"Scantiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... figure and agile military bearing seemed likely to preserve to him for some time longer. Although he had conquered the difficulty of his gray hair, reducing its silvery reflections by keeping it cut very close, he was less resigned to the scantiness of his moustache, which he wore in youthful style, twirled to a sharp point by means of a Hungarian cosmetic, which also preserved to a certain degree its primitive color. But whoso wants to prove too much proves nothing, and ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... really astounding, when we consider the scantiness of the means. No pig's or sheep's pepsin can rival that of the worm. I have a bottle of pepsin that comes from the School of Chemistry at Montpellier. I lavishly powder some pieces of hard-boiled white of egg with the potent drug, just as I did with the eggs of the Bluebottle. The oven is not ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... accustomed to keep his snuff. The absence of any pocket at all in the usual direction, suddenly recalled to his recollection the fact that he had no waistcoat on; and this leading him to a contemplation of the extreme scantiness of his attire, he shut the door abruptly, and retired upstairs ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... instinctively that it was Miss Grayson—was meager of visage and figure, with high cheek bones, thin curls flat down on her temples, and a black dress worn and old. The room exhibited the same age and scantiness, the same aspect of cold poverty, with its patched carpet and the slender ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... a haunting, almost a morbid feeling that a lifetime had passed since last his car had turned out of the station gates and he had seen the moorland unroll itself before his eyes. There was a new pungency in the autumn air, an unaccustomed scantiness in the herbiage of the moor and the low hedges growing from the top of the stone walls. The glory of the heather had passed, though here and there a clump of brilliant yellow gorse remained. The telegraph posts, leaning away from the wind, seemed somehow scantier; the ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to the scantiness of the attire of the Paraguayan women at one period of the war. Some terrible facts are related in connection with this matter, showing the horrible desperation and sternness with which Lopez conducted his military operations, bringing untold woe on his own people in his savage resolve ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... terror, she answered him that the rascal should be in the shed by the stables, where it was his wont to sleep. Out into the rain, despite the scantiness of his attire, went Charlot, followed closely by La Boulaye and one or two stragglers. The shed proved empty, as Caron could have told him—and so, too, did the stables. Here, at the spot where Madame de Bellecour's coachman had been left bound, the Captain turned to La Boulaye ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... twelve hundred," said Richard, affecting the indifference of his companion, but feeling privately humbled by the scantiness of ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... Early Middle English. Decay of Anglo-Saxon. Early Middle English Literature. Scantiness of its constituents. Layamon. The form of the Brut. Its substance. The Ormulum: Its metre, its spelling. The Ancren Riwle. The Owl and the Nightingale. Proverbs. Robert of Gloucester. Romances. Havelok the Dane. King Horn. The prosody of the modern ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... then the average full life of aged parents should be added, or say sixty years more, making a total of at least one hundred and forty years since the immigration. Something might, it is true, be allowed for a sojourn at intermediate points: and the scantiness of the remarks is also to be remembered. But there remains to account for the considerable population which had grown up in the land from apparently one centre. If the original intruders were four hundred, for example, then in doubling every twenty years, they would ...
— Hochelagans and Mohawks • W. D. Lighthall
... inner door was thrown wide open and inquisitive faces were peering in at it. Coarse laughing faces with pipes and cigarettes and heads wearing caps thrust themselves in at the doorway. Further in could be seen figures in dressing gowns flung open, in costumes of unseemly scantiness, some of them with cards in their hands. They were particularly diverted, when Marmeladov, dragged about by his hair, shouted that it was a consolation to him. They even began to come into the room; at last a sinister shrill outcry was heard: this came from Amalia ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... collectors. Macnaghten summoned the chiefs to Cabul. They came, they did homage to the Shah and swore allegiance to him; they went away from the capital pledging each other to his overthrow, and jeering at the scantiness of the force they had seen at Cabul. Intercepted letters disclosed their schemes, and in the end of September Sale, with a considerable force, marched out to chastise the disaffected Kohistanees. The fort of Tootundurrah ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... the fat of the animal which is about the paunch, and then he offers them with fire; and the rest of the flesh they eat on that day of full moon upon which they have held the sacrifice, but on any day after this they will not taste of it: the poor however among them by reason of the scantiness of their means shape pigs of dough and having baked them they ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... unfortunate countrymen. The confessor, an Italian who spoke German, kept it, and never gave relief from it to any of them, most of whom were suffering, not only from privation of wholesome air, to which, among other privations, they never had been accustomed, but also from scantiness of nourishment and clothing. Even in Mantua, where, as in the rest of Italy, sympathy is both weak and silent, the lowest of the people were indignant at the sight of so brave a defender of his country led into the public square to expiate a crime unheard ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... of their bedroom in costumes as yet by no means completed. Yet when, in reply to the demand of the squire as to what was the meaning of this arrival, it was briefly explained to him that his daughter had attempted to elope with his guest, he descended to the porch without regard to scantiness of clothing. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... to lie down on, not a bench to sit on. Many were almost without cloaths. The dysentery, fever, phrenzy and despair prevailed among them, and filled the place with filth, disgust and horror. The scantiness of the allowance, the bad quality of the provisions, the brutality of the guards, and the sick, pining for comforts they could not obtain, altogether furnished continually one of the greatest scenes of human distress and misery ever beheld. It was now the middle of October, the weather ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... seemed to spring up out of the bare coral. On approaching the place, we found that a little island, about the size of Palm-islet was there in process of formation. Notwithstanding the exposed and barren character of the locality, and the scantiness of the soil, which was not anywhere a foot in depth. It was covered with a thrifty vegetation, among which were several well-grown-palms, a group of young casuarinas, and some ferns and tournefortias. Nor was this ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... on the feet and very quickly dried. The calves of our legs, however, being left bare, we were obliged, for state occasions at least, to retain and utilize the upper portion of our old stockings. It was owing to this scantiness of wardrobe that we were obliged when taking a bath by the roadside streams to make a quick wash of our linen, and put it on wet to dry, or allow it to flutter from the handle-bars as we rode along. It was astonishing even ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... the feeble flame of the newly-lighted fire, he had a rather patchy air. Shelton, on the other hand, had lost his feeling of fatigue; the strangeness of the place was stimulating his brain; he kept stealing glances at the scantiness around; the room, the parson, the furniture, the very fire, all gave him the feeling caused by seeing legs that have outgrown their trousers. But there was something underlying that leanness of the landscape, something superior ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... France, which, from the peculiarity of their soil and situation, exclusively yield wine of a certain flavour, is sold of course at a price very far exceeding the cost of production. And this is owing to the greatness of the competition for such wine, compared with the scantiness of its supply; which confines the use of it to so small a number of persons, that they are able, and rather than go without it, willing, to give an excessively high price. But if the fertility of these lands were increased, so as very considerably ...
— Nature and Progress of Rent • Thomas Malthus
... recover my canoe at the western end of the island, which I reached in three days, but suffering severely from the soreness of my feet, and the scantiness of provisions. This island is not so plentifully stored as Roatan, so that during the five or six days of my residence, I had difficulty in procuring subsistence; and the insects were, besides, infinitely more numerous ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... of reading pleased him, nor whether he was addicted to books; but he was a great admirer of Voltaire, with whom he had conversed in early life, and whose style, of its class, is perfect. He always deplored the scantiness of his classical attainments, and, particularly, his ignorance of the Greek tongue; and, so far as this volume teaches us, he would not appear to have been what it is customary to call a learned man. M. Colmache gives us certain "maxims for seasoning ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... many criticisms passed on the English law the manner in which it has been enunciated seems to have been lost sight of. The hesitation of our courts in declaring principles may be much more reasonably attributed to the comparative scantiness of our precedents, voluminous as they appear to him who is acquainted with no other system, than to the temper of our judges. It is true that in the wealth of legal principle we are considerably poorer than several modern European nations, But they, it must be remembered, took the ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... to recall to the recollection of those around me, the circumstances under which the project of undertaking an overland journey to Port Essington was formed. The smallness of your party, and the scantiness of its equipment, the length and unknown character of the country proposed to be traversed, induced many to regard the scheme as one characterised by rashness, and the means employed as wholly inadequate towards ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... Plata, and not very far from the mouth of the estuary. It is a most quiet, forlorn, little town; built, as is universally the case in these countries, with the streets running at right angles to each other, and having in the middle a large plaza or square, which, from its size, renders the scantiness of the population more evident. It possesses scarcely any trade; the exports being confined to a few hides and living cattle. The inhabitants are chiefly landowners, together with a few shopkeepers and the necessary tradesmen, ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... forget the primary object of clothing, and to think of it too much as a means of adornment. This leads to excesses and follies such as tight waists, high-heeled shoes, to the ungainly crinoline or to indecent scantiness of skirts. Direct interference in these matters is badly tolerated, but much may be accomplished both by example and by cultivating a refined and artistic ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... had witnessed or heard of—how, between decks too low to admit of a full-grown man standing upright, the wretched victims, chained to the sides of the ships, lay squeezed together in such numbers, though the whole voyage was within the tropics, that, from the overpowering heat and scantiness of food, it was estimated that two-thirds of each cargo died on the passage. Most fortunately for the credit of England, the fearful trade was brought under the notice of a young member of Parliament singularly zealous in the cause ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... literally transcribed by Bede, which confirm the brief statements of the "Saxon Chronicle" (7). But there is, throughout, such a want of precision and simplicity, such a barrenness of facts amidst a multiplicity of words, such a scantiness of names of places and persons, of dates, and other circumstances, that we are obliged to have recourse to the Saxon Annals, or to Venerable Bede, to supply the absence of those two great lights ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... aunt, I saw reasons for declining the attempt. It was not only that, having passed the three score years and ten usually allotted to man's strength, and being unaccustomed to write for publication, I might well distrust my ability to complete the work, but that I also knew the extreme scantiness of the materials out of which it must be constructed. The grave closed over my aunt fifty-two years ago; and during that long period no idea of writing her life had been entertained by any of her family. Her nearest relatives, far ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... to speak of Thomas Whately, to whom I have already alluded, and of whom, from the scantiness of all record of his life, it is possible to say only very little. He lived at Nonsuch Park, in Surrey, not many miles from London, on the road to Epsom. He was engaged in public affairs, being at one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... in general much less. At the time of the Major's expedition, the water actually flowing, as seen at one or two shallow places, did not exceed in quantity that which would be necessary to turn a mill. But, with all this scantiness of supply during the dry season then prevailing,[16] the marks of tremendous inundations were plain upon the surface of the country, frequently extending two miles back from the ordinary channel of the waters. And everywhere the banks of the river displayed the ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... The old constitution was set to work; the Volksraad again met; Mr. Stephen John Paul Kruger, who had been the leading figure in the triumvirate, was chosen by the people to be President, and has subsequently been thrice re-elected to that office. Undismayed by the scantiness of his State resources, he formed bold and far-reaching plans of advance on the three sides which lay open to him. To the north a trek was projected, and some years later was nearly carried out, for the occupation of Mashonaland. To the south bands of Boer adventurers entered Zululand, the ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... who was a lover of verse, "how true it is that poetry lends an illusive charm to conceptions ordinary in themselves, like a lovely screen which bestows a grace on the scantiness it only half conceals. Poetry hath an ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... of Mr. Gladstone's prowess as a woodcutter, and to some it may even have been matter of surprise to see no scantiness of trees in the Park at Hawarden. It is true that he attacks trees with the same vigour as he attacks abuses in the body politic, {32b} but he attacks them on the same principle—they are blemishes and not ornaments. No one more scrupulously respects a sound ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone
... up and down were rows of people with baskets between their legs and papers before their faces; and all showed by some peculiarity of air or dress the excess of heat which they had already borne, and to which they seemed to look forward, and gave by the scantiness of their number a vivid impression of the uncounted thousands within doors prolonging, before the day's terror began, the oblivion ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of the Pampas whispered something to a very small brother beside her, who was remarkable chiefly for the size of his gorgeous eyes and the scantiness of his costume. With ready obedience the urchin unhooked a miniature lasso from the wall, and lassoed a large hen. How the brother and sister executed that hen ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... the gratuitous supplies of food, of physical enjoyments and of spectacles to the idle populace of the towns, the excesses of public and private luxury, the enormity of unproductive expenditure, and all this in a society which, without our machines, supported itself by hand-labor; next, the scantiness and dearness of available capital, a legal rate of interest at twelve per cent, the latifundia, the oberati, the oppression of the working classes, the diminution of free laborers, the exhaustion of slaves, depopulation and impoverishment, at the end the colon attached to his glebe, the workman ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the ordinary solemnities, and such as were due to every distinguished Roman. Certainly his corpse was burned in a foreign country because of the long journey, in such a manner as it was, but afterward it was but just to have compensated the scantiness of the first ceremony by the increased solemnity of the last; his brother met him but one day's journey, his uncle not, even at the gate. Where were those observances of the ancients, the effigies of the dead laid in state on a bed, hymns composed in memory of departed virtue, with ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... bore no small part. They were poor. The father had been a diplomat of some distinction who, at his death, left his wife no other source of income than the widow's pension. Two sons were abroad as attaches of an embassy, struggling with the scantiness of their salary and the demands of their position. The mother and daughter lived in Madrid, chained to the society in which they were born, fearing to abandon it, as if that would be equivalent to a degradation, remaining during the day in a fourth-floor apartment, furnished with the remnants ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... silenced by the scantiness of her vocabulary, but through her mind still whirled wordless outcries of rebellion. Her one brief visit to the city rose before her with all the horror of the inexplicable, strange, and repellent life which it ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... especially, require time and culture before man can enjoy them. To rude races her processes bring only terror, which is very slowly outgrown. Humboldt has best exhibited the scantiness of finer natural perceptions in Greek and Roman literature, in spite of the grand oceanic anthology of Homer, and the delicate water-coloring of the Greek Anthology and of Horace. The Oriental and the Norse ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... exclaimed a young woman more remarkable for prettiness than neatness, and more remarkable still for the scantiness of her attire, nearly all of which had been torn from her rounded shoulders in ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... could do for the man who had manifested JESUS to them. And when that is the spirit, the liberality will often be surprising. Not long ago in one of our North American missions a small meeting of poor Christian Indians apologized for the scantiness of their collection for missionary objects; it was worth only L7; they would do ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... exponent of the role of "The Chiffon Girl," the idol of the pit and gallery, Queen regnant over the hearts beating behind the polished shirt-fronts in the stalls, has lived to hear herself pitied—not envied, but commiserated—for the scantiness of the costume in which it is alike her privilege and her joy to trill and caper seven times in the week before her patrons and adorers. Small wonder that she feels her carefully-manicured nails elongating with the desire to ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... of visiters might come than had been expected. Mary immediately informed her Son. She saw that this circumstance occasioned confusion, she knew the power of Jesus, and she wished to spare the feelings of the new-married pair, who might have been exposed to censure for the scantiness of the supply. If these were her real sentiments, they were worthy of her character and sex. Let this example of amiable concern for the reputation of another, and the general comfort of the guests at this nuptial feast, stimulate us ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... deficient, that the slaves were frequently found gasping for life, and almost suffocated. The pulse with which they had been said to be favoured, were absolutely English horse-beans. The legislature of Jamaica had stated the scantiness both of water and provisions, as a subject which called for the interference of parliament. As Mr. Norris had said, the song and the dance were promoted, he could not pass over these expressions without telling the house what they meant. It ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... what Rienzi did, we must look to his means, to the difficulties that surrounded him, to the scantiness of his resources. We see a man without rank, wealth, or friends, raising himself to the head of a popular government in the metropolis of the Church—in the City of the Empire. We see him reject any title save that of a ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... interesting audience two evil-looking kleptomaniacs, buffalo-herders dressed in next to nothing, who eye my garments drying on the bushes with lingering covetousness. It is scarcely necessary to add that I watch them quite as interestingly myself; for, while I pity the scantiness of their wardrobe, I have nothing that I could possibly spare among mine. A network of irrigating ditches, many of them overflowed, render this valley difficult to traverse with a bicycle, and I reach a large village about noon, myself and wheel ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... in the main, they did not possess sufficient data to prove themselves right. No human authority, however high, can maintain itself against the voice of Nature speaking through experiment. But the voice of Nature may be an uncertain voice, through the scantiness of data. This was the case at the period now referred to, and at such a period, by the authority of Newton, ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... take with themselves: who, because of the inconceivableness of something they find in one, throw themselves violently into the contrary hypothesis, though altogether as unintelligible to an unbiassed understanding. This serves not only to show the weakness and the scantiness of our knowledge, but the insignificant triumph of such sort of arguments; which, drawn from our own views, may satisfy us that we can find no certainty on one side of the question: but do not at all thereby help us to truth by running into the opposite opinion; which, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... the darkest regions of the East, and the blame of this rests entirely upon the Greek hierarchy, who discountenance all attempts to the spiritual improvement of the people, who, poor things, are exceedingly willing to receive instruction, and, notwithstanding the scantiness of their means in general for the most part, eagerly buy the tracts which a few pious English Christians cause to be printed and hawked in the neighbourhood. But no one is better aware, Sir, than yourself that without the Scriptures men can never be brought to a true sense of ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... has always lived in the valley, he is full of memories of it, and especially early memories; recalling the comparative scantiness of its population when he was a boy, and the great extent of the common; and the warm banks where hedgehogs abounded—hedgehogs which his father used to kill and cook; and the wells of good water, so few and precious that each had its local name. For instance, "Butcher's Well" (so-called to ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... Scantiness of furniture is certainly a powerful factor in hygiene; here physical and psychical hygiene are at one. In our schools we recommend the use of "light" furniture, which is correspondingly simple, and economical in the extreme. If it be washable, so much the better, especially ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... upon the masterly execution of the Life of DRYDEN, which we have seen[158] was one of Johnson's literary projects at an early period, and which it is remarkable, that after desisting from it, from a supposed scantiness of materials, he should, at an advanced age, have ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... the usual tendency is towards an improper scantiness. Here, too, asceticism peeps out. There is a current theory, vaguely entertained if not put into a definite formula, that the sensations are to be disregarded. They do not exist for our guidance, but to mislead us, seems to be the ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... a notion that what prevented her perhaps from going off in one great, nervous leap, was the scantiness of her attire. The wicker armchair was the most substantial thing about her person. What she had on under that dingy, loose, amber wrapper must have been of the most flimsy and airy character. One could not help being aware of it. It was ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... love, leading to glad flinging away of life to pleasure the beloved, are freely given to men, but too often withheld from God, We lavish on our beloveds or on our chosen leaders, a devotion that ought to shame us, when contrasted with the scantiness of our grudging devotion and self-surrender to Him. If we loved God a tenth part as ardently as we love our wives or husbands or parents or children, and were willing to do and bear as much for Him as we are willing to bear for them, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was a striking-looking person, notwithstanding the oddness and shabbiness of her dress. Scantiness is a better word for it than shabbiness, for her dress was of good material, neat and well preserved, but it was without a superfluous fold or gather, and in those days, when, even in country places, crinoline was beginning to assert itself, she did look ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... The scantiness of our acquaintance with Roman Christianity in Britain is the more to be regretted, because it would have been very interesting to compare its manifestations with those of the Church which found refuge in the West during the ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... better appointment; but in Upper Canada, where the traces of civilisation are less evident throughout, and become gradually more faint as we advance westward, the fortresses and harbours bear the same proportion In strength and extent to the scantiness of the population they are erected to protect. Even at the present day, along that line of remote country we have selected for the theatre of our labours, the garrisons are both few in number and weak in strength, and evidence of cultivation is seldom to be ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... has been made in this paper to the subject of slavery, which bulks so large in almost every study of the war. A similar scantiness of allusion to slavery is noticeable in the Memorial volume, to which I have already referred; a volume which was prepared, not to produce an impression on the Northern mind, but to indulge a natural desire to honor the fallen soldiers of the Confederacy; a book written ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... deck of their hulk. In the most good-humoured way possible, they asked their neighbours how many geese and turkeys they had discussed that day. The meagre answer called forth shouts of merriment, and the poor fellows belonging to the other ship were rather unhandsomely taunted with the scantiness of their Christmas fare. "Look at that and weep, you hungry-faced rascals!" exclaimed one of our jolly blades, holding up the drumstick of a goose in one hand and that of a turkey in the other. He was answered by the practical joke of having the two bones twisted from his hands and shyed in his face, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... Harry noted the scantiness of their costume, which consisted chiefly of a strip of cloth about the waist, and another strip thrown over the shoulder or disposed of in some fantastic way. Their skins were black, though not of the inky, coal-like color of the pure-blooded African negro. Their hair was curly, but did not ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... to an experienced practitioner, as with the art of war In the grammar schools, as we may call them, the course was purely literary and humanistic, and it was conducted both in Greek and Latin, but chiefly in Greek, as a natural result of the comparative scantiness of Latin literature.[287] Homer, Hesiod, and Menander were the favourite authors studied; only later on, after the full bloom of the Augustan literature, did Latin poets, especially Virgil and Horace, take a place of almost equal importance. The study of the Greek poets was apparently a ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... was enchanted. The one difficulty lay in the scantiness of her information. She made up her mind, however, like a good general, that the difficulty must somehow be overcome, and accepted without visible hesitation. Before she left the Casino she invited the journalist to call, with the intention of pumping him, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Constantins, p. 65) treats this inference o: Gibbon, and the authorities to which he appeals, with too much contempt, considering the general scantiness of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... had better be dispensed with. However, I pushed on to St. Germain, threaded its long streets, looked down from the height over its magnificent tract of forest and turned westward down the Seine. Owing to the scantiness of villages, I was obliged to walk an hour and a half in the wind and darkness, before I reached a solitary inn. As I opened the door and asked for lodging, the landlady inquired if I had the necessary papers. I answered in ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... such homes as poverty alone could not make. Still less, when we gaze upon some pleasant looking village, fair enough in outward seeming for poets' songs to celebrate, should we expect to find scarcity of fuel, scantiness of food, prevalence of fever, the healthy huddled together with the sick, decency outraged, and self-respect all gone. And yet such sights, both in town and country, if not of habitual occurrence, are at any rate sadly too numerous for us to ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... the fashions of his day, alluding to the "sinful costly array of clothing, namely, in too much superfluity or else indisordinate scantiness!" Changing fashions have always been the despair of writers who have tried to lay down rules for aesthetic effect in dress. "An Englishman," says Harrison, "endeavouring some time to write of our attire... when he saw what a difficult piece of work he had ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... impolitic of all things,—unequal taxation. It would throw upon one description of persons in the community that burden which ought by fair and equitable distribution to rest upon the whole. None on account of their dignity should be exempt; none (preserving due proportion) on account of the scantiness of their means. The moment a man is exempted from the maintenance of the community, he is in a sort separated from it,—he loses ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... lady, madam! Ah, from a child she knew the right from wrong; but sorrowful was her life, after her mamma's death. She was no squanderer of her father's money—she knew the value of every thing; no waste, no scantiness was her mode. But it was a sad day when she ceased to rule in her father's house. O, Madam, I have seen her so treated! But it will come home at last to those who have triumphed in their wickedness; justice overtakes sinners ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... one among a busy throng, to what extent we succeeded. It was as a man confined in a dungeon, whose small and grated rift at first renders the doubtful light more sensibly obscure, till, the visual orb having drunk in the beam, and adapted itself to its scantiness, he finds that clear noon inhabits his cell. So we, a simple triad on empty earth, were multiplied to each other, till we became all in all. We stood like trees, whose roots are loosened by the wind, which support one another, leaning ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... church-yards; and it does not often happen that anything, in a greater degree discriminate or appropriate to the dead or to the living, is to be found in them. This want of discrimination has been ascribed by Dr. Johnson, in his Essay upon the epitaphs of Pope, to two causes; first, the scantiness of the objects of human praise; and, secondly, the want of variety in the characters of men; or, to use his own words, 'to the fact, that the greater part of mankind have no character at all.' Such language may be holden without blame among the generalities ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... armchair without appearing too lame. The room seemed to me twice as wide to cross as the Champ de Mars, for hardly had I taken a step in its chilly atmosphere—the fire had gone out, it was April, and the chateau overlooked the Loire—when the cold reminded me of the scantiness of my costume. What! to cross the room before that angel, who was doubtless watching me, in the most grotesque of costumes, and with a helpless leg into the bargain! Why had I forgotten my dressing-gown? However, I reached the armchair, into which I sank. I seized my dress-coat ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... This scantiness of dress became the subject of protest, of justification, of discussion in press, in public and ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... five years of age, quite the pet nursling of the school."[3] But though at first, no doubt, these two babies were pleased by the change of scene and the companionship of children, trouble was to befall them. Not the mere distasteful scantiness of their food, the mere cold of their bodies; they saw their elder sister grow thinner, paler day by day, no care taken of her, no indulgence made for her weakness. The poor ill-used, ill-nourished child grew very ill without complaining; but at last even the authorities at Cowan's Bridge ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... the seditions of his men, and the suggestions of his own despair. He had, at length, sent a mere tantalizing message, by a man known to be one of his bitterest enemies, with a present of food, which, from its scantiness, seemed ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... of the sanctifying operations of the Holy Spirit, appears to have met with still worse treatment. It would be to convey a very inadequate idea of the scantiness of the conceptions on this head, of the bulk of the Christian world, to affirm merely, that they are too little conscious of the inefficacy of their own unassisted endeavours after holiness of heart and life, and that they ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... According to the judgment of our poet, his father was a man of strong character and understanding. Banished from his native country, and engaged in providing for his family, he was prevented by the scantiness of his fortune, and the cares of his situation, from rising to that eminence which he might have otherwise attained. But his admiration of Cicero, in an age when that author was universally neglected, was a proof of his ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... scantiness of his spoil. His real reward was his restoration at Court. He sent a letter by Sir Anthony Ashley to Cecil on July 7. After extolling Essex for having behaved both valiantly and advisedly in the highest degree, without pride and without cruelty, he expressed a hope that her Majesty would take his ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... against institutions sanctioned by experience, all the great executive duties had been devolved either on committees of congress, or on boards consisting of several members. This unwieldy and expensive system had maintained itself against all the efforts of reason and public utility. But the scantiness of the national means at length prevailed over prejudice, and the several committees and boards yielded to a secretary for foreign affairs, a superintendent of finance, a secretary of war, and a secretary of marine. But so miserably defective was the organization ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... ladies was classic in its scantiness, especially at balls and parties. The fashionable ball dress was of white India crape, and five breadths, each a quarter of a yard wide, were all that was asked for to make a skirt, which only came down to the ankles, and was elaborately ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... subject, I refer the reader to Mr Suessmilch's tables. The extracts that I have made are sufficient to shew the periodical, though irregular, returns of sickly seasons, and it seems highly probable that a scantiness of room and food was one of the principal causes that ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... current fiction was not written down, but travelled from mouth to mouth, as it does in the Orient to-day, this fact must have been realized—that, in the short-story, plot is superior to style. Among modern writers, however, there has been a growing tendency to make up for scantiness of plot by high literary workmanship; the result has been in reality not a short-story, but a descriptive sketch or vignette, dealing chiefly with moods and landscapes. So much has this been the case that the writer of a recent Practical Treatise on the Art ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... aged 36 years. For dropsy of the belly and legs, and scantiness of urine, of several weeks standing, took three grains of the powder twice a day, and was quite restored in ten days. She took many ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... frugality, lack, scantiness, defect, economy, inadequacy, need, shortcoming, deficiency, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... free from any such commitment. He said, "I go to Him that sent me;" "I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also." The references to locality are vague and mysterious. The nature of his words, and their scantiness, are as if he had said, We shall live hereafter; we shall be with the Father; we shall be together. All the rest is mystery, even to me: it is not important to be known, and the Father hath concealed it. Such, almost, are his very words. "A little while, and ye shall not see me; again, a ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... introducing all the anti-historical monstrosities that a vain imagination could suggest. Here we have the other method of making the past a living reality; for historical data subjective fancies are substituted, whose merit is measured by their boldness—that is, the scantiness of the particulars on which they are based and the peremptoriness with which they contravene the best established ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... converted into a city. Indeed, their arrival at the place at all seemed very like the crafty design of some persons who were minded to form a city. The aversion was not unnatural, since the majority of the soldiers had not left their homes on so long a voyage from scantiness or subsistence, but attracted by the fame of Cyrus's virtues; some of them bringing followers, while others had expended money on the expedition. And amongst them was a third set who had run away from fathers and mothers; ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... the very low temperatures on the earth under the equator at a height where the barometer stands at about three times as high as on Mars, proves that from scantiness of atmosphere alone Mars cannot possibly have a temperature as high as the freezing-point of water. The combination of these two results must bring down the temperature of Mars to a degree wholly incompatible with the ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... are more serviceable as models than any of their sister itinerants. They have symmetrical forms, which are partially revealed through the scantiness of their clothing. Their coffee-coloured features are, besides, regular ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... of most. I have been able to find nothing like an extended systematic treatise on the subject, either among our own or the foreign agricultural literature which has come within my notice. Indeed, from the scantiness of what appears to have been written, coupled with the fact that much knowledge must exist somewhere, one is tempted to believe that not all which might have done so, has yet found its way to printers' ink. That a great deal has been acquired, we know, as we ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... was in this scantiness of intermediate types is amply met by the fact that every fresh decade of search in the geological tombs brings some to light. We have seen many instances of this—the seed-bearing ferns and flower-bearing cycads, for example, ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... September the thermometer rarely fell below 103 deg. during the night, and often rose to 115 deg. by day. Dust storms were frequent. A veritable plague of flies tormented the unhappy soldiers. The unhealthy climate, the depressing inactivity, and the scantiness of fresh meat or the use of condensed water, provoked an outbreak of scurvy. At one time nearly all the followers and 50 per cent of the troops were affected. Several large drafts were invalided to India. The symptoms were painful and disgusting—open wounds, ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... pernicious influence of them upon public morals will be diminished also. In those regions where a tropical sun renders clothing cumbersome, and the costume of the ladies of necessity exceeds a little that of ears in transparency and scantiness, familiarity renders it harmless; little or nothing is left for the imagination to feed upon; cheapened by their obviousness, the female charms are rejected by the fancy which loves to dwell on what it only guesses ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... unwholesome fens and forests, where nature wages a war even more relentless than man, was not to be thought of. In this perplexity, they decided on the little island of Gallo, as being, on the whole, from its distance from the shore, and from the scantiness of its population, the most eligible spot for them in their forlorn ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... its usual quiet tenor at Clifton; health good, as usual while the warm weather lasted, and activity abundant; the scene as still as the busiest could wish. "You metropolitan signors," writes Sterling to his Father, "cannot conceive the dulness and scantiness of our provincial chronicle." Here is a little excursion to the seaside; the lady of the family being again,—for good ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... 1672, indeed, the Spaniards moved by some strange infatuation, had persisted in a course of active hostility to the English in the West Indies. Could the Spanish Government have realized the inherent weakness of its American possessions, could it have been informed of the scantiness of the population in proportion to the large extent of territory and coast-line to be defended, could it have known how in the midst of such rich, unpeopled countries abounding with cattle, hogs and other provisions, the buccaneers could ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... its scantiness of furniture was a happy abode for Tidy, who found in Mammy Grace even a better mother than old Rosa had been to her; for, besides being kind and cheerful, she was pious, and from her lips it was that Tidy first heard the name of God. Would you believe it? Tidy had lived to ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society
... cigars, that was all to find fault with. Dolly waited. The stillness grew dreadful. To seventeen years old the first trouble comes hard; albeit seventeen years old has also a great fund of spirit and strength to meet and conquer trouble. But what was the trouble here? It was not the unusual scantiness of means; that could soon be made right, if other things were not wrong which wrought to cause it. On the other hand, if her father had fallen irreparably into bad habits—Dolly would not admit the "irreparably" into her thoughts. But it was bitter to her that children should ever have ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... rather a portion of them, to abandon magic as a principle of faith and practice and to betake themselves to religion instead. When we reflect upon the multitude, the variety, and the complexity of the facts to be explained, and the scantiness of our information regarding them, we shall be ready to acknowledge that a full and satisfactory solution of so profound a problem is hardly to be hoped for, and that the most we can do in the present state of our knowledge is to hazard a more or less plausible conjecture. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... where I found my friend's schoolfellow living upon an establishment perfectly corresponding with his substantial creditable equipage: his house, garden, pleasure-grounds, table, in short every thing good, and no scantiness appearing. Every man should form such a plan of living as he can execute completely. Let him not draw an outline wider than he can fill up. I have seen many skeletons of shew and magnificence which excite at once ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... Charles I., is said by his friend Hyde to have turned to devotion after a somewhat libertine life, and died in 1639, before the evil days of triumphant Puritanism, felix opportunitate mortis. He wrote little, and the scantiness of his production, together with the supposed pains it cost him, is ridiculed in Suckling's doggerel "Sessions of the Poets." But this reproach (which Carew shares with Gray, and with not a few others of ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... of amazement of the Orientals at the scantiness of the retinue with which an Englishman passes the Desert, for I was somewhat struck myself when I saw one of my countrymen making his way across the wilderness in this simple style. At first there was a mere moving ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... or deserts, is the primary source of human sustenance. Without it man would perish miserably; and where it is deficient, he cannot rise to great heights in the scale of civilization. Yet strangely enough the scantiness of the vegetation of the deserts was a great help in the ascent of man. Only in dry regions could primitive man compete with nature in fostering the right kind of vegetation. In such regions arose the nations which first practised agriculture. There man ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... woman prepared a slice of bread and butter, with cheese. If Trudie could have seen it, she would have fainted. In the "citizen's class," such and such a sub-class, according to Pennewip, is found a certain scantiness that does not obtain in the common laboring class. In the matter of eating, laborers, who do not invest their money in Geneva, are not troubled so much by "good form" as people who give their children ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... scantiness of Mrs. Burgoyne's musical memory that night. She, who could play by the hour without note, on most occasions, showed herself, on this, tied and bound to the printed page; and that page must be turned for her by Lucy, ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... think it looks ridiculous, mama?" referring anxiously to the scantiness of the skirt and the unblushing exposure of ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... alternations of heat and cold, he speedily becomes locally inflamed from the action of the filth or exposure. The symptoms of idiopathic fever are shivering, loss of appetite, dejected appearance, quick pulse, hot mouth, and some degree of debility; generally, also, costiveness and scantiness of urine; sometimes, likewise, quickness of breathing, and such pains of the bowels as accompany colic. Idiopathic fever, if it does not pass into inflammation, never kills, but ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... a least little bit of kindly interest,—what? Up had gone their youthful vivacity like an umbrella. Oh, yes!—like all young folks—their affairs were intensely private. Once or twice he had shaken his head at the scantiness of all their provisions for life. Well? They simply and unconsciously stole a hold upon one another's hand or arm, as much as to say, "To love is enough." When, gentlemen of the jury, it ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... Insufficiency. — N. insufficiency; inadequacy, inadequateness; incompetence &c. (impotence) 158; deficiency &c. (incompleteness) 53; imperfection &c. 651; shortcoming &c. 304; paucity; stint; scantiness &c. (smallness) 32; none to spare, bare subsistence. scarcity, dearth; want, need, lack, poverty, exigency; inanition, starvation, famine, drought. dole, mite, pittance; short allowance, short ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and he left the duke of Exeter, his uncle, governor of Paris during his absence. The authority which naturally attends success, procured from the English parliament a subsidy of a fifteenth; but, if we may judge by the scantiness of the supply, the nation was nowise sanguine on their king's victories; and in proportion as the prospect of their union with France became nearer, they began to open their eyes, and to see the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... to seek the First Lieutenant, and plead the scantiness of my wardrobe, which wholly disqualified me to fill so distinguished a station, when I heard the bugler call away the "gig;" and, without more ado, I slipped into a clean frock, which a messmate doffed for my benefit, and soon after found myself pulling off his High Mightiness, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... provision for his undertaking. "I have this moment received a letter from his lordship," wrote M. Eynard to Mr. Hobhouse on the 12th of January, 1827, "wherein he appears rather disappointed with respect to the scantiness of the forces and the means placed at his disposal. He informs me that he has no officers, few sailors; and that, in case the steamers should not arrive, he will not feel qualified to encounter the Turkish and Egyptian naval forces, as well as the Algerines, who of all are the ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... number of battles and skirmishes fought to no determinate end, and in which nothing of the military art appeared, but the destruction which it caused. Various, on this occasion, were the reverses of fortune, while Stephen, though embarrassed by the weakness of his title, by the scantiness of his finances, and all the disorders which arose from both, supported his tottering throne with wonderful activity and courage; but being at length defeated and made prisoner under the walls of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to a remote and dark corner of the vault, where I placed three heavy stones upon it. I then took the two leathern pouches I had selected, and stuffed one in each of the pockets of my trousers. The action reminded me of the scantiness of attire in which I stood arrayed. Could I be seen in the public roads in such a plight? I examined my purse, which, as I before stated, had been left to me, together with my keys and card-case, by the terrified ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... cow, but not yielded in equal quantity. What these latter produce is also very small compared with the dairies of Europe. At Batavia, likewise, we are told that their cows are small and lean, from the scantiness of good pasture, and do not give more than about an English quart of milk, sixteen of which are required to make a pound ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... language which savages employ on any solemn occasion, it appears that man is a poet by nature. Whether at first obliged by the mere defects of his tongue, and the scantiness of proper expressions, or seduced by a pleasure of the fancy in stating the analogy of its objects, he clothes every conception in image and metaphor. "We have planted the tree of peace," says an American orator; "we have buried the axe under its roots: we will henceforth repose under its shade; ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... ever sailed so far south as to land on the coast of the Australian continent. They have left no trace of their passage, either on the land itself, or among its inhabitants. Besides, the Chinese were never very enterprising sailors, the form of their junks, their peculiar sails, and the scantiness of their nautical knowledge prevented them from extending very far the radius of their maritime explorations. Marco Polo is the authority generally quoted in this matter, as he states that the people of Cathay knew of the existence of a great land far to ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... other things that seem too petty—but since the death of the Auditor, our Uncle Andrea, thou hast perchance noted much scantiness of our treasury, though when it is a question of pageantry, the Council hath ever found enough and to spare. But the land is a rich land; yet there are no moneys in my hand wherewith to reward a favor or grant a dole of charity. If this be ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... French travellers for the hospitable attentions heaped upon them for upwards of two months; but also refused to accept any payment for the supplies which had been furnished for the refitting of the corvette. He even went so far as to write a letter of apology for the scantiness of the provisions, the result of the drought which had desolated Guam for the previous six months, and which had prevented him from doing things as he could have wished. The final farewell took place off Agagna. "It was impossible," says Freycinet, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the difficulties of the journey, and the scantiness of our food, Shakro, with his rich vitality, could not acquire the lean, hungry look, of which the starving peasants could boast in its fullest perfection. Whenever he caught sight, in the distance, of these latter, he would exclaim: "Pouh! pouh! ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... empty chair beside Harmony Peter slid his long figure, and met a tremulous bow and silence. From the head of the table Frau Schwarz was talking volubly—as if, by mere sound, to distract attention from the scantiness of the meal. Under cover of the Babel Peter spoke to the girl. Having had his warning his tone was friendly, without a hint of the intimacy ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... movements, were the three mids,—still stripped to their shirts,—and the old man-o'-war's-man, clad with like scantiness; since the only garment that clung to his sinewy frame was a pair of cotton drawers neither very clean nor very sound ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... and really noteworthy in itself, acquires a certain preciousness by its being the only one transmitted to us of that period of Chopin's existence. But this scantiness of information need not cause us much regret. During the first years of a man's life biography is chiefly concerned with his surroundings, with the agencies that train his faculties and mould his character. A man's acts and opinions are interesting ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the absence or scantiness of explicit or systematic information connected with the opening stages of such inquiries as the present, that the student is compelled to draw his own inferences from indirect or unwitting allusion; but so long as conjecture and hypothesis are not too freely indulged, ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... To the question, if ever it was asked, May I not do what I will with my own? there was the brief answer, No man may do what is wrong, either with that which is his own or with that which is another's. Workmen were not allowed to take advantage of the scantiness of the labour market to exact extravagant wages. Capitalists were not allowed to drive the labourers from their holdings, and destroy their healthy independence. The antagonism of interests was absorbed into a relation of which equity was something more ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... In travelling to Pezimba's we had commenced our western descent to the Lake, for we were now lower than Magola's by 300 feet. We crossed many rivulets and the Lochesi, a good-sized stream. The watershed parts some streams for Loendi and some for Rovuma. There is now a decided scantiness of trees. Many of the hill-tops are covered with grass or another plant; there is pleasure now in seeing them bare. Ferns, rhododendrons, and a foliaged tree, which looks in the distance like silver-fir, are ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... true London species, in whom excess of woollen comforter made up for any marked scantiness in the rest of his attire, came trotting the pavement, pouring one of the favourite tunes of his native metropolis through the tube of a penny-whistle, from which it did not issue so disguised but that attentive ears might pronounce it the royal ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... region are the Loucheux Indians. Fine grown men of considerable stature, and well-knit frames, they have evidently followed the course of the Mackenzie River, from south to north. These are the Indians of whom from the scantiness of our previous data, information is most valuable. They are reasonably considered to belong to the same family as the Dog-rib, Beaver, Hare, Copper, Carrier, and other Indians, a family which some call Chepewyan, others Athabascan, but which the present work designates as Tinne. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... after all, the murder rests upon the testimony of only a very few original authorities, but this is simply owing to the scantiness of contemporary historians. It is true, also, that of these there are two who only mention it as a report; but it must be observed that neither of them expresses the smallest doubt of its truth, and one of them more than hints that he believes it as a fact. How, indeed, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... Squatting down on the floor, in every ungraceful attitude imaginable, sat about a dozen Indian women, dressed in printed calico gowns, the chief peculiarity of which was the immense size of the balloon-shaped sleeves, and the extreme scantiness, both in length and width, of the skirts. Coloured handkerchiefs covered their heads, and ornamented moccasins decorated their feet; besides which, each one wore a blanket in the form of a shawl, which they put off before standing up to dance. They were chatting and talking to each other with ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... us in their too brief records, teeming with interest for all their scantiness, many a tale ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... blessings were restored to the people, before the main fulfilment of the promise of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit took place; compare Ps. cvii. 33-42 with Joel ii. 25-27.—The words, "I shall pour out," refer to the rain in ver. 23. The idea of copiousness, opposed to the former scantiness, is indeed implied in it. Yet it must not be exclusively considered; the qualities of the rain alluded to in ver. 24 ff.—viz., the quickening of what was previously dead, the fructifying power—must not be overlooked.—The ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... excursion into Italy, and mentions in his Schoolmaster, with great severity, the vices of Venice. He was desirous of visiting Trent, while the council were sitting; but the scantiness of his purse defeated ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... larboard hand, the wind manifested a tendency to draw up the inlet, and this, when the ship passed in, was found to be sufficiently the case to keep all her canvas full. The passage to the anchorage occupied a considerable time, in consequence of the scantiness of the wind as soon as the ship passed in under the lee of the cliffs, and under other circumstances it might have been tedious; but in the present case it was quite the reverse, the unaccustomed sight of the lofty verdure-clad ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... curtains were old and half worn out, yet were still left to hang in the once pretty and decorated chamber. There were a few domestic maidens there partaking of supper. The table and service seemed to be old Chinese, but everything else betrayed a scantiness of furniture. ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... The scantiness of contemporary records of Shakespeare's career has been much exaggerated. An investigation extending over two centuries has brought together a mass of detail which far exceeds that accessible in the case of any other contemporary professional writer. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... at the scantiness of Mrs. Burgoyne's musical memory that night. She, who could play by the hour without note, on most occasions, showed herself, on this, tied and bound to the printed page; and that page must be turned for her ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... good-looking man, with immense bushy, red whiskers, a freckled, florid complexion, and sandy hair, rather inclined to scantiness towards the scalp of the head, which garnished the nape of his neck with a ruff of crisp little curls, like the ring on a monk's shaven crown. Notwithstanding this tendency to baldness, Jack could not be more than thirty, though his looks were some five years in advance. ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... all the men who lived and worked with Day, was Reginald or Reyner Wolfe, of the Brazen Serpent in St. Paul's Churchyard. Much as we have to regret the scantiness of all material for a study of the lives of the early English printers, it is doubly felt in the case of Reginald Wolfe. The little that is made known to us is just sufficient to whet the appetite and kindle the curiosity. It reveals to us an active business man, evidently with large capital ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... case of those products which are most easily transported from place to place, and which, at the same time, possess the utility that is most widely recognized. The smallness of the market may depend upon the scantiness of the population, or upon its scattered condition;(364) upon their smaller ability to pay, or upon the bad means of communication at their disposal.(365) Hence it is, that in villages, small cities, and still more on isolated farms, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... dropped on to the chair by the fireplace. Two tears rose to her eyes, and at once dried away. She looked at Montes, saw the girl, and burst into a cackle of forced laughter. The dignity of the insulted woman redeemed the scantiness of her attire; she walked close up to the Brazilian, and looked at him so defiantly that ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... followed the footman into an apartment possessing exactly the same peculiarities as the former one; viz. a most disproportionate plurality of windows, a commodious scantiness of furniture, and a prospect without, that seemed as if the house had been built on the middle of ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the results of wise normal evidence in Art will be found in whatever evidence remains respecting the lives of great Italian painters, though, unhappily, in eras of progress, but just in proportion to the admirableness and efficiency of the life, will be usually the scantiness of its history. The individualities and liberties which are causes of destruction may be recorded; but the loyal conditions of daily breath are never told. Because Leonardo made models of machines, dug ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... she, 'long beheld with compassion the wretched fate of those women, who from scantiness of fortune, and pride of family, are reduced to become dependent, and to bear all the insolence of wealth from such as will receive them into their families; these, though in some measure voluntary slaves, ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... of painters who, owing to the scantiness of their studies, must needs live up to the beauty of gold and azure, and with supreme folly declare that they will not give good work for poor payment, and that they could do as well as others if they were well paid. Now consider, foolish people! Cannot such men ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... common by the American aborigines are the copper-coloured or rather the cinnamon-coloured complexion, along with the high cheek-bones and small deep-set eyes, the straight black hair and absence or scantiness of beard. With regard to stature, length of limbs, massiveness of frame, and shape of skull, considerable divergencies may be noticed among the various American tribes, as indeed is also the case among the members of the white race in Europe, and of other races. With regard to culture the ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... revolted at the baseness of fabrication;—an inordinate love of riches, more devouring in his breast than his next strongest passion, love of knowledge, was sufficient to egg him on to it. Throughout life, his moral conduct was unfavourably influenced by the scantiness of his means. It was to beguile the anxiety occasioned by his narrow circumstances that he devoted himself to intense study, from knowing that superior attainments combined with splendid talents would secure for him great offices of trust and profit: he saw how those who were esteemed the most ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... Julian was seen night and day on the battlements and ramparts, attended by a band of armed men, boiling over with anger and gnashing his teeth, because, often as he wished to sally forth, he was prevented from taking such a step by the scantiness of the force which he had ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... the three incomplete years; but those of the remaining eight are graphically depicted upon Chart 8. The curves speak so plainly for themselves that any comment were almost superfluous, and the concord between the various curves, although, of course, not perfect, is far greater than the scantiness of the data would have justified us in expecting. The curves all agree in pointing to the existence of three well-defined maxima,—viz., in March, June, and September,—these being, therefore, the months in which the sexual ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... with perplexity, but with no loss of confidence in the ultimate success of Britain. The country was still swarming with troops, and still under summer sunshine. A second hay harvest redeemed the scantiness of the first, the wheat crops were wonderful, and the great fig tree at the corner of the Dower House had never borne so bountifully nor such ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... dictated by him in prison, is remarkable for its reserve and its scantiness of all semblance of ornament in its literary style. Messer Marco evidently did not greatly affect the arts and graces of fine writing. Like most of the Italian gentlefolk of his day and generation, he held the business of writing in low esteem. Some of his chapters are very brief indeed, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... this stage of his meditations, when he was landed amid a yelling crowd of both sexes, and all ages and sizes, but not of all colors. In fine, he was surrounded by a tribe of Biddiomahs as black as jet. Nor had he to blush for the scantiness of his costume, for he saw that he was in "undress" in the highest ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... make three bags and a half of pemmican, besides some dried meat and tongues. We were truly delighted by this prompt and cheerful behaviour, and would gladly have rewarded the kindness of himself and his companions by some substantial present, but we were limited by the scantiness of our store to a small donation of fifteen charges of ammunition to each of the chiefs. In return for the provision they accepted notes on the North-West Company, to be paid at Fort Providence; and to these was subjoined ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... end of one of Sax's horns. His eyes of a dull gray, were small and red at the lids, and absolutely void of expression; yet they fatigued the observer by their insupportable restlessness. A few straight hairs shaded his forehead, which receded like that of a greyhound, and through their scantiness barely concealed his long ugly ears. He was very comfortably dressed, clean as a new franc piece, displaying linen of dazzling whiteness, and wearing silk gloves and leather gaiters. A long and massive gold chain, very vulgar-looking, ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... That in the general scantiness of compensation of woman's labor, the restrictions imposed by custom and public opinion upon her choice of employments, and her opportunities of earning money, and the laws and social usages which regulate the distribution of property as between ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage |
