"Scrawl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... than Gregory's. This was Philip of Spain. Catharine had not delayed writing to her royal son-in-law. In her endeavor to make capital out of the massacre she betrayed great satisfaction at her supposed masterly stroke of policy. Her letter—a misspelled scrawl—furnishes a fresh illustration of the fact that singular shrewdness in planning and executing criminal projects is not incompatible with a trust, amounting almost to fatuity, in the unsuspecting credulity of others. Catharine actually ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... current hand, magnified, ought to swell into a large hand.' Whereas, on the contrary, 'the large hands reduced appear very stiff and cramped; and the magnified running hand'—'appears little better than a scrawl.' Now to us the result appears in a different light. It is true that the large hands reduced do not appear good running hands according to the standard derived from the actual practice of the world: but why? Simply because they are too good: i. e. they are ideals and in fact are ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... cut their names on doors or rock-heads, But leave the task to scribblers and to blockheads; Pert, trifling folks, who, bent on being witty, Scrawl on each post some fag-end of a ditty, Spinning, with spider's web, their shallow brains, O'er wainscots, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... which Lucette rowed me over; and not being much in use except on Sunday, is generally half full of water. Lucette insists on doing the bailing. She has very often performed this service, and I have always considered it as included in the curious scrawl of a bill which madame gravely presents at the end of each of my days here, beginning in small printed type with "Francois Laguerre, Restaurant Francais," and ending ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... keep you on deck, I fancy. Don't stay there. Turn the wheel over to Sandy if you have to. I'll insist on havin' you there. That'll be better. They'll probably have some fool agreement to sign. Carlsen would do that. Make 'em all feel it's more like a bizness meetin'. They'll love to scrawl their names an' put down their marks. I'll have to have you there to read it over to ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... pushed briskly forward. The contract was signed at Paisley on June 10th, and on the following day the marriage was celebrated at the same place. Lady Catherine's is not among the signatures; but there is to be seen the almost illegible scrawl of the old grandfather and of Euphrame his wife, a daughter of Sir William Scott of Ardross. The bride's eldest brother, whose own marriage with the Lady Susannah Hamilton was soon to follow, and her cousin John, son ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... was not the delicately perfumed article that usually is despatched by fictional heroines but a rather business-like envelope bearing the well-known words "The New York Herald" in one corner and the name "R. Schmidt, Hotel Ritz," in firm but angular scrawl across its face. As Robin ripped it open with his finger, Baron Gourou entered the room, but not without giving vent to a slight cough in the way ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... angry devil of the duel, you answer me, either sword point to sword point; or from the pointing pistol, that shall speak both sharp and decisive, and the dotting bullet, perhaps, put a period to your proud life's scrawl. But no; I am grown too old to have recourse to violence. Away, go, go; but, mind you, do not breathe this calumny into a human ear,—no, not into the air. Shame, shame! you are no noble minded man, to villify my ward and your own son; whom, if I accounted to be ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... am trying to write this scrawl to you on a round milk container in a camp near London. We are ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... had the affectionate sympathy of all England. Lord Hood himself, before unknown to the family, hastened to their house with the news, calling to the servants as he ran up the stairs to "throw off their mourning!" The following was Riou's brief letter to his mother, which he found time to scrawl and send off by a ship just leaving Table Bay for England as the poor helpless Guardian ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... wasn't even thinking of that. I was thinking of Eunice, and of that round, childish scrawl of a diary upstairs in the attic trunk. And I was picturing Eunice, in the years to come, writing her diary; and I thought, what if she should ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... a scrawl," explained the secretary, "and it comes from the prisoner's child—Monckton's little girl—Monckton, the forger, you know. Of course there's nothing to it—a mere scrawl; for the child is only four years old. But the gentleman who sends it says the child brought ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... of many a grandmother is hidden a pathetic scrawl that the baby made for her and called "a letter." To the alien eye, it is a mere tangle of pencil marks, and the baby himself, grown to manhood, with children of his own, would laugh at the yellowed message, which is put away with ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... I wish to send," she explained, glancing at the almost illegible scrawl with an expression of doubt. "Couldn't you stop the carriage a moment while ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... what I ought to feel, and do feel for the loss you have sustained[1]; and I must thus dismiss the subject, for I dare not trust myself further with it for your sake, or for my own. I shall endeavour to see you as soon as it may not appear intrusive. Pray excuse the levity of my yesterday's scrawl—I little thought under what circumstances it ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... was such a scrawl that my father could not read it, but underneath was printed, "Mayor ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... Marteen requests the pleasure of Mr. Marcus Gard's company at dinner"—the usual engraved invitation, with below a girlish scrawl: "You'll come, won't you? It's my very last dinner ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... claims our times avow, The ancient Sphinx still keeps the porch of shade; And comes Despair, whom not her calm may cow, And coldly on that adamantine brow Scrawls undeterred his bitter pasquinade. But Faith (who from the scrawl indignant turns) With blood warm oozing from her wounded trust, Inscribes even on her shards of broken urns The sign o' the ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... him the anonymous scrawl which had kindled her fury against him. He turned it listlessly over in his hand. "I guess I know who it's from," he said, giving it back to her, "and I guess you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... his orders than to write the letter you expect. Then there was my ignorance and your brother James's ignorance to be thrown into the account. For the drawing, Sisson says Dr. Perelli has the description of it already; however, I have insisted on his making a reference to that description in a scrawl we have with much ado extorted from him. I pray to Sir Isaac Newton that the machine may answer: It costs, the stars know what! The whole charge comes to upwards of threescore pounds! He had received twenty pounds, and yet was so necessitous, that on our hesitating, he wrote ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... accompanied with this assurance, that, though there may be inaccuracies in the letter, there is not a single defect in the friendship." Occasionally there was, as here, an apology: "I am persuaded you will excuse this scratch'd scrawl, when I assure you it is with difficulty I write at all," he ended a letter in 1777, and in 1792 of another said, "You must receive it blotted and scratched as you find it for I have not time to copy it. It is now ten o'clock at night, after my usual hour for retiring to rest, ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... Notebook begun in 1894 and used at intervals for the next four or five years, in which Gilbert wrote down his philosophy step by step as he came to discover it. The handwriting is the work of art that he must have learnt and practised, so different is it from his boyhood's scrawl. Each idea is set down as it comes into his mind. There is no sequence. In this book and in The Coloured Lands may be seen the creation of the Chesterton view of life—and it all took place in his early twenties. From the seed-thoughts here, Orthodoxy and the rest were to grow—here ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... were higher here than elsewhere; the coat-rooms were robbers' dens infested by Italian mafiosi; tips were extravagant and amounted in effect to ransom; and each meal-check was headed by an illegible scrawl which masked an item termed "service." The figure opposite would have covered the cost of a repast at Childs's. But New York dearly loves to be pillaged; it cherishes a reputation for princely carelessness of expenditure. ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... laundry, she taught Miss Anthony to clear-starch and iron them. Each summer she managed to be home long enough to assist with the canning, pickling and preserving. The little journal gives the best glimpses of her daily life, usually only a hasty scrawl of a few lines but containing many flashes of humor and wisdom. Thus the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... mechanically as I felt it go, and—by gad, the inside of it didn't look right! There was nothing on the glued-down top flap, but the inside back of the envelope wasn't blank, as it should have been. It wasn't written on in Thompson's neat copperplate or in his neat phrases, either. A pencil scrawl stared at me, upside down, as I gripped the lower flap of the envelope unconsciously, under the ball of my big thumb. "Why, here's some more," I exclaimed like an ass, glaring at the envelope's inside back. "'Take care—something——' ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... see, Wilbert had never had but one letter before in his life, and that was a little boyish scrawl from Clarence, and no wonder he opened the big envelope timidly. The contents began, "Know all men by these presents," and here Wilbert looked again into the envelope to see where the presents it spoke ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... from the tree, and which she had quite forgotten. What did it mean? Was there anything inside it? With a thrill of fear she darted to the window, untwisted the paper, and by the dim light could just make out the following scrawl: "Leeve the en roost oppen nex Munday nite." Mary gazed at it with horror, unable for the first few minutes to take in the sense, but when she did so she sank down on the ground and burst into tears. What wicked, wicked people they were! Not content with taking all her ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... lines from the great Collingwood himself. That brave heart, in the midst of the din of victory, had found time to scrawl a word to his old schoolmate, and tell him that his boy had died like a hero, and that he regretted ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... and the scrawl characteristic of an office boy's chirography proved that his terms at public school had not done Scorch much good. ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... be visited, of trips to the moon and of buried races that live beneath the rivers and mountains. He writes of amazing crimes he has committed, of weird longings that will not let him sleep. And, too, he writes of strange gods which man should worship. He pours out his soul in a fantastic scrawl. He says: "One is all. God looked down and saw ants. The wheel of life turns seven times and you can see between. You will sometime understand this. But now you have curtains ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... came as Jane was finishing breakfast. He brought a note from Selma—a hasty pencil scrawl on a sheet ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... the dead there is no room for the living." It seemed then a foolish memorandum to write, and now, as I look at the half-effaced pencil lines, I wonder why I was not ashamed to write it. Yet there it is before me, a witness to my sensations at the time, and the scrawl has even now the power to bring up to me an unpleasantly vivid memory of that ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... restless feet are weary of these hills of purple vines, These crooked groves of olive trees that scrawl the crooked lanes The walnuts shoulder weakly round the tall Italian pines, That whisper like the waves of wheat across ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... bounding down again, stricken white, and not caring if he encountered the devil. On his table he had found a package—the complete manuscript of "Roderick Hanscom" and this scrawl: ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... knock at the door; Jimmy Benyon went and opened it; he came back holding a note, and gave it to May; it was addressed to her husband in a pencil scrawl. "A congratulation for you," she said to Quisante. He glanced carelessly and languidly at it, murmuring, "Read it to me, please," and she broke open the sealed envelope. Inside the writing was as negligent a scribble ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... receiving this joyful news, that it was with considerable difficulty I could scrawl about two or three lines to inform Lieutenant Maughn of the arrangements I had made. We were all so deeply affected by the gratifying tidings, that we seldom closed our eyes, but continued watching day and night for the boat. On the 6th she returned with Lieutenant Maughn's answer, saying ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... and set, lay the matter to be transferred on the plate, and rub it gently all over on the back; now raise it up, and it will be transferred on to the wax on the plate. Now take needles of a different thickness, and scrawl all over the wax, following the lines of the engraving. Having got the picture all traced out, pour upon it some weak acid if you use zinc, which is too soft to print many from, therefore it is better to use copper or ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... under these artificial circumstances, I fail of course to present them in their habitual aspect; and my portrait, as a necessary consequence, disappoints everybody, the sitter always included. When we wish to judge of a man's character by his handwriting, we want his customary scrawl dashed off with his common workaday pen, not his best small-text, traced laboriously with the finest procurable crow-quill point. So it is with portrait-painting, which is, after all, nothing but a right reading of the externals of character recognizably presented to ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... I must say!" remarked Jack, after perusing the scrawl a second time. "Evidently the writer loves ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... He smoothed the hurried scrawl out tenderly, feeling as if something hard and cold in his left side had melted with a sudden gush of warmth. Back in three-quarters of an hour! He laughed aloud at the sanguineness of it. Why, it took him ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... brierwood, lying on a pile of books on his desk, and within reach of his hand, he started to fill the bowl, when a scrap of paper covered with a scrawl written in pencil came into view. He turned it to the light and sprang to ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... measure of respect. As we sat under the awning in opposite corners of the cockpit, he braiding hairs from dead men's chins, I forming runes upon a sheet of folio paper, he would nod across to me as one Tahuku to another, or, crossing the cockpit, study for a while my shapeless scrawl and encourage me with a heartfelt 'mitai!—good!' So might a deaf painter sympathise far off with a musician, as the slave and master of some uncomprehended and yet kindred art. A silly trade, he doubtless considered it; but a man must make allowance for ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the effect that their clerk was robbing them right and left and running a business of his own with their money, under a fictitious name. They had implicit confidence in his honesty, and the only action they took was to hand the scrawl to him with a remark that they hoped he would discover and ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... from Peggy's crestfallen air, it was all wrong. The note was not written in Lucy's usual regular hand. The letters straggled, the lines zig-zagged across the page, and the name signed was almost an unintelligible scrawl. But Peggy thought less of these superficial matters than of ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... a pen, and upon a quarto page, already half filled with Leroux's small, neat, illegible writing, began to scrawl a message, bending down, one hand upon the table, and with ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... spelling and writing would pass muster nowhere else, or casual visitors from the world of business, or young men and women fresh from school, or even children writing in round text,—all these classes may be represented in a single week's work; and the papers sent in will vary in elaborateness from a scrawl on a post-card to a magazine article or treatise. I have received an exercise of such a character that the student considerately furnished me with an index; I remember one longer still, but as this hailed from a lunatic asylum I will quote it only for illustrating ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... bidding all true friends to Protestants to do no injury to the property of any true Protestant, "as I am well assured the proprietor of this house is a stanch and worthy friend to the cause." But there were plenty of houses where neither fear nor fanaticism displayed blue banner or chalked scrawl, houses whose owners boasted no safeguard signed by Lord George Gordon, and with these the mob busied themselves. The description in the "Annual Register" is so striking that it deserves to be cited; it is probably from ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... bits o' paper be all she left behind her,—yes, keep them, but put back Mark's. Are they all here,—sure?" And the widow, though she could not read her husband's verses, looked jealously at the manuscripts written in his irregular, large scrawl, and, smoothing them carefully, replaced them in the trunk, and resettled over them some sprigs of lavender, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... great frescoed room. The maid-servant had said something about the Signora's having left a letter for her; and there it lay on the writing-table, with her mail and Nick's; a thick envelope addressed in Ellie's childish scrawl, with a glaring "Private" dashed ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... who had exchanged his bit of broken china for a very much used and tooth-marked lead-pencil, frowned with a whimsical air at the latter before he put it in his pocket. Then he read my hurried scrawl. ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... stylograph and had been resting on some scattered sheets of foolscap that Ian had left there in the morning. She had certainly been scrawling on it a little, but she was not aware of having written anything. Yet the scrawl, partly on one sheet and partly on another, was writing, very bad and broken, but still with a resemblance to her own handwriting. She pored over it; then looked Ian in the eyes, her own eyes large with a ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... The scrawl was taken to her by a discreet official, and this time she received the letter, pressed it to her heart, and then slipped it into the bodice of her gown. But this time, as before, she left without ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... them for some of the quietest pleasures of our lives. But that is the way of human nature, isn't it? We rarely value anything until we lose it; we sigh most ardently for the thing which is beyond our reach, we count our happiest days those across the record of which we now must scrawl, "Too late!" That is why I always feel so infinitely sorry for the blind. The blind can so rarely get away from themselves, and, when they do, only with that effort which in you and me would demand some bigger result than merely to lose remembrance of our ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... to get letters from the trenches," she said half wistfully one day to Beatrice Howell, who was exulting over a pencil scrawl written by her brother in a dug-out. "I ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... hasty scrawl on a prescription blank, and smiled at the discomfited faces of his two friends showing plainly in the lights which streamed from ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... half-believing, half-doubting kind of way, on the probability of a life to come, and ends by speaking of or rather apostrophizing Jesus Christ in a strain which would seem to savour of Socinianism. This letter he calls "a distracted scrawl which the writer dare scarcely read." And yet it appears to have been deliberately copied with some amplification from an entry in his last year's commonplace book. Even the few passages from his correspondence already given are enough to show ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... managed to scrawl the word "Barsanti;" then he wrapped the paper round a small pebble and approached the fountain. By putting one foot on the edge of the stone basin beneath he could reach over to the curved top, ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... At length the scrawl was finished, and looking up from the writing table he saw Joan Devereux passing through the hall. He got up and hurried after her. "Would you mind addressing this for me?" He held out the envelope. "I've managed to spoil the paper inside, but ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... to whom the billet-doux was addressed in T. Haviland Hicks, Jr.'s, familiar scrawl, tore open the envelope, and while the squad listened, he read aloud the message left by ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... lay propped up against a tree, with his feet over a pool of water, near where my men had left him. His eyes were sunk in his head, his lips parched and cracked, his voice almost gone. A few hours more and he would have been beyond help. He had fainted, so they told me, after writing the scrawl, and only the efforts of my men and the morsel of food they could spare him brought him back to life. When I had poured a few drops of brandy down his throat and had made him a broth and warmed him up his strength began to come back. It is astonishing what a few ounces of food ...
— Homo - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... dreadful day, he came back to the Club and found a package, addressed in her hand. Out fell a little bundle of rags, topped by a comical black face, and a note. The letter of the morning was in a firm, correct hand. This was a trembling scrawl, blotted ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... Betty interrupted disrespectfully. "We know who wrote this—there is no mistaking Roy's scrawl. ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... and read the latest, which was a scrawl in quavering characters over three telegraph forms. It was from Ladcock at Gilgit, saying that he was having a row of his own with the navvies there, and that he could send no reinforcements at present. If he quieted the trouble in time he would try and hold the Mazeno Pass, and ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... me at the time. I was staying in a country house with a very pleasant party of young and old, including persons whose education and versatility were certainly not below the social average. One evening we played at a round game, which consisted in each of us drawing as absurd a scrawl as he or she could, representing some historical event; the pictures were then shuffled and passed successively from hand to hand, every one writing down independently their interpretation of the picture, as to what the historical ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... Ferris," he soberly said. "You should not leave till the whole thing's cleared up. If you don't want me to follow up your private inquiry, just say so." He handed to the astonished man an evening paper. There, marked with a great scrawl, was a brief item. ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... in new ones too, there are inscriptions and inscriptions. We are all familiar with the scrawl of the clown, who has handed down to us his unconsecrated name on the title-page or fly-leaf of some volume of ours otherwise irreproachable. Just a step above him is your fellow who writes some objurgatory caveat against the malappropriator, and brings ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... once to his house; sent me a card, half of it printed like a book! t'other half a scrawl could not read; pretended to give a supper; all a mere bam; went without my dinner, and got nothing to eat; all glass and shew: victuals painted all manner of colours; lighted up like a pastry-cook on twelfth-day; wanted something solid, and got a great ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... only a scrawl; he was dying, and signed your—your husband; he had been stricken down by fever; your name was ever on his lips; he said you loved Paris, and he would be buried there; he had loved you all his life; he was glad to go; you were not to shed one tear ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... Indian. Colonel Howell, having heard the explanation of the finding of the letter, without any hesitation and evidently without any qualms of conscience, drew out the enclosure. The letter was an illiterate scrawl. ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... in a neat, pretty little hand, which of itself seemed to reprove the student's awkward scrawl. He turned then to his own studies, which he was pursuing in a tattered volume of Blackstone's Commentaries on the English Common Law. He did not get on very fast with this book, and sometimes he wondered what bearing ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... the chapel door, With ever changing notices spread o'er: Whatever doctrines may within be taught, With words of peace that door is rarely fraught: For there, mid notices of beds for hire, Of concerts in the state-house by desire, Some ill-spelt scrawl demands the mighty debt Of half a crown, with a ferocious threat; Some traitorous agent is denounced; some spy, That blabb'd of gin, is hung in effigy; Here angry fools proclaim the petty jar, And clumsy pasquinades provoke ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Madame Dort tore the envelope apart, and soon made herself mistress of the contents of the letter. It was only a short scrawl which the sailor lad had written off hurriedly to take advantage of the opportunity of sending a message home by a passing ship, as his brother had surmised—Eric not expecting to have been able to forward any communication ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... amanuensis, scrivener, secretary, clerk, penman, copyist, transcriber, quill driver; stenographer, typewriter, typist; writer for the press &c (author) 593. V. write, pen; copy, engross; write out, write out fair; transcribe; scribble, scrawl, scrabble, scratch; interline; stain paper; write down &c (record) 551; sign &c (attest) 467; enface^. compose, indite, draw up, draft, formulate; dictate; inscribe, throw on paper, dash off; manifold. take up the pen, take pen in hand; shed ink, spill ink, dip one's pen in ink. Adj. writing &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... wife, and Argus his eyes, Tom Piper, poor Cobler, and Lazarus's thighs: Rough Esau, with Maudlin, and gentles that scrawl, With Bishop that burneth—ye ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... a deep breath and took up his fountain pen. He signed with a rapid, illegible scrawl that toward the end of the pile became a mere hieroglyphic. Jonas put his black face in at the door just as he finished ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... minded to afford him more entertainment than I need, and bade him begone before I opened the packet. He withdrew reluctantly. Then I unfastened Nell's parcel. It contained ten guineas wrapped in white paper, and on the inside of the paper was written in a most laborious awkward scrawl (I fear the execution of it gave poor Nell much pains), "In pay for your dagger. E.G." It was all of her hand I had ever seen; the brief message seemed to speak a sadness in her. Perhaps I deluded myself; her skill with the pen would not serve her far. She had gone, that was the sum of it, ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... scrap-book; he kept a paper scrap- book, too. Into these he would put whatever he cared to keep— poetry, history, funny sayings, fine passages. He had a scrap-book for his arithmetic "sums," too, and one of these is still in existence with this boyish rhyme in a boyish scrawl, underneath one of his tables of ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... of the score of my "Elizabeth" are written out complete (in my own little cramped scrawl). But the final chorus—about 40 pages—and the piano-arrangement have still to be done. By the middle of August I shall send ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... knowing what particular days were rainy and what pleasant, in Holland, a week back. Then, after you had got about two thirds down the page, you would stop because you could not think of any thing more to say, and subscribe your name with ever so many scrawl flourishes, and as many affectionate and dutiful phrases as you could get to fill ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... heralds the approach of a nervous curlew, running and pausing, and stamping, its script—an erratic scrawl of fleurs-de-lis—on the easy sand. Halting on the verge of the water, it furtively picks up crabs as if it were a trespasser, conscious of a shameful or wicked deed and fearful of detection. It is not night nor yet quite day, but this ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... last night!" She handed him the slip of paper. He, too, chuckled tenderly, for the scrawl ran: "What I want for Chrismas: Pictures, pretty ones, Picture frames, Chairs, Plates for dinner, Knives, Spoons, Anything for a flat." A little space followed as if the author had hesitated before he had added in heavier writing that which ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... has made me the happy instrument of destroying the enemy's fleet; which, I hope, will be a blessing to Europe. You will have the goodness to communicate this happy event to all the courts in Italy; for my head is so indifferent, that I can scarcely scrawl this letter. Captain Capel, who is charged with my dispatches for England, will give you every information. Pray, put him in the quickest mode of getting home. You will not send, by post, any particulars of this action; as I should be sorry to have any accounts get home before my dispatches. ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... done this, and had copied the whole of the wandering scrawl on a page of my note book the result was ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... enemy. No witnesses could be found to throw any more light on the inquiry than the barn boss himself. And de Spain made only a pretense of a formal investigation. If he had had any doubts about the origin of the fire they would have been resolved by an anonymous scrawl, sent through the mail, promising more if he didn't ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... of the bed a taper Shall ever with matches be, A pencil and piece of paper, To note what occurs to me. * * * * * Since then I have tried, but the late joke, As seen in my bedside scrawl, Is always so poor,—that the great joke, I'm sure, was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various
... not write books, He could scrawl the earth with his record: He could make hieroglyphs, Constellations of mounds and animals, Effigies of unnamable things, Monsters, and hybrids unnatural, Bred of grotesque fancies; and man-forms. These last, none of your pigmies A span long in the womb, And six feet, at full growth, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... present situation of your unworthy but constant and affectionate daughter. I pretend not to justify or even to palliate my clandestine elopement. In hopes of pacifying your mind, which I am sure must be afflicted beyond measure, I write you this scrawl. Conscious of not having thus abruptly absconded by reason of any fancied ill treatment from you, or disaffection toward any, the thoughts of my disobedience are truly poignant. Neither have I a plea that the insults of man have ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... sheet, and, by the light of a match read the scrawl upon it. The writing had evidently been done in haste, but its ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... out her hand for the paper. When Si was gone she sat gazing at it, trying in her ignorance to pick from the, to her, senseless scrawl those last words. Ben had ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... children's books about the Grubbling domicile, that had been the older child's—Cornelia's—and had descended to Master Herbert, while yet his only pastime in them was to scrawl them full of pencil marks, and tear them into tatters. These, one by one, Glory rescued, and hid away, and fed upon, piecemeal, in secret. She could read, at least—this poor, denied unfortunate. Peter McWhirk had taught his child her letters in happy, humble Sundays ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Haygarth. I felt that these letters had in all probability been carefully numbered by the lady to whom they belong, and that to tamper with them to any serious extent might be dangerous. I have therefore only ventured to retain one insignificant scrawl as an example of Matthew Haygarth's caligraphy and signature. From the rest I have taken copious notes. It appears to me that these letters relate to some liaison of the gentleman's youth; though I am fain to confess myself surprised to discover that, even in a period ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... Temple should have been in such a dangerous state. Much occasion for thankfulness is there that it has not been worse with you. Pray write, or make somebody write frequently. I feel myself a good deal stronger to-day, not withstanding the scrawl. God bless you, my dear Temple! I ever am your old and affectionate friend, here and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... For that reason he remains, as he remained from the beginning, beyond all hope of description—as it might be, a visible god sitting in the garden of a world made new. They sell photographs of him with tourists standing on his thumb nail, and, apparently, any brute of any gender can scrawl his or its ignoble name over the inside of the massive bronze plates that build him up. Think for a moment of the indignity and the insult! Imagine the ancient, orderly gardens with their clipped trees, shorn turf, and silent ponds smoking in the mist that the hot ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... those bits o' paper be all she left behind her—yes, keep them, but put back Mark's. Are they all here?—sure?" And the widow, though she could not read her husband's verses, looked jealously at the MSS. written in his irregular large scrawl, and, smoothing them carefully, replaced them in the trunk, and resettled over them some sprigs of lavender, which Leonard had ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Fisher hesitated; then, as she repeated her desire, he took up the scrawl and deliberately read it through. It had evidently been written immediately after his interview ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... you call it that again," she flashed. "You—Jerrold Fullerton—whose merest scrawl is reviewed by every literary editor in the land. Do you think you can't do still better ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... He began to scrawl hastily with a dry pen that he had not time to dip in the well of ink. The shadow of the Lord Cromwell's silent return was cast upon them both, ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... a life, With large results so little rife, Though bearable, seem hardly worth This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth; Yet, Fausta, the mute turf we tread, The solemn hills around us spread, This stream which falls incessantly, The strange-scrawl'd rocks, the lonely sky, If I might lend their life a voice, Seem to bear rather than rejoice. And even could the intemperate prayer Man iterates, while these forbear, For movement, for an ampler sphere, Pierce Fate's ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... last letter before the Alcestis was heard of at Spithead. Then she sailed; she sent in her letters to Plymouth, and her final greetings by a Falmouth cutter—poor Harry's wild scrawl in ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... said Kathlyn calmly. The fear in her heart had, as the brown man had anticipated, blinded her to the fact that this was not her father's characteristic blunt scrawl. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... female amanuenses are busy with friends, and I fear this scrawl will give you much trouble to read.—With many thanks, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... heard precisely; though I made inquiries about him from some of our return passengers who, wandering about to "see the country" during the ship's stay in port, had come upon him here and there. At last we sailed, homeward bound, and still not one line was added to the careless scrawl of the many pages which poor Jacques had had the patience to read with the very shadows of Eternity gathering already in the hollows of his kind, ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... "New England Almanac," and a book of dreams and fortune-telling; in which last was a sheet of foolscap much scribbled and blotted in several fruitless attempts to make a copy of verses in honor of the heiress of Van Tassel. These magic books and the poetic scrawl were forthwith consigned to the flames by Hans Van Ripper; who, from that time forward, determined to send his children no more to school, observing that he never knew any good come of this same reading and writing. Whatever money the schoolmaster ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... the stellar science to its present state of disrepute. Astrology is too vast, both mathematically {FN16-1} and philosophically, to be rightly grasped except by men of profound understanding. If ignoramuses misread the heavens, and see there a scrawl instead of a script, that is to be expected in this imperfect world. One should not dismiss the ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... a characteristic scrawl from Philippa, full of Alec and Alonzo, what they said and what they did, and how they ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... hand had been laboriously learning to write, his left hand, all unsuspected, had been picking up the same lesson, and that by taking a pencil in his left hand and writing from right to left, without watching what he was writing, and then examining the scrawl in a mirror, he could reproduce his own handwriting in exact reverse. About three people out of five have this often quite unsuspected ability. He demonstrated his gift, and then Miss Cecily Corner, who had dropped in in a casual sort of ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... from armorial or fanciful initials, the standing of a house may be gauged by the handwriting, the titles of the larger monasteries being given in bold letters, while those of the smaller form an almost illegible scrawl. The greater houses would have been in a position to support a competent scribe—not so the lesser; and this is believed to have been the ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... the fool, Thought to scrawl "Duke of Reichstadt" o'er my name. But hold the paper up before the sun: You'll ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... air as it touches your cheek and sends the blood leaping in glad life. You love water and fire and wind, elemental things, and you love them with fervor and passion. All this to the world! Much more intimate to me, who can read the letters you scrawl for the impudent, careless world. For deep down in the core of that rose there lies a soul that permeates it all—a longing, restless soul, one moment revealing a heaven that the next is ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... "Deluge," and Gericault's dismal "Medusa." Gericault died, they say, for want of fame. He was a man who possessed a considerable fortune of his own; but pined because no one in his day would purchase his pictures, and so acknowledge his talent. At present, a scrawl from his pencil brings an enormous price. All his works have a grand cachet: he never did anything mean. When he painted the "Raft of the Medusa," it is said he lived for a long time among the corpses which he painted, and that his studio was a ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... nine and ten o'clock when Marshall Langham reached his office. He scarcely had time to remove his hat and overcoat when a policeman entered the room and handed him a note. It was a hasty scrawl from Moxlow who wished him to come at ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... did not reply, but made the usual scrawl in his book, while the squatter hastened to agree with the fat man. "I like to see a bit of pace myself," ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... tears, that it was altogether unworthy of him to whom it was to be sent. It was the first love letter she had ever written,—probably the first letter she had ever written to a man, except those short notes which she would occasionally scrawl to Father Marty in compliance with her mother's directions. The letter to Fred ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... crumpled sheet of note paper before us on which was written something in a trembling scrawl. "For instance, here's a letter I received ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... his hand in his pocket, and the bit of folded paper struck sharp against his fingers, so he drew it out. Hardly the familiar school-boy scrawl: Jack used to hate writing, he remembered. This had a decisive force about it. How odd that business-like "John" looked! "Jack!" He uttered the name aloud, and a thrill seemed to warm his frozen heart,—to stir emotions most ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... pencils, soap, caps, a steamer trunk from the closet, several framed photographs, some college banners, and a score of other articles. On the very top of the heap was a fancy sofa pillow Nellie had given to Tom and to this was pinned a card, on which was written, in a disguised scrawl: ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... print on the reverse side, and the letters showed through in grayish flecks and gave the curious impression as of clouds in the sky. And that little drawing, with less form than a school-boy's blackboard scrawl, was completely transfigured by those gray spots, and because of them it took on for me a deep and dreadful significance. Aided by the dim light in the room the pictured scene became a vision that faded away into the distance like the pale surface of the ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... the pad, and watched him feebly scrawl a "T" and what might have been an "o"—and a haggling "m"; and then the pencil dropped. He looked so strange, he scarcely breathed; and frightened, Charley darted into the other room where his father ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... trunk, by the bye, that wants patching up before my boy carries it off with him; I'll send it round to you; Hopkins. But stay—what's this?" and the doctor took up a soiled, yellow sheet of paper, from the heap rejected by the workman; it contained a scrawl which proved to be the identical letter of the poor poet, the Lumley autograph, though in what manner it became mingled with that heap of rubbish has never ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... covered with horny parchment, which he opened and presented to my dear teacher and myself. It contained an old Greek text, full of abbreviations and ligatures which at first gave me the effect of an illegible scrawl. But M. Coignard, having put on his barnacles and placed the book at the necessary distance, began to read the characters easily; they looked more like balls of thread that had been unrolled by a kitten ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... blue shadows across the snowy road ahead. Roderick was hurrying home to take supper at the farm, and Helen was coming out of the rough little path that led from the Perkins' home. She was feeling tired and very sad. She had been reading a letter from the husband in prison, a sorrowful pencilled scrawl, pathetically misspelled, but breathing out true sympathy for his wife and children, and the deepest repentance and self-blame. And at the end of every misconstructed sentence like a wailing refrain were the words, "I done wrong and I deserve all I got, but it's hard on you old ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... begin to appear fast and furiously, flashing from legal page to legal page and in a flash vanishing. But ever the persistent soil remains for others to scrawl themselves across. Come the names of men of whom I have vaguely heard but whom I have never known. Kohler and Frohling—who built the great stone winery on the vineyard called Tokay, but who built upon a hill ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... It's a great tribute to our acting that even Hodges takes us to be in earnest. I can't call to mind any stage row I ever listened to that I shouldn't have spotted the hollowness of in a brace of shakes. At this minute Author summons Actor to Rehearsal. I close up. This Scrawl to tell you I haven't forgotten you. Would have written more, ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... always the same: "You will go soon enough, and you will stay long enough." This increased our irritation. Suddenly, on one still and dark November day, parade was sharply cancelled, we clad ourselves in full marching order, there was just a moment to scrawl on a postcard a few last words home, tender words were exchanged with our friends in the billets, and with heavy tread and in solemn silence we marched forth along the Bedford Road. There was a pillar ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... a private, modest way to walls already so crowded, is allowable; but to scrawl one's name, place of birth, and country, half across a wall, covering scores of names under it, is an operation which speaks for itself. No one would ever want to know more of a man than to see ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... letter, brought by the night carrier, from her father (a most dirty, ill-written scrawl signed Robert Evans with his mark), praying he may be excused, as his masts are to be stepped o' Wednesday, and he must take the occasion of a ketch leaving Dartford for Falmouth this day, and at the same time begging her acceptance of a canister ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... attempt this impossible theme? While reflecting on my debt to thee, my heart becomes too big for its mansion. My hand falters, and the characters it traces run into an illegible scrawl. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... scrawl. How did you like Erewhon? It's pretty near closing time and I must say grace over ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... accounts used only the initial "T." Some of his employees favored Tyrus, others Titus. One in a wild flight of fancy suggested Ticonderoga. But the mystery remained unsolved, and, after all, as the checks that bore the scrawl, "T. Grimshaw," were promptly honored at the ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... of purposes. Had they known Celtic well, it is hardly credible that they should not have sometimes written in that language, as the Gauls did across the Channel. A Gaulish potter of Roman date could scrawl his name and record, Sacrillos avot, 'Sacrillus potter', on the outside of a mould.[1] No such scrawl has ever been found in Britain. The Gauls, again, could invent a special letter Eth to denote a special Celtic sound and keep it in Roman times. ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... sparkling eyes. First he showed her the letter Francois had brought him. Unmarked by postal indications, the missive had evidently been intrusted to a private messenger of the governor whose seal it bore. Dated about three years previously, it was written in a somewhat illegible, but not unintelligible, scrawl, the duke's ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... men who loaf, my dear," she replied. "When you undertake the transcription of an author's scrawl at ninepence the thousand words you have to work hard, especially when, as it is in this case, the thing's practically unreadable. Besides, the woman in it makes me lose my temper. If I'd had a man of the kind described to deal ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... this scrawl will reach Kingcombe Holm. Possibly, no more news of me may ever reach there.—Yet I fear not, for He who is everywhere is likewise in the wild western prairies; and life is not so sweet that I should dread its ending. Still, if it does end, remember me to my brother, ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Planchette wrote so fast that I could hardly keep up with it. And when it stopped, I lighted a match and see ... here ... in your mother's very handwriting"—fervently she held the bit of paper up for Sylvia to see. The girl cast a hostile look at the paper and saw that the writing on it was the usual scrawl produced by Cousin Parnelia, hardly legible, and resembling anything ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... confirm Jaffery's last statement, here is a bit of a scrawl from Liosha—her complete account ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... clear at any rate," said Elspeth. "Mine's such a scrawl I'm afraid that will be against me. Aren't you thankful the ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... was no longer to be counted in his column—he had thought and fought that out in the small hours; but he did need and pounced upon the statement that Little Poland's master would be out of town the greater part of election day. The scrawl ended with an appointment for a clandestine meeting at eleven o'clock, toward which he now bent his ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... and several books. He took up the one nearest him, a volume on big game hunting, and turned the pages idly. Their unconscious and unwilling host took his sports seriously, it seemed. He dropped the book upon his knees, and as he did so it fell open at the fly leaf, upon which in a feminine scrawl a name was inscribed. He read it with surprise and concern. "Madeleine de Cahors!" Olga Tcherny's ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... her father. She felt guilty, for of late she had rather forgotten him and this was something new and blameworthy. Now she remembered how long it was since she had seen him and that his last letter had come over a month ago. It was a short scrawl from Downieville and had told her that the sale of his prospect hole—he had hoped to sell it sometime early in September—had fallen ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... read until midnight." The great wood of stone pines on the Pisan Maremma was his favourite study. Trelawny tells us how he found him there alone one day, and in what state was the manuscript of that prettiest lyric, "Ariel, to Miranda take". "It was a frightful scrawl; words smeared out with his finger, and one upon the other, over and over in tiers, and all run together in most 'admired disorder;' it might have been taken for a sketch of a marsh overgrown with ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... other—don't disturb yourself:" and Ferrers seated himself at the writing-table, dipped a pen into the ink, arranged blotting-book and paper before him in due order, and was soon employed in covering page after page with the most rapid and hieroglyphical scrawl that ever engrossed a mistress or ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... car had once been placed at your disposal by the Government, getting supplies for it was merely a question of signing bons. Obtaining extra equipment for my car was Roos' chief amusement. Tyres, tools, spare parts, horns, lamps, trunks—all you had to do was to scrawl your name at the foot of a printed form and they were promptly handed over. When I first went to Belgium I was given a sixty horse-power touring car, and when the weather turned unpleasant I asked for and was given a limousine that was big enough to sleep in, and when I found this too ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... will tell you? It was found under your door before I went away." She suddenly produced from her pocket a folded paper and handed it to him. It was a misspelt scrawl, and ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... writing of mine—very bad manners, to put any one—especially a Lady—to the trouble and pain of deciphering. I hope all about Donne is legible, for you will be glad of it. It is Lodging- house Pens and Ink that is partly to blame for this scrawl. Now, don't answer till I write you something better: but believe me ever ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... offer, and be very grateful for it, for I do not bear this mountain traveling very well. If you find him, give him this scrawl and tell him where I am—that will ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... calculations. Then a short paragraph written in Roger Hunter's hurried scrawl. "No doubt now what it is," the words said. "Wish Johnny were here, show him a real bonanza, but he'll ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... fair-haired man seated opposite him, Mademoiselle Baltz having been given an easy-chair close by Rasputin's table. It was a writing-table, but the scoundrel never wrote. Sometimes he pretended to do so, but the truth was that it was a long and painful procedure with him. He preferred to scrawl his initials to any typewritten letter which ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... interest, in procuring a situation in the Sham-Post. The duties, here, are simple, and not altogether unprofitable. For example:—very early in the morning I had to make up my packet of sham letters. Upon the inside of each of these I had to scrawl a few lines on any subject which occurred to me as sufficiently mysterious—signing all the epistles Tom Dobson, or Bobby Tompkins, or anything in that way. Having folded and sealed all, and stamped them with sham postmarks—New Orleans, Bengal, Botany Bay, or any other ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to say in her charge to me, and the incident ought to have been closed, as far as we were concerned. But Tedham's not speaking threw me off my guard. I could not let the matter end so bluntly, and I added, in the same spirit one makes a scrawl at the bottom of a page, "Of course, it's for you to decide whether you will ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... by time, seemed to show by contrast with the dull hue of the page even more clearly than it could have done when first written. The paper proved to be a will, drawn up in legal form and signed with the peculiar scrawl of which you hold a tracing. It purported to have been made and published in December, 1789, at Lancaster, in the State of Pennsylvania, and to have been witnessed by James Adiger and Johan ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... "Seventy Years on the Frontier," he relates how on every wagon-sheet and wagon-bed, on every tree and barn door, he used to find the name "William F. Cody" in a large, uncertain scrawl. Those were my writing lessons, and I took them daily until I had my signature plastered pretty well over the whole ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... . . then there was a "wild screech," and when Emmerjane ran upstairs Maggie was stretched out on the floor in a dead faint, clutching in her tight hand the photograph which Owen Owens had returned with the words, written in his heavy scrawl across ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... least, containing poetry, which the motion of a journey emptied of their contents. Is it from the vanity of being thought geniuses, or a mere mechanical imitation of the custom of others, that we are tempted to scrawl ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... between. The air, to-day, was soft and sweet, the long billows of the Blue Ridge seen dreamily, through an amethyst haze. The men lay among dandelions. Some watched the horses; others read letters from home, or, haversack for desk, wrote some vivid, short-sentenced scrawl. A number were engaged by the rim of the clear pool. Naked to the waist, they knelt like washerwomen, and rubbed the soapless linen against smooth stones, or wrung it wrathfully, or turning, spread it, grey-white, upon the grass to dry. Four played poker beneath ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... young artists: first, that it gives great firmness of hand to deal for some time with a solid substance; again, that it induces caution and steadiness—a boy trusted with chalk and paper suffers an immediate temptation to scrawl upon it and play with it, but he dares not scrawl on gold, and he cannot play with it; and, lastly, that it gives great delicacy and precision of touch to work upon minute forms, and to aim at producing richness and finish of design correspondent to the preciousness ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... was added a postscript: "Your note has just come and I return the cheque." As chance would have it the cheque had come just as Rachel had finished her letter, and with the cheque there had been a short scrawl as follows: "I send the money as settled, ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... oft while all is calm without The stormy spirit wars with endless doubt; This is the mocking spectre, scarce concealed Behind tradition's bruised and battered shield. He sees the sleepless critic, age by age, Scrawl his new readings on the hallowed page, The wondrous deeds that priests and prophets saw Dissolved in legend, crystallized in law, And on the soil where saints and martyrs trod Altars new builded to the Unknown God; His shrines imperilled, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... do," it was asked, "when life becomes unbearable?" The answer was contained in one word, but written in such a scrawl as to be illegible. The question was repeated, when the same word apparently was written in reply, but still illegible. The question was put a third time, when Planchette, with great energy, wrote in bold characters, and distinct, the word PRAY. On comparing this with the former answers, they ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... resumed Bluewater, carefully tearing the signature from the bottom of the page, and burning it in a candle; "let this disgraceful part of the secret die, at least. The fellow who wrote this, has put 'confidential' at the top of his miserable scrawl: and a most confident scoundrel he is, for his pains. However, no man has a right to thrust himself, in this rude manner, between me and my oldest friend; and least of all will I consent to keep this piece of treachery from your knowledge. I do more than the rascal ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper |
