was held to be the highest quality in human nature, and a man's—much more a woman's—worth was measured by the amount of "sensibility" he or she possessed. This new school paid scant heed to the observation and study of real life. An essential tenet in the cult consisted of a glorification of the distant past, "the good old times," adorned by fancy, as the ideal model for the present; the worship of the poor but honest country folk, ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... he showed her how he was a good bit interested, and had speech with her, off and on, and made it pretty clear in his scant leisure that she could come to him if she was minded. It pleased her a good bit to find such a remarkable man as Ball had found time to think upon her, and she also liked his opinions and his valiant hunger for hard ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... so trivial that I gave him but scant attention till he let a name fall which caused me to prick up my ears and even to put in a word. "The Moore house," ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... One of the commonest methods of arousing interest in an audience apathetic and indifferent is to impress upon them the importance and gravity of the question at issue. Matters thought to be trivial are apt to receive scant attention. This fact is so universally recognized that many writers and speakers attempt at the very outset to show that upon the correct solution of the problem at hand depend serious and far-reaching results. It is seldom enough ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... away in a great huff, and I set out for the house of Abu Shamah, using my scant store of Arabic to ask the way. Mahommed ben Hamza was lolling on the stone veranda, gossiping with half-a-dozen men. He came the minute I ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... and comparative poverty of this new home, it was far safer for him than the land of his birth. His worldly position there gave him sundry claims of superiority, for all of which his hardy pioneer son had had scant sympathy; and Ralph Emsden, in the difficult crisis of the disclosure of the state of his affections, heaved many a sigh for this ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... interesting of all book forms was current in Mexico before the Conquest. As in the case of the Chinese book, it looks superficially like ours; we think it is a tiny quarto until we see that its measure is rather that of an oblong twenty-fourmo; that is, its dimensions are just scant of five inches high and six inches wide. It has thin wooden covers and is, over all, an inch thick; but between these covers is a strip of deerskin twenty-nine feet long and, of course, nearly five inches wide. This is folded in screen or fan fashion, the first and last leaves being pasted ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... which Mordecai, the broker, gets from poor Woebegone, the bankrupt, on a loan to keep Woebegone's family from starvation; what is that ruinous discount but a Fast-Fish? What is the Archbishop of Savesoul's income of L100,000 seized from the scant bread and cheese of hundreds of thousands of broken-backed laborers (all sure of heaven without any of Savesoul's help) what is that globular L100,000 but a Fast-Fish? What are the Duke of Dunder's hereditary ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... procession through her brain came back with renewed vigor; forcing themselves, as it were, upon her contemplation, because she offered but a feeble resistance to their returning invasion. And as she stood on the shore, having donned her scant clothing, and now combing out her long, luxuriant hair, to the silk richness of which the salt water had lent a more glorious gloss—she became a prey to an increasing restlessness—an augmenting anxiety, a longing to quit the island, and an earnest desire to behold her brother ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... process of recognizing and stating true principles of the kinematics of mechanisms was proceeding through three generations of French, English, and finally German scholars, the actual design of mechanisms went ahead with scant regard for what the scholars were ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... still searching to excuse her; slowly she began to recognise the sensitive simplicity of the man, the innate courtesy so out of harmony with her experience among men. What, after all, was there about him that a woman should treat with scant consideration, impatience, the toleration of contempt? His clumsy manner? His awkwardness? His very slowness to exact anything for himself? Or had it been the half-sneering, half-humourous attitude of her husband toward him which had insensibly ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... but little time in her society, for she was a poor, gentle creature of no spirit, who found little happiness in her lot, since her lord treated her with scant civility, and her children one after another sickened and died in their infancy until but two were left. He scarce remembered her existence when he did not see her face, and he was certainly not thinking of her this morning, having other things in view, and ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sense of hopeless indebtedness. The churlish fields attached to the place offered but a grudging reward for the hardest labor. There was no hope of his acquiring a profession or even an education beyond the scant opportunity of Allen Wight's school, unless he himself could earn the means to pay for it. Still he was neither discouraged nor without hope. Instead of sinking under this accumulation of difficulties, his moral fibre was rendered more robust, and with it his physical ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... rust was easily removed and little trouble was had. It was found, sometimes, that upon axles newly turned back a careless workman would leave a ridge at the starting point of the turning. Frequently also the axles were a little sprung, so that the new turning would be a little scant upon one side when compared with the old surface, and upon the opposite side a little full. As an indication that these difficulties were overcome as they appeared, I will say that upon our line only 202 wheels burst ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... girl uttered a cry, and looked round the circle as if for a way of escape; but a Court is a cruel place, in which the ugly or helpless find scant pity. A dozen voices begged the Queen to insist; and, amid laughter and loud jests, Bassompierre hastened to the door, and returned with an armful of women's gear, surmounted by a ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... horses are splendid, and the men, especially the grooms, ride well, but the women are stiff, and bounce, which isn't according to our rules. I longed to show them a tearing American gallop, for they trotted solemnly up and down, in their scant habits and high hats, looking like the women in a toy Noah's Ark. Everyone rides—old men, stout ladies, little children—and the young folks do a deal of flirting here, I saw a pair exchange rose buds, for it's the thing to wear one in ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... Indians got disagreeable, having to go back several times to bring the remaining baskets. Nevertheless, we got down as far as the Curubing mountains. Up to this time we were more or less always starving. Arrived at the Curubing mountains, procured a scant supply of provisions, but lost nearly all of them in a small creek, and what was saved was spoiling under our eyes, it being then that the rainy season had fully started, drenching us from morning to night. It took ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... deposition of Peter. She would have liked to place him under guard in some distant palace. But while the matter was still under discussion she was awakened early one morning by Alexis Orloff. He grasped her arm with scant ceremony. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... and civil rights advocates lent itself to official procrastination. Civil rights organizations, preoccupied with racial unrest throughout the nation and anxious for the passage of new civil rights legislation, seemed to lose some (p. 557) of their intense interest in service problems. They paid scant attention to the directive beyond probing for the outer limits of the new policy. In the months following the directive, officials of the NAACP and other organizations shot off a spate of requests for the imposition of off-limits sanctions against certain businesses ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... shift to the northward and hold there long enough it would probably drive the ice back into the bay and then it would quickly freeze and they could reach the mainland. This their only hope, at this season of the year, for March was nearly spent, was a scant one. ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... hat, the bands, and cloak into a ditch, for experience had taught him that, however useful as a passport they might be while still within the lines of the troops of the Commons, they would be likely to procure him but scant welcome when he entered those of the Royalists. Round Oxford the royal army were encamped, and Harry speedily discovered that his father was with his troop at his own place. Turning his head again eastward, he rode to Abingdon, and quickly afterward ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... had taken his post at one corner of the platform, paid scant attention to what was happening on it, as it neither interested him nor could he understand too much of it, even though he knew quite a bit of Greek. Again his eyes were busy continually looking all about the ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... jesting tone, and laughed loudly, but the look in his eyes told more than his words, and I guessed that for all his play my cousin would show me but scant mercy. Still, he was pleasant enough, and I passed a very agreeable hour in ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... ever farmed at all—in the foggy latitude of Boeotia, and knew nothing of the sunny wealth in the south of the peninsula, or of such princely estates as Eumaeus managed in the Ionian seas. Flaxman has certainly not given him the look of a large proprietor in his outlines: his toilet is severely scant, and the old gentleman appears to have lost two of his fingers in a chaff-cutter. As for Perses, who is represented as listening to the sage,[A] his dress is in the extreme of classic scantiness,—being, in fact, a mere night-shirt, and a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... optimist phrase We are so, and have been, from Gurth's simpler days, Though now platform flowers of speech—pleasant joke!— May wreath the serf's ring till men scarce see the yoke. Attached to the soil! The soil clings to our souls! Young labour's scant guerdon, cold charity's doles, The crow-scarer's pittance, the poor-house's aid All smell of it! Tramping with boots thickly clayed From brown field or furrow, or lowered at last In our special six-feet by the sexton up-cast, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... fix the whole business on my head. Won't Brooks and Tongs say where they got drunk, and then shan't I be in a scant fixin'?" ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... episode of life admitted few generalizations, I fancy. To be ready and strong and brave—there was scant time for more than that in those strenuous days. Yet under that simple formula lay a sea of patriotism and self-sacrifice, from which sprang their soldiers' force. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. "By thy scant gray looks and glittering eye, Now ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various
... times! One evening Jacques de Beaune (he kept the name although he was not lord of Beaune) was walking along the embankment, occupied in cursing his star and everything, for his last doubloon was with scant respect upon the point of quitting him; when at the corner of a little street, he nearly ran against a veiled lady, whose sweet odour gratified his amorous senses. This fair pedestrian was bravely mounted on pretty pattens, wore a beautiful dress of Italian ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... slept and she had not lain down, and the sole endeavor during those shattered hours had been to prepare herself for his awakening. She was not yet ready—she felt that during the rest of her life she should never be quite ready to meet him again. Scant time ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... rivers, Not a whiting from the waters, Not a salmon of the North-seas, I, a young and merry maiden, Friend and sister of the fishes, Youkahainen's youngest sister, I, the one that thou dost fish for, I am Aino whom thou lovest. "Once thou wert the wise-tongued hero, Now the foolish Wainamoinen, Scant of insight, scant of judgment, Didst not know enough to keep me, Cruel-hearted, bloody-handed, Tried to kill me with thy fish-knife, So to roast me for thy dinner; I, a mermaid of Wellamo, Once the fair and lovely ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... important bills. Many of the speeches which are printed in the Congressional Record have not been delivered; but they are intended for circulation among the constituents of representatives, and for use as campaign documents. Many of the speeches that are actually delivered receive scant attention; the lack of interest in them is made evident by the noise and confusion that very often prevail during sessions of ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James
... the rocks, and are quite bulky, the walls composed of grasses and the lining consisting of soft feathers. In order to procure the grasses required, they must descend at least to the belt of scant vegetation just below the region of bare rocks and boulders. Where they get the downy feathers for the carpet of their nurseries I have not been able to ascertain. No nest has yet been discovered below an elevation ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... made by Nature to supply the needs of the settler in the way of fruits, wild meats, and skins for clothing, life in the settlements was plain in the extreme. Furniture and household utensils were scant and crude, for the most part being of home construction. Salt was one of the greatest needs of the settlers. At first, they made it from the water of the numerous salt licks, each family making its supply by boiling the water in a kettle until the moisture had evaporated, leaving the ...
— The story of Kentucky • Rice S. Eubank
... you saw her fair, none else being by, Herself pois'd with herself in either eye: But in that crystal scales let there be weigh'd Your lady's love against some other maid That I will show you shining at this feast, And she shall scant show well ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... on to declare in another that the time which he spent at Sacco was the happiest he ever knew.[47] No greater instance of inconsistency is to be found in his pages. He writes: "I gambled, I occupied myself with music, I walked abroad, I feasted, giving scant attention the while to my studies. I feared no hurt, I paid my respects to the Venetian gentlemen living in the town, and frequented their houses. I, too, was in the very flower of my age, and no time could have been more delightful ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... mouth of the firth, leaving large intervals, however, of ocean. Roseneath, a smaller isle, lies much higher up the firth, and towards its western shore, near the opening of the lake called the Gare Loch, and not far from Loch Long and Loch Scant, or the Holy Loch, which wind from the mountains of the Western Highlands to join the estuary ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... had been donned some distance behind the tool house and unknown to the watchful George. All this had not surprised Gus, but he had been puzzled by the appearance on the hillside of another figure that kept behind the scant bushes much as Gus was doing, except that it was screened against being seen from below and evidently did not know of Gus's presence. Now, however, all attention was given to the altercation before the tool house, around which the ghost ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... can see only chalk at your feet, and chalk on either hand, and overhead the empty sky, this ignorance may be excused. In the boyaux, which began where the railroad stopped, that was our position. We walked through an endless grave with walls of clay, on top of which was a scant foot of earth. It looked like a layer of chocolate on ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... and set his seal to this missive, which I now have at mine hostelrie, and died the same day. My brother judged me too young then to quit his roof; and condemned me to bear his humours till, at the age of twenty-three, I could bear no more! So having sold him my scant share in the heritage, and turned, like thee, bad land into good nobles, I joined a party of horse in their journey to London, and arrived yesterday at Master Sackbut's hostelrie in Eastchepe. I went this morning ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hardly more than a military post. At the time of Champlain's death, in 1635, there was, says Winsor, a fortress with a few small guns on the cliffs of Cape Diamond. Along the foot of the precipice was a row of unsightly and unsubstantial buildings, where the scant population lived, carried on their few handicrafts, and stored their winter provisions. It was a motley crowd which, in the dreary days, sheltered itself here from the cold blasts that blew along the river channel. There was the military ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... word Margate without Aunt Aggie remarking that she had had a dear friend who had evinced a great partiality for Margate. Were the clergy mentioned in her presence with the scant respect with which the ministry and other secular bodies have to put up, Aunt Aggie vibrated with indignation. She had known men of the highest talents holding preferment ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... brief West Virginia campaign, where he first came in contact with McClellan, being looked upon as an invader rather than a friend, Lee had scant success. Some therefore called him a "mere historic name," "Letcher's pet," a "West Pointer," no fighting general. He went to South Carolina to supervise the repair and building of coast fortifications ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... certainly shown rather scant civility to Mr. Anderson, and this trait of thoughtfulness for a sickly and capricious ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the order for the advance, the order so eagerly awaited by Weldon, maddened by his long exposure to the bullets of his unseen foe. In extended order, the squadrons galloped forward until their goal was a scant five hundred yards away, when of a sudden a murderous fire broke out from the rocks in front of them, emptying many a saddle and dropping many a horse. Under such conditions, safety lay only ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... horse for a last, heartbreaking burst of speed and the dun made good. At the beginning of the slope to the ridge, Rathburn veered sharply to the right and burst through the trees a scant rod or two from his man. His gun was leveled straight at the other, who had been ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... roles in those fierce dramas that were sometimes unrolled beneath its green-curtained pines. Nameless and penniless, he was overlooked by the census and ignored by the tax collector, while in a hotly-contested election for sheriff, when even the head-boards of the scant cemetery were consulted to fill the poll-lists, it was discovered that neither candidate had thought fit to avail himself of his actual vote. He was debarred the rude heraldry of a nickname of achievement, and in a camp made ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... a lovely stream. This we crossed over as it had been dry, Passing the seven gates that guard the same, And reached a meadow, green as Arcady. People were there with deep, slow-moving eyes Whose looks were weighted with authority. Scant was their speech, but rich in melodies. The walls receding left a pasture fair, A place all full of light and of great size, So we could see each spirit that was there. And straight before my eyes upon the green Were shown to me the souls of those that were, Great spirits it exalts me to have seen. ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... scarcity and males, in relatively higher animal forms and in man. The main facts in support of the theory that such a connection exists are the following: Furriers testify that rich regions yield more furs from females and poor regions more from males. In high altitudes, where nutrition is scant, the birthrate of boys is high as compared with lower altitudes in the same locality. Ploss has pointed out, for instance, that in Saxony from 1847 to 1849 the yield of rye fell, and the birth-rate of boys rose with the approach ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... to see the grand old housekeeper (harder of hearing now) going to church on the arm of her son and to observe— which few do, for the house is scant of company in these times—the relations of both towards Sir Leicester, and his towards them. They have visitors in the high summer weather, when a grey cloak and umbrella, unknown to Chesney Wold at other periods, are seen among the leaves; when two young ladies are ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the year 1931 than they were in 1887. A critic of the Boston Transcript said, when the novel first appeared, that the new State imagined by Bellamy was all very well, but that the author lost much of his effectiveness by putting his Utopia a scant fifty years ahead, and that he might much better ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... which would destroy our trade; But dirt, and damp, and defective drainage will raise that ghost on a world afraid; And at thirty years our strength is sapped by insidious siege of the stifling fume, Or what if we linger a little longer? Scant rays ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... than out of the room when Jim slid off the bed quick as a cat; softly as a cat, on his noiseless stockinged feet he followed Mac down the hall; crafty as a cat, he crept down the creaking stairs, tread for tread, a scant arm's length behind his prey—why, God alone knows, unless for a savage joy in longer holding another thug's life in his hands. So he hung, like a leech to the blood it loves, across the corridor and to the middle of the trunk room ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... called the boat by name, knowing her voice: "It's the Bessie May Brown!" They started on a run to the bluff overlooking the river, their short legs making a full mile of the scant furlong. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... fields perhaps, since she was strong and there would be but two of them ... Should spend her evenings at the spinning-wheel or in patching old clothes ... Now arid then in summer resting for half an hour, seated on the door-step, looking across their scant fields girt by the measureless frowning woods; or in winter thawing a little patch with her breath on the windowpane, dulled with frost, to watch the snow falling on the wintry earth and the forest ... The forest ... Always ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... things, but they seem to me now to have been but scant and shabby. Why did not I say a great many more? Oh, all of you who live with those that are dearer to you than they seem, tell them every day how much you love them! at the risk of wearying them, tell them, I pray you: it will save you, perhaps, ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... still return home? It is because from you I am to learn who are my father and mother!" Mime evades him: "What father! What mother! Idle question!" But Siegfried catches him by the throat, and the terrified dwarf communicates, grudgingly, a scant fact or two of his history. "Oh, ungrateful and wicked child! now hear for what it is you hate me. I am neither your father nor any kin of yours, and yet to me you owe your life...." Making his own part in the story as meritorious as ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... in life when these things become evident to even the least observant of us. When we stand beside the newly dead the most intolerable reflection of countless mourners is that their tears fall on quiet lips to which they gave scant caresses, in the days of health: their passionate words of love are uttered to unhearing ears, which in life waited eagerly for such assurances as these, and waited vainly. All the purity and beauty of the vanished human soul is revealed ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... Asia the influence of India has been notable in extent, strength and duration. Scant justice is done to her position in the world by those histories which recount the exploits of her invaders and leave the impression that her own people were a feeble, dreamy folk, sundered from ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... to anoint him and be feasted three days,—it is carefully mentioned, however (xii. 40), that they took their provisions up with them. The proper kernel of Israel, Ephraim and Manasseh, is, in comparison with Simeon, Reuben, Gad, Issachar, treated with very scant kindness (vii. 14-29),—a suspicious sign. The list of the families of Manasseh is an artificial rechauffe of elements gleaned anywhere; Maachah passes for the wife as well as the sister of Machir, but being a Gileaditess (Beth-Maachah), ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... and his salaried cut-throats to promote public economy and private liberty by emptying the prisons of Paris, certain agents of Marat made a notable effort in behalf of the 'moral unity of France.' To this effort the melodramatic historians of the French Revolution have done scant justice. Mr. Carlyle, for example, alludes to it only in a casual half-disdainful way, which would be almost comical were the theme less ghastly. 'At Reims,' he observes, 'about eight persons were killed—and two were afterwards hanged for doing it.' The contest of this curious ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... remain until to-morrow before making the run for Singapore. Weather improved this morning, however, and the barometer going up. Several islands visible that were hid from us yesterday. Pulo Aor looking beautiful and picturesque. Some of the natives on board with their scant stores of fowls, eggs, and cocoa-nuts. They are larger than the natives of Condore, and stouter, and more developed, but with countenances not very prepossessing. The Governor, a rough-looking, middle-aged fellow, above the common height, pulled out some greasy papers, the recommendations ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... hills, that we were hoping to reach soon, loomed up grand and majestic, with patches of snow, like white sheets, spread over their sides and tops. From Nipishish to Washkagama we had passed through a burned and rocky country where no new growth save scant underbrush and a few scattering spruce, balsam and tamarack trees had taken the place of the old destroyed forest. The dead, naked tree trunks which, gaunt and weather-beaten, still stood upright or lay in promiscuous confusion on the ground, gave this part of the country from our ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... Oliver," she said; for she knew as well as he did that for the horse-stealer, in those parts and at that time, there was scant mercy and short shrift: it was danger to be ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... He gave scant attention to his audience in the way of ceremonial greeting, and plunged at once into his subject; —beginning in a high, piping, falsetto voice which, for a few moments, was almost painful. But the value of his matter soon overcame the defects of his manner; ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... the Heart.—Stout people are usually more or less "scant of breath." Accumulations of fatty material, or changing of muscle into fat, cause this, especially if about the chest and heart. To reduce the fat, and grow healthy muscle instead, will perfectly cure the difficulty of breath. Moderate open-air exercise and simple food, ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... 12: That minor operations such as these should receive but scant recognition at the hands of historians is not to be wondered at, but neither the official nor the Times histories in their accounts of this surprise of Pochefstroom found space to mention the length of this march, an omission which is very ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... 'd plenty to gie, o' my cheer and my crack, Ther war' plenty to come, and wi' joy to partak'; But whanever the water grew scant at the well, I was welcome to drink all alane ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... an intelligence and dropping through it. She could scarcely remain in the berth. Listen! Was her mother awake, in the lower one? The boat veered a trifle back northward and suddenly again, hovering over dim water and shore and blazing like a herald angel, was the morning star, a scant point or so to "stabboard." She chuckled, softly, at ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... on scant rations, corn, watermelon and other vegetables principally, but in spite of this Bob's arm was mending somewhat. He had to sleep with it pillowed on my breast, Jim being also crippled with a wound in his shoulder, and we could not get much sleep. The wound in my thigh was troubling me and ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... rugged stones or on ashes or bare stones or on the bare earth or on beds or on battlefields or in water or in mire or on wooden planks or on diverse kinds of beds; or impelled by desire of fruits, he regards himself as clad in a scant piece of cloth made of grass or as totally nude or as robed in silk or in skin of the black antelope or in cloth made of flax or in sheep-skin or in tiger-skin or in lion-skin or in fabric of hemp, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... impatiently, and searched the sky for wind clouds, while the sailors whistled shrilly for a breeze. But none came and the night descended calm, dark, and still. As the slow hours dragged themselves away, the ship's company, weary of the monotony of their watch, sought their sleeping places, or found such scant comfort as the decks afforded, until of them all only ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... them, and the Andrew Halloran still swung at anchor alone at the foot of the cliff. Whenever the artist broached the subject of a new boat, Uncle William turned it aside with a jest and trotted off to his clam-basket. The artist brooded in silence over his indebtedness and the scant chance of making it good. He got out canvas and brushes and began to paint, urged by a vague sense that it might bring in something, some time. When he saw that Uncle William was pleased, he kept on. The work ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... of fine meadow land with thinly scattered oaks, athwart which the evening sun poured its golden floods, suggesting pleasing images of abundance without effort. This part of Servia is a wilderness, if you will, so scant is it of inhabitants, so free from any thing like inclosures, or fields, farms, labourers, gardens, or gardeners; and yet it is, and looks a garden in one place, a trim English lawn and park in another: you almost say to yourself, "The man ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... gave scant time for preparation for the important ceremony that Mrs. Allen deemed necessary. During this period the busiest spot in Arizona was the kitchen of Allen hacienda. An immense cake, big as a cheese, was the crowning effort of Josephine, who wept copiously ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... for a few minutes that I may have my coffee. Being the last man, I get a bo'sun's share of the grounds. To my protests the cook gives scant heed. ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... Eschenhagen entered the great city park, which, he had just declared to his uncle, he would explore for himself. This extensive, well-wooded park, which lay before the city's very doors, was well worth a visit, but Willibald took scant notice of its beauties as he hurried on in the keen November morning. He glanced neither to the right nor to the left, but strode on, striking into this path and now into that, frequently re-treading the very ground which he had left but ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... was agreed to, though it might have been wiser had we kept to our original purpose. For some time we made fine weather of it, but getting into another channel, we found the wind first scant, and then directly against us. We had consequently no choice but to attempt to beat up to the station. This delayed us much beyond the time we expected to get there. We of course kept a bright look-out for the schooner, lest she should pass us; but evening was closing in apace, and still ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... details of the mythical land and the mythical journey to suit its own geographical position. The souls had generally to cross water, either the sea or a river, and they were put across it by a ghostly ferryman, who treated the passengers with scant courtesy.[773] According to some people, the River of the Souls (Waini-yalo) is what mortals now call the Ndravo River. When the ghosts arrived on the bank, they hailed the ferryman and he paddled his canoe over to receive them. ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... officer named Foraker, who was supposed to be in command. As a matter of fact, there was a Captain Foraker aboard the schooner who navigated her and instilled the "run and jump" discipline that had so excited Code's admiration. Outside of this vague fact, Nat's knowledge was scant. ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... fire, and we saw lights bursting out on all the batteries; while one, a little on the starboard bow, was blazing away at us. As we glided on, the guns of all the forts opened fire as they could be brought to bear. The wind was very scant, and it seemed impossible that we could weather the point without tacking, and, of course, while we were in stays, the enemy would have taken steady aim; but again a favourable flaw of wind helped us. As soon as the ship was well under command, the order was ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston
... she told the little Irishman made him drop the shoe he was at work upon and glare at her over his spectacles, and with his scant reddish hair ruffled up. This, with his whiskers, made him look like ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... near an end. I was like a man emerging from a thicket, and suddenly coming on some unmeaning tragedy. I went to bury him. My mind was still on this research, and I did not lift a finger to save his character. I remember the funeral, the cheap hearse, the scant ceremony, the windy frost-bitten hillside, and the old college friend of his who read the service over him—a shabby, black, bent old man ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... pimply. He had that order of nose on which the envy of mankind has bestowed the appellation 'snub,' and it was very much turned up at the end, as with a lofty scorn. Upon the upper lip of this young gentleman were tokens of a sandy down; so very, very smooth and scant, that, though encouraged to the utmost, it looked more like a recent trace of gingerbread than the fair promise of a moustache; and this conjecture, his apparently tender age went far to strengthen. He was intent upon his work. Every time he snapped the ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... source of intimate knowledge of the boy, who was a mature man at twenty-two, has left the record of the early period curiously scant. Fortunately, there are in his letters and speeches some casual allusions to his childhood and youth, and a few facts and anecdotes of the period from members of his family, from school, college, and ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... in bringing Hugh Pitcairn into my story, and, as I read that which I have written, I seem to have set him down in a scant and dry manner little calculated to do justice to his many virtues. These virtues, however, were of the kind which made him a fine citizen rather than a jolly companion over a bowl of brose. He was a tall ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... Alfego, with another bow, "Ramon Delcasar! And I knew you when you were un muchachito" (a little boy). He bent over and measured scant two feet from the floor with his hand. "My house is yours. I ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... interesting instance of a singular survival.' He made an obvious effort to become more like his usual self. 'It is extremely unfortunate, Atherton, that I should have troubled you with such a display of weakness,—especially as I am able to offer you so scant an explanation. One thing I would ask of you,—to observe strict confidence. What has taken place has been between ourselves. I am in your hands, but you are my friend, I know I can rely on you not to speak of ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... accompany them. Nor was it to be thought of that he should allow himself to be kidnapped into such an arrangement by the impudence of any Miss Dawkins. But there was, he felt, a difficulty in answering such a proposition from a young lady with a direct negative, especially while he was so scant of breath. So he wiped his brow again, and ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope
... the day of Webster's greatest effort ladies were admitted to the seats of the members, and the throng overflowed through the lobbies and down the long stairways, quite beyond hearing distance. In the House of Representatives the Speaker remained at his post, but the attendance was so scant that no business could ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... was not literary, indeed was terribly illiterate, any traditions that survived cannot conceivably have been literary. That is absolutely certain. Natives at Stratford had, by your own hypothesis, scant interest in literary anecdote. Fifty years after Shakespeare's death, no native was likely to cherish tales of any sprouts of wit (though it was remembered in 1649, that he was "witty"), or any "wood-notes wild," which he may have displayed ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... moon of the Frost-Touching-Mildly clouds came up from the south with a great trampling of thunder, and flung out over the Dry Washes as a man flings his blanket over a maiden. But if the Rains were scant for two or three seasons, then there was Hunger, and the dust devils took the ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... sheets and pillow-cases to dry (a bit of the North, of Hermann and Dorothea transferred to the South), a great twisted fig-tree juts out like an eccentric gargoyle over the sea, and drops its ripe fruit into the deep blue pools. There is but scant furniture in the house, but a great oleander overhangs it, presently to burst into pink splendor; and on all the window-sills, even that of the kitchen (such a background of shining brass saucepans Waldemar's wife has made of it!) are pipkins and tubs full of trailing ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... followed, Bryant produced a few other noteworthy poems, yet it is significant of the thinness of his inspiration that, though he began writing in early youth and lived to the age of eighty-four, his total product was scant in the extreme when compared with that of any of the acknowledged masters. His earnings from this source were never great, and, removing to New York, he secured, in 1828, the editorship of the Evening Post, with which he remained ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... the sweet-breathing, mournful, slow-eyed kine With hazel-shielded horns, and gave their milk Gravely to merry maidens. Low the sun Had fallen, when, Patrick near the summit now, There burst on him a wandering troop, wild-eyed, With scant and quaint array. O'er sunburnt brows They wore sere wreaths; their piebald vests were stained, And lean their looks, and sad: some piped, some sang, Some tossed the juggler's ball. "From far we came," ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... been made in ethical standards. I do not believe that there is the slightest necessary connection between any weakening of virile force and this advance in the moral standard, this growth of the sense of obligation to one's neighbor and of reluctance to do that neighbor wrong. We need have scant patience with that silly cynicism which insists that kindliness of character only accompanies weakness of character. On the contrary, just as in private life many of the men of strongest character are the very men of loftiest and most exalted morality, so I believe ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... man but scant consideration, and in less than three minutes had visited every pocket, examined every secret receptacle, and practically turned ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... to official procrastination. Civil rights organizations, preoccupied with racial unrest throughout the nation and anxious for the passage of new civil rights legislation, seemed to lose some (p. 557) of their intense interest in service problems. They paid scant attention to the directive beyond probing for the outer limits of the new policy. In the months following the directive, officials of the NAACP and other organizations shot off a spate of requests for the imposition of off-limits sanctions against certain businesses ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... scientist of some reputation, the theorem went by the name of 'la Pascalia,' and Descartes's remarks do not seem to have been taken seriously, which indeed is not to be wondered at, seeing that he was in the habit of giving scant credit to the work of other ...
— An Elementary Course in Synthetic Projective Geometry • Lehmer, Derrick Norman
... was a man who trimmed life down to the essentials, and he had long ago impressed it upon her that if she could not shoot quickly, and hit where she aimed, there was not much use in her attempting to shoot at all. Jean proved by her scant interest in the hawk how well she had learned the lesson, and how sure she was of hitting where ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... he felt the wound, and not for Bully Presby, her father. For the latter he spared scant sympathy; but it was Joan who would be stricken by any action he might take, and the action must be taken, and ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... cultivated chemistry with pleasure and ardor. Some left visible imprints, while scarce a vestige remains of others. Their labours have made our path easier. A century hence, many honoured to-day and respected for their achievements, will receive scant consideration, though the work of the present looms up large ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith
... black silk, so tight that the buttonholes were burst out, and it showed white on the shoulders,—while the skirt was so scant that she could not ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... had planted the poppies? Through the mass of undergrowth and brambles, she made scant headway. Thorns pressed forward rudely as if to stab the intruder. Vines, closely matted, forbade her to pass, yet she kept on until she reached the western slope of ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... up to the scratch is to do scant justice to the testimony which he gave and to the manner in which he gave it. He swore to Berry: he swore to me: and in all honesty he swore to the car. For this, since Ping and Pong were duplicates, ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... Winifred's were not overworked; there was enough work to stimulate but not to oppress them, and Walter's work grew more promising every day. He was fond of praise, and Mr Percival, while he always took care so to praise him as to obviate the danger of conceit, was not so scant of his approbation as most men are. His warm and generous appreciation encouraged and rewarded Walter's exertions, so that he was quite the "star" of his form. Many other boys did well under Mr Percival. There was a bright and ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... said, and Rhoda whisked round and dashed behind her curtain, which flew out behind in an aggrieved fashion, as if unused to be treated with such scant courtesy. The next few moments seemed to have concentrated in them a lifetime of bitterness. The comb tugged remorselessly through the curling locks, but the physical pain passed unnoticed; it was the blow to pride which ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... trying to keep the troublesome Robbins where he belonged, which, in Clint's judgment, was among the second team substitutes. That was a glorious afternoon for the second team, for they held the 'varsity scoreless in the first period and allowed them only the scant consolation of a field-goal in the second. "Boutelle's Babies," as some waggish first team man had labelled them, went off in high feather and fancied themselves more ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... place and the absence of human life was somewhat depressing. We remained at the island for three days, and during our stay our crew of South Sea Islanders literally filled our decks with fish, turtle and birds' eggs. Curiously enough, in our scant library on board the little trading vessel I came across portion of a narrative of a voyage in a South Seaman, written by her surgeon, a Mr Bennett, in 1838,{*} and our captain and myself were much interested in the accurate description he gave ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... private effects. "I have been taken by the Americans," wrote Andre, "and robbed of everything save the picture of Honora, which I concealed in my mouth. Preserving that, I think myself happy." Sent into the remote parts of Pennsylvania, his companions and himself met with but scant measure of courtesy from the mountaineers of that region; nor was he exchanged for many long and weary months. Once more free, however, his address and capacity soon came to his aid. His reports and sketches speedily commended him to the especial favor of the commander-in-chief, Sir William Howe; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... the most inclement weather of the season. 'Under these circumstances,' he said, 'heightened by assaults and fire of the Enemy, some of the men had been without meat for three days, and all were suffering from reduced rations and scant clothing. Colonel Cole, chief commissary, reports that he has not a pound of meat at his disposal. If some change is not made, and the commissary department reorganized, I apprehend dire results. The physical strength of the men, if their courage survives, must fail ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... When done have ready in a saucepan a cup of cream, diluted with a few spoonfuls of hot water, for fear it might clot in heating, in which have been stirred cautiously two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, a scant tablespoonful of flour, and a little chopped parsley. Heat this in a vessel set within another of boiling water, add the gravy from the dripping-pan, boil up once to thicken, and when the trout is laid on a suitable hot dish, pour this sauce around ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... used it, Though I somehow felt 'twas wrong; For I kind o' thought that sometime Some one might be coming here Worn out with a long, long journey, And would crave that kind o' cheer. Now, then, Billy, draw your stool up; What we've got is scant and plain— I ain't ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... was full of places where the almost limitless forest afforded timber without end, and the labor of the prisoners themselves under the same guards that garrisoned the prison would have comfortably housed and warmed them, and then the scant and wretched rations would not so soon have been the cause of emaciation and disease. The risk of escape would not have been great, and I doubt if as many would have got away as in fact managed to do so in the actual circumstances. The almost certainty of sickness and death nerved many ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... to see a young girl as often as he feels inclined and she cares to receive him. If she continually asks to be excused, or shows him scant attention when he is talking to her, or in any other way indicates that he annoys or bores her, ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... found the village of Palanan and the missions of Dicalayon, and Dauilican or Divilican. Thence, until one reaches the cape of Engano, [123] one finds nothing more than some small anchoring-places, which offer but scant refuge to the vessels, as they are all exposed to the vendavals. On the northern coast as well, which begins at the said cape of Engano (so called because of the deceitfulness of its currents), one does not meet bay or port until he reaches ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... was," said Gerald, with that scant smile of his; "but I was not so fortunate as to find you ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... fifty years there are but scant records of work done to the building. Though Professor Freeman[1] speaks of its "not long-lived perfection," it is quite possible that Marshall's work was considered, by his own and the succeeding generation, to be final. Any interest there may be in the lives of two of the succeeding ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... small, and their foliage so scant and slight that they afforded no shelter whatever from the burning rays of the sun; which appeared to strike up again from the sandstone with redoubled heat, so that it was really painful to touch ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... scissors, he had trimmed a surprisingly heavy beard Van Dyck fashion, which emphasized his peaked features and a certain consciousness of superiority; while the barber's son sported only a few scraggly hairs. The scant, reddish product of Pilzer's cheeks, leaving bare the liver patch, only accentuated its repulsiveness and a savagery in his voice and look which was no longer latent under the conventional discipline of every-day existence. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... assembled crowds could ever experience such tremendous excitement as came about when Fred Fenton caught up with Badger and the Mechanicsburg Wonder on the home-stretch of the twenty-five mile Marathon, and managed to win by a scant ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... distasteful, Edinburgh had no other distinctive charms to offer to young Darwin, and he was entered at Christ's College, Cambridge, early in 1828, with the idea of his becoming a clergyman of the Church of England. It might have been thought that there was scant stimulus for a biological student in the Cambridge of that period; but although the old literary and mathematical studies were still the only paths to a degree, there were men of original force and genius ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... gesture of impatience. "Well, then, how is the skirt made? Tell me that. Tell me everything that you remember about skirts. Are they loose as mine, or tighter?" She rose and stood before him, in her scant drapery of homespun, turning slowly, so ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... King Philip's War wrought such fearful damage to the English, it was for the Indians themselves utter destruction. Most of the warriors were slain, and to the survivors, as we have seen, the conquerors showed but scant mercy. The Puritan, who conned his Bible so earnestly, had taken his hint from the wars of the Jews, and swept his New English Canaan with a broom that was pitiless and searching. Henceforth the red man figures no more ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... however, gave scant time for preparation for the important ceremony that Mrs. Allen deemed necessary. During this period the busiest spot in Arizona was the kitchen of Allen hacienda. An immense cake, big as a cheese, was the crowning effort of Josephine, who wept copiously ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... rearranged the light waterproof which he had slung over one shoulder in toreador fashion. His breeches, his white rubber shoes and his jauntily slung waterproof expressed youth. But his figure fell into rotundity at the waist, his hair was scant and grey and his face, when the waves of expression had passed over it, ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... a small metal cup. Against the cabin door leaned Savaroff, eyeing me with his usual expression of hostile mistrust. The third passenger was the man with the auburn beard, whom I had seen in the launch on the day I picked up Mr. Gow. He was busy with the tiller, and for the moment was paying scant attention ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... hardly hold her responsible. James King was taken suddenly, alarmingly ill with pneumonia two days before they left Los Angeles to catch their steamer at New York, and it was manifestly impossible for his son to leave him. The doctors gave scant ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... ones to Philip, who had scant patience with the querulous old aunt. But Amanda, since she had glimpsed the girlhood romance of the woman, had a kindlier feeling for her and could smile at the faultfinding or at least run away from it without retort if it became ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... This scant sympathy Ethel found to be the usual tone among her acquaintances. St. Jude's got a new rector and a new idol, and the Stanhope affair was relegated to the limbo of things "it was ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... establishment the furnishings were scant and poor, and in every way things were vastly different from what we find them in the poorhouse of our modern times. In the main office, where Mr. Engler transacted his business affairs and entertained strangers, there was simply a rude desk, a homemade couch ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... and the lovers lean Towards Yasmini, with yearning eyes, Who dances, wondering what they mean, And gives cold kisses, and scant replies. They talk of Love, she withholds the name,— (Love came to her as a Flame of Fire!) From things that are only a weary shame; Trivial Vanity;—light Desire. Ahi, ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... The scant vegetation clothes it not in a livery of verdure. The leaves of the agave are mottled with scarlet, and the dull green of the cactus is still further obscured by its thickly-set spines. The blades of the yuccas are dimmed by dust, and resemble clusters of half-rusty ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... convulsed with rage, and he was screaming over and over "Dam scabs! Dam scabs! Dam scabs!" The laughter with which they greeted him only increased his fury. He toddled closer, and with a mighty exertion threw the rock. It fell a scant ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... of life admitted few generalizations, I fancy. To be ready and strong and brave—there was scant time for more than that in those strenuous days. Yet under that simple formula lay a sea of patriotism and self-sacrifice, from which sprang their soldiers' force. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... which the religious life is devoid of joy and peace. That is a phase of Christian experience, which meets any one who knows much of the workings of men's hearts, and of his own, when faith is exercised with but little of the light of faith, and the fear of the Lord is cherished with but scant joy in the Lord. Now if it be remembered that such an application of the words is not their original purpose, there can be no harm in using them so. Indeed we may say that, as the words are perfectly general, they ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... found, I took and kept the pearls that those natives brought me, not rendering them to the Sovereigns. God judge me, it is not so! Spain becometh vastly rich, and the head of the world, and her Sovereigns, lest they should scant their own nobility, give nobility, place and wage to him who brought them Lordship here. It is all! And out of my gain am I not pledged to gather an army and set it forth to gain the Sepulchre? Have I fallen, now and again, ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... matter was, that so much of their precious time was spent in trying to overcome the numerous difficulties by which they found themselves confronted, that there were scant opportunities for fishing ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... difficult in these days for a man who takes such scant interest in foreign affairs—trust a whilom diplomat for that!—to follow the continual geographical disturbances of European surfaces. Thus, I can not distinctly recall the exact location of the Grand Duchy of Barscheit ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... to seek their meat—when the swarm of beggars that came forth was a sight truly calamitous. Many a decent auld woman that had patiently eiked out the slender thread of a weary life with her wheel, in privacy, her scant and want known only to her Maker, was seen going from door to door with the salt tear in her e'e, and looking in the face of the pitiful, being as yet unacquainted with the language of beggary; but the worst sight ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... the other passions fleet to ayre, As doubtfull thoughts, and rash imbrac'd despaire: And shuddring feare, and greene-eyed iealousie. O loue be moderate, allay thy extasie, In measure raine thy ioy, scant this excesse, I feele too much thy blessing, make it ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... private liberty by emptying the prisons of Paris, certain agents of Marat made a notable effort in behalf of the 'moral unity of France.' To this effort the melodramatic historians of the French Revolution have done scant justice. Mr. Carlyle, for example, alludes to it only in a casual half-disdainful way, which would be almost comical were the theme less ghastly. 'At Reims,' he observes, 'about eight persons were killed—and two were afterwards hanged for doing it.' The contest of this curious passage ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... upon her father's death with no other fortune than her gowns and a few artistic gems of scant value, she had coldly decided upon ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... results of the work of two seasons compare very closely and show generally that there is a variation from a minimum of a scant two gallons up to more than a pint over three gallons from forty pounds of each variety. The forty-pound quantity is taken as representative of the bushel by measure. The varieties leading cider production are—the Hibernal and Wealthy, ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... on Youth's hither shore Would I be some poor Player on scant hire, Than King among the old, who play no more, - "THIS is the end ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... dust flies highest in the air, And all their faces does begarie. Gif they could speak, they wald them warie...[151] But I have maist into despite Poor claggocks[152] clad in raploch-white, Whilk has scant twa merks for their fees, Will have twa ells beneath their knees. Kittock that cleckit[153] was yestreen, The morn, will counterfeit the queen: And Moorland Meg, that milked the yowes, Claggit with clay aboon the hows,[154] In barn nor byre she will not bide, Without her kirtle tail ...
— English Satires • Various
... she listens, none replies, And Janet shudders. "Husbandless, alone, And with two children—they have scant supplies. Good neighbor! She ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... the hours take flight! What's read at morn is dead at night; Scant space have we for art's delays, Whose breathless thought so briefly stays, We may not work—ah! would we might, With ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... had long since passed into the hands of capable families—with this exception, that here and there between the borders of large estates little farms were to be found representing all that remained from slow processes of partition and absorption. These scant freeholds had thus their pathos, marking as they did the losing fight of successive holders against more fortunate, more powerful neighbors. Nothing in its way records more surely the clash and struggle and ranking of men than the boundaries of land. There you ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... Willibald von Eschenhagen entered the great city park, which, he had just declared to his uncle, he would explore for himself. This extensive, well-wooded park, which lay before the city's very doors, was well worth a visit, but Willibald took scant notice of its beauties as he hurried on in the keen November morning. He glanced neither to the right nor to the left, but strode on, striking into this path and now into that, frequently re-treading the very ground which he had left but a ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... I paid but scant attention to his conversation, wriggled off his chair and stood before me with ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... disappearances, mysterious alone in the lack of knowledge as to the victim's end; and they conjured me, if I would see such things, at least to go under the escort of the police. All this I had paid scant attention to at the time; but the reality was before me with its grim terror. The room was filled with the scum of sea-going humanity; foul smoke from foul pipes floated in choking clouds to the dirt-begrimed ceiling; great brown pots of strong drink were emptied as though their ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... down upon his sled, and, after digging into his scant food supply, opened a can of frozen beans. These he shared with his dog. Having eaten, he took up ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... half hour the bonne, despatched to fetch the children from their classes, would be back with her flock; and at any moment Geordie's imperious cries might summon his slave up to the nursery. In the scant time allotted them, the two sat, and visibly wondered what ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... 1758 in Provence, Comtat, in a large family of poor people who eked out a scant subsistence on a small estate called Canquoelle. Peyrade, paternal uncle of Theodose de la Peyrade, was of noble birth, but kept the fact secret. He went from Avignon to Paris in 1776, where he entered the police force two years later. Lenoir thought well ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... the most instructive and impressive talker in Germany, and the one man who appears to have influenced the direction of his mind. Bishop Martensen has described his amazing powers; and Doellinger, who remembered him with more scant esteem, bore equal testimony to the wealth and worth of his religious philosophy. He probably owed to him his persistent disparagement of Hegel, and more certainly that familiarity with the abstruse literature of mysticism which made him as clear and sure of vision in the twilight of Petrucci and ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... dawn. I had arisen from the sleepless bed Which my scant means had purchased, and gone forth To taste the air, and cool my burning brow. I wandered on, not knowing where I went, Nor caring whither. There were few astir; The market wagons lumbered slowly in, Piled high with carcasses of slaughtered lambs, ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... vast solitudes where foot of man but rarely trod, till I reached the more settled states. Food and shelter were rarely denied to the poor mad woman, though of the roughest sort. At length I reached the eastern cities; scant was the charity I found within them, I gained the sea-coast; I gazed upon the ocean, with its majestic billows rolling up from the far-off east. They seemed to me like mighty monuments raised to the memory of those who slept beneath. For many years ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... very pleasant in spite of the cramped accommodation, for the little crew were a kindly simple people, whose countenances invited trust, and though the fare on board had been scant, yet it was wholesome and good, as the rest the travellers had found ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... the refectory opened to the figure of Senor Perkins. A green silk sash across his breast, a gold-laced belt, supporting a light dress-sword and a pair of pistols, buckled around the jaunty waist of his ordinary black frock-coat, were his scant martial suggestions. But his hat, albeit exchanged for a soft felt one, still reposed on the back of his benevolent head, and seemed to accent more than ever the contrast between his peaceful shoulders and the military ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... German courts were beginning to take an interest in German literature. Before the Seven Years' War the whole of German culture had been French. Even now German writers found but scant acceptance at Berlin or Vienna. The princes of the smaller states surrounded themselves with literature and art. The duke of Brunswick had made Lessing his librarian. The duke of Wuertemberg paid special attention to education; he promoted the views of Schubart, and founded the school ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... was recovering herself, she felt something like a pin prick her wrist; and she wondered vaguely what brooch had become unfastened. But she gave it scant attention for the big blade was threatening her from a new direction. She leaped to meet it, and for the next minute was kept turning, twisting, dodging, till her breath began to come in gasps, and her exhausted hand to relax its hold. Her weapon was almost ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... nm or to the edge of continental margin exclusive economic zone: 200 nm territorial sea: 12 nm International disputes: none Climate: tropical monsoon; cloudy, rainy, hot, humid summers (southwest monsoon, June to September); less cloudy, scant rainfall, mild temperatures, lower humidity during winter (northeast monsoon, December to April) Terrain: central lowlands ringed by steep, rugged highlands Natural resources: petroleum, timber, tin, antimony, zinc, copper, tungsten, lead, coal, some marble, limestone, precious stones, natural ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... however, befell Pollenius Sebennus, who had preferred the charge that caused his death. He was delivered by Sabinus to the Norici, for whom he had shown scant consideration during his governorship of them, and went through a most disgraceful experience. We saw him stretched on the ground, pleading piteously, and had he not obtained mercy, thanks to his uncle Auspex, [Footnote: A. Pollenius Auspex.] ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... which some text-books on the same subject would be sure to include. To make a manual complete and self-sufficing is precisely what I have not intended. The book is designed to be suggestive and stimulating, to leave the reader with scant information on some points, to make him (as Mr. Samuel Weller says) "vish there wos more," and to show him how to go on by himself. I am well aware that, in making an experiment in this somewhat new direction, nothing is easier than to fall into errors of judgment. I ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... the night. A peculiar object lying stretched upon the lawn for some time baffled his eyesight; but at length he had made it out to be a long ladder, or series of ladders bound into one; and he was still wondering of what service so great an instrument could be in such a scant enclosure, when he was recalled to himself by the noise of some one running violently down the stairs. This was followed by the sudden, clamorous banging of the house door; and that again, by rapid and retreating footsteps ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... if Hays' farmhouse, or "Hays," as it was familiarly called, looked any more bleak and cheerless that winter afternoon than it usually did in the strong summer sunshine. Painted a cold merciless white, with scant projections for shadows, a roof of white-pine shingles, bleached lighter through sun and wind, and covered with low, white-capped chimneys, it looked even more stark and chilly than the drifts which had climbed its low roadside fence, and yet seemed hopeless of gaining a foothold ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... they rushed upon the Christian With a shout like cannon's roar; Like the dashing of the torrent, Like the sweeping of the storm, Like the raging of the tempest, Came down the dusky swarm. From the scant and struggling brush-wood, From the waste of burning sand, Sped the warriors of the desert, Like the locusts of the land: They would crush the bold invader, Who had dared to cross their path; They were fighting for their prophet, In the might of Islam's wrath, They were savage ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... "are not as badly off as they were before they had the copyright. Their stories can no longer be stolen with impunity as in the past. They are better paid, too. Many an olden-time author received very scant remuneration for his labor; sometimes he received none at all. Many had to beg the patronage of the rich in order to get their works printed; contracts were unfair and publishers unprincipled. The unfortunate author was the prey of vultures who cheated him at every turn. Many died in extreme ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... an era of "plain living" far, far remote from the day of Turkish rugs and Japanese bric-a-brac, and Aunt Jane was in perfect correspondence with her environment. She wore a purple calico dress, rather short and scant; a gingham apron, with a capacious pocket, in which she always carried knitting or some other "handy work"; a white handkerchief was laid primly around the wrinkled throat and fastened with a pin containing ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... me too, for reasons Billy knew nothing about. Why Thompson had come back was his own business; but it was plain he had been dead a scant twenty-four hours, and the only place I could think of where he was likely to have been killed was on my corduroy road the night before. Only I did not see how Thompson's clothes could have got water-soaked in a frozen swamp; and I did not see, ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... thee, dame, be not offended," I said, approaching her, while the ladies stood at a little distance. "We have entered your abode with scant ceremony, but have no desire to treat you with disrespect; gladly will we pay, too, for the injury we may have done your door, though we could not remain outside exposed to the pelting storm when shelter was at hand. Had you admitted us without parley, the latch ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... a theater attached to the restaurant. Through the glass doors we could see an iridescence of scant costumes, but the audience was light, and we ourselves preferred, as a more satisfactory ending to our day, to walk quietly toward the Arc de Triomphe which is waiting, waiting for fresh glories. On the other side of this last sheet of paper my lovers had so walked together. But upon looking ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... had been a seaman, and the marks of a sailor's life were stamped hard on his face. His weathered cheeks were plowed by wrinkles that stretched, deep furrowed, from his red-gray hair to the corners of his mouth. From under scant brows he peered out on the world with near-sighted eyes; but whenever a smile broadened his wide mouth, his eyes would ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of Massachusetts effaced the last vestige of State ownership by giving the Vanderbilts a perpetual lease of this richly profitable railroad for a scant two million dollars' payment a year. During the debate over this act Representative Dean charged in the Legislature that "it is common rumor in the State House that members are receiving $300 apiece for their votes." ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... country dweller leased a house, with option to buy, in a very good neighborhood. House, location, and surroundings exactly pleased and it was a scant ten minutes from the station on a good road. The school system was well rated but the graded school for this section drew a majority of its pupils from a textile mill settlement two or three miles away. The children of the English spinners and weavers ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... looked pale and worn, but he carried his head erect, if not with some defiance. "Do, Heath. Morning, Vandyck," he mumbled, flinging himself upon a settee with scant ceremony. "You will excuse me from ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... that. He had viewed the failure of the plan to capture a city in the northwest in February with irritation, but without discouragement. They had acted prematurely there and without sufficient secrecy. That was all. The plan in itself was right. And he had watched the scant reports of the uprising in the newspapers with amusement and scorn. The very steps taken to suppress the facts showed the uneasiness of the authorities and left the nation with a feeling of ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the making of his will, I am happy to relate, to find that he had made no mistake. As he preceded his son-in-law into the Great Beyond by a scant three years, it readily may be seen that he wrought too well by far. Seventeen unnecessary years of proscription remained, and he had not intended them for Sara ALONE. He was not afraid of Sara, ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... from those days, oh let not man, Boastful of reason, check with scornful speech Those legends pure; for who the heart may scan Or say what hallowed thoughts such legends teach To those who may perchance their scant flocks keep On hill or plain, to whom the quivering tree Hinteth a thought which, holy, solemn, deep, Sinks in the heart, bidding their spirits flee All thoughts of vice, that dread and hateful thing Which troubleth of each joy the pure and ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... her," said Gwen; "'tis lying down she is, a good deal,—miladi is a bit lazy, I think," and with this scant information he had ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... a sheep-run on the Darling Downs, and boasted of few and scant improvements, though things had gradually got a little better than when we started. A verandahless four-roomed slab-hut now standing out from a forest of box-trees, a stock-yard, and six acres under barley were the only evidence of settlement. ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... a great impression upon me—a most unreasonable impression, unwarranted by the scant facts as he related them. The girl whom he had seen resembled Frances—yes; but she was an Austrian, her name was not Morley. And resemblances were common enough. That Frances should be singing in a ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... been taken when Port Hudson fell, from their confinement in Thompson's Creek, where the falling water had left them sunk in the sand. As the army fell back, and during its stay at Grand Ecore, he had heard rumors about the scant water at the Falls, and the thought had taken hold of his mind that he might now build a dam on a greater scale and to a more vital purpose than ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... in Paris; and flour, milk, eggs, equally high. Fuel is so dear that shivering is the law for all save the wealthy; and rents are no less dear, with no "improved dwellings" system to give the most for the scant sum at disposal. Bread and coffee, chiefly chiccory, make one meal; bread alone is the staple of the others, with a bit of meat for Sunday. Hours are frightfully long, the disabilities of the French needleworker being in many points the ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... militia, who, late in the day, took the field to man the defenses when Sherman was marching to the sea. They were frequently made up of old men and boys who had been exempt from the regular service, and these were hurried into action with poor equipment and scant preparation. General Toombs, in a letter written to his wife, ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... my love, With wind alone the branches move, And though the leaves be scant above The Autumn ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... count not the comfort had brought me, Fair queen of the ring, thy embrace! Go, mate with the man of thy choosing, Scant mirth will he get of thy grace! Be dearer henceforth to thy dastard, False dame of the coif, than to me;— I have spoken the word; I have sung it;— I have said my ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... Emerson says: "Metre begins with pulse-beat, and the length of lines in songs and poems is determined by the inhalation and exhalation of the lungs," and this really goes near to the root of the matter; albeit we might derive therefrom the unsupported inference that a poet "fat and scant of breath" would write in lines of a foot each, while the more able-bodied bard, with the capacious lungs of a pearl-diver, would deliver himself all across his page, with "the spacious volubility of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... until dark the ancient seven-pounders of her batteries had banged and grumbled, her Maxims had rattled defiance from Kopje Fort, and the Nordenfelt released its showers of effective, death-dealing little projectiles. Scant news from outside trickled into the town. Grumer, with his Brigade, was guarding the Drifts, and when the Relief might be expected was now a moss-grown topic of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... were free to roam according to their desire, the travelers rode gaily along the paths, taking but scant ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... crimson to the ears, and the three married women felt unutterably humiliated at being met thus by the soldier in company with the girl whom he had treated with such scant ceremony. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... brought it's keen edge down upon the mooring line. The flat-boat shuddered and moved, slowly at first, then faster as it worked into the current. The Texan gazed dumbfounded at the rapidly widening strip of water that separated them from the shore. But he found scant time to stare idly at the water. All about them it's surface was clogged with floating debris. The river had risen to within a foot of the slender cable that held the boat on its course, and the unwieldy craft was trembling and jerking as uprooted trees and masses of flotsam caught on ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... levied on such proportion of the revenues of railroads operating in the State as their mileage there bore to their total mileage. In Maine v. Grand Trunk Railway Company,[672] a sharply divided Court upheld the tax on the basis of its designation, giving scant attention to its apportionment feature. Said Justice Field for the majority: "The privilege of exercising the franchises of a corporation within a State is generally one of value, and often of great value, and the subject of earnest contention. ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... been a month or two at Venice, when Mr Dorrit, who was much among Counts and Marquises, and had but scant leisure, set an hour of one day apart, beforehand, for the purpose of holding some ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... again, all that remained of decoration were the remnants of an altar, at the far end, above which hung a large picture of the Crucifixion, and below a representation of the Lord's Supper; both badly painted, if one might judge from the scant colour remaining on the canvas. On one side stood a pulpit with a top like an extinguisher, much the worse for wear; formerly it had been painted all over with bright colours, the panels of the saints being surrounded by garish festoons and queer designs. ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... plants on the mundane sphere. The water falling on the upper surface in scattering drops forms myriads of minute stalagmites; on side positions the falling drop first strikes the point exposed to its line of descent and then spreads. The scant moisture slowly makes its way down sloping sides and shelving edges, leaving on each small irregularity a tiny portion of its volume, to deposit an infinitely small charge of solid substance, and the balance finally hangs in ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... of the Camps and their swindling friends, but Dave's report was scant. He had seen the man of the canes, but the seller of 'soo-vy-neer' matches was no longer he of the big moustache and goodly height, but a small elderly Turk, who piped weakly and plied his calling listlessly. The Camps, Smug, ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... a vulgar envy of richer women's clothes and jewels. Her dress, with which she had been pleased, looked ordinary beside the creations of great Parisian ateliers, and the few old paste ornaments which were the only jewels she possessed, charming as they were, seemed dim and scant among the crowns and constellations of diamonds that surrounded her. Her pride rebelled against this envy, but could not ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... of him, then he would have forced back the walls again. If only once she had walked by his side through the crowds, then he would have caught their cry in time. The world had narrowed down to a pin prick, but if only she had come a scant two days ago, she would have bent his eye to this tiny aperture as to the small end of a telescope as she did now and made him see big enough to grasp the meaning ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... no time in reaching Cartown with the belated mail, and so was obliged to leave the girls an the road with scant ceremony, hardly pausing to discuss why he had been bound when no apparent ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... low-lying surface, sluggish, inky pools and tortuous sloughs, twisting their slimy way, eel-like, toward the open bay were all hard facts. Occasionally, here and there, could be seen a few green tussocks, with their scant blades, their amphibious flavor and unpleasant dampness. And if you chose to indulge your fancy, although the flat monotony of Duck Island was not inspiring, the wavy line of scattered drift gave an unpleasant consciousness of the spent waters and made ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... was young, probably a scant five and twenty, tall, lean, close-knit of frame with finely chiseled, almost ascetic features, though the vigorous chin and generous sized mouth forbade any hint of weakness or effeminacy. His deep-set, clear gray-blue eyes were the eyes of youth; but ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... the old port-cochere, and no one but the night clerk was about. He swung the great door open and welcomed them to the hotel office, a large living-room, with a wide brick and rubble fireplace in one corner, dimly lighted by a log fitfully blazing, fed by scant draughts, so deeply was it choked by the pile of ashes from the logs that had served to brighten the busy room the night before. It is important to note this fireplace, for long afterward, when ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... Ethan. He had foreseen an immediate demand for money, but not a permanent drain on his scant resources. He no longer believed what Zeena had told him of the supposed seriousness of her state: he saw in her expedition to Bettsbridge only a plot hatched between herself and her Pierce relations to foist on him the cost of a servant; and ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... rather grimly. "And that!" she answered, whereupon Rimrock flushed. He had used those words before in exactly the same connection. It must be madness, this insane prompting that moved him to talk love to this girl. The first time he had met her, after a scant hour of conversation, he had made that equivocal remark: "How about fifty-fifty—an undivided half?" And many times since, when he came to think of it, he had wondered how the words had slipped out. It was a way he had, of speaking impulsively, ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... care we took of them. Besides, the Indians got disagreeable, having to go back several times to bring the remaining baskets. Nevertheless, we got down as far as the Curubing mountains. Up to this time we were more or less always starving. Arrived at the Curubing mountains, procured a scant supply of provisions, but lost nearly all of them in a small creek, and what was saved was spoiling under our eyes, it being then that the rainy season had fully started, drenching us from morning ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... became maddening, after that, he would ride down to the Wolverine for news. And the news was monotonously scant. Phoebe could read and write, after a fashion, and Billy Louise sent her a letter now and then, saying that mommie was about the same, and that she wanted John to do certain things about the ranch. She could not leave mommie, she said. Ward gathered that ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... passage as the most dangerous one he had ever encountered. It has its difficulties, no doubt, in certain states of the wind and tide, but Roswell had received good accounts of the place from Stimson, who had been through several times. The wind was rather scant to go through, and the weather threatened to be thick. As Daggett urged his reasons for keeping off and passing outside of Staten Land, a circuit of considerable extent, besides bringing a vessel far to leeward with the ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... at the first glance that I had seen him before,—a tall, spare man, thin-lipped, light-eyed, with an ungraceful stoop in the shoulders, and scant gray hair worn somewhat long upon the collar. He carried a light water-proof coat, an umbrella, and a large brown japanned deed-box, which last he placed under the seat. This done, he felt carefully in his breast-pocket, as if to ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... dwarf elms with gray trunks covered with yellow, leprous-like spots and stripped of branches to a point higher than a man's head; scraggy oaks, eaten by caterpillars so that their leaves were like lacework. The verdure was scant and sickly and entirely unshaded, the leaves above had a very unhealthy look; the stunted, ragged, parched foliage made only faint green lines against the sky. Clouds of dust from the high-roads covered the bushes with a gray pall. Everything had ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... number of butterflies seen hovering about this fringeless orchis and its more attractive kin, it is small wonder their nectaries are soon exhausted and they are accused of being gay deceivers. Sprengel's much-quoted theory would credit moths, butterflies, and even the highly intelligent bees with scant sense; but Darwin, who thoroughly tested it, forever exonerated these insects from imputed stupidity and the flowers from gross dishonesty. He found that many European orchids secrete their nectar between ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... a heritage of bath-tubs. Spotlessly white were her buckskin moccasins and leggings, which encased a pair of tiny feet and then wound round and round her sturdy legs until they looked as shapeless as telegraph posts. Her scant, red calico skirt met her leggings at the knee; and her red mantle, of Navajo weave, fell back from her head, but wrapped closely her waist and arms, and then dropped long ends down the front of her dress. Her coal-black ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... hostilities, and make war on us, trusting to his numerous ships—although afterward it did not turn out as happily as he thought, as your Majesty will see by the relation which the viceroy sends from this Nueva Espana. [20] The blockade being so long and rations so scant, the poor soldiers were in such distress that they took to hunting rats, of which there are great numbers in that land, and which are much larger than those of Espana. With all this privation, and the allurements and abundance in the Portuguese fleet, they ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... a while Caesar went out in the evening after dinner. There was scant animation in the streets, theatres didn't interest him, and he would soon return to the hotel salon to chat with ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... had scant time to enjoy the gifts of summer; in vain they begged the Seneschal to prolong them. Already the centrepiece, like a planet in its appointed revolution, was changing the season of the year; already the grain, painted ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... be sure, or so they ca'd them; but the serious were o' opinion there was little service for sae mony, when the hail o' God's Word would gang in the neuk of a plaid. Then he wad sit half the day and half the nicht forbye, which was scant decent—writin' nae less; and first, they were feared he wad read his sermons; and syne it proved he was writin' a book himsel', which was surely no fittin' for ane of his years ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... This was all forest once. Under the shade of the mighty oaks here those gallant O'Caharneys your ancestors followed the chase, or rested at noontide, or skedaddled in double-quick before those smart English of the Pale, who I must say treated your forbears with scant courtesy.' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... that an incessant battle with nature is necessary to keep the road from burial. To prevent this, tamarisk, wild oats, and desert shrubs are planted along the line, and in particular that strange plant of the wilderness, the saxaoul, whose branches are scraggly and scant, but whose sturdy roots sink deep into the sand, seeking moisture in the depths. Fascines of the branches of this plant were laid along the track and covered with sand, and in places palisades were built, of which only ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... little meek, white, vacant face, and left it hardly more expressive than the unfeatured block upon which these articles are displayed in the barber's window. He was an exquisite image of shabby gentility. His scant ill-made coat, desperately brushed, his darned gloves, his highly polished boots, his rusty, shapely hat, told the story of a person who had "had losses" and who clung to the spirit of nice habits even though the letter had been hopelessly effaced. Among other things M. ...
— The American • Henry James
... and watches in her mountain home for his return. She knows the coyotes and buzzards picked the scant flesh from his starved frame, but she says: "He promised he would come back to me, and he will. I am waiting for ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... repay Matt's good turn he offered him passage but Matt preferred to ride the sheriff's horse. He was unable to understand or appreciate any friendly offers from Glen, for he felt that his share in the proceedings had been ludicrous if not contemptible and expected scant mercy from either Glen or Chick-chick. As a matter of fact, Glen would have been very glad to have his company, both that he might repay his good turn and that he might have the advantage of his experience in cycling, for Glen was a rank novice and found great ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... slight and slow variation of the sub-race under changing conditions of food and climate as beyond doubt.[38] Stature is partly a matter of feeding and hence of geographic condition. In mountain regions, where the food resources are scant, the varieties of wild animals are characterized by smaller size in general than are corresponding species in the lowlands. It is a noticeable fact that dwarfed horses or ponies have originated in islands, in Iceland, ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... half of the seventeenth century Quakers were flogged and imprisoned in England as blasphemers; and the early Christian settlers in New England, escaping from the persecution of Old World Christians, showed scant mercy to the followers of ...
— Humanity's Gain from Unbelief - Reprinted from the "North American Review" of March, 1889 • Charles Bradlaugh
... decried, Washed them with many a tear, And with her tresses dried, And given them, from her store Of spikenard, cool relief, And kissed them o'er and o'er In penitential grief. Therefore her joy begins, Her prayer is heard in heaven; Though many are her sins, They all shall be forgiven!" Scant mercy he receives Whose love for God is small; But he whom God forgives The ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... class of workers who depend upon irregular earnings of less than 18s. a week to set by anything for a rainy day. The essence of thrift is regularity, and regularity is to them impossible. Even supposing their scant wage was regular, it is questionable whether they would be justified in stinting the bodily necessities of their families by setting aside a portion which could not in the long run suffice to provide ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... months before starting from Asuncion, in Paraguay, for our journey into the interior, I was kept so busy that I had scant time to think of natural history. But in a strange land a man who cares for wild birds and wild beasts always sees and hears something that is new to him and interests him. In the dense tropical woods near Rio Janeiro I heard in late October—springtime, near the southern tropic—the songs of many ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... bow five feet long, one and a quarter inches broad in the middle, three-fourths of an inch thick at the centre, and a half-inch scant at the ends in ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... north, just the very way they had planned to go. Then they struck a coast that wasn't laid down or charted, but the cliffs were such that no boat could land until they found a bay and struck across under sail to the other side where the shore looked lower; they were scant of provisions and out of water, but they got sight of something that looked like a great town. 'For God's sake, Gaffett!' said I, the first time he told me. 'You don't mean a town two degrees farther north than ships ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... tree hardly larger than a bush about a half-mile from the track, and riding to this, the girl, whose name was Josephine, had dismounted to seek its scant protection, while the herder tried to hold the frightened horses. As peal on peal of thunder resounded and the electric lights of nature played tag over the plain, the horses became more and more unmanageable and at last stampeded, with old Paz ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... road and, finding him uninteresting, she gave him a scant good-night and left him. She sank into the heather and told herself many times that she did not know what to do. She had wit enough to realize that she was almost ridiculous in her discontent, but for that Notya must be blamed, and her own immediate necessity ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... castle of Taga. But beyond that point no advance was essayed, in spite of bitter reproaches from Nara. "In summer," wrote the Emperor (Konin), "you plead that the grass is too dry; in winter you allege that bran is too scant. You discourse adroitly but you get no nearer to the foe." Konin's death followed shortly afterwards, but his successor, Kwammu, zealously undertook the pursuit of the campaign. Notice was sent (783) to the provincial authorities directing them to make preparations and to instruct the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... croon, cross-grained, cross-patch, cross purposes, cuddle, to cuff (to strike), cleft, din, earnest money, egg on, greenhorn, jack-of-all-trades, loophole, settled, ornate, to quail, ragamuffin, riff-raff, rigmarole, scant, seedy, out of sorts, stale, tardy, trash. How Halliwell ever came to class these words as archaic I cannot imagine; but I submit that any one who sets forth to write about the English of England ought to have sufficient acquaintance ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... area: slightly larger than Washington, DC Land boundaries: none Coastline: 68.5 km Maritime claims: Exclusive fishing zone: 12 nm Territorial sea: 12 nm Disputes: none Climate: tropical marine; little seasonal temperature variation Terrain: flat with a few hills; scant vegetation Natural resources: negligible; white sandy beaches Land use: arable land 0%; permanent crops 0%; meadows and pastures 0%; forest and woodland 0%; other 100% Environment: lies outside the Caribbean hurricane belt Note: 28 ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... heath, and ready to come at the master's whistle, and call of "Soh! Soh!—now Poppet!" Stephen caught the bridle, and Ambrose helped the burgess into the saddle. "Now, good boys," he said, "each of you lay a hand on my pommel. We can make good speed ere the rascals find out our scant numbers." ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... to toil, or founder in the tide, At the moist pumps incessantly we plied; Here, doomed to starve, like famished dogs we tore The scant allowance that our tyrants bore. Remembrance shudders at this scene of fears, Still in my view, some tyrant chief appears, Some base-born Hessian slave walks threatening by, Some servile Scot with murder in his eye, Still haunts my sight, as vainly they bemoan ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... Christolero sings, they are content; and well for them that they should be. They have received their nation's thanks, and ask no more, save to lie there in peace. They have had justice done them; and more than one is there, who had scant justice done him while alive. Even Castlereagh is there, in spite of Byron's and of Shelley's scorn. It may be that they too have found out ere now, that there he ought to be. The nation has been just to him who, in such wild times as the world had not seen for full three ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... to get on with him very well, I thought, but the fawning attitude of his wife quite unhorsed me. If I am to see the devil I'd rather he'd frown than smile. Cobb had very little to say to us, and left the room at the first opportunity. In doing so he had shown scant consideration for his wife, however, as it left a burden upon her shoulders that must have taxed her strength. But she was not unequal to it. Her smile broadened after he had gone, and there was a tone of deeper sincerity in her expressions of regard. We had been to dinner, and if she ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... late in the afternoon. The sun hung low in the west, looking fiery red, which promised a fair day on the morrow. Once he had his letters, however, Tom paid but scant attention ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... now more than a month since our captivity began, and there seems scant likelihood that it will come to a speedy close,—altho', being in good health myself, and of an age when hope dies slowly, I despair not of recovering both liberty and friends. Yet, in the event of our further detention, of sickness or any other evil that may befall me—and ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... pinned to your hair, and very loose gloves will complete a dress quite suitable for private lessons, and not so expensive that you need grudge the swift destruction certain to come to all equestrian costumes. Nothing is more ludicrous than to see a rider clothed in a correct habit, properly scant and unhemmed, to avoid all risks when taking fences and hedges in a hunting country, with her chimney-pot hat and her own gold-mounted crop, her knowing little riding-boots and buckskins, with outfit enough for Baby Blake and Di Vernon and Lady Gay Spanker, and to ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... with almost summer power through the shutterless window of their cabin, and ironically disclosed the details of its rude interior. Two or three mangy, half-eaten buffalo-robes, a bearskin, some suspicious-looking blankets, rifles and saddles, deal-tables, and barrels, made up its scant inventory. A strip of faded calico hung before a recess near the chimney, but so blackened by smoke and age that even feminine curiosity respected its secret. Mrs. Rightbody was in high spirits, and informed her daughter that she was at last on the track of her husband's unknown ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... looked at her in a delight mingled with pain, counting the weeks silently till she became his very own. Only five now before Advent; and in the fifth the Church would give her to him, grudgingly indeed, with scant ceremony and festivity, like a mother half grieved, still with her blessing, which must content him. And beyond? The strong man—stern with himself and his own passion, all the more that the adored one was under the protection of his roof, and yielded thereby to his sight and wooing more freely ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... If the milk sugar be measured in the milk-dipper, two scant dipperfuls may be calculated as one ounce. If measured in a tablespoon, three even tablespoonfuls may be ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt
... the foot of the cliff. Whenever the artist broached the subject of a new boat, Uncle William turned it aside with a jest and trotted off to his clam-basket. The artist brooded in silence over his indebtedness and the scant chance of making it good. He got out canvas and brushes and began to paint, urged by a vague sense that it might bring in something, some time. When he saw that Uncle William was pleased, he kept on. The work took his mind off himself, and he grew strong and vigorous. Andy, coming ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... grandfather. But the place seemed empty: he had made his reconnaisance apparently in vain, and was on the point of going away, when he heard the click of the front gate and saw Ariel coming towards him, her old water-proof cloak about her head and shoulders, the patched, scant, faded skirt, which he knew so well, blowing about her tumultuously. At the sound of the gate he had crouched close against the side of the house, but she ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... on the rocky shore that afternoon, meeting the steely north-east blast with a good deal of resolution, if scant enjoyment. Something in the immediate future she found vaguely disquieting, something ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... generation had seen in Tiberius Gracchus a man whose political influence had been vast, a noble with but scant respect for the indefeasible rights of the nobility and as stern as Cato in his animadversions on the vices of his order, a man whose greatest successes abroad had been those of diplomacy rather than of war, ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Vance rested with me overnight in a cabin. We had scant food for ourselves or for the mare we led. It was thirty-five miles to the next cabin; we must reach that place or lie out in the snow. So a very early start was made before daybreak, while the wind lay. The good woman of the cabin ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... form'd most Nobly and Great; When Heaven survey'd the Works that it had done, Saw Male and Female, but found Man alone, A baren Sex, and Insignificant, } Then God made Woman to supply the want, } And to make perfect which before was scant. } The Word no sooner spoke, but it was done; 'Cause 'twas not fit for Man to be alone; It was not in his power without a Wife, To reap the happy Fruites of human Life; Nay, more than this, Mankind long since had ceas'd, And now had been surviv'd by senceless Beast, ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... length of time, or longer, to a lecture, a sermon, or a debate, I have imagined that a theatrical performance could not become fatiguing in the same time. As early as 1872, in one of my first dramatic experiments, "The Outlaw," I tried the same concentrated form, but with scant success. The play was written in five acts and wholly completed when I became aware of the restless, scattered effect it produced. Then I burned it, and out of the ashes rose a single, well-built act, covering fifty printed pages, and taking ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... saluting and bowing low, conducted the other dignitary to the cabin, with the officers trailing after them. For the moment, Major Starland found his situation a trifle embarrassing. General Yozarro scowled savagely at him, but the others paid scant attention. There was some crowding, for it will be remembered that the apartment was of slight size. The American waited till a lull came in the conversation and then, with an elaborate ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... somewhat depressing. We remained at the island for three days, and during our stay our crew of South Sea Islanders literally filled our decks with fish, turtle and birds' eggs. Curiously enough, in our scant library on board the little trading vessel I came across portion of a narrative of a voyage in a South Seaman, written by her surgeon, a Mr Bennett, in 1838,{*} and our captain and myself were much interested in the accurate description he gave of Christmas Island ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... reappears in the last paragraph of that story. But, so far as we can know at this day, nothing definite was done until after his departure for Italy. It was then, while staying in Rome, that he began to put upon paper that plot which had first occupied his thoughts three years before, in the scant leisure allowed him by his duties at the Liverpool consulate. Of leisure there was not a great deal at Rome, either; for, as the "French and Italian Note-Books" show, sight-seeing and social intercourse took up a good deal of his time, and the ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to put forth his hand and take it. The skilled housewife makes wonderful provision against winter from the opulence of summer, and her storehouse is crowded with innumerable glass cells rich in the spoils of orchard and garden. There is scant use for the grocer and the butcher under such conditions. I am so well convinced that my estimate of $5 a month is liberal that I have taxed the account with all the salt used ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... To tame rude nature in her drearest forms; Foodless and guideless, thro that waste of earth, You march'd long months; and, sore reduced by dearth, Reach'd the proud capital, too feeble far To tempt unaided such a task of war; Till now Montgomery's host, with hopes elate, Joins your scant powers, to ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... artifice consisted in finally taking advantage of my excess of virtue. After a few weeks of self-torture, over-fatigue, scant food, little sleep and insufficient clothing, I naturally fell ill, and the kind Tenders family would not hear of it that I should be tended elsewhere than in ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... that I ought to let them have the four and a half per cents. at par, as some had been put to the people at that. I desired a premium of three per cent. They finally met me half way, and gave one and a half premium. In short, we get a very little scant of 103 currency for those bonds, for the syndicate pays over to us ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... eyes brightened as the strongly marked brows frowned over them, while he replied: "Yes, Fred, I have seen old women more miserable than that. I have seen women so old that their tottering limbs could scarcely support them, going about in the bitterest November winds, with clothing too scant to cover their wrinkled bodies, and so ragged and filthy, that you would have shrunk from touching it—I have seen such groping about among heaps of filth that the very dogs looked at, and turned ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... to say clere, darke plentuous or scant, whiche is to understande quadri-partite, cest a dire clere, obscure habondante et rare, qui est ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous
... almost every source of intimate knowledge of the boy, who was a mature man at twenty-two, has left the record of the early period curiously scant. Fortunately, there are in his letters and speeches some casual allusions to his childhood and youth, and a few facts and anecdotes of the period from members of his family, from school, college, and early newspaper associates. In 1888, the story ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... be more interested in visiting Robin Hays than in noting the preparations made and the order observed by the Protector for his intended journey. When Cromwell put his state upon him, he did it with all dignity; there was no sparing of expense, no scant of attendants, no lack of guards—boldly and bravely were his arrangements formed; for he wisely knew that plainness and simplicity, although they may be understood and appreciated by the high-minded, are held in contempt by the low and the uneducated, because imagined to be within their own attainment. ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... beside the panting ammunition horse. Then at last came the order for the advance, the order so eagerly awaited by Weldon, maddened by his long exposure to the bullets of his unseen foe. In extended order, the squadrons galloped forward until their goal was a scant five hundred yards away, when of a sudden a murderous fire broke out from the rocks in front of them, emptying many a saddle and dropping many a horse. Under such conditions, safety lay only in an ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... and thus there had been no audible rush of the waters until they reached this point, where they poured in and filled this great basin, the lower end of which was probably stopped up by accumulations of sand and deposits, which even in that country of scant vegetation had accumulated in the course of years. When the waters of the lake had rushed into the amphitheatre, this natural dam had held them for a while, but then, giving way before the great pressure, the whole body of water had suddenly rushed ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... of success apparently at his feet, so unsatisfying, so ironical are the conditions of life, that he was conscious of a something to damp the anticipatory delights of that success. Those long, solitary tramps over the veldt after scant coveys of partridge, or the stealthy stalk of wild duck at some vlei, were very conducive to introspection; that wealth which he imagined within his grasp did not now look so all-in-all sufficing, and yet he had deemed it the end and all-in-all of life. ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... may remark that Mr. Delepierre does very scant justice to many of the interesting questions which he discusses. It is to be regretted that he has not thought it worth while to argue his points more thoroughly, and that he has not been more careful in making statements of fact. He sometimes makes strange blunders, ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... getting rapidly thinner. So scant was it on the exposed Upsala plain that we fully expected being obliged to leave our sleds on the way. Even before reaching Upsala, our postillions chose the less-travelled field-roads whenever they led in the same direction, and beyond that town we were charged additional ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... Polly ate a scant meal, and washed the few dishes. Then she thought of Patricia. Softly shutting the door of the living-room, she went to ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... In one part or another of the hall I met his mother. She was dark and lean; without being tall, she looked gaunt. She seemed occupied with herself, as she moved out of one shadow into another, and she gave scant attention to a casual boy. Raymond was really no more hospitable than any young and growing organism must be; but perhaps she was thankful that it was only one boy, instead of ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... animated, but it was in the castle courtyard Frank found most amusement. Here of a morning a thousand negroes would be gathered, most of them men sent down from Dunquah, forming part of our native allied army. Their costumes were various but scant, their colors all shades of brown up to the deepest black. Their faces were all in a grin of amusement. The noise of talking and laughing was immense. All were squatted upon the ground, in front of each was a large keg labelled "pork." Among them moved two or three commissariat ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... guessed it!" he called. "The blooming tank is empty, and we're feeding on the scant reserve in ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... those gray old wives, The sights we see in our daily drives Shimmer of lake and shine of sea, Brown's bare hill with its lonely tree, (It wasn't then as we see it now, With one scant scalp-lock to shade its brow;) Dusky nooks in the Essex woods, Dark, dim, Dante-like solitudes, Where the tree-toad watches the sinuous snake Glide through his forests of fern and brake; Ipswich River; its old stone bridge; Far off Andover's ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... swinging round leisurely in his revolving-chair. Ed Martin was always so leisurely in his movements that the marvel was how he got so much accomplished. Local dignitaries of the most admired kind, perhaps, wear their distinction as a kind of toga; but Ed was plump and short, with his scant, fair hair always rumpled, and a manner as ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... her door Is sitting in the sun; Her day of work is almost o'er, Her day of rest begun. Her face is black as darkest night, Her form is bent and thin, And o'er her bony visage tight Is stretched her wrinkled skin. Her dress is scant and mean; yet still About her ebon face There flows a soft and creamy frill Of costly Mechlin lace. What means the contrast strange and wide? Its like is seldom seen— A pauper's aged face beside The laces of a queen. Her mien is stately, ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... ca'd them; but the serious were of opinion there was little service for sae mony, when the hale o' God's Word would gang in the neuk o' a plaid. Then he wad sit half the day, an' half the nicht forbye, which was scant decent—writin', nae less; an' first, they were feared he wad read his sermons; an' syne it proved he was writin' a book himsel', which was surely no' flttin' for ane o' his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... island in the Philippinas, and extends farthest north of all those islands. It is the most populous in nations and tribes, who exceed the others, both in bravery and in the light of reason, with well-known advantages. Its least altitude is scant thirteen degrees, and its greatest ten or nine and one-half. Its circuit, without taking into account certain bays, comprehends four hundred and twelve leguas. Those who make it three hundred are in error, for they do not consider ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... in much money to the writer? Yes, but I knew nothing of that worthy. I heard, it is true, from Mr. Petulengro, that when alive he committed robberies on the hill, on the side of which Mr. Petulengro had pitched his tents, and that his ghost still haunted the hill at midnight; but those were scant materials out of which to write the man's life. It is probable indeed, that Mr. Petulengro would be able to supply me with further materials if I should apply to him, but I was in a hurry, and could not afford ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... a breastwork on its eastern side, from which it was separated by a sallyport protected in front by a "blind," with a passage-way opening rearward as a provision for retreat. The men were given picks and shovels, and at once bent to their task with feverish energy. Scant four hours they had before them, when daylight would reveal them and their position to the enemy, for June's longest days and shortest nights were near, with daylight at four in the morning. They all labored for their lives, both officers and men, and toiled without ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... as was very likely to prove to be the case, he had fully made up his mind to pass the early summer months in Leipsic. In Leipsic he had an interest—the one great interest of his existence. The family had but scant sympathy with the force of the Leipsic attraction; their ambitions were set in quite another direction, and all their hopes and plans and wishes were bent to the accomplishment of that one end. They desired most ardently that he should take unto himself a wife, ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... bushes arch with the weight of clusters of beautiful bright berries in September, every one must take notice of a shrub so decorative, which receives scant attention from us, however, when its insignificant ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... with the wavering, lean image of hungry speculation, that cannot but fill the mind's eye because of certain famous Hamlets of our stage. Shakespeare himself foreshadowed a symbolic change, that shows a change in the whole temperament of the world, for though he called his Hamlet 'fat, and scant of breath,' he thrust between his fingers agile rapier ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... often passing into verrucose and chinky conditions, but scarcely ever areolate, sometimes scant and evanescent; apothecia usually minute or small, and commonly adnate, exciple weak and often becoming covered; hypothecium and hymenium passing from pale through shades of brown, the former becoming darker than the latter, this rarely ...
— Ohio Biological Survey, Bull. 10, Vol. 11, No. 6 - The Ascomycetes of Ohio IV and V • Bruce Fink and Leafy J. Corrington
... But the same grace, for which the Canaanitish woman had needed to plead so hard, now seems to flow almost unasked. She had, as it were, wrung a drop out; now it gushes abundantly. She had not got her 'crumb' without much pleading; these get the bread almost without asking. It is this contrast of scant and full supplies which the evangelist would have us observe. And he points his meaning plainly enough by that expression, 'they glorified the God of Israel,' which seems to be Matthew's own, and not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... in the course of the next ten minutes they drew up at the end of a shallow pocket of a street, a scant half-block in depth; where alighting, Lanyard helped the girl out, paid and dismissed the cocher, and turned to an iron gate in a high stone wall ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... of the painter's last decade. His art had matured; adversity had thrown him back upon his work; it was the solace of the hours that were not claimed by absurd official duties. Who shall say that the scant consideration he received from parasites and courtiers was an unmixed evil? The men who despised the painter because Philip favoured him may have helped to mould his character, may have enabled him to detach himself completely from his own official character when he could lay ...
— Velazquez • S. L. Bensusan
... him until it squeezed the soul out of him, then he would have forced back the walls again. If only once she had walked by his side through the crowds, then he would have caught their cry in time. The world had narrowed down to a pin prick, but if only she had come a scant two days ago, she would have bent his eye to this tiny aperture as to the small end of a telescope as she did now and made him see big enough to ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... school session received scant attention from the prospective hikers, the Tenderfoots especially being absorbed in the prospects of a ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... this now almost-forgotten race—the Saracen—are still to be found on the northern seaboard of Africa, in the kingdom called Morocco, where they strive to eke out a scant existence from the arid plains of that ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... work which was forbidden him, and to get him out-of-doors; the devotion of the youngest boy, who used to call her "my Kitty," and would not go to bed without her. How nice it all was! Then she recalled the thin, terribly thin figure of Petrov, with his long neck, in his brown coat, his scant, curly hair, his questioning blue eyes that were so terrible to Kitty at first, and his painful attempts to seem hearty and lively in her presence. She recalled the efforts she had made at first to overcome the repugnance she felt for him, as for all consumptive people, and the ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... is generally described as cold in love. References to a knight's desire for a woman's love are very scant, and only once do we come across a hero who is quite in love. The young knight prefers more serious matters; his first desire is to win fame in battle, make rich booty.[21] He looks on love as superfluous, indeed he is convinced that it incapacitates him from what ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... made no reply, but busied himself hastening a scant breakfast in order that the worn mules be got to water before the worst heat of a dry day. Also the losses to the culinary outfit did make problems for ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... population living in dry, well-drained, well-ventilated houses, properly supplied with pure water and the means of disposal of refuse. And we have yet to become acquainted with a poor population spending their scant earnings entirely, or in a very large proportion, upon the necessities of life; for such is not the case when half the earnings of a family are thrown away to provide adulterated alcoholic drinks for one member of it. Until reforms such as ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... here," holding out her hand. "One makes acquaintance so much more quickly out of doors. I must begin ours by asking for your arm, Miss Swendon. I am fat and scant o' breath, and apt ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... collectively they were distinctly pleasing. The impression one received was of a clean, straight-limbed, clear-eyed fellow, who, if he had worked with his hands, had won with his brain. He looked a little older than his twenty-eight years warranted, and a little taller than his scant five-feet-eleven proved. Above all, he appeared healthful, alert, capable, and kindly. He made friends at sight with men, children, and dogs and wore his friendships as easily as he wore his clothes. The ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... brother's careless delight in the Surrey pine-woods with keen envy. It seemed to me that it was easy for him to enjoy himself with his month to squander; and in any case he was a healthy, cheerful boy who liked school well enough when he was there, though of course he liked holidays better. He had scant patience with my moods, and secretly I too thought they were wicked. We had been taught to believe that we alone were responsible for our sins, and it did not occur to me that the causes of my wickedness might lie beyond my control. The beauty of the scented pines and ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... Pennsylvania city. Altoona first became alarmed by the non-arrival and reported loss of the day express east on the Pennsylvania Railroad Friday afternoon. Soon the station was thronged with an anxious crowd, and the excitement became intense as the scant news came slowly in. Saturday the anxiety was relieved by a telegram from Ebensburg, which a blundering telegraph operator made "three hundred lost," instead of "three thousand." That was soon corrected by ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... while Caesar went out in the evening after dinner. There was scant animation in the streets, theatres didn't interest him, and he would soon return to the hotel salon to chat ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... of the Incas remained huddled together on the ledge without, but they made no effort to attack us. I had been watching perhaps three hours when they began to melt away into the passage. Soon but a scant dozen or so remained. These squatted along the wall just under the lighted urns, evidently in the capacity ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... and my mother presided over the kitchen at the big house and my Master's table, and among her other duties were to milk the cows and run the loom, weaving clothing for the other slaves. This left her scant time to look after me, so I early acquired the habit of looking out for myself. The other members of father's family were my sister Sally, about eight years old, and my brother Jordan, about five. My sister Sally was supposed to look after me when ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... print or narrative, the voyage at a venture of men, families, goods, The disembarkation, the founding of a new city, The voyage of those who sought a New England and found it—the outset anywhere, The settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa, Willamette, The slow progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddle-bags; The beauty of all adventurous and daring persons, The beauty of wood-boys and wood-men, with their clear untrimmed faces, The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves, The American contempt for statutes ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... of Browning seems to have little identity with the brief and splendid Sordello of Dante, the figure that fronts us in the superb sixth canto of the Purgatoria, "a guisa di leon quando si posa." The records of the real Sordello are scant, fragmentary and contradictory. No coherent outline of his personality remains, so that the character which Browning has made for him is a creation as absolute as if it had been wholly invented. The name indeed of Sordello, embalmed in Dante's verse, is still fresh to ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... had hired a little chateau in front of the Glandaz mountain—himself, his wife, their eldest girl, and Alicia. The adaptation of his famous manner to that strange scenery, its browns and French greys and filmy blues, so preoccupied him that he had scant time for becoming intimate with these hills and valleys. From the little gravelled terrace in front of the annex, out of which he had made a studio, there was an absorbing view over the pan-tiled old town of Die. It glistened below in the early or late sunlight, flat-roofed and ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... beings created to draw another circumferential line, and you will see the action and the result of this great law of Co-operative Activities. When I first looked within the lids of that hollyhock, and was incited to read the rudimental lessons of the new leaves that man's art had added to its scant, original volume, I had no thought of finding so much matter printed on its pages. I have transcribed it here in the order of its paragraphs, hoping that some who read them may see in this life of flowers an interest ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... Alas! he showed Not like the one Mazeppa rode; Scant-maned, sharp-backed, and shaky-kneed, The wreck of what was once a steed, Lips thin, eyes hollow, stiff in joints; Yet not without his knowing points. The sexton laughing in his sleeve, As if 't were all a make-believe, Led forth the ...
— The One Hoss Shay - With its Companion Poems How the Old Horse Won the Bet & - The Broomstick Train • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... same expression. The eyes are generally large and ill shaped, the nose is long, the face is wan and meagre, and there is a peevish and almost saturnine expression in the wooden features which shows but slight affection for the Christ-child, and which could have afforded but scant comfort to any who sought to find there a gleam of tender pity. These pictures were generally half-length, against a background of gold leaf, which was at first laid on solidly, but which at a later period was adorned with tiny cherub figures. The folds of ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... in one building were the words, in the Spanish language, 'In this place the unfortunate Juan Juste, with many others of his company, was imprisoned.' It was fortunate that the inhabitants had fled, for they would have met with but scant mercy from the Spaniards, who were full of indignation at the thought of the horrible doom which had overtaken their companions. Sandoval now resumed his march to Tlascala, but before he could reach it, the convoy appeared transporting the ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... had been very pleasant in spite of the cramped accommodation, for the little crew were a kindly simple people, whose countenances invited trust, and though the fare on board had been scant, yet it was wholesome and good, as the rest the ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... me one blessing, anyway, didn't it, Brown Brother?" the Hermit said softly, as he watched the buck eagerly drinking from a pail of water which he had thought to provide. Pal, strange to say, paid scant attention to the deer. Something in the heavy atmosphere seemed to weigh upon his spirits, for he crowded close upon the heels of his master. When the man seated himself the ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... these years he never raised his hood, no matter what the ardor of the sun or the rain's strength. He never put on a shoe. He wore a garment of coarse sackcloth, with nothing else upon his skin. This garment was as scant as possible, and over it a little cloak of the same stuff. When the cold was great he took off the cloak and opened for a while the door and little window of his cell. Then he closed them and resumed the mantle—his way, as he told us, of warming himself, and making his body feel a better temperature. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... have treated his mother with scant courtesy in public but Suarez, a jesuit theologian and Spanish gentleman, has apologized ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... husband will be polite and delightful to you—as a doctor, he would treat you with scant civility, and would probably give you little ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... are not able to bear so great charges for the exhibytion of theyr chyldren. And Marchaunt menne can seldome finde in theyr heartes to hynder theyr merchaundise with so greate yearly expenses. And it thus falleth out that there is scant anye man founde within the realme skilfull and cunning in the lawes, except he be a gentleman borne, and come of noble stocke. Wherefore they more than any other kinde of men have a speciall regarde to their ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... kicked so hard it almost killed me. I feel that I had a more narrow escape by shooting that gun than I had with the Indians. When we returned I had taken nine different scalps. The Crees who had not been scalped had taken refuge in the scant forest, and my father said to quit and go home. So we took pity on the tribe, and let them go, so they could tell the story. I remember that we killed over three hundred, and many more that I cannot remember. When we returned we began to count ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... Applegate Farm and dug a new think-line in Ken's young forehead. For Rocky Head Granite was, it seemed, by no means so firm as its name sounded. Mr. Dodge's hopes for it were unfulfilled. It was very little indeed that could now be wrung from it. The Fidelity was for Mother—with a margin, scant enough, to eke out the young Sturgises' income. There was the bill for carting, other bills, daily expenses. Felicia, reading over Ken's shoulder, bit ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... . . . then had come her refusal to marry him. What a fool he had been through it all! The wind and rain chastised his emotional intoxication, and he turned shivering to look for shelter. Dismounting, he crept beneath a low spruce and shivered beneath the scant covering of his saddle-blanket. To-morrow the sun would shine on a new world. He would arise and conquer his temptation. As he drifted to troubled sleep he knew, deep in his heart, that despite his heroics he would at that moment have given the little canvas sack of his brother's ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... periods are full of incongruities. Men have not yet adjusted their relations to morality and law with any niceness. They hold strongly by certain rude virtues, and on the other hand they quite fail to recognize even as shortcomings not a few traits that obtain scant mercy in older communities. Many of the desperadoes, the man-killers, and road-agents have good sides to their characters. Often they are people, who, in certain stages of civilization, do, or have done, good work, but who, when these stages have passed, find themselves ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... dimensions of his person would allow; but his hasty arrival, the effort of strength he had made, and his astonishment at the appearance of the most powerful personage in the Nile Province in the building entrusted to his care, so utterly took away his breath—of which he at all times was but "scant"—that he was unable even to stammer out a suitable greeting. Titianus gave him a little time, and then, after expressing his regret at the sad plight of the washing, now strewn upon the ground, and mentioning to the steward the name and position of his friend Pontius, he briefly explained ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... paid scant heed to these accustomed sights but walked as far as the wharf built of palmetto piling. The wide harbor and the sea that flashed beyond the outer bar were ruffled by a piping breeze out of the northeast. The only vessel at anchor ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... original draft of his address, written before he came to Washington, Lincoln had dismissed with scant consideration the notion of a constitutional amendment: "I am not much impressed with the belief that the present Constitution can be improved. I am rather for the old ship, and the chart of the old pilots."[956] Sometime after his interview with Douglas, Lincoln struck ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... up in his arms as if he were a baby, instead of a 165-pound boy, carried him after her and laid the injured lad out in the scant strip of shade afforded by the aeroplane. Then, with bits of canvas ripped from the cover which had served to conceal him when he entered the aerial vehicle, the strange wanderer skillfully bathed and then bandaged ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... the virtues and attractions of that useful article of furniture—the sublime, immortal prig of all the ages, or you can take the head of any novel- reader under thirty for a football. You may have known many women, from Bernadettes of Massavielle to Borgias of scant neighborhoods, but you know you never knew one who would marry Old Dob, except as that emotional dishrag, Amelia, married him—as the Last Chance on the stretching high-road of uncertain years. No girl ever willingly marries door mats. She just wipes her feet on them and passes on into the drawing ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... child of want, Our doors are open still; And though our portions are but scant, We give them with ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... It is not possible to expect that large class of workers who depend upon irregular earnings of less than 18s. a week to set by anything for a rainy day. The essence of thrift is regularity, and regularity is to them impossible. Even supposing their scant wage was regular, it is questionable whether they would be justified in stinting the bodily necessities of their families by setting aside a portion which could not in the long run suffice to provide even a ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... been a woman to work much. So that now she would stand often at the garden-gate, watching the scant world go by. And the sight of children pleased her, made her happy. She had usually an apple or a few sweets in her pocket. She liked ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... Rao was kept pivoting in his own tracks to face the danger, with scant room to meet a rush when it came. And always it came when least suggested by the other's manner. Then the pale one squealed—a succession of thin, cutting tones—and Gunpat Rao answered with a charge. The pale one ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... power. Graceful in tone and expression his outlook was the philosophical, possibly over-tolerant for the exigencies of the situation, although upon occasion his judgment proved a valuable counterweight to the hasty enthusiasm of Lloyd George. But Balfour, like Lansing, was sometimes treated with scant consideration by his chief and by no means exercised the influence which his experience and capacity ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... alone—that undoubtedly there was someone watching his prison. He examined the place as well as he could in the darkness, tried the door, ran his hands over the sides and up among the piles of linen. There was scant encouragement to be found, though Phil believed that if he had room to take a running start he ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... seen its population trebled in 1628. As it was, the situation became worse than ever. Lewis Kirke had been careful to seize the cattle pastured at Cap Tourmente and to destroy the crops. When winter came, there were eighty mouths to feed on a scant diet of peas and maize, imperfectly ground, with a reserve supply of twelve hundred eels. Towards spring anything was welcome, and the roots of Solomon's seal were esteemed a feast. Champlain even gave serious ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... speaks of a "cloth of the Sone and Mone." The use of such painted cloths was an important step toward modern scenery. We may, however, conclude that the scenery of any Elizabethan theater would have seemed scant to one accustomed to the detailed setting of the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... days that followed, between the necessary adjustment of matters of state, and the many ceremonies incident upon the King's sudden death, there was scant time to discuss the rapid happenings; even in the court-circle they scarcely knew what was passing—still less how it had come about. It was said that Janus had died of malignant fever, due to the terrible malaria of the coasts ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... is, if you don't walk so fast. You see, here there are no views that can give one an excuse for stopping to take breath. You would think it romantic to be walking with a person "fat and scant o' breath" if I were Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Have compassion on my infirmities ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... complaint to those who sheltered her. The Five Nations of the Iroquois had always been her allies against the French, had guarded her borders and fought her battles. What they wanted in return were gifts, attentions, just dealings, and active aid in war; but they got them in scant measure. Their treatment by the province was short-sighted, if not ungrateful. New York was a mixture of races and religions not yet fused into a harmonious body politic, divided in interests and torn ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... for all men of family or title to be found among the undergraduates was amazingly extensive and acute; and she had paid much court to Falloden, as the prospective heir to a marquisate. He had hitherto treated her with scant attention, but she was not easily abashed, and she fastened at once on Lady Laura, whom she had seen once at ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rifle fire. Their anxiety, however, was not about the Indians, whom they had found friendly, but about the problem of making the trip of seventy days to San Bernardino, across a desert country, with their wornout animals and their scant supplies. Had Mormon cruelty taken only the form of withholding provisions and forage from this company, its effect would have satisfied their most ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... in bataylle. For in fleynge, thei schooten behynden hem, and sleen bothe men and hors. And whan thei wil fighte, thei wille schokken hem to gidre in a plomp; that zif there be 20000 men, men schalle not wenen, that there be scant 10000. And thei cone wel wynnen lond of straungeres, but thei cone not kepen it. For thei han grettre lust to lye in tentes with outen, than for to lye in castelle or in townes. And thei preysen no thing the wytt of other ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... Guinemer doth his stirrup hold. Then might ye look upon cavaliers A-many round him who spake in tears. "Sir," they said, "what a woful day! Long were you ranked in the king's array, A noble vassal as none gainsay. For him who doomed you to journey hence Carlemagne's self shall be scant defence; Foul was the thought in Count Roland's mind, When you and he are so high affined. Sir," they said, "let us with you wend." "Nay," said Ganelon, "God forefend. Liefer alone to my death I go, Than such brave bachelors perish so. Sirs, ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... pray you, Sir, take patience; I have hope, You less know how to value her desert, Than she to scant her duty. ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... mind, will save a great deal of idle astonishment. It is in nothing more apparent than in the preparation here at Scheveningen for centuries of summer visitors, while at our Long Island hotel there was a losing bet on a scant generation of them. When it seemed likely that it might be a winning bet the sand was planked there in front of the hotel to the sea with spruce boards. It was very handsomely planked, but it was never afterwards touched, ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... noticed, on our Laird's court-day, An' mony a time my heart's been wae, Poor tenant bodies, scant o' cash, How they maun thole a factor's snash: He'll stamp an' threaten, curse an swear, He'll apprehend them, poind their gear: While they maun stan', wi' aspect humble, An' hear it a', an' fear ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... in early life,—and that however distasteful the hardships and comparative poverty of this new home, it was far safer for him than the land of his birth. His worldly position there gave him sundry claims of superiority, for all of which his hardy pioneer son had had scant sympathy; and Ralph Emsden, in the difficult crisis of the disclosure of the state of his affections, heaved many a sigh for this simple manly ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Whoop Up trail, a brown streak against the vivid upland green, dipped down the hillside to our right, down to the sage-grown flat, and into the river by the great boulders that gave the ford its name. The blue ridge up the river I gave scant heed to; the Writing-Stone was only a name to me, for I'd never seen the place. My attention was all for the scene at hand. The patch of soft green that I knew for the cottonwoods Rutter had spoken of drew my roving gaze whether I would or no. I have ridden ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... village of Palanan and the missions of Dicalayon, and Dauilican or Divilican. Thence, until one reaches the cape of Engano, [123] one finds nothing more than some small anchoring-places, which offer but scant refuge to the vessels, as they are all exposed to the vendavals. On the northern coast as well, which begins at the said cape of Engano (so called because of the deceitfulness of its currents), one does not meet bay or port until he reaches the village of Aparri, some ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... terrace, absorbed by confused and distracted thoughts. Suddenly, she observed Velmont approaching her. She would have avoided him, but the balustrade that surrounded the terrace cut off her retreat. She was cornered. She could not move. A gleam of sunshine, passing through the scant foliage of a bamboo, lighted up her beautiful golden hair. Some one spoke to her in ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... chivalry at some length in his 'History of Fiction,' seems never to have suspected that these tales were written with any other intention than to amuse or that the events which they related were looked upon by their readers as other than facts. For Arthur he has scant respect, 'nor,' says he, 'as we advance, do we find him possessed of a single quality, except strength and courage, to excite respect or interest.' Surely the remark of one who must have been dead to all sense of imagination and romance—although purporting to be an authority ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... on hand and busily bidding for votes. He had felt so confident of the office in advance of muster-day, that he had rummaged through several country tailor-shops and got a new suit of the nearest approach to a captain's uniform that their scant stock could furnish. So there he was, arrayed in jaunty cap, and a swallow-tailed coat with brass buttons. He even wore fine boots, and moreover had them blacked—which was almost a crime among a country crowd of ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... would prevent or embarrass me in writing my book. I thought so myself at first, but had not long been at work before I found that the essential book needed no data other than those existing in my memory and supplied by the general theme; my material was not scant, but excessive. My knowledge of prison and my opinions and arguments based upon that knowledge were not subject to the Warden's confiscation, and they were quite enough to make a book of themselves, without need of dates, places, names and illustrations. ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... on a brush-dotted level, his horse, Dexter, slowly circled his picket and nibbled at the scant bunch-grass. The western sun trailed long shadows across the canon; shadows that drifted imperceptibly farther and farther, spreading, commingling, softening the broken outlines of ledge and brush until the walled solitude was brimmed with dusk, save where a ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... received scant sympathy, even from his most intimate friends, and his prestige in the community was henceforth destroyed. Arthur did not crow, for his part. He told the girls frankly of his attempt to run away and evade the meeting, which ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... are not to be found in the house of the good and godly man, for he, as his God, abhors them; but they are to be found in the house of evil doers, such as Mr. Badman's is. 'Are there,' saith the prophet, 'yet the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked, and the scant measure that is abominable!' (Micah 6:10). Are they there yet, notwithstanding God's forbidding, notwithstanding God's tokens of anger against those that do such things! O how loth is a wicked man to let go a sweet, a gainful sin, when he hath hold ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... not. Finally, after his modest dinner that evening, he bought a stall for the Frivolity and watched the piece. The girl he had come to see was there in the second row of the chorus, but she certainly did not look her best in the somewhat scant costume required by the part. She showed no signs whatever of any special ability—neither her dancing nor her singing seemed to entitle her to any consideration. She carried herself with a certain amount of self-consciousness, and her eyes ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... away up the slope towards the Gibbet Knoll, Whitefoot stealing along at his heels, walking almost in his tracks, but with his ears cocked to catch the slightest unexplained noise. As he arrived under the scant foliage of the few remaining gaunt trees, tall branchless trunks with a mere plume at the top of each, bent permanently away from the south-west by the sea-winds, he walked to the small stone platform on which ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... pause; Laura did not dare to raise her head; she even said a little prayer. Mrs. Gurley stood working at her chain, and tapping her foot—like a beast waiting for its prey, thought the child. And at last a hurried step was heard in the corridor, the door opened and a girl came in, high-coloured and scant of breath. Laura darted one glance at Mrs. Gurley's face, then looked away and studied the pattern of a quilt, trying not to hear what was said. Her throat swelled, grew hard and dry with pity for the culprit. But Lilith Gordon—a ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... fashion. Many without manners, though right well to look at; others wealthy, but without heart or soul; and others again ready to burst with rage, if any one but touched his hat to the beautiful Matilda. To all such, the innocent child had not a word to say; for she knew well enough, that scant blessing waits on marriages of such a make. There was but one young fellow who could be said to please her thoroughly, and he was neither rich nor singularly handsome. She had become acquainted with him at the weaver's, where he, like herself, went daily to work. Albert was industrious, well-behaved, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... in the weight of their skins? Yet it is so. Cattle raised in stalls and supplied regularly with good food have far better hides than those that range the fields and are forced to forage for the scant rations found there. Wild cattle, on the other hand, have much tougher hides than ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... bedsteads and other furniture went, until there was only one bedstead left, and that was rented through the day to a man who worked nights. Many days they had nothing to eat but bread or crackers—and often that was of a stale quality and a scant allowance. The eldest, a little boy, attended the Sunday-school of a Boston church; he has one of the truest, noblest, and most interesting faces I have ever seen. On missing him for a couple of Sundays, the superintendent of the school went in search of him, and for the first time knew of the condition ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... above him. The mountain was high here, and there was nothing resembling a path leading upward. To climb from one scant footing to another would ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... appropriation of money from the Western Lands, they would join with other dissenters in opposing it, on the ground that, in order to obtain their share of the money, they would have to admit their inferiority through the showing of the compulsory certificates. Moreover, even the scant favor secured through these was in danger from the continual favoritism of the legislature, with its treasury open at all times to its Congregational college, and with its enactments in ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... resumed his eastward march. At Lisieux, the next important stage, came the inevitable two cardinals with their inevitable proposals of mediation, which Edward put aside with scant civility. The army was soon once more on the move, and on August 7 struck the Seine at Elbeuf, a few miles higher up the river than Rouen. Here Edward was at last in touch with his enemy. During the English march through lower Normandy, Philip VI. had ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... gate in the lichen-covered stone wall, and follow him with her palm- shaded eyes down the lonely road; and it as frequently happened that he would glance back over his shoulder at the nut-brown maid, whose closely clinging, scant drapery gave her a sculpturesque grace to which her unconsciousness of it ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... was gloomy enough at Blooms-End. Yeobright remained in his study, sitting over the open books; but the work of those hours was miserably scant. Determined that there should be nothing in his conduct towards his mother resembling sullenness, he had occasionally spoken to her on passing matters, and would take no notice of the brevity of her replies. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... constitution like a tempest of wind and thunder, and he had not forgotten it. He chuckled at the successful result of his attack, not caring to conceal his glee; but this meeting proved very unfortunate for poor Fan. After dismissing her old lover with scant courtesy, Miss Starbrow caught up with the girl, and they walked on in silence, looking at no shop-windows now. One glance at the dark angry face was enough to spoil Fan's pleasure for the day and to make her shrink within herself, wondering much as to what had caused so ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
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