"Scant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he trudged along the road. It was a scant three miles to town, and he would rather walk that short distance than to be bothered with a horse. When he took Old Nig, he had to keep to the main-traveled road straight into town, then tie him to a post—and worry ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... of barberry bushes arch with the weight of clusters of beautiful bright berries in September, every one must take notice of a shrub so decorative, which receives scant attention from us, however, when its insignificant ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... epic in which suspense is so successfully kept up." Of their successors, the long line of sons, grandsons and nephews, each more valiant and puissant than the last, it must be said that they are as scant of beauty as of grace. In order to keep up the interest of their readers, the authors of the Primaleons and the Polindos—the Florisels and the Florisandos—were compelled to put in wonders on an ascending ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... in there!" and immediately poor Rod was roughly dragged to the ground. "Take them into the waiting-room, and see that they don't escape while I examine the car. There may be more of the gang hidden in there," commanded the station agent. So to the waiting-room the prisoners were hustled with scant ceremony. As yet no one knew what they had done, nor even what they were charged with doing; but every one agreed that they were two of the toughest looking young villains ever seen in that ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... described as a failure in the role of freeman. The idleness and shiftlessness of certain members of his race—undoubtedly altogether too numerous—are dwelt upon as characteristic of the entire family. Scant praise is given to those members who are doing well, and whose number is encouragingly large. These are as far as possible ignored. The race problem is spoken of as full of increasing difficulties, and as imperatively ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... Jesus' views and the universality of His love, as well as His courage in defying the hated formalism, even in the palace of its stanchest advocates, but also His attitude toward women. The Jews as a race held women in but scant esteem. They were not deemed worthy to sit with the men in the synagogue. It was deemed unworthy of a man to mention his female relations in general company. They were regarded as inferior in every way to men, and were treated ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... lower Illinois through northern Indiana, southwestern Michigan, southern Ontario, central New York and middle New England. As was to have been expected, the blight has wrought its greatest destruction in places of densest representation of the chestnut species. It is in the outlying districts of scant frequency that the danger of infection from chestnut trees from the forest is least to planted trees, and likewise, there it is that combative measures should be most successful. Obviously, the farther from the center of the native range ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... remain on the field amid all the carnage going on around them, helpless and almost hopeless, until the battle is over, and, if still alive, await their turn from the litter-bearers. The bravest and best men dread to die, and the halo that surrounds death upon the battlefield is but scant consolation to the wounded soldier, and he clings to life with that same tenacity after he has fallen, as the man of the world ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... records they have left, impresses the conviction that they were no strangers to the underlying fact that the people are the true source of political power, the evidence whereof is to be found in the scant records of their proceedings—a priceless heritage of all future generations. And first—and fundamental in all legislative assemblies—they asserted the absolute right to determine as to the election and qualification of members. Grants of land were asked, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... Johnnie's notice. Out from the front of his host's throat, to the ruination of such scant good looks as he had, protruded an Adam's apple that was as large and tanned and tough-looking as his nose. On that brown prominence a number of long pale hairs had their roots. These traveled now high, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... a very different account could have been rendered; for with all his rattling, ranting fun around the garrison, he was a gallant and dutiful soldier in the field. It was now after ten o'clock; most of the men, rolled in their blankets, were sleeping on the scant turf that could be found at intervals in the half-sandy soil below the corrals and stables. The herds of the two troops and the pack-mules were all cropping peacefully at the hay that had been liberally distributed among them because there was hardly grass enough for a "burro." ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... the great bison's horn he hung. Giraffe and elk he left to hold The wilderness of boughs in peace, And trained his youth to pen the fold, To press the cream, and weave the fleece. As shrunk the streamlet in its bed, As black and scant the herbage grew, O'er endless plains his flocks he led Still to new brooks and postures new. So strayed he till the white pavilions Of his camp were told by millions, Till his children's households seven Were numerous as the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... rock stand up here and there from the grassy turf, and clumps of heath and gorse weave their tapestry of golden purple garniture on every side. Amidst all these, and winding along between the rocks, is a natural footway worn by the scant, rare tread of the village traveller. Just midway, a somewhat larger stretch than usual of green sod expands, which is skirted by the path, and which is still identified as the legendary haunt of the phantom, by the ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... events connected with this visit to England, want of space precludes us from giving details. A great wave of missionary enthusiasm at that time swept over the country, and Moffat found himself hurried from town to town with but scant opportunities for rest. In May, 1840, he preached the Anniversary Sermon for the London Missionary Society, and, at their Annual Meeting, Exeter Hall was packed so densely that after making his speech in ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... tell about them. The world does not contain a more uninteresting accumulation of men and houses than the great city of New York: it is a place wherein the stranger feels inexplicably lonely. The traveller has no mental property in this city whose enormous growth of life has struck scant roots into the great ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... refused on the grounds that he would be depriving us of our full share—he accepted, and came and joined us. He seemed very reluctant to take much at first, and all through the meal, which consisted of mealie porridge and sugar, cafe sans lait, bread and jam, expressed his appreciation of our scant hospitality. He had joined the Military Police for three ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... or March, had come at last, and Wazeah, the God of Storm, was still angry. Their scant provision of dried meat had held out wonderfully, but it was now all but consumed. The Sioux had but little ammunition, and the snow was still so deep that it was impossible for them to move away to any other region in ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... at once accorded him the hospitality he required, for though he had but scant cheer for himself, and nought of comfort to bestow, he had still some of the feeling of a gentleman ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... Brandon parish we held scant intercourse, except at tithing time, when my father always received him with grim civility and bade him take what the law gave him, since title from the Gospel he had none. Our only friend in the neighbourhood ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... dressed, though he had not bought a suit expressly, like Randolph. He didn't appear to notice Luke's scant suit. Even if he had, he would have been too much of a gentleman to refer ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... was great, but in a military sense the position had defects. If it was difficult to carry, it was easy to blockade: and to be hemmed in on that narrow finger of land were an inglorious posture for the monarch of Samoa. The peninsula, besides, was scant of food and destitute of water. Pressed by these considerations, Brandeis extended his lines till he had occupied the whole foreshore of Apia bay and the opposite point, Matautu. His men were thus drawn out along some three ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... then place it on the back of the stove where it will simmer for ten minutes. Add a dash of cold water; wait a moment, then pour off carefully into silver coffee pot, which has been standing with hot water in it. Filippini's recipe for Black Coffee is as follows: "Take six scant tablespoonfuls of coffee beans and grind them in a mill. Have a well cleaned French coffee pot; put the coffee on the filter with the small strainer over, then pour on a pint and a half of boiling water, little by little, recollecting at the same time that too much care ...
— Favorite Dishes • Carrie V. Shuman
... approaches to his throne were one-and-twenty of his favourite women, beautifully dressed in feather textures, with the curved neck and head of a bird surmounting their brows. But their costume was scant and simple compared with that of the dancing girls below us. They wore a wonderful head-dress, composed of the entire body of a small peacock. The head and neck were arched over the forehead, the back fitted tightly, like a hat over their head, the drooping ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... which lay across the arid plain beneath them like a tape. The country here is barren and stone-ridden, but to the west, where Torrijos gleamed whitely on the plain, the earth was green with lush corn and heavy blades of maize, now springing into ear. Where the two soldiers sat the herbage was scant and of an aromatic scent, as it mostly is in hot countries and in rocky places. That these men belonged to a mounted branch of the service was evident from their equipment, and notably from the great rusty spurs at their heels. They were clad in cotton—dusky white breeches, dusky blue tunics—a ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... providence which rules daily events, had ordained that two or three of the prettiest Court ladies should be present;—Prince Humphry and his two brothers, Rupert and Cyprian, were at table,—and though conversation was slow and scant, the picturesqueness of the scene was not destroyed by silence. The apartment which was used as a private dining-room when their Majesties had no guests save the members of their own household, was in itself a gem of art and architecture,—it had been designed and painted from floor to ceiling ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... to see how things were going. He was a sleek, fat man, and it was amazing to see with what deference his victims treated him. He affected not to have heard what DeLong said, but I could imagine what he was thinking, for I had heard that he had scant sympathy with anyone after he "went broke"—another evidence of the camaraderie and good-fellowship that surrounded ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... Corcyra, spoke thus with her brother: "Dost thou wish the kingdom, brother, to pass into strange hands, and our father's wealth to be made a prey rather than thyself return to enjoy it? Come back home with me, and cease to punish thyself. It is scant gain, this obstinacy. Why seek to cure evil by evil? Mercy, remember, is by many set above justice. Many, also while pushing their mother's claims have forfeited their father's fortune. Power is a slippery thing—it has many suitors; and he ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... in shape and contained an area of three or four acres. Its rocky surface sustained a scant growth of gnarled black spruce and stunted white birch, with here ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... what a generous hand, what an amiable life was that of the noble Sir Walter! I will take another man of letters, whose life I admire even more,—an English worthy, doing his duty for fifty noble years of labour, day by day storing up learning, day by day working for scant wages, most charitable out of his small means, bravely faithful to the calling which he had chosen, refusing to turn from his path for popular praise or princes' favour;—I mean Robert Southey. We have left his old political ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... boom of the river he reflected that the water he had diverted to his own purposes was but a fraction of the whole mighty torrent racing in front of him. Into the scant half mile between shore and shore was forced the escaping flood of the mighty Superior, and such was the compression that, midway, the torrent heaped itself up into a low ridge of broken plunging crests. Just over the ridge he could see the opposite shore line. It ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... of almost every source of intimate knowledge of the boy, who was a mature man at twenty-two, has left the record of the early period curiously scant. Fortunately, there are in his letters and speeches some casual allusions to his childhood and youth, and a few facts and anecdotes of the period from members of his family, from school, college, and early newspaper ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... they slid down that hill-side of a river—were taking deeper and stronger drafts of the heady sunshine of their own Southern sun. On the other hand, I am forced to admit that had his motive been pure benevolence his offering would not have been so pitiably scant. ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... down below!" said Jarette, fiercely; and in a slow surly way first one and then the other was dragged to the hatchway and lowered down, with scant attention to any injuries which ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... all kinds were showered upon him. Many medals were awarded to him, and the grateful miners subscribed from their scant wages enough to present him with a magnificent service of silver worth $12,000. His discovery was hailed from every part of Europe. The Czar Alexander of Russia sent him a beautiful vase, and he was chosen a member of the historic Institute of France; while his own ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... windows in the thatch, into which, as her best, the land-lady ushered me, I certainly found nothing to identify the locale with that chosen by the literary lawyer for his open library. But, according to Ferguson, though "learning was scant, provision was good;" and I dined sumptuously on an immense platter of fried flounders. There was a little bit of cold pork added to the fare; but, aware from previous experience of the pisciverous habits of the swine of a fishing village, I did what ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... said; for she knew as well as he did that for the horse-stealer, in those parts and at that time, there was scant mercy and short shrift: it was danger to be accused, death to ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... adventured perils by sea and land; endured toil, was near starving, ate horse-flesh at Munster; and all to quell that man, who now smileth in peace at those that did hazard their lives to destroy him. Essex took me to Ireland, I had scant time to put on my boots; I followed with good will, and did return with the lord-lieutenant to meet ill-will; I did bear the frowns of her that sent me; and were it not for her good liking, rather than ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... antidote for the prevailing spirit of romance, even in this woman-forsaken country. A good creature, all limp calico, Roman nose, and sharp elbows, she brought him his breakfast with an ill grace that she had not shown to the others. The men about the table gave him scant greeting, but the absence of enthusiasm didn't ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... that wouldn't do, so we used to kick a stone wall till they brightened up. There! there she comes. Humph! stockin's soaked, too. Wish I had some dry ones to lend you. Might give you a pair of mine, but they'd be too scant fore and aft and too broad in the beam, I cal'late. Humph! and your top-riggin's as wet as your hull. Been on your ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Jack. It can be done with any wild creature. Be gentle, but firm. Teach him to obey the slightest touch of rein, to stand when you throw your bridle on the ground, to come at your whistle. Always remember this. He's a desert-bred horse; he can live on scant browse and little water. Never break him of those best virtues in a horse. Never feed him grain if you can find a little patch of browse; never give him a drink till he needs it. That's one-tenth as often as a tame horse. Some day you'll be caught in the ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... looked at him silently for some time. Then the old man pulled a newspaper out of his pocket, unfolded it carefully, and fluttered it above Andrews's eyes. In the scant light Andrews made ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... off Cherbourg, France, which sent to the bottom of the ocean the most destructive cruiser the Southern Confederacy ever launched. And here was the grandson of the hero of that fight, already thirty years of age, with the hair on his crown growing scant. ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... girl innocently exposes more of her body than meets with her modest mother's approval. The scolding is full and positive. Little Miss Apache, sitting in the middle of the blanket with her knees drawn to her chin and with scant skirt now tucked carefully about her feet, looks up with roguish smile, then down at her wiggling toes ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... of August and the first portion of September wore away in this dreary manner, and it was perhaps a week later that Colonel Washington sent me to Frederick to make arrangements for some supplies. The distance, which was a scant fifty miles, was over a well-traveled road, and through a district so well protected that the Indians had not dared to visit it; so I rode out of the fort one morning, taking with me only my negro boy ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... course, in the face of their direct counter evidence, treat statements made in a fictitious or half-fictitious narrative as if made in what professed to be a sober autobiography. Dickens, I repeat, seems to have acquired a very scant amount of classic lore while under the instruction of Mr. Jones, and not too much lore of any kind. But if he learned little, he observed much. He thoroughly mastered the humours of the place, just as he had mastered the humours of the Marshalsea. He had got to know all about the masters, and all ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... Agnes sobbing under breath. The room was small and very hot; the table was warped so badly that the dishes had a tendency to slide to the center; the walls were bare plaster grayed with time; the food was poor and scant, and the flies absolutely swarmed upon everything, like bees. Otherwise the ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... tested by musicians who are said to have been enthusiastic over the success of their experiments. Several years ago a piano was lowered into the cave for use on a special occasion, and still occupies a position on the dancing platform, where it will probably remain indefinitely under the scant protection of a small ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... towards Pillow's column. The Rebels open with a volley of musketry. The fire is aimed at the Eighth and Twenty-ninth Illinois regiments, which, you remember, are on the right of Oglesby's brigade. The men are cold. They have sprung from their icy beds to take their places in the ranks. They have a scant supply of ammunition, and are unprepared for the assault, but they are not the men to run at the first fire. The Rebel musketry begins to thin their ranks, but they do not flinch. They send their volleys into ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... than the the one, the remembrance of which he thus cherished. He had been present at many a scene of carnage, where blood flowed in deluges, compared with which the libations of slaughter poured out at Valmy would have seemed scant and insignificant. But he rightly estimated the paramount importance of the battle with which he thus wished his appellation while living, and his memory after his death, to be identified. The successful resistance, which the new Carmagnole levies, and the disorganized relics of the old ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... seem to lie midway between the grotesquely truthful sketch by Bunbury prefixed in 1776 to the 'Haunch of Venison', and the portrait idealized by personal regard, which Reynolds painted in 1770. In this latter he is shown wearing, in place of his customary wig, his own scant brown hair, and, on this occasion, masquerades in a furred robe, and falling collar. But even through the disguise of a studio 'costume,' the finely-perceptive genius of Reynolds has managed to suggest much that is most appealing in his sitter's nature. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... for the grass, it grew as scant as hair In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood. One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, Stood stupefied, however he came there: Thrust out past service from the ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... but come to me, And thou shalt dwell in Goshen and be nigh me, And with provision there will I supply thee; Both thou and thine, flocks, herds, and all thou hast, (For yet these five years will the famine last) Lest otherwise, provision being scant, Thou and thy family may come to want. Behold, both you and Benjamin my brother Do see that it is I and not another. Go tell my father this amazing story, And bring him hither to behold my glory. Then falling on his youngest brother's neck, And he on his, they o'er ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... from his friend, and soon this too had its house—small, crude, brown, meagre, but not uncomforting to one who looked over the wide land and saw none better than his own. Then, little by little, they got precious coal from the railroad, this land having but scant fuel near at hand, and they built great stacks of the bois des vaches, that fuel which Nature left upon the plains until the railroads brought in coal and wood. Each man must, under the law, live upon his own land, but in practice ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... with scant courtesy successive Lacedaemonian embassies coming to propose terms of peace after the notable Athenian successes at Pylos, when the Island of Sphacteria was captured and 600 Spartan citizens brought prisoners to Athens. This was in 425 ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... without pay. They did not look much like soldiers on parade, but were among the bravest and best fighters of the Revolution. Their swords were beaten out of old mill-saws at the country forge, and their bullets were made largely from pewter mugs and other pewter utensils. Their rations were very scant and simple. Marion, their leader, as a rule, ate hominy and potatoes and drank water flavored with a ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... elder: "He is as now in Meadhamstead, and may be in this chamber in scant half an hour." So the King bade send for him, and there was silence in the chamber till he came in, clad in a scarlet kirtle and a white cloak, and with his sword by his side. He was a tall man, bigly made; somewhat pale of face, black and curly ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... unfriendly a sky. His annals are "the short and simple annals of the poor." His home was a log cabin that had but three sides, the fourth one being a buffalo robe, swaying to and fro in the wind. When the biting wind of poverty became unbearable in Kentucky, the scant possessions were loaded upon a horse, carried across the Ohio, and the child walked barefooted through the forests of Indiana, where a new shack was built in the wilderness. There Lincoln's "angel mother" sickened and died—that mother to whom Lincoln said he ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Castle. Under a flag of truce, two of his men were admitted to the grounds. They presented the infamous ultimatum of the Iron Count. In brief, it announced the establishment of a dictatorship pending the formal assumption of the crown by the conqueror. With scant courtesy the Iron Count begged to inform Prince Robin that his rule was at an end. Surrender would result in his safe conduct to America, the home of his father; defiance would just so surely end in death for him and all of his friends. The Prince was given twenty-four ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... early on hand and busily bidding for votes. He had felt so confident of the office in advance of muster-day, that he had rummaged through several country tailor-shops and got a new suit of the nearest approach to a captain's uniform that their scant stock could furnish. So there he was, arrayed in jaunty cap, and a swallow-tailed coat with brass buttons. He even wore fine boots, and moreover had them blacked—which was almost a crime among a ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... behind empty caravans and waggons, skirting booths and tents until we came on one greater than all the rest, a huge canvas structure into which he brought me forthwith. The place was empty except for some scant few persons grouped about a stage whereon two fellows, naked to the waist, their fists swathed in what I believe are termed 'muffles', dodged and ducked, feinted or smote each other with great spirit and gusto until one of them, reeling from a flush hit, sat down with sudden violence ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... high water-table, the alfalfa plant will be shorter lived according to the shallowness of soil above water. One could get very good results at from 4 to 6 feet, whereas at 2 or 3 feet the stand of alfalfa would soon become scant through decay of its fleshy root. Where the water comes very near the surface, a more shallow and fibrous rooting plant, like the Eastern red clover, should be substituted for alfalfa in California. It is ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... worm-eaten, the armory which still suggested the clank of half-armored men, who lived only for the joy of defying death. The factor's house, whence, in the days gone by, the orders for battle had been issued, and the sentence of life and death had been handed out with scant regard for justice. Then there were the ruined walls of the common-room, where the fighting men had caroused and slept. The scenes of frightful orgies held in this place were easy to conjure. All these things counted in a manner which ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... that landscape, to any who loved not Cornwall, would seem ugly indeed, with a grey cottage stuck here and there naked upon the moor, with a bare deserted engine house upon the horizon, with trees, deep in the little valley, but scant and staggering upon the hill—ugly by day but now packed with a mystery that contains everything that human language has no name for, there is nothing to do, on beholding it, but to kneel down and worship God. Mr. Jackson ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... opinions, had never shaken these illusions, it was but natural that they should have done their best to hand them down as sacred heirlooms to their only child. Even Gabriel's four years of hard fighting and scant rations were enkindled by so much of the disinterested idealism that had sent his State into the Confederacy, that he had emerged from them with an impoverished body, but an enriched spirit. Combined ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... widest part. It begins at Chatham Square, which lies on the parallel of the sixth Broadway block above City Hall, and loses its identity at the Cooper Union where Third and Fourth Avenues begin, so that it is a scant mile in all. But it is the alivest mile on the face of the earth. And it either bounds or bisects that square mile that the statisticians say is the most densely populated square mile on the face of the globe. This is the heart ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... close beside her. Bacon, with scant regard for elegance, seated himself on the edge of the ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... hope. She turned eagerly to examine them. Piles of sombre skirts, blue and black and tan. They were stout and coarse and scant, and not of the latest cut, but what mattered it? She decided on a seventy-five cent black one. It seemed pitiful to have to economize in a matter of twenty-five cents, when she had been used to counting her money by dollars, ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... Belden, that she had toiled along the same route, laden with screens, rugs and couch-covers, at least a hundred times that afternoon. She was tired and exasperated at this final hitch, and she burst into the room of the fat freshman who had Ermengarde's part with scant ceremony. What was her amazement to ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... guard-house. The trooper's willingness, after eight months hunting Indians, to buy almost anything brought a smile to his lips, and a certain sympathy in his heart. He knew what those eight months had been like; how monotonous, how well endured, how often dangerous, how invariably plucky, how scant of even the necessities of life, how barren of glory, and unrewarded by public recognition. The American "statesman" does not care about our army until it becomes necessary for his immediate personal protection. General Crook knew ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... was different. There was no grain to be had for them. They had been starving for a month, for the Indians had burned the grass before us wherever we went, and here in the pine-covered hills what grass could be found was scant and wiry,—not the rich, juicy, strength-giving bunch-grass of the open country. Of my two horses, neither was in condition to do military duty when we got to Whitewood. I was adjutant of the regiment, and had to be bustling around a good deal; and so it happened that one ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... reduction in competition which is causing some concern among the trading community has not, as it seems to me, gone far enough yet to be a serious danger. The idea that the big banks with offices in London give scant consideration to the needs of their local customers seems to be so contrary to the interests of the banks that they would be extraordinarily bad men of business if those who were responsible for their ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... to stick close to their shanties and fire-places, for their clothing was scant and the weather extremely cold. The division did not remain at North Chickamauga long, for, on the 26th of December, it crossed the Tennessee, taking up camp at McAfee's church, on the left of the Chickamauga battle-field and six ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... a few minutes of a scant quarter-hour to spare, I would not have any one miss seeing the cloister, from which the Catholic Kings used to enter the church by the gallery to those balcony capitals, but which the common American must now see by going outside the ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... army that at last they were to meet the foe, none was so eager for the fray as Dan. In spite of Scotty's admonitions, he went to one of his officers to beg permission to join the advance the next morning. The request was promptly refused, and the volunteer bidden with scant ceremony to go back to his boat and mind his own business. But Mr. Murphy was convinced that his business lay with the front rank of the advancing column. He had not been trained to army discipline and was not minded to lose the glorious chance of participating ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... child—treated him with scant respect, though she never allowed anyone else to be other than polite to him in her hearing. But then she and Nick had been pals from the beginning of things, and this surely entitled her to a certain licence ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... a few minutes when I heard a rustling at the door. I looked up, and beheld Mr. Jaffrey standing on the threshold, with his dress in disorder, his scant hair flying, and the ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... go back now. But as matters are, one would tumble over the other. So forward, whatever it may cost. We are close on their heels. Halt! Halt! That accursed stinging smoke! Wait, you dogs! As soon as the pathway widens, we'll run you down with scant ceremony, and may the gods deprive me of a day of life for each one I spare! Another torch out! One can't see one's hand before one's face! At a time like this a beggar's crutch would be ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... bastion, upon a tall hill of porphyritic trap. We called this remnant of material harder than the rest, Burj el-Dahab—"the Tower Hill of Dahab." I have been minute in describing the Golden Harbour: scant justice has been done to it by the Hydrographic Chart, and it will prove valuable when the Makna' mines are opened. Ahmed Kaptn vainly attempted soundings—he was too ill to work. Wellsted's identification of the site with Ezion-geber (ii. ix.), and ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... stooped still closer; he laid his lips soundlessly, gently upon her hair. And when again he stood up, the look in his eyes boded scant good to anything that might ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... the soul out of him, then he would have forced back the walls again. If only once she had walked by his side through the crowds, then he would have caught their cry in time. The world had narrowed down to a pin prick, but if only she had come a scant two days ago, she would have bent his eye to this tiny aperture as to the small end of a telescope as she did now and made him see big enough to grasp the ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... penitential Foundress regarded as a relaxation. The Sisters, including the saintly woman who founded them, had accustomed themselves to sleep on straw mattresses, with pillows of the same material, to wear none but low shoes; to make their simple dress without plaits, and as scant as convenience for working would allow; not to be ashamed of patches, no matter how numerous or inelegant; to eat only broken bread; in short to live in every respect like the poorest classes of society. These, and innumerable other practices of mortification, ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... Oh, scant is their cheer! All benumb'd is their song in The hedge they are thronging, And for shelter still longing, The mortar[92] they tear; Ever noisily, noisily Squealing ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... one hand. She neither danced, sang, nor acted. But she had her part letter perfect before any of the other principals. She never missed a cue, and though she sang off the top of her voice, and let the confines of a very scant little tailor skirt mark the limits of her dancing, she sang her songs in perfect tempo and always made it completely clear to Galbraith and the musical director, just how much of the stage in every direction, her dances were going to occupy and ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Christmas of the fateful year 1830; as usual, there would be no performance at the theatre on Christmas Eve, but instead a concert for the poor had been organised, which received but scant support. The first item on the programme was called by the exciting title 'New Overture'—nothing more! I had surreptitiously listened to the rehearsal with some misgiving. I was very much impressed by the coolness with which Dorn fenced with the apparent confusion which ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... he could hope for the first returns from his hack-work. Except at such times as he saw Ruth, or dropped in to see his sister Gertude, he lived a recluse, in each day accomplishing at least three days' labor of ordinary men. He slept a scant five hours, and only one with a constitution of iron could have held himself down, as Martin did, day after day, to nineteen consecutive hours of toil. He never lost a moment. On the looking-glass were lists of definitions ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Thee I thirst! fulfil my hope; Augment in me Thine own celestial flame! For love of Thee I thirst! too scant earth's scope: The glorious Vision ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... forth the horse!" Alas! he showed Not like the one Mazeppa rode; Scant-maned, sharp-backed, and shaky-kneed, The wreck of what was once a steed, Lips thin, eyes hollow, stiff in joints; Yet not without his knowing points. The sexton laughing in his sleeve, As if 't were all a make-believe, Led forth the horse, and ...
— The One Hoss Shay - With its Companion Poems How the Old Horse Won the Bet & - The Broomstick Train • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... husbands."[4116] They are obliged to pay for their lodgings, their keepers, and for what they eat; they are robbed at their very doors of the supplies they send for outside; they are compelled to eat at a mess-table; they are furnished with scant and nauseous food, "spoilt codfish, putrid herrings and meat, rotten vegetables, all this accompanied with a mug of Seine water colored red with some drug or other."[4117] They starve them, bully them, and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... in a fashion that none would have believed nor understood, at the blue gleam of her gown and the gold gleam of her little head through the trees of the park, or through the oaken shadows of the hall at Cavendish Court during my scant visits there. No maid of my own age drew, for one moment, my heart away from her. She had no rivals except my books, for I was ever an eager scholar, though it might have been otherwise had the state of the country been different. I can imagine that I might in some severe stress have ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... although he was Captain-Lieutenant of the musketeers, and he did arrest Fouquet and escort him to prison, was far from the dashing hero Dumas made him. As for the other characters, particularly Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, they also appeared in this fictional memoir, and lacking even the scant details about them that subsequent historians have managed to bring to the light of day, Dumas's ever-fertile imagination made them three of the ...
— Dumas Commentary • John Bursey
... A scant black costume and a touch of white apron completed the picture, and Warble played with her as a child ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... Kathryn in her scant gauzy strips of white and silver having drifted towards them at the moment stood looking on with a funny little disturbed expression ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... with its old violence, and there was scant hope of its passing for another twelve hours ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... they are putting on expressional activity as an essential in the process of religious education does seem to indicate that they regard self activity. Wherever the social service was very scant the one reporting felt it his duty to give an apology for the actual conditions and express a hope of better results in the future. This showed that they felt it the vital factor in the progressive socialization of the individuals. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... first dazed days that followed, between the necessary adjustment of matters of state, and the many ceremonies incident upon the King's sudden death, there was scant time to discuss the rapid happenings; even in the court-circle they scarcely knew what was passing—still less how it had come about. It was said that Janus had died of malignant fever, due to the terrible malaria of the coasts where he had been hunting. ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... in battle, had scant notice from his love. 'Yes, I 'm glad,' and she passed him to follow her newly constituted mistress. His pride was dashed, all the foam of the first draw on the top of him blown off, as he figuratively explained the cause of his gloom ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... me over a little doubtfully, but evidently impressed with the early hours I kept told me that I might try. He waved me to a desk, bidding me wait until he had made out his morning book of assignments; and with such scant ceremony was I finally introduced to Newspaper Row, that had been to me like an enchanted land. After twenty-seven years of hard work in it, during which I have been behind the scenes of most of the plays that go to make ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... to carry home their first impressions of their invaders. Then one group of masters and servants set to work to sort the luggage which cumbered the platform, while others received it at the hotel door, and distributed it to the various billets. Light was scant, hands were not too numerous, and the work was not done without some confusion. But it was done; and the tired workers went to their beds, thankful for what was finished, and full of good hopes for the work which was ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... cruelly he has treated me. I have been immured in a desolate old country-house, without friends or companions of my own age or sex, and left to drag on a useless and aimless life. My poor father left me a scant inheritance; but, such as it is, my uncle set his greedy heart upon adding it to his own. To do this, he determined upon marrying me to his only son. My cousin William was his father over again—meaner, more ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... of foreman of the slaves on the plantation, and my mother presided over the kitchen at the big house and my Master's table, and among her other duties were to milk the cows and run the loom, weaving clothing for the other slaves. This left her scant time to look after me, so I early acquired the habit of looking out for myself. The other members of father's family were my sister Sally, about eight years old, and my brother Jordan, about five. My sister Sally was supposed to look after me when ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love |
