"Sketchy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... suits himself and his particular grade of work. On the one hand, the plan should not be so detailed as to become burdensome to follow in the lesson hour. On the other hand, it should not be so brief and sketchy as not to bring out the significant ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... a thorough education," was the answer, "whether or not you ultimately become a writer. This education is indispensable for whatever career you select, and it must not be slipshod or sketchy. You should go ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... thought of Fresnel as he had last seen him, with his muffled face and glaring eyeballs. "For one who was anything but a man of action," he writes, "I felt that I had acquitted myself none so badly." It is a phrase that recurs at intervals in his sketchy "Confessions." Constantly is he reminding you that he is a man of mental and not physical activities, and apologizing when dire necessity drives him into acts of violence. I suspect this insistence upon his philosophic detachment—for which I confess he had justification ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... his ears, and henceforth hardly dares even to read history, to say nothing of writing it. Perhaps I draw too harsh a picture, but the truth is that I did, as a very young man, with no training except that provided by a sketchy knowledge of the classics, once attempt to write an historical biography. I shudder to think of my method and equipment; I skipped the dull parts, I left all tiresome documents unread. It was a sad farrago ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Rose had only to dispatch Edwin to the grocery for eggs and cheese, and send Myrna next door to borrow a chafing-dish, and, while these errands were being accomplished, to complete her own sketchy toilet. Rose was an impressionist when it came to dress. She got the desired effect with the least possible effort, as was evinced now by the way she was whirling two coils of chestnut hair, from which the tangles had not been removed, into round puffs over each ear. ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... might die. He knelt by her side, and chafed her hands; but it was of no avail. Just then a thought came into his mind. He would paint her as she slumbered in that death-like swoon. He seized his brushes, and quickly wrought a picture—sketchy, but true—and when it was drawn he called it 'Death.' Then came signs of awakening. Tears flowed from the half-opened eyes, and rushes of colour, like the morning sunrise, stole over her cheeks. Then the mists cleared away, and she saw Chios kneeling before her, and, with a wild, convulsive ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... with cotton-wool," said a Midshipman whose acquaintance with the classics was still a recent, if sketchy acquisition. ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... a somewhat hurried and sketchy luncheon a telegram was handed to him. It was from Max Wisler, the San Francisco detective, and it said laconically, "Don't let A. ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... a lot of seafaring out of Konassa, and there are several other busy seaports we know of. But no one in any of them ever heard of navigation out of sight of land, let alone trying it. There's nothing but pilotage, and even that's pretty sketchy. And, there's this thing." He crossed to the workbench, picked up the sword, ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... the top floor in the back, and gaining it, he jerked up the shade and looked out. Formerly a row of dreary yards extended to the houses in the rear. Now the frame of the new building filled them in, projecting in sketchy outline to the end of the lots. Disturbed he studied it—four stories, a hotel, apartments, or offices. Whatever it was it would be bad for him, bringing men so ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... day was already breaking, and the electric light burned dimly in the general wash of grayness. About him the atmosphere had a strangely sketchy effect, as if it had been laid on crudely with a few strokes from ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... Going upon the rather sketchy suggestions of Mrs. Standish, the girl had prefigured Aunt Abby as a skittish female of three-score years and odd; a gabbling creature with a wealth of empty gesticulation and a parrot's vacant eye; semi-irresponsible, prone to bright colours and an overyouthful style ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... that no two men were alike, nor were any two subjects. They discovered that a man with an extensive education already could take a larger sitting and have the new information available for mental use in a shorter settling time than a man whose education had been sketchy or incomplete. ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... eve of Mons, but it is not infallible. Officers and men were changed up to the last minute, so that the headquarters file, having been prepared in advance, is not authoritative. The squadron war diaries are sometimes sketchy. Even when surviving pilots set down what they remember, the whole war lies between them and those early days, and their memory is often fragmentary. The following list is compiled, as correctly as may be, from the diary of Lieutenant B. H. ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... effect was temperamental and sketchy. The boards which formed the floor were never even nailed down; they were fine, wide planks without a knot in them, and they looked so well that we merely fitted them together as closely as we could and lightheartedly let them go at that. ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... past. Enticing odours arose from the kitchen. The grocery wagon came, and came again. The girls went home. A sketchy lunch was eaten off the kitchen table, and father stayed down town. The girls reappeared. They overran the kitchen, peeling oranges and pineapples and bananas for "heavenly hash." Marguerite grew cross. The Baby, who ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... a picture such as was never seen on land or sea. Having thus placed myself on record, I began to examine the other decorations. There were heads and faces, and architectural scraps, trees and animals, and bits of landscape and ships that pass in the night. Most of the work was decidedly sketchy, but some of the faces ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... happenings of the first week. Doubtless he would have made a desperate struggle, but it would have been useless. Not even conversion can make new habits overnight, and in his first two years at college Joe had been known to teachers and students alike as distinctly a sketchy student, wholly inexpert ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... painter; "execution sketchy; coloring quiet, to be in keeping with the place and subject, but pure. You know the scene better than I, so work away, Giotto. Motto—'Will ye pay or toll it, mother?' Price twenty-five guineas. Take it to What's-his-name's, and if it sells we'll go to Arcadia, Giotto mio! The very thought of ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of the first edition of this work, the figure in question has appeared from the pencil and burin of Mr. Cotman; of which the only fault, as it strikes me, is, that the surface is too rough—or the effect too sketchy.] ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... crossing his hands—quite passable hands, if you didn't look too closely at what should have been nails—and bent forward in a sketchy gesture. ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... of fifteen possess dimples, mere man becomes but as a piece of damp blotting-paper. Pringle was seventeen and a half, and consequently too old to take note of such frivolous attributes; but all the same he had a sort of vague, sketchy impression that it would be pleasanter to run up a lively century against the O.B.s with Miss Lorimer as a spectator than in her absence. He felt pleased that she ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... violet silk muslin, trimmed with violets and their leaves. Then violet and silver livery was ordered in a great hurry for the four footmen—to be worn on one afternoon, and no more! But these things were mere sketchy details, compared ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... pockets of his overcoat copies of the Times, and with the permission of the Court, read again with unction his own criticism, to every word of which he said he still adhered. "All Mr. Whistler's work is unfinished. It is sketchy. He, no doubt, possesses artistic qualities, and he has got appreciation of qualities of tone, but he is not complete, and all his works are in the nature of sketching. I have expressed, and still adhere to the opinion, that these pictures only come ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... with excellent records of achievement in war-flying who have but a sketchy knowledge of motor and aircraft construction. Some are college-bred men, but many more have only a common-school education. It is not at all strange that this should be the case, for one may have had no technical training worth mentioning; one may have only ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... marvels the future may bring, the people who will live then will take them in a matter-of-fact way. Their conversation will be cigarettes, "sag-paste," drinks, women. References to the scientific marvels around them will be casual and sketchy. How many million words of an average car owner's conversation would you have to report to give a visitor from 1700 an idea of internal combustion engines? The author, if skillful, can convey that information ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... Hunt, by FINCH MASON, published by Messrs. FORES. Rather too spring-like a title for a sporting book, as it suggests hunting for flowers. Sketchy ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various
... Now, there is a peculiarity in Rubens' method, and which strictly belongs to his colouring, from which arises what may be not improperly designated flimsiness, that is, the leaving too much of the first getting in of his picture, the first transparent sketchy brown. If in some respect this gives force to the more solid parts, by the contrast of the transparent with the opaque, yet is it rather a flashy force, in which the means become too visible; an entire substance is wanted; we come too ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... borrowed a bicycle for Rachel to ruin while learning to ride. He said that a friend had lent it to him—a man in Hanbridge whose mother had given up riding on account of stoutness—but who exactly this friend was Rachel knew not, Louis' information being characteristically sketchy and incomplete; and with his air of candour and good humour he had a strange way of warding off questions; so that already Rachel had grown used to a phrase which she would utter only in her mind, "I don't like to ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... meanwhile there floated before his mind's eye those delicate features, those shades, and airy tints which he had copied, and which his brush had annihilated. Engrossed with them, he put the portrait on one side and hunted up a head of Psyche which he had some time before thrown on canvas in a sketchy manner. It was a pretty little face, well painted, but entirely ideal, and having cold, regular features not lit up by life. For lack of occupation, he now began to tone it up, imparting to it all he had taken note ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... car to-day, as he occasionally liked to do, then asked, why was a Settlement? And as well as she could Carlisle retailed her rather sketchy information: how "they" planned to buy the deserted Dabney House, make it the headquarters for all the organized charities of the city, and use the rest of the great pile for working-men's clubs, night classes, lodgings, gymnasiums ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Marta and Pantalis. Nilsson had fixed the ideal of Helen in Europe and New York, and it is she, I believe, who started the questionable practice of having one performer impersonate both Marguerite and the classic Queen. Boito has given us so little of Goethe's Gretchen in his delightful, but sketchy, opera that it does not make much difference how the part is acted; but Helen is a character that seemed cut to the very form of Nilsson—regal in beauty and carriage, soul-moving in voice, serene in pose and gesture. She fitted perfectly into ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... clear,—but the close interpretation of these conditions, to enable us to predict the extent of one of these deposits, or to explain its presence in one place and absence in another, is in an early and sketchy stage. ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... at first casually over the dozen or more sketches and studies on the succeeding pages. Many of them represented studies of women's heads and figures, with little or no attempt to obtain a likeness. Some were half-draped, showing in a sketchy way the long graceful lines of the half-nude figure, of bare shoulders and breasts, of gauze-like fabrics that but illy concealed impressive charms. Suddenly his eyes narrowed and a sharp exclamation fell from ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... number of Spectator Papers is some small drawback. But here before the birth of the modern English novel we have a full-length portrait of such a character as we have described, in addition to a number of other more sketchy but still convincing delineations of English types. We are brought into the society of a fine old-fashioned country gentleman, simple, generous, and upright, with just those touches of whimsicality and those lovable faults which go straight to our hearts: and all so charmingly described that these ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... across to the veranda, had caught the gesture and tone; and while his knowledge of English was extremely sketchy, he knew six and four when he heard those numerals mentioned, and the rest was ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... to hear something of what this restless speculative scientific generation is thinking and doing. But I can't read with much pleasure the fragmentary review literature of the day. The "Cornhill" and that class of books I can't stand, and sketchy writings. The best specimens of light reading I have seen of late are Charlotte Yonge's "Pupils of St. John the Divine," and Guizot's ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he had been for years in coasters, then in the Mediterranean, and last in the West Indian trade. He had never been round the Capes. He could just write a kind of sketchy hand, and didn't care for writing at all. Both were thorough good seamen of course, and between those two old chaps I felt like a ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... with expectant faces while he got out his tobacco and laid a sheaf of papers on the table, and waited while their envoy, laying Bassett's map on the table, proceeded carefully to draw in a continuation of the trail beyond the pass, some sketchy mountains, and ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... modish medico, laughs low At ruddy RASPER'S keenly-whispered mot— RASPER, a soul all strictures, Holds the great world a field for sketchy chaff. Many love not the man, but how they laugh At ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... speaking, there is but little similarity between the above sketchy trifle and the celebrated "Moon-Story" of Mr. Locke; but as both have the character of hoaxes (although the one is in a tone of banter, the other of downright earnest), and as both hoaxes are on the same subject, the moon—moreover, as ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the envelope go quite a blank, though I cannot quite make it a prize ... In literature I have done nothing but write a preface and notes for two new editions of the old Highways and Byeways, and a short sketchy article in this month's number of the North American Review on the present state of Ireland. I am going to follow it up in the next number in reference to the state of the Irish in America, and I hope I shall thus do some good to a subject I have much at heart. I have ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... of them came filing in, bronzed, rugged, radiating a beauty of youth and health that no sketchy exigence of apparel could obscure, some one already seated at the table would put a foot on a chair opposite him and send it spinning out into the middle of the floor as a hint to the new-comer that that was his reserved seat. And the cow-puncher, sheep-herder, prospector, or man about "Town," ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... doorway looking well about him before he lifted a loosened plank in the flooring and took from beneath it the grand old weapon of the Williams family. Nor did his eye lighten with any pleasurable excitement as he sat himself down in a shadowy corner and began some sketchy experiments with the mechanism. The allure of first sight was gone. In Mr. Williams' bed-chamber, with Sam clamoring for possession, it had seemed to Penrod that nothing in the world was so desirable as to have that revolver in his own hands—it was his ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... a sketchy sort of arrangement, but it worked very well. Sometimes Peter provided the meals which Emma cooked, for he was expert at snaring, crabbing, shrimping, and fishing. Sometimes the spirit moved Cassius to lay an offering of a side of bacon, a bushel of potatoes, a string ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... the demands upon it are constant, and all legitimate support and food withdrawn. I do not recollect in any, even of the most important of Cattermole's works, so much as a fold of drapery studied out from nature. Violent conventionalism of light and shade, sketchy forms continually less and less developed, the walls and the faces drawn with the same stucco color, alike opaque, and all the shades on flesh, dress, or stone, laid in with the same arbitrary ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... the stories are too short and sketchy for the praise that has been bestowed on them, it may be answered that in their translation we have had the best opportunity to observe the skill, power, and perception of character which constitute their real merit. Simple as they seem, they are written with ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... the period of his perdition. For one or the other of these reasons—orthographical inability, or Irish pride—the half is never told; therefore, as a rule, the reading public is acquainted only with sketchy and fallacious pictures of that continuous, indurating hardship which finally sends reluctant Hope after ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Bijou Moving Picture Theatre. She was dressed as on the preceding Wednesday in her lilac gown of frailest organdy, but it had evidently been washed and starched since then, for it was fresh and unrumpled. Daylight confirmed the impression he had received that in a sketchy, faulty way she was lovely. She was clean, her features were small, irregular, but eloquent and appropriate to each other. She was a dark, unenduring little flower—yet he thought he detected in her some quality of spiritual reticence, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... in their completeness unextinct ichthyosauri of business. By day he fairly consumed old Bronson; he read dry books far into the night. Thus he rapidly filled the holes in the walls of his knowledge, and strengthened its rather sketchy foundation. Of course he realized that what he was learning was in a sense academic; it had to be tested and developed and made flexible by experience; but then much of it became instantly a living enlargement of the things of which he ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... of Harun-al-Rashid and "Albert the Good," who wanders through the play as a detective in disguise, and appears in his own person at the close to discharge in full the general and particular claims of justice and philanthropy. The whole work is slight and sketchy, primitive if not puerile in parts, but easy and amusing to read; the confidence reposed by the worthy monarch in noblemen of such unequivocal nomenclature as Lord Proditor, Lussurioso, and Infesto, is one of ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... transfer thoughts to language, as one is shown, or ought to be shown, when one learns the Greek and Latin grammars and attacks Latin prose or Latin verse. My teaching in this direction had been more than sketchy. The only schoolroom matter in which I had made any advance was mathematics. Euclid and algebra fascinated me. I felt for them exactly what I felt for poetry. Though I did not know till many years afterwards that when Pythagoras discovered ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... as the introductory thirty-five pages of Dr. Holmes's book make, we doubt the wisdom of so very sketchy an account of Emerson's lineage and intellectual environment. Attracted towards Emerson everybody must be; but there are many who have never been able to get quit of an uneasy fear as to his 'staying ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... should like to be clever, Mr. Le Breton, and I should like to know all about everything, but what chance has one at Dunbude? Do you know, till you came here, I never got any sensible conversation with anybody.' And she sighed gently as she put her head on one side to take a good view of her sketchy little picture. Lady Hilda's profile was certainly very handsome, and she showed it to excellent advantage when she put her head on one side. Ernest looked at her and thought so to himself; and Lady Hilda's quick eye, glancing sideways ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... Gravener said. "It was a sketchy design of her late husband's, and he handed it on to her; setting apart in his will a sum of money of which she was to enjoy the interest for life, but of which, should she eventually see her opportunity—the matter was left ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... the lighter and more sketchy productions of one of the most original and distinguished writers in the country. The "Shells" are symbolical of the various lights and shades of Life—scattered over its surface or lying deep beneath its ocean. They ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... de Montleon, I., 282, 309.—Buchez et Roux, XXVIII, 356, 357 (Journal de Lyon Nos. 223 and 224.) "The acceptance of the Constitution was neither entire nor very sincere; people took credit to themselves for accepting a vicious and sketchy production." Meillan, "Memoires," 120. (In July he leaves Caen for Quimper). "Although we were assured that we should pass only through Maratist towns, we had the satisfaction of finding nearly all the inhabitants regarding Marat with horror. They had indeed accepted the Constitution offered ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... W.,—I have your good letter. By 'good' I mean many things—well done as a bit of sketchy composition, a welcome letter, kindly also in spirit, cheering, timely, telling of things that interest the receiver, one, too, having the flavor of the household whence it comes, altogether a good letter. I had one also from Her; which I brutally answered ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... is so sketchy that you'd never make out what it's supposed to be unless you knew already what you were looking for. To us the head of a dog is fairly plain. If you know enough to fill in the gaps you can see it was meant to be a big shaggy dog ...
— To Remember Charlie By • Roger Dee
... conceive a little sketchy woodcut no larger than a cut in Punch, and drawn by a master like Charles Keene, or the German Adolf Menzel, giving us all the essence of any picture by Hogarth even more effectively, more agreeably, than any of Hogarth's most finished engravings. And ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... this little matter," suggested Raleigh, "don't you think we might go somewhere and feed? I can get a sketchy kind of wash at the office while you're talking to the manager; and I'm beginning to notice that I didn't ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... been raised to this simple, and apparently pagan, way of stating the case; they will be considered in due time. The reader is asked to refrain from parting company with the writer, if his prejudices are aroused, until the consonance of this sketchy account of the basis of morality with Christianity and all idealism can ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... diaries on his travels are sketchy throughout, and more laconic and objective: for ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... passage through this upper end of Red Canyon we refer to our journal: sketchy notes jotted down, usually in the evening just before retiring, by the light of a camp-fire, or the flickering flame of a candle. Under the date of Friday, September the 15th, ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... and meditation that Byron excelled. "Description," as he said in Don Juan, "was his forte." His manner is indeed peculiar, and is almost unequalled; rapid, sketchy, full of vigour; the selection happy, the strokes few and bold. In spite of the reverence which we feel for the genius of Mr. Wordsworth we cannot but think that the minuteness of his descriptions often diminishes their effect. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... necessary antagonism of the interests of the individual to the common-weal, of "Wealth against Commonwealth," that went with that. While most men had to go propertyless in a world that was privately owned, the assertion of equality was an empty lie. For the rest, primordial Socialism was entirely sketchy and experimental. It was wild as the talk of school-boys. It disregarded the most obvious needs. It did not provide for any principle of government, or for the maintenance of collective thought and social determination, it offered no safeguards and ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... of these sketchy studies of fishing in Norway has been fairly warned already not to expect exciting records of slaughter amongst salmon. Of course, no angler would be at a loss to explain away his poor bags; his excuses are proverbial, they are an old joke, they have ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... So easily and swift I drew, Sufficed for my design; My sketchy, superficial hand Drew solids at a dash—and spanned A surface ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... fair girlish faces into a region of pure poetry. These frescoes are superior to Sodoma's work in the Farnesina. Impressed, as all artists were, by the monumental character of Borne, and fired by Raphael's example, he tried to abandon his sketchy and idyllic style for one of greater majesty and fulness. The delicious freshness of his earlier manner was sacrificed; but his best efforts to produce a grandiose composition ended in a confusion of individually beautiful but ill-assorted ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... was not a good one. As a sample of the groundman's art it was sketchy and amateurish; it lacked finish. Clephane won the toss, took a hasty glance at the corrugated turf, and decided to bat first. The wicket was hardly likely to improve ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... for he is by nature so peculiarly a raconteur that he forgets himself entirely in seizing the prominent points of his story; and it is to this that his chief fault is attributable,—the want of elaboration,—a fault, however, which he has greatly overcome in his later books, where, leaving sketchy outlines, he has given us one or two complete and perfect pictures. His style, too, owes some slight debt to this fact; it has been saved thereby from offensive mannerism, and yet given traits of its own insusceptible of imitation,—for ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... ingenuity which led her grandmother to meet it with a merely provisional and somewhat sketchy answer. "Your ignorance would be melancholy if your behaviour were not ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... of the great republic across the sea was at this period of his life a little sketchy. He knew that there had been unpleasantness between England and the United States in seventeen-something and again in eighteen-something, but that things had eventually been straightened out by Miss Edna May and ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... vaguely debated plans for a self-mutilation such as would make his appearance as the Child Sir Lancelot inexpedient on public grounds; it was a heroic and attractive thought, but the results of some extremely sketchy preliminary experiments ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... the country is as sketchy and inaccurate as can be," I protested. "No one knows anything about it really. Here's the file of the United Services ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... a Sunday afternoon one beholds some weird and wonderful costumes. On a Sunday afternoon in a sub-suburb of a Kensington suburb I saw, passing through a drab, sad side street, a little Cockney man with the sketchy nose and unfinished features of his breed. He was presumably going to church, for he carried a large Testament under his arm. He wore, among other things, a pair of white spats, a long-tailed coat and a high ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... picked up in the stores. There is a good deal of choice among these. We have ourselves published one or two, from originals by Mr. Botch, which will answer as well as anything we know, being admirable in color and architectural feeling, and just sketchy enough. Pains should generally be taken not to make an elaborate picture of an architectural sketch, and the processes preliminary to making a highly-finished water-color painting, such as laying a ground-color of neutral orange, and sponging it partly out, cutting out foreground lights ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... sculptors of the present treat the minor details of their subjects in a sketchy, or, as some critics contend, in a rough imperfect manner, while others find that this treatment of detail, combined with a careful, comprehensive treatment of the important parts, emphasizes the meaning and imparts strength to the whole, ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... more than a skit, and the plot—if the thin, sketchy incident that stood in its place may be called one—served only as an excuse for a continuous fusillade of local hits, often of a personal character. These not only kept the audience in a fever of merriment, but long afterward furnished Mexican official and social ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... the truth, mon ami. It is inevitable that Turkey fights if Germany goes to war. England, France, Russia know it. Ask yourself, then, how enormous to us the value of those plans—tentative, sketchy, perhaps, yet the inception and foundation of those German-made and German-armed fortifications which today line the Dardanelles and the adjacent waters within the sphere of ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... and modified a tone. Decidedly, the gentleman in the velveteen jacket was worth nothing at all, he was altogether pasty and badly seated; the only really good bit of work about him was his hand. In the background the two little wrestlers—the fair and the dark one—had remained too sketchy, and lacked substance; they were amusing only to an artist's eye. But he was pleased with the trees, with the sunny glade; and the nude woman—the woman lying on the grass appeared to him superior to his own powers, as if some one else had painted ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... possibly, and elaborated beyond Randolph's sketchy and casual utterance; but Amy looked uncomfortable and chilled and glanced with little favor at a few other flat stones lying at her feet. "Please don't. Please change the subject," she ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... do with the part of Venus; she had undertaken it for the sake of the success of the performance, for although a small part, so much depended upon its being ideally interpreted! Later on, when the work was given in Paris, I became convinced that this part had been written in too sketchy a style, and this induced me to reconstruct it by making extensive additions, and by supplying all that which I felt it lacked. For the moment, however, it looked as if no art on the part of the singer could give to this sketch anything of what it ought to represent. The only thing ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... belongs to no school, and such art as he produces is peculiarly his own, save a leaven of influences from Velasquez and the Japanese. His art is the perfection of delicacy, both in color and in line. Apparently very sketchy, it is in reality the maximum of effect with the minimum of display. It has the pictorial charm of mystery and suggestiveness, and the technical effect of light, air, and space. There is nothing better produced in modern painting ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... have told you thus, with literal truth, all that I could know of this drama of real life; but, of course, its sketchy outline could be easily filled out by fancy. Your readers, perhaps, will like to do this for themselves. Yours truly, N. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... with Leland's "English Gypsies" and Dr. Miklosich's "Dialects and Migrations of the Gypsies in Europe," and he was attacked for his derivations, his ignorance of philology and of other writers on his subject, his sketchy knowledge of languages, his interference with the purity of the idiom in his Romany specimens. His Gypsy songs were found interesting, his translations, of course, bad. The final opinion of the book as a book on the Gypsy language ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... say not," he declared very positively. "That sort of thing is no child's work. That's what painters do when they're recording an impression, and I've often looked in more wonder at such sketchy outlines than at the finished product. To know how to get that impression on paper so that it's unmistakable—I tell you that's training and nothing else. I don't know enough about it to say it's genius, too, yet I've had an artist friend ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... too, tomorrow afternoon." The Kid's conception of time was extremely sketchy and had no connection whatever with the calendar. "I'm going to keep Silver in the little corral and let him sleep in the box stall where his leg got well that time he broke it. I 'member when he had a rag tied on it and teased for sugar. And the Countess has got to quit ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... involve less danger of precipitating a discussion of the two schemes of life for the future. "It's awfully kind of you, Alice, to propose such a thing, and you mustn't make it a burden. Any sort of little sketchy record will do; mother can read between the lines, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... short of &c 304; lack &c (be insufficient) 640; neglect &c 460. Adj. incomplete; imperfect &c 651; unfinished; uncompleted &c (complete) &c 729; defective, deficient, wanting, lacking, failing; in default, in arrear^; short of; hollow, meager, lame, halfand-half, perfunctory, sketchy; crude &c (unprepared) 674. mutilated, garbled, docked, lopped, truncated. in progress, in hand; going on, proceeding. Adv. incompletely &c adj.; by halves. Phr. caetera desunt ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... weaker sex in the smoking-room, the Baron begs to commend "THACKERAY's Portraits of Himself," as interesting to Thackerayans, and "A Maiden Speech," in Murray, for August, the latter being rather too sketchy, though in its sketchiness artistic, as, like Sam Weller's love-letter, it makes you "wish as there ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... The sketchy nature of Japanese poetry, especially in this five-line stanza, may be illustrated further by two poems quoted by Prof. B. H. Chamberlain in his ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... his hand, staying the knife at the supreme moment. He turned the prints, and paused again before The Prodigal Son. Some might call the face of the kneeling prodigal hideous, might assert that the landscape was slight and unfinished, that the figure in the doorway was too sketchy. Not so our enthusiast. This was the Prodigal Son, and as for the bending, forgiving father, all that he could imagine of forgiveness and pity was there realised in a few scratches of the needle. He turned the prints and withdrew ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... and very sketchy analysis of German femininity in the war, I reiterate views expressed on previous visits to Germany, that German women are not standing the anxiety of the war as well as those of France ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... great, and told on him so heavily, that every one said he was going to die. He had been left thin and gaunt enough by his illness, but distress of mind, coupled with weakness of body, reduced him to a kind of sketchy likeness of Don Quixote—his pure soul and honest nature the only beautiful things about him—while his mother's heart was as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... put their trust in the horsemen rather than the airmen in the break-through. As for "tanks," he offers the alternative of organised world control or a new warfare of mammoth landships, to which the devastation of this War will be merely sketchy; but I doubt if he quite makes his point here. And finally this swift-dreaming thinker proclaims a vision which he has seen of a new world-wide interrelated republicanism founded on a recognition of the over-lordship of God.... You put the book down feeling you have had a long, desultory ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 28, 1917 • Various
... "It is sketchy, I will admit," said Yoritomo. "It is not as solidly based as our other reconstructions of his background. The pattern of his raids indicates, however, that his knowledge of the materials he wants and their locations comes from vocal ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... work. And it is only fair to ask every reader of the following pages to remember that he is reading, in the main, incomplete notes and not finished work. This will account for a great deal that may seem sketchy and unsatisfactory in the treatment of different points, and also for repetitions and traces of inconsistency. But I can hardly think any one can read these notes to the end without agreeing with me that if I had withheld them from publication, the world would ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... given in the pleasant pastime of writing these rambling and sketchy pages of reminiscences is dedicated to those who in the hours of trial and tribulation felt with Sir Philip Sidney, "Honor is the idol of man's mind" and determined to do that which honor demanded knowing that if they lost their honor they ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks
... Edward, when turning the corner of the drive they saw Geoffrey's bicycle leaning against the porch. "I expect she's in the drawing-room with her grandfather. There seem to be lights everywhere. Well, I'm going to make a bee-line for the dining-room for grub. We had a very sketchy lunch, no tea, and no dinner, so ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... automobile and everything happened to him that can happen to an automobile except an absolute smash. He punctured his tires, had a big hole in his reservoir, his steering gear bent, his bougies always doing something they oughtn't to. He dined and slept at Falaise; rather a sketchy repast, but as he told us he could always get along with poached eggs, could eat six in an ordinary way and twelve in an emergency, we were reassured; for one can always get eggs and milk in Normandy. He arrived in a perfectly good humour and made ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... be despised; but this was over water and level land, where it did not jar, as here, with the soft contour of hills and valleys. The whole scene had an indefinable look of being painted, the colour was so abstract and correct, and there was something so sketchy and merely impressional about these distant single trees on the horizon that one was forced to think of it all as of a clever French landscape. For it is rather in nature that we see resemblance to art, than in art to nature; and we say a hundred times, "How ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and mechanical in its effects, the name of the author is almost invariably that of a newcomer, or of one of our few uncorrupted masters of the art. Still more remarkable, the good short stories that I meet with in my reading are the trivial ones,—the sketchy, the anecdotal, the merely adventurous or merely picturesque; as they mount toward literature they seem to increase in artificiality and constraint; when they propose to interpret life they become machines, and nothing more, for the discharge of sensation, sentiment, or romance. ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... were mere duffers. So when he speaks of Whistler, as we shall presently see, his blame is so exaggerated that it produces a revulsion in the mind of the reader. He said Whistler's painting consisted in throwing a pot of paint in the public's face. Well! we may say Whistler is somewhat sketchy and careless or wanting in colour, but it is quite possible to ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... is to be brought out in London. It will not stand the ghost of a chance unless well mounted. Music light and sketchy; remarkable for a Chorus of Fishermen, well known as the "Shad ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... second survey of our ground, somewhat more detailed than the first, but woefully sketchy. Everyone who has studied MSS. of any class or period would detect omissions in it which for him would vitiate the whole story. The best I can hope is that the assertions in it are not incorrect, and that it gives a true notion of the general course of book-production ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James
... take to it more than to others I have tried to read by the Greatest Novelist of the Day: but I will go on a little further. Oh for some more brave Trollope; who I am sure conceals a much profounder observation than these Dreadful Denners of Romance under his lightsome and sketchy touch, as ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... entirely different market, the Elizabethan theatre. I have tried to show how easily his mind might be steeped in the all- pervading classicism and foreign romance of the period, with the wide, sketchy, general information, the commonly known fragments from the great banquet of the classics,—with such history, wholly uncritical, as Holinshed and Stow, and other such English chroniclers, could copiously provide; with the courtly manners mirrored ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... reference to the illustrations already given. Their study will, I believe, give some insight into the mental characteristics of the Chiriquians. That their art, so far as these figures are concerned, was not serious is indicated by the sketchy, unsystematic nature of the work, and more especially by the grotesque and occasionally amusing representation ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... which they brought with them and illustrated, has never ceased to work powerfully among our people. Why not bring the children into direct contact with these characters in the intermediate grades, not by short and sketchy stories, but by full life pictures of these men and their surroundings? We have not been wholly lacking in literary artists who have worked up a part of these materials into a more durable and acceptable ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... realised later on that her daughter had escaped much trouble, as in 1836 the Balzac family threatened M. de Montzaigle with a lawsuit on the subject of his son, who was left to wander about Paris without food, shoes, or clothes. We cannot suppose that any one with such sketchy views of the duties of a father could have been a particularly satisfactory husband; but perhaps Laurence died before she had time to discover M. de ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... Charles Kingsley has been rather declining, the credit of his brother Henry has been gradually rising. Those who have complained of something rather shallow and sketchy in some of his former books will find far more solid and faithful work in this. Indeed, he undertakes rather more than he can carry through, and the capacious plot, well handled at first, gets into some confusion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... CHEEVER, and published by A.S. Barnes and Co. It is the substance of a work published during Mr. Colton's life-time, under the title of "Visit to Athens and Constantinople," with additions from the original manuscripts of the author, and revised and condensed by the editor. Mercurial, sketchy, and incoherent, tasting strongly of the salt water and the ship's-cabin, enlivened with occasional flashes of harmless vanity, it rewards the attention of the reader by its lively, rapid descriptions, its unfailing ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... still smiling, "the report is rather sketchy. I would like to see more information before any ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... much better," George said to his mother, a few minutes after their arrival, on the night they got home. He stood with a towel in her doorway, concluding some sketchy ablutions before going downstairs to a supper which Fanny was hastily preparing for them. Isabel had not telegraphed; Fanny was taken by surprise when they drove up in a station cab at eleven o'clock; and George instantly demanded "a little decent ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... that show this slovenliness, are, we should suspect, in those parts merely sketched in—a method agreeable to his practice, which was to work upon and upon, glazing, and heaping colour—a method which required, in the first instance, a loose and undefined sketchy manner. Some few years ago there was a picture by him exhibited at the Institution, Pall-Mall—dead game, wonderfully painted, and evidently unfinished; a boy in the background was, as we might term it, daubed in in a very slovenly manner, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... pieced together a few sketchy fragments of Miss Terroll's biography, just enough to make the wish for fuller knowledge tantalizing. That was her maiden name, also used as a stage name, but she had been married when just out of Wellesley. She spoke little of that episode. Her girlhood ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... First, in sketchy, half-formed pictures, I saw her return to the village, of her people; her welcome there, with curious crowds around her, questioning her. Their incredulous expressions as she told them of her experience ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... not often send out a new volume, but when she does it is always a literary event.... Her previous books were sketchy and slight when compared with the finished and trained power evidenced in 'An Utter Failure.'"—New ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... is given up chiefly to Alson Clark's over-sketchy and intemperately colored Panama pictures. The most interesting thing here is Ernest Lawson's "Beginning of Winter," on wall B, a representative work by one of the most successful ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... growing up in such celestial semblance. Native to the mesa meadows is a pale iris, gardens of it acres wide, that in the spring season of full bloom make an airy fluttering as of azure wings. Single flowers are too thin and sketchy of outline to affect the imagination, but the full fields have the misty blue of mirage waters rolled across desert sand, and quicken the senses to the anticipation of things ethereal. A very poet's ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... body; but no! ingrate that I am, to-day I should be content—simply to be; even a cabbage ought to be happy in such perfect summer weather. T. B. Aldrich is in—as much as he ever is supposed to be; but I recall now that I read his sketchy book the other night, while I was brushing my hair, giving it a sort of 'good time generally,' letting it run wild a little before going to sleep. I read 'Pierre Antoine's Date Tree' quite through, and liked—the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... correct within me any mal-effects of the tragedy just told, he recalled the story of a Tucson day of merry relaxation with Dave Tutt. He opined that it furnished a picture of the people of cows in lighter, brighter colors, and so gave me details with a sketchy gladness. ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... about half-past eight, after a wretched and sketchy breakfast, and after saying good-bye to one of our friends ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... to the water front under Telegraph Hill, the newest and the most squalid part of town. The shallow water was in slow process of being filled in by sand from the grading uptown and with all sorts of miscellaneous debris, Pending solidity, this sketchy real estate swarmed with squatters. There were lots sunken below the street level, filled with stagnant water, discarded garments, old boxes, ashes, and rubbish; houses huddled closely together with stale water beneath; there were muddy alleys; murderous cheap saloons; cheaper gambling ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... Calabar is a fine type of the secret society. It is exceedingly well developed in its details, not sketchy like Isyogo, nor so red-handed as Poorah. Unfortunately, however, I cannot speak with the same amount of knowledge of Egbo as I could ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... night he could just make out the sketchy forms of a river-barge and two steamers anchored a few yards out. From their masts he could see the dull glow of red where a meagre lamp was hung, and he heard the hoarse voice of a man calling out to some one across the river. As if in answer, the rattle of a chain came from ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... way through the streets of Cynthiana, where the acrid smoke of burning caught at throats, adding to the torturous thirst which dried a man's mouth when he tore cartridge paper with his teeth. Drew and Croxton took sketchy orders from Captain Quirk, their eyes red-rimmed with fatigue above their powder-blackened lips and chins. Fan out, be eyes and ears for the column moving ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... occasional small pieces washed at home. Along with the sink may be installed an electric dishwasher, depending, of course, on whether the family considers its benefits equal to the expense involved. If mother is to do the work, it may be warranted; but where her efforts are limited to one or two sketchy meals on Thursdays and Sunday evenings, one might well interview the person who is monitor of the service wing the bulk of the time. Dishwashers, cake mixers, complicated fruit juice extractors, and similar gadgets are all excellent ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... only the low, half-suppressed growl, as of Bruin in a hollow trunk, the questioner continued: "Well, sir, if you will permit me, in my small way, to speak for you, you remark, respected sir, an incipient creation; loose sort of sketchy thing; a little preliminary rag-paper study, or careless cartoon, so to speak, of a man. The idea, you see, respected sir, is there; but, as yet, wants filling out. In a word, respected sir, the man-child is at present but little, every way; I don't pretend to deny ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... into hollows of the viscid crust, the precursors of Atlantic, Pacific, and the Indian Seas. Wrinklings of the crust, produced by the cooling and consequent contraction, gave rise at first to baby mountain ranges, and afterwards to the earliest rough draughts of the still very vague and sketchy continents. The world grew daily more complex and more diverse; it progressed, in accordance with the Spencerian law, from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, and so forth, as aforesaid, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... In this sketchy portrait I must not forget one of the finest of this composer's gifts—his talent as a teacher of music. Everything has fitted M. d'Indy for this part. By his knowledge and his precise, orderly mind he must be a perfect teacher of composition. If I submit ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... Zelma first revealed her tragic power. In her fitful tenderness, in the passionate reproaches which she stormed upon him, in her entreaties and imprecations, she was the poet's ideal, and more. She dashed into the crude and sketchy character bold strokes of Nature and illuminative gleams of genius, all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... insufficient) 640; neglect &c. 460. Adj. incomplete; imperfect &c. 651; unfinished; uncompleted &c. (see complete &c. 729); defective, deficient, wanting, lacking, failing; in default, in arrear[obs3]; short of; hollow, meager, lame, halfand-half, perfunctory, sketchy; crude &c. (unprepared) 674. mutilated, garbled, docked, lopped, truncated. in progress, in hand; going on, proceeding. Adv. incompletely &c. adj.; by halves. Phr. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... doubt, in any provincial museum which dates back thirty or forty years, that the great curse of the collection, so to speak, is sketchy versatility. In walking through the usually "dry-as-dust" collections you find numbers of very atrociously-rendered mammals, a greater sprinkling of funereal and highly-disreputable birds, some extremely-protracted fishes, some chipped insects, and a lot of shells, chiefly ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... a scrap, apparently, was left over to cover, decently, the rest of the earth's surface—of that one was quite certain in looking at this vast inverted cup overflowing with ether. What there was of land was a very sketchy performance. Opposite ran the red line of ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... to learn before he could meet such a situation with Van Rycke's unfailing patience and aplomb. The Cargo-master seemed in nowise tired by his wasted day and Dane knew that Van would probably sit up half the night, going over for the hundredth time Traxt Cam's sketchy recordings in another painstaking attempt to discover why and how the other Free Trader had succeeded where the Queen's men were ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... a conversational sketch, in which I rather satirized this inconsistent spirit, and brought out the effects of patronizing any violation of private rights. It was in a light, sketchy style, designed to draw attention to a long editorial of Henry's in which he considers the subject fully and seriously. His piece is, I think, a powerful one; indeed, he does write very strongly. I am quite proud of his editorials; they are well studied, ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... belied the annoyance. Phil surmised that she had enjoyed the experience; but Lois added no details to her hasty picture. Lois did not trouble herself greatly with details; everything with her was sketchy and impressionistic. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... expand these sketchy outlines to his heart's content by following the chapters in The Innocents Abroad, which is very good history, less elaborated than might be supposed. But on the other hand, the next letter adds something of interest to the book-circumstances which a modest author would ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hope is that the Dragon may take as little interest in Ellaline's clothes as he has taken in Ellaline's self, or that, being used to the costumes of the Bengalese, which, perhaps, are somewhat sketchy, he may be thankful that his ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... thought there was nothing out of which to make a map, for except by the sides of the high-road, and in the detached villages of Brompton, Earl's Court, and Little Chelsea, there were only fields. Faulkner's 1820 map is very slight and sketchy. He says: "In speaking of this part, proceeding down Earl's Court Lane [Road], we arrive at the village of Earl's Court." The 1837 Survey shows a considerable increase in the number of houses, though Earl's Court is still a village, connected with Kensington by a lane. ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... him thinking. He had a sketchy knowledge of the salmon packer's monopoly of cannery sites and pursing licenses and waters. He had heard more or less talk among fishermen of agreements in restraint of competition among the canneries. But he had never supposed ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Our sketchy tour of Windsor Castle has hitherto been told in visits far between, perhaps, if not few, for the interesting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... journey to the pearly gates," and once or twice it looked for a short time as if the victim had mislaid his return ticket. Treat yourself to an election riot, a railway collision and a subway explosion, all in one evening, and you will get a rather sketchy idea of what we aimed at. I don't mean, of course, that we ever killed any one. There is no real danger in an initiation, you know, if the initiate does exactly as he is told and the members don't get careless ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... rather sketchy description of his imaginary home in Fleming County, Kentucky—a none too convincing description. Then he tried to change the subject by asking her if she had always lived ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... The rapid and sketchy page just quoted from Blackwood's Magazine will illustrate the high ground which periodical literature is daily attaining in this country. Of this ascendancy, the volume before us is indeed a fine specimen, and one of which we have reason to entertain a national pride. We know it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... very carefully extricated himself from among the slumberers and followed. He congratulated himself upon the fact that his preparations for the night had been extremely sketchy, had in fact consisted merely in removing his coat and riding-boots. Once safe outside the cabin, he pulled on the boots, smoothed his hair with his fingers, knotted the handkerchief more becomingly about his throat, and went ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... her library window, Mr. Carrington saw that her ladyship's back was turned, and he then gave this candid, if somewhat sketchy, account of his ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... lodging in Swallow Street, where he had been dunned by his landlady within doors, and watched by bailiffs without, until death came to his relief. A corner of the Morning Post noticed his death, generously adding, that his manner displayed considerable genius, though his style was rather sketchy; and referred to an advertisement, which announced that Mr. Varnish, a well-known printseller, had still on hand a very few drawings and painings by Richard Tinto, Esquire, which those of the nobility and gentry who might wish to complete their collections ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... Dredge's first appearance on the scene. You know the Lanfears always lived very simply. That summer they had gone to Buzzard's Bay, in order that Professor Lanfear might be near the Biological Station at Wood's Holl, and they were picnicking in a kind of sketchy bungalow without any attempt at elegance. But Galen Dredge couldn't have been more awe-struck if he'd been suddenly plunged into a Fifth Avenue ball-room. He nearly knocked his shock head against the low doorway, and in ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... a taste of flannel, Durtal had nodded a sketchy affirmative, knowing full well that if he ventured on the least comment he would have to endure an incoherent harangue on all the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... analogous attempts, we do not think Chopin has been equally successful. He could not retain, within the square of an angular and rigid mould, that floating and indeterminate contour which so fascinates us in his graceful conceptions. He could not introduce in its unyielding lines that shadowy and sketchy indecision, which, disguising the skeleton, the whole frame-work of form, drapes it in the mist of floating vapors, such as surround the white-bosomed maids of Ossian, when they permit mortals to catch some vague, yet lovely outline, from their home in the changing, ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... your vocation," she said, while her eyes narrowed and her upper lip shortened into a delightful smile. "You were born to be a schoolmaster, a veritable pedagogue and terror of illiterate youth. You love to correct. And my rather sketchy English gives you an opportunity of which I observe you are by no means slow to take advantage. You care infinitely more for the manner of saying, than for the thing said. Whereas I"—she broke off abruptly, and ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... seize, with sketchy air, Some outlines of the tourney; Yet I betimes myself prepare For ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... The dialect in which he spoke proved incomprehensible to Matthews. Luckily it was not altogether so to Abbas, that underling long resigned to the eccentricities of the Firengi, whose accomplishments included even a sketchy knowledge of his master's tongue. It appeared that the law of Bala Bala forbade the door of the Father of Swords to open before sunrise. But the tall-hatted one offered the visitor the provisional hospitality of a black tent, of a refreshing drink of goats' buttermilk, and of a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Izu, made in the neighbouring island of Hachijo[u] by girls well fitted themselves to give grace to the beautiful tissue, an obi (sash) of fawn and scarlet into which was woven the shadowy figure, here and there, of a landscape—sketchy but suggestive. The belt which girded it within was of egg coloured crape, and the orange tissue broadened and hung down to add its touch of carefully contrasted colour. The hair was built high in the taka-shimada style, ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... I had been living in those days when it first beamed upon mankind that the earth was round, I am sure I should have said, "We know now the bounds of the earth: there are no interminable plains joined to the regions of the sun, allowing of indefinite sketchy outlines at the edges of maps. That little creature man will immediately begin to think that his world is ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... politically, is a subject too broad, too wide, and too deep for us, we most readily confess; nor is it exactly proper for a work of a sketchy nature, in which we only skim lightly along the surface of society, picking up any little curiosity as we go along, but without dipping deep into motives or habits of thought or action, especially ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various |
