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Meager   /mˈigər/   Listen
Meager

adjective
1.
Deficient in amount or quality or extent.  Synonyms: meagerly, meagre, scrimpy, stingy.  "Meager fare"



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"Meager" Quotes from Famous Books



... forth on an unknown sea. Its sailing orders under the new Constitution were unique. Precedents, those charts and lighthouses of the judicial mariner, were lacking. Progress was tentative and groping. Little wonder therefore that at first the business of the Court was meager and membership in its body seemed less attractive than membership in the judiciary of a state. Robert Hanson Harrison, one of President Washington's original appointees to the Supreme bench, declined to serve, ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson

... be Pere Olivier's eating-place, dingy, tottering, and poverty-stricken, furnished with a few cracked and broken dishes and rusty knives and forks, the equipment of a miner or sheep-herder. Pere Olivier apologized for the meager fare, but we did well enough, with soup and a tin of boiled beef, breadfruit, and feis. The soup was of a red vegetable, not appetizing, and I could not make out the native name for it, hue arahi, until Grelet cried, "Ah, j'ai trouve le mot anglais! Ponkeen, ponkeen!" ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... not do to say that Peter Cooper was exactly disgusted with the public-school system of New York, for he, more than any other one man, had evolved it and carried it forward from very meager beginnings. Democracy is a safeguard against tyranny, but it often cramps and hinders the man of genuine initiative. If the entire public-school system of the State had been delegated to Peter Cooper in Eighteen Hundred Fifty, he as sole commissioner could and would have set the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... a meager half of the wire conversation; and the excitement, whatever its nature, was at the other end of the line. None the less, the station agent's broken ejaculations were provocative of keen interest in a man who had been boring himself ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... every preparation for the journey, and took the greatest care that the military household of the king, as yet very inconsiderable in numbers, should be well officered and well disciplined in its meager and limited proportions. The result was that, through the captain's arrangements, the king, on arriving at Melun, saw himself at the head of both the musketeers and Swiss guards, as well as a picket of the French guards. It might almost have been called a small army. M. Colbert ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... every conceivable and inconceivable device for attracting attention. Parents, nurses, and porters hurried along with mysterious looking bundles and important countenances. Crowds of curious, merry children thronged the sidewalks; here a thinly clad, meager boy, looked, with longing eyes and empty pockets, at pyramids of fruit and sweetmeats; and there a richly dressed group chattered like blackbirds, and occasionally fired a pack of crackers, to the infinite dismay of horses and drivers. Little chaps just out of frocks rushed about, with their ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... primitive woman he brought all his technological skill and a part of his technological interest to bear on the new problems. Women had been able to thrust a stick into the earth and drop the seed and await a meager harvest. When man turned his attention to this matter, his ingenuity eventually worked out a remarkable combination of the animal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms: with the iron plow, drawn by the ox, he upturned the face of the earth, and produced food stuffs in excess of immediate ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... become deeply interested in, or a very enthusiastic listener to sermons about Lot's disobedient wife, who because she looked back was turned into a pillar of salt. He is far more concerned about his own overworked and perhaps underfed wife who, due to the strain of trying to raise his family on a meager income that permits of no rest or proper medical care, is slowly but surely turning into a corpse. To go to a church and listen to a sermon about the sublimeness of being humble and meek, that no matter how desperate ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... names known in connection with the buildings themselves. The word architect was little used until after the Renaissance. The owner and the "surveyor" were the people responsible, and the plans, directions and details given to the workmen were astonishingly meager. ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop

... woodland, from which he had filched it in true pioneer fashion. Concerning Cooper's "costly contest with the soil," Mr. Keese tells us: "The inspiring beauty of its commanding views caught Cooper's fancy for buying it far more than any meager money returns its two hundred ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips

... watched her as she told her tale, the flush of happiness and joy still lighting up his face. As she finished relating the meager facts which to her denoted so many heart-throbs, a sob drowned her voice. As Aleck followed the story, ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger

... daybreak they had passed Harry where he rested in the deep dusk of the morning, without knowing he was near. With swift, silent steps they had passed down the trail, taking as much of Larry Kildene's corn as they could carry, and leaving the bloody pelt of the sheep and a very meager share of the mutton in exchange. Hungry and footsore, yet eager and glad to have come home successfully, Harry King walked forward, leading his good yellow horse, his eyes fixed on the cabin, and wondering not a little; for he, ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... rural districts of Missouri recently made his first visit to New York. Shortly after his arrival he went into a restaurant and ordered what seemed to him like a rather meager meal. When the bill was presented it totaled $8.35. The Missourian looked at the amount twice to make sure his eyes were not deceiving him. Then he smiled. "Waiter," he called, "you've made a mistake. I've got more ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... Herman moved his bed down-stairs and slept in the sitting-room, the five or six hours of day-light sleep which were all he required. And at night, while he was at the mill, Rudolph sat and dozed and kept watch below. Twice a day some meager provisions were left at the top of the stairs and her door was unlocked. She would creep out and get them, not because she was hungry, but because she meant to keep up her strength. Let their vigilance slip but once, and she meant to ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... started at Lake Guatanita in Bogota, and traveled north to Quivera, but the wealth that the Spaniards sought they never found. Their journey led them over deserts that gave them but little food and only a meager supply of water, ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk

... completed and his meager apparel redonned he seated himself at the foot of the tree and motioning Tarzan to a place beside him, opened the pouch that hung at his right side taking from it strips of dried flesh and a couple of handfuls of thin-shelled nuts with which ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... half-frantic with despair. What were they to do? In the morning they would be discovered and killed. For all his inherited size and strength he was, after all, only a little boy—a frightened, homesick little boy—reasoning faultily from the meager experience of childhood. He could think of but a single glaring fact—they had killed a fellow man, and they were among savage strangers, thirsting for the blood of the first victim whom fate cast into their clutches. This much he had ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... either side were two uniformed persons called soldiers—incomprehensible to one who has no knowledge of the interior, for they bore no marks whatever of the military—whilst uniformed men also solemnly guarded the back. Then came the grinning coolies, carrying that meager portion of my worldly goods which I had anticipated would have been engulfed in the Yangtze. And at the head of all, leading them on as captains do the Salvation Army, was I myself, walking along triumphantly, undoubtedly looking a person of weight, but somehow peculiarly unable to get out of ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... taken were meager and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson

... our highest good - in other words, that the knowledge and love of God is the ultimate aim to which all our actions should be directed. (36) The worldling cannot understand these things, they appear foolishness to him. because he has too meager a knowledge of God, and also because in this highest good he can discover nothing which he can handle or eat, or which affects the fleshly appetites wherein he chiefly delights, for it consists solely in thought and the pure reason. (37) They, on the other hand, who know that they ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza

... all that was dirty, and mean, and contemptible, and cowardly in the eyes of a brave man, and yet, notwithstanding all this, Billy Byrne was no coward. He was what he was because of training and environment. He knew no other methods; no other code. Whatever the meager ethics of his kind he would have lived up to them to the death. He never had squealed on a pal, and he never had left a wounded friend to fall into the ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... but their fluid kinds are very bulky for their meager nutritive value. However, a few cans of consomme are fine for 'stock' in camp soups or stews, and invaluable in case of sickness. Here, as in canned meat, ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... necessary, Peter. Without them my—my life would have been quite empty, Peter. It's—it's very strange—amazing. You will understand as you read. I'll be back to dinner, so good-by." In the strangest agitation the old Captain walked out of the library. The last glimpse Peter had of him was his meager old figure silhouetted against the cold gray fog ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... elaborate. It was thus surely only the shadow of a true theater, different not only as a photograph is compared with a painting, but different as a photograph is compared with the original man. And yet, however meager and shadowlike the moving picture play appeared compared with the performance of living actors, the advantage of the cheap multiplication was so great that the ambition of the producers was natural, to ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg

... made a sound in the aire." I should like to explain to him about the motions of the seven planets which are the seven governours of the world, and how Saturn "causeth a complexion of colour between blacke and yeallowe, meager, distorted, of an harde skinne, eminent vaines, an hairie bodie, small eies, eie brows joyned together &c.," and how "he maketh a man subtle, wittie, a way-layer, and murtherer;" how, again, Jupiter is "magnipotent, good natured, fortunate, ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... well in the wood: one yellow-haired, lean and eager; the other redhaired, heavy and pondering; and if it be true that two heads are better than one, it is truer that four hands are better than two. In any case, their united and repeated efforts bore fruit at last, if anything so hard and meager and forlorn can be called a fruit. It weighed loosely in the net as it was lifted, and rolled out on the grassy edge of the well; ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton

... obliged to write their descriptions of accidents hastily and often from meager data, and in the attempt to make them vivid they sometimes make them ridiculous; for example, a New York City paper a few days ago, in describing a collision between a train and a motor bus, said: "The train, too, was filled with passengers. Their shrieks mingled with the cries of the dead ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... youth, and care little for the soul as the price paid for it. Not a few, mistaking "Witch-of-Endorism" pure and simple, for Occultism—"through the yawning Earth from Stygian gloom, call up the meager ghost to walks of light," and want, on the strength of this feat, to be regarded as full blown Adepts. "Ceremonial Magic" according to the rules mockingly laid down by Eliphas Levi, is another imagined alter ego of the philosophy of the Arhats of old. In short, the prisms through which ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky

... 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 forbore to urge him. He was meager and sickly from the first, and hence had his nickname of Batalus, given him, it is said, by the boys, in derision of his appearance; Batalus being, as some tell us, a certain enervated flute-player, in ridicule of whom Antiphanes wrote a play. Others speak of ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... halo of romantic splendor surrounds the first voyage of Sebastian Cabot. A meager extract from an old Bristol record: "In the year 1497, June 24, on St. John's Day, was Newfoundland found by Bristol men in a ship called the Matthew"—a few dry statements such as might be found in the note-book of any intelligent sea captain—these are all the traces of the ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various

... Harvard students. To form a good English style, he told them, a student ought to keep near at hand a Bible, a volume of Shakespeare, and Bacon's essays. That group of books would enlarge the vocabulary, would supply a store of words, phrases, and, allusions, and save the necessity of ransacking a meager and hide-bound diction in order to make one's meaning plain. Coleridge in his Table-Talk adds that "intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being VULGAR in point of style." So it may be urged that these times have and still ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee

... penitence.[92] The total, during forty-three years, between 1481 and 1525, amounted to 234,526, including all descriptions of condemned heretics.[93] These figures are of necessity vague, for the Holy Office left but meager records of its proceedings. The vast numbers of cases brought before the Inquisitors rendered their method of procedure almost as summary as that of Fouquier Thinville, while policy induced them to bury the memory of their victims ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... prepared in part for the first meager showing of mission work. On shipboard he had encountered the usual assortment of missionary critics; the unobservant, the profane, the superior, the loose-living, and all that tribe. The first of them he had met on the second day out from San Francisco, and every boat which sailed the ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt

... to give him careful attention, even the Dominican. The jeweler was a tall, meager, nervous man, very dark, dressed in the English fashion and wearing a pith helmet. Remarkable about him was his long white hair contrasted with a sparse black beard, indicating a mestizo origin. To avoid the glare of the sun he wore constantly a pair of enormous blue goggles, which completely ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... brief, coherent, and often contradictory allusions to her which the biographies of the plowman-poet contain. This paper—prepared during a sojourn in "The Land of Burns"—while it adds a little to our meager knowledge of Mary Campbell, aims to present consecutively and congruously so much as may be known of her brief life, her relation to the bard, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... bed of straw and spend the night in this place. In this stable, possibly the very cave where now stands the Church of the Nativity, Mary and Joseph found lodgings for the night. It was not a mark of degradation or social inferiority for them to do this, though it was an indication of their meager means, as wealthy visitors would ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden

... her Husbands neuer sundred heart. If that I dye, yet will it glad my soule, Which then shall feede on those Elisian ioyes, That in the sacred Temple of thy breast, My liuing memory shall shrined bee. But if that enuious fates should call thee hence, And Death with pale and meager looke vsurpe, Vpon those rosiate lips, and Currall cheekes, Then Ayre be turnde, to poyson to infect me, 450 Earth gape and swallow him that Heauens hate, Consume me Fire with thy deuouring flames, Or Water drowne, who else would melt in teares. But ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous

... ready—as ready as we could be with our meager equipment. The camp was in a state of siege. The cliff-lights were extinguished: the interior lights were dim, save in the workshops of the main building, where the final assembling of Snap's other flying platforms and their insulated ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various

... can not fawn, Though it would raise him to the lawn He pass'd his hours among his books; You find it in his meager looks: He might, if he were worldly wise, Preferment get, and spare his eyes; But owns he had a stubborn spirit, That made him trust alone to merit; Would rise by merit to promotion; Alas! a mere chimeric notion. The Doctor, if you will believe him, Confess'd ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... mature students often reveal very meager knowledge of methods of study. I once had a class of some thirty persons, most of whom were men twenty-five to thirty-five years of age, who were college graduates and experienced teachers. One day I asked them, "When has a book been read properly?" The first reply came from ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry

... railway and street-car undertakings, land developments, government revision of the tariff, war between France and Turkey, famine in Russia or Ireland, and so on. The first Atlantic cable had not been laid as yet, and news of any kind from abroad was slow and meager. Still there were great financial figures in the held, men who, like Cyrus Field, or William H. Vanderbilt, or F. X. Drexel, were doing marvelous things, and their activities and the rumors concerning them counted ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... Massachusetts, to prepare him for Phillips Academy. At the academy he was prepared for Yale College, which he entered when fifteen years of age. With the knowledge of science so small at the time, collegiate instruction in such subjects was naturally meager in the extreme. Jeremiah Day was then professor of natural philosophy at Yale, and was probably America's ablest teacher of the subject. His lectures upon electricity and the experiments with which he illustrated them aroused the interest of ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers

... destitute, and it became necessary for Mrs. Greyson to look out for a humble lodging where she could find the united advantages of cheapness, cleanliness and pure air, she was providentially led to inquire at the cottage of the widow Rocke, whom she found only too glad to increase her meager income by letting half her little house to such unexceptionable tenants as the widow Greyson and ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... a long time; and it was clear that the photograph had been mislaid. Somers was in hopes she would not be able to find it; though he had but a meager expectation of over-throwing the claims of his rival to the name of Allan Garland. It was a hot day, and the windows of the house were all open. His legs seemed to promise the only satisfactory solution of the problem; and while he was considering the propriety of jumping out through ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic

... literature have furnished. The poet has devoted no more than one single scene to this entire sleep walking including the grounds for it, and he has said as little of Lady Macbeth's childhood as of her sexual erotic life. Our knowledge of Shakespeare's life is above all so meager, if we turn from the case to the poet himself, that the difficulties tower in our way almost mountain high. The reader will in this case, which presents itself so unfavorably, have to expect neither that certainty nor even that high degree of probability of ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger

... put off for land, and a stranger stepped on shore, a lofty, lordly kind of man, tall and dry, with a meager face, furnished with hug mustachios. He was clad in Flemish doublet and hose, and an insufferably tall hat, with a cocktail feather. Such was the patroon Killian Van Rensellaer, who had come out from Holland to found a colony or patroonship on a great tract ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... large house, costing eight thousand dollars (in Salt Lake City it would have been worth fifty thousand dollars), I was offered eight hundred dollars. My fanaticism would not allow me to take so meager a sum for it. I locked it up, selling only one stove out of it, for which I received eight yards of cloth. The building, with its twenty-seven rooms, I turned over to the committee, to be sold to help the poor away. The committee afterwards parted with ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee

... when I left New York for Europe, Italy was "on the verge" of entering the great war. According to the meager reports that a strict censorship permitted to reach the world, Italy had been hesitating for many months between a continuance of her precarious neutrality and joining with the Allies, with an intermittent war fever in her pulses. It was known that she was buying supplies for her ill-equipped ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... making of history became a habit, a habit so inveterate that not even death itself could break him of it. He only lived to be thirty-two; but he made vast quantities of history in that meager handful of years. 'His,' says Sir James Stephen, 'is the one heroic name which adorns the annals of the English church from the days of Elizabeth to our own.' And Dr. George Smith, his biographer, boasts ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham

... stowed what was left of his meager supper into his blouse and strolled out. Once clear of the house, he ran swiftly to the edge of the village, and from the end of a hollow log drew forth a canvas bag. He inspected the contents, which ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce

... rewarded in this life and the life to come. She and her husband were in complete harmony on this vital point. Yet not a miserly trait entered into their humble thrift. It was a necessity entailed by their meager resources; it was inspired by the wish for an honest independence in ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe

... angels instead. Pointing to some poor drab lurking in a shadowy corner he asks, "See! is she not a vile thing?" On this we must part; he is too old to change, and his mind has withered in prejudice and conventions; "a meager mind," I mutter to myself, "one incapable of the effort necessary to understand me if I were to tell him, for instance, that the desire of beauty is in itself a morality." It was, perhaps, the only morality the Greeks ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... medical man's appearance, and after some little conversation, a carriage was called, and Mr. Lincoln was removed, accompanied by Matt, to the doctor's private sanitarium. Andy was left behind to go over Mr. Lincoln's meager effects and bring away ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer

... have both much to tell each other. But I wish to hear your story first. Remember, Claudia, those alarming letters you sent me were very meager in their details. Tell me everything, my child; everything from the time you left me until the time ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... the road on the opposite bank, but it was carried away three or four years ago, and its ragged butments stand as a monument of procrastination, while the stream is crossed by means of a flatboat and a cable. In front of the hotel, on the slight slope to the river, is a meager grove of locusts. The famous spring, close to-the stream, is marked only by a rough box of wood and an iron pipe, and the water, which has a temperature of about one hundred degrees, runs to a shabby bath-house below, in which is a pool for bathing. The bath is very agreeable, the tepid ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... with the lights doused," he soliloquized. Then he remembered a little stump of candle he kept in his desk for use when heating sealing wax, so he lighted the candle and by its meager rays took inventory of his features in the little mirror ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... been preaching at the Sault de Sainte Marie, a little below the foot of Lake Superior. He was associated with others in that mission; but the largest type, though it thrust itself no higher than the smallest, will make the broadest impress on the page of history; and even in the meager record of that time, we may trace the influence of his gentle but firm spirit—those by whom he was accompanied evidently took their tone from him. But he was one of the Church's pioneers; that class whose eager, single-hearted zeal is always pushing forward to new conquests ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... are thornless, fair Ruth! you are useful and sweet! But lovers shall pass you to sigh at the feet Of the selfish and idle, for such is man's way; Your lot is to work, and to weep, and to pray. To give much and get little; to toil and to wait For the meager rewards of indifferent fate. Yet so wholesome your heart, you will never complain; You will feast on life's sorrow and drink of its pain, And thank God for the banquet; 'tis women like you Who make the romancing of preachers seem true. ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... Garrick, afterward the celebrated actor. In 1737, he removed to London, where he lived for most of the remainder of his life. Here he entered upon literary work, in which he continued, and from which he derived his chief support, although at times it was but a meager one, His "Vanity of Human Wishes" was sold for ten guineas. His great Dictionary, the first one of the English language worthy of mention, brought him 1575 Pounds, and occupied his time for seven years. Most of the money he received for the work went to pay ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... beautiful tree-fern attains a height of stem of 25 to 30 feet, with fronds spreading out into a crest 26 feet in diameter. These plants are among the most beautiful of all vegetable productions, and in their gigantic forms indicate, in a meager degree, the extraordinary beauty of the vegetation on the globe previous to the formation of the ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders

... that so graciously furnished the material upon which this little book is based. But the author feels that some of them will not agree with all the statements made and the inferences drawn, and for this reason is unable to do better than give this meager return for a service which was ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney

... could be giving vent to such agony. The travelers joined him; and the Asturian maid was stirred to quick action by a bad conscience, as well as by the excited state of her master. She untied the halter, and Don Quixote fell so suddenly that his meager body landed like a dead weight ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... meager vocabulary convey the idea of relatives to Phyllis's mind? But somehow, at last, it ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens

... me here take leave to beg pardon of the gallant Highland stags for comparing them one instant with the shabby, miserable-looking wretches that travesty them in Richmond Park. After seeing these latter scrubby, meager apologies for deer, one wonders why something better cannot be turned loose there. A hunting-mare I know well nevertheless flattered them thus by racing them through the park: when in harness herself, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... digestion, it is a matter of surprise that they are not more generally used; yet scarcely one family in fifty makes any use of the grains, save in the form of flour, or an occasional dish of rice or oatmeal. This use of grains is far too meager to adequately represent their value as an article of diet. Variety in the use of grains is as necessary as in the use of other food material, and the numerous grain preparations now to be found in market render it quite possible to make this class ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... after Kid Wolf's arrival in the town, the old padre was astonished to find a package of money inside his door. It was addressed simply: "For the poor." It was a windfall and a much-needed addition to the mission's meager finances. ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... came in the hard little laugh with which Annie Squires drew from the pocket of her coat—in which she also was muffled at the breakfast table—a meager little newspaper, close-folded. She spread it out before she ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough

... afraid. Seth Huntington had assured her there was nothing to be feared in Paradise Park. But for all that, it was not without uneasiness that she hastily arranged the meager folds of her divided skirt, and passed her hands quickly over the still disordered masses of her hair. And then he was fairly upon her, reining up with a jerk that brought the sweating pony ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham

... weather front. Over the area of the plain and the rolling hills were meager wisps of clouds. Darkness again was creeping ...
— Attrition • Jim Wannamaker

... story of the life led by many girl clerks in the department stores of a large city. It seems a young girl from the country applied for a position in one of the stores, but upon hearing of the small wages paid, said, "How can I live on that? It would not provide even the most meager of board and the smallest room." The employer asked in reply, "But have you not a gentleman friend?" That reply, repeated to a social worker, started an investigation which resulted in startling revelations. It was ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry

... portion above it. Behind that fraudulent subterfuge the city officials have never been inclined to go, nor have they made any effort. As a consequence the only revenue that the city has since received from that line has been a meager ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... of hickory splints which did its work to perfection, and Ree sharpened up his knife and carved from a whitewood block several plates and trays to add to their meager collection of dishes. Both boys improved the opportunity also, while shut in, to give their wardrobes attention, making themselves stout moccasins, coon-skin caps ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden

... formidable piece of bread, the old man helped himself to a crust, and both father and son bravely attacked the meager meal, with robust appetites, sprinkling it plentifully with ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue

... neighbors, all looked precisely the same as when I left them. I had seen so much and been so constantly on the wing that I wondered that all things here should have stood still. I expected to hear of many births, marriages, deaths, and social upheavals, but the village news was remarkably meager. This hunger for home news on returning is common, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... was widely read and two publishinghouses had approached me with the idea of putting out a book, any editorial revision and emendations to be taken care of by them without disturbing me at all. I could have allied myself with almost any paper in the country, undoubtedly at better than the meager stipend Le ffacase doled ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... the exertion, Bobby fell into deep and strength-restoring slumber, and Skipper Ed joined the others to cheer their hearts with the good news that Bobby's illness had passed its climax, and to rejoice with them over a meager breakfast. ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... quality also shows that he excels in swiftness. An athlete whose arms from exercise show a full spring and play of the muscles, is a beautiful sight, and he, likewise, is best fitted as a combatant. Thus the true species is never without its utility, as even a meager judgment easily ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser

... resources in a poverty-stricken community struggling for a bare subsistence after the ravages of war. But Lee devoted himself body and soul to the work, living in the simplest possible fashion. Indeed, he refused to accept an increase in his meager salary, which would have provided him with some of the ordinary comforts of life, on the ground that the institution needed every penny of its funds for its development. But though the work was hard he took keen pleasure in seeing it grow under his hands, and, ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill

... are contained in an armored body and the two tractor belts extend to full length on either side, being so arranged that the tank can climb a steep slope. From the meager data obtainable it would appear that the tanks carry from 4 to 6 machine guns in armored projections built out from the sides. These are provided with revolving shields permitting two guns to fire in any ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... was apprenticed to a surveyor on the London and Birmingham Railway. The pay was meager—board and keep and five pounds for the first year, with ten pounds the second year "if he deserved it." However, school-teachers and clergymen are used to small reward, and to make a living for one's self was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... reverse," Strindberg replied, explaining that his father no longer gave him the meager help in his university course, which he ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg

... rumor actually accused of sometimes arriving at the corner in "a hack," was, despite ten years' residence, a complete stranger to her neighbors. She was quiet and well-behaved; she wore good clothes and shamefully neglected her child. These were the meager facts upon which gossip built a ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... Carthage—except Mrs. Ulysses S. G. Budlong—celebrates Christmas behind closed doors. People find it easier to rhapsodize when the collateral is not shown. It is amazing how far a Carthaginian can go on the most meager donation. The formula is usually: "We had Such a lovely Christmas at our house. What did I get? Oh, so many things ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes

... by sight, knew of him further by repute as an impulsive, violent, warm-hearted and learned pundit who, for a typically meager recompense, furnished sundry classes of young gentlemen with amusement, alarm and instruction, in about equal parts, through the medium of lectures at the Metropolitan University. During vacations the professor pursued, ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... be the extent of the injury sustained, in regard to which the evidence is apparently quite meager, I can not see that it was such a result of military service as to entitle the applicant to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... of taking care of the water shed by roofs during heavy or protracted rains. In some localities where the supply of water is excessively hard or is so meager that it is not sufficient for all household purposes, pipes from the eaves are connected with an underground cistern, thus conserving the prized rain water. Otherwise, the common practice is simply to equip leaders or down-spouts with "quarter-bend" ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... knowledge of mining greatly exceeded his own. And the assertion that he had advanced sums of money for the carrying on of the work sounded plausible enough, for the girl knew that her father's income had been small—pitiably small, but enough, he had always insisted, for his meager needs. Unquestionably, up to that point the man's words had carried the ring of truth. Then came the false notes; the open accusation of Vil Holland, and the warning as to the concealment of the map and photos which she had twice purposely refused to admit that she possessed. This was the second ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... o'clock we waked, ate a meager breakfast, and hit the trail up the mountain. We knew the general range of our cougar. It is necessary in all his tracking to get in the field while the dew is on the ground and before the sun dissipates it, also before the goats obliterate ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... of the onslaught he had to meet in the next few seconds. He certainly did his level best with such weapons as Nature had given him, but his blunt, hooked beak and the claws he had not got seemed suddenly meager against the hammering, tearing, stabbing, rending dagger ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... helped any by the fact that Bertram was hungry. Bertram's luncheon had been meager and unsatisfying. That the kitchen down-stairs still remained in silent, spotless order instead of being astir with the sounds and smells of a good dinner (as it should have been) did not improve his temper. Where Billy was he could not imagine. He thought, once or twice, ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter

... later, Dean Fenneben sat alone in his university barracks and saw the prairie dogs making the dust fly as they digged about what had been intended for a flower bed on the campus. Then he packed up his meager library and other college equipments and walked ten miles across the plains to hire a man with a team to haul them away. The teamster had much ado to drive his half-bridle-wise Indian ponies near enough to the university ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter

... do not wish to exaggerate the importance of my results, for as contrasted with what might be obtained by further study, and with what must be obtained if we are adequately to describe the mind of the orang utan, they are meager indeed. ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... was Moreau, was living and in perfect health at the time of the report, his bizarre face, without expression, and his sobriquet, as mentioned, making him an object of great curiosity. He wore the Cross of Honor, and nothing delighted him more than to talk about the war. To augment his meager pension he sold a pamphlet containing in detail an account of his injuries and a description of the skilfully devised apparatus by which his declining life was made endurable. A somewhat similar case is mentioned ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... those who are not versed in the minutiae of Shelleyan topics, a word may be said regarding Mr. Ruskin's reference[G] to the poet who met his death in the Bay of Spezzia. The Don Juan was no "traitorous" craft. Fuller and more authentic information is to hand now than the meager facts at the disposal of a writer in 1856; and we know that the greed of man, and not the lack of sea-worthiness in his tiny vessel, caused Percy ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin

... your lovely Brides, That have ingeminate in endlesse league Your troth-plight hearts, in your nuptial vowes Tyed true love knots that nothing can disolve Till death, that meager pursevant of Jove That Cancels all bonds: we are to [sic] clowdie, My spirit a typtoe, nothing I could chid so much As winged time, that gins to free a passage To his current glasse and crops our day-light, ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... status, and needs of rural and agricultural education, an appreciation of and sympathy for the co-operative movements among farmers. Does one say, this is asking too much of the burdened country pastor with his meager salary and widespread parish? Let me ask if the pastor has any other road to power except to know? Moreover, the task is not so formidable as first appears. The pastor is supposed to be a trained student, and since he needs to know these things only in broad lines, ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield

... and gazed straight into Satish's eyes. He flushed with emotion, lowering his gaze in silent repentance. When we were served a lavish meal, including out-of-season mangoes, I noticed that my brother-in-law's appetite was meager. He was bewildered, diving deep into the ocean of thought. On the return journey to Calcutta, Satish, with softened expression, occasionally glanced at me pleadingly. But he did not speak a single word after the moment the priest had appeared to invite us ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... comprehensive thoroughness except the essentials of his profession. But he could master details as no man before or since; he had a vast fund of information, and a historic outline drawn in fair proportion and powerful strokes. His philosophy was meager, but he knew the principles of Rousseau and Raynal thoroughly. His conception of politics and men was not scientific, but it was clear and practical. The trade of arms had not been to his taste. He heartily disliked ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... session, Dean Benjamin G. Brawley, of Morehouse College, read an excellent paper on Three Negro Poets: Horton, Mrs. Harper and Whitman, giving his audience startling information about these literary workers in the days when opportunities were meager. In this way, Dean Brawley successfully bridged the gap between Phyllis Wheatley and Paul Lawrence Dunbar. Professor Kelly Miller then delivered an instructive address on The Place of Negro History in our Schools. Professor Miller's discourse was well received and seemed to arouse ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... meager tanneries were exempt from military services and transportation for hides and leather ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... him. The speaker said, "All of you have, within the last hour, awakened in your cells. You have discovered that you cannot remember your former lives—not even your names. All you possess is a meager store of generalized knowledge; enough to keep ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley

... between different souls are not always strictly drawn. As to the manner of the souls' indwelling in the body, and as to their relations one to another, savages have nothing definite to say, or, at least, have said nothing. In general our information regarding savage psychical theories is meager; it is not unlikely that with fuller acquaintance the details given above would have to be modified, though the general fact of polypsychism ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy



Words linked to "Meager" :   hand-to-mouth, exiguous, adequacy, minimum, sufficiency, paltry, ample, scanty, hardscrabble, spare, measly, bare, miserable, insufficient, minimal, deficient, scarce



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