"Scanty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... twenty-seventh of November when Mr. Shrimplin killed Murphy of the solitary eye, and he reached the climax of the story just as Mrs. Shrimplin began to prepare the dressing for the small turkey that was to be the principal feature of their four-o'clock dinner. The morning's scanty fall of snow had been so added to as time passed that now it completely whitened the strip of brown turf in the little side yard ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... fire in her chair, straight and stiff, making no sound. Now and then her eyelids shook, fluttered red rims; slow, scanty tears oozed and fell, their trail glistening in the long furrows ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... tables and benches, and here the peasants sit smoking their long pipes and emptying their big mugs or glasses, and as a rule hardly speaking. They do not get drunk, but no doubt they spend more than they can afford out of their scanty earnings. ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... the precautionary lies of nature, to keep us going, that, the instant we are tinkered in any part, we ignore its merely being fitted up for shortened use. Hope eternal tells us how much stronger it is than it was before. If you rub unguent into your scanty hair you can feel it grow, as a poet hears the grass. A nostrum on your toil-hardened hands brings back, to keen anticipation, the skin of youth. All mankind is prepared to a perfect degree of sensitiveness for response to the quack ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... Indian piracy, which is believed to have originated from the wreck of an English buccaneer on a cay in the Caribbean Sea known as "The Dead Man's Chest." The cay was so named from its fancied resemblance to the old sailors' sea chest which held his scanty belongings. The song or chantey was familiar to deep-sea sailors many years ago. The song is copied from a very old scrapbook, in which the author's name was not given. ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... were read chiefly by milliners and other women on the verge of literacy. But though persons of solid education avoided reading novels and eastern tales as they might the drinking of drams, it is certain that no one of scanty means could have afforded Mrs. Haywood's slender octavos at the price of one to three shillings. The Lady's Library ("Spectator" No. 37) containing beside numerous romances "A Book of Novels" and "The New Atalantis, with a Key to it," which last Lady Mary Montagu also ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... hitherto been keeping well out from the adjacent coast, by reason of their seeing its inhospitable look, and the scanty chance there was of their effecting a landing there. This fact, indeed, was self-evident, for they could see the surf breaking in one continuous line, as far as the eye could reach, against the steep rocky face of the cliff. Besides, ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... hands of the British merchants, involved for the most part transactions in skins, furs, ginseng, snakeroot, and "dried rattlesnakes—used to make a viper broth for consumptive patients." "There was but one church building and attendance was scanty and infrequent." Not so, however, of Farmicola's tavern, whither card playing, drinking, and ribaldry drew crowds, especially when the legislature was in ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... is some notice on the tenth ode of the first decade of the Sacrificial Odes of Kau. To him the kings of Kau traced their lineage. Of Kiang Yuean, his mother, our knowledge is very scanty. It is said that she was a daughter of the House of Thai, which traced its lineage up to Shan-nung in prehistoric times. From the first stanza of this piece it appears that she was married, and had been so for some time without having any child. But who ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... the funeral they had later in the day, when the herd was again just trail-weary cattle feeding hungrily on the scanty grass. Down at the edge of the creek the carcasses of many dead animals lay half-buried in the mud. Up on a little knoll where a few stunted trees grew, the negroes dug a long, deep hole. Mother's eyes were often filled with tears that day, and ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... fifty-three—a little man of a reddened, weather-worn skin and a meditative, almost saddened, aspect. He had blue eyes, but his scanty iron-gray hair showed raven black in its shadows. The width and prominence of his cheek-bones dominated all one's recollections of his face. The long vertical upper-lip and irregular teeth made, in repose, an unshapely ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... out the sledge, packed it, took our bearings, and made all preparations for a start to the luminous mountain, which was about a hundred miles away. The thermometer stood at twenty below, but we were comfortable enough in our furs as we ate a scanty supper and went to sleep in the cabin of ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... incident to men that are awake in their souls, than to have wrong thoughts of God—thoughts that are narrow, and that pinch and pen up his mercy to scanty and beggarly conclusions, and rigid legal conditions; supposing that it is rude, and an intrenching upon his majesty to come ourselves, or to invite others, until we have scraped and washed, and rubbed off as much of our dirt from us as we think is ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... slaves were in the habit of spending a part of their nights and Sundays in fishing for oysters, and in this way made up the deficiency of their scanty allowance. An old man belonging to Colonel Lloyd, while thus engaged, happened to get beyond the limits of Colonel Lloyd's, and on the premises of Mr. Beal Bondly. At this trespass, Mr. Bondly took offence, and with ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... rags, tied about their waists. Their skins, from constant exposure to the weather, had become hard, crusty, and seamed, resembling the coarse black covering of some beast, or like that of an elephant, a wrinkled hide scattered with scanty hairs. On contemplating their persons, you saw them with a physical organization resembling beings of a grade below the rank of man; long projecting heels, the gastronymic muscle wanting, and no calves to their legs; their mouths and chins protruded, their noses flat, their foreheads retiring, ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... the tyranny of Louis Napoleon, afterwards settling permanently in this country. He was an engineer by profession, but a poet at heart, and all his spare time and thought he devoted to tackling the problem of aerial navigation. His day was spent earning a scanty living in a shipbuilding yard, but his evenings and nights were passed in constructing a model of a flying-machine. He would bring his drawings round to our father for discussion and advice; and although he never attained success, he was always hopeful, trusting that some one of the ever fresh improvements ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... fastened in an untidy knot, slipped from the hairpins, and fell, grey and scanty, over her neck; her bony shoulders, barely covered by the ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... been our tale; rather a glimpse of a beginning! We have traversed an alpine pass between the illimitable lands of Past and Future. We have felt the rock rugged beneath our feet; have seen the avalanche and mused beside the precipice, and have taken what relief we might in the scanty greensward, the few flowers, and the brief sunshine. Now, standing on the farewell promontory, let us question the magic mirror concerning the further road,—as, before, of that ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... cook it on the moor in the fresh, cool evening, and feast till it was time to sleep, and then wake and follow the deer again. And so the food which was given to him in St. Patrick's house seemed poor and scanty ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... domestic animals to have erected such a great mound. The earth for its construction was probably scraped from the surface and carried to the mound in baskets. A people who could erect such a monument as this, with such scanty means at their command, must have possessed those qualities which would sooner or later have brought ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... had a chum; and indeed, his life had been a lonely one, burdened by responsibilities that had made him much older than his years—his scanty associations had been with hardy lumbermen or voyageurs, so that the presence of this twain struck him as the most mysterious and remarkable thing in all ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... and sat down alone to think matters over. Our condition was somewhat parlous; all our beasts were now dead, even the second donkey, which was the last of them, having perished that morning, and been eaten, for food was scanty since of late we had met with little game. The Strathmuir men, who now must carry the loads, were almost worn out and doubtless would have deserted, except for the fact that there was no place to which they could go. ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... mounted corps, permission to return to Charleston, but they refused to accept the offer, and, turning their horses into the woods, determined to share the fate of the garrison. In making this offer the colonel was influenced partly by motives of policy, as the stock of provisions was exceedingly scanty, and he feared that they would not last if the siege should be a long one. Besides this, he feared that, as had already too often happened, should the place fall, even the solemn engagement of the terms of ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... the outer Barcoo where the churches are few, And men of religion are scanty, On a road never cross'd 'cept by folk that are lost, One Michael Magee ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... kennel water upon him as he passed along the streets; so that he was forced constantly to wear a surtout of oiled cloth, by which means he came home pretty clean, except where the surtout was a little scanty. ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... on, during the whole of the day, much to our edification. How contemptible, how paltry is such vanity! But with their indulgence of it for our amusement, the cow-skin, and a scanty dinner, we got through the first day, during which two or three occasional patronising questions or remarks were thrown at our heads, and then they reverted to their own assumed exclusiveness. The night, as may be supposed, was anything but comfortable ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... really adapted to navigation are, however, only those which are perpetually fed by those tributary streams that flow down from mountains which are covered with snow all the year, and these are not many. The majority of Spanish rivers are very scanty of water during the summer time, and very rapid in their flow when filled by rains or melting snow: during these periods they are impracticable for boats. They are, moreover, much exhausted by being drained ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... e'er his tale was done, night held the earth; Yea, the brown bird grown bold, as sounds of mirth Grew faint and scanty, now his tale had done, And by his mate abode the next day's sun; And in those old hearts did the story move Remembrance of the mighty deeds of love, And with these thoughts did hopes of life arise, Till tears unseen were in their ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... piraungaru relation but little can be said, mainly for the reason that our information is so scanty. We do not learn, for example, if it is temporary or permanent, if the consent of the woman is needed, if she ever asks her husband for a certain piraungaru, or if she applies rather to her elder brothers. We do not know what becomes of the piraungaru when the ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... museums and gorgeously pictured in our books; but every traveler finds new kinds, and how many sorts there may be which have so far eluded the few and short visits of naturalists, no one is able to tell. Even of those we have, how scanty is our knowledge! What they eat we are told; how they bathe and dress their plumage; their loud calls and unmusical voices; the shyness of those whose conspicuous beauty sets a price upon their heads, and their "dancing parties," so graphically described ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... Atrocious! The old human fiends, With one foot in the grave, with dim eyes, strange To tears save drops of dotage, with long white[bd] 110 And scanty hairs, and shaking hands, and heads As palsied as their hearts are hard, they counsel, Cabal, and put men's lives out, as if Life Were no more than the feelings long extinguished In ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... in three or four weeks from May to October. As a general rule, two or three irrigations in a season will be ample. When used at all, water should be applied in sufficient quantities to wet down to the roots of the trees. Frequent scanty waterings may do much harm. The water is usually applied in furrows, and for young trees there should be one on either side of each row, but as the roots extend the number should be increased, until when five or six years old the entire orchard should be irrigated ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... said: "We stopped too soon. We ought to have gone on for another three months." It was for fighting-men to say those things, because they knew the things they suffered and risked. That word "we" was not to be used by gentlemen in government offices scared of air raids, nor by women dancing in scanty frocks at war-bazaars for the "poor dear wounded," nor even by generals at G. H. Q., enjoying the thrill of war without its ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... her mother at the window added its suggestion—a lean, sallow, lined face, full of anxious furrows, with a rim of scanty gray-streaked hair about the brow, with spectacles perched above, and beneath the flabby ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Chalcis in Euboea, and Corinth, "the three fetters of the Hellenes." But the strength of the state lay above all in its hereditary soil, the province of Macedonia. The population, indeed, of that extensive territory was remarkably scanty; Macedonia, putting forth all her energies, was scarcely able to bring into the field as many men as were contained in an ordinary consular army of two legions; and it was unmistakeably evident that the land had not yet recovered from ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... my historic production, the scanty fruit of a long and laborious life, I have failed to gratify the dainty palate of the age, I can only lament my misfortune, for it is too late in the season for me even to hope to repair it. Already has ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... heavy confessional, was jubilant. Nothing exhilarates him like work. Given a scanty confessional, and he is as gloomy as Sisyphus; given a hard, laborious day, and he is as bright as Ariel. He was in uncommonly ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... Anthony. And did the same amongst the women, whom we separated from the men. We then confessed them, and admitted them to the communion. After mass we applied ourselves again to catechise, to instruct, and receive the renunciation of their errors, scarce allowing ourselves time to make a scanty meal, which we never did more ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... these the boy pursued his education, learning many things that are not taught in colleges; learning to take the weather as it comes, wet or dry, and fortune as it falls, good or bad; learning that a meal which is scanty fare for one becomes a banquet for two—provided the other is the right person; learning that there is some skill in everything, even in digging bait, and that what is called luck consists chiefly in having your tackle in good order; learning that a man can ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... ancient ancestry (putting one in mind of Mr. and Mrs. German Reed's entertainment of "Ages Ago") rather than in the present and with the people surrounding them. They are reputed to be excessively mean and close, but perhaps they have but a scanty allowance to support their nobility, and therefore, by necessity, it is half starved. A friend who has resided at Malta many years, related to me a little incident of his own experience. For once breaking ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... man looked as though he was sorely disappointed. He gathered up the papers, rolled them together, and then looked about the little chamber. On one side of it there was a painted chest, which contained Leo's rather scanty wardrobe. He raised the lid, and thrust the bundle of papers down to the bottom of it, burying them beneath the boy's summer clothing. Closing the chest, he took his carpet-bag, and left the room. Leo was waiting for him in ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... Saxons was a more graceful, as well as a more convenient dress, than the garb of the Normans, whose under garment was a long doublet, so loose as to resemble a shirt or waggoner's frock, covered by a cloak of scanty dimensions, neither fit to defend the wearer from cold or from rain, and the only purpose of which appeared to be to display as much fur, embroidery, and jewellery work, as the ingenuity of the tailor ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... to the proof of the existence of a body of Arthurian legend in Brittany, we are, perhaps, a little alarmed at the outset to find that our manuscript sources are scanty. "It had to be acknowledged," says Professor Saintsbury, "that Brittany could supply no ancient texts whatever, and hardly any ancient traditions."[54] But are either of these conditions essential to a belief in the ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... letter continues: "I have, I don't know what to call it, constitutional (I suppose) presence of mind, and was not the least fluttered at the time. I instantly remembered that I had the MS. of a number with me, and clambered back into the carriage for it. But in writing these scanty words of recollection I feel the shake, and ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... stalls are low-cut waistcoats, clubmen, shining bald heads, wide partings in scanty hair, light-coloured gloves, big opera-glasses raised and directed towards various points. In the galleries a mixture of different social sets and all kinds of dress, all the people well known as figuring at this kind of solemnity, and the embarrassing promiscuity which ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... provisions were left and washed down the scanty meal with what water was left in the bottles. So far they had been unable to find any springs ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... blessing of a calf by a Brahmin. Inside a diminutive shrine—into the door of which I was curious enough to peep—I discovered two skinny, repulsive old women, with sunken, discoloured eyes, untidy locks of scanty hair, long unwashed, bony arms and legs, and finger and toe nails of abnormal length. They were clad in a few dirty rags, and were busily attending to the lights burning on several primitive stone candlesticks ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... success, money, and social distinction as things which revolted her. She was quite right. With all her genius it was strictly and narrowly limited; she was ignorant of the world to a degree immeasurably below that of any other known writer of fiction; her world was incredibly scanty and barren. She had to spin everything out of her own brain in that cold, still, gruesome Haworth parsonage. It was impossible for any genius to paint a world of which it was as ignorant as a child. ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... mademoiselle, also sorrel salad and—and water,' answered Marie, as if trying to make the most of her scanty meal. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... indignities he endured, all which are narrated with great simplicity, show that whatever his knowledge of our Constitution might be, "his knowledge of the country was, at that time, very incomplete." At length, when he shared the profits of his work with the booksellers, they were "but scanty and slow." After all, our author sarcastically congratulates himself, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... the Trinity, commanded by Gonzala Gomez de Espinosa, another of the ships of Magellan, sailed from Tidore for New Spain. And, as the wind was scanty, they steered towards the N. E. in lat. 16 deg. N. where they found two islands, which they named the Islands of St John. In lat. 20 deg. N. they came to another island, which they called la Griega, where some of the simple natives came on board, whom they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... party. They had two days' start, and though the ground was frozen, there had been no deep snow to prevent the others from a tolerably comfortable march. They would no doubt be in soon. It seemed a large addition to their scanty store. A great ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... with such meagre acquirements, so he had joined a cavalry regiment and fought in the Thirty Years' War. At the end of the war his horse and his trumpet were his sole possessions, and from that time he had wandered through the world, gaining a scanty livelihood with the aid of his ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... liked it broke down his scanty reserve of restraint. Clayton found himself looking down at her from a great distance. She was very remote. Clare ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... New England school of writers have come to write of John Greenleaf Whittier, they have been puzzled as to the scanty number of letters and private papers left by the poet. This letter, written to Bok, in comment upon a report that the poet had burned all his ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... with the books about and the other fellows scribbling away for dear life, the landladies in this close and that square, with faces hardened and tempers sharpened by generations of needy students, out of whom they must nevertheless make their scanty livings, the penetrating Edinburgh airs, the thinness of my cloak and the clumsiness of my countrified rig—these all kept me singularly aware of myself, and prevented any yielding to the folly ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... 30% of GDP; scanty rainfall limits crop production to mostly fruit and vegetables; half of population pastoral nomads herding goats, sheep, and camels; imports ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Bragg's army on the south, and by an almost impassable mountain region on the north and west. Its communication by rail with its secondary base at Bridgeport, and with its primary base at Nashville, had been broken by the Confederate cavalry and rendered most uncertain. Its supplies were scanty and growing daily less, while its artillery horses and draft mules were dying by hundreds, for lack of forage. The only safe wagon roads to the rear were by a long and circuitous route through the ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... feet he would wander from window to window of the stone tower, and mount from story to story; but mount as high as he would there was still nothing to be seen but the vast unvarying plain, clothed with scanty grass, and flooded with the glaring sunshine; flocks and herds, and shepherds, moved across it sometimes, but nothing else, not even a shadow, for there was no cloud in the sky ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... to see that your regiment bore itself as well in the field of battle as in the park of Versailles. What news do you bring? Nothing of importance, I hope, for there can hardly be good news when the marshal has so scanty a force with ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... wrapped in a splendid blue dressing-gown, with a golden girdle and trimmings. His scanty brownish hair curled (whether artificially or not, I am unable to say) in little ringlets. His complexion was yellow; his greenish-brown eyes were of the sort called "goggle"—they looked as if they might drop out of his face, if you held a spoon under them. His mustache and goat's beard were ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... and across the water before the fire reached us, and we were nearly, very nearly caught. The bush grew denser as we went on, and was filled with "lawyers," which impeded our progress, so that in our extremity to tear ourselves away we left most of our scanty clothing and somewhat of our skins in their clutches, while a fresh breeze springing up, increased the pace of the terrible fire which came roaring towards us in a wall of flame, sparks and smoke, which had already nearly blinded us, the trees snapping, creaking, and falling ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... the enemy at this period numbered 40,000 men, all trained soldiers of the former regular army, besides undisciplined armed hordes of fanatics and rabble of the city and surrounding country—a formidable disproportion to our scanty force when it is recollected that they were protected by strong fortifications mounting upwards of fifty guns, with an unlimited supply of artillery and munitions of war, and that with their vast numbers they ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... hearth, from which a scanty fire shed a dim light through the cleanly-kept room, sat the fisherman's aged wife in a capacious chair. At the entrance of the noble guest she rose to give him a kindly welcome, but resumed her seat of honor without offering it to the stranger. ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... it is possible to discover from the scanty documentary evidence the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries provide, the same privileges appear to have been accorded to the guilds of working masons in England and Scotland, which, although presided over by powerful nobles and apparently on occasion admitting members from outside ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... To these scanty means of improvement she added others. Her sister Fanny, having a great desire to learn dancing, the Child of the Marshalsea persuaded a dancing-master, detained for a short time, to teach her. And Fanny ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... come out with him. One was a low-spirited gentleman of middle age, of a meagre habit, and a disconsolate face; who kept his hands continually in the pockets of his scanty pepper-and-salt trousers, very large and dog's-eared from that custom; and was not particularly well brushed or washed. The other, a full-sized, sleek, well-conditioned gentleman, in a blue coat with bright buttons, and a white cravat. This gentleman had a very red face, as if an ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... formed by amateurs, in which all sorts of heterogeneous objects are jumbled together. The museum of Lima bids fair to remain for some time to come on the footing on which it was when I saw it, for the establishment has no funds, save a monthly allowance of thirty-two dollars, and out of that scanty pittance the expense of fitting up the rooms, the glass cases, &c., has yet to be defrayed. The museum is open to the public four days ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... minute more, and I am on thy breast! Time, too, has dealt gently with thee, as he doth with those for whom the wild passions and keen cares of the world never sharpen his scythe. The broad front looks more broad, for the locks are more scanty and thin, but still not a furrow. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for his children, that, instead of voraciously devouring the small portion of food, he divided it into morsels, and gave it to them in the most affectionate manner. His children from their appearance had partaken of by far the largest share of that scanty supply which he had lately been able to obtain in hunting. They pitched their tents at a short distance below in the woods, and the poor man came to me next morning with the request that I would bleed him for a violent pain which he complained of in his side. This I refused ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... cottage; for the shores of the Lake of Como have generally the character there described, with a little more cheerfulness, and a little less elevation,[14] but aided by great variety of form. They are not quite so rich in vegetation as the plains: both because the soil is scanty, there being, of course, no decomposition going on among the rocks of black marble which form the greater part of the shore; and because the mountains rise steeply from the water, leaving only a narrow zone at their bases in the climate of Italy. In that zone, however, the olive grows in great luxuriance, ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... there was scarcely a man on the frontier, who had not lost a father, a mother, or a brother, by the tomahawk; and not a few of them had suffered in their own persons. The child, who learned the rudiments of his scanty education at his mother's knee, must decipher the strange characters by the straggling light which penetrated the crevices between the logs; for, while the father was absent, in the field or on the war-path, the mother was obliged ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... in the action, and attacked the right flank of the center with great fury. Although Major Wyllys was among the first who fell the battle was maintained by the regulars with spirit, and considerable execution was done on both sides. At length the scanty remnant of this small band, quite overpowered by numbers, was driven off the ground, leaving fifty of their comrades, exclusive of Major Wyllys and Lieutenant Farthingham, dead upon the field. The loss sustained by the ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... thin, of medium height, with enormously long arms. His head was on crooked, his jaw awry, and he squinted. A blue blouse, as long as a shirt, hung down to his knees, and his yellow hair, which was scanty and plastered down on his head, gave his face a worn-out, dirty look, a dilapidated look that was frightful. He had been nicknamed "the cure" because he could imitate to perfection the chanting in church, and even the sound of the serpent. This talent attracted ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... kindly, though somewhat sad. His weak blue eyes were sheltered by an enormous pair of spectacles, which he took off and wiped continually. He was smooth-shaven and his scanty hair was as white as the driven snow. Now, as he sat in Uncle Ebeneezer's parlour, he seemed utterly friendless and forlorn—a complete failure of that pitiful type which never for a moment guesses that it ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... more probably the Capitolium of the city, erected by Vespasian in A.D. 73 (if the inscription really belongs to the building; cf. Th. Mommsen in Corp. Inscrip. Lat. v. No. 4312, Berlin, 1872), and excavated in 1823. It contains a famous bronze statue of Victory, found in 1826. Scanty remains of a building on the south side of the forum, called the curia, but which may be a basilica, and of the theatre, on the east of the temple, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... turned toward the table. The white loaf was there, and a basin of the berries his little ones had picked from the plain. In a solitary cup (for it was the only one saved from their wreck of crockery) Graffam saw his tea, and offered to exchange with his wife for the broken mug, into which was poured a scanty portion for herself. ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... after writing up the painfully doctored log, set to work to finish a task on which the adventurers had been engaged in their leisure moments since leaving Point Barrow. This was the counting and sorting of the skins. The packing-case had been broken open, and the scanty but precious contents littered an improvised table in the hold. Pen in hand, Hardenberg counted and ciphered and counted again. He could not forbear a chuckle when the net result was reached. The ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... rash hopes soon foundered. He had, as he expressed it, no money to buy knowledge. And instead of attending the Schools he went into a biscuit-factory. The three roubles (then 5s.), which was his monthly salary, earned him a scanty living by an eighteen-hour day. Gorki soon gave up this task, which was too exhausting for him. He lived about on the river and in the harbour, working at casual jobs as a sawyer or porter. At this time he had no roof, and was forced to live in the ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... when Terence wakened from his nap, he found himself deserted, and thrown completely upon his own resources. As he had not been quite three years in amassing these, they were on the whole but scanty. In fact, he was helplessly unable to realise a world with nothing in it except endlessly swelling up slopes of furzy grass, no Molly nor Micky for him to trot after, and to carry him wherever they were going, whenever he intimated the desirability ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... followed by on of those short, thick-set Burmans of whom Dr. Fu-Manchu had a number among his entourage; they were members of the villainous robber bands notorious in India as the dacoits. Over one broad shoulder, slung sackwise, the dacoit carried a girl clad in scanty white drapery.... ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... he resumed, in a yet lower voice, "and indeed until quite recently, there were but few reliable European medical men in Cairo, and during the summer of 1902 an outbreak of cholera temporarily depleted their already scanty ranks. It happened then that one night, whilst I sat in the huge, lofty room, once the principal harem apartment of the house, which I had appropriated as a study, Cassim, my Nubian servant, communicated to me (by means of a sign-language which ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... encountered some troops belonging to La Rochefoucauld; but being anxious almost as much to avoid their own partizans as the enemy, Conde and his companions hid themselves in a barn, while Gourville went out to forage. He succeeded in procuring some scanty fare; and they rode on till some hours had passed after nightfall, when they reached a little wayside inn, where Conde volunteered to cook an omelet for the whole party. The hand, however, which could wield a truncheon with such effect, proved somewhat too violent for the frying-pan, ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... scanty remains thus left of certain features of aboriginal life in ancient Mexico, as well as out of the conflicting statements about that country's early history, we have now attempted to reconstruct the conceptions of the Mexican aborigines ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... than low huts, of a circular figure, built of rough timber, thatched with straw, and pierced at the top to leave a free passage for the smoke. In the most inclement winter, the hardy German was satisfied with a scanty garment made of the skin of some animal. The nations who dwelt towards the North clothed themselves in furs; and the women manufactured for their own use a coarse kind of linen. [24] The game of various sorts, with which the forests ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... sun gained the zenith and the streets were ablaze. Belated marketers, with laden baskets atop their heads, were hurrying homeward, hugging the scanty shade of the glaring buildings. Shopkeepers were drawing their shutters and closing their heavy doors, leaving the hot noon hour asleep on the scorching portals. The midday Angelus called from the Cathedral ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... "that no very active demands are likely to be made upon my services. In this country more than any other I fear that the possibilities of my aid are scanty." ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... then is love, sings Corydon, Since Phyllida is grown so coy? A flattering glass to gaze upon, A busy jest, a serious toy, A flower still budding, never blown, A scanty dearth in fullest store Yielding least fruit where most is sown. My daily note shall be therefore— Heigh ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... Forni on his way to Alessandro Malfi's. That he had been robbed as well as wounded was already known—his brother and sister having found his pockets empty and his watch gone. The explanation he could give, however, proved to be very scanty. Indeed, he seemed to know very little about the matter, but he still adhered to his first assertion, that Ripa was the assassin. With regard to the money he had lost, there was necessarily less mystery, since it consisted of a sum that he was carrying to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... first time, saw the way in which the king collected his army together. The highroads were all thronged with Waganda warriors, painted in divers colours, with plantain-leaf bands round their heads, scanty goat-skin fastened to their loins, and spears and shield in their hands, singing the tambure or march, ending with a repetition of the word Mkavia, or Monarch. They surpassed in number, according to Bombay, the troops and ragamuffins ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... believe that the Naval power of the Britons was considerable before the coming of the Romans. As to succeeding Times, when the Britons were driven into Wales, a Country with an extensive Sea Coast, they had little to subsist upon, but a scanty Agriculture, and rich Fisheries; so that very great Numbers of them were compelled by necessity to pursue a ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... gleaner, weak of hand, Shall pick a scanty sheaf where I have sown? "Nay, for of thee the Master doth demand Thy work: the harvest ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... said, "be welcome. I am worth two hundred and forty-five millions. Thank God that you are not. Thank God that you are poor. Thank God for your scanty meals and clothing, and your ceaseless failure to make both ends meet. Pray God you may die poor. How I envy you all your blessed privilege of struggle! Thank God, and ...
— How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee • Owen Wister
... lanes, where carpenters, at work with plane and chisel in their shops, tossed the light shaving straight upon the water, where it lay like weed, or ebbed away before me in a tangled heap. Past open doors, decayed and rotten from long steeping in the wet, through which some scanty patch of vine shone green and bright, making unusual shadows on the pavement with its trembling leaves. Past quays and terraces, where women, gracefully veiled, were passing and repassing, and where idlers were reclining ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... inland an occasional green castor-oil plant, and a few grasshoppers, true friends of the desert, may be met with. Some grass is scattered over the surface of the central elevated region, and the whole much resembles the worse parts of the Welsh mountains. But, scanty as the pasture appears, about six hundred sheep, many goats, a few cows and horses, all thrive well on it. Of native animals, land-crabs and rats swarm in numbers. Whether the rat is really indigenous may well be doubted; there are two varieties as described by Mr. Waterhouse; one ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... skin to her neck. It was plain she understood perfectly what he wished, for she endeavoured to hold her neck conveniently, turning it this way and that while he contrived, with his rather scanty material, to make the collar fit. As his mother had taken care to provide him with needles and thread, he soon had a nice gorget ready for her. He laced it on with one of his boot laces, which its long hair covered. Poor Lina looked much better in ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... But the difficulties of the task were great. The Numidians of these regions were more attached to a pastoral life than to agriculture; the stores of corn to be found along the route were therefore scanty, and their scarcity was increased by the fact that the king, who seems but lately to have passed through these regions, had ordered that large supplies of grain should be conveyed from the district and stored in the fortresses ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Should SOLSTICE, stalking through the sickening bowers, 550 Suck the warm dew-drops, lap the falling showers; Kneel with parch'd lip, and bending from it's brink From dripping palm the scanty river drink; NYMPHS! o'er the soil ten thousand points erect, And high in air the electric flame collect. 555 Soon shall dark mists with self-attraction shroud The blazing day, and sail in wilds of cloud; Each silvery Flower the streams ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... them seemed to notice Malcolm Herrick's scrutiny, they were so absorbed by the pigeons; but the scanty supply of corn had soon been scattered, and the guests were flying off by ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... plane, was constructed in one of his bath-houses. Down this the Shah would gravely slide into the water, followed by his seraglio. The sight must have been a strange one, the costumes on these occasions being, to say the least of it, scanty! ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... scanty room in the small house, Mr. Jones was nodding in a chair near the stove. When asked about his early life, he straightened up [HW struck out: on his spine], crossed his legs and said, "I's perty old—ninety six. I was ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States, From Interviews with Former Slaves - Virginia Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... life and the only time the poor crushed soul evidenced interest in anything was when tidings came from the children or she could prevail upon their thankless father to send them a little money. The mother's wardrobe was scanty that the darlings of her heart might ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... nodding and wagging of the head, and remarkable agility. Their skin is of a dull brown color, "like partly roasted coffee," and destitute of the covering of hair seen by Du Chaillu on the Obongos. The hair of the head and the beard is scanty and of woolly texture. ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... the lake. There was no doubt about it, it looked like rain—or snow—perhaps a combination of both. Mr. Quirk felt a shiver of dread run through him, and his heart sank at the prospect of many nights like this to come. He derived some scanty comfort from the sight of old Tom puttering wearily around a camp-fire, the smoke from which followed him persistently, bringing tears to his smarting eyes and strangling complaints ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... the enthusiasm of everybody; for this increases every day, as well among us of the ranks as among the officers and generals, and which shows most it would be hard to say. The mess has been a little scanty in these last days, because the sea was fiercer than the Moors themselves, and the boats were unable to reach us with the supplies; but what matter? The worst of it was that we had no tobacco. And so it happened that the commander-in-chief, who ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... sleeves scarcely reached to his wrists. It was buttoned closely up to his chin, at the imminent hazard of splitting the back; and an old stock, without a vestige of shirt collar, ornamented his neck. His scanty black trousers displayed here and there those shiny patches which bespeak long service, and were strapped very tightly over a pair of patched and mended shoes, as if to conceal the dirty white stockings, which ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... had worn only the scanty clothing in use by the peasantry, and the small cultivators; but Sufder now bought him clothes such as were worn by youths of a superior class. Soyera had offered no objection to his departure and, indeed, Sufder had spoken to her ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... reached into the deep pocket of his overalls and drew out the scanty wages of his last ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... are waiting for the facts," he presently resumed, speaking with a slowness which told of a mind labouring for the right mode of expression. "These are so scanty, I fear, of so, shall I say, phantom a kind, that even when they are in your possession you will consider me to be merely the victim of a delusion. In the first place, then, I have reason to believe that someone followed me from my home ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... a highly individualistic character was Diogenes of Laertius, who wrote the Lives of Philosophers, being very little of a philosopher himself and too prone to drop into anecdotage, but interesting and invaluable to us because of the scanty information we possess about ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... wide face, fringed with reddish hair, scanty about the lips and more full below; and it looked the wider from the narrow drooping eyes set near together and the small pursed mouth. Below, his chin swelled down fold after fold into his collar, and the cheeks were wide ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... that a robust organization is any warrant of long life, nor that a frail and slight bodily constitution necessarily means scanty length of days. Many a strong-limbed young man and many a blooming young woman have I seen failing and dropping away in or before middle life, and many a delicate and slightly constituted person outliving the athletes and the ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... their efforts there was but a very scanty supply obtained, and of that Joses declared the mules got by far the best share, biting and kicking at the horses whenever they approached, and driving the ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... goats were diligently searching among the rocks for their scanty food, and a few grottoes or huts of stone announced to us the proximity of a little town or village. Right thankful were we to emerge safely from these fearful deserts into a less sterile and more ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... never omitted since he could say a prayer, except when he had the measles. He knew the boys were watching him; but he thought of his mother, and how she had taught him to pray at her knee. He hid himself as well as he could with the scanty bed-curtains, and kneeled. He could not attend to the words he said, while feeling that eyes were upon him; and before he had done, the maid came in for the candle. She waited; but when he got into bed, she told him that he must ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... about the house quietly, and did all she could with her crude means to make her guest comfortable, and to assure him of her hospitality. She pressed his clothes into shape again, and gave him a well-cooked dinner, as well served as her scanty supplies would allow, asking no questions, but with a quiet dignity making him feel that she was glad to serve him. There was something in her manner which made a strong appeal to the chivalrous heart of the young man. He wanted to help ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... the appearance of a man who had once been stout and well built, but who was now barely recovered from a long illness. The flesh hung in little bags underneath his bloodshot eyes, his mouth twitched continually, and the hand which rested on the table trembled. He wore a scanty grey moustache, which failed to hide a weak thin mouth, and a very obvious wig concealed his baldness. His clothes had seen plenty of service and his linen was doubtful. He had evidently ordered some brandy immediately on his entrance, and his eyes met mine just as he was in the act ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... help, had refrained, at her entreaty and her father's, from refusing to aid him, but indignantly sent him away when he persisted in the declaration that it would be impossible for him to remain for months secluded from all society and subsist for weeks on scanty fare. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and flying at the heels of the horse, renders him often a very dangerous nuisance. He is, however, valuable to the cottager; he is a faithful defender of his humble dwelling; no bribe can seduce him from his duty; and he is a useful and an effectual guard over the clothes and scanty provisions of the labourer, who may be working in some distant part of the field. All day long he will lie upon his master's clothes seemingly asleep, but giving immediate warning of the approach of a supposed marauder. He has ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... weka, or wood-hens, about as large as sparrows . . . were esteemed a valuable addition to our scanty supper." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... great for his now enfeebled constitution. "Nor could he conceal from himself and his friends," says Trevelyan, "that it was a grievous waste, while the reign of Anne still remained unwritten, for him to consume his scanty stock of vigor in the tedious and exhaustive routine of political existence; waiting whole evenings for the vote, and then ... trudging home at three in the morning through the slush of a February thaw." He therefore spared ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... all her misfortunes had lost a leg. A leg, but not a foot. For the brass foot, which belonged, was found shoved away in the chest of drawers, which was enough, and more than enough, to contain the whole of the owner's scanty wardrobe. It was a cabinet-maker's job, and rather a nice one at that, to provide a new and suitable leg and attach it securely in the place of the old one. And it would come to nineteen-and-sixpence to make a job of it. The exactness of this sum will suggest the facts, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Davy! O Scrope! ye fishers hard by taverns! luxury was ours of which ye know no more than a Chinaman does of music. Under the noble yellow birch we cooked our own fish. We used our scanty kitchen-battery with skill. We cooked with the high art of simplicity. Where Nature has done her best, only fools rush in to improve: on the salmonids, fresh and salt, she has lavished her creative refinements; cookery should only ripen and develop. From our silver ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... had but scanty appetite. Scarcely had he finished, and directed the removal of the dishes, than the servant entered to ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... But this information, so scanty and yet so conclusive, by no means satisfied the curiosity of the women. A great deal of indignation was expressed by Sophy's kindred and friends in the village at her total ignoring of their claims. They did not expect to be invited to a house like ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... weaves at her own door Pillow and bobbins, all her little store, Content though mean, and cheerful if not gay, Shuffling her threads about the live-long day, Just earns a scanty pittance, and at night Lies down secure, her heart and pocket light; She for her humble sphere by nature fit, Has little understanding and no wit; Receives no praise, but though her lot be such, Toilsome and indigent, she renders much; Just knows and knows no more, her ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... alleviation, aggravated it in his eyes. He said little of his wife; but, from what escaped him, I easily gathered that she had shown strength of mind, good feeling and affection for him, and was willing to struggle by his side for a scanty and hard-earned subsistence. His selfish cares and irritable mood prevented his appreciating or returning her attachment, and he looked upon her as a clog and an encumbrance, without which he might again rise in the world. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... and Boyd's black mood vanished in amazement at the sight which met his eyes. Moored to the fish-dock was a lighter awash with a cargo that made him stare and doubt his vision. He had seen his scanty crew of gill-netters return empty-handed with the rising sun, exhausted, disheartened, depleted in numbers; yet there before him were thousands of salmon. They were strewn in a great mass upon the dock and inside the shed, while from the scow beneath they came in showers as the handlers ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... any more easily than we could turn dried apples into roast beef and plum-pudding. Excellent food as dried fruit is, yet it is apt to become monotonous when it must do duty for breakfast, dinner, and tea! Such was our scanty fare; nevertheless we managed to keen up the appearance of being ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... French novels, another in the centre of a collection on sports, a third in the midst of modern histories, while others are "upstairs and downstairs, and in my lady's chamber." The diversity of sizes, from folio to duodecimo, makes books very difficult to arrange where room is scanty. Modern shelves in most private houses allow no room for folios, which have to lie, like ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... even Larry himself found it hard to tell. But by and by he was drawing with pencil and pen, and selling his sketches for what he could get, buying now a brush and then some paints with the scanty proceeds, and working upon his bits of canvas with all the ardor ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... resolute, and when he leaned forward, musing, with knitted brows, Blake gave him a sympathetic glance. Harding had entered the paint factory when a very young man, and had studied chemistry in his scanty spare time, with the object of understanding his business better. He found the composition of varnishes an interesting subject, and as the best gums employed came from the tropics and were expensive he began to experiment with the exudations from ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... automobile ride put them down at the Tecolote camp. Along the edge of the canyon, where the well-borers had developed water, the framework of a gigantic mill and concentrator was rapidly being rushed to completion. On the flats below, where Old Juan's burros had browsed on the scanty mesquite, were long lines of houses for the miners and a power plant to run the great stamps. A big gang of miners were running cuts into the hillside where the first of the ore was to come out and like a stream of ants the workmen and teams swarmed about each mighty task, but ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... his guardians for a shilling. Delme's firmness of purpose, and his after prudence, met with their due reward. The family estates became wholly unencumbered, and Sir Henry was enabled to add to the too scanty provision of his sister, as well as to make up to George, on his entering the army, a sum more than adequate to all his wants. These circumstances were enough to endear him to his family; and, in truth, amidst all its members, there ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... city scavengers, these pigs. Ugly brutes they are; having, for the most part, scanty brown backs, like the lids of old horsehair trunks: spotted with unwholesome black blotches. They have long, gaunt legs, too, and such peaked snouts, that if one of them could be persuaded to sit for ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... morning on going out upon the seashore they found a log of wood, somewhat resembling the human form, which they took home and set in a corner of their lowly hut, and continued their habit of praying to Kaneaukai. One evening, after having prepared a scanty supper of poi and salt, with perhaps a few roasted kukui-nuts, as a relish, and a couple of cocoanut cups of awa as their usual drink, they saw a handsome young man approaching, who entered their hut and saluted them. He introduced ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... uninteresting soil from which it springs. A few spare olives cast their shadows on the lower slopes; here and there a copse of oakwood and acacia marks the course of some small rivulet; rye-fields, grey beneath the wind, clothe the hillsides with scanty verdure. Every knoll is crowned with a village—brown roofs and white house-fronts clustered together on the edge of cliffs, and rising into the campanile or antique tower, which tells so many stories of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... outskirts of Timber Town stood a dilapidated wooden cottage. Its windows lacked many panes, its walls were bare of paint, the shingles of its roof were rotten and scanty; it seemed uninhabitable and empty, and yet, as night fell, within it there burned a light. Moreover, there were other signs of life within its crazy walls, for when all without was quiet and dark, the door opened ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... prettily on the line. This accomplished, I hurried down, removed my trousers, rehumped my back over the tub, scrubbed industriously until the trousers in turn were white and once more dashed roofwards. I have always been absent minded, but never to such an appalling extent as to appear clad only in my scanty underwear in the midst of a mixed throng of ladies, gentlemen and children. This I did. Some venturous souls had claimed the roof as their own during my absence so that when I sprang from the final step to claim my ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... morning, I dismounted from the top of a coach in the yard of a London inn. Delivering my scanty baggage to a porter, I followed him to a lodging prepared for me by an acquaintance. It consisted of a small room in which I was to sit, and a smaller one still in which I was ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... considered it of the first importance to make us familiar with French at a very early age, because, when she reached Berlin with a scanty knowledge of German, her mastery of French secured numerous pleasant things. She often told us how highly French was valued in the capital, and we must believe that the language possesses an imperishable charm for Germans when we remember that this was the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the original; which was to the effect that it contains a little nonsense, a good deal of truth, and a not intolerable admixture of superstition. He added further that Sir John must not be judged hardly; for he was limited by an inadequate vocabulary and an ignorance of many of the terms that his scanty reading ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson |
