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More "Meagre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bringing money and fame; they think there is no difficulty in the art. The novel will afford them an opportunity of bringing in a variety of scattered details; scraps of knowledge too scanty for an essay, and scraps of experience too meagre for independent publication. Others, again, attempt histories, or works of popular philosophy and science; not because they have any special stores of knowledge, or because any striking novelty of ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... and nervously from his home to the banking-house in State Street. The situation was just as far from pleasant as it could be. He did not wish to deprive the family of the necessaries of life, which were purchased with his meagre salary, on the one hand, and it was almost impossible to endure the tyranny of Mr. Checkynshaw on the other hand. To a young man with so high an opinion of himself as the banker's clerk entertained, the greatest privation to which he could be subjected was a want of appreciation ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... not omit mentioning. It relates to the representation of our Saviour. Whether as a painting, or as a piece of sculpture, this sacred figure is generally made most repulsive—even, in the cathedral. It is meagre in form, wretched in physiognomical expression, and marked by disgusting appearances of blood about the forehead and throat. In the church of St. Mary, supposed to be the oldest in Vienna, as you enter the south door, to ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... being thus inseparable: and what rendered us more conspicuous, my cousin was very tall, myself extremely short, so that we exhibited a very whimsical contrast. This meagre figure, small, sallow countenance, heavy air, and supine gait, excited the ridicule of the children, who, in the gibberish of the country, nicknamed him 'Barna Bredanna'; and we no sooner got out of doors than our ears were assailed with a repetition of ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... however, saw them standing their little empty shoes in front of the meagre fire, he bowed his head on his hands, and the tears trickled through his fingers. But the mother smiled softly to herself, as she kissed each of the children and tucked them ...
— Gabriel and the Hour Book • Evaleen Stein
... form which literally might be called the wild man of the woods. On entering he laid down a ball of wax which he had collected in the forest. His hammock was all ragged and torn, and his bow, though of good wood, was without any ornament or polish: "erubuit domino, cultior esse suo." His face was meagre, his looks forbidding and his whole appearance neglected. His long black hair hung from his head in matted confusion; nor had his body, to all appearance, ever been painted. They gave him some cassava bread and boiled fish, which he ate voraciously, and soon after left the hut. As ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... specially on the subject of Irish writers. First is Bishop Nicholson's "Irish Historical Library." It gives accounts of numerous writers, but is wretchedly meagre. In Harris's "Hibernica" is a short tract on the same subject; and in Harris's edition of Ware's works an ample treatise on Irish Writers. This treatise is most valuable, but must be read with caution, ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... Caldwell was in great straits for want of money at this time. She had scarcely enough to pay for their meagre fare, and her own clothes and the children's were almost beyond patching and darning. Beth surprised her several times sitting beside the dining-table with the everlasting mending on her lap, fretting silently, and the child's heart was wrung. There was some legal difficulty, and letters which ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... American woman, one of a large family of daughters, who, some years since, migrated from her meagre country home to one of the northern cities, to gain her own support. She soon became an expert seamstress, but finding the employment too confining for health and comfort, she went boldly to work for others, to house-keep, cook, clean, &c. After trying several places, she fell upon one where ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... more and more exciting, till the meagre repast was at an end, when the colonel rose and walked round to ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... owned no slaves; their homes were generally in the hills and poor country; their facilities for educating their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre—what there was, if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too needed emancipation. Under the old regime they were looked down upon by those who controlled all the affairs in the interest of slave-owners, as poor white trash who were allowed the ballot so long as they ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... know them as Adam and Eve, for both were beginning a world that contained neither friends nor kin. Both had very white hands and very short hair. The man was tall and meagre, with a receding forehead and a sandy complexion that should have been freckled, but was not. He had a trick of half-closing his eyes when he looked at anything, not screwing them up as seamen do, but appearing rather to drop a film over them like the inner eyelid of a ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Apart from these meagre facts, we know nothing of Marvell's boyhood at Hull. His clerical foe, Dr. Parker, afterwards Bishop of Oxford, writes contemptuously of "an hunger-starved whelp of a country vicar," and in another passage, which ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... necessary; both men and women sit on their heels; and in this posture they surround the great iron pot, with each a bason in his hands, when they take their meals. The poverty of their food was sufficiently indicated by their meagre appearance. It consists chiefly of boiled rice, millet, or other grain, with the addition of onions or garlic, and mixed sometimes with a few other vegetables that, by way of relish, are fried in rancid oil, extracted from a variety of plants, such as the Seffamum, Brassica ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... completed and their shattered planks and timbers torn out of the "gripes." The crew of the ship had, for safety's sake, assembled aft on the full poop; and among them could be seen a female figure crouching down under the meagre shelter of the cabin skylight evidently in ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... fellows, waddling under the effects of double allowance of solids, and perhaps with a trifle too much of fluids, came singing and capering along the deck of their hulk. In the most good-humoured way possible, they asked their neighbours how many geese and turkeys they had discussed that day. The meagre answer called forth shouts of merriment, and the poor fellows belonging to the other ship were rather unhandsomely taunted with the scantiness of their Christmas fare. "Look at that and weep, you hungry-faced rascals!" exclaimed one of our jolly blades, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... sittings and standings, and vanished the merchandise, and with it the barrows, donkeys, donkey-carts, and tumbrils, and all other things on wheels and feet, except the slow scavengers with unwieldy carts and meagre horses clearing up the rubbish, assisted by the sleek town pigeons, better plumped out than on non-market days. While there was yet an hour or two to wane before the autumn sunset, the loiterer outside ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... and meagre a sketch of the literature of Siam, I would fain prepare the reader to appreciate the peculiarities of an English classical school in the Royal Palace at Bangkok. In Siam, all schools, literary societies, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... Lazarus from the dead! That, as Bunyan justly says, would be to make a new Bible, to improve the finished salvation. No, if they will not hear Moses and the prophets, our Lord and his apostles, they must all likewise perish. This is a very meagre outline of this solemn treatise; it is full of striking illustrations, eminently calculated to arouse the thoughtless, and to convey solid ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... very few remnants of classical works have come down to us in the original from a remote period. The rare exceptions are certain papyrus fragments, found in Egypt, some of which are Greek manuscripts dating from the third century B.C. Even from these sources the output is meagre; and the only other repository of classical books is a single room in the buried city of Herculaneum, which contained several hundred manuscripts, mostly in a charred condition, a considerable number of which, however, have been unrolled and found more or less legible. This ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... some knowledge of the Land of the Midnight Sun, of the sun's ways among the Laplanders, of a hoary summer breathing very softly on the violet beds, or say, the London-pride and crab-apples, provided for those meagre people, somewhere amid the remoteness of their icy seas. In such wise Apollo had already anticipated his sad fortunes in the Middle Age as a god definitely in exile, driven north of the Alps, and even here ever in flight before ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Beyond some meagre annals, compiled in monastic houses, and a few rhymed panegyrics, the muses of history and of poetry seem to have abandoned the island to the theologians, jurists, and men of science. The Bardic order was still one of the recognized estates, and found patrons ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... drummed into his unwilling ears, and in the midst of his suffering he turned to his faith for comfort. He remembered the psalms that had been taught by his father and mother and said them repeatedly, and he even forbore at times to eat his meagre rations, thinking that by fasting he might prove worthy in the eyes ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... gravel in a rude miner's cradle, paddling about on the river's brink, and anon staggering down from the gravel bank above, with large square kerosene cans filled with pay dirt balanced on either end of a pole across their meagre shoulders. Bare-headed, in their loose garments, with their pottering movements and wrinkled faces shining with heat, they looked like two weird, unrevered old women working out some dismal penance. High up in the sky the great black buzzards sailed and sailed on slanting ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... organisms represented by such adaptation do not more frequently arise, in which case new diseases would frequently occur. It cannot be denied that new diseases appear, but there is no certain evidence that they do, and there is equally no evidence that diseases disappear. From the meagre descriptions of diseases, usually of the epidemic type, which have come down to us from the past, it is difficult to recognize many of the diseases described. The single diseases are recognized by comparing the causes, the lesions and the symptoms with those of other diseases, and ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... "literate" in the sense of being able to read and write a letter. The proportion of literacy among Hindus and Sikhs is three times as great as among Muhammadans. In 1911-12 one boy in six of school-going age was at school or college and one girl in 37. This may seem a meagre result of sixty years of work, for the Government and Christian missionaries, who have had an honourable connection with the educational history of the province, began their efforts soon after annexation, and a Director of Public Instruction was appointed as long ago as 1856. ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... treading this haunted byway was not clear to him, but in time he emerged into a more commodious avenue. When within a few yards of the corner he perceived, through a window, that a small confectionary of mean appearance was set in the angle. His same glance that estimated its meagre equipment, its cheap soda-water fountain and stock of tobacco and sweets, took cognizance of Captain Peek within lighting a ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... the sweet little bedroom didn't move Maggie Howland. Tildy presently brought up a meagre supper, of which the mother and daughter partook almost in silence. Then Mrs. Howland went to her room, where she fell fast asleep, and Maggie had the drawing-room to herself. She had arranged a sort of extempore bed on the hard sofa, and was about to lie down, ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... and He Himself is Fullness of Life. The idea therefore of God, in the myth of the Dying and Reviving Saviour, is, from one point of view, imperfect. At any rate it is a more constant help to think of God as full, not of any more meagre satisfaction at His works, but of the most ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... use his own expressions, he lived a "solitary and sedentary life, mihi et musis, having more converse with the dead than the living, that is, more with books than with men." The facts for his biography are scanty and meagre, and are rather collected by inference from his works, than from any other source. He was born at Thornton on the 3rd of February, 1610. From a passing notice of A. a Wood, and an incidental allusion in his own works, he may be presumed to have passed some time at Cambridge, ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... after the challenge of the forged finger print, he continued at work, endeavoring to extract a clue from the meagre evidence—the bit of cloth and trace of poison already obtained from other cases, and now added the strange succession of events that surrounded the tragedy we ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... school, a miserable hovel, which was falling to ruin: he constructed two, one for girls, the other for boys. He allotted a salary from his own funds to the two instructors, a salary twice as large as their meagre official salary, and one day he said to some one who expressed surprise, "The two prime functionaries of the state are the nurse and the schoolmaster." He created at his own expense an infant school, a thing then almost ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... attended to the curious point of equatorial refrigeration. I quite agree that it must have been small; yet the more I go into that question the more convinced I feel that there was during the Glacial period some migration from north to south. The sketch in the "Origin" gives a very meagre account of my fuller ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... rights of men, as would be perpetrated by any sovereign State, which, to-day, makes a thing to be property, and to-morrow, takes it from the lawful owners, without political necessity or pecuniary compensation. Now, if it be morally right for a majority of the people (and that majority possibly a meagre one, who may not own a slave) to take, without necessity or compensation, the property in slaves held by a minority, (and that minority a large one,) then it would be morally right for a majority, without property, to take any thing else that may be lawfully ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... from its mother earth. I hoped from my heart that the whole thing was abandoned, and would not mention it in my letters home, lest I should revive the mere idea of it. But in default of the "Literary Times" there did appear a new journal, a daily journal too,—a tall, slender, and meagre stripling, with a vast head, by way of prospectus, which protruded itself for three weeks successively at the top of the leading article, with a fine and subtle body of paragraphs, and the smallest legs, in the way of advertisements, that any poor newspaper ever stood upon! And yet ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it has ceased. That wretched woman with the infant in her arms, round whose meagre form the remnant of her own scanty shawl is carefully wrapped, has been attempting to sing some popular ballad, in the hope of wringing a few pence from the compassionate passer-by. A brutal laugh at her weak voice is all she has gained. The tears fall thick and fast ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... barren along part of the coast, between Tacna and Copiapo, but with a coarse scanty vegetation near the Cordilleras along watercourses and on the slopes where moisture from the melting snows above percolates through the sand. In the valleys of the Copiapo and Huasco rivers a meagre vegetation is to be found near their channels, apart from what is produced by irrigation, but the surface of the plateau and the dry river channels below the sierras are completely barren. Continuing southward into the province of Coquimbo a gradual ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... us in our time of need, For Thou canst quell the lions' rage, and feed Our hungry spirits with celestial fare: And if some soul no meagre taste would gain Of that repast, but thirstily is fain Full measure of ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... cells, and two sets of iron bars intervened between us and the windows, but we instituted an attack upon them as best we could. Our tin drinking cups, the electric light bulbs, every available article of the meagre supply in each cell, including my treasured copy of Browning's poems which I had secretly taken in with me, was thrown through the windows. By this simultaneous attack from every cell, we succeeded in breaking one window before our supply of tiny weapons was exhausted. The fresh October air came ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... barbarity to neglect. The framers of such a bill must be content to inherit the honours of that Athenian lawgiver whose edicts were said to be written not in ink but in blood. But suppose it past; suppose one of these men, as I have seen them,—meagre with famine, sullen with despair, careless of a life which your Lordships are perhaps about to value at something less than the price of a stocking-frame;—suppose this man surrounded by the children for whom he is unable ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... dry lips cracked apart; he swallowed grimly several times, then his long bony fingers sought the meagre ends of his black ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... he was a bank clerk; it had a poor and meagre sound. It was not for him that she had been trained. She had been made to slave for herself, and was to make a "continental" marriage with the highest bidder. Eve's heart had been pretty well schooled out of her, and yet, before dinner came to an ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... multiplication table. Yet strange as it may seem, his musical education was neglected. A four months' course in piano instruction was interrupted and then resumed for two months more. Upon this meagre foundation rested his subsequent phenomenal progress." I pause to point out to the astonished and breathless reader that even Mozart and Schubert, infant prodigies that they were, received more ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field—that, of course, they are many in number,—or, that, after all, they are other than the little, shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... animal structure and habits are to be accounted for. How, for instance, could the mammary glands be developed in oviparous creatures? Mr. Darwin regards them as originating in cutaneous glands, developed in the pouch of the marsupials. But his grounds for this statement are very meagre. To a great extent they rest on what an American Naturalist "believes he has seen;" and besides, the ornithorhyncus, which has no pouch, and which is lower in the scale of life than the marsupials, by Mr. Darwin's own admission (O. S., p. 190), possesses the glands. Mr. ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... was my lord's, the forest was my lord the king's; neither of them for this poor Jacques. If he thought to eke out his meagre way of life by some petty theft of wood for the fire, or for a new roof-tree, he found himself face to face with a whole department, from the Grand Master of the Woods and Waters, who was a high-born lord, down to the common sergeant, who ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... interlaced that, taken together—which was how I had to take them—they form as good an illustration as I can recall of the manner in which, for the good of his soul doubtless, fate sometimes deals with a man's avidity. These incidents certainly had larger bearings than the comparatively meagre consequence we are here concerned with—though I feel that consequence also a thing to speak of with some respect. It's mainly in such a light, I confess, at any rate, that the ugly fruit of my exile is at this hour present to me. Even at first indeed the spirit in which ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... speech in Tuesday's "Times?" I saw it by chance, and have written a sharp letter to the "Times." [(Being in Edinburgh, he had been reading the Scotch papers, and] "the reports of the Scotch papers as to what takes place in Parliament are meagre.") ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... but the nave of a temple designed with transepts and choir. The length was to have been 800 feet, the width of the transepts 625, the dome 183 feet in diameter. A building so colossal in extent, and so monotonously meagre in conception, could not but ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... dialectical peculiarities of our author. The scanty material at our disposal must be a sufficient excuse for the very meagre outline which is here presented to the reader. As our materials increase, the whole question of Early English dialects will no doubt receive that attention from English philologists which the subject really demands, and editors of old English works will then be enabled ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... to obtain communications from one of his friends, designated by the initial A., more than a year after the latter's death. He spent six sittings over it, but the result was meagre. He obtained some names, and with difficulty some mention of certain incidents of A.'s life. Some of the incidents were even unknown to Dr Hodgson at the time, but all was full of incoherence and confusion. Finally he ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... were not infrequently reduced to the very verge of starvation, yet they struggled on. Tree after tree fell before the axe, and the small clearing was turned to immediate account. A few necessaries of life were produced, and even these, limited and meagre as they were, were the beginnings of comfort. Comfort, indeed! but far removed not only from them, but from the idea we associate with the term. I have in my younger days taken grist to the mill, as ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... Byzantine Madonna is to be found in nearly every old church in Italy, to see one is to see all. They are half-length figures against a background of gold leaf, at first laid on solidly, or, at a somewhat later date, studded with cherubs. The Virgin has a meagre, ascetic countenance, large, ill-shaped eyes, and an almost peevish expression; her head is draped in a heavy, dark blue veil, falling in ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... altogether the weapon so irresistibly took my fancy that I unhesitatingly appropriated it forthwith. The shirts and stockings, too, and a few other articles of clothing that looked as if they would fit me, promised to make a very welcome addition to my rather meagre wardrobe; so I made them up into a good-sized bundle for transference ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... prepared for the day, consisted of a canvas wall with a wide-open space all around, between it and the roof; and the whole internal economy was ingenuously open to public gaze. Not that it mattered, for everything was as neat as a model doll's house: the narrow bed, the pathetically meagre toilet arrangements, the one chair, the small trunk which was the sole wardrobe, and the ridiculous shaving mirror stuck up on a pole, above a ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... meagre: why not? He who lives with so good a mother, so healthy and so beauteous a sister, and who has such a good uncle, and a world-*full of girl cousins, wherefore should he leave off being lean? Though he touch naught save what is banned, thou canst find ample reason wherefore ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... rejoice in the greatest abundance of its gifts. Where, on the contrary, its exercise is regarded as the badge of dishonor and the vile office of the refuse and offscouring of the race, its largess must be proportionably meagre and scanty. The key of the enigma is to be found in the constitution of human nature. A man in fetters cannot do the task-work that one whose limbs are unshackled looks upon as a pastime. A man urged by the prospect of winning an improved condition for himself and his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... were the Fairies, concerning whom the reader will find a long dissertation, in Volume Second. The Brownie formed a class of beings, distinct in habit and disposition from the freakish and mischievous elves. He was meagre, shaggy, and wild in his appearance. Thus, Cleland, in his satire against the Highlanders, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... morning, his strength had in large measure returned to him. His head was still a little giddy but his appetite was returning. Still he looked askance at the meagre and unpalatable breakfast ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... not positive, but I believe that he got a hint that a European had wandered over that country who had been wounded in the head and hand, and was almost naked; but the natives could give him but very meagre accounts. He continued on, however, down the Isthmus, on the Pacific side, by sea, as far as Chili, when he went into the interior to Peru, crossed the Andes, and followed down the Orinoco to Para, when ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... some meagre little purchases in hand, had been listening to the discussion, started for the door. When he had opened it, he turned and faced them. "I'll tell ye one thing, all of ye," he said, "an' that is, he'll ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the brothers Hocking. The stationer will tell you that there is no demand for books; but that he can procure anything you specially want by return of post. He will also tell you that on the whole he makes no profit out of books; what trifle he captures on his meagre sales he loses on books unsold. He may inform you that his rival has entirely ceased to stock books of any sort, and that he alone stands for letters in the midst of forty thousand people. In a town of sixty thousand there will be a largeish stationer's with a small separate ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... rhetoric. I have marked the transitions of your discourse, the felicities of your expression, your refined argumentation, and glowing imagery; and been forced to acknowledge, that all delights were meagre and contemptible, compared with those connected with the audience and sight of you. I have contemplated your principles, and been astonished at the solidity of their foundation, and the perfection of their structure. I have traced ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... swept my dollars into hands other than mine. However, with still a "shot in the locker," and with some feelings of our own in the matter of how we should get home, I say, we set to work with tools saved from the wreck—a meagre kit—and soon found ourselves in command of another ship, which I will describe the building of, also the dimensions and the model and rig, first naming the tools ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... for the dire success depends On various sects, by common guilt made friends. Whose heads, though ne'er so differing in their creed, I' th' point of treason yet were well agreed. 'Mongst these, extorting Ishban first appears, 280 Pursued by a meagre troop of bankrupt heirs. Blest times when Ishban, he whose occupation So long has been to cheat, reforms the nation! Ishban of conscience suited to his trade, As good a saint as usurer ever made. Yet Mammon has not so engross'd him quite, But Belial lays as large a claim of spite; Who, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... of the Gospels record only three or four meagre facts regarding the first thirty years of Jesus' life. The real history of those significant years ran so far beneath the surface of external events that it completely escaped the historian. The history of the mental ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... assuaged; Eda's was the love content to pour out, that demands little. She was capable of immolation. Janet was by no means ungrateful for the warmth of such affection, though in moments conscious of a certain perplexity and sadness because she was able to give such a meagre return for ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... have done as she did. It was not Southern suppleness that saved her from the charge of harsh audacity, but something of the kind of genius in her mood which has hurried the greater poets of sound and speech to impose their naturalness upon accepted laws, or show the laws to have been our meagre limitations. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... So meagre was the salary for the increasing household, that Roxana urged that a select school be started; and in this she taught French, drawing, painting, and embroidery, besides the higher English branches. With all this work she found time to make herself the idol of her children. ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... impart that knowledge may be the best fitted, at once to obviate the natural indisposition to the subject, and to provide that when it does obtain a place in their understanding, it shall not be a meagre, diminutive, insulated occupant there, but in its proper dimensions and relations. And if, in attentively studying this, there be any who come to ascertain, that the right expedient is a bare inculcation of religious instruction, disconnected, on system, from the illustrative aid ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... plan—even more difficult—was to continue down the river as far as its junction with the Tres Barras, from which place I would strike across the virgin forest as far as the Madeira River. I had not the faintest idea how I could realize either plan with the ridiculously meagre resources at my disposal. I had money enough, but unfortunately that was one of the few spots on earth where money was of little use. Again I trusted in Providence to come to our help. Both plans involved thousands of kilometres of navigation of a diabolical river, in an almost uncontrollable ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... knocked against each other. One sail, square and of a dingy white, drooped from a broad yard-arm, which was itself tilted, and now and then creaked against the yellow mast complainingly, unmindful of the simple tackle designed to keep it in control. A watchman crouched in the meagre shade of a fan-like structure overhanging the bow deck. The roofing and the floor, where exposed, were clean, even bright; in all other parts subject to the weather and the wash there was only the blackness ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... was only vague rumor and meagre report that fell to the share of these outsiders; but the day before Leif's departure it happened that they got a bit ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... energies, his heart, 150 Insensible to courage, truth, or love, His stunted stature and imbecile frame, Marked him for some abortion of the earth, Fit compeer of the bears that roamed around, Whose habits and enjoyments were his own: 155 His life a feverish dream of stagnant woe, Whose meagre wants, but scantily fulfilled, Apprised him ever of the joyless length Which his short being's wretchedness had reached; His death a pang which famine, cold and toil 160 Long on the mind, whilst yet the vital spark Clung to the body stubbornly, had brought: All was inflicted here that ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... 1832, says, "From St. Louis, I went to Fort Jefferson, about nine miles distant, to see Black Hawk, the Indian warrior and his fellow prisoners—a forlorn crew—emaciated and dejected—the redoubtable chieftain himself, a meagre old man upwards of seventy. He has, however, a fine head, a Roman style of face, and a prepossessing countenance."[13] When Catlin the artist, visited Jefferson Barracks for the purpose of painting the ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... table. Great astonishment. Colonel Kase says it is wonderful, but during the Centennial year they got tables loaded with flowers (the Medium has not given a flower seance for some years, she says, hence the rather meagre supply.) A lady points out the fact that the flowers are quite cold and have a sort of dew on them. But I found those before me quite dry, as if they had been in the room for some time. The Medium is tired and retires. Mrs. X. is requested ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... oars showed that he was no stranger to exercise of this kind. His frame, though a trifle meagre, was well set. By degrees a preoccupation which had been manifest in him gave way under the influence of the sky, and when it was time to approach the landing-place he had fallen into a mood of cheerful talk—light with Paula, with Annabel more earnest. His eyes often passed from one to the other ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... over the scene, but there was not the charm about it that his recollection had warranted him to expect. During the years of his wandering he had looked forward to just this scene, and now that it had come he was disappointed. It was a bare and meagre life, he deemed, and not to be compared to the one to which he had become used. Still, he would open their eyes a bit, and his own ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... are the meagre result of long search in periodical literature. The fact that the photograph and the personal note bulk far more largely than criticism in ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... Christmas-day, passed very agreeably: we treated the men, on that day, with the best the establishment afforded. Although that was no great affair, they seemed well satisfied; for they had been restricted, during the last few months, to a very meagre diet, living, as one may say, on sun-dried fish. On the 27th, the schooner having returned from her second voyage up the river, we dismantled her, and laid her up for the winter at the entrance of a ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... must seem a bold thing to attempt to deduce these grand results out of the meagre subject that I deal with; but I am one of those who believe that all is in little. The child is small, and he includes the man; the brain is narrow, and it harbours thought; the eye is but a ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... have, therefore, taken in hand a short sketch-history of mine, published some six months ago, have cut out some of it and have revised the rest, and blended it with the material of the following chapters, of which it forms nearly one-third. The result is something not quite so meagre in quantity or staccato in style, though even now less full than I should have liked to make it, had it been other than the work of an unknown writer telling the story of a small archipelago which is at once the most ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... man's first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste brought death into the world and all our woe." It is only when we review the strangely mingled elements which make up the poem that we realize the genius which fused them into such a perfect whole. The meagre outline of the Hebrew legend is lost in the splendour and music of Milton's verse. The stern idealism of Geneva is clothed in the gorgeous robes of the Renascence. If we miss something of the free play of Spenser's fancy, ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... been different; he could not have borne for twenty-four hours the idea that she was in uncertainty as to money. But that had all been settled long ago. From the first she had had the administering of their modest fortune. On their marriage Nick's own meagre income, paid in, none too regularly, by the agent who had managed for years the dwindling family properties, had been transferred to her: it was the only wedding present he could make. And the wedding ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... of leading their lives in the most beautiful of towns. Their habitations are decayed; their taxes heavy; their pockets light; their opportunities few. One receives an impression, however, that life presents itself to them with attractions not accounted for in this meagre train of advantages, and that they are on better terms with it than many people who have made a better bargain. They lie in the sunshine; they dabble in the sea; they wear bright rags; they fall into attitudes and harmonies; they assist at an eternal conversazione. It is not easy to say that one ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... mamma, "her advantages for learning were not so good as mine; indeed, I was her principal teacher. As I have told you, I went to school very little as a child, and the village school at Vermont gave only the most meagre and elementary instruction, but I was always an eager reader of whatever came in my way, as well as an attentive listener, and thus I contrived while in the woods to pick up considerable information. I remember seeing at that time in a neighbor's ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... disappointed at this meagre account and sudden conclusion of what had bidden fair to become a stirring tale of the sea; but Maikar re-aroused their expectations by stating his firm belief that it was all nonsense about there ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... markets. Madame Lecoeur and La Sarriette were in their own fashion keeping the oaths of silence they had taken. For her own part, Mademoiselle Saget warily held her tongue, leaving the two others to circulate the story of Florent's antecedents. At first only a few meagre details were hawked about in low tones; then various versions of the facts got into circulation, incidents were exaggerated, and gradually quite a legend was constructed, in which Florent played the part of a perfect bogey man. He had killed ten gendarmes at the barricade in the ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... Czarina. And with these dreams he suffered the tortures of hunger. For days and days he had no nourishment but horseflesh roasted on the reeds, which was made palatable by meadow- grass in place of salt. One night, as he was sitting over the fire and roasting his meagre dinner on a wooden spit, one of the three Cossacks who formed his body-guard said to him, "You have played your comedy long enough, Pugasceff!" The adventurer sprang ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... his horse and inclined his head sideways on seeing the old major step out, very tall and meagre, in a straight narrow coat coming down to his ankles as it were the casing of the regimental ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... about the long green cloths. Algerian soldiers on leave, gambling their meagre pay. Moorish merchants from the upper town. Negroes. Maltese. Colonists who have come a hundred miles to wager the price of a cart or a pair of oxen on the turn of a card. Pale, tense and anxious ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... opened his eyes sharply and beheld the meagre figure of Mrs. Silk. In one hand she held a medicine-bottle and a glass and in the ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... this was completed, the Government schooner arrived from Port Jackson, and King sent ten ringleaders of the mutiny to Sydney for trial, pardoning ten others. The vessel was despatched in a hurry, and King sent a very meagre letter to Grose, leaving a lieutenant of the corps in charge of the guard sent with ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... sat with both hands holding the book upon her lap, her eyes seldom moving from a point directly before her. Wilfrid glanced at her frequently. He was more observant now of the traces of bodily weakness in her; he saw how meagre she had become, how slight her whole frame was. At moments it cost him a serious effort to refrain from leaning to her and whispering words—he knew not what—something kind, something that should change her fixed sadness. Why had he forced his company upon ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... 'Twas a meagre old rascal that someone had charged with picking pockets: and they were dragging him off to be duck'd. Now in the heart of Wantage the little stream that runs through the town is widen'd into a cistern about ten feet square, ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... or ray of eloquence. The momentary feeling of disappointment in the audience, however—almost all of whom, it may easily be believed, were in the interest of the Aubreys—quickly yielded to one of satisfaction and relief; as they thought they might regard so meagre a speech as heralding as meagre a case. As soon as he had sat down, Mr. Quicksilver rose and called the first witness. "We're safe!" said the Attorney-General to Mr. Sterling and Mr. Crystal, with his hand before his mouth, and with the very faintest whisper that could be audible to those whom ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... who, while receiving a salary of fifteen hundred francs a year, spent a couple of thousand, and utilized his wits in defending his meagre salary from his creditors. On perceiving Chupin, he made a wrathful gesture, and his first words were: "I haven't ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... with a vague terror of the law, and an ignorant sense of an impending implication that set both craft and veracity at defiance. They held their heads down ponderingly, as they stood; perhaps rehearsing mentally the details of their meagre knowledge of the event, or perhaps canvassing the aspect of certain points which might impute to them blame or arouse suspicion, and endeavoring to compass shifty evasions, to transform or suppress them in their forthcoming testimony. At random, one might have differentiated the witnesses ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Burke's small store, the customer scanned the place anxiously, and it seemed to him that its supplies had never been so meagre. He succeeded in buying his lettuce, however, and a bottle of salad oil, and, remembering a can of asparagus tips on his own shelves, congratulated himself upon the attainment of his salad. Some eggs which the grocer swore were above reproach, and some small bakery cakes, ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... piece of tapestry. Wadard, a gentleman with a Saxon name, held it of him, probably for the quit—rent of an annual eel-pie, although the consideration is not stated. The clergy were, by reason of their frequent meagre days and seasons, great consumers of fish. The phosphorescent character of that diet may have contributed, if we accept certain modern theories of animal chemistry as connected in some as yet unexplained way with psychology, to the intellectual predominance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... published were considered worthy of mention, each in its own way. The Gothic design could be made very rich and interesting with panel colored decoration. The upper portion is well proportioned, the lower portion somewhat too meagre. The Colonial design is interesting above the keyboard; the arches below the "trusses" are out of scale. The Baroque design would depend for its good or bad quality entirely upon the delicacy and skill with which the carving was done. Both the Gothic and Baroque designs could ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration - Vol 1, No. 9 1895 • Various
... Pointed in heaven, should clap their wings, and sing To all the under world the Loves and Fights Of gods, and such men neere 'em. Palamon Is but his foyle, to him a meere dull shadow: Hee's swarth and meagre, of an eye as heavy As if he had lost his mother; a still temper, No stirring in him, no alacrity, Of all this sprightly sharpenes not a smile; Yet these that we count errours may become him: Narcissus was a sad Boy, but a heavenly:— ...
— The Two Noble Kinsmen • William Shakespeare and John Fletcher [Apocrypha]
... see them undergo the poverty of the religious life, which is great, together with its penances, its meagre food, the yoke of obedience, which makes me ashamed of myself at times; and with all this, interrupted sleep, trials everywhere, everywhere the Cross. I think it would be a great evil for any one to lose so great a good by his own fault. It may be some ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... her glory, and bounced into the barouche with a vigor that made it rock quite unromantically; for she is not frail, she is not a butterfly, as you perceived. I recognized her from a description I had received from my cousin the bride. She was accompanied by that meagre, smart little sprite of a French girl, whom Madam always takes with her,—to talk French with, and to be waited upon by her, she says; but rather, I believe, by way of a contrast to set off her own brilliant complexion and imperial proportions. It is Juno and Arachne. The divine orbs of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... seeing the house in such a crowded state, started, paused, and glanced with some terror at the persons assembled. Her dress was not altered since her last visit; but her countenance, though more meagre and emaciated, expressed but little of the unsettled energy which then flashed from her eyes, and distorted her features by the depth of that mysterious excitement by which she had been agitated. Her countenance was still muffled ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... Journal of two members of the Labadist sect who came over to this country in order to find a location for the establishment of a community has served to throw a flood of light upon what otherwise might have been a lost chapter in the history of Maryland. For so meagre are the sources of ready availability for a knowledge of the Labadist colony which was effected in Maryland that without this account the story of the first communal sect in America might have ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... You shall have diamonds.—Jean-Marie, take it out of the boot, with religious care, and bring it piece by piece into the dining-room. We shall have plate at table! Darling, hasten and prepare this turtle; it will be a whet—it will be an addition to our meagre ordinary. I myself will proceed to the cellar. We shall have a bottle of that little Beaujolais you like, and finish with the Hermitage; there are still three bottles left. Worthy wine ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in thought, as to wish to marry the man she did not love. Just because he is a man. Yes, I know Tib, and now I will go straight to her and ask her if she will marry a good, honest lad, who, to be sure, is somewhat lean, but who doubtless will become fatter if he has any other fare than the meagre, abominable stuff on which Gammer Gurton feeds him; a lad who, to be sure, is blear-eyed, but will soon get over that disease when he no more sees Gammer Gurton, who acts on his eyes like a stinking onion, and makes them always red and ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... youthful Joukahainen, He, the meagre youth of Lapland; And, when visiting the village, Wondrous tales he heard related, How there dwelt another minstrel, And that better songs were carolled. Far in Vainola's sweet meadows, Kalevala's extended heathlands; Better songs than he ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... Al-rami), to the southward of which is another kingdom named Sumoltra, and not far from thence a large island named Java. His account, which was delivered orally to the person by whom it was written down, is extremely meagre and unsatisfactory. ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... neighborhood, but, from time to time, brought in meagre supplies of fish, which they sold to the famished soldiers at exorbitant prices. Lest they should pay the penalty of their extortion, they would not enter the fort, but lay in their canoes in the river, beyond gunshot, waiting for their customers to come out to them. "Oftentimes," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... being now over, the strangers requested to be shown to their place of repose. The old people would gladly have talked with them a little longer, and have expressed the wonder which they felt, and their delight at finding the poor and meagre supper prove so much better and more abundant than they hoped. But the elder traveller had inspired them with such reverence, that they dared not ask him any questions. And when Philemon drew Quicksilver aside, and inquired how under the sun a ...
— The Miraculous Pitcher - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... foreign lands, especially in the East, the English or American traveler is constantly amazed to observe upon what meagre diet the natives exist. Accustomed to meat at every meal, he sees thousands of people who eat meat perhaps not once a year; used to an abundance of vegetables and fruits of infinite variety, he encounters ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... concerning the partition of the soil of the forest into small plots of ground for the poor. Paper is very forbearing, and it looks very idyllic and comfortable to see, carefully calculated before our eyes, how many hundreds of dear little estates could be made out of the meagre soil of the forest, on which the proletarian could settle down to the contented patriarchal existence of a farmer. Practical attempts along this line have not been wanting, but, instead of diminishing the proletariat, such an increase of small farms only served to augment it all the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... a short time for estimating the harvest from such sowing as this. The beginning was small. The annals are meagre. Here have labored earnest and consecrated men and women from the best institutions of the North. The citizens of Austin have always been sympathetic and helpful. Several of the most prominent of them have ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 2, April, 1900 • Various
... of the huge carcase, ere the skeleton itself should be torn asunder. Nor could the invading populace have been disappointed of their expectations: they found numberless things of immense value in their eyes, and great use in their meagre economy. For years, I might say centuries after, pieces of furniture and panels of carved oak, bits of tapestry, antique sconces and candlesticks of brass, ancient horse-furniture, and a thousand ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... have occupied eight presses, or sets of shelves, set against the east and west walls, but our information on the subject of the fittings is provokingly meagre. It is chiefly contained in the following passage of a description written by Bernardino Baldi, and dated 10 June, 1587. Baldi, as a native of Urbino, and in later life attached to the service of the Duke, must have been ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... doubt what that action would be. Since September the province had been gathering its meagre military supplies. It was but common sense to seize them before they could be used. Soon after the new year Gage began his measures. "Genl. Orders," writes disgruntled Lieutenant Barker. "If any officers of the different ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... pupil. According, in Mr. Lindsay's treatise, we have upwards of forty pages of elementary instructions, definitions, and concise treatises, copiously interspersed with musical illustrations; whereas the engraved treatises are generally meagre in their instructions, from the difficulty of punching text illustrations. The article on accentuation is, we are told, the first successful attempt in any elementary work on the Flute, to define this important subject. It is written in a lucid and popular style, and is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... money in his pocket, Inkspot entered a tavern, a low place, but not so low as the one he had patronized on his arrival in Valparaiso. He had had a meagre supper, and now possessed but money enough to pay for one glass of whiskey, and having procured this, he seated himself on a stool in a corner, determined to protract his enjoyment as long as possible. Where he would sleep that night he knew not, but it was not yet bedtime, and he ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... a small, unhealthy-looking man, not much unlike Matthieu, though darker in colouring, and of a weaker type of face. He was a serious, silent, earnest man, a model of solidarity, regularly setting aside his weekly contribution to the Cause out of his meagre earning on which he had to maintain a wife and four children and a young sister. They all lived in the one room, but one felt that this did not cause them any suffering; they were evidently used to it. The three grown-ups were all at ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... the house. It was rather a hovel than a house; but, poor as it was, it was as neat as misery could make it. The old woman was sitting up in her wretched bed, winding worsted; four meagre, ill-clothed, pale children were all busy, some of them sticking pins in paper for the pin-maker, and others sorting rags for ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... in outward figure, His meagre corps, though full of vigour, Would halt behind him, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... these meagre details of objective life. The master had taken a bel appartement. There were curtains to his bed. Food was dear in Paris. They had been to Fontainebleau. Narcisse had stolen the sausages of the concierge. The Master was always talking of me and of the great future for which I was destined. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... eating his heart out, for death alone could set him free. One morning the turnkey, whose duty it was to bring him his food, instead of leaving him when he had given him his meagre pittance, stood with his arms folded, looking at him with strange meaning. Conversation between them was brief, and the warder never began it. The Chevalier was therefore greatly surprised when the man said to him: 'Of ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... the united incomes of the two made but a meagre sum, and there was nothing for it now but to reduce expenses. The rent being one thing that was never cut, the result was a scantier allowance of food. Moreover, the mortals seeing to it that their heavenly visitant had her full craving ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... stealthily as possible, that he might not disturb his friend, and paused by the door. Mrs. Risdale sat by the bedside of Columbus, who was sleeping uneasily, his curious big head and long, thin hair making a strange picture against the pillow. His face looked more meagre and his eyes more sunken than ever before, but there was a feverish flush on his wan cheeks, and the slender hands moved uneasily on the outside of the blue coverlet, the puny arms were bare to ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... in close touch with Seward, the relations between England and America at London were exceedingly meagre. All that the American Minister Dallas knew of Russell's intentions is summed up in his despatches to Seward of March 22 and April 9, 1861[102]. On the former date, he gave an account of an interview with Russell in which the latter simply refused to pledge himself against ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... means of the changes made there, the individual is able better to adjust himself to new situations. For when the individual enters the world, he is not prepared to meet many situations; only a few of the neural connections are made and he is able to perform only a meagre number of simple acts, such as breathing, crying, digestion. The pathways for complex acts, such as speaking English or French, or writing, are not formed at birth but must be built up within the life-time ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... Trans.") will lead to any revolution in the chemical philosophy. As far as "words" go, I have become a formidable chemist—having got by heart a prodigious quantity of terms, etc., to which I attach "some" ideas, very scanty in number, I assure you, and right meagre in their individual persons. That which must discourage me in it is, that I find all "power" of vital attributes to depend on modes of "arrangement", and that chemistry throws not even a distant rushlight glimmer upon this subject. The "reasoning", likewise, ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... first a very meagre publication. It was not much bigger than a number of the old 'Penny Magazine,' containing a single short leader on some current topic, without any pretensions to excellence; some driblets of news spread out in large type; half a column of foreign ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... turdy-facy, nasty-paty, lousy-fartical rogues, with one poor groat's worth of unprepared antimony, finely wrapt up in several scartoccios (covers), [33] are able, very well, to kill their twenty a week, and play; yet these meagre, starved spirits, who have stopt the organs of their minds with earthy oppilations, want not their favourers among your shrivelled sallad-eating artizans, [34] who are overjoyed that they may have ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... whenever he opened his mouth, the imprisoned enemies came rushing and scrambling out, overturning and contradicting each other in a manner quite astounding to the ignorant spectator. Mr. Callythorpe was meagre, thin, sharp, and yellow. Whether from having a great propensity for nailing stray acquaintances, or being particularly heavy company, or from any other cause better known to the wits of the period than to us, he was occasionally termed by his friends ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... expenses were defrayed from the daughter's salary; hence strict economy was obligatory, and the expenditure of every five-dollar bill was a matter of moment. Miss Willis's father had died when she was a baby. The meagre sum of money which he left had sufficed to keep his widow and only child from want until Marion's majority. All had been spent except the house; but, as Miss Willis now proudly reflected, she had become a breadwinner, ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... the happiness of mankind." [History of the later Roman Commonwealth, vol ii. p. 317.] In fact, the more we test its importance, the higher we shall be led to estimate it; and, though the authentic details which we possess of its circumstances and its heroes are but meagre, we can trace enough of its general character to make us watch with deep interest this encounter between the rival conquerors of the decaying Roman empire. That old classic world, the history of which occupies so large a portion of our early studies, lay, in the eighth century ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... souls, mainly French, among whom the incipient Fritz now was, appear to have done their part as well as could be looked for. Respectable Edict-of-Nantes French ladies, with high head-gear, wide hoops; a clear, correct, but somewhat barren and meagre species, tight-laced and high-frizzled in mind and body. It is not a very fertile element for a young soul: not very much of silent piety in it; and perhaps of vocal piety more than enough in proportion. An element ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... are said to have been the produce of long and patient labor. The epithet of "slow" was early given to him by Rochester, and was frequently repeated. In truth his mind, unless we are greatly mistaken, was naturally a very meagre soil, and was forced only by great labor and outlay to bear fruit which, after all, was not of the highest flavor. He has scarcely more claim to originality than Terence. It is not too much to say that there is hardly anything of the least value in his plays of which the hint is not ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fulfilment of the promise. That is what America was for. The land of opportunity it was, but opportunities must be used, must be grasped, held, squeezed dry. To keep a child of working age in school was to invest the meagre present for the sake of the opulent future. If there was but one child in a family of twelve who promised to achieve an intellectual career, the other eleven, and father, and mother, and neighbors must devote themselves to that one child's welfare, and feed and clothe and cheer it on, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... matter, to Macchiavelli, in an existing political emergency. If a classical education, designed as it is in England to promote 'character' rather than 'intellect' (a vicious distinction which leaves no room for such a quality as intellectual integrity) often leaves behind it but a meagre residuum of knowledge and ideas, it should at least cause the public school man of yesterday and the London clubman of to-day to realize the limitations of his field of study and to abstain from confident political generalization. The Labour M.P. who once remarked ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... dogs. In another moment they dashed into the midst of a snow village, and were immediately surrounded by the excited natives. For some time no information could be gleaned from their interpreter, who was too excited to make use of his meagre amount of English. They observed, however, that the natives, although much excited, did not seem to be so much surprised at the appearance of white men amongst them as those were whom they had first met with near the ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... H—- had cleared the farm, and while the soil was new it gave good crops; but as the rich surface, or "black muck," as it is called, became exhausted by continual cropping, nothing but a poor, meagre soil remained. ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... learning was not to be satisfied with the meagre knowledge furnished in the miserable schools he was able to attend at long intervals. His step-mother says: "He read diligently. He read everything he could lay his hands on, and when he came across a passage that ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... drive over the uneven heath, and through the deep sand. They stopped at length before the house of mourning, which was crowded with strangers, some inside, some on the outside. Vehicle after vehicle stood together; the horses and oxen were turned out amidst the meagre grass; large sand-hills, like those at home by the German Ocean, were to be seen behind the farm, and stretched far away in wide long ranges. How had they come there, twelve miles inland, and nearly as high and as large as those near the shore? The wind had lifted them ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... timidities, we have chattered and pecked one another and fouled the world—like daws in the temple, like unclean birds in the holy place of God. All my life has been foolishness and pettiness, gross pleasures and mean discretions—all. I am a meagre dark thing in this morning's glow, a penitence, a shame! And, but for God's mercy, I might have died this night—like that poor lad there—amidst the squalor of my sins! No more of this! No more of this!—whether ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... characterized it as petty and false, yet none can deny that these cheerful scenes with their bright colours and their agreeable if trivial subjects were singularly well adapted to improve the appearance of the bare narrow rooms, the meagre proportions of which seem to us absolutely incompatible with plain comfort, to say nothing of luxury. Space may be increased, so far as the eye is concerned, by an architectural or landscape painting ingeniously conceived, and thus the restricted rooms seem to obtain ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... from the time of Henry III. to our own day. We can only speak of this work from memory, having been unable, in London, to procure the sight of a copy; but our impression, at the time we saw the collection, was as unfavorable as could possibly be: nothing could be more meagre than the wit, or poorer than the execution, of the whole set of drawings. Under the Empire, art, as may be imagined, was at a very low ebb; and, aping the Government of the day, and catering to the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it, for the sake of wearing its rich uniform and caracoling in front of the ladies. But recruiting was now such a difficult matter that one had to content oneself with good-looking young men of doubtful or ruined nobility, whose only care was for the meagre "pay" which just enabled ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... minister, had married M. Pillerault's grand-niece, and greatly respected her uncle; of him, therefore, M. Pillerault had asked for the post, which Poulain had now held for two years. That appointment and its meagre salary came just in time to prevent a desperate step; Poulain was thinking of emigration; and for a Frenchman, it is a kind of ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... real, though subordinate, cause; otherwise every action, whether good or evil, must be ascribed directly and immediately to the efficiency of the Divine will, and to that alone. And in the material world, "second causes" can as little be dispensed with; for every theory, even the most meagre, must acknowledge the existence of some power or property in matter, were it only the passive power or vis inertiae on which all the laws of motion depend. And if this can be admitted as a power inherent in matter and inseparable from it, we cannot see why the ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... plumage of Mr. Hodder's flock arose and flew lightly away, thus reversing the seasons. Only the soberer ones came fluttering into the cool church out of the blinding heat, and settled here and there throughout the nave. The ample Mr. Bradley, perspiring in an alpaca coat, took up the meagre collection on the right of the centre aisle; for Mr. Parr, properly heralded, had gone abroad on one of those periodical, though lonely tours that sent anticipatory shivers of delight down the spines of foreign picture-dealers. The faithful Gordon Atterbury was worshipping at ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... she glanced towards the middle of the room where Miss Schley was still calmly standing up with Leo holding the bouquet. The mother from Susanville had subsided on a small chair with gilt legs, spread out her meagre gown, and assumed the aspect of a roosting bird at twilight. Fritz stood up with his back against the wall, staring at Miss Schley. His face still looked bloated. Presently Miss Schley glanced at him, as if by accident, looked ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... to act, not to expect Colonel Ysselstein, "dismissed for a homicide or two" God has given absolute power to no mortal man Hope delayed was but a cold and meagre consolation Natural to judge only by the result No authority over an army which they did not pay ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... life. He was a regular guest in almost all the famous literary salons of that time—Baron d'Holbach's, Helvetius', Madame de Geoffrin's, Comtesse de Boufflers', Mademoiselle l'Espinasse's, and probably Madame Necker's. Our information about his doings is of course meagre, but there is one week in July 1766 in which we happen to have his name mentioned frequently in the course of the correspondence between Hume and his Paris friends regarding the quarrel with Rousseau, and during that week Smith was on the 21st at Mademoiselle ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... place, fresh hordes were issuing from the woods and wilds of Germany, all bent for the Holy Land. They were commanded by a fanatical priest, named Gottschalk, who, like Gautier and Peter the Hermit, took his way through Hungary. History is extremely meagre in her details of the conduct and fate of this host, which amounted to at least one hundred thousand men. Robbery and murder seem to have journeyed with them, and the poor Hungarians were rendered almost desperate by their numbers and rapacity. Karloman, the king of the country, made a ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... idleness. There were no longer battles with pirates. The Holy Order of Malta was now only an honorable distinction. A brother of his father, knight commander at Valetta when Bonaparte conquered the island, had come to spend his last days in Palma with only the meagre pension of a half-pay officer. It had been two centuries since the Febrers, forgotten on the sea where there was no longer any commerce, and where only poor padrones and fishermen's sons now made war, had given themselves up to investing their name with a splendrous luxury, which gradually ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... With its pale and meagre train? Do they gather closely round thee, Want, and suffering and pain? Mourn not, for the chilly dew-drops, Fell upon thy Master's bed; Mourn not, for the Prince of Glory Had not ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... college) was all to be stolen. There was an uncommon clearance of cakes and doughnuts, and pie and cheese, from each meal, at this time. Cup-custards, even, disappeared,—cups and all. A cold supper, laid at nine on Wednesday evening, for some expected travelers, turned out a more meagre provision on the arrival of the guests than the good host of the Giant's Cairn had ever been known to make. At bedtime Sin Saxon presented ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... by gestures that the former go above and the latter below after death. They bury their dead usually on top of the ground in a box made of small timbers or drift-wood, elevating the box four feet from the surface, and resting it on cross poles. Their meagre belongings are generally buried with them. The small bidarka (skin canoe) is not infrequently used for a casket when the head ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... last with a very meagre speech, on which no amendment could be hung. The Duke spoke extremely well in the House of Lords, and Peel the same in the House of Commons. Both approved (the Duke without any qualification, Peel more guardedly) of the foreign policy of the Government, and both said ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... being distasteful to the listener by the fact that it was given with a melancholy despairing gesture, which to a less serious person than Ringfield might have been amusing. But his sense of humour, originally meagre, was not developing at St. Ignace as fast as it might, and he saw nothing humorous in this view of madame's immunity from disease. Before he could frame ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... active, and ill-rewarded course of life which we have endeavoured to describe. He was a man between forty and fifty, devoted to his profession, and of such reputation in the medical world, that he had been more than once, as opportunities occurred, advised to exchange Middlemas and its meagre circle of practice, for some of the larger towns in Scotland, or for Edinburgh itself. This advice he had always declined. He was a plain blunt man, who did not love restraint, and was unwilling to subject himself to that which ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... but little to give to Christ; yet it is a comfort to know that our friendship really is precious to him, and adds to his joy, poor and meagre though its best may be—but he has infinite blessings to give to us. "I call you friends." No other gift he gives to us can equal in value the love and friendship of his heart. When Cyrus gave Artabazus, one of his courtiers, a gold ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... apart from human companionship, was supported on a small annuity, paid her quarterly by a very honest company, that would have been ruined with many such venerable clients. On pleasant days she crept about the town to do her meagre marketing, or crawled to the paupers' pew in the old brick meeting-house. During the warm summer weather her scant life was somewhat cheered, and a faint attempt at joyousness sometimes winked in her old eyes, but with the winter's cold came the cruel ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the lieges of the war-lord. They are all the more loyal to the throne as they are poor, and therefore dependent on the King for their very subsistence. There are few large estates in Prussia, and they yield but a meagre revenue. The relations of the Junkers to the Hohenzollerns are the relations of William the Conqueror to his companions-in-arms. The Junkers originally held their broad acres, their Rittergut, by military tenure. Some of their feudal ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... say that almost the same amount of spiritual power goes to waste in our average church life? One is startled at times as he notes the manifestations of fervor and warmth in the devotional meetings of the present day, and the meagre results that follow in the transformation of society into the likeness of the kingdom of heaven. Exactly what we have to do, however, is to help hasten the answer to the prayer our Lord taught us, "Thy ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... have a reputation to enhance or lose as the result might decide. Suddenly a name occurred to him. A short time ago his friend the President had been telling him the inner story of a very intricate case which had involved a scandal of two Courts. Only the most meagre details had obviously been permitted to appear in the papers, but His Lordship had told him that it had been solved and settled almost entirely by the skill and diplomacy of a M. Nicol Hendry, who held the little advertised but highly ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... tilled earth. Wild medicinal plants, so important in the rustic materia medica of New England—such as pennyroyal, for example—are generally much less aromatic and powerful when cultivated in gardens than when self-sown on meagre soils. On the other hand, the cinchona, lately introduced from South America into British India and carefully cultivated there, is found to be richer in quinine than the ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... plastered, it was simply built of enormous bones skillfully arranged, which gave it its white color. Strange as the materials were, they were forced to admit that the idea of utilizing them was a natural one; besides there was nothing else available on the island where vegetation was most meagre; but the whole place, even the neighboring hills were covered with bones, which Dr. Schwaryencrona recognized as the remains of ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... they succeeded in catching him they carried him to the burning pile and made as if they would throw him on it. This ceremony over, they returned to the house of the Green Wolf, where a supper, still of the most meagre fare, was set before them. Up till midnight a sort of religious solemnity prevailed. No unbecoming word might fall from the lips of any of the company, and a censor, armed with a hand-bell, was appointed to mark and punish instantly any infraction of the rule. ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... of writing stories and plays, but we were never able to get her to do anything of the kind for us. One of her constant pleas was that she might get the chance to become a well-trained teacher of English. Her letters never showed the same skill with English that her conversation denoted, but her meagre ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... loophole Father Robineau watched his chapel burning, with its meagre enrichments, added year by year. But this was nothing, when his eye dropped to the two or three figures lying face downward on the road. He turned himself toward the wailing of a ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... had represented only a meagre minority of the voters of the State since the Know-Nothing defection, now responded to the call with a full quota of delegates, and elected John A. King president. King was nearly double the age of Fenton. He had been a lieutenant of cavalry in the War ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... anticipated it. How terribly significant becomes the simple mechanism of loading a rifle when one knows that it is at once the earnest of deadly battle and the preparation for it! The few details which we could gather from the deck hands concerning the fight were meagre and unsatisfactory. They told us of disaster that befell our army in the morning, and which it seemed very doubtful if the afternoon had yet seen remedied; and their testimony was borne out by evidences to which our ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the conventicles came to the knowledge of the magistrates, and on the eighth of September, 1546, a descent was made upon the worshipping Christians. Sixty-two persons composed the gathering. The lieutenant and provost of the city, with their meagre suite, could easily have been set at defiance. But the announcement of arrest in the king's name prevented any attempt either at resistance on their part, or at rescue on that of their friends. Respecting the authority ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... guest could eat or drink. Lord Byron did not touch meat, fish, or wine; and as to the biscuits and soda-water he asked for, there were, unfortunately, none in the house. He declared he was equally pleased with potatoes and vinegar, and on this meagre pittance he succeeded in making an ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... to follow her fancy, as the dame said who kissed her cow—only I do not much approve her choice, that is all. He cannot be six years short of fifty; and a verjuice countenance, under the penthouse of a slouched beaver, and bag of meagre dried bones, swaddled up in a black cloak, is ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... grow Those subtle weeds no man has need to tend, That flourish through neglect, and soon must send Perfume too sweet upon us and overthrow Our steady senses; how such matters go We are aware, and how such matters end. Yet shall be told no meagre passion here; With lovers such as we forevermore Isolde drinks the draught, and Guinevere Receives the Table's ruin through her door, Francesca, with the loud surf at her ear, Lets fall the colored ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... The result was meagre, and he was just losing himself again in contemplation of the upturned face, whose fixed mouth and haunting expression told such a story of suffering and determination, when there came from the dim recesses above his head a cry, which, forming itself into two words, rang down ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... kitchen. He looked around with keen, searching eyes, scanning every nook and corner in the bare little room. Truly, there was not much to see. The old fireplace had been blocked up, and in its place was the usual iron cooking-stove, with a meagre array of pots and pans hanging behind it. The floor was bare; the furniture, a table and chair, with a stool for John. There was no provision for guests; but that did not matter, as Mr. Scraper never had guests. Altogether, there was little attraction ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... packages and read and reread the labels, one was struck by the meagre English of merchandisers and the poor verbal resources of commerce generally. A while ago business dealt hardly with the word "proposition." It was the universal noun. Everything that business touched, however remotely, was ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... steaming poisons, and a length of flame. From every blast of her contagious breath Famine and drought proceed, and plagues and death. A robe obscene was o'er her shoulders thrown, A dress by Fates and Furies worn alone. She toss'd her meagre arms; her better hand In waving circles whirl'd a funeral brand: A serpent from her left was seen to rear His flaming crest, and lash the yielding air. But when the Fury took her stand on high, 160 Where vast Cithaeron's top salutes the ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... where every smallest scene and almost personage is connected with the general theme; nor the lower unity of such a thing as Phedre, where everything is pared down, or, as Landor put it in his own case, "boiled off" to a meagre residuum of theme special. It has, at the very most, that species of unity which Aristotle did not like even in epic, that of a succession of events happening to an individual; and while most of these might be omitted, or others substituted for them, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... roused herself, and managed to furnish very scantily the little home where Katherine sat thinking. But the addition to their income was but meagre compared to the expenses which followed in the train of Mrs Frederic Liddell and her ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... These lovers fled away into the storm. That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe, And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form Of witch and demon and large coffin-worm, Were long be-nightmared. Angela, the old, Died palsy-twitch'd with meagre face deform; The Beadsman, after thousand aves told, For aye unsought-for slept among ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... was dead and he was all friendless. Monsieur de Jouy procured him the place of private secretary to Count Tolstoy, a Russian nobleman established by the Czar in Paris as his political correspondent. The salary given was meagre enough, but in this world all things have a relative as well as an intrinsic value, and eight dollars a month seemed to the poor lad, who had never yet earned a cent, a fragment of El Dorado or of Peru. It gave him independence. His contemporaries have described ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... to-day, the horizon is thrown up so much that the altitude is about 12 too small. No land visible for twenty miles. No animal life observed. Lower Clark's tow-net with 566 fathoms of wire, and hoist it up at two and a half miles an hour by walking across the floe with the wire. Result rather meagre—jelly-fish and some fish larvae. Exercise dogs in sledge teams. The young dogs, under Crean's care, pull as well, though not so strongly, as the best team in the pack. Hercules for the last fortnight ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... cry all day for bread, And, 'neath the shelter of my meagre breast, Stirs one unborn, who must e'er long be fed— Another babe to hunger with the rest. Madonna Mary, hear a mother's moan! Pity the travail I must ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... a force that was passionate. There was violence in the grip of his hands. His light eyes were ablaze. His whole meagre body quivered as though galvanized by some vital, electric current more potent than it ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... diet passed provided that a tax payable in silver should be levied to defray the expenses of the war, though apparently nothing was fixed by the diet as to the amount to be raised or as to the mode of levy. With this meagre record our information regarding this celebrated diet ends; but the new Cabinet, before it parted, drew up a long-winded account of the cruelties of Christiern, which it sent abroad among the people for a lasting memorial ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... replete with the finest feelings of art, notwithstanding the Gothic dryness and fantastic forms of his figures. The folds of his draperies are more like creased pieces of paper than cloth, and his representation of the naked is either bloated and coarse, or dry and meagre. His backgrounds have all the extravagant characteristics of a German romance, and are totally destitute of aerial perspective; yet, with the exception of the character of the people and scenery ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... foyer, which troubled me very much. Mlle. Brohan was to play the part of the Marquise de Prie. At this time she was so fat as to be almost unsightly, while I was so thin that the composers of popular and comic verses took my meagre proportions as their theme and the cartoonists as a subject ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... commanded set them in a whirl. Baskets and boxes were dragged forth to receive the platters and remains of their meagre feast. In an instant the ground was cleared, and the three ladies had taken their departure to the chaise, which was set apart for their use. The men were already climbing into the house on wheels, when ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... many services to scientific truth, and one of these was an edition of Ptolemy's Geography, in which Judea was spoken of, not as "a land flowing with milk and honey," but, in strict accordance with the truth, as, in the main, meagre, barren, and inhospitable. In his trial this simple statement of geographical fact was used against him by his arch-enemy John Calvin with fearful power. In vain did Servetus plead that he had simply ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... endeavoured to explain the popular dislike to burial on the north side of the church, by reference to the place of the churchyard cross, the sunniness, and the greater resort of the people to the south. {254} These are not only meagre ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various
... burst forth in a kind of tender rapture, rolling pearly waves of harmony along the large spaces, and filling the dome with the foam and spray of interlacing measures, it seemed as if angels were welcoming the young child to heaven." The pettiness of a brief burial service in a private parlor or in a meagre meeting-house would not have touched her heart so profoundly, because it would not have recalled heaven so impressively in all its grandeur and tenderness. She evidently perceived here the sweet and even cheering veracity of a devotion that is glad to remember all the possibilities of reverent ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... power or instinct do they do it? With nothing of inheritance, so far as can be judged, to justify any aspirations towards the good or beautiful, among the poorest and hardest of surroundings, with none but the most meagre of educational facilities, by what inherent quality is it that the American woman, not now and again only, but in her tens of thousands, rises to such an instinctive comprehension of what is good and worth while in life, that she becomes, ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... involves these points:—The Aristophanic estimate of Euripides, with criticisms on its taste and justice (for which, however, a historical subject is given as an alternative); the Greek chorus, and choric metres. Now such an examination is, in the first place, a most meagre view of literature: it does not necessarily exercise the faculty of critical discernment. In the next place, it is chiefly a matter of compilation from English sources; the actual readings of the candidate in Greek and Latin would be of little ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... was productive of very meagre results. However, a singular combination of circumstances and of proper names will render the ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... was bid. And the missionary's eyes were on the fair head of the man as he leant down over the smouldering embers stewing his own meagre midday meal. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... spoken in previous sketches of the faithfulness and devotion of many of the government nurses, appointed by Miss Dix. No salary, certainly not the meagre pittance doled out by the government could compensate for such services, and the only satisfactory reason which can be offered for their willingness to render them, is that their hearts were inspired by a patriotism equally ardent with that which actuated ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... announcement ope and hear: Pistoia first of Neri groweth meagre; Then Florence doth ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... than a pianist, a thinker than a musician. Commonplace is instinctively avoided in all the works of Chopin; a stale cadence or a trite progression, a humdrum subject or a hackneyed sequence, a vulgar twist of the melody or a worn- out passage, a meagre harmony or an unskillful counterpoint, may in vain be looked for throughout the entire range of his compositions; the prevailing characteristics of which, are, a feeling as uncommon as beautiful, a treatment as original as felicitous, ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... dispirits, the attentive renders more diligent: so slight, so small a matter it is, which overturns or raises a mind covetous of praise! Adieu the ludicrous business [of dramatic writing], if applause denied brings me back meagre, bestowed [makes me] full ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... like homesickness was in his heart. He had almost fancied for a minute that he was back once more in Athens. He raised his eyes and gave a quick, deep glance up and down the street—soot and dirt and grime, frowning buildings and ugly lines, and overhead a meagre strip of sky. Over Athens the sky hung glorious, a curve of light from side to side. His soul flew wide to meet it. Once more he was swinging along the "Street of the Winds," his face lifted to the Parthenon on its Acropolis, his nostrils breathing the clear air. Chicago ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... His complexion was of the muddy and unwholesome kind which tells a tale of bad health, late hours and penury, and almost always of a bad disposition. The best description of him may be given in two familiar expressions—he was sharp and snappish. His cracked voice suited his sour face, meagre look, and magpie eyes of no particular color. A magpie eye, according to Napoleon, is a sure sign of dishonesty. "Look at So-and-so," he said to Las Cases at Saint Helena, alluding to a confidential servant whom he had been obliged to dismiss for malversation. "I do not know how ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... of devotees, and very unlike the ghost in 'Don Juan,' who says, 'Che si pasce di cibo celeste non si pasce di cibo mortale,' for though rigorously obedient to the prescribed fasts of the Church, she devours flesh enough on other days to suffice for those on which it is forbidden; and on the meagre days she indemnifies herself by any quantity of fish, vegetables, and sucreries of all kinds. It is only like eating her first course on Thursday ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... the omission of a play from a casual catalogue of this kind would hardly warrant us in assuming its necessary non-existence at the time. The works ascribed to him at his death are fixed in the same approximate fashion through the edition published by his fellow-actors. Beyond these meagre facts and our knowledge of the publication of a few of his dramas in his lifetime all is uncertain; and the conclusions which have been drawn from these, and from the dramas themselves, as well as from assumed resemblances with, or references to, other plays of the period, ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... the dear New England woods and meadows, upon the tidy village where every man and woman was her friend; for his sake she had come to dwell among strangers in a strange and barren land. The old homestead had been sold, and with the meagre proceeds she had paid their way across the prairies, and had bought a little house and a lot of land on the outskirts of Springtown, while Willie looked about him for something to do. But the enemy before whom they had fled followed them to the high pure altitude ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... mumbled fiercely when he saw them, and Simmons cried out delightedly: "There now, he's better— he's swearin' at me!" The first intelligible words he spoke were those that had last passed his lips: "M-m-my f-f—," and from his melancholy eyes a meagre tear slid into a wrinkle and ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... and female, are meagre-bodied birds, with slender legs, and beaks twelve inches long. They are an inseparable couple, and wander about our patio and rooms in a restless nervous fashion, rattling their chop-stick noses ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... on her unmade cot, drawing a ragged sweater about her shoulders, and looked up at Kate with an almost furtive gaze. She always had been a small, meagre creature, but now she seemed positively shriveled. The pride and plenitude of womanhood were as far from her realization as they could be from a daughter of Eve. Sexless, stranded, broken before an undertaking too great for her, she sat there in the throes of a sudden, nervous chill. ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... I have the satisfaction—a meagre satisfaction you may call it, but a satisfaction all the same—of knowing that by the ploughing and harrowing of my heart a step is taken toward that future in which hearts shall be less harrowed and ploughed. "It must never ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... but he had saved space by making himself a bunk, in lieu of a bed, which, hung on hinges, could be hooked up out of the way when not in use. For the rest, a couple of chairs, a chest of drawers, and a table with a little oil stove for cooking purposes composed the meagre furnishings. But each bit of wall space was occupied in a manner that astonished one at first glance, for up to the height of four feet were shelves partly filled with books and magazines, while ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... shall have a future opportunity of giving a better account of the discovery and conquest of Chili than this extremely meagre notice by Zarate from Molina, Ovalle and other early authors. The nameless city mentioned by Zarate was probably St Jago de Chili, which was founded by Valdivia. The commencement of the Valdivian expedition was in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... some Europeans. The men are in general tall, that is, about five feet ten inches, or six feet; but I saw none that were fat and lusty like the Earees of Otaheite; nor did I see any that could be called meagre. Their teeth are not so good, nor are their eyes so full and lively as those of many other nations. Their hair, like ours, is of many colours, except red, of which I saw none. Some have it long, but the most general custom ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... little estimation), so biographers (if we except Melchior Adam, the great favourite of Bayle) have been equally silent respecting its author. Fabricius, and the Historical Dictionary published at Caen, do not mention him; and Moreri has but a meagre and superficial notice of him. Wolfius's Penus Artis Historicae, of which the best edition is that of 1579, is well described in the tenth volume of Fournier's Methode pour etudier l'histoire, p. 12, edit. 1772. My respect for so extraordinary a bibliomaniac ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... enforced; and free people of color were ordered point blank to leave the city.[54] Where they were to go, however, no one seemed to care, and as the free people of color had no intention of going, the question was not discussed. For some reason the enforcement of the law was not insisted upon. When a meagre attempt was made, it proved unsuccessful, and the complexion of Louisiana was definitely settled for ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... hostility toward the press, but that which boasted Sawyer Lenthal for its speaker was its friend (at all events, at first, though afterward, as we shall notice by and by, it displayed some animosity against its early protege), and from this meagre beginning took its rise that which is beyond doubt one of the most important domestic functions of the press at ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... abject appearance and degraded condition of the teachers who plainly said to us by their looks every day of their lives, "Boys, never be learned; whatever you are, above all things be warned from that in time by our sunken cheeks, by our poor pimply noses, by our meagre diet, by our acid-beer, and by our extraordinary suits of clothes, of which no human being can say whether they are snuff-coloured turned black, or black turned snuff-coloured, a point upon which we ourselves are perfectly unable to offer ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... inclined to be cross; so when Boggley suggested we should dine in the waiting-room while Autolycus and the chuprassis went on with the luggage to acquaint the dak-bungalow people of our arrival, I upbraided him for not making proper arrangements, and reviled the meagre repast, and was altogether very unpleasant. When we reached our destination we found Autolycus prancing distractedly. "This," he said to Boggley, "is what comes of making no bundabust." Some other people were already occupying the bungalow, and we could only get the back rooms, small, mouldy, ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... incident, as in the case of Hawthorne's Tales, is so meagre and the language so exquisite, that the telling seems to be quite inadequate and inferior to the reading of the story. In such cases, variety may be afforded by reading, but generally speaking, it is more effective to tell ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... polished barrel, always replenished with beer, at the other a hearth with a wood fire constantly burning, and there was a table running the whole length of the room; at one end of this was laid a cloth, with a few trenchers on it, and horn cups, surrounding a barley loaf and a cheese, this meagre irregular supper being considered as a sufficient supplement to the funeral baked meats which had abounded at Beaulieu. John Birkenholt sat at the table with a trencher and horn before him, uneasily using his knife to crumble, rather than cut, his bread. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... not stand out so prominently as the figure of Pontiac in the later struggle. This may be partly because Pontiac's story has been told by such a magician as Mr. Francis Parkman. But it is partly because the data are too meagre. In all probability, however, the schemes of Sassacus the Pequot, of Philip the Wampanoag, and of Pontiac the Ottawa, were substantially the same. That Philip plotted with the Narragansetts seems certain, and the early ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... greatly sought the honour of forming part of it, for the sake of wearing its rich uniform and caracoling in front of the ladies. But recruiting was now such a difficult matter that one had to content oneself with good-looking young men of doubtful or ruined nobility, whose only care was for the meagre "pay" which just enabled them ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... he wrote and destroyed. The floor became littered with torn papers. Then he enveloped a meagre result. Parker had ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... extraordinary cordial. He knew he could securely depend, not only on the good faith of an English ministry, but also on the good plight of the British nation, which, like an indulgent nurse, hath always presented the nipple to her meagre German allies. Those, however, who pretended to consider and canvas events, without prejudice and prepossession, could not help owning their surprise at hearing an alliance stigmatized as pernicious to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... moment they dashed into the midst of a snow village, and were immediately surrounded by the excited natives. For some time no information could be gleaned from their interpreter, who was too excited to make use of his meagre amount of English. They observed, however, that the natives, although much excited, did not seem to be so much surprised at the appearance of white men amongst them as those were whom they had first met with near the ship. In a short time Meetuck apparently had expended all he had to say to his ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... known in the country as Beauty Smith. But he was anything save a beauty. To antithesis was due his naming. He was pre-eminently unbeautiful. Nature had been niggardly with him. He was a small man to begin with; and upon his meagre frame was deposited an even more strikingly meagre head. Its apex might be likened to a point. In fact, in his boyhood, before he had been named Beauty by his fellows, he ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... busy. He had formed several theories to account for the disappearance of the youth, of whom he had grown extremely fond, brief as was their acquaintance, but the data upon which he based these theories were so vague and meagre that he could do nothing until more ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... lady was for a time tearful in her forebodings that Harry would be starved, for in those days it was a matter of national opinion that our neighbours across the Channel fed on the most meagre of diet; but she was not in the habit of disputing her husband's will, and when the letter of acceptance had been sent off, she busied herself in preparing Harry's ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... of olive, fig, and pomegranate trees. The trees being small and low, the foliage of the olive thin and pale, the leaves of the fig broad and few, and the soil appearing everywhere at their roots, as well as between the rows of vines, the vegetation, when viewed from a little distance, has a meagre and ragged appearance. The whiteness of the hills, which the eye can hardly bear to rest upon at noon, the intense blue of the sea, the peculiar forms of the foliage, and the deficiency of shade and verdure, made me almost fancy myself in ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... from the school at Millersville, so Amanda spent most of her weekends at home. Each time she had wonderful tales to tell, at least they seemed wonderful to the little group at the Reist farmhouse. Mrs. Reist and Uncle Amos, denied in their youth of more than a very meagre education, took just pride in the girl who was pursuing the road to knowledge. Philip, boylike, expressed no pride in his sister, but he listened attentively to her stories of how the older students played pranks on the newcomers. Millie was proud ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... 'Hard-favour'd tyrant, ugly, meagre, lean, 931 Hateful divorce of love,'—thus chides she Death,— 'Grim-grinning ghost, earth's worm, what dost thou mean To stifle beauty and to steal his breath, Who when he liv'd, his breath and beauty set Gloss on the rose, ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... studies uninterrupted, was a friend of Authors, and composed a small work, "De Infelicitate Literatorum," which has been frequently reprinted.[1] It forms a catalogue of several Italian literati, his contemporaries; a meagre performance, in which the author shows sometimes a predilection for the marvellous, which happens so rarely in human affairs; and he is so unphilosophical, that he places among the misfortunes of literary men those fatal casualties to ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... together—which was how I had to take them—they form as good an illustration as I can recall of the manner in which, for the good of his soul doubtless, fate sometimes deals with a man's avidity. These incidents certainly had larger bearings than the comparatively meagre consequence we are here concerned with—though I feel that consequence also a thing to speak of with some respect. It's mainly in such a light, I confess, at any rate, that the ugly fruit of my exile is at this ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... him: they had eaten up the last of his bacon: he stood up, and they were ready for the journey. The smoke from their meagre fire went thinly into the air, the small grey clouds of it went slowly up: nothing beside remained to bid them farewell, or for them to thank for their strange night's hospitality. They climbed till they reached ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... modern historians. Tillemont and Dupin are very full and very learned. But a truly immortal history of the church, exhaustive yet artistic, brilliant as well as learned, is yet to be written. The ancient historians, like Eusebius and Socrates and Zosimus, are very meagre. The genius and spirit of the early church can only be drawn from the lives and ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... family, into two genera—the horse (equus) and the ass (asinus)—the principal points of distinction being, that animals of the horse kind have long flowing manes, full tails, and warty callosities on both hind and fore limbs; while asses, on the contrary, have short, meagre, and upright manes, tails slender and furnished only with long hairs at the extremity, and their hind limbs wanting the callosities. These, however, are found on the ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... match Over a mine of Greek fire, did ye know! He holds on firmly to some thread of life— (It is the life to lead perforcedly) Which runs across some vast distracting orb 180 Of glory on either side that meagre thread, Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet— The spiritual life around the earthly life: The law of that is known to him as this, His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here. So is the man perplext with impulses Sudden to start off crosswise, not ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... a length for which we must apologise to our readers; and yet this is but a meagre sketch of the contents of a book which deals with a very large proportion of the subjects that occupy the thoughts and move the feelings of religious men. We will attempt to sum up in a few words the leading ideas of the author. Addressing a mixed audience, he undertakes to controvert ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... evil thing that walks by night, In fog, or fire, by lake or moorish fen, Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, No goblin, or swart fairy of the mine, Hath hurtful power ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... not amusing itself; it has a busy and serious air, like an Englishman or a Dutchman. Neither polyps nor jelly-fish, neither sea-weed nor crabs enliven the sands at low water; the sea life is poor and meagre. What is wonderful is the struggle of man against a miserly and formidable power. Nature has done little for him, but she allows herself to be managed. Stepmother though she be, she is accommodating, subject to the occasional destruction of a hundred thousand ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... victual for Walrave and others of that faith, on the meagre-days; but Walrave eat right before him,—evidently nothing but the name of Catholic. Indeed, he was a man hated by the Catholics, for his special rapacity on them. 'He is of no religion at all,' said the Catholic Prelate ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Hastings, ignorant of the conditions of English political life, could bring forward no better champion than Major Scott. Hastings opposed to the greatest orator and most widely informed man of his age, a man of meagre parts, who only succeeded in wearying profoundly the House of Commons and every other audience to which he appealed. Such a proconsul as Warren Hastings standing his trial upon such momentous charges needed all the ability, all the ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... past forty minutes, bringing to the work of cross-questioning her all the intelligence, craftiness and logic at his command. The net result of his fusillade of interrogatories, however, was exceedingly meagre. ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... mammary glands be developed in oviparous creatures? Mr. Darwin regards them as originating in cutaneous glands, developed in the pouch of the marsupials. But his grounds for this statement are very meagre. To a great extent they rest on what an American Naturalist "believes he has seen;" and besides, the ornithorhyncus, which has no pouch, and which is lower in the scale of life than the marsupials, by Mr. Darwin's ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... places land-slides had blocked the trail, and it involved a great amount of labor to clear them off. Everything around Ben West was of a most discouraging nature. What with being cold and wet all day; leg weary in the extreme when night came; bill of fare very meagre, consisting of bread, beans, bacon, and coffee, the men he hired sometimes felt like throwing up the sponge. For they met many returning who said the country was hell and no good; many were sick lying along the side of the ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... Meagre and cold was the sympathy which a transgressor might expect from the assembly at the pond. The women mingled freely with the crowd and appeared to take a peculiar interest in the punishment about to be inflicted. The age had not ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... close in upon the road, boldly took his beasts along the neglected parterres until at last he reached the stables. Here, near the open door he saw Malsain, tall and thin, but muscular and strong as whipcord, sitting down by the light of a guttering candle to a meagre repast of bread and cheese, washed down with ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... convalescence, as Raymond would sit beside her bed and read aloud to her, their eyes were constantly meeting in unspoken apprehension. They saw the ground, so solid a month before, now crumbling beneath their feet; their struggles, their makeshifts, their starved and meagre life had all been in vain. Their little savings were gone; the breadwinner, tempting fate once too often, had received what was to her worse than a mortal wound, for the means of livelihood had been ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... he had done for Greece. To his persistent entreaties were due all the meagre displays of patriotism by which the Government of the country was maintained and Capodistrias accepted as President, and all the feeble efforts by which the war was carried on and the triumph of the Porte was averted until the direct interference of the Allied Powers. That interference had ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... may taste the meagre liquid, and pronounce it agreeable to their gustative inclinations; but something more than an agreeable titilation of the palate is required to keep up that manufactory of blood, bone, and muscle which constitutes the ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... and Britain. As aide-de-camp, or orderly, for such a position he probably held, his place was by Caesar's side. They forded the rivers together, walked or rode through woodland or open side by side, shared the same meagre rations, and lay in the same tent at the end of the day's march, ready to spring from the ground at a moment's warning to defend each other against attack from the savage foe. Caesar's narrative of his campaigns in Gaul is a soldier's story of military movements, ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... proved meagre enough. Her mother died when Mary Ann was a child; her father when she was still a mere girl. His affairs were found in hopeless confusion, and Mary Ann was considered lucky to be taken into the house of the well-to-do Mrs. Leadbatter, of London, the eldest sister of a young woman who had ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... take shape in criminal action. The intellectual training given by town life does not, as we have seen, assist in stimulating higher intellectual and moral interests whose satisfaction lies above the plane of material desire. There is indeed some evidence that the meagre and wholly rudimentary education given to our town-dwellers is, by reason of its inadequacy, a direct feeder of town vices. The lower forms of music-hall entertainment, the dominant popular vice of gambling, the more degraded ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... easily be captured, and that the intervening district promised an abundance of ripening corn and green apples. It was decided, however, that such fare, on which, it may be said, the Confederates learned afterwards to subsist for many days in succession, was too meagre for the work in hand. Jackson, runs the story, groaned so audibly when Lee pronounced in favour of postponement, that Longstreet called the attention of the Commander-in-Chief ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... displeasure against foolish men, That live an atheist life; involves the heaven In tempests; quits his grasp upon the winds, And gives them all their fury; bids a plague Kindle a fiery boil upon the shin, And putrefy the breath of blooming health. He calls for famine, and the meagre fiend Blows mildew from between his shrivelled lips, And taints the golden ear. He springs his mines, And desolates a nation at ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... quarter-deck of the Ranger, deep in thought, paced the captain, John Paul Jones, a man of meagre build but of indomitable will, and as daring a fighter as roved the ocean {2} in this year 1778. He held a letter of marque from the Congress of the revolted colonies in America, and was just now engaged in harrying the British ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... his species, let him spend a week or two at Washington; let him go amongst the little leaders of party in that preposterous capital, watch their little tricks, the rapacity with which they clutch the meanest spoils and wonder how political profligacy grows fat upon diet so meagre and uninviting. He will come away with a conviction, already indorsed by the more respectable portion of the American community, that their government is the most corrupt under the sun; but he will not, with them, lay the flattering notion ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... that he did no other good than that of keeping away some person more objectionable than himself. He was however prepared to repeat this self-sacrifice in a spirit of patriotism for which he received a very meagre meed of eulogy from Miss Jack, and an amount of self-applause which ...
— Miss Sarah Jack, of Spanish Town, Jamaica • Anthony Trollope
... unparalleled in every individual, their rendering suffers, on the whole, from a great monotony. Love's gesture and symptoms are noted and unvarying; its vocabulary is poor and worn. Even a poet, therefore, can give of love but a meagre expression, while the philosopher, who renounces dramatic representation, is condemned to be avowedly inadequate. Love, to the lover, is a noble and immense inspiration; to the naturalist it is ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... were being rubbed with ice to draw the frost out of them. The farmer-boys were allowed no share in all this excitement, for the fisher-boys, who went in and out and saw everything, drove them away if they approached—and sold meagre information at extortionate prices. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... lovely Rhine they grew more and more enthusiastic in their admiration and curiosity, and finding the meagre description of the guide-books very unsatisfactory, Amy begged her uncle to tell her all the legends of picturesque ruin, rock and river, as ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... insubstantial, he was slight and short and a trifle too punctually, though not yet quite lamentably, bald. Delicacy was in the arch of his eyebrow, the finish of his facial line, the economy of "treatment" by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... Spurzheim are sustained by positive science. In the further development of the subject, hereafter, the true value and proper position of the discoveries of Ferrier, and the continental vivisectionists will be explained, though but meagre contributions to psychology, they furnish very valuable additional information as to the functions ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... the beach until he reached the open door of the cabin and looked in. He found it deserted as he had expected. He went in and hunted about among its meagre belongings and came back to the boys, triumphant, bringing with him a hatchet, an axe and a large, keen-bladed knife that was used by Mark in cleaning ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... of Spenser is wrapt in a similar obscurity to that which hides from us his great predecessor Chaucer, and his still greater contemporary Shakspere. As in the case of Chaucer, our principal external authorities are a few meagre entries in certain official documents, and such facts as may be gathered from his works. The birth-year of each poet is determined by inference. The circumstances in which each died are a matter of controversy. What sure information we have of the intervening events ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... Lenton, simpler in style but identical in arrangement and facts with the former work; a biography by Robert Redman; a metrical chronicle by Elmham (published in Rolls Series in "Memorials of Henry the Fifth"); and the meagre chronicles of Hardyng and Otterbourne. The King's Norman campaigns may be studied in M. Puiseux's "Siege de Rouen" (Caen, 1867). The "Wars of the English in France" and Blondel's work "De Reductione Normanniae" (both in Rolls Series) give ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... supplied at the lowest price; but it often was so intolerably bad, that I was obliged to send it back untasted, and endeavour, by a walk in the fresh air instead, to appease my hunger. I had lived thus for some time, and was, as may be imagined, become meagre enough, when Mrs. W., with whom I was not personally acquainted, proposed to me, through her housekeeper, that she should provide me with a dinner at the same low charge as the eating-house. I was astonished, but extremely delighted, and thankfully accepted the proposal. I soon discovered, ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... he took his leave of us, with strong symptoms of gratitude and attachment, and set out for Sunderland, in order to embark in the first collier, bound for the river Thames. He had not been gone half an hour, when we were joined by another character, which promised something extraordinary — A tall, meagre figure, answering, with his horse, the description of Don Quixote mounted on Rozinante, appeared in the twilight at the inn door, while my aunt and Liddy stood at a window in the dining-room — He wore a coat, the cloth of which had once been scarlet, trimmed with Brandenburgs, now totally deprived ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... consider what way of attempting to impart that knowledge may be the best fitted, at once to obviate the natural indisposition to the subject, and to provide that when it does obtain a place in their understanding, it shall not be a meagre, diminutive, insulated occupant there, but in its proper dimensions and relations. And if, in attentively studying this, there be any who come to ascertain, that the right expedient is a bare inculcation of religious instruction, disconnected, on system, from the illustrative aid of other ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... was buried was made known by the researches of Signor Sacchi, a Cremonese conversant with the annals of his native city.[28] This was an interesting addition to the meagre information previously handed down to us touching Stradivari. It had long been known that a family grave was purchased by Stradivari in the church of San Domenico, in the year 1729: but in the certificates ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... he stopped, but said presently: Hard it is to tell thee of them, but needs must I. There be two of these things; and one is an image of a tall woman of middle-age, red-haired, white- skinned, and meagre, and whiles she has a twiggen rod in her hand, and whiles a naked short sword, and whiles nought at all. But the voice of her is ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... course, to be found a few pirates with household names such as Kidd, Teach, and Avery. A few, too, of the buccaneers, headed by the great Sir Henry Morgan, come in for their share. But I compare with indignation the meagre show of pirates in that monumental work with the rich profusion of divines! Even during the years when piracy was at its height—say from 1680 until 1730—the pirates are utterly swamped by the theologians. Can it be that these two professions flourished most vigorously side by side, ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... circulate in the markets. Madame Lecoeur and La Sarriette were in their own fashion keeping the oaths of silence they had taken. For her own part, Mademoiselle Saget warily held her tongue, leaving the two others to circulate the story of Florent's antecedents. At first only a few meagre details were hawked about in low tones; then various versions of the facts got into circulation, incidents were exaggerated, and gradually quite a legend was constructed, in which Florent played the part of a perfect bogey man. He had ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... selecting certain dresses, hats, stockings, etc., each of which she laid carelessly aside: an imposing pile of many hues, all bright and gay and glittering. In another heap she laid the sombre things of black: a meagre assortment as compared ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... Just the same kind of pompous platitude conveyed in turgid phraseology, at which, in old times, Members used to laugh and run away. But CHAPLIN had them now. Like the wedding guest whom the Ancient Mariner button-holed—though as PLUNKET reminds me, the A.M. was meagre in frame, and CHAPLIN is not—the House could not help but hear. Once, when the orator dropped easily into autobiographical episode, described himself strolling about the fields of Lincolnshire, turning up a turnip here, drawing ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... his eyes sharply and beheld the meagre figure of Mrs. Silk. In one hand she held a medicine-bottle and a glass and in ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... I was away there in Montreal waiting for the New Yorkers to take it—if they could. They were a sorry rabble, for they rushed on La Prairie, that meagre place,—massacred ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... harshness, and he had looked into her chamber in just the same way. The present room was much humbler, but what struck him about it was the abundance of books lying everywhere. Their number and quality made the meagre furniture that supported them seem absurdly disproportionate. Some, indeed many, must have been recently purchased; and though he encouraged her to buy in reason, he had no notion that she indulged her innate passion so extensively in proportion to ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... Betsy Thoughtless is evaporated; the fire of the author scarcely sparkles. Even two meagre volumes could not be filled, without a little History of Melinda Fairfax;—without the Tale of Cornaro and the Turk,—a tale told twice, in verse and prose,—a tale already often published, and as often read. Alas, poor author! we catch ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... be of the simplest description, without paintings, sculpture, or stained glass; and the ritual used at the services was in keeping with this bareness. The arrangements of the refectory and the dormitory were equally meagre. Hard manual work, strict silence, and one daily meal gave the inmates every opportunity of conquering their ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... opinion he could lay no claim. His library was sold at auction in New York on the evening of October 12, 1868. If the collection disposed of on that occasion was really his library in full, it must be confessed it was a sorry affair and meagre in the extreme. In surveying the collection a judge of the value of such property would perhaps pronounce it worth from one hundred and twenty-five to one hundred and fifty dollars. The books brought fabulous ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... uneasy about what that ancient lawgiver they call the Public will say when it sees me, after slumbering so many years in the silence of oblivion, coming out now with all my years upon my back, and with a book as dry as a rush, devoid of invention, meagre in style, poor in thoughts, wholly wanting in learning and wisdom, without quotations in the margin or annotations at the end, after the fashion of other books I see, which, though all fables and profanity, are so full of maxims from Aristotle, and Plato, and the whole ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... family dinner, you see," said Mr. Smith, as we took our places at the meagre board. "We are plain people. Shall I help you to some of the ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... in the old site of its towns or villages, arouses our imagination and excites our curiosity. Men gaze with awe at the inscription on an ancient Egyptian or Assyrian stone; they hold with reverential touch the yellow parchment-roll whose dim, defaced characters record the meagre learning of a buried nationality; and the announcement that for centuries the tropical forests of Central America have hidden within their tangled growth the ruined homes and temples of a past race, stirs the civilized world ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... them standing their little empty shoes in front of the meagre fire, he bowed his head on his hands, and the tears trickled through his fingers. But the mother smiled softly to herself, as she kissed each of the children and tucked them into their worn ...
— Gabriel and the Hour Book • Evaleen Stein
... time, the great mass of the people in Europe—men and women—were ignorant to the last degree, possessing little if any sense of delicacy or refinement, and were utterly uncouth. For the most part, they lived in miserable hovels, were clothed in a most meagre and scanty way, and were little better than those beasts of burden which are compelled to do their master's bidding. Among these people, rights depended quite largely upon physical strength, and women were generally misused. To the lord of ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... said, I am going to quote a few of my old gleanings from gravestones, not because they are good of their kind—my collection will look poor and meagre enough compared with those that others have made—but I have an object in doing it which will appear presently ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... a large annual sum out of moneys provided by Acts of Parliament for University purposes. The reason which the Commissioners gave fer not making this institution the basis of a new College was declared to be its meagre scale which makes ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... themselves idealists of a sort, entangled in the vehicles of perception, and talking about sensations and ideas, pleasures and pains, as if these had been the elements of human nature, or even of nature at large: and only the most meagre of verbal systems, and the most artificial, can be constructed out of such materials. Moreover, they spoke much of pleasure and happiness, and hardly at all of misery and pain: whereas it would have been wiser, and truer to their real inspiration, to have laid all ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... of the birth, childhood, early associations, and very peculiar and abnormal psychological experiences of Professor Stowe. Aside from the fact of Dr. Stowe's being Mrs. Stowe's husband, and for this reason entitled to notice in any sketch of her life, however meagre, he is the original of the "visionary boy" in "Oldtown Folks;" and "Oldtown Fireside Stories" embody the experiences of his childhood and youth among the grotesque and original ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... theme of conversation, and a topic for all sorts of discussions. National feeling was wrought up. Jokes were cracked upon the only Frenchman in the ship, and comparisons made between "old horse" and "soup meagre," etc., etc. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... shown off to advantage by an extensive smile, when she found that we had no murderous intentions. The other gin was the most repulsive object I have ever seen—like a hideous toad with wrinkled, baggy skin, with legs and arms so thin as to be no more than skin stretched tight over very meagre shinbones; and the face of this wretched being was a mass of festering wounds, on which no one could look without pity and horror. The man, too, was remarkable; an exceedingly smart young buck with an air of irresponsibility about him that suggested ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... all these accessions in the nick of time, two millions and a quarter of whites was a meagre outfit for stocking a virgin farm of fifteen hundred miles square, to say nothing of its future police and external defence against the wolves of the deep. It barely equaled the original population, between the two oceans, of nomadic Indians, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... with some meagre little purchases in hand, had been listening to the discussion, started for the door. When he had opened it, he turned and faced them. "I'll tell ye one thing, all of ye," he said, "an' that ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Goethe's Wilhelm Meister are the three greatest tendencies of the age. Whoever is offended at this juxtaposition, and whoever can deem no revolution important which is not boisterous and material, has not yet risen to the broad and lofty viewpoint of the history of mankind. Even in our meagre histories of culture, which, for the most part, resemble a collection of variant readings accompanied by a running commentary the classical text of which has perished, many a little book of which the noisy rabble took scant notice in its day, plays a greater role than all that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... it upon the burning sands of Africa or in the frozen home of the Esquimaux, that he knows more than he puts in practice. We will concede to him that the quantum of his moral knowledge is very stinted and meagre; but in the same breath we will remind him that small as it is, he has not lived up to it; that he too has "come short"; that he too, knowing God in the dimmest, faintest degree, has yet not glorified him as God in the ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... returned, who had been seeing his horses provided for; that is to say, he had economically let them loose in the fields, where the poor beasts had to content themselves with the scanty moss they could pull off the rocks and a few meagre sea weeds, and the next day they would not fail to come of themselves and resume the labours ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... especially when hanging in clusters forty or fifty feet skyward. We had often read of the fan-palm, but they are much more curious to see than to read about, being here presented in their most thriving aspect. The California specimens are quite meagre and unsatisfactory in comparison with those grown so near the equator. Here the tree springs up in the exact shape of an outspread feather-fan, as though it were artificially trained, and reaches the height of thirty or forty feet, making a very distinctive ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... indeed, so exactly and so fully what they are that little remains for their bibliographer to add beyond the meagre historical detail here given. Their short and simple annals could be eked out by confidences which would not appreciably enrich the materials of the literary history of their time, and it seems better to leave them to the imagination of such posterity as they may reach. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... my pocket for the coin I glanced at the doorkeeper, the marked character and individuality of whose aspect encouraged me to expect something not quite in the ordinary way. He wore an old-fashioned great-coat, much faded, within which his meagre person was so completely enveloped that the rest of his attire was undistinguishable. But his visage was remarkably wind-flushed, sunburnt, and weather-worn, and had a most, unquiet, nervous, and apprehensive ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... house. It was rather a hovel than a house; but, poor as it was, it was as neat as misery could make it. The old woman was sitting up in her wretched bed, winding worsted; four meagre, ill-clothed, pale children were all busy, some of them sticking pins in paper for the pin-maker, and others sorting rags ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... then, the war was ended once more, after many men and much money had been consumed. The legions supported for it were very numerous, whereas the spoils taken were exceedingly meagre. [-17-] On this occasion also Germanicus announced the victory, in honor of which Augustus and Tiberius were allowed to bear the name imperator and to celebrate a triumph; and they received still other honors, as well as two arches bearing trophies, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... the scramble of the century passed, though apparently without even warming the lofty ceiling. Never had paler and more callous light entered by the large glazed doors, behind which one espied the little slumberous garden with its meagre, wintry lawns. And not an echo of the tempest of the sitting near at hand reached the spot; from the whole heavy pile there fell but death-like silence, and a covert quiver of distress that had come from far away, perhaps from ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the first male child, To him that did but yesterday suspire, There was not such a gracious creature born. But now will canker sorrow eat my bud, And chase the native beauty from his cheek; And he will look as hollow as a ghost, As dim and meagre as an ague's fit; And so he'll die; and, rising so again, When I shall meet him in the court of heaven I shall not know him: therefore, never—never— Shall I behold my ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... easy-going man, who wore a suit of rough heather-tweed and a round cloth fishing-hat. "My information is unfortunately very meagre. You have watched carefully. Well, ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... and in general he was known in the country as Beauty Smith. But he was anything save a beauty. To antithesis was due his naming. He was pre-eminently unbeautiful. Nature had been niggardly with him. He was a small man to begin with; and upon his meagre frame was deposited an even more strikingly meagre head. Its apex might be likened to a point. In fact, in his boyhood, before he had been named Beauty by his fellows, he had been ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... watched him with tears in his eyes. It did not last long: the unshapely head sank lower and lower; then suddenly turning his long neck round to the side of his body, the animal rolled over, and all that remained of poor "Lamentations" was a meagre meal for the ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... tangle of the "laurel-hell" that came down the mountainside to encroach upon the meagre patch reclaimed for human habitation, a man who had crept yard by yard to the thicket's edge drew back at the sight of ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... imperishable and increased lustre envelops the name of Sir Walter Raleigh as the pioneer and faithful promoter of English colonization in America. The recognition of his services by the people who reap the reward of his labors has ever been too meagre. A portrait here and there, the name of the capital city in a State, a mention among other explorers on a tablet in the National Library, the name of a battleship, and a few pages in history, help to remind us of his ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... his tall meagre figure looming dark in the lamp-light. Very eagerly he walked round the Crescent, examining the numbers of the houses, until he came to one, rather cleaner than the others, of which he took ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... of a book; hence very few remnants of classical works have come down to us in the original from a remote period. The rare exceptions are certain papyrus fragments, found in Egypt, some of which are Greek manuscripts dating from the third century B.C. Even from these sources the output is meagre; and the only other repository of classical books is a single room in the buried city of Herculaneum, which contained several hundred manuscripts, mostly in a charred condition, a considerable number of which, however, have been unrolled and found ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... tale will tell, Intent upon their ruin. Beware, Macduff, the fallen stars! Venus aggrieved will fly to Mars; There's mischief brewing. What mountain of a fair is that, Whose jewels, lace, and Spanish hat, Proclaim her high degree, With a tall, meagre-looking man, Who bears her reticule and fan? That was Maria D-, Now the ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... therefore, taken in hand a short sketch-history of mine, published some six months ago, have cut out some of it and have revised the rest, and blended it with the material of the following chapters, of which it forms nearly one-third. The result is something not quite so meagre in quantity or staccato in style, though even now less full than I should have liked to make it, had it been other than the work of an unknown writer telling the story of a small archipelago which is at once the most distant and well-nigh the youngest of English states. I have done ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... been well exhibited by Dr. Henderson[1]; while an outline of Russian literature in general is presented in the work of Otto[2]. Valuable information respecting the South-western Slavi is contained in the recent work of Sir J.G. Wilkinson.[3] But beyond this meagre enumeration, the English reader will find few sources of information at his command upon these topics. All these, too, are only sketches of separate parts of one great whole; of which in its full extent, both as a whole and in the ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... far-off flames, More dread than darkness. Soon the distant sound Of clanking anvils, and the lengthened breath Provoking fire are heard: and now they reach A wide expanded den where all around Tremendous furnaces, with hellish blaze, Flamed dreadful. At the heaving bellows stood The meagre form of Care, and as he blew To augment the fire, the fire augmented scorch'd His wretched limbs: sleepless for ever thus He toil'd and toil'd, of toil to reap no end But ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... children, fresh from romping in the bracing prairie air, were favored with a ravenous appetite, she had little. Tom understood all this; for, constituted like her, he, too, felt the deprivations of the table, although in a less degree, and much did he worry about her meagre diet. ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... garrulous of better days; but useful still, going through its own daily work,—as some old fisherman beaten grey by storm, yet drawing his daily nets: so it stands, with no complaint about its past youth, in blanched and meagre massiveness and serviceableness, gathering human souls together underneath it; the sound of its bells for prayer still rolling through its rents; and the grey peak of it seen far across the sea, principal of the three that rise above the waste of surfy sand and hillocked shore,—the lighthouse ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... John Randolph of Roanoke, Mr. Stephens has an acute intellect attached to a frail and meagre body. As was said by the witty Canon of St. Paul's of Francis Jeffrey, his mind is in a state of indecent exposure. A trained and skillful politician, he was for many years before the war returned to the United States House of Representatives from the district in which he resides, ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... themselves and with Protestantism, and therefore God would not allow them to proceed. Yet their repudiation of all art was better than the Judas-kiss which Romanism bestows on it, in the meagre eclecticism of the ancient religious schools, and of your modern Overbecks and Pugins. The only really wholesome designer of great power whom I have seen in Germany is Kaulbach; and perhaps every one would not agree with my reasons for admiring him, in this whitewashed ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... which mining country Elam's boyhood was lived. He had known nothing but hard knocks for big stakes. Pluck and endurance counted in the game, but the great god Chance dealt the cards. Honest work for sure but meagre returns did not count. A man played big. He risked everything for everything, and anything less than everything meant that he was a loser. So for twelve Yukon years, Elam Harnish had been a loser. True, ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... wet without showers! and as for food, what art thou, O, bully Ocean! but the stable of horse-fishes, the stall of cow-fishes, the sty of hog-fishes, and the kennel of dog-fishes! Commend me to a fresh-water dish for meagre days! Sea-weeds stewed with chalk may be savoury stuff for a merman; but, for my part, give me red cabbage and cream: and as for drink, a man may live in the midst of thee his whole life and die for thirst at the end of it! ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Congress at this time were secret. Historically, even the Journal which they kept gives little light as to their true proceedings. An American gentleman, who has studied that document with care, laments that it is painfully meagre, the object being apparently to record as little as possible." (Life of President Reed, by Mr. William ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... friends. And they say also, that men eat their flesh for to deliver them out of pain; for if the worms of the earth eat them the soul should suffer great pain, as they say. And namely when the flesh is tender and meagre, then say their friends, that they do great sin to let them have so long languor to suffer so much pain without reason. And when they find the flesh fat, then they say, that it is well done to send them soon to Paradise, and that they have not suffered ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... had mentioned all these things on the previous day, but she did not seem to have said anything memorable about them, and, so far as he could recollect, he had said nothing in reply but "Oh, yes" and "To be sure!" Could he sustain a lifetime of small-talk on these meagre responses? He saw in vision his most miserable tea-table—a timid husband and a mad wife glaring down their noses at plates. The picture leaped at him as from a cinematograph and appalled him. . . . After a time they would not even dare to look at each ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... truth, and one of these was an edition of Ptolemy's Geography, in which Judea was spoken of, not as "a land flowing with milk and honey," but, in strict accordance with the truth, as, in the main, meagre, barren, and inhospitable. In his trial this simple statement of geographical fact was used against him by his arch-enemy John Calvin with fearful power. In vain did Servetus plead that he had simply drawn the words from ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... accompanied by Dr. Moloney, called at the police-station and reported himself as being the victim of a terrible assault by which he will be marked for life. It appears from particulars to hand, which are very meagre, that two men named Morris and Winter have followed him for some months in order to be revenged for some fancied wrong. They decoyed him into a house and committed the assault complained of. We learn that information has been sworn, and the matter is in the ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... individual is able better to adjust himself to new situations. For when the individual enters the world, he is not prepared to meet many situations; only a few of the neural connections are made and he is able to perform only a meagre number of simple acts, such as breathing, crying, digestion. The pathways for complex acts, such as speaking English or French, or writing, are not formed at birth but must be built up within the ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... talkin' about?' asked Toot. 'I haven't seed—seen no barrel.'" Hettie was trying to speak correctly, but the spirit of the narrative ran away with her meagre ideas of grammar. ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... indeed, the playwright. Each night he left his boarding-place, drawn by an impulse he could not resist, to walk slowly to and fro opposite the theatre entrance, calculating with agonized eye the meagre numbers of those who entered. At times he took his stand near the door in a shadowy nook (with coat-collar rolled high about his ears), in order to observe the passing stream, hoping, exulting, and suffering alternately ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... as our fare had been meagre and our accommodation indifferent at Nazareth and Jerusalem, did we find every thing here excellent. In an elegant dining-room stood a large table covered with a fine white cloth, on which cut glass and clean knives, forks, and china plates gleamed invitingly. A servant in European ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... of those who have loved here will in the next world amount to perfect identity, that they will look back on the expressions of affection here as mere meagre strugglings after and approximation to the union which ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... sitting out one session of the colonial parliament, and had satisfied himself that he did no other good than that of keeping away some person more objectionable than himself. He was however prepared to repeat this self-sacrifice in a spirit of patriotism for which he received a very meagre meed of eulogy from Miss Jack, and an amount of self-applause which was ...
— Miss Sarah Jack, of Spanish Town, Jamaica • Anthony Trollope
... the grim protection of Osterno, was deserted and forlorn. All the doors were closed, the meagre curtains drawn. It was very cold. There was a sense of relief in this great frost; for when Nature puts forth her strength men are usually ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... of the continent of America was made near this Peninsula, and the accounts of early Spanish voyagers contain meagre but still valuable descriptions of the country, as it appeared at the time it was first visited by Europeans. It may be interesting to call to mind some of the circumstances connected with their voyages, and with the first settlement of Yucatan ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... the fifth floor of a building in New York City he toiled at his experiments day and night, with little food, and that of the simplest kind. Indeed so meagre was his fare, mainly crackers and tea, that he bought provisions at night in order to keep his friends from finding out how ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... elaborate preparation. Beyond the fact that a "Push" was to be inaugurated upon an entirely new and experimental form of advance, nothing was disclosed even to the men. The utter importance of maintaining absolute secrecy of this meagre information was earnestly reiterated. The slightest inkling of the impending intentions escaping to Fritz would have cast upon the troops engaged a disaster perhaps unequalled in the ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... hope the solitary occupant of III. will sheathe her claws when she hears how narrow an escape she has had of not being named at all. Her account of the process by which she got the answer is so meagre that, like the nursery tale of "Jack-a-Minory" (I trust I. E. A. will be merciful to the spelling), it is scarcely to ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... repeated the last words low and slowly, and then, for a little, silence fell upon the pair. Vague and meagre though the message was, it accorded exactly with Estein's long-suppressed desires. So entirely did Atli believe in himself and the virtue of his counsel, that the young Viking was thoroughly infected with his faith; ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... upon the embonpoint of the French Princesses. They said that their nieces, by the exercise of religious principles, obtained the advantage of solid flesh, while the Austrian Archduchesses, by wasting themselves in idleness and profane pursuits, grew thin and meagre, and were equally exhausted in their minds and bodies! At this the Abbe Vermond, as the tutor of Marie Antoinette, felt himself highly offended, and called on Comte de Mercy, then the Imperial Ambassador, to apprise him of the insult the Empire had received over ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... did not care what part her guardian played in the morrow's ceremonies. Like all the other figures peopling her meagre world he had grown non-existent to her. She had ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... afternoon, the chill fog made it impossible to go out, for the wind had risen from the sea and driven the salt mist inland. Miss Hathaway's library was meagre and uninteresting, Hepsey was busy in the kitchen, and Ruth was frankly bored. Reduced at last to the desperate strait of putting all her belongings in irreproachable order, she found herself, at four o'clock, without occupation. The temptation ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... While they ate, a monk, stationed at a desk near by, read aloud the extracts from the Lives of the Saints appointed for the day. This was one of the "sights," but we found it curious and melancholy to see strong, healthy men turned into monks and content with that meagre fare. Frugality and dominion over the flesh are good, of course, but minds from west of the Atlantic Ocean never seem quite to get into sympathy with the monastic idea; and we always felt, when we met monks, as though they ought ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... the first part of this tale should be of peculiar interest to the student of Shakspeare as well as to those engaged in tracing the genealogy of popular fiction. Jonathan Scott has given—for reasons of his own—a meagre abstract of a similar tale which occurs in the "Bahar-i- Danish" (vol. iii. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... outward figure, His meagre corps, though full of vigour, Would halt behind him, were ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... eating and drinking. They are rather picnics than assemblies for the serious purpose of qualifying as national defenders. Even in marksmanship the ranges are so short, and the efficiency expected so meagre, that the military value of this civic force is exceedingly dubious. It could only be compared with that of the Garde Civique of Belgium, and with neither the Swiss Rifle Corps ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... she went home with her goat, and found an earthen dish which her sisters had left her filled with their leavings. She did not touch it; and the next morning she went off again without taking the meagre breakfast which was left out for her. The first and second time she did this the sisters thought nothing of it; but when she did the same the third morning their attention was roused, and they said, "All is not right with Two-Eyes, for she has left her meals twice, and has touched nothing of ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... the parish school, one of the best in the county. The endowment from the tiends or tithes, extorted by John Knox from the Lords of the congregations, who had seized on the church lands, was more meagre for the schoolmasters than for the clergy. I think Mr. Thomas Murray had only 33 pounds in Money, a schoolhouse, and a residence and garden, and he had to make up a livelihood from school fees, which began at 2/ a quarter for reading, 3/6 when writing ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... the credit of the English nation that so little has been done in connection with Turkish bath building for the people. The attention given to the question of supplying bath-houses of any kind is of the most meagre character. The provisions of the Public Baths and Wash-houses Act are entirely inadequate. In these matters the German nation is far ahead of us. Fortunately for the general health, the Englishman is renowned for his morning "tub." But the cold tub is merely a tonic bath, and the ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... of Alfred, and above all with the chronicle of his reign. It seems likely that the King's rendering of Bede's history gave the first impulse toward the compilation of what is known as the English or Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was certainly thrown into its present form during his reign. The meagre lists of the kings of Wessex and the bishops of Winchester, which had been preserved from older times, were roughly expanded into a national history by insertions from Bede; but it is when it reaches the reign of Alfred that the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... cried out loudly at sight of the meagre tray, and as the egg and tea passed her lips a strange, eager sensation was hers, a delicious, gratified climax of emotion: Miss Mary was glad she was alive! She savoured each morsel of the pitiful meal; she could have wished it ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... plate above them on the iron rim: and so stood there, eating contentedly, while the warmth from the glowing yule-log entered gratefully into his lean old body and stirred to a brisker pulsing the blood in his meagre veins. But his interest in what was going forward revived again—his legs being, also, by that time well warmed—when his own praises were sounded by his daughter: in the story of how he stopped the runaway horse on the very brink of the precipice at Les Baux; and how his wife ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... that came into the hall, With visage wan and grim, And throwing off his sickly pall, Disclos'd each meagre limb. ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... they were poorer. There began to be talk of Debs, the leader of a great labor machine. The A. R. U. had fought one greedy corporation with success, and intimidated another. Sometime in June this Debs and his lieutenant, Howard, came to Chicago. The newspapers had little paragraphs of meagre information about the A. R. U. convention. One day there was a meeting in which a committee of the Pullman strikers set forth their case. At the close of that meeting the great boycott had been declared. "Mere bluff," said the newspapers. But ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... renaissance than architecture and more bay-window than both; but the number was the number of his sister's house; and, as the street and the avenue corroborated the numbered information, he mounted the doorstep, rang, and leisurely examined four stiff box-trees flanking the ornate portal—meagre vegetation compared to what he had been accustomed ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... haste.... I found this place, outside the Park, and was fairly comfortable for a few days, but she has found me out. Found me out, and has named the place Tonawanda—says it looks like that. In fact, I was not sorry she came, for there are but meagre pickings here, and she brought some of those apples. I was obliged to eat them, I was so hungry. It was against my principles, but I find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed.... She came curtained in boughs ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... theirs Through a thin skin of shrewish water, then Turn on a languid fin, and dip down, down, Into unplumbed, vast, oozy deeps of dream. His stomach was his master, and proclaimed it; And never were such meagre puppets made The slaves of such a tyrant, as his thoughts Of that obese epitome of ills. Trussed up he sat, the mockery of himself; And when upon the wan green of his eye I marked the gathering lustre of ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... together these meagre possessions—rich in bullion value, but meagre in happiness, considering all that might have been, and to-morrow I sail for London. There, following Henriette's advice, I shall enter the study of the ministry, and when I am ordained shall buy ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... Reveillee scatters into flight The flagging Rearguard of a ruined Night, And hark! the meagre Champion of the Roost Has flung a matins ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... woman, especially when the favorite drawing pupil discovered and aided Luigi Porta, whom she married shortly afterwards, against the will of Bartolomeo di Piombo. Madame Porta lived most wretchedly; she resorted to Magus to dispose of copies of paintings at a meagre price; brought a son into the world, Barthelemy; could not nurse him, lost him, and died of grief and exhaustion in ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... of the same examination involves these points:—The Aristophanic estimate of Euripides, with criticisms on its taste and justice (for which, however, a historical subject is given as an alternative); the Greek chorus, and choric metres. Now such an examination is, in the first place, a most meagre view of literature: it does not necessarily exercise the faculty of critical discernment. In the next place, it is chiefly a matter of compilation from English sources; the actual readings of the candidate in Greek and Latin would be of little ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... rising and sometimes getting lower, like a strange throbbing sob; and then once more it ceased. The audience hesitated a moment, being not quite certain whether the music was really finished or not. Then when they saw Margaritis rise from the piano, some meagre well-bred applause was heard, and an immense sigh of relief. The people streamed into the other rooms, and the ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... small quantity of silver, together with a silver-hafted knife, and had absconded with his pillage." Here you see, gentlemen, the murder is plain, and the manner of it. It was L.M. who murdered Spinosa for his money. Poor S. was an invalid, meagre, and weak: as no blood was observed, L.M., no doubt, threw him down and smothered him with pillows,—the poor man being already half suffocated by his infernal dinner. But who was L.M.? It surely never could ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... in reference to the Virgin and her Child. The group thus brought into relation is full of meaning, and, from the variety and contrast of character, full of poetical and artistic capabilities. St. John the Baptist is usually a man about thirty, with wild shaggy hair and meagre form, so draped that his vest of camel's hair is always visible; he holds his reed cross. St. John the Evangelist is generally the young and graceful disciple; but in some instances he is the venerable seer ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... of Babylon given by Herodotus is not that of an eye-witness, and his historical notices are meagre and untrustworthy. He was controverted by Ctesias, who, however, has mistaken mythology for history, and Greek romance owed to him its Ninus and Semiramis, its Ninyas and Sardanapalus. The only ancient authority of value on Babylonian and Assyrian ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... the deep sand. They stopped at length before the house of mourning, which was crowded with strangers, some inside, some on the outside. Vehicle after vehicle stood together; the horses and oxen were turned out amidst the meagre grass; large sand-hills, like those at home by the German Ocean, were to be seen behind the farm, and stretched far away in wide long ranges. How had they come there, twelve miles inland, and nearly as high and as large as those near the shore? The wind had lifted them and removed ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... a later period than the preceding one) Mr. Sheridan often alluded in conversation—particularly when any regret was expressed at his having ceased to assist Old Drury with his pen,—"wait (he would say smiling) till I bring out my Foresters." The plot, as far as can be judged from the few meagre scenes that exist, was intended to be an improvement upon that of the Drama just described—the Devils being transformed into Foresters, and the action commencing, not with the loss of a son, but the recovery ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... evening was a dismal failure. Try as he would, he could not catch Opal's eye again, nor secure more than the most meagre replies even to his direct questions. She was too French to be actually impolite, but she interposed between them those barriers only a woman can raise. She knew that Paul was mad for a word with her; she knew that she was tormenting ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... hopes and splendid prophecies, the fates had turned their backs on him at last, and all in a moment his air-castles crumbled to ruins abort him. Hawkeye rose from her fright triumphant and rejoicing, and down went Stone's Landing! One by one its meagre parcel of inhabitants packed up and moved away, as the summer waned and fall approached. Town lots were no longer salable, traffic ceased, a deadly lethargy fell upon the place once more, the "Weekly Telegraph" faded into an early grave, the wary tadpole returned from exile, the bullfrog resumed ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... all those notes, you might have arrived at something definite." Evidently he was disappointed in me; and I was somewhat disappointed in myself when I contrasted Thorndyke's elaborate instructions with the meagre result of my investigations. For what did my discoveries amount to? And how much was the inquiry advanced by the few entries in ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... Mucius Scaevola in 123 B.C.—the year of the first tribunate of C. Gracchus. The large number of these books has long been a stumbling-block to the learned, for we are expressly told that the annales maximi, as the records were called, were (in spite of their name) of a very meagre character; and many conjectures have quite recently been made to explain it.[581] But guessing is almost useless, seeing that there are no data for it. The editor may have added matter of his own, amplifying and adorning after the manner of writers of his day; or he may have worked ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... regards girls. How many girls enter upon marriage quite ignorant and altogether inexperienced. They commit themselves to the keeping of a man of whom they know hardly anything at all. The parents are often satisfied with the most meagre information. It is considered improper to ask for detailed information regarding the husband's past life, and hence it often happens that a girl is delivered up to an unscrupulous man suffering from ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... of it, and he could see even more of the relief she was taking from him. His presence, his face, his voice, the old rooms themselves, so meagre yet so charged, where Kate had admirably been to him—these things counted for her, now she had them, as the help she had been wanting: so that she still only stood there taking them all in. With it however popped up characteristically a throb ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... we went up to its top, where it is stony. Though there is earth enough for plants, yet they are so thin sown, that hardly two hundred could be found on an acre of ground. Trees are also very rare on that spot, and these poor, meagre, and cancerous. The stones I found there are all fit ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... ethnical, archaeological, and aesthetical excursions. Folk-lore is a treacherous byway of literature, and Hearn always worked in it with old-fashioned tools. As versatile in range as were his researches, the results are meagre, for he was not a trained observer nor thinker in any domain. So is it that in his later rovings among the metaphysics of Spencer and modern thought there is something feverishly shallow. His judgments of English writers were amateurish. He called Kipling a great poet, presumably ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... large United States flag, a few old clothes trimmed with ribbons, and one artillerist's uniform coat and hat, which probably Captain Clark will never wear again. We have to depend entirely upon this meagre outfit for the purchase of such horses and provisions as it will be in our power to obtain—a scant dependence, indeed, for such a journey as is ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... teaser that he bowled me that day. I had notched a three and two singles, when he sent me down a medium to fast which got me in two minds and I played back to it too late. Now, I am seldom out on a really grassy wicket for such a meagre score, and as David and I changed places without a word, there was a cheery look on his face that I found very galling. He ran in to my second ball and cut it neatly to the on for a single, and off my fifth and sixth he had two pretty drives for three, both behind the wicket. This, however, as ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... the reason that he did not obtain the liberal education that he should have had; besides that on account of weakness and delicate health, his mother would not let him exert himself, and his teachers forebore to urge him. He was meagre and sickly from the first, and hence had the nickname of Batalus, given him, it is said, by the boys, in derision of his appearance; Batalus being a certain enervated flute-player, in ridicule of whom ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... Hawkesby's niece, was a young woman of some little importance in the world. The patrons of the circulating libraries knew her as Ena Dunkeld, and shook their heads over her. The gentlemen who add to the meagre salaries they earn in Government offices by writing reviews knew her under both her names, for no literary secrets are hid from them. They praised her novels publicly, and in private yawned over her morality. Many people, her aunt Lady Hawkesby ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... all, you tell me to my face that you do not love me! Why have you sworn so often that you did?" He hadn't sworn it often. He had never sworn it at all since she had rejected him. He had been induced to admit a passion in the most meagre terms. "Do you own yourself ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... its rough sincerity; for the waves washed paint and powder from worn faces, and left a fresh bloom there. No ailment could entirely resist its vigorous cure; for every wind brought healing on its wings, endowing many a meagre life with another year of health. No gloomy spirit could refuse to listen to its lullaby, and the spray baptized it with the subtile benediction of a cheerier mood. No rank held place there; for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... proposed to her that she should come to the yacht, and indeed leave Brookfield to go on board. But Mrs. Chump was in that frame of mind when, shamefully wounded by others, we find our comfort in wilfully wounding ourselves. "No," she said (betraying a meagre mollification at every offer), "I'll not stop. I won't go to the yacht—unless I think better of ut. But I won't stop. Ye've hurrt me, and I'll say good-bye. I hope ye'll none of ye be widows. It's a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... dying rich—actually rich. The professor pulls his beard, and involuntarily glances round the somewhat meagre apartment, that not all his learning, not all his success in the scientific world—and it has been not unnoteworthy, so far—has enabled him to improve upon. It has helped him to live, no doubt, and distinctly outside the line of want, a thing ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... himself, and speaks of the "concise and superficial narrative from Commodus to Alexander." But the whole volume lacks the grasp and easy mastery which distinguish its successors. No doubt the subject-matter was comparatively meagre and ungrateful. The century between Commodus and Diocletian was one long spasm of anarchy and violence, which was, as Niebuhr said, incapable of historical treatment. The obscure confusion of the age is aggravated into almost complete darkness by the wretched ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... in a sore plight. Raided through and through by the fierce guerillas of North American warfare, swept bare of grain and cattle for Wolfe's army, the fugitives from smoking farms and hamlets were glad to seek refuge in the English lines, where the soldiers generously shared with them their meagre rations. More than one expedition had been sent up the river. Admiral Holmes, with over twenty ships, was already above the town, and had driven the French vessels, which had originally taken refuge there, to discharge their crews and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... any very great stretch of imagination we can picture to ourselves this man as belonging to one of the most primitive types of our race, having little occasion to use a vocabulary—save of a most meagre order; and indeed his language would embody only a supply of words just expressive of his few simple wants. Without daring to compare primitive culture with modern advancement, this prototype's appetites would have been possibly served for the greater part by sign-language, ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... me to disown them, or forsake The meagre wandering herd that lows for help— And needs me for its guide, to seek my pasture Among the well-fed beeves that graze at will. Because our race has no great memories, I will so live, it shall remember me ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... doubtless, more facilities in New England for the study of Arabic or Persian than there were then for the study of German." But it was not yet even 1813 in Hartford and its neighborhood, and in the middle of the eighteenth century the literary resources were meagre in the extreme. Learning was not concentrated in the towns, but the access to books there was easier. The country minister, who was the scholar, literary man, and school-master, fell back largely ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... weight in the argument. Perhaps I have felt that my recollections of things seen when the sense of reality was weakened must be untrustworthy. A few months ago, however, I talked it over with my two friends, and compared their somewhat meagre recollections with my own. That sense of unreality was all the more wonderful because the next day I heard sounds as unaccountable as were those lights, and without any emotion of unreality, and I remember them with perfect distinctness and confidence. ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... Mermaid, the other old taverns of Cheapside make a meagre showing in history. There was a Mitre, however, which dated back to 1475 at the least, and had the reputation of making "noses red"; and the Bull Head, whose host was the "most faithful friend" Bishop Ridley ever had, and was the meeting-place of the Royal Society for several ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... the period at which M. BOSC wrote, that he obtained his information from travellers to the further east, and has connected with the habitat universally ascribed to them from old KNOX'S work (Part 1. chap. vi.) a meagre description, more properly belonging to the land leech of Batavia or Japan. In all likelihood, therefore, there may be a H. Boscii, distinct from the H. Ceylanica. That which is found in Ceylon is round, a little flattened ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... happiness as the foundation of morals, the reference of human actions to the standard of the better mind of the world, or of the one 'sensible man' or 'superior person.' His conception of ousia, or essence, is not an advance upon Plato, but a return to the poor and meagre abstractions of the Eleatic philosophy. The dry attempt to reduce the presocratic philosophy by his own rather arbitrary standard of the four causes, contrasts unfavourably with Plato's general discussion ...
— Philebus • Plato
... of design compared with the style it succeeded, from the meagre and clumsy execution of sculptured and other ornamental work, from the intermixture of detail founded on an entirely different school of art, and the consequent subversion ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... the finite and meagre nature of our feelings does prevent us from extending our sympathies to those whom we have not seen in the flesh. It should not be so, and would not with one who had nurtured his heart with the proper care. And we are prone to permit an evil worse than that to canker ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... several accounts which have come down to us, meagre though they are, it ought to be possible to arrive at some conclusions regarding the nature of the plague of the fourteenth century which, for the pathologist, would amount to certainties. The wonder is that such men as Dr. Hecker and his learned translator should have shown so much reserve—not ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... grave question. And then the great heat of the days, added to our enfeebled condition, caused by the close confinement, and the meagre character of our diet, as well as the actual sickness of some of our party, including myself, induced me to believe that the attempt should at least be postponed. Still, day by day, we discussed the ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... had worn but once or twice, some not at all, selecting certain dresses, hats, stockings, etc., each of which she laid carelessly aside: an imposing pile of many hues, all bright and gay and glittering. In another heap she laid the sombre things of black: a meagre assortment as compared to ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... continental scenes of amusement, is gambling. Both sexes, and all ages, are busy at all times in the mysteries of the gaming-table. Dollars and florins are constantly changing hands. The bloated German, the meagre Frenchman, the sallow Russian, and even the placid Dutchman, hurry to those tables, and continue at them from morning till night, and often from night till morning. The fair sex are often as eager and miserable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... very appreciatively of Little Alfred, who was afterward the Great, and from mighty meagre materials creates a story that hangs together well. The illustrations for this volume are especially ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... artist is filled with unspeakable apprehension by the possibility of seeing these master-pieces destroyed or scattered abroad, these treasures plundered, all this wealth annihilated; and especially by the danger of seeing the ungraceful and meagre forms of modern utilitarianism usurp the place held by the manners, the habits, the face of all things in this privileged land of beauty, all consecrated by the admiration of ages. Alas! Holy Father, what is happening ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... maintained it with considerable ability. But he grew restless under restraint; and at length, taking advantage of the managing editor's absence, he published articles on prohibited subjects, which lost the paper half its subscribers, and him his situation. When next heard of, he was gaining a meagre subsistence by writing theatrical puffs,—employment for which he was indebted to the kindness of a certain influential actress ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... stone, Huddling from the black cruelty of the frost. With the new sparkling sun they swooped and came Like a cloud between the sun and street, and then Like a cloud blown from the blue north were lost, Vanishing and returning ever again, Small cloud following cloud across the flame That clear and meagre burned and burned away And left the ice unmelting ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... lived at the Benedictines; meagre day; soup meagre, herrings, eels, both with sauce; fryed fish; lentils, tasteless in themselves. In the library; where I found Maffeus's de Histori Indic: Promontorium flectere, to double the Cape. I parted very tenderly from the Prior and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... professional life, was at the capital of the State. He was, at the time mentioned, in general practice as a lawyer and a regular attendant upon the neighboring courts. His early opportunities for education were meagre indeed. He had been a student of men, rather than of books. He was, in the most expressive sense, "of the people,"—the people as they ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... the later Roman Commonwealth, vol ii. p. 317.] In fact, the more we test its importance, the higher we shall be led to estimate it; and, though the authentic details which we possess of its circumstances and its heroes are but meagre, we can trace enough of its general character to make us watch with deep interest this encounter between the rival conquerors of the decaying Roman empire. That old classic world, the history of which occupies so large ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... the Guides, under Lumsden, were hastening down from Lahore to give Edwardes that invaluable support which, however meagre in numbers, stout hearts, whose loyalty is above suspicion, afford to a harassed commander. Joyfully were they welcomed, as one sweltering day in June the Guides joined the little force which was besieging an army of ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... well tell you at once, what you will inevitably discover ere long if you condescend to inspect my meagre attainments, that for abstract study I have no more inclination than to fondle some mummy in the crypts of Cyrene, or play 'blind man's buff' with the corpses in the Morgue. My limited investments of time ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... place abounds in merchandize, and the country round produces dates, ginger of Mecca[218], and other sorts. In a mosque on the outside of the town is a tomb, which according to the Mahometans is the burial-place of Eve. The inhabitants go almost naked, and are meagre and swarthy. The sea produces abundance of fish. The natives tie three or four pieces of timber together about six feet long, on one of which slight rafts a man rows himself with a board, and ventures out to sea eight or nine miles to fish in all weathers. At this place the fleet ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... we arrived at our hotel in time to make up for our meagre lunch and rectify the danger of neglecting the inner man, as travellers are sometimes prone to do when so deeply interested in the objects around them. Later, in the cool of the evening, we had a deliciously pleasant walk through the ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... authenticated dates and records of domestic and professional experiences and achievements, was in England a comparatively late growth. It had no existence when Shakespeare died. It began to blossom in the eighteenth century, and did not flourish luxuriantly till a far more recent period. Meagre seeds of the modern art of biography were, indeed, sown within a few years of Shakespeare's death; but outside the unique little field of Izaak Walton's tillage, the first sproutings were plants so different from the fully developed tree, that they can with difficulty be identified with the genus. ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... table was this at Maple Grove! Several sorts of meat and wild fowl, several species of bread and cake, several indigenous preserves; and Robert could not help going back with aching heart to the scant supply of meagre fare at home; he saw again his sweet pale mother trying to look cheerful over the poor meal, and Linda keeping up an artificial gaiety, while her soul was sick of stints and privations. His face grew stern and sad at the ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... fragments of stone with so plain a marking of red dirt on them. Helen merely knew that her father had more than once climbed up here, though she had laughed at him for seeking gold upon the exalted heights. To know anything beyond this meagre and unsatisfying data, they ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... give and to do, though in itself imperative. The people of the whole country are alive to the necessity of it, and are ready to lend to the utmost, even where it involves a sharp skimping and daily sacrifice to lend out of meagre earnings. They will look with reprobation and contempt upon those who can and will not, upon those who demand a higher rate of interest, upon those who think of it as a mere commercial transaction. I have not come, therefore, ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... rosy limbs, and blue eyes and gold lashes— Made in the mold of the Saviour, they say! Drink deep of my bosom, my starved, meagre bosom, That—keeps you alive ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... distingue woman, with powdered hair and imposing presence, who presented a striking contrast to the meagre personage engaged in conversation with her. The Duke de Riancourt was a small, nervous man of thirty years or thereabouts, with a sanctimonious, unctuous mien, shifting eyes and long, smooth hair, carefully parted near the ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... would guess, so complex and contradictory are the involutions of the human brain. Hellenism, Greek culture and ideal; academic groves; young disciples, Plato and Socrates, the august nakedness of the Gods were equal, or almost equal, in his mind with the lacerated bodies of meagre saints; and his heart wavered between the temple of simple lines and the cathedral of a thousand arches. Once there had been a sharp struggle, but Christ, not Apollo, had been the victor, and the great cross in the bedroom of Stanton College overshadowed the beautiful slim body in which ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... or angels, and doll-like child-Christs in the one invariable attitude holding up two fingers of a baby hand to bless the spectator and worshippers, were for ever repeated. In a similar manner the instances of rude or meagre contemporary paintings with which the early Christians adorned their places of worship and the sepulchres of their dead in the basilicas and catacombs of Rome, are very curious and interesting for their antiquity and their associations, and as illustrations of faith; but they ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... form of the book and try to give it another shape. For the friendly reception given to it I have to offer my heartiest thanks. But against those who, believing themselves in possession of a richer view of the history here related, have called my conception meagre, I appeal to the beautiful words of Tertullian; "Malumus in scripturis minus, si forte, sapere ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... the greatest care should be taken to adapt the lessons to the standard of living of the pupils. In communities where the equipment for serving foods is most meagre, a special effort should be made to make the best use of such dishes and furnishings as are found in the homes of the pupils. Serving meals in a more pleasing way with more adequate (but not elaborate) equipment should also be ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... renounced the field of valour. At present, however, the fragrance of forbidden fruit seemed occasionally to float past him and remind him that the finest of pleasures is the rush of action. Living as he now lived was like reading a good book in a poor translation—a meagre entertainment for a young man who felt that he might have been an excellent linguist. He had good winters and poor winters, and while the former lasted he was sometimes the sport of a vision of virtual ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... appearance and degraded condition of the teachers who plainly said to us by their looks every day of their lives, "Boys, never be learned; whatever you are, above all things be warned from that in time by our sunken cheeks, by our poor pimply noses, by our meagre diet, by our acid-beer, and by our extraordinary suits of clothes, of which no human being can say whether they are snuff-coloured turned black, or black turned snuff-coloured, a point upon which we ourselves are perfectly unable to offer any ray ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... shall deal with the tall, meagre female near the fire-hearth, in abbreviated hair and a nose-pinch, who set up the claim that her sex were in all essentials the equals, if not the superiors, of man. Now, without any gairish of words, I will proceed baldly to enumerate ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... upon me like a thunderclap. I was in the enemy's country, sailing under false colours, with only the most meagre information about the man whose place I had taken and no plausible tale, such as I had fully intended to have ready, to carry me through the rigorous scrutiny of the ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... waist, and its whiteness was obscured by filth incredible. The long locks that mingled with it and overlay it on either side were roped together and tangled beyond hope of severance. The face was horribly pinched and meagre, and was of the color or want of color which you see in plants which have grown wholly in the dark. I will not describe further what I saw—what loathsome evidences of foul neglect. I have no heart for it, ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... toying with her fan beside me, and talking in an undertone behind it. "What prince of all that you have seen or read of," said she, "if born on a meagre mountain farm, would have made his fortune and have educated himself, as this man has done? I think the kings who founded races of kings were like him. And what prince of them all alive looks so much the prince as he? This one as fat ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... walks,—to have this fertile spot under my windows, not a few imported barrow-fulls of soil only to cover the sand which was thrown out in digging the cellar. Why not put my house, my parlor, behind this plot, instead of behind that meagre assemblage of curiosities, that poor apology for a Nature and Art, which I call my front-yard? It is an effort to clear up and make a decent appearance when the carpenter and mason have departed, though done as much for the passer-by as the dweller within. The most tasteful front-yard ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... been fused in the furnace of so strong a sorrow and silence has little of the dross of common speech—the unmeaning, misleading, unnecessary elements: his veritable memory and thought and feeling were painted by his meagre tale. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... an American college girl, Sylvia realized, and the varied intercourse, the day's hundred and one contacts and small excitements, meant more to her than her fellow students knew. When there was fun in the air Sylvia could be relied upon to take a hand in it. Her allowance was not meagre and she joined zestfully in such excursions as were possible, to concerts, lectures, and the theatre. She had that reverence for New England traditions that is found in all young Westerners. It was one of her jokes that she took two Boston ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... shore of the sluggish and swamp-like stream where the big rowboat was moored, was a meagre meal, indeed. For after a moment of consideration it was decided not to use up all the ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... applied to the impassioned life of Nature the "rules of mimic art." He calls this habit "a strong infection of the age," and tells how he too, for a time, was wont to compare scene with scene, and to pamper himself "with meagre novelties of colour and proportion." In another passage he speaks of similar melodramatic errors, from conformity to book-notions, in his early ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... poverty surround thee, With its pale and meagre train? Do they gather closely round thee, Want, and suffering and pain? Mourn not, for the chilly dew-drops, Fell upon thy Master's bed; Mourn not, for the Prince of Glory Had not where to ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... insolent and unfounded airs of superiority. In arms, we have almost always outshone them: and till they have excelled Newton, and come near to Shakspeare, pre-eminence in genius must remain with us. I think they are most entitled to triumph over the Italians; as, with the most meagre and inharmonious of all languages, the French have made more of that poverty in tragedy and eloquence, than the Italians have done with the language the most capable of both. But I did not mean to send you a dissertation. I hope it will not be long before you remove to Hampton.—Yet why should ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... the meagre details she knew concerning me, and as the practitioner, whom I took to be a veterinary surgeon called in for the emergency, ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... unnatural manner. A pang of compassion for the dumb unfortunate stirred in my breast, but I sat still and watched. He tried to walk, but the effort was a failure, and again he sat down and howled, this time with his meagre face upturned to my window. The street was empty, as far as I could see, for twilight was almost come, and cheery firesides were more tempting than slippery pavements and stinging winds. The muffled tones of distress became weaker and more despairing, ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... from the dead! That, as Bunyan justly says, would be to make a new Bible, to improve the finished salvation. No, if they will not hear Moses and the prophets, our Lord and his apostles, they must all likewise perish. This is a very meagre outline of this solemn treatise; it is full of striking illustrations, eminently calculated to arouse the thoughtless, and to convey solid instruction to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... justest celebrity, have assured us, that endless and dreadful evils are the portion of all who are engaged in the manufacture of tobacco; that the workmen are in general meagre, jaundiced, emaciated, asthmatic, subject to colic, diarrheas, to vertigo, violent headach, and muscular twitchings, to narcotism, and to various diseases of the breast and lungs.[48] They have also declared that some of these evils have befallen families from the fact alone ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... to answer questions, bade the driver go fast (he had a particular aversion to slow driving) and rolled, in all probability through a dusty suburb, to the goal of his pilgrimage. If the goal was a disappointment, if the church was meagre, or the ruin a heap of rubbish, Newman never protested or berated his cicerone; he looked with an impartial eye upon great monuments and small, made the guide recite his lesson, listened to it religiously, asked if there was nothing ...
— The American • Henry James
... patches, which the hard hand of labor had, with toil and difficulty, worn from what might otherwise be called a cold, bleak, desert. The rocks in several instances were overgrown with underwood and shrubs of different descriptions, which were browsed upon by meagre and hungry-looking goats, the only description of cattle that the poverty of these poor people allowed them to keep, with the exception of two or three families, who were able to indulge in the luxury of a cow. In winter it had an air of shivering desolation that was enough ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... otherwise. Mother, kneeling on the carpet beside him, like the faithful, ruffed, and farthingaled wife on a fifteenth-century tomb. Behind them, again, at some little distance, we and our visitor. With the best will in the world to do so, I can get but a meagre view of the latter. The room is altogether rather dark, it being one of our manners and customs not to throw much light on prayers, and he has chosen the darkest corner of it. I only vaguely see the outline of a kneeling figure, evidently ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... copies are only recensions of a single original. Some of the MSS. are parchment but the majority are in paper; some Lives again are merely fragments and no doubt scores if not hundreds of others have been entirely lost. Of many hundreds of our Irish saints we have only the meagre details supplied by the martyrologies, with perhaps occasional reference to them in the Lives of other saints. Again, finally, the memory of hundreds and hundreds of saints additional survives only in place names or is ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous
... left but a meagre product. Delacroix is par excellence the representative of the romantic epoch. And both by the mass and the quality of his work he forms a true connecting link between the classic epoch and the modern—in somewhat the same way as ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... right to be treated as a prisoner of war, and to relieve him of the monopoly of fatigue and garrison duty. He was too overjoyed with the boon of fighting for the liberation of his race to make much contention about who was to lead him. With meagre exception, his exclusive business in that war was to carry a gun. Yet repeatedly Negro soldiers evinced high capacity for command. Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson draws a glowing portrait of Sergeant Prince Rivers, Color-Sergeant of the First South Carolina Volunteers, a regiment of slaves, ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... the bureau, still protecting it with her meagre but energetic form while her eyes rested with almost a savage expression upon the master of the house as if he, and not the detective, had been the aggressor whose ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... black, uneven line, between its hoar-fringed banks. Then Lutra, bold in the unbroken stillness of Nature's perfect sleep, climbed the steps leading to a village garden, and searched the refuse heap for scraps discarded from the cottager's meagre board. She even wandered further, crossed the road, and passed under a gate into the fields near the outlying stables of the inn. Here some birds had roosted in the hazels by the fence, and the cub stood watching ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... top of the Fourteen Hundreds—the border had grown wider, had left its meagre allowance of three or four inches, and was fast acquiring a foot in width. This meant more detail, a broader design, coarser flowers, bigger fruit, and these spraying over the galloon, and all but invading the picture. It was all in the way of development. ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... Alps.—The sight of these mountains, whose tops seemed to touch the skies, and were covered with snow, and where nothing appeared to the eye but a few pitiful cottages, scattered here and there, on the sharp tops of inaccessible rocks; nothing but meagre flocks, almost perished with cold, and hairy men of a savage and fierce aspect; this spectacle, I say, renewed the terror which the distant prospect had raised, and chilled with fear the hearts of the soldiers.(743) ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... were when our fellows took hold, and hearing no word from them for a long time and then but a meagre one, it may be that many a citizen on this side ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... de Choiseul, who was a remarkably meagre-looking man, came to London to negotiate a peace, Charles Townsend, being asked whether the French government had sent the preliminaries of a treaty, answered, "he did not know, but they had sent the ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... submarines might seek to destroy, when no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and care taken that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. The precautions taken were meagre and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... thirst for learning was not to be satisfied with the meagre knowledge furnished in the miserable schools he was able to attend at long intervals. His step-mother says: "He read diligently. He read everything he could lay his hands on, and when he came across ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... help ne'er fails us in our time of need, For Thou canst quell the lions' rage, and feed Our hungry spirits with celestial fare: And if some soul no meagre taste would gain Of that repast, but thirstily is fain Full measure of ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... age of eleven years, he found himself free, bereft of parents, completely dependent upon his own resources. His early life, therefore, was one of great trials and sacrifices. Possessed, however, of a determination to live and learn, young Murray availed himself of every opportunity to improve his meagre stock of knowledge. So well did he succeed that his first day in school was spent as teacher rather than student. In later life, he acquired a good education, entered into the service of the public schools of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... not feel at all comfortable. I was, notwithstanding, just about to nestle myself up again in the corner, and once more close my eyes, when they lighted on two, tall, meagre forms, whom I immediately recognised by their garb as chairmen. There was something mysterious in their movements, as if they were consulting on matters of grave import—of their discourse I could understand nothing—and their voices sounded to me, in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... been apparent to me had it not obtruded itself in the form of a hindrance to social and economic progress.[9] In the Irish love of home, as in the larger national aspirations, the ideal has but a meagre material basis, its appeal being essentially to the social and intellectual instincts. It is not the physical environment and comfort of an orderly home that enchain and attract minds still dominated, more or less unconsciously, by the associations and common interests of the primitive clan, but ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... of salvation was widely disseminated in the land during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and we cannot know that Shakespeare did not accept the atonement of Christ in simple faith before he came to die.' The concession will today seem meagre to gay and worldly spirits, but words cannot express how comfortable it was to me. I gazed at my Father with loving eyes across the cheese and celery, and if the waiter had not been present I believe I might have ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... truly in saying this about Tartarin, who carried in his frame the soul of Don Quixote, the same chivalric impulses, heroic ideal, and crankiness for the grandiose and romantic; but, worse is the luck! he had not the body of the celebrated hidalgo, that thin and meagre apology for a body, on which material life failed to take a hold; one that could get through twenty nights without its breast-plate being unbuckled, and forty-eight hours on a handful of rice. On the contrary, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... is a hard mattress stretched on the floor, and sleep brings him only a meagre respite from the ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... This large army, set free for production, not only increases the volume of wealth produced, but makes possible a reduction of the hours of work. These people are to-day more or less parasites: they are supported by the work of others: in many instances they must toil diligently in return for a meagre existence. In Socialist society they are superfluous as merchants, hosts, brokers and agents. In lieu of the dozens, hundreds and thousands of stores and commercial establishments of all sorts, that to-day every community ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... of spirit and considerable power. The shock of Frederic's military successes made him suddenly drop the pen with which he had been inditing Anacreontics, and weak, rhymeless Horatian moods. His grenadier-songs, though often meagre and inflated, and marked with the literary vices of the time, do still account for the great fame which they acquired, as they went marching with the finest army that Europe ever ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... I am altogether at my ease when I see anywhere in my path that meagre, squalid, famine-faced spectre, Poverty; attended as he always is, by iron-fisted oppression, and leering contempt; but I have sturdily withstood his buffetings many a hard-laboured day already, and still ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... you see John the Baptist baptizing Christ in the Jordan, denotes that you will have a desperate mental struggle between yielding yourself to labor in meagre capacity for the sustenance of others, or follow desires which might lead ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... and the sane common-sense with which life was regarded, the simplicity of its faith and the patience with which trials were borne. The lessons he learned in it had more practical influence in his life than all the books he read. Nor were his opportunities for the study of character so meagre as the limit of one family would imply. As often happens in New England households, individualities were very marked, and from his stern uncle and his placid aunt down to the sweet and nimble-witted Alice, the family had developed traits and even eccentricities enough to make it a sort ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... a bust, this uncouth and slovenly thing would never have been ascribed to him. It is a reliquary, the crown of the head being detachable, and the head can also be separated from the bust. It is heavily gilded and minutely chased with the trivial work of some meagre craftsman; the eyes seem to have been enamelled. It is merely interesting as a school-piece. Speaking generally, Donatello's portraits are less important as busts than when they are portions of complete statues. Excluding Niccolo da Uzzano and the old man ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... that Las Cases was busily employed, and obtained a sight of his journal, with which he was not displeased. He, however, noticed that some of the military details and anecdotes gave but a meagre idea of the subject of war: This first led to the proposal of his writing his own Memoirs. At length the Emperor came to a determination, and on Saturday, the 9th of September he called his secretary into his cabin and dictated to him some particulars of the siege of Toulon. On approaching ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... season the beasts are half-starved. Their "kitchen" is a meagre ration of bruised beans, and their daily bread consists of the dry leaves of thorn trees, beaten down by the Makhbat, a flail-like staff, and caught in a large circle of matting (El-Khasaf). In Sinai the vegetation fares even worse: the branches are rudely lopped off to feed ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... 1837 went to Fredericton to obtain an appointment from the Hon. Thomas Baillie, then Surveyor-General of the Province. Mr. Baillie complimented him on his attainments, but refused to appoint him to the office. When Mr. Monro got back to St. John he had but two shillings in his pocket, and with this meagre sum he started on foot for home. Before he had gone far he found a job of masonry work and earned fifteen shillings. With this money he returned to St. John, and purchased Gibson's "Land Surveying" and some cakes for lunch, and set out again for Westmoreland. On the way he worked a day at digging ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... organised, and nearly all the members of the post and families interested would join together and go off on an excursion of several days to places where the berries were abundant, and thus secure large quantities, which were an acceptable addition to their rather meagre bill of fare. ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... night, after the challenge of the forged finger print, he continued at work, endeavoring to extract a clue from the meagre evidence—the bit of cloth and trace of poison already obtained from other cases, and now added the strange succession of events that surrounded the ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... addressed Amine was a little meagre personage, dressed in the garb of the Dutch seamen of the time, with a cap made of badger-skin hanging over his brow. His features were sharp and diminutive, his face of a deadly white, his lips pale, and his hair of a mixture between red and white. He had very little show of beard—indeed, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to give to Christ; yet it is a comfort to know that our friendship really is precious to him, and adds to his joy, poor and meagre though its best may be—but he has infinite blessings to give to us. "I call you friends." No other gift he gives to us can equal in value the love and friendship of his heart. When Cyrus gave Artabazus, one of his courtiers, a gold cup, he gave Chrysanthus, his favorite, ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... voyaging, the port of his destination heaves in sight. For months he has been penned up on shipboard, the subject of a discipline more strict than that in any way of life ashore. The food, poor in quality, and of meagre allowance at the best, has become doubly distasteful to him. The fresh water has nearly run out, and the red rusty sediment of the tank bottoms has a nauseating effect and does little to assuage the thirst engendered by salt rations. Shipmates have told and retold their yarns, discussions ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... that he did not obtain the liberal education that he should have had; besides that on account of weakness and delicate health, his mother would not let him exert himself, and his teachers forebore to urge him. He was meagre and sickly from the first, and hence had the nickname of Batalus, given him, it is said, by the boys, in derision of his appearance; Batalus being a certain enervated flute-player, in ridicule of ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... fell with a force that was passionate. There was violence in the grip of his hands. His light eyes were ablaze. His whole meagre body quivered as though galvanized by some vital, electric current more potent than ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... Bavaria as the subject in which to make her debut. She waited with considerable tact till she was approaching those scenes in which the mob triumph over order; and then, pretending to discover a cabal in the meagre applause she was receiving, she stopped in the middle of her acting, and, her eyes flashing fire, her face beaming brass, and her voice wild with well-assumed indignation, she cried—"I'm anxious to do my best to please the company; but if this cabal continues, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Thrown o'er your heads, from under which ye both Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a match Over a mine of Greek fire, did ye know! He holds on firmly to some thread of life— (It is the life to lead perforcedly) Which runs across some vast distracting orb 180 Of glory on either side that meagre thread, Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet— The spiritual life around the earthly life: The law of that is known to him as this, His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here. So is the man perplext ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... Day. That festive season of the year is not less marked and honoured in the Great Nor'-west than it is in civilised lands, though there are comparatively few to honour it, and their resources are somewhat meagre. These facts do not however, diminish the hearty zeal of the few—perchance they ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... at one o'clock Stuart's messenger arrived with a meagre account, having left Paris on the night of the 29th. The tricoloured flag had been raised; the National Guard was up, commanded by old Lafayette (their chief forty years ago), who ruled in Paris with Gerard, Odier, Casimir Perier, Lafitte, and one or two more. The Tuileries and the Louvre ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... there will be nothing left except the lying dreams of history, the miserable wreckage of our museums and picture- galleries, and the carefully guarded interiors of our aesthetic drawing-rooms, unreal and foolish, fitting witnesses of the life of corruption that goes on there, so pinched and meagre and cowardly, with its concealment and ignoring, rather than restraint of, natural longings; which does not forbid the greedy indulgence in them if it can but be ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... complete squadrons and a part of a fourth which constituted the force sent to France at the outbreak of war. The value of General Henderson's work lies in the fact that, in spite of official stinginess and meagre supplies of every kind, he built up a skeleton organisation so elastic and so well thought out that it conformed to war requirements as well as even the German plans fitted in with their aerial needs. On ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... either side were now playing eagerly with dice, diving from time to time for small silver pieces into heavy leathern purses, that seemed to have been destined for sums very different from what their present meagre contents represented. So many debased, avaricious countenances as he saw around him he had never imagined that it would be possible to collect in one spot, and he made up his mind to have no more to do with them than he could possibly help. He might congratulate ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... the New World the wealth of wit and imagination which has so long delighted us in the stories of Herakles, Perseus, Hermes, Sigurd, and Indra. The mythic lore of the American Indians is comparatively scanty and prosaic, as befits the product of a lower grade of culture and a more meagre intellect. Not only are the personages less characteristically pourtrayed, but there is a continual tendency to extravagance, the sure index of an inferior imagination. Nevertheless, after making due allowances for differences in the artistic method of treatment, ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... was left quite a stock of rare old plates and dishes which could be used as occasion demanded. The blue-and-white crockery which must serve a part of the time was pretty meagre, the supply of antique silver good as far as it went; it did ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... our human love, meagre and fluctuating as it is, for God's gift of holy love—of divine reciprocity, and with the presentation of this divine gift immediately we find ourselves in possession of a new set of desires, which for the first time in our experience of living prove themselves completely ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley
... wrote and destroyed. The floor became littered with torn papers. Then he enveloped a meagre result. Parker had ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... Too meagre a force to embrace the opportunity, there was nothing to do but to return to Panama. There it was agreed that Pizarro, with De Candia, should go over to Spain, taking with him Peruvians and treasures, tell what he had seen, and secure the royal countenance and support for their future undertaking, ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the insufficient eyebrows, they symbolized, as it were, a meagre and restricted life, vaguely acknowledged as the dispensation of an obscurely hostile but consistent Providence; a Providence far too awful and exalted—as well as hostile—to interest itself benignantly in so small and neutral a personality as stared ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley
... seeds has already been declared. They must not only grow, but grow into what we have bought them for—be true to name. Without the latter quality we cannot be sure of good gardens, and without the former they will not be full ones. A meagre "stand" from seeds properly sown is a rather exasperating and discouraging experience to encounter. The cost for fertilizing and preparing the land is just as much, and the cost of cultivating very nearly as much, when the rows are full of thrifty plants or strung ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... into this gloomy and distressed home brought with it a sudden gleam of happiness, the great question as to how they were to live had still to be solved. They were absolutely without means, and they could only hope to meet their meagre expenses by the sale of the house in which ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... rich. Whatever may have been the merits of this policy, which made some commotion for a few years, we can easily understand that it appealed to the imagination of young Lincoln at a time of keen political energy on his part of which we have but meagre details. ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... announcement of a grand cockfight between two persons of honour, and an advertisement offering a reward for a strayed dog. The whole made up two pages of moderate size. Whatever was communicated respecting matters of the highest moment was communicated in the most meagre and formal style. Sometimes, indeed, when the government was disposed to gratify the public curiosity respecting an important transaction, a broadside was put forth giving fuller details than could be found in the Gazette: but neither ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... female, on seeing the house in such a crowded state, started, paused, and glanced with some terror at the persons assembled. Her dress was not altered since her last visit; but her countenance, though more meagre and emaciated, expressed but little of the unsettled energy which then flashed from her eyes, and distorted her features by the depth of that mysterious excitement by which she had been agitated. Her countenance ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... gloom: no Love was left; All earth was but one thought—and that was Death, Immediate and inglorious; and the pang Of famine fed upon all entrails—men Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh; The meagre by the meagre were devoured, Even dogs assailed their masters, all save one, And he was faithful to a corse, and kept The birds and beasts and famished men at bay, Till hunger clung them,[57] or the dropping dead 50 Lured ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... Independence and an equal proportion of our generals, statesmen and presidents have been members of that denomination. As the sources of information regarding the religious views of most prominent Americans are shamefully meagre, I was inclined to regard Rector Reed's sermon as a historical document of inestimable value. Being prone, however, to act upon the advice of St. Paul and "prove all things," I began a cursory investigation. ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... fresh from the gorgeous coast of Italy to be in ecstasies with the meagre villages and villas that, more or less, lined the bay of New-York; but when they reached a point where the view of the two rivers, separated by the town, came before them, with the heights of Brooklyn, heights comparatively ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... manifold. In them we first begin to become really acquainted with ancestors of the people of to-day, even though we may have read in the pages of earlier writers of alien descent much that is of great concurrent interest. Through the medium of the native saga, epic, and meagre chronicle, we see for the first time their real though dim outlines, moving in and out of the mists that obscure the dawn of history; and these outlines become more and more distinct as the literary remains of succeeding periods become more abundant ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... have parents or relatives engaged in the same business, who require them to bring in a certain sum of money at the end of the day, and if they do not make up the amount they are received with blows and curses, and are refused the meagre suppers of which they are so much in need, or are turned into the streets to pass the night. The poor little wretches come crowding into the Five Points from nine o'clock until midnight, staggering under their heavy harps, those who have not made up the required ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... "bold discoverer in an unknown sea" found herself presented an appearance far from cheerful or attractive. It was of small dimensions, but too large for the meagre supply of furniture it contained. The unpapered walls displayed a monotonous surface of bare whitewash in urgent need of renewal. In one corner was an impoverished looking bed, on which reposed an infant of a few months old. At the foot of the ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... Cardan's life for the next two years is a meagre one. His rest was constantly disturbed either by the machinations of his foes or by the dread thereof, the evil last-named being probably the more noxious of the two. As long ago as 1557 he had begun the treatise De Utilitate ex Adversis Capienda, a work giving ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... at a length for which we must apologise to our readers; and yet this is but a meagre sketch of the contents of a book which deals with a very large proportion of the subjects that occupy the thoughts and move the feelings of religious men. We will attempt to sum up in a few words the ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... hard of flesh and tense of muscle, with his scant rations and meagre covering in the cold nights, with his long marches and fruitless risks and futile fightings, when he is shot down, has little consolation, save in the fact that the thing he and his comrades and the regiment and the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Orange had faced the desolate road before him it was as though men ploughed into his heart and left it mangled. Submission to the severities of God whatever they might be, obedience to authority, a companionless existence—these were the conditions, he knew, of the meagre joy permitted to those who, full of intellect, feeling, and kindness, undertook the rigorous discipline of a solitary journey. The world seldom takes account of the unhappy sensitiveness in devout souls; it thinks them insensible not only because they know how to ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... opposite. The Puritans admitted incessantly that they were exceedingly bad. The records sustain them.... The Puritans wallowed in every known form of wickedness to a disgusting degree. Considering the extremely meagre population of the early colonies, they were appallingly busy in evil. I do not refer to the doctrinal crimes that they artificially construed and dreaded and persecuted with such severity that England had to intervene: the crimes of being a Quaker, a Presbyterian, ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... grander estate than was ever conquered by sword, purchased by gold, or bequeathed by the laws of descent. There are homes for privacy, for the sanctities of love and friendship; but the wealth of life is common to all. Instead of elegant houses, and a meagre, inferior public life, as in the great cities of the world, there are modest homes and a noble common life. If the houses in our cities were simple and home-like in their appointments, and all their treasures of art and beauty were lodged in ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Take the fire; All that thou canst; by Roman hand at least Enkindled. And should Fortune grant return To loved Hesperia's land, not here shall rest Thy sacred ashes; but within an urn Cornelia, from this humble hand received, Shall place them. Here upon a meagre stone We draw the characters to mark thy tomb. These letters reading may some kindly friend Bring back thine head, dissevered, and may grant Full funeral honours to thine ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... satisfied with the very meagre information he had received, and directly he got a favourable opportunity, he besieged Mrs. Mittens, the old housekeeper, with questions concerning the new relation who was coming to make her home with them, and of ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... the corner of the street on which, halfway down the block, fronted Chang Foo's tea-shop. A glance in that direction, and Jimmie Dale drew a breath of relief. A patrol wagon was backed up to the curb, and a half dozen officers were busy loading it with what was evidently Chang Foo's far from meagre stock of gambling appurtenances; while Chang Foo himself, together with Sam Wah and another attendant, were in the grip of two other officers, waiting possibly for another patrol wagon. There was a crowd, too, but the crowd was at a respectful ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... that he was a bank clerk; it had a poor and meagre sound. It was not for him that she had been trained. She had been made to slave for herself, and was to make a "continental" marriage with the highest bidder. Eve's heart had been pretty well schooled out of her, and yet, ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... was for a time tearful in her forebodings that Harry would be starved, for in those days it was a matter of national opinion that our neighbours across the Channel fed on the most meagre of diet; but she was not in the habit of disputing her husband's will, and when the letter of acceptance had been sent off, she busied herself in preparing Harry's clothes for ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... rattling," said this strange girl; whose position, my Eleanor, in this house causes your Catherine some natural perplexity. When we had reached my chamber, "Be silent, silent as death," said Miss Eyre, her finger on her lip and her meagre body convulsed with some mysterious emotion. "Speak not of what you hear, do not remember what you ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... found herself possessed of what is colloquially termed a swivel eye (derived from her father), which she might perhaps have declined if her sentiments on the subject had been taken. She was not otherwise positively ill-looking, though anxious, meagre, of a muddy complexion, and looking as old again as ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... while Miss Blackley renders that of Benvenuto Cellini. Mrs. McCunn, as already said, compiled from the sources indicated the Adventures of Prince Charles, and she tells the story of Grace Darling; the contemporary account is, unluckily, rather meagre. Miss Alleyne did 'The Kidnapping of the Princes,' Mrs. Plowden the 'Story of Kaspar Hauser.' Miss Wright reduced the Adventures of Cortes from Prescott, and Mr. Rider Haggard has already been mentioned in connection ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... same sort in his 'Personal Narrative,' and forthwith wrote the worst description of the capital and the 'Pike' of Tenerife that any traveller has ever written of any place. He confesses to having kept a meagre diary, not intending to publish a mere book of travels, and drew his picture probably from ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... to Castlewood—you were all eyes, like a young crow. We intended you should be a priest. That awful Father Holt—how he used to frighten me when I was ill! I have a comfortable director now—the Abbe Douillette—a dear man. We make meagre on Fridays always. My cook is a devout pious man. You, of course, are of the right way of thinking. They say the Prince of ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... out by force of logic and analogy an extensive system of private law from the meagre fabric of the Twelve Tables, so under the lead of American lawyers American judges have applied the processes familiar in the development of unwritten law to the development of our written law, both ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... I had inserted an account in the Newgate Lives and Trials; it was bare and meagre, and written in the stiff, awkward style of the seventeenth century; it had, however, strongly captivated my imagination and I now thought that out of it something better could be made; that, if I added to the adventures, and purified the style, I might fashion out of it a very ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... peculiar representative in the southern States, of the genius of partizan warfare, we are surprised, when we would trace, in the pages of the annalist, the sources of this fame, to find the details so meagre and so unsatisfactory. Tradition mumbles over his broken memories, which we vainly strive to pluck from his lips, and bind together in coherent and satisfactory records. The spirited surprise, the happy ambush, the daring ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... heard but the sharp whistle of the silk and the rush of the water. It seemed a long time that they had stood there, when suddenly the colonel created a commotion by hooking and hauling forth a trout of meagre proportions. Unheeding Rex's brutal remarks, he silently inspected his prize dangling at the end of the line. It fell back into the water and darted away gayly upstream, but the colonel was not in the least disconcerted and strolled off after ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... into various cottages, where they were being rubbed with ice to draw the frost out of them. The farmer-boys were allowed no share in all this excitement, for the fisher-boys, who went in and out and saw everything, drove them away if they approached—and sold meagre information ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Massachusetts, August 24th, 1808. His father was a farmer in narrow circumstances, who, owing to the loss of property, was able to bestow upon his children only such an education as could be obtained in the district schools of a purely agricultural district. Books were scarce, and as poor in quality as meagre in quantity; but being a lad with literary tastes, a desire for information, and an omnivorous appetite for reading, every book that fell in the way of young Otis was eagerly seized and its contents ravenously devoured. The life of a poor farmer, with its ceaseless drudgery and petty needs, was ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... I required, and the chatib seconded me, though not with the zeal that I might have wished. To my demand for permission to travel no answer was returned, and the iniquitous despot, who had received from me no less than the value of about 750 piastres in goods, condescended to give me twenty meagre oxen, worth about 120 piastres. The state of my purse would not permit me to refuse even this mean return, and I bade adieu to El-Fascher ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... I know it. But promise." And Olive drew the girl nearer to her, flinging over her with one hand the fold of a cloak that hung ample upon her own meagre person, and holding her there with the other, while she looked at her, suppliant but ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... demands little. She was capable of immolation. Janet was by no means ungrateful for the warmth of such affection, though in moments conscious of a certain perplexity and sadness because she was able to give such a meagre return for the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was mine; I did not understand. So now is music prisoned in her cave, Save where some ebbing desultory wave Frets with its restless whirls this meagre strand. And in the withered hollow of this land Hath Summer dug herself so deep a grave, That hardly can the leaden willow crave One silver blossom ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... name, Hungry, meagre, slender, and lean, To show my body I have great shame, For hunger I feel so great teen; {88c} On me no fatness will be seen, Because that pasture I find none, Therefore I am ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... with a singular devotedness to the interests of the United States, and with a warm and undeviating attachment to the rights and liberties for which they were contending. Congress seem not to have well understood the extent or merits of his labors. He was obliged often to complain of the meagre compensation he received, and of the extreme difficulty with which he and his small family contrived to subsist on it. Both Mr Adams and Dr Franklin recommended him to Congress as worthy of better returns, but with little effect. This indifference to his worth and his services while living renders ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... compilation must be pronounced to be on the whole near to it. The book, of course, is not in the modern sense strictly critical, though it must be remembered that the authorities for at least the earlier history of Scotland are so exceedingly few and meagre, that criticism of the saner kind has very little to fasten upon. But in this book eminently, in the somewhat later compilation for Lardner's Cyclopaedia to a rather less degree, this absence of technical criticism ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... scene is, in my eyes, the daring juxtaposition of large simple masses of positive colour. There are none of the misty enamelled tones of Lynmouth, or the luscious richness of Clovelly. The forms are so simple and severe, that they would be absolutely meagre, were it not for the rich colouring with which Nature has so lovingly made up for the absence of all softness, all picturesque outline. One does not regret or even feel the want of trees here, while the eye ranges down from that dappled cloud- world above, over that ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... be seen in country places at certain times of the year. The very meagre celebrations of May Day, which can be seen in London even now, are a survival of the ancient customs with which the Morrice-Dance was always associated. Hawkins gives this account of the Morris; "there ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... came, with the nurse, before the story was ended, and then it had to be begun and told all over again,—the old, old story of a quarrel between the father and the "baby" of his family, of the hasty leaving home of the boy, of the meagre news of his early marriage, and lastly of the years that were empty of tidings. These Polly was able to fill up in part, when the story-teller turned listener, with interest almost as great ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... a balance in her hand, Which o'er and o'er she tries, and finds it true: From either side, conducted full in view, A man comes forth, of figure strange and queer; We now and then see something like them here. The first[313] was meagre, flimsy, void of strength, But Nature kindly had made up in length What she in breadth denied; erect and proud, A head and shoulders taller than the crowd, 120 He deem'd them pigmies all; loose hung his skin O'er his bare bones; ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... they had shared the meagre lunch of the noble French army surgeon, who had conceived such an ardent admiration for the trio of young Americans. Josh was already heard saying that he felt as hungry as a tramp who had been walking the railroad ties from early morning; and ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... Giotto and a Raphael, the sculpture of a Michael Angelo, the music of a Palestrina, and our politician might then ask himself which he thought had been the more beneficial as a social force. There still remain as our meagre heritage from these times of "faith," on the one hand the orthodoxy of the Nicene Creed, on the other certain festivals and celebrations in the cathedral of a small Bavarian town, little known, scarcely noticed, but still in the full glory ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... it, but I am certain of it—soon he will be incapable of work. I can see his poor hands tremble now. He will not even have a right to a pension. If he could not continue to work in the office he could hardly obtain a meagre relief, and that by favor only. And for long years I can only hope for an insufficient salary. Oh! to think that the catastrophe draws near, that one of these days he may fall ill and become infirm, perhaps, and that we shall be almost needy and I shall ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... ceased every sound Of war triumphant, and of love's sweet song, And all was silent—Creeping slow along, With eager eyes, that wandered round and round, Wild, haggard mien, and meagre, wasted frame, Bow'd to the earth, pale, starving Av'rice came: Clutching with palsied hands his golden god, And tottering in the path the others trod. These, one by one, Came and were gone: And after them followed the ceaseless stream Of worshippers, who, with mad shout and scream, ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... through foreign lands, especially in the East, the English or American traveler is constantly amazed to observe upon what meagre diet the natives exist. Accustomed to meat at every meal, he sees thousands of people who eat meat perhaps not once a year; used to an abundance of vegetables and fruits of infinite variety, he ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... continent. It was the same kind of ominous voice; but these men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies. They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to them, an insoluble mystery from the sea. All their meagre breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... were naked, and Stanton, who had thought of him as meagre and shrunken, was amazed at their sinewy strength. He remembered that he had once heard of him as a village Hercules. The President was unconscious, but some tortured nerve made him moan like an animal in pain. It was a strange sound to hear from one who had been wont to suffer with tight lips. ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... The old view that savages have degenerated from a higher level of culture, on which their forefathers once stood, is destitute alike of evidence and of probability. On the contrary, the information which we possess as to the lower races, meagre and fragmentary as it unfortunately is, all seems to point to the conclusion that on the whole even the most savage tribes have reached their low level of culture from one still lower, and that the upward movement, though so slow as to be almost ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... uncomprehending, she has incomparably more protection than the girl who is living in the city without home ties. Such girls form sixteen per cent. of the working women of Chicago. With absolutely every penny of their meagre wages consumed in their inadequate living, they are totally unable to save money. That loneliness and detachment which the city tends to breed in its inhabitants is easily intensified in such a girl into isolation and a desolating feeling of belonging nowhere. All youth resents the sense of the ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... effort at a fresh start tried to explain everything rather one-sidedly out of the meagre knowledge of the body. Spinoza had said in his remarkable Ethics (III, Prop. II, Schol.): "Nobody has thus far determined what the body can do, i.e., nobody has as yet shown by experience and trial what the body can do by the laws of nature alone in so far as nature ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... the Fall River and the New Bedford High Schools. And within a few years regattas and cricket-matches have become common events. Still, these public exhibitions are far from being a full exponent of the athletic habits of our people; and there is really more going on among us than this meagre "pentathlon" exhibits. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... luxury advanced more upon the model of the ancients than in this: the dinners (cn) of the Romans were even more luxurious, and a thousand times more costly, than our own; but their breakfasts were scandalously meagre; and, with many men, breakfast was no professed meal at all. Galen tells us that a little bread, and at most a little seasoning of oil, honey, or dried fruits, was the utmost breakfast which men generally allowed themselves: some indeed drank wine after it, but ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... companions; I would cheerfully live with him under the tents; I would knowingly explain all the manoeuvres of war, and all the details of the life military. As it is, the reader must please, out of his experience and imagination, to fill in the colours of the picture of which I can give but meagre hints and outlines, and, above all, fancy Mr. Harry Warrington in his new red coat and yellow facings, very happy to bear the King's colours, and pleased to learn and perform all the duties of his ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... service had been detached in one half from the army of the Rhine; the other half had served under Napoleon in his first foreign campaign, viz., the Italian campaign of 1796, which accomplished the conquest of Northern Italy. Those from Germany showed, by their looks and their meagre condition, how much they had suffered; and some of them, in describing their hardships, told their Irish acquaintance that, during the seige of Metz, which had occurred in the previous winter of 1797, they had slept in holes ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... surveying the stall. Something very like homesickness was in his heart. He had almost fancied for a minute that he was back once more in Athens. He raised his eyes and gave a quick, deep glance up and down the street—soot and dirt and grime, frowning buildings and ugly lines, and overhead a meagre strip of sky. Over Athens the sky hung glorious, a curve of light from side to side. His soul flew wide to meet it. Once more he was swinging along the "Street of the Winds," his face lifted to the Parthenon on its Acropolis, his nostrils breathing the clear air. ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... mortal make, she evinceth withal a trembling sensibility, a yielding infirmity of purpose, a quick susceptibility to reproach, and all the train of diffident and blushing virtues, which for their habitation usually seek out a feeble frame, an attenuated and meagre constitution. With more than man's bulk, her humors and occupations are eminently feminine. She sighs,—being six foot high. She languisheth,—being two feet wide. She worketh slender sprigs upon the delicate muslin,—her fingers being capable of moulding a Colossus. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... the top of the mountain, they saw before them two dark spots in a little hollow, and when they reached it, there was the wolf, dead in a mass of frozen blood and trampled snow. It was a huge, gaunt, gray, meagre carcass, with the foam frozen about its jaws, and stabbed in many places, which showed the fight had been a close one. All the snow was beaten about, as if with many feet, which showed still more plainly what a tussle it had been. A little farther on lay Alister, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... went up to its top, where it is stony. Though there is earth enough for plants, yet they are so thin sown, that hardly two hundred could be found on an acre of ground. Trees are also very rare on that spot, and these poor, meagre, and cancerous. The stones I found there are all fit ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... Arabian Al-rami), to the southward of which is another kingdom named Sumoltra, and not far from thence a large island named Java. His account, which was delivered orally to the person by whom it was written down, is extremely meagre and unsatisfactory. ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... to the men, and they had sworn to stick together to the last, they had only made journeys of about a mile in length through the dense jungle. The guide was still delirious, and half the men down with sickness or wounds. Food they had had of the most meagre description, and that principally the birds they had shot. Their ammunition was fast failing, and the time seemed to have come that evening to lie down and die, so weak were they, and so pertinacious were the attacks of the enemy—when a thrill of joy ran through every breast as ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... release (he would have called it so) Made half an inch of news, there were no tears That are recorded. Women there may have been To wish him back, though I should say, not knowing, The few there were to mourn were not for love, And were not lovely. Nothing of them, at least, Was in the meagre legend that I gathered Years after, when a chance of travel took me So near the region of his nativity That a few miles of leisure brought me there; For there I found a friendly citizen Who led me to his house among the trees That were above a railroad and a river. Square ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... back to her own street again before anyone else noticed her; then she met a very large important-looking gentleman, with a lady at his side—a small, thin, meagre woman, with a dried yellow face, wearing spectacles. The lady stopped very deliberately before Fan, ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... that swept rooms and spread new rushes. Upon the whole, the cooks blessed the Queen, along with all them that had to do with feeding and the kitchens. They thanked God for her because she had brought back the old fasts. For, as they argued, your fast brings honours to cooks, since, after a meagre day, your lord cometh to his trencher with a better appetite, and then is your cook commended. The Archbishop's cooks were the hottest in this contention, for they had the most reason to know. The stablemen, palfreniers, and falconers' mates were, most part of them, politicians more than ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... volume. Probably the Ameer, had he desired, would not have dared to concede such demands on any terms, no matter how full of advantage. But the terms which Lord Lytton was instructed to tender as an equivalent were strangely meagre. The Ameer was to receive a money gift, and a precarious stipend regarding which the new Viceroy was to 'deem it inconvenient to commit his government to any permanent pecuniary obligation.' The desiderated ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... and take all my powers under Thy control. I called to see Mr. Spence; his natural powers decline, but heaven beams on his countenance. He said, while he was putting on his neckcloth, in the morning, he had been struck with the meagre and ghastly appearance he presented in the glass; but the sweet serenity of his soul compelled him to exclaim, 'Welcome old man! welcome declining age! welcome death!'—I spoke at the Prayer Leaders' lovefeast, but the enemy troubled me much afterward: however, ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... their contents but because they are our earliest examples of the Overture fashioned in complete Sonata form. Originally the Overture had been a prelude to the opening of a play, a prelude of the lightest and most meagre nature. Examples, beginning with Monteverde, abound in all the early Italian opera composers.[129] Lully of the French school and Alessandro Scarlatti of the Italian were the first to amplify these beginnings and to ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... Council Board; and the plea was not without foundation, for his digestive organs had some morbid peculiarities which puzzled the whole College of Physicians; his complexion was livid; his frame was meagre; and his face, handsome and intellectual as it was, had a haggard look which indicated the restlessness of pain as well as the restlessness of ambition, [580] As soon, however, as he was once more minister, he applied himself strenuously to business, and toiled every day, and all day long, with ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... reached Sacramento via Salt Lake City, almost from a due easterly direction. On account of its location this route or trail could be easily controlled by the North in case of war. It had received very meagre support from the Government, and carried as a rule, only local mail. While the most direct route to San Francisco, it had been rendered the least important. This was not due solely to Congressional manipulation. Because of its northern latitude and the numerous high mountain ranges ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... paint, but went on the stage with their natural complexion. He instances this paragraph from Cibber: "The first thing that enters into the head of a young actor is that of being a heroe: In this ambition I was soon snubb'd by the insufficiency of my voice; to which might be added an uniform'd meagre person (tho' then not ill-made) with ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... This necessarily meagre account of a life which deserves more ample commemoration may be fitly closed by a few words concerning the relatives and descendants of ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... but indifferently upon this meagre regimen, but beyond all other evils a true Spaniard of the poorer sort dreads obesity. During the darkest night of the season he will get up at an absurd hour and stab his best friend in the back ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... broken sconce, a mirror crack'd, With table underpropp'd, and chairs new back'd; A marble side-slab with ten thousand stains, And all an ancient Tavern's poor remains. With much entreaty, they your food prepare, And acid wine afford, with meagre fare; Heartless you sup; and when a dozen times You've read the fractured window's senseless rhymes, Have been assured that Phoebe Green was fair, And Peter Jackson took his supper there; You reach a chilling chamber, ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... money and fame; they think there is no difficulty in the art. The novel will afford them an opportunity of bringing in a variety of scattered details; scraps of knowledge too scanty for an essay, and scraps of experience too meagre for independent publication. Others, again, attempt histories, or works of popular philosophy and science; not because they have any special stores of knowledge, or because any striking novelty of conception urges them to ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... gray. The sea here is not amusing itself; it has a busy and serious air, like an Englishman or a Dutchman. Neither polyps nor jelly-fish, neither sea-weed nor crabs enliven the sands at low water; the sea life is poor and meagre. What is wonderful is the struggle of man against a miserly and formidable power. Nature has done little for him, but she allows herself to be managed. Stepmother though she be, she is accommodating, subject to the occasional destruction of a hundred thousand ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... perches on the shoulders of the sentry in the sentry-box: she whispers the porter sleeping in his arm-chair: she glides up the staircase, and lies down between the king and queen in their bed-royal: this very night I daresay she will perch upon poor old Goody Twoshoes' meagre bolster, and whisper, "Will the gentleman and those ladies ask me again! No, no; they will forget poor old Twoshoes." Goody! For shame of yourself! Do not be cynical. Do not mistrust your fellow-creatures. What? Has the Christmas morning dawned upon thee ninety times? For four-score and ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... of the muddy and unwholesome kind which tells a tale of bad health, late hours and penury, and almost always of a bad disposition. The best description of him may be given in two familiar expressions—he was sharp and snappish. His cracked voice suited his sour face, meagre look, and magpie eyes of no particular color. A magpie eye, according to Napoleon, is a sure sign of dishonesty. "Look at So-and-so," he said to Las Cases at Saint Helena, alluding to a confidential servant whom he had been obliged to dismiss for malversation. "I do not know how ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... Napoleon received a letter fortnightly, in which epistle she communicated to him her opinions and observations upon politics and current events. Upon the return to power of the Orleans family, she was put off with a meagre pension. Like many other French women, she became more and more melancholy and misanthropic. She was unable to control her wrath against the philosophers and some of the contemporary writers, such as Lamartine, Mme. de Stael, Scott, and Byron. Her death, in 1830, was announced ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... merely that the latter devoured men's flesh in the shape of cotton, sugar, gold. And the native discrimination was not altogether unpraiseworthy, if the later French missionaries can be exonerated from national prejudice, when they declare that the Caribs said Spaniards were meagre and indigestible, while a Frenchman made a succulent and peptic meal. But if he was a person of a religious habit, priest or monk, woe to the incautious Carib who might dine upon him! a mistake in the article of mushrooms were not more fatal. Du Tertre relates that a French priest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... virtuoso is the reverent possessor of a genuine "Cremona." He consents to take for his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for technique, but not the soul of an artist. The youth has led the happy, careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American and he cannot, with his meagre past, express the love, the passion and the tragedies of life and all its happy phases as can the master who has lived life in all its fulness. But a girl comes into his life—a beautiful bit of human driftwood that his aunt had taken into her heart and home, and ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... patiently waiting the leisure of their beasts, sighing, and cursing, and complaining by turns, for want of more suitable recreation. The night was dreary, and the spreading branches of the tree under which our friends had taken shelter, afforded but a meagre accommodation. If their lodgings were comfortless, the supper which they could expect was still more humble and hermit-like;—the bill of fare consisted of some green grass, which though abundantly supplied, presented a most provoking and unrelishing want of variety. We would not venture ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... Besides these, we gathered great quantities of fruit that resembled the cranberry, and the leaves of a shrub somewhat like our thorn, which were remarkably sour. When we arrived, all our people began to look pale and meagre; many had the scurvy to a great degree, and upon others there were manifest signs of its approach; yet in a fortnight there was not a scorbutic person in either of the ships. Their recovery was effected by their being on shore, eating ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... of the towns was a very pleasing garden, as has been said, the Christians settled in them; each one in the place that fell to his share or, (as they say,) was committed to his charge; each one carried on his own cultivation, supporting himself with the meagre provisions of the Indians, thus robbing them of their private lands and inheritances, by which they maintained themselves. 8. In this wise the Spaniards kept within their own houses all the Indian ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... venture to think they will nevertheless maintain their ground, and that they can only be met by the discovery of new facts or new laws, of a nature very different from any yet known to us. I can only hope that my treatment of the subject, though necessarily very meagre, has been clear and intelligible; and that it may prove suggestive, both to the opponents and to the upholders of the theory ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... territories. But our people have pronounced against it. All who voted for Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Douglas —over three million three hundred thousand citizens—voted against this claim. Less than a million voted for it. Should the great majority yield to a meagre minority, especially under threats of disunion? This minority demand that slavery be protected by the constitution. Our fathers would not allow the word 'slave' or 'slavery' in the constitution, when all the states but one were slaveholding. Shall ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... walls—cheap, but, on the whole, well selected. The rugs were in subdued brown tints that matched well the pretty wall paper. To the cattleman, it was pathetic that the girl had done so much with such frugal means to her hand. For plainly her meagre efforts were circumscribed by ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... have given close attention to statistics which seemed to indicate that the yield per acre, of the wheat fields in all countries, is steadily decreasing. Decreasing to such an extent as to make it probable, that in the near future, the yield on a large proportion of these lands, will become too meagre to pay the cost of cultivation. A long series of carefully conducted experiments demonstrated the truth of ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... a young man with a meagre wife And two pale children in a Midland town; He showed the photograph to all his mates; And they considered him a decent chap Who did his work and hadn't much to say, And always laughed at other people's jokes Because he hadn't any ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... this kind would hardly warrant us in assuming its necessary non-existence at the time. The works ascribed to him at his death are fixed in the same approximate fashion through the edition published by his fellow-actors. Beyond these meagre facts and our knowledge of the publication of a few of his dramas in his lifetime all is uncertain; and the conclusions which have been drawn from these, and from the dramas themselves, as well as ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... you the most meagre information," said Mr. Farrington. He was white and shaky, a natural state for a law-abiding man who had witnessed wilful murder. "I heard voices and went down to the door, thinking I would find a policeman—then I heard ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... detecting about her some odour of the worm, with the feeling that here was rather ghost than woman. And yet I can hardly convey to you the why of this, except by dry details as to the contours of her lofty brow, meagre lips, pointed chin, and ashen cheeks. She was tall and deplorably emaciated, her whole skeleton, except the thigh-bones, being quite visible. Her eyes were of the bluish hue of cigarette smoke, and had in them the strangest, feeble, unearthly gaze; while at ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... given way to her imagination—from the first moment of her imprisonment. Inclined to be very musical, her ear had become keen in the silence, and on this background of silence, out of the meagre bits of reality, the footsteps of the guards in the corridors, the ringing of the clock, the rustling of the wind on the iron roof, the creaking of the lantern—it created complete musical pictures. At first Musya was afraid of them, ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... exposition of clauses of Bill. Just the same kind of pompous platitude conveyed in turgid phraseology, at which, in old times, Members used to laugh and run away. But CHAPLIN had them now. Like the wedding guest whom the Ancient Mariner button-holed—though as PLUNKET reminds me, the A.M. was meagre in frame, and CHAPLIN is not—the House could not help but hear. Once, when the orator dropped easily into autobiographical episode, described himself strolling about the fields of Lincolnshire, turning up a turnip here, drawing forth a casual ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... miserably supplied with household goods that even a rash and optimistic man would hesitate before offering a sovereign for an entire home, yet pawnshops flourish exceedingly, although the people possess nothing worth pawning. Children are half fed, for the earnings of parents are too meagre to allow a sufficient quantity of nourishing food; but public-houses do a roaring trade on the ready-money principle, while the chandler supplies scraps of food and half-ounces of tea on ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... a shocked voice; she knew very well who was meant. Joe was the ne'er-do-well of a son-in-law whose iniquities had transformed the young and comely Priscilla into the meagre and colourless Mrs. Baxter. 'He has no right to trouble her!' she ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and the grandchildren, whose photographs hung on the walls; and the long letters her mistress was always writing in a beautiful, fine hand, beginning, "My darling Sybil," "My darling Reggie," and ending always "Your devoted mother," seemed to a warm and simple heart but meagre substitutes for flesh-and-blood realities. But as Madame would inform her—they were too busy doing things for the dear soldiers, and working for the war; they could not come to her—that would never do. And to go to them would give so much trouble, when the railways were ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... shattered planks and timbers torn out of the "gripes." The crew of the ship had, for safety's sake, assembled aft on the full poop; and among them could be seen a female figure crouching down under the meagre shelter of the cabin skylight evidently in ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... trouble your mind so; you think about it all day. I can keep you, Cythie, in a plain way of living. Twenty-five shillings a week do not amount to much truly; but then many mechanics have no more, and we live quite as sparingly as journeymen mechanics... It is a meagre narrow life we are drifting into,' he added gloomily, 'but it is a degree more tolerable than the worrying sensation of all the world being ashamed of you, which we experienced ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... of the above drama was suggested by two or three rather meagre pages of the 'Islendingasaga' of Sturla Thordsson (ed. Vigfusson, ch. 146). To my notion, the poet has succeeded admirably in reproducing the cool coloring, the ironic-pessimistic attitude, that uncompromisingly masculine sentiment we know ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... you," exclaimed Fannie. She indicated a stout man in shirt-sleeves. He had his coat over one arm, his collar and necktie protruding from the breast pocket. His wife, a meagre woman, panted at his side. She carried two heavy children, one of them ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... lives in the most beautiful of towns. Their habitations are decayed; their taxes heavy; their pockets light; their opportunities few. One receives an impression, however, that life presents itself to them with attractions not accounted for in this meagre train of advantages, and that they are on better terms with it than many people who have made a better bargain. They lie in the sunshine; they dabble in the sea; they wear bright rags; they fall into attitudes ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... even, of such indifferent food, being thus really more than would be sufficient for the cultivation of the earth according to the more provident arrangements of civilised men. Yet in a land affording such meagre support the Australian savage is not a cannibal: while the New Zealander, who inhabits a much more productive region, notoriously feasts on ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... Guides, under Lumsden, were hastening down from Lahore to give Edwardes that invaluable support which, however meagre in numbers, stout hearts, whose loyalty is above suspicion, afford to a harassed commander. Joyfully were they welcomed, as one sweltering day in June the Guides joined the little force which was besieging an army of equal or perhaps greater strength ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... happened, Jean-Baptiste has been looking forward to a visit to Valenciennes which Antony Watteau had proposed to make. He hopes always—has a patient hope—that Antony's former patronage of him may be revived. And now he is among us, actually at his work-restless and disquieting, meagre, like a woman with some nervous malady. Is it pity, then, pity only, one must feel for the brilliant one? He has been criticising the work of Jean-Baptiste, who takes his judgments generously, gratefully. Can it be that, after all, he despises and ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... days; but useful still, going through its own daily work,—as some old fisherman beaten grey by storm, yet drawing his daily nets: so it stands, with no complaint about its past youth, in blanched and meagre massiveness and serviceableness, gathering human souls together underneath it; the sound of its bells for prayer still rolling through its rents; and the grey peak of it seen far across the sea, principal of the three ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... incalculable value. For that such men were well qualified to give an exact account of facts is beyond doubt. But the exclusive importance attached to active life made them indifferent to such memorials, and they were content with the barren and meagre notices of the pontifical annals and the yearly registers of magistrates in the temple of ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... On October 13, Mr. Moore, of Middelburg, which is another town here, died of a pestilential disease, which prevailed in several of our English towns and in New England. He left a widow with seven or eight children. A year before, being dissatisfied with the meagre and irregular payments from his hearers, he went to Barbadoes, to seek another place. Mr. Richard Denton, who is sound in faith, of a friendly disposition, and beloved by all, cannot be induced by us to remain, although we have earnestly tried to do this in various ways. He first went to Virginia ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... as if it were "the rule of life" to Christians, I saw to be a glaring mistake, intensely opposed to the Pauline doctrine. This discovery, moreover, soon became important to me, as furnishing a ready evasion of objections against the meagre or puerile views of the Pentateuch; for without very minute inquiry how far I must go to make the defence adequate, I gave a general reply, that the New Testament confessed the imperfections of the older dispensation. I still presumed the Old to have been perfect for its own objects ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... tulip become striped with many colours, the plant loses almost half of its height; and the method of making them thus break into colours is by transplanting them into a meagre or sandy soil, after they have previously enjoyed a richer soil: hence it appears, that the plant is weakened when the flower becomes variegated. See note on Anemone. For the acquired habits of ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... strength of that rule. Oudh still sends many recruits to the native army, though the young men no longer enjoy the advantage of a training in 'bhumiawat'. An occasional gang-robbery or bludgeon fight is the meagre modern substitute. The Rajputs or Thakurs of Bundelkhand and Gwalior still retain their old character for turbulence, but, of course, have less scope for what the author calls their 'sporting propensities' than they had in ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Good Cheer, the Sullen Month will die, And a young Moon requite us by and by: Look how the Old one, meagre, bent, and wan With age and Fast, ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... after night Merryon lay on his veranda, smoking his pipe in stark endurance while the dreadful hours crept by. Sometimes he held a letter from his wife hard clenched in one powerful hand. She wrote to him frequently—short, airy epistles, wholly inconsequent, often provocatively meagre. ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... dead! That, as Bunyan justly says, would be to make a new Bible, to improve the finished salvation. No, if they will not hear Moses and the prophets, our Lord and his apostles, they must all likewise perish. This is a very meagre outline of this solemn treatise; it is full of striking illustrations, eminently calculated to arouse the thoughtless, and to convey ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... same breath. On the right, stood a bulky figure, with a broken rattle hanging out of his great-coat pocket, who held up a lantern to his battered countenance to prove to the spectators that both his orbs of vision were darkened: on the left, a meagre constable had divested himself of his shirt, to bind up with greater convenience a gaping cut in ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... churches. But in our faithless, loveless, selfish, sin-drowned century, such an attempt at community of goods would not only annihilate all morality completely, but absolutely degrade us back from civilisation and modern Catholicism into the rudest and most meagre barbarism. The apostles of such doctrines now must speak, though perhaps unconsciously, from the sole inspiration of Satan, like Sidonia. The progress of humanity is not to be furthered by such means. Let our merchants no longer ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... directing a single person to institute any search, she simply took some refuse twigs, and making up a few mace, she despatched them with the meagre message that they had been sent by madame Wang, and that there was, in fact, no more; subsequently reporting to madame Wang that she had asked for and obtained all there was and that she had collected as much as two taels, and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... there is a possibility of a movement which, carried out legitimately, should command the fullest sympathy of every Christian heart, degenerating into the rejection of all the supernatural elements in the nature and work of our Lord, and leaving us with a meagre human Christ, shrunken and impotent. The Christ of the Gospels, by all means; but let it be the whole Christ of all the Gospels, the Christ over whose cradle angels sang, by whose empty grave angels watched, whose ascending form angels beheld and proclaimed ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
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