"Scraggy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... skin showed signs of wrinkling; a thick fold lay under each eye, and at each end of his upper lip. There were no prominent cheek-bones or almond-shaped eyes, which are so distinctively seen in most of the Mongolian race. Under the scraggy mustache we could distinguish a rather benevolent though determined mouth; while his small, keen eyes, which were somewhat sunken, gave forth a flash that was perhaps but a flickering ember of the fire they once contained. The left eye, which was partly ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... sculptured drapery. Here and there the mouth of a cave was seen half blocked, some green lianas beckoning in the entrance. In front, the fissured pavement of the lava stretched into the sea and made a surfy point. A scattered village, two white churches, one Catholic, one Protestant, a grove of tall and scraggy palms, and a long bulk of ruin, occupy the end. Off the point, not a cable's length beyond the breaching surf, a schooner rode; come to discharge house-boards, and presently due at Hookena to load lepers. The village is Honaunau; the ruin, the Hale Keawe, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... overlooking a large extent of cultivation. The people grow sweet potatoes, manioc—out of which tapioca is made—beans, and the holcus. Not one chicken could be purchased for love or money, and, besides grain, only a lean, scraggy specimen of a goat, a long time ago ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... sauntering homeward by the brink of the turbid Eger, they came to a man lying on the grass with a pipe in his mouth, and lazily watching from under his fallen lids the cows grazing by the river-side, while in a field of scraggy wheat a file of women were reaping a belated harvest with sickles, bending wearily over to clutch the stems together and cut them with their hooked blades. "Ah, delightful!" March took off his hat as if ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... copper colour. In dress and countenance, very like one of Captain Lyon's female Esquimaux. She was mounted on a long-backed bright bay horse, with a scraggy tale, crop-eared, and the mane as if the rats had eaten part of it; and he was not in high condition. She rode a-straddle; had on a conical straw dish-cover for a hat, or to shade her face from the sun, a short, dirty, white bedgown, a pair of dirty, white, loose and wide trousers, a pair of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... had English saddles, but I think we should have done just as well (I should certainly have seen more of the country) if we had adopted saddles like that of our Tatar, who towered so loftily over the scraggy little beast that carried him. In taking thought for the East, whilst in England, I had made one capital hit which you must not forget—I had brought with me a pair of common spurs. These were a great comfort to me ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... and miserable, with a few scraggy trees bowing low, like all trees of Sistan, towards the S.S.E., owing to the severe, N.N.W. winds. Here instead of the everlasting domes, flat roofs were again visible—wood being, no doubt, available ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... craving to become acquainted with details. This craving, foolish rather than wise, we consider it thriftiest to satisfy at once; and shall give the King's NARRATIVE entire, though it is a jingling lean scraggy Piece, partly rhyme, "in the manner of Bachaumont and La Chapelle;" written at the gallop, a few days hence, and despatched to Voltaire:—"You," dear Voltaire, "wish to know what I have been about, since leaving Berlin; annexed you will find a description of it," writes Friedrich. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... delicately clean, the birds, the fishes she lived on, and she be bred amidst running sores and vermin, was one of the mysteries I pondered over when we took to our canoes. For such a pair of eyes, for those exquisite features, some scraggy denizen of Vanity Fair would have given a king's ransom. Yet here was a thing of beauty, dropped by a vile freak of Nature into an appalling environment of filth and ignorance; a creature destined, no doubt, to spring into mature ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... or to get well. What do we do with ailing vegetables? Dr. Warren, my honored predecessor in this chair, bought a country-place, including half of an old orchard. A few years afterwards I saw the trees on his side of the fence looking in good health, while those on the other side were scraggy and miserable. How do you suppose this change was brought about? By watering them with Fowler's solution? By digging in calomel freely about their roots? Not at all; but by loosening the soil round them, and supplying them with the right kind ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... directly into the grove, where we were obliged to dismount, as the low, scraggy branches would not permit our riding beneath them. Securing our animals, we followed the trail on foot for some distance, when Jerry called my attention to a number of fresh tracks ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... enormous rocks balanced in every conceivable position on extremely slender pedestals. After about eight miles we arrived at a diminutive spring, which gave enough water for Andy to make bread and coffee with, but none for the stock. There we camped. A few armfuls of scraggy sage-brush furnished wood for a fire, but it was not enough to make our invalids comfortable, and the night was cold and raw. We did all we could for them and they did ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... ragged, and a thin white tunic, came to say that supper was ready, and when the skipper went into the cabin he found the engineer already seated at table. The engineer was a long, lean man with a scraggy neck. He was dressed in blue overalls and a sleeveless jersey which showed his thin arms tatooed ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... line from here," he said, "across the lake to that big, scraggy oak, every clear night the moon builds a bridge of molten gold, and once you walked it, my girl, and came straight to me, alone and unafraid; and you were gracious and lovely beyond anything a man ever dreamed of before. I'll have that to think of to-night. Now come see the ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... wonder a neat housewife finds them an eyesore. But I never pass the spot in August (I do not pass it at all after that) without seeing that hers is only one side of the story. My approach is sure to startle a few goldfinches (and they too are most estimable neighbors), to whom these scraggy herbs are quite as useful as my excellent lady's apple-trees and pear-trees are to her. I watch them as they circle about in musical undulations, and then drop down again to finish their repast; and I perceive that, in spite of its unsightliness, ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... his fat sides wagging about through his merriment. "You must excuse me, but I do think you would look so comical with all your feathers gummed down to your skinny sides, that wisp of a tail like a streak of horsehair, and those stilty legs sticking into your scraggy body—ho-ho-ho-ho—my fat sides! How I wish I had ribs, for then I could stop laughing easier; but you are such a droll ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... the stolid man with the scraggy beard, rather reluctantly, "I confess that this has come to ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... straggling herd of buffaloes. He noticed that the ponderous animals were breathing heavily, and that their flanks were moist with perspiration. Those at the head of the moving herd were strong and virile, and in good condition; those towards the rear were thin and scraggy, and many of these were a long distance in ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... disposition that he might have won a success on the stage as Chief Toady in a burlesque of Court life. He was a pale, thin old man, with a wizened face set well back amid wisps of white hair, and a scraggy throat which asserted its working muscles visibly whenever he spoke, laughed or took food. His way of shaking hands expressed his moral flabbiness in the general dampness, looseness and limpness of the act,—not that he often shook hands with his pupil, for though ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... gave place gradually to a wilderness—ugly brown and pock-marked. The roads became bare and dented, the fields were mottled by shell-holes, the woods looked like scraggy patches of burnt furze. It was a district of great deeds and glorious deaths—the desolation surrounding the Fronts of yesterday ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... to the gang. Soldiers were allowed about a pound of meat a day. This would have been luxury if the meat had been good, and if they had had anything else to eat with it. But a pound of bad beef, or of scraggy horse-flesh, or some times even of flabby salt cod-fish, with a quarter of a pound of bread, and nothing else but a little Indian corn, is not a good ration for an army. The Canadians were worse off still. In the spring the bread ration was halved again, ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... just rising on Orange River Camp. Our tents are pitched on the slopes of white sand, soft and deep, into which you sink at every step, that stretch down to the river, dotted with a few scraggy thorn-trees. There are men round me, sleeping about on the sand, rolled in their dark brown blankets, like corpses laid out, covered from head to foot, with the tight folds drawn over their feet and over their heads. ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... twice a year: once in summer for the Muckle Friday, when the performers were gay and stout, and even the horses had flesh on their bones; and again in the "back-end" of the year, when cold and hunger had taken the blood from their faces, and the scraggy dogs that whined at their side were lashed for licking the paint off the caravans. While the storm-stayed show was in the vicinity the villages suffered from an invasion of these dogs. Nothing told more truly the dreadful tale of the showman's ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... smith went to work within, the rider sat down by Yarrow on the trough, and began to talk of the weather, politics, etc., in a quiet, pleasant way, making a joke now and then. He had a thin face, with a scraggy fringe of yellow hair and whisker about it, and a gray, penetrating eye. The shoe was on presently, and mounting, with a touch of his hat to Yarrow, he rode off. The convict hesitated a moment, then called ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... ring and carrying a great happiness in her heart, went often to see how the cottage was progressing and how the trees were growing. For the hill-slope was covered with the gray-green of young olive trees, the dense, dark foliage of young oranges, and the stunted, scraggy boughs of the Japanese persimmon. His fruit ranch promised well, the day for their bridal was set, and they were hopeful, ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... arching chest, and a quick jerky way of walking. He had a round strong head, bristling with short wiry black hair. His face was wonderfully ugly, but it was the ugliness of character, which is as attractive as beauty. His jaw and eyebrows were scraggy and rough-hewn, his nose aggressive and red-shot, his eyes small and near set, light blue in colour, and capable of assuming a very genial and also an exceedingly vindictive expression. A slight wiry moustache covered his upper lip, and his teeth were yellow, strong, ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... weary limbs of toil, so does this milk fill up the wasted limbs and restore the vanished strength. Strange is it to see the herds feeding on this abundant pasture. They look as if it did not profit them at all. Thin and scraggy, as they wander through the thickets they look like the patients who seek their aid; yet their milk is so thick that it ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... finding this of no avail, apparently made up his mind, like Mahomet, to go to the mountain, since the mountain would not come to him, and attempted to get over; but a crabbed old cherry-tree, that grew hard by, caught him by the frock in one of its crooked scraggy arms that stretched over the wall. In attempting to disengage himself his foot slipped, and down he tumbled—but not to the earth;—the tree still kept him suspended. There was a silent struggle, and then ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... and generous. The contrast between her and her betrothed, the handsome but worthless Anzoleto, also a singer, is, at first, not overworked; and one scene—that in which, when Consuelo has got over the "scraggy" age and is developing actual beauty, she and Anzoleto debate, in the most natural manner, whether she is pretty or not—is quite capital, one of the things that stick in one's memory and stamp the writer's genius, or, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the scare-crows, scraggy ones, now come In turn; the lean, ill-favored, gawky, bald, Long-nosed, uncouth, raw-boned, and those with scald And freckled, frowsy, ricketty and squat, The stumpy, bandy-legged, gaunt, each bought A man; though ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... thus paired off—I and the other dog," he said, taking the chair Joyce indicated and dropping luxuriously back into its spreading seat, with his hands laid along its broad arms. "How delightful this is! Who could have dreamed, a twelve-month ago, that this scraggy bluff could be made into such beautiful homes, and that the dismal flat-iron below, dumping-place for tincans, frit, and cinders, as it was, could bloom out into that neat grassy park with growing trees along its walks, and flower-beds ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... out of bed and thud-thudded across the room on her heels to shut the window she glanced out into the quiet street. Her city eyes, untrained to nature's hints, failed to notice that the scraggy, smoke-dwarfed oak that sprang, somehow, miraculously, from the mangey little dirt-plot in front of the building had developed surprising things all over its scrawny branches overnight. But she did see that the front windows of the flat building across the way were bare of the Chicago-grey ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... the morning sun broke over the mountain, throwing its scraggy brown bowlders, spruce-pines, thorn-bushes, and tangled vines into impenetrable shadow. Massed at the base and along the rocky sides were mists as dense as clouds, through the filmy upper edges of which the yellow light shone as through a mighty ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... go the scraggy neck which he held in the fork of his hand. They were, by this time, ringed about by spectators, but the thief was not less expert with crowds than with pockets. He was no sooner loose than he seemed to merge into the folk about, to pass ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... was the more desirable because of all the parts above it being bleak and dreary. Round the shoulders of the upland, like the arch of a great arm-chair, ran a barren scraggy ridge, whereupon no tree could stand upright, no cow be certain of her own tail, and scarcely a crow breast the violent air by stooping ragged pinions, so furious was the rush of wind when any power awoke the clouds; or sometimes, when ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... weeks after, Mrs. Pepper and Polly were busy in the kitchen. Phronsie was out in the "orchard," as the one scraggy apple-tree was called by courtesy, singing her rag doll to sleep under its sheltering branches. But "Baby" was cross and wouldn't go to sleep, and Phronsie was on the point of giving up, and returning to the house, when a strain of music made her ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... inspirations—an empty pantry? We shall presently see whether an author from below is better than one from above—whether it will be more eligible that the Muses should have several more stories to descend, when their nine ladyships are invoked so to do—and that the pen should be taken out of the scraggy hand of a gentleman in rags, and be placed in the plump gripe of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... was in order to fill up the void thus created in his finances that he had espoused the half-million represented by Constance—an ugly creature, as he himself bitterly acknowledged, coarse male as he was. Truth to tell, she was so thin, so scraggy, that before consenting to make her his wife he had often called her "that bag of bones." But, on the other hand, thanks to his marriage with her, all his losses were made good in five or six years' time; the business of ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... half-civilized, half-savage, and almost entirely supported by the subsidies they receive. Nearly all of the able-bodied men are under arms. A few, who are too old or too young to fight, remain at home and look after the cattle and the scraggy gardens upon the gravelly hillsides. The women are as hardy and as enduring as the men and are taught to handle the rifle. The British authorities are confident of the loyalty of the Afridis and believe that the present arrangement would be absolutely safe in time ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... little more moss-grown; but its general aspect is precisely what it was when we were last there. The snow-ball and the sweet-briar are in their old places, each side of the humble porch; the white blossoms have fallen from the scraggy branches of the snow-ball, this first week in June; the fresh pink buds are opening on the fragrant young shoots of the sweet-briar. There is our friend, Miss Patsey, wearing a sun-bonnet, at work in the garden; ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... (illotum vulgus,) who were at length quieted after two or three had been somewhat roughly handled (gladio jugulati). The speaker was the well-known Mark Tully, Eq.,—the subject, Old Age. Mr. T. has a lean and scraggy person, with a very unpleasant excrescence upon his nasal feature, from which his nickname of chick-pea (Cicero) is said by some to be derived. As a lecturer is public property, we may remark, that his outer garment (toga) was of cheap stuff and somewhat worn, and that his general style ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... descried a herdsman's chalet, pitched at an angle against the wind on the edge of an arete, or clinging like a wasp's-nest to some jutting cornice of rock. After making four or five short turns, the party passed through a clump of scraggy, wind-swept pines, and suddenly found themselves at ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... veranda, she saw a man, a stranger, riding towards the house and she stood to await his approach. He belonged to what is rather indiscriminately known in that section of the State as the "piney-woods" genus. A rawboned fellow, lank and long of leg; as ungroomed with his scraggy yellow hair and beard as the scrubby little Texas pony which he rode. His big soft felt hat had done unreasonable service as a head-piece; and the "store clothes" that hung upon his lean person could never in their remotest freshness have masqueraded under the character ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... could now see him more distinctly, and he was truly a pitiable object, with his ragged black coat and trousers, through the rents in which you could espy his scraggy limbs. Underneath a black cloth cap, which was drawn low over his brows, as though he were afraid of being recognised, could be seen two large brown eyes, gleaming with peculiar softness in his otherwise stern and harassed countenance. It seemed to Madame Francois that he was in far too ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... thing was seen stirring, save troops of blue-jays which went scolding from tree to tree before the settlers as they proceeded to the conference. Here and there, also, was a half-famished, yellow, or black and yellow dog, with small head and long scraggy hair, skulking about the fields and among the wigwams of the ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... days he often longed for Kennedy Square and for those whom he loved, but it was not until one warm spring day, when the grass was struggling into life, and the twigs on the scraggy trees in Union Square were growing pink and green with impatient buds and leaves that he had his wish. Then a startling telegram summoned ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... reference to recent conversations with Mrs. Oldcastle. Certain things I laid down as premises which could not be questioned; as, for example, that I found this gracious little lady (Mrs. Oldcastle was petite and softly rounded in figure; I am tall and inclined in these days to a stooping, scraggy kind of gauntness) a most delightful companion, admirably well-informed, vivacious, and unusually gifted in the matter of deductive powers and the sense of humour. Also, that (whatever the ship's chatterboxes might say) there had been nothing in the faintest ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... design," read Hugh, "shows all the faults of nature's worst handiwork. (No pun intended.) A scraggy little paw, brown, knotted and shapeless; of course every one will ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... this, and took the cloth and spread it out upon the grass, and then it was covered with the daintiest dishes that any one could desire, and there was wine, and mead, and cake. And now she became brisk and well again, and grew so rosy, and plump, and fair that the Queen and her scraggy daughter turned blue and white with vexation at it. The Queen could not imagine how her step-daughter could look so well on such bad food, so she ordered one of her handmaidens to follow her into the wood and watch her, and see how it was, for she thought that some of the servants must ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... much better an' we were reelin' off the miles in great shape. I hadn't a place on my map for about sixty miles, when in the distance I saw a little hut, just in the fringe of some stunted cottonwoods and some scraggy willows, for we were not far ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Professor's house was opened to them by Helene Jegado, another of M. Bidard's servants. She was a woman of forty odd, somewhat scraggy of figure and, while not exactly ugly, not prepossessing of countenance. Her habit of looking anywhere but into the face of anyone addressing her gave her rather ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... spear, but only a black rod to which was bound the tail of a wildebeeste. Except for his moocha he was almost naked, and into his grey hair was woven a polished ring of black gum, from which hung several little bladders. Upon his scraggy neck was a necklace of baboon's teeth and amulets, whilst above the moocha was twisted a snake that might have been either ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... fact that the police in Ireland have to deal with ordinary wrong doers as well as with turbulent mobs. Ornament of every kind is rigorously excluded from these rooms. It is all very well to aim at the development of the aesthetic faculty for children by putting pictures and scraggy geraniums in pots into schoolrooms. No one wants a policeman to be artistic. But the love of the beautiful breaks out occasionally, even in policemen who live in barracks. Constable Moriarty, for instance, had a passion for music. He whistled better ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... This was a failure: you could not SEE things, when you wrote about, say, "Beneficence"; and Laura's thinking was done mainly in pictures. Matters were still worse when she tinkered at Cupid's especial genre: her worthless little incident stared at her, naked and scraggy, from the sheet; she had no wealth of words at her disposal in which to deck it out. So, with a sigh, she turned back to the advice Cupid had given her, and prepared to make a faithful transcript of actuality. ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... Kennebec, on approaching it from the sea, presents to the stranger a barren and uninviting picture. Hemmed in on either side by low, rocky isles, studded with scraggy pines that have long defied old Atlantic's blasts, it must have been a dreary and disappointing sight, indeed, to the little band of voyagers who were seeking a home in the new world over two centuries ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... the decayed pink-and-purple wall-paper, the ragged oil-cloth on the floor, the dingy window with its dingier outlook, the rickety deal wash-stand with the paint peeling off, a horrible clothless tray on a horrible splotchy chest of drawers, containing the horrible scraggy remains of a meal. "Do you think I would have this if I could command silken sloth? I long like hell, old chap, for silken sloth, and if I could get it, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... scraggy, filthy, mangy, miserable cloud, for all the depth of it, can't turn the sun red, as a good, business-like fog does with a hundred feet or so of itself. By the plague-wind every breath of air you draw is polluted, half round the world; in a London fog the air itself is pure, though you choose ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... the doctor's scraggy, ill-tempered horse took a fit of kicking quite frantical. For some time it seemed likely that either the doctor himself, or his saddle-bags, would be deposited in the bottom of the creek, but after a severe spell of whipping and kicking on ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... this gigantic bird they were not believed; but at last someone managed to shoot one and brought it to England, so then he had to be believed. The one here in the Museum has spread his wings, and the length from end to end is larger than the tallest man. The hideous vultures near have scraggy necks, with a ruff round them. The vultures never kill animals for their own food, but live on the refuse that is left by other animals or men. The eagle is like the lion among the animals, and the vulture is like the jackal, who runs about picking up all the nasty bits ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... reached the edge of the woods, when he found himself so closely pursued that he seemed to have no resource but to turn and dash his coat into the dog's face. That gave him an instant's reprieve; then Lion was upon him again; and he had just time to leap to the low limb of a scraggy oak-tree, and swing his lower limbs free from the ground, when the fierce eyes and red tongue were ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... anxious about him and had wanted to talk to him. Morgan noticed that he seemed a little excited. His face, too, seemed a trifle more worn and lined than usual behind his spectacles, and his beard had a scraggy appearance. ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... a whalebone whale, Hank?" asked the boy, turning to a lithe Yankee sea-dog with a scraggy gray beard who had been busily working over the mechanism ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the ball again, "here is the only symbol, my boy. So fat. So satisfied. Not like that scraggy individual, stretching his arms in stark weariness." And he pointed up to the cross, his face dark with a grin. "I was telling you just now, Michael, that I can prove the best part of the rationalist case and the Christian ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... wasn't a gentleman in the country had better outbuildings of all sorts. It was a real tip-top place, good enough for the Governor himself if he came to live up the country. All the old fencing had been knocked down, and new railings and everything put up. Some of the scraggy trees had been cleared away, and all the dead wood burned. I never thought the old place could have showed out the way it did. But money can do a lot. It ain't everything in this world. But there's precious ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... A rough, scraggy plant, with unattractive, dark-green foliage and a profusion of buds standing out at all angles, is, in July, almost the only growing thing to be seen on the barren-looking mesa around Colorado Springs. Anything more unpromising can hardly be imagined; ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... and yarning. The "case" in question was a wretchedly forlorn-looking specimen of the swag-carrying clan whom a boundary-rider had found wandering about the adjacent plain, and had brought into the station. He was a small, scraggy man, painfully fair, with a big, baby-like head, vacant watery eyes, long thin hairy hands, that felt like pieces of damp seaweed, and an apologetic cringe-and-look-up-at-you manner. He professed to have forgotten who he ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... then consider camels: only think Of camels long enough, and you'ld go mad— With all their humps and lumps; their knobbly knees, Splay feet, and straddle legs; their sagging necks, Flat flanks, and scraggy tails, and monstrous teeth. I've not forgotten the first fiend I met: 'Twas in a lane in Smyrna, just a ditch Between the shuttered houses, and so narrow The brute's bulk blocked the road; the huge green stack Of dewy fodder that it slouched beneath Brushing the yellow walls on either ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... doubt, but that white kitten was no ordinary animal. Its little heart beat bravely when it rose to the surface, and, before its young master came up, it had regained the bank. But, alas! what a change! It went into the stream a fat, round, comfortable ball of eider-down. It came out—a scraggy blotch of white paint, with its black eyes glaring like two great glass beads! No sooner did it crawl out of the water than Bob Croaker seized it, and whirled it round his head, amid suppressed cries of "Shame!" intending to throw it in again; but at that instant Martin Rattler ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... together. We started a couple of days later, and managed to travel by rail as far as Rennes. But from that point to Laval the line was now very badly blocked, and so we hired a closed vehicle, a ramshackle affair, drawn by two scraggy Breton nags. The main roads, being still crowded with troops, artillery, and baggage waggons, and other impedimenta, were often impassable, and so we proceeded by devious ways, amidst which our driver lost ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... replied the lad. "We had a black, scraggy pond two miles away, dotted with stumps and rotting tree trunks. About sundown we fellows would steal a leaky old punt anchored there and pole along the water's edge until we reached a place where the water was deep, and ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... stalking about in high headgears and stiff gowns, or sitting by the side of lean and stunted pages, singing (with dolorous voice) to lutes; or promenading under trees with long-shanked, high-shouldered gentlemen, with vacant sickly face and long scraggy hair and beard, their bony elbows sticking out of their slashed doublets. These courtly figures culminate in Duerer's magnificent plate of the wild man of the woods kissing the hideous, leering Jezebel in her brocade and jewels. These aristocratic women are terrible; ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... muttered the old woman, passing her fingers round her scraggy neck. "Well, do as you please—it is all the same to me who it is sends the young to be killed, and drives the old folks' cattle from the field. What ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... robust and enduring health. The cold and the exposure had, together, given it a color of uniform red. His gray eyes were glancing under a pair of shaggy brows, that overhung them in long hairs of gray mingled with their natural hue; his scraggy neck was bare, and burnt to the same tint with his face. A kind of coat, made of dressed deerskin, with the hair on, was belted close to his lank body, by a girdle of colored worsted. On his feet were deerskin moccasins, ornamented with ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... alone had lingered came forward slowly, showing an open copybook. His thick hair and scraggy neck gave witness of unreadiness and through his misty glasses weak eyes looked up pleading. On his cheek, dull and bloodless, a soft stain of ink lay, dateshaped, recent and damp as a ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... was warm: the fire had burned down low in the grate, and both windows were wide open. The wind which entered, though raw, had a breath of spring in it. The scraggy plum trees outside were covered with deep pink blossoms, yellow dandelions blazed up out of the grass, and even in the muddy walks: a half-frozen bee buzzed among them feebly for a while, and then lost his way into the room and fell with a thump on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... took seats on a wooded bench in front. 'All persons whatsoever havin' any business whatever with this 'ere court—Squire Belhash sitting—must come for'ard now or never,' cries out at the top of a deep sonorous voice a little scraggy-looking Scotchman, who, without coat or vest (his shirt-sleeves rolled up, and the right leg of his nether garment tucked away beneath a coarse deck-boot), acted the double part of usher and constable. Again directing a few legal phrases to the Squire, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... base; further away the mountains were very dark against a yellow line of sky. Marian continued her way thoughtfully toward the garden, turned off before she reached the gate and climbed a ladder which leaned against the side of the old brick wall. From the ladder one could reach a long limb of a scraggy apple tree upon which hung early apples nearly ripe. Marian went up the ladder very carefully, taking care not to catch her frock upon a nail or a projecting twig as she crept along the stout limb to settle herself in a crotch ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... uneven, jagged, craggy, rugged, cragged, scraggy; rude, inurbane, burly, unrefined, discourteous, uncivil, blunt, bluff, brusque, austere, abrupt, gruff, boorish, uncourtly; boisterous, tumultuous, tempestuous, stormy; harsh, hard, severe, inclement, drastic, violent; harsh, grating, raucous, discordant, inharmonious; unkempt, disheveled, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... very little appearance of vegetation on the sterile crags that soon began to lift themselves above the steely waves ahead. A few scraggy trees and bushes, which twisted and writhed like vines around the square tower and crumbling walls of an irregular but angular building, looked in their brown shadows like ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... must be left untroubled when he had great work to do. When I came back the gallon jar was empty, and he lay as you see him, with the board in front of him with this sorry device." She raised up a panel which was leaning against the wall, and showed a rude painting of a scraggy and angular fowl, with very long legs and ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "wonderfully worm-like". Her clothes had, of course, grown with her, and she looked like a little girl reflected in one of those long bent mirrors at Rosherville Gardens, that make stout people look so happily slender, and slender people so sadly scraggy. She sat down suddenly on the floor, and it was like a four-fold foot-rule folding ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... When from the grove a fearful sound outbreaks, As if some earthquake hill and mountain tore, Wherein the southern wind a rumbling makes, Or like sea waves against the scraggy shore; There lions grumble, there hiss scaly snakes, There howl the wolves, the rugged bears there roar, There trumpets shrill are heard and thunders fell, And all these sounds one ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... made dainty blue-prints, scarcely recognizable as coming from such humble family trees as the despised onion. Wild spikenard, with its crown of tiny white flowers, also reproduced beautifully in the blue-print. The Seal of Solomon and purple Twisted Stalk made scraggy pictures ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... of Mesa del Nayarit the descent toward the pueblo of Jesus Maria begins. The valley appears broad and hilly, and the vegetation assumes the aspect of the Hot Country. Specially noticeable were the usual thickets of thorny, dry, and scraggy trees, seen even on the edge of the mesa. They are called guisachi, and in the vernacular of the common man the word has been utilised to designate a sharper. A man who "hooks on," as, for instance, ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... root, a stem without any blemish, and a rapid growing tree. This is seldom to be got where most people recommend trees to be taken from—isolated ones on the outside of the woods; they are generally scraggy and stunted; and to get their roots you would have to follow along way to get at the fibers on their points, without which they will have a hard struggle to live. Another point recommended is to plant so that the tree ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... his shoulders from under the load of his fifty years and be a boy again? What a pity it is that we must age and die in our wrinkles, leaving nothing better to gaze upon than a shrunken face, colorless of bloom and written all over with the scraggy record of our griefs, our errors, and our pains! Why cannot death charm back the boyish vigor and girlish grace to our faces, when, with the invisible and fatal gesture, he sweeps his hand swiftly ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... Mr. Layard states that the mountain babbler frequents low, scraggy, impenetrable brush, along the margins of deserted ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... power to draw down under its sturdy trunk this heart of human oak. It was a sight to see those thin grey haffets making a soft pillow of that jutting knee of gnarled and knotty oak, and with his well-worn quarterstaff held close in a hand all wrinkled skin and scraggy bone. And from that day till he waved his quarterstaff when half over the river and shouted, Grace reigns! there is no pilgrim of them all that affords us half the good humour, sagacity, continual entertainment, and brave encouragement we enjoy through ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... to 5 inches long and as much across the mouth, white with an occasional tinge of rose and very fragrant. In size, colour, and fragrance of the blossoms this is the noblest of the genus. It grows out-of-doors in Cornwall and in the greenhouse in other parts of England as a scraggy bush 10 to 12 feet high. R. barbatum is a tree from 40 to 60 feet high, producing flowers of a rich scarlet or blood-colour, and sometimes puce or rich pink. It is one of the most beautiful of the ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... hold. She did not say anything, but obeyed him in spite of the terror that this exercise caused her; and she was so pitifully light in weight that she did not even fully stretch the ropes, being like one of those poor scraggy little birds which fall from a young tree without as much as ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... moment to stretch out one of her scraggy hands, which was worn and thin at the fingertips, and pricked with the sharp points of ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... Denver, and the Arkansas to New Mexico—this country was an unsettled waste known only to the Indians and a few trappers. There were neither roads nor well-marked trails, and the only timber to be found—which generally grew only along the streams—was so scraggy and worthless as hardly to deserve the name. Nor was water by any means plentiful, even though the section is traversed by important streams, the Republican, the Smoky Hill, the Arkansas, the Cimarron, and the Canadian all flowing ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... to have arrived. Standing on the streets, waiting for cars, lost in wandering about the streets searching for homes, the negroes presented a helpless group. The search for homes carried them into the most undesirable sections. Here the scraggy edges of society met. The traditional attitude of unionists toward negroes began to assert itself. Fear that such large numbers would weaken present and subsequent demands aroused considerable opposition to their presence. Meetings ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... sight was Bones at that early hour with the open pyjama jacket showing his scraggy neck, with his fish mouth drooping dismally, his round, staring eyes and his hair rumpled up, one frantic tuft at the back ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... "have you heard about the trouble that old fool Theophilus has been getting into? Mark my words, before he dies, he'll land his sister in the poorhouse, as sure as I sit here. Garden needed moisture, he said, couldn't raise some of those scraggy, new-fangled things that nobody can pronounce the names of except himself, so he went to work and had pipes laid from one end to the other. When the bill came in there was no way to pay it except by mortgaging his house, so he's gone and mortgaged it. Mrs. ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... her to go," he muttered as he wiped his mouth, "it's time for her to go! Git back here, Scraggy, and take this ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... place there, owing to the struggle of the enemy to retain a footing on that splendid line of observation, the Lorette Ridge. The Arras-Bethune Road, known as the Route de Bethune, and bordered by a few scraggy trees, ran through the sector more or less from North to South—about a mile behind the front line, and two miles in front of Mont St. Eloy. The forward area was a scene of desolation—trenches and wire, shell-holes everywhere, mine craters here and there, shewing ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... leisure for admiring the scenery; the light native cart, or ekka, consisting of a somewhat small body screened by a wide white hood, and capable of holding far more luggage than would at first sight seem possible, and drawn by a scraggy-looking but much enduring little horse tied up by a wild and complicated system of harness (chiefly consisting of bits of old rope) between a ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... to-day. I have had a wash in a thimbleful of water, and shaved, and feel another man. They gave us an hour of stables, but the horses certainly needed it, as they never get groomed now, and are a shaggy, scraggy-looking lot. I'm glad to say mine are quite free from galls and sore backs. As one never sees their backs by daylight, it is interesting to get a good look at them at last. They are very liable to sore ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... clothes-horse for a screen; and to heighten the effect, the assistant, who was expert in portraiture, covered this screen, and, indeed, the walls of the room, with scraggy outlines of the human countenance upon large sheets of paper. These, they said, were executed by the draftsman, whose right hand, when under spiritual influence, uncontrollably jerked off these likenesses. They added, that the spirits had given information that, before the mediums left ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... side of this is an open tract of ground, half cleared, half woodland; the former sterile, the latter scraggy. It seems to belong to no one, as if not worth claiming, or cultivating. It has been, in fact, an appanage of Colonel Armstrong's estate, who had granted it to the public as the site for a schoolhouse, and a common burying-ground—free ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... been only the scraggy little tree she had taken care of, the battered old toys, the torn dolls and the little pets she had played with and loved so well, the bird and the wild creatures she had fed and chattered to, and a little bit of ivy and green moss. But just as soon as she looked at ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... DOES!" drawled one of the men,—a weird, withered fellow with a scraggy beard and ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... her, and Mr Hinks, his scraggy neck at full length, awaited her reply with a look ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... this, but only, with her hand to her breast stood back a little and watched him with frightened eyes. She was wearing an old, faded, green blouse, open at her scraggy neck and her skirt was a kind of bed-quilt, odd bits of stuffs of many colours stuck together. Her scanty hair was pulled into a bunch on the top of her head, her face where it was not brown was purple, and her hands were always shaking so that her fingers rattled together like ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... hidden by the scraggy pine trees and thick bushes which drooped over its entrance, was a long, dark passage, leading underground, not so large, probably, as Mammoth Cave, but in my estimation rivaling it in interest. This was an old mine, where, years before, men had dug for gold. ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... and wit and ugliness are seldom separated. I have an example of this in my own family. A few days ago a great-grandniece was sent to me, a child under ten years old, that has no other relative. She is as tawny as a frog, as scraggy as a spider, yet, withal, as cunning as an ape, and as learned as a book. Judge for yourself, sire; here is my little monster ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... the edge of the high bluff entered a grove of scraggy pitch pines about a mile from the lighthouse and the picnic ground. Albert stalked gloomily through the shadows of the little grove and emerged on the other side. There he saw another person ahead of him on the path. This other person was a girl. He recognized her even ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... you," said Sartello, leaving the scraggy laurel behind which he had concealed himself. "What cheer brings thou from Rome, my gallant lad'? Certes, thy look is loftier and manlier now, whatever fortune thou ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... eggs will jolt out!" From the road,' said he, 'I could not see who thus was rated; so Sprang up beside her and beheld her husband, Lover or keeper, what you like to call him;— A middle-aged stout man upon whose shoulders Kneeled up a scraggy mule-boy slave, who was The fool that could not reach a thrush's nest Which they, while plucking almond, had revealed. Before she knew who it could be, I said "Why yes, he is a fool, but we, fair friend, Were we not foolish waiting for such fools? ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... and thin, with a ragged coat, A scraggy tail, and a hunted look; No songs of melody burst from his throat As he seeks repose in some quiet nook— A safe retreat from this world of sin, And all of its boots and stones and that— For the life of a cat is a life of din, If he is a ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... brought with them to Mexico and the descendants of that finest of equine bloods made up the wild herds which soon roamed the mountain-desert to the north. Long famines of winter, hot deserts in summer, changed their appearance. Their heads grew lumpier, their necks more scraggy, their croups more slanting, their legs shorter; but their hoofs grew denser, hardier, their shorter coupling gave them greater weight-carrying possibilities, the stout bones and the clean lines of their legs meant speed, and above all they kept the stout heart of the thoroughbred and they gained ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... evanescent, imperceptible, invisible, inappreciable, insignificant, inconsiderable, trivial; infinitesimal, homoeopathic^; atomic, subatomic, corpuscular, molecular; rudimentary, rudimental; embryonic, vestigial. weazen^, scant, scraggy, scrubby; thin &c (narrow) 203; granular &c (powdery) 330; shrunk &c 195; brevipennate^. Adv. in a small compass, in a nutshell; on ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... much as Betty, at her age, I'm sure," said Zerlina, forgetting a photograph which stands on Jim's dressing-table, of a small fat girl with very little hair and that rather scraggy. But what does it matter? These are the sort of ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... was a camp of magnificent distances, restful to the eyes but distressful to the feet. The soil was rich loam, and at no remote date had been mostly under cultivation. There were several pretty clumps of dhoum palms, and a few scraggy mimosa by the river's margin. Of tree-shade for the troops there was practically none. Much of the thorny bush had been cut to form a zereba. In fact, there were two zerebas, the British division having a dividing ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... but oftener silent, we jogged on till about three o'clock in the afternoon, when suddenly, as we were skirting a patch of scraggy woodland, a troop of six armed men emerged from it, and, wheeling about, came directly towards us. A glance was enough to tell us that they were soldiers or mounted policemen, scouring the country in search of recruits, or, in other words, of deserters, skulking criminals, and ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... snake here, Joel," announced Polly, in her most determined tone. "Put him off on the grass in the orchard," as the one scraggy apple tree was called. "Now hurry, like a good boy, and then come and tell us how ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... stricken and I get a certain amount of fun—chirping 'em up on cloudy days. They like to hear from Emerson and John A. Logan, and Sitting Bull and Huxley and their comrades. So I guess I'm being more or less useful." He stroked his scraggy beard and looked at the fire. "And then," he added, "she always seems nearer where there is sorrow. Grant, too, is that way, though neither of ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... have viewed the scraggy specimens in the menageries and zoological gardens would scarcely suspect the activity and power of running possessed by them. The body is covered with such an abundance of hair that it looks larger than it really is, while the legs appear smaller. But the bison ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... bowling-green, and was kept clear of shrubs or flower-beds. Beyond was a smooth, rather rapid slope towards a quiet river, beyond which there rose again a beautiful green field, crowned above by a thick wood, ending at the top in some scraggy pine-trees, with scanty dark foliage at the top of their rude russet arms. Fine trees stood out here and there upon the slope of the field; and Captain Merrifield's fine sleeked cows were licking each other, or chewing the ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ass you are," said the Captain after a pause; "just you listen to me. That scraggy young woman, Charlie Fairstairs, is to be ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... the Traveller's Delight the ground dipped down into a hollow, which, even in daylight, was completely screened from the view of any one within the house or about the yard by a great clump or patch of scraggy furze bushes. In this secluded spot there stood a lime-kiln, one of those built somewhat like a low circular tower, with gaping mouth and open roof; but for many a day the kiln had not been used—not since the present tenant entered on possession ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... a troop of babies!' he yelled. 'Ain't you goin' into the fight? Can't you lick a blamed Yankee?' And, bless your soul! those scraggy fellows stood ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... were tramps, proved to be correct. Both had all the marks of vagrants. Their clothes were ragged and dirty, their hair long and uncombed, and their faces were covered with scraggy beards. ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... villa in a lonely spot on the high road to Witham. As I idled about it, I smelt a curious odor of melting rubber. Apparently the place had been taken furnished, but with what object I could not guess. Tarrant was a queer, rather insignificant-looking old fellow with a shock of white hair and a scraggy white beard. ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... where one year before I had spent my last night on the Gulf of Mexico with the "Maria Theresa," my little paper canoe. Soon it rose like a green spot in the desert, the well-remembered grove coming into view, with the half-dead oak's scraggy branches peering out of the feathery tops of ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... just come down to breakfast; Mrs. T. in her large dust-colored morning-dress and Madonna front (she looks rather scraggy of a morning, but I promise you her ringlets and figure will stun you of an evening); and having read the note, the following ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... draw-plate fixed to the vise. Seated in front of the bench, Lorilleux, quite as small of stature, but more slender in the shoulders, worked with the tips of his pliers, with the vivacity of a monkey, at a labor so minute, that it was impossible to follow it between his scraggy fingers. It was the husband who first raised his head—a head with scanty locks, the face of the yellow tinge of old wax, long, and ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... through the Elysian Fields (which, I suppose, are the French idea of heaven) to Bonaparte's triumphal arch. The Champs Elysees may look pretty in summer; though I suspect they must be somewhat dry and artificial at whatever season,—the trees being slender and scraggy, and requiring to be renewed every few years. The soil is not genial to them. The strangest peculiarity of this place, however, to eyes fresh from moist and verdant England, is, that there is not one blade of grass in all the Elysian Fields, nothing but hard ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stone blind, and as scraggy as a scarecrow, so there's not much driving to be had out of him. Fancy if the aristocratic Power, or some other Saint Winifred's fellow saw us! Why, it would supply Henderson with jokes for six weeks," said ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... that scarcely interrupted the beautiful rhythm of his stride. At the far end of the clearing, snuggled between two great pines that reached high into the blue, his squatty cabin showed red-brown against the precipitous shoulder of Bear Top peak, covered thick with brush and scraggy timber whipped incessantly by the wind that blew over ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... condensed to about five miles, or a horseman to every fifty feet. Wolves had been sighted numerous times running from covert to covert, but few had shown themselves to the flank line, being contented with such shelter as the scraggy plum brush afforded. Whenever the beaters would rout or sight a wolf, the yelling would continue up and down the line for several minutes. Cave and his well-formed circle of beaters were making good time; Reese on the left flank was closing and moving ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... "gentleman friend" (a very fine man too) calling on Miss Smith for the first time since she had come to live in the house. When she returned, for she did come back alone, there were allusions made to that outing. She had to take her meals with these rather vulgar people. The woman of the house, a scraggy, genteel person, tried even to provoke confidences. Flora's white face with the deep blue eyes did not strike their hearts as it did the heart of Captain Anthony, as the very face of the suffering world. Her pained reserve had no power to awe them ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... of the way the Saskatchewan weather was behaving after all her boasting. She was thin at the best of times, but now she grew positively scraggy with the worry of it. I am afraid I took an unholy delight in teasing her, and abused the western weather even ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... he seemed to be in the last straits. He held doggedly on, in spite of cold and tempest and disease. His own frail body broke down, and for the first time the shadow of depression fell on the British camps when they no longer saw the red head and lean and scraggy body of their general moving amongst them. For a week, between August 22 and August 29, he lay apparently a dying man, his face, with its curious angles, white with pain and haggard with disease. But he struggled out again, and framed yet new plans of attack. On September 10 the captains of ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... mournful in winter The lowing of kine; How lean-back'd they shiver, How draggled their cover, How their nostrils run over With drippings of brine, So scraggy and crining In the cold frost ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various |
