"Scantiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this subject, I refer the reader to Mr Suessmilch's tables. The extracts that I have made are sufficient to shew the periodical, though irregular, returns of sickly seasons, and it seems highly probable that a scantiness of room and food was one of the principal ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... The scantiness of the declension of Celtic nouns.—In Irish there is a peculiar form for the dative plural, as cos foot, cos-aibh to feet (ped-ibus); and beyond this there is nothing else whatever in the ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... storms and March glooms, it had better be dispensed with. However, I pushed on to St. Germain, threaded its long streets, looked down from the height over its magnificent tract of forest and turned westward down the Seine. Owing to the scantiness of villages, I was obliged to walk an hour and a half in the wind and darkness, before I reached a solitary inn. As I opened the door and asked for lodging, the landlady inquired if I had the necessary papers. I answered in the affirmative and was admitted. While I ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... a notion that what prevented her perhaps from going off in one great, nervous leap, was the scantiness of her attire. The wicker armchair was the most substantial thing about her person. What she had on under that dingy, loose, amber wrapper must have been of the most flimsy and airy character. One could not help being aware of it. It was obvious. I felt it actually embarrassing at first; but that ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Lys awoke, and for a moment she could not seem to comprehend her situation. She looked at me and then turned and glanced at my arm about her, and then she seemed quite suddenly to realize the scantiness of her apparel and drew away, covering her face with her palms and blushing furiously. I drew her back toward me and kissed her, and then she threw her arms about my neck and wept softly in mute surrender ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... do not exaggerate the scantiness of my resources or the difficulties of my life. I know that if a shilling were given me at any time, I spent it in a dinner or a tea. I know that I worked from morning until night, a shabby child, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... travelled to recover my canoe at the western end of the island, which I reached in three days, but suffering severely from the soreness of my feet, and the scantiness of provisions. This island is not so plentifully stored as Roatan, so that during the five or six days of my residence, I had difficulty in procuring subsistence; and the insects were, besides, infinitely more numerous and harassing than at my old habitation. These circumstances ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... Ashbourne; where I found my friend's schoolfellow living upon an establishment perfectly corresponding with his substantial creditable equipage: his house, garden, pleasure-grounds, table, in short every thing good, and no scantiness appearing. Every man should form such a plan of living as he can execute completely. Let him not draw an outline wider than he can fill up. I have seen many skeletons of shew and magnificence which excite at once ridicule and pity. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... the difficulties of a position embroiled with divers worries, and in spite of the scantiness of the financial means, we ought to stick to our affirmative position and not in ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... left no trace of their passage, either on the land itself, or among its inhabitants. Besides, the Chinese were never very enterprising sailors, the form of their junks, their peculiar sails, and the scantiness of their nautical knowledge prevented them from extending very far the radius of their maritime explorations. Marco Polo is the authority generally quoted in this matter, as he states that the people of Cathay knew of the existence of a great land far ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... is a paradise for the artist—not a corner, not a creature which does not seem to cry aloud to be painted. The only difficulty in such embarras de richesses of subject and such scantiness of time, is to decide what ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... not do what I will with my own? there was the brief answer, No man may do what is wrong, either with that which is his own or with that which is another's. Workmen were not allowed to take advantage of the scantiness of the labour market to exact extravagant wages. Capitalists were not allowed to drive the labourers from their holdings, and destroy their healthy independence. The antagonism of interests was absorbed into a relation of ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... darling child, under five years of age, quite the pet nursling of the school."[3] But though at first, no doubt, these two babies were pleased by the change of scene and the companionship of children, trouble was to befall them. Not the mere distasteful scantiness of their food, the mere cold of their bodies; they saw their elder sister grow thinner, paler day by day, no care taken of her, no indulgence made for her weakness. The poor ill-used, ill-nourished child grew very ill without complaining; but at last even the authorities at Cowan's ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... region, with its unwholesome fens and forests, where nature wages a war even more relentless than man, was not to be thought of. In this perplexity, they decided on the little island of Gallo, as being, on the whole, from its distance from the shore, and from the scantiness of its population, the most eligible spot for them in their forlorn and ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... the goatherds, as they passed along the path. There I remained, sunk in contemplation, and reveling in remembrances, till the sun was almost dipping behind the snow-clad tops of Nivolex. I did not wish to cross the lake, or enter the town by daylight, as the homeliness of my dress, the scantiness of my purse, and the frugality of life to which I was constrained, in order to live some months near Julie, would have seemed strange to the inmates of the old doctor's house. They formed too great a contrast with my elegance in dress and ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... facts of her life by laying a "solemn injunction on a person who was well acquainted with all the particulars of it, not to communicate to any one the least circumstance relating to her." The success of her precaution is evident in the scantiness of our information about her. The few details recorded in the "Biographia Dramatica" can be amplified only by a tissue of probabilities. Consequently Mrs. Haywood's one resemblance to Shakespeare is the obscurity that covers ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... such as the practice of writing his compositions on the back of letters, as may be seen in the remaining copy of the Iliad, by which, perhaps, in five years five shillings were saved; or in a niggardly reception of his friends, and scantiness of entertainment, as, when he had two guests in his house, he would set at supper a single pint upon the table; and, having himself taken two small glasses, would retire, and say, "Gentlemen, I leave you to your wine." Yet he tells his friends, that "he has a heart ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... out my purse; a meagre thing it was. "Five shillings, sir." He took the purse, poured the hoard into his palm, and chuckled over it as if its scantiness amused him. Soon he produced his pocket-book: "Here," said he, offering me a note; it was fifty pounds, and he owed me but fifteen. I told him I ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... really astounding, when we consider the scantiness of the means. No pig's or sheep's pepsin can rival that of the worm. I have a bottle of pepsin that comes from the School of Chemistry at Montpellier. I lavishly powder some pieces of hard-boiled white of egg with ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... latitude, and our voyage was limited to six, since we had not taken provisions for a longer time. In consequence of fogs and storms, we had not been able to go farther than Mallebarre, where we waited several days for fair weather, in order to sail. Finding ourselves accordingly pressed by the scantiness of provisions, Sieur de Monts determined to return to the Island of St. Croix, in order to find another place more favorable for our settlement, as we had not been able to do on any of the coasts which we had explored ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... scantiness, defect, economy, inadequacy, need, shortcoming, deficiency, failure, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... auspicious climate and free political institutions, its inhabitants displayed an uncommon share of intellectual and moral energy. Its long line of coast opened the way to an extensive and flourishing commerce; and its enterprising navy indemnified the nation for the scantiness of its territory at home, by the important foreign conquests of Sardinia, Sicily, Naples, ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... the parish and the scantiness of the vicar's leisure occupied the remainder of the interview, and Oleron thanked the vicar, took his leave, and ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... very narrow area is small indeed. This is the less accountable as, though scanty as regards the number of its species, the natural history of Ireland is full of interest, abounding in problems not even yet fully solved: the very scantiness of its fauna being in one sense, an incentive and stimulus to its study, for the same reason that a language which is on the point of dying out is often of more interest to a philologist than one that is in ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... encourage an easy, but very precarious, cultivation of autumn millets and pulses. The great Thal desert to the south of the Salt Range between the valleys of the Jhelam and the Indus has a similar soil, but the scantiness of the rainfall has confined cultivation within much narrower limits. Between the Sutlej and the Jhelam the uplands between the river valleys are known locally as Bars. The largest of the truly indigenous trees ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... imagination could suggest. Here we have the other method of making the past a living reality; for historical data subjective fancies are substituted, whose merit is measured by their boldness—that is, the scantiness of the particulars on which they are based and the peremptoriness with which they contravene the best ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... sort of amazement of the Orientals at the scantiness of the retinue with which an Englishman passes the Desert, for I was somewhat struck myself when I saw one of my countrymen making his way across the wilderness in this simple style. At first there was a mere ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... experience, all the great executive duties had been devolved either on committees of congress, or on boards consisting of several members. This unwieldy and expensive system had maintained itself against all the efforts of reason and public utility. But the scantiness of the national means at length prevailed over prejudice, and the several committees and boards yielded to a secretary for foreign affairs, a superintendent of finance, a secretary of war, and a secretary of marine. But so miserably ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... had become very imminent, when our confrere, the late M. Tenon, with his usual sagacity, recognized the trouble, and put an end to it by a complicated operation, of which M. de Lamarck preserved deep scars. This treatment lasted for a year, and, during this time, the extreme scantiness of his resources confined him to a solitary life, when he had the leisure to devote ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... contrary to their inclination), both promote their strength and render them men of vast stature of body. And to such a habit have they brought themselves, that even in the coldest parts they wear no clothing whatever except skins, by reason of the scantiness of which a great portion of their body is bare, and besides they bathe ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... exclaimed a young woman more remarkable for prettiness than neatness, and more remarkable still for the scantiness of her attire, nearly all of which had been torn from her rounded ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... Harry noted the scantiness of their costume, which consisted chiefly of a strip of cloth about the waist, and another strip thrown over the shoulder or disposed of in some fantastic way. Their skins were black, though not of the inky, coal-like color of the pure-blooded African ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... There was an ominous scantiness of supply in the market this morning, and the prices beyond most persons—mine among ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... least little bit of kindly interest,—what? Up had gone their youthful vivacity like an umbrella. Oh, yes!—like all young folks—their affairs were intensely private. Once or twice he had shaken his head at the scantiness of all their provisions for life. Well? They simply and unconsciously stole a hold upon one another's hand or arm, as much as to say, "To love is enough." When, gentlemen of the ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... democratic nations ambition is ardent and continual, but its aim is not habitually lofty; and life is generally spent in eagerly coveting small objects which are within reach. What chiefly diverts the men of democracies from lofty ambition is not the scantiness of their fortunes, but the vehemence of the exertions they daily make to improve them. They strain their faculties to the utmost to achieve paltry results, and this cannot fail speedily to limit their discernment ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... themselves: who, because of the inconceivableness of something they find in one, throw themselves violently into the contrary hypothesis, though altogether as unintelligible to an unbiassed understanding. This serves not only to show the weakness and the scantiness of our knowledge, but the insignificant triumph of such sort of arguments; which, drawn from our own views, may satisfy us that we can find no certainty on one side of the question: but do not at all thereby help us to truth by running into the opposite opinion; ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... this stage of his meditations, when he was landed amid a yelling crowd of both sexes, and all ages and sizes, but not of all colors. In fine, he was surrounded by a tribe of Biddiomahs as black as jet. Nor had he to blush for the scantiness of his costume, for he saw that he was in "undress" in the ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... of deacons (chap. 6), and the ordination of elders, though these last are only mentioned incidentally (chaps. 14:23; 20:17), the office being understood of itself from the usages of the Jewish Synagogue. The scantiness of the information which we have on this matter of church organization is a part of the wisdom of the Holy Ghost, and is full of instruction to ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... GENITALIA even when bathing in the company of his fellows, but, if necessary, uses his hands as a screen. The bearing of the women is habitually modest, and though their single garment might be supposed to afford insufficient protection, they wear it with an habitual skill that compensates for the scantiness of its dimensions; they bathe naked in the river before the house, but they slip off their aprons and glide into the water deftly and swiftly; and on emerging they resume their garments with equal skill, so that they cannot be said to expose themselves unclothed. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... to the people, before the main fulfilment of the promise of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit took place; compare Ps. cvii. 33-42 with Joel ii. 25-27.—The words, "I shall pour out," refer to the rain in ver. 23. The idea of copiousness, opposed to the former scantiness, is indeed implied in it. Yet it must not be exclusively considered; the qualities of the rain alluded to in ver. 24 ff.—viz., the quickening of what was previously dead, the fructifying power—must not be overlooked.—The words, "Upon all flesh," are, by most ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... Nature, especially, require time and culture before man can enjoy them. To rude races her processes bring only terror, which is very slowly outgrown. Humboldt has best exhibited the scantiness of finer natural perceptions in Greek and Roman literature, in spite of the grand oceanic anthology of Homer, and the delicate water-coloring of the Greek Anthology and of Horace. The Oriental and the Norse sacred books are full of fresh and beautiful allusions; but the Greek ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... The scantiness of our acquaintance with Roman Christianity in Britain is the more to be regretted, because it would have been very interesting to compare its manifestations with those of the Church which found refuge in ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... again, the whisky, bread, and cheese were handed around by some close friend of the family, and were then placed upon the table for general use. It was not surprising that, where all were free to come and welcome to stay, and where anything like scantiness in providing or niggardliness in serving would be a matter of family disgrace, the wake often degenerated into a frolic, if not a debauch. In order to check any such tendency, it had been the custom of late years to introduce religious services, begun by the ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... after all, the murder rests upon the testimony of only a very few original authorities, but this is simply owing to the scantiness of contemporary historians. It is true, also, that of these there are two who only mention it as a report; but it must be observed that neither of them expresses the smallest doubt of its truth, and one of them more than hints that he believes ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... by Dr. Wallis to be irregular only in the formation of the preterit, and its participle. Indeed, in the scantiness of our conjugations, there is scarcely any ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... low temperatures on the earth under the equator at a height where the barometer stands at about three times as high as on Mars, proves that from scantiness of atmosphere alone Mars cannot possibly have a temperature as high as the freezing-point of water. The combination of these two results must bring down the temperature of Mars to a degree wholly incompatible with the ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... death, having taken due care that the money should be ready in his exchequer. For the rest he ordered different times of payment. In some of his bequests he went as far as twenty thousand sesterces, for the payment of which he allowed a twelvemonth; alleging for this procrastination the scantiness of his estate; and declaring that not more than a hundred and fifty millions of sesterces would come to his heirs: notwithstanding that during the twenty preceding years, he had received, in legacies from ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... in this paper to the subject of slavery, which bulks so large in almost every study of the war. A similar scantiness of allusion to slavery is noticeable in the Memorial volume, to which I have already referred; a volume which was prepared, not to produce an impression on the Northern mind, but to indulge a natural desire to honor the fallen soldiers of the Confederacy; a ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... glanced back to see if the timbers were being carried in. They were, at the rear of his force, but behind them intruded Father Vincent de Paris wrapped in a blanket which one of the soldiers had provided for him. The scantiness of this good friar's apparel should have restrained him in camp. But he was such an apostle as stalks naked to duty if need be, and he felt it his present duty to keep the check of religion upon the implacable nature of ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... "It is this scantiness of means, this continual deficiency, this constant hitch, this perpetual struggle to keep the head above water and the wolf from the door, that keeps society from falling to pieces. Let every man have a few more dollars than he wants, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... far remov'd, Predestination! is thy root from such As see not the First cause entire: and ye, O mortal men! be wary how ye judge: For we, who see our Maker, know not yet The number of the chosen: and esteem Such scantiness of knowledge our delight: For all our good is in that primal good Concentrate, and God's will and ours are one." So, by that form divine, was giv'n to me Sweet medicine to clear and strengthen sight, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... absence or scantiness of explicit or systematic information connected with the opening stages of such inquiries as the present, that the student is compelled to draw his own inferences from indirect or unwitting allusion; but so long as conjecture and hypothesis are not too freely indulged, this class of evidence is, ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... should be added, or say sixty years more, making a total of at least one hundred and forty years since the immigration. Something might, it is true, be allowed for a sojourn at intermediate points: and the scantiness of the remarks is also to be remembered. But there remains to account for the considerable population which had grown up in the land from apparently one centre. If the original intruders were four hundred, for example, then in doubling every twenty years, they would number 12,800 in a century. ...
— Hochelagans and Mohawks • W. D. Lighthall
... two seemed to him to be of a piece. The former—and he knew instinctively that it was Miss Grayson—was meager of visage and figure, with high cheek bones, thin curls flat down on her temples, and a black dress worn and old. The room exhibited the same age and scantiness, the same aspect of cold poverty, with its patched carpet and the slender fire ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... feast, extorting from the faithful Ned the flattering compliment 'b' gollies, Boss, you is the best shot I ever see'd.' Preparation is rapidly advancing, and so is the appetite of the longing expectants. But such preparation was not the work of a moment, especially, from the scantiness of Lucy's cooking utensils. So the guests thought they would withdraw for a time in order to relieve the busy cook of all ceremony, and at the same time relieve themselves of the uncomfortable reflection of three blazing fires in the chimney place. After partaking of ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... solitude—in the face of the world, and in the name of literature, in one memorable satire. I speak of "Flecno, an English Priest in Rome," wherein nothing is spared—not the smallness of the lodging, nor the lack of a bed, nor the scantiness ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the scantiness of my resources or the difficulties of my life. I know that if a shilling were given me by Mr. Quinion at any time, I spent it in a dinner or a tea. I know that I worked, from morning until night, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... agitated to dissemble her feelings, dropped on to the chair by the fireplace. Two tears rose to her eyes, and at once dried away. She looked at Montes, saw the girl, and burst into a cackle of forced laughter. The dignity of the insulted woman redeemed the scantiness of her attire; she walked close up to the Brazilian, and looked at him so defiantly that her eyes glittered ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... mechanically put his hand towards his waistcoat pocket, where he was accustomed to keep his snuff. The absence of any pocket at all in the usual direction, suddenly recalled to his recollection the fact that he had no waistcoat on; and this leading him to a contemplation of the extreme scantiness of his attire, he shut the door abruptly, and retired ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... distressing uncertainty, exposed to the hostilities of the natives, the seditions of his men, and the suggestions of his own despair. He had, at length, sent a mere tantalizing message, by a man known to be one of his bitterest enemies, with a present of food, which, from its scantiness, seemed intended to mock ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... respectively with land and water accompanied in lower latitudes, and were thought to be occasioned by floods ensuing upon this rapid antarctic thaw. It is true that scarcity of moisture would account for the scantiness and transitoriness of snowy deposits easily liquefied because thinly spread. But we might expect to see the whole wintry hemisphere, at any rate, frost-bound, since the sun radiates less than half as much heat on Mars ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... mankind to retain her as the spectacle of only a few. The stage would have been her proper sphere. She should have made it a point of duty, moreover, to sit endlessly to painters and sculptors, and preferably to the latter; because the cold decorum of the marble would consist with the utmost scantiness of drapery, so that the eye might chastely be gladdened with her material perfection in its entireness. I know not well how to express that the native glow of coloring in her cheeks, and even the flesh-warmth over her round arms, ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... together. I noticed by the way that Clara must really rather have felt the contrast between herself as a town madam and this piece of the summer country that we all admired so, for she had rather dressed after Ellen that morning as to thinness and scantiness, and went barefoot also, except for ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... of physical enjoyments and of spectacles to the idle populace of the towns, the excesses of public and private luxury, the enormity of unproductive expenditure, and all this in a society which, without our machines, supported itself by hand-labor; next, the scantiness and dearness of available capital, a legal rate of interest at twelve per cent, the latifundia, the oberati, the oppression of the working classes, the diminution of free laborers, the exhaustion of slaves, depopulation and impoverishment, at the end the colon attached to his glebe, the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... dark, keeping his instructions scrupulously free from any such commitment. He said, "I go to Him that sent me;" "I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also." The references to locality are vague and mysterious. The nature of his words, and their scantiness, are as if he had said, We shall live hereafter; we shall be with the Father; we shall be together. All the rest is mystery, even to me: it is not important to be known, and the Father hath concealed it. Such, almost, are his very words. "A little ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... This scantiness of dress became the subject of protest, of justification, of discussion in press, in public and in private ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... the demand of the squire as to what was the meaning of this arrival, it was briefly explained to him that his daughter had attempted to elope with his guest, he descended to the porch without regard to scantiness of clothing. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... these routes, and also of the valley highways of the western Tian Shan. It therefore occupies a location which would make it one of the great emporiums of the world, were it not for the expanse of desert to the west and the scantiness of its local water supply, which is tapped farther upstream for the irrigation of Samarkand. In its bazaars are found drugs, dyes and teas from India; wool, skins and dried fruit from Afghanistan; woven goods, arms, and books from Persia; and Russian wares imported by rail and caravan. English ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... his long legs rolled up in a blanket, and stretched towards the feeble flame of the newly-lighted fire, he had a rather patchy air. Shelton, on the other hand, had lost his feeling of fatigue; the strangeness of the place was stimulating his brain; he kept stealing glances at the scantiness around; the room, the parson, the furniture, the very fire, all gave him the feeling caused by seeing legs that have outgrown their trousers. But there was something underlying that leanness of the landscape, something superior and academic, which defied all sympathy. It was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... had manifested JESUS to them. And when that is the spirit, the liberality will often be surprising. Not long ago in one of our North American missions a small meeting of poor Christian Indians apologized for the scantiness of their collection for missionary objects; it was worth only L7; they would do ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... one difficulty lay in the scantiness of her information. She made up her mind, however, like a good general, that the difficulty must somehow be overcome, and accepted without visible hesitation. Before she left the Casino she invited the ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the usual tendency is towards an improper scantiness. Here, too, asceticism peeps out. There is a current theory, vaguely entertained if not put into a definite formula, that the sensations are to be disregarded. They do not exist for our guidance, but to mislead us, seems to be the prevalent belief reduced to its naked form. It is a grave ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... Euler were right in the main, they did not possess sufficient data to prove themselves right. No human authority, however high, can maintain itself against the voice of Nature speaking through experiment. But the voice of Nature may be an uncertain voice, through the scantiness of data. This was the case at the period now referred to, and at such a period, by the authority of Newton, all antagonists were ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... were denied the ordinary solemnities, and such as were due to every distinguished Roman. Certainly his corpse was burned in a foreign country because of the long journey, in such a manner as it was, but afterward it was but just to have compensated the scantiness of the first ceremony by the increased solemnity of the last; his brother met him but one day's journey, his uncle not, even at the gate. Where were those observances of the ancients, the effigies of the dead laid ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... that we suffered most from, the hardship hardest to bear, was hunger. The scantiness of the rations was something fierce. We never got a square meal that winter. We were always hungry. Even when we were getting full rations the issue was one-quarter pound of bacon, or one-half pound of beef, and little over a pint of flour or cornmeal, ground with ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... whole of the fat of the animal which is about the paunch, and then he offers them with fire; and the rest of the flesh they eat on that day of full moon upon which they have held the sacrifice, but on any day after this they will not taste of it: the poor however among them by reason of the scantiness of their means shape pigs of dough and having baked them they offer these as ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... ransoming captives. Secondly, there may be various religious orders according to the diversity of practices; thus in one religious order the body is chastised by abstinence in food, in another by the practice of manual labor, scantiness of clothes, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... instant the sound of hammering ceased, and the door opened. It was six o'clock, and Pine had come to have a last look at his patients before dinner. It seemed that there was somebody with him, for a kind, though somewhat pompous, voice remarked upon the scantiness of accommodation, and the "necessity—the absolute necessity" of complying ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... mankind, or rather a portion of them, to abandon magic as a principle of faith and practice and to betake themselves to religion instead. When we reflect upon the multitude, the variety, and the complexity of the facts to be explained, and the scantiness of our information regarding them, we shall be ready to acknowledge that a full and satisfactory solution of so profound a problem is hardly to be hoped for, and that the most we can do in the present state of our knowledge is ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... allowance of water was so deficient, that the slaves were frequently found gasping for life, and almost suffocated. The pulse with which they had been said to be favoured, were absolutely English horse-beans. The legislature of Jamaica had stated the scantiness both of water and provisions, as a subject which called for the interference of parliament. As Mr. Norris had said, the song and the dance were promoted, he could not pass over these expressions without telling the house what ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... it looks ridiculous, mama?" referring anxiously to the scantiness of the skirt and the unblushing exposure of ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... a slice of bread and butter, with cheese. If Trudie could have seen it, she would have fainted. In the "citizen's class," such and such a sub-class, according to Pennewip, is found a certain scantiness that does not obtain in the common laboring class. In the matter of eating, laborers, who do not invest their money in Geneva, are not troubled so much by "good form" as people who give ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... the scantiness of the attire of the Paraguayan women at one period of the war. Some terrible facts are related in connection with this matter, showing the horrible desperation and sternness with which Lopez conducted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... of their difficulties, the scantiness of their means, the wisdom of many of their views are equally striking. More than one did their utmost to teach and improve their Indian neighbor. They forbade at an early date the selling to them of the destructive "fire water." Cadillac did so from the first; the Marquis de Vaudreuil reissued ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... was a lover of verse, "how true it is that poetry lends an illusive charm to conceptions ordinary in themselves, like a lovely screen which bestows a grace on the scantiness it only half conceals. Poetry hath an advantage ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... what Rienzi did, we must look to his means, to the difficulties that surrounded him, to the scantiness of his resources. We see a man without rank, wealth, or friends, raising himself to the head of a popular government in the metropolis of the Church—in the City of the Empire. We see him reject any title save that of a popular ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... many officials and dependents that then, as now, were at Oriental courts, were ill, he stayed there for some time. As a rule he could only get back to his own home in the afternoon, and then he was, as he says himself, "almost dying with hunger." Knowing the scantiness of the Oriental breakfast, we are not surprised. There he found his waiting-room full of patients, "Jews and Mohammedans, prominent and unimportant, friends and enemies," he says himself, "a varied crowd, who are looking for my medical advice. There ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... The most obvious characteristics possessed in common by the American aborigines are the copper-coloured or rather the cinnamon-coloured complexion, along with the high cheek-bones and small deep-set eyes, the straight black hair and absence or scantiness of beard. With regard to stature, length of limbs, massiveness of frame, and shape of skull, considerable divergencies may be noticed among the various American tribes, as indeed is also the case among the members of the white race ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... the attempt. It was not only that, having passed the three score years and ten usually allotted to man's strength, and being unaccustomed to write for publication, I might well distrust my ability to complete the work, but that I also knew the extreme scantiness of the materials out of which it must be constructed. The grave closed over my aunt fifty-two years ago; and during that long period no idea of writing her life had been entertained by any of her family. Her nearest relatives, far from making provision for such a purpose, had actually ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... stepmother, however, had thoroughly enjoyed herself since the discovery that no accompaniment presented any difficulty to Cecilia. It saved her a world of trouble in practising; moreover, when standing, it was far easier to let herself go in the affecting passages, which always suffered from scantiness of breath when she was sitting down. Therefore she would stand beside Cecilia, pouring forth song after song, with her head slightly on one side, and one hand resting lightly on the piano—an attitude which, after experiment with a mirror, ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... various movements, were the three mids,—still stripped to their shirts,—and the old man-o'-war's-man, clad with like scantiness; since the only garment that clung to his sinewy frame was a pair of cotton drawers neither very clean nor very sound at ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... gauntness, spareness, meagerness; tenuity, delicacy, fineness; incompactness; rarity, subtilty, subtilization; inadequacy, sparseness, scantiness. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... very quickly dried. The calves of our legs, however, being left bare, we were obliged, for state occasions at least, to retain and utilize the upper portion of our old stockings. It was owing to this scantiness of wardrobe that we were obliged when taking a bath by the roadside streams to make a quick wash of our linen, and put it on wet to dry, or allow it to flutter from the handle-bars as we rode along. It was astonishing even to ourselves how little a man required ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... those inclined to be disorderly, of the danger of carrying their boisterousness or ruffianism too far. On the walls are black engravings of the French school, fit ornaments for the place. But, while we are taking this casual survey, one of the attendant nymphs, with great scantiness of clothing, affording display for bare shoulders and not unhandsome ankles, appears, and in a voice of affected sweetness wholly at variance with her brazen countenance and impertinent air, requests us ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... the language which savages employ on any solemn occasion, it appears that man is a poet by nature. Whether at first obliged by the mere defects of his tongue, and the scantiness of proper expressions, or seduced by a pleasure of the fancy in stating the analogy of its objects, he clothes every conception in image and metaphor. "We have planted the tree of peace," says an American orator; "we have buried the axe ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... written down, but travelled from mouth to mouth, as it does in the Orient to-day, this fact must have been realized—that, in the short-story, plot is superior to style. Among modern writers, however, there has been a growing tendency to make up for scantiness of plot by high literary workmanship; the result has been in reality not a short-story, but a descriptive sketch or vignette, dealing chiefly with moods and landscapes. So much has this been the case that the writer ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... permit the immediate recognition of the least strange object. If you consult the remains of antique monuments you will see that the beauty of Greek and Roman apartments sprang principally from the purity of their lines, the clear sweep of their walls and scantiness of furniture. The Greeks would have smiled in pity, if they had seen the gaps which our ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... yet I was inclined to resent her use of the word, though I was by no means sure of the shade of meaning she meant to put into it. I had, indeed, an uneasy sense of the scantiness of my fund of humour to meet and turn such a situation; for I was experiencing, now, with her, the same queer feeling I had known in my youth in the presence of Cousin Robert Breck—the suspicion that this extraordinary person saw through me. It was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... daughter. Camilla had submitted with compressed lips and a slight nod of her head. She had worked very hard, but her day of reward was coming. It was impossible not to perceive,—both for her and her mother,—that the scantiness of Mr. Gibson's attention to his future bride was cause of some weak triumph to Arabella. She said that it was very odd that he did not come,—and once added with a little sigh that he used to come in former days, alluding to those happy days in which another love was paramount. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... dress and her jewels it need only be said that she affects tailor-made costumes and cat's-eye bangles by day, and that at night she escapes by the skin of her teeth from that censure which the scantiness of her coverings would seem to warrant, and which Mr. HORSLEY, R.A., if he saw her, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... and French terms, and have nearly forgotten their old signs. The prevalence of this mongrel speech, originating in the same causes that produced the pigeon-English or lingua-franca of the Orient, explains the marked scantiness of sign language among the tribes ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... leading to glad flinging away of life to pleasure the beloved, are freely given to men, but too often withheld from God, We lavish on our beloveds or on our chosen leaders, a devotion that ought to shame us, when contrasted with the scantiness of our grudging devotion and self-surrender to Him. If we loved God a tenth part as ardently as we love our wives or husbands or parents or children, and were willing to do and bear as much for Him as we are willing to bear for them, how different our lives would be! We can ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... conflict, with impatience, with perplexity, but with no loss of confidence in the ultimate success of Britain. The country was still swarming with troops, and still under summer sunshine. A second hay harvest redeemed the scantiness of the first, the wheat crops were wonderful, and the great fig tree at the corner of the Dower House had never borne so bountifully ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... of painters who, owing to the scantiness of their studies, must needs live up to the beauty of gold and azure, and with supreme folly declare that they will not give good work for poor payment, and that they could do as well as others if they were well paid. Now consider, foolish people! Cannot ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... age, awaited him. However much any one might have been accustomed to distress and privation among the Spanish peasantry, it was impossible not to be struck with the evidence of poverty in the house of the good priest. The nakedness of the walls, and scantiness of the furniture, were the more apparent, from a certain air about them of better days. Senora Margarita had just prepared for her master's supper an olla podrida, which notwithstanding the sauce, and high sounding name, was nothing ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... seats, to lie down on, not a bench to sit on. Many were almost without cloaths. The dysentery, fever, phrenzy and despair prevailed among them, and filled the place with filth, disgust and horror. The scantiness of the allowance, the bad quality of the provisions, the brutality of the guards, and the sick, pining for comforts they could not obtain, altogether furnished continually one of the greatest scenes of human distress and misery ever beheld. It was ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... door. French and Italian were alike incomprehensible to this lady, and de Vasselot was still explaining with much volubility, and a wealth of gesture, that the man he sought wore a tonsure, when Clement himself, affable and supremely indifferent to the scantiness of his own ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... in 1739, with very little money, "and a very large assortment of letters of recommendation: whether his relatives intended to compensate for the scantiness of the one by their profusion in the other is uncertain; but he has often been heard to declare that their liberality in the last article was prodigious." The Smolletts were not "kinless loons"; they had connections: ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... rose to her feet and shook out the folds of her diaphanous gown, daring alike in its shapelessness and scantiness. She lit a cigarette and laid her hand upon ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... somewhat disdainful affection, in which commiseration bore no small part. They were poor. The father had been a diplomat of some distinction who, at his death, left his wife no other source of income than the widow's pension. Two sons were abroad as attaches of an embassy, struggling with the scantiness of their salary and the demands of their position. The mother and daughter lived in Madrid, chained to the society in which they were born, fearing to abandon it, as if that would be equivalent to a degradation, remaining during the day ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... might be able to procure would be as limited in their extent as burdensome in their conditions. They would be made upon the same principles that usurers commonly lend to bankrupt and fraudulent debtors, with a sparing hand and at enormous premiums. It may perhaps be imagined that, from the scantiness of the resources of the country, the necessity of diverting the established funds in the case supposed would exist, though the national government should possess an unrestrained power of taxation. But two considerations will serve to quiet all apprehension on this head: ...
— The Federalist Papers |
