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Scrawl   /skrɔl/   Listen
Scrawl

verb
(past & past part. scrawled; pres. part. scrawling)
1.
Write carelessly.  Synonym: scribble.



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"Scrawl" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... I snatched up the paper. Vic had said in his note, that he would leave another note for me here. This was it, for in a bold scrawl at the top was my name. And in hardly decipherable script, below, ...
— The Infra-Medians • Sewell Peaslee Wright

... electronic shout, the most powerful and tightly-beamed short-wave transmission which men could generate, directed with all the precision which mathematics and engineering could offer. Nevertheless that pencil must scrawl broadly over the sky, and for a long time, merely hoping to write on its target. For when distances are measured in light-weeks, the ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson

... pencil, a pencil which must have been rather blunt, because the marking was heavy, though it showed signs of haste. No one familiar with Eagle March's hand could have failed to recognize it as his, rough and hurried as was the scrawl. ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... 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 the pen of Edmund Burke: "As soon {205} as the ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... 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 before ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... the one in 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 with ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... to do about mine. But I am running on at a tremendous rate, and quite forget that I have traveled upward of forty miles to-day, and that I promised my mother, whenever I could, to go to bed early. Good-by, my dear Mrs. Jameson. I hope you will be able to make out this scrawl, and to decipher that I am ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... 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

... wide. Then narrower, nearer, and quicker. At last He stood still, and one long look upon her he cast. "Lucile, dost thou dare to look into my face? Is the sight so repugnant? ha, well! canst thou trace One word of thy writing in this wicked scroll, With thine own name scrawl'd through it, defacing a soul?" In his face there was something so wrathful and wild, That the sight of it scared her. He saw it, and smiled, And then turn'd him from her, renewing again That short restless stride; ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... for a pen and wrote a note to the watchman, telling him that the bearer, Richard Townsend, had come to look over the property and that his orders must be accepted, and signed it with his hard-driven scrawl. He handed it up to Dick without rising from his seat, and said: "That'll fix you up, ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... 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

... that 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 ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... 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 ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... three hasty 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

... such a line, our lives show wavering deformity, and are like the tremulous strokes in a child's copy-book. David had the pattern before him, and by its side his unsteady purpose, his passionate lust, had traced this wretched scrawl. The path on which he should have trodden was a straight course to God, unbending like one of these conquering Roman roads, that will turn aside for neither mountain nor ravine, nor stream nor bog. If it had been thus straight, it would have reached its goal. Journeying on ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... easily worded scrawl to make an ordinarily normal heart beat faster, yet the heart of this simple child of the gods, gifted with genius and deprived of worldly wisdom as all such divine children are, throbbed uneasily, and her eyes were wet. ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... the letter produced, and was much disturbed to read in Tess's handwriting the sentiments expressed in her last hurried scrawl to him. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... illegible scrawl through more carefully this time. It was a clumsy notification addressed to Mme. la Comtesse de Nole de St. Pris to the effect that her tou-tou was for the moment safe, and would be restored to the arms of his fond mistress provided ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... 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

... age. But he descried a dim tracery of words. A crabbed scrawl, written in blood, hard to read! He held it more to the light, and slowly he deciphered ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... faded scrawl Pinned upon the ragged shawl— Nothing else to leave a clue Even of a friend or two, Who might come to fold the hands, Or smooth back the dripping strands Of her tresses, or to wet Them anew with ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... in quest of the one sentence which he had been able, or fancied he had been able, to read yesterday. The illumination that had brought it out was now faded, and all was a blur, an inscrutableness, a scrawl of unintelligible characters alike. So much did this affect him, that he had almost a mind to tear it into a thousand fragments, and scatter it out of the window to the west-wind, that was then blowing past the house; and if, in that summer season, there ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... between 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

... he said, and struck a match to read the scrawl which Poltavo had written. Fortunately there was nothing in it which betrayed the great secret of the house, but it was enough, as he realized, to awaken the dormant suspicion, even supposing it was dormant, of ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace

... were feeble and ineffective, her writing remained a childish scrawl, no matter how much she was made to practice, she dropped things continually and frequently spilt her food at meal-time. Most of all was her awkwardness manifest ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... sheet, and, by the light of a match read the scrawl upon it. The writing had evidently been done in haste, ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... Schmucke. He went for the bit of stamped-paper left by the bailiff, and gave it to Pons. Pons read the scrawl through with close attention, then he let the paper drop and lay quite silent for a while. A close observer of the work of men's hands, unheedful so far of the workings of the brain, Pons finally counted ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... so that he was a long time writing it, and wrote it in a tremulous scrawl at last. It was a cheque for one hundred pounds. He folded it up, put it in Young john's hand, and ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... have a pencil in my pocket. What shall I do for paper?" She looked eagerly round and spied a small piece which lay among the brushwood. With a cry of joy she picked it out. It was very coarse and very dirty, but she managed to scrawl a few lines upon it, describing her situation and asking for aid. "I will write the address upon the back," she said. "When you get to Bedsworth you must buy an envelope and ask the post-office people to copy the ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... all he held in his hand for several seconds unopened. The envelope was a large one and stiff, as if it contained cardboard. It was directed in an irregular, childish scrawl. Mordaunt, sitting at his writing-table, with his back to his guest, studied it gravely, thoughtfully. Finally very ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... we transgress Thus to familiarly address One of our betters. But Jamie, do you no recall The slate whereon you learned to scrawl Your ...
— The Peter Pan Alphabet • Oliver Herford

... insists upon it that I should leave some room for her scrawl. A bold request! But then who says no to her? Not I, and therefore I ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... surprise, and then at her right hand. It held a 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 bewilderment touched ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... greater than the sword, Of that there is no doubt. The pen for me whene'er I wish An enemy to rout. A pen, a pad, and say a pint Of ink with which to scrawl, To put a foe to flight is ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs

... it me—a little dirty envelope, with an illiterate scrawl. I opened it carelessly, but as my eye fell on the President's hand, I started in amazement. The note was dated "Saturday—From on board The Songstress," ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope

... eternal disgrace to the nation. But the Jew may govern the money-market, and the money-market may govern the world. The Minister may be in doubt as to his scheme of finance till he has been closeted with the Jew. A congress of sovereigns may be forced to summon the Jew to their assistance. The scrawl of the Jew on the back of a piece of paper may be worth more than the royal word of three kings, or the national faith of three new American republics. But that he should put Right Honourable before his name would be the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... of inner gardens. Oh, fantastic legends of Odalisk and Caliph! On I go from street to street, and square to square; I begin to meet some people, but they pass and disappear like phantoms. All the streets resemble each other; the houses have only three or four windows; and not a spot, scrawl, or crack is to be seen on the walls, which are as smooth and white as a sheet of paper. From time to time I hear a whisper behind a blind, and see, almost at the same moment, a dark head, with a flower in the hair, appear and disappear. I look in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... for Stampoff. Having a minute to spare, he obtained a newspaper, took a seat voucher for the first dinner, lighted a cigarette, entered his reserved compartment, arranged his luggage, and burnt General Stampoff's scrawl just as the train ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... to France, Nor dare to practise till they've learn'd to dance. Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile? (Should Ripley[150] venture, all the world would smile) But those who cannot write, and those who can, All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... dropping this accidentally as I leave," read the fly leaf in Philip's scrawl. "I don't want you to suspect my classic tastes, but what can I do if you ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... 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

... Folding up the hurried scrawl, she was conscious of a strong sense of dissatisfaction, but she would not reopen it. There was nothing ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... noting the pencil scrawl upon the back, proceeded to tear it open, when Willett stretched forth ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... extremely difficult to settle my thoughts upon anything but the scene before me, when I am from home, I am from home so seldom. If any, the least hint crosses me, I will write again, and I very much wish to read your plan, if you could abridge and send it. In this little scrawl you must take the will for the deed, for I most sincerely wish ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... a little scrawl to Milsom next day, by the hands of a stable- boy, inviting that gentleman to a social rubber and a friendly supper in the servants'-hall ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... careless scrawl, dated Sept. 19th, 1774, recording the burial of one Matthew Haygarth, aged four years, removed from the burial-ground attached to the parish church ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... reached the hotel. It 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 ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... of sight without once turning his head, and Kettle glanced down at the screw of paper which lay on his knees, and saw on it a scrawl of writing. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... fear you will scarcely be able to read this scrawl, but I feel hurried and agitated. Death is not welcome to me. I confess it is ever dreaded. You have made me too fond of life. Adieu, then, thou kind, thou tender husband. Adieu, friend of my heart. May Heaven prosper you, and may we meet hereafter. Adieu; perhaps we may never see ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... trial. The murderer was found guilty. Poor Julia's diary, too, which I had abstracted, told fearfully against him. But he contrived to escape the gallows; he had managed to conceal poison on his person, and he was found dead in his cell. Mary Simms I never saw again. I once received a little scrawl, "I am at peace now, ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... opposition, the marriage was 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 of the outlaw ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris

... the proffered pen in unaccustomed fingers and made a crisscross scrawl, adorned with thirteen blots. The pen nib broke under the strain, and he handed it back with an air ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... a characteristic scrawl from Philippa, full of Alec and Alonzo, what they said and what they did, and how they looked when they ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... otherwise be had for any price. There are quite brains enough, and there is quite sentiment enough, among the gentlemen of England to answer all the purposes of England: but if you so train your youths of the richer classes that they shall think it more gentlemanly to scrawl a figure on a bit of note paper, to be presently rolled up to light a cigar with, than to draw one nobly and rightly for the seeing of all men;—and if you practically show your youths, of all classes, that they will be held gentlemen, for babbling with a simper in Sunday pulpits; ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... merely in acknowledgment of your editorial: to say that I shall give my mind at once to the Murder. But I bethink me you can say so much and convey my sense of the liberality of our Cousins, without exhibiting this scrawl. So I may go on to tell you that I have at last found a publisher as eager to publish, as I am to write a Hazlitt. Bentley is the Boy; and very liberal, at least, as per last advices; certainly very friendly and eager, which makes work light, like whistling. I wish I was with the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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 diversity of the spheres ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner

... 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——' What's ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... bedroom softly and picked up the sheets. There are two communications, one in a large scrawl written by a woman—I believe, it is Penelope's mother. The other is in a small regular hand with quick powerful strokes, evidently a man's writing. There! You see the handwriting is ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... 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 sun soaks up after rain, and the ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... the act of writing to you," said she, "but now my scrawl may go into the basket;" and she raised the sheet of gilded note-paper from off her desk as though ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... "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 of ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)

... detective, every unfamiliar sign or unusual incident meant a clue to some crime or burglary. Remembering this trait of Miss Aleyn's, Britt suddenly realised how full of meaning must have appeared the hasty scrawl he had left on Miss Aleyn s gate-post for the hounds' guidance that afternoon. He startled the maid-servant by a peal of laughter that echoed through ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... a poor scholar, and the handwriting was deplorable. Undotted "i's" travelled incognito through the scrawl, and uncrossed "t's" passed themselves off unblushingly as "l's." After half an hour's steady work, his imagination excited by one or two words which he had managed to decipher, he abandoned the task in despair, and stood moodily looking out of the window. His gaze fell ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... handwriting: and although he was, at the end of the holidays, very far from attaining the perfection shown in the examples produced by his teachers of the marvels they had effected in many of their pupils, he did improve vastly, and wrote a fair current hand instead of the almost undecipherable scrawl that had so puzzled and annoyed a succession of masters at Shrewsbury. After another month spent in London, getting his clothes and outfit, Godfrey started for St. Petersburg. On his last evening at home his father had a serious ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... magnitude of this star and to predict the ascendant course which it has in fact triumphantly taken. That was in the days when Kolniyatsch was still alive. His recent death gives the cue for the boom. Out of that boom I, for one, will not be left. I rush to scrawl my name, large, on the ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... read hastily, chuckling over it as though it contained many a joke. But he was more interested in the other scrawl, whose strange words completely baffled him. He tried in vain to make out its meaning, turning it about, peering at it from all angles, like an evil old buzzard. Then he gave way to a fit of rage, whining curses and making to tear the thing ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... a curse upon his head Who dares insult the noble dead, And basely scrawl his worthless name Upon the records of their fame! Nelson, arise! thy country gave A heartfelt tear, a hallow'd grave: Her eyes are dry, her recreant sons Dare to profane thy mould'ring bones! And you, ye heroes of the past, Who serv'd your country to the last, And bought her freedom with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various

... could not say what the matter might be, and he went away, only to return in a few moments bearing a scratchy note from his master, badly blotted and still wet; and Leila, with a shrug of resignation, took the blotched scrawl daintily between thumb and forefinger and unfolded it. Behind her, the maid, twisting up the masses of dark, fragrant hair, read the note very easily over her mistress' shoulder. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... your old mother's letter. If she knew as much as I do about you, scapegrace, she would never trouble herself whether you were dead or alive! Fagotin! Here is a bundle of Paris newspapers for you; they are quite new—only nine months old! Potele! Some woman has sent you a love-scrawl and some tobacco; I suppose she knew your passions all ended in smoke! Rafle! Here is a little money come for you from France; it has not been stolen, so it will have no spice for you! Racoleur! Here is a love-billet from some simpleton, with a knife ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... 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

... "Excuse my scrawl: you must guess more than the half of it, but I know no help for this. I am obliged to write to you hastily while everyone is asleep here: but be easy, I take infinite pleasure in my watch; for I cannot sleep like the others, not being able to sleep as I would like—that ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... 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 ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... benign and austere, as though the art he practiced so supremely both exacted much and conferred much. He made a fine and potent figure as he stood, with his back to the bright street and the gutter-child standing beside him like a familiar companion, and read the smudged scrawl of ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... sentence had reached him on the reverse side of an invitation to take tea at Merrion—a vague some-day-when-you're-passing sort of invitation, in Neeld's eyes plainly and merely a pretext for writing and an opportunity of conveying the urgent little scrawl on the other side. It arrived at mid-day; in the afternoon Duplay had come and was ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... and gentleman, how they talked of him at Mount Juliet's town, making him quite, as one may say, a laughing-stock and a butt for the whole company; but they were soon cured of that by an accident that surprised 'em not a little, as it did me. There was a bit of a scrawl found upon the waiting-maid of old Mr. Moneygawl's youngest daughter, Miss Isabella, that laid open the whole; and her father, they say, was like one out of his right mind, and swore it was the last thing he ever should have thought of, when he invited ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... goes on to moralize in a 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 that there was in Burns's ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... the Morning Report, found Perkins seated in the same place. Perkins signed the book in a sprawling scrawl, and the sergeant went his way. The Chino cook brought the meals, and then came and took them off again. The day dragged through, the gray evening fell; the rain streamed down; and still the officer sat ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... somebody's name?" She had evidently never speculated on the meaning of the scrawl that had ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... 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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... extracted the other paper ball, unfolding it near the orange flame. The inner surface was red, the earthly red of porphyry, and cracked and scarred by the crumpling. Nearly obliterated by the lacework of wrinkles and scratches was a scrawl, evidently scarred into the glazed surface by a knife-point. The upper part was unintelligible. On the lower surface he made out with difficulty the single word, Vandalia. He carried it to the door, slid back the shutter ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... his story, would go softly with it to Peter's room; and there think and ask herself how her father, whose system she had long quietly observed, would have treated the case. Then she would write an illegible scrawl with a cabalistic letter, and bring it down reverently, and show it the patient, and "Could he read that?" Then it would be either, "I am no reader," or, with admiration, "Nay, mistress, nought ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... composing it (and there were fewer still after the first six lessons) were put into the first two or three rows of desks. The teacher was a little sandy man who made well-trodden jokes and talked in a wheezy voice well suited to his appearance. He used the blackboard, and stood upon tiptoe to scrawl upon it in a large handwriting. That was at the beginning. Later, methods developed; but for the present Sally and the others were merely initiated into the first movements of the difficult craft. With amazement she began to learn the mysteries of the signs "Dr." and ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton

... big fortune left to her by her father passed unreservedly into her own hands, was a wearisome necessity that had been got through as expeditiously as possible, with as little attention to detail as the old family lawyer had allowed, and an absence of interest that was evidenced in the careless scrawl she attached to each document that was given her to sign. The mere money in itself was nothing; it was only a means to an end. She had never even realised how much was expended on the continuous and luxurious expeditions that she had made with Sir Aubrey; her own individual ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... 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 ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... the uppermost sheet, Dennis seized the opportunity to fold up the end one and slip it into his pocket; and he had just succeeded when the general added the last scrawl to his ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry

... labour I have undergone. It has neither been of a slight nor an agreeable kind. I made it a rule to read everything that has been written respecting Napoleon, and I have had to decipher many of his autograph documents, though no longer so familiar with his scrawl as formerly. I say decipher, because a real cipher might often be much more readily understood than the handwriting of Napoleon. My own notes, too, which were often very hastily made, in the hand I wrote in my youth, have ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... it through her tears and hurried to the Confederate White House to show it to the President. Davis scanned the scrawl with indignant sympathy: ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... attempt to save Bathsheba from, at any rate, immediate anguish, he looked again, as he had looked before, at the chalk writing upon the coffin-lid. The scrawl was this simple one, "FANNY ROBIN AND CHILD." Gabriel took his handkerchief and carefully rubbed out the two latter words, leaving visible the inscription "FANNY ROBIN" only. He then left the room, and went out ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... the little journalist's scrawl. His whole face grew crimson, his eye shone as with madness. "Hulda! Hulda!" he cried, "the Idea works! God be thanked! English! Through the world! Hulda! Hulda!" He was bending ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... the utmost care, confessing to herself, almost with 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 ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope

... several other letters, all from friends at home. One, in a great square envelope, addressed with an English scrawl, she dreaded, and she kept it for the last. When she did tear it open her face grew quite pale. There was much in it about duty and consecration, and much concerning two lives sacrificed to the same great ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood

... which Lily received with a blotted scrawl from Gus Trenor strengthened her self-confidence in the exact degree to which it effaced ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... has brought a letter from Catherine. I find it lying by my plate when I come down to breakfast. I take it up, look at the superscription, partly in Catherine's well-known writing, partly in my landlady's spider scrawl—for it had gone first to my London rooms. I turn it over, feel it, decide it contains one sheet of paper only, and put it resolutely down. After breakfast is time enough to read it; nothing she can say shall ever move ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various

... imperfections, 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 ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... exclaimed. "You are heavenly restful and comforting. You—" he checked himself and got up. "Then I'm to write, and you are to make out as much of my scrawl as you can and answer. Is ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... to dinner, they brought their colloquy to a close. Don Diego asked his son what he had been able to make out as to the wits of their guest. To which he replied, "All the doctors and clever scribes in the world will not make sense of the scrawl of his madness; he is a madman full of ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... hair, and glanced around the 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" ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... at the end was written in an uneven, diminishing scrawl, as if the letter had taxed the strength of the writer almost beyond endurance, and I heaved a sigh of earnest sympathy for ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... 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 ...
— Homo - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith

... efficacy of their written characters in cases of sickness, but the presence of the marabout himself is necessary, in order that the writing may suit the nature of the disorder. When the disease is dangerous, the writing is administered internally, for which purpose they scrawl some words in large characters, with thick streaks of ink round the inside of a cup, dissolve the ink with broth, and with many devout ceremonies pour the liquor down the sick man's throat. These impostors have always free access to the beys and other high dignitaries of the state; and with regard ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... fell into deep ennui, and to beguile himself he rummaged out of the canvas bag an old note-book and a pencil, and began a clumsy and uninstructed effort to sketch the scene before him. The effort proving quite abortive, he began to scrawl beneath it, 'Paul Armstrong.' 'Yours very truly, Paul Armstrong.' 'Disrespectfully yours, Paul Armstrong.' 'Sacred to the memory of Paul Armstrong, who died of boredom in the Rocky Mountains.' 'Paul Armstrong: ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... 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 ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... her chair and tore open the envelope. The inclosure was a dingy sheet of cheap notepaper covered with a penciled scrawl. With trembling fingers she unfolded the paper and read what was written there. Then she leaned back in the chair and put her hand ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln

... were singing their nightly chorus, and the situation reports were coming in from the battalions in the line. With his hair sizzling in the flame of the candle, the Brigade Orderly Officer who was on duty for the night tried to decipher the feathery scrawl ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 28, 1917 • Various

... that gay ship, than have her turned into a Roundhead. Didn't I with my own eyes see a lubberly rascal take a chisel, or some o' their land tools, and shave every lock of hair off the figure-head of the 'Royal Charles,' and even off the beard, shorten the nose into a stub, and then scrawl under it, 'The blessed change; this regenerated vessel will be known hereafter as the Holy Oliver'? Wasn't that blasphemy? Come, captain, rouse yourself; let's call a council—there's little Robin Hays, he loves her timbers as he loves his life—there's the boatswain, and a lot of ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... most masterly version of 'Ossian.'" It is probable that the friends visited the house together. At any rate, I care to believe that while Cesarotti sat "composing" his tribute comfortably at the table, Alfieri's impetuous soul was lifting his tall body on tiptoe to scrawl ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... was fast regaining the blooming, hoyden appearance most natural to me; and Aunt Henshaw continued to write glowing accounts of my improvement. In due time my scrawl was answered by a most affectionate letter from mamma, to which was added a postscript by my father; and I began to rise wonderfully in my own estimation, in consequence of having letters addressed entirely to myself. I even undertook ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman

... whatever may be feminine, and to deem all other men mere goats? But, because ye sit, a row of fools numbering one hundred or haply two hundred, do ye think I dare not irrumate your entire two hundred—loungers!—at once! Think it! but I'll scrawl all over the front of your tavern with scorpion-words. For my girl, who has fled from my embrace (she whom I loved as ne'er a maid shall be beloved—for whom I fought fierce fights) has seated herself here. All ye, both honest men and rich, and also, (O cursed shame) all ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... attend you through life'" she had written in her old-country scrawl; "but in the end will prove your undoing, for you will meet your death at the ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge

... of the bed she regarded the dear scrawl lovingly, savoring it, as is the way of a woman. Then she took a hairpin from the knot of bright hair (also as is the way of woman) and slit the envelope with a quick, sure rip. M-m-m—it wasn't much ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... white threads of considerable length at the extremities of the leaves, of which threads I remember no drawing or notice in the botanical books. Figure 1 represents, magnified, a cluster of these leaves, with the germinating stalk springing from their centre; but my scrawl was tired and careless, and for once, Mr. Burgess ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... in this part of Cumberland partake of the rudeness which characterises those of Scotland. The outside of the house promised little for the interior, notwithstanding the vaunt of a sign, where a tankard of ale voluntarily decanted itself into a tumbler, and a hieroglyphical scrawl below attempted to express a promise of 'good entertainment for man and horse.' Brown was no fastidious traveller: he stopped and entered the cabaret. ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... the note and spoke with an elaborate air of indifference that was meant to express a calm ignoring of the puzzled questioning in the other's eyes. The next moment she read this in Arkwright's peculiar scrawl: ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter

... him. The business had been arranged while Larry was in Paris, and the expostulations that might have prevailed if delivered viva voce, failed of their effect when presented on foreign paper, in Cousin Dick's illegible scrawl. It was all very fine for Larry, ran the illegible scrawl, to talk of selling at such a price, but he ought to see what a hole his doing so put his neighbours in! Larry hadn't a squad of incumbrances, and charges, and ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... lower classes wrote Latin for all sorts 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 ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield

... thousand feet above the greening valley; in the riotous din of squirrels and birds interwoven with the booming of frogs from the still ponds; and finally in the announcement tacked upon the post-office door. The two line scrawl in lead pencil did not state in so many words the same tidings which the blue birds were proclaiming from the thicket on the far bank of the Little MacLeod; it merely announced that to-night Pere Marquette and his beloved wife, Mere Jeanne, were keeping open house. Every one in the Settlement ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory

... once before the court of assizes," said la Peyrade, after reading a few lines of the sheriff's scrawl. ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... moment 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 ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell

... 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 ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... 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 ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... sure-enough trump!" admitted Bluff. "Do you know what he said when he was showing that scrawl to us fellows? I was close enough to get part of it, and I'm dead sure the words 'entering wedge' formed ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren

... herself in the gaudy apartment of Lola behind the Golden Cloud where the dance-hall woman had peremptorily brought her when they took her off Cleve Whitmore's shoulder. She left a little note for Courtrey, a pathetic short scrawl, which simply reiterated that she had "ben true to him as his shadow," and that if he did no longer want her, ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe

... she had recognized me, but not troubling myself about the matter I left the gardens to walk elsewhere. The day after next, just as I was going to get into my carriage, a man of evil aspect gave me a paper and asked me to read it. I opened it, but finding it covered with an illegible scrawl I gave it him back, telling him to read it himself. He did so, and I found myself summoned to appear before the commissary of police to answer to the plea which the midwife (whose name ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... box 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

... Polly's scrawl (which contrasted so strongly with Mrs. Clover's neat, clear hand), Gammon discovered the passage which had disturbed his correspondent. "You mustn't expect me to go into black for your husband, for ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing

... also had its peculiarities. She always wrote in a large, loose scrawl, running the words into one another after the idle fashion which was an index to her character. In this instance, however, the fault had been carried to such an extreme that the address was almost illegible; indeed, Morris wondered that the letter had not ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard

... 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 he ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... the judge and clerk had partially restored to order the chaos begotten by this scene, when a bit of paper was slipped from behind into Bruce's hand. He unfolded it with trembling fingers, and read in a disguised, back-hand scrawl: ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott

... to find that it was a note from a certain girl with unforgettable grey eyes. But before he had read the few words, as soon in fact as his eyes had fallen upon the uneven, laboriously constructed letters of the lead-pencilled scrawl, he knew that this did not come from her hand. The signature puzzled him; it consisted of two letters, initials evidently, a very large j, not capitalized, followed by ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... it?" cried Ahab. "Give it me, man. Aye, aye, it's but a dim scrawl;—what's this?" As he was studying it out, Starbuck took a long cutting-spade pole, and with his knife slightly split the end, to insert the letter there, and in that way, hand it to the boat, without its coming any closer to ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... pleasure feels: Each line detains him; he omits not one, And all the sorrows of his state are gone. - Alas! even then, in that delicious hour, He feels his fortune, and laments its power. Some Tradesman's bill his wandering eyes engage, Some scrawl for payment thrust 'twixt page and page; Some bold, loud rapping at his humble door, Some surly message he has heard before, Awake, alarm, and tell him he is poor. An angry Dealer, vulgar, rich, and proud, Thinks of his bill, and, passing, raps aloud; The elder daughter meekly ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... absolving his subjects from their oath of allegiance to him. The degraded king writhed in helpless indignation, for he was a captive. With the foolish petulance of a spoiled child, as he affixed his signature in almost an illegible scrawl, he dashed blots of ink upon the paper, and then, tearing the pen to pieces, threw it upon the floor, and ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... 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 ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... note that caught her eye lying on the table she paused to open and hastily peruse. The writing was unfamiliar to her—a dashing, impetuous scrawl that ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... afterwards, too, if need be. Here's something to be going on with—but I'm coming to London in a day or two, as it happens, and will go into the matter—I'll call on you as soon as I arrive. Excuse this scrawl—post time. ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher

... 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 rhyme ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... 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 making ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... cube-sugar box beside the green rep sofa where Bough lolled on wet days or stormy nights, her great eyes wild with apprehension, her every nerve tense and strained with terror of the master in his condescending moods, when he would make pretence of teaching her to scrawl coarse pothooks and hangers on the greasy slate that usually hung below the glass-and-bottle shelf. Or—and at these times the Sisters found her difficult to manage—she was crouching upon one side of a locked door, and a long thin wire was feeling its way ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... 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 box beside the road. It was only ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... in the envelope," she exclaimed. "I think a scrawl from Aunt Marjorie. I had a volume from her yesterday. I wonder what she wants to write ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... course, the mere writing, which is almost always excellent, but there is a ready apprehension of the meaning of any point clearly put before them, which is very satisfactory. I am now thinking of the twenty or thirty best among our 145 scholars. This is a confused, almost unintelligible scrawl; but I am busy, and not very fresh ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... was remarkably bold, but careful. Punctuation was strictly attended to, and in places a word had been obliterated with a circular scrawl which left ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... your joking did 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 told of a longing ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely

... am trying to write this scrawl to you on a round milk container in a camp near London. We are not ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... scrawl improves! [more] O come, 'tis pretty plain. Hey! how's this? Dibble!—sure it cannot be! A poet's brief! a poet ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan

... nearly the 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 ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... work at this early period we possess probably nothing except a rough scrawl on the plaster of a wall at Settignano. Even this does not exist in its original state. The Satyr which is still shown there may, according to Mr. Heath Wilson's suggestion, be a rifacimento from the master's hand at a subsequent period ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... inventive. There was not a grain of truth in it. He could not possibly have been so rude. He had been too indifferent. Too indifferent! The repetition of the phrase made him sit straighter. Pshaw! It could not be that. He possessed a little vanity; if he had not, his history would not have been worth a scrawl. But he denied the possession vehemently, as men are wont to do. Strange, a man will admit smashing those ten articles of advisement known as the decalogue and yet deny the inherent quality which surrenders the admission—vanity. However ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... 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 was ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... that occurred to her was that Steve had gone suddenly mad. He had given no hint of his altruistic motives in the hurried scrawl which she had found on the empty cot. He had merely said that he had taken away William Bannister, but that "it ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... the little chain of pitiful proofs. They found all the little, sweet, white girl-clothes folded neatly by themselves and laid in a pile together, as if on an altar for sacrifice. If the Little Girl had written "Good-bye" in her childish scrawl upon them, the Shining Mother would not have better understood. So many things she was ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... 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

... relentlessly upon his heart, and upon seeing proofs of the interview. If they had not done justice to his erotic bellowings and gesticulations, he stuck in, in a large inky scrawl, all and more than ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... interest to remark that, apart 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 reason of ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... doubts, and hopes, and fears, equal to those of any heroine of romance, and ten times as sincere. And then, too, there is her secret hoard of love documents;—the broken sixpence, the gilded brooch, the lock of hair, the unintelligible love scrawl, all treasured up in her box of Sunday finery, ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... 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 work ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond

... a brief scrawl from Nell, telling him that it was all right, she had gone to her new job, and would soon have results. So Peter went cheerfully about his own duties of trying to hold down the protest campaign of the radicals. It was really quite terrifying, the success ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... I resolved to find you out—to see what you were driving at, and where. I could only guess a part from your letter to Barnabas, and that costive scrawl with which you honored me. Perhaps, too—and give my friendship credit for the attempt—I came with some hope ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... date to this sad scrawl; but it needed none; for in twenty-four hours after it had arrived at the manse, I had set out on my way to Rosehall. The meeting betwixt the foster-father and the child was, of course, exceedingly affecting. Investigations ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... death-like faces, attenuated noses, and swollen lips. They thought all these things very ugly. The stone carvings of the present day were a great deal better. An inscription in Phoenician characters amazed them. No one could possibly have ever read that scrawl. But Monsieur Madinier, already up on the first landing with Madame Lorilleux, called to them, shouting ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... her handwritin' lately," said Tad, "and I've got so I can scrawl jest like her. Old Scotch and Jenks ain't never run onto each other at our house, but I've ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish

... and then. It was a mere hurried scrawl, saying that Allerdyke was just setting off for Hull, in obedience to a call from the police; as Gaffney had nothing to do, would Appleyard make use of him during ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher

... only one small leaf, and but very few words on that; but these words, few though they were, seemed to take her breath away, and to overwhelm her with overpowering emotion. She sat staring at the miserable scrawl as though the letters were potent with some mighty spell, and then, throwing the paper on the table by her, gave way to a passionate outburst ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson

... the short scrawl, and as he did so his face turned pale and a quick exclamation escaped ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... through the generous employment of his imagination that the storekeeper was able to make out the scrawl, which, though not signed, he knew to be the pilot's. That same imagination enabled him to bring ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates



Words linked to "Scrawl" :   write, cacography, squiggle, scrawler, chicken scratch, handwriting, script, scribble, hand, scratch



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