Sentence Examples:
For five miles or so we skirted the sea along a level, well-made road through a barren wind-swept country whence the meager harvest had already been garnered.
From the still earlier glacial period our data are naturally much more meager, but it seems probable that it was characterized by glaciated areas within both the northern and the southern hemispheres.
The most conspicuous trees of the great Pennsylvanian lowlands and swamps have, indeed, left meager modern representatives, and here we have an excellent illustration of a once prominent group of plants which has dwindled away almost to extinction.
Ill-considered proposals to turn over the vocational and manual-training departments to the government for the purpose of making munitions have shown a lack of knowledge of their meager equipment for an industry highly specialized with standard jigs and fixtures.
A meager figure enough, superficially the scholastic-dyspeptic, he had shown that the bureaucracy of education was no bad beginning for ordering a new department with small attention to the tricks, of merchandise, but with every thought as to technological detail.
Such meager provisions against inundation suffice for the sparse population characterizing the lower stages of civilization, but they must be supplemented for the increasing density of higher stages by the embankment of the stream, to protect also the adjacent fields.
The effort required is prodigious, the conditions under which these preliminary establishments are to be made are often unattractive and unfavorable, the workers who are in a position to undertake such tasks limited, and the resources they can command meager and inadequate.
Most of our knowledge of European history from the sixth to the twelfth century is derived from meager and unreliable monkish chronicles, whose authors were often ignorant and careless, and usually far away from the scenes of the events they recorded.
Each is the outcome of experience in university instruction in philosophy, and is intended to furnish a manual which shall be at once scientific and popular, one to stand midway between the exhaustive expositions of the larger histories and the meager sketches of the compendiums.
On credit easily secured from wild-cat banks, the Western pioneer had bought lands beyond the purchasing power of his own meager capital; and the speculator in turn had borrowed money to secure title to lands which he would unload upon unsuspecting settlers.
Life takes on novel and curious aspects in these alien lands, where there is more regard for festivals than for public improvements, and the outlander must take his chances of meager accommodation in inns by courtesy, surrounded by a careless, pleasure-loving throng.
It is hoped that the library notes appended to each chapter will be of assistance to the earnest student, in supplementing the meager outlines of this volume with the abundance of personal detail and wealth of dramatic incident which give life and action to history.
The well-appointed kitchen of today, with hot and cold water on tap, fine steel range, cupboards and closets crowded with every sort of cunning invention in the shape of utensils for cooking, is a luxurious contrast to the meager outfit of the pioneer housewife.
It was as characterless as it was possible for fabric to be, and considered with his meager physique and vacant physiognomy, was a fitting complement to both; an adjustment of component detail too consistent to have been the needless aspect it was designed to present.
It is not perhaps surprising that this state of affairs is tolerated by people who have lived on farms and were used to meager toilet facilities; but the discomfort and danger here are infinitely greater than in the country, and here the conditions are remediable.
The impatience with which we awaited the moment when the boatswain should dole out our meager allowance of water, and the eagerness with which those lukewarm drops were swallowed, can only be realized by those who for themselves have endured the agonies of thirst.
The world at large, seated by its fireside and sagely thumbing those returns of one hundred and seventy-eight for the General against a meager eighty-three for Statesman Adams, finds therein a stunning rebuke to both the ambitions and the methods of Statesman Clay.
All his life his work was stunted and crippled by poverty, and countless researches which he was the one human being qualified by genius and experience to undertake, remain to this day unperformed because he never could command the meager necessary equipment of apparatus.
A short, cheerful prayer each morning, no matter how early she and the children rose, a word of thankfulness at the beginning of every meal, no matter how meager, and a thoughtful, quiet Bible-reading and prayer at night, formed part of that cabin life.
All men, except a meager few of the dwarfed and strictly city-bred, partake of this, and it is so much a sign of the times that no Sunday edition is complete without its column devoted to wild creatures, their traits, their habits, or their eccentricities.
In preparing breakfast he gave me a practical demonstration of the art of conserving a limited resource of fuel, bringing our two canteens to a boil with a very meager handful of sticks; and while doing so he delivered an oral thesis on the best methods of food preparation.
On the whole, her questions are analogous to those that a bright three-year-old child asks; but her desire for knowledge is so earnest, the questions are never tedious, though they draw heavily upon my meager store of information, and tax my ingenuity to the utmost.
When analysis succeeds in gaining insight into this neurosis, it will reveal that this well-bred, intelligent girl of high ideals, has completely suppressed her sexual desires, but that unconsciously they cling to the meager experiences she had with the friend of her childhood.
It does not become me to say anything in regard to the case that you have tried, or the verdict you have rendered; but men compulsorily serving as jurors, as you have done, deserve some recognition of the service you have performed besides the meager compensation you have received.
As Dennis looked up and down this busy thoroughfare, with its thousands speeding oppositely in preoccupied interest, as if all that was vital and worthy was to be found at either extreme of its splendid distances, he paused for a moment to account his meager finances.
Wealthy by inheritance, he had chosen the field of education for his life work solely from a desire to be of some material benefit to mankind since the meager salary which accompanied his professorship was not of sufficient import to influence him in the slightest degree.
Pale and haggard faces, lank and bony figures, children with the countenances of old men, deformities with irons upon their limbs, boys of stunted growth, and others whose long, meager legs would hardly bear their stooping bodies, all crowded on the view together.
The antiquarian literature of the province is extremely meager, being confined to brief sketches made by transient visitors or based for the most part upon the testimony of gold hunters and government explorers, who took but little note of the unpretentious relics of past ages.
His quickness and accuracy, in this respect, amounted almost to another sense; reports, which to others appeared meager and unsatisfactory, and circumstances devoid of meaning to all but himself, frequently afforded him a significant and lively understanding of the matters which he wished to know.
Human remains, of the most meager description, in connection with the pottery furnish reasonable evidence of burial places, but, being only crumbling fragments of bone, are too minute to supply any information respecting the form of burials or the relative position of the objects associated with them.
Petty government officers on their meager salaries, as well as the well-paid top tier, didn't need to be cloistered in the political issues that mired the day but yearned for sports columns in their newspapers and genuflected to the action effusing from their television sets.
As we gleaned the meager facts, it became more evident that whoever had perpetrated the crime must have had the diabolical cunning to do it in some ordinary way that aroused no suspicion on the part of the victim, for there was no sign of any violence anywhere.
This was an event which brought his plans to an end, at least so far as the immediate future was concerned, for he had hitherto drawn upon her alone for his meager pittance, and his means were not sufficient for an independent life outside his native place.
Unfortunately much of this frequent shifting of rural pastors is directly due to ecclesiastical rule rather than to the needs of the local churches, though much of it results from meager salaries and sectarian rivalries which soon discourage a man who sees larger opportunities for service elsewhere.
Orion Clemens, anxious for laurels, established himself in the meager fashion which he thought the government would approve; and his brother, finding neither duties nor salary attached to his secondary position, devoted himself mainly to the study of human nature as exhibited under frontier conditions.
She sobbed wildly as she looked over her few cherished possessions preparatory to packing them in the box she dragged in from the attic; her mother's watch, a locket containing her father's picture, a ring or two, her shabby little gowns and meager toilet things.
An auger had been added to the meager outfit, and long after the sea had leaked through the hole bored through her bottom, and swallowed her, and the insurance had been paid, the truth leaked out that the captain had received instructions, which had been fulfilled.
As man felt his own powerlessness in the midst of tremendous, and often hostile agencies, which overtopped his own meager powers, he was led to feel the desire to ally himself with these agencies and propitiate them in order that all might be well with him.
The extreme suffering of my troops for want of food induced me to ride back to General Lee, and request him to send two or more brigades to our relief, at least for the night, in order that the soldiers might have a chance to cook their meager rations.
We realize, too, that long before the nations lived that have left a meager and scattered history hewn in stone, lived still other men, possibly greater far than we; and no sign or signal comes to us from those whose history, like ours, is writ in water.
We shall know now when that extraordinary bird the Emperor penguin lays its eggs, and under what conditions; but even if our information remains meager concerning its embryology, our party has shown the nature of the conditions which exist on the Great Barrier in winter.
However, no savior has appeared, and I think my best course will be, under the circumstances, to make an entirely clean breast in the matter and tell you that my knowledge on the subject of the technical details of the Conservation of natural resources is very meager.
We had contemplated sending two of our three steamers home in September, but the premature and unforeseen formation of ice walls round them had thwarted our plans; and now, with the entire crews on our hands, we had to economize still more with our meager provisions, fuel and light.
In the light of the continued high praise bestowed on him for much longer than a century, the altogether too general and dogmatic statements of these short seventy-odd pages would seem somewhat meager, so that upon their perusal one is very likely to suffer an outright disenchantment.
As soon as they had made their meager breakfast of salt pork, coffee and biscuit, Clayton commenced work upon their house, for he realized that they could hope for no safety and no peace of mind at night until four strong walls effectually barred the jungle life from them.
The Eskimos had eaten everything that they had brought, and it now devolved upon us to feed them also from our meager store, which at the start only provided for Easton and me for ten days, as that had been considered more than ample time for the journey.
Richard of England and Philip of France, with many another noble warrior of high repute, had doubtless been glad enough, times without number, to seek the shelter and meager fare of just such a jumble of darkened tenements as that through which his guide was leading him.
After this preliminary verification of the previous results, I was convinced that to pass from these comparatively meager statistics, gathered under limited conditions in a very special case, to the general statement that the optical illusion is reversed in the field of touch, is an altogether unwarranted procedure.
What things of vigor her life had known were cruel: a passionate shrinking from her uncle, a fear for the brother who had hotly rebelled at the meager life around him, a loneliness aloof from her kind and a vague hunger for some fuller, sweeter life beyond the hills.
Some of them were quick to discover that the air was clearer and fresher close to the ground and many of them threw themselves prone among the stones and lay that way breathing in the meager quantity of smoke-free air that lingered in crevices between the rocks.
Whatever conclusion we reach regarding the song service during the Apostolic age, because of the meager facts we have regarding it, we have sufficient information regarding the second, third, and fourth centuries to be sure that the hymn had become a more and more important feature of the religious life.
The deep sand blotted and hid the meager stream where the bottom was farther below the sand's surface; but where the porous layer was not so thick, the volume of water, being larger than that of the sand, submerged the filling and flowed in plain sight.
Of course, the writer has means at command to vitalize his people other than to draw them in actions illustrating their peculiarities, but it is difficult enough at best to vivify a character, and the writer who depends solely on his powers of direct description will achieve very meager results.
I should like to add some instances from Shakespeare's works of serious and estimable behavior on the part of individuals representing the lower classes, or of considerate treatment of them on the part of their "betters," but I have been unable to find any, and the meager list must end here.
It was a small head covered with tow-colored hair, which had been slicked back and braided so tightly that the short, meager cue curled outward and up in a crescent, as though it were wired, and the shoulders beneath the coarse blue-and-white striped cotton gown were thin and peaked.
We continually force upon the extremely meager data obtained directly through our senses, an interpretation which, in its complexity and penetration, would seem to be entirely incommensurate with the data themselves, and we exercise over physical things a kind of rational control which greatly transcends the native cunning of the hand.
Soon they grew dissatisfied with this meager allowance of space in which to see each other, for by this time they had become so much in love that the tender whispers breathed through the broken wall only made them long to be together without this cruel barrier between them.
The specimens of minerals are numerous and scientifically arranged; but the entomological department is meager, considering the immense numbers and beautiful varieties of insects for which this country is so justly celebrated: there are many private collections in the city which far surpass this, in numbers and brilliancy.
The woman had dragged from childbirth to childbirth: crippled with rheumatism, she had worn herself out in trying to make both ends meet, and had spent her days running hither and thither trying to obtain from the Public Charity a meager sum which was not readily forthcoming.
Each tarried, for a brief time, to attend to the live stock under his immediate care, and some even to snatch a morsel of food, but mostly they were off and away again, a flask of water and a bit of hardtack in pocket, oftener than not forgetting even this meager nourishment.
The cramped offices in the temporary wing of the old System Security Building, the meager appropriation, the obsolete office equipment, the inadequate staff all testified not only to the Bureau's lack of priority, but also to a lack of knowledge of its existence on the part of many System officials.
When about the age of twenty-four years, as he tells us in his meager journal, he became, through the cares of the world, neglectful in conduct, and remained so to some extent until he was thirty years old, when, by sincere repentance, he again received a testimony that his sins were forgiven.
I have never looked at the obituaries for the last twenty years without hoping to read that someone has willed a million dollars for birth control, but the only legacy ever bequeathed us was that saved from the meager earnings of this schoolteacher, Viola Kaufman, who herself lived in poverty.
Reasoning from cause to effect, and seeing but a meager sprinkling of people on the streets throughout the day, and these seeming, for the most part, merely idlers, and in nowise accessory to the evident thrift and opulence of their surroundings, the observant stranger will be puzzled at the situation.
The countess had been as practical and economical as all German housewives, even when relieved by housekeepers and stewards, and she calculated that with a meager staff of servants and two years of seclusion she should be able to furnish a flat in Berlin and pay a year's rent in advance.
Unfortunately Jefferson's conception of democracy was meager, narrow, and self-contradictory; and just because his ideas prevailed, while Hamilton toward the end of his life lost his influence, the consequences of Jefferson's imperfect conception of democracy have been much more serious than the consequences of Hamilton's inadequate conception of American nationality.
It is true that the serfs were liberated, and the ancient communal form kept, but the land allotted to the village was poor and meager, the plots were scattered, and the tax on them for repayment to the landlords was so great that it took over fifty years to pay.
As she sank down upon the cot without removing her wraps, she was greeted by the usual creaking of rusty springs; her table with its meager array of dishes, its coffee pot and little alcohol burner, sat as ever in its corner, inviting the preparation of her evening meal.
All the great discoverers began with nearly the same meager powers for observation that the rest of the world has, but early in life came to value above all other mental powers this incalculable power to closely notice; and each made his realm of observation much richer for his discoveries.
It is doubtful if the world ever can run along without the work of women, but the time will surely come when society will be so constituted that no woman in the first flush of her youth will be forced to squander it on the meager temporary reward, and forfeit her birthright.
The apparent closeness of the grouping of these loci is not to be taken as significant, for they have been placed only with reference to the distant points yellow and vermilion and not with respect to each other; furthermore, the data available in the cases of lemon and depressed are very meager.
It cannot be that the consumers of this fruit care for less than a dozen of the several hundred American grapes; or that under the varied conditions of half a continent over which grow a score of species of wild grapes but a meager half dozen varieties can be grown for commercial purposes.
The proceeds of his office were doubtless very meager, but in that day, when the rate of postage on letters was still twenty-five cents, a little change now and then came into his hands, which, in the scarcity of money prevailing on the frontier, had an importance difficult for us to appreciate.
As he passed up the hill, he stepped into a little nook, not above a dozen paces in circuit, enclosed by rocks and bushes, and so overshadowed by beeches as to form a thick-roofed grotto, on the floor of which sparkled a meager rill, flowing from a spring at the bottom of a rock.
The survivors who reach high school and college receive relatively a good deal of attention in physical training and organized play, but the little fellows of the elementary grades who have curvatures, retardation, adenoids, and small defects which cause loss of grade, truancy, and delinquency receive as yet very meager attention.
The French soldiers took their very meager portions of food, improvised a kind of table on the top of a flat rock, and having laid out the rations, including the small quantity of wine that formed part of the repast, sat down in comfort and began their meal amid a chatter of talk.
Berries, I felt sure, existed somewhere in the woods, but, aside from blueberries or blackberries and the tiny scarlet partridge berries, I knew of none which were edible, and I smiled to think how hungry I would be if I depended upon the meager and uncertain supply of such things for a livelihood.
It seems probable that there was a goodly measure of communism in the control and use of lands (tho not in other things), but this was largely confined to an oligarchy of the favored; whereas the masses lived in subjection, cut off from all but a meager share in the common lands.
One lonely little native sheet masquerades as a newspaper, the languid little shops, often owned by foreigners, offer a meager and ancient stock chiefly imported and all high in price; for it takes great inducement to make the natives produce anything beyond the corn and beans for their own requirements.
The vote secured from their memberships was so meager and unsatisfactory that the system of voting by mail was inaugurated, and with such splendid results, that now it is being used exclusively by a majority of the above organizations, as a method of voting upon propositions and officers coming before them for election.
She had been unceremoniously dumped into his arms by a delegate from the Foundling Asylum, who had found him the most convenient receptacle nearest the door; and he had been offered the meager information that she belonged to no one, was wrong somehow, and a hospital was the place for her.
No one but a soldier can form any proper conception of the feelings and imaginations of a green boy performing his first night's picket duty on the outpost, and in order to give some meager idea of such a situation, the writer will here relate his personal experience during his first night on the outpost.
On the plateau the train seldom halted without being surrounded by a jostling crowd, fighting to sell their meager wares; here they either lolled in the shade of their banana groves, waiting for purchasers to come and inspect their displays of fruit, or they did not even trouble to offer anything for sale.
Robert was the second boy now started, and already matters were somewhat easier; but he shuddered to think of the lot of the man who was battling away unaided, with four or five children to support, and depending on a meager three and sixpence or four shillings of a daily wage to keep the house together.
Just as in feudal times, the great mass of men live in bitter poverty; even under the best conditions, they have the meager necessities of life, earned by hard, crushing, stupefying forced labor, no longer exacted by right of political exploitation, but just as effectively forced from the laborers by their economic needs.
To make doubly sure that these were water-tight, I smeared the edges of the packages with pitch, as I had seen Joe repair rents in the canoe, and having thus provided against future showers as far as was possible, I sat down to my meager meal and the world and my future took on a more roseate hue.
Probably one reason for this was that as the education of the populace was too meager to give them much knowledge of numerals, and as they had but little business of importance to transact, they were far less interested in the time than in the dumb show gone through with by the little carved dolls.
He was remarkably erect in person, and, though certainly meager, was broad-shouldered and muscular, or rather, perhaps, I may say, sinewy; for the hand that grasped his cloak, and the part of the arm and wrist seen above it, displayed the strong markings of the muscles like cords under the skin.
Farther on the street suffered a decline, the line of dwellings was broken by patches of bedraggled gardens, set with the broken fragments of stone ornaments; small frame structures, streaked by the weather and blistered remnants of paint, alternated with stables, stores heaped with the sorry miscellanies of meager, disrupted households.
Up to the present war, the results of chemical investigations upon the pathology of the blood in scurvy were not only contradictory, but meager, and wanting in that careful detail of the cases from which the blood was abstracted which would enable us to explain the cause of the apparent discrepancies in different analyses.
The sledge had not capsized until they all rolled over at the end, but the jolting had scattered their belongings and broken open the biscuit box, with the result that they had no provisions left, except the few scraps they could pick up and the meager contents of their food bag.
With the dropping of fasts and meager days, fish was seldom used, and the Sunday morning breakfast of Queen Elizabeth and her retinue in one of her "progresses" through the country, for which three oxen and one hundred and forty geese were furnished, became the standard, which did not alter for many generations.
Having thus given due warning, he led his "army" forward, marching and counter-marching his meager forces among the trees and hills to give an appearance of great numbers, while he and his captains helped keep up the illusion by galloping wildly here and there on horses they had confiscated, as if ordering a vast array.
In a few moments a colt was seen gliding, like a fallow deer, among the straight trunks of the pines; and, in another instant, the person of the ungainly man, described in the preceding chapter, came into view, with as much rapidity as he could excite his meager beast to endure without coming to an open rupture.
At length, the realization that I must soon take my place in line for the duties of the early morning pulls me together; and after pouring cool water from the meager supply in my pail over my head and face, rearranging my clothes, and draining to the bottom my tin drinking cup, I am somewhat refreshed.
Preparing myself for I knew not what, I regarded them with such open interest that before I knew it, and quite before I was ready for any such exhibition, they were both on their knees before me, holding up their meager arms with beseeching and babbling words which I did not understand till later.
I have since learned what I did not know at the time of the incident related, that there is a considerable company of minor writers hanging as it were on the skirts of literature and journalism, who make the better part of their meager incomes by copying the writings of others and selling them at opportune times.
Yet, foreign tyranny, from the earliest ages, has coveted this meager territory as lustfully as it has sought to wrest from their native possessors those lands with the fatal gift of beauty for their dower; while the genius of liberty has inspired as noble a resistance to oppression here as it ever aroused in Grecian or Italian breasts.
The meager amount of artificial material, and its random distribution, as if one piece was lost here, another thrown there, throughout the talus from the present surface to the underlying clay would appear good evidence that the cave was never used as a place of permanent abode, but merely provided temporary refuge at intervals extending over a prolonged period.
If left in this way to struggle for a meager existence, without a word of kindness, and chased for their very lives if they presume, in their lonely longing, to timidly enter the family refinement, is it a wonder that under these conditions, these dwellers in solitude develop only the worse and uglier traits in their disposition?