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More "Scribble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for this great kindness to Mr. Bouncer, who whiled away the time by telling him terrible stories about the matriculation ordeal, Mr. Verdant Green and Fosbrooke ran upstairs, and spread a newspaper over a heap of pipes and pewter pots and bottles of ale, and prepared a table with pen, ink, and scribble-paper. Soon afterwards, Mr. Bouncer led ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... dream. Every day I try to overcome the feeling, but I can't succeed. This afternoon I made up my mind to return to our villa and write my diary. The day was lovely, and I meant to enjoy a rest and a scribble, but so strong was the horrid influence of the place that I couldn't settle to anything. I can't describe it, but it seemed to stifle me, and I can only compare it to some second sight in which one sees death. I sat as long as I could doing my writing, but I had to give in at last, and I tucked ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... cue from this short, spasmodic dream I had one evening in a steamer chair, of what I imagined was to happen on our coming voyage, I started to scribble; and following the fantastic idea in the vision, I shall adopt the abbreviated name of The Cork, for our good ship—although some of the passengers preferred to call her The Corker, as she was big and fine, and justly celebrated among those who go ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... fragrance of curious learning, as well as in the brighter intervals where prints and medals and miniatures were suspended on a surface of faded stuff. The place had both colour and quiet; I thought it a perfect room for work and went so far as to say to myself that, if it were mine to sit and scribble in, there was no knowing but I might learn to write as well as the author of "Beltraffio." This distinguished man still didn't reappear, and I rummaged freely among his treasures. At last I took down a book that detained me a while and seated myself in a ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... inconsistent, very stupid, very silly. You do not write to me. You do not love your husband. You know how much pleasure your letters would afford, and you do not write to him even six lines, which you can readily scribble out." ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... can go more quietly; I'll wait here." Katherine sank down on the lowest stair, while Betty flew back to scribble a note which she laid on Rachel's pillow. Then the ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... my new poetical talent in an epistle to Colonel Godard, whom I ridiculed to the utmost of my abilities. I showed this scribble to Madam de Merveilleux, who, instead of discouraging me, as she ought to have done, laughed heartily at my sarcasms, as well as her son, who, I believe, did not like M. Godard; indeed, it must be confessed, he was a man not calculated to obtain affection. I was tempted ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... used in case of an estrangement—a few bars of Schumann's melody, "The Nut Bush," should be sent, and the one who received it should at once hurry to the side of the other and all difference should be healed. But this token was never sent by me, perhaps because I did not know how to scribble the musical phrase: pride perhaps kept her from sending it; in any case five years are a long while, and she seemed to have died out of my life altogether; but one day the sight of a woman who had known her, ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... the "mark for the prize," if we have a clearer and more desirous view of the yet far-distant goal. "Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty, they shall behold the land that is very far off," must have been addressed to one still "very far" from the promised land. Thus I scribble to thee the musings with which, in my now shady allotment, I try to encourage myself to hope; and which perhaps are as incorrect as the lament which the beautiful spring will sometimes prompt, "With ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... my rhyming be at fault, If e'er I chance to scribble dope, If that my metre ever halt, I err ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... worse, instead of better. He could hardly hear and he was too weak to write much. But he did manage to scribble a note: ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum
... rapture, And Buckingham rail to the end of the chapter; Lewd Rochester lampoon the King and the court, And Sidley and others may cry him up for't; Soft Waller and Suckling, chaste Cowley and others, With Beaumont and Fletcher, poetical brothers, May here scribble on with pretence to the bays, E'en Shakespear himself may produce all his plays, And not get for whole pages one mouth full ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... impossible. Curious to see three editions of the 1,000 Nights advertised at the same time, not to speak of the bastard. [363] I return you nine sheets [of proofs] by parcels post registered. You have done your work very well, and my part is confined to a very small amount of scribble which you ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... gleams of 1829. The great German died three years later, after receiving the birthday tribute, in his 82nd year, from English friends; and it is pleasant to remember that in this instance the disciple was to the end loyal to his master. To this period belong many other correspondences. "I am scribble scribbling," he says in a letter of 1832, and mere scribbling may fill many pages with few headaches; but Carlyle wrestled as he wrote, and not a page of those marvellous Miscellanies but is red with his life's blood. Under all his reviewing, he was set on a work whose ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... of dance have I Gone as far as Raumer quite In the art of letters—can he Scribble better than ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... curiosity of seeing some particulars how I passed my life when I was absent from MD this time; and so I tell you now that I dined to-day at Molesworth's, the Florence Envoy, then went to the Coffee-house, where I behaved myself coldly enough to Mr. Addison, and so came home to scribble. We dine together to-morrow and next day by invitation; but I shall alter my behaviour to him, till he begs my pardon, or else we shall grow bare acquaintance. I am weary of friends; and friendships are ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... exercised therein, that they pass from schools to the Universities and return from thence (some of them) more unable to write true English, than either Latin or Greek. Not to speak of our ordinary Tradesmen, many of whom write such false English, that none but themselves can interpret what they scribble in their ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius
... of public education in 1837 was deplorable. There were missionary schools and a few desultory teachers, who had in very few cases the mental or the moral qualities to fit them for the task of instruction. The most they did was to teach the young idea how to read or scribble its name. For this they received trifling fees, but doubtless these fees were no more trifling than the services rendered. Such free schools as existed, and were nominally supported by Government, were so indifferently managed that they were treated with contempt, even by ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... and disappointment, and the course of oppression which you have run through, weaken your mind, my dearest creature, and make you see inconveniencies where there possibly cannot be any. If your talent is scribbling, as you call it; so is mine—and I will scribble on, at all opportunities; and to you; let them say what they will. Nor let your letters be filled with the self-accusations you mention: there is no cause for them. I wish that your Anna Howe, who continues in her mother's house, were but half so good as Miss ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Then, you think, Mr. Lawyer, it will be as well to marry Henrietta to the baron, eh? Very well! Let me add that on the day when Henrietta goes to the altar with Baron Leonard, I will make you a present of all this scribble. Till then I shall ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... letter and am still going on. It seems to me that nothing matters and yet I scribble verses. I don't read them to Mariana and she is not very anxious to hear them, but you have sometimes praised my poor attempts and most of all you'll keep them to yourself. I have been struck by a common phenomenon in Russia... But, however, let the verses speak ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... odd that I should be sitting at that desk with a Cabinet Minister, a Field-Marshal, two high Government officials, and a French General watching me, while from the scribble of a dead man I was trying to drag a secret which meant life or ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... in prison they had so little time to discuss such details, in face of the one awful fact that he was there, and was in all probability going to die in two days. But from this incomplete, tear-stained scribble that he left behind and from the answers he gave to her few questions, she gathered that the story of his quest was ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... Here I am sitting at the old desk again, in the old office of the Banner. I could only scribble you a little note on the train last night to tell you that my heart still was with you, and I did not have the time to explain why I was coming. It is a dead secret, little woman, and perhaps I shouldn't tell ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... Over the grim precipitous edge he hung, An eagle waiting for the lightning now To swoop upon his prey. One iron hand Gripped a rough tree-root like a bunch of snakes; And, as the rain rushed round him, far away He saw to northward yet another flash, A scribble of God's finger in the sky Over a waste of white stampeding waves. His eye flashed like a falchion as he saw it, And from his lips there burst the sea-king's laugh; For there, with a fierce joy he knew, he knew Doughty, at last—an open mutineer! An open ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... William was one of the earliest recorded burials in the registers of St. Margaret's, Westminster. "William Shakespeare was buried April 30, 1539." A comparatively modern hand has written against this the foolish scribble, "Query if this be the poet or not?" He may have been in the service of the Court, but there are no signs that he was a man of wealth. In the churchwardens' account[312] he was only charged 2d. for the ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... was so villainous that it was enough of itself to arouse the dislike of a healthy-minded young fellow such as Marcy; but, moreover, the Pole had habits of sneaking about the vessel, and afterwards retiring to quiet corners, where he would scribble in a pocket notebook. Such conduct as this in a man whose position corresponded with that of a common seaman on an ordinary vessel, seemed contrary to discipline and good conduct, and he mentioned the matter ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... cheery doctor injecting something into my wrist. I then lay on a stretcher awaiting further transportation. My good servant Smith somehow discovered my whereabouts, and turned up at this hospital. He sat beside me and gave me a writing-pad to scribble a note on. I scrawled a line to my mother to say I had been knocked out, but was perfectly all right. Smith went back to the battalion, and I lay on the stretcher, partially asleep. Night came on and I went off into a series of agonizing dreams. I awoke with a start. I was being ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... should be writing history, for which I am in no way qualified. However, as I must make up my mind to begin again, and write something, or give up the practice altogether, and as I don't choose (just yet, at least) to do the latter, I will scribble what occurs to me, and take a short survey of the Parliamentary campaign that is just over. The danger, whether real or supposed, which the Queen ran from the attempt of the half-witted coxcomb who fired at her, elicited whatever there was of dormant loyalty ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... not all like the Duke of Gloucester, who, when Gibbon brought him the second volume of the Decline and Fall, 'received him with much good nature and affability, saying to him, as he laid the quarto on the table, "Another d——d thick, square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon?"' Best's Memorials, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... dear old friend of mine who died of indigestion, and gradually lead the conversation round to Nervino. I don't force it on them. I don't even ask them to try it. I merely point to myself, rosy with health, and say that I owe everything to it, and the thing is done. They thank me profusely and scribble the name down on their shirt-cuffs. And there your are! I don't suppose," said Uncle Chris philosophically, "that the stuff can do them ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... moment he was gone; and with a stab of pain I realized that, if the colonel had sent for him, he must miss out his dance with me. Would he even remember it? Would he scribble me a line of farewell? I longed to run out and catch him before he went, if only for a word, but I dared not dash past Di, and give her the shock of learning that I had been within three yards of her all the time. Again I was ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... laugh and did not look up at him, but continued to scribble shorthand notes on the ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... and the Laureate's pay, And no deductions at quarter-day? Oh, that would be the post for me! With plenty to get and nothing to do, But to deck a pet poodle with ribbons of blue, And whistle a tune to the Queen's cockatoo, And scribble of verses remarkably few, And empty at evening a ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... at times. The Honorable Betty understood, but her Highness would not be convinced. Thus she suffered this needless affront. Pardon this parenthesis, but when one talks from behind a curtain the parenthesis is the only available thing.) There was silence. I saw Steinbock poise the pen, then scribble on the parchment. It ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... be very happy in paraphrasing them, it is my opinion, both of them, without giving the least preference to either, should be read alternately in your schools, as the tutor shall direct. Pardon, learned Sir, this scribble to my age and weakness, both which are very great, and command me wherein I may ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... protocol to the effect that the "disorders" which had taken place in the Kingdom of Poland "where the Jews enjoy equal rights" (i.e., the right of residence) tend to support the theory of the "injuriousness" of the Jewish people. Official pens began to scribble more rapidly, and within a short time, by the spring of 1882, a project was ready, to be inflicted as a severe punishment upon the Jews for the atrocities perpetrated upon them. The "conquered foe," represented ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... of sense of the fitness of things that would make the average reporter scribble away for dear life, if, when the President's message on the tariff was being read in Congress, a large black cat had happened to walk up the aisle of the House and jumped on the back of Speaker Cannon. Such an occurrence, I venture to say, would have commanded ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... made up my bunch of flowers, I return home with them.... Then I ascend to my study, and generally read, or perchance scribble in this journal, and otherwise suffer Time to loiter onward at his own pleasure, till the dinner-hour. In pleasant days, the chief event of the afternoon, and the happiest one of the day, is our walk.... So comes the night; and I look back upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... a good deal to have witnessed his subsequent movements, but she would have been considerably disappointed had she done so, for Hone's methods were disconcertingly direct. All he did when he found himself alone was to sit down and scribble ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... sure at least of sincerity, and even though the annotation be rude, he may rely upon the justness of the comment." This is calm and complacent enough, but he proceeds with some warmth: "As for the little puny critics who scatter their peevish strictures in private circles, and scribble at every author who has the eminence of being unconnected with them, as they are usually spleen-swoln from a vain idea of increasing their consequence, there will always be found a petulance and illiberality in their remarks, which should place them as far beneath the notice ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... snapped my lady. "They chatter and scribble; they don't feel. They write stanzas of 'gush' on Maternity; and tear the little bleating calf from its mother to bleed to death in a long, slow agony. They maunder twaddle about Infancy over some ugly red lump of human flesh, in whose ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... science so far, and I doubt if I ever get beyond that portion of my subject. And I don't care to. Any Muggins can write about old days on the Mississippi of five hundred different kinds, but I am the only man alive that can scribble about the piloting of that day, and no man has ever tried to scribble about it yet. Its newness pleases me all the time, and it is about the only new ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... feeble-minded enough for Annuals and Keepsake Books, and so fetch him an occasional guinea. For, my dear, the verses I write of my own accord are not sufficiently genteel to be vended in Paternoster Row; they smack too dangerously of human intelligence. So I am compelled, perforce, to scribble such jingles as I am ashamed to read, because I must write something. . . ." Paul Vanderhoffen shrugged, and continued, in tones more animated: "There will be no talk of any grand-duke. Instead, there will be columns of ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... him, with an air of prudence.] I tell you what I will do. [Pointing to the writing-table.] Scribble her a note— a line— and I'll give it to her. That won't attract attention. I've no objection to do that for you. Hurry up! [He sits at the writing-table and searches for writing materials.] In the drawer. [He opens a drawer and takes ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... silence when some rhymes are coming out; And when they're come, the very pleasant rout: The message certain to be done to-morrow. 'Tis perhaps as well that it should be to borrow Some precious book from out its snug retreat, To cluster round it when we next shall meet. Scarce can I scribble on; for lovely airs Are fluttering round the room like doves in pairs; Many delights of that glad day recalling, When first my senses caught their tender falling. And with these airs come forms of elegance Stooping their shoulders o'er a horse's prance, ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... attention to the arts."[609] His neglect of literature and the arts was the more unfortunate because George III and his sons did not raise the tone of the Court in this respect, witness the remark of the King to Gibbon at a State function. "Well, Mr. Gibbon, it's always scribble, scribble, I suppose."[610] ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... follow'd by many, and our number went on growing continually. This was one of the first good effects of my having learnt a little to scribble; another was, that the leading men, seeing a newspaper now in the hands of one who could also handle a pen, thought it convenient to oblige and encourage me. Bradford still printed the votes, and laws, and other publick business. He had printed an address of the House to the governor, ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... now with authority, Turpin's or Monmouth Geoffry's Chronicle; Men whose historical superiority Is always greatest at a miracle. But Saint Augustine has the great priority, Who bids all men believe the impossible, Because 'tis so. Who nibble, scribble, quibble, he Quiets at once ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... foot, and the other way you work with your fingers, but I rather guess there's more headache in the stories than there is in the stitches, because you don't have to think quite so hard while your foot's going as you do when your fingers is at work, scratch, scratch, scratch, scribble, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... old Gadley, as we laid by the last of them, "thirty years come Christmas next, he and I together. No other hands but ours have ever touched them, and now people to whom they mean nothing but so much business will fling them about, drop greasy crumbs upon them—I know their ways, the brutes!—scribble all over them. And he who always would have everything so ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... He there says, referring to the French Revolution of July 1830, that "unless God send us some miraculous help, we have to look forward to a period of destruction similar to that which the Roman world experienced about the middle of the third century." Now, when I see a man scribble such abject nonsense about events which are passing under our eyes, what confidence can I put in his judgment as to the connection of causes and effects in times very imperfectly ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... with a blank sheet of paper before him, Bob made ready to scribble at high speed, while Herb held a watch to time him. As for Jimmy, he was content to curl up on a sofa and act the part ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... gathering a few little things together and putting them in a large but light-weight satchel, such as she had often used to carry some of the choicest apples from the orchard when they were being gathered in. Her first care was for her manuscript,—the long-treasured scribble, kept so secretly and so often considered with hope and fear, and wonder and doubting—then she took one or two of the more cherished volumes which had formerly been the property of the "Sieur Amadis" and packed them with it. Choosing only the most necessary garments from her little store, ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... cannot scribble Without a glove to tear or nibble Or a small twig to whisk about— As if the hidden founts of Fancy, Like wells of old, were thus found out By mystic trick of rhabdomancy. Such was the little feathery wand,[3] That, held for ever in the hand ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... under the purao. Now they would write a word or two, now scribble it out; now they would sit biting at the pencil end and staring seaward; now their eyes would rest on the clerk, where he sat propped on the canoe, leering and coughing, his pencil racing glibly ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... To overwrite, usually unintentionally: "I walked off the end of the array and clobbered the stack." Compare {mung}, {scribble}, {trash}, and {smash ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... He offers 50,000 bushels of wheat for October delivery at $1.43 7/8 per bushel. It's that fellow down there with the blazing red tie half way up his collar. He hits out with both hands at the air as he yells. A surge of buyers overwhelms him. They scribble notes upon their sales cards ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... many miles lie between us there is no alternative but the hastily written and imperfect scribble which will shortly be presented you, if the elements have not conspired ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... some readers know for the idle Books, long-winded Novels chiefly, which he wrote, was the Grandfather of this favored Princess; a good-natured old gentleman, of the idle ornamental species, in whose head most things, it is likely, were reduced to vocables, scribble and sentimentality; and only a steady internal gravitation towards praise and pudding was traceable as very real in him. Anton Ulrich, affronted more or less by the immense advancement of Gentleman Ernst and the Hanoverian or ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... more am I, perhaps. I don't think any better of the stuff that I scribble than you do. It's all an experiment with me. I'm trying my brushes—trying my brushes. Perhaps I may be able to do something stronger some day, and perhaps not. But at all events I sha'n't force my mood. I shall wait for my inspiration. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... sort of fatality in my mind, leading me to put at first my statement or proposition in a wrong or awkward form. Formerly I used to think about my sentences before writing them down; but for several years I have found that it saves time to scribble in a vile hand whole pages as quickly as I possibly can, contracting half the words; and then correct deliberately. Sentences thus scribbled down are often better ones than ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... triumph, impossible to describe. Father Caboccini looked at him with angry astonishment; when Rodin, growing still more imperious and haughty, and with an air of more sovereign disdain than ever, pushed aside the paper with the back of his dirty hand and said: "What is the date of that scribble?" ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Fortune, the punctual goddess stepped down from the machine. One of the Princess's ladies begged to enter; a man, it appeared, had brought a line for the Freiherr von Gondremark. It proved to be a pencil billet, which the crafty Greisengesang had found the means to scribble and despatch under the very guns of Otto; and the daring of the act bore testimony to the terror of the actor. For Greisengesang had but one influential motive: fear. The note ran thus: "At the first council, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in all life worse is, For abating superfluous pride, Than having to scribble on verses With the editor waiting outside; I am hearing a lecture on Shelley, Where I ought to be able to dream, But my brain is as vapid as jelly. And I cannot alight ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... myself had frequent experience of the automatic construction of fantastic figures, through a practice I have somewhat encouraged for the purpose, of allowing my hand to scribble at its own will, while I am giving my best attention to what is being said by others, as at small committees. It is always a surprise to me to see the result whenever I turn my thoughts on what I have been subconsciously doing. I can rarely recollect even a few of the steps by which the drawings ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... him. Think of it a while, my friend, and you will admit that I am not raving. Think of his seeing that spotless image, not for a moment, for a day, in a happy dream, or a restless fever-fit; not as a poet in a five minutes' frenzy—time to snatch his phrase and scribble his immortal stanza; but for days together, while the slow labour of the brush went on, while the foul vapours of life interposed, and the fancy ached with tension, fixed, radiant, distinct, as we see it now! What a master, certainly! But ah! what ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... the scribble of doom on the dark, Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, again? Mystery—is it a scrap of remembrance, a spark Burning still in the fog of a blind world's brain? Elf of the gossamer tangles of shadow and light, Wild electrical webs and the battle that rolls League upon perishing league thro' the ravenous ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... say that. If it were the deuce's own scribble, and yo' axed me to read in it for yo'r sake, and th' oud gentleman's, I'd do it. Whatten's this, wench? I'm not going for to take yo'r brass, so dunnot think it. We've been great friends, 'bout the sound o' money ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... I scribble these hasty lines in all the bustle of preparation, and interrupted by the babies and by Armand, who keeps saying, "Godmother, godmother! I want to see her," till I am almost jealous. ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... you think I had the luxury of choosing for myself? Every day, about eleven o'clock a small boy brings me my fate on a slip of paper. Let me dictate this to you. I'm sure you can't read that penciled scribble." ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... school to whom we all owe a great deal of amusement. He was not so versatile nor so original as Cruickshank; he had not the genius, nor the geniality, still less the sense of beauty, of John Leech. In his later years his work became more and more unequal, till he was sometimes almost as apt to scribble hasty scrawls as Constantin Guys. M. Guys was an artist selected by M. Baudelaire as the fine flower of modern art, and the true, though hurried, designer of the fugitive modern beauty. It is recorded that M. Guys was once sent to draw a scene of triumph and certain illuminations in London, ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... him, trust me. Nothing comforts a poor beggar like a bit of praise when he's down; and all fellows that take to writing are as greedy after it as trout after the drake, even if they only scribble in county newspapers. I've watched them when I've ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... there was just time to scribble a note before she dressed for the picnic, and of course, though she had no wish to encourage Reggie's friendship, yet a birthday was a special occasion, and had she remembered it she would ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... the frosted glass door marked "Private." With his hand reaching for the knob he halted, made an impatient gesture, plumped himself down at the long table—at its distant opposite end. With a sweep of the arm he cleared a space wherein he proceeded to spread papers from his pocket and to scribble upon them furiously. When Susan happened to glance at him, his head was bent so low and his straw hat was tilted so far forward that she could not see his face. She observed that he was dressed attractively in an extremely light summer suit of homespun; his hands were large and strong ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... like them, we do mischief. And that is just what we are: children that have not learnt to read let loose upon the library of the universe; and all that we can do is to pull the books about and play games with them and scribble on their pages. Everywhere the earth is defaced with our meaningless scribbling, and we tell ourselves that it means something because we want to scribble. Or sometimes we tell ourselves that there is no ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... spring, a wonder in this barren country. This was a favourite haunt of Emily, and indeed they all loved the spot. Here they would use some of their paper, for they still kept up their old habit of writing tales and poems, and loved to scribble out of doors. And some of it they would use in drawing, since at this time they were taking lessons, and Emily and Charlotte were devoted to the art: Charlotte making copies with minuteness and exact fidelity; Emily drawing animals and still-life with ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... which graduated in 1838. He was a reader, as so many of his fellows were, and the letters which he wrote shortly after leaving college show how intent he had been on making acquaintance with the best things in literature. He began also to scribble verse, and he wrote both poems and essays for college magazines. His class chose him their poet for Class Day, and he wrote his poem; but he was careless about conforming to college regulations respecting attendance at morning prayers; and for this was suspended ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... disgorge its contents—town is empty—consequently I can scribble at leisure, as occupations are less numerous. In a fortnight I shall depart to fulfil a country engagement; but expect two epistles from you previous to that period. Ridge does not proceed rapidly in Notts—very possible. In town things wear a more promising ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... Latin authors all! Nor think your verses sterling, Though with a golden pen you scrawl, And scribble in a Berlin: ...
— English Satires • Various
... unconscious of any evil intention, my eyes fastened upon the signature of the letter, which would have made my future secure if it had only appeared in the right place. It was an unusually well- written signature—and you know how sometimes one may absent- mindedly scribble a sheet of paper full of meaningless words. I had a pen in my hand—[picks up a penholder from the table] like this. And somehow it just began to run—I don't want to claim that there was anything mystical—anything of a spiritualistic nature back of it—for that kind ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... who delight to render obscurity more obscure, and who assume that in a multitude of words, as in a multitude of counsellors, there is wisdom! O ye critics, who vote yourselves the Areopagites of Intellect, whose decrees confer immortality in the Universe of Letters! O all ye that write or scribble,—all ye tribes, both great and small, of pen-drivers and paper-scrapers!—know ye, that, while ye are listening in your imaginative ambition to the praise of the elect or the applause of nations, your wives ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... group of words that have been naturalized: scribe, prescribe, ascribe, proscribe, transcribe, circumscribe, subscriber, indescribable, scribble, script, scripture, postscript, conscript, rescript, manuscript, nondescript, inscription, superscription, description. It is clear that these words are each other's kith and kin in blood, and that the strain or stock common to all ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... musical soul than you in refusing to trammel my inspiration with the dull rules invented by fools. I suppose you have mastered them all, eh?" He picked up some sheets of manuscript. "Great Scot! How you must have schooled yourself to scribble all this—you, with your restless nature—full scores, too! I hope you don't offer this sort of ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... the roll out of their hands. They feared lest I should tear it or throw it overboard; so they tried to stay me and scare me, but I signed to them that i could write, whereat all marvelled, saying, "We never yet saw an, ape write." And the Captain cried, "Let him write; and if he scribble and scrabble we will kick him out and kill him; but if he; write fair and scholarly I will adopt him as my son; for surely I never yet saw a more intelligent and well mannered monkey than he. Would Heaven my real son were his match in morals and manners." I took ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... scrape, or I scribble all day, My tunes are neglected, my verse flung away. Thy substantive here, Vice Apollo [2] disdains, To vouch for my numbers, or list to my strains. Thy manual sign he refuses to put To the airs I produce from the pen, or the gut: Be thou then propitious, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... of Harold's pilgrimage: Ye who of him may further seek to know, Shall find some tidings in a future page, If he that rhymeth now may scribble moe. Is this too much? stern Critic! say not so: Patience! and ye shall hear what he beheld In other lands, where he was doomed to go: Lands that contain the monuments of Eld, Ere Greece and Grecian arts by barbarous hands ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... sending you into a home," said Gaisford. "Why not go out to California for six months? You can scribble there ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... all marble and precedence, and I wish him well out of the adventure. I can't tell you how much more and more your attitude to him, in the midst of all this, shines out by contrast. I never willingly talk to these people about him, but see what a comfort I find it to scribble to you! I appreciate it— it keeps me warm; there are no fires in the house. Mrs. Wimbush goes by the calendar, the temperature goes by the weather, the weather goes by God knows what, and the Princess is easily ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... she received the intimation that a palaver was beginning, and that a fight was imminent, she would not be ready, and would resort to stratagem: she would seize a large sheet of paper and scribble some words—any words—upon it and add some splashes of sealing—wax to make it look important. This she would despatch by a swift runner to the chiefs, and by the time they had discussed the mysterious ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... Mr. Matthew Sharpin, has made a mess of the case at Rutherford Street, exactly as I expected he would. Business keeps me in this town; so I write to you to set the matter straight. I enclose, with this, the pages of feeble scribble-scrabble which the creature, Sharpin, calls a report. Look them over; and when you have made your way through all the gabble, I think you will agree with me that the conceited booby has looked for the thief in every direction but the right one. The case ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... her methodical soul to have anybody else "messing" with this neat little record. It was only a trifle better that the girl should have turned to the very back of the book and chosen a fly leaf there to scribble on. Scribbling it seemed, so rapidly was it done, and after a brief time the book was returned to its owner and she silently requested to examine what had been written in it. This is what ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... could tell: but in a moment he himself supplied the means. For the rocks here were of some kind of slate, very hard, but scaly: and finding two pieces, a large and a small, he handed them to me, bawling that I was to write therewith. So giving him my pistol, I made shift to scribble a few words. Seeing his eyes twinkle as he ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... occurrence as the visit of strangers to a mail-boat. The visiting party therefore consisted of Lady Olivia, Ida, Sir Reginald, Mildmay, and Lethbridge, most of whom availed themselves of the opportunity to scribble a hasty letter or two to friends ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... asked Maurice," Drall confided to me, "to scribble a testimonial to Lemonbeer. It will kind of break the spell, and it wouldn't be Maurice if he didn't turn out a perfect gem of literary composition. I know my Lemonbeer is really good and I know ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... trifling, pert, one knows not what! Form thy light Measures, nimbler than the Wind, Whilst heavy lingring Sense is left behind; With all thy Might pursue, and all thy Will, That unabating Thirst, to scribble still, Giv'n at thy Birth! the Poetaster's Gust, False and unsated as the ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... to scribble a line on my card. Our father is dangerously ill—his lawyer has been sent for. Come with me to London by the first train. Meet ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... take Seymour's place as illustrator of Pickwick, Thackeray applied for the job, but without success. He was then a young man of twenty-five, and still hesitating between art and literature. He had begun to draw caricatures with his pencil when a schoolboy at the Charter House, and to scribble them with his pen when a student at Cambridge, editing The Snob, a weekly under-graduate paper, and parodying the prize poem Timbuctoo of his contemporary at the university, Alfred Tennyson. Then he went abroad to study art, passing a season at Weimar, where he met Goethe and filled ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... before the mail goes; this last chapter is equally delicate and necessary. The prayers of the congregation are requested. Eheu! and it will be ended before this letter leaves and printed in the States ere you can read this scribble. The first dinner gong has sounded; je vous salue, monsieur et cher confrere. Tofa, soifua! Sleep! long life! as our Samoan ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... portraits, but he couldn't make them out very well now. They were sort of blurred to him, but I described them and he told me who they were. "That's a girl o' mine," he said, with reference to one—a jolly, good-looking bush girl. "I got a letter from her yesterday. I managed to scribble something, but I'll get you, if you don't mind, to write something more I want to put in on another piece of paper, and ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... scribble a line or two; but Holland is so fascinating that I have found myself running on about it, and Mr. van Buren has seemed grateful because it's his native land, and the places he likes best have turned out to be my favorites. In that way we have happened to write each other ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... Sancho's couch of pack-saddles and pummels would not be a bed of down in comparison, I ordered a fresh faggot on my hearth: they brought me some ink in a gally-pot—invisible ink—for I cannot see what I am writing; and I sit down to scribble, pour ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... scrawl you a line of some sort I know you will begin to fancy that I neglect you, in spite of all I said last time we met. You can hardly fancy it possible, I dare say, that I cannot find a quarter of an hour to scribble a note in; but when a note is written it is to be carried a mile to the post, and consumes nearly an hour, which is a large portion of the day. Mr. and Mrs. White have been gone a week. I heard from them this morning; they are now at Hexham. No time ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... Sunday. He cannot post a letter, so he rings up the paper and dictates a letter by telephone. He leaves the title to his friends at the other end; he knows that they can spell "Gray," as no doubt they can: but the letter is put down by journalistic custom in a pencil scribble and the vowel may well be doubtful. The friend writes at the top of the letter "'G. K. C.' Explains," putting the initials in quotation marks. The next man passing it for press is bored with these ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... about myself. I want to suggest something to you. You may laugh, old boy—but I'm in earnest. I remember you're telling me once that, when you were up at the 'Varsity, you used to scribble a bit. I didn't pay much attention; in those days one didn't pay attention—ever. But now your words have come back to me once or twice, during the night, when I've been seeing dream pictures in ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... and spend Wednesday afternoon with you all at Dingle Cottage. If suitable, do not trouble replying to this scribble.— ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... wit these lose their common sense, And then turn critics in their own defence: Each burns alike, who can, or cannot write, 30 Or with a rival's, or an eunuch's spite. All fools have still an itching to deride, And fain would be upon the laughing side; If Maevius scribble in Apollo's spite, There are who judge still worse than he ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... the soil, or by making shoes or hobnails, that the 'genial current of the soil is frozen,' and superior talents prevented from accomplishing their proper work: it is by being connected with some cheap weekly periodical, or twice or thrice a week newspaper, and compelled to scribble on almost without pause or intermission for daily bread. We have been led to think of this matter by an interesting little volume of poems, chiefly lyrical, which has just issued from the Edinburgh press,—the production of Mr. Thomas Smibert, a man who has lived for many years by his pen, and ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... descended from an illustrious family, and was destined to one of the learned professions; but he could not give up his mind to anything but drawing,—as annoying to his father as Galileo's experiments were to his parent; as unmeaning to him as Gibbon's History was to George III.,—"Scribble, scribble, scribble; Mr. Gibbon, I perceive, sir, you are always a-scribbling." No perception of a new power, no sympathy with the abandonment to a specialty not indorsed by fashions and traditions, but without which abandonment genius cannot easily be developed. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... unfastened his shirt a scrap of paper slipped from it and fluttered to the floor. It was Gemma's letter, which he had worn all day upon his neck. He picked it up, unfolded it, and kissed the dear scribble; then began folding the paper up again, with a dim consciousness of having done something very ridiculous, when he noticed on the back of the sheet a postscript which he had not read before. "Be sure and come as soon ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... Mr. Copley, whose pen did not cease to scribble. "I can hear. No time for anything like the present minute. I've got this case by heart, and don't need to think about it. Go on, Lawrence. Has your father sent ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... I've begun to scrawl, but whether In rhyme or prose, or baith thegither, Or some hotch-potch that's rightly neither, Let time mak proof; But I shall scribble down some ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... contents of which are highly obliging to me: and I should be inexcusable if I did not comply with your injunctions, and be very proud and thankful for your ladyship's condescension in accepting of my poor scribble, and promising such a rich and valuable return; of which you have already given such ample and delightful instances. I will not plead my defects, to excuse my obedience. I only fear that the awe ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... hair-line hieroglyphics, twisted and scrawled in brownish or reddish purple, about the egg. The markings are nowhere as a rule crowded, and towards the small end are usually sparse and occasionally wholly wanting. In some eggs a bad pen seems to have been used to scribble the pattern, and every here and there instead of a fine hair-line there is a ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... hand is free of the inmost minds of men past and present; their lives both within and without the pale of their uttered thoughts are unveiled to him; he needs no introduction to the greatest; he stands on no ceremony with them; he may, if he be so minded, scribble "doggrel" on his Shelley, or he may kick Lord Byron, if he please, into a corner. He hears Burke perorate, and Johnson dogmatise, and Scott tell his border tales, and Wordsworth muse on the hillside, without the leave of any man, or the payment ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... here hair and complexion. There I was to stay with her till—till this same sea-captain was to come and carry her off where she would give no more trouble. Oh, sir, it was too much—and my Lady knew it, for she had tied my hands so that I had but a moment to scribble down that scrip, and bid Syphax take it to you. The dear lady! she said, 'her God could deliver her out of the mouth of the lion,' and I could not believe it! I thought ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you are too hopeful on your side of the water. I never believed the "canards" of the army of the Potomac having capitulated. My good dear wife and self are come to wish for peace at any price. Good night, my good friend. I will scribble ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... literary part of the character of Walpole, it is natural to allude to the transactions which took place between him and the unfortunate Chatterton; a text upon which so much calumny and misrepresentation have been embroidered. The periodicals of the day, and the tribe of those "who daily scribble for their daily bread," and for whom Walpole had, perhaps unwisely, frequently expressed his contempt, attacked him bitterly for his inhumanity to genius, and even accused him as the author of the subsequent misfortunes ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Soane muttered. He began to scribble with a pencil. From the tone of his voice I knew that he had reached the precise stage at which something brilliant—the real thing ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... diaries are for ... to work off blue moods in, moods that come on without any reason whatever and therefore can't be confided to any fellow creature. You scribble away for a while ... and then it's all gone ... and your soul feels clear ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... she does not nod or smile To any other, nor her hand imbue With his fast-flowing wine, that her swift guile May scribble on the ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... to plague and starve the city; Let them stare, and storm, and frown, When they see a clergy gown; Let them, ere they crack a louse, Call for th'orders of the house; Let them, with their gosling quills, Scribble senseless heads of bills; We may, while they strain their throats, Wipe our a—s with their votes. Let Sir Tom,[4] that rampant ass, Stuff his guts with flax and grass; But before the priest he fleeces, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... myself for death. One thing only makes me uneasy: I fear that as I approach the prescribed limit, I may push it continually back, and that at forty-five I may still be thinking only of continuing to live and, perhaps, of continuing to scribble. Hard as I try to think, or to make others think, that I am different from the rest of mankind, I fear, I tremble lest ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... said. "We'll try it again later to be sure. Wish I didn't scribble such a rotten hand. My capital As and Ps are ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... say, all preparations had been made, weather permitting; I had merely to telephone the caterers, electricians, and musicians, and scribble these invitations. I'd advise you to arrange your day to include a good long nap before dinner, for you'll be up till all hours very likely. I fancy I ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... amuse myself," said Lesley, meekly. "I've had so little to do since I came here, and I thought I would scribble down my impressions." ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... wayward Queen! Who rule the sex to fifty from fifteen: Parent of vapours and of female wit, Who give th' hysteric, or poetic fit, 60 On various tempers act by various ways, Make some take physic, others scribble plays; Who cause the proud their visits to delay, And send the godly in a pet to pray. A nymph there is, that all thy pow'r disdains, 65 And thousands more in equal mirth maintains. But oh! if e'er thy ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... innocence and unconsciousness of self in the history of men whose after lives have been torn to pieces by the storms of vicissitude and passion. So far, he had not begun to rhyme—an unusual case, as boys who can make two lines jingle, whether they be poets or not, generally scribble plentifully before leaving school. At the age of fourteen he wrote some verses to his mother on her birthday, but it is fair to suppose that they gave no hint of talent, as they have not been preserved: it was only from his temperament that his destiny might ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... that it shouldn't be hard; That dozens, who claim to be poets, Could scribble off stuff by the yard And fare very well; and I know it's A theme that the Masters of Rhyme Have written some excellent verse on, Which proves, as I take it, that I'm ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... replied somewhat curtly. He crossed over to his father's desk where he sat down to scribble a few words, while Mr. Bagley, who had followed him in scowling, was making ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... Claudia remembered her letter to her father It was now near the close of the short winter day. Her interview with the detective had occupied her so long that she had barely time to scribble and send off the few urgent lines with which the reader is already acquainted. Then she dined and resigned herself to repose for the ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... the letter and read it to the end, to the last scribble on the margin: "You should have married a girl like Winny Dymond." "It was a lie what I told you once about her." "You needn't be afraid of being fond of Baby." There was nothing evocative, nothing significant for him in these phrases, not even in the names. His mind ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... this, he said to Mrs. Cliff that he was not sure but what the parsons were quite correct, and although everybody was sorry to lose two members of the party, it could not be helped, and all who had letters to send to New York went to work to scribble them as fast as they could. Mrs. Cliff also wrote a note to Captain Horn, informing him of the state of affairs, and of their reasons for not waiting for him, and this the departing clergymen undertook to leave with Beaver & Hughes, where Captain Horn would ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... now,' said Gentian when Hollyhock's task was finished, and she passed her scribble to her father to see—'I wonder whether there is a similar mistake in the names of our cousins—or brothers, as ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... Galaxy liner which Aristides had sailed in. I had only time for a word to you; but a million words could not have told the agonies I suffered, and when I overtook him on board the Orient Pacific steamer at Plymouth, where she touched, I could just scribble off the cable sent Mr. Makely before our steamer put off again. I am afraid you did not find my cable very expressive, but I was glad that I did not try to say more, for if I had tried I should simply have gibbered, ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... have not had a letter from Europe since May, and wish you to write to me by way of New York. I avail myself of an unexpected passenger to scribble this in the presence of many of the court, who tell me it is time to resume our labours; therefore, my beloved brothers, adieu. I shall write again in a few days, via ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... too hard for me, although not so for the Lord! Jer. xxxii. 17.... And now a word: is ridicule the right thing in so solemn a matter as the discussion of Holy Writ? [Is food for ridicule the right thing? Did I discuss Holy Writ? I did not: I concussed profane scribble. Even the Doctor did not discuss; he only enunciated and denunciated out of the mass of inferences which a mystical head has found premises for ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... soon receive it, you may conclude that it has miscarried; in which case, I shall not consent to the universe existing a moment longer. I have no copy of it, except the wildest scribble of a first draught, so that it could never ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... tattered flag, its broad stripes and bright stars still gleaming through the smoke of a fierce battle, moved Francis Scott Key to scribble a few words on the back of an envelope, the words that became our National Anthem. Today, that Star-Spangled Banner, along with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, are on display just a short walk from here. They are America's treasures. And we must ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... to me by Mr. J., one of the commercial gentlemen, a private letter from Rio Janeiro, which had been lent him. After these delays, with full materials, I sprang to work—read, read, read; wonder, wonder, wonder; guess, guess, guess; scratch, scratch, scratch; and scribble, scribble, scribble, make the only transcript I can give of the operations which followed. At first, several of the other gentlemen in the room sat around me; but soon Mr. C., having settled the deaths and marriages, ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... look through a pile of correspondence, and to scribble in a large saffron-coloured diary. He went out to Mr. Mayer; Mr. Mayer came in to him; they called to each other from room to room. The machinery stopped beneath and started again. A horse fell down in the yard, and Stanway, watching from ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... Egbert; "well, let's collaborate on this letter of thanks and get it done. I'll dictate, and you can scribble it down. 'Dear Mrs. Froplinson—thank you and your husband so much for the very pretty calendar you sent us. It was very good of you to ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... irrepressible joyous sense of superiority is flavoured with pity for their sisters lying low and pale. You see, the fiddles are on the table, and even with these you have to hang on to your cup occasionally. The fiddle makes such a comfortable rest for my elbows, so I scribble this on the back of the breakfast menu (no one wants it) without being seen. I remember that neither the position nor the occupation were allowed in the nursery, and I hear of people to-day in quite good society so dead to art that they will not allow you to draw on ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... hyenas. And a few yards away were the rifle that would have put him out of his misery, and the water-bottle that would have alleviated his pain—to the extent, at any rate, of enabling him to think clearly and perhaps scribble a few words in blood or something, somehow, for Lucille ... Lucille! Would the All-Merciful let him see her once again for a moment in return for an extra thousand years of Hell or whatever it was that unhappy mortals got as a continuation of the joys of this gay ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... and told me to burn it if not yet despatched. She is forever speaking of it, and saying that it will kill you. Do not delay your departure for an instant if you wish to see the angel before she leaves us. Pray excuse this scribble, but I have not slept now for three nights. You know how much ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... sour his disposition even more, rough and bad as it had formerly been. They would purposely hand him the papers upside down to see his efforts to read them, and wherever he found a blank space he would scribble a lot of pothooks which rather fitly passed for his signature. The natives mocked while they paid him. He swallowed his pride and made the collections, but was in such a state of mind that he had no respect for any one. He even came to have some ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... the vacuity about it he fills with grotesques, which are odd fantastic figures without any grace but what they derive from their variety, and the extravagance of their shapes. And in truth, what are these things I scribble, other than grotesques and monstrous bodies, made of various parts, without any certain figure, or any other than ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... other time." They were sitting near a table where a pencil and some loose leaves of paper lay. He pulled his chair a little closer, and, with the child still upon his knee, began to scribble and sketch at random. "Ah, there's San Miniato," he said, with a glance from the window. "Must get its outline in. You've heard how there came to be a church up there? No? Well, it shows the sort of man San Miniato really was. He was one of the early Christians, and he gave the ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... but now my decaying memory and enfeebled brain have made me almost incapable of work, and I have nothing to tell of but treacheries, perfidies, and torturing memories. The walls around me have ears; I am encompassed by spies and vigilant enemies. Racked with anxiety and fear, I scribble page after page without revising them. An ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... unnecessary to write, expecting to see her; or that the illness having passed, Miss Gailey, busy, had put off writing. She could not dismiss a vision of a boarding-house in London upset from top to bottom by the grave illness of one person in it, and a distracted landlady who had not a moment even to scribble a post card. And all the time, as this vision tore and desolated her, she was thinking: "Fancy that child having a follower, at her age! She's certainly got ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... "Air you a-goin' t' scribble that there three thou-san' on a piece o' paper?" inquired Uncle Billy, sitting bolt upright. "Ef you air a-figgerin' on that, Mr. Kamp, jis' you save yore time. I give a man four dollars fer one o' them check things oncet, an' I owe myself ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... his heart ached. Such darkness seemed gathered round his happiness. He heard Big Ben chime "Three" above the traffic. The sound moved something in him, and, taking out a piece of paper, he began to scribble on it with a pencil. He had jotted a stanza, and was searching the grass for another verse, when something hard touched his shoulder-a green parasol. There above ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that scintillating line: "A scribble of God's finger in the sky"; and an admonition to the preacher: "Thou art God's minister, not ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... to toil on at my hack-writing, only praying that I might be let alone to scribble in peace, and often thinking, sadly, how little my friends in Harley-street could guess at the painful experience, the doubts, the struggles, the bitter cares, which went to the making of the poetry which ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... their names on the frescoes. We found one name "Battista," with the date "1485" against it. It is a mistake to hold that the English scribble their names about more than other people. The Italians like doing this just as well as we do. Let the reader go to Varallo, for example, and note the names scratched up from the beginning of the ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... He had a book in his hand, and he began to scribble a little sketch of Lydia's pose, on a fly-leaf. She looked round and saw it. "You've detected me," he said; "I haven't any right to keep your likeness, now. I must make you a present of this work of art, Miss Blood." He finished the sketch with some ironical flourishes, and made as if to tear ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... Darwin confessed: "There seems to be a sort of fatality in my mind leading me to put at first my statement or proposition in a wrong or awkward form. Formerly I used to think about my sentences before writing them down; but for several years I have found that it saves time to scribble in a vile hand whole pages as quickly as I possibly can, contracting half the words; and then correct deliberately. Sentences thus scribbled down are often better ones than ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... ourselves, and growing defaced and cornerless, and liable at any moment to fall a prey to some antiquary and be patched in the legs, and "restored" with an unseemly nose, and labeled wrong and dated wrong, and set up in the Vatican for poets to drivel about and vandals to scribble their names on ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wanted, so I followed the person who had so kindly interested himself in my scribble. He proved to be Mr. Mowbray, the manager of the theatre. The picture behind the scenes that night was a perfect Elysium to me. I think Mowbray must have noticed the impression it made upon me, for he asked if I would like ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... passage of time the actuating causes were somewhat blurred in perspective. The main facts stood forth clear enough, but the underlying details were misty and uncertain, like some half-obliterated scribble on a badly rubbed slate upon which a more important sum has been overlaid. One rendition had it that the firm of Stackpole Brothers sued the two Tatums—Harve and Jess—for an account long overdue, and won judgment in the courts, but won with it the murderous enmity ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... on her, with something of the admiration which we might conceive in an Esquimaux for a fixed star, or in an Italian highwayman for some Parian statue which he had stumbled on in his thickets. But the admiration was soon absorbed in the job in hand, and he turned away—to scribble to the Minister. Of the younger portion of the family I shall say but little. Children are happiest in the nursery, and there I leave them. I had two sisters, sweet little creatures, one with black eyes and the other with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... hate you. You are a wicked creature, very inconsistent, very stupid, very silly. You do not write to me. You do not love your husband. You know how much pleasure your letters would afford, and you do not write to him even six lines, which you can readily scribble out." ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... had shaken down in Aurora's mind, Gerald's letter, which she from time to time re-read, impressed her as a most gentle and reasonable production of his pen, while her own letter, preserved in the original scribble, appeared to her horrid, cutting, and ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... have for some time been convinced that I have done wrong to scribble to thee so freely as I have done (and the more so, if I make the lady legally mine); for has not every letter I have written to thee been a bill of indictment against myself? I may partly curse my vanity for it; and I think I will refrain for ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... us! needs must live A profitable life: some glance along Rapid and gay, as if the earth were air. And they were butterflies to wheel about Long as their summer lasted; some, as wise, Upon the forehead of a jutting crag Sit perch'd with book and pencil on their knee, And look and scribble, scribble on and look, Until a man might travel twelve stout miles, Or reap an acre of his neighbour's corn. But, for that moping son of Idleness Why can he tarry yonder?—In our church-yard Is neither epitaph nor monument, ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... fytte of Harold's pilgrimage. Ye who of him may further seek to know, Shall find some tidings in a future page, If he that rhymeth now may scribble moe. Is this too much? Stern critic, say not so: Patience! and ye shall hear what he beheld In other lands, where he was doomed to go: Lands that contain the monuments of eld, Ere Greece and Grecian arts by barbarous ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... to the old story, scribble till two, then walk for exercise till four. Deil hae it else, for company eats up the afternoon, so nothing can be done that is not achieved in ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... she. "I went to get your M. Gaudissart out of a fix. He wants some music for a ballet, and you are hardly fit to scribble on sheets of paper and do your work, dearie.—So I understood, things being so, that a M. Garangeot was to be asked to set the ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... admit that I am not raving. Think of his seeing that spotless image, not for a moment, for a day, in a happy dream, or a restless fever-fit; not as a poet in a five minutes' frenzy—time to snatch his phrase and scribble his immortal stanza; but for days together, while the slow labour of the brush went on, while the foul vapours of life interposed, and the fancy ached with tension, fixed, radiant, distinct, as we see it now! What a master, certainly! But ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... sign your name always so that people can read it. Some, out of pure affectation, conceal what they call themselves under a scribble which none can read—"a hopeless puzzle of intemperate scratches." How is a stranger, getting a letter signed in this way, to know to whom to send a reply, unless, as is sometimes done, he cuts out the signature, pastes it on the envelope, and adds the address? ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... I mean—a plan that will at least give you an occasional sight of your 'Frank,' that no doubt you think more of than a Congressman of his, and wouldn't lend it to anybody. Scribble him a little note at once, tell him who I am and what I am going to do. Put in this card of mine, so that he can know where to find me. Then tell him to get a soldier's uniform—(say a Captain's) a crutch, a cane, and a green patch for one ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... but wedged in so as directly to shatter it. If, for instance, it is an impertinent thing to interrupt another person when he is speaking, it is no less impertinent to interrupt oneself. But all bad, careless, and hasty authors, who scribble with the bread actually before their eyes, use this style of writing six times on a page, and rejoice in it. It consists in—it is advisable to give rule and example together, wherever it is possible—breaking up one phrase in order to glue in another. Nor is it merely out of ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... enjoying the confusion into which the mention of this phantom beast threw her persecutor, she continued to scribble on scraps of paper which the concierge was told to take to the lawyer, who never ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... suffered this needless affront. Pardon this parenthesis, but when one talks from behind a curtain the parenthesis is the only available thing.) There was silence. I saw Steinbock poise the pen, then scribble on the parchment. It ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... here were of some kind of slate, very hard, but scaly: and finding two pieces, a large and a small, he handed them to me, bawling that I was to write therewith. So giving him my pistol, I made shift to scribble a few words. Seeing his eyes twinkle as he ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... shouldn'. I'd say, 'You rate me too high, my dear. Still,' I'd say, 'if you insist upon it, you just scribble down the main points on a sheet o' paper, and I'll take a walk and think it over.' Then I'd carry it off to Benny." 'Bias, who so far had held the better of the argument by keeping his temper, clinched his triumph with a ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Morley, in her deplorable tone, "I am continually ordering Sir Gerald not to scribble in books, but he never ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... and heart to work and composed a rhyme. Now, the most unfit sphere on earth for an inexperienced mind to exercise the poetic faculty is in epitaphiology. It does very well in copy-books, but it is most unfair to blot the resting-place of the dead with unskilled poetic scribble. It seems to me that the owners of cemeteries and graveyards should keep in their own hand the right to refuse inappropriate ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... there says, referring to the French Revolution of July 1830, that "unless God send us some miraculous help, we have to look forward to a period of destruction similar to that which the Roman world experienced about the middle of the third century." Now, when I see a man scribble such abject nonsense about events which are passing under our eyes, what confidence can I put in his judgment as to the connection of causes and effects in times very imperfectly ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... must," said she. We had no opportunity of speaking before, for her husband or some one was always in the way. To make sure I next day slipped an envelope into her hand, in which was one addressed to myself, and a scribble asking her to say where I was to meet her. It came back by post containing in execrable writing the words, "My dear, same time, and place, if he be out, on Saturday night." I did not comprehend, but waited ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... went disgusted, to toil on at my hack-writing, only praying that I might be let alone to scribble in peace, and often thinking, sadly, how little my friends in Harley-street could guess at the painful experience, the doubts, the struggles, the bitter cares, which went to the making of the poetry which ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... of Fortune, the punctual goddess stepped down from the machine. One of the Princess's ladies begged to enter; a man, it appeared, had brought a line for the Freiherr von Gondremark. It proved to be a pencil billet, which the crafty Greisengesang had found the means to scribble and despatch under the very guns of Otto; and the daring of the act bore testimony to the terror of the actor. For Greisengesang had but one influential motive: fear. The note ran thus: "At the first council, procuration to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... moving through the streets gave Erik Dorn a picture. It was morning. Above the heads of the people the great spatula-topped buildings spread a zigzag of windows, a scribble of rooftops against the sky. A din as monotonous as a silence tumbled through the streets—an unvarying noise of which the towering rectangles of buildings tilted like great reeds out of a narrow ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... was worse, instead of better. He could hardly hear and he was too weak to write much. But he did manage to scribble a note: ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum
... But look here, whoever sent you that cowardly bit of scribble thought that because you lived out here in this lonely place you would be easily frightened. Look here," he continued, taking a scrap of dirty paper out of his old pocket-book; "that bit of rubbish was stuck on one of the tines of a hay-fork, and the shaft driven into the ground in front ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... a moment to scribble a line on my card. Our father is dangerously ill—his lawyer has been sent for. Come with me to London by the first train. Meet at ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... SIR,—I just now received your brief epistle; and, to take vengeance on your laziness, I have, you see, taken a long sheet of writing-paper, and have begun at the top of the page, intending to scribble on to the ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... starboard horizon. To Mr. Fett and Mr. Badcock this meant nothing, and my father might have left them to their ignorance had he not in the course of the forenoon caught them engaged upon a silly piece of mischief, which was, to scribble on small sheets of paper various affecting narratives—as that the Gauntlet was sinking, or desperately attacked by pirates, in such and such a latitude and longitude—insert them in empty bottles, and commit them to the chances of the deep. The object (as Mr. Fett explained ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... somewhat curtly. He crossed over to his father's desk where he sat down to scribble a few words, while Mr. Bagley, who had followed him in scowling, was making ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... are built for idiots, and there is much joy when after many years of persevering effort some devoted person succeeds in teaching these beings, whose mentality is far inferior to that of a monkey, to repeat a few words like a parrot, to scribble some words on paper, or to repeat a prayer mechanically with their eyes ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... love-letter, a most elaborate affair, the pure overflowing of la belle passion, all about Venus, Cupids, bows and arrows, hearts, darts, and them things, which, having copied neatly over on a handsome sheet of foolscap, turned up with gilt, (for, though I say it myself, I scribble a smart fist,) I made a blotch of red wax on the back as large as a dollar, that thereon I might the more indelibly impress a seal, with a couple of pigeons cooing upon it, and 'toujours wotre' for the motto. This I popped into the post-office, and waited ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... good counsel of that learned and pious Prelate: And having, by long experience, found the truth and benefit of it, I conceive, I could not without ingratitude to him, and want of charity to others, conceal it.—Pray pardon this rude, and, I fear impertinent scribble, which, if nothing else, may signify thus much, that I am willing to obey your desires, ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... could read it away, but I do not read in that violent measure, with which, having no Time my own but candlelight Time, I used to weary out my head and eyesight in by-gone winters. I walk, read or scribble (as now) just when the fit seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure; I let it come to me. I am like ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... pair of shoes in a shop six feet by eight in size and with walls three feet thick, I noticed a mangy leopard skin on the floor. I had no Spanish. The shop-keeper had no English. But I was an adept at sign language. I wanted to know where I should go to buy leopard skins. On my scribble- pad I drew the interesting streets of a city. Then I drew a small shop, which, after much effort, I persuaded the proprietor into recognising as his shop. Next, I indicated in my drawing that on the many streets ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... were bestowed in the amphitheatre. Each desk received its man. He was to scribble on it by day, and sleep under it by night. When the desks were all taken, the companies overflowed into the corners and into the lobbies. The staff took committee-rooms. The Colonel reigned in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... necessary to close it against all horses and carriages. All the rank and fashion of Paris flung itself into this game of speculation. Every one has heard the story of the hunchback who made a little fortune by the letting of his hump as a desk on which impatient speculators might scribble their applications for shares. A French novelist, M. Paul Feval, has made good use of {185} this story, and London still remembers to what a brilliant dramatic account it was turned by Mr. Fechter. Law was the most powerful ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... nothing but piloting as a science so far, and I doubt if I ever get beyond that portion of my subject. And I don't care to. Any Muggins can write about old days on the Mississippi of five hundred different kinds, but I am the only man alive that can scribble about the piloting of that day, and no man has ever tried to scribble about it yet. Its newness pleases me all the time, and it is about the only ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... way on, amusing his friends in private, and entertaining the world of letters by his genial humor. It welled up as from a hidden fountain, and that fountain never failed but with life. So easily and spontaneously did it flow, that if he wanted an order to see the play, for some friends, he would scribble something like ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... the East (where ladies are not taught to write, lest they should scribble assignations), flowers, cinders, pebbles, etc., convey the sentiments of the parties, by that universal deputy of Mercury—an old woman. A cinder says, "I burn for thee;" a bunch of flowers tied with hair, "Take me and fly;" but a pebble declares—what nothing else can. [Compare ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... This is, in my opinion, a rule of profound sense, and ought never to depart from the mind of an honest reformer. I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases. A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a ride of two hours yesterday on Calvert's pony, and he is improving fast in horsemanship. The school appears to answer very well. We shall have the Governess in a day or two, which will be a great satisfaction. Will you send my Mother this scribble with my ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... down to write to Alice Puttenham, and to scribble a note to Lady Fox-Wilton asking her to see him as soon as possible. Then Anne forced some luncheon on him, and he had barely finished it when a step outside made itself heard. He looked ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... October delivery at $1.43 7/8 per bushel. It's that fellow down there with the blazing red tie half way up his collar. He hits out with both hands at the air as he yells. A surge of buyers overwhelms him. They scribble notes upon their sales cards and go at ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... being arrested. When they met in prison they had so little time to discuss such details, in face of the one awful fact that he was there, and was in all probability going to die in two days. But from this incomplete, tear-stained scribble that he left behind and from the answers he gave to her few questions, she gathered that the story of his quest ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... had a taste for poetry, and taught the lad to scribble rhymes. Very proud was the boy's mother, and very carefully did she preserve ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... but happy man was thus pleasantly engaged, his entertainer opened his writing portfolio and began to scribble off note after note, with such rapidity that the amazed pauper at his elbow fairly lost his appetite, and, after a vain attempt to recover it, suggested that it might be as well for him to retire to one of ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... hand reaching for the knob he halted, made an impatient gesture, plumped himself down at the long table—at its distant opposite end. With a sweep of the arm he cleared a space wherein he proceeded to spread papers from his pocket and to scribble upon them furiously. When Susan happened to glance at him, his head was bent so low and his straw hat was tilted so far forward that she could not see his face. She observed that he was dressed attractively in an extremely light summer ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Canzonet' is brief enough for your Majesty's immediate consideration," replied Teresa;—"It is just such a thing as a man might scribble in his note-book after a bout of champagne, when he is in love for ten minutes! He would not mean a word of it,—but it might sound pretty by moonlight!" Whereupon she ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... this way, and smooth as much as I can, but never sufficiently; and, latterly, I can weave a nine-line stanza faster than a couplet, for which measure I have not the cunning. When I began 'Childe Harold,' I had never tried Spenser's measure, and now I cannot scribble in any other. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... sense, And then turn critics in their own defence: Each burns alike, who can, or cannot write, 30 Or with a rival's, or an eunuch's spite. All fools have still an itching to deride, And fain would be upon the laughing side; If Maevius scribble in Apollo's spite, There are who judge still worse than ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... Gibbon brought him the second volume of the Decline and Fall, 'received him with much good nature and affability, saying to him, as he laid the quarto on the table, "Another d——d thick, square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... England Mr. Balfour occupies a leading place. He possesses the gift of never saying a word too much, a habit which might be copied to advantage by many public speakers. His habit during a debate is to scribble a few words on an envelop, and then to speak with rare facility ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... Monmouth Geoffry's Chronicle; Men whose historical superiority Is always greatest at a miracle. But Saint Augustine has the great priority, Who bids all men believe the impossible, Because 'tis so. Who nibble, scribble, quibble, he Quiets at once ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... love the Christmas holidays at college. It was a perfect time of peace after the excitement and hurry of her life—a time when she could steal into the big library and read the hours away without being disturbed, or scribble things on paper that she would like to expand into something, some day, when her diffidence ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... enough about myself. I want to suggest something to you. You may laugh, old boy—but I'm in earnest. I remember you're telling me once that, when you were up at the 'Varsity, you used to scribble a bit. I didn't pay much attention; in those days one didn't pay attention—ever. But now your words have come back to me once or twice, during the night, when I've been seeing dream pictures in my reading lamp and the ward has been asleep. Have you thought that possibly that is the line along ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... Might she not scribble down a few of the sentences which had puzzled her, but were now quite clear? Of course her aunt would not like it, but then she need never know. It could not be any worse to write than to lie in bed and think, she argued, and it would ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... such a disadvantage in case of a surprise. The High Lama explained the different images to me, and threw handfuls of rice over them as he called them by their respective names, all of which I tried hard to remember, but, alas! before I could get back to the serai and scribble them down on paper, they had all escaped my memory. A separate entrance led from ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... Father Caboccini looked at him with angry astonishment; when Rodin, growing still more imperious and haughty, and with an air of more sovereign disdain than ever, pushed aside the paper with the back of his dirty hand and said: "What is the date of that scribble?" ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... It's coming up to you." It had its choice Of the door to the cellar or the hall. It took the hall door for the novelty, And set off briskly for so slow a thing, Still going every which way in the joints, though, So that it looked like lightning or a scribble, From the slap I had just now given its hand. I listened till it almost climbed the stairs From the hall to the only finished bedroom, Before I got up to do anything; Then ran and shouted, "Shut the bedroom door, Toffile, ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... sun was bright, and a breeze fluttered the leaves of the young lime-tree beneath which he lay; but his heart ached. Such darkness seemed gathered round his happiness. He heard Big Ben chime "Three" above the traffic. The sound moved something in him, and, taking out a piece of paper, he began to scribble on it with a pencil. He had jotted a stanza, and was searching the grass for another verse, when something hard touched his shoulder-a green parasol. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... It was Mrs. Packard who spoke. She was pointing at the scribble he was making on ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... a shopping-bag she was embellishing. And when, in due course, a funny-looking, canary-colored envelope carried this fragment to the desk of some bored phlegmatic editor, he would, as like as not, grin and scribble an order to the cashier for two dollars (or some such munificent sum) and pin it to the stamped "return" canary envelope, which would presently reach Number 98 ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... work with your foot, and the other way you work with your fingers, but I rather guess there's more headache in the stories than there is in the stitches, because you don't have to think quite so hard while your foot's going as you do when your fingers is at work, scratch, scratch, scratch, scribble, scribble, scribble. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... mischief to religion, is to strew his bed with roses; he will reply in triumph, that this was his design; and I am loth to mortify him, by asserting he hath done none at all. For I never yet saw so poor an atheistical scribble, which would not serve as a twig for sinking libertines to catch at. It must be allowed in their behalf, that the faith of Christians is not as a grain of mustard seed in comparison of theirs, which can remove such mountains of absurdities, and submit with so entire ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... the ship still remaining in her unusual position, and heard the uproar going on overhead, began to entertain some very disagreeable doubts as to the possibility of the event to which he was alluding actually occurring, and looked very blue about the gills; whereat little Scribble, the clerk, laughed heartily at him, and seated himself on the table, with his feet on the side of the ship, affirming that he was not afraid, and was as contented and happy as ever—the truth being, not that the young donkey was a bit more brave than the other two, but that ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... the Laureate's wine, and the Laureate's pay, And no deductions at quarter-day? Oh, that would be the post for me! With plenty to get and nothing to do, But to deck a pet poodle with ribbons of blue, And whistle a tune to the Queen's cockatoo, And scribble of verses remarkably few, And empty at evening a bottle ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... standing all day on the summits of roofs, in front of ovens, among machines, and in the water, and underground, with nothing to eat but a little bread; and I feel almost ashamed, I, who in all that time have accomplished nothing but scribble four small pages, and that reluctantly. Ah, I am discontented, discontented! I see plainly that my father is out of humor, and would like to tell me so; but he is sorry, and he is still waiting. My dear father, who works so hard! all is ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... read it to the end, to the last scribble on the margin: "You should have married a girl like Winny Dymond." "It was a lie what I told you once about her." "You needn't be afraid of being fond of Baby." There was nothing evocative, nothing significant for him in these phrases, ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... offer from Chicago that you've been thinking about! It's a big thing—designing for that firm. It will make you independent, leave you time to scribble, and give you a change. Pat, ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... Peronne to-morrow, and I have availed myself of the hour between cards and supper, which is usually employed by the French in undressing, to scribble my remarks. In some families, I suppose, supping in dishabille is an arrangement of oeconomy, in others of ease; but I always think it has the air of preparation for a very solid meal; and, in ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... just the one thing that I can do for you all, now that I am away, and I am not so selfish that I grudge an hour in the day. I know how disappointed one face looks when there is no letter from Bessie in the morning, and so I lay down my book and scribble away ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... believe, is getting restive. Through the roof of what we call Fatherland social currents begin to filter. There remains only one ideal in presence of which the most hardened sceptic raises his hat,—the People. But on the base of this statue mischievous spirits are beginning already to scribble more or less ribald jokes, and, what is still more strange, the mist of unbelief is rising from the heads of those who, in the nature of things, ought to bow down reverently. Finally there will come a gifted sceptic, a second Heine, to spit and ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... writes so very slowly, and as father does not think he should scribble at all, he has desired me to inform you of everything that has passed since you left us. And first I must acquaint you with a sad accident which will render one of your commissions useless. Poor Hector, the day after you went away, was lost for several hours. We went to every house in the village, ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... classes. To the labor of the hand I join the labor of the arm. I have my scrivener's stall in the market of the Rue de Sevres. You know? the Umbrella Market. All the cooks of the Red Cross apply to me. I scribble their declarations of love to the raw soldiers. In the morning I write love letters; in the evening I dig graves. Such ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... obscurity more obscure, and who assume that in a multitude of words, as in a multitude of counsellors, there is wisdom! O ye critics, who vote yourselves the Areopagites of Intellect, whose decrees confer immortality in the Universe of Letters! O all ye that write or scribble,—all ye tribes, both great and small, of pen-drivers and paper-scrapers!—know ye, that, while ye are listening in your imaginative ambition to the praise of the elect or the applause of nations, your wives are often counting the coppers ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... the Signoria, cajoled the clergy, bamboozled the popolani, descended even to the ragamuffins in the gutters, and taught them how to shout "Duca! Duca!" when his master went proudly a-horseback, or to scribble his effigy in great chalk circles on the city walls. Though it may be true that Molly's graces brought Amilcare the crown of Nona, it must be added that neither Molly nor her Duke could have got in at all if Grifone had not been there to oil the ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... library; and, like them, we do mischief. And that is just what we are: children that have not learnt to read let loose upon the library of the universe; and all that we can do is to pull the books about and play games with them and scribble on their pages. Everywhere the earth is defaced with our meaningless scribbling, and we tell ourselves that it means something because we want to scribble. Or sometimes we tell ourselves that there is no meaning in anything, no more in the books than ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... he looked on his watch, 'this rigor, you see, will soon pass away, and you're doing everything we could wish, and (for he found he had time to scribble a prescription), we'll just order him a trifle. Good-day, Sir. Your most ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... name with, why, you must keep up the position you've made—and you shall too! You're quite right to drop the schoolmastering, since you make more money with your scribbling. Your time's valuable now. Set to and scribble away while you're the fashion; make your 'ay while the sun shines, my boy. I'll see yer through it. I want you to do me credit. I want everyone to know that you're not like some of these poor ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... ages were qualified for this work. A certain degree of literary proficiency was required for the task. The centuries during which the papacy rose to the zenith of its power are notorious for the illiteracy of the masses. It was considered a remarkable achievement even for a nobleman to be able to scribble his name. Among those who possessed the ability few had the inclination and persistency necessary for the effort to transcribe the Bible. The cloisters of those days were the chief seats of learning and centers of lower ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... thinking; used to get mad at him. He worked for me in 1829, pulling fodder. I say Abe was awful lazy, he would laugh and talk, and crack jokes all the time, didn't love work, but did dearly love his pay." He liked to lie under a shade tree, or up in the loft of the cabin and read, cipher, or scribble. At night he ciphered by the light of the fire on the wooden fire shovel. He practised stump oratory by repeating the sermons, and sometimes by preaching himself to his brothers and sister. His gifts in the rhetorical line were high; when it was announced in the harvest field ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... ground-floor, and a window adjoining the street lets in upon me the light and air through a heavy crimson curtain, near which I sit and scribble. I was just enlarging upon the necessity of resignation, while the frown yet lingered on my brow, and was writing myself into a more calm and complacent mood, when—another knock at the door. As I opened it, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... he continued, apparently in answer to an assent from his colleague. "Sir Percy, will you be so kind as to scribble the necessary ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... note from the House of Commons—which, if your Lordship can read, I do not think I now could, such was the haste of scribble—Sheridan threw out the menace which the papers state, with Pitt's answer; the comment on which is, in the mouth of Opposition: "Pray, for God's sake, don't put a question, and urge it to a division, which will ruin our pretensions as ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... story or a horrid dream. Every day I try to overcome the feeling, but I can't succeed. This afternoon I made up my mind to return to our villa and write my diary. The day was lovely, and I meant to enjoy a rest and a scribble, but so strong was the horrid influence of the place that I couldn't settle to anything. I can't describe it, but it seemed to stifle me, and I can only compare it to some second sight in which one sees death. I sat as long as I could doing my writing, but I had to give in at last, and I tucked ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... much; she explained that she could only scribble a line or two while mommie slept. Mommie was about the same. She did not think there was anything Ward could do, and she thanked him for offering to help. There was nothing, she said pathetically, that anybody ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... signified to me his approbation of my journals, from whence I infer, that he either never reads them, or does not give himself the trouble to remember any of their contents, tho' some part has been address'd to him, so, for the future, I shall trouble only you with this part of my scribble—Last thursday I din'd at Unkle Storer's & spent the afternoon in that neighborhood. I met with some adventures in my way viz. As I was going, I was overtaken by a lady who was quite a stranger to me. She accosted me with "how do you do miss?" ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... there was Colles' signature. But the pencilling was in a different hand. My deduction from this was that some one wished to send me a message, and that Colles had given that some one a sheet of signed paper to serve as a kind of introduction. I might take it, therefore, that the scribble was ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... the 1,000 Nights advertised at the same time, not to speak of the bastard. [363] I return you nine sheets [of proofs] by parcels post registered. You have done your work very well, and my part is confined to a very small amount of scribble which you ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... His father had never himself thought to draw, but he had always taken an interest in sculpture and painting, and he had said before Rodney was born that he would like to have a son a sculptor. And he waited for the little boy to show some signs of artistic aptitude. He pondered every scribble the boy made, and scribbles that any child at the same age could have done filled him with admiration. But when Rodney was fourteen he remodelled some leaves that had failed to please an important customer; and his father ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... at 'em 'n' we wanged 'em best we could. 'Twas either bed 'n' breakfast or a scribble and a wreath. Haynes bust a Prussian's almond, took the bay'net where he stood, Then heaved his last 'arf-Brunswick, split the demon's grinnin' teeth, And Son went down in glory, with ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... near. The post is going out, and to-morrow we shall begin to mount the cliffs of the Tyrol; but don't be afraid of any long-winded epistles from their summits: I shall be too well employed in ascending them. Just now, as I have lain by a long while, I grow sleek, and scribble on in mere wantonness of spirit. What excesses such a correspondence is capable of, you will soon be able ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... very well now. They were sort of blurred to him, but I described them and he told me who they were. "That's a girl o' mine," he said, with reference to one—a jolly, good-looking bush girl. "I got a letter from her yesterday. I managed to scribble something, but I'll get you, if you don't mind, to write something more I want to put in on another piece of paper, and address an ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... plague and starve the city; Let them stare, and storm, and frown, When they see a clergy gown; Let them, ere they crack a louse, Call for th'orders of the house; Let them, with their gosling quills, Scribble senseless heads of bills; We may, while they strain their throats, Wipe our a—s with their votes. Let Sir Tom,[4] that rampant ass, Stuff his guts with flax and grass; But before the priest he fleeces, Tear ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... hung, An eagle waiting for the lightning now To swoop upon his prey. One iron hand Gripped a rough tree-root like a bunch of snakes; And, as the rain rushed round him, far away He saw to northward yet another flash, A scribble of God's finger in the sky Over a waste of white stampeding waves. His eye flashed like a falchion as he saw it, And from his lips there burst the sea-king's laugh; For there, with a fierce joy he knew, he knew ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... DEAREST: Here I am sitting at the old desk again, in the old office of the Banner. I could only scribble you a little note on the train last night to tell you that my heart still was with you, and I did not have the time to explain why I was coming. It is a dead secret, little woman, and perhaps I shouldn't tell even you, but I feel that I must bring ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... really nothing to do but to scribble. "Barkis is willing." Captain Blunt brought me word this morning that his daughter smiles propitious. I am to report this evening; but I shall send my slender baggage in an hour ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... when Gibbon had published the second and third volumes of his "Decline and Fall," the Duke of Cumberland met him one day, and accosted him with, "How do you do, Mr. Gibbon? I see you are always at it in the old way—scribble, scribble, scribble!" The duke probably intended to pay the author a compliment, but did not know how better to do it than in this blunt and apparently ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... were especially grievous when they occurred in the evening, so that the two friends had to spend the night in disunion, which meant that both of them were morally upset. Christophe would get up and scribble a note and slip it under Olivier's door: and next day as soon as he woke up he would beg his pardon. Sometimes, even, he would knock at his door in the middle of the night: he could not bear to wait for the day to come before he humbled himself. As a rule, Olivier would be ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... cause, I have given up to what seemed the inevitable, and have thought little of it since. Perhaps I have done wrong, and if so, I trust I shall see it and repent it. I do not intend to make any promises, because I may have reason to regret them, but I do not know that I shall scribble any more on the objectionable ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... inspect his armament and stores, don his harness, get into his heavy boots, scribble a couple of words to confide Baya to the prince, and slip a few bank-notes sprinkled with tears into the envelope, and then the dauntless Tarasconian rolled away in the stage-coach on the Blidah ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... when Hollyhock's task was finished, and she passed her scribble to her father to see—'I wonder whether there is a similar mistake in the names of our cousins—or brothers, as they ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... After lunch we scribble letters, for the post leaves at five. As we write the peaceful afternoon is disturbed by the roar of five engines. B Flight is starting up in readiness for an offensive patrol. Ten minutes later more engines break into song, as three machines ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... which followed the usual custom (for the coroner seemed singularly devoid of originality) the bodies were uncovered, and a murmur of excited expectancy ran through the crowd. With morbid curiosity they pressed forward. The reporters started to scribble in their note-books, a little pale and perturbed, for all their experience of such affairs. One or two of the crowd gasped, and then shut their eyes. Brellier exclaimed aloud in French, and for a moment covered ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... not sending you any address, for I don't want you to know where I am, dear. I shan't write to you again unless I scribble things and tear them up without posting. This is final. When a woman makes such a break she must do it once and for all. Oh, Simon, when you kissed me two days ago you thought you loved me; but I know what the senses are and how they deceive people, and I ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... makes his mark is understood To write his name, and 'tis in law as good, So he, that can not write one word of sense Believes he has as legal a pretense To scribble what he does not understand, As idiots have a title ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... volumes of his diary these notes of sympathetic love for his fellow-men are mingled with yearnings for solitude. "This book," he writes on the last page of one of them, "has answered some little purpose; for when I wanted to speak to some one and yet was alone, it cost me no labor to scribble in it. It would give me great pleasure if I had a friend who would exchange such thoughts with me." He was soon to enter into that spiritual heritage which among its other treasures bestows the beatitude of the sage, "Blessed is the man who hath ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... blottings, as confused and unsatisfactory as his verbal statements had been. An officer was then summoned into the royal presence, and commanded to take the cardinal into custody and conduct him to the Bastile. He was, however, permitted to visit his home. The cardinal contrived, by the way, to scribble a line upon a scrap of paper, and, catching the eye of a trusty servant, he, unobserved, slipped it into his hand. It was a direction to the servant to hasten to the palace, with the utmost possible speed, and commit to the flames all of ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... the mysteries of hold stowage, in order to keep him under his immediate eye. But Hamilton bluntly confessed to loathing anything that was at all useful, and so he perforce had to be left to pick his own position under the awnings, there to doze, and smoke cigarettes, and scribble on paper as the moods so ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... to start early that afternoon for Knollsea, to spend the few opening days of their married life there, and as the hour for departure was drawing near Raye asked his wife if she would go to the writing-desk in the next room and scribble a little note to his sister, who had been unable to attend through indisposition, informing her that the ceremony was over, thanking her for her little present, and hoping to know her well now that she was the writer's ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... in my epistle, when a torrent of ill news rushed in upon us, and compelled me to delay my scribble. I am sorry to say, that in addition to the account which I have already given of the depressed state of the markets, I must add some dismal intelligence. The markets are in a deplorable state, and so is the mercantile community in general. Every day there ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... apostilles, could heal a bleeding country, here were the physicians to furnish those drugs in unlimited profusion. If reams of paper, scrawled over with barbarous technicalities, could smother and bury a quarrel which had its origin in the mutual antagonism of human elements, here were the men to scribble unflinchingly, till the reams were piled to a pyramid. If the same idea presented in many aspects could acquire additional life, here were the word-mongers who, could clothe one shivering thought in a hundred thousand garments, till it attained all the majesty which decoration ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... visited on Christmas-Eve and thought of the Judgment. And Common-sense said: "You have done your best; do not be dismayed; you will only be surprised, and when the shock is over you will smile at your fear." And as he thought thus the whole sky became a sea of fire. A fierce and vindictive scribble of red quick flame ran across it, and the universe was burned away. "And I knew," thought Browning, "now that Judgment had come, that I had chosen this world, its beauty, its knowledge, its good—that, though I often looked above, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... carriage is getting ready I may as well scribble the last day at Rome. And this morning went at eight to the Palazzo Accoramboni, to see the procession of the Corpus Domini, and was disappointed. This Palazzo Accoramboni, in which we were accommodated, belonged to a very rich old ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... more quietly; I'll wait here." Katherine sank down on the lowest stair, while Betty flew back to scribble a note which she laid on Rachel's pillow. Then ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... silent. Talk of making love to a young miss closely watched by governess or guardian—a ward in Chancery—an heiress of expectant thousands! It is but "child's play" to break through the entourage that surrounds one of such. To scribble sonnets and scale walls is but an easy task, compared with the bold effrontery that challenges the passions and prejudices ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... ancestors whose memory I cherish, and I have torn up their work as if it were a scrap of paper covered with a child's meaningless scribble." ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... approaches to the "mark for the prize," if we have a clearer and more desirous view of the yet far-distant goal. "Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty, they shall behold the land that is very far off," must have been addressed to one still "very far" from the promised land. Thus I scribble to thee the musings with which, in my now shady allotment, I try to encourage myself to hope; and which perhaps are as incorrect as the lament which the beautiful spring will sometimes prompt, "With the year seasons ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... the writing tables covered with blue cloth, was empty, as it usually is, and I flung myself down to scribble a note—an apology for not keeping ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... Reason before you let your good friends slip from you. I'll give you a chance to consider what you are doing, (turns up to bureau —aloud) Squire, I want to scribble a few words to you. (pointing to bureau) May ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... I said I would scribble a few remarks on the subject, and would give them to him in a day or two. I remarked that Mr. Newman had treated these great subjects very briefly, but that I could not be quite so concise ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... Walpole, it is natural to allude to the transactions which took place between him and the unfortunate Chatterton; a text upon which so much calumny and misrepresentation have been embroidered. The periodicals of the day, and the tribe of those "who daily scribble for their daily bread," and for whom Walpole had, perhaps unwisely, frequently expressed his contempt, attacked him bitterly for his inhumanity to genius, and even accused him as the author of the subsequent misfortunes and untimely death of that ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Before I had finished breakfast the next day a telegram arrived, ordering me to go to Falmouth by the earliest possible train on an urgent matter. This necessitated my leaving Plymouth almost before my breakfast was finished. All I could do, therefore, was to scribble him a hasty line, explaining the situation, and urging him to communicate with me at an address I gave him in Falmouth. I also told him that on my return to Plymouth I would look him up, and do all ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... sword of Mars. As for me, I look forward to a quiet life: a quiet little home, a quiet little library full of books, and a little Some one dulce ridentem, dulce loquentem, on t'other side of the fire, as I scribble away at my papers. I am so pleased with this prospect, so utterly contented and happy, that I feel afraid as I think of it, lest it should escape me; and, even to my dearest Hal, am shy of speaking of my happiness. What is ambition to me, with ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sculpture? The Princess Beatrice, has she not done something in the way of designing? The Duke of Edinburgh, he is a musician. And it is in these little excursions into art that the family most truly manifests its bourgeois nature. The sincerest bourgeois are those who scribble little poems and smudge little canvases in the intervals between an afternoon reception and a dinner-party. The amateur artist is always the most inaccessible to ideas; he is always the most fervid admirer of the commonplace. A staid German ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... and watching Thorne scribble his name in several places on her card. "It is Berkeley. The Byrd girls and I always saved a waltz for him to prevent his feeling left out. He don't like to ask girls generally; his one arm makes it look ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... reply, Dan chimed in. "I've just been telling her," he said, "that little heads like hers can't contain books. It's all very well to scribble a little for pastime, and all that, but she mustn't seriously imagine she can do that sort of work. She'll only do herself harm. Literature ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... And Tabby, whom you have absolutely fascinated, talks a great deal more nonsense about your ladyship than I care to repeat. It is now so dark that, notwithstanding the singular property of seeing in the night-time, which the young ladies at Roe Head used to attribute to me, I can scribble ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... open. His eyes blazed, but his hands were steady. The soldier held out a receipt book and a pencil, and Kirby took time to scribble his initials in the proper place. Warrington, humming to himself, began to squeeze the rain out of his tunic to hide impatience. The soldier saluted, faced about and hurried to the waiting car. Then Kirby read the telegram. He nodded to Warrington. Warrington, his finger-ends pressed tight into ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... of Orleans, And when I was dawdling and dreaming Over the ways and means Of answering, the power was denied me, Fate frowned and took her stand; I have your unanswered letter Here in my hand. This—in your famous scribble, It was ever a cryptic fist, Cuneiform or Chaldaic Meanings ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... commonplace as the rest of us. Vain of trivial things all the first half of her life, and still vain of them at seventy and recording them with naive satisfaction—even rescuing some early rhymes of hers of the sort that we all scribble in the innocent days of our youth—rescuing them and printing them without pity or apology, just as the weakest and commonest of us do in our gray age. More—she still frankly admires them; and in her introduction of them profanely confers upon ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... away were the rifle that would have put him out of his misery, and the water-bottle that would have alleviated his pain—to the extent, at any rate, of enabling him to think clearly and perhaps scribble a few words in blood or something, somehow, for Lucille ... Lucille! Would the All-Merciful let him see her once again for a moment in return for an extra thousand years of Hell or whatever it was that unhappy mortals ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... may get. And, although it is the very key to prosperity and success in common life, but few know any thing about it. Unfortunately for our people, so soon as their children learn to read a Chapter in the New Testament, and scribble a miserable hand, they are pronounced to have "Learning enough"; and taken away from School, no use to themselves, nor community. This is apparent in our Public Meetings, and Official Church Meetings; of the great number of men present, there ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... letter to her father It was now near the close of the short winter day. Her interview with the detective had occupied her so long that she had barely time to scribble and send off the few urgent lines with which the reader is already acquainted. Then she dined and resigned herself to repose for the remainder of ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... had not been informed it was concocted by Europe's pet philosopher, would infallibly conclude some unfortunate lunatic had given birth to it. That there is no creature now tenanting Bedlam who would or could scribble purer nonsense about God than this of Newton's, we are well convinced—for how could the most frenzied of brains imagine anything more repugnant to every principle of good sense than a self-existent, eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent Being, ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... more than 6 copies, and tell me if I put you to any additional expence, by printing with you. I have no thought of the kind, and in that case, must reimburse you. My epistle is a model of unconnectedness, but I have no partic: subject to write on, and must proportion my scribble in some degree to the increase of postage. It is not quite fair, considering how burdensome your correspondence from different quarters must be, to add to it with so little shew of reason. I will make an end for this evening. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... books, and when he actually gave up his share of the water we used to take together, that his contribution to the rent might go for rare editions and bindings. After this deplorable change of character we naturally saw each other less, but we were still friendly. I went up to town to scribble; Allen stayed on at Oxford. One day I chanced to go into Blocksby's rooms; it was a Friday, I remember—there was to be a great sale on the Monday. There I met Allen in ecstasies over one of the books displayed in the ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... people were governed much as they are now, and since A.D. 67 have published a daily Peking Gazette, of which (thanks to our intelligent "host of the Garter," Mr. Janssen) we have secured a copy. We are all but of yesterday compared to the Heathen Chinee, and it is impossible to sit down and scribble glibly of such a people. In Japan there is no record. It is a new race appearing almost for the first time among civilized nations. It has given the world nothing, but how widely different here! It is to China the world owes the compass, ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... with his associate, Poe would continue to scribble away with his pencil, as if writing, and when his visitor jestingly remonstrated with him on his want of politeness, he replied that he had been all attention, and proved that he had by suitable comment, ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... professions; but he could not give up his mind to anything but drawing,—as annoying to his father as Galileo's experiments were to his parent; as unmeaning to him as Gibbon's History was to George III.,—"Scribble, scribble, scribble; Mr. Gibbon, I perceive, sir, you are always a-scribbling." No perception of a new power, no sympathy with the abandonment to a specialty not indorsed by fashions and traditions, but without which abandonment genius ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... into doggerel, and desecrated the spot by the following impromptu, which, as he had the delicacy not to scribble on Camoen's Cave, I transcribe for ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... that I should be sitting at that desk with a Cabinet Minister, a Field-Marshal, two high Government officials, and a French General watching me, while from the scribble of a dead man I was trying to drag a secret which meant life or death ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... grow short-breathed or accuse us passionately of reading ahead, we would, on the slightest provocation, out-Fletcher Fletcher chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy. And we would underline and bracket and side-line and overline the ragged little paper volume, and scribble up and down its margins, and dream over its ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... you each a copy, bound in the handsomest manner. It does not become a man of my rank to scribble, but I do it only to serve the publishers, who are ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... know whether you lent me or gave me M. Taine's beautiful book. In the uncertainty I am returning it to you. Here I have had only the time to read a part of it, and at Nohant, I shall have only the time to scribble for Buloz; but when I return, in two months, I shall ask you again for this admirable work of which the scope ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... myself. I want to suggest something to you. You may laugh, old boy—but I'm in earnest. I remember you're telling me once that, when you were up at the 'Varsity, you used to scribble a bit. I didn't pay much attention; in those days one didn't pay attention—ever. But now your words have come back to me once or twice, during the night, when I've been seeing dream pictures in my reading lamp and the ward has been asleep. Have you thought that possibly that is the line along which ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... quietly in a chair without table or note paper and are satisfied to scribble an occasional note on some scrap of paper they seem to have picked up by accident. Clarence Darrow got more out of this easy going method than any man I ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... more probable," said Egbert; "well, let's collaborate on this letter of thanks and get it done. I'll dictate, and you can scribble it down. 'Dear Mrs. Froplinson—thank you and your husband so much for the very pretty calendar you sent us. It was very good of ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... letter and read it to the end, to the last scribble on the margin: "You should have married a girl like Winny Dymond." "It was a lie what I told you once about her." "You needn't be afraid of being fond of Baby." There was nothing evocative, nothing significant for him in these phrases, not even in the names. His mind had no longer any grip ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... was six, as we have seen, he had already begun his musical studies. If not sitting at the piano, he would scribble notes—for he had learned without instruction how to write them long before he knew the letters of the alphabet, or rudiments of writing. His small hands were a source of trouble to him, and he resorted to all kinds ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... hours, he worked only at night and he smoked "all the time." If towards morning he felt somewhat faint he would refresh himself with crusts of bread soaked in cold water, thus imitating to a certain extent our William Ptynne, who would from time to time momentarily suspend his interminable scribble to recruit exhausted nature with a moistened crust; only the verbose author of "Histriomastix" used to dip his crusts in Strong ale. And the bitter old pamphleteer, for all that his ears had been cropped and his cheeks branded by the Star Chamber, lived to be nearly ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... leaves—then my eye caught a counterfoil where I had chanced to open it. It was not in Miss Sharp's handwriting, although this was the house cheque-book which Burton usually keeps, but in my own and there was written, just casually as I scribble in my private account.—"For Suzette 5000 francs" and the date of last Saturday—and on turning the page there was the further one of "For Suzette 3000 francs" and the ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... of thy letters at once before me to answer; in each of which thou complainest of my silence; and in one of them tallest me, that thou canst not live without I scribble to thee every day, or every other ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... table, with a blank sheet of paper before him, Bob made ready to scribble at high speed, while Herb held a watch to time him. As for Jimmy, he was content to curl up on a sofa and act the ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... on that account. I scribble away so long as it goes. When it no longer goes, others take my place and do the same. When Conrad Bolz, the grain of wheat, has been crushed in the great mill, other grains fall on the stones until the flour ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... but I rather guess there's more headache in the stories than there is in the stitches, because you don't have to think quite so hard while your foot's going as you do when your fingers is at work, scratch, scratch, scratch, scribble, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... art of dance have I Gone as far as Raumer quite In the art of letters—can he Scribble better than ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... you believe that you are dearer to me than the whole world beside, and yet neglect yourself? If you do not, you wrong a perfect friendship; and if you do, you must consider my interest in you, and preserve yourself to make me happy. Promise me this, or I shall haunt you worse than she does me. Scribble how you please, so you make your letter long enough; you see I give you good example; besides, I can assure you we do perfectly agree if you receive not satisfaction but from my letters, I have none ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... men, that are in love, do thus; what can the unlearned Notary's do less? Even nothing else, but when they are writing, scribble up a multiplicity of several words, unnecessary clauses, and make long periods; not so much as touching or mentioning the principal business; and if he does, writes it clear contrary to the intent of the party ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... snatched the roll out of their hands. They feared lest I should tear it or throw it overboard; so they tried to stay me and scare me, but I signed to them that i could write, whereat all marvelled, saying, "We never yet saw an, ape write." And the Captain cried, "Let him write; and if he scribble and scrabble we will kick him out and kill him; but if he; write fair and scholarly I will adopt him as my son; for surely I never yet saw a more intelligent and well mannered monkey than he. Would Heaven my real son were his match in morals and manners." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... were not all like the Duke of Gloucester, who, when Gibbon brought him the second volume of the Decline and Fall, 'received him with much good nature and affability, saying to him, as he laid the quarto on the table, "Another d——d thick, square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon?"' Best's Memorials, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... worry, that is simply his way. I am sure he didn't mean to alarm you. I am just going to scribble a note before dinner, while that is being done," she added, and went into her own room, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... Evelyn—at that very moment I was, perhaps, sitting innocently by his side. We used to scribble our letters together, sitting out in the woods, and break off every few minutes to laugh and chatter. Probably, after it was finished, we walked together to the nearest post, and as we went he looked ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... now. They were sort of blurred to him, but I described them and he told me who they were. "That's a girl o' mine," he said, with reference to one—a jolly, good-looking bush girl. "I got a letter from her yesterday. I managed to scribble something, but I'll get you, if you don't mind, to write something more I want to put in on another piece of paper, and address ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... really take my pen to scribble a little before I set off. The Gentlemen are just set off to the races, and I am preparing to set off ...
— Journal of a Young Lady of Virginia, 1782 • Lucinda Lee Orr
... was addressed to her husband in a pencil scrawl. "A congratulation for you," she said to Quisante. He glanced carelessly and languidly at it, murmuring, "Read it to me, please," and she broke open the sealed envelope. Inside the writing was as negligent a scribble as on the outside, the writing of a man in bed, with a stump of pencil. Old Mr. Foster wrote better when he was up and abroad, so much better that Quisante's tired eyes had not marked the hand for his. "Read it out to me," said Quisante, his ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... fountain,"—"A wounded spirit,"—"An appointed time."—Ib. (2.) Words of a participial appearance, formed from nouns by adding ed; as, "The eve thy sainted mother died."—W. Scott. "What you write of me, would make me more conceited, than what I scribble myself."—Pope. (3.) Participles, or participial adjectives, reversed in sense by the prefix un; as, unaspiring, unavailing, unbelieving, unbattered, uninjured, unbefriended. (4.) Words of a participial form construed elliptically, as if they were nouns; as, "Among ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... finishing this letter and am still going on. It seems to me that nothing matters and yet I scribble verses. I don't read them to Mariana and she is not very anxious to hear them, but you have sometimes praised my poor attempts and most of all you'll keep them to yourself. I have been struck by a common phenomenon in ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... end, when the Germans were driving you from Ghent to Bruges, and from Bruges to Ostend and from Ostend to Dunkirk, you could not sit down to write your impressions, even if you were cold-blooded enough to want to. It was as much as you could do to scribble the merest note of what happened ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... occurrences had shaken down in Aurora's mind, Gerald's letter, which she from time to time re-read, impressed her as a most gentle and reasonable production of his pen, while her own letter, preserved in the original scribble, appeared to her horrid, cutting, ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... Durban office, and there was Colles' signature. But the pencilling was in a different hand. My deduction from this was that some one wished to send me a message, and that Colles had given that some one a sheet of signed paper to serve as a kind of introduction. I might take it, therefore, that the scribble was Colles' reply to ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... Scribble, an attorney's clerk, who tries to get married to Polly Honeycombe, a silly, novel-struck girl, but well off. He is happily foiled in his scheme, and Polly is saved from the consequences of a most unsuitable match.—G. Colman, the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... the contrary, I hate you. You are a wicked creature, very inconsistent, very stupid, very silly. You do not write to me. You do not love your husband. You know how much pleasure your letters would afford, and you do not write to him even six lines, which you can readily scribble out." ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... beginning to feel as if publishers had a code of signals or private marks like freemasonry, which they scribble sometimes, like the concealed marks on bank-notes, on the first page of a manuscript, so as to spare their brother publishers the trouble of looking through a manuscript which is below market value. I have never ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... hers—withdrew it sharply—flung himself into a seat beside the table, and began to scribble on the back of Virgie's rumpled pass; while the child stood watching, trusting, with the simple trust of ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... for October delivery at $1.43 7/8 per bushel. It's that fellow down there with the blazing red tie half way up his collar. He hits out with both hands at the air as he yells. A surge of buyers overwhelms him. They scribble notes upon their sales cards and go at ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... with this author for doing mischief to religion, is to strew his bed with roses; he will reply in triumph, that this was his design; and I am loth to mortify him, by asserting he hath done none at all. For I never yet saw so poor an atheistical scribble, which would not serve as a twig for sinking libertines to catch at. It must be allowed in their behalf, that the faith of Christians is not as a grain of mustard seed in comparison of theirs, which can remove such mountains of absurdities, and submit with so entire ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... reach of his hand. He took a pencil, drew a writing-pad toward him and began to scribble a few characters. But he ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... tell me if I put you to any additional expence, by printing with you. I have no thought of the kind, and in that case, must reimburse you. My epistle is a model of unconnectedness, but I have no partic: subject to write on, and must proportion my scribble in some degree to the increase of postage. It is not quite fair, considering how burdensome your correspondence from different quarters must be, to add to it with so little shew of reason. I will make an end ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... help of Fortune, the punctual goddess stepped down from the machine. One of the Princess's ladies begged to enter; a man, it appeared, had brought a line for the Freiherr von Gondremark. It proved to be a pencil billet, which the crafty Greisengesang had found the means to scribble and despatch under the very guns of Otto; and the daring of the act bore testimony to the terror of the actor. For Greisengesang had but one influential motive: fear. The note ran thus: "At the first council, procuration to be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with the Moorish coast low on our starboard horizon. To Mr. Fett and Mr. Badcock this meant nothing, and my father might have left them to their ignorance had he not in the course of the forenoon caught them engaged upon a silly piece of mischief, which was, to scribble on small sheets of paper various affecting narratives—as that the Gauntlet was sinking, or desperately attacked by pirates, in such and such a latitude and longitude—insert them in empty bottles, and ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... very happy in paraphrasing them, it is my opinion, both of them, without giving the least preference to either, should be read alternately in your schools, as the tutor shall direct. Pardon, learned Sir, this scribble to my age and weakness, both which are very great, and command me wherein I may ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... this morning and I beat him, four out of five. We're in the lab now. He's watching me scribble this. His thumb and forefinger are twitching in fury. He looks like some great white spider ...
— Competition • James Causey
... the purao. Now they would write a word or two, now scribble it out; now they would sit biting at the pencil end and staring seaward; now their eyes would rest on the clerk, where he sat propped on the canoe, leering and coughing, his pencil ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... if that hungry Mahmoud died; But this I know—he must have versified, For, with his race, from better still to worse, The plague of writing follows like a curse; And men will scribble though they fail to dine, Which is the Moral of ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... something, and she liked to hear him talk of the ways in which he meant to show it. He talked of them almost to no one else—she spoiled him for other listeners. With her fair bloom and her quiet grace she was indeed an ideal public, and if she had ever confided to him that she would have liked to scribble (she had in fact not mentioned it to a creature), he would have been in a perfect position for asking her why a woman whose face had so much expression should not have felt that she achieved. How in the world ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... unkind, because it was not just, and that I put him upon contradicting me, which did not consist with good manners, any more than with his affection; and therefore, since I had insensibly drawn him into this poetical scribble, he begged I would not oblige him to break it off; ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... qualified for this work. A certain degree of literary proficiency was required for the task. The centuries during which the papacy rose to the zenith of its power are notorious for the illiteracy of the masses. It was considered a remarkable achievement even for a nobleman to be able to scribble his name. Among those who possessed the ability few had the inclination and persistency necessary for the effort to transcribe the Bible. The cloisters of those days were the chief seats of learning and centers of lower education, ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... curtain was going down on the first act. The audience stared steadily at us with and without opera-glasses. I suppose people thought that we were members of some royal family. As the performance was not interesting and I was tired, we left at an early hour. I scribble this off to you ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... had been made, weather permitting; I had merely to telephone the caterers, electricians, and musicians, and scribble these invitations. I'd advise you to arrange your day to include a good long nap before dinner, for you'll be up till all hours very likely. I fancy I can ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... but he had always taken an interest in sculpture and painting, and he had said before Rodney was born that he would like to have a son a sculptor. And he waited for the little boy to show some signs of artistic aptitude. He pondered every scribble the boy made, and scribbles that any child at the same age could have done filled him with admiration. But when Rodney was fourteen he remodelled some leaves that had failed to please an important customer; and his father was overcome with joy, and felt that his hopes were about to be realised. ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... visit the prisoners "para un momento." As the gates were thrown open Stuart advanced and met me, grasping my hand cordially, and slipping a letter up the sleeve of my coat. He had caught sight of me labouring up the hill, and had immediately hastened to scribble a few lines which he trusted to my sympathy with misfortune to smuggle to their destination for him. He was not mistaken, and in so doing I had no qualm of conscience. I accompanied him to his cell, and he told me the story of the capture of the San Margarita. It was substantially as ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... case of a surprise. The High Lama explained the different images to me, and threw handfuls of rice over them as he called them by their respective names, all of which I tried hard to remember, but, alas! before I could get back to the serai and scribble them down on paper, they had all escaped my memory. A separate entrance led from the monastery ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... girls stood together in groups and superciliously regarded the ranks of humble wall-flowers. Suddenly a half-dozen would dash down upon a young man, beg him simultaneously for an eighth of a waltz, and scribble hieroglyphics on their fans. Alan Rush was the belle, and no girl was allowed to have more than a fourth of him at a time. Once the girls left the room in a body, returning, with mumbled excuses, after the music for the next dance had been ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... to the door and opens it. Frank sits down in Vivie's chair to scribble a note]. My dear ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... confided to me, "to scribble a testimonial to Lemonbeer. It will kind of break the spell, and it wouldn't be Maurice if he didn't turn out a perfect gem of literary composition. I know my Lemonbeer is really good and I know that Maurice is extremely appreciative. Maurice is under a spell. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... received your brief epistle; and, to take vengeance on your laziness, I have, you see, taken a long sheet of writing-paper, and have begun at the top of the page, intending to scribble on to the ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... meant but fools. In search of wit these lose their common sense, And then turn critics in their own defence: Each burns alike, who can, or cannot write, 30 Or with a rival's, or an eunuch's spite. All fools have still an itching to deride, And fain would be upon the laughing side; If Maevius scribble in Apollo's spite, There are who judge still worse than he ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... Rantremly helpless from an attack of paralysis. The physicians say that only his eyes seemed alive, and they were filled with a great fear, and indeed that is not to be wondered at, after his wicked, wicked life. His right hand was but partially disabled, and with that he tried to scribble something which proved indecipherable. And so he died, and those who attended him at his last moments say that if ever a soul had a taste of future punishment before it left this earth, it was the soul of Lord Rantremly as it shone through ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... went?" repeated she. "I went to get your M. Gaudissart out of a fix. He wants some music for a ballet, and you are hardly fit to scribble on sheets of paper and do your work, dearie.—So I understood, things being so, that a M. Garangeot was to be asked to set ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... the rest of us. Vain of trivial things all the first half of her life, and still vain of them at seventy and recording them with naive satisfaction—even rescuing some early rhymes of hers of the sort that we all scribble in the innocent days of our youth—rescuing them and printing them without pity or apology, just as the weakest and commonest of us do in our gray age. More—she still frankly admires them; and in her introduction ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... under the pseudonym of "Uncle Scribble," contributed to the pages of the Sporting Magazine an admirable series of photographs—to adopt a modern word—of hunting and hunting men, as remarkable for dry wit and common sense, as a thorough knowledge of sport. But "Uncle Scribble," as the ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... your best; do not be dismayed; you will only be surprised, and when the shock is over you will smile at your fear." And as he thought thus the whole sky became a sea of fire. A fierce and vindictive scribble of red quick flame ran across it, and the universe was burned away. "And I knew," thought Browning, "now that Judgment had come, that I had chosen this world, its beauty, its knowledge, its good—that, though I often looked above, yet to renounce utterly the beauty ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... be at fault, If e'er I chance to scribble dope, If that my metre ever halt, I err in ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... and reach Brussels without being arrested. When they met in prison they had so little time to discuss such details, in face of the one awful fact that he was there, and was in all probability going to die in two days. But from this incomplete, tear-stained scribble that he left behind and from the answers he gave to her few questions, she gathered that the story of his ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... to grace my dull page, At the sight of reward, she flies off in a rage; Prayers, threats, and intreaties I frequently try, But she leaves me to scribble, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various
... drop; Even Radcliffe's doctors travel first to France, Nor dare to practise till they've learned to dance. Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile? (Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile;) But those who cannot write, and those who can, All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man. Yet, Sir, reflect, the mischief is not great; These madmen never hurt the church or state: Sometimes the folly benefits mankind; And rarely avarice taints the tuneful mind. Allow him but his plaything of a pen, He ne'er rebels, or plots, like other men: Flight of cashiers, or ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... gives in English the regulations under which it is issued. A passport must be applied for, for reasons of "health, botanical research, or scientific investigation." Its bearer must not light fires in woods, attend fires on horseback, trespass on fields, enclosures, or game-preserves, scribble on temples, shrines, or walls, drive fast on a narrow road, or disregard notices of "No thoroughfare." He must "conduct himself in an orderly and conciliating manner towards the Japanese authorities and people;" he "must produce his passport ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... and it again consumed some of the next day's leisure, part of it being written between schools in the forbidden class-room. Still it was not quite finished on Friday afternoon at six, when school ended, and Eric stayed a few minutes behind the rest to scribble off the last ten lines; which done, he banged down the lid of his desk, not locking ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... practise till they've learned to dance. Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile? (Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile) But those who cannot write, and those who can, All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man. Yet, sir, reflect, the mischief is not great; These madmen never hurt the Church or State; Sometimes the folly benefits mankind; And rarely av'rice taints the tuneful mind. Allow him but his plaything of a pen, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... die, we ask? There must be a final cause, a purpose for each death of every son of man, or the fact would be altogether hideous—a scribble without a meaning—a skeleton without a soul. Why did he die? "I became dumb, I opened not my mouth; for it was Thy doing." So says the Burial Psalm. So let us say likewise. "I became dumb:" not with rage, not with despair; but because it was Thy doing, and therefore it was done well. ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... short, spasmodic dream I had one evening in a steamer chair, of what I imagined was to happen on our coming voyage, I started to scribble; and following the fantastic idea in the vision, I shall adopt the abbreviated name of The Cork, for our good ship—although some of the passengers preferred to call her The Corker, as she was big and ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... heroine, and there will be no logical development at all, which my English teacher insists is an elemental requirement of fiction if it isn't of life. I thought this summer I was going to begin some sort of book just for practice, but by the time I get through putting down the things I scribble about the day's doings, and write to Father and send my weekly letter to Mother and the girls, and run off something every now and then to Billy, and answer the notes I get from Whythe and some of the kiddies around here who think they're grown, I don't feel like writing ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... As to the old story, scribble till two, then walk for exercise till four. Deil hae it else, for company eats up the afternoon, so nothing can be done that is not ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... wait for some other time." They were sitting near a table where a pencil and some loose leaves of paper lay. He pulled his chair a little closer, and, with the child still upon his knee, began to scribble and sketch at random. "Ah, there's San Miniato," he said, with a glance from the window. "Must get its outline in. You've heard how there came to be a church up there? No? Well, it shows the sort of man San Miniato ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... old now, and had actually learned how to scribble pretty fast. She was very proud of this, for Milly could ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... explanation of the mystery soon came. After he sat down, ghastly pale, almost painfully panting after this tremendous effort, Mr. Gladstone tarried a little to recover himself—to say a few words to Mr. John Morley—to scribble a note. At last he rose, and then came the moment for which those silent Irish Benches had been waiting. With one accord, with one quick and simultaneous spring, the Irish members were on their feet—hats and handkerchiefs were waved; there was the suggestion ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... living, might have managed to attend both. But the young minister couldn't think of such a thing. The loveliest flower of maidenhood in his parish had been cut down. One of the first families had been bereaved. Day and night he must ponder and scribble to prepare a suitable discourse. And then, having exhausted spiritual grace in bedecking the tomb of the lovely, should he,—good gracious! could he descend from those heights of beauty and purity to the grave of a superannuated negro? Could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... letter, having caught the second post, lay on the hall table—poor Betty Flanders writing her son's name, Jacob Alan Flanders, Esq., as mothers do, and the ink pale, profuse, suggesting how mothers down at Scarborough scribble over the fire with their feet on the fender, when tea's cleared away, and can never, never say, whatever it may be—probably this—Don't go with bad women, do be a good boy; wear your thick shirts; and come back, come back, come back ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... green-baize-covered table, on the one side of which were some eight or ten miserable beings who were then undergoing examination, and were supplied with pens, ink, blotting-pad, and large sheets of thin "scribble-paper," on which they were struggling to impress their ideas; or else had a book set ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... in possession of it, would he bring it of his own accord to be tried at Westminster? We who write, if we want the talents [talent], yet have the excuse that we do it for a poor subsistence; but what can be urged in their defence, who, not having the vocation of poverty to scribble, out of mere wantonness take pains to make themselves ridiculous? Horace was certainly in the right where he said, "That no man is satisfied with his own condition." A poet is not pleased, because he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... of broad smiles. He knew that he was an object of ridicule and this tended to sour his disposition even more, rough and bad as it had formerly been. They would purposely hand him the papers upside down to see his efforts to read them, and wherever he found a blank space he would scribble a lot of pothooks which rather fitly passed for his signature. The natives mocked while they paid him. He swallowed his pride and made the collections, but was in such a state of mind that he had no respect for any one. He even came ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... think I had the luxury of choosing for myself? Every day, about eleven o'clock a small boy brings me my fate on a slip of paper. Let me dictate this to you. I'm sure you can't read that penciled scribble." ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... answered, 'By Nanty Ewart,' for he remembered seeing that person scribble something with a pencil, although he was not well enough to observe with accuracy where or upon what. But not knowing what suspicions, or what worse consequences the seamen's interest in his affairs might draw upon him, he judged it ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... puny critics, who scatter their peevish strictures in private circles, and scribble at every author who has the eminence of being unconnected with them, as they are usually spleen-swoln from a vain idea of increasing their consequence, there will always be found a petulance and illiberality in their remarks, which should place them as far beneath ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... immortality must rest on the gossip which departed spirits utter in dark rooms through the mouths of hypnotized business mediums, and our deepest personality comes to light when we scribble disconnected phrases in automatic writing. Is life then really ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... incessant, mayst thou blot, A lively, trifling, pert, one knows not what! Form thy light Measures, nimbler than the Wind, Whilst heavy lingring Sense is left behind; With all thy Might pursue, and all thy Will, That unabating Thirst, to scribble still, Giv'n at thy Birth! the Poetaster's Gust, False and unsated ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... Edward a ride of two hours yesterday on Calvert's pony, and he is improving fast in horsemanship. The school appears to answer very well. We shall have the Governess in a day or two, which will be a great satisfaction. Will you send my Mother this scribble with my love; and ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... room, in which he was to be shut up to study. It contained only a bed and a table on which were a large book and writing materials. Crab seated himself at the table and did nothing but turn over the leaves of the book and scribble the paper so that the servants who brought him his food thought him a great man. They were the ones who had stolen the ring, and from the severe glances that the peasant cast at them whenever they entered, they began to fear ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... sphere on earth for an inexperienced mind to exercise the poetic faculty is in epitaphiology. It does very well in copy-books, but it is most unfair to blot the resting-place of the dead with unskilled poetic scribble. It seems to me that the owners of cemeteries and graveyards should keep in their own hand the right to refuse inappropriate ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... PHILLIMORE. It amuses me to hear these two clever Counsel, in this natural and ecclesiastical fog, carrying on an animated legal conversation with each other, ignoring the Bishops; not that the latter seem to mind, as they scribble merrily away at their folios. Are their Right Reverend Lordships engaged in writing their ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... sign manual; autograph, monograph, holograph; hand, fist. calligraphy; good hand, running hand, flowing hand, cursive hand, legible hand, bold hand. cacography^, griffonage^, barbouillage^; bad hand, cramped hand, crabbed hand, illegible hand; scribble &c v.; pattes de mouche [Fr.]; ill-formed letters; pothooks and hangers. stationery; pen, quill, goose quill; pencil, style; paper, foolscap, parchment, vellum, papyrus, tablet, slate, marble, pillar, table; blackboard; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... that a William was one of the earliest recorded burials in the registers of St. Margaret's, Westminster. "William Shakespeare was buried April 30, 1539." A comparatively modern hand has written against this the foolish scribble, "Query if this be the poet or not?" He may have been in the service of the Court, but there are no signs that he was a man of wealth. In the churchwardens' account[312] he was only charged 2d. for the candles at his ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... ruefully around as she followed Mrs. Cameron, the younger, up the three flights of stairs to Marian's door, which did not open to the assured knock, nor yet yield to the gentle pressure. Marian was out, and there was no alternative but for Katy to scribble a few lines upon the card she left upon the knob, telling Marian who had been there, and requesting her to call that evening at No. —— Fifth Avenue, as the elder Mrs. Cameron was particularly anxious to see her before ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... for poetry, and taught the lad to scribble rhymes. Very proud was the boy's mother, and very carefully did she preserve ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... thy dexter eye, They hate thee with a bitter spite, But scribble since thou must, or die, Take tip the pen, ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... don't scrawl you a line of some sort I know you will begin to fancy that I neglect you, in spite of all I said last time we met. You can hardly fancy it possible, I dare say, that I cannot find a quarter of an hour to scribble a note in; but when a note is written it is to be carried a mile to the post, and consumes nearly an hour, which is a large portion of the day. Mr. and Mrs. White have been gone a week. I heard from them this morning; they are now at Hexham. No time ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... villainous that it was enough of itself to arouse the dislike of a healthy-minded young fellow such as Marcy; but, moreover, the Pole had habits of sneaking about the vessel, and afterwards retiring to quiet corners, where he would scribble in a pocket notebook. Such conduct as this in a man whose position corresponded with that of a common seaman on an ordinary vessel, seemed contrary to discipline and good conduct, and he mentioned the matter to ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... of time the actuating causes were somewhat blurred in perspective. The main facts stood forth clear enough, but the underlying details were misty and uncertain, like some half-obliterated scribble on a badly rubbed slate upon which a more important sum has been overlaid. One rendition had it that the firm of Stackpole Brothers sued the two Tatums—Harve and Jess—for an account long overdue, and won judgment in the courts, but won with it the murderous enmity of the defendant ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... particulars how I passed my life when I was absent from MD this time; and so I tell you now that I dined to-day at Molesworth's, the Florence Envoy, then went to the Coffee-house, where I behaved myself coldly enough to Mr. Addison, and so came home to scribble. We dine together to-morrow and next day by invitation; but I shall alter my behaviour to him, till he begs my pardon, or else we shall grow bare acquaintance. I am weary of friends; and friendships ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... less of a flatterer, and speak the simple truth. I desire now to look over with you my compositions of the last few days. I wish you, however, always to remember that when you write, you do so to add to the fame of your nation and to the honor of your fatherland. For myself, I scribble for my amusement; and I could easily be pardoned, if I were wise enough to burn my work as soon as it was finished. [Footnote: The king's own words.— Oeuvres Posthumes.] When a man approaches his fortieth year and ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... letter. The "Night Piece," to which you refer me, I meant fully to have noticed; but the fact is, I come so fluttering and languid from business, tired with thoughts of it, frightened with fears of it, that when I get a few minutes to sit down and scribble (an action of the hand now seldom natural to me,—I mean voluntary pen-work), I lose all presential memory of what I had intended to say, and say what I can, talk about Vincent Bourne or any casual image, instead of that which I had meditated (by the way, I mast look ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... intervention Bellairs had seemed uneasy, and at this new attack he began (in his turn) to scribble a note between the bids. I imagined, naturally enough, that it would go to Captain Trent; but when it was done and the writer turned and looked behind him in the crowd, to my unspeakable amazement, he did not seem to remark the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... received the intimation that a palaver was beginning, and that a fight was imminent, she would not be ready, and would resort to stratagem: she would seize a large sheet of paper and scribble some words—any words—upon it and add some splashes of sealing—wax to make it look important. This she would despatch by a swift runner to the chiefs, and by the time they had discussed the mysterious official—looking ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... clever fellow, Dick, but even you can't wash out the writing on the wall," philosophized the patient, from behind his bandage, "nor scribble anew on the tablet of Fate, which is hung round the neck of every man. If the old hag meant me to be blind, she'd fixed me all ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... of the Sea and Waves of Love. I'm awfully fond of the theatre, but I never write anything about that. For anyhow the play is written by a poet and one can read it if one wants to, and one just sees the rest anyhow. I can't make out what Dora finds such a lot to scribble about always the day after we've been to the theatre. I expect she's in love with one of the actors and that's why she writes such a lot. Besides we in the second class did not get tickets for all the performances, but only ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... And this is what happens to most of us. We are not effectively coerced to learn: we stave off punishment as far as we can by lying and trickery and guessing and using our wits; and when this does not suffice we scribble impositions, or suffer extra imprisonments—"keeping in" was the phrase in my time—or let a master strike us with a cane and fall back on our pride at being able to hear it physically (he not being allowed to hit us too hard) ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... begun to scribble rhyme, I tell ye wut, I hain't ben foolin'; The parson's books, life, death, an' time Hev took some trouble with my schoolin'; 20 Nor th' airth don't git put out with me, Thet love her 'z though she wuz a woman; Why, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... matter, Rose." His eyes darkened with memory—with the sort of memory that hurts more to forget than even to remember. "Do you realize that I am sixteen years older than you are?" he said a little hurriedly as if he were trying to scribble the memory over with ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... remembered her letter to her father It was now near the close of the short winter day. Her interview with the detective had occupied her so long that she had barely time to scribble and send off the few urgent lines with which the reader is already acquainted. Then she dined and resigned herself to repose for ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... or next day," he replied. "Just as soon as we can get our teams organized. Just scribble me a temporary permit, will you?" He offered a fountain pen and a ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... received Mrs. Vostrand's card at his studio in Boston, and learned from the scribble which covered it that she was with her daughter at the Hotel Vendome. He went at once to see them there, and was met, almost before the greetings were past, with ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the conversation into a less disagreeable channel — But, lest you should think my scribble as tedious as Mrs Tabby's clack, I shall not add another word, but that I ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... feet thick, I noticed a mangy leopard skin on the floor. I had no Spanish. The shop-keeper had no English. But I was an adept at sign language. I wanted to know where I should go to buy leopard skins. On my scribble- pad I drew the interesting streets of a city. Then I drew a small shop, which, after much effort, I persuaded the proprietor into recognising as his shop. Next, I indicated in my drawing that on the many streets there were many ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... proceeds very leisurely; I find the subject dry and uninteresting, and the materials scarce worth arranging: yet I think I shall execute my purpose, at least as far as relates to painters. It is a work I can scribble at any time, and on which I shall bestow little pains; things that are so soon forgotten should not take one up too much. I had consulted Mr. Lethinkai, who told me he had communicated to Mr. Vertue what observations he had made. I believe they were scanty, for I find small ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... commonplace," snapped my lady. "They chatter and scribble; they don't feel. They write stanzas of 'gush' on Maternity; and tear the little bleating calf from its mother to bleed to death in a long, slow agony. They maunder twaddle about Infancy over some ugly red lump of human flesh, in whose creation their vanity happens to be involved; and then ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... collapsed state, and I remember a cheery doctor injecting something into my wrist. I then lay on a stretcher awaiting further transportation. My good servant Smith somehow discovered my whereabouts, and turned up at this hospital. He sat beside me and gave me a writing-pad to scribble a note on. I scrawled a line to my mother to say I had been knocked out, but was perfectly all right. Smith went back to the battalion, and I lay on the stretcher, partially asleep. Night came on and I went off into a series of agonizing dreams. I awoke ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... and smiled fixedly, and watched the other girls dance. Or I talked with great animation to the chaperons. Ann, I've felt sometimes that I would gladly die, to have the boys crowd around me just once, and grab my card and scribble their names all over it. I didn't dress very well, or dance very well—and I never could talk to boys." She began to trace a little watercourse in the sand with an exquisite finger tip. "I was the most unhappy girl on earth, I think! I felt every birthday was a separate ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... better by a second Grand Jury. The second jury accompanied its rejection of the bill by a presentment against the patent,[4] and the defeat of the "prerogative" became assured. Every where the Drapier was acclaimed the saviour of his country. Any person who could scribble a doggerel or indite a tract rushed into print, and now Whitshed was harnessed to Wood in a pillory of contemptuous ridicule. Indeed, so bitter was the outcry against the Lord Chief Justice, that it is said ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... body may get. And, although it is the very key to prosperity and success in common life, but few know any thing about it. Unfortunately for our people, so soon as their children learn to read a Chapter in the New Testament, and scribble a miserable hand, they are pronounced to have "Learning enough"; and taken away from School, no use to themselves, nor community. This is apparent in our Public Meetings, and Official Church Meetings; of the great number of men present, there ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... must live A profitable life: some glance along, Rapid and gay, as if the earth were air, And they were butterflies to wheel about Long as the [1] summer lasted: some, as wise, 5 Perched on the forehead of a jutting crag, Pencil in hand and book upon the knee, Will look and scribble, scribble on and look, [2] Until a man might travel twelve stout miles, Or reap an acre of his neighbour's corn. 10 But, for that moping Son of Idleness, Why can he tarry yonder?—In our church-yard Is neither epitaph nor ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... do for you all, now that I am away, and I am not so selfish that I grudge an hour in the day. I know how disappointed one face looks when there is no letter from Bessie in the morning, and so I lay down my book and scribble away as I am ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... went from bad to worse, and swiftly. On the very next afternoon, which was a Sunday, Lionel was about to walk down to Sloane Street, to have a chat and a cup of tea with Mrs. Grey and Nina; but before going he thought he would just have time to scribble a piece of music in an album that Lady Rosamund Bourne had sent him and affix his name thereto. He brought his writing materials to the table and opened the big volume; and he was glancing over the pages (Lady Rosamund had laid some very distinguished people, mostly ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... subjects crossed your mind, you would soon have a skeleton (and that seems to me the difficulty) on which to put the flesh and colours in your inimitable manner. I believe such a book might have a brilliant success, but I did not intend to scribble so ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... boat at Pierre's Portage, fifty miles farther down the river. He had come direct from the creeks, and his impressions of the motley pioneer life at the gold-diggings were so vivid that he had found an isolated corner of the deck where he could scribble them in ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... parish register reveals a remarkable variation in the style and character of the handwriting. We see in the old parchment pages numerous entries recorded in a careless scribble, and others evidently written by the hand of a learned and careful scholar. The rector or vicar ever since the days of Henry VIII, when in 1536 Vicar-General Thomas Cromwell ordered the keeping of registers, ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... horrid dream. Every day I try to overcome the feeling, but I can't succeed. This afternoon I made up my mind to return to our villa and write my diary. The day was lovely, and I meant to enjoy a rest and a scribble, but so strong was the horrid influence of the place that I couldn't settle to anything. I can't describe it, but it seemed to stifle me, and I can only compare it to some second sight in which one sees death. I sat as ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... have been nearly an hour later that a messenger boy handed James a note. It was a hasty scribble ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... each a copy, bound in the handsomest manner. It does not become a man of my rank to scribble, but I do it only to serve the publishers, who are ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... wont to scribble on many sheets of paper so as to put himself in a mood for work, Des Esseintes felt the necessity of steadying his hand by several initial and unimportant experiments. Desiring to create heliotrope, he took down bottles of vanilla and almond, then changed his idea and decided ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... from the House of Commons—which, if your Lordship can read, I do not think I now could, such was the haste of scribble—Sheridan threw out the menace which the papers state, with Pitt's answer; the comment on which is, in the mouth of Opposition: "Pray, for God's sake, don't put a question, and urge it to a division, which will ruin our ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... therein, that they pass from schools to the Universities and return from thence (some of them) more unable to write true English, than either Latin or Greek. Not to speak of our ordinary Tradesmen, many of whom write such false English, that none but themselves can interpret what they scribble in their ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius
... my miserable fate, though I have no hope that what I write can be convey'd to your hands! I have now nothing to do but write and weep and fear and pray! But I will tell you what has befallen me, and some way, perhaps, may be opened to send the melancholy scribble to you. Alas, the unhappy Pamela may be undone before you can know her ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... disadvantage in case of a surprise. The high Lama explained the different images and threw handfuls of rice over them as he called them by their respective names, all of which I tried hard to remember, but, alas! before I could get back to the serai and scribble down their appellations, they had all escaped my memory. A separate entrance led from the living part of ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... said Pell, as he looked on his watch, 'this rigor, you see, will soon pass away, and you're doing everything we could wish, and (for he found he had time to scribble a prescription), we'll just order him a trifle. Good-day, Sir. Your most ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Tolstoy, who enjoyed all the advantages of education and travel abroad (where he made acquaintance with Goethe), began to scribble verses at the age of six, he says in his autobiography. Born in 1817, he became Master of the Hounds at the imperial court in 1857, and died in 1875. He made his literary debut in 1842 with prose tales, and ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... Suddenly all the midnight round One fire. The dome of heaven had stood As made up of a multitude Of handbreadth cloudlets, one vast rack Of ripples infinite and black, From sky to sky. Sudden there went, Like horror and astonishment, A fierce vindictive scribble of red Quick flame across, as if one said (The angry scribe of Judgment) 'There— Burn it!' And straight I was aware That the whole ribwork round, minute Cloud touching cloud beyond compute, Was tinted, each with its own spot Of burning at the core, till clot Jammed against clot, and spilt its ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... Drawing forth my cigar-case, I am soon wreathed in the fragrant clouds engendered by the incineration of a halfpenny cheroot, and, with a sigh of satisfaction, I spread out my writing or sketching materials and proceed to scribble or paint, calm in the knowledge that nothing on earth is in the least likely to disturb the flow of ideas, or interrupt the laying on of a broad flat wash. Now and again, lazily, I lean back to watch the witless hoverings of a big butterfly, or sleepily listen to the increasing ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... scornfully. "She's a conceited chicken that thinks she's a nightingale because she can peep louder than some. Wait till you've had some of your stuff printed, Judy, before you boast. Anyone can scribble——" ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... impose now with authority, Turpin's or Monmouth Geoffry's Chronicle; Men whose historical superiority Is always greatest at a miracle. But Saint Augustine has the great priority, Who bids all men believe the impossible, Because 't is so. Who nibble, scribble, quibble, he Quiets at once with ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... even fitted into the frame of the sentence, but wedged in so as directly to shatter it. If, for instance, it is an impertinent thing to interrupt another person when he is speaking, it is no less impertinent to interrupt oneself. But all bad, careless, and hasty authors, who scribble with the bread actually before their eyes, use this style of writing six times on a page, and rejoice in it. It consists in—it is advisable to give rule and example together, wherever it is possible—breaking up one phrase ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... years old now, and had actually learned how to scribble pretty fast. She was very proud of this, for Milly could do ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... is on the ground-floor, and a window adjoining the street lets in upon me the light and air through a heavy crimson curtain, near which I sit and scribble. I was just enlarging upon the necessity of resignation, while the frown yet lingered on my brow, and was writing myself into a more calm and complacent mood, when—another knock at the door. As I opened it, I heard Peter's voice asserting sturdily that I had "gone out." Never dreaming of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... schools have turned out an arrogant and ignorant lot—boys who venture to use old books for wrapping parcels or papering windows, for boiling water, or wiping the table; boys, I say, who scribble over their books, who write characters on wall or door, who chew up the drafts of their poems, or throw them away on the ground. Let all such be severely punished by their masters that they may be saved, while there is yet time, from the wrath of an ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... but fools. In search of wit these lose their common sense, And then turn critics in their own defence: Each burns alike, who can, or cannot write, 30 Or with a rival's, or an eunuch's spite. All fools have still an itching to deride, And fain would be upon the laughing side; If Maevius scribble in Apollo's spite, There are who judge still worse than ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... would have thought it when we parted? I scribbled down the great news against time. (I had an importunate proof to correct before sailing; proofs are apt to take hours, I find, and my sailing hour was near.) He might be expected to have my scribble handed to him on the hospital stoep about three days after. So I calculated. I flattered myself that I knew the ins and outs of our despatches and mail deliveries, also that I had allowed in my calculation for censorial delay. It was pleasant ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... lose the thread or grow short-breathed or accuse us passionately of reading ahead, we would, on the slightest provocation, out-Fletcher Fletcher chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy. And we would underline and bracket and side-line and overline the ragged little paper volume, and scribble up and down its margins, and dream over its ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... have thought little of it since. Perhaps I have done wrong, and if so, I trust I shall see it and repent it. I do not intend to make any promises, because I may have reason to regret them, but I do not know that I shall scribble any more on the ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... to start to-morrow or next day," he replied. "Just as soon as we can get our teams organized. Just scribble me a temporary permit, will you?" He offered a fountain pen and a blank leaf ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... likely to do anything else than to study. He was a young fellow of buoyant temperament, lively and social in his habits, of a brilliant and versatile mind, and possessing an income of twelve or fifteen thousand dollars a year; he could sing, play, scribble, and paint very cleverly, and some of his heads and figure- pieces were really well done, considering that he never had any regular training in art; but he was not a worker. Personally he was fine- looking, of good height and figure, active, healthy, and with a remarkably fine ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... laughing-time of my life. For what a woe must that be, which for an hour together can mortify a man six or seven and twenty, in high blood and spirits, of a naturally gay disposition, who can sing, dance, and scribble, and take and give delight in them all?—But then my grief, as my joy, is sharper-pointed than most other men's; and, like what Dolly Welby once told me, describing the parturient throes, if there were not lucid intervals, if they did not come and go, there would be ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... after the fight. In his letter to my mother, he said he had got his chest, and that he had the Bible all right. He wrote, too, that he meant to read it more than he had ever done before, and not use it to scribble in. That was the last letter we ever got from father. We heard that he had gone out to attend to the trawls, and was lost in a fog, not being able to find his way back to the vessel. Of course we hadn't ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... fastens on John Haygarth's money, it'll be bad times for you and me. Miss Halliday counts for exactly nothing in my way of reckoning. If her stepfather told her to sign away half a million, she'd scribble her name at the bottom of the paper, and press her pretty little thumb upon the wafer, without asking a single question as to the significance of the document. And, of course, she'd be still less inclined ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... pockets filled with gingerbread for the nephews and nieces. 'Tis for you to brandish the sword of Mars. As for me, I look forward to a quiet life: a quiet little home, a quiet little library full of books, and a little Some one dulce ridentem, dulce loquentem, on t'other side of the fire, as I scribble away at my papers. I am so pleased with this prospect, so utterly contented and happy, that I feel afraid as I think of it, lest it should escape me; and, even to my dearest Hal, am shy of speaking of my happiness. What is ambition to me, with ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the same time, not to speak of the bastard. [363] I return you nine sheets [of proofs] by parcels post registered. You have done your work very well, and my part is confined to a very small amount of scribble which you ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... doing mischief to religion, is to strew his bed with roses; he will reply in triumph, that this was his design; and I am loth to mortify him, by asserting he hath done none at all. For I never yet saw so poor an atheistical scribble, which would not serve as a twig for sinking libertines to catch at. It must be allowed in their behalf, that the faith of Christians is not as a grain of mustard seed in comparison of theirs, which can remove such mountains of absurdities, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... is a good example of the dainty little notes Lewis Carroll used to scribble off on any scrap of paper that lay ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... house to house on a horse or mule with the ballot- box in his lap. It will be brought to the farmhouse door. The busy wife will leave her churning, or sweeping, or sewing for a minute. She will scribble her name on a ticket and drop it in the slit while she asks the man how his family is. She may offer him a cup of hot coffee or a snack to eat. She will go to the back door and call her husband or sons in from the field to do their voting, and then the polls of that ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... contents—town is empty—consequently I can scribble at leisure, as occupations are less numerous. In a fortnight I shall depart to fulfil a country engagement; but expect two epistles from you previous to that period. Ridge does not proceed rapidly in Notts—very possible. In town things ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... literary proficiency was required for the task. The centuries during which the papacy rose to the zenith of its power are notorious for the illiteracy of the masses. It was considered a remarkable achievement even for a nobleman to be able to scribble his name. Among those who possessed the ability few had the inclination and persistency necessary for the effort to transcribe the Bible. The cloisters of those days were the chief seats of learning ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... funny!" Allen glanced at Dan with frank admiration. "You write well—praise from Sir Hubert—I scribble verses myself! So our acquaintance really began a long time ago. It must have been last October that we were at ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... called 'A Canzonet' is brief enough for your Majesty's immediate consideration," replied Teresa;—"It is just such a thing as a man might scribble in his note-book after a bout of champagne, when he is in love for ten minutes! He would not mean a word of it,—but it might sound pretty by moonlight!" ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... "I've got a notion brandy can't hurt a man when he's in bed. I'll go to bed, and you shall brew me some; and you'll let no one come nigh me; and if I talk light-headed, it's blank paper and scribble, mind that." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and putting them in a large but light-weight satchel, such as she had often used to carry some of the choicest apples from the orchard when they were being gathered in. Her first care was for her manuscript,—the long-treasured scribble, kept so secretly and so often considered with hope and fear, and wonder and doubting—then she took one or two of the more cherished volumes which had formerly been the property of the "Sieur Amadis" and packed them with it. Choosing only the most necessary garments from her little store, ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... the painter received Mrs. Vostrand's card at his studio in Boston, and learned from the scribble which covered it that she was with her daughter at the Hotel Vendome. He went at once to see them there, and was met, almost before the greetings were past, with a prayer for ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... from strife, With the Laureate's wine, and the Laureate's pay, And no deductions at quarter-day? Oh, that would be the post for me! With plenty to get and nothing to do, But to deck a pet poodle with ribbons of blue, And whistle a tune to the Queen's cockatoo, And scribble of verses remarkably few, And empty at evening a bottle or two, ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... day: but the next day is Sunday. He cannot post a letter, so he rings up the paper and dictates a letter by telephone. He leaves the title to his friends at the other end; he knows that they can spell "Gray," as no doubt they can: but the letter is put down by journalistic custom in a pencil scribble and the vowel may well be doubtful. The friend writes at the top of the letter "'G. K. C.' Explains," putting the initials in quotation marks. The next man passing it for press is bored with these initials (I am with him there) and crosses ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... together? Puff. No; it will, not be yet this hour, for they are always late at that theatre: besides, I must meet you there, for I have some little matters here to send to the papers, and a few paragraphs to scribble before I go.—[Looking at memorandums.] Here is A conscientious Baker, on the subject of the Army Bread; and a Detester of visible Brick-work, in favour of the new invented Stucco; both in the style of Junius, and promised for ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... and I doubt if I ever get beyond that portion of my subject. And I don't care to. Any Muggins can write about old days on the Mississippi of five hundred different kinds, but I am the only man alive that can scribble about the piloting of that day, and no man has ever tried to scribble about it yet. Its newness pleases me all the time, and it is about the only ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... government, an infectious depravity spreads and corrupts all particulars. Everything turns from its true and natural course. Thus scribbling is the sign of a disordered age. Men write in such times instead of acting; and scribble, or seem to perhaps, instead of ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... the House of Commons—which, if your Lordship can read, I do not think I now could, such was the haste of scribble—Sheridan threw out the menace which the papers state, with Pitt's answer; the comment on which is, in the mouth of Opposition: "Pray, for God's sake, don't put a question, and urge it to a division, which will ruin our pretensions as Whigs if we do, as ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... debtor, You will remember how; For I went away to Nantucket, And you to the Isle of Orleans, And when I was dawdling and dreaming Over the ways and means Of answering, the power was denied me, Fate frowned and took her stand; I have your unanswered letter Here in my hand. This—in your famous scribble, It was ever a cryptic fist, Cuneiform or Chaldaic Meanings held ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... way and it disturbed her methodical soul to have anybody else "messing" with this neat little record. It was only a trifle better that the girl should have turned to the very back of the book and chosen a fly leaf there to scribble on. Scribbling it seemed, so rapidly was it done, and after a brief time the book was returned to its owner and she silently requested to examine what had been written in it. This is ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... was gone; and with a stab of pain I realized that, if the colonel had sent for him, he must miss out his dance with me. Would he even remember it? Would he scribble me a line of farewell? I longed to run out and catch him before he went, if only for a word, but I dared not dash past Di, and give her the shock of learning that I had been within three yards of her all the time. Again I was trapped, unless Di and Major Vandyke should go indoors to ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... in 1829, pulling fodder. I say Abe was awful lazy, he would laugh and talk, and crack jokes all the time, didn't love work, but did dearly love his pay." He liked to lie under a shade tree, or up in the loft of the cabin and read, cipher, or scribble. At night he ciphered by the light of the fire on the wooden fire shovel. He practised stump oratory by repeating the sermons, and sometimes by preaching himself to his brothers and sister. His gifts in the rhetorical line were high; when it was announced in the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... miscellaneous character. He has an especial liking for books which bear the traces of former distinguished owners. He himself has pointed out that, 'as a rule, tidy and self-respecting people do not even write their names on their fly-leaves, still less do they scribble marginalia. Collectors love a clean book, but a book scrawled on may have other merits. Thackeray's countless caricatures add a delight to his old school books; the comments of Scott are always to the purpose; but how few books once owned by great authors ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... your foot, and the other way you work with your fingers, but I rather guess there's more headache in the stories than there is in the stitches, because you don't have to think quite so hard while your foot's going as you do when your fingers is at work, scratch, scratch, scratch, scribble, scribble, scribble. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to Alice Puttenham, and to scribble a note to Lady Fox-Wilton asking her to see him as soon as possible. Then Anne forced some luncheon on him, and he had barely finished it when a step outside made itself heard. He looked ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... go more quietly; I'll wait here." Katherine sank down on the lowest stair, while Betty flew back to scribble a note which she laid on Rachel's pillow. ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... However, we don't mean to stay long, so it's no great matter. Oh, I can't begin to tell you how I enjoy it all! I never can, so I'll only give you bits out of my notebook, for I've done nothing but sketch and scribble since ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... is one fytte of Harold's pilgrimage. Ye who of him may further seek to know, Shall find some tidings in a future page, If he that rhymeth now may scribble moe. Is this too much? Stern critic, say not so: Patience! and ye shall hear what he beheld In other lands, where he was doomed to go: Lands that contain the monuments of eld, Ere Greece and Grecian arts by barbarous hands ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... the door and opens it. Frank sits down in Vivie's chair to scribble a note]. My dear ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... eye fell on Lightmark's derelict paper, with its scribble of a girl's head. He considered it thoughtfully for some time, starting a little, and covering it with his blotting-paper, when Mrs. Bullen, his housekeeper, entered with a cup of tea—a freak of his nerves which made him smile when ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... spark? or should he just flit to Elysium? There, seated on Elysian lawns, browsed by none but Dian's (no allusion to little Mrs. Lollipop) fawns, amid the noise of fountains wonderous and the parle of voices thunderous, some wag might scribble on his door, "Here lies Ali Baba"—as if glancing at his truthfulness. How is he to pass effectively into the golden silences? How is he to relapse into the still-world of observation? Would four thousand five hundred a month and Simla do it, with nothing to do ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... Sarriette and Monsieur Jules. These two letters warned the Government to beware of Gavard. Farther on Lisa recognised the coarse style of old Madame Mehudin, who in four pages of almost indecipherable scribble repeated all the wild stories about Florent that circulated in the markets. However, what startled her more than anything else was the discovery of a bill-head of her own establishment, with the inscription ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... But the pencilling was in a different hand. My deduction from this was that some one wished to send me a message, and that Colles had given that some one a sheet of signed paper to serve as a kind of introduction. I might take it, therefore, that the scribble was ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... healthy plant, and in his school-days this born song-writer would scribble verses on his copy-books and read Racine for his own amusement. Turning his back upon the mill-wheels of his native town and an assured future in a Parisian business house, like Gil Bias's friend, il s'est ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... some slender delicate birches spring, a wonder in this barren country. This was a favourite haunt of Emily, and indeed they all loved the spot. Here they would use some of their paper, for they still kept up their old habit of writing tales and poems, and loved to scribble out of doors. And some of it they would use in drawing, since at this time they were taking lessons, and Emily and Charlotte were devoted to the art: Charlotte making copies with minuteness and exact fidelity; Emily drawing animals and still-life with far greater freedom and certainty ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... existed in my too flattering opinion of your qualities. So then, you propose to return to MacGrawler (the scurvy old cheat!), and pass the inglorious remainder of your life in the mangling of authors and the murder of grammar? Go, my good fellow, go! scribble again and forever for MacGrawler, and let him live upon thy brains instead of ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to put at first my statement or proposition in a wrong or awkward form. Formerly I used to think about my sentences before writing them down; but for several years I have found that it saves time to scribble in a vile hand whole pages as quickly as I possibly can, contracting half the words; and then correct deliberately. Sentences thus scribbled down are often better ones than I ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... action, with the most lamentable consequences for you, Devar. Now, I will hold my hand, provided you obey me implicitly. Send for your overcoat, go straight to the Central Station, and travel to London by the next train. You can scribble some excuse to your mother, but, if I have any cause even to suspect that you have told her who I am, I shall not hesitate to put the police on your track. You must vanish, and be dumb—for three months at least. If you are hard up, I will give you some money—sufficient ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... Drusilla explained—"mother and I together. If we were you we'd simply scribble a few lines on your card and send it round ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... dejection and disappointment, and the course of oppression which you have run through, weaken your mind, my dearest creature, and make you see inconveniencies where there possibly cannot be any. If your talent is scribbling, as you call it; so is mine—and I will scribble on, at all opportunities; and to you; let them say what they will. Nor let your letters be filled with the self-accusations you mention: there is no cause for them. I wish that your Anna Howe, who continues in her mother's house, were but half so good as Miss Clarissa ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Bulwer if he kept an amanuensis. "No," he said, "I scribble it all out myself, and send it to the press in a most ungentlemanlike hand, half print, half hieroglyphics, with all its imperfections on its head, and correct in the proof—very much to the dissatisfaction ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... anxiously for the arrival of a fresh wedded pair. Next week I move off across the lake to a sort of lodge of Lord Kenmare, where I have persuaded an old lady to take me into the family. I am going to live with them, and I am going to have her ladyship's own boudoir to scribble in. It is a wild place enough with porridge and potatoes to eat, varied with what fish I may provide for myself and arbutus berries if it comes to starving. The noble lord has been away for some years. They will put a deal table into the said boudoir for me, and if living under a ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... never himself thought to draw, but he had always taken an interest in sculpture and painting, and he had said before Rodney was born that he would like to have a son a sculptor. And he waited for the little boy to show some signs of artistic aptitude. He pondered every scribble the boy made, and scribbles that any child at the same age could have done filled him with admiration. But when Rodney was fourteen he remodelled some leaves that had failed to please an important customer; ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... approbation of my journals, from whence I infer, that he either never reads them, or does not give himself the trouble to remember any of their contents, tho' some part has been address'd to him, so, for the future, I shall trouble only you with this part of my scribble—Last thursday I din'd at Unkle Storer's & spent the afternoon in that neighborhood. I met with some adventures in my way viz. As I was going, I was overtaken by a lady who was quite a stranger to me. She accosted me ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... Signoria, cajoled the clergy, bamboozled the popolani, descended even to the ragamuffins in the gutters, and taught them how to shout "Duca! Duca!" when his master went proudly a-horseback, or to scribble his effigy in great chalk circles on the city walls. Though it may be true that Molly's graces brought Amilcare the crown of Nona, it must be added that neither Molly nor her Duke could have got in at all if Grifone had not been there to oil ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... . . . What an abominable hand do I scribble! but I have been chopping wood, and turning a grindstone all the forenoon; and such occupations are apt to disturb the equilibrium of the muscles and sinews. It is an endless surprise to me how much ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... write, the Trash you read, End in the Garbage Barrel—take no Heed; Think that you are no worse than other Scribes, Who scribble Stuff to ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... life worse is, For abating superfluous pride, Than having to scribble on verses With the editor waiting outside; I am hearing a lecture on Shelley, Where I ought to be able to dream, But my brain is as vapid as jelly. And I cannot ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... Father Dan," he replied, "the seed is sown; the die is cast. I intend to scribble away now and to submit my manuscript to the editor of some ecclesiastical journal. If he accepts it, well and good; if he doesn't, no harm done. By the way, you must help me, by looking over this translation ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... Marquise were enjoying the confusion into which the mention of this phantom beast threw her persecutor, she continued to scribble on scraps of paper which the concierge was told to take to the lawyer, who ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... short letter. The "Night Piece," to which you refer me, I meant fully to have noticed; but the fact is, I come so fluttering and languid from business, tired with thoughts of it, frightened with fears of it, that when I get a few minutes to sit down and scribble (an action of the hand now seldom natural to me,—I mean voluntary pen-work), I lose all presential memory of what I had intended to say, and say what I can, talk about Vincent Bourne or any casual image, instead of that which I had meditated (by the way, I mast look out V. B. for you). So I had ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... myself, and call For pens and parchment, writing-desk and all. None dares be pilot who ne'er steered a craft; No untrained nurse administers a draught; None but skilled workmen handle workmen's tools: But verses all men scribble, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... the patent, and the Crown fared no better by a second Grand Jury. The second jury accompanied its rejection of the bill by a presentment against the patent,[4] and the defeat of the "prerogative" became assured. Every where the Drapier was acclaimed the saviour of his country. Any person who could scribble a doggerel or indite a tract rushed into print, and now Whitshed was harnessed to Wood in a pillory of contemptuous ridicule. Indeed, so bitter was the outcry against the Lord Chief Justice, that ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... the different images to me, and threw handfuls of rice over them as he called them by their respective names, all of which I tried hard to remember, but, alas! before I could get back to the serai and scribble them down on paper, they had all escaped my memory. A separate entrance led from ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... silence and this look that Sanda changed her mind, after one day and night, all of which she spent—vainly—in trying to find another plan. A letter did come from her father, as she and Ourieda had hoped it might (Colonel DeLisle, while still at Sidi-bel-Abbes, found time to scribble off a few lines to his girl for each camel post that travelled through the dunes from Touggourt to Djazerta), and in sickness of heart Sanda pretended that she was wanted "at home." The Agha was grieved and astonished, but, great Arab gentleman that ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... Highness would not be convinced. Thus she suffered this needless affront. Pardon this parenthesis, but when one talks from behind a curtain the parenthesis is the only available thing.) There was silence. I saw Steinbock poise the pen, then scribble on the parchment. It was done. ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... romance is, no doubt, a very fine thing, but it will soon bring you to starvation if you have nothing else to depend upon. Those poetic gentlemen love to scribble about ideals and such like rubbish, yet they themselves are always looking out for the trees on which money grows. Why, the whole world runs after money, nothing but money, and he who has money has honour into the bargain. A beggar ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... feet by eight in size and with walls three feet thick, I noticed a mangy leopard skin on the floor. I had no Spanish. The shop-keeper had no English. But I was an adept at sign language. I wanted to know where I should go to buy leopard skins. On my scribble- pad I drew the interesting streets of a city. Then I drew a small shop, which, after much effort, I persuaded the proprietor into recognising as his shop. Next, I indicated in my drawing that on the many streets there were many shops. And, finally, I made myself into a living interrogation ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... that every body may get. And, although it is the very key to prosperity and success in common life, but few know any thing about it. Unfortunately for our people, so soon as their children learn to read a Chapter in the New Testament, and scribble a miserable hand, they are pronounced to have "Learning enough"; and taken away from School, no use to themselves, nor community. This is apparent in our Public Meetings, and Official Church Meetings; of the great ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... between us there is no alternative but the hastily written and imperfect scribble which will shortly be presented you, if the elements ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... that Dot came to be baptised; and, to witness the ceremony, all the Mesuriers assembled at the chapel that Sunday evening,—even Henry, who could hardly remember when he used to sit in this still-familiar pew, and scribble love-verses in the back of his hymn-book ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... 27th, 1828.—If I scribble to-day again so much nonsense, I do so only in order to remind you that you are as much locked in my heart as ever, and that I am the same Fred I was. You do not like to be kissed; but to-day you must ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... it carefully twice over, and then sat down at the table and began to scribble on the back of the envelope. She convinced herself that three times fifteen was forty-five, and that so many lire amounted to not quite two pounds. Then there was the fare out to be reckoned. Finally, ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... dealings with about here hair and complexion. There I was to stay with her till—till this same sea-captain was to come and carry her off where she would give no more trouble. Oh, sir, it was too much—and my Lady knew it, for she had tied my hands so that I had but a moment to scribble down that scrip, and bid Syphax take it to you. The dear lady! she said, 'her God could deliver her out of the mouth of the lion,' and I could not believe it! ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... an accurate copy. But I don't think you will get much out of it. Depend upon it, it is mere nonsense, a wanton scribble. I must be going now, Dyson. No, no more; that stuff of yours ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... guiltily drew from the inside pocket of his coat a thick and scrawly letter. Then he did things to this letter that in after years he would blush to acknowledge, if they remained a part of his memory. He kissed the scribble—undeniably. Then, with rapt eyes, he reread the lengthy missive from "Dolly." It had come in the morning mail and he had read it a dozen times. The reader is left to conjecture just what the letter contained. Mr. Garrison's ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... 1830, that "unless God send us some miraculous help, we have to look forward to a period of destruction similar to that which the Roman world experienced about the middle of the third century." Now, when I see a man scribble such abject nonsense about events which are passing under our eyes, what confidence can I put in his judgment as to the connection of causes and effects in times ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... blind. And so you would even have married her! You, the descendant of St. Louis, and she the Scarron widow, the poor drudge whom in charity I took into my household! Ah, how your courtiers will smile! how the little poets will scribble! how the wits will whisper! You do not hear of these things, of course, but they are a little ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... t' scribble that there three thou-san' on a piece o' paper?" inquired Uncle Billy, sitting bolt upright. "Ef you air a-figgerin' on that, Mr. Kamp, jis' you save yore time. I give a man four dollars fer one o' them check things oncet, an' I owe myself them ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... Gibbon had published the second and third volumes of his "Decline and Fall," the Duke of Cumberland met him one day, and accosted him with, "How do you do, Mr. Gibbon? I see you are always at it in the old way—scribble, scribble, scribble!" The duke probably intended to pay the author a compliment, but did not know how better to do it than in this ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... a disadvantage in case of a surprise. The high Lama explained the different images and threw handfuls of rice over them as he called them by their respective names, all of which I tried hard to remember, but, alas! before I could get back to the serai and scribble down their appellations, they had all escaped my memory. A separate entrance led from the living part of ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the learned professions; but he could not give up his mind to anything but drawing,—as annoying to his father as Galileo's experiments were to his parent; as unmeaning to him as Gibbon's History was to George III.,—"Scribble, scribble, scribble; Mr. Gibbon, I perceive, sir, you are always a-scribbling." No perception of a new power, no sympathy with the abandonment to a specialty not indorsed by fashions and traditions, but without which abandonment genius cannot easily be ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... high her aristocratic skirts and glancing ruefully around as she followed Mrs. Cameron, the younger, up the three flights of stairs to Marian's door, which did not open to the assured knock, nor yet yield to the gentle pressure. Marian was out, and there was no alternative but for Katy to scribble a few lines upon the card she left upon the knob, telling Marian who had been there, and requesting her to call that evening at No. —— Fifth Avenue, as the elder Mrs. Cameron was particularly anxious to see her before committing her ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... I but vacant seasons spend In this my scribble; nor did I intend But to divert myself in doing this From worser thoughts which make ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... VERY DEAREST: Here I am sitting at the old desk again, in the old office of the Banner. I could only scribble you a little note on the train last night to tell you that my heart still was with you, and I did not have the time to explain why I was coming. It is a dead secret, little woman, and perhaps I shouldn't tell even you, but I feel that I must bring everything to you. ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... maniac like the night. My mind closes like a darkness over the world but I enjoy myself walking amid insane houses, staring at windows that look like drunken octagons, observing lamp posts that simper with evil, promenading fan shaped streets that scribble themselves like ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... the clock; there was just time to scribble a note before she dressed for the picnic, and of course, though she had no wish to encourage Reggie's friendship, yet a birthday was a special occasion, and had she remembered it she would ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... we drove right at 'em 'n' we wanged 'em best we could. 'Twas either bed 'n' breakfast or a scribble and a wreath. Haynes bust a Prussian's almond, took the bay'net where he stood, Then heaved his last 'arf-Brunswick, split the demon's grinnin' teeth, And Son went down in glory, with a ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... the house, since his invitation could be easily conveyed by a note which he would scribble there, and was admitted by Martin. Mrs. Assheton, however, was out, a fact which he learned with regret, but, if he might write a note to her, his walk would not be wasted. Accordingly he was shown ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... opinion, want, The wonder of the ignorant, The praises of the author, penn'd B' himself, or wit-insuring friend; The itch of picture in the front, 655 With bays and wicked rhyme upon't; All that is left o' th' forked hill, To make men scribble without skill; Canst make a poet spite of fate, And teach all people to translate, 660 Tho' out of languages in which They understand no part of speech; Assist me but this once, I 'mplore, And I shall ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... he replied somewhat curtly. He crossed over to his father's desk where he sat down to scribble a few words, while Mr. Bagley, who had followed him in scowling, was making frantic ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... astonishment; when Rodin, growing still more imperious and haughty, and with an air of more sovereign disdain than ever, pushed aside the paper with the back of his dirty hand and said: "What is the date of that scribble?" ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... of the pair, who was the one in authority, "if you wish to scribble a note, here are paper and pencil." And he tore a leaf from his notebook and handed it ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... fine fortune, and could James get her, he might sing, "I'll go no more to sea, to sea." Give my love to him when you write.—"God preserve us, what a scrawl!" says one of the ladies just now, in admiration at the expedition with which I scribble. Well—I was never able in my life to do anything with what ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... brain and heart to work and composed a rhyme. Now, the most unfit sphere on earth for an inexperienced mind to exercise the poetic faculty is in epitaphiology. It does very well in copy-books, but it is most unfair to blot the resting-place of the dead with unskilled poetic scribble. It seems to me that the owners of cemeteries and graveyards should keep in their own hand the right to ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... obtained, and prepare myself for death. One thing only makes me uneasy: I fear that as I approach the prescribed limit, I may push it continually back, and that at forty-five I may still be thinking only of continuing to live and, perhaps, of continuing to scribble. Hard as I try to think, or to make others think, that I am different from the rest of mankind, I fear, I tremble lest I be ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... young lime-tree beneath which he lay; but his heart ached. Such darkness seemed gathered round his happiness. He heard Big Ben chime "Three" above the traffic. The sound moved something in him, and, taking out a piece of paper, he began to scribble on it with a pencil. He had jotted a stanza, and was searching the grass for another verse, when something hard touched his shoulder-a green parasol. There above ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... from the way we sit and scribble, and one man asked me if I were writing a book! All this time I haven't mentioned the Port Said letters. We got them before we left the ship, and, determined for once to show myself a well-balanced, sensible young person, I took mine to the cabin and locked them firmly in a ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... her deplorable tone, "I am continually ordering Sir Gerald not to scribble in books, but ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Honour and right shalt value duly, In everything act simply, truly,— Virtue and godliness proclaim, And call all evil by its name, Nought soften down, attempt no quibble, Nought polish up, nought vainly scribble. The world shall stand before thee, then, As seen by Albert Durer's ken, In manliness and changeless life, In inward strength, with firmness rife. Fair Nature's Genius by the hand Shall lead thee on through every land, Teach thee each different life to scan, Show thee the ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... surface by its hair, a long-drowned corpse. If we are, as assuredly we are, writing with invisible ink our whole life's history on the pages of our own minds, and if we shall have to read them all over again one day, is it not tragic that most of us scribble the pages so hastily and carelessly, and forget that, 'what I have written I have written,' and what I have written I ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... anticipated would ensue upon so unusual an occurrence as the visit of strangers to a mail-boat. The visiting party therefore consisted of Lady Olivia, Ida, Sir Reginald, Mildmay, and Lethbridge, most of whom availed themselves of the opportunity to scribble a hasty letter or two ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... dear old granny. He breathed free again. At the bottom of the letter she even had placed her signature, learned by heart, but trembling like a school-girl's scribble: "Widow Moan." ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... long experience, found the truth and benefit of it, I conceive, I could not without ingratitude to him, and want of charity to others, conceal it.—Pray pardon this rude, and, I fear impertinent scribble, which, if nothing else, may signify thus much, that I am willing to obey your desires, and ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... went around the board, but Mr. Kestrel did not heed them. Leaning forward, he seized a pen, and drawing a sheet of paper to him, began to scribble a memorandum of the terms, which, when finished, he pushed across the table ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... his drop; Even Radcliffe's doctors travel first to France, Nor dare to practise till they've learned to dance. Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile? (Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile;) But those who cannot write, and those who can, All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man. Yet, Sir, reflect, the mischief is not great; These madmen never hurt the church or state: Sometimes the folly benefits mankind; And rarely avarice taints the tuneful mind. Allow him but his plaything of a pen, He ne'er rebels, or plots, like other ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... and think camel or man out of the depths of their inner consciousness, alias their ignorance, will tell you that in the intervals of war and danger, peace and tranquil life acquire their true value and satisfy the heroic mind. But those who look before they babble or scribble will see and say that men who risk their lives habitually thirst for exciting pleasures between the acts of danger, are not for ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... you playing there?" It was Mrs. Packard who spoke. She was pointing at the scribble he was making ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... is getting restive. Through the roof of what we call Fatherland social currents begin to filter. There remains only one ideal in presence of which the most hardened sceptic raises his hat,—the People. But on the base of this statue mischievous spirits are beginning already to scribble more or less ribald jokes, and, what is still more strange, the mist of unbelief is rising from the heads of those who, in the nature of things, ought to bow down reverently. Finally there will come a gifted sceptic, a second Heine, to spit and trample on the idol, as in his time did Aristophanes; ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... parenthesis are not even fitted into the frame of the sentence, but wedged in so as directly to shatter it. If, for instance, it is an impertinent thing to interrupt another person when he is speaking, it is no less impertinent to interrupt oneself. But all bad, careless, and hasty authors, who scribble with the bread actually before their eyes, use this style of writing six times on a page, and rejoice in it. It consists in—it is advisable to give rule and example together, wherever it is possible—breaking up one phrase in order to glue in another. Nor is it merely out of ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... passed during the first months of his captivity in writing books in English or Latin; but when pen and paper were taken from him, and he could only scribble a few words with the end of a charred stick, he had plenty of time to think over his life and to recall the years that had been so happy. The harsh words that he had written about men whose religion was different from his own did not trouble him, nor the thought of the imprisonment to which he had ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... the punctual goddess stepped down from the machine. One of the Princess's ladies begged to enter; a man, it appeared, had brought a line for the Freiherr von Gondremark. It proved to be a pencil billet, which the crafty Greisengesang had found the means to scribble and despatch under the very guns of Otto; and the daring of the act bore testimony to the terror of the actor. For Greisengesang had but one influential motive: fear. The note ran thus: "At the first council, procuration ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... up there, where Moses and Esau had stood, with the date and circumstances, and all about the whole business, and travellers would come for thousands of years and gawk at it, and climb over it, and scribble their names on it. ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... press buttons, his switchboard that from his bed connected him with every part of the ranch and most of the rest of California, his phonograph on the hinged and swinging bracket, the orderly array of books and magazines and agricultural bulletins waiting to be read, the ash tray, cigarettes, scribble pads, and thermos bottle. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... at all, which my English teacher insists is an elemental requirement of fiction if it isn't of life. I thought this summer I was going to begin some sort of book just for practice, but by the time I get through putting down the things I scribble about the day's doings, and write to Father and send my weekly letter to Mother and the girls, and run off something every now and then to Billy, and answer the notes I get from Whythe and some of the kiddies around here who think they're grown, ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... at the table, with a blank sheet of paper before him, Bob made ready to scribble at high speed, while Herb held a watch to time him. As for Jimmy, he was content to curl up on a sofa and act the part of ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... breakfast the next day a telegram arrived, ordering me to go to Falmouth by the earliest possible train on an urgent matter. This necessitated my leaving Plymouth almost before my breakfast was finished. All I could do, therefore, was to scribble him a hasty line, explaining the situation, and urging him to communicate with me at an address I gave him in Falmouth. I also told him that on my return to Plymouth I would look him up, and do all I ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... out what diaries are for ... to work off blue moods in, moods that come on without any reason whatever and therefore can't be confided to any fellow creature. You scribble away for a while ... and then it's all gone ... and your soul feels clear as crystal ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... dabble in their dung: Let them form a grand committee, How to plague and starve the city; Let them stare, and storm, and frown, When they see a clergy gown; Let them, ere they crack a louse, Call for th'orders of the house; Let them, with their gosling quills, Scribble senseless heads of bills; We may, while they strain their throats, Wipe our a—s with their votes. Let Sir Tom,[4] that rampant ass, Stuff his guts with flax and grass; But before the priest he fleeces, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... you are writing such a lot to?" Somov inquires, seeing that his wife is just beginning to scribble the sixth page. ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... wish you knew him. Well, dearest, this letter—a very unhandsome return, I own, for yours—must content you at present, for they will not let me write more; though, so far as I am concerned, I am never so weak, in frame I mean, but what I could scribble to you ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and ought never to depart from the mind of an honest reformer. I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases. A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... thy awkward muse, With censures praise, with flatteries abuse. To lash, and not be felt, in thee's an art; Thou ne'er mad'st any but thy schoolboys smart. Then be advis'd, and scribble not agen; Thou'rt fashioned for a flail, and not a pen. If B——l's immortal wit thou wouldst descry, Pretend 'tis he that writ thy poetry. Thy feeble satire ne'er can do him wrong; Thy poems and thy ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... are making me "talky," and, I fear, tedious. I could scribble and chatter about bygone Birmingham from now till about the end of the century, which, however, as I write, is not very far off. But, my gentle reader, you shall be spared. Most people know that Birmingham is swallowing up its immediate suburbs, ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... injecting something into my wrist. I then lay on a stretcher awaiting further transportation. My good servant Smith somehow discovered my whereabouts, and turned up at this hospital. He sat beside me and gave me a writing-pad to scribble a note on. I scrawled a line to my mother to say I had been knocked out, but was perfectly all right. Smith went back to the battalion, and I lay on the stretcher, partially asleep. Night came on and I went off into a series of agonizing ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... me. Nothing comforts a poor beggar like a bit of praise when he's down; and all fellows that take to writing are as greedy after it as trout after the drake, even if they only scribble in county newspapers. I've watched them when ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... neglect of literature and the arts was the more unfortunate because George III and his sons did not raise the tone of the Court in this respect, witness the remark of the King to Gibbon at a State function. "Well, Mr. Gibbon, it's always scribble, scribble, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... natural to allude to the transactions which took place between him and the unfortunate Chatterton; a text upon which so much calumny and misrepresentation have been embroidered. The periodicals of the day, and the tribe of those "who daily scribble for their daily bread," and for whom Walpole had, perhaps unwisely, frequently expressed his contempt, attacked him bitterly for his inhumanity to genius, and even accused him as the author of the subsequent misfortunes ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... this short scribble. I must go to dress. Tell Charlie that if he has not kissed that horrid Dewlap girl yet, I send him a nice long kiss. By-the-bye, he's such a blind fool, he won't have noticed she bites ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... next Sunday at———." "I must," said she. We had no opportunity of speaking before, for her husband or some one was always in the way. To make sure I next day slipped an envelope into her hand, in which was one addressed to myself, and a scribble asking her to say where I was to meet her. It came back by post containing in execrable writing the words, "My dear, same time, and place, if he be out, on Saturday night." I did not comprehend, but waited outside her cottage that night. She did not show. On ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... I want to suggest something to you. You may laugh, old boy—but I'm in earnest. I remember you're telling me once that, when you were up at the 'Varsity, you used to scribble a bit. I didn't pay much attention; in those days one didn't pay attention—ever. But now your words have come back to me once or twice, during the night, when I've been seeing dream pictures in my reading lamp and the ward ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... low on our starboard horizon. To Mr. Fett and Mr. Badcock this meant nothing, and my father might have left them to their ignorance had he not in the course of the forenoon caught them engaged upon a silly piece of mischief, which was, to scribble on small sheets of paper various affecting narratives—as that the Gauntlet was sinking, or desperately attacked by pirates, in such and such a latitude and longitude—insert them in empty bottles, and commit them to the chances of the deep. The object (as Mr. Fett explained it) being ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... mind leading me to put at first my statement or proposition in a wrong or awkward form. Formerly I used to think about my sentences before writing them down; but for several years I have found that it saves time to scribble in a vile hand whole pages as quickly as I possibly can, contracting half the words; and then correct deliberately. Sentences thus scribbled down are often better ones than ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... have really nothing to do but to scribble. "Barkis is willing." Captain Blunt brought me word this morning that his daughter smiles propitious. I am to report this evening; but I shall send my slender baggage in an hour ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... your name always so that people can read it. Some, out of pure affectation, conceal what they call themselves under a scribble which none can read—"a hopeless puzzle of intemperate scratches." How is a stranger, getting a letter signed in this way, to know to whom to send a reply, unless, as is sometimes done, he cuts out the signature, pastes it on the envelope, and adds the address? ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... builder! His father had never himself thought to draw, but he had always taken an interest in sculpture and painting, and he had said before Rodney was born that he would like to have a son a sculptor. And he waited for the little boy to show some signs of artistic aptitude. He pondered every scribble the boy made, and scribbles that any child at the same age could have done filled him with admiration. But when Rodney was fourteen he remodelled some leaves that had failed to please an important customer; and ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... so very slowly, and as father does not think he should scribble at all, he has desired me to inform you of everything that has passed since you left us. And first I must acquaint you with a sad accident which will render one of your commissions useless. Poor Hector, the day after ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... false as Parthia, maybe worse; Before the dawn I rouse myself, and call For pens and parchment, writing-desk and all. None dares be pilot who ne'er steered a craft; No untrained nurse administers a draught; None but skilled workmen handle workmen's tools: But verses all men scribble, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... companionship of one whose point of view should justify his own, who should confirm, by deliberate observation, the truth to which his intuitions had leaped. He could not wait for the midday recess, but seized a moment's leisure in court to scribble ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... closer to the city, and at the end, when the Germans were driving you from Ghent to Bruges, and from Bruges to Ostend and from Ostend to Dunkirk, you could not sit down to write your impressions, even if you were cold-blooded enough to want to. It was as much as you could do to scribble the merest note of what happened ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... not? If a publisher likes to print the book—all right. And if anybody wants to read it, let him. But why anybody should read one single word if he doesn't want to, I don't see. Unless of course he is a critic who needs to scribble a dollar's worth of ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... conducted to a room, in which he was to be shut up to study. It contained only a bed and a table on which were a large book and writing materials. Crab seated himself at the table and did nothing but turn over the leaves of the book and scribble the paper so that the servants who brought him his food thought him a great man. They were the ones who had stolen the ring, and from the severe glances that the peasant cast at them whenever they entered, they began to fear that they ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... for the task. The centuries during which the papacy rose to the zenith of its power are notorious for the illiteracy of the masses. It was considered a remarkable achievement even for a nobleman to be able to scribble his name. Among those who possessed the ability few had the inclination and persistency necessary for the effort to transcribe the Bible. The cloisters of those days were the chief seats of learning and centers of lower education, but even these asylums of piety sheltered many an ignorant ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... left after the fight. In his letter to my mother, he said he had got his chest, and that he had the Bible all right. He wrote, too, that he meant to read it more than he had ever done before, and not use it to scribble in. That was the last letter we ever got from father. We heard that he had gone out to attend to the trawls, and was lost in a fog, not being able to find his way back to the vessel. Of course we hadn't any doubt that he was dead, after we got a letter from the captain ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... I have for some time been convinced that I have done wrong to scribble to thee so freely as I have done (and the more so, if I make the lady legally mine); for has not every letter I have written to thee been a bill of indictment against myself? I may partly curse my vanity for it; ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... and over again,"[556] he avoids and fears that satiety which lies in ambush for every narrative, and takes the hearer from one subject to another, and relieves by novelty the possibility of being surfeited. But the talkative worry one's ears to death with their tautologies, as people scribble the same things over and over ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... to Peronne to-morrow, and I have availed myself of the hour between cards and supper, which is usually employed by the French in undressing, to scribble my remarks. In some families, I suppose, supping in dishabille is an arrangement of oeconomy, in others of ease; but I always think it has the air of preparation for a very solid meal; and, in effect, supping is not a mere ceremony with either ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... when one has nearly completed his classes. To the labor of the hand I join the labor of the arm. I have my scrivener's stall in the market of the Rue de Sevres. You know? the Umbrella Market. All the cooks of the Red Cross apply to me. I scribble their declarations of love to the raw soldiers. In the morning I write love letters; in the evening I dig graves. Such is ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... had been his pupil in school: "These little sticks of wood need only a good scratch to confuse me, for a moment, with the God of Genesis. But they also encourage Mrs. Grumble to burn, before I come down in the morning, the bits of paper on which I like to scribble ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... 'A Canzonet' is brief enough for your Majesty's immediate consideration," replied Teresa;—"It is just such a thing as a man might scribble in his note-book after a bout of champagne, when he is in love for ten minutes! He would not mean a word of it,—but it might sound pretty by moonlight!" Whereupon ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Grifone wrought upon the Signoria, cajoled the clergy, bamboozled the popolani, descended even to the ragamuffins in the gutters, and taught them how to shout "Duca! Duca!" when his master went proudly a-horseback, or to scribble his effigy in great chalk circles on the city walls. Though it may be true that Molly's graces brought Amilcare the crown of Nona, it must be added that neither Molly nor her Duke could have got in at all if Grifone had not been there to ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... block, from which sheet after sheet might be torn, and on which they could draw in charcoal, and a little desk there was, furnished with great carpenter's pencils of varying hardness and a copious supply of paper, on which the boys might first scribble and then draw more neatly. And moreover Redwood gave orders, so far ahead did his imagination go, for specially large tubes of liquid paint and boxes of pastels against the time when they should be ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... piloting as a science so far, and I doubt if I ever get beyond that portion of my subject. And I don't care to. Any Muggins can write about old days on the Mississippi of five hundred different kinds, but I am the only man alive that can scribble about the piloting of that day, and no man has ever tried to scribble about it yet. Its newness pleases me all the time, and it is about the only new ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... man out of the depths of their inner consciousness, alias their ignorance, will tell you that in the intervals of war and danger, peace and tranquil life acquire their true value and satisfy the heroic mind. But those who look before they babble or scribble will see and say that men who risk their lives habitually thirst for exciting pleasures between the acts of danger, are not for ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... is what I mean—a plan that will at least give you an occasional sight of your 'Frank,' that no doubt you think more of than a Congressman of his, and wouldn't lend it to anybody. Scribble him a little note at once, tell him who I am and what I am going to do. Put in this card of mine, so that he can know where to find me. Then tell him to get a soldier's uniform—(say a Captain's) a crutch, a cane, ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... your ladyship's three letters, the contents of which are highly obliging to me: and I should be inexcusable if I did not comply with your injunctions, and be very proud and thankful for your ladyship's condescension in accepting of my poor scribble, and promising such a rich and valuable return; of which you have already given such ample and delightful instances. I will not plead my defects, to excuse my obedience. I only fear that the awe which will ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... heard this, he said to Mrs. Cliff that he was not sure but what the parsons were quite correct, and although everybody was sorry to lose two members of the party, it could not be helped, and all who had letters to send to New York went to work to scribble them as fast as they could. Mrs. Cliff also wrote a note to Captain Horn, informing him of the state of affairs, and of their reasons for not waiting for him, and this the departing clergymen undertook to leave with Beaver & Hughes, where Captain ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... enclosed Dr. Beddoes's late pamphlets; neither of them as yet published. The Doctor sent them to me.... My dutiful love to your excellent Mother, whom, believe me, I think of frequently and with a pang of affection. God bless you. I'll try and contrive to scribble a line and half every time the man goes with "The Watchman" ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... Books, and so fetch him an occasional guinea. For, my dear, the verses I write of my own accord are not sufficiently genteel to be vended in Paternoster Row; they smack too dangerously of human intelligence. So I am compelled, perforce, to scribble such jingles as I am ashamed to read, because I must write something. . . ." Paul Vanderhoffen shrugged, and continued, in tones more animated: "There will be no talk of any grand-duke. Instead, there will be columns of denunciation and tittle-tattle in every ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... are sitting at table, I could, gracious reader, bring them pictorially before your eyes; but I shall only manage to give a few general outlines, and those certainly worse than the sketches which Traugott had the audacity to scribble in the inauspicious letter; for the meal will soon be over; and besides, I am urged by an impulse I cannot resist to go on with the remarkable history of the excellent Traugott, which I have undertaken ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... chair without table or note paper and are satisfied to scribble an occasional note on some scrap of paper they seem to have picked up by accident. Clarence Darrow got more out of this easy going method than any man ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... many, and our number went on growing continually. This was one of the first good effects of my having learnt a little to scribble; another was, that the leading men, seeing a newspaper now in the hands of one who could also handle a pen, thought it convenient to oblige and encourage me. Bradford still printed the votes, and laws, and other publick business. He ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... renewed amity dissolved in whisky, "I think I showed more musical soul than you in refusing to trammel my inspiration with the dull rules invented by fools. I suppose you have mastered them all, eh?" He picked up some sheets of manuscript. "Great Scot! How you must have schooled yourself to scribble all this—you, with your restless nature—full scores, too! I hope you don't offer this sort of ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... let thy awkward muse, With censures praise, with flatteries abuse. To lash, and not be felt, in thee's an art; Thou ne'er mad'st any but thy schoolboys smart. Then be advis'd, and scribble not agen; Thou'rt fashioned for a flail, and not a pen. If B——l's immortal wit thou wouldst descry, Pretend 'tis he that writ thy poetry. Thy feeble satire ne'er can do him wrong; Thy poems and thy patients ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... nothing he said lacked weight or authority. He collaborated in several ballets for the Opera and that gave him a good deal of work to do. It sounds incredible, but he used to bring his "work" to class and scribble away on his orchestration while his pupils played the organ. This did not prevent his listening and looking after them. He would leave his work and make appropriate comments as though ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... MISS SCRIBBLE-"The heroine of my next story is to be one of those modern advanced girls who have ideas of their own and don't want to ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... man was thus pleasantly engaged, his entertainer opened his writing portfolio and began to scribble off note after note, with such rapidity that the amazed pauper at his elbow fairly lost his appetite, and, after a vain attempt to recover it, suggested that it might be as well for him to retire to one of the palatial fourpence-a-night residences ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... But if I scribble longer now, [xviii] The deuce a soul will stay to read; My pen is blunt, my ink is low; 'Tis ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... Here's a scribble upon grave matters! I ought to be acknowledging instead your scrupulous honesty, as illustrated by five-franc pieces and Tuscan florins. Make us as useful as you can do, for the future; and please us by coming often. I am afraid ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... in a multitude of counsellors, there is wisdom! O ye critics, who vote yourselves the Areopagites of Intellect, whose decrees confer immortality in the Universe of Letters! O all ye that write or scribble,—all ye tribes, both great and small, of pen-drivers and paper-scrapers!—know ye, that, while ye are listening in your imaginative ambition to the praise of the elect or the applause of nations, your wives are often counting the coppers that are to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... as odd that I should be sitting at that desk with a Cabinet Minister, a Field-Marshal, two high Government officials, and a French General watching me, while from the scribble of a dead man I was trying to drag a secret which meant ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... clock; there was just time to scribble a note before she dressed for the picnic, and of course, though she had no wish to encourage Reggie's friendship, yet a birthday was a special occasion, and had she remembered it she would certainly ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... rhyming be at fault, If e'er I chance to scribble dope, If that my metre ever halt, I err in company ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... Clerks scribble ceaselessly, rolls and nominal rolls, nominal lists and lists. By the time they have finished one list it is long out-of-date. Then they start the next. Everything happens at the same time; nobody has time to finish a sentence. Only a military mind, with a very limited descriptive ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... others, who are still smaller, who have been standing all day on the summits of roofs, in front of ovens, among machines, and in the water, and underground, with nothing to eat but a little bread; and I feel almost ashamed, I, who in all that time have accomplished nothing but scribble four small pages, and that reluctantly. Ah, I am discontented, discontented! I see plainly that my father is out of humor, and would like to tell me so; but he is sorry, and he is still waiting. My dear father, who works so hard! all is yours, all that I see around me in the house, ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... getting ready I may as well scribble the last day at Rome. And this morning went at eight to the Palazzo Accoramboni, to see the procession of the Corpus Domini, and was disappointed. This Palazzo Accoramboni, in which we were accommodated, belonged to a very rich old man, who was married to a young and pretty ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... scintillating line: "A scribble of God's finger in the sky"; and an admonition to the preacher: "Thou art God's minister, not ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... to the end of the chapter; Lewd Rochester lampoon the King and the court, And Sidley and others may cry him up for't; Soft Waller and Suckling, chaste Cowley and others, With Beaumont and Fletcher, poetical brothers, May here scribble on with pretence to the bays, E'en Shakespear himself may produce all his plays, And not get for whole pages one ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... my musical concern—is enclosed by Canada and Mexico, the Pacific and Atlantic. So, rightly or wrongly, even if the miracle occur and I do finish in time, I cannot leave. A short distance, such a short distance from where I scribble these words, Vanzetti died. No more childish thought than atonement was ever conceived. It is a base and baseless gratification. Evil is not recalled. So I do not sentence myself for the murder of Vanzetti or for my manifold crimes; ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... begun to scrawl, but whether In rhyme or prose, or baith thegither, Or some hotch-potch that's rightly neither, Let time mak proof; But I shall scribble down some blether ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... virtues, and both your poets are acknowledged to be very happy in paraphrasing them, it is my opinion, both of them, without giving the least preference to either, should be read alternately in your schools, as the tutor shall direct. Pardon, learned Sir, this scribble to my age and weakness, both which are very great, and command me wherein I may serve ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... pen to scribble a little before I set off. The Gentlemen are just set off to the races, and I am preparing to set off for Chantilly. Adieu, ...
— Journal of a Young Lady of Virginia, 1782 • Lucinda Lee Orr
... over," Drusilla explained—"mother and I together. If we were you we'd simply scribble a few lines on your card and ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... very clever fellow, Dick, but even you can't wash out the writing on the wall," philosophized the patient, from behind his bandage, "nor scribble anew on the tablet of Fate, which is hung round the neck of every man. If the old hag meant me to be blind, she'd fixed me ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... to the influences of Nature. Before his disease became serious he writes: "I wander about here with music-paper among the hills, and dales, and valleys, and scribble a good deal. No man on earth can love the country as I do." But one of Nature's most delightful modes of speech to man was soon to be utterly lost to him. At last he became so deaf that the most stunning crash of thunder or the fortissimo of the full orchestra ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... arts."[609] His neglect of literature and the arts was the more unfortunate because George III and his sons did not raise the tone of the Court in this respect, witness the remark of the King to Gibbon at a State function. "Well, Mr. Gibbon, it's always scribble, scribble, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... of the past are making me "talky," and, I fear, tedious. I could scribble and chatter about bygone Birmingham from now till about the end of the century, which, however, as I write, is not very far off. But, my gentle reader, you shall be spared. Most people know that Birmingham is swallowing up its immediate suburbs, and ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... no better by a second Grand Jury. The second jury accompanied its rejection of the bill by a presentment against the patent,[4] and the defeat of the "prerogative" became assured. Every where the Drapier was acclaimed the saviour of his country. Any person who could scribble a doggerel or indite a tract rushed into print, and now Whitshed was harnessed to Wood in a pillory of contemptuous ridicule. Indeed, so bitter was the outcry against the Lord Chief Justice, that it is said to have hastened his death. The cities of Dublin, Cork and Waterford ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... other professions, so in medicine, when one's brain is overflowing with private affairs, one cannot attend properly to patients. On such occasions one is apt to ask the usual questions mechanically, hear the replies and scribble a prescription of some harmless formula. On the afternoon in question I certainly believe myself guilty of such lapse of professional attention. Yet even we doctors are human, although our patients frequently forget that fact. The medico is a long-suffering person, even in these days ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... last of them, "thirty years come Christmas next, he and I together. No other hands but ours have ever touched them, and now people to whom they mean nothing but so much business will fling them about, drop greasy crumbs upon them—I know their ways, the brutes!—scribble all over them. And he who always would have ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... to the shadows in me. I am not a maniac like the night. My mind closes like a darkness over the world but I enjoy myself walking amid insane houses, staring at windows that look like drunken octagons, observing lamp posts that simper with evil, promenading fan shaped streets that scribble themselves ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... dearer to me than the whole world beside, and yet neglect yourself? If you do not, you wrong a perfect friendship; and if you do, you must consider my interest in you, and preserve yourself to make me happy. Promise me this, or I shall haunt you worse than she does me. Scribble how you please, so you make your letter long enough; you see I give you good example; besides, I can assure you we do perfectly agree if you receive not satisfaction but from my letters, I have none ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... affair, the pure overflowing of la belle passion, all about Venus, Cupids, bows and arrows, hearts, darts, and them things, which, having copied neatly over on a handsome sheet of foolscap, turned up with gilt, (for, though I say it myself, I scribble a smart fist,) I made a blotch of red wax on the back as large as a dollar, that thereon I might the more indelibly impress a seal, with a couple of pigeons cooing upon it, and 'toujours wotre' for the motto. This I popped into ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... history of men whose after lives have been torn to pieces by the storms of vicissitude and passion. So far, he had not begun to rhyme—an unusual case, as boys who can make two lines jingle, whether they be poets or not, generally scribble plentifully before leaving school. At the age of fourteen he wrote some verses to his mother on her birthday, but it is fair to suppose that they gave no hint of talent, as they have not been preserved: it was only from his temperament that his destiny ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... tire and was rolling it into the shop. Slowly they followed him. Hawkins proceeded to the desk and picked up a pad of repair forms and started to scribble something on the top sheet. Joe watched his narrow, bent shoulders under the sleazy shirt. There was something pathetic in the proud crest of hair above his forehead and the pucker ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... Wharton that I should call to-morrow, as agreed. Upon this, General Richman politely requested the favor of my company at dinner. I accepted his invitation, and bade them good night. I shall do the same to you for the present, as I intend, to-morrow, to scribble the cover, which is to ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... critics, who scatter their peevish strictures in private circles, and scribble at every author who has the eminence of being unconnected with them, as they are usually spleen-swoln from a vain idea of increasing their consequence, there will always be found a petulance and illiberality in their remarks, ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... never tire; and I almost envy Fanny and Harriet the pleasure of reading them for the first time. After breakfast I take my little table into Lucy's room, and write there for an hour; she likes to have me in her room, though she only hears the scribble, scribble: she is generally reading at that hour, or doing Margaret's delight—algebra. I am doing the Sequel to Frank. Walking, reading, and talking fill the rest of the day. I do not read much, it tires my eyes, and I have not yet finished the Life of Wesley: I think it a most curious, entertaining, ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Millionaires. But what produced the most beneficial effects on the new people, and excited the greatest indignation and despair among the old class, were some volumes which the Government, with shocking Machiavelism, bribed some needy scions of nobility to scribble, and which revealed certain secrets vainly believed to be ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... up on the floor and shouted, "Toffile, It's coming up to you." It had its choice Of the door to the cellar or the hall. It took the hall door for the novelty, And set off briskly for so slow a thing, Still going every which way in the joints, though, So that it looked like lightning or a scribble, From the slap I had just now given its hand. I listened till it almost climbed the stairs From the hall to the only finished bedroom, Before I got up to do anything; Then ran and shouted, "Shut the bedroom door, Toffile, for my sake!" "Company," he said, ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... fashionable place, but Uncle stopped here years ago, and won't go anywhere else. However, we don't mean to stay long, so it's no great matter. Oh, I can't begin to tell you how I enjoy it all! I never can, so I'll only give you bits out of my notebook, for I've done nothing but sketch and scribble since I started. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... not soon receive it, you may conclude that it has miscarried; in which case, I shall not consent to the universe existing a moment longer. I have no copy of it, except the wildest scribble of a first draught, so that it ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... Pierre's Portage, fifty miles farther down the river. He had come direct from the creeks, and his impressions of the motley pioneer life at the gold-diggings were so vivid that he had found an isolated corner of the deck where he could scribble them in a ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... the board, but Mr. Kestrel did not heed them. Leaning forward, he seized a pen, and drawing a sheet of paper to him, began to scribble a memorandum of the terms, which, when finished, he pushed ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... about it he fills with grotesques, which are odd fantastic figures without any grace but what they derive from their variety, and the extravagance of their shapes. And in truth, what are these things I scribble, other than grotesques and monstrous bodies, made of various parts, without any certain figure, or any other than accidental order, coherence, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Esquimaux for a fixed star, or in an Italian highwayman for some Parian statue which he had stumbled on in his thickets. But the admiration was soon absorbed in the job in hand, and he turned away—to scribble to the Minister. Of the younger portion of the family I shall say but little. Children are happiest in the nursery, and there I leave them. I had two sisters, sweet little creatures, one with black eyes and the other with blue. This is enough for their description. My four ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... ignorant, The praises of the author, penn'd B' himself, or wit-insuring friend; The itch of picture in the front, 655 With bays and wicked rhyme upon't; All that is left o' th' forked hill, To make men scribble without skill; Canst make a poet spite of fate, And teach all people to translate, 660 Tho' out of languages in which They understand no part of speech; Assist me but this once, I 'mplore, And I shall trouble thee ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... going to have a lot of lunch presently; and then I shall feel all right again, and the loneliness will pass away as often before. It is the flesh that is weak. Already I have done myself all the good in the world by this scribble, and feel alive again ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... without being arrested. When they met in prison they had so little time to discuss such details, in face of the one awful fact that he was there, and was in all probability going to die in two days. But from this incomplete, tear-stained scribble that he left behind and from the answers he gave to her few questions, she gathered that the story of his ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... it were the deuce's own scribble, and yo' axed me to read in it for yo'r sake, and th' oud gentleman's, I'd do it. Whatten's this, wench? I'm not going for to take yo'r brass, so dunnot think it. We've been great friends, 'bout the sound o' money ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... heart to work and composed a rhyme. Now, the most unfit sphere on earth for an inexperienced mind to exercise the poetic faculty is in epitaphiology. It does very well in copy-books, but it is most unfair to blot the resting-place of the dead with unskilled poetic scribble. It seems to me that the owners of cemeteries and graveyards should keep in their own hand the right to refuse ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... of two hours yesterday on Calvert's pony, and he is improving fast in horsemanship. The school appears to answer very well. We shall have the Governess in a day or two, which will be a great satisfaction. Will you send my Mother this scribble with my love; ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... to write to Alice Puttenham, and to scribble a note to Lady Fox-Wilton asking her to see him as soon as possible. Then Anne forced some luncheon on him, and he had barely finished it when a step outside made itself heard. He looked ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of my journals, from whence I infer, that he either never reads them, or does not give himself the trouble to remember any of their contents, tho' some part has been address'd to him, so, for the future, I shall trouble only you with this part of my scribble—Last thursday I din'd at Unkle Storer's & spent the afternoon in that neighborhood. I met with some adventures in my way viz. As I was going, I was overtaken by a lady who was quite a stranger to me. She accosted me with "how do you do miss?" I answer'd her, but told her I had not the ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... by many, and our number went on growing continually. This was one of the first good effects of my having learnt a little to scribble; another was, that the leading men, seeing a newspaper now in the hands of one who could also handle a pen, thought it convenient to oblige and encourage me. Bradford still printed the votes, and laws, and other publick business. He ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... a commonplace," snapped my lady. "They chatter and scribble; they don't feel. They write stanzas of 'gush' on Maternity; and tear the little bleating calf from its mother to bleed to death in a long, slow agony. They maunder twaddle about Infancy over some ugly red lump of human flesh, in whose ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... act. The audience stared steadily at us with and without opera-glasses. I suppose people thought that we were members of some royal family. As the performance was not interesting and I was tired, we left at an early hour. I scribble this off to you ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... ruined as well. The woman I love is a woman forbidden to me while I suffer as I suffer now. Realize that—and then fancy you see a man sitting at this table here, with pen, ink, and paper before him, who has only to scribble a line or two, and to begin the cure of you from that moment. Deliverance in a few months from the horror of the fits; marriage in a few months to the woman you love. That heavenly prospect in exchange for the hellish existence that you are enduring now. And the one price to pay for it, a discolored ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... should think it WAS a king that spoke; there's no denying it, when the humour's upon on him he doth thunder and lighten like your true King; now where got he that trick? See him scribble and scratch away contentedly at his meaningless pot-hooks, fancying them to be Latin and Greek—and except my wit shall serve me with a lucky device for diverting him from his purpose, I shall be forced to pretend ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... SISTER: ... As soon as I finish this scribble I am to have 5 o'clock tea with Frances Power Cobbe. Tomorrow I go shopping, Thursday Millicent Garrett Fawcett is to dine with us, and Mrs. Peter Taylor is to call here, and all are to take "substantial tea" with dear, noble Mrs. Lucas, and then ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... governed much as they are now, and since A.D. 67 have published a daily Peking Gazette, of which (thanks to our intelligent "host of the Garter," Mr. Janssen) we have secured a copy. We are all but of yesterday compared to the Heathen Chinee, and it is impossible to sit down and scribble glibly of such a people. In Japan there is no record. It is a new race appearing almost for the first time among civilized nations. It has given the world nothing, but how widely different here! It is to China the world owes the compass, gunpowder, porcelain, and even the art of printing, ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... balance to-night developed a shortage of $1.22. Before the budgeteer could precisely place it, his attention became diverted by something else, to return no more that evening. Having drawn a stray sheet of paper toward him to scribble on it "Milk for Miggs," he was caught and engrossed by other inscriptions on the sheet, noted down in the early ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... topped by its aureole of frizzy yellow curls. She leaned against the sun-warmed granite, and cried a little. That was the way of women when the man was late at the tryst. Then she dried her eyes and hummed a song, and, finally, taking a stump of pencil from her pocket, she began to scribble on the smooth red stone—all part of the old play, the boulder knew. The first woman whom he remembered had drawn a figure meant for a portrait of her lover, with a ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... write—you see, I've always sort of wanted to write fiction. Magazine stories. I like to scribble ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... good Hauschka! As for myself, I wander about here with music paper, among the hills and dales and valleys, and scribble a great deal to get my daily bread; for I have brought things to such a pass in this mighty and ignominious land of the Goths and Vandals, that in order to gain time for a great composition, I must always previously scrawl away ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... who was wont to scribble on many sheets of paper so as to put himself in a mood for work, Des Esseintes felt the necessity of steadying his hand by several initial and unimportant experiments. Desiring to create heliotrope, he took down bottles of vanilla and almond, then changed his idea ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... pamphlets; neither of them as yet published. The Doctor sent them to me.... My dutiful love to your excellent Mother, whom, believe me, I think of frequently and with a pang of affection. God bless you. I'll try and contrive to scribble a line and half every time the man goes with "The Watchman" ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... a home," said Gaisford. "Why not go out to California for six months? You can scribble there as ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... the Lord! Jer. xxxii. 17.... And now a word: is ridicule the right thing in so solemn a matter as the discussion of Holy Writ? [Is food for ridicule the right thing? Did I discuss Holy Writ? I did not: I concussed profane scribble. Even the Doctor did not discuss; he only enunciated and denunciated out of the mass of inferences which a mystical head has found premises for in ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... ejaculated Ellen when, after more debating, the signature was finally inscribed, "I'm clean beat out. Why, I could have deeded away the whole United States in the time it's taken this lout of a boy to scribble his name. Is it any wonder that with only a stupid idiot like this for help, my garden's always behind other folks', an' my ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... passion, even if reciprocated, must be secret and silent. Talk of making love to a young miss closely watched by governess or guardian—a ward in Chancery—an heiress of expectant thousands! It is but "child's play" to break through the entourage that surrounds one of such. To scribble sonnets and scale walls is but an easy task, compared with the bold effrontery that challenges the passions ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... I run!—Thou wilt own, that if I pay thee not in quality, I do in quantity: and yet I leave a multitude of things unobserved upon. Indeed I hardly at this present know what to do with myself but scribble. Tired with Lord M. who, in his recovery, has played upon me the fable of the nurse, the crying child, and the wolf—tired with my cousins Montague, though charming girls, were they not so near of kin—tired with Mowbray and Tourville, and their everlasting identity— ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... miniatures were suspended upon a surface of faded stuff. The place had both color and quiet; I thought it a perfect room for work, and went so far as to say to myself that, if it were mine to sit and scribble in, there was no knowing but that I might learn to write as well as the author of Beltraffio. This distinguished man did not turn up, and I rummaged freely among his treasures. At last I took down a book that detained me awhile, and seated myself ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... memory I cherish, and I have torn up their work as if it were a scrap of paper covered with a child's meaningless scribble." ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... smoked "all the time." If towards morning he felt somewhat faint he would refresh himself with crusts of bread soaked in cold water, thus imitating to a certain extent our William Ptynne, who would from time to time momentarily suspend his interminable scribble to recruit exhausted nature with a moistened crust; only the verbose author of "Histriomastix" used to dip his crusts in Strong ale. And the bitter old pamphleteer, for all that his ears had been cropped and his cheeks branded by the Star Chamber, lived to be nearly ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... for some other time." They were sitting near a table where a pencil and some loose leaves of paper lay. He pulled his chair a little closer, and, with the child still upon his knee, began to scribble and sketch at random. "Ah, there's San Miniato," he said, with a glance from the window. "Must get its outline in. You've heard how there came to be a church up there? No? Well, it shows the sort of man San Miniato really was. He was one of the early Christians, ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... was awful lazy, he would laugh and talk, and crack jokes all the time, didn't love work, but did dearly love his pay." He liked to lie under a shade tree, or up in the loft of the cabin and read, cipher, or scribble. At night he ciphered by the light of the fire on the wooden fire shovel. He practised stump oratory by repeating the sermons, and sometimes by preaching himself to his brothers and sister. His gifts in the rhetorical line were high; when it was announced in ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... People were parting after supper; or they were lingering in the restaurant beyond. Nobody paid the slightest attention to the newcomers, and Annesley settled down unobtrusively in a corner, while her companion went to scribble a line to the Countess ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... An exception disproves the rule. Have you ever had occasion to study character in handwriting? What do you make of this fellow's scribble?" ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... very moment I was, perhaps, sitting innocently by his side. We used to scribble our letters together, sitting out in the woods, and break off every few minutes to laugh and chatter. Probably, after it was finished, we walked together to the nearest post, and as we went he looked at me—he looked. Oh!"—she ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... that over," Drusilla explained—"mother and I together. If we were you we'd simply scribble a few lines on your card and send it ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... of Latin authors all! Nor think your verses sterling, Though with a golden pen you scrawl, And scribble in ...
— English Satires • Various
... finishes with his utmost care and art, and the vacuity about it he fills with grotesques, which are odd fantastic figures without any grace but what they derive from their variety, and the extravagance of their shapes. And in truth, what are these things I scribble, other than grotesques and monstrous bodies, made of various parts, without any certain figure, or any other than accidental order, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... two shillings; and the first volume of Idalia (for Eliza was Ouidaesque even in her titles) only cost her eighteen-pence. She seems to have been a clean girl. She did not drop warm lard on the leaves. She did not tottle up her milk-scores on the bastard-title. She did not scribble in the margin "Emanuella is a foul wench." She did not dog's-ear her little library, or stain it, or tear it. I owe it to that rare and fortunate circumstance of her neatness that her beloved books have come into ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... the next day's leisure, part of it being written between schools in the forbidden class-room. Still it was not quite finished on Friday afternoon at six, when school ended, and Eric stayed a few minutes behind the rest to scribble off the last ten lines; which done, he banged down the lid of his desk, not locking it, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... 'You rate me too high, my dear. Still,' I'd say, 'if you insist upon it, you just scribble down the main points on a sheet o' paper, and I'll take a walk and think it over.' Then I'd carry it off to Benny." 'Bias, who so far had held the better of the argument by keeping his temper, clinched his triumph with a nod and ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Longhurst's useless intervention Bellairs had seemed uneasy, and at this new attack he began (in his turn) to scribble a note between the bids. I imagined, naturally enough, that it would go to Captain Trent; but when it was done and the writer turned and looked behind him in the crowd, to my unspeakable amazement, he did not seem to remark ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the inevitable, and have thought little of it since. Perhaps I have done wrong, and if so, I trust I shall see it and repent it. I do not intend to make any promises, because I may have reason to regret them, but I do not know that I shall scribble any more on the objectionable ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... goddess stepped down from the machine. One of the Princess's ladies begged to enter; a man, it appeared, had brought a line for the Freiherr von Gondremark. It proved to be a pencil billet, which the crafty Greisengesang had found the means to scribble and despatch under the very guns of Otto; and the daring of the act bore testimony to the terror of the actor. For Greisengesang had but one influential motive: fear. The note ran thus: 'At the first council, procuration to be withdrawn. ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... carefully twice over, and then sat down at the table and began to scribble on the back of the envelope. She convinced herself that three times fifteen was forty-five, and that so many lire amounted to not quite two pounds. Then there was the fare out to be reckoned. Finally, she decided that she ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... great boulders, and where some slender delicate birches spring, a wonder in this barren country. This was a favourite haunt of Emily, and indeed they all loved the spot. Here they would use some of their paper, for they still kept up their old habit of writing tales and poems, and loved to scribble out of doors. And some of it they would use in drawing, since at this time they were taking lessons, and Emily and Charlotte were devoted to the art: Charlotte making copies with minuteness and exact fidelity; Emily drawing animals and still-life with far greater ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... family, publicly exhibited sculpture? The Princess Beatrice, has she not done something in the way of designing? The Duke of Edinburgh, he is a musician. And it is in these little excursions into art that the family most truly manifests its bourgeois nature. The sincerest bourgeois are those who scribble little poems and smudge little canvases in the intervals between an afternoon reception and a dinner-party. The amateur artist is always the most inaccessible to ideas; he is always the most fervid admirer of the commonplace. A ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... drew from the inside pocket of his coat a thick and scrawly letter. Then he did things to this letter that in after years he would blush to acknowledge, if they remained a part of his memory. He kissed the scribble—undeniably. Then, with rapt eyes, he reread the lengthy missive from "Dolly." It had come in the morning mail and he had read it a dozen times. The reader is left to conjecture just what the letter contained. Mr. Garrison's thoughts were ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... take my pen to scribble a little before I set off. The Gentlemen are just set off to the races, and I am preparing to set off for ...
— Journal of a Young Lady of Virginia, 1782 • Lucinda Lee Orr
... the charms of Goldsmith's later style are to be traced in the letters of his youth, and he began to scribble verses when he could scarcely write. At the age of eight he went to the Rev. Mr. Gilpin's superior school of Elphin, in Roscommon, where he was considered "a stupid, heavy blockhead, little better than a fool, whom everyone made fun of." Indeed, from his earliest youth he was made ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... us passionately of reading ahead, we would, on the slightest provocation, out-Fletcher Fletcher chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy. And we would underline and bracket and side-line and overline the ragged little paper volume, and scribble up and down its margins, and dream over its footnotes, to ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... dung: Let them form a grand committee, How to plague and starve the city; Let them stare, and storm, and frown, When they see a clergy gown; Let them, ere they crack a louse, Call for th'orders of the house; Let them, with their gosling quills, Scribble senseless heads of bills; We may, while they strain their throats, Wipe our a—s with their votes. Let Sir Tom,[4] that rampant ass, Stuff his guts with flax and grass; But before the priest he fleeces, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... care and apart from strife, With the Laureate's wine, and the Laureate's pay, And no deductions at quarter-day? Oh, that would be the post for me! With plenty to get and nothing to do, But to deck a pet poodle with ribbons of blue, And whistle a tune to the Queen's cockatoo, And scribble of verses remarkably few, And empty at evening a bottle ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... unconsciousness of self in the history of men whose after lives have been torn to pieces by the storms of vicissitude and passion. So far, he had not begun to rhyme—an unusual case, as boys who can make two lines jingle, whether they be poets or not, generally scribble plentifully before leaving school. At the age of fourteen he wrote some verses to his mother on her birthday, but it is fair to suppose that they gave no hint of talent, as they have not been preserved: it was only from his temperament that his destiny ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... to the "mark for the prize," if we have a clearer and more desirous view of the yet far-distant goal. "Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty, they shall behold the land that is very far off," must have been addressed to one still "very far" from the promised land. Thus I scribble to thee the musings with which, in my now shady allotment, I try to encourage myself to hope; and which perhaps are as incorrect as the lament which the beautiful spring will sometimes prompt, "With the year seasons return, but not to me." It would, however, be most ungrateful ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... all life worse is, For abating superfluous pride, Than having to scribble on verses With the editor waiting outside; I am hearing a lecture on Shelley, Where I ought to be able to dream, But my brain is as vapid as jelly. And I cannot ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... nimble fingers—they were always speeding up the printers—ply their typesetting machines, and cast and arrange masses of metal in a sort of kitchen inferno, above which, in a beehive of little, brightly lit rooms, disheveled men sit and scribble. There is a throbbing of telephones and a clicking of telegraph instruments, a rushing of messengers, a running to and fro of heated men, clutching proofs and copy. Then begins a roar of machinery catching the infection, going faster and faster, and whizzing and ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... then set to work gathering a few little things together and putting them in a large but light-weight satchel, such as she had often used to carry some of the choicest apples from the orchard when they were being gathered in. Her first care was for her manuscript,—the long-treasured scribble, kept so secretly and so often considered with hope and fear, and wonder and doubting—then she took one or two of the more cherished volumes which had formerly been the property of the "Sieur Amadis" and packed them with it. Choosing only the most necessary garments ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... and call For pens and parchment, writing-desk, and all. None dares be pilot who ne'er steered a craft; No untrained nurse administers a draught; None but skilled workmen handle workmen's tools; But verses all men scribble, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... we scribble letters, for the post leaves at five. As we write the peaceful afternoon is disturbed by the roar of five engines. B Flight is starting up in readiness for an offensive patrol. Ten minutes later more engines break into song, as three machines of C Flight leave to photograph some new lines of defence ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... to inspect his armament and stores, don his harness, get into his heavy boots, scribble a couple of words to confide Baya to the prince, and slip a few bank-notes sprinkled with tears into the envelope, and then the dauntless Tarasconian rolled away in the stage-coach on the Blidah road, leaving the ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... and this look that Sanda changed her mind, after one day and night, all of which she spent—vainly—in trying to find another plan. A letter did come from her father, as she and Ourieda had hoped it might (Colonel DeLisle, while still at Sidi-bel-Abbes, found time to scribble off a few lines to his girl for each camel post that travelled through the dunes from Touggourt to Djazerta), and in sickness of heart Sanda pretended that she was wanted "at home." The Agha was grieved and astonished, ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... wipe my heated brow and settle down to the calm enjoyment of the honk. Drawing forth my cigar-case, I am soon wreathed in the fragrant clouds engendered by the incineration of a halfpenny cheroot, and, with a sigh of satisfaction, I spread out my writing or sketching materials and proceed to scribble or paint, calm in the knowledge that nothing on earth is in the least likely to disturb the flow of ideas, or interrupt the laying on of a broad flat wash. Now and again, lazily, I lean back to watch the witless hoverings of a big butterfly, or sleepily listen to the ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... ought never to depart from the mind of an honest reformer. I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases. A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... perhaps. I don't think any better of the stuff that I scribble than you do. It's all an experiment with me. I'm trying my brushes—trying my brushes. Perhaps I may be able to do something stronger some day, and perhaps not. But at all events I sha'n't force my mood. I shall ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... loved to scribble, but only within the last few years had she thought of writing for money that she should need. She had already sent several manuscripts to editors of magazines; but somehow, like birds too young to leave the nest, they all found their way back to her. With each failure, however, she had become ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... spoken of nothing but piloting as a science so far, and I doubt if I ever get beyond that portion of my subject. And I don't care to. Any Muggins can write about old days on the Mississippi of five hundred different kinds, but I am the only man alive that can scribble about the piloting of that day, and no man has ever tried to scribble about it yet. Its newness pleases me all the time, and it is about the only ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... elder of the pair, who was the one in authority, "if you wish to scribble a note, here are paper and pencil." And he tore a leaf from his notebook and handed it ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... much amusement from the way we sit and scribble, and one man asked me if I were writing a book! All this time I haven't mentioned the Port Said letters. We got them before we left the ship, and, determined for once to show myself a well-balanced, sensible young person, I took mine to the cabin and ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... bibliophile, would treat a book as roughly as if it were a pair of shoes, would stick in straws to keep his place, or stuff it with violets and rose-leaves, and would very likely eat fruit or cheese over one page and set a cup of ale on the other. An impudent boy would scribble across the text, the copyist would try his pen on a blank space, a scullion would turn the pages with unwashed hands, or a thief might cut out the fly-leaves and margins to use in writing his letters; 'and all these various negligences,' ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... for idiots, and there is much joy when after many years of persevering effort some devoted person succeeds in teaching these beings, whose mentality is far inferior to that of a monkey, to repeat a few words like a parrot, to scribble some words on paper, or to repeat a prayer mechanically with their eyes turned ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... initial or other simple design on the wood half an hour before going to press, when the Editor hurriedly required such a decoration—possibly to supply an artist's omission. Such sketches were "The Cabman's Ticket" in February, 1854, put upon the wood from a scribble by Gilbert a Beckett—his sole artistic contribution to Punch; "Broom v. Brush" in May, 1859; and "The Turkish Bath" in 1880. And, above all, "process" had not yet held out its alluring promise of nearly equal ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... comes that scintillating line: "A scribble of God's finger in the sky"; and an admonition to the preacher: "Thou art God's minister, ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... works of modern wits, 650 With vanity, opinion, want, The wonder of the ignorant, The praises of the author, penn'd B' himself, or wit-insuring friend; The itch of picture in the front, 655 With bays and wicked rhyme upon't; All that is left o' th' forked hill, To make men scribble without skill; Canst make a poet spite of fate, And teach all people to translate, 660 Tho' out of languages in which They understand no part of speech; Assist me but this once, I 'mplore, And I ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... start early that afternoon for Knollsea, to spend the few opening days of their married life there, and as the hour for departure was drawing near Raye asked his wife if she would go to the writing-desk in the next room and scribble a little note to his sister, who had been unable to attend through indisposition, informing her that the ceremony was over, thanking her for her little present, and hoping to know her well now that she was the writer's ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... the Bosh you write, the Trash you read, End in the Garbage Barrel—take no Heed; Think that you are no worse than other Scribes, Who scribble Stuff to meet ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... any one of "the others," the playwrights, a player, holding a share in his company? If not, the fact makes an essential difference, for Shakspere WAS a shareholder. Collier, in his preface to Henslowe's so-called "Diary," mentions a playwright who was bound to scribble for Henslowe only (Henry Porter), and another, Chettle, who was bound to write only for the company protected by the Earl of Nottingham. {159b} Modern publishers and managers sometimes make the same terms with novelists ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... men, he was a man of method. He kept a pad on his desk on which he would scribble down his appointments, and it was my duty on entering the office each morning to take this pad and type its contents neatly in a loose-leaved ledger. Usually, of course, these entries referred to business ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... moment to scribble a line on my card. Our father is dangerously ill—his lawyer has been sent for. Come with me to London by the first train. Meet at ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... and cornerless, and liable at any moment to fall a prey to some antiquary and be patched in the legs, and "restored" with an unseemly nose, and labeled wrong and dated wrong, and set up in the Vatican for poets to drivel about and vandals to scribble their names on ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... write much; she explained that she could only scribble a line or two while mommie slept. Mommie was about the same. She did not think there was anything Ward could do, and she thanked him for offering to help. There was nothing, she said pathetically, that anybody could do; even the doctors did not seem able to ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... know. I wrote that before we were married; Let's see—why, it's ten years ago! You remember that night, at Drake's party, When you flirted with Dick all the time? I left in a state quite pathetic, And went home to scribble that rhyme. ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... the Christmas holidays at college. It was a perfect time of peace after the excitement and hurry of her life—a time when she could steal into the big library and read the hours away without being disturbed, or scribble things on paper that she would like to expand into something, some day, when ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... so confident about that,' replied Nicholas. 'But I dare say I could scribble something now and then, that would ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... talked with his associate, Poe would continue to scribble away with his pencil, as if writing, and when his visitor jestingly remonstrated with him on his want of politeness, he replied that he had been all attention, and proved that he had by suitable comment, ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... spirit,"—"An appointed time."—Ib. (2.) Words of a participial appearance, formed from nouns by adding ed; as, "The eve thy sainted mother died."—W. Scott. "What you write of me, would make me more conceited, than what I scribble myself."—Pope. (3.) Participles, or participial adjectives, reversed in sense by the prefix un; as, unaspiring, unavailing, unbelieving, unbattered, uninjured, unbefriended. (4.) Words of a participial ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... metaphysical speculations of knowledge? On the theorems of Condillac, I, in common with numberless contemporaneous students (for, in my youth, Condillac held sway in the schools, as now, driven forth from the schools, his opinions float loose through the talk and the scribble of men of the world, who perhaps never opened his page),—on the theorems of Condillac I had built up a system of thought designed to immure the swathed form of material philosophy from all rays and all sounds of a world not material, as the walls ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I am not sending you any address, for I don't want you to know where I am, dear. I shan't write to you again unless I scribble things and tear them up without posting. This is final. When a woman makes such a break she must do it once and for all. Oh, Simon, when you kissed me two days ago you thought you loved me; but I know what the senses are and how they deceive people, and I had only just caught your senses on that ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... summits of roofs, in front of ovens, among machines, and in the water, and underground, with nothing to eat but a little bread; and I feel almost ashamed, I, who in all that time have accomplished nothing but scribble four small pages, and that reluctantly. Ah, I am discontented, discontented! I see plainly that my father is out of humor, and would like to tell me so; but he is sorry, and he is still waiting. My dear father, who works so hard! ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... to the transactions which took place between him and the unfortunate Chatterton; a text upon which so much calumny and misrepresentation have been embroidered. The periodicals of the day, and the tribe of those "who daily scribble for their daily bread," and for whom Walpole had, perhaps unwisely, frequently expressed his contempt, attacked him bitterly for his inhumanity to genius, and even accused him as the author of the subsequent ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... cheque-book—and absently fingered the leaves—then my eye caught a counterfoil where I had chanced to open it. It was not in Miss Sharp's handwriting, although this was the house cheque-book which Burton usually keeps, but in my own and there was written, just casually as I scribble in my private account.—"For Suzette 5000 francs" and the date of last Saturday—and on turning the page there was the further one of "For Suzette 3000 francs" and ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... you back to, it has brought you back to no good! it's a hard case, you must needs think, madam, to a mother, to see a son that might do whatever he would, if he'd only set about it, contenting himself with doing nothing but scribble and scribe one day, and when he gets tired of that, thinking of nothing better than casting up ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... wit these lose their common sense And then turn critics in their own defense Each burns alike who can or cannot write Or with a rival's or an eunuch's spite All fools have still an itching to deride And fain would be upon the laughing side If Maevius scribble in Apollo's spite [34] There are who judge still worse than ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... learned men, that are in love, do thus; what can the unlearned Notary's do less? Even nothing else, but when they are writing, scribble up a multiplicity of several words, unnecessary clauses, and make long periods; not so much as touching or mentioning the principal business; and if he does, writes it clear contrary to the intent of the party concern'd: By that means ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... I see your name with, why, you must keep up the position you've made—and you shall too! You're quite right to drop the schoolmastering, since you make more money with your scribbling. Your time's valuable now. Set to and scribble away while you're the fashion; make your 'ay while the sun shines, my boy. I'll see yer through it. I want you to do me credit. I want everyone to know that you're not like some of these poor devils, but have got a rich old uncle at ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... complain, Thy cause with jesting thou shalt gain, Honour and right shalt value duly, In everything act simply, truly,— Virtue and godliness proclaim, And call all evil by its name, Nought soften down, attempt no quibble, Nought polish up, nought vainly scribble. The world shall stand before thee, then, As seen by Albert Durer's ken, In manliness and changeless life, In inward strength, with firmness rife. Fair Nature's Genius by the hand Shall lead thee on through every land, Teach ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... Samoa book before the mail goes; this last chapter is equally delicate and necessary. The prayers of the congregation are requested. Eheu! and it will be ended before this letter leaves and printed in the States ere you can read this scribble. The first dinner gong has sounded; je vous salue, monsieur et cher confrere. Tofa, soifua! Sleep! long life! as our Samoan ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and speak the simple truth. I desire now to look over with you my compositions of the last few days. I wish you, however, always to remember that when you write, you do so to add to the fame of your nation and to the honor of your fatherland. For myself, I scribble for my amusement; and I could easily be pardoned, if I were wise enough to burn my work as soon as it was finished. [Footnote: The king's own words.— Oeuvres Posthumes.] When a man approaches his fortieth year and makes bad ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... intention, my eyes fastened upon the signature of the letter, which would have made my future secure if it had only appeared in the right place. It was an unusually well- written signature—and you know how sometimes one may absent- mindedly scribble a sheet of paper full of meaningless words. I had a pen in my hand—[picks up a penholder from the table] like this. And somehow it just began to run—I don't want to claim that there was anything mystical—anything of a spiritualistic ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
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