"Scant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... scant fare here," answered Leonard, "but you are welcome to it. Follow me, mother," and he led the way across the donga to the cave, the woman limping after ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... silently to the girl's rhapsodies—she suddenly awakened to the realization that he was paying scant attention to her enthusiastic words. She looked at him, her heart-beats quickened, some intuition warned her of the ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... thrown backward. Bound up in her grief and the injured sense of her impotence, she cried long, gently, and monotonously, pouring out all the pain of her wounded heart in her sobs. And before her, like an irremovable stain, hung that yellow face with the scant mustache, and the squinting eyes staring at her with malicious pleasure. Resentment and bitterness were winding themselves about her breast like black threads on a spool; resentment and bitterness toward those who tear a ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... who are needed; for the past year came eighty-odd soldiers, and this year ninety. That is but a scant number for the many men who die here, for our forces are steadily diminishing. I can do no more, for money has not been coined here, nor do the people multiply. I ask, Sire, for what is needed to fulfil my obligations. The viceroy does not send the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... latitude of Boeotia, and knew nothing of the sunny wealth in the south of the peninsula, or of such princely estates as Eumaeus managed in the Ionian seas. Flaxman has certainly not given him the look of a large proprietor in his outlines: his toilet is severely scant, and the old gentleman appears to have lost two of his fingers in a chaff-cutter. As for Perses, who is represented as listening to the sage,[A] his dress is in the extreme of classic scantiness,—being, in fact, a mere night-shirt, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... with scant dismay, Since the memory of this day With me there will ever dwell. Fair Daria, fare thee well, And since now thou knowest who Died for love of thee, renew The sweet vow that in the dell Once thou gav'st me, Him to love After death who ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... approaches to his throne were one-and-twenty of his favourite women, beautifully dressed in feather textures, with the curved neck and head of a bird surmounting their brows. But their costume was scant and simple compared with that of the dancing girls below us. They wore a wonderful head-dress, composed of the entire body of a small peacock. The head and neck were arched over the forehead, the back fitted tightly, like a hat over their head, the drooping wings ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... turn, answered: I should think it best, Ischomachus, to use indifferently the whole sowing season. [5] Far better [6] to have enough of corn and meal at any moment and from year to year, than first a superfluity and then perhaps a scant supply. ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... time in her society, for she was a poor, gentle creature of no spirit, who found little happiness in her lot, since her lord treated her with scant civility, and her children one after another sickened and died in their infancy until but two were left. He scarce remembered her existence when he did not see her face, and he was certainly not thinking of her this morning, ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... ashore a scant six feet above certain death. Fortunately the raft was light and they were able to gain a foothold and lift it from ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... because movable—so that it may be carried from generation to generation, and our sons unborn may be rich in the things that have been, and possess a hope built on an unchangeable foundation.' They said it and they wrought it, though often breathing with scant life, as in a coffin, or as lying wounded amid a heap of slain. Hooted and scared like the unowned dog, the Hebrew made himself envied for his wealth and wisdom, and was bled of them to fill the bath of Gentile luxury; he absorbed knowledge, he diffused it; his dispersed ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... a word at this point as to the general relation of religion and philosophy. We realise the evil which Kant first in clearness pointed out. It was the evil of an apprehension which made the study of religion a department of metaphysics. The tendency of that apprehension was to do but scant justice to the historical content of Christianity. Religion is an historical phenomenon. Especially is this true of Christianity. It is a fact, or rather, a vast complex of facts. It is a positive religion. ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... thou wilt depart with such scant ceremony"—he grumbled peevishly—"get thee thence and find out the road as best thou mayest! ... why should I aid thee? For myself I am well contented here to remain and sleep,—no better couch can the Poet have than this violet-scented moss"—and he waved his arm with a grandiloquent ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... and comprehending mind saw and suffered things that formerly never affected him. The hard and sometimes cruel discipline, toil from sunrise to sunset, scant food, the stifling of ambitions—all these began now to be perceived and felt, and the impression they left sank into the soul of this rebellious boy. He saw a slave killed by an overseer, on no other charge than that of being "impudent." "Crimes" of this nature were committed, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... take seamen from American merchant ships upon the plea of her right to impress British seamen in any place; and, though the claim to detain or search ships of war had been explicitly disavowed after the Chesapeake affair of 1807, scant deference was shown to the vessels of a power so little able to stand up for itself. In a day when most vessels carried some guns for self-defense, it was a simple matter to ignore the national character of an armed ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... for it is strange how people's sympathies veer around on the side of the people who are in power. My father has told me many times how, when he was thought to be the prospective heir of Pennington, people could not make enough of him, while Richard Tresidder had but scant courtesy paid him. When it became known that my father was disinherited, no matter how unjustly, these same folks discovered that Richard Tresidder was a very mine of wit and goodness, while my father was made a butt for ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... I said at the outset, a hard-working amateur in "A Modern Lover"; three years later, in "A Drama in Muslin," he writes with authority and insight; as he does, too, in "Parnell and his Island" (1887), though here with scant sympathy; but it is not until "Evelyn Innes" that he becomes deeply concerned with beauty of subject or beauty of background, or, except at haphazard, possessed of any mastery of style. "Evelyn Innes" is very well written,—in ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... wilderness—lovely asters and abronias on the dusty plains, rose-gardens around the mountain wells, and resiny woods, where all seemed so desolate, adorning the hot foothills as well as the cool summits, fed by cordial and benevolent storms of rain and hail and snow; all of these scant and rare as compared with the immeasurable exuberance of California, but still amply sufficient throughout the barest deserts for a clear ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... laddie"[6] who had taught the boat-master how to build his boats so cunningly below the water-line—above the water-line he had had to use his native wits, and they were scant enough—must surely have been there beforehand, and bidden him both sell it cheaply, so that Elias might get it, and stipulate besides that the boat should not be looked at too closely. In this way it escaped the usual tarring fore ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... physiognomies—the one lean and jovial, the other plump and resigned—alight with the same smile of welcome. Father Abella mentioned them as his coadjutor Father Martin Landaeta, and their guest Father Jose Uria of San Jose; and then the three, with the scant rites of genuine hospitality, applied themselves to the tickling of palates long unused to ambrosial living. Responding ingenuously to the glow of their home-made wines, they begged Rezanov to accept the Mission, burn it, plunder it, above all, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... sand hills and the sea; a vast barren land stretching away in wave-like undulations far as eye can reach; marsh and heath and sand, sand and heath and marsh; here and there a stretch of scant coarse grass, a mass of waving reeds, a patch ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... will see the action and the result of this great law of Co-operative Activities. When I first looked within the lids of that hollyhock, and was incited to read the rudimental lessons of the new leaves that man's art had added to its scant, original volume, I had no thought of finding so much matter printed on its pages. I have transcribed it here in the order of its paragraphs, hoping that some who read them may see in this life of flowers an interest they may have ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... went in, uninvited, and looked about the room. Nothing was changed except the fire, which was lower and feebler; it seemed to Prescott that the two or three lumps of coal on the hearth were hugging each other for scant comfort, and even as he looked at it the timbers of the ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... congregational matters with Morris's father, for Mr. Kohn was one of the early presidents of Kehilath Anshe Ma'arav, Chicago's first synagogue, and one of its most active members. Morris, busy in the next room with his lessons for the next day, had paid scant attention to their conversation, until the words, "Mr. Lincoln," and "flag" caught his ear. Then he closed his geography with a slam, for like every other nine-year-old boy of his day, he had heard much of the "rail splitter from Illinois," ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... speak, but MacNair interrupted her. "I have scant time for parley. I was starting for Mackay Lake, but when Old Elk reported two of yon scum's satellites hanging about, I dropped down the river. By your words it's a school you will be building. If it were a post I would have to take you ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... endeavor to persuade Kara Mustapha first of all to subdue the surrounding country, and to postpone until the following year the attack upon Vienna; his advice was scornfully rejected, and, indeed, the audacity of the Grand Vizier seemed justified by the scant resistance he had met with. He talked of renewing the conquests of Solyman: he assembled, it is said, seven hundred thousand men, one hundred thousand horses, and one thousand two hundred guns—an army more powerful than any the Turks had set on foot since the capture of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... Laurance was a poor man's daughter. She and I were of the same age and did not look unlike each other, although I was not so pretty by half. You can see by the portrait how beautiful she was, and it does her scant justice, for half her charm lay in her arch expression and her vivacious ways. She had her little faults, of course, and was rather over much given to romance and sentiment. This did not seem much of a defect to me then, Amy, for I was young and romantic too. Mother never cared much ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... "Scant haffen mile," put in the blacksmith, "down to a sort of cave, or tunnel, that runs under the mounting—yander—that lets 'em out into ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... he gave his critics no lack of cause. His enterprises were often enough of a hair-raising kind, and he had scant patience with censure. Thus once, when harassed by an Admiralty order purposely issued to annoy him, he wrote back: "The biggest fool can see that to obey would defeat all my plans. I shall not do it. It may suit folk who love loafing about shore, but to an honest man such talk is disgusting, ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... come to see his mother for an old familiar talk, because his wife either comes with him, or expects him to be at home. He has no time for his mother's interests or his mother's friends; there is scant welcome in his home for her, because between them has come an alien presence which ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... persons who walk with drooping shoulders and awkward movements. Coming back to civilisation with fresh impressions of the people of nature, not a few of the so-called superior race appear as caricatures, in elaborate and complicated clothing, with scant attention to poise and graceful carriage. One does not expect ladies and gentlemen to appear in public in "the altogether," but humanity will be better off when healthful physical development and education of the intellect receive equal attention, thus enabling man to ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... into our saddle-bags and separated for the day into two parties, Nimrod and the Horsewrangler, the Host and myself, leaving the Cook to take care of camp. We were hunting for elk, mountain lion, or bear. Nimrod had his camera, as well as his gun, a combination which the Horsewrangler eyed with scant tolerance. ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... against the west wall, near the window, and a little round table, with a white towel and a rosewood box on it, in the corner at the head of the great high-posted bedstead, which filled the rest of the room, with scant passageway at the foot and one side. Ann's little body scarcely raised the patchwork quilt on the bed; her face, sunken in the feather pillows, looked small and weazened as a sick child's in the dim light. She reached out one little bony hand, clutched Jerome's poor jacket, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... antique interiors as a bric-a-brac cabinet. In an upper story of one of these subdivided houses Rob Riley and his wife, Henrietta, have two old-fashioned rooms; the front room is large and airy, with a carved mantelpiece, the back room small and cosy. The furniture is rather plain and scant, for Rob has not yet got to be a great engineer working on his own account. At present he is one of those little fish that the big fish are made to eat—an obscure man whose brains are carried up to ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... written on Spanish travel spoke of the range admiringly. But these authors, we find, invariably, only passed by the eastern extremity, or the western, of the great mountain wall; the mountains themselves they did not visit. Search in the large libraries brings out a few scant volumes of Pyrenean travel, but all, with two or three exceptions, bear date within the first three-fifths of the century. It is with books, often, as with the Furancon, the wine of the Pyrenees, and with certain other vintages: age improves them only up ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... until she was a slender shadow of her former self. She became hard, brown as the rangers, lithe and quick as a panther. She seemed to live on water and the air—perhaps, indeed, on love. For of the scant fare, the best of which was continually urged upon her, she partook but little. She reminded Gale of a wild brown creature, free as the wind on the lava slopes. Yet, despite the great change, her beauty remained undiminished. Her eyes, seeming ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... hours' march they passed this barren land and approached the foot of a hill where the mimosa was plentiful again, and other shrubs were seen, with herbage, scant indeed, but good for camels, who will browse upon what would hardly tempt a donkey. Here a halt was called, and while the men dismounted and lay down, the three officers who were with the company explored the spot. There were two mud-holes which supplied ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... Dolores, still pressing her ear against the tapestry. The murmur of a hundred voices came clearly to her, and above all sounded the high-raised shout of one who harangued the rest. At periods the murmuring became a howl, and the triumphant note in it left scant room for doubt as to the nature of the address. The girl, faced with the responsibility of decided action, no longer able to depend on the wisdom and terrible power of Red Jabez, stepped from the wall with panting heart and parted ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... hither shore Would I be some poor Player on scant hire, Than King among the old, who play no more, - "THIS is the end ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... and Claudet, there was a joyous hurrah of welcome. Justice Destourbet exchanged a ceremonious hand-shake with the new proprietor of the chateau. The scant costume and tight gaiters of the huntsman's attire, displayed more than ever the height and slimness of the country magistrate. By his side, the registrar Seurrot, his legs encased in blue linen spatterdashes, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... was, that so much of their precious time was spent in trying to overcome the numerous difficulties by which they found themselves confronted, that there were scant opportunities for ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... rapping at his door. O'Hana could hear but a whispered consultation going on without the amado. Iemon returned to the room. His face was white; his step tottered. Hastily he donned an outer robe. To her question he made scant reply, so agitated was he. His one idea was to keep from her what he had just heard. In the garden he found his wardsmen assembled. All were dumbfounded and aghast. They looked at each other and then at the broken ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... enthusiastic over the success of their experiments. Several years ago a piano was lowered into the cave for use on a special occasion, and still occupies a position on the dancing platform, where it will probably remain indefinitely under the scant protection ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... through the grace of the owners, and there was forest-reserve grazing besides, which the Sawtooth could have if it chose to pay the nominal rental sum. The Quirt ranch, was almost surrounded by Sawtooth land of one sort or another, though there was scant grazing in the early spring on the sagebrush wilderness to the south. This needed Quirt Creek for accessible water, and Quirt Creek, save where it ran through cut-bank hills, was fenced within the section and a half of the ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... from the W.C.T.U. to the Elks and was a blood-brother of the Tin Horn and the acidulated Elder with the scant Skilligans. ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... the furnishings were scant and poor, and in every way things were vastly different from what we find them in the poorhouse of our modern times. In the main office, where Mr. Engler transacted his business affairs and entertained ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... we were still molested, and no hope remained of any purchase to be had in this place any longer; because we were now so notably made known in those parts, and because our victuals grew scant: as soon as the weather waxed somewhat better (the wind continuing always westerly, so that we could not return to our ships) our Captain thought best to go (3rd November) to the Eastward, towards Rio Grande [Magdalena] long the coast, where we had been before, ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... was dressed. And, lest the custom that he had to steal Might cause him sometime to forget his zeal, He gives his journeyman a special charge That, if the stuff allowed fell out too large, And that to filch his fingers were inclined, He then should put the Banner in his mind. This done, I scant the rest can tell for laughter. A Captain of a ship came three days after, And bought three yards of velvet and three quarters, To make Venetians down below the garters. He, that precisely knew what was enough, Soon ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... example, thrift. It is not possible to expect that large class of workers who depend upon irregular earnings of less than 18s. a week to set by anything for a rainy day. The essence of thrift is regularity, and regularity is to them impossible. Even supposing their scant wage was regular, it is questionable whether they would be justified in stinting the bodily necessities of their families by setting aside a portion which could not in the long run suffice to provide even a bare maintenance for old age ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... just the rude stories one hears In sadness and mirth, The records of wandering years, And scant is their worth Though their merits indeed are but slight, I shall not repine, If they give you one moment's delight, Old comrades ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... a month or two at Venice, when Mr Dorrit, who was much among Counts and Marquises, and had but scant leisure, set an hour of one day apart, beforehand, for the purpose of holding some conference ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... empty sky, this ignorance may be excused. In the boyaux, which began where the railroad stopped, that was our position. We walked through an endless grave with walls of clay, on top of which was a scant foot of earth. It looked like a layer of chocolate on the top of ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... trenches, rations are issued, cooked, the bread being baked and the beef boiled, bacon or salt pork is issued raw, the soldiers eating it raw, or boiled on coals, if convenient and the meat not too scant. In permanent camp, the soldiers drew the rations raw or cooked as they preferred almost always each mess preferred to do its own cooking. With us confederates, bread was mostly corn pone, sometimes biscuits, sometimes hard-tack. Cold cornbread or hard-tack crumbled into a tin can and boiled ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little
... thrice, saying, 'Peace, peace, peace,' and teachyng many things, which he anon declared to the bishops, and bid the people amend their naughtie living. Being rapt also in spirite, they sayde he behelde the joyes of heaven and sorowes of hell, for scant were there three in the realme, sayde he, that ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... for the prevailing spirit of romance, even in this woman-forsaken country. A good creature, all limp calico, Roman nose, and sharp elbows, she brought him his breakfast with an ill grace that she had not shown to the others. The men about the table gave him scant greeting, but the absence ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... in the dark a few hours ago are now in the brightest sunshine, while the oracles of yesterday are the meekest disciples to-day. I rode from New-Haven to London in the same car with three Frenchmen and two Frenchwomen, coming up to the Exhibition, with a scant half-allowance of English among them; and their efforts to understand the signs, &c., were interesting. "London Stout," displayed in three-foot letters across the front of a drinking-house, arrested their attention: "Stoot? Stoot?" queried one of them; but the rest were ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... or I might well say the dishonour, that you do put upon Saint Mary the blessed Virgin. Surely, of all that He knew and loved on this earth, she must have been the dearest unto our Lord. Why then thus scrimp and scant the reverence due unto her? Verily, in this matter, the Papists do more ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... of the farmer wore an ominous frown, and his wife, as she distributed to each the scant measure of brown bread and milk remarked, grudgingly, that she should think 'twas 'bout time that her house was cleared of a crowd o' hungry, squallin' young ones; and then Mr. Gubtil took out his account-book and wrote down the name of each child, with an estimate of the amount ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... She could scarcely remain in the berth. Listen! Was her mother awake, in the lower one? The boat veered a trifle back northward and suddenly again, hovering over dim water and shore and blazing like a herald angel, was the morning star, a scant point or so to "stabboard." She chuckled, softly, ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... imprint His Power on all the universe that His Word should not remain in infinite excess.[1] And this makes certain that the first proud one, who was the top of every creature, through not awaiting light, fell immature.[2] And hence it appears, that every lesser nature is a scant receptacle for that Good which has no end and measures Itself by Itself. Wherefore our vision, which needs must be some ray of the Mind with which all things are full, cannot in its own nature be so potent that it may not discern its origin to be far beyond ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... friend who loves her, before the child is born. This is finally satisfactorily arranged. Later, Sanin, not because he disapproves of the libertine officer's affair with his sister, but because he regards the officer as a blockhead, treats him with scant courtesy; and the officer, hidebound by convention, sees no way out but a challenge to a duel. The scene when the two brother officers bring the formal challenge to Sanin is the only scene in the novel marked by. genuine humour, and is also the only scene ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... out from her, ran without ceasing till she came in to the Lady Zubeideh and related to her the story; and the princess said to her, laughing, "Tell it over again to the Khalif, who maketh me out scant of wit and lacking of religion, and to this ill-omened slave, who presumeth to contradict me." Quoth Mesrour, "This old woman lieth; for I saw Aboulhusn well and Nuzhet el Fuad it was who lay dead." "It is thou that liest," rejoined the stewardess, "and wouldst fain ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... The proprietor has a bald head, a long face, and a nose like the beak of a hawk. He sits upon a carpet spread upon the dust; the wall is at his back; overhead hangs a scant curtain, around him, within hand's reach and arranged upon little stools, lie osier boxes full of almonds, grapes, figs, and pomegranates. To him now comes one at whom we cannot help looking, though for another ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... a little and speaking more coldly than at first. "You may see it for yourself. Here are we, a scant threescore souls, not one score grown men, come to people a savage land and make terms with hordes of savage inhabitants. Is it not the clearest, ay, sternest necessity that those of us who are unwived, to our sorrow though it be, should take the women who remain, be they maids or widows, in ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... pleasant in spite of the cramped accommodation, for the little crew were a kindly simple people, whose countenances invited trust, and though the fare on board had been scant, yet it was wholesome and good, as the rest the travellers ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... directly in their faces, they often lost the road, had to stand still at times and look about them to see where they were and gather breath, or turn around to let the strongest gusts go by; it took them three-quarters of an hour to go the scant fifteen minutes' walk to the parsonage. There they first shook off the snow as well as they could, then knocked on the door. But they knocked long in vain; the sound was swallowed up in the howling of the wind, which raged ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... and roots. In the moon of the Frost-Touching-Mildly clouds came up from the south with a great trampling of thunder, and flung out over the Dry Washes as a man flings his blanket over a maiden. But if the Rains were scant for two or three seasons, then there was Hunger, and the dust devils took ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... he would join them in their box at the opera, or when Stafford brought him home to dinner they sat and chatted on all kinds of congenial topics while the husband, wholly absorbed in the business details of a busy day, paid only scant attention to ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... and recreations of a day. Doubtless the routine duties repeated day after day were thought too ordinary to be worth recording. The pleasures were so simple and came so much as a matter of course that they also receive scant mention in the annals of the fort. It is from the General Regulations for the Army that one gets the daily program of a military post; and the few fragmentary pages of Taliaferro's diary and letters, together with the stray remarks of travellers ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... was curiously built. It consisted of two storeys, and formed a main building and one wing, which gave it a peculiarly lop-sided appearance that reminded me somewhat ludicrously of Chanticleer, with a solitary, scant, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... very," he assured her, covering an alarm he felt for the first time. She did appear to be feverish, and the anxiety of her manner deepened as the meal progressed. It developed quickly that she had but scant appetite for the choice food now being served. She could only taste bits here and there. Her plates were removed with their delicacies almost intact. Between courses her hand would seek his, gripping it as if in some nameless ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... join thee in the tourney," cried Hagen. "It were well that these women and these knights saw how we can ride. They give Gunther's men scant praise." ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... penniless poverty. But now to school From the half-yearly holidays returned, 85 We came with weightier purses, that sufficed To furnish treats more costly than the Dame Of the old grey stone, from her scant board, supplied. Hence rustic dinners on the cool green ground, Or in the woods, or by a river side 90 Or shady fountains, while among the leaves Soft airs were stirring, and the mid-day sun Unfelt shone brightly round us in our joy. Nor is my aim neglected if I tell How sometimes, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... miles and miles of moor and fell, to beautiful mills and dells and waterfalls—too many miles for slender Marty or little Chips; or even Bob and Chucker-out—who weigh thirty-two stone between them, and are getting lazy in their old age, and fat and scant of breath. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... over ten thousand dollars remaining for the return match; and this, as Loring pointed out with just indignation, would only put them even. They knew that Wyatt would have at least twice that much with him. So they scurried forth and made such good use of the scant time left them, by borrowing, by squeezing both Bickford and the hard-working bookkeeper, and by resource to certain nest-eggs laid by for case of extreme urgency (known among themselves as "fix money"), they scraped together ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... girl of scant sixteen, who had never seen a slaveholder on his plantation, though I had known these two for years, and loved them dearly, as guests in our Northern home before it was broken up by the death of my mother. Father ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... painful thing for him to do; not that they had any quarrel, though sometimes David thought a quarrel would be better than the scant and almost sad intercourse their once tender love had fallen into. By some strange mental sympathy, hardly sufficiently recognized by us, John was thinking of his nephew when he entered. He greeted him ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... square, two-storied substantial building of stone, but the stone had been liberally oiled to keep out the wet, and the blackness thus produced had not a very cheerful look. Then, on this particular evening the scant bushes surrounding the house hung limp and dark in the rain, and amid the prevailing hues of purple, blue-green and blue the bit of scarlet coping running round the black house was wholly ineffective in relieving the general impression of dreariness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... nodding towards her, much elated. Joe again cleared his throat tentatively, but Margaret ruthlessly corked the bottle, and, assuming her usual frosty air, remarked with somewhat scant politeness that it was time for her to be setting about her business, and there was no need for other folks ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... for the first time he fully realised how strongly the trade wind was really blowing, for, close-hauled as the catamaran was, she felt the full strength of the breeze. It piped through her scant rigging with the clamour of half a gale, and poured into her canvas with a savageness of spite that threatened to tear the cloths clean out of the bolt-ropes, while it careened the craft until the lee gunwale was completely buried in the hissing turmoil of foaming yeast that ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... roommate at college. Jack had the same merry blue eyes and sunny smile as his sister, and Judith forgot to be shy with him. Thomas was a cheery youth, whose chief interest at the dinner-table was the food, and Judith gave him scant attention. But Tim, the elder brother, who had been in the Flying Corps and had several enemy machines to his credit, who still limped from injuries received during an air-fight, and whose grey eyes had the keen, ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... For a moment he stood thinking, while Herzog eyed him with trepidation, and Waldron, almost forgetting to smoke, waited developments with interest. The Billionaire, however, wasted but scant time in consideration. It was not money now, he lusted for, but power. Money was, to him, no longer any great desideratum. At most, it could now mean no more to him than a figure on a check-book or a page of statistics in his private ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... survival.' He made an obvious effort to become more like his usual self. 'It is extremely unfortunate, Atherton, that I should have troubled you with such a display of weakness,—especially as I am able to offer you so scant an explanation. One thing I would ask of you,—to observe strict confidence. What has taken place has been between ourselves. I am in your hands, but you are my friend, I know I can rely on you not to speak of it to anyone,—and, ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... of whom one of the strongest was Falstaffe, who wrote in direct opposition to Steele's "Sir John Edgar", openly attempting to provoke that knight to a journalistic contest. But Edgar gave scant attention to his essays, though they were vigorously written and presented strong arguments in defense of the Lord Chamberlain's intervention in Drury Lane affairs. Steele acknowledged the first number of The Anti-Theatre (it appeared on February 15, 1720) in the fourteenth number of ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... at him, her eyes, though moist, illumined with pleasure inspired by the sympathy in his tones rather than the import of his words. The girl's life heretofore had been as scant of kindness as of cash, and there was a deep sincerity in his voice which was as refreshing to her lonesome heart as it was new to her experience. This man was not so stupid as he had pretended to be. He had accurately divined the inner meaning ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... receive the law of righteousness is, indeed, a rare thing in the world! The wisdom of a master derived from former births, enables him to accept the law with joy: this is not rare; but that a woman, weak of will, scant in wisdom, deeply immersed in love, should yet be able to delight in piety, this, indeed, is very rare. A man born in the world, by proper thought comes to delight in goodness, he recognizes the impermanence of wealth and beauty, and looks upon religion as his best ornament. He feels that this ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... the base of the hill on which the fortress stood. They found that on one side the hill sloped gently toward the city, and on the other toward the sea. The face toward the city, except for some venturesome goats grazing on its scant herbage, was bare and deserted. The side that sloped to the sea was closely overgrown with hardy mesquite bushes and wild laurel, which would effectually conceal any one approaching from that direction. What had been the fortress was now only a broken wall, a few feet in height. It was covered ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... shepherds called their leader King, though his kingship was over but few men. Yet they were such men as begin history, and in the scant company there were all the seeds of empire. First the profound faith of natural mankind, unquestioning, immovable, inseparable from every daily thought and action; then fierce strength, and courage, and love of life and of possession; last, obedience ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... yielding to a vulgar envy of richer women's clothes and jewels. Her dress, with which she had been pleased, looked ordinary beside the creations of great Parisian ateliers, and the few old paste ornaments which were the only jewels she possessed, charming as they were, seemed dim and scant among the crowns and constellations of diamonds that surrounded her. Her pride rebelled against this envy, ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... miles long. Its breadth at no point exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the mainland by a scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh-hen. The vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of any magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort Moultrie[4] stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings, tenanted, during summer, by the fugitives from Charleston ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... and a bounce. Near at hand they only excited my pity. One evening one sat by my door two paces from me, at first trembling with fear, yet unwilling to move; a poor wee thing, lean and bony, with ragged ears and sharp nose, scant tail and slender paws. It looked as if Nature no longer contained the breed of nobler bloods, but stood on her last toes. Its large eyes appeared young and unhealthy, almost dropsical. I took a step, and lo, away it scud with an elastic spring over the snow-crust, straightening ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... was thatched; a new chateau was reared Of stone, as weathered as the church at Caen; Gray blooms were coloured suddenly in red; A flag was flung across the eastern sky.— Nearer at hand, he made me then aware Of peasant women bending in the fields, Cradling and gleaning by the first scant light, Their sons and husbands somewhere o'er the edge Of these green-golden fields which they had sowed, But will not reap,—out somewhere on the march, God but knows where and if they come again. One fallow field he pointed out to me Where but the day before a peasant ploughed, Dreaming of next ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... to Norway, Ibsen's correspondence became very scant, and we have no letters dating from the period when he was at work on The Master Builder. On the other hand, we possess a curious lyrical prelude to the play, which he put on paper on March 16, 1892. It is said to have been his habit, before setting to work on ...
— The Master Builder • Henrik Ibsen
... The breeze continued scant all night, notwithstanding which the Flying Cloud was, at eight o'clock next morning, as close to the French coast as Captain Blyth cared to take her, and she was accordingly hove about, the wind so far favouring her that it was confidently hoped ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... corraled that greatest glory, The State Intercollegiate Football Championship! In Captain Butch's Sophomore year, he had flung his bulk into the fray, training, sacrificing, fighting like a Trojan, only to see the pennant lost by a scant three inches, as Jack Merritt's forty-yard drop-kick for the goal that would have won the Championship struck the cross-bar and bounded back into the field. And the past season-old Bannister could still vision that tragic scene of ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... her Sir Rudiger and all his knightly train To serve her ever truly, and all her rights maintain, Nor e'er of her due honors scant her in Etzel's land. Thereto gave the good margrave th' assurance ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... captured by Indians, who had held them captive for ten months. Indeed, Mr. Atherly, senior, never recovered from the effects of his captivity, and died shortly after Mrs. Atherly had given birth to twins, Peter and Jenny Atherly. This was scant knowledge for Peter in the glorification of his name through his immediate progenitors; but "Atherly of Atherly" still sounded pleasantly, and, as the young lady had said, smacked of old feudal days and honors. It was believed beyond doubt, even in their simple family records,—the ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... Ursula, when Mark gave her the message, and from that moment she was calmer. She did not fret Mark with questions even as much as Annaple did, she tried to prevent her father from raging at the scant information, and she even endeavoured to employ herself with some of her ordinary occupations, though all the time she kept up the ceaseless watch. 'Mr. Dutton would not have said that without good hope,' she averred, 'and I ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a year, she had been obliged to spend nearly five fatiguing hours in being finished as a Queen. How strange it all seems to us American Republicans, who make and unmake our rulers with such expedition and scant ceremony. ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... some of these things because he did not smoke, because he never took off his walking coat and shoes till he went to bed, and because he had an old bath robe made him by her grandmother, very short and very scant (according to her notion at the chance moments when she had surprised him in it), from which neither love nor money could part him; the others she rejected for the reason already assigned. Little or nothing remained, then, but to give him books, and ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... which it suits you should be his property. When it ceases to suit you, it has lost its legality for you, and any absolute right in it you will laugh at."[14] It is always the same tune: "For me there is nothing above myself." But his scant respect for the property of others does not prevent the "Ego" of Stirner from having the tendencies of a property-owner. The strongest argument against Communism, is, in his opinion, the consideration that Communism by abolishing individual property ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... of the sweat-gland ducts, seated upon the face. The lesions may be present in scant numbers or in more or less profusion. They have the appearance of boiled sago grains imbedded in the skin; the larger lesions may have a bluish color, especially about the periphery. It is not common, ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... or soul; and others again ready to burst with rage, if any one but touched his hat to the beautiful Matilda. To all such, the innocent child had not a word to say; for she knew well enough, that scant blessing waits on marriages of such a make. There was but one young fellow who could be said to please her thoroughly, and he was neither rich nor singularly handsome. She had become acquainted with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... Noire, a matter of ten kilometres. It is no hardship, my rounds, not at all, with the ground like a white tablecloth, and this good sun, to me like to my dogs, it is but play." He rose from the table, glad of the excuse to hasten his going, and with scant courtesy Jakapa sped his ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... watched the brilliant figures swimming in the glow of wax candles. Face after face could be singled out as beautiful, and the scant dresses revealed taper forms. Madame de Ferrier's garments may have been white or blue or yellow; I remember only her satin arms and neck, the rosy color of her face, and the powder on her hair making ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Mexico before the Conquest. As in the case of the Chinese book, it looks superficially like ours; we think it is a tiny quarto until we see that its measure is rather that of an oblong twenty-fourmo; that is, its dimensions are just scant of five inches high and six inches wide. It has thin wooden covers and is, over all, an inch thick; but between these covers is a strip of deerskin twenty-nine feet long and, of course, nearly five inches wide. This is folded in screen or fan fashion, the ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... climb lulled his brain, John played with these idle fancies. Barboux, being out of condition and scant of breath, conversed very little. The Indians kept silence ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... relate briefly his experiences at the chateau, thus beguiling the way until the curiously assorted trio reached the Flying Fish, at the vast bulk of which Vasilovich stared in stupefied amazement. His captors, however, afforded him but scant time for indulgence in surprise or conjecture, conveying him forthwith to the tank chamber, wherein they securely locked him, taking the additional precaution of placing his hands and feet in fetters and attaching him thereby to a ring-bolt, thus rendering it absolutely impossible ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... in a shabby, leather-cushioned armchair, sat a little old man with scant gray hair and a fringe of gray throat whiskers. He wore steel-rimmed spectacles and over these ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of the train was very slow, as the soil was soft on the newly made and sandy roads. We progressed but a few miles on our first day's journey, and in the evening parked our train at a point where there was no wood, a scant supply of water—and that of bad quality—but an abundance of grass. There being no comfortable place to sleep in any of the wagons, filled as they were to the bows with army supplies, I spread my blankets on the ground between the wheels of one of them, and awoke in the morning feeling ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... honour means?" retorted Andrew—"but ca' him what ye wull, they're a great convenience in a country-side that's scant o' borough-towns like this Northumberland—That's no the case, now, in Scotland;—there's the kingdom of Fife, frae Culross to the East Nuik, it's just like a great combined city—sae mony royal boroughs yoked on end to end, like ropes of ingans, with their hie-streets and their ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... all women except my mother, and, Catholic as he was, had scant respect for the mendicant orders, hated this dream, hated to be reminded of it, hated the name which he had been persuaded into giving me, and, as a consequence, I believe, never loved me. For unnumbered generations of our family we had been Antonys, Gerards, Ralphs, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... gravely Bright-Wits made reply, "Here you will find the map in proper shape. Scant must be the brains in Parrabang when so simple a task ...
— Bright-Wits, Prince of Mogadore • Burren Laughlin and L. L. Flood
... weak from gloating insolently over the half-shorn strength of the strong, was a thankless, hopeless task. The former masters of the land were peremptorily ordered about, seized and imprisoned, and punished over and again, with scant courtesy from army officers. The former slaves were intimidated, beaten, raped, and butchered by angry and revengeful men. Bureau courts tended to become centres simply for punishing whites, while the regular ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... not only the broadness of Jesus' views and the universality of His love, as well as His courage in defying the hated formalism, even in the palace of its stanchest advocates, but also His attitude toward women. The Jews as a race held women in but scant esteem. They were not deemed worthy to sit with the men in the synagogue. It was deemed unworthy of a man to mention his female relations in general company. They were regarded as inferior in every way to men, and were treated as almost unclean in ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... hardly settled himself before a man stepped from behind a stump and struck out rapidly upon his trail. The man was traveling light, apparently studying the ground as he walked. Wentworth glanced about him and noted that the rocky ridge would give the man scant opportunity for trailing him to his position. The figure was coming up the ridge now. As it passed a twisted pine, Wentworth got a good look into his face, and the sight of it sent cold shivers up his spine that prickled ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... deserted. The Tiber between low, interrupted slopes, some covered with longest most compact green grass, others of brown, unreal tufo, like crumbled masonry, or hollowed into Signorelli-looking grottoes, with deep growths of Judas-tree, broom, and scant asphodels; all green and brown, of such shapes that one wonders whether they also, like so many seeming boulders scattered in their neighbourhood, are not in ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... in the flickering glare I mark me the boughs of my tree, My tree of the years, growing bare. Growing bare with the scant days to be. ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... They dare not sit or lean, But fume and fret and posture And foam and curse between; For being bound to Baal, Whose sacrifice is vain, Their rest is scant with Baal, They glare and pant for Baal, They mouth and rant for Baal, For Baal in ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... of the cloister, it organized a separate company, which we, in its regularly constituted assembly, call a conventicle. Instead of the cowl, it put on its youth a dress like that of the world, but scant and ashen-colored; it substituted for the tonsure closely-cut hair and shaven beard, and it often went beyond the obedience of the monks in its expression of pining humility and prudish composure. Education within such a circle could not well recognize nature and history as manifestations ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... housekeepers, and at last a style was decided upon. Then there was a laying on of patterns, and cutting, and basting, and ripping out, and sewing together, till at last the dress was completed. It is true that it was a little too long on the shoulder, and a little too short under the arm, and a little too scant in the skirt. But it was pretty, and the effect ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... brought in Josephine, and E. W. B. Childers (rather deeply lined in the jaws by daylight), and the Little Wonder of Scholastic Equitation, and in a word, all the company. Amazing creatures they were in Louisa's eyes, so white and pink of complexion, so scant of dress, and so demonstrative of leg; but it was very agreeable to see them crowding about Sissy, and very natural in Sissy to be unable ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... time he had staggered into camp the daylight had come. He glanced about him wearily. Across a tiny ravine the horses dozed, tied each to a short picket rope. Bob was already enough of a mountaineer to notice that the feed was very scant. The camp itself had been made under a dozen big yellow pines. A bright little fire flickered. About it stood utensils from which the men were rather dispiritedly helping themselves. Bob saw that the long pine needles had been scraped together to make ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... level with Amadis, and averring that he knew "no romance and no epic in which suspense is so successfully kept up." Of their successors, the long line of sons, grandsons and nephews, each more valiant and puissant than the last, it must be said that they are as scant of beauty as of grace. In order to keep up the interest of their readers, the authors of the Primaleons and the Polindos—the Florisels and the Florisandos—were compelled to put in wonders on an ascending ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... snow, whether exploring or hunting, was heart-breaking work. The horses suffered most; the extreme toil, and scant pasturage weakened them so that some died from exhaustion; others fell over precipices and the magpies proved evil foes, picking the sore backs of the wincing, saddle-galled beasts. In striving to find some pass for the horses the whole party ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... so small, so scant, Yet somehow oh, so bright and airy. There was a pink geranium plant, Likewise a very pert canary. And in the maiden's heart it seemed Some fount of gladness must be springing, For as alone I sadly dreamed I ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... hedge that even a vigilant scout looking for an enemy might have passed within a dozen feet of him without seeing him. Another drift of snow falling after he had gone to sleep had covered up his footsteps and he was as securely hidden as if he had been a hundred miles, instead of only a scant two miles, from the double French ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... our consorts and which the chase. At this time we could see the Duchess and the chase near together, and the Marquis standing to them with all the sail she could carry. We also made all the sail we could, but being three or four leagues to leeward, and having a very scant wind, we made little way. At noon they bore S.E. from us, being still three leagues right to windward. In the afternoon we observed the Marquis get up with the chase, and engage her pretty briskly; but soon fell to leeward out of cannon shot, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr |
