"Meagre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a link of much interest on the whole question, from the comparison of pottery and pipes. On the whole the Hochelagan facts throw much light both forward on the history of the Iroquois and backwards on that of the Huron stock. Interpreted as above, they afford a meagre but connected story through a period hitherto lost in darkness, and perhaps a ray by which further links may still be discovered ...
— Hochelagans and Mohawks • W. D. Lighthall
... performances in the coffee-houses, where the Wits gathered under the presidency of Addison or Swift. The professional critic has appeared who will make it his regular business to give an account of all new books, and though his reviews are still comparatively meagre and apt to be mere analyses, it is implied that a kind of public opinion is growing up which will decide upon his merits, and upon which his success or failure will depend. That means again that the readers ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... Amine was a little meagre personage, dressed in the garb of the Dutch seamen of the time, with a cap made of badger-skin hanging over his brow. His features were sharp and diminutive, his face of a deadly white, his lips pale, and his hair of a mixture between red and white. He had ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... from post- mortem consciousness as wisdom is distinct from mere animal intelligence. On the whole, therefore, there seems to be little real worth in Spiritism, even accepting it at its own valuation. The nourishment it yields the soul is too meagre; and—save on that one bare point of life beyond the grave, which might just as easily prove an infinite curse as an infinite blessing—it affords no trustworthy ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... which Paz deposited weekly on the mantel-piece, joined to Malaga's meagre salary, gave her the means of sumptuous living compared with her former poverty. Wonderful stories went the rounds of the Circus about Malaga's good-luck. Her vanity increased the six thousand francs which Paz had spent ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... chilly and damp, and daylight was slow in coming to this valley of desolation and death. At an early hour the valley, where so many have gone to rest, presented a most dismal scene. It looked, indeed, like the valley of the dead. Nothing was moving, and all remained within the meagre shelter offered them till the day had fairly begun. As the day advanced, the tented hills began to show signs of life, smoke arose from many a camp fire, and on every eminence surrounding this valley of desolation could be seen the guards moving ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... archway, and alighted in the court-yard of Meg Dods's inn, and delivered the bridle of his horse to the humpbacked postilion. "Bring my saddle-bags," he said, "into the house—or stay—I am abler, I think, to carry them than you." He then assisted the poor meagre groom to unbuckle the straps which secured the humble and now despised convenience, and meantime gave strict charges that his horse should be unbridled, and put into a clean and comfortable stall, the girths slacked, and a cloth cast over his loins; but ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the matter stands, advocates of special creation must face the fact that a certain small number of new and peculiar species have been formed on the British Isles; and, therefore, that creative activity has not been wholly suspended in their case. Why, then, has it been so meagre in this case of a thousand islands, when it has proved so profuse in the case of all single islands more remote from mainlands, and presenting a higher antiquity? Or why should the Divinity have thus appeared so uniformly to consult these merely accidental circumstances of space and ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... never used boots; and his shoes, though carefully dusted, were never blacked. A most unpretending bow fastened his cravat of colored cambric. For many years his only outer garment was a brown camlet cloak, of very scanty proportions, thinly lined, and a meagre protection against winter. His hat was worn for years before being laid aside, and put you in mind of the prevailing mode by the law of contrast only. He was never seen with gloves, and rarely with an umbrella. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... to insist upon is this. The difference between small and ever present fluctuations and rare and more sudden variations was clear to Darwin, although the facts known at his time were too meagre to enable a sharp line to be drawn between these two great classes of variability. Since Darwin's time evidence, which proves the correctness of his view, has accumulated with increasing rapidity. Fluctuations constitute one type; they ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... were disappointed at not finding him in command. Leigh's and Harcourt's expeditions confirmed his assertions of the immense possibilities of the country. Harcourt expressly stated his 'satisfaction that there be rich mines in the country.' The actual fruits were so meagre as to demonstrate that supreme capacity was needed ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... very appreciatively of Little Alfred, who was afterward the Great, and from mighty meagre materials creates a story that hangs together well. The illustrations for this volume ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... way to her imagination—from the first moment of her imprisonment. Inclined to be very musical, her ear had become keen in the silence, and on this background of silence, out of the meagre bits of reality, the footsteps of the guards in the corridors, the ringing of the clock, the rustling of the wind on the iron roof, the creaking of the lantern—it created complete musical pictures. At first Musya was afraid of them, brushed them away from her as if they were the hallucinations ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... pointed to a small, faded yellow house which stood at the top of a gentle slope on their right. It was a hundred yards from the river and a faintly marked, winding path led from it down to the bank. The surrounding land showed meagre cultivation, and the looks were anything ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... arranged with a high comb. She was the only one without spectacles or eyeglasses. Henry looked older and feebler than any of the company. His scant hair hung in thin and long white locks, and his tall, slender figure had gained a still more meagre effect from his dress, while his shoulders were bowed in a marked stoop; his gait was rigid and jerky. He assisted himself with a gold-headed cane, and sat in his ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... felt them only as one feels a spider's web across the face, had not the master, according to a little affectation of the times, promoted him to be his game-keeper. Many a day did these two living magazines of wrath spend together in the dismal swamps and on the meagre intersecting ridges, making war upon deer and bear and wildcat; or on the Mississippi after wild goose and pelican; when even a word misplaced would have made either the slayer of the other. Yet the months ran smoothly round and the wedding night drew nigh[3]. A goodly company ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... meagre sketch it is easy to understand that if the natural or artificial configuration of surrounding objects is really believed by the Chinese to influence the fortunes of a city, a family, or an individual, they are only reasonably averse to the introduction of such novelties ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... figures, had no doubt a sufficiently comical effect. When we were at length comfortably settled, the Governor Chinau came forth, and with no other addition than a round hat to the costume already described, mounted a meagre unsaddled steed, and off we all went at full gallop, the Queen taking infinite pains to avoid losing me by the way. The people came streaming from all sides, shouting "Aroha maita!"—our team continually increasing, while a crowd behind contended for the honour of helping to push ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... teaching and practical effort. There was a great historic Church party, imperfectly conscious of its position and responsibilities;[13] there was an active but declining pietistic school, resting on a feeble intellectual basis and narrow and meagre interpretations of Scripture, and strong only in its circle of philanthropic work; there was, confronting both, a rising body of inquisitive and, in some ways, menacing thought. To men deeply interested in religion, the ground seemed confused and treacherous. ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... de Genlis, Napoleon received a letter fortnightly, in which epistle she communicated to him her opinions and observations upon politics and current events. Upon the return to power of the Orleans family, she was put off with a meagre pension. Like many other French women, she became more and more melancholy and misanthropic. She was unable to control her wrath against the philosophers and some of the contemporary writers, such as Lamartine, Mme. de Stael, Scott, and Byron. Her death, in 1830, was announced in these words: ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... A reconstruction supposes a previous existence. This they felt, and had something to say about an earth anterior to this of ours, but one without light or human inhabitants. A lake burst its bounds and submerged it wholly. This is obviously nothing but a mere and meagre fiction, invented to explain the origin of the primeval ocean. But mark it well, for this is the germ of those marvellous myths of the Epochs of Nature, the catastrophes of the universe, the deluges of water and of fire, which have laid such strong hold on the human fancy in every land and ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... private grown hard of flesh and tense of muscle, with his scant rations and meagre covering in the cold nights, with his long marches and fruitless risks and futile fightings, when he is shot down, has little consolation, save in the fact that the thing he and his comrades and the regiment and the army set out to do ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... after the following directions, and you will have a delicious relish for made dishes, ragouts, soup, sauces, or hashes. Mushroom gravy approaches the nature and flavor of made gravy, more than any vegetable juice, and is the superlative substitute for it; in meagre soups and extempore gravies, the chemistry of the kitchen has yet contrived to agreeably awaken the palate and ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... husband's sister, the beautiful Madame Renaudin, in Paris—"contrary to all our wishes, God has given me a daughter. My joy is not therefore diminished, for I look upon my child as a new bond which binds me still closer to your brother, my dear husband, and to you. Why should I have such a poor and meagre opinion of the female sex, that a daughter should not be welcomed by me? I am acquainted with many persons of our sex who concentrate in themselves as many good qualities as one would only with difficulty find in the other sex. Maternal love ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... did his first ovariotomy. He believed the operation to be without precedent in the annals of surgery, yet he kept no note of it or of his subsequent work. He prepared no account of it until 1817. This appeared in the Eclectic Repertory. It was so meagre and so startling that surgeons hesitated to credit its truth. He had not mastered his mother tongue. The paper was thought to bear internal evidence of its author's having "relied upon his ledger for his dates and upon his memory ...
— Pioneer Surgery in Kentucky - A Sketch • David W. Yandell
... reminded by the phantom's attitude of a passage, ever memorable, in Milton: that passage, I mean, where Death first becomes aware, soon after the original trespass, of his own future empire over man. The 'meagre shadow' even smiles (for the first time and the last) on apprehending his own abominable bliss, by apprehending from afar the savor 'of mortal change ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... and eloquent in parts, and bare and meagre in others. Connections are omitted, passages of real and rare beauty jostling with long passages of the most common-place rhetoric. His platitudes, however, to myself who knew him, have a genuine ring about them; he never admitted a truism into his ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the fact that the notes regarding his pupils are few and meagre. Excepting for the record of money transactions only very exceptional circumstances would have prompted him to make any written observations on the persons with whom he was in daily intercourse, among ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... in previous sketches of the faithfulness and devotion of many of the government nurses, appointed by Miss Dix. No salary, certainly not the meagre pittance doled out by the government could compensate for such services, and the only satisfactory reason which can be offered for their willingness to render them, is that their hearts were inspired by a patriotism ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... which he entered was meagre and stale-smelling, with bare floor and stained and sagging wall-paper; unfurnished save for a battered deal table and ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... restlessly to turn once more towards the duties of active life; when he recalled all the former drudgeries and toils of political conflict, or the wearing fatigues of literature, with its small enmities, its false friendships, and its meagre and capricious rewards,—ah, then, indeed, he shrank in dismay from the thoughts of the solitude at home! No lips to console in dejection, no heart to sympathize in triumph, no love within to counterbalance the hate without,—and the best of man, his household ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... behold The daisy and the marigold; White-plumed lilies, and the first Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst; Shaded hyacinth, alway Sapphire queen of the mid-May; And every leaf, and every flower Pearled with the self-same shower. Thou shalt see the fieldmouse peep Meagre from its celled sleep; And the snake all winter-thin Cast on sunny bank its skin; Freckled nest-eggs thou shalt see Hatching in the hawthorn-tree, When the hen-bird's wing doth rest Quiet on her mossy nest; Then the hurry and alarm When the beehive casts its swarm; ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... little ones, they cry all day for bread, And, 'neath the shelter of my meagre breast, Stirs one unborn, who must e'er long be fed— Another babe to hunger with the rest. Madonna Mary, hear a mother's moan! Pity the travail I ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... upon the physiological axiom of Hippocrates—ubi stimulus, ibi affluxus. Seneca considers it as able to remove the quartan ague. Jerome Mercurialis speaks of it as employed by many physicians in order to impart embonpoint to thin, meagre persons; and Galen informs us that slave merchants used it as a means of clearing the complexion of their slaves and plumping them up. Alædeus of Padua, recommends flagellation with green nettles, that is, urtication, to be performed ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... several unmarried officers, and several officers with their wives, about eight or nine in all, and we could have had a merry time enough but for the awful heat, which destroyed both our good looks and our tempers. The fare was meagre, of course; fresh biscuit without butter, very salt boiled beef, and some canned vegetables, which were poor enough in those days. Pies made from preserved peaches or plums generally followed this delectable course. Chinamen, as we all know, ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... by qualifying through our human love, meagre and fluctuating as it is, for God's gift of holy love—of divine reciprocity, and with the presentation of this divine gift immediately we find ourselves in possession of a new set of desires, which for the first time in ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley
... Waffs rose to the occasion. Notwithstanding their arduous advance and its meagre results they eagerly hastened to meet the new danger, knowing that with the destruction of their baggage and transport and their lines of communication cut they would be in a serious position ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... optimistic man would hesitate before offering a sovereign for an entire home, yet pawnshops flourish exceedingly, although the people possess nothing worth pawning. Children are half fed, for the earnings of parents are too meagre to allow a sufficient quantity of nourishing food; but public-houses do a roaring trade on the ready-money principle, while the chandler supplies scraps of food and half-ounces of tea on ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... substantial downfall of the posts in the West, where its great strength was at first, the history of the early years of the order is left in much uncertainty. But the organization had in the western states a wild, riotous growth; the meagre reports extant naming two hundred thousand as the membership in 1867; but the utter lack of organization, and the intrusion of politics, left the order, almost as speedily as it had sprung ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... tracts specially on the subject of Irish writers. First is Bishop Nicholson's "Irish Historical Library." It gives accounts of numerous writers, but is wretchedly meagre. In Harris's "Hibernica" is a short tract on the same subject; and in Harris's edition of Ware's works an ample treatise on Irish Writers. This treatise is most valuable, but must be read with caution, as Ware was slightly, and Harris enormously, ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... unparalleled suffering their testimony for spirituality of worship; and it is undeniable that some of the greatest reforms which have characterised the century recently closed have found their foremost advocates and apologists from their somewhat meagre ranks. Those who wait on God renew their strength. The world ignores them, scorning to reckon their tears and toils amid its renovating energies; but they refuse to abate their endeavours and sacrifices on its behalf. They repay its neglect ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... had a great run there. It was not a literal translation from the Greek author, but a kind of melange, drawn from the Clouds and Plutus together. The characters of Socrates and his equestrian son were very well performed; but the scenic accessories I considered very meagre, particularly the choral part, which must have been so striking and beautiful in the original of the former drama. Upon my return to England I wrote to the then lessee of Drury Lane Theatre, recommending ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... very clean," writes an English traveler in France in the year 1789; "so far from being meagre and ill-looking fellows, as John Bull would persuade us, they are well-formed, tall, handsome men, and have a cheerfulness and civility in their countenances and manner which is peculiarly pleasing. They also looked very healthy, great care is ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... always promising so much and giving so little. Then he urged to a wise and patient consent to this discipline, which, if rightly used, would help to temper and strengthen the soul against the day of sorrow and bereavement. But I am not doing him justice in this meagre report; there was something almost heavenly in his expression which ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... likes molasses candy. And so Old Easter, whose meagre confections grew poorer as her stories waxed in richness, walked the streets in rags and dirt ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... up the crack in the ledge, made certain mental alterations in its narrow, jagged walls, and reached for the tough-handled, efficient prospector's pick he had thoughtfully included in his meagre equipment. Slowly and methodically he worked up the crevice, knocking off certain sharp points of rock, and knowing all the while what would probably happen to him ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... it is good eating. She had added to the gift a small crab, but that he had carried to the seashore and set free, because it was alive. These, the half-cookie, the turnip, and the dulse, with the smell of the baker's bread, was all he had had. It had been rather one of his meagre days. But it is wonderful upon how little those rare natures capable of making the most of things will live and thrive. There is a great deal more to be got out of things than is generally got out of them, whether the thing be a chapter of the Bible or ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... was built up and grouped around the mother conferred special rights on women. The form of marriage favourable to this influence was that by which the husband entered the wife's family and clan, and lived there as a "consort-guest." The wife and mother was director in the home, the owner of the meagre property, the distributor of food, and the controller of the children.[2] Hence arises what is ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... shoulders, muttered a strong expression, and turned round again. The woman met his look steadily. She was perhaps thirty, rather tall, with features more refined than her position would have led one to expect. Her figure was good but meagre; her cheeks were very thin, and the expression of her face, not quite amiable at any time, was at present almost fierce. She seemed about to say something further, but ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... she was pointed to as a warning to the rest. This discipline preyed greatly on her mind, and Clara, whose cell was next to hers, heard her weeping night after night. When she appeared in public, she hung down her head, and scarcely tasted any of the meagre fare placed before her; taught to suppose that fasting was a virtue, or else weary of the life she was doomed to lead, she ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... whitewash with which, if I remember rightly, they have been endued. The little streets of Loches wander crookedly down the hill, and are full of charming pictorial "bits:" an old town- gate, passing under a mediaeval tower, which is orna- mented by Gothic windows and the empty niches of statues; a meagre but delicate hotel de ville, of the Renaissance, nestling close beside it; a curious chancel- lerie of the middle of the sixteenth century, with mythological figures and a Latin inscription on the ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... the fifth floor of a building in New York City he toiled at his experiments day and night, with little food, and that of the simplest kind. Indeed so meagre was his fare, mainly crackers and tea, that he bought provisions at night in order to keep his friends from finding out how great his ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... that concerned itself with the production of chronicles. Other Annales Monastici have been edited in five volumes (Rolls Series, vol. v. is the index) by Dr. Luard. They are of special importance for the reign of Henry III. In vol. i. the meagre annals of the Glamorganshire abbey of Margam only extend to 1232. The Annals of Tewkesbury are useful from 1200 to 1263, and specially for the history of the Clares, the patrons of that house. The Annals of Burton-upon-Trent illustrate the years 1211 to 1261 with somewhat ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... contrasted with previous excessive heat—such air must, nevertheless, be rarefied to the full extent indicated by the mercurial thermometer, and give us, therefore, our supply of vital oxygen in a very diluted form, and of a meagre, unsupporting, and unsatisfying consistence.... The sine qua non, therefore, for healthy and robust life in tropical countries, is air cold and dry—cold to the thermometer and dry to the hygrometer; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... late thirteenth and early fourteenth century, developing the meagre suggestions of Byzantine decoration, incorporating the richer inventions of the bas-reliefs of the Pisan sculptors and of the medallions surrounding the earliest painted effigies of holy personages, produced a complete ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... beautiful of towns. Their habitations are decayed; their taxes heavy; their pockets light; their opportunities few. One receives an impression, however, that life presents itself to them with attractions not accounted for in this meagre train of advantages, and that they are on better terms with it than many people who have made a better bargain. They lie in the sunshine; they dabble in the sea; they wear bright rags; they fall into attitudes and harmonies; they assist at an eternal conversazione. It is not easy to say that one ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... burden to the people I knew, and wandering about the city alone. Nothing of it remains to me except the fortune that favored me that Sunday night with a view of the old Granary Burying-ground on Tremont Street. I found the gates open, and I explored every path in the place, wreaking myself in such meagre emotion as I could get from the tomb of the Franklin family, and rejoicing with the whole soul of my Western modernity in the evidence of a remote antiquity which so many of the dim inscriptions afforded. I do not think that I have ever known anything practically older than these monuments, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... written at a length for which we must apologise to our readers; and yet this is but a meagre sketch of the contents of a book which deals with a very large proportion of the subjects that occupy the thoughts and move the feelings of religious men. We will attempt to sum up in a few words the leading ideas of the author. Addressing a mixed audience, he undertakes to controvert ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... the paucity of result from all the labor and hardship undergone, the author—considering the losses of material he sustained—cannot be justly criticised; but certainly the bulk of his volume makes its meagre substance somewhat ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... it all and he knew it better than she guessed—that it had actually come to a question of food with them; that her son was a geological dreamer, just out of college, and that Alice's meagre salary at the run-down female college where she taught music was all that stood between them and poverty of ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... the field with his forces, having no confidence in their fidelity. He knew that they listened wistfully to the emissaries of Roldan, and contrasted the meagre fare and stern discipline of the garrison with the abundant cheer and easy misrule that prevailed among the rebels. To counteract these seductions, he relaxed from his usual strictness, treating ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... any attempt that might possibly be made to carry us into some Southern port after we should leave Aspinwall. However, our fears proved groundless; at all events, no such attempt was made, and we reached New York in safety in November, 1861. A day or two in New York sufficed to replenish a most meagre wardrobe, and I then started West to join my new regiment, stopping a day and a night at the home of my parents in Ohio, where I had not been since I journeyed from Texas for the Pacific coast. The headquarters ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... appeal for half a year, and died before he could enjoy any relief from Mr. Bass's meagre Bill. But the public was loud in denunciation of the nuisance when they learned that he who had made their lives so much merrier for a quarter of a century had been harassed into the grave. "Carlyle," wrote Mr. Moncure Conway, "who suffered from the same fraternity, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... dead! That, as Bunyan justly says, would be to make a new Bible, to improve the finished salvation. No, if they will not hear Moses and the prophets, our Lord and his apostles, they must all likewise perish. This is a very meagre outline of this solemn treatise; it is full of striking illustrations, eminently calculated to arouse the thoughtless, and to convey solid instruction to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... insignificant thing upon which they could lay their hands was booty. Children who had learned to be hard and cruel thronged the court, and he feared, if he left Andy alone in the hovel, that it would not only be robbed of its meagre furniture, but the child subjected to ill-treatment. He had always fastened the door on going out, but hesitated now about ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... that there were good grounds for such a report, and that Chapman undoubtedly made free use of the Latin of Scapula in all of his translations. Chapman's allegation, if true, seems to imply that Shakespeare's knowledge of Latin was not so meagre but that he could, upon occasion, successfully combat his learned opponents with weapons of their ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... the kitchen fire, his stockinged feet, in the oven, and his; hands stretched out toward the kettles, which were bubbling prosperously away, and puffing a cloud of steam, into his face. He was a meagre, sad-colored man, with mutton-chop whiskers so thin as to lie like a shadow on his fallen cheeks; and his glance, wherever it fell, Seemed to deprecate reproof. Thick layers of flannel swathed his throat, and from time to time, he coughed wheezingly, ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... helplessness of my situation, and crouched trembling in the nest. The Chatterer came directly to the tree—I remember it was an oak tree—and began to climb up. And he never ceased for a moment from his infernal row. As I have said, our language was extremely meagre, and he must have strained it by the variety of ways in which he informed me of his undying hatred of me and of his intention there and then to have it ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... advocating nationalization as a cure for all social ills; or again The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at Fontainebleau, led by Gurdjieff and Uspenski which combines esoteric meditation with an extremely meagre diet and strenuous manual labour. It is interesting, by the way, to notice that the art of movement known as Eurhythmy—not to be confounded with the system of M. Dalcroze which is known in England only as Eurhythmics—forms an important part of the curriculum of the last society, ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... proposition By building on a small addition. A certain wolf, in point of wit The prudent fisher's opposite, A dog once finding far astray, Prepared to take him as his prey. The dog his leanness pled; "Your lordship, sure," he said, "Cannot be very eager To eat a dog so meagre. To wait a little do not grudge: The wedding of my master's only daughter Will cause of fatted calves and fowls a slaughter; And then, as you yourself can judge, I cannot help becoming fatter." The wolf, believing, waived the matter, And so, some days therefrom, Return'd with sole ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... when one of the boys bewailed the meagre celebration, "never mind, shipmate. There's a good time coming when we can whoop 'er up for Old Glory as much as we please. Then we'll make up for to-day. We can't expect to do much under these conditions, ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... The next morning Miss Marston appeared at the usual hour and made the coffee. After Clayton had finished his meagre meal, she sat down shyly and looked ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... very handsomely furnished room, where Brussels carpeting and softly cushioned sofas contrasted strangely with the meagre and comfortless chambers of the doctor, sat a young man at a small breakfast-table beside the fire. He was attired in a silk dressing-gown and black velvet slippers, and supported his forehead upon a hand of most lady-like whiteness, whose fingers were absolutely covered with rings of great beauty ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... bound by such a vow, And women were as phantoms. O, my brother, Why wilt thou shame me to confess to thee How far I faltered from my quest and vow? For after I had lain so many nights A bedmate of the snail and eft and snake, In grass and burdock, I was changed to wan And meagre, and the vision had not come; And then I chanced upon a goodly town With one great dwelling in the middle of it; Thither I made, and there was I disarmed By maidens each as fair as any flower: But when they led me into hall, behold, The Princess of that castle ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... holds in the minds of his countrymen. Thus, while Marion is every where regarded as the peculiar representative in the southern States, of the genius of partizan warfare, we are surprised, when we would trace, in the pages of the annalist, the sources of this fame, to find the details so meagre and so unsatisfactory. Tradition mumbles over his broken memories, which we vainly strive to pluck from his lips, and bind together in coherent and satisfactory records. The spirited surprise, the happy ambush, the daring onslaught, the fortunate escape,—these, as they ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... cold, No smiling courtiers tread; One silent woman stands, Lifting with meagre hands A ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... do remember an apothecary,— And hereabouts he dwells,—whom late I noted In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows, Culling of Simples; meagre were his looks; And in his needy shop a tortoise hung, An alligator stuff'd, and other skins Of ill-shap'd fishes; and about his shelves A beggarly account of empty boxes, Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... street, Front street, and Coenties Slip, that even now, when wandering along those thoroughfares, we almost momently expect to meet him. We can not but think that at the next turn we shall see that shrunken and diminutive form, that meagre, hungry-looking countenance, and that timid, nervous eye, which indicated the fear of loss or the dread approach of charity. His office was held for years in the second story of a warehouse in Front street, a spot in whose vicinity he had passed nearly three-score years. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... toward its bloody goal. To a civilian, unaccustomed to scenes of war, the tranquillity of these men would have seemed very wonderful. Many of the soldiers were still munching the hard bread and raw pork of their meagre breakfasts, or drinking the cold coffee with which they had filled their canteens the day previous. Many more were chatting in an undertone, grumbling over their sore feet and other discomfits, chaffing each other, and laughing. The general bearing, however, was grave, patient, quietly ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... poor efforts, The wretched work I had done, And, even when trying most truly, The meagre success ...
— Separation and Service - or Thoughts on Numbers VI, VII. • James Hudson Taylor
... but meagre fare, as no meat had as yet been obtained, but mealy cakes and bowls of tea were sufficient to satisfy their hunger for the present. Scarcely had they begun breakfast, however, when Umgolo, who had gone to the top of a slight elevation in the neighbourhood, came hurrying back with the report ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... else had failed to shake his resolution, they had applied lawyers to him, with the threat of getting out guardianship papers and of confining him in the state asylum for the insane—which was reasonable for a man who had, a quarter of a century before, speculated away all but ten meagre acres of a California principality, and who had displayed no better business acumen ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... stuccoed building, plain and without decoration either interior or exterior. This was used as a nunnery until about three years ago, and the wall decorations in the room used by the nuns as a chapel are still quite fresh. This room is ugly and meagre, and without attractiveness. It has a fine garden at the back, stretching out parallel to that of its neighbour, and the two together embrace an area of close upon four acres, which will make a fine playground ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... treacherous; one step too far plunged her into twenty feet of water, and the next moment she was spinning round and round in the current. She had learned to swim a few strokes in the creek on her father's farm, and her meagre skill now stood her in good stead, for she was able to keep afloat until the current threw her against a gravel bar that jutted into the river. She dragged herself ashore, very wet, and of a sudden, very frightened, and sat down ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... short time for estimating the harvest from such sowing as this. The beginning was small. The annals are meagre. Here have labored earnest and consecrated men and women from the best institutions of the North. The citizens of Austin have always been sympathetic and helpful. Several of the most prominent of them have served on the board ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 2, April, 1900 • Various
... cane. But the villages they passed, single streets of unrelieved squalor in a dusty waste, they decided were immeasurably depressing. No one who could avoid it walked; lank men in broad straw hats and coat-like shirts rode meagre horses with the sheaths of long formidable blades slapping their miserable hides. Groups of fantastically saddled horses drooped their heads tied in the vicinity of a hands-breadth of shade by general stores. "I could burst into tears," Savina declared. But he showed ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... to Tricotrin in their garret one winter's night, as they went supper-less to their beds. "Now that the days of privation are past, I recall them with something like regret. The shock of the laundress's totals, the meagre dinners at the Bel Avenir, these things have a fascination now that I part from them. I do not wish to sound ungrateful, but I cannot help wondering if my millions will impair the taste of ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... but a poor relation I fear her display of wedding gifts would have been but a meagre one. As it was, perhaps St. Nivel's terse comment on the "show," as he called it, was ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... breastplates, and all the debris of the fight, were long ago buried fathoms deep beneath mounds of drifting sand. Old Nieuport—Nieuport Ville, as they call it now—for which so much blood was shed, is desolate and dreary with its small industries and meagre commerce; but a short walk to the north brings us to Nieuport-Bains, and to the gay summer life which pulsates all along the Flemish coast, from La Panne on the west ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... success in nut-growing, brought about by our activities, when we compare nut-growing in our field with pecan-growing in the South, and with walnut, almond, and perhaps filbert-growing, on the Pacific Coast, our results are meagre indeed. Of course commercial production, the building of a new industry of food supply for the people, is our ultimate goal. Why are our results in this direction, after fourteen years of effort, so small? Is it because we have devoted ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... fur coat which seemed to extinguish his thin form, Joe Pillin entered. It was snowing, and the cold had nipped and yellowed his meagre face between its slight ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of the courtly poets of Japan is the simplicity of their style, which is, doubtless, in a large measure, due to the meagre range of spiritual faculties which characterize the Japanese mind. This intellectual poverty manifests itself in the absence of all personification and reference to abstract ideas. The narrow world ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... At last, a short meagre man, in a tarnished waistcoat, desired to see the garret, and when he had stipulated for two long shelves, and a larger table, hired it at a low rate. When the affair was completed, he looked round him with great satisfaction, and repeated some words which the woman did not understand. In two days ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... be said, is but a meagre outcome. Can the long records of humanity, with all its joys and sorrows, its sufferings and its conquests, teach us more than this? Let us approach the subject ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... fools, rolling their eyes in appraisement of such meagre female beauty as is on display in Christendom, bring to their judgments a capacity but slightly greater than that a cow would bring to the estimation of epistemologies. They are so unfitted for the business ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... Oakbourne, that pretty town within sight of the blue hills, where he break-fasted. After this, the country grew barer and barer: no more rolling woods, no more wide-branching trees near frequent homesteads, no more bushy hedgerows, but greystone walls intersecting the meagre pastures, and dismal wide-scattered greystone houses on broken lands where mines had been and were no longer. "A hungry land," said Adam to himself. "I'd rather go south'ard, where they say it's as flat as a table, than come to live here; though ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... of his flight, and made for the waste places. When the light of the fire had quite died out behind him, the first of the dawn was creeping up the sky; and by this time he had come to a barren region of low thickets, ragged woods, and rocks thrusting up through a meagre, whitish soil. ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... to the north, with the exception perhaps of the insignificant settlement at Black Corcyra (Curzola, about 174?). No adequate explanation has yet been given why the Greek colonization developed itself in this direction to so meagre an extent. Nature herself appeared to direct the Hellenes thither, and in fact from the earliest times there existed a regular traffic to that region from Corinth and still more from the settlement at Corcyra (Corfu) founded not ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... three-fold appreciation, during and especially since the war, in the cost both of the cotton stuffs which the working man needs even for his scanty apparel and of the foodstuffs which constitute his meagre fare, discontent grew steadily more acute, and wages, though more than once enhanced, did not always keep pace with that appreciation. If in circumstances, often of undoubted hardship, labour had been sufficiently equipped to state its own case, or had found disinterested ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... can be written fully and impartially. Even among the narratives of those who witnessed the engagements there are many differences and discrepancies, as is necessarily the case when the men who write are in different parts of the field. Until, then, the very meagre military despatches are supplemented by much fuller details, anything like an accurate history of the war would be impossible. I have, however, endeavoured to reconcile the various narratives of the fighting in Natal, and to make the account of the military occurrences as clear as possible. ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... turgid phraseology, at which, in old times, Members used to laugh and run away. But CHAPLIN had them now. Like the wedding guest whom the Ancient Mariner button-holed—though as PLUNKET reminds me, the A.M. was meagre in frame, and CHAPLIN is not—the House could not help but hear. Once, when the orator dropped easily into autobiographical episode, described himself strolling about the fields of Lincolnshire, turning up a turnip here, drawing forth a casual carrot ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... had been a meagre dinner that evening. The other girls had not seemed to care. But Anne ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... framed prints on the walls—cheap, but, on the whole, well selected. The rugs were in subdued brown tints that matched well the pretty wall paper. To the cattleman, it was pathetic that the girl had done so much with such frugal means to her hand. For plainly her meagre efforts were circumscribed by the ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... pretentiousness and dogmatism. In the narration of his journeys and adventures Mr. Squier is always entertaining; his account of the present condition of the country and the people is instructive, though somewhat meagre; his descriptions of ancient remains, if not always as vivid or even as clear as one might desire, are generally more careful and minute than any that have before been given of them, and are supplemented by admirable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... Journal of two members of the Labadist sect who came over to this country in order to find a location for the establishment of a community has served to throw a flood of light upon what otherwise might have been a lost chapter in the history of Maryland. For so meagre are the sources of ready availability for a knowledge of the Labadist colony which was effected in Maryland that without this account the story of the first communal sect in America might have failed ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... his door, he sincerely hoped they were asleep. Before descending into the noisome depths, however, he concluded to climb up into his window, and have another look at the beautiful panorama of mountain and woodland shimmering in the meagre light of a hazy sky and a moon past full. The uncertain outline of a distant horizon; the interminable stretch of forest, which bore away upon every hand; the rugged heights, now soft and colorless; the aromatic smell of pine and ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... with them than otherwise. Mother, kneeling on the carpet beside him, like the faithful, ruffed, and farthingaled wife on a fifteenth-century tomb. Behind them, again, at some little distance, we and our visitor. With the best will in the world to do so, I can get but a meagre view of the latter. The room is altogether rather dark, it being one of our manners and customs not to throw much light on prayers, and he has chosen the darkest corner of it. I only vaguely see ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... revenue. Again, we were told that the exportation of new-chums' pistols to the United States was one of the main industries of the colony. But our purgatory was over at last, and our splendid outfits had passed into Hebrew hands, leaving a very meagre sum of money with us to represent them. And now we are ready ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... his curiosity, had not a seeing eye in his head, was able to supply nothing but meagre generalities, which it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as were those of Greece on the shores of the Black Sea. The Albanians even, descendants of the ancient Illyrians, were affected by the supremacy of the Latin language, from which no less than a quarter of their own meagre vocabulary is derived; though driven southwards by the Romans and northwards by the Greeks, they have remained in their mountain fastnesses to this day, impervious to any of the civilizations to which they ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... if not in its own National Hall, yet with the Nation, especially with Paris. For in such universal panic of doubt, the opinion that is sure of itself, as the meagrest opinion may the soonest be, is the one to which all men will rally. Great is Belief, were it never so meagre; and leads captive the doubting heart! Incorruptible Robespierre has been elected Public Accuser in our new Courts of Judicature; virtuous Petion, it is thought, may rise to be Mayor. Cordelier Danton, called also by ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... she cried eagerly. She bustled about, searching her meagre stock of chinaware for ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... repeated upon my hapless friend, I wondered; or had he succumbed to the injuries already inflicted? Hour by hour I waited, listening to the shuffling footsteps of my gaolers, but only once a day there came a black slave to hand me my meagre ration of food and depart without deigning to give answer ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... laborer Valois married the sub-lieutenant Lamotte, who lived in a little garrison city of the province, and sought to increase his meagre salary by many ingenious devices. He not merely gave instruction in fencing and riding, but he was also a very skilful card-player—so skilful, that fortune almost always ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach |
