"Meagre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... way of attempting to impart that knowledge may be the best fitted, at once to obviate the natural indisposition to the subject, and to provide that when it does obtain a place in their understanding, it shall not be a meagre, diminutive, insulated occupant there, but in its proper dimensions and relations. And if, in attentively studying this, there be any who come to ascertain, that the right expedient is a bare inculcation of religious ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... spinning across a pool. And now there was nothing to be heard but the sharp whistle of the silk and the rush of the water. It seemed a long time that they had stood there, when suddenly the colonel created a commotion by hooking and hauling forth a trout of meagre proportions. Unheeding Rex's brutal remarks, he silently inspected his prize dangling at the end of the line. It fell back into the water and darted away gayly upstream, but the colonel was not in the least disconcerted and strolled off after ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... Reason takes her stand Just in the midst, a balance in her hand, Which o'er and o'er she tries, and finds it true: From either side, conducted full in view, A man comes forth, of figure strange and queer; We now and then see something like them here. The first[313] was meagre, flimsy, void of strength, But Nature kindly had made up in length What she in breadth denied; erect and proud, A head and shoulders taller than the crowd, 120 He deem'd them pigmies all; loose hung his skin O'er his bare bones; ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... that they may visit 'mammoth caves' and 'Giant's Causeways.' We talk of the 'Seven Wonders of the World,' while to them there is a successive series for every day in the year—putting to the blush our meagre stock of monstrosities—making 'Ossa like a wart.' Nothing gratifies them more than the issuing from the press of an anonymous work, that they may exert their ingenuity in endeavoring to discover the author; and, when called ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... afternoon, the chill fog made it impossible to go out, for the wind had risen from the sea and driven the salt mist inland. Miss Hathaway's library was meagre and uninteresting, Hepsey was busy in the kitchen, and Ruth was frankly bored. Reduced at last to the desperate strait of putting all her belongings in irreproachable order, she found herself, at four o'clock, without occupation. The temptation in the attic wrestled strongly ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... But it proved meagre enough. Her mother died when Mary Ann was a child; her father when she was still a mere girl. His affairs were found in hopeless confusion, and Mary Ann was considered lucky to be taken into the house of the well-to-do Mrs. Leadbatter, of London, the eldest sister of a young ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... rule requires. While they ate, a monk, stationed at a desk near by, read aloud the extracts from the Lives of the Saints appointed for the day. This was one of the "sights," but we found it curious and melancholy to see strong, healthy men turned into monks and content with that meagre fare. Frugality and dominion over the flesh are good, of course, but minds from west of the Atlantic Ocean never seem quite to get into sympathy with the monastic idea; and we always felt, when we met monks, as though they ought all to be off ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... warfare of tricks and petty annoyances; a warfare that was perfectly defensive on the part of O'Hearn, who did little more, in the way of retort, than comment on the long, lank, shapeless figure, and meagre countenance of his enemy. Joel had not been seen to smile, since he engaged with the captain; though three times had he laughed outright, and each time at the occurrence of some mishap to Michael O'Hearn the fruit of one of his own schemes ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... want of thrift. This minister had spent some time in school studying theology. How much better it would have been to have had this minister taught the dignity of labour, taught theoretical and practical farming in connection with his theology, so that he could have added to his meagre salary, and set an example for his people in the matter of living in a decent house, and having a knowledge of correct farming! In a word, this minister should have been taught that his condition, and that of his people, ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... kind, by way of breakfast. In no meal has luxury advanced more upon the model of the ancients than in this: the dinners (caenae) of the Romans were even more luxurious, and a thousand times more costly, than our own; but their breakfasts were scandalously meagre; and, with many men, breakfast was no professed meal at all. Galen tells us that a little bread, and at most a little seasoning of oil, honey, or dried fruits, was the utmost breakfast which men generally allowed themselves: some indeed drank wine after it, but this was far ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... certainly an institution educating the youth of a race scarcely forty years out of the house of bondage, and hence poor beyond all expression, needs vastly more the income of an endowment to supplement the meagre tuitions which its pupils pay. Here is an opportunity for the man of large means to bestow a princely gift, while the man of slender means none the less can invest ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 01, January, 1900 • Various
... rather meagre and elongated, continued motionless; her paleness increased their formality. But as time passed, weariness settled the more deeply on her drooping eyelids. Whenever she passed a window of the drawing-rooms, the pin in her hair east quick, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... plants, so important in the rustic materia medica of New England—such as pennyroyal, for example—are generally much less aromatic and powerful when cultivated in gardens than when self-sown on meagre soils. On the other hand, the cinchona, lately introduced from South America into British India and carefully cultivated there, is found to be richer in quinine than the ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... audacity, but something of the kind of genius in her mood which has hurried the greater poets of sound and speech to impose their naturalness upon accepted laws, or show the laws to have been our meagre limitations. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... entertainment in the evening in honor of "the great event." Italian palaces are so vast, are so ill-adapted to the moderate establishments of modern tones, that their grand style in general only impresses those who visit them with a feeling of disappointment and even mortification. The meagre retinue are almost invisible as they creep about the corridors and galleries, and linger in the sequence of lofty chambers. These should be filled with crowds of serving-men and groups of splendid retainers. They were built for the days when a great man was obliged ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... Colenso Sir Redvers Buller's telegraphic despatch, though it probably does the commander less justice than he would have received at the hands of any other narrator, gives an authoritative if meagre account. The attack seems to have been planned rather as a reconnaissance in force, to be followed up in case it should reveal possibilities of victory, than as a determined effort on which everything was to be staked. In all probability this form of action was inevitable ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... thy pristine years And his, with thy possession much enhanced His meagre sum of personal estate; And, in phrase professional, call'd thee 'chattel'— A vile distinction for a beaver hat! A lawyer's hat!—alack! what teeming store-house oft Of mischiefs dire; ill-boding parchment; 'writs,' With hieroglyphics mystical inscribed; ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... and now, as a rich man, he was left with one daughter, an only child. As a poor man Mr. Furnival had been an excellent husband, going forth in the morning to his work, struggling through the day, and then returning to his meagre dinner and his long evenings of unremitting drudgery. The bodily strength which had supported him through his work in those days must have been immense, for he had allowed himself no holidays. And then success and money had come,—and Mrs. Furnival sometimes found herself ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... Grey had faced death in every shape, and shown great powers of endurance, but the results of all his toil were but meagre, and of no very great importance. He had crossed and named the rivers running into the west coast, between where he abandoned his boats and the Moore River, but in the state he was in he knew little more than the fact that they were there, having neither strength nor resources ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... a length for which we must apologise to our readers; and yet this is but a meagre sketch of the contents of a book which deals with a very large proportion of the subjects that occupy the thoughts and move the feelings of religious men. We will attempt to sum up in a few words the leading ideas of the author. Addressing a mixed audience, he undertakes to controvert ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... related in the first part of this tale should be of peculiar interest to the student of Shakspeare as well as to those engaged in tracing the genealogy of popular fiction. Jonathan Scott has given—for reasons of his own—a meagre abstract of a similar tale which occurs in the "Bahar-i- Danish" (vol. iii. App., p. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... renders that of Benvenuto Cellini. Mrs. McCunn, as already said, compiled from the sources indicated the Adventures of Prince Charles, and she tells the story of Grace Darling; the contemporary account is, unluckily, rather meagre. Miss Alleyne did 'The Kidnapping of the Princes,' Mrs. Plowden the 'Story of Kaspar Hauser.' Miss Wright reduced the Adventures of Cortes from Prescott, and Mr. Rider Haggard has already been mentioned in ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... rosy limbs, and blue eyes and gold lashes— Made in the mold of the Saviour, they say! Drink deep of my bosom, my starved, meagre bosom, That—keeps you ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the captain allowed them ten spoonfuls of maize a day each man, instead of eight. Dampier declares that he benefited by this meagre fare, and drank about three times every twenty-four hours, but some men drank only once in nine or ten days, and one did not swallow any liquid for seventeen days, and asserted that he did not feel at all thirsty. They ran on for nearly ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... would guess, so complex and contradictory are the involutions of the human brain. Hellenism, Greek culture and ideal; academic groves; young disciples, Plato and Socrates, the august nakedness of the Gods were equal, or almost equal, in his mind with the lacerated bodies of meagre saints; and his heart wavered between the temple of simple lines and the cathedral of a thousand arches. Once there had been a sharp struggle, but Christ, not Apollo, had been the victor, and the great cross in the bedroom ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... veil'd His face with the other, and at once, as falls A creeper when the prop is broken, fell The woman shrieking at his feet, and swoon'd. Then her own people bore along the nave Her pendent hands, and narrow meagre face Seam'd with the shallow cares of fifty years: And here the Lord of all the landscape round Ev'n to its last horizon, and of all Who peer'd at him so keenly, follow'd out Tall and erect, but in ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... charm of oddness. I went over and stood by him while the porter dropped the tester-glass into the cool depths of cask after cask, and solemn counsel was held and grave decisions reached. I was enchanted with one meagre, little old gentleman of frail and refined figure, who bent over his wine with closed eyes, as if to shut out all the sense-impressions he did not need, while the rest waited to hear what he had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... present, let us enquire what we mean by giving many names to the same thing, e.g. white, good, tall, to man; out of which tyros old and young derive such a feast of amusement. Their meagre minds refuse to predicate anything of anything; they say that good is good, and man is man; and that to affirm one of the other would be making the many one and the one many. Let us place them in a class with our previous opponents, and interrogate both of them at once. Shall we assume ...
— Sophist • Plato
... small and low, the foliage of the olive thin and pale, the leaves of the fig broad and few, and the soil appearing everywhere at their roots, as well as between the rows of vines, the vegetation, when viewed from a little distance, has a meagre and ragged appearance. The whiteness of the hills, which the eye can hardly bear to rest upon at noon, the intense blue of the sea, the peculiar forms of the foliage, and the deficiency of shade and verdure, made me almost fancy ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... This was the reason that he did not obtain the liberal education that he should have had; besides that on account of weakness and delicate health, his mother would not let him exert himself, and his teachers forebore to urge him. He was meagre and sickly from the first, and hence had the nickname of Batalus, given him, it is said, by the boys, in derision of his appearance; Batalus being a certain enervated flute-player, in ridicule of whom ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... the victorious armies of the Turks, it was not likely that this emperor would entertain the idea of violating the religious peace, and thereby destroying his own painful work. The heavy expenses of the perpetually recurring war with Turkey could not be defrayed by the meagre contributions of his exhausted hereditary dominions. He stood, therefore, in need of the assistance of the whole empire; and the religious peace alone preserved in one body the otherwise divided empire. Financial necessities made the Protestant as needful to him as ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... large simple masses of positive colour. There are none of the misty enamelled tones of Lynmouth, or the luscious richness of Clovelly. The forms are so simple and severe, that they would be absolutely meagre, were it not for the rich colouring with which Nature has so lovingly made up for the absence of all softness, all picturesque outline. One does not regret or even feel the want of trees here, while the eye ranges down ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... was grotesque-looking at any time. He was lank and meagre, with a long body and limbs, and high shoulders. His face was smooth-shaven, and his skin like old parchment stretched over high cheek-bones and lantern jaws; but in their hollow sockets his eyes gleamed with the changeful lustre of two precious gems. In the ruddy firelight ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... kind of spider. The tall duke, now, has just the look of your garden spider; not the large-bellied kind, they are less dangerous; but your long-footed, meagre-bodied gentleman, that does not fatten on his diet, and whose threads are slender indeed, but ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... hero's valet-de-chambre, whose visage, being naturally meagre and swarthy, was adorned with artificial whiskers; so that he became the Persian dress which he wore, and seemed a very proper master of the ceremonies to an Oriental necromancer. Having crossed his arms upon his breasts, with an inclination of the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... scarce might I have the heart to write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose the fall of valour in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... lifting a cheese, so that the mistress, not having appeared earlier in the day, might be safely assumed not to be coming to the market. Anne stowed her empty baskets under the stall of a woman who sold smallwares, and began to make her meagre purchases for the week. Then she took her baskets and made for the yard of the inn behind the market-square, where she had ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... self-complacency, and riddled your patience through and through; to put up with him was hard, to put him down was impossible, (your long tolerated nuisance of fifty is always incorrigible.) His bore was surprising considering the smallness of his calibre; like a meagre gimlet, he would drill a small hole in some unimportant statement, and then gather up his opima spolia, and march off to the sound of his own trumpet. For instance, on convicting you of assigning a fine picture to a wrong church or gallery, he denied all your pretensions ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... had shared the meagre lunch of the noble French army surgeon, who had conceived such an ardent admiration for the trio of young Americans. Josh was already heard saying that he felt as hungry as a tramp who had been walking the railroad ties from early morning; ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... exercised—for the latter, "at one lift," would now and then sweep a whole range of shelves in Scott's shop of every volume which it contained. And yet how whimsical, and, in my humble opinion, ill-founded, was Dr. North's taste in matters of typography! Would you believe it, Lisardo, he preferred the meagre classical volumes, printed by the Gryphii, in the italic letter, to the delicate and eye-soothing ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... "Adesso," after I have bled this gentleman. Such are all the interiors where Salassatore is written over the door; they bleed and they shave indifferently, and doing either, talk of the last take of thunny, the opera that has been or is to be, and the meagre skimmings of their permitted newspaper, which begins probably with the advertisement of a church ceremony, and ends always ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... unfortunate, as the records of anthropology are rich in unexamined materials of psychical research. I am unacquainted with any work devoted by an anthropologist of renown to the hypnotic and kindred practices of the lower races, except Herr Bastian's very meagre tract, 'Ueber psychische Beobachtungen bei Naturvoelkern.'[7] We possess, none the less, a mass of scattered information on this topic, the savage side of psychical phenomena, in works of travel, and in Mr. Tylor's monumental ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... may not understand the connection. The old 'meeting-house' (for the Puritans used the word church only in a spiritual sense) stood fronting the site of the present enormous edifice. It was torn down in 1812. Here for nearly a quarter of a century the tall form, and face pale and meagre from intense thinking, appeared each Sabbath before a people among whom his recluse habits rendered him almost a stranger. Here, having rested upon the desk, upon the elbow of his left arm, whose hand held a tiny book of closely written MS., he read with stooping form and low ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... he was; but so utterly unacquainted with the whole Business of Criticism, that he did not even collate or consult the first Editions of the Work he undertook to publish; but contented himself with giving us a meagre Account of the Author's Life, interlarded with some common-place Scraps from his Writings. The Truth is, Shakespear's Condition was yet but ill understood. The Nonsense, now, by consent, received for his own, was ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... Brownie formed a class of being distinct in habit and disposition from the freakish and mischievous elves. He was meagre, shaggy, and wild in his appearance. Thus Cleland, in his satire against the Highlanders, compares ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... historical authority, but one or two minor incidents of Godfrey's life and crusade were taken from Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered." In the treatment of a few unimportant events, some imaginative details and circumstances strictly in harmony with the meagre historical record of facts have been added to give color and interest to the narrative. Also in several instances where the subject-matter of a conversation or speech is purely legendary, or is given by historians ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... hearts of President and people at the metropolis of our politics, and which has sprinkled with its cordial drops kindred spirits scattered far and wide over the land, welled up from no wholesome sources such as these. It was no deliverance from barbarous enemies, from pestilential disease, from meagre famine, that moved those raptures,—no joy at ignorance dissipated, barbarism dispelled, or tyranny put down. The "peace" and the "prosperity," the prophecy of which was so sweet to the souls that took sweet counsel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... "This wall is of rough masonry compared to that in the choir, and the whole of this part of the church is of a much coarser and ruder description, betokening a later age. The capitals of the piers are of the very rudest kind, and are a perfect contrast to the delicate work of the choir. In the meagre description of St. John's to be found in the books on Perth, this rudeness is pointed to as a sign of great antiquity, but the reverse is unquestionably the case. This nave is undoubtedly 'the New Kirk of Perth' referred to in the Chronicle, in which 'ane Synodall ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... difference underfoot from what has gone before: scraps of Roman tile and stone chippings protrude through the grass in meagre quantity, but sufficient to suggest that masonry stood on the spot. Before the eye stretches under the moonlight the interior of the fort. So open and so large is it as to be practically an upland plateau, and yet its area lies wholly within the walls of what may be designated as one building. ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... experience had made her distrustful of every one, so that she was dreadfully afraid of what might happen as the consequence of all she had betrayed. She was distracted, too, about Duncan, and altogether could find but meagre comfort in the promise that by-and-by she should be allowed to go ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... his horse and inclined his head sideways on seeing the old major step out, very tall and meagre, in a straight narrow coat coming down to his ankles as it were the casing of the regimental colours rolled round ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... a meagre repast. There was some very thin soup, then a stew, then macaroni. There were also bread and sour wine. However, the boys did not complain. They had footed it so far, and had worked so hard, that they were all ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... the sweet little bedroom didn't move Maggie Howland. Tildy presently brought up a meagre supper, of which the mother and daughter partook almost in silence. Then Mrs. Howland went to her room, where she fell fast asleep, and Maggie had the drawing-room to herself. She had arranged a sort of extempore bed on the hard sofa, and ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... fragrance into the troubled air, the bread took on a nice deep brown in the Dutch oven, the coffee's aromatic steam drifted from the fire, and warm and comfortable we sat down to the welcome though meagre meal. The rule was three little strips of bacon, a chunk of bread about the size of one's fist, and coffee without stint for each man three times a day. Sugar was a scarce article, and I learned to like coffee without it so well that ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... table. Great astonishment. Colonel Kase says it is wonderful, but during the Centennial year they got tables loaded with flowers (the Medium has not given a flower seance for some years, she says, hence the rather meagre supply.) A lady points out the fact that the flowers are quite cold and have a sort of dew on them. But I found those before me quite dry, as if they had been in the room for some time. The Medium is tired and retires. Mrs. X. is requested to come under the influence ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... the Dominion status. She has become so poor that she has little power of resisting famines. Before the British advent India spun and wove in her millions of cottages just the supplement she needed for adding to her meagre agricultural resources. The cottage industry, so vital for India's existence, has been ruined by incredibly heartless and inhuman processes as described by English witnesses. Little do town-dwellers know how the semi-starved masses of Indians are slowly sinking to lifelessness. Little ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... as in the valley of the Nile, and a small garrison sufficed to keep watch over the Bedouin of the neighbourhood. Sometimes the latter ventured to attack the miners, and then fled in haste, carrying off their meagre booty; but they were vigorously pursued under the command of one of the officers on the spot, and generally caught and compelled to disgorge their plunder before they had reached the shelter of their "douars." The old Memphite kings prided ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Devonshire estates. In 1798 he became Lieutenant-General, and in 1801 was entrusted with the command of the town of Plymouth, in anticipation of an attack upon that place by the French fleet. The attack never took place, and his command proved a sinecure. From this time forward we have but meagre accounts of him until a short time before his death, which, as the monumental tablet has already informed us, took place on the 25th of October, 1806. During the summer of that year he had been fixed upon as Commander-in-Chief of the East ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... these meagre facts, we know nothing of Marvell's boyhood at Hull. His clerical foe, Dr. Parker, afterwards Bishop of Oxford, writes contemptuously of "an hunger-starved whelp of a country vicar," and in another passage, which undoubtedly refers to Marvell, he speaks of "an unhappy education among Boatswains ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... from the water and looking at the sky, he remembered again how fate in the person of an unknown woman had by chance caressed him, he remembered his summer dreams and fancies, and his life struck him as extraordinarily meagre, poverty-stricken, and ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... won from the Turks in the neighborhood of Nisch, and the quaint old city of Nisch itself, were no meagre prizes, and ought to content the ambition of the young prince for some time. It was righteous that the Servians should possess Nisch, and that the Turks should be driven out by violence. The cruel and vindictive ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... than trout, and a novice almost always overestimates them. But the guides were not deceived. "This one will weigh four pounds and three-quarters, and this one four pounds, but that one not more than three pounds; he is meagre, M'sieu', BUT he is meagre." When we went ashore and tried the spring balance (which every angler ought to carry with him, as an aid to his conscience), the guides guess usually proved to be within an ounce or two of the ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... of Edward Bok passed away when Edward was eighteen years of age, and it was found that the amount of the small insurance left behind would barely cover the funeral expenses. Hence the two boys faced the problem of supporting the mother on their meagre income. They determined to have but one goal: to put their mother back to that life of comfort to which she had been brought up and was formerly accustomed. But that was not possible on their income. It was evident that other employment must ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... she was sad and sorry and ashamed, because of the futile bustle and bluster and cheerful courageous activity about her. Not a cheek had blenched; not a hand had trembled; not a voice had been lifted to protest or counsel surrender, despite their meagre capacities for defense and their number, but a handful. What would these men say to her if they knew that their patriotism and their valor were expended in vain,—above all, their mutual cause of quarrel wasted!—as pretty a bit of neighborhood spite as ever ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Fortune, wearied at last, finally turned her back upon her favorite. The desperate and bloody battle resulted in little else than the ebb of the tide of war southward. Northern people, it is true, breathed more freely. Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington were safe for the present, but this seemed a meagre reward for millions of treasure and tens of thousands of lives, especially when the capture of Richmond and the end of the Rebellion had been ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... an amused smile playing round his lips; "but if you can find therein anything to please you, I shall be glad.—Now, daughter, what have we here? We so rarely have guests to supper, I fear Mr Louvaine may find our fare somewhat meagre: though 'better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... youth he had followed this same habit of heavy labor, and as a result the experience of this master of exact literature was reduced to a minimum; but this minimum sufficed for him, precisely because of the philosophical insight which he possessed to so high a degree. To this meagre number of positive faculties furnished by observation, he applied an analysis so intuitive that he discovered, behind the small facts amassed by him in no unusual quantity, the profound forces, the ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... Phillis, he each circling glass Wisheth her health, and joy, and equal love. Meanwhile, he smokes, and laughs at merry tale, Or pun ambiguous, or conundrum quaint. But I, whom griping penury surrounds, And Hunger, sure attendant upon Want, With scanty offals, and small acid tiff, (Wretched repast!) my meagre corpse sustain: Then solitary walk, or doze at home In garret vile, and with a warming puff Regale chill'd fingers: or from tube as black As winter-chimney, or well-polish'd jet, Exhale mundungus, ill-perfuming scent: Not blacker tube, nor of a shorter size, Smokes ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... meagre and inadequate interpretation of this sublime text. The philosophy of life, which will be the 'corona et finis coronans' of the sciences of comparative anatomy and zoology, will hereafter supply ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... apart 40 Gorging himself in gloom: no Love was left; All earth was but one thought—and that was Death, Immediate and inglorious; and the pang Of famine fed upon all entrails—men Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh; The meagre by the meagre were devoured, Even dogs assailed their masters, all save one, And he was faithful to a corse, and kept The birds and beasts and famished men at bay, Till hunger clung them,[57] or the dropping dead 50 Lured their lank ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... generalities; not even any reference to the one unbroken bond of union, the one support, except in the three scanty final words, the simplest of blessings. It was not satisfying; but Averil recalled, with a start, that no wonder the letter was meagre, since it was necessarily subject to inspection; and how could the inner soul be expressed when all must pass under strangers' eyes, who would think such feelings plausible hypocrisy in a convicted felon. Again she took it up, to suck to the utmost all that might ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... silent, moved most of all by the unimpaired simplicity of heart with which his mother could take up past relations, and open her meagre life to the high visitations of grace and fashion, without a tinge of self-consciousness or apology. "I shall never be as genuine as that," he thought, remembering how he had wished to have Mrs. Westmore know that he was of her own class. How mixed our passions ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... what the world might do for her—the world and its cultivation, which would not be for her, because she was friendless and without money or home. The world would have nothing but toil to give her, with a meagre living. ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... at her. Some day she will poison the soup or the vin rouge; but I hope that will not be until after mother and I shall have left her. She has two daughters, who, except that one is decidedly pretty, are meagre imitations ...
— A Bundle of Letters • Henry James
... others had been taken into various cottages, where they were being rubbed with ice to draw the frost out of them. The farmer-boys were allowed no share in all this excitement, for the fisher-boys, who went in and out and saw everything, drove them away if they approached—and sold meagre ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... But the villages they passed, single streets of unrelieved squalor in a dusty waste, they decided were immeasurably depressing. No one who could avoid it walked; lank men in broad straw hats and coat-like shirts rode meagre horses with the sheaths of long formidable blades slapping their miserable hides. Groups of fantastically saddled horses drooped their heads tied in the vicinity of a hands-breadth of shade by general ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... justified all the expectations which had been formed at home regarding the wondrous youth, that none could venture to utter any adverse opinion. Scipio's command was indefinitely prolonged; he himself resolved no longer to confine his efforts to the meagre task of guarding the passes of the Pyrenees. Already, in consequence of the fall of New Carthage, not only had the Spaniards on the north of the Ebro completely submitted, but even beyond the Ebro the most powerful princes had exchanged the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... articles, I have only been able to suggest rather than put forward ideas, for my own knowledge of these correspondences is very incomplete. As far as I know the subject has been untouched hitherto, and this must be my excuse for the meagre nature of the information given. I hope later on to treat of the relation of sound and colour to form and to show how these correspondences will enable us to understand the language which the gods speak to us through flowers, ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... journey, three of them crossing the plains to the Pawnee villages, and the rest descending the Arkansas to the Mississippi. [Footnote: Journal du Voyage des Freres Mallet, presente a MM. de Bienville et Salmon. This narrative is meagre and confused, but serves to establish the main points. Copie du Certificat donne a Santa Fe aux sept [huit] Francais par le General Hurtado, 24 Juillet, 1739. Pere Rebald au Pere de Beaubois, sans date. Bienville et ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... amongst the little leaders of party in that preposterous capital, watch their little tricks, the rapacity with which they clutch the meanest spoils and wonder how political profligacy grows fat upon diet so meagre and uninviting. He will come away with a conviction, already indorsed by the more respectable portion of the American community, that their government is the most corrupt under the sun; but he will not, with them, lay the flattering notion to his soul, that the people of whom ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... that few of those commodities, which are the objects of commerce, are adulterated to a greater extent than wine. All persons moderately conversant with the subject, are aware, that a portion of alum is added to young and meagre red wines, for the purpose of brightening their colour; that Brazil wood, or the husks of elderberries and bilberries,[27] are employed to impart a deep rich purple tint to red Port of a pale, faint colour; ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... and has been known to influence the manner of his dangling from the gibbet! To hear some one cry, "There goes a proper handsome man," saith our previously quoted authority, Jack Hall, "somewhat ameliorates the terrible thoughts of the meagre tyrant death; and to go in a dirty shirt were enough to save the hangman a labor, and make a man die with grief and shame at being in that deplorable condition." With a gracious smile of condescension, like a popular orator—with a look of blarney like that of ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... quaint, useless presents to both the occupants of the lonely house,—Navajo blankets and Indian jeweler and basket-work,—and Austen little knew how carefully these were packed away and surreptitiously gazed at from time to time. But to Hilary the Western career was a disgrace, and such meagre reports of it as came from other sources than Austen tended only to confirm him ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... gave a free rein to his prodigious powers of satire, which he used to the full in his attacks on Peel. In point of fact, vituperation and sarcasm were his chief weapons of offence. He spoke of Mr. Roebuck as a "meagre-minded rebel," and called Campbell, who was afterwards Lord Chancellor, "a shrewd, coarse, manoeuvring Pict," a "base-born Scotchman," and a "booing, fawning, jobbing progeny of haggis and cockaleekie." When he ceased to be witty, sarcastic, or ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... his veranda, smoking his pipe in stark endurance while the dreadful hours crept by. Sometimes he held a letter from his wife hard clenched in one powerful hand. She wrote to him frequently—short, airy epistles, wholly inconsequent, often provocatively meagre. ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... than usual, and knocked at the door of Ernest's lodging. There was no answer, so he turned the handle, and entered by himself. The remains of breakfast lay upon the table. Arthur did not want to spy, but he couldn't help remarking that these remains were extremely meagre and scanty. Half a loaf of bread stood upon a solitary plate in the centre; a teapot and two cups occupied one side; and—that was all. In spite of himself, he couldn't restrain his curiosity, and he looked more closely at the knives and plates. Not a ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... that evening there was but a meagre sprinkling of guests, among whom I saw my brown-bearded friend sitting alone on a sofa, with his head against the wall. It could not have been curiosity to see Mrs. Amyot that had impelled him to attend the performance, for it would ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... let Aunt Kathryn pass in before me, which she did without a word. We both stood before the fire, holding out gloved hands to the meagre blaze, while little Airole ran about, whimpering and ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... their lids, as it were, he could see that she was again caught up, though her body remained abased, her hands interlocked between her knees, swaying in unison with the petition. The Ensign was a little meagre freckled woman, whose wisps of colourless hair and tight drawn-down lips suggested that in the secular world she would have been bedraggled and a nagger. She gained an elevation, it was plain, from the Bengali ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... lavish, and there he was lavish indeed. His friends still smiled at his zeal, or reproached him for it. It has been only since the mighty growth of the business in his products that they have acknowledged that he was right and that they were wrong. They remember him, sick, meagre, and yellow, now coming to them with a walking-stick of India-rubber, exulting in the new application of his material, and predicting its general use, while they objected that his stick had cost him fifty dollars; now running about among the ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... ragout from a piece of leather, failed for want of materials on which to exercise it. The supplies of flesh, fowl, and—strange to say—fish, were scanty and bad. The French officers in garrison messed, en pension, at our hotel, but their fare, limited by a close economy, was not only meagre, but, with all the accompaniments ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... one of that unfortunate class who have hitherto gained a meagre support from the stolen hire of a few slaves, and who, after entire emancipation, will be stripped of every thing. This is the class upon whom emancipation will fall most heavily; it will at once cast many out of a situation of ease, into the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... premeditation and, as De Quincey said, in a spirit of pure artistry. The lust of fire propels him, and he uses his art to secure wealth. The man may be a tool in the hands of others, however. It's unsafe to generalise on the meagre facts we now have. Oh, well, there is nothing we can do just yet. Let's take a walk, get an early dinner, and be back here ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... after the Lord had spoken unto them He was received up into heaven and sat on the right hand of God." That is all he has to say about the most wonderful thing that ever blessed human vision—about a miracle great enough to have stuffed credulity to bursting; and yet we have one poor, little meagre verse. So, then, after He had quit speaking, He was caught up and sat on the right hand of God. How does he know He was on the right hand? Did he see Him after He had sat down? Luke says: "And it came to pass while He blessed them He was parted from them and was carried ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... hot haste, soon returning with the desired outfit; no doubt looted from some gentleman's closet near by. Quickly she donned it; but here and there were slight alterations to be made, and her fingers were all a-tremble, slackening speed to a meagre haste. She donned a red-hued periwig and cockle hat, then strutted back and forth, proud of her fine appearance, as, indeed, she looked a roguish fop of no mean parts. She flung out into the passage and asked the lad if the horse ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... soldier shouts of triumph over a defeated foe, no bells in ancient belfrys rang, no Te Deums were sung, and no preacher mounted the rostrum to eulogise the victors or to point the moral to the multitude. A small, almost meagre procession, consisting of the Commander-in-Chief and his Staff, with a guard of honour, less than 150 all told, passed through the gate unheralded by a single trumpet note; a purely military act with a minimum of military display ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... belonged to a band of monks living somewhere beyond the mountains; and that he sometimes crossed, searching for stray cattle. That is the history of my sketch, and since I am indebted to you for its recovery, I regret for your sake that it is so meagre." ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... question which puzzled and embarrassed the Dictator. He could methodically balance the forces on either side. The big Republic had measureless tracts of territory, but she had only a comparatively meagre population. Gloria was much smaller in extent—not much larger, say, than France and Germany combined—but she had a denser population. Given something vital to fight about, Ericson felt some hope that Gloria could hold her own. But the ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... would then have reason to rejoice, to see so many of its half-starved manufacturers amply provided for; and the whole tribe of meagre incurables would probably shout for joy, at being delivered from the tyranny and garrets of printers, publishers, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... now he felt that his last hour was come. His little strength was completely worn out in efforts to disentangle himself. Once a day a door opened, and Herr Hippe placed a crust of bread and a cup of water within his reach. On this meagre fare he had subsisted. It was a hard life; but, bad as it was, it was better than the horrible death that menaced him. His brain reeled with terror at the prospect of it. Then, where was Zonela? Why did she not come to his rescue? But she was, perhaps, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... journeying with his eyes for some distance. He vaulted the wall and crossed to the brook, examining it with the curiosity of a fisherman. It was rather disappointing. He didn't believe any self-respecting fish would deign to inhabit such meagre quarters. But it was a fascinating little stream for all of that, and it sang and purled and had such a jolly good time all to itself that unconsciously Wade fell into step with it, so to speak, and kept it company through the meadow. Swallows darted above him and ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... said to have been the produce of long and patient labor. The epithet of "slow" was early given to him by Rochester, and was frequently repeated. In truth his mind, unless we are greatly mistaken, was naturally a very meagre soil, and was forced only by great labor and outlay to bear fruit which, after all, was not of the highest flavor. He has scarcely more claim to originality than Terence. It is not too much to say that there is hardly anything of the least value in his plays of which the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... robe of office an unctuous leathery surtout was all too visible, peered in vain through a pair of massive horn-spectacles into a huge timber-swathed volume in search of the act, the provisions of which I had violated. At length, the schoolmaster—a meagre, pensive-looking scarecrow, industriously patched all over—came to his assistance, turned over the ponderous code by which the little community were governed, and having rummaged out the law, and the clause under the provisions of which I had been so summarily ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... and Salve's neighbours on either side were now playing eagerly with dice, diving from time to time for small silver pieces into heavy leathern purses, that seemed to have been destined for sums very different from what their present meagre contents represented. So many debased, avaricious countenances as he saw around him he had never imagined that it would be possible to collect in one spot, and he made up his mind to have no more to do with them than he could possibly help. ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... roused herself, and managed to furnish very scantily the little home where Katherine sat thinking. But the addition to their income was but meagre compared to the expenses which followed in the train of Mrs Frederic Liddell and her ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... seen the dusky visages of my Indian attendants, bending in earnest devotion round the magic narrative, that flowed, half poetry, half prose, from the lips of the tale-teller! No wonder that European fiction sounds cold and meagre, after the wonderful effects which I have seen the romances of the East produce ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... she assented; she handled an oar very well, he found out, and the exercise became her. Winslow tried to get her to talk about herself, but failed signally and had to content himself with Mrs. Pennington's meagre information. He told her about himself frankly enough—how he had had fever in the spring and had been ordered to spend the summer in the country and do nothing useful until his health was fully restored, and ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... may appear to be somewhat meagre, when compared with the great volumes usually consecrated to Aesthetic. But it will not seem so, when it is observed that these volumes, as regards nine-tenths of their contents, are full of matter which does not appertain to Aesthetic, such as definitions, ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... crouched trembling in the nest. The Chatterer came directly to the tree—I remember it was an oak tree—and began to climb up. And he never ceased for a moment from his infernal row. As I have said, our language was extremely meagre, and he must have strained it by the variety of ways in which he informed me of his undying hatred of me and of his intention there and then to ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... thus made plain to our apprehensions in the case of a foreign language is partially true even with the tongue we learned in childhood. Indeed, we all speak different dialects; one shall be copious and exact, another loose and meagre; but the speech of the ideal talker shall correspond and fit upon the truth of fact - not clumsily, obscuring lineaments, like a mantle, but cleanly adhering, like an athlete's skin. And what is the result? ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cooks and coachmen were put at his disposal. He was lodged in the same apartments in which Saxe had lived, when, at the height of power and glory, he visited Prussia. Frederic, indeed, stooped for a time even to use the language of adulation. He pressed to his lips the meagre hand of the little grinning skeleton, whom he regarded as the dispenser of immortal renown. He would add, he said, to the titles which he owed to his ancestors and his sword, another title, derived from his last and proudest acquisition. His style ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... by the fear of its destruction, a comparision of 217,299 would-be purchasers in six years with 8,992 in two years demonstrates that the abolition of dual ownership has been thrown back to the conditions which called for the Treaty of 1903. Furthermore, it is proper to discount, in turn, even the meagre total of 8,992. For it includes the remainders of estates, other parts of which had been sold under the Act of 1903 and the spurt of applications expedited, in this case, by the revolution of last August. To the over-sanguine and the over-timid this seemed to foreshadow the rapid passage ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... without directing a single person to institute any search, she simply took some refuse twigs, and making up a few mace, she despatched them with the meagre message that they had been sent by madame Wang, and that there was, in fact, no more; subsequently reporting to madame Wang that she had asked for and obtained all there was and that she had collected as much as two taels, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Pedro with a judicial frown. Then he stuck out a finger at the horse, keeping the thumb hooked in his pocket. So meagre a gesture was felt by the ruffled Shorty to be no just way to point at Pedro. "What's the matter with that foreleg ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... visit my estate. I was at New Orleans, which city was just then held fast in the gripe of its annual scourge and visitor, the yellow fever. I was in a manner left alone; all my friends had gone up or down stream, or across the Pont Chartrain. There was nothing to be seen in the whole place but meagre hollow-eyed negresses, shirtless and masterless, running about the streets, howling like jackals, or crawling in and out of the open doors of the houses. In the upper suburb things were at the worst; there, whole streets were deserted, the houses empty, the doors and windows knocked ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... doubt your warranty, fair uncle," said the youth; "you are the only adviser my mishap has left me. But is it true, as fame says, that this King keeps a meagre Court here at his Castle of Plessis? No repair of nobles or courtiers, none of his grand feudatories in attendance, none of the high officers of the crown; half solitary sports, shared only with the menials of his household; secret councils, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... to give to Christ; yet it is a comfort to know that our friendship really is precious to him, and adds to his joy, poor and meagre though its best may be—but he has infinite blessings to give to us. "I call you friends." No other gift he gives to us can equal in value the love and friendship of his heart. When Cyrus gave Artabazus, one of his courtiers, a gold cup, he gave Chrysanthus, his favorite, only a kiss. And ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... a full account of himself, but only a meagre report was recorded. He said that he came from Richmond, and left because he was on the point of being sold by John A. Smith, who owned him. He gave Smith credit for being a tolerable fair kind of a slave-holder, but added, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... his most ingratiating smile, silently beckoned Scott to enter. With a quick glance the latter took in every detail of the second apartment. It was somewhat larger than the first, but the furnishing was meagre and shabby in the extreme, and, with the exception of a small set of shelves containing a few dilapidated volumes, there were no visible signs ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... sometimes getting lower, like a strange throbbing sob; and then once more it ceased. The audience hesitated a moment, being not quite certain whether the music was really finished or not. Then when they saw Margaritis rise from the piano, some meagre well-bred applause was heard, and an immense sigh of relief. The people streamed into the other rooms, and the conversation became loud ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... up the stairs to his room and found Ling Chu polishing the meagre stock of silver which Tarling possessed. Ling Chu was a thief-catcher and a great detective, but he had also taken upon himself the business of attending to Tarling's personal comfort. The detective spoke no word, out went straight to the cupboard where he kept his foreign ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... Servetus had rendered many services to scientific truth, and one of these was an edition of Ptolemy's Geography, in which Judea was spoken of, not as "a land flowing with milk and honey," but, in strict accordance with the truth, as, in the main, meagre, barren, and inhospitable. In his trial this simple statement of geographical fact was used against him by his arch-enemy John Calvin with fearful power. In vain did Servetus plead that he had simply ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... last thirty or forty years, Handsworth was little more than a pleasant country village, though now a well-populated suburb of Birmingham. The name is to be found in the "Domesday Book," but the ancient history of the parish is meagre indeed, and confined almost solely to the families of the lords of the manor, the Wyrleys, Stanfords, &c., their marriages and intermarriages, their fancies and feuds, and all those petty trifles chroniclers of old were so fond of recording. ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... her meagre dress flapping about her knees like a flag. But at the foot of the rickety outer steps that ran across the bare front of the shack crookedly, like a broken arm, I ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... somewhat tattered, permitted a soiled and faded under-dress to make itself perceptible, giving to the old man the appearance of indigence and slovenliness. Nothing, not even the face, or the thin and meagre hands he extended to his servants, was neat and cleanly; nothing about him shone but his eyes, those gray, piercing eyes with their fiery side-glances and their now kind and now sly and subtle expression. This ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... de Yanks go troo de kentry like an ol bull in a crock'ry sto'." In his duties of waiting on the troopers and clearing the table he had opportunities of purloining a goodly portion of the viands, for he remembered that he also had assumed the role of host with a very meagre larder ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... approach is the row of unswathed mummies that follow. Here, in each coffin over which we bend, there is a face which stares at us—or else closes its eyes in order that it may not see us; and meagre shoulders and lean arms, and hands with overgrown nails that protrude from miserable rags. And each royal mummy that our lantern lights reserves for us a fresh surprise and the shudder of a different fear—they resemble one another so little. Some of them seem to laugh, showing their yellow ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... me hied far * And you left a lover shall aye outcry: I wot not where on this earth you be * And how long this patience when none is nigh: Ye fared and my eyeballs your absence weep, * And my frame is meagre, my ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... excites our curiosity. Men gaze with awe at the inscription on an ancient Egyptian or Assyrian stone; they hold with reverential touch the yellow parchment-roll whose dim, defaced characters record the meagre learning of a buried nationality; and the announcement that for centuries the tropical forests of Central America have hidden within their tangled growth the ruined homes and temples of a past race, stirs the civilized world with a strange, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... for such an apostolate. The old type of evangelism has plainly had its day. Strenuous efforts are put forth to revive it, but their success is meagre. It is easy by expending much money in advertising, by organizing a great choir, and employing the services of gifted and earnest men, to draw large congregations; but the great mass of those who attend these services are church members,—the outside multitude is scarcely, touched by them. ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... March, 537, and lasted a year and nine days, till March, 538, a siege perhaps the most memorable of all that "Roma AEterna" has seen and has groaned under, as part of the penalty of her undying greatness, it will be impossible here to give even a meagre outline. The events of those wonderful 374 days are chronicled almost with the graphic minuteness of a Kinglake by a man whom we may call the literary assessor of Belisarius, the rhetorician Procopius of Caesarea. One or two incidents of the siege may be briefly ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... a fallen log binding up the heavy ropes of her hair. Before her were spread the meagre adjuncts of her toilet, in all conscience slim enough for any masculine runner of the forest,—a dozen little pegs hand-whittled from hard wood and polished to finest gloss by contact ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... The meagre information from there, left him, as has been seen, to act very much on possibilities. These, however, were dark and storm-laden; he felt that England was confronted by her whole destiny in India. On the other hand, the operations in China were the result of ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne |
