|
|
|
More "Scrawl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the pleasure of Mr. Marcus Gard's company at dinner"—the usual engraved invitation, with below a girlish scrawl: "You'll come, won't you? It's my very last dinner before ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... the one in which Lucette rowed me over; and not being much in use except on Sunday, is generally half full of water. Lucette insists on doing the bailing. She has very often performed this service, and I have always considered it as included in the curious scrawl of a bill which madame gravely presents at the end of each of my days here, beginning in small printed type with "Francois Laguerre, Restaurant Francais," and ending with ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... to do about mine. But I am running on at a tremendous rate, and quite forget that I have traveled upward of forty miles to-day, and that I promised my mother, whenever I could, to go to bed early. Good-by, my dear Mrs. Jameson. I hope you will be able to make out this scrawl, and to decipher that I am ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the scrawl characteristic of an office boy's chirography proved that his terms at public school had not done Scorch much good. ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... wide. Then narrower, nearer, and quicker. At last He stood still, and one long look upon her he cast. "Lucile, dost thou dare to look into my face? Is the sight so repugnant? ha, well! canst thou trace One word of thy writing in this wicked scroll, With thine own name scrawl'd through it, defacing a soul?" In his face there was something so wrathful and wild, That the sight of it scared her. He saw it, and smiled, And then turn'd him from her, renewing again That short restless stride; ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... for a pen and wrote a note to the watchman, telling him that the bearer, Richard Townsend, had come to look over the property and that his orders must be accepted, and signed it with his hard-driven scrawl. He handed it up to Dick without rising from his seat, and said: "That'll fix you up, ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... science to its present state of disrepute. Astrology is too vast, both mathematically {FN16-1} and philosophically, to be rightly grasped except by men of profound understanding. If ignoramuses misread the heavens, and see there a scrawl instead of a script, that is to be expected in this imperfect world. One should not dismiss the ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... that this scrawl will reach Kingcombe Holm. Possibly, no more news of me may ever reach there.—Yet I fear not, for He who is everywhere is likewise in the wild western prairies; and life is not so sweet that I should dread its ending. Still, if it does end, remember ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... the latest, which was a scrawl in quavering characters over three telegraph forms. It was from Ladcock at Gilgit, saying that he was having a row of his own with the navvies there, and that he could send no reinforcements at present. If he quieted the trouble in ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... three hasty lines from the great Collingwood himself. That brave heart, in the midst of the din of victory, had found time to scrawl a word to his old schoolmate, and tell him that his boy had died like a hero, and that he regretted ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... such a line, our lives show wavering deformity, and are like the tremulous strokes in a child's copy-book. David had the pattern before him, and by its side his unsteady purpose, his passionate lust, had traced this wretched scrawl. The path on which he should have trodden was a straight course to God, unbending like one of these conquering Roman roads, that will turn aside for neither mountain nor ravine, nor stream nor bog. If it had been thus straight, it would have reached its goal. Journeying on ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... easily worded scrawl to make an ordinarily normal heart beat faster, yet the heart of this simple child of the gods, gifted with genius and deprived of worldly wisdom as all such divine children are, throbbed uneasily, and her eyes were wet. ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... the letter produced, and was much disturbed to read in Tess's handwriting the sentiments expressed in her last hurried scrawl to him. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... illegible scrawl through more carefully this time. It was a clumsy notification addressed to Mme. la Comtesse de Nole de St. Pris to the effect that her tou-tou was for the moment safe, and would be restored to the arms of his fond mistress provided ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Kathlyn calmly. The fear in her heart had, as the brown man had anticipated, blinded her to the fact that this was not her father's characteristic blunt scrawl. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... age. But he descried a dim tracery of words. A crabbed scrawl, written in blood, hard to read! He held it more to the light, and slowly he deciphered ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... faded scrawl Pinned upon the ragged shawl— Nothing else to leave a clue Even of a friend or two, Who might come to fold the hands, Or smooth back the dripping strands Of her tresses, or to wet Them anew with ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... in quest of the one sentence which he had been able, or fancied he had been able, to read yesterday. The illumination that had brought it out was now faded, and all was a blur, an inscrutableness, a scrawl of unintelligible characters alike. So much did this affect him, that he had almost a mind to tear it into a thousand fragments, and scatter it out of the window to the west-wind, that was then blowing past the house; and if, in that summer season, there ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... between nine and ten o'clock when Marshall Langham reached his office. He scarcely had time to remove his hat and overcoat when a policeman entered the room and handed him a note. It was a hasty scrawl from Moxlow who wished him to come at ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... he said, and struck a match to read the scrawl which Poltavo had written. Fortunately there was nothing in it which betrayed the great secret of the house, but it was enough, as he realized, to awaken the dormant suspicion, even supposing it was dormant, of ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... were feeble and ineffective, her writing remained a childish scrawl, no matter how much she was made to practice, she dropped things continually and frequently spilt her food at meal-time. Most of all was her awkwardness manifest ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... sheet, and, by the light of a match read the scrawl upon it. The writing had evidently been done in haste, ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... Schmucke. He went for the bit of stamped-paper left by the bailiff, and gave it to Pons. Pons read the scrawl through with close attention, then he let the paper drop and lay quite silent for a while. A close observer of the work of men's hands, unheedful so far of the workings of the brain, Pons finally counted ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... so that he was a long time writing it, and wrote it in a tremulous scrawl at last. It was a cheque for one hundred pounds. He folded it up, put it in Young john's hand, and ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... have a pencil in my pocket. What shall I do for paper?" She looked eagerly round and spied a small piece which lay among the brushwood. With a cry of joy she picked it out. It was very coarse and very dirty, but she managed to scrawl a few lines upon it, describing her situation and asking for aid. "I will write the address upon the back," she said. "When you get to Bedsworth you must buy an envelope and ask the post-office people to copy the ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... all he held in his hand for several seconds unopened. The envelope was a large one and stiff, as if it contained cardboard. It was directed in an irregular, childish scrawl. Mordaunt, sitting at his writing-table, with his back to his guest, studied it gravely, thoughtfully. Finally very ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... we transgress Thus to familiarly address One of our betters. But Jamie, do you no recall The slate whereon you learned to scrawl Your ...
— The Peter Pan Alphabet • Oliver Herford
... insists upon it that I should leave some room for her scrawl. A bold request! But then who says no to her? Not I, and therefore I ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... surprise, and then at her right hand. It held a stylograph and had been resting on some scattered sheets of foolscap that Ian had left there in the morning. She had certainly been scrawling on it a little, but she was not aware of having written anything. Yet the scrawl, partly on one sheet and partly on another, was writing, very bad and broken, but still with a resemblance to her own handwriting. She pored over it; then looked Ian in the eyes, her own eyes large with a bewilderment touched ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... greater than the sword, Of that there is no doubt. The pen for me whene'er I wish An enemy to rout. A pen, a pad, and say a pint Of ink with which to scrawl, To put a foe to flight is ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... it me—a little dirty envelope, with an illiterate scrawl. I opened it carelessly, but as my eye fell on the President's hand, I started in amazement. The note was dated "Saturday—From on board The Songstress," ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... eternal disgrace to the nation. But the Jew may govern the money-market, and the money-market may govern the world. The Minister may be in doubt as to his scheme of finance till he has been closeted with the Jew. A congress of sovereigns may be forced to summon the Jew to their assistance. The scrawl of the Jew on the back of a piece of paper may be worth more than the royal word of three kings, or the national faith of three new American republics. But that he should put Right Honourable before his name would be the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of inner gardens. Oh, fantastic legends of Odalisk and Caliph! On I go from street to street, and square to square; I begin to meet some people, but they pass and disappear like phantoms. All the streets resemble each other; the houses have only three or four windows; and not a spot, scrawl, or crack is to be seen on the walls, which are as smooth and white as a sheet of paper. From time to time I hear a whisper behind a blind, and see, almost at the same moment, a dark head, with a flower in the hair, appear and disappear. I look in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... for Stampoff. Having a minute to spare, he obtained a newspaper, took a seat voucher for the first dinner, lighted a cigarette, entered his reserved compartment, arranged his luggage, and burnt General Stampoff's scrawl just as the train ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... to France, Nor dare to practise till they've learn'd to dance. Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile? (Should Ripley[150] venture, all the world would smile) But those who cannot write, and those who can, All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... dropping this accidentally as I leave," read the fly leaf in Philip's scrawl. "I don't want you to suspect my classic tastes, but what can I do if you ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... the missive had evidently been intrusted to a private messenger of the governor whose seal it bore. Dated about three years previously, it was written in a somewhat illegible, but not unintelligible, scrawl, the duke's ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Folding up the hurried scrawl, she was conscious of a strong sense of dissatisfaction, but she would not reopen it. There was nothing ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... noting the pencil scrawl upon the back, proceeded to tear it open, when Willett stretched forth ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... extremely difficult to settle my thoughts upon anything but the scene before me, when I am from home, I am from home so seldom. If any, the least hint crosses me, I will write again, and I very much wish to read your plan, if you could abridge and send it. In this little scrawl you must take the will for the deed, for I most sincerely wish ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... a little scrawl to Milsom next day, by the hands of a stable- boy, inviting that gentleman to a social rubber and a friendly supper in the servants'-hall ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... careless scrawl, dated Sept. 19th, 1774, recording the burial of one Matthew Haygarth, aged four years, removed from the burial-ground attached to the parish church ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... reached the hotel. It was not the delicately perfumed article that usually is despatched by fictional heroines but a rather business-like envelope bearing the well-known words "The New York Herald" in one corner and the name "R. Schmidt, Hotel Ritz," in firm but angular scrawl across its face. As Robin ripped it open with his finger, Baron Gourou entered the room, but not without giving vent to a slight cough in the ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... of sight without once turning his head, and Kettle glanced down at the screw of paper which lay on his knees, and saw on it a scrawl of writing. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... fear you will scarcely be able to read this scrawl, but I feel hurried and agitated. Death is not welcome to me. I confess it is ever dreaded. You have made me too fond of life. Adieu, then, thou kind, thou tender husband. Adieu, friend of my heart. May Heaven prosper you, and may we meet hereafter. Adieu; perhaps we may never see ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... trial. The murderer was found guilty. Poor Julia's diary, too, which I had abstracted, told fearfully against him. But he contrived to escape the gallows; he had managed to conceal poison on his person, and he was found dead in his cell. Mary Simms I never saw again. I once received a little scrawl, "I am at peace now, ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... opposition, the marriage was pushed briskly forward. The contract was signed at Paisley on June 10th, and on the following day the marriage was celebrated at the same place. Lady Catherine's is not among the signatures; but there is to be seen the almost illegible scrawl of the old grandfather and of Euphrame his wife, a daughter of Sir William Scott of Ardross. The bride's eldest brother, whose own marriage with the Lady Susannah Hamilton was soon to follow, and her cousin John, son of the outlaw ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... the proffered pen in unaccustomed fingers and made a crisscross scrawl, adorned with thirteen blots. The pen nib broke under the strain, and he handed it back with an air ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... a characteristic scrawl from Philippa, full of Alec and Alonzo, what they said and what they did, and how they looked when they ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... otherwise be had for any price. There are quite brains enough, and there is quite sentiment enough, among the gentlemen of England to answer all the purposes of England: but if you so train your youths of the richer classes that they shall think it more gentlemanly to scrawl a figure on a bit of note paper, to be presently rolled up to light a cigar with, than to draw one nobly and rightly for the seeing of all men;—and if you practically show your youths, of all classes, that they will be held gentlemen, for babbling with a simper in Sunday pulpits; ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... merely in acknowledgment of your editorial: to say that I shall give my mind at once to the Murder. But I bethink me you can say so much and convey my sense of the liberality of our Cousins, without exhibiting this scrawl. So I may go on to tell you that I have at last found a publisher as eager to publish, as I am to write a Hazlitt. Bentley is the Boy; and very liberal, at least, as per last advices; certainly very friendly and eager, which makes work light, like whistling. I wish I was with the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... muster nowhere else, or casual visitors from the world of business, or young men and women fresh from school, or even children writing in round text,—all these classes may be represented in a single week's work; and the papers sent in will vary in elaborateness from a scrawl on a post-card to a magazine article or treatise. I have received an exercise of such a character that the student considerately furnished me with an index; I remember one longer still, but as this hailed from a lunatic asylum I will quote it only for illustrating the diversity of the spheres ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... right! There was nothing on the glued-down top flap, but the inside back of the envelope wasn't blank, as it should have been. It wasn't written on in Thompson's neat copperplate or in his neat phrases, either. A pencil scrawl stared at me, upside down, as I gripped the lower flap of the envelope unconsciously, under the ball of my big thumb. "Why, here's some more," I exclaimed like an ass, glaring at the envelope's inside back. "'Take care—something——' What's ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... bedroom softly and picked up the sheets. There are two communications, one in a large scrawl written by a woman—I believe, it is Penelope's mother. The other is in a small regular hand with quick powerful strokes, evidently a man's writing. There! You see the handwriting is ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... reason he remains, as he remained from the beginning, beyond all hope of description—as it might be, a visible god sitting in the garden of a world made new. They sell photographs of him with tourists standing on his thumb nail, and, apparently, any brute of any gender can scrawl his or its ignoble name over the inside of the massive bronze plates that build him up. Think for a moment of the indignity and the insult! Imagine the ancient, orderly gardens with their clipped trees, shorn turf, and silent ponds smoking in the mist that the hot sun soaks up after rain, and the ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... the act of writing to you," said she, "but now my scrawl may go into the basket;" and she raised the sheet of gilded note-paper from off her desk as though ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... "Seventy Years on the Frontier," he relates how on every wagon-sheet and wagon-bed, on every tree and barn door, he used to find the name "William F. Cody" in a large, uncertain scrawl. Those were my writing lessons, and I took them daily until I had my signature plastered pretty well over the whole of ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... detective, every unfamiliar sign or unusual incident meant a clue to some crime or burglary. Remembering this trait of Miss Aleyn's, Britt suddenly realised how full of meaning must have appeared the hasty scrawl he had left on Miss Aleyn s gate-post for the hounds' guidance that afternoon. He startled the maid-servant by a peal of laughter that echoed through ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... a poor scholar, and the handwriting was deplorable. Undotted "i's" travelled incognito through the scrawl, and uncrossed "t's" passed themselves off unblushingly as "l's." After half an hour's steady work, his imagination excited by one or two words which he had managed to decipher, he abandoned the task in despair, and stood moodily looking out of the window. His gaze fell ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... handwriting: and although he was, at the end of the holidays, very far from attaining the perfection shown in the examples produced by his teachers of the marvels they had effected in many of their pupils, he did improve vastly, and wrote a fair current hand instead of the almost undecipherable scrawl that had so puzzled and annoyed a succession of masters at Shrewsbury. After another month spent in London, getting his clothes and outfit, Godfrey started for St. Petersburg. On his last evening at home his father had a serious ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... magnitude of this star and to predict the ascendant course which it has in fact triumphantly taken. That was in the days when Kolniyatsch was still alive. His recent death gives the cue for the boom. Out of that boom I, for one, will not be left. I rush to scrawl my name, large, on the ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... read hastily, chuckling over it as though it contained many a joke. But he was more interested in the other scrawl, whose strange words completely baffled him. He tried in vain to make out its meaning, turning it about, peering at it from all angles, like an evil old buzzard. Then he gave way to a fit of rage, whining curses and making to tear the thing ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... a curse upon his head Who dares insult the noble dead, And basely scrawl his worthless name Upon the records of their fame! Nelson, arise! thy country gave A heartfelt tear, a hallow'd grave: Her eyes are dry, her recreant sons Dare to profane thy mould'ring bones! And you, ye heroes of the past, Who serv'd your country to the last, And bought her freedom with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... could not say what the matter might be, and he went away, only to return in a few moments bearing a scratchy note from his master, badly blotted and still wet; and Leila, with a shrug of resignation, took the blotched scrawl daintily between thumb and forefinger and unfolded it. Behind her, the maid, twisting up the masses of dark, fragrant hair, read the note very easily over her mistress' shoulder. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... your old mother's letter. If she knew as much as I do about you, scapegrace, she would never trouble herself whether you were dead or alive! Fagotin! Here is a bundle of Paris newspapers for you; they are quite new—only nine months old! Potele! Some woman has sent you a love-scrawl and some tobacco; I suppose she knew your passions all ended in smoke! Rafle! Here is a little money come for you from France; it has not been stolen, so it will have no spice for you! Racoleur! Here is a love-billet from some simpleton, with a knife ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... dreadful day, he came back to the Club and found a package, addressed in her hand. Out fell a little bundle of rags, topped by a comical black face, and a note. The letter of the morning was in a firm, correct hand. This was a trembling scrawl, blotted ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... "Excuse my scrawl: you must guess more than the half of it, but I know no help for this. I am obliged to write to you hastily while everyone is asleep here: but be easy, I take infinite pleasure in my watch; for I cannot sleep like the others, not being able to sleep as I would like—that ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the long billows of the Blue Ridge seen dreamily, through an amethyst haze. The men lay among dandelions. Some watched the horses; others read letters from home, or, haversack for desk, wrote some vivid, short-sentenced scrawl. A number were engaged by the rim of the clear pool. Naked to the waist, they knelt like washerwomen, and rubbed the soapless linen against smooth stones, or wrung it wrathfully, or turning, spread it, grey-white, upon the ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... benign and austere, as though the art he practiced so supremely both exacted much and conferred much. He made a fine and potent figure as he stood, with his back to the bright street and the gutter-child standing beside him like a familiar companion, and read the smudged scrawl of ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... sentence had reached him on the reverse side of an invitation to take tea at Merrion—a vague some-day-when-you're-passing sort of invitation, in Neeld's eyes plainly and merely a pretext for writing and an opportunity of conveying the urgent little scrawl on the other side. It arrived at mid-day; in the afternoon Duplay had come and was ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... and gentleman, how they talked of him at Mount Juliet's town, making him quite, as one may say, a laughing-stock and a butt for the whole company; but they were soon cured of that by an accident that surprised 'em not a little, as it did me. There was a bit of a scrawl found upon the waiting-maid of old Mr. Moneygawl's youngest daughter, Miss Isabella, that laid open the whole; and her father, they say, was like one out of his right mind, and swore it was the last thing he ever should have thought of, when he invited ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... goes on to moralize in a half-believing, half-doubting kind of way, on the probability of a life to come, and ends by speaking of or rather apostrophizing Jesus Christ in a strain which would seem to savour of Socinianism. This letter he calls "a distracted scrawl which the writer dare scarcely read." And yet it appears to have been deliberately copied with some amplification from an entry in his last year's commonplace book. Even the few passages from his correspondence already given are enough to show that there was in Burns's ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... the Morning Report, found Perkins seated in the same place. Perkins signed the book in a sprawling scrawl, and the sergeant went his way. The Chino cook brought the meals, and then came and took them off again. The day dragged through, the gray evening fell; the rain streamed down; and still the officer sat ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... somebody's name?" She had evidently never speculated on the meaning of the scrawl that had ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... secretary, clerk, penman, copyist, transcriber, quill driver; stenographer, typewriter, typist; writer for the press &c (author) 593. V. write, pen; copy, engross; write out, write out fair; transcribe; scribble, scrawl, scrabble, scratch; interline; stain paper; write down &c (record) 551; sign &c (attest) 467; enface^. compose, indite, draw up, draft, formulate; dictate; inscribe, throw on paper, dash off; manifold. take up the pen, take ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... extracted the other paper ball, unfolding it near the orange flame. The inner surface was red, the earthly red of porphyry, and cracked and scarred by the crumpling. Nearly obliterated by the lacework of wrinkles and scratches was a scrawl, evidently scarred into the glazed surface by a knife-point. The upper part was unintelligible. On the lower surface he made out with difficulty the single word, Vandalia. He carried it to the door, slid back the shutter ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... his story, would go softly with it to Peter's room; and there think and ask herself how her father, whose system she had long quietly observed, would have treated the case. Then she would write an illegible scrawl with a cabalistic letter, and bring it down reverently, and show it the patient, and "Could he read that?" Then it would be either, "I am no reader," or, with admiration, "Nay, mistress, nought ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... composing it (and there were fewer still after the first six lessons) were put into the first two or three rows of desks. The teacher was a little sandy man who made well-trodden jokes and talked in a wheezy voice well suited to his appearance. He used the blackboard, and stood upon tiptoe to scrawl upon it in a large handwriting. That was at the beginning. Later, methods developed; but for the present Sally and the others were merely initiated into the first movements of the difficult craft. With amazement she began to learn the mysteries of the signs "Dr." and ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... big fortune left to her by her father passed unreservedly into her own hands, was a wearisome necessity that had been got through as expeditiously as possible, with as little attention to detail as the old family lawyer had allowed, and an absence of interest that was evidenced in the careless scrawl she attached to each document that was given her to sign. The mere money in itself was nothing; it was only a means to an end. She had never even realised how much was expended on the continuous and luxurious expeditions that she had made with Sir Aubrey; her own individual ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... see, Wilbert had never had but one letter before in his life, and that was a little boyish scrawl from Clarence, and no wonder he opened the big envelope timidly. The contents began, "Know all men by these presents," and here Wilbert looked again into the envelope to see where the presents ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the uppermost sheet, Dennis seized the opportunity to fold up the end one and slip it into his pocket; and he had just succeeded when the general added the last scrawl to his ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... labour I have undergone. It has neither been of a slight nor an agreeable kind. I made it a rule to read everything that has been written respecting Napoleon, and I have had to decipher many of his autograph documents, though no longer so familiar with his scrawl as formerly. I say decipher, because a real cipher might often be much more readily understood than the handwriting of Napoleon. My own notes, too, which were often very hastily made, in the hand I wrote in my youth, have ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... it through her tears and hurried to the Confederate White House to show it to the President. Davis scanned the scrawl with indignant sympathy: ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... attempt to save Bathsheba from, at any rate, immediate anguish, he looked again, as he had looked before, at the chalk writing upon the coffin-lid. The scrawl was this simple one, "FANNY ROBIN AND CHILD." Gabriel took his handkerchief and carefully rubbed out the two latter words, leaving visible the inscription "FANNY ROBIN" only. He then left the room, and went out ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... the little journalist's scrawl. His whole face grew crimson, his eye shone as with madness. "Hulda! Hulda!" he cried, "the Idea works! God be thanked! English! Through the world! Hulda! Hulda!" He was bending ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the utmost care, confessing to herself, almost with tears, that it was altogether unworthy of him to whom it was to be sent. It was the first love letter she had ever written,—probably the first letter she had ever written to a man, except those short notes which she would occasionally scrawl to Father Marty in compliance with her mother's directions. The letter ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... several other letters, all from friends at home. One, in a great square envelope, addressed with an English scrawl, she dreaded, and she kept it for the last. When she did tear it open her face grew quite pale. There was much in it about duty and consecration, and much concerning two lives sacrificed to the same great ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... which Lily received with a blotted scrawl from Gus Trenor strengthened her self-confidence in the exact degree to which it effaced ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... has brought a letter from Catherine. I find it lying by my plate when I come down to breakfast. I take it up, look at the superscription, partly in Catherine's well-known writing, partly in my landlady's spider scrawl—for it had gone first to my London rooms. I turn it over, feel it, decide it contains one sheet of paper only, and put it resolutely down. After breakfast is time enough to read it; nothing she can say shall ever move ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... imperfections, accompanied with this assurance, that, though there may be inaccuracies in the letter, there is not a single defect in the friendship." Occasionally there was, as here, an apology: "I am persuaded you will excuse this scratch'd scrawl, when I assure you it is with difficulty I write at all," he ended a letter in 1777, and in 1792 of another said, "You must receive it blotted and scratched as you find it for I have not time to copy it. It is now ten o'clock at night, after my usual ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... exclaimed. "You are heavenly restful and comforting. You—" he checked himself and got up. "Then I'm to write, and you are to make out as much of my scrawl as you can and answer. Is ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to dinner, they brought their colloquy to a close. Don Diego asked his son what he had been able to make out as to the wits of their guest. To which he replied, "All the doctors and clever scribes in the world will not make sense of the scrawl of his madness; he is a madman full of ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... hair, and glanced around the great frescoed room. The maid-servant had said something about the Signora's having left a letter for her; and there it lay on the writing-table, with her mail and Nick's; a thick envelope addressed in Ellie's childish scrawl, with a glaring "Private" ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... at the end was written in an uneven, diminishing scrawl, as if the letter had taxed the strength of the writer almost beyond endurance, and I heaved a sigh of earnest sympathy for ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... his feet over a pool of water, near where my men had left him. His eyes were sunk in his head, his lips parched and cracked, his voice almost gone. A few hours more and he would have been beyond help. He had fainted, so they told me, after writing the scrawl, and only the efforts of my men and the morsel of food they could spare him brought him back to life. When I had poured a few drops of brandy down his throat and had made him a broth and warmed him up his strength began to come back. It is astonishing what a few ounces ...
— Homo - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... efficacy of their written characters in cases of sickness, but the presence of the marabout himself is necessary, in order that the writing may suit the nature of the disorder. When the disease is dangerous, the writing is administered internally, for which purpose they scrawl some words in large characters, with thick streaks of ink round the inside of a cup, dissolve the ink with broth, and with many devout ceremonies pour the liquor down the sick man's throat. These impostors have always free access to the beys and other high dignitaries of the state; and with regard ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... fell into deep ennui, and to beguile himself he rummaged out of the canvas bag an old note-book and a pencil, and began a clumsy and uninstructed effort to sketch the scene before him. The effort proving quite abortive, he began to scrawl beneath it, 'Paul Armstrong.' 'Yours very truly, Paul Armstrong.' 'Disrespectfully yours, Paul Armstrong.' 'Sacred to the memory of Paul Armstrong, who died of boredom in the Rocky Mountains.' 'Paul Armstrong: ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... and be very grateful for it, for I do not bear this mountain traveling very well. If you find him, give him this scrawl and tell him where I am—that ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... her chair and tore open the envelope. The inclosure was a dingy sheet of cheap notepaper covered with a penciled scrawl. With trembling fingers she unfolded the paper and read what was written there. Then she leaned back in the chair and put her hand ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... were singing their nightly chorus, and the situation reports were coming in from the battalions in the line. With his hair sizzling in the flame of the candle, the Brigade Orderly Officer who was on duty for the night tried to decipher the feathery scrawl ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 28, 1917 • Various
... that gay ship, than have her turned into a Roundhead. Didn't I with my own eyes see a lubberly rascal take a chisel, or some o' their land tools, and shave every lock of hair off the figure-head of the 'Royal Charles,' and even off the beard, shorten the nose into a stub, and then scrawl under it, 'The blessed change; this regenerated vessel will be known hereafter as the Holy Oliver'? Wasn't that blasphemy? Come, captain, rouse yourself; let's call a council—there's little Robin Hays, he loves her timbers as he loves his life—there's the boatswain, and a lot of ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... most masterly version of 'Ossian.'" It is probable that the friends visited the house together. At any rate, I care to believe that while Cesarotti sat "composing" his tribute comfortably at the table, Alfieri's impetuous soul was lifting his tall body on tiptoe to scrawl ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... was fast regaining the blooming, hoyden appearance most natural to me; and Aunt Henshaw continued to write glowing accounts of my improvement. In due time my scrawl was answered by a most affectionate letter from mamma, to which was added a postscript by my father; and I began to rise wonderfully in my own estimation, in consequence of having letters addressed entirely to myself. I even undertook ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... whatever may be feminine, and to deem all other men mere goats? But, because ye sit, a row of fools numbering one hundred or haply two hundred, do ye think I dare not irrumate your entire two hundred—loungers!—at once! Think it! but I'll scrawl all over the front of your tavern with scorpion-words. For my girl, who has fled from my embrace (she whom I loved as ne'er a maid shall be beloved—for whom I fought fierce fights) has seated herself here. All ye, both honest men and rich, and also, (O cursed shame) all ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... attend you through life'" she had written in her old-country scrawl; "but in the end will prove your undoing, for you will meet your death at the ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... of the bed she regarded the dear scrawl lovingly, savoring it, as is the way of a woman. Then she took a hairpin from the knot of bright hair (also as is the way of woman) and slit the envelope with a quick, sure rip. M-m-m—it wasn't much ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... white threads of considerable length at the extremities of the leaves, of which threads I remember no drawing or notice in the botanical books. Figure 1 represents, magnified, a cluster of these leaves, with the germinating stalk springing from their centre; but my scrawl was tired and careless, and for once, Mr. Burgess ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... in this part of Cumberland partake of the rudeness which characterises those of Scotland. The outside of the house promised little for the interior, notwithstanding the vaunt of a sign, where a tankard of ale voluntarily decanted itself into a tumbler, and a hieroglyphical scrawl below attempted to express a promise of 'good entertainment for man and horse.' Brown was no fastidious traveller: he stopped and entered the cabaret. ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the note and spoke with an elaborate air of indifference that was meant to express a calm ignoring of the puzzled questioning in the other's eyes. The next moment she read this in Arkwright's peculiar scrawl: ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... him. The business had been arranged while Larry was in Paris, and the expostulations that might have prevailed if delivered viva voce, failed of their effect when presented on foreign paper, in Cousin Dick's illegible scrawl. It was all very fine for Larry, ran the illegible scrawl, to talk of selling at such a price, but he ought to see what a hole his doing so put his neighbours in! Larry hadn't a squad of incumbrances, and charges, and ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... lower classes wrote Latin for all sorts of purposes. Had they known Celtic well, it is hardly credible that they should not have sometimes written in that language, as the Gauls did across the Channel. A Gaulish potter of Roman date could scrawl his name and record, Sacrillos avot, 'Sacrillus potter', on the outside of a mould.[1] No such scrawl has ever been found in Britain. The Gauls, again, could invent a special letter Eth to denote a special ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... thousand feet above the greening valley; in the riotous din of squirrels and birds interwoven with the booming of frogs from the still ponds; and finally in the announcement tacked upon the post-office door. The two line scrawl in lead pencil did not state in so many words the same tidings which the blue birds were proclaiming from the thicket on the far bank of the Little MacLeod; it merely announced that to-night Pere Marquette and his beloved wife, Mere Jeanne, were keeping open house. Every one in the Settlement ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... once before the court of assizes," said la Peyrade, after reading a few lines of the sheriff's scrawl. ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... moment Fisher hesitated; then, as she repeated her desire, he took up the scrawl and deliberately read it through. It had evidently been written immediately after ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... inquiries about him from some of our return passengers who, wandering about to "see the country" during the ship's stay in port, had come upon him here and there. At last we sailed, homeward bound, and still not one line was added to the careless scrawl of the many pages which poor Jacques had had the patience to read with the very shadows of Eternity gathering already in the hollows of his ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... Haygarth. I felt that these letters had in all probability been carefully numbered by the lady to whom they belong, and that to tamper with them to any serious extent might be dangerous. I have therefore only ventured to retain one insignificant scrawl as an example of Matthew Haygarth's caligraphy and signature. From the rest I have taken copious notes. It appears to me that these letters relate to some liaison of the gentleman's youth; though ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... sure-enough trump!" admitted Bluff. "Do you know what he said when he was showing that scrawl to us fellows? I was close enough to get part of it, and I'm dead sure the words 'entering wedge' formed ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... herself in the gaudy apartment of Lola behind the Golden Cloud where the dance-hall woman had peremptorily brought her when they took her off Cleve Whitmore's shoulder. She left a little note for Courtrey, a pathetic short scrawl, which simply reiterated that she had "ben true to him as his shadow," and that if he did no longer want her, ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... she had recognized me, but not troubling myself about the matter I left the gardens to walk elsewhere. The day after next, just as I was going to get into my carriage, a man of evil aspect gave me a paper and asked me to read it. I opened it, but finding it covered with an illegible scrawl I gave it him back, telling him to read it himself. He did so, and I found myself summoned to appear before the commissary of police to answer to the plea which the midwife (whose name ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... box of many a grandmother is hidden a pathetic scrawl that the baby made for her and called "a letter." To the alien eye, it is a mere tangle of pencil marks, and the baby himself, grown to manhood, with children of his own, would laugh at the yellowed message, which is put away with ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... Polly's scrawl (which contrasted so strongly with Mrs. Clover's neat, clear hand), Gammon discovered the passage which had disturbed his correspondent. "You mustn't expect me to go into black for your husband, for ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... also had its peculiarities. She always wrote in a large, loose scrawl, running the words into one another after the idle fashion which was an index to her character. In this instance, however, the fault had been carried to such an extreme that the address was almost illegible; indeed, Morris wondered that the letter had not ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... receiving this joyful news, that it was with considerable difficulty I could scrawl about two or three lines to inform Lieutenant Maughn of the arrangements I had made. We were all so deeply affected by the gratifying tidings, that we seldom closed our eyes, but continued watching day and night for the boat. On the 6th she returned with Lieutenant Maughn's answer, saying he ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... the judge and clerk had partially restored to order the chaos begotten by this scene, when a bit of paper was slipped from behind into Bruce's hand. He unfolded it with trembling fingers, and read in a disguised, back-hand scrawl: ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... to find that it was a note from a certain girl with unforgettable grey eyes. But before he had read the few words, as soon in fact as his eyes had fallen upon the uneven, laboriously constructed letters of the lead-pencilled scrawl, he knew that this did not come from her hand. The signature puzzled him; it consisted of two letters, initials evidently, a very large j, not capitalized, followed by ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... it?" cried Ahab. "Give it me, man. Aye, aye, it's but a dim scrawl;—what's this?" As he was studying it out, Starbuck took a long cutting-spade pole, and with his knife slightly split the end, to insert the letter there, and in that way, hand it to the boat, without its coming any closer to ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... pleasure feels: Each line detains him; he omits not one, And all the sorrows of his state are gone. - Alas! even then, in that delicious hour, He feels his fortune, and laments its power. Some Tradesman's bill his wandering eyes engage, Some scrawl for payment thrust 'twixt page and page; Some bold, loud rapping at his humble door, Some surly message he has heard before, Awake, alarm, and tell him he is poor. An angry Dealer, vulgar, rich, and proud, Thinks of his bill, and, passing, raps aloud; The elder daughter meekly ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... absolving his subjects from their oath of allegiance to him. The degraded king writhed in helpless indignation, for he was a captive. With the foolish petulance of a spoiled child, as he affixed his signature in almost an illegible scrawl, he dashed blots of ink upon the paper, and then, tearing the pen to pieces, threw it upon the floor, and ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... their habitual aspect; and my portrait, as a necessary consequence, disappoints everybody, the sitter always included. When we wish to judge of a man's character by his handwriting, we want his customary scrawl dashed off with his common workaday pen, not his best small-text, traced laboriously with the finest procurable crow-quill point. So it is with portrait-painting, which is, after all, nothing but a right reading of the externals of ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... note that caught her eye lying on the table she paused to open and hastily peruse. The writing was unfamiliar to her—a dashing, impetuous scrawl that ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... afterwards, too, if need be. Here's something to be going on with—but I'm coming to London in a day or two, as it happens, and will go into the matter—I'll call on you as soon as I arrive. Excuse this scrawl—post time. ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... least, containing poetry, which the motion of a journey emptied of their contents. Is it from the vanity of being thought geniuses, or a mere mechanical imitation of the custom of others, that we are tempted to scrawl rhyme ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... The scrawl was taken to her by a discreet official, and this time she received the letter, pressed it to her heart, and then slipped it into the bodice of her gown. But this time, as before, she left without making ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... cube-sugar box beside the green rep sofa where Bough lolled on wet days or stormy nights, her great eyes wild with apprehension, her every nerve tense and strained with terror of the master in his condescending moods, when he would make pretence of teaching her to scrawl coarse pothooks and hangers on the greasy slate that usually hung below the glass-and-bottle shelf. Or—and at these times the Sisters found her difficult to manage—she was crouching upon one side of a locked door, and a long thin wire was feeling its way ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... always the same: "You will go soon enough, and you will stay long enough." This increased our irritation. Suddenly, on one still and dark November day, parade was sharply cancelled, we clad ourselves in full marching order, there was just a moment to scrawl on a postcard a few last words home, tender words were exchanged with our friends in the billets, and with heavy tread and in solemn silence we marched forth along the Bedford Road. There was a pillar box beside the road. It was only ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... in the envelope," she exclaimed. "I think a scrawl from Aunt Marjorie. I had a volume from her yesterday. I wonder what she wants to write ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... course, the mere writing, which is almost always excellent, but there is a ready apprehension of the meaning of any point clearly put before them, which is very satisfactory. I am now thinking of the twenty or thirty best among our 145 scholars. This is a confused, almost unintelligible scrawl; but I am busy, and not very fresh ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was remarkably bold, but careful. Punctuation was strictly attended to, and in places a word had been obliterated with a circular scrawl which left ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... your joking did last night!" She handed him the slip of paper. He, too, chuckled tenderly, for the scrawl ran: "What I want for Chrismas: Pictures, pretty ones, Picture frames, Chairs, Plates for dinner, Knives, Spoons, Anything for a flat." A little space followed as if the author had hesitated before he had added in heavier writing that which told of a longing ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... am trying to write this scrawl to you on a round milk container in a camp near London. We are not ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... nearly the last letter before the Alcestis was heard of at Spithead. Then she sailed; she sent in her letters to Plymouth, and her final greetings by a Falmouth cutter—poor Harry's wild scrawl ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... work at this early period we possess probably nothing except a rough scrawl on the plaster of a wall at Settignano. Even this does not exist in its original state. The Satyr which is still shown there may, according to Mr. Heath Wilson's suggestion, be a rifacimento from the master's hand at a subsequent period ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... inventive. There was not a grain of truth in it. He could not possibly have been so rude. He had been too indifferent. Too indifferent! The repetition of the phrase made him sit straighter. Pshaw! It could not be that. He possessed a little vanity; if he had not, his history would not have been worth a scrawl. But he denied the possession vehemently, as men are wont to do. Strange, a man will admit smashing those ten articles of advisement known as the decalogue and yet deny the inherent quality which surrenders the admission—vanity. However ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... pad, and watched him feebly scrawl a "T" and what might have been an "o"—and a haggling "m"; and then the pencil dropped. He looked so strange, he scarcely breathed; and frightened, Charley darted into the other room where his father was ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... that occurred to her was that Steve had gone suddenly mad. He had given no hint of his altruistic motives in the hurried scrawl which she had found on the empty cot. He had merely said that he had taken away William Bannister, but that "it ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... the little chain of pitiful proofs. They found all the little, sweet, white girl-clothes folded neatly by themselves and laid in a pile together, as if on an altar for sacrifice. If the Little Girl had written "Good-bye" in her childish scrawl upon them, the Shining Mother would not have better understood. So many things she was ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... made me the happy instrument of destroying the enemy's fleet; which, I hope, will be a blessing to Europe. You will have the goodness to communicate this happy event to all the courts in Italy; for my head is so indifferent, that I can scarcely scrawl this letter. Captain Capel, who is charged with my dispatches for England, will give you every information. Pray, put him in the quickest mode of getting home. You will not send, by post, any particulars of this action; as I should be sorry to have any accounts get home before my dispatches. ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... relentlessly upon his heart, and upon seeing proofs of the interview. If they had not done justice to his erotic bellowings and gesticulations, he stuck in, in a large inky scrawl, all and more than ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... interest to remark that, apart from armorial or fanciful initials, the standing of a house may be gauged by the handwriting, the titles of the larger monasteries being given in bold letters, while those of the smaller form an almost illegible scrawl. The greater houses would have been in a position to support a competent scribe—not so the lesser; and this is believed to have been the reason of ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... doubts, and hopes, and fears, equal to those of any heroine of romance, and ten times as sincere. And then, too, there is her secret hoard of love documents;—the broken sixpence, the gilded brooch, the lock of hair, the unintelligible love scrawl, all treasured up in her box of Sunday finery, ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... it that again," she flashed. "You—Jerrold Fullerton—whose merest scrawl is reviewed by every literary editor in the land. Do you think you can't do still better work ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... a brief scrawl from Nell, telling him that it was all right, she had gone to her new job, and would soon have results. So Peter went cheerfully about his own duties of trying to hold down the protest campaign of the radicals. It was really quite terrifying, the success ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... I resolved to find you out—to see what you were driving at, and where. I could only guess a part from your letter to Barnabas, and that costive scrawl with which you honored me. Perhaps, too—and give my friendship credit for the attempt—I came with some hope ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... date to this sad scrawl; but it needed none; for in twenty-four hours after it had arrived at the manse, I had set out on my way to Rosehall. The meeting betwixt the foster-father and the child was, of course, exceedingly affecting. Investigations ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... death-like faces, attenuated noses, and swollen lips. They thought all these things very ugly. The stone carvings of the present day were a great deal better. An inscription in Phoenician characters amazed them. No one could possibly have ever read that scrawl. But Monsieur Madinier, already up on the first landing with Madame Lorilleux, called to them, shouting ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... her handwritin' lately," said Tad, "and I've got so I can scrawl jest like her. Old Scotch and Jenks ain't never run onto each other at our house, but I've ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... and then. It was a mere hurried scrawl, saying that Allerdyke was just setting off for Hull, in obedience to a call from the police; as Gaffney had nothing to do, would Appleyard make use of him during ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... only one small leaf, and but very few words on that; but these words, few though they were, seemed to take her breath away, and to overwhelm her with overpowering emotion. She sat staring at the miserable scrawl as though the letters were potent with some mighty spell, and then, throwing the paper on the table by her, gave way to a passionate outburst ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... the short scrawl, and as he did so his face turned pale and a quick exclamation escaped ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... through the generous employment of his imagination that the storekeeper was able to make out the scrawl, which, though not signed, he knew to be the pilot's. That same imagination enabled him to bring ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... than Gregory's. This was Philip of Spain. Catharine had not delayed writing to her royal son-in-law. In her endeavor to make capital out of the massacre she betrayed great satisfaction at her supposed masterly stroke of policy. Her letter—a misspelled scrawl—furnishes a fresh illustration of the fact that singular shrewdness in planning and executing criminal projects is not incompatible with a trust, amounting almost to fatuity, in the unsuspecting credulity of others. Catharine actually ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... current hand, magnified, ought to swell into a large hand.' Whereas, on the contrary, 'the large hands reduced appear very stiff and cramped; and the magnified running hand'—'appears little better than a scrawl.' Now to us the result appears in a different light. It is true that the large hands reduced do not appear good running hands according to the standard derived from the actual practice of the world: but why? Simply because they are too good: i. e. they are ideals and in fact are ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... cut their names on doors or rock-heads, But leave the task to scribblers and to blockheads; Pert, trifling folks, who, bent on being witty, Scrawl on each post some fag-end of a ditty, Spinning, with spider's web, their shallow brains, O'er wainscots, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... which Lucette rowed me over; and not being much in use except on Sunday, is generally half full of water. Lucette insists on doing the bailing. She has very often performed this service, and I have always considered it as included in the curious scrawl of a bill which madame gravely presents at the end of each of my days here, beginning in small printed type with "Francois Laguerre, Restaurant Francais," and ending ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... keep you on deck, I fancy. Don't stay there. Turn the wheel over to Sandy if you have to. I'll insist on havin' you there. That'll be better. They'll probably have some fool agreement to sign. Carlsen would do that. Make 'em all feel it's more like a bizness meetin'. They'll love to scrawl their names an' put down their marks. I'll have to have you there to read it over to ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... pushed briskly forward. The contract was signed at Paisley on June 10th, and on the following day the marriage was celebrated at the same place. Lady Catherine's is not among the signatures; but there is to be seen the almost illegible scrawl of the old grandfather and of Euphrame his wife, a daughter of Sir William Scott of Ardross. The bride's eldest brother, whose own marriage with the Lady Susannah Hamilton was soon to follow, and her cousin John, son ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... was not the delicately perfumed article that usually is despatched by fictional heroines but a rather business-like envelope bearing the well-known words "The New York Herald" in one corner and the name "R. Schmidt, Hotel Ritz," in firm but angular scrawl across its face. As Robin ripped it open with his finger, Baron Gourou entered the room, but not without giving vent to a slight cough in the way ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... angry devil of the duel, you answer me, either sword point to sword point; or from the pointing pistol, that shall speak both sharp and decisive, and the dotting bullet, perhaps, put a period to your proud life's scrawl. But no; I am grown too old to have recourse to violence. Away, go, go; but, mind you, do not breathe this calumny into a human ear,—no, not into the air. Shame, shame! you are no noble minded man, to villify my ward and your own son; whom, if I accounted to be ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... had the affectionate sympathy of all England. Lord Hood himself, before unknown to the family, hastened to their house with the news, calling to the servants as he ran up the stairs to "throw off their mourning!" The following was Riou's brief letter to his mother, which he found time to scrawl and send off by a ship just leaving Table Bay for England as the poor helpless Guardian ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... wasn't even thinking of that. I was thinking of Eunice, and of that round, childish scrawl of a diary upstairs in the attic trunk. And I was picturing Eunice, in the years to come, writing her diary; and I thought, what if she should ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... a scrawl," explained the secretary, "and it comes from the prisoner's child—Monckton's little girl—Monckton, the forger, you know. Of course there's nothing to it—a mere scrawl; for the child is only four years old. But the gentleman who sends it says the child brought ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... of many a grandmother is hidden a pathetic scrawl that the baby made for her and called "a letter." To the alien eye, it is a mere tangle of pencil marks, and the baby himself, grown to manhood, with children of his own, would laugh at the yellowed message, which is put away with ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... I wish to send," she explained, glancing at the almost illegible scrawl with an expression of doubt. "Couldn't you stop the carriage a moment while ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... what I ought to feel, and do feel for the loss you have sustained[1]; and I must thus dismiss the subject, for I dare not trust myself further with it for your sake, or for my own. I shall endeavour to see you as soon as it may not appear intrusive. Pray excuse the levity of my yesterday's scrawl—I little thought under what circumstances it ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... was such a scrawl that my father could not read it, but underneath was printed, "Mayor ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... Marteen requests the pleasure of Mr. Marcus Gard's company at dinner"—the usual engraved invitation, with below a girlish scrawl: "You'll come, won't you? It's my very last dinner ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... claims our times avow, The ancient Sphinx still keeps the porch of shade; And comes Despair, whom not her calm may cow, And coldly on that adamantine brow Scrawls undeterred his bitter pasquinade. But Faith (who from the scrawl indignant turns) With blood warm oozing from her wounded trust, Inscribes even on her shards of broken urns The sign o' the ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... him the anonymous scrawl which had kindled her fury against him. He turned it listlessly over in his hand. "I guess I know who it's from," he said, giving it back to her, "and I guess you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... his orders than to write the letter you expect. Then there was my ignorance and your brother James's ignorance to be thrown into the account. For the drawing, Sisson says Dr. Perelli has the description of it already; however, I have insisted on his making a reference to that description in a scrawl we have with much ado extorted from him. I pray to Sir Isaac Newton that the machine may answer: It costs, the stars know what! The whole charge comes to upwards of threescore pounds! He had received twenty pounds, and yet was so necessitous, that on our hesitating, he wrote ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... accompanied with this assurance, that, though there may be inaccuracies in the letter, there is not a single defect in the friendship." Occasionally there was, as here, an apology: "I am persuaded you will excuse this scratch'd scrawl, when I assure you it is with difficulty I write at all," he ended a letter in 1777, and in 1792 of another said, "You must receive it blotted and scratched as you find it for I have not time to copy it. It is now ten o'clock at night, after my usual hour for retiring to rest, ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... Notebook begun in 1894 and used at intervals for the next four or five years, in which Gilbert wrote down his philosophy step by step as he came to discover it. The handwriting is the work of art that he must have learnt and practised, so different is it from his boyhood's scrawl. Each idea is set down as it comes into his mind. There is no sequence. In this book and in The Coloured Lands may be seen the creation of the Chesterton view of life—and it all took place in his early twenties. From the seed-thoughts here, Orthodoxy and the rest were to grow—here ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... were higher here than elsewhere; the coat-rooms were robbers' dens infested by Italian mafiosi; tips were extravagant and amounted in effect to ransom; and each meal-check was headed by an illegible scrawl which masked an item termed "service." The figure opposite would have covered the cost of a repast at Childs's. But New York dearly loves to be pillaged; it cherishes a reputation for princely carelessness of expenditure. ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... laundry, she taught Miss Anthony to clear-starch and iron them. Each summer she managed to be home long enough to assist with the canning, pickling and preserving. The little journal gives the best glimpses of her daily life, usually only a hasty scrawl of a few lines but containing many flashes of humor and wisdom. Thus the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... mechanically as I felt it go, and—by gad, the inside of it didn't look right! There was nothing on the glued-down top flap, but the inside back of the envelope wasn't blank, as it should have been. It wasn't written on in Thompson's neat copperplate or in his neat phrases, either. A pencil scrawl stared at me, upside down, as I gripped the lower flap of the envelope unconsciously, under the ball of my big thumb. "Why, here's some more," I exclaimed like an ass, glaring at the envelope's inside back. "'Take care—something——' ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... from the tree, and which she had quite forgotten. What did it mean? Was there anything inside it? With a thrill of fear she darted to the window, untwisted the paper, and by the dim light could just make out the following scrawl: "Leeve the en roost oppen nex Munday nite." Mary gazed at it with horror, unable for the first few minutes to take in the sense, but when she did so she sank down on the ground and burst into tears. What wicked, wicked people they were! Not content with taking all her ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... lines from the great Collingwood himself. That brave heart, in the midst of the din of victory, had found time to scrawl a word to his old schoolmate, and tell him that his boy had died like a hero, and that he regretted ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... and the scrawl characteristic of an office boy's chirography proved that his terms at public school had not done Scorch much good. ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... be visited, of trips to the moon and of buried races that live beneath the rivers and mountains. He writes of amazing crimes he has committed, of weird longings that will not let him sleep. And, too, he writes of strange gods which man should worship. He pours out his soul in a fantastic scrawl. He says: "One is all. God looked down and saw ants. The wheel of life turns seven times and you can see between. You will sometime understand this. But now you have curtains ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... came as Jane was finishing breakfast. He brought a note from Selma—a hasty pencil scrawl on a sheet ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... the dead there is no room for the living." It seemed then a foolish memorandum to write, and now, as I look at the half-effaced pencil lines, I wonder why I was not ashamed to write it. Yet there it is before me, a witness to my sensations at the time, and the scrawl has even now the power to bring up to me an unpleasantly vivid memory of that ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... restless feet are weary of these hills of purple vines, These crooked groves of olive trees that scrawl the crooked lanes The walnuts shoulder weakly round the tall Italian pines, That whisper like the waves of wheat across ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... bounding down again, stricken white, and not caring if he encountered the devil. On his table he had found a package—the complete manuscript of "Roderick Hanscom" and this scrawl: ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... knock at the door; Jimmy Benyon went and opened it; he came back holding a note, and gave it to May; it was addressed to her husband in a pencil scrawl. "A congratulation for you," she said to Quisante. He glanced carelessly and languidly at it, murmuring, "Read it to me, please," and she broke open the sealed envelope. Inside the writing was as negligent a scribble ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... and set, lay the matter to be transferred on the plate, and rub it gently all over on the back; now raise it up, and it will be transferred on to the wax on the plate. Now take needles of a different thickness, and scrawl all over the wax, following the lines of the engraving. Having got the picture all traced out, pour upon it some weak acid if you use zinc, which is too soft to print many from, therefore it is better to use copper or ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... under these artificial circumstances, I fail of course to present them in their habitual aspect; and my portrait, as a necessary consequence, disappoints everybody, the sitter always included. When we wish to judge of a man's character by his handwriting, we want his customary scrawl dashed off with his common workaday pen, not his best small-text, traced laboriously with the finest procurable crow-quill point. So it is with portrait-painting, which is, after all, nothing but a right reading of the externals of character recognizably presented to ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... I must say!" remarked Jack, after perusing the scrawl a second time. "Evidently the writer loves ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... He smoothed the hurried scrawl out tenderly, feeling as if something hard and cold in his left side had melted with a sudden gush of warmth. Back in three-quarters of an hour! He laughed aloud at the sanguineness of it. Why, it took him ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... brierwood, lying on a pile of books on his desk, and within reach of his hand, he started to fill the bowl, when a scrap of paper covered with a scrawl written in pencil came into view. He turned it to the light and sprang to ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... measure of respect. As we sat under the awning in opposite corners of the cockpit, he braiding hairs from dead men's chins, I forming runes upon a sheet of folio paper, he would nod across to me as one Tahuku to another, or, crossing the cockpit, study for a while my shapeless scrawl and encourage me with a heartfelt 'mitai!—good!' So might a deaf painter sympathise far off with a musician, as the slave and master of some uncomprehended and yet kindred art. A silly trade, he doubtless considered it; but a man must make allowance for ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the effect that their clerk was robbing them right and left and running a business of his own with their money, under a fictitious name. They had implicit confidence in his honesty, and the only action they took was to hand the scrawl to him with a remark that they hoped he would discover and ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... from Peggy's crestfallen air, it was all wrong. The note was not written in Lucy's usual regular hand. The letters straggled, the lines zig-zagged across the page, and the name signed was almost an unintelligible scrawl. But Peggy thought less of these superficial matters than of ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... a pen, and upon a quarto page, already half filled with Leroux's small, neat, illegible writing, began to scrawl a message, bending down, one hand upon the table, and with ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... spelling and writing would pass muster nowhere else, or casual visitors from the world of business, or young men and women fresh from school, or even children writing in round text,—all these classes may be represented in a single week's work; and the papers sent in will vary in elaborateness from a scrawl on a post-card to a magazine article or treatise. I have received an exercise of such a character that the student considerately furnished me with an index; I remember one longer still, but as this hailed from a lunatic asylum I will quote it only for illustrating ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... bidding all true friends to Protestants to do no injury to the property of any true Protestant, "as I am well assured the proprietor of this house is a stanch and worthy friend to the cause." But there were plenty of houses where neither fear nor fanaticism displayed blue banner or chalked scrawl, houses whose owners boasted no safeguard signed by Lord George Gordon, and with these the mob busied themselves. The description in the "Annual Register" is so striking that it deserves to be cited; it is probably from ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... bits o' paper be all she left behind her,—yes, keep them, but put back Mark's. Are they all here,—sure?" And the widow, though she could not read her husband's verses, looked jealously at the manuscripts written in his irregular, large scrawl, and, smoothing them carefully, replaced them in the trunk, and resettled over them some sprigs of lavender, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... great frescoed room. The maid-servant had said something about the Signora's having left a letter for her; and there it lay on the writing-table, with her mail and Nick's; a thick envelope addressed in Ellie's childish scrawl, with a glaring "Private" dashed ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... who had exchanged his bit of broken china for a very much used and tooth-marked lead-pencil, frowned with a whimsical air at the latter before he put it in his pocket. Then he read my hurried scrawl. ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... stylograph and had been resting on some scattered sheets of foolscap that Ian had left there in the morning. She had certainly been scrawling on it a little, but she was not aware of having written anything. Yet the scrawl, partly on one sheet and partly on another, was writing, very bad and broken, but still with a resemblance to her own handwriting. She pored over it; then looked Ian in the eyes, her own eyes large with a ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... them for some of the quietest pleasures of our lives. But that is the way of human nature, isn't it? We rarely value anything until we lose it; we sigh most ardently for the thing which is beyond our reach, we count our happiest days those across the record of which we now must scrawl, "Too late!" That is why I always feel so infinitely sorry for the blind. The blind can so rarely get away from themselves, and, when they do, only with that effort which in you and me would demand some bigger result than merely to lose remembrance of our ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... to get letters from the trenches," she said half wistfully one day to Beatrice Howell, who was exulting over a pencil scrawl written by her brother in a dug-out. "I ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... hasty scrawl on a prescription blank, and smiled at the discomfited faces of his two friends showing plainly in the lights which streamed from ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... half-believing, half-doubting kind of way, on the probability of a life to come, and ends by speaking of or rather apostrophizing Jesus Christ in a strain which would seem to savour of Socinianism. This letter he calls "a distracted scrawl which the writer dare scarcely read." And yet it appears to have been deliberately copied with some amplification from an entry in his last year's commonplace book. Even the few passages from his correspondence already given are enough to show ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... managed to scrawl the word "Barsanti;" then he wrapped the paper round a small pebble and approached the fountain. By putting one foot on the edge of the stone basin beneath he could reach over to the curved top, ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... At length the scrawl was finished, and looking up from the writing table he saw Joan Devereux passing through the hall. He got up and hurried after her. "Would you mind addressing this for me?" He held out the envelope. "I've managed to spoil the paper inside, but ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... to whom the billet-doux was addressed in T. Haviland Hicks, Jr.'s, familiar scrawl, tore open the envelope, and while the squad listened, he read aloud the message left by ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... lay propped up against a tree, with his feet over a pool of water, near where my men had left him. His eyes were sunk in his head, his lips parched and cracked, his voice almost gone. A few hours more and he would have been beyond help. He had fainted, so they told me, after writing the scrawl, and only the efforts of my men and the morsel of food they could spare him brought him back to life. When I had poured a few drops of brandy down his throat and had made him a broth and warmed him up his strength began to come back. It is astonishing what a few ounces of food ...
— Homo - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Betty interrupted disrespectfully. "We know who wrote this—there is no mistaking Roy's scrawl. ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... and read the latest, which was a scrawl in quavering characters over three telegraph forms. It was from Ladcock at Gilgit, saying that he was having a row of his own with the navvies there, and that he could send no reinforcements at present. If he quieted the trouble in time he would try and hold the Mazeno Pass, and ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... me at the time. I was staying in a country house with a very pleasant party of young and old, including persons whose education and versatility were certainly not below the social average. One evening we played at a round game, which consisted in each of us drawing as absurd a scrawl as he or she could, representing some historical event; the pictures were then shuffled and passed successively from hand to hand, every one writing down independently their interpretation of the picture, as to what the historical ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... Ferris," he soberly said. "You should not leave till the whole thing's cleared up. If you don't want me to follow up your private inquiry, just say so." He handed to the astonished man an evening paper. There, marked with a great scrawl, was a brief item. ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... in new ones too, there are inscriptions and inscriptions. We are all familiar with the scrawl of the clown, who has handed down to us his unconsecrated name on the title-page or fly-leaf of some volume of ours otherwise irreproachable. Just a step above him is your fellow who writes some objurgatory caveat against the malappropriator, and brings ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... once to his house; sent me a card, half of it printed like a book! t'other half a scrawl could not read; pretended to give a supper; all a mere bam; went without my dinner, and got nothing to eat; all glass and shew: victuals painted all manner of colours; lighted up like a pastry-cook on twelfth-day; wanted something solid, and got a great ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... only a scrawl; he was dying, and signed your—your husband; he had been stricken down by fever; your name was ever on his lips; he said you loved Paris, and he would be buried there; he had loved you all his life; he was glad to go; you were not to shed one tear ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... Indian. Colonel Howell, having heard the explanation of the finding of the letter, without any hesitation and evidently without any qualms of conscience, drew out the enclosure. The letter was an illiterate scrawl. ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... in a neat, pretty little hand, which of itself seemed to reprove the student's awkward scrawl. He turned then to his own studies, which he was pursuing in a tattered volume of Blackstone's Commentaries on the English Common Law. He did not get on very fast with this book, and sometimes he wondered what bearing ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... the chapel door, With ever changing notices spread o'er: Whatever doctrines may within be taught, With words of peace that door is rarely fraught: For there, mid notices of beds for hire, Of concerts in the state-house by desire, Some ill-spelt scrawl demands the mighty debt Of half a crown, with a ferocious threat; Some traitorous agent is denounced; some spy, That blabb'd of gin, is hung in effigy; Here angry fools proclaim the petty jar, And clumsy pasquinades provoke ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Madame Dort tore the envelope apart, and soon made herself mistress of the contents of the letter. It was only a short scrawl which the sailor lad had written off hurriedly to take advantage of the opportunity of sending a message home by a passing ship, as his brother had surmised—Eric not expecting to have been able to forward any communication ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... amanuensis, scrivener, secretary, clerk, penman, copyist, transcriber, quill driver; stenographer, typewriter, typist; writer for the press &c (author) 593. V. write, pen; copy, engross; write out, write out fair; transcribe; scribble, scrawl, scrabble, scratch; interline; stain paper; write down &c (record) 551; sign &c (attest) 467; enface^. compose, indite, draw up, draft, formulate; dictate; inscribe, throw on paper, dash off; manifold. take up the pen, take pen in hand; shed ink, spill ink, dip one's pen in ink. Adj. writing &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... wife, and Argus his eyes, Tom Piper, poor Cobler, and Lazarus's thighs: Rough Esau, with Maudlin, and gentles that scrawl, With Bishop that burneth—ye ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... a deep breath and took up his fountain pen. He signed with a rapid, illegible scrawl that toward the end of the pile became a mere hieroglyphic. Jonas put his black face in at the door just as he finished ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... minded to afford him more entertainment than I need, and bade him begone before I opened the packet. He withdrew reluctantly. Then I unfastened Nell's parcel. It contained ten guineas wrapped in white paper, and on the inside of the paper was written in a most laborious awkward scrawl (I fear the execution of it gave poor Nell much pains), "In pay for your dagger. E.G." It was all of her hand I had ever seen; the brief message seemed to speak a sadness in her. Perhaps I deluded myself; her skill with the pen would not serve her far. She had gone, that was the sum of it, ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... scrap-book; he kept a paper scrap- book, too. Into these he would put whatever he cared to keep— poetry, history, funny sayings, fine passages. He had a scrap-book for his arithmetic "sums," too, and one of these is still in existence with this boyish rhyme in a boyish scrawl, underneath one of his tables of ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... of the score of my "Elizabeth" are written out complete (in my own little cramped scrawl). But the final chorus—about 40 pages—and the piano-arrangement have still to be done. By the middle of August I shall send ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... knowing what particular days were rainy and what pleasant, in Holland, a week back. Then, after you had got about two thirds down the page, you would stop because you could not think of any thing more to say, and subscribe your name with ever so many scrawl flourishes, and as many affectionate and dutiful phrases as you could get to fill ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... heralds the approach of a nervous curlew, running and pausing, and stamping, its script—an erratic scrawl of fleurs-de-lis—on the easy sand. Halting on the verge of the water, it furtively picks up crabs as if it were a trespasser, conscious of a shameful or wicked deed and fearful of detection. It is not night nor yet quite day, but this ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... last night!" She handed him the slip of paper. He, too, chuckled tenderly, for the scrawl ran: "What I want for Chrismas: Pictures, pretty ones, Picture frames, Chairs, Plates for dinner, Knives, Spoons, Anything for a flat." A little space followed as if the author had hesitated before he had added in heavier writing that which ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... has made me the happy instrument of destroying the enemy's fleet; which, I hope, will be a blessing to Europe. You will have the goodness to communicate this happy event to all the courts in Italy; for my head is so indifferent, that I can scarcely scrawl this letter. Captain Capel, who is charged with my dispatches for England, will give you every information. Pray, put him in the quickest mode of getting home. You will not send, by post, any particulars of this action; as I should be sorry to have any accounts get home before my dispatches. ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... done this, and had copied the whole of the wandering scrawl on a page of my note book the result was ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... enemy. No witnesses could be found to throw any more light on the inquiry than the barn boss himself. And de Spain made only a pretense of a formal investigation. If he had had any doubts about the origin of the fire they would have been resolved by an anonymous scrawl, sent through the mail, promising more if he didn't ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... of the bed a taper Shall ever with matches be, A pencil and piece of paper, To note what occurs to me. * * * * * Since then I have tried, but the late joke, As seen in my bedside scrawl, Is always so poor,—that the great joke, I'm sure, was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various
... not write books, He could scrawl the earth with his record: He could make hieroglyphs, Constellations of mounds and animals, Effigies of unnamable things, Monsters, and hybrids unnatural, Bred of grotesque fancies; and man-forms. These last, none of your pigmies A span long in the womb, And six feet, at full growth, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... present situation of your unworthy but constant and affectionate daughter. I pretend not to justify or even to palliate my clandestine elopement. In hopes of pacifying your mind, which I am sure must be afflicted beyond measure, I write you this scrawl. Conscious of not having thus abruptly absconded by reason of any fancied ill treatment from you, or disaffection toward any, the thoughts of my disobedience are truly poignant. Neither have I a plea that the insults of man have ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... out her hand for the paper. When Si was gone she sat gazing at it, trying in her ignorance to pick from the, to her, senseless scrawl those last words. Ben had ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... children's books about the Grubbling domicile, that had been the older child's—Cornelia's—and had descended to Master Herbert, while yet his only pastime in them was to scrawl them full of pencil marks, and tear them into tatters. These, one by one, Glory rescued, and hid away, and fed upon, piecemeal, in secret. She could read, at least—this poor, denied unfortunate. Peter McWhirk had taught his child her letters in happy, humble Sundays ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Temple should have been in such a dangerous state. Much occasion for thankfulness is there that it has not been worse with you. Pray write, or make somebody write frequently. I feel myself a good deal stronger to-day, not withstanding the scrawl. God bless you, my dear Temple! I ever am your old and affectionate friend, here and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... For that reason he remains, as he remained from the beginning, beyond all hope of description—as it might be, a visible god sitting in the garden of a world made new. They sell photographs of him with tourists standing on his thumb nail, and, apparently, any brute of any gender can scrawl his or its ignoble name over the inside of the massive bronze plates that build him up. Think for a moment of the indignity and the insult! Imagine the ancient, orderly gardens with their clipped trees, shorn turf, and silent ponds smoking in the mist that the hot ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... those bits o' paper be all she left behind her—yes, keep them, but put back Mark's. Are they all here?—sure?" And the widow, though she could not read her husband's verses, looked jealously at the MSS. written in his irregular large scrawl, and, smoothing them carefully, replaced them in the trunk, and resettled over them some sprigs of lavender, which Leonard had ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Fisher hesitated; then, as she repeated her desire, he took up the scrawl and deliberately read it through. It had evidently been written immediately after his interview ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... you call it that again," she flashed. "You—Jerrold Fullerton—whose merest scrawl is reviewed by every literary editor in the land. Do you think you can't do still better ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... He began to scrawl hastily with a dry pen that he had not time to dip in the well of ink. The shadow of the Lord Cromwell's silent return was cast upon them both, ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... a life, With large results so little rife, Though bearable, seem hardly worth This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth; Yet, Fausta, the mute turf we tread, The solemn hills around us spread, This stream which falls incessantly, The strange-scrawl'd rocks, the lonely sky, If I might lend their life a voice, Seem to bear rather than rejoice. And even could the intemperate prayer Man iterates, while these forbear, For movement, for an ampler sphere, Pierce Fate's ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... said Kathlyn calmly. The fear in her heart had, as the brown man had anticipated, blinded her to the fact that this was not her father's characteristic blunt scrawl. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... female amanuenses are busy with friends, and I fear this scrawl will give you much trouble to read.—With many thanks, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... heard precisely; though I made inquiries about him from some of our return passengers who, wandering about to "see the country" during the ship's stay in port, had come upon him here and there. At last we sailed, homeward bound, and still not one line was added to the careless scrawl of the many pages which poor Jacques had had the patience to read with the very shadows of Eternity gathering already in the hollows of his kind, ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... "New England Almanac," and a book of dreams and fortune-telling; in which last was a sheet of foolscap much scribbled and blotted in several fruitless attempts to make a copy of verses in honor of the heiress of Van Tassel. These magic books and the poetic scrawl were forthwith consigned to the flames by Hans Van Ripper; who, from that time forward, determined to send his children no more to school, observing that he never knew any good come of this same reading and writing. Whatever money the schoolmaster ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... the stellar science to its present state of disrepute. Astrology is too vast, both mathematically {FN16-1} and philosophically, to be rightly grasped except by men of profound understanding. If ignoramuses misread the heavens, and see there a scrawl instead of a script, that is to be expected in this imperfect world. One should not dismiss the ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... hand had been laboriously learning to write, his left hand, all unsuspected, had been picking up the same lesson, and that by taking a pencil in his left hand and writing from right to left, without watching what he was writing, and then examining the scrawl in a mirror, he could reproduce his own handwriting in exact reverse. About three people out of five have this often quite unsuspected ability. He demonstrated his gift, and then Miss Cecily Corner, who had dropped in in a casual sort of ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... from armorial or fanciful initials, the standing of a house may be gauged by the handwriting, the titles of the larger monasteries being given in bold letters, while those of the smaller form an almost illegible scrawl. The greater houses would have been in a position to support a competent scribe—not so the lesser; and this is believed to have been the ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... the fool, Thought to scrawl "Duke of Reichstadt" o'er my name. But hold the paper up before the sun: You'll ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... air as it touches your cheek and sends the blood leaping in glad life. You love water and fire and wind, elemental things, and you love them with fervor and passion. All this to the world! Much more intimate to me, who can read the letters you scrawl for the impudent, careless world. For deep down in the core of that rose there lies a soul that permeates it all—a longing, restless soul, one moment revealing a heaven that the next is ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... "Deluge," and Gericault's dismal "Medusa." Gericault died, they say, for want of fame. He was a man who possessed a considerable fortune of his own; but pined because no one in his day would purchase his pictures, and so acknowledge his talent. At present, a scrawl from his pencil brings an enormous price. All his works have a grand cachet: he never did anything mean. When he painted the "Raft of the Medusa," it is said he lived for a long time among the corpses which he painted, and that his studio was a ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... nine and ten o'clock when Marshall Langham reached his office. He scarcely had time to remove his hat and overcoat when a policeman entered the room and handed him a note. It was a hasty scrawl from Moxlow who wished him to come at ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... did not reply, but made the usual scrawl in his book, while the squatter hastened to agree with the fat man. "I like to see a bit of pace myself," ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... tears, that it was altogether unworthy of him to whom it was to be sent. It was the first love letter she had ever written,—probably the first letter she had ever written to a man, except those short notes which she would occasionally scrawl to Father Marty in compliance with her mother's directions. The letter to Fred ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... crumpled sheet of note paper before us on which was written something in a trembling scrawl. "For instance, here's a letter I received ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... his hand in his pocket, and the bit of folded paper struck sharp against his fingers, so he drew it out. Hardly the familiar school-boy scrawl: Jack used to hate writing, he remembered. This had a decisive force about it. How odd that business-like "John" looked! "Jack!" He uttered the name aloud, and a thrill seemed to warm his frozen heart,—to stir emotions most ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... pencils, soap, caps, a steamer trunk from the closet, several framed photographs, some college banners, and a score of other articles. On the very top of the heap was a fancy sofa pillow Nellie had given to Tom and to this was pinned a card, on which was written, in a disguised scrawl: ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... print on the reverse side, and the letters showed through in grayish flecks and gave the curious impression as of clouds in the sky. And that little drawing, with less form than a school-boy's blackboard scrawl, was completely transfigured by those gray spots, and because of them it took on for me a deep and dreadful significance. Aided by the dim light in the room the pictured scene became a vision that faded away into the distance like the pale surface of the ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... the pad, and watched him feebly scrawl a "T" and what might have been an "o"—and a haggling "m"; and then the pencil dropped. He looked so strange, he scarcely breathed; and frightened, Charley darted into the other room where his father ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... trunk, by the bye, that wants patching up before my boy carries it off with him; I'll send it round to you; Hopkins. But stay—what's this?" and the doctor took up a soiled, yellow sheet of paper, from the heap rejected by the workman; it contained a scrawl which proved to be the identical letter of the poor poet, the Lumley autograph, though in what manner it became mingled with that heap of rubbish has never ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... covered with horny parchment, which he opened and presented to my dear teacher and myself. It contained an old Greek text, full of abbreviations and ligatures which at first gave me the effect of an illegible scrawl. But M. Coignard, having put on his barnacles and placed the book at the necessary distance, began to read the characters easily; they looked more like balls of thread that had been unrolled by a kitten ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... blue shadows across the snowy road ahead. Roderick was hurrying home to take supper at the farm, and Helen was coming out of the rough little path that led from the Perkins' home. She was feeling tired and very sad. She had been reading a letter from the husband in prison, a sorrowful pencilled scrawl, pathetically misspelled, but breathing out true sympathy for his wife and children, and the deepest repentance and self-blame. And at the end of every misconstructed sentence like a wailing refrain were the words, "I done wrong and I deserve all I got, but it's hard on you old ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... begin to appear fast and furiously, flashing from legal page to legal page and in a flash vanishing. But ever the persistent soil remains for others to scrawl themselves across. Come the names of men of whom I have vaguely heard but whom I have never known. Kohler and Frohling—who built the great stone winery on the vineyard called Tokay, but who built upon a hill ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... It's a great tribute to our acting that even Hodges takes us to be in earnest. I can't call to mind any stage row I ever listened to that I shouldn't have spotted the hollowness of in a brace of shakes. At this minute Author summons Actor to Rehearsal. I close up. This Scrawl to tell you I haven't forgotten you. Would have written more, ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... a private, modest way to walls already so crowded, is allowable; but to scrawl one's name, place of birth, and country, half across a wall, covering scores of names under it, is an operation which speaks for itself. No one would ever want to know more of a man than to see ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... letter, brought by the night carrier, from her father (a most dirty, ill-written scrawl signed Robert Evans with his mark), praying he may be excused, as his masts are to be stepped o' Wednesday, and he must take the occasion of a ketch leaving Dartford for Falmouth this day, and at the same time begging her acceptance of a canister ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... attempt this impossible theme? While reflecting on my debt to thee, my heart becomes too big for its mansion. My hand falters, and the characters it traces run into an illegible scrawl. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... accounts used only the initial "T." Some of his employees favored Tyrus, others Titus. One in a wild flight of fancy suggested Ticonderoga. But the mystery remained unsolved, and, after all, as the checks that bore the scrawl, "T. Grimshaw," were promptly honored at the ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... of purposes. Had they known Celtic well, it is hardly credible that they should not have sometimes written in that language, as the Gauls did across the Channel. A Gaulish potter of Roman date could scrawl his name and record, Sacrillos avot, 'Sacrillus potter', on the outside of a mould.[1] No such scrawl has ever been found in Britain. The Gauls, again, could invent a special letter Eth to denote a special Celtic sound and keep it in Roman times. ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... sparkling eyes. First he showed her the letter Francois had brought him. Unmarked by postal indications, the missive had evidently been intrusted to a private messenger of the governor whose seal it bore. Dated about three years previously, it was written in a somewhat illegible, but not unintelligible, scrawl, the duke's ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... men who loaf, my dear," she replied. "When you undertake the transcription of an author's scrawl at ninepence the thousand words you have to work hard, especially when, as it is in this case, the thing's practically unreadable. Besides, the woman in it makes me lose my temper. If I'd had a man of the kind described to deal ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... this scrawl will reach Kingcombe Holm. Possibly, no more news of me may ever reach there.—Yet I fear not, for He who is everywhere is likewise in the wild western prairies; and life is not so sweet that I should dread its ending. Still, if it does end, remember me to my brother, ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Planchette wrote so fast that I could hardly keep up with it. And when it stopped, I lighted a match and see ... here ... in your mother's very handwriting"—fervently she held the bit of paper up for Sylvia to see. The girl cast a hostile look at the paper and saw that the writing on it was the usual scrawl produced by Cousin Parnelia, hardly legible, and resembling anything ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... confirm Jaffery's last statement, here is a bit of a scrawl from Liosha—her complete account ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... clear at any rate," said Elspeth. "Mine's such a scrawl I'm afraid that will be against me. Aren't you thankful the ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... was no longer to be counted in his column—he had thought and fought that out in the small hours; but he did need and pounced upon the statement that Little Poland's master would be out of town the greater part of election day. The scrawl ended with an appointment for a clandestine meeting at eleven o'clock, toward which he now bent his ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... and several books. He took up the one nearest him, a volume on big game hunting, and turned the pages idly. Their unconscious and unwilling host took his sports seriously, it seemed. He dropped the book upon his knees, and as he did so it fell open at the fly leaf, upon which in a feminine scrawl a name was inscribed. He read it with surprise and concern. "Madeleine de Cahors!" Olga Tcherny's ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... her father. She felt guilty, for of late she had rather forgotten him and this was something new and blameworthy. Now she remembered how long it was since she had seen him and that his last letter had come over a month ago. It was a short scrawl from Downieville and had told her that the sale of his prospect hole—he had hoped to sell it sometime early in September—had fallen ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... read until midnight." The great wood of stone pines on the Pisan Maremma was his favourite study. Trelawny tells us how he found him there alone one day, and in what state was the manuscript of that prettiest lyric, "Ariel, to Miranda take". "It was a frightful scrawl; words smeared out with his finger, and one upon the other, over and over in tiers, and all run together in most 'admired disorder;' it might have been taken for a sketch of a marsh overgrown with ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... other—don't disturb yourself:" and Ferrers seated himself at the writing-table, dipped a pen into the ink, arranged blotting-book and paper before him in due order, and was soon employed in covering page after page with the most rapid and hieroglyphical scrawl that ever engrossed a mistress or ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... car had once been placed at your disposal by the Government, getting supplies for it was merely a question of signing bons. Obtaining extra equipment for my car was Roos' chief amusement. Tyres, tools, spare parts, horns, lamps, trunks—all you had to do was to scrawl your name at the foot of a printed form and they were promptly handed over. When I first went to Belgium I was given a sixty horse-power touring car, and when the weather turned unpleasant I asked for and was given a limousine that was big enough to sleep in, and when I found this too ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... will tell you? It was found under your door before I went away." She suddenly produced from her pocket a folded paper and handed it to him. It was a misspelt scrawl, and ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... writing of mine—very bad manners, to put any one—especially a Lady—to the trouble and pain of deciphering. I hope all about Donne is legible, for you will be glad of it. It is Lodging- house Pens and Ink that is partly to blame for this scrawl. Now, don't answer till I write you something better: but believe me ever ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... offer, and be very grateful for it, for I do not bear this mountain traveling very well. If you find him, give him this scrawl and tell him where I am—that will ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... calculations. Then a short paragraph written in Roger Hunter's hurried scrawl. "No doubt now what it is," the words said. "Wish Johnny were here, show him a real bonanza, but he'll ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... fair-haired man seated opposite him, Mademoiselle Baltz having been given an easy-chair close by Rasputin's table. It was a writing-table, but the scoundrel never wrote. Sometimes he pretended to do so, but the truth was that it was a long and painful procedure with him. He preferred to scrawl his initials to any typewritten letter which ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... interest, in procuring a situation in the Sham-Post. The duties, here, are simple, and not altogether unprofitable. For example:—very early in the morning I had to make up my packet of sham letters. Upon the inside of each of these I had to scrawl a few lines on any subject which occurred to me as sufficiently mysterious—signing all the epistles Tom Dobson, or Bobby Tompkins, or anything in that way. Having folded and sealed all, and stamped them with sham postmarks—New Orleans, Bengal, Botany Bay, or any other ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to say in her charge to me, and the incident ought to have been closed, as far as we were concerned. But Tedham's not speaking threw me off my guard. I could not let the matter end so bluntly, and I added, in the same spirit one makes a scrawl at the bottom of a page, "Of course, it's for you to decide whether you will ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... by time, seemed to show by contrast with the dull hue of the page even more clearly than it could have done when first written. The paper proved to be a will, drawn up in legal form and signed with the peculiar scrawl of which you hold a tracing. It purported to have been made and published in December, 1789, at Lancaster, in the State of Pennsylvania, and to have been witnessed by James Adiger and Johan ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... . . then there was a "wild screech," and when Emmerjane ran upstairs Maggie was stretched out on the floor in a dead faint, clutching in her tight hand the photograph which Owen Owens had returned with the words, written in his heavy scrawl across ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... between. The air, to-day, was soft and sweet, the long billows of the Blue Ridge seen dreamily, through an amethyst haze. The men lay among dandelions. Some watched the horses; others read letters from home, or, haversack for desk, wrote some vivid, short-sentenced scrawl. A number were engaged by the rim of the clear pool. Naked to the waist, they knelt like washerwomen, and rubbed the soapless linen against smooth stones, or wrung it wrathfully, or turning, spread it, grey-white, upon the grass to dry. Four played poker beneath ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... young artists: first, that it gives great firmness of hand to deal for some time with a solid substance; again, that it induces caution and steadiness—a boy trusted with chalk and paper suffers an immediate temptation to scrawl upon it and play with it, but he dares not scrawl on gold, and he cannot play with it; and, lastly, that it gives great delicacy and precision of touch to work upon minute forms, and to aim at producing richness and finish of design correspondent to the preciousness ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... was added a postscript: "Your note has just come and I return the cheque." As chance would have it the cheque had come just as Rachel had finished her letter, and with the cheque there had been a short scrawl as follows: "I send the money as settled, ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... oft while all is calm without The stormy spirit wars with endless doubt; This is the mocking spectre, scarce concealed Behind tradition's bruised and battered shield. He sees the sleepless critic, age by age, Scrawl his new readings on the hallowed page, The wondrous deeds that priests and prophets saw Dissolved in legend, crystallized in law, And on the soil where saints and martyrs trod Altars new builded to the Unknown God; His shrines imperilled, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... do," it was asked, "when life becomes unbearable?" The answer was contained in one word, but written in such a scrawl as to be illegible. The question was repeated, when the same word apparently was written in reply, but still illegible. The question was put a third time, when Planchette, with great energy, wrote in bold characters, and distinct, the word PRAY. On comparing this with the former answers, they ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... resumed Bluewater, carefully tearing the signature from the bottom of the page, and burning it in a candle; "let this disgraceful part of the secret die, at least. The fellow who wrote this, has put 'confidential' at the top of his miserable scrawl: and a most confident scoundrel he is, for his pains. However, no man has a right to thrust himself, in this rude manner, between me and my oldest friend; and least of all will I consent to keep this piece of treachery from your knowledge. I do more than the rascal ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... clumsy scrawl, their eyes leaping along the lines, striving to grasp the meaning ere it ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... together for an excuse. The address was Paddington, she was to say she waited an hour at the station, then made a mistake, and went to Islington, and not finding the street there came to Paddington. The excuse turned out good, Paddington and Islington looked much alike on the scrawl. ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... constancy will attend you through life'" she had written in her old-country scrawl; "but in the end will prove your undoing, for you will meet your death at the hands of ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... up a pen, and upon a quarto page, already half filled with Leroux's small, neat, illegible writing, began to scrawl a message, bending down, one hand upon the table, and with ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... and confirmed it with an oath, "if I don't see him this very night it will be a pity:" words which were afterwards thought to have been prophetic by the curious in such matters. So Bellaroba entrusted him with her scrawl to "My love Angilotto," and the Captain chewed and swallowed it when she was not looking. Then he lifted her to his horse and rode with her into the green-sheltered Borgo, just as it was settling into twilight. And Olimpia, from her ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... from day to day," continued Mrs. Magnus, sitting down again. "Every morning the little heap of ashes and fragment of cigar, and a scrawl like that—until finally, one morning, I understood what was happening in this room, ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... not reply, but made the usual scrawl in his book, while the squatter hastened to agree with the fat man. "I like to see a bit of pace ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... said, laying down her pen, "Suppose he comes, Soames!" in such a strange tone of voice, as if she did not know her own mind. "He won't come," he had answered, "till he's spent his money. That's why we must act at once." Annexed to the copy of that letter was the original of Dartie's drunken scrawl from the Iseeum Club. Soames could have wished it had not been so manifestly penned in liquor. Just the sort of thing the Court would pitch on. He seemed to hear the Judge's voice say: "You took this seriously! Seriously enough to write him as ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... line detains him; he omits not one, And all the sorrows of his state are gone. - Alas! even then, in that delicious hour, He feels his fortune, and laments its power. Some Tradesman's bill his wandering eyes engage, Some scrawl for payment thrust 'twixt page and page; Some bold, loud rapping at his humble door, Some surly message he has heard before, Awake, alarm, and tell him he is poor. An angry Dealer, vulgar, rich, and proud, Thinks of his bill, and, passing, raps aloud; The elder daughter meekly makes ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... goldsmith's work is so wholesome for young artists: first, that it gives great firmness of hand to deal for some time with a solid substance; again, that it induces caution and steadiness—a boy trusted with chalk and paper suffers an immediate temptation to scrawl upon it and play with it, but he dares not scrawl on gold, and he cannot play with it; and, lastly, that it gives great delicacy and precision of touch to work upon minute forms, and to aim at producing ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... graphomania^; phrenoia^. writer, scribe, amanuensis, scrivener, secretary, clerk, penman, copyist, transcriber, quill driver; stenographer, typewriter, typist; writer for the press &c (author) 593. V. write, pen; copy, engross; write out, write out fair; transcribe; scribble, scrawl, scrabble, scratch; interline; stain paper; write down &c (record) 551; sign &c (attest) 467; enface^. compose, indite, draw up, draft, formulate; dictate; inscribe, throw on paper, dash off; manifold. take up the pen, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... did last night!" She handed him the slip of paper. He, too, chuckled tenderly, for the scrawl ran: "What I want for Chrismas: Pictures, pretty ones, Picture frames, Chairs, Plates for dinner, Knives, Spoons, Anything for a flat." A little space followed as if the author had hesitated before he had added in heavier ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... lay before him on the desk. The minutes passed. As he wrote, he scored out words and lines here and there, substituting others. At the end he had covered three large pages with, to any one but himself, an indecipherable scrawl. These he shoved aside now, and, very carefully, very legibly, made a copy on fresh sheets. As he finished, he heard a car draw up in front of the house. Jimmie Dale folded the copied sheets neatly, tucked ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... postscripts to her mother's letters, upon one single line, and the spelling much amended; then by a short, very short note, in French; and at last, by a despatch of unquestionable authenticity, all about doves and rabbits,—a holiday scrawl, rambling, scrambling, and uneven, and free from restraint as heart could desire. It appeared but yesterday since Helen Graham was herself a child; and here she was, within two miles of us, a ...
— Country Lodgings • Mary Russell Mitford
... remained now but to refuse the proffered bribe of claim and cabin by letter, for he must not wait their return. He tore a leaf from a blotted diary, begun and abandoned long since, and essayed to write. Scrawl after scrawl was torn up, until his fury had cooled down to a frigid third personality. "Mr. John Ford regrets to inform his late partners that their tender of house, of furniture," however, seemed too inconsistent with the pork-barrel table he was writing on; ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... chain of pitiful proofs. They found all the little, sweet, white girl-clothes folded neatly by themselves and laid in a pile together, as if on an altar for sacrifice. If the Little Girl had written "Good-bye" in her childish scrawl upon them, the Shining Mother would not have better understood. So many things she was seeing ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... title-deeds had been sold to any one who could claim the property, what would be the consequence? She felt herself in a mist of ignorance and perplexity; dreading the consequences, yet feeling as if her own removal might leave her fortune free to make up for them. She tried to scrawl an explanation; but mind and fingers were alike unequal to the task, and she desisted just as fresh torture began at the doctor's hands—torture from which they sent her mother away, and that left her exhausted, and despairing of holding out through ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Peter extracted the other paper ball, unfolding it near the orange flame. The inner surface was red, the earthly red of porphyry, and cracked and scarred by the crumpling. Nearly obliterated by the lacework of wrinkles and scratches was a scrawl, evidently scarred into the glazed surface by a knife-point. The upper part was unintelligible. On the lower surface he made out with difficulty the single word, Vandalia. He carried it to the door, ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... sister had the affectionate sympathy of all England. Lord Hood himself, before unknown to the family, hastened to their house with the news, calling to the servants as he ran up the stairs to "throw off their mourning!" The following was Riou's brief letter to his mother, which he found time to scrawl and send off by a ship just leaving Table Bay for England as the poor helpless Guardian was being ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... 'Gentlemen,' said Mr Melmotte, in his usual hurried way, 'is it your pleasure that I shall sign the record?' Paul Montague rose to say that it was not his pleasure that the record should be signed. But Melmotte had made his scrawl, and was deep in conversation with Mr Cohenlupe before Paul ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... sympathy with Swift, said that he knew of "nothing more manly, more tender, more exquisitely touching, than some of these notes." Swift says that when he wrote plainly, he felt as if they were no longer alone, but "a bad scrawl is so snug it looks like a PMD." In writing his fond and playful prattle, he made up his mouth "just as ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... of her mother's opposition, the marriage was pushed briskly forward. The contract was signed at Paisley on June 10th, and on the following day the marriage was celebrated at the same place. Lady Catherine's is not among the signatures; but there is to be seen the almost illegible scrawl of the old grandfather and of Euphrame his wife, a daughter of Sir William Scott of Ardross. The bride's eldest brother, whose own marriage with the Lady Susannah Hamilton was soon to follow, and her cousin John, son of the outlaw of Ochiltree, were also among the witnesses; ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... worked in the Troy laundry, she taught Miss Anthony to clear-starch and iron them. Each summer she managed to be home long enough to assist with the canning, pickling and preserving. The little journal gives the best glimpses of her daily life, usually only a hasty scrawl of a few lines but containing many flashes of humor and ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... rather written upon with a sharp tool, such as a nail, and wherever this instrument had touched it, the acid juice oozing through the outer skin had turned a rusty blood colour. Presently I found the beginning of the scrawl, and read this in English, and covering the surface of the leaf and of two others that ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... pulled out the drawer, and there, side by side, lay two neat but far from voluminous manuscripts, each weighted down by the unused portion of the scratch pad from which the written sheets had been torn. One was in the bold, superior scrawl of a boy, the other ineffably feminine in its painstaking regard for legibility ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... crumpled scrap out of her pocket, smoothed it out carefully, and passed it over to Gail. At the top of the page in Peace's childish scrawl were scribbled these words, "Didn't you reely put that muny in our barn?" Below, in Mr. Strong's firm, flowing handwriting, was the answer, "I reely didn't." "Are you purfickly shure you aint lying just to be plite?" was the next question. "Purfickly shure." "Cross your heart?" ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... purpose. A purpose that he could very well conceive. But if she lied for that purpose she would have given importance and prominence to her lie. She wouldn't have hidden it away in an almost invisible scrawl on ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... silent till she suddenly discovered that this effigy meant a cow, then she cried out, "tee dee moomo!" with a joy which afforded me more satisfaction than any acceptance of a story on the part of an editor had ever conveyed. Each scrawl was to her a fresh revelation of the omniscience, the magic of her father—therefore I drew and drew while her recreant mother sat on the other side of the fire and watched us, a wicked smile ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... appearance were in unpleasant contrast to those of our kind old friend Katcherofsky. Although this natural prison had no bolts and bars or other evidences of a penal system, the very air seemed tainted with mystery and oppression, and the melancholy row of huts to scrawl the word "captivity" across the desolate landscape. Even the ispravnik's room, with its heavy black furniture and sombre draperies, was suggestive of the Inquisition, and I searched instinctively around me for the rack and thumbscrews. How many a poor wretch had stood in this gloomy ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... note when they started to lift her from the chest. A hasty scrawl, it lay beneath her ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... of shingle scrap-book; he kept a paper scrap- book, too. Into these he would put whatever he cared to keep— poetry, history, funny sayings, fine passages. He had a scrap-book for his arithmetic "sums," too, and one of these is still in existence with this boyish rhyme in a boyish scrawl, underneath one of his ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... first to France, Nor dare to practise till they've learned to dance. Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile? (Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile) But those who cannot write, and those who can, All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man. Yet, sir, reflect, the mischief is not great; These madmen never hurt the Church or State; Sometimes the folly benefits mankind; And rarely av'rice taints the tuneful mind. Allow him but his plaything of a pen, He ne'er rebels, or plots, like ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... the cabin of the paralyzed Indian. Colonel Howell, having heard the explanation of the finding of the letter, without any hesitation and evidently without any qualms of conscience, drew out the enclosure. The letter was an illiterate scrawl. ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... went back to the sitting-room and sat down at her desk. When that letter was written, carefully, and in her best style, she dashed off three notes in an almost unreadable scrawl, to Mollie and Fay and Kell, telling them of her invitation and the delight it gave her. Then she wandered back to the bedroom where Eliot sat mending, and wandered ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... letter you expect. Then there was my ignorance and your brother James's ignorance to be thrown into the account. For the drawing, Sisson says Dr. Perelli has the description of it already; however, I have insisted on his making a reference to that description in a scrawl we have with much ado extorted from him. I pray to Sir Isaac Newton that the machine may answer: It costs, the stars know what! The whole charge comes to upwards of threescore pounds! He had received twenty pounds, and yet was so necessitous, that on ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... precious their lives, so much the better for sexual selection. [Note in original.]) But it seems to me a good argument, and very good if it could be thoroughly established. I do not know whether you will care to read this scrawl. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... up," declared Polly, running back to get into her chair again. "O dear me, what a horrible old scrawl," she cried, with a very red face. "I didn't know it did look so bad" And she tore it clear across the page, and then snipped it ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... him. The address, 'C. Edmonstone, Esq.,' was a mere scrawl, and within the writing was very trembling and weak. Charles remarked it, and she answered by saying that her own letter began in his own strong hand, but failed and grew shaky at the end, as if from fatigue and agitation. The words were few, brief, and simple, very unlike ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tree, with his feet over a pool of water, near where my men had left him. His eyes were sunk in his head, his lips parched and cracked, his voice almost gone. A few hours more and he would have been beyond help. He had fainted, so they told me, after writing the scrawl, and only the efforts of my men and the morsel of food they could spare him brought him back to life. When I had poured a few drops of brandy down his throat and had made him a broth and warmed him up his strength began to come back. It ...
— Homo - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... letters of gold, the crime it told, That blasted a sister's soul. That fluttering dove flew round the shrine, Where the Pope by chance was led, And he let the scribbled parchment fall On his holiness' bald head. Now the Pope was very sore perplex'd, At the words the dove had scrawl'd, For he could not read the pig-squeak tongue, Which is now old English call'd. He questioned the French ambassador, The news of that scroll to speak. Who bowing observed, "it was not French, He never had learn'd ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... McCormick dropped in to see us again. This time he had another note, a disguised scrawl ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... about the lips when he had finished this scrawl. He flung on his coat, and rushed into the street. Calling ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... letter!' said Mrs. Burke, taking it up again. 'Not even the civility to write with his own hand!—only his signature to the scrawl—looks as if it was written by a drunken man, does not it, Mr. Evans?' said she, showing the letter to Lord Colambre, who immediately recognised the writing of Sir ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... on this letter, which I had quite forgotten, or, rather, had fancied I had sent off to you three weeks and more ago. My baggage has just come to hand, and the scrawl turned up in my paper cases. Well, I have plenty to tell you now, at any rate, if I have time to tell it. That 'assembly' which stopped me short sounded in consequence of the arrival of one of the commander-in-chief's ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... out her loosened hair, and glanced around the great frescoed room. The maid-servant had said something about the Signora's having left a letter for her; and there it lay on the writing-table, with her mail and Nick's; a thick envelope addressed in Ellie's childish scrawl, with a glaring ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... first opportunity I dived into a thicket of leaves and opened it with nervous fingers. It was brief, exceedingly brief, but no number of words could have produced the same cold chill of dread which took possession of me as I glanced over the scrawl upon the paper. ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... was written in an uneven, diminishing scrawl, as if the letter had taxed the strength of the writer almost beyond endurance, and I heaved a sigh of earnest sympathy for the ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... me over; and not being much in use except on Sunday, is generally half full of water. Lucette insists on doing the bailing. She has very often performed this service, and I have always considered it as included in the curious scrawl of a bill which madame gravely presents at the end of each of my days here, beginning in small printed type with "Francois Laguerre, Restaurant Francais," and ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... herds to-morrow, that when during the next few weeks he could get back he would signal with smoke from the cliffs above her cave, it must have taken him a long time to say it. Considering how little she had to read Wanda must have been very deliberate in reading Wayne's scrawl. At any rate, long before she had finished, Mr. Willie Dart had gone silently down the porch, peered in the kitchen window at Mrs. Leland and Julia, continued on to the door of Martin's study and let himself in. The door had been locked, at that, ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... the writer an old forgotten beginner's attempt by himself. Whence it came, who sent it, he knows not; he had forgotten its very existence. He read it with curiosity; it was written in a very much better hand than his present scrawl, and was perfectly legible. But readable it was not. There was a great deal of work in it, on an out of the way topic, and the ideas were, perhaps, not quite without novelty at the time of its composition. But it was cramped and thin, and hesitating ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... a hurried scrawl in pencil, as if written in a train. I felt utterly dejected. Was Hilda, then, ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... Garman in a clear feminine hand, and it read: "Garman: Am at the cottage on Palm Island; come to-night. Annette." At the bottom in a huge masculine scrawl, were three ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... the latter end of January from the Hermitage, and intrusted the letter to Mrs. Prevost. It was a mere scrawl. This is of the same cast. However, I promise, the very first leisure hour, to devote it entirely to you in the letter way. Although I do not write frequently to you, yet, believe me, I think frequently of you. Oh, Burr! may you enjoy health, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... distance one could see the outline of a gloomy shore. The thin paper, a leaf torn from a book, had print on the reverse side, and the letters showed through in grayish flecks and gave the curious impression as of clouds in the sky. And that little drawing, with less form than a school-boy's blackboard scrawl, was completely transfigured by those gray spots, and because of them it took on for me a deep and dreadful significance. Aided by the dim light in the room the pictured scene became a vision that faded away into the distance like the pale surface of the sea. I was terrified at my own ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... my dear friend, at my own house, my roofless home; and my first scrawl from here is to the vicarage. You will be sorry to hear that the Lords of Her Majesty's Council have defied all equitable terms in my eleven years' suffering case. My counsel and myself have only received impertinent replies from under officials. Had ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... her sister back, she groped her way upstairs. Inside her room, when she had locked the door, she stood a moment upright with the letter in her hand,—the blotted incoherent scrawl, where Langham had for once forgotten to be literary, where every pitiable half-finished sentence pleaded with her—even in the first smart of her wrong—for pardon, for compassion, as towards something maimed and paralysed from birth, unworthy ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... optimistic conjecture that the "inside" was all right. Judging from Peggy's crestfallen air, it was all wrong. The note was not written in Lucy's usual regular hand. The letters straggled, the lines zig-zagged across the page, and the name signed was almost an unintelligible scrawl. But Peggy thought less of these superficial matters than of the ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... I found, my Love, a hurried scrawl Meant not for me," at length said I; "I glanced thereat, and let it lie: The words were three - ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... materials. And as she listened to the director's rough words, she took up a pencil and twisted it nervously in her fingers. Then, with increasing agitation, as she realized that her effort for Lloyd had failed, she began, without thinking, to make little marks on the blotter, and then a written scrawl—all with a singular fixed look ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... conduct I shall pursue until I receive direct orders to abandon it. I will now conclude by repeating that in a few days you will receive my journal, which will prove more interesting than the above hasty scrawl. ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... was no better than very vulgar: reading, or rather spelling, an illegible scrawl, and a little ordinary plain work, composed the whole system of it; and then all my foundation in virtue was no other than a total ignorance of vice, and the shy timidity general to our sex, in the tender age of life, when objects alarm or frighten more by their novelty than ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... was no great hand at reading or writing. He could just manage to scrawl his name. He tried to make out what the articles were about, but it was ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... great field of performance, south and southwest. You shall hear of me, perhaps may wish to hear FROM me. Here is my address, meanwhile, in Alabama. I shall advise you of my further progress, and shall esteem highly a friendly scrawl from you. If you write, do not fail to tell me what you may hear of Mr. Latour Cleveland, and how he got down from the muck-heap. Write me all about it, Clifford, and whatever else you can about our fools and knaves, for though ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... swollen lips. They thought all these things very ugly. The stone carvings of the present day were a great deal better. An inscription in Phoenician characters amazed them. No one could possibly have ever read that scrawl. But Monsieur Madinier, already up on the first landing with Madame Lorilleux, called to them, shouting ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... the nation. But the Jew may govern the money-market, and the money-market may govern the world. The Minister may be in doubt as to his scheme of finance till he has been closeted with the Jew. A congress of sovereigns may be forced to summon the Jew to their assistance. The scrawl of the Jew on the back of a piece of paper may be worth more than the royal word of three kings, or the national faith of three new American republics. But that he should put Right Honourable before his name would be the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that, apart from armorial or fanciful initials, the standing of a house may be gauged by the handwriting, the titles of the larger monasteries being given in bold letters, while those of the smaller form an almost illegible scrawl. The greater houses would have been in a position to support a competent scribe—not so the lesser; and this is believed to have been the ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... certainly inscribed her name and address in a heavy rustic scrawl, with pothooks and hangers tumbling over one another. When at last she made it all out, after being repeatedly baffled by the extraordinary style and spelling, she could not but smile again. It was a letter from Rosalie's aunt, introducing Zephyrin Lacour, who had fallen a victim to the conscription, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... a bundle did come from the hotel, with a scrawl from the housekeeper: "You may mend this linen, my dear, and I'll send for ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... said the stranger, with humorous defiance, "and can lick him out of his boots, whoever HE is. That ought to satisfy you. But if you want my certificate, here's your own letter, old man," he said, producing Leonidas's last scrawl ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... should just lie here missing Fergus. He always made such a fuss on my birthdays; they were red-letter days to him, and now this friendly message has come to me. Give me my writing-case, Livy. I must scrawl a few lines to your old gentleman," and she refused to dictate ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... fact a singular scrawl. It consisted of all kinds of crooked characters, disposed in columns, and had evidently been prepared by some person who had before him at the time a book containing various alphabets. Greek and Hebrew letters, crosses and flourishes, Roman letters inverted, or ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... see a lubberly rascal take a chisel, or some o' their land tools, and shave every lock of hair off the figure-head of the 'Royal Charles,' and even off the beard, shorten the nose into a stub, and then scrawl under it, 'The blessed change; this regenerated vessel will be known hereafter as the Holy Oliver'? Wasn't that blasphemy? Come, captain, rouse yourself; let's call a council—there's little Robin Hays, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... home! I think of your letters so full of heart and friendship, with perhaps a little scrawl of Charley's or Mamey's, lying at the bottom of the deep sea; and am as full of sorrow as if they had once been living ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... threw on the table three small sheets of paper, covered with a hurried pencil scrawl, all from Varvara Petrovna. The first letter was dated the day before yesterday, the second had come yesterday, and the last that day, an hour before. Their contents were quite trivial, and all referred to Karmazinov and betrayed the vain and fussy uneasiness of Varvara Petrovna ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... their official scrawl, they made me write in French my name, Christian name, and profession. Then they gave me an extraordinary document on a sheet of rice-paper, which set forth the permission granted me by the civilian Authorities of the Island of Kiu-Siu, to inhabit ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... got back to his room, spent and disheveled at nine o'clock, he found two letters under his door. One, a black-bordered envelope addressed in Connie's familiar scrawl, he thrust into his pocket, smiling in spite of himself at the memory of Miss Lady's bargain stationery. The other, a long, bulky envelope, bearing the device of a well-known magazine, caused him to sit limply down on his steamer- trunk and gaze at ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... laboured scrawl came to an end, save for a few incoherent strokes. David thrust it back into his pocket. His cheek was red; his eyes burnt; he sat for long, with his elbows on his knees, staring at the February river. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with a stricken conscience, the elegant scrawl in his hand—"is from Tedcastle George Luttrell (he is evidently proud of his name), declaring himself not only ready but fatally willing to accept my invitation to spend a month ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... admitted Bluff. "Do you know what he said when he was showing that scrawl to us fellows? I was close enough to get part of it, and I'm dead sure the words 'entering wedge' formed the backbone of ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... christened "Tippy," also for a reason she could not or would not divulge. But one evening, to her secret amusement, Lilly found a sheet of paper in the litter of the desk, jotted all over with Zoe's joyous scrawl, "Zantippe," in every case the first ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... in a stiff, female scrawl, and Leonard observed that two or three mistakes in spelling had been corrected, either in another pen or ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... bad writing of mine—very bad manners, to put any one—especially a Lady—to the trouble and pain of deciphering. I hope all about Donne is legible, for you will be glad of it. It is Lodging- house Pens and Ink that is partly to blame for this scrawl. Now, don't answer till I write you something better: but believe me ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... treasure box of many a grandmother is hidden a pathetic scrawl that the baby made for her and called "a letter." To the alien eye, it is a mere tangle of pencil marks, and the baby himself, grown to manhood, with children of his own, would laugh at the yellowed message, which is put away with ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... glass—we see books worth their weight in gold, either for their uniqueness or their beauty, or because they have belonged to illustrious men, and have their autographs in them. The copy of the English translation of Montaigne, containing the strange scrawl of Shakespeare's autograph, is here. Bacon's name is in another book; Queen Elizabeth's in another; and there is a little devotional volume, with Lady Jane Grey's writing in it. She is supposed to have taken it to the scaffold with her. Here, too, I saw a copy, which ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rival. She scrutinised her hair, her nose, her mouth; held the photograph at a distance, and then brought it closer again. And, finally, with compressed lips, she read on the back of it, in a big, ugly scrawl: "Louise, to her friend, Florent." This quite scandalised her; to her mind it was a confession, and she felt a strong impulse to take possession of the photograph, and keep it as a weapon against her enemy. However, she slowly replaced it in the envelope on ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... "this letter, which, after all, is but an anonymous scrawl, is not even addressed to you, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the tenderest parts in your own little volume, at the end of such a slatternly scribble as this, but indeed they cost us some tears. I scrawl away because of interruptions every moment. You guess how it is in a busy office—papers thrust into your hand when your hand is busiest—and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... inscription has emerged. Instead, we have proof that the lower classes wrote Latin for all sorts of purposes. Had they known Celtic well, it is hardly credible that they should not have sometimes written in that language, as the Gauls did across the Channel. A Gaulish potter of Roman date could scrawl his name and record, Sacrillos avot, 'Sacrillus potter', on the outside of a mould.[1] No such scrawl has ever been found in Britain. The Gauls, again, could invent a special letter Eth to denote ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... to drudge for the dregs of men, And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, And mingle among the jostling crowd, Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud— I often come to this quiet place, To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face, And gaze upon thee in silent dream, ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... be in the least alarmed on reading this hasty scrawl, after waking from the sleep you meant to sleep forever. There is no sleep without a live body to sleep in—no such thing as everlasting sleep. Self-destruction seems a very simple thing—more often a duty than not; but it's not to be done! ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... all, I want you gentlemen to understand that I have known this lady since she was a child. There were seven of us in a gang in Chicago, and Elsie's father was the boss of the Joint. He was a clever man, was old Patrick. It was he who invented that writing, which would pass as a child's scrawl unless you just happened to have the key to it. Well, Elsie learned some of our ways; but she couldn't stand the business, and she had a bit of honest money of her own, so she gave us all the slip and got away to London. She had been engaged to me, and she would have married me, I believe, if ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... remarkably bold, but careful. Punctuation was strictly attended to, and in places a word had been obliterated with a circular scrawl which left ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... after all, that the carriage shall meet you, as you mention, on the 15th. I wish it was directly; they will be all well by the time you come. But it is so very forlorn, and I am so nervous; so excuse this scrawl. ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... type—long, lean, grey and listless—who murmured that Prince Saradine was from home at present, but was expected hourly; the house being kept ready for him and his guests. The exhibition of the card with the scrawl of green ink awoke a flicker of life in the parchment face of the depressed retainer, and it was with a certain shaky courtesy that he suggested that the strangers should remain. "His Highness may be here any minute," he said, "and would be distressed to ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... letter—lying on his table. The brief epistle which conveyed to him the regrets of the new female college building committee, that his plans were too elaborate and costly, and must therefore be declined, really demanded no reply, and would probably never have one. It was the hurried scrawl from his friend Wilberforce which claimed of his sense of honor an answer by the next mail. The letter from Wilberforce was dated ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... books about the Grubbling domicile, that had been the older child's—Cornelia's—and had descended to Master Herbert, while yet his only pastime in them was to scrawl them full of pencil marks, and tear them into tatters. These, one by one, Glory rescued, and hid away, and fed upon, piecemeal, in secret. She could read, at least—this poor, denied unfortunate. Peter McWhirk had taught his child her letters in happy, humble Sundays and holidays long ago; and ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... style in composition, and for purposes of edification. These exercises {22} abound in errors of spelling and grammar, having sometimes the master's corrections elegantly written above in red. As may be imagined, a schoolboy's scrawl over three thousand years old is no easy thing to translate; but faute de mieux the Egyptologist welcomes any version, even the most barbarous. Fortunately, the MS. from which these translations come is not of this kind; ...
— The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke'Gemni - The Oldest Books in the World • Battiscombe G. Gunn
... therefore, receive it with all its imperfections, accompanied with this assurance, that, though there may be inaccuracies in the letter, there is not a single defect in the friendship." Occasionally there was, as here, an apology: "I am persuaded you will excuse this scratch'd scrawl, when I assure you it is with difficulty I write at all," he ended a letter in 1777, and in 1792 of another said, "You must receive it blotted and scratched as you find it for I have not time to copy it. It is now ten o'clock at night, after my usual hour ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... good they were! And nobody writes them now; Never at all comes in the scrawl On the written pages which told us all The news of town and the folks we knew, And what they had done or were going to do. It seems we've forgotten how To spend an hour with our pen in hand To write in the language ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... shelter from the howling sea-wind behind a great boulder of rock. She dreaded his reproaches unspeakably. For the past six weeks she had lived in dread of that moment. Her fingers were shaking as she opened the envelope that bore his boyish scrawl. ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... instance. But, however, I understand you to be speaking of book-learning; and as to that, it is a simple affair. Most children, seeing books lying about, manage to read by the time they are four years old; though I am told it has not always been so. As to writing, we do not encourage them to scrawl too early (though scrawl a little they will), because it gets them into a habit of ugly writing; and what's the use of a lot of ugly writing being done, when rough printing can be done so easily. You understand that handsome writing we like, and many people will write ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... instruction from him. But how to address him she was ignorant. He was gone, but she did not know whither. The servants, no doubt, knew where, but she could not bring herself to ask them. On the third day she wrote as follows. The reader will remember that that short scrawl which she addressed to him from her bedroom ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... the first two or three rows of desks. The teacher was a little sandy man who made well-trodden jokes and talked in a wheezy voice well suited to his appearance. He used the blackboard, and stood upon tiptoe to scrawl upon it in a large handwriting. That was at the beginning. Later, methods developed; but for the present Sally and the others were merely initiated into the first movements of the difficult craft. With amazement ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... fish; and transposing o into the middle, which was taken from the beginning; apex, a piece; peak, pike; zophorus, freese; mustum, stum; defensio, fence; dispensator, spencer; asculto, escouter, Fr. scout; exscalpo, scrape; restoring l instead of r, and hence scrap, scrabble, scrawl; exculpo, scoop; exterritus, start; extonitus, attonitus, stonn'd; stomachus, maw; offendo, fined; obstipo, stop; audere, dare; cavere, ware; whence, a-ware, beware, wary, warn, warning; for the Latin v consonant formerly sounded like our w, and the modern sound of the v consonant was formerly ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... requests the pleasure of Mr. Marcus Gard's company at dinner"—the usual engraved invitation, with below a girlish scrawl: "You'll come, won't you? It's my very last ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... of poets; machines, at least, containing poetry, which the motion of a journey emptied of their contents. Is it from the vanity of being thought geniuses, or a mere mechanical imitation of the custom of others, that we are tempted to scrawl rhyme ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... handwriting which he found there. The result of his study was what he had expected: the writing of the note to Marcia was sufficiently like Judith's to pass muster to an uncritical eye, looking, in fact, what it purported to be, a very hasty scrawl. But Lee decided that Judith had not written it. He slipped it into ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... took the proffered pen in unaccustomed fingers and made a crisscross scrawl, adorned with thirteen blots. The pen nib broke under the strain, and he handed it back with ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... twelve or fourteen. I do not think it advisable to engage a child in any but the most voluntary practice of art. If it has talent for drawing, it will be continually scrawling on what paper it can get; and should be allowed to scrawl at its own free will, due praise being given for every appearance of care, or truth, in its efforts. It should be allowed to amuse itself with cheap colours almost as soon as it has sense enough to wish for them. If it merely daubs the paper with ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... albums, how I dread Your everlasting scrap and scrawl! How often wish that from the dead Old Omar would pop forth his head, And make a bonfire of ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... case of a controlled or assisted hand must depend largely upon the relative force, exercised by the joint hands. The difficulty in writing arises from the antagonizing motion of one hand upon the other, which is likely to produce an unintelligible scrawl, having little or none of the habitual ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... the miserable scrawl on the table. "The fellow is a scoundrel," said the Squire; "he does not seem to have a spark of gratitude. You've done a deal too much for him already; and if the sister is as old as Dora—" he continued, after a long pause, with a half-humorous ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... have been so rude. He had been too indifferent. Too indifferent! The repetition of the phrase made him sit straighter. Pshaw! It could not be that. He possessed a little vanity; if he had not, his history would not have been worth a scrawl. But he denied the possession vehemently, as men are wont to do. Strange, a man will admit smashing those ten articles of advisement known as the decalogue and yet deny the inherent quality which surrenders the admission—vanity. However you may look at it, man's vanity is ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... quail; not I,—but, by the angry devil of the duel, you answer me, either sword point to sword point; or from the pointing pistol, that shall speak both sharp and decisive, and the dotting bullet, perhaps, put a period to your proud life's scrawl. But no; I am grown too old to have recourse to violence. Away, go, go; but, mind you, do not breathe this calumny into a human ear,—no, not into the air. Shame, shame! you are no noble minded man, to villify my ward and your own son; whom, if I accounted to be as strangely base as you have ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... do not curse you—I scorn you. I can now thank the chance that has divided us. I do not feel even a desire for revenge; I no longer love you. I want nothing from you. Live in peace on the strength of my word; it is worth more than the scrawl of all the notaries in Paris. I will never assert my claim to the name I perhaps have made illustrious. I am henceforth but a poor devil named Hyacinthe, who asks no more than his share ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... got a printing-machine and am going to try and write to you upon it and see if it will suit your eyes better than my scrawl of handwriting. Thank you for the Photographs and the line of music; I know that old bit of tune, it seems to me. I think Mr. Irving's face more like Young's than my Father's. Tom Taylor, years ago, told me that Miss Ellen Terry would ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... at that house. And, now she thought of it, what a queer burglary it had been! The thieves must certainly have known something about Mrs. Ellsworth, or else, in helping themselves to her valuables, it would not have occurred to them to scrawl a sarcastic message. ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... up and read the latest, which was a scrawl in quavering characters over three telegraph forms. It was from Ladcock at Gilgit, saying that he was having a row of his own with the navvies there, and that he could send no reinforcements at present. If he quieted the trouble in time he would try and hold the Mazeno Pass, and meanwhile he had ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... This scrawl had attracted the attention of fully a score of cadets, and one after another they entered the classroom designated to find out what it meant. When they saw the teeth dangling in the air they set ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... supper at the farm, and Helen was coming out of the rough little path that led from the Perkins' home. She was feeling tired and very sad. She had been reading a letter from the husband in prison, a sorrowful pencilled scrawl, pathetically misspelled, but breathing out true sympathy for his wife and children, and the deepest repentance and self-blame. And at the end of every misconstructed sentence like a wailing refrain were the words, "I done wrong and I deserve all I got, but it's hard on ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... to reach the Niger on the 27th of June. You must excuse this hasty scrawl, as it is only meant to let you know that I am still alive and going forward in my journey. Please to let Mrs. Dickson know that I ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... mother's letter. If she knew as much as I do about you, scapegrace, she would never trouble herself whether you were dead or alive! Fagotin! Here is a bundle of Paris newspapers for you; they are quite new—only nine months old! Potele! Some woman has sent you a love-scrawl and some tobacco; I suppose she knew your passions all ended in smoke! Rafle! Here is a little money come for you from France; it has not been stolen, so it will have no spice for you! Racoleur! Here is a love-billet from some simpleton, with a knife as a souvenir; sharpen it on ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... management; prices were higher here than elsewhere; the coat-rooms were robbers' dens infested by Italian mafiosi; tips were extravagant and amounted in effect to ransom; and each meal-check was headed by an illegible scrawl which masked an item termed "service." The figure opposite would have covered the cost of a repast at Childs's. But New York dearly loves to be pillaged; it cherishes a reputation for princely carelessness ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... Barrie seldom wrote to each other. When they did it was a mere scrawl that no other human being in the world could read. The only cablegram that Barrie ever sent Frohman was about "What Every Woman Knows." Hilda Trevelyan played Maggie Wylie. Barrie liked her work so much that he cabled Frohman about it on the opening night. When the actress went down to breakfast ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... roses at graduation; a little silver ring marking a childish romance; a flattened and much-dried chocolate drop with tender associations; dance-favors, clippings, photographs, theater programs, each illumined and emphasized by a line or two of sentiment or of nonsense in Jean's girlish scrawl. ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... back with a pencilled scrawl from Kress to the effect that Lieutenant Stuyvesant was to be permitted to interview the prisoner Murray outside the guard-house, but sentries must be placed ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... Butler I am now writing with the gold pen he gave me before I left England, which is the reason my scrawl is more unintelligible than usual. I have been at Athens, and seen plenty of these reeds for scribbling, some of which he refused to bestow upon me, because topographic Gell had brought them from Attica. But I will not describe,—no—you must be satisfied ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... name was a queer-looking squiggle. Each was slightly different, and each bore some resemblance to a stick-figure, a geometrical figure or just a childish scrawl. The whole parade reminded Malone of pictures he ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Peter was to endure to greenest old age, more platonic, perhaps, than that of Madame Recamier and Chateaubriand. It was to be fruitful in letters that would compare favorably with the best of the seventeenth century series. Even now her own letters to Peter were no sprightly scrawl of passing events, but efforts whose seriousness suggested, at least in their carefully elaborated stages of structure, the letters ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... and I found out from one of the servants. Sharp found an envelope under the door. It contained a five-dollar bill, and on it was written in a scrawl, 'For a new photograph.'" ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... but the Fates must decide. I can scrawl, or, with pains, I can imitate Miss Fanny; but the other alternative ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... respects to the two colonels, and remembrances to all friends. Tell Ultima Analise[106] that his friend Raids did not make his appearance with the brig, though I think that he might as well have spoken with us in or off Zante, to give us a gentle hint of what we had to expect. Excuse my scrawl, on account of the pen and the frosty ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... to show them to you, love,' said he. 'They're hardly fit for a lady's eyes—the most part of them. But look here. This is Grimsby's scrawl—only three lines, the sulky dog! He doesn't say much, to be sure, but his very silence implies more than all the others' words, and the less he says, the more he thinks—and this is Hargrave's missive. He is particularly grieved at me, because, forsooth ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... lying's sake. If she had lied, then, she had lied for a purpose. A purpose that he could very well conceive. But if she lied for that purpose she would have given importance and prominence to her lie. She wouldn't have hidden it away in an almost invisible scrawl on an ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... lately," said Tad, "and I've got so I can scrawl jest like her. Old Scotch and Jenks ain't never run onto each other at our house, but ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... half expected to find that it was a note from a certain girl with unforgettable grey eyes. But before he had read the few words, as soon in fact as his eyes had fallen upon the uneven, laboriously constructed letters of the lead-pencilled scrawl, he knew that this did not come from her hand. The signature puzzled him; it consisted of two letters, initials evidently, a very large j, not capitalized, followed by a very ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... shook out her loosened hair, and glanced around the great frescoed room. The maid-servant had said something about the Signora's having left a letter for her; and there it lay on the writing-table, with her mail and Nick's; a thick envelope addressed in Ellie's childish scrawl, with a glaring "Private" ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... Lydia a little scrawl from her aunt, bidding the girl come and breakfast with her in her room ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... this office, you're reading the latest scrawl from your son. One would think Jock's letters were deathless masterpieces. I believe you read them at half-hour intervals all week, and on Sunday get 'em all out and play ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... of it. Otherwise the letter really contained nothing, nothing of what he was doing, not even anything about the Laemkes, also no longing "come back soon"; but it was written carefully, tidily and clearly, not such a scrawl as he usually wrote. And that showed ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... talk!" laughed Avdeyev: "Signed it, indeed! They used to bring the accounts to my shop and I signed them. As though I understood! Give me anything you like, I'll scrawl my name to it. If you were to write that I murdered someone I'd sign my name to it. I haven't time to go into it; besides, I can't see without ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... charge to me, and the incident ought to have been closed, as far as we were concerned. But Tedham's not speaking threw me off my guard. I could not let the matter end so bluntly, and I added, in the same spirit one makes a scrawl at the bottom of a page, "Of course, it's for you to decide ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... who loaf, my dear," she said. "When you undertake the transcription of an author's scrawl at ninepence the thousand words you have to work unusually hard, especially when, as it is in this case, the thing's practically unreadable. Besides, the woman in it makes me lose my temper. If I'd had a man of the kind ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... and compared it carefully with scraps of her handwriting which he found there. The result of his study was what he had expected: the writing of the note to Marcia was sufficiently like Judith's to pass muster to an uncritical eye, looking, in fact, what it purported to be, a very hasty scrawl. But Lee decided that Judith had not written it. He slipped it ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... Snawley-Grubbs while he perused the pencilled scrawl. That gentleman, however, as Editor and Proprietor of the Snake—a new, but highly successful weekly "society" journal, was far too dignified and self-important to allow his countenance to betray his feelings. He merely remarked, as he folded ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... for the bit of stamped-paper left by the bailiff, and gave it to Pons. Pons read the scrawl through with close attention, then he let the paper drop and lay quite silent for a while. A close observer of the work of men's hands, unheedful so far of the workings of the brain, Pons finally counted out the threads of the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... sell. This done, I am off for the great field of performance, south and southwest. You shall hear of me, perhaps may wish to hear FROM me. Here is my address, meanwhile, in Alabama. I shall advise you of my further progress, and shall esteem highly a friendly scrawl from you. If you write, do not fail to tell me what you may hear of Mr. Latour Cleveland, and how he got down from the muck-heap. Write me all about it, Clifford, and whatever else you can about our fools and knaves, for though I leave them without a tear, yet, d—n 'em, I keep 'em in my memory, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... my hand something like your's—which, by the bye, you neglect rather too much: but, as what you write is good sense, every body will forgive the scrawl. ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... walk elsewhere. The day after next, just as I was going to get into my carriage, a man of evil aspect gave me a paper and asked me to read it. I opened it, but finding it covered with an illegible scrawl I gave it him back, telling him to read it himself. He did so, and I found myself summoned to appear before the commissary of police to answer to the plea which the midwife (whose name I forget) brought ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... anything so impudent on the walls of any exhibition, in any country, as last year in London. It was a daub professing to be a "harmony in pink and white" (or some such nonsense;) absolute rubbish, and which had taken about a quarter of an hour to scrawl or daub—it had no pretence to be called painting. The price asked for it was two hundred and ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... Mr. Pearce, "but I have given you the substance of the illiterate scrawl in tolerable English as far as it remains. Looks as if the sheet had been torn apart. There is a fortune for you if ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... refers to the ruins of Machu Picchu. Just when it was first seen by a Spanish-speaking person is uncertain. When the Count de Sartiges was at Huadquina in 1834 he was looking for ruins; yet, although so near, he heard of none here. From a crude scrawl on the walls of one of the finest buildings, we learned that the ruins were visited in 1902 by Lizarraga, lessee of the lands immediately below the bridge of San Miguel. This is the earliest local record. Yet some one must have ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... passed out of sight without once turning his head, and Kettle glanced down at the screw of paper which lay on his knees, and saw on it a scrawl of writing. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... writer an old forgotten beginner's attempt by himself. Whence it came, who sent it, he knows not; he had forgotten its very existence. He read it with curiosity; it was written in a very much better hand than his present scrawl, and was perfectly legible. But readable it was not. There was a great deal of work in it, on an out of the way topic, and the ideas were, perhaps, not quite without novelty at the time of its composition. But it was cramped and thin, and hesitating between several manners; ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... and Argus his eyes, Tom Piper, poor Cobler, and Lazarus's thighs: Rough Esau, with Maudlin, and gentles that scrawl, With Bishop that burneth—ye ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... sheet, Dennis seized the opportunity to fold up the end one and slip it into his pocket; and he had just succeeded when the general added the last scrawl to his indecipherable signature. ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... hastened to their house with the news, calling to the servants as he ran up the stairs to "throw off their mourning!" The following was Riou's brief letter to his mother, which he found time to scrawl and send off by a ship just leaving Table Bay for England as the poor helpless ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... not one, And all the sorrows of his state are gone. - Alas! even then, in that delicious hour, He feels his fortune, and laments its power. Some Tradesman's bill his wandering eyes engage, Some scrawl for payment thrust 'twixt page and page; Some bold, loud rapping at his humble door, Some surly message he has heard before, Awake, alarm, and tell him he is poor. An angry Dealer, vulgar, rich, and proud, Thinks of his bill, and, passing, raps aloud; The elder daughter ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... answer to the letter came, the Prince gave it to her to read. It was very short, a mere scrawl of scarlet ink on the brown, rough-edged paper that ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... a spirit of joy into green field and hedgerow is awful to look upon in Paris. You leave the train half-frozen, to find the porters red-eyed from their watch. The customs officials, in a kind of stupor, scrawl cabalistic signs upon your trunk. You get outside the station, to find a few scattered cabs, their drivers asleep inside, their lamps ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... other half undone, than do them all indifferently. Moreover, the few seconds that are saved in the course of the day, by writing ill instead of well, do not amount to an object of time by any means equivalent to the disgrace or ridicule of writing the scrawl of a common whore. Consider, that if your very bad writing could furnish me with matter of ridicule, what will it not do to others who do not view you in that partial light that I do? There was a pope, I think ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... swagman deposited bluey on the foot-board and himself on the seat. Then the chestnuts tossed their heads, and the buggy resumed its way, surging across the crab-holes like a canoe on rough water. My soul went forth in a paean of joy, for, exactly as the perfect circle of a flying scrawl bespoke Giotto, this action bespoke Stewart of Kooltopa, now masquerading under a pair of strange horses. Here was my opportunity. Figuratively, I would put Alf in a basket, with a note pinned to his bib, and leave ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... I lighted a match and see ... here ... in your mother's very handwriting"—fervently she held the bit of paper up for Sylvia to see. The girl cast a hostile look at the paper and saw that the writing on it was the usual scrawl produced by Cousin Parnelia, hardly legible, and resembling anything rather than her ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... prime of life who had come to these regions to gain a little money; or little children, carried off by the harsh climate (yet the climate of this place is preferred to that of Gafsa). The enclosure is filling up with drift-sand; the inscriptions on the tombs, often a mere charcoal scrawl of some unlettered friend or parent, is soon ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... much as I do about you, scapegrace, she would never trouble herself whether you were dead or alive! Fagotin! Here is a bundle of Paris newspapers for you; they are quite new—only nine months old! Potele! Some woman has sent you a love-scrawl and some tobacco; I suppose she knew your passions all ended in smoke! Rafle! Here is a little money come for you from France; it has not been stolen, so it will have no spice for you! Racoleur! Here is a love-billet from some simpleton, with a knife as a souvenir; sharpen it on the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... the big fortune left to her by her father passed unreservedly into her own hands, was a wearisome necessity that had been got through as expeditiously as possible, with as little attention to detail as the old family lawyer had allowed, and an absence of interest that was evidenced in the careless scrawl she attached to each document that was given her to sign. The mere money in itself was nothing; it was only a means to an end. She had never even realised how much was expended on the continuous and luxurious expeditions that she had made with ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... Radcliff's doctors travel first to France, Nor dare to practise till they've learned to dance. Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile? (Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile) But those who cannot write, and those who can, All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man. Yet, sir, reflect, the mischief is not great; These madmen never hurt the Church or State; Sometimes the folly benefits mankind; And rarely av'rice taints the tuneful mind. Allow him but his plaything of ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... somewhat subsided, Roy produced the letter he had found in the cabin of the paralyzed Indian. Colonel Howell, having heard the explanation of the finding of the letter, without any hesitation and evidently without any qualms of conscience, drew out the enclosure. The letter was an illiterate scrawl. ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... deceptions open to an ingenious management; prices were higher here than elsewhere; the coat-rooms were robbers' dens infested by Italian mafiosi; tips were extravagant and amounted in effect to ransom; and each meal-check was headed by an illegible scrawl which masked an item termed "service." The figure opposite would have covered the cost of a repast at Childs's. But New York dearly loves to be pillaged; it cherishes a reputation for princely carelessness of expenditure. It follows that freedom from extortion in places of entertainment ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... and ink, could not even write, the hoax was a physical impossibility. If he could write, but was a rough bookless man, his condition would be scarcely the more gracious, even if he were able to copy in his scrawl the fine Roman hand of the concealed poet. I am surprised that the Baconians have never made that point. Will's "copy" was almost without blot or erasion, the other actors were wont to boast. Really the absence of erasions and corrections is too easily explained on the theory that Will was ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... that goldsmith's work is so wholesome for young artists: first, that it gives great firmness of hand to deal for some time with a solid substance; again, that it induces caution and steadiness—a boy trusted with chalk and paper suffers an immediate temptation to scrawl upon it and play with it, but he dares not scrawl on gold, and he cannot play with it; and, lastly, that it gives great delicacy and precision of touch to work upon minute forms, and to aim at producing richness and finish ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... and struck a match to read the scrawl which Poltavo had written. Fortunately there was nothing in it which betrayed the great secret of the house, but it was enough, as he realized, to awaken the dormant suspicion, even supposing it was dormant, of ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... in catching fish for supper, walking in the woods, swinging, singing, playing on some musical instrument, &c. I have often been on these parties, and never spent my time more to my satisfaction; which is more than you will be able to say of that spent in reading this scrawl from ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... and ten o'clock when Marshall Langham reached his office. He scarcely had time to remove his hat and overcoat when a policeman entered the room and handed him a note. It was a hasty scrawl from Moxlow who wished him to come at ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... to send," she explained, glancing at the almost illegible scrawl with an expression of doubt. "Couldn't you stop the carriage a moment while I ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... summer. Cold is the speciality of the North, and all its sports and gayeties take thence their tone. The houses are built to shut out the demon of Frost, and protect one from his assaults of ice and snow. Let him howl about your windows and scrawl his wonderful landscapes on your panes and pile his fantastic wreaths outside, while you draw round the blazing hearth and enjoy the artificial heat and warm in the social converse that he provokes. Your punch is all the better for his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... the age of twelve or fourteen. I do not think it advisable to engage a child in any but the most voluntary practice of art. If it has talent for drawing, it will be continually scrawling on what paper it can get; and should be allowed to scrawl at its own free will, due praise being given for every appearance of care, or truth, in its efforts. It should be allowed to amuse itself with cheap colours almost as soon as it has sense enough to wish for them. If it merely daubs the paper ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... just three hasty lines from the great Collingwood himself. That brave heart, in the midst of the din of victory, had found time to scrawl a word to his old schoolmate, and tell him that his boy had died like a hero, and that he regretted ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... dint of great interest, in procuring a situation in the Sham-Post. The duties, here, are simple, and not altogether unprofitable. For example:—very early in the morning I had to make up my packet of sham letters. Upon the inside of each of these I had to scrawl a few lines on any subject which occurred to me as sufficiently mysterious—signing all the epistles Tom Dobson, or Bobby Tompkins, or anything in that way. Having folded and sealed all, and stamped them with sham ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... a nation of poets; machines, at least, containing poetry, which the motion of a journey emptied of their contents. Is it from the vanity of being thought geniuses, or a mere mechanical imitation of the custom of others, that we are tempted to scrawl rhyme upon ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... shown. That she smiled on his early evidences of talent, and fostered them, we may well imagine; and the tenderness with which she regarded his early compositions is indicated by the fact that a copy of verses, written in a boyish scrawl, was carefully preserved by her, and found, after her death, folded in a paper on which was inscribed, "My Walter's first lines, 1782." That she gloried in his successes when they came, we gather; ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... our proud ignorance Learning call? We oddly Plato's paradox make good, Our knowledge is but mere remembrance all; Remembrance is our treasure and our food; Nature's fair table-book, our tender souls, We scrawl all o'er with old and empty rules, Stale memorandums of the schools: For learning's mighty treasures look Into that deep grave, a book; Think that she there does all her treasures hide, And that her troubled ghost still haunts there since she died; Confine ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... of the emperors showed a taste for scholarship; one of them was said to have been so devoted to study that he almost forgot to reign. When kings in western Europe were so ignorant that they could with difficulty scrawl their names, eastern emperors wrote books and composed poetry. It is true that Byzantine scholars were erudite rather than original. Impressed by the great treasures of knowledge about them, they found it difficult to strike out into new, unbeaten paths. Most students were content to make huge collections ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... well as hearing his story, would go softly with it to Peter's room; and there think and ask herself how her father, whose system she had long quietly observed, would have treated the case. Then she would write an illegible scrawl with a cabalistic letter, and bring it down reverently, and show it the patient, and "Could he read that?" Then it would be either, "I am no reader," or, with admiration, "Nay, mistress, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... amanuenses are busy with friends, and I fear this scrawl will give you much trouble to read.—With many thanks, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... stared Williams came rushing wildly in. All gave way to him, and the young doctor who followed him was greeted with low words of satisfaction. To his partner, whom he recognized, Haney repeated his command: "Send for Bertie." With a hurried scrawl Williams put down the girl's name and address on a piece of paper, and shouted: "Here! Somebody take this and rush it. Tell her to come quick as the Lord will let her." Then, with the tenderness of a brother, he bent to Haney. "How ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Norfolk for a long while to come. The odd part is, that he does not know George. But he said he would gladly take charge of it and remember the address, which Lilly told him was Richmond. Well! if the Yankees get it they will take it for an insane scrawl. I wanted to calm his anxiety about us, though I was so wildly excited that I could only say, "Don't mind us! We are safe. But fight, George! Fight for us!" The repetition was ludicrous. I meant so much, too! I only ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... Price was "selling nails," as he still expressed his business career, there came in his mail a queer little scrawl, postmarked Pittsburg. It was from Delia Conry, and ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... is good news was surely concocted by some one who never chafed through day after lengthening day for that which does not come. But in the end it did come, in the form of a scrawl from the Weeping Scion himself. He was mending, but very slowly, and they said it would be a long time—months, perhaps—before he could get back to the front. Meantime, they were still picking odds and ends, chiefly metallic, out of various parts ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... gentleman!' What was it I doubted?" puckering her brow. "No matter." She went on: "'You have asked me if I love you. Find me and put the question. France is large. If you love me you will find me. You have complained that I have never permitted you to kiss me.'" She paused, glanced obliquely at the scrawl, and shrugged. "Can it be possible that I wrote this—'I kiss your handsome grey eyes a thousand times'?" Calmly she folded the letter. "Well, Monsieur, and you searched thoroughly, I have no doubt. This would be an incentive to ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... now she thought of it, what a queer burglary it had been! The thieves must certainly have known something about Mrs. Ellsworth, or else, in helping themselves to her valuables, it would not have occurred to them to scrawl a sarcastic message. ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... field. The leading officers maintained a dignity and a reserve, and reined their horses together in places, to confer. At one time, a private soldier came out to me, presenting a scrap of paper, and asked me to scrawl him a line, which he would dictate. It was ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... accidentally as I leave," read the fly leaf in Philip's scrawl. "I don't want you to suspect my classic tastes, but what can I do if ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... apart from armorial or fanciful initials, the standing of a house may be gauged by the handwriting, the titles of the larger monasteries being given in bold letters, while those of the smaller form an almost illegible scrawl. The greater houses would have been in a position to support a competent scribe—not so the lesser; and this is believed to have been the ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... man's presumption, Frankenstein's monster—but instinct with gumption; Another strange state captive in the north, Constable-guarded in an iron mask— Still let me ask, Hast thou no silver platter, No door-plate, or no card—or some such matter, To scrawl a name upon, and ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... the Arabic scrawl under a paperweight. He was a man who plumed himself on a gift of accurate divination. Such a belief is fatal. For the third time that day, he ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... Turn the wheel over to Sandy if you have to. I'll insist on havin' you there. That'll be better. They'll probably have some fool agreement to sign. Carlsen would do that. Make 'em all feel it's more like a bizness meetin'. They'll love to scrawl their names an' put down their marks. I'll have to have you there to read it over to ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... spread out a crumpled sheet of note paper before us on which was written something in a trembling scrawl. "For instance, here's a ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... case came up for trial on this October day, the Court House was well filled indeed, but rather on account of the lawyers engaged than because of the matter's intrinsic interest. The British Merchants had retained Mr. Ludwell Cary. The side of the prisoner, mentioning that fact in a pitiful scrawl addressed to the law office of Messrs. Rand and Mocket, found to its somewhat pathetic surprise that Mr. Rand himself would take the ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... back and forth across the hulks of classic sea mysteries, new and old; of the City of Boston, which went down with all hands, leaving for record only a melancholy scrawl on a bit of board to meet the wondering eyes of a fisherman on the far Cornish coast; of the Great Queensland, which set out with five hundred and sixty-nine souls aboard, bound by a route unknown to a tragic end; of the Naronic, with ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... be the efficacy of their written characters in cases of sickness, but the presence of the marabout himself is necessary, in order that the writing may suit the nature of the disorder. When the disease is dangerous, the writing is administered internally, for which purpose they scrawl some words in large characters, with thick streaks of ink round the inside of a cup, dissolve the ink with broth, and with many devout ceremonies pour the liquor down the sick man's throat. These impostors have always free access to the beys and ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... her pen, "Suppose he comes, Soames!" in such a strange tone of voice, as if she did not know her own mind. "He won't come," he had answered, "till he's spent his money. That's why we must act at once." Annexed to the copy of that letter was the original of Dartie's drunken scrawl from the Iseeum Club. Soames could have wished it had not been so manifestly penned in liquor. Just the sort of thing the Court would pitch on. He seemed to hear the Judge's voice say: "You took this seriously! Seriously enough to write him as you ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... memorandum to write, and now, as I look at the half-effaced pencil lines, I wonder why I was not ashamed to write it. Yet there it is before me, a witness to my sensations at the time, and the scrawl has even now the power to bring up to me an unpleasantly vivid memory of ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... faces, attenuated noses, and swollen lips. They thought all these things very ugly. The stone carvings of the present day were a great deal better. An inscription in Phoenician characters amazed them. No one could possibly have ever read that scrawl. But Monsieur Madinier, already up on the first landing with Madame Lorilleux, called to them, shouting beneath ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... those bits o' paper be all she left behind her,—yes, keep them, but put back Mark's. Are they all here,—sure?" And the widow, though she could not read her husband's verses, looked jealously at the manuscripts written in his irregular, large scrawl, and, smoothing them carefully, replaced them in the trunk, and resettled over them some sprigs of lavender, which Leonard ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... will trace on the page, poor and thin though it be, which has been whitened by His blood, the fair letters and shapes of His own likeness. Do not let your hearts be the devil's copybooks for all evil things to scrawl their names there, as boys do on the walls, but spread them before Him, and ask Him to make them clean and write upon them His new name, indicating that you now belong to another, as a new owner writes his name on a book that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... when Cora called the men to breakfast Mose and Jim did not respond. A scrawl from Mose said: "We've gone to the mountains. I'll be back in the spring. Keep my outfit ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... And now, my dear Allan, how are you? How is Mrs. Cunningham and your family, and our old friend George Darley? As for myself, I am as dull as a fog in November, and as far removed from all news of literary matters as the man in the moon; therefore I hope you will excuse this dull scrawl, and believe me, as ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... further word of instruction from him. But how to address him she was ignorant. He was gone, but she did not know whither. The servants, no doubt, knew where, but she could not bring herself to ask them. On the third day she wrote as follows. The reader will remember that that short scrawl which she addressed to him from her bedroom had not ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... money-market may govern the world. The Minister may be in doubt as to his scheme of finance till he has been closeted with the Jew. A congress of sovereigns may be forced to summon the Jew to their assistance. The scrawl of the Jew on the back of a piece of paper may be worth more than the royal word of three kings, or the national faith of three new American republics. But that he should put Right Honourable before his name would be the most frightful of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have been in such a dangerous state. Much occasion for thankfulness is there that it has not been worse with you. Pray write, or make somebody write frequently. I feel myself a good deal stronger to-day, not withstanding the scrawl. God bless you, my dear Temple! I ever am your old and affectionate friend, here and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... note there and then. It was a mere hurried scrawl, saying that Allerdyke was just setting off for Hull, in obedience to a call from the police; as Gaffney had nothing to do, would Appleyard make use of ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... They found him dead on the field. He fell in the front ranks with my photograph in his pocket next to his heart, this pardon wrapped around it, and on the back of it in his boy's scrawl, 'God bless Abraham Lincoln.' I love to invest in ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... of Hercules? I write you in great agitation of mind; for I have made all inquiries, and greatly fear that this work of ancient art has been mislaid. I labour besides under another perplexity, not unconnected with the first. Pray excuse the inelegance of this scrawl, and believe me yours in haste, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nothing on the glued-down top flap, but the inside back of the envelope wasn't blank, as it should have been. It wasn't written on in Thompson's neat copperplate or in his neat phrases, either. A pencil scrawl stared at me, upside down, as I gripped the lower flap of the envelope unconsciously, under the ball of my big thumb. "Why, here's some more," I exclaimed like an ass, glaring at the envelope's inside back. "'Take care—something——' ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... about him from some of our return passengers who, wandering about to "see the country" during the ship's stay in port, had come upon him here and there. At last we sailed, homeward bound, and still not one line was added to the careless scrawl of the many pages which poor Jacques had had the patience to read with the very shadows of Eternity gathering already in the hollows of his kind, ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... poor laboured scrawl came to an end, save for a few incoherent strokes. David thrust it back into his pocket. His cheek was red; his eyes burnt; he sat for long, with his elbows on his knees, staring at the February river. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... one—especially a Lady—to the trouble and pain of deciphering. I hope all about Donne is legible, for you will be glad of it. It is Lodging- house Pens and Ink that is partly to blame for this scrawl. Now, don't answer till I write you something better: but believe me ever ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... as much of the general taste of the place: everything you behold savors too much of art; all is forced, all is constrained about you; statues and vases sowed everywhere without distinction; sugar loaves and minced pies of yew; scrawl work of box, and little squirting jets- d'eau, besides a great sameness in the walks, can not help striking one at first sight, not to mention the silliest of labyrinths, and all Aesop's fables in water; since these were designed "in usum ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... assisted hand must depend largely upon the relative force, exercised by the joint hands. The difficulty in writing arises from the antagonizing motion of one hand upon the other, which is likely to produce an unintelligible scrawl, having little or none of the habitual characteristics ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... years, in which Gilbert wrote down his philosophy step by step as he came to discover it. The handwriting is the work of art that he must have learnt and practised, so different is it from his boyhood's scrawl. Each idea is set down as it comes into his mind. There is no sequence. In this book and in The Coloured Lands may be seen the creation of the Chesterton view of life—and it all took place in his ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... this note for you," and he handed her an envelope with her own name written on it in an uneven, uncertain scrawl. She tore it ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... into her chair and tore open the envelope. The inclosure was a dingy sheet of cheap notepaper covered with a penciled scrawl. With trembling fingers she unfolded the paper and read what was written there. Then she leaned back in the chair and put her ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... nothing of the tenderest parts in your own little volume, at the end of such a slatternly scribble as this, but indeed they cost us some tears. I scrawl away because of interruptions every moment. You guess how it is in a busy office—papers thrust into your hand when your hand is busiest—and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... in a half-believing, half-doubting kind of way, on the probability of a life to come, and ends by speaking of or rather apostrophizing Jesus Christ in a strain which would seem to savour of Socinianism. This letter he calls "a distracted scrawl which the writer dare scarcely read." And yet it appears to have been deliberately copied with some amplification from an entry in his last year's commonplace book. Even the few passages from his correspondence already given are enough to show ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... remembrances to all friends. Tell Ultima Analise[106] that his friend Raids did not make his appearance with the brig, though I think that he might as well have spoken with us in or off Zante, to give us a gentle hint of what we had to expect. Excuse my scrawl, on account of the pen and the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... from his struggle of the night before. Up there by the ashes of the fire the mullah showed him a letter he had crumpled in his fist. There were only a few lines, written in Arabic, which all mullahs are supposed to be able to read, and they were signed with a strange scrawl that might have meant anything. But the paper smelt strongly of ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... said Mrs. Harrington, as she finished reading the hurried scrawl, 'she is pining to come and join us; she says she is much better, but so lonely and homesick that she feels it will be impossible for her to get well until she ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... night came she could put it off no longer, so, fetching down her writing-case, she spoiled a dozen sheets of paper in the effort to make her news fairly palatable, finally dashing off an unsatisfactory scrawl, badly written and lamely expressed; and, having folded and directed it, she flew out into the yard to find a messenger to take it. The first who presented himself was ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... tore the envelope apart, and soon made herself mistress of the contents of the letter. It was only a short scrawl which the sailor lad had written off hurriedly to take advantage of the opportunity of sending a message home by a passing ship, as his brother had surmised—Eric not expecting to have been able ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and by, on those I am looking for. These can go into it, meantime. It will be a good riddance, at any rate, a fine clearance, yes, indeed! To the fire, to the fire with them all, even to the smallest scrap of paper, even to the most illegible scrawl, if we wish to be certain of destroying the ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... their names on doors or rock-heads, But leave the task to scribblers and to blockheads; Pert, trifling folks, who, bent on being witty, Scrawl on each post some fag-end of a ditty, Spinning, with spider's web, their shallow brains, O'er wainscots, borrowed books, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... inscribed her name and address in a heavy rustic scrawl, with pothooks and hangers tumbling over one another. When at last she made it all out, after being repeatedly baffled by the extraordinary style and spelling, she could not but smile again. It was a letter from Rosalie's aunt, introducing Zephyrin Lacour, who ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... incomprehensible speaking. A clear enunciation is scarcely more important than a plain hand. A lawyer, in speaking, may as well jumble his words so together that not one in fifty can be understood, as in writing to scrawl and run them about so that not one in ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... abruptly the next day and found her packing her dolls. When she saw him, she sat down and began to weep hopelessly. He knew then that his fate was sealed. And when, a year later, he received her last little scrawl, he was almost glad that she ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... unworthy of him to whom it was to be sent. It was the first love letter she had ever written,—probably the first letter she had ever written to a man, except those short notes which she would occasionally scrawl to Father Marty in compliance with her mother's directions. The letter to Fred ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... filthy scrawl from Phemy. How can you be so headstrong, child?" cried Diana, snatching the letter from her sister and throwing it from the window. "I declare you are sufficient ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... Peak a thousand feet above the greening valley; in the riotous din of squirrels and birds interwoven with the booming of frogs from the still ponds; and finally in the announcement tacked upon the post-office door. The two line scrawl in lead pencil did not state in so many words the same tidings which the blue birds were proclaiming from the thicket on the far bank of the Little MacLeod; it merely announced that to-night Pere Marquette and his beloved wife, Mere Jeanne, were keeping open house. Every ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... one of those suppers which 'ought to be dinners.' I have hardly seen her, and never him, since you set out. I told you, you were the last link of that chain. As for * *, we have not syllabled one another's names since. The post will not permit me to continue my scrawl. More anon. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... judge and clerk had partially restored to order the chaos begotten by this scene, when a bit of paper was slipped from behind into Bruce's hand. He unfolded it with trembling fingers, and read in a disguised, back-hand scrawl: ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... his bit of broken china for a very much used and tooth-marked lead-pencil, frowned with a whimsical air at the latter before he put it in his pocket. Then he read my hurried scrawl. ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... lifetime on the joy of one day. Her eyes fell again on the mantelpiece, on Hagar's unopened letters. At first her eyes wandered over the writing on the uppermost envelope mechanically, then a painful recognition came into them. She had seen that writing before, that slow sliding scrawl unlike any other, never to be mistaken. It turned her sick. Her fingers ran up to the envelope, then drew back. She felt for an instant that she must take it and open it as she stood there. What had the writer of that letter to do with George Hagar? She glanced at the postmark. It was ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... what the matter might be, and he went away, only to return in a few moments bearing a scratchy note from his master, badly blotted and still wet; and Leila, with a shrug of resignation, took the blotched scrawl daintily between thumb and forefinger and unfolded it. Behind her, the maid, twisting up the masses of dark, fragrant hair, read the note very easily over her mistress' ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... at least of flaming lies, And florid vaunts of quacks who advertise. Not these sky-horrors, huge and noisy-hinged, Shamed the still air about it, or obscured Its every view. Is it to be endured, O much-enduring Briton? There be those Who'd scrawl advertisements of Hogs or Hose Across the sun-disc as it flames at noon, Or daub the praise of Pickles o'er the moon. Unmoved by civic pride, unchecked by taste, They 'd smear the general sky with poster's paste And at Dan Phoebus seem to "take a sight." Colossal bottles blot the air, to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... interrupted disrespectfully. "We know who wrote this—there is no mistaking Roy's scrawl. ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... with a blessing. You have become a woman, and the mistress of a house. Still I cannot think of you otherwise than as my younger sister. I have brought you up to womanhood, I taught you your letters; but now when I see your writing I am ashamed to send this scrawl. But of what use to be ashamed? My day is over; were it not so how should I be in this condition? What condition?—it is a thing I cannot speak of to any one; should I do so there will be sorrow and shame; yet if I do not tell some one ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... ground? Shall I, a mediator between God and man, falter in my speech, and my tongue hang palsied in my mouth, because Aurelian speaks? What to me, O Romans, is the edict of a Roman Emperor? Down, down, accursed scrawl! nor insult longer ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... details of the inquest, and concluded that you were the friend. We made inquiries about you, Mr Hannay, and found you were respectable. I thought I knew the motives for your disappearance—not only the police, the other one too—and when I got Harry's scrawl I guessed at the rest. I have been expecting you any time this past week.' You can imagine what a load this took off my mind. I felt a free man once more, for I was now up against my country's enemies only, and not ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... book, had print on the reverse side, and the letters showed through in grayish flecks and gave the curious impression as of clouds in the sky. And that little drawing, with less form than a school-boy's blackboard scrawl, was completely transfigured by those gray spots, and because of them it took on for me a deep and dreadful significance. Aided by the dim light in the room the pictured scene became a vision that faded away into the distance like the pale ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... read myself, under the fair copies of Mr. Duncan of the same city: I don't think he would plume himself much upon my progress. However, I wrote much better then than I have ever done since. Haste and agitation of one kind or another have quite spoilt as pretty a scrawl as ever scratched over a frank. The grammar-school might consist of a hundred and fifty of all ages under age. It was divided into five classes, taught by four masters, the chief teaching the fourth and fifth himself. As in England, the fifth, sixth forms, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... as she listened to the director's rough words, she took up a pencil and twisted it nervously in her fingers. Then, with increasing agitation, as she realized that her effort for Lloyd had failed, she began, without thinking, to make little marks on the blotter, and then a written scrawl—all with a singular fixed look ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... Kent deposited his suit-case on one of the chairs and tore open the envelope. The note was a scrawl, which he ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... thrust his hand inside the breast of his jumper and produced his sad evidence—a letter from a clergyman, one or two from lay-workers in some north-country slum, and one from his mother herself, an incoherent, abusive scrawl, with liquor stains still upon the ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... bags. I was a young man, and somewhat more curious in feminine handwriting than I am now. There was one family in particular, whom I had never seen, but with whose signatures I was perfectly familiar—clear, delicate, and educated, very unlike the miserable scrawl upon other letter-bills. One New Year's-eve, in a moment of sentiment, I tied a slip of paper among a bundle of letters for their office, upon which I had written, "A happy New Year to you all." The next evening brought me a return of my good wishes, signed, as I guessed, by three sisters of ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... pin, became visible; visible, but not immediately legible, so scratchy were the letters and imperfectly formed the strokes. It was not until the fourth or fifth time of reading that Sir George made out the following scrawl: ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... book, too. Into these he would put whatever he cared to keep— poetry, history, funny sayings, fine passages. He had a scrap-book for his arithmetic "sums," too, and one of these is still in existence with this boyish rhyme in a boyish scrawl, underneath one of his ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... in this easily worded scrawl to make an ordinarily normal heart beat faster, yet the heart of this simple child of the gods, gifted with genius and deprived of worldly wisdom as all such divine children are, throbbed uneasily, and her eyes were wet. More than this, ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... was named the "Four Alls": its sign, a crude painting of a table and four seated figures, a king, a parson, a soldier, and a farmer. Beneath the group, in a rough scrawl, were ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... in no way remarkable; but Dolores was deeply affected by scenes which no longer moved her companions. Every evening a man entered, called several persons by name and handed them a folded paper, a badly written and often illegible scrawl in which not even the spelling of the names was correct, and which, consequently, not unfrequently failed to reach the one for whom it was intended. This was an act of accusation. The person who received ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... hand for the paper. When Si was gone she sat gazing at it, trying in her ignorance to pick from the, to her, senseless scrawl those last words. Ben had ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... such a scrawl that my father could not read it, but underneath was printed, "Mayor ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... voices there, Where all so quiet was before; They say the face has not a care Nor sorrow in it any more— His latest scrawl:—"Forgive me—You Who prayed, 'they know not what they do!'" My tears wilt never let me see This man that rooms next door ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... since last September, so that I can take no part in Church affairs. But God has been with me—my strength and comforter. I am beginning to revive, but have not yet been able to go down stairs, or move, only creep about with the help of a cane. I do not know whether you can read the scrawl I have written, but I ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... price will in the end be paid back to you, no doubt, when you are worn out, and what you do is as worthless as the rustling canes that blow together in autumn by dull river sides: then you scrawl your signature across your soulless work, and it fetches thrice its weight ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... become but a shadow and a name to Cally; she had willed it so, and so it had been. Now, in his own poor scrawl, the ghost of a lover too roughly discarded rose and walked again. And beneath the cheap writing and the unrestrained self-pity, she seemed to plumb for the first time the depths of the boy's present misery. The old ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... a difference there was in the letters; Deena's had three pages of pretty handwriting; Stephen's six of closely written scrawl. In Deena's the ideas barely flowed to the ink; in Stephen's they flowed so fast they couldn't get themselves written down—he used contractions, he left out whole words; he showed the interest he felt in the work he left behind in endless questions ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... direct lie to this assertion, and this conduct I shall pursue until I receive direct orders to abandon it. I will now conclude by repeating that in a few days you will receive my journal, which will prove more interesting than the above hasty scrawl. ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... turquoise-blue flower pots. It was opened by a butler of the drearier type—long, lean, grey and listless—who murmured that Prince Saradine was from home at present, but was expected hourly; the house being kept ready for him and his guests. The exhibition of the card with the scrawl of green ink awoke a flicker of life in the parchment face of the depressed retainer, and it was with a certain shaky courtesy that he suggested that the strangers should remain. "His Highness may be here any minute," he said, "and would be distressed to have just missed any ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... forced to drudge for the dregs of men, And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, And mingle among the jostling crowd, Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud— I often come to this quiet place, To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face, And gaze upon ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... educational qualification. No one ought anywhere to exercise it who cannot read and write, and if I had my way, no one should cast a ballot who had not a fair conception of the effect of it, shown by a higher test of intelligence than the mere fact of ability to scrawl his name and to spell out a line or two in the Constitution. This much the State for its own protection is bound to require, for suffrage is an expediency, not a right belonging to universal humanity regardless of intelligence or ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... legends of Odalisk and Caliph! On I go from street to street, and square to square; I begin to meet some people, but they pass and disappear like phantoms. All the streets resemble each other; the houses have only three or four windows; and not a spot, scrawl, or crack is to be seen on the walls, which are as smooth and white as a sheet of paper. From time to time I hear a whisper behind a blind, and see, almost at the same moment, a dark head, with a flower in the hair, appear and disappear. I look ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... ranged themselves with drawn swords against the wall, while the assassins overturned the table and did their work. Wallenstein, as usual, was not at the banquet. He was, indeed, in no condition for revelry. Gout had shattered his stately form, reduced his bold handwriting to a feeble scrawl, probably shaken his powerful mind, though it could rally itself, as at Lutzen, for a decisive hour; and, perhaps, if his enemies could have waited, the course of nature might have spared them the very high price which they paid for his blood. He had just dismissed his astrologer, Seni, into whose ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... which I had abstracted, told fearfully against him. But he contrived to escape the gallows; he had managed to conceal poison on his person, and he was found dead in his cell. Mary Simms I never saw again. I once received a little scrawl, "I am at peace now, Master John. ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the envelope," she exclaimed. "I think a scrawl from Aunt Marjorie. I had a volume from her yesterday. I wonder what she wants to ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... compunctious visitings at my long silence. But, indeed, it is no easy effort to set about a correspondence at our distance. The weary world of waters between us oppresses the imagination. It is difficult to conceive how a scrawl of mine should ever stretch across it. It is a sort of presumption to expect that one's thoughts should live so far. It is like writing for posterity; and reminds me of one of Mrs. Rowe's superscriptions, "Alcander ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... that sum prove insufficient; so the Bohemian household under the shadow of St. Gudule profited by her independence. She sent her brother a good deal of money, and received very cheery letters in acknowledgment of her generosity, with sometimes a little ill-spelt scrawl from Bessie, telling her that Austin was much steadier in Brussels than he had been in Paris, and was working hard for the dealers, with whom he was in great favour. English and American travellers, strolling ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... stopped, I lighted a match and see ... here ... in your mother's very handwriting"—fervently she held the bit of paper up for Sylvia to see. The girl cast a hostile look at the paper and saw that the writing on it was the usual scrawl produced by Cousin Parnelia, hardly legible, and resembling anything rather ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... rage he took a pen and wrote this single sentence in answer to the report: "The sector is to be held." Underneath he signed his name in the perpendicular scrawl that every school child knew from the picture card of the "Victor of ——." He himself put the envelope into the motor-cyclist's hand for it to be taken to the wireless station as the telephone wires of the brigade had long since been shot into the ground. Then he blustered ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... envelope slowly and clumsily with her stiff fingers, and held up the letter so the light struck it. She could not read strange writing easily, and this was a nearly illegible scrawl. However, after the first few words, she seemed to absorb it by some higher faculty than reading. In a short time she had the gist of the letter. It was from a lawyer who signed himself Daniel Tuxbury. He stated formally that Thomas ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... house; sent me a card, half of it printed like a book! t'other half a scrawl could not read; pretended to give a supper; all a mere bam; went without my dinner, and got nothing to eat; all glass and shew: victuals painted all manner of colours; lighted up like a pastry-cook on twelfth-day; wanted ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... not share the laugh. He plucked the book to himself, and read on the fly-leaf, in a child's irregular scrawl, blistered, too, with the unmistakable trace of ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... so indulgent," said Mr. Maddledock, as he glanced at the scrawl upon the bit of cardboard and bowed to his daughter, "and with the approval of the prosecutor, I am constrained to ask the Court's consent to a further violation of the Prandial Code. I don't know whether the punishment ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... get letters from the trenches," she said half wistfully one day to Beatrice Howell, who was exulting over a pencil scrawl written by her brother in a ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... damp, and covered with a dull, spotted, green mould, in consequence of being kept in a dark locker of the cabin. Of such a letter, Death himself might well have been the post-boy. Can'st not read it? cried ahab. give it me, man. aye, aye it's but a dim scrawl; —what's this? As he was studying it out, Starbuck took a long cutting-spade pole, and with his knife slightly split the end, to insert the letter there, and in that way, hand it to the boat, without its coming any closer to the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... at this very time of my illness, you and Miss Temple should have been in such a dangerous state. Much occasion for thankfulness is there that it has not been worse with you. Pray write, or make somebody write frequently. I feel myself a good deal stronger to-day, not withstanding the scrawl. God bless you, my dear Temple! I ever am your old and affectionate friend, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Lord Hood himself, before unknown to the family, hastened to their house with the news, calling to the servants as he ran up the stairs to "throw off their mourning!" The following was Riou's brief letter to his mother, which he found time to scrawl and send off by a ship just leaving Table Bay for England as the poor helpless Guardian ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... with him has done; He's buried; save the undertaker's bill, Or lapidary scrawl, the world is gone For him, unless he left a German will:[508] But where's the proctor who will ask his son? In whom his qualities are reigning still,[gl] Except that household virtue, most uncommon, Of constancy to a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... trying to write this scrawl to you on a round milk container in a camp near London. We are not permitted ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... man—his heart and head too would tell him that the Animosities are mortal, but the Humanities live for ever—and that Leigh Hunt has more talent in his little finger than the puling prig, who has taken upon himself to lecture Christopher North in a scrawl crawling with forgotten falsehoods. Mr. Hunt's London Journal, may dear James, is not only beyond all comparison, but out of all sight, the most entertaining and instructive of all the cheap periodicals; and when laid, as it duly is once a week, on my breakfast table, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... we rose sharply for about three miles. This brought us to the first notice on the trail which was signed by the road-gang, an ambiguous scrawl to the effect that feed was to be very scarce for a long, long way, and that we should feed our horses before going forward. The mystery of the sign lay in the fact that no feed was in sight, and if it referred back to ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... the less the conviction was upon him that Helen had written him. His arm through his horse's bridle, he struck a match and took into his hand a scrap of paper. As his peering eyes made out a sweeping, familiar scrawl, he felt a disappointment quite as unreasonable as had been his hope. It was unmistakably from the hand of John Carr, hastily written in lead pencil upon the inner side of an old envelope and ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... differ so much from you, but I have thought that you would desire my open opinion. Frank is away, otherwise he should have copied my scrawl. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... repeating the message, word for word. When she was done, she listened, got her answer, threw off the switch with a sweep of her thumb, and fumbled among the papers on the table until she found an envelope. She addressed it with a hasty scrawl of her pencil, sealed it with a vicious little spat of her hand, and then sat looking down ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... Thought to scrawl "Duke of Reichstadt" o'er my name. But hold the paper up before the sun: You'll see "Napoleon" ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... morning," announced Ted. "I forgot to give them to you." He fished the aforesaid letters out of his pocket and examined them before handing them over. "One is from Dick—the other"—he held the large square envelope off and squinted at it teasingly. "Some scrawl!" he commented. "Reckless display of ink and flourishes, I call it. Who's ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... the edge of the bed she regarded the dear scrawl lovingly, savoring it, as is the way of a woman. Then she took a hairpin from the knot of bright hair (also as is the way of woman) and slit the envelope with a quick, sure rip. M-m-m—it wasn't much as to length. Just ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... at this early period we possess probably nothing except a rough scrawl on the plaster of a wall at Settignano. Even this does not exist in its original state. The Satyr which is still shown there may, according to Mr. Heath Wilson's suggestion, be a rifacimento from the master's hand at a subsequent ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... Instead, we have proof that the lower classes wrote Latin for all sorts of purposes. Had they known Celtic well, it is hardly credible that they should not have sometimes written in that language, as the Gauls did across the Channel. A Gaulish potter of Roman date could scrawl his name and record, Sacrillos avot, 'Sacrillus potter', on the outside of a mould.[1] No such scrawl has ever been found in Britain. The Gauls, again, could invent a special letter Eth to denote a special Celtic sound and keep it in Roman times. No such letter ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... just half past twelve o'clock. Hiram sat down, and taking up a torn piece of paper, scratched off a blurred and nearly unintelligible scrawl as follows: ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... read the clumsy scrawl, their eyes leaping along the lines, striving to grasp the meaning ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... a great comfort. I am writing with my new one, so this letter won't, I hope, be such a puzzle to decipher as my pencil scrawl. ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... may govern the money-market, and the money-market may govern the world. The Minister may be in doubt as to his scheme of finance till he has been closeted with the Jew. A congress of sovereigns may be forced to summon the Jew to their assistance. The scrawl of the Jew on the back of a piece of paper may be worth more than the royal word of three kings, or the national faith of three new American republics. But that he should put Right Honourable before his name would be the most frightful of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... are weary of these hills of purple vines, These crooked groves of olive trees that scrawl the crooked lanes The walnuts shoulder weakly round the tall Italian pines, That whisper like the waves of ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... letter that came yesterday. It is nothing but a scrawl, and it's unsigned. It was sent from ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... write. By the last Post in particular I receiv'd a Packet of Scandal that is not legible; and have a whole Bundle of Letters in Womens Hands that are full of Blots and Calumnies, insomuch that when I see the Name Caelia, Phillis, Pastora, or the like, at the Bottom of a Scrawl, I conclude on course that it brings me some Account of a fallen Virgin, a faithless Wife, or an amorous Widow. I must therefore inform these my Correspondents, that it is not my Design to be a Publisher of Intreagues and Cuckoldoms, or to bring little infamous Stories ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... he pulled out the drawer, and there, side by side, lay two neat but far from voluminous manuscripts, each weighted down by the unused portion of the scratch pad from which the written sheets had been torn. One was in the bold, superior scrawl of a boy, the other ineffably feminine in its painstaking regard ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... note for you," and he handed her an envelope with her own name written on it in an uneven, uncertain scrawl. She tore it ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... puts a spirit of joy into green field and hedgerow is awful to look upon in Paris. You leave the train half-frozen, to find the porters red-eyed from their watch. The customs officials, in a kind of stupor, scrawl cabalistic signs upon your trunk. You get outside the station, to find a few scattered cabs, their drivers asleep inside, their lamps blinking ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... hope of description—as it might be, a visible god sitting in the garden of a world made new. They sell photographs of him with tourists standing on his thumb nail, and, apparently, any brute of any gender can scrawl his or its ignoble name over the inside of the massive bronze plates that build him up. Think for a moment of the indignity and the insult! Imagine the ancient, orderly gardens with their clipped trees, shorn turf, and silent ponds smoking in the mist that the hot sun ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... letter, lingering over it and scrutinizing the writing in a way that was not his wont. How characteristic, was his thought, as he studied the boyish scrawl—clear to read, painfully, clear, but none the less boyish. The clearness of it reminded him of her face, of her cleanly stencilled brows, her straightly chiselled nose, the very clearness of the gaze of her eyes, the firmly yet delicately moulded ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... living." It seemed then a foolish memorandum to write, and now, as I look at the half-effaced pencil lines, I wonder why I was not ashamed to write it. Yet there it is before me, a witness to my sensations at the time, and the scrawl has even now the power to bring up to me an unpleasantly vivid memory of that first evening ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... quavering whistle heralds the approach of a nervous curlew, running and pausing, and stamping, its script—an erratic scrawl of fleurs-de-lis—on the easy sand. Halting on the verge of the water, it furtively picks up crabs as if it were a trespasser, conscious of a shameful or wicked deed and fearful of detection. It is not night nor yet quite day, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... Witchcraft, a New England Almanac, and a book of dreams and fortune-telling; in which last was a sheet of foolscap much scribbled and blotted in several fruitless attempts to make a copy of verses in honor of the heiress of Van Tassel. These magic books and the poetic scrawl were forthwith consigned to the flames by Hans Van Ripper, who from that time forward determined to send his children no more to school, observing that he never knew any good come of this same reading and writing. Whatever money the schoolmaster possessed—and he had received ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... at the irregular up-and-down scrawl on the paper, while he rang up the Homicide Bureau of the Central Office and left word for O'Connor to call him up the first ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... and half women, with death-like faces, attenuated noses, and swollen lips. They thought all these things very ugly. The stone carvings of the present day were a great deal better. An inscription in Phoenician characters amazed them. No one could possibly have ever read that scrawl. But Monsieur Madinier, already up on the first landing with Madame Lorilleux, called to them, ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... rapidly over the short scrawl, and as he did so his face turned pale and a quick ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... is certainly done under circumstances which are apt to have a disturbing effect upon the literary style. "Excuse this scrawl," writes one soldier, "the German shells have interrupted me six times already, and I had to dash out with my bayonet before I was able to finish it off." Another concludes: "Well, mother, I must close now. The bullets are a bit ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... a fat ox in exchange, and—' the General glanced to the foot of the scrawl, turned the paper over, and found it blank save for the name and direction—'and that, it seems, is all. No talk of prisoners. . . . Truly an urgent message to ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... A little scrawl of a note, delivered just after breakfast at Mr. Elton's door, brought Madeline to visit Mrs. Percival, who, like her mother, seemed to be in continual need ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... pitiful little scrawl through the first time on the store porch. Then, tear-blinded, she started down the hill toward the old wharf at the inlet where she had first seen Hopewell Drugg's ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... world of business, or young men and women fresh from school, or even children writing in round text,—all these classes may be represented in a single week's work; and the papers sent in will vary in elaborateness from a scrawl on a post-card to a magazine article or treatise. I have received an exercise of such a character that the student considerately furnished me with an index; I remember one longer still, but as this hailed from a lunatic asylum I will ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... him to read it, if necessary, and to answer it by return of post. It is important; therefore, dear aunt, don't delay. I think you know Baldwin's address, as I've been told he lives in the district of the town which you are wont to visit. Excuse this shabby scrawl, and the trouble I ask you to take, and believe me to be your ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... back into his chair. More shouts and hammering of gavels by the judge and clerk had partially restored to order the chaos begotten by this scene, when a bit of paper was slipped from behind into Bruce's hand. He unfolded it with trembling fingers, and read in a disguised, back-hand scrawl: ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... the matter I left the gardens to walk elsewhere. The day after next, just as I was going to get into my carriage, a man of evil aspect gave me a paper and asked me to read it. I opened it, but finding it covered with an illegible scrawl I gave it him back, telling him to read it himself. He did so, and I found myself summoned to appear before the commissary of police to answer to the plea which the midwife (whose name I forget) ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... "Madame, I do not curse you—I scorn you. I can now thank the chance that has divided us. I do not feel even a desire for revenge; I no longer love you. I want nothing from you. Live in peace on the strength of my word; it is worth more than the scrawl of all the notaries in Paris. I will never assert my claim to the name I perhaps have made illustrious. I am henceforth but a poor devil named Hyacinthe, who asks no more than ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... day while Vickers Price was "selling nails," as he still expressed his business career, there came in his mail a queer little scrawl, postmarked Pittsburg. It was from Delia ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... North in the winter and to the South in the spring and summer. Cold is the speciality of the North, and all its sports and gayeties take thence their tone. The houses are built to shut out the demon of Frost, and protect one from his assaults of ice and snow. Let him howl about your windows and scrawl his wonderful landscapes on your panes and pile his fantastic wreaths outside, while you draw round the blazing hearth and enjoy the artificial heat and warm in the social converse that he provokes. Your ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... How good they were! And nobody writes them now; Never at all comes in the scrawl On the written pages which told us all The news of town and the folks we knew, And what they had done or were going to do. It seems we've forgotten how To spend an hour with our pen in hand To write in the ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... whose grim manners and appearance were in unpleasant contrast to those of our kind old friend Katcherofsky. Although this natural prison had no bolts and bars or other evidences of a penal system, the very air seemed tainted with mystery and oppression, and the melancholy row of huts to scrawl the word "captivity" across the desolate landscape. Even the ispravnik's room, with its heavy black furniture and sombre draperies, was suggestive of the Inquisition, and I searched instinctively around me for the rack and thumbscrews. ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... just features, what just dingily represented one, as it were, is forgotten, or rather gets remembered. Of course, the first glimpse is the landscape under lightning as it were. But afterwards isn't it surely like the alphabet to a child; what was first a queer angular scrawl becomes A, and is always ever after A, undistinguished, half-forgotten, yet standing at last for goodness knows what real wonderful things—or for just the dry bones of soulless words? Is that it?' She stole a sidelong ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... carelessness," she said. "I must have caught up a scrawl of the baby's in taking this ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... characterises those of Scotland. The outside of the house promised little for the interior, notwithstanding the vaunt of a sign, where a tankard of ale voluntarily decanted itself into a tumbler, and a hieroglyphical scrawl below attempted to express a promise of 'good entertainment for man and horse.' Brown was no fastidious traveller: he stopped and entered the cabaret. [Footnote: See ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... was a "wild screech," and when Emmerjane ran upstairs Maggie was stretched out on the floor in a dead faint, clutching in her tight hand the photograph which Owen Owens had returned with the words, written in his heavy scrawl across the face—Maggie ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... crowning reward of all his sufferings and all his love! There was the letter, evidently undictated, with its errors of orthography, and in the child's rough scrawl; the serpent's tooth pierced to the heart, and left there its ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the morning after Clancy's departure that Solomon handed me a pale blue envelope bearing in the upper left-hand corner the device of the Post-Dispatch. I laughed as I ripped it open; I had almost forgotten Terry's existence. It contained a characteristic pencil scrawl slanting across a sheet of yellow ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... mind was a very different one when I read this scrawl, from that which bewildered and oppressed me on that never-to-be-forgotten night of suffering and distress, both mental and physical. Formed of those elements which readily react, courage and calmness had returned to me before I read the oracle of our worthy ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... somewhat more curious in feminine handwriting than I am now. There was one family in particular, whom I had never seen, but with whose signatures I was perfectly familiar—clear, delicate, and educated, very unlike the miserable scrawl upon other letter-bills. One New Year's-eve, in a moment of sentiment, I tied a slip of paper among a bundle of letters for their office, upon which I had written, "A happy New Year to you all." The next evening brought me a return ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... Hall and Professor Raymond knitted their brows as they studied the scrawl. There was absolutely no clue, except that it bore the Green Haven postmark on the envelope, and had been ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... contract was signed at Paisley on June 10th, and on the following day the marriage was celebrated at the same place. Lady Catherine's is not among the signatures; but there is to be seen the almost illegible scrawl of the old grandfather and of Euphrame his wife, a daughter of Sir William Scott of Ardross. The bride's eldest brother, whose own marriage with the Lady Susannah Hamilton was soon to follow, and her cousin John, son ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... then if you want to be VERY horrid you may tease me for being so slow to see a joke. And then you might take me to see some of the Colleges and things before we go on to lunch at The MacQuern's? Forgive pencil and scrawl. Am sitting up in bed to write.—Your ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... beheld. He lay propped up against a tree, with his feet over a pool of water, near where my men had left him. His eyes were sunk in his head, his lips parched and cracked, his voice almost gone. A few hours more and he would have been beyond help. He had fainted, so they told me, after writing the scrawl, and only the efforts of my men and the morsel of food they could spare him brought him back to life. When I had poured a few drops of brandy down his throat and had made him a broth and warmed him up his strength began to come back. It is ...
— Homo - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... little chain of pitiful proofs. They found all the little, sweet, white girl-clothes folded neatly by themselves and laid in a pile together, as if on an altar for sacrifice. If the Little Girl had written "Good-bye" in her childish scrawl upon them, the Shining Mother would not have better understood. So many things she was seeing beyond ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... back a love letter—my first love letter—and she made no reply for eight days. Then came a scrawl: "I can't write letters. Wait till we can talk. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... trace on the page, poor and thin though it be, which has been whitened by His blood, the fair letters and shapes of His own likeness. Do not let your hearts be the devil's copybooks for all evil things to scrawl their names there, as boys do on the walls, but spread them before Him, and ask Him to make them clean and write upon them His new name, indicating that you now belong to another, as a new owner writes his name on a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... fluttering dove flew round the shrine, Where the Pope by chance was led, And he let the scribbled parchment fall On his holiness' bald head. Now the Pope was very sore perplex'd, At the words the dove had scrawl'd, For he could not read the pig-squeak tongue, Which is now old English call'd. He questioned the French ambassador, The news of that scroll to speak. Who bowing observed, "it was not French, He never had learn'd the Greek." He ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... with the Morning Report, found Perkins seated in the same place. Perkins signed the book in a sprawling scrawl, and the sergeant went his way. The Chino cook brought the meals, and then came and took them off again. The day dragged through, the gray evening fell; the rain streamed down; and still the officer sat ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... her message to the lad with his own hand. "For," said he, and confirmed it with an oath, "if I don't see him this very night it will be a pity:" words which were afterwards thought to have been prophetic by the curious in such matters. So Bellaroba entrusted him with her scrawl to "My love Angilotto," and the Captain chewed and swallowed it when she was not looking. Then he lifted her to his horse and rode with her into the green-sheltered Borgo, just as it was settling into twilight. And Olimpia, from ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... All gave way to him, and the young doctor who followed him was greeted with low words of satisfaction. To his partner, whom he recognized, Haney repeated his command: "Send for Bertie." With a hurried scrawl Williams put down the girl's name and address on a piece of paper, and shouted: "Here! Somebody take this and rush it. Tell her to come quick as the Lord will let her." Then, with the tenderness of a brother, he bent to Haney. "How ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... for the dregs of men, And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, And mingle among the jostling crowd, Where the sons of strife are ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... reply, but made the usual scrawl in his book, while the squatter hastened to agree with the fat man. "I like to see a bit ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... the reverse side of an invitation to take tea at Merrion—a vague some-day-when-you're-passing sort of invitation, in Neeld's eyes plainly and merely a pretext for writing and an opportunity of conveying the urgent little scrawl on the other side. It arrived at mid-day; in the afternoon Duplay had come and was now alone ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... to take supper at the farm, and Helen was coming out of the rough little path that led from the Perkins' home. She was feeling tired and very sad. She had been reading a letter from the husband in prison, a sorrowful pencilled scrawl, pathetically misspelled, but breathing out true sympathy for his wife and children, and the deepest repentance and self-blame. And at the end of every misconstructed sentence like a wailing refrain were the words, "I done wrong and I deserve all I got, but it's ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... delivering it. The chief agreed to send us in a small gun-boat till we came within sight of the Antelope; then the compradore's boat was to bring the ransom and receive us. I was so agitated at receiving this joyful news, that it was with difficulty I could scrawl about two or three lines to inform Lieutenant Maughn of the arrangements I had made. We were all so deeply affected by the gratifying tidings, that we seldom closed our eyes, but continued watching day and night for ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... were sitting, held the pass over it by the extremest tips of her dainty thumb and forefinger, and then dropped it upon the coals, as if it were a rag from a small-pox hospital. Glancing at her finger-tips an instant, as if they had been permanently contaminated by the scrawl of the Yankee General, she touched her nag, and was off like an arrow without so much as ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... quite sure that no good could come from this vagabondish nature, and she did not spare the rod, for she feared that the desire to scrawl and daub would spoil the child. But he was a stubborn lad, with a pug-nose and big, dreamy, wondering eyes, and a heavy jaw; and when parents see that they have such a son, they had better hang up the rod behind the kitchen-door and lay aside force and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... of which as yet the colonel, presumably, knew so very little; of which, as post commander, Plume had yet to tell him! An orderly came running with a field glass and a scrap of paper. Plume glanced at the latter, a pencil scrawl of his wife's inseparable companion, and, for aught he knew, confidante. "Madame," he could make out, and "affreusement" something, but it was enough. The orderly supplemented: "Leece, sir, says the ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... this fact, as I perused the epistles of Matthew Haygarth. I felt that these letters had in all probability been carefully numbered by the lady to whom they belong, and that to tamper with them to any serious extent might be dangerous. I have therefore only ventured to retain one insignificant scrawl as an example of Matthew Haygarth's caligraphy and signature. From the rest I have taken copious notes. It appears to me that these letters relate to some liaison of the gentleman's youth; though I am ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... pen in one quivering hand, then grasp it with the other to give it a little steadiness, watching for an interval in the nervous twitching of the arm and hand, and then, making an uncertain dash at the paper, scrawl a word or two at long intervals. In this way I continued for several weeks to prepare the few brief notes I was obliged to write. My signature at this period I regard with some curiosity and more pride. It is certainly better than that of Guido Faux, affixed ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... pitiful, childish scrawl she had made of it! "I've come to my senses, and I've gone back to him. I'm not worthy of any sacrifice of yours, dear. And it would have been a big sacrifice. You wouldn't like being dragged through ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... lying on a pile of books on his desk, and within reach of his hand, he started to fill the bowl, when a scrap of paper covered with a scrawl written in pencil came into view. He turned it to the light and ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... he or she wishes. Practically instantaneous is the method adopted by Rodin to preserve the fleeting attitudes, the first shiver of surfaces. He draws rapidly with his eye on the model. It is a mere scrawl, a few enveloping lines, a silhouette. But vitality is in it; and for his purposes a mere memorandum of a motion. A sculptor has made these extraordinary drawings not a painter. It will be well to observe the distinction. He is the most rhythmic sculptor ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... father. She felt guilty, for of late she had rather forgotten him and this was something new and blameworthy. Now she remembered how long it was since she had seen him and that his last letter had come over a month ago. It was a short scrawl from Downieville and had told her that the sale of his prospect hole—he had hoped to sell it sometime early in September—had fallen through. He had ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... piece of good luck that let me find him that night in a little room in one of the by-ways of Bloomsbury. He was sprawling angularly on a cane lounge, surrounded by whole rubbish heaps of manuscript, a grey scrawl in a foam of soiled paper. He peered up at me as I stood in ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... new ones too, there are inscriptions and inscriptions. We are all familiar with the scrawl of the clown, who has handed down to us his unconsecrated name on the title-page or fly-leaf of some volume of ours otherwise irreproachable. Just a step above him is your fellow who writes some objurgatory caveat against the ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... Major Talbot-Lowry, had found it hard to forgive him. The business had been arranged while Larry was in Paris, and the expostulations that might have prevailed if delivered viva voce, failed of their effect when presented on foreign paper, in Cousin Dick's illegible scrawl. It was all very fine for Larry, ran the illegible scrawl, to talk of selling at such a price, but he ought to see what a hole his doing so put his neighbours in! Larry hadn't a squad of incumbrances, and charges, and mortgages, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... as I leave," read the fly leaf in Philip's scrawl. "I don't want you to suspect my classic tastes, but what can I do if you find ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... ghastly "Deluge," and Gericault's dismal "Medusa." Gericault died, they say, for want of fame. He was a man who possessed a considerable fortune of his own; but pined because no one in his day would purchase his pictures, and so acknowledge his talent. At present, a scrawl from his pencil brings an enormous price. All his works have a grand cachet: he never did anything mean. When he painted the "Raft of the Medusa," it is said he lived for a long time among the corpses which he painted, and that his studio was a second Morgue. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rhetoricians" and the "consul of the philosophers." Many of the emperors showed a taste for scholarship; one of them was said to have been so devoted to study that he almost forgot to reign. When kings in western Europe were so ignorant that they could with difficulty scrawl their names, eastern emperors wrote books and composed poetry. It is true that Byzantine scholars were erudite rather than original. Impressed by the great treasures of knowledge about them, they found it difficult to strike out into new, unbeaten paths. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... useless. Natures opposed on certain points understand each other with difficulty, and I am afraid that you will not understand me any better today than formerly. However, I am sending you this scrawl so that you can see that I am occupied with you almost as ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... duty to-day, both morning and afternoon, and to preach twice, I have only time to scrawl a few lines to you between the services. I will write to ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol. I. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... follies, and remove their baneful effects by a friendly miracle. What miracle can restore the books we borrow and lose, or the books we borrow and spoil with ink, or with candle-wax, or which children scrawl or paint over, or which "the dog ate," like the famous poll-book at an Irish election, that fell into the broth, and ultimately into the jaws of an illiterate animal? Books are such delicate things! Yet men—and still more frequently women—read ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... has neither been of a slight nor an agreeable kind. I made it a rule to read everything that has been written respecting Napoleon, and I have had to decipher many of his autograph documents, though no longer so familiar with his scrawl as formerly. I say decipher, because a real cipher might often be much more readily understood than the handwriting of Napoleon. My own notes, too, which were often very hastily made, in the hand I wrote in my youth, have sometimes also much ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... was back with a pencilled scrawl from Kress to the effect that Lieutenant Stuyvesant was to be permitted to interview the prisoner Murray outside the guard-house, but sentries must be placed ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... the rattling paper out on the table, and with difficulty spelled out the scrawl written with pencil and evidently in much haste. The ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... endeavour, but the Fates must decide. I can scrawl, or, with pains, I can imitate Miss Fanny; but the other alternative only ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... apt to be. On the table were quill-pens and curious old papers with seals on them, and on one I saw the date, June Sixteenth, Seventeen Hundred Sixty-eight—the whole document written out in the hand of John Adams, beginning very prim and careful, then moving off into a hurried scrawl as spirit mastered the letter. There is a little hair-covered trunk in the corner, studded with brass nails, and boots and leggings and canes and a jackknife and a bootjack, and, on the window-sill, a friendly snuffbox. In the clothespress were buff trousers and an embroidered coat, and ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... feel some compunctious visitings at my long silence. But, indeed, it is no easy effort to set about a correspondence at our distance. The weary world of waters between us oppresses the imagination. It is difficult to conceive how a scrawl of mine should ever stretch across it. It is a sort of presumption to expect that one's thoughts should live so far. It is like writing for posterity; and reminds me of one of Mrs. Rowe's superscriptions, "Alcander to Strephon, in the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... intelligence revolts at usurpations must abstain from discussing the principles and policies of your Federal government, or receive the kicks of crossroad sputterers and press reporters; must either lie or be silent. They know only how to brawl and scrawl 'hot-head' and 'impolitic maniac.' Why, my free negroes know more than all your bosses. Now, damn it, ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... hand, all unsuspected, had been picking up the same lesson, and that by taking a pencil in his left hand and writing from right to left, without watching what he was writing, and then examining the scrawl in a mirror, he could reproduce his own handwriting in exact reverse. About three people out of five have this often quite unsuspected ability. He demonstrated his gift, and then Miss Cecily Corner, who ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... of his right hand was sore. He spoke to worried doctors and frantic hospital administrators and hysterical nurses. His firm, fine penmanship deteriorated to a barely legible scrawl as writer's cramp knotted his hand and arm. His voice burned down to a rasping whisper. But columns climbed up his rough chart and broken ...
— The Plague • Teddy Keller
... penchant for authorship was shown. That she smiled on his early evidences of talent, and fostered them, we may well imagine; and the tenderness with which she regarded his early compositions is indicated by the fact that a copy of verses, written in a boyish scrawl, was carefully preserved by her, and found, after her death, folded in a paper on which was inscribed, "My Walter's first lines, 1782." That she gloried in his successes when they came, we gather; for when speaking late in life to Dr. Davy about his ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... pelting each other with snowballs, just as this John had done in the clay-paths. But for nearly two hundred years his bones had been crumbled into lime and his flesh gone back into grass and roots. Yet here he was, a boy still; here was the old pamphlet and the scrawl in yellowing ink, with the smell ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... few minutes to read the scrawl, and grasp the meaning. It told of failure in the city, and that she was coming home to the care of her parents. It was easy for Douglas to read between the lines, and he knew that more was contained there ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... the hermit, sweat-covered and breathless, returned to the rock. For a moment he gazed about, bewildered by the silence. The white card caught his eye. He read its angular scrawl. ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... "It's the men who loaf, my dear," she replied. "When you undertake the transcription of an author's scrawl at ninepence the thousand words you have to work hard, especially when, as it is in this case, the thing's practically unreadable. Besides, the woman in it makes me lose my temper. If I'd had a man of the kind described to deal with ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... had never had but one letter before in his life, and that was a little boyish scrawl from Clarence, and no wonder he opened the big envelope timidly. The contents began, "Know all men by these presents," and here Wilbert looked again into the envelope to see where the presents it spoke of ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... utmost care, confessing to herself, almost with tears, that it was altogether unworthy of him to whom it was to be sent. It was the first love letter she had ever written,—probably the first letter she had ever written to a man, except those short notes which she would occasionally scrawl to Father Marty in compliance with her mother's directions. The letter to ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... dangerous to pass whole days with your head drooping, your hands unoccupied, your eyes restless and full of thought; it is dangerous to prefer the least frequented paths, and no longer be amused with such diversions as gladden young girls' hearts; it is dangerous, Louise, to scrawl with the point of your foot, as you do, upon the gravel, certain letters it is useless for you to efface, but which appear again under your heel, particularly when those letters rather resemble the letter L than the letter B; and, lastly, it is dangerous to allow the ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... dollar cheque which Lily received with a blotted scrawl from Gus Trenor strengthened her self-confidence in the exact degree to which it ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... there were fewer still after the first six lessons) were put into the first two or three rows of desks. The teacher was a little sandy man who made well-trodden jokes and talked in a wheezy voice well suited to his appearance. He used the blackboard, and stood upon tiptoe to scrawl upon it in a large handwriting. That was at the beginning. Later, methods developed; but for the present Sally and the others were merely initiated into the first movements of the difficult craft. With amazement she began to learn the mysteries of the signs "Dr." and "Cr.", the words ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... characteristic scrawl from Philippa, full of Alec and Alonzo, what they said and what they did, and how they ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sent on to me. Of course you'll make me your banker until your book's finished—and afterwards, too, if need be. Here's something to be going on with—but I'm coming to London in a day or two, as it happens, and will go into the matter—I'll call on you as soon as I arrive. Excuse this scrawl—post time. Always ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... permitted me to say in her charge to me, and the incident ought to have been closed, as far as we were concerned. But Tedham's not speaking threw me off my guard. I could not let the matter end so bluntly, and I added, in the same spirit one makes a scrawl at the bottom of a page, "Of course, it's for you to decide whether you ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... Judging from Peggy's crestfallen air, it was all wrong. The note was not written in Lucy's usual regular hand. The letters straggled, the lines zig-zagged across the page, and the name signed was almost an unintelligible scrawl. But Peggy thought less of these superficial matters than of the unwelcome ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... she went back to the sitting-room and sat down at her desk. When that letter was written, carefully, and in her best style, she dashed off three notes in an almost unreadable scrawl, to Mollie and Fay and Kell, telling them of her invitation and the delight it gave her. Then she wandered back to the bedroom where Eliot sat mending, and wandered restlessly around ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... unlikely. At the beginning of Henslowe's Diary we find the scrawl "Chomley when" (Greg, Henslowe's Diary I, 217); this was written not earlier than 1592, and it shows that Cholmley was at that ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... rough words, she took up a pencil and twisted it nervously in her fingers. Then, with increasing agitation, as she realized that her effort for Lloyd had failed, she began, without thinking, to make little marks on the blotter, and then a written scrawl—all with a singular ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... longer with a blessing. You have become a woman, and the mistress of a house. Still I cannot think of you otherwise than as my younger sister. I have brought you up to womanhood, I taught you your letters; but now when I see your writing I am ashamed to send this scrawl. But of what use to be ashamed? My day is over; were it not so how should I be in this condition? What condition?—it is a thing I cannot speak of to any one; should I do so there will be sorrow and shame; yet if I do not tell some one of my heart's trouble I cannot endure ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... he came in after dinner to settle down to work, he would find a piece of paper on his table covered with her schoolgirl scrawl. It ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... which was written in a round boyish scrawl, "Isabel Douglas Herbert, from her loving ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... regions to gain a little money; or little children, carried off by the harsh climate (yet the climate of this place is preferred to that of Gafsa). The enclosure is filling up with drift-sand; the inscriptions on the tombs, often a mere charcoal scrawl of some unlettered friend or parent, is soon ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... Do not scrawl your letter over the page; but do not, on the other hand, appear to economize in paper. Make the place and date lines clear and distinct. Set off the salutation from the body of the letter, and make the form of the letter upon the page artistic and concise. ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... thoughts upon anything but the scene before me, when I am from home, I am from home so seldom. If any, the least hint crosses me, I will write again, and I very much wish to read your plan, if you could abridge and send it. In this little scrawl you must take the will for the deed, for I most sincerely wish success ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... graphoidea^, graphomania^; phrenoia^. writer, scribe, amanuensis, scrivener, secretary, clerk, penman, copyist, transcriber, quill driver; stenographer, typewriter, typist; writer for the press &c (author) 593. V. write, pen; copy, engross; write out, write out fair; transcribe; scribble, scrawl, scrabble, scratch; interline; stain paper; write down &c (record) 551; sign &c (attest) 467; enface^. compose, indite, draw up, draft, formulate; dictate; inscribe, throw on paper, dash off; manifold. take up the pen, take pen in hand; shed ink, spill ink, dip one's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... children under the age of twelve or fourteen. I do not think it advisable to engage a child in any but the most voluntary practice of art. If it has talent for drawing, it will be continually scrawling on what paper it can get; and should be allowed to scrawl at its own free will, due praise being given for every appearance of care, or truth, in its efforts. It should be allowed to amuse itself with cheap colours almost as soon as it has sense enough to wish for them. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... that followed were in no way remarkable; but Dolores was deeply affected by scenes which no longer moved her companions. Every evening a man entered, called several persons by name and handed them a folded paper, a badly written and often illegible scrawl in which not even the spelling of the names was correct, and which, consequently, not unfrequently failed to reach the one for whom it was intended. This was an act of accusation. The person who received ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... upper earth with him has done; He's buried; save the undertaker's bill, Or lapidary scrawl, the world is gone For him, unless he left a German will:[508] But where's the proctor who will ask his son? In whom his qualities are reigning still,[gl] Except that household virtue, most uncommon, Of constancy to a bad, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... with surprise that after this little episode the girl seemed to relax and her face assumed lines almost of contentment. After all, no one could blame him for failing to realise the true significance of that hurried, transient scrawl. One does not expect to find the map reference of probably the greatest source of wealth the world has ever known scribbled across the window pane of a South Western Railway carriage by the fat little forefinger of a girl scarcely out of her teens. Such an eventuality ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... of his study was what he had expected: the writing of the note to Marcia was sufficiently like Judith's to pass muster to an uncritical eye, looking, in fact, what it purported to be, a very hasty scrawl. But Lee decided that Judith had not written it. He ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... September, so that I can take no part in Church affairs. But God has been with me—my strength and comforter. I am beginning to revive, but have not yet been able to go down stairs, or move, only creep about with the help of a cane. I do not know whether you can read the scrawl I have written, but I cannot ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... very well to talk!" laughed Avdeyev: "Signed it, indeed! They used to bring the accounts to my shop and I signed them. As though I understood! Give me anything you like, I'll scrawl my name to it. If you were to write that I murdered someone I'd sign my name to it. I haven't time to go into it; besides, I can't ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... mighty apt to get a feller into a tarnation snarl. Schoolmaster gumption makes d-d bad niggers; and there's why I say it's best to hang schoolmasters. It's dangerous, 'cos it larns the critturs to writin' a scrawl now and then; and, unless ye knows just how much talent he's got, and can whitewash him yaller, it's plaguy ticklish. When the brutes have larnin', and can write a little, they won't stay sold when ye sell 'em-that is, I mean, white riff-raff stuff; they ain't a bit like niggers and ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... there is no room for the living." It seemed then a foolish memorandum to write, and now, as I look at the half-effaced pencil lines, I wonder why I was not ashamed to write it. Yet there it is before me, a witness to my sensations at the time, and the scrawl has even now the power to bring up to me an unpleasantly vivid memory of that ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... book—there's still a chapter you can write, or one you can finish up; but me—I've come right down to Finis, only the Lord won't write it for me. It's as if somebody wanted to scrawl on the back flyleaf something that hasn't a thing to do with the rest of the book, some scratching stuff in a furrin' language ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... the welfare of Mr. Semitopolis's statue of Hercules? I write you in great agitation of mind; for I have made all inquiries, and greatly fear that this work of ancient art has been mislaid. I labour besides under another perplexity, not unconnected with the first. Pray excuse the inelegance of this scrawl, and believe me yours in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... priests and monks, also hypocritical; they ate and drank and coarsely flattered her father, whom they did not like. The boys had the good-fortune to go to school, while Nina was left practically uneducated. All her life she wrote an illegible scrawl, and had read nothing but historical novels. Seventeen years ago, when she was twenty-two, on a summer holiday at Himki, she made the acquaintance of her present husband, a landowner called Panaurov, had fallen in love with ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... letter that Mrs. Willoughby wrote: "I had to scrawl so hurriedly yesterday to catch the first mail that I couldn't begin at the beginning, or get to the point, or anything. I'll try now, though, as for the beginning, it's like going back to the dark ages, it all seems ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... beasts, half cats and half women, with death-like faces, attenuated noses, and swollen lips. They thought all these things very ugly. The stone carvings of the present day were a great deal better. An inscription in Phoenician characters amazed them. No one could possibly have ever read that scrawl. But Monsieur Madinier, already up on the first landing with Madame Lorilleux, called to them, shouting beneath the ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... the note there and then. It was a mere hurried scrawl, saying that Allerdyke was just setting off for Hull, in obedience to a call from the police; as Gaffney had nothing to do, would Appleyard make use of him during ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... of correspondents, Robert Narramore had as yet sent no reply to the letters in which Hilliard acquainted him with his adventures in London and abroad; but at the end of July he vouchsafed a perfunctory scrawl. "Too bad not to write before, but I've been floored every evening after business in this furious heat. You may like to hear that my uncle's property didn't make a bad show. I have come in for a round five ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... had a sword by his side and the outward bearing of a gallant officer. Lest there should be any want of belief on the part of the colonists, he caused his credentials to be tacked up on the gateway of Fort Gibraltar. There, in legible scrawl, was an order appointing him as captain and Alexander Macdonell as lieutenant in the Voyageur Corps. The sight of a soldier sent a thrill through the breasts of the Highlanders and the fight-loving Irish. Cameron had in fact once belonged to the Voyageurs, and ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... the other paper ball, unfolding it near the orange flame. The inner surface was red, the earthly red of porphyry, and cracked and scarred by the crumpling. Nearly obliterated by the lacework of wrinkles and scratches was a scrawl, evidently scarred into the glazed surface by a knife-point. The upper part was unintelligible. On the lower surface he made out with difficulty the single word, Vandalia. He carried it to the door, slid back the shutter and let the dim, gray light filter upon ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... day he fell into deep ennui, and to beguile himself he rummaged out of the canvas bag an old note-book and a pencil, and began a clumsy and uninstructed effort to sketch the scene before him. The effort proving quite abortive, he began to scrawl beneath it, 'Paul Armstrong.' 'Yours very truly, Paul Armstrong.' 'Disrespectfully yours, Paul Armstrong.' 'Sacred to the memory of Paul Armstrong, who died of boredom in the Rocky Mountains.' 'Paul Armstrong: the Autobiography of ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... trump!" admitted Bluff. "Do you know what he said when he was showing that scrawl to us fellows? I was close enough to get part of it, and I'm dead sure the words 'entering wedge' formed the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... will attend you through life'" she had written in her old-country scrawl; "but in the end will prove your undoing, for you will meet your death at the ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... making rhymes. After great efforts, amidst much laughter and profound knitting of brows, we produced what, in the innocence of youth, we called a poem!—an epic, on our adventure. I still preserve the old scrawl of it, in several different youthful hands, on crumpled sheets of yellowed paper. It has little value as poesy, but I would not part with it for autograph copies of the masterpieces of ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... matter I left the gardens to walk elsewhere. The day after next, just as I was going to get into my carriage, a man of evil aspect gave me a paper and asked me to read it. I opened it, but finding it covered with an illegible scrawl I gave it him back, telling him to read it himself. He did so, and I found myself summoned to appear before the commissary of police to answer to the plea which the midwife (whose name I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Davenport, taking back the sheet. "You merely describe the handwriting itself. Your characterization, as far as it goes, would fit men who write very differently from this. It fits me, for instance, and yet look at my angular scrawl." He held up a specimen of his own irregular hand, beside the elegant penmanship of the note, and Larcher had to admit himself ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... suppose they trouble themselves to find one? Not a bit of it. They simply scrawl a great R in chalk on the back of it, and send you a printed notice to carry it home again. What is it to them, if a poor devil has been painting his very heart and hopes out, day after day, for a whole year, ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... the men who loaf, my dear," she replied. "When you undertake the transcription of an author's scrawl at ninepence the thousand words you have to work hard, especially when, as it is in this case, the thing's practically unreadable. Besides, the woman in it makes me lose my temper. If I'd had a man of the kind described to deal with I'd have ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... against the slanting rafters just above him, he was brought to a painful realization of where he was. He turned, scowling, and the first thing he saw was a piece of brown wrapping paper held down by a shoe and covered with a clumsy scrawl. ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... letter—my first love letter—and she made no reply for eight days. Then came a scrawl: "I can't write letters. Wait till we can talk. Are ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... to blush, "Madame, I do not curse you—I scorn you. I can now thank the chance that has divided us. I do not feel even a desire for revenge; I no longer love you. I want nothing from you. Live in peace on the strength of my word; it is worth more than the scrawl of all the notaries in Paris. I will never assert my claim to the name I perhaps have made illustrious. I am henceforth but a poor devil named Hyacinthe, who asks no more than his share of ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... consideration, opened the tin of biscuits and, munching, he wrote a note. Having no paper, he tore a wrapper from one of the boxes. He had the stub of a pencil, and the result was a scrawl. ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... name in a private, modest way to walls already so crowded, is allowable; but to scrawl one's name, place of birth, and country, half across a wall, covering scores of names under it, is an operation which speaks for itself. No one would ever want to know more of a man than to see his ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... Daphne read a badly spelled, badly written scrawl, in the writing of an old woman unused to holding ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... little child at Moor Park. Thackeray, who was not much in sympathy with Swift, said that he knew of "nothing more manly, more tender, more exquisitely touching, than some of these notes." Swift says that when he wrote plainly, he felt as if they were no longer alone, but "a bad scrawl is so snug it looks like a PMD." In writing his fond and playful prattle, he made up his mouth "just as ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... of Matthew Haygarth. I felt that these letters had in all probability been carefully numbered by the lady to whom they belong, and that to tamper with them to any serious extent might be dangerous. I have therefore only ventured to retain one insignificant scrawl as an example of Matthew Haygarth's caligraphy and signature. From the rest I have taken copious notes. It appears to me that these letters relate to some liaison of the gentleman's youth; though I am fain to confess myself surprised to discover ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... done in the clay-paths. But for nearly two hundred years his bones had been crumbled into lime and his flesh gone back into grass and roots. Yet here he was, a boy still; here was the old pamphlet and the scrawl in yellowing ink, with ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... to Garman in a clear feminine hand, and it read: "Garman: Am at the cottage on Palm Island; come to-night. Annette." At the bottom in a huge masculine scrawl, were three words; "Poor ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... letter, which, after all, is but an anonymous scrawl, is not even addressed to you, but ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... speciality of the North, and all its sports and gayeties take thence their tone. The houses are built to shut out the demon of Frost, and protect one from his assaults of ice and snow. Let him howl about your windows and scrawl his wonderful landscapes on your panes and pile his fantastic wreaths outside, while you draw round the blazing hearth and enjoy the artificial heat and warm in the social converse that he provokes. Your punch is all the better for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... an upraised, attentively listening expression. Once he murmured aloud "ARDATH! Nay, I shall not forget!—we will meet at ARDATH!" and again he resumed his occupation. Page after page he covered with close writing-no weak, uncertain scrawl, but a firm bold, neat caligraphy,—his own peculiar, characteristic hand. The sun mounted higher and higher in the heavens, ... hour after hour passed, and still lie wrote on, apparently unaware of the flitting ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... did not know her own mind. "He won't come," he had answered, "till he's spent his money. That's why we must act at once." Annexed to the copy of that letter was the original of Dartie's drunken scrawl from the Iseeum Club. Soames could have wished it had not been so manifestly penned in liquor. Just the sort of thing the Court would pitch on. He seemed to hear the Judge's voice say: "You took ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... grog and tobacco smoke at the "Compton Arms," in the company of the castle servants, and if the calves' heads had known anything essential, I fancy I should have wormed it out of them. They have, however, kindly furnished me with a scrawl of introduction to the establishment now in town, some of whom I shall have the honor to meet, in the character of an out-and-out liberal sporting gentleman, at the "Albemarle Arms" this evening. I want to get hold of ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... fourteen. I do not think it advisable to engage a child in any but the most voluntary practice of art. If it has talent for drawing, it will be continually scrawling on what paper it can get; and should be allowed to scrawl at its own free will, due praise being given for every appearance of care, or truth, in its efforts. It should be allowed to amuse itself with cheap colours almost as soon as it has sense enough to wish ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... came bounding down again, stricken white, and not caring if he encountered the devil. On his table he had found a package—the complete manuscript of "Roderick Hanscom" and this scrawl: ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... wages were offset by the various deceptions open to an ingenious management; prices were higher here than elsewhere; the coat-rooms were robbers' dens infested by Italian mafiosi; tips were extravagant and amounted in effect to ransom; and each meal-check was headed by an illegible scrawl which masked an item termed "service." The figure opposite would have covered the cost of a repast at Childs's. But New York dearly loves to be pillaged; it cherishes a reputation for princely carelessness of expenditure. It ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... Paddington, she was to say she waited an hour at the station, then made a mistake, and went to Islington, and not finding the street there came to Paddington. The excuse turned out good, Paddington and Islington looked much alike on the scrawl. ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... not read, or the illegible, meaningless ink scrawl upon the sheet within the boldly-addressed envelope would have aroused his suspicions at the outset. So well had Bough, that expert in human frailty, understood his subject, that the letter was a bogus letter, a fraud, not elaborate—a ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... by the light of a match read the scrawl upon it. The writing had evidently been done in haste, but its meaning ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... irritable and susceptible, you must be more careful than ever to prevent her having access to him; otherwise she might easily contrive to revive all those impressions in his mind which we are so anxious to avoid. What confidence can be placed in any promise to reform on her part, the impertinent scrawl I enclose will best prove [in reference, no doubt, to an enclosed note]. I send it merely to show you how fully I am justified in the precautions I have already adopted with regard to her. On this occasion, ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... I was fast regaining the blooming, hoyden appearance most natural to me; and Aunt Henshaw continued to write glowing accounts of my improvement. In due time my scrawl was answered by a most affectionate letter from mamma, to which was added a postscript by my father; and I began to rise wonderfully in my own estimation, in consequence of having letters addressed entirely to myself. I even undertook to correct ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... have just striven to describe. Nobody has taught one better how to observe with one's own eyes, first, to regard humanity around us and life as it is, and next, old and authentic documents, how to read more than merely the black and white of the page, how to detect under old print and the scrawl of the text the veritable sentiment and the train of thought, the mental state in which the words were penned. In his writings, as in those of Sainte Beuve and in those of the German critics the reader will find how much is to be derived from a ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... Girodet's ghastly "Deluge," and Gericault's dismal "Medusa." Gericault died, they say, for want of fame. He was a man who possessed a considerable fortune of his own; but pined because no one in his day would purchase his pictures, and so acknowledge his talent. At present, a scrawl from his pencil brings an enormous price. All his works have a grand cachet: he never did anything mean. When he painted the "Raft of the Medusa," it is said he lived for a long time among the corpses which he painted, and that his studio was a second Morgue. If you have not ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his hearers sat expectant, but not impatient, proceeded: "Scrawling on a slate is one thing, Master Chuter: painting and decorating's another. Painting's a trade; and not rightly to be understood by them that's not larned it, nor to be picked up by all as can scrawl a line here and a line there, as the whim takes 'em. Take oak-graining,"—and here Master Linseed paused again, with a fine sense of effect,—"who'd ever think of taking a comb to it as didn't know? ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... budget, black-edged and bulky. Bettina's showed a faddish slender monogram. Following was Justin's—she knew that boyish scrawl; a business letter or two, a bill, an advertisement, and then—her heart leaped. On the flap of a great square envelope blazed the seal which Anthony had chosen for his house of healing—a lighthouse flashing its beacon over ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... a fearful scrawl," Mrs. Hastings commented, "his l's and his t's and his vowels were all the same height. I used to tell him that I didn't ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... begone before I opened the packet. He withdrew reluctantly. Then I unfastened Nell's parcel. It contained ten guineas wrapped in white paper, and on the inside of the paper was written in a most laborious awkward scrawl (I fear the execution of it gave poor Nell much pains), "In pay for your dagger. E.G." It was all of her hand I had ever seen; the brief message seemed to speak a sadness in her. Perhaps I deluded myself; her skill with the pen would not serve her far. She ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... burglary at that house. And, now she thought of it, what a queer burglary it had been! The thieves must certainly have known something about Mrs. Ellsworth, or else, in helping themselves to her valuables, it would not have occurred to them to scrawl a sarcastic message. ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... addressed in Mark Wylder's hand—not the least like it. Mark's was a bold, free hand, and if there was nothing particularly elegant, neither was there anything that could be called vulgar in it. But this was a decidedly villainous scrawl—in fact it was written as a self-educated butcher might pen a bill. There was nothing impressed on the wafer, but a poke of something like the ferrule of ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... wrote my sighs, and sent them to my love; I praised that fair that none enough could praise; But plaints nor praises could fair Licia move; Above my reach she did her virtues raise, And thus replied: "False Scrawl, untrue thou art, To feign those sighs that nowhere can be found; For half those praises came not from his heart Whose faith and love as yet was never found. Thy master's life, false Scrawl shall be thy doom; Because he burns, I judge thee to the flame; Both your attempts deserve ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... take something from under his head and I helped him. I found a scrawl saying, 'Look on ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... days of early summer Rose Macleod was re-reading a letter from her friend Helene; which, though a mere elegant scrawl in the first place, and now yellow and worn with age, has been with some difficulty deciphered by the writers of ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... ahead. Roderick was hurrying home to take supper at the farm, and Helen was coming out of the rough little path that led from the Perkins' home. She was feeling tired and very sad. She had been reading a letter from the husband in prison, a sorrowful pencilled scrawl, pathetically misspelled, but breathing out true sympathy for his wife and children, and the deepest repentance and self-blame. And at the end of every misconstructed sentence like a wailing refrain ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... the door at the bottom of the staircase giving on the yard, and they stood in the sunlight, looking at the scrawl of the two unsteady childish hands two or three steps up the staircase. There was something in this simple memento of a blighted childhood, and in the tenderness of Mrs ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... yourself:" and Ferrers seated himself at the writing-table, dipped a pen into the ink, arranged blotting-book and paper before him in due order, and was soon employed in covering page after page with the most rapid and hieroglyphical scrawl that ever engrossed a mistress or ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Larry is missing? If Larry doesn't show up, it will break his heart, and it will break mine, too!" And he brushed away the tears that sprang up in spite of his efforts to keep them down. Then he turned to the heavy, twisted scrawl from his Uncle Job. ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... the lettering—that is, the labels lettered with the titles of books—in all libraries that are not of recent date. No man would believe that the very earliest attempt to impress a mark of ownership upon some bucket of the Argonauts, or the rudest scrawl of Polyphemus in forging a tarry brand upon some sheep which he had stolen, could be so bad, so staggering and illegible, as are these literary inscriptions. How much better to have had a thin tablet or veneering of marble ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... not do so. It was a veritable scrawl, madam, running something like this: 'I return your daughter to you. She is here. Neither she nor you will ever see me again. Remember Evelyn!' And ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... then, as she repeated her desire, he took up the scrawl and deliberately read it through. It had evidently been written immediately after his interview ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... Celtic inscription has emerged. Instead, we have proof that the lower classes wrote Latin for all sorts of purposes. Had they known Celtic well, it is hardly credible that they should not have sometimes written in that language, as the Gauls did across the Channel. A Gaulish potter of Roman date could scrawl his name and record, Sacrillos avot, 'Sacrillus potter', on the outside of a mould.[1] No such scrawl has ever been found in Britain. The Gauls, again, could invent a special letter Eth to denote a special Celtic sound and keep it in Roman times. No such letter was used in Roman Britain, ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... he was back with a pencilled scrawl from Kress to the effect that Lieutenant Stuyvesant was to be permitted to interview the prisoner Murray outside the guard-house, but sentries must ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... think Saint Paul Such lengthy letters had to scrawl. And so to make his labor lighter I ...
— Confessions of a Caricaturist • Oliver Herford
... recommended a raw beefsteak with a gravity worthy of a Spanish grandee. He was not allowed to see Lottie, who was kept in seclusion as being half culprit, half invalid, and wholly unpresentable; but as he was going away the servant gave him a little note in Lottie's boyish scrawl: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... part their teeth can fasten on." The reference to the rhinoceros is omitted in later editions of the "Origin."), which I thought I might as well point out, and have taken advantage of the same opportunity to scrawl down half a dozen other notes, which may, or may not, be ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... a small envelope bearing my name on a silver tray by the hatstand and open it suspiciously as my wife is divested of her wraps. Inside is a card bearing in an almost illegible scrawl the words: Mrs. Jones. I hastily refresh my recollection as to all the Joneses of my acquaintance, whether in coal, oil or otherwise; but no likely candidate for the distinction of being the husband of my future dinner companion comes to my mind. ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... questions. Who stands here As my accuser? Ha! wilt thou be he, Who art my judge? Accuser, witness, judge, What, all in one? Here is Orsino's name; 175 Where is Orsino? Let his eye meet mine. What means this scrawl? Alas! ye know not what, And therefore on the chance that it may be Some evil, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... globe-trotters. My objection is only to those—alas! too numerous—vagrants who cannot go abroad without casting shame on the country which bred them; whose vulgarity causes offence in church and picture-gallery; who cannot see a monument or a statue without desiring to chip off a fragment, or at least scrawl their ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... by the captain's groom and gentleman, how they talked of him at Mount Juliet's town, making him quite, as one may say, a laughing-stock and a butt for the whole company; but they were soon cured of that by an accident that surprised 'em not a little, as it did me. There was a bit of a scrawl found upon the waiting-maid of old Mr. Moneygawl's youngest daughter, Miss Isabella, that laid open the whole; and her father, they say, was like one out of his right mind, and swore it was the last thing he ever should have thought of, when he invited my master to his house, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... ring marking a childish romance; a flattened and much-dried chocolate drop with tender associations; dance-favors, clippings, photographs, theater programs, each illumined and emphasized by a line or two of sentiment or of nonsense in Jean's girlish scrawl. ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... here and has brought a letter from Catherine. I find it lying by my plate when I come down to breakfast. I take it up, look at the superscription, partly in Catherine's well-known writing, partly in my landlady's spider scrawl—for it had gone first to my London rooms. I turn it over, feel it, decide it contains one sheet of paper only, and put it resolutely down. After breakfast is time enough to read it; nothing she can say shall ever ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... devotion, to Ninette,'" read Harriet, from the inky scrawl across the picture. "Do you call her Ladybird, Nina? You and she have formed a pretty ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... Olympia. After a car had once been placed at your disposal by the Government, getting supplies for it was merely a question of signing bons. Obtaining extra equipment for my car was Roos' chief amusement. Tyres, tools, spare parts, horns, lamps, trunks—all you had to do was to scrawl your name at the foot of a printed form and they were promptly handed over. When I first went to Belgium I was given a sixty horse-power touring car, and when the weather turned unpleasant I asked for and was given a limousine that was big enough to sleep in, and when I found this too clumsy, ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... her letters are not likely to throw much light upon my friend's fate. I dare say she wrote the usual womanly scrawl. There are very few who write so charming and uncommon a hand as ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... silently fascinating, especially so because since starting this letter two short raps at my window announce Carlton who comes each night to accompany me to the late post after the landlady is snoozing. His arms are around me as I scrawl, and the thousand tiny little thrills that answer so eagerly to his nearness, assure me that it is not deplorable to ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... to Daphne as she dressed for dinner. It was only a hurried scrawl on a leaf torn from a memorandum book, and, having read it, she passed it on ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... It was a hasty scrawl to McLean, saying that Ryder was on his way with the museum finds and sending this ahead by runner, and that McLean must positively be at the Cairo Museum to meet him at five and would he please stop on the way and call at his hotel upon a Miss Jeffries and borrow a woman's ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... witnesses could be found to throw any more light on the inquiry than the barn boss himself. And de Spain made only a pretense of a formal investigation. If he had had any doubts about the origin of the fire they would have been resolved by an anonymous scrawl, sent through the mail, promising more if he didn't get out ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... Protestant, "as I am well assured the proprietor of this house is a stanch and worthy friend to the cause." But there were plenty of houses where neither fear nor fanaticism displayed blue banner or chalked scrawl, houses whose owners boasted no safeguard signed by Lord George Gordon, and with these the mob busied themselves. The description in the "Annual Register" is so striking that it deserves to be cited; it is probably from the pen of Edmund ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... composition of Lingua franca, or corrupt Spanish, of unintelligible jargon, consisting of many words quite unintelligible to the Africans, whether Negroes or Moors, or others. The language of this document, although it has some Arabic words in it, is worse, if possible, than the scrawl in which it is written; neither is it a correct translation of the English which precedes it. But purporting to be a letter issued from the accredited servants of the King of the English, it is certainly a disgrace to the country from ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... her right hand. It held a stylograph and had been resting on some scattered sheets of foolscap that Ian had left there in the morning. She had certainly been scrawling on it a little, but she was not aware of having written anything. Yet the scrawl, partly on one sheet and partly on another, was writing, very bad and broken, but still with a resemblance to her own handwriting. She pored over it; then looked Ian in the eyes, her own eyes large with a bewilderment ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... to the ruins of Machu Picchu. Just when it was first seen by a Spanish-speaking person is uncertain. When the Count de Sartiges was at Huadquina in 1834 he was looking for ruins; yet, although so near, he heard of none here. From a crude scrawl on the walls of one of the finest buildings, we learned that the ruins were visited in 1902 by Lizarraga, lessee of the lands immediately below the bridge of San Miguel. This is the earliest local record. Yet some one must have visited Machu Picchu long before ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... common, streets, a fragment of character-drawing which smiled visibly and talked audibly. Elfrida in her garret drew a joy from these things. She cut them out and read them over and over again, and put them sacredly away, with Nadie's letters and a manuscript poem of a certain Bruynotin's, and a scrawl from one Hakkoff, with a vigorous sketch of herself, from memory, in pen and ink in the corner of the page, in the little eastern-smelling wooden box which seemed to her to represent the core of her existence. They quickened her pulse, they gave ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... understood it. 'Gentlemen,' said Mr Melmotte, in his usual hurried way, 'is it your pleasure that I shall sign the record?' Paul Montague rose to say that it was not his pleasure that the record should be signed. But Melmotte had made his scrawl, and was deep in conversation with Mr Cohenlupe before Paul could get upon ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... said that he had no habits? Every day, when he was away from her, he wrote a letter to his mother, and no swift scrawl at that, for, no matter how crowded and eventful the day, he wrote her the best letter that he could write. That was the only habit he had. He was a ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... "Saw your scrawl on the register," he said, "and I've seen it too often on wheat tickets to forget it. Thought I'd look you up. Maybe can be of some service to you here. What are ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... premised that as Bunker was a lawyer, he wrote a first-rate hand; in fact, he might have bragged of being able to equal, if not surpass, the "Hon." Rufus Choate, whose scrawl more resembles the scratchings of a poor half-drowned in an ink-saucer spider, meandering over foolscap, than quill-driving, and as unintelligible as the marks of a tea-box or hieroglyphics on the sarcophagus of ye ancient Egyptians! In short, Counsellor ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... it gives great firmness of hand to deal for some time with a solid substance; again, that it induces caution and steadiness—a boy trusted with chalk and paper suffers an immediate temptation to scrawl upon it and play with it, but he dares not scrawl on gold, and he cannot play with it; and, lastly, that it gives great delicacy and precision of touch to work upon minute forms, and to aim at producing richness and finish of design correspondent to ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... those who cannot write, and those who can, All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble to ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... scratched on the enamel, as if with the point of a pin, became visible; visible, but not immediately legible, so scratchy were the letters and imperfectly formed the strokes. It was not until the fourth or fifth time of reading that Sir George made out the following scrawl: ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... in which she glanced at her hair that had been superiorly tralala'd. She turned again, reflecting that Lennox must have already received the postal-order, which she had mailed the night before, and wondering whether he had liked her little scrawl of indignant thanks. ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... glance at the following reproduction of a snap-shot which I took of this scrawl, you will ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... letters crossed, but mine was a wretched scrawl by the side of yours. I do not know how, with those terrible telegrams beginning to fly round you, you find time to write such letters. I could never have taken the Foreign Office without the heaviest misgiving, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... earnestly that this scrawl will reach Kingcombe Holm. Possibly, no more news of me may ever reach there.—Yet I fear not, for He who is everywhere is likewise in the wild western prairies; and life is not so sweet that I should dread its ending. Still, if it does end, remember me to my brother, my nieces, and all old friends, ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... ready apprehension of the meaning of any point clearly put before them, which is very satisfactory. I am now thinking of the twenty or thirty best among our 145 scholars. This is a confused, almost unintelligible scrawl; but I am busy, and not very ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the poor. If the title-deeds had been sold to any one who could claim the property, what would be the consequence? She felt herself in a mist of ignorance and perplexity; dreading the consequences, yet feeling as if her own removal might leave her fortune free to make up for them. She tried to scrawl an explanation; but mind and fingers were alike unequal to the task, and she desisted just as fresh torture began at the doctor's hands—torture from which they sent her mother away, and that left her exhausted, and despairing of holding ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... also the passing events. The process tended to suffocate thought, and to hinder progress; for there is continual wandering in the wisest minds, and Truth writes her last words, not on clean tablets, but on the scrawl that Error has made ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... letter up to her bedroom and there read it a number of times. It all seemed wonderful to her, the stamped blue address, the rich white square notepaper, and above all the beautiful handwriting. She thought of her own childish scrawl and blushed, she even sat down, there and then, at her dressing-table and, with a pencil, began to imitate some ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... greatly we depend upon them for some of the quietest pleasures of our lives. But that is the way of human nature, isn't it? We rarely value anything until we lose it; we sigh most ardently for the thing which is beyond our reach, we count our happiest days those across the record of which we now must scrawl, "Too late!" That is why I always feel so infinitely sorry for the blind. The blind can so rarely get away from themselves, and, when they do, only with that effort which in you and me would demand some bigger ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... chicken, I shall scrawl Just what I fancy as I strike it, Fairies and Fusiliers, and all Old broken knock-kneed thought will crawl Across my verse in the classic way. And, sir, be careful what you say; There are old-fashioned ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... sergeant reverently removed a pile of books and papers from a chair, dusted it, and placed it near an open window, and I amused myself by looking out upon the busy scene in the harbour, while the admiral proceeded to scrawl his signature upon document ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... He was holding a note in his hand, and staring intently at the house and garden. Seeing Cissy, he transferred his stare to her. Snatching the note from him, she tore it open, and read in Piney's well-known scrawl, "Dad won't let me come to you now, dear, but I'll try to slip out late to-night." Why should she want to come? She had said nothing about coming NOW—and why should her father prevent her? Cissy crushed the note between her fingers, and faced ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... largely upon the relative force, exercised by the joint hands. The difficulty in writing arises from the antagonizing motion of one hand upon the other, which is likely to produce an unintelligible scrawl, having little or none of the habitual characteristics of ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... accept your offer, and be very grateful for it, for I do not bear this mountain traveling very well. If you find him, give him this scrawl and tell him where I ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... she showed him the anonymous scrawl which had kindled her fury against him. He turned it listlessly over in his hand. "I guess I know who it's from," he said, giving it back to her, "and I guess you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... reached him on the reverse side of an invitation to take tea at Merrion—a vague some-day-when-you're-passing sort of invitation, in Neeld's eyes plainly and merely a pretext for writing and an opportunity of conveying the urgent little scrawl on the other side. It arrived at mid-day; in the afternoon Duplay had come and ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... his house; sent me a card, half of it printed like a book! t'other half a scrawl could not read; pretended to give a supper; all a mere bam; went without my dinner, and got nothing to eat; all glass and shew: victuals painted all manner of colours; lighted up like a pastry-cook on twelfth-day; wanted something solid, and got a great lump of ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... been bad this time. Read that." Fitzpatrick handed Cardepie's scrawl to McTavish, and watched keenly as ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... in his next? I have many things to say; but it is now between 1 & 2 o'Clock in y^e morning, and I find nature flags. I could get no other time to write. I have neither time nor strength to copy, therefore hope the D^r will excuse the scrawl from him who is with much duty & esteem Rev^d & ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... me with a slow, odd smile; Stretched in abandon at my feet, the while, He fanned me idly with his broad-brimmed hat. "Then all young ladies must be formed for that!" He laughed, and said. "Their letters read, and look, As like as twenty copies of one book. They're written in a dainty, spider scrawl, To 'darling, precious Kate,' or 'Fan,' or 'Moll.' The 'dearest, sweetest' friend they ever had. They say they 'want to see you, oh, so bad!' Vow they'll 'forget you, never, never, oh!' And then they tell about a splendid beau— A lovely hat—a charming dress, and send A little scrap of this ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the last mail, so I must send you an extra long scrawl to make up. Thanks so much for your last batch of photographs. I am glad you marked the names on the back, for really it is difficult to believe that that ferocious-looking bearded person is really you! I am glad you have promised to shave it off ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... Ironhead and Indian Peak a thousand feet above the greening valley; in the riotous din of squirrels and birds interwoven with the booming of frogs from the still ponds; and finally in the announcement tacked upon the post-office door. The two line scrawl in lead pencil did not state in so many words the same tidings which the blue birds were proclaiming from the thicket on the far bank of the Little MacLeod; it merely announced that to-night Pere Marquette and his beloved ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... He found, however, that his head was in a perfect whirl, and that his hand was so unsteady as to make the accomplishment of the task almost an impossibility; but he managed, in an almost illegible scrawl, to inform her of his safe arrival. He asked her to excuse the brevity of his communication, as he was still suffering from the effects of his stormy voyage across the lake, which had shattered, for the time being, his nervous ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... exalted, sits high on his throne, Dividing the heav'ns, dividing my crown, Into poems and business, my skull's split in two, One side for the lawyers, and t'other for you. With my left eye, I see you sit snug in your stall, With my right I'm attending the lawyers that scrawl With my left I behold your bellower a cur chase; With my right I'm a-reading my deeds for a purchase. My left ear's attending the hymns of the choir, My right ear is stunn'd with the noise of the crier. My right hand's inditing these lines to your reverence, My left ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... John, who ascended the throne after putting out his nephew's eyes with a pair of curling-irons, and who is the first English Sovereign who attempted to write his own name; for the scrawl is evidently something more than his mark, which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... for it was open at the portrait of Roberts. Underneath the portrait were a few words written in pencil in a clumsy scrawl. I read them over, expecting some ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... holding me back. I managed to get hold of a blue-paper manuscript book by the favour of one of the officers of our estate. With my own hands I ruled it with pencil lines, at not very regular intervals, and thereon I began to write verses in a large childish scrawl. ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... turned hastily to letters from Harry and Jenny. The first was only a scrawl in pencil, written with that boyish reticence which always overcame Harry when he wrote to one of his family; but beneath the stilted phrases she could read his homesickness and his longing for ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... from their oath of allegiance to him. The degraded king writhed in helpless indignation, for he was a captive. With the foolish petulance of a spoiled child, as he affixed his signature in almost an illegible scrawl, he dashed blots of ink upon the paper, and then, tearing the pen to pieces, threw it upon the floor, and trampled it ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... there's another one," spoke up William Streeter tersely. "And I've read it—all but the scrawl at the end. There couldn't anybody ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... beech and oak. The green valley lay between. The air, to-day, was soft and sweet, the long billows of the Blue Ridge seen dreamily, through an amethyst haze. The men lay among dandelions. Some watched the horses; others read letters from home, or, haversack for desk, wrote some vivid, short-sentenced scrawl. A number were engaged by the rim of the clear pool. Naked to the waist, they knelt like washerwomen, and rubbed the soapless linen against smooth stones, or wrung it wrathfully, or turning, spread it, grey-white, upon ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... a claim record, registered in the name of Laird Martin, Earthman. An attached photograph matched what could be seen of face behind its mask of frozen blood. Across the foot of the sheet was a hurried scrawl: ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
