"Famine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... directed thither, and often must their hearts have grown sick from the tedious delay of the hope in which they indulged. Certainly, it is a remarkable instance of the hard-heartedness and corruption of man's nature, that, even under these circumstances, with the horrors of famine daily in view, left alone on a remote and desolate coast, and, as it appeared, forsaken by the rest of the world, they did not profit by the lessons thus forcibly brought before them, nor listen with any good effect to the warnings taught them by sorrow ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... a Universal Duty Want of Poor-Law in France Appeals for Help in Times of Distress Jasmin Recitations entirely Gratuitous Famine in the Lot-et-Garonne Composition of the Poem 'Charity' Respect for the Law Collection at Tonneins Jasmin assailed by Deputations His Reception in the Neighbouring Towns Appearance at Bergerac At Gontaud At Damazan His ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... Famine is India's specialty. Elsewhere famines are inconsequential incidents—in India they are devastating cataclysms; in one case they annihilate hundreds; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that wretched summer, scorching drought alternating with cloud-bursts vied with each other in blasting the hopes of the farmers, and premature frost destroyed the few remaining stalks of corn, so that when the winter snows came, gaunt famine stared our family ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... to Sincapore for provisions, for famine was staring us in the face, but that same night a breeze sprang up, and on the 20th of May we dropped our anchor in the roads. At Sincapore we found the Hazard, 18, whose crew suffered so much at New Zealand; and here ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... Infamous and corrupt men, who suck the blood and gold of the country. Paris and the maritime towns taxed; the rural districts ruined and laid waste by the soldiers and other agents of the Cardinal; the peasants reduced to feed on animals killed by the plague or famine, or saving themselves by self-banishment—such is the work of this new justice. His worthy agents have even coined money with the effigy of the Cardinal-Duke. Here are some ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the Shire river, the travellers saw symptoms of recent distress among the people, which caused them much concern. Chimbolo, in particular, was rendered very anxious by the account given of the famine which prevailed still farther up the river, and the numerous deaths that had taken ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... city life by a system of starvation that would do infinite credit to a Thebaid anchorite. Eat abundantly. Take generous care of your body, for spiritual famine is inevitably ahead of you. Yonder on the table, carefully covered, is your dinner. Of course it is cold, stone-cold as this world's charity; but people who sleep until eight o'clock, ought not to expect ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... distressed, a Galileo, a Dryden, or an Otway, did but excite my admiration and my envy. Let me but equal them and I could willingly live with them in poverty and imprisonment, or die with them of misery, malady, and famine. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... them with a smile of ineffable sweetness and protection; like Rowena going to see Ivanhoe; like Marie Antoinette visiting the poor in the famine; like the Marchioness of Carabas alighting from her carriage and four at a pauper-tenant's door, and taking from John No. II., the packet of Epsom salts for the invalid's benefit, carrying it with her own imperial hand into the sick ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... knew there was such a thing as war until this happened to me. In America we don't know there is such a thing. It's like pestilence and famine; something in the story books. We've forgotten it for anything real. There's just a few grandfathers go around talking about it. Judge Holmes and sage old fellows like him. Otherwise it's just a game the kids play at.... And then suddenly here's everybody running about ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... suffering we live in! How Jesus sacrificed all and identified Himself with it! Let us in our measure do so too. The persecuted Stundists and Armenians and Jews, the famine-stricken millions of India, the hidden slavery of Africa, the poverty and wretchedness of our great cities—and so much more: what suffering among those who know God and who know Him not. And then in smaller circles, ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... and the Primaeval Teuton, have done so at the expense of facts. First, they have overlooked the broad fact, that while the Red Indians have been, ever since we have known them, a decreasing race, the Teutons have been a rapidly increasing one; in spite of war, and famine, and all the ills of a precarious forest life, proving their youthful strength and vitality by a reproduction unparalleled, as far as I know, in history, save perhaps by that noble and young race, the Russian. These writers have not known that the Teuton had his definite laws, more ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... their armies. The King was, from the first, master of the field, and immediately laid siege to the castle of Rochester, which was obstinately defended by William de Albiney, at the head of a hundred and forty knights with their retainers, but was at last reduced by famine. John, irritated with the resistance, intended to have hanged the governor and all the garrison; but on the representation of William de Mauleon, who suggested to him the danger of reprisals, he was content ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... return to Rome the princes found that their father was at war. He was besieging the city of Ardea, which lay south of Rome; and as this city was strong and well defended the king and his army were kept a long while before it, waiting until famine, their ally, should force the inhabitants to surrender. While the army was thus waiting in idleness its officers had leisure for feasts and diversions, and one of the king's sons found time to indulge in fatal mischief. ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... infatuation, he determined to go on. The soldiers subsisted for a time on such vegetables as they could find by the way; when these failed, they slaughtered and ate their beasts of burden; and finally, in the extremity of their famine, they began to kill and devour one another; then, at length, Cambyses concluded to return. He sent off, too, at one time, a large army across the desert toward the Temple of Jupiter Ammon, without any of the necessary precautions for such a march. ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... history has never seen, and the future, glowing with the unquenchable fire of undying France. When I think of the flaming courage of that heroic race, my imagination returns always to the vision of that defense—not the patient fortitude before famine of Paris, Sebastopol or Mafeking, but that miracle of patience and calm in the face of torrential rains of steel which for months swept the human earth in such a deluge as never before had been sent in punishment ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... my view. He could retire to-morrow —but he keeps on—why? Because he feels the weight of a tremendous responsibility on his shoulders, because he knows if it weren't for him and men like him upon whom the prosperity of this nation depends, we'd have famine and anarchy on our hands in no time. And look what he's done for the city, without ostentation, mind you! He never blows his own horn-never makes a speech. And for the Church! But I needn't tell you. When this settlement house and chapel are finished, they'll be coming ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... fat, and corn plentiful, its stones hummed from daylight to dark to the blent music of the creaking wheel and the splash-splash of the water which drove it. In lean years, when war or famine was abroad, and thanks to England these years were not few, the sluice was lifted, and in place of the hoarse murmur and complaint of the grinding stones and lumbering wheel there was the soft purr of the millrace, and the Calvet of his generation ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... navigated and conquered to save, to civilize, and to instruct; or to oppress, to plunder, and to destroy? Let India and Africa give the answer to these questions. The one we have exhausted of her wealth and her inhabitants by violence, by famine, and by every species of tyranny and murder. The children of the other we daily carry from off the land of their nativity; like sheep to the slaughter, to return no more. We tear them from every object of their affection, or, sad alternative, drag them together ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... observed Hartrath, willing to change the subject, "I hear you are on the Famine Relief Committee. Does your ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... that Phoebus told To me, and I the first-born fiend that same to you unfold: Ye sail for Italy, and ye, the winds appeased by prayer, Shall come to Italy, and gain the grace of haven there: Yet shall ye gird no wall about the city granted you, Till famine, and this murder's wrong that ye were fain to do, Drive you your tables gnawed with teeth to ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... of him as hopelessly as if he had beheld Famine itself stalking across the yard and making straight for ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... Master Richard fulfilled from the time of his setting out from his house, to the time that he entered into his heavenly mansion. Seven days are the time of perfection; it was in seven days that God Almighty made the world and all that is in it; there were seven years of famine in Egypt in which Joseph gathered store, and seven years of plenty. [I cannot bring myself to follow Sir John through the whole of the Old and New Testaments.].... And it was in seven days that Master Richard Raynal completed ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... people. Washington needed reinforcements; nay, more, the perilous situation of the army as it lay in camp at Valley Forge, at the conclusion of the campaign of 1777, was indeed distressing. The encampment consisted of huts, and there was danger of a famine. The soldiers were nearly destitute of comfortable clothing. "Many," says the historian, "for want of shoes, walked barefoot on the frozen ground; few, if any, had blankets for the night. Great numbers ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... which welters in the awful baptism of sensuality and ignorance,—the groans of inarticulate woe, the spectacle of oppression, the shameless cruelty of war, the pestilence that shakes its comet-sword over nations, and famine that peers with skeleton face through the corn-sheaves of plenty. Upon this theory of mere happiness no metaphysical subtlety can solve the fact of evil;—the coiled enigma constantly returns ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... the wailing little atom of humanity. The Indian woman had recently lost her own child. She hid the babe and afterward was permitted to adopt it. When a few months later she died of smallpox, Stokimatis had inherited the care of the little one. She had named it Sleeping Dawn. Later, when the famine year came, she had sold the child to ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... remarkably corresponds to the speculation of the Piutes. The Mintira of the Malayan Peninsula say that both sun and moon are women. The stars are the moon's children; once the sun had as many. They each agreed (like the women of Jerusalem in the famine), to eat their own children; but the sun swallowed her whole family, while the moon concealed hers. When the sun saw this she was exceedingly angry, and pursued the moon to kill her. Occasionally she gets a bite out of the moon, and that is an eclipse. The ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... He presently rejected it by answering, 'Rich is not quite the word for me, dame. I do work, and I must work. And even if I only get to Casterbridge by midnight I must begin work there at eight to-morrow morning. Yes, het or wet, blow or snow, famine or sword, my day's ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... to equalise matters, the event is sure to be followed by three years of dearth. In this instance, the highest mandarins escorted the wife of the literary athlete to the top of the wall, where she scattered a few handfuls of rice to avert the impending famine. ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... drivers, and the trampling of pursuing horses, were swept into captivity in an unknown and hostile land. Those who were able to evade this tempest fled to the walled cities; but escaping from fire, sword, and exile, they fell into the jaws of famine. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... interrupted the man with the riband. "All the deserters are unanimous in saying that famine and pestilence are at Orenbourg; that thistles are eaten as dainties there. If you wish to hang Alexis, hang on the same gibbet this young fellow, that ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... the measures of government, added to the internal commotions, had discouraged labour by rendering its profits insecure. These causes, aided perhaps by unfavourable seasons, had produced a scarcity which threatened famine. This state of things suggested to their enemies the policy of increasing the internal distress, by cutting off the external supply. In execution of this plan, the British cruisers were instructed "to stop ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... gentle and non-aggressive qualities. They eschew opium and spirituous liquors. Their chief sustenance, morning, noon, and eve, is rice. The rice crop seldom fails, not merely to support the population, but to leave a large margin for export. Famine, that hideous shadow which broods over so many a rice-subsisting population, is unknown here. Even scarcity is of rare occurrence. In the worst of years hardly a sack of grain has to be imported. It is this very abundance which ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... the tragic future of these unfortunates. A few, perhaps, would go as food for the Queen in times of famine. The remainder would become living incubators for the larvae of the Queen which would be planted in their living bodies by the monster attendant to eat away the vitals until death mercifully ended the victim's life, and the growing spider emerged to feed on ...
— Loot of the Void • Edwin K. Sloat
... this trifle, of which neither the fashionable colonel nor his fashionable tailor had leisure to think, the poor weaver and his whole family were reduced to the last degree of human misery—to absolute famine. The man had exerted himself to the utmost to finish a pattern, which had been bespoken for a tradesman who promised upon the delivery of it to pay him five guineas in hand. This money he received; but four guineas of it were due to his landlord for rent of his wretched garret, and the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... the rest of Central China, was in a turmoil. Because of the disturbed conditions most of the missionaries left the city, but Dr. Kahn refused to leave her work. With the help of her nurses she kept the hospital open, giving a refuge to many sufferers from famine and flood, and caring for the wounded soldiers. None of the forty beds was ever empty, and many had ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... expenditure so intimately related to questions of comfort, it must be remembered that in an English household there are two dinners a day: one early for the servants and children, and one late for the grown-ups; and solid dinners cost money even in England, where at present there is no meat famine. When Germans dine late they don't also dine early, even where there are children; while the kitchen dinner, that meal of supreme importance here, is eaten when the family has finished theirs, and is as informal as the meal a bird makes of berries. In a German household, living ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... One Reader is quite as likely to be not the person most resembling myself, but the one to whom my nature is complementary. Just as a particular soil wants some one element to fertilize it, just as the body in some conditions has a kind of famine—for one special food, so the mind has its wants, which do not always call for what is best, but which know themselves and are as peremptory as the salt-sick sailor's call for a lemon or a raw potato, or, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... without such advantage will be the ones to die. We may suppose, for example, that some of the individuals had longer necks than the average. In time of scarcity of food these individuals would be able to get food that the short-necked individuals could not reach. Hence in times of famine the long-necked individuals would be the ones to survive. Now if this peculiarity were a congenital variation it would be already represented in the germ plasm, and consequently it would be inherited by the next generation. ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... legally declared dead, but who have recovered, pass their lives. As a picture of hell on earth it has never been surpassed. Another of Kipling's Indian tales that is worth reading is William the Conqueror, a love story that has a background of grim work during the famine year. ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... beech-tree in the war-God's wood; and that it was the fleece of the wondrous ram who bore Phrixus and Helle across the Euxine sea. For Phrixus and Helle were the children of the cloud-nymph, and of Athamas the Minuan king. And when a famine came upon the land, their cruel step-mother Ino wished to kill them, that her own children might reign, and said that they must be sacrificed on an altar, to turn away the anger of the Gods. So the poor children were brought to the altar, and the priest stood ready with ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... on his hacienda, in partnership with an American who had been long resident in that part of the island. In this and the following year, however, the east of Cuba was visited by an unprecedented drought; causing famine which, though it destroyed many lives and ruined thousands of proprietors, attracted no more attention, he says, in England, than was implied by "a paragraph of three lines in an English newspaper." The west of Cuba was at the same ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... draw him on from dale to dale and from hill to hill, till the night starkened and the firmament darkened, when it roosted on a high tree. So Kamar al-Zaman stopped under the tree confounded in thought and faint for famine and fatigue, and giving himself up for lost, would have turned back, but knew not the way whereby he came, for that darkness had overtaken him. Then he exclaimed, "There is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah, the Glorious the Great!"; and laying ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... I have heard, There have been men, in such a hapless clime, As this poor Ireland, unctuous, wordy men, With slug-like skins, and smiling, cheerful faces, That, with their pamper'd families, grew fat, By bleeding Famine's well-nigh bloodless frame; Lessening the pauper's bitter, scanty bread, Season'd with salt tears; shredding finer still The blanket huddled to the stone-cold heart Of the wild, bigot, ghastly, dying wretch.— Thus, for a devilish and unnatural gain, Mowing ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... Commission of Enquiry into the state of the poor in Dorsetshire gave him an opportunity of proving his true talents; and he was appointed a Poor Law Inspector, first at Worcester, next at Manchester, where he had to deal with the potato famine and the Irish immigration of the 'forties, and finally in London, where he again distinguished himself during an epidemic of cholera. He was then advanced to the Permanent Secretaryship of Her Majesty's Office of Works ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... plague, pestilence and famine, from battle, murder, sudden death, and all forms of cowlike contentment, Good Lord, ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... another, and being shouted at by the men, who were brushing away at their coats to get them into as high a state of perfection as possible. There were the bullocks too, sadly reduced in numbers, and suggesting famine if some new efforts were ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... demons," says Origen, "which produce famine, unfruitfulness, corruptions of the air, and pestilence. They hover concealed in clouds, in the lower atmosphere, and are attracted by the blood and incense which the heathen offer to them as gods."[38] ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... small force of about 250 men under Clark, who, descending the Ohio, hid their boats, and marched northwardly, with their provisions on their backs. These being consumed, they subsisted for two days on roots, and, in a state of famine, appeared before Kaskaskias, unseen ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... his pork and eats it, and likewise butcher's meat; he enjoys his boiled beef and broth on Sunday; he drinks wine; his bread is more nutritious, not so black and healthier; he no longer lacks it and has no fear of lacking it. Formerly, he entertained a lugubrious phantom, the fatal image of famine which haunted him day and night for centuries, an almost periodical famine under the monarchy, a chronic famine and then severe and excruciating during the Revolution, a famine which, under the republic, had in three years destroyed over a million of lives.[3252] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... might well apprehend that they had escaped the shot and the sword only to perish by famine. The whole domain was a waste. Houses, barns, furniture, implements of husbandry, herds, flocks, horses, were gone. Many months must elapse before the clan would be able to raise on its own ground the means of supporting even ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... freebooter, George of Fransperg, or Franzberg, who carried about a silken cord by which he swore to strangle the Pope with his own hands. The enemy reached the walls of Rome on the night of the fifth of May; devastation and famine lay behind them in their track, the plunder of the Church was behind the walls, and far from northward came rumours of the army of the League on its way to cut off their retreat. They resolved to win the spoil or die, and at dawn the Constable, clad in a white cloak, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... built in them. When cold, keen winds blew fierce without, the soldier sat comfortable within, and soon our North Chickamauga camp became a semi-paradise—a home in the woods. It was here the brigade suffered so much from hunger; famine was our ghost, it haunted us by day and ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... Separate Brigade, and a row in the tents of the regulars. Up to within a fortnight such a state of affairs would have been considered abnormal, for the papers would have it that the former were on the verge of dissolution through plague, pestilence and famine due to the neglect of officials vaguely referred to as "the military authorities," or "the staff," while, up to the coming of Canker to command, sweet accord had reigned in the regular brigade, and the volunteers looked on with envy. But now a great martial magnate had praised the stalwart citizen ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... years of the Irish famine. By the failure of the potato crop, hundreds of thousands died of starvation or of fever. Multitudes had to leave their homes to get government work; and hunger and despair brought a new temptation to drink. Father Mathew's heart was well-nigh broken with seeing the misery of his ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... instructive to observe how, as they advanced in culture, and the mind dwelt more intently on the great problems of Life and Time, they were impelled to remove further and further the dim and mysterious Beginning. The Peruvians imagined that two destructions had taken place, the first by a famine, the second by a flood—according to some a few only escaping—but, after the more widely accepted opinion, accompanied by the absolute extirpation of the race. Three eggs, which dropped from heaven, hatched out the present ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... not crowd about me so to-morrow. O Leofric! could my name be forgotten, and yours alone remembered! But perhaps my innocence may save me from reproach; and how many as innocent are in fear and famine! No eye will open on me but fresh from tears. What a young mother for so large a family! Shall my youth harm me? Under God's hand it gives me courage. Ah! when will the morning come? Ah! when will the noon ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... weather-cock, perched upon his spindle neck, to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... Scinde, there are very rarely more than three or four showers in the year, and the cultivator has to depend entirely upon the overflow of the river for the growth of his crops, in the same way as the fellah of Egypt is saved from famine by the annual inundation of the Nile. In Fort Bukkur, there is a gauge on which the height of the river is registered, in a similar manner to that of the celebrated one in Egypt; and the news of the rise or fall of a few inches, is received by the Scindians with an eager interest, not a little ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... on Saturday, at a club, to make a demonstration before the Hotel de Ville, in favour of M. Mottu, the Mayor of the eleventh arrondissement, who was dismissed on account of his crusade against crucifixes. An amendment, however, was carried, putting it off until famine gives the friends of a revolution new adherents. Crucifixes were denounced by an orator in the course of the evening, as "impure nudities, which ought not to be suffered in public places, on account of ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... building of the great Capitoline temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, and I then explained why this constituted a religious revolution. The next temple of which tradition tells us was destined for another trias, Ceres, Liber, and Libera; the traditional date was 493 B.C., the cause a famine, and the site was at the foot of the Aventine, the plebeian quarter outside the pomoerium, close to the river where corn-ships might be moored.[529] Ceres, Liber, and Libera are plainly neither more nor less than the three Greek corn deities, Demeter, Dionysus, ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... I was saved, the grasshoppers came to our part of the country, and laid their eggs, and in the spring the young grasshoppers hatched out by the million. There were so many grasshoppers and they destroyed the vegetation so rapidly that people began to fear a famine. The governor of the State proclaimed a day of fasting and prayer, and many people gathered at the different houses of worship to plead with the Lord to stay the plague. Even hardhearted sinners left ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... to her own room, by the hands of Missouri Joe and the Chinese cook, where she dispensed such restoratives as finally brought back consciousness; and some slight nourishment being administered, revealed the fact that exhaustion and famine, more than disease, had reduced the invalid to his present condition; on becoming aware of which fact, Miss Edwards grew suddenly embarrassed, and, arranging everything for his comfort, was about to ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... attainable with slight labor, furnishing an abundance, not only for its own population, but making Egypt the granary of the Mediterranean countries. We learn from the Scriptures, of the visits of the sons of Jacob to Egypt to buy corn of Joseph when famine existed in their own land. These conditions, which made living so cheap, were doubtless the main causes of the early settlement of the valley of the Nile, and the rapid increase in its population. In confirmation of the foregoing we have the testimony of Diodorus Siculus, a Greek writer, ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... a history, my dears, as I have said. And time is growing short. I shall pass over that dreary summer of '74. It required no very keen eye to see the breakers ahead, and Mr. Bordley's advice to provide against seven years of famine did not go unheeded. War was the last thing we desired. We should have been satisfied with so little, we colonies! And would have voted the duties ten times over had our rights been respected. Should any of you doubt this, you have but to read the "Address to the King" of our Congress, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... were nearly used up in the mountains and the early spring supply trains from the East were about due, there came an unusual fall of snow, eighteen inches deep, extending far eastward over the plains, completely blockading teams and transportation. A famine was threatened and people became panic-stricken. Flour rose as high as $50 a sack, and one day a small quantity sold for eighty cents a pound. Coffee and other things also advanced in price. We were on our last sack of flour, and I decided that when that was gone ...
— A Gold Hunter's Experience • Chalkley J. Hambleton
... a healthy and moral population, was the gospel of selfishness, invented for the salvation of landlords and capitalists. Malthus was the heartless exponent of natural laws that kept down multiplication by famine, while the rich man fared sumptuously every day; and the Ricardians, with their mechanical balancing of supply and demand, were mocking distress by solemn formulas. It must be admitted that these sharp assailants ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... fathers", they made answer: "Since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and the famine". The women took a leading part in these practices, but refused to accept all the blame, saying, "When we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make our cakes and pour out drink offerings unto her without our men?"[140] ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... whole world. When he came down he had all sorts of wonderful things to tell. How one king was marching in battle against another, and which was likely to be the victor. How, in another place, great rejoicings were going on, while in a third people were dying of famine. In fact there was not the smallest event going on over the earth that ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... but keep us from the dainties of the wicked Joabs, Judases, and Ahithophels. Verse 8 speaks sadly against ministers that withdraw from their charges so unnecessarily, as a bird that wandereth too long from her nest: the young starve for cold or famine, or are made a prey. So these who, having no necessary call to be elsewhere, especially not being members of the Commission, yet stay not with their flocks, are guilty of their soul's ruin. Ver. 10: O how doth this speak against the present course of judicatories! They have ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... mountain passes to the west of Genoa, shut up the left wing of their army within the lines of Genoa, and forced the right wing under Suchet across the Var. Their advance was stayed by Massena's defence of Genoa. His troops suffered terribly from famine; they were shut in on land by the Austrians and bombarded from the sea by British ships. Meanwhile Bonaparte was preparing to attack the Austrians in northern Italy as soon as their chief army in the Black Forest country under ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... her own fair children, dearer than they: By a death of shame they all had died, And were stretched on the bare rock, side by side. And Rizpah, once the loveliest of all That bloomed and smiled in the court of Saul, All wasted with watching and famine now, And scorched by the sun her haggard brow, Sat mournfully guarding their corpses there, And murmured a strange and solemn air; The low, heart-broken, and wailing strain Of a mother that ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... that the Germans were changing their trench troops about that time, and if we managed to catch them, we must have done them much harm. Rode over to inspect my transport yesterday. Incidentally, Major Baker and I bought 1-1/2 doz. eggs at four for a franc. Famine price, of course, but I have only seen two since I came over here! As to the discomfort of this work, it is not very pleasant, but I do not trouble greatly about it. As an unmarried man, I should not mind the danger either very much, having had a certain ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... of death against all who should dare to pass it; the mayor (viguier) and the four sheriffs were left alone, and without resources to confront a populace bewildered by fear, suffering, and, ere long, famine. Then shone forth that grandeur of the human soul, which displays itself in the hour of terror, as if to testify of the divine image still existing amidst the wreck of us. Whilst the Parliament was flying from threatened Aix, and hurrying affrighted from town to town, accompanied or pursued ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... love I hold so free, My fond possessions come to be Clouded with grief; These fairy kisses, This archness innocent, Sting me with sorrow and disturbed content: I think of what my portion might have been; A dearth of blisses, A famine of delights, If I had never had what now I value most; Till all I have seems something I have lost; A desert underneath the garden shows, And in a mound ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... and mismanagement of Henry kept on increasing. At last the burden of taxation became too great to bear. Bad harvests had caused a famine, and multitudes perished even in London. Confronted by these evils, Parliament (S205) met in the Great Hall at Westminster. Many of the barons were in complete armor. As the King entered there was ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... they again went in search of other eggs, intending to lay in a store against the eventuality of any possible period of famine. ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... examine it by the nicest powers of the senses, study it upwards, downwards, and crosswise, experiment to learn if it has any mysterious chemical forces in it, consider its figures in relation to any astrological positions, to any natural signs of whirlwinds, tempests, plagues, famine, or earthquakes, try long to discover some hidden symbolism in it, and confess finally that no man unregenerate to letters, by any a priori or empirical knowledge, could have at all suspected that a bit of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... profound impression. Old Paddy her grandfather was with difficulty brought to realise the fact that "they were after makin' a doctor of young Nicholas O'Beirne, him that went out to the States the year before the Famine." And when he had got the idea into his head, it seemed to act like a swivel-joint, and set him nodding to the tune of: "Well tub-be sure; glory be ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... and often tidings necessary for the priest's safety came to them in roundabout ways. Warnings and advice reached them so opportunely that they could only have been sent by some person in the possession of state secrets. And, at a time when famine threatened Paris, invisible hands brought rations of "white bread" for the proscribed women in the wretched garret. Still they fancied that Citizen Mucius Scaevola was only the mysterious instrument of a kindness always ingenious, and ...
— An Episode Under the Terror • Honore de Balzac
... dire forewarnings came over the land of the North-humbrians, and miserably terrified the people; these were excessive whirlwinds, and lightnings; and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air. A great famine soon followed these tokens: and a little after that, in the same year, on the 6th of the Ides of January, the ravaging of heathen men lamentably destroyed God's church at Lindisfarn, through rapine and slaughter. And Siega died on the 8th of the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... Orleans wasted away. And through the dreary Winter the citizens watched one fort after another rise around them. The enemy was growing stronger, they were growing weaker; they had no prospect before them but defeat; when the Spring came would come the famine; their city would be ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... fact; insurrection is always a moral phenomenon. Riot is Masaniello; insurrection, Spartacus. Insurrection borders on mind, riot on the stomach; Gaster grows irritated; but Gaster, assuredly, is not always in the wrong. In questions of famine, riot, Buzancais, for example, holds a true, pathetic, and just point of departure. Nevertheless, it remains a riot. Why? It is because, right at bottom, it was wrong in form. Shy although in the right, violent although strong, it struck ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... informed me that it was in their true spirit. One of the waiters told me with an air of great wisdom, that the Tribune never took up military men except to set them down with bruises. This waiter was a gifted Irishman, and a great politician. During a sweet little touch of a rebellion, or a famine (which are about the same) in his country, he had read the Tribune twice a day to his wife, Biddy Regan, who expressed herself delighted at the forked lightning style it then kept up in defense of the rights of her fifty ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... 1780, gave Washington about the worst pinch in his career. It was the pinch of hunger. Supplies had not arrived. Famine had entered the camp and begun to threaten its life. Soldiers can get along without pay but they must have food. Mutiny ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... came to me. They offered to do this work (to make this road) for me as a free gift, without hire, without supplies, and I was tempted at first to refuse their offer. I knew the country to be poor; I knew famine threatening; I knew their families long disorganised for want of supervision. Yet I accepted, because I thought the lesson of that road might be more useful to Samoa than a thousand bread-fruit trees, and because to myself it was an exquisite pleasure ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... spot where there were no houses, but only a great sandbank, and beyond it a row of poplars with the rising moon behind them. In silence I went ashore, and found on the sand a strange assemblage of human beings, half-nomads, wandering from some remote region of famine, each family huddled together surrounded by all its belongings, some sleeping, others silently making small fires of twigs. The flickering flames lighted up gnarled, bearded faces of wild men, strong, patient, primitive women, and children as sedate and slow ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... generous wine and food: What boastful son of war, without that stay, Can last a hero through a single day? Courage may prompt; but, ebbing out his strength, Mere unsupported man must yield at length; Shrunk with dry famine, and with toils declined, The drooping body will desert the mind: But built anew with strength-conferring fare, With limbs and soul untamed, he tires a war. Dismiss the people, then, and give command. With strong repast to hearten ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... Demeter was believed to bring mankind rich harvests and fruitful crops, whereas her displeasure caused blight, drought, and famine. The island of Sicily was supposed to be under her especial protection, and there she was regarded with particular veneration, the Sicilians naturally attributing the wonderful fertility of their country to the partiality of ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... 'neath the silent stars. It must be remembered that they had been accustomed to short allowance of food for months, while he had been used to having an abundance. Their bodies had been schooled to endure famine, privations, and long, weary walks. For many days before reaching the mountains, they had been used to walking every day, in order to lighten the burdens of the perishing oxen. Fatigues which exhausted them crushed Stanton. The weather was clear and pleasant, but the glare ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... stand acquitted in the eyes of God and of men in denouncing and executing the vengeance of the State against the willful outcasts. The messengers of justice and of wrath await them in the field, and devastation, famine, and every concomitant horror that a reluctant but indispensable prosecution of military duty must occasion will bar the way ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... the city has in a memorial set forth three propositions which he considers of force—that Rome, he says, asks for her rites again, that pay be given to her priests and vestal virgins, and that a general famine followed upon the refusal of the priests' ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... Novgorod. The grand duke, however, was soon (p. 058) displeased with him and displaced him by a younger son, Iaroslaf. Soon there were quarrels between him and the people, whereupon Iaroslaf moved to Torjok, a town within Novgorod territory, and from there stopped all supplies. Famine appeared in the city, and at last envoys were sent to the duke, who had them arrested. Nothing except absolute submission would satisfy him. In this dire need help came from an unexpected quarter. Mstislaf the Bold, son of Mstislaf ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... die; and I will both live and die with honour. The fate of my army I leave wholly to your discretion. Let your council of war determine whether you must surrender prisoners of war, fall by the sword, or die by famine. May your resolutions, if possible, be conducted by humanity: whatever they may be, I have no longer any share in them; and I declare you shall not be answerable for aught but one thing, namely, not to carry arms against me or my allies. I pray God may have you, Mr. Mareschal, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... not wholly bad amazes me at times.... I wonder if you know how hunger tampers with the will? I mean more than mere hunger; I mean that dreadful craving never completely satisfied—so that the ceaseless famine gnaws and gnaws while the sick mind still sickens, brooding over what the body seems to need of meat and drink and warmth—day after day, night after night, endless and terrible." She flushed, but continued calmly: "I had nigh sold myself to some young officer—some gay and ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... victims not to Moloch, nor to any other foreign deity, but to the national God Jehovah" (Ibid, p. 390). "The second recorded instance of human sacrifices killed in honour of Jehovah forms a remarkable incident in the life of David" (Ibid, p. 390). We read in 2 Sam. xxi. that God said that a famine then prevailing was on account of Saul and of his bloody house; that David desired to make an "atonement;" that seven men of Saul's family were hanged "in the hill before the Lord;" that then they were buried, with Saul and Jonathan, "and, after that, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... Guilt belongs "To the deaf Synod, 'full of gifts and lies!' "By Wealth's insensate Laugh! By Torture's Howl! "Avenger, rise! "For ever shall the bloody Island scowl? "For aye unbroken, shall her cruel Bow "Shoot Famine's arrows o'er thy ravag'd World? "Hark! how wide NATURE joins her groans below— "Rise, God of Nature, rise! ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... conquered. For God had blinded their minds for the transgressions they had been guilty of, nor could they see how much greater forces the Romans had than those that were now expelled, no more than they could discern how a famine was creeping upon them; for hitherto they had fed themselves out of the public miseries, and drank the blood of the city. But now poverty had for a long time seized upon the better part, and a great many had died already for want of necessaries; although the seditious indeed ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... this season, my sons. We mustn't get too far from the supplies. Means—you know what! famine and that ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... straps are called, round their waists, Wilmot?" said Swinton. "They are called the belts of famine. All the natives wear them when hard pressed by hunger, and they say that they are a great relief. I have no doubt but ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... The terrible famine of 1770-72 added to the discontent of the common man, throughout Germany; he began to feel that it was the duty of kings to feed the hungry; bark, grass, leaves, carrion were eaten; disease spread; emigrations depopulated ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... fruits so precious? We must believe and declare, then, that if, in this our age, there were a due meed of remuneration, there would be without a doubt works greater and much better than were ever wrought by the ancients. But the fact that they have to grapple more with famine than with fame, keeps our hapless intellects submerged, and, to the shame and disgrace of those who could raise them up but give no thought to it, prevents ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... ask why the Jews have not fled a hundred leagues from this Slough of Despond. The answer is, because they were born there. Moreover, the taxation is light, and rent is moderate. Add that, when famine has been in the land, or the inundations of the Tiber have spread ruin and devastation around, the scornful charity of the Popes has flung them some bones to gnaw. Then again, travelling costs money, and passports are not to be had for the ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... intellectual, and moral laws, and often violation on violation to breed such compound misery. A lock-jaw that bends a man's head back to his heels; hydrophobia that makes him bark at his wife and babes; insanity that makes him eat grass; war, plague, cholera, famine, indicate a certain ferocity in nature, which, as it had its inlet by human crime, must have its outlet by human suffering. Unhappily no man exists who has not in his own person become to some amount a stockholder ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Attica; some suppose by the jealousies of Aegeus, who appears to have had a singular distrust of all distinguished strangers. Minos retaliated by a war which wasted Attica, and was assisted in its ravages by the pestilence and the famine. The oracle of Apollo, which often laudably reconciled the quarrels of princes, terminated the contest by enjoining the Athenians to appease the just indignation of Minos. They despatched, therefore, ambassadors to Crete, and consented, in token ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... prey to want and misery, they were now butchered by the peasantry of Saxony and Thuringia, who, armed with hatchets and scythes, flew to avenge upon the relic the wrongs they had suffered from the whole army. Many of the fugitives plunged into the forests, preferring the slow tooth of famine to the swifter stroke of steel. Others, concealing themselves until the first gust of passion was over, besought the mercy of the peasantry, who, at last moved with compassion or glutted with slaughter, received them as fellow-beings, healed their wounds, and sent them to their homes. Henry ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... terrible speed, in the hottest season, through stifling forest fires. Behind, at slower pace, came the provisions. De la Verendrye reached the Lake of the Woods in September. Fearing the delay of the goods for trade, and dreading the danger of famine with so many men in one place, De la Verendrye despatched Jemmeraie to winter with part of the forces at Lake Winnipeg, where Jean and Pierre, the second son, had built Fort Maurepas. The worst fears were realized. Ice had blocked the Northern rivers by the time the supplies had come to Lake ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... touching ingenuity to steal one by one the thunderbolts of their Jupiter. They have removed war from the list of Heaven-sent visitations that could only be prayed against; they have erased its name from the supplication against the wrath of war, pestilence, and famine, as it is found in the litanies of the Roman Catholic Church; they have dragged the scourge down from the skies and have made it into a calm and regulated institution. At first sight the change does not seem for the better. Jove's thunderbolt looks a most dangerous plaything ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... They'll be the death of me, what with the things they won't do, and the things they WILL do. They're trying now to create a water famine for the jumpers, and they're making their own mother swim for the good of the cause." Phoebe held out a plump hand, moist and cold from lifting cool crocks of milk, and laughed at ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... about Lucy, and the baby. At least I had kept faith longer than she had. I wondered if she once more loved her husband. Did I hope so? Yes, of course, in the same way that you express conventional horror when you hear of the latest famine in China. ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... need not return to his wife stridhana appropriated by him, during a famine, or in order to perform sacred rites,[227] or when suffering from disease,[227] or when ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... quagmire, covered with coarse aquatic grasses, and so unfruitful that it would not give back the seed sown upon it. In 1848 a crop of corn was taken from it, which was measured and found to be eighty bushels per acre, and as, because of the Irish famine, corn was worth $1 per bushel that year, this crop paid not only all the expense of drainage, but the first cost of ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... the highest offices in the gift of the people.] or those of Spurius Maelius [Footnote: Maelius, of the equestrian order, but of a plebeian family, obtained unbounded popularity with the plebs by selling corn at a low price, and giving away large quantities of it, in a time of famine. He was charged with seeking kingly power, and, on account of his alleged movements with that purpose, Cincinnatus was appointed dictator, and Maelius, resisting a summons to his tribunal, was killed by Ahala, his master ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... retires from your dwelling at 3 A. M., leaving a piece of the calf of his leg in the jaws of your trusty watch-dog; nor for the Irish bog-trotter who (poor fellow), from behind the hedge, misses his aim at the landlord who fed him and his family through the season of famine. You do not feel very deeply for the disappointment of the friend, possibly the slight acquaintance, who with elongated face retires from your study, having failed to persuade you to attach your signature to a bill for ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... the Half-Gods, Half-Gods men, And Man the brute. Gods, born of Night, Feel a blacker appetite Gape to devour them; Half-Gods dread But jealous Gods; and mere men tread Warily lest a Half-God rise And loose on them from empty skies Amazement, thunder, stark affright, Famine and sudden War's thick night, In which loud Furies hunt the Pities Through smoke above wrecked, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... change to which I have referred, they exported very few cattle, and hardly any thing else. They were, also, every now and then, exposed to all the difficulties of extreme famine. In the years 1812-13, and 1816-17, so great was the misery that it was necessary to send down oatmeal for their supply to the amount of nine thousand pounds, and that was given to the people. But, since industrious habits were introduced, and they were settled within reach of fishing, ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... night-world, and master of many a secret that sleepy-eyed day-folk never guess. As he shook out his loose, soft coat and breathed the cool air, he felt the pleasant tang of a hunger that has with it no fear of famine. ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... others were wicked spirits inhabiting regions close to the earth and there was no evil that they did not exert every effort to cause.[41] At the same time both violent and cunning, impetuous and crafty, they were the authors of all the calamities that befell the world, such as pestilence, famine, tempests and earthquakes. They kindled evil passions and illicit desires in the hearts of men and provoked war and sedition. They were clever deceivers rejoicing in lies and impostures. They encouraged the phantasmagoria ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... leaves. Interspersed also are long purely Autobiographical delineations; yet without connection, without recognizable coherence; so unimportant, so superfluously minute, they almost remind us of "P.P. Clerk of this Parish." Thus does famine of intelligence alternate with waste. Selection, order, appears to be unknown to the Professor. In all Bags the same imbroglio; only perhaps in the Bag Capricorn, and those near it, the confusion a little ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle |
