"Measly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... circulars up and down Fifth Avenue, and open it up as a school—not one of 'em knows how to furnish their houses. How the devil did you—Oh, I see! Just plain yellow-wash and the reflected red light. Looks like a stained-glass window in a measly old church. Where's Sam. Oh, behind that screen. Well come out here and ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... your eye out for a second one," advised Frank, uneasily; "because they generally hunt in couples. That isn't a measly little prairie rattler either; but a fellow that's come ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... Jehoshaphat! all this row about a measly old 'coon sitting for his picture!" grumbled Jerry, falling back again, and apparently meaning to seek once more relief in slumber, if the bump on his forehead ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... two, married a woman who lived only long enough to produce this man upon whose trail we're scouting. This Kenneth was a measly little offspring and his mother's people undertook to give him a chance to live. He picked up and he and his father became pals—Hannah rooted out a picture of them riding horseback. Then the father was thrown from his horse and killed right before the eyes of the boy, and that put him ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... "We shan't have any more trouble with that lot, I think. You warned that pirate—I wish he had been in truth a clean, honest, straightforward pirate, instead of the measly Turkish swab he was—that something might occur before the first stroke of six bells. Well, something has occurred, and for him and all his crew that six bells will never sound. So the Lord fights for the Cross against the Crescent! ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... will be soft and pulpy, like lard. If the lean be tough, and the fat flabby and spongy, feeling rough, it is old, especially if the rind be stubborn, and you cannot nip it with your nails. Little kernels, like nail-shot, in the fat, are a sign that it is measly, and dangerous to ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... since I could walk, and if she wasn't a saint she'd have kicked me out long ago. Why, I sneaked off and left a lie on her dresser, and never gave her a chance to get the thing straight, or anything. I tell you, Marion, if I was in her place, and had a measly cub of a son like I've been, I'd drown him in a tub, or something. Honest to John, I wouldn't have a brat like that on the place! How she's managed to put up with me all these years is more than I can figure; it gets my goat to look back at the kinda mark I've been—strutting around, ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... do you suppose those measly old insurrectos want to chase us for in this style?" he growled. "We're attending to our private business and not bothering them one little bit. Why don't they leave a fellow alone? Goodness knows we've just got trouble enough ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... Gwalior a pleasant surprise was in store. We had "train rations" on the usual measly Indian scale, but for tea on Saturday we were to rely on tea provided by Scindia at Gwalior. Happily a Maharajah's ideas of tea are superior to a Quartermaster's, and this is what we had for fifty men! Unlimited tea, with sugar, twenty-five tinned cheeses, fifty tins of sausages ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... to side with decent folks, who have stood by my girl, and you can do your damnedest. You take this stuff away from here. And as for you, Wash Gibbs, if you ever set foot on my place again, if you ever cross my path after to-night I'll kill you like the measly yeller hound you are." As he finished, Jim stood with his back to the corner of the room, his hand inside of the hickory shirt where the button ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... He can see them coming; he'll have every advantage against attack; and there's another way out of the cave, up on top of the hill. There's just one thing against him. There wasn't even a canteen here. He took some jerky and canned stuff—but only one measly beer bottle of water. When that's used up it's going to be a dull time for him. We can't get water to him very handy without leaving some sign. We mustn't get hostile with the posse. Take it easy—you especially, Pringle. Stella and me, they know ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... woman. It can't buy capacity. What's the good of thirty millions when I ain't got room for more than a quart of cocktails a day? If I had a hundred-quart-cocktail thirst, it'd be different. But one quart—one measly little quart! Here I am, a thirty times over millionaire, slaving harder every day than any dozen men that work for me, and all I get is two meals that don't taste good, one bed, a quart of Martini, and a hundred and forty hair bridles to look ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... Muggses have heads shaped like a China orange, croppy hair, chubby chins, chubby cheeks, and blazing red and chubby noses—short, pursy, apoplectic necks, like their fathers—squab, four-square figures, mounted upon turned legs, with measly skins; so that, taken altogether, they are exceedingly offensive and disagreeable. Then they eat, these young, Stubbses and Muggses, how they do eat! then they are dressed, how they are dressed! five different ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... ball. He never even ticked one and retired in disgust, limping and swearing. Ashwell was next. He did not show much alacrity. On Rube's first pitch down went Ashwell flat in the dust. The ball whipped the hair of his head. Rube was wild and I began to get worried. Ashwell hit a couple of measly punks, but when he assayed a bunt the gang ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... about a vacation. None of your measly little two weeks' affairs, with one week on salary, and th' other without. I ain't goin' t' take my vacation for a while—not till fall, p'raps, or maybe winter. But w'en I do take it, sa-a-ay, girl, it's goin' t' be ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... language shall be spelled! Don't I know your history, Mr. Gratz? Don't I know you had your name changed from Gratzensteinburgher? And you pretend to be worried because our President and the most talented men in the country want to drop a few useless letters out of a measly three hundred words! I tell you these changes in spelling should have been made long ago. Long ago. This is the business man's age, Mr. Gratz-and-the-rest-of-it. Yes, sir! And you, as a business man, should be proud of this ...
— Mike Flannery On Duty and Off • Ellis Parker Butler
... over all my calculations; and then, as I had changed the amount of money, he had to go over all HIS as to the amount of the lay; and altogether, a bank could be run with less effusion of figures than it took to shore up a single chapter of a measly yarn. However, it's done, and I have but one more, or at the outside two, to do, and I am Free! and can do any damn ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fiercely. "I s'pose you'd let him freeze to death 'fore you'd let me buy him any clothes," he burst out, angrily. "I sh'd like ter know w'at's the matter with ye, anyhow. Has that measly Dick Hunt ben stuffin' ye ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... Country? Mine? I likes their cheek. Me mud-bespattered by the cars they drive, Wot makes my measly thirty bob a week, And sweats red blood to keep meself alive! Fight for the right to slave that they may spend, Them in their mansions, me 'ere in my slum? No, let 'em fight wot's something to defend: But me, I've nothin'—let the Kaiser come. And so I cusses ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... he repeated scornfully. "With what? Ye've got nothin', Nal Roberts—that is, nothin' but yer sorrel filly and a measly two, or three mebbe, hundred dollars. I vally Mandy at twenty dollars a month. At one per cent.—I allus git one per cent. a month—that makes two thousand dollars. Have ye got the cold ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... sport in some districts. I can remember when nearly every tank was good for a few brace of mallard, duck, or teal, where never a feather is now to be seen, save the ubiquitous paddy-bird. Jungles, where a pig was a certain find, only now contain a measly jackal, and not always that; and cover in which partridge, quail, and sometimes even florican were numerous, are now only tenanted by the great ground-owl, or a colony of field rats. I am far from wishing to limit sport to the European community. I would ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... the larvae of the common tapeworm of man. Cattle become infected from feed or water which has been contaminated by the feces of persons harboring the adult tapeworms, and human beings in turn become infected by eating raw or rare beef infested with the larval stage (measly beef). ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... way. How can I explain to you, or you to her, such a measly affair as this? It began with a question of money he owed that woman on the ranch. He bought it of her,—and a cruel bad bargain it was,—and he never could make his last payment. She has threatened him, and played the fool with him when he'd let her, and bored him no end. His governor would ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... toothache is, which you can put your hand on; but an indefinite, unsettled, undecided kind of pain, which went wandering about from place to place inside of me like a strange ghost lost in Cudjo's Cave. I never knew until then what the personal sensations of a haunted house are. If only the measly thing could have made up its mind to settle down somewhere and start light housekeeping I think should have been better satisfied. I never had such an uneasy tenant. Alongside of it a woman with the moving fever would be comparatively ...
— "Speaking of Operations—" • Irvin S. Cobb
... so hard, maybe your dad gave you enough money for it to buy a respectable piece of chocolate with instead of that measly little sample you brought around last ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... the word again, and rammed it down with a good oath. “And if ever I catch you within six fathoms of my house,” I cried, “I’ll clap a bullet in your measly carcase.” ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stable, and Scheller, the fellow who was always running after the girls, and that whole crowd? Fellows of that sort, you see, don't know what to do with their money, and I wouldn't be such an ass as to give them their pay, their uniform allowance, and so on; they don't care about those measly few coins. Scheller, besides, gave me a chance to make some money outside of that. The last night before he had finished his two years, I happened to inspect his quarters, it being considerably past taps. And what do I see but this very fellow, Scheller, ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... in man after eating "measly" beef or pork. "Measles" are embryo tapeworms called, from their appearance, "bladder worms." In from six to ten weeks after being received into the intestine of a man, these bladder worms become full grown, and measure from ten to ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... always used by the first of company, and if they wanted to quarrel, they might fight it out in the streets.' Whereupon they all began to barge the master at once,—one saying 'his coffee was all snuff and duckweed,' or something of the kind; whilst the other told him 'he looked as measly as a mouldy muffin;' and then all of a sudden a lot of half-pint cups and pewter spoons flew up in the air, and the three men began an indiscriminate battle all to themselves, in one of the boxes, 'fighting quite permiscus,' as the lady properly observed. I think ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... allow! Ain't we got ter find 'em? Ain't they got ter come ter shore somewhar? You bet yer boots! Old Rocks is on ther warpath, an' ther measly varmints want ter ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... Mr. Clark stoutly, his obstinacy reviving. "I shall send a wire to Stanley at once asking for the dates of Emily's birth and marriage. He must have them both by this time; why on earth doesn't he send full information and not such a measly telegram as this!" and the old gentleman put on his hat and took his cane and stamped off in a rage to ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... well-known examples of parasites, whole groups of them being especially adapted to parasitic life. The tapeworms, common in many animals and often occurring in man, the roundworms of which the trichina (Fig. 3) that causes "measly" pork is a representative, are familiar examples. These and a host of others all show a very high degree of specialization fitting them for their ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... of the thousand things we have had to do. It would take years to give you an account of what we have done and why we do it. It is like a game of whist and poker combined and we bluff on two flimsy fours, and crawl the next minute to a man that holds a measly two-spot. There is not a wire we have not pulled, or a leg, either, and we go dashing about all day in a bath-chair, with a driver in a bell hat and a blue nightgown, leaving cards and writing notes and giving drinks and having secretaries to lunch and buying flowers for wives and cigar ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... him the word again, and rammed it down with a good oath. "And if ever I catch you within six fathoms of my house," I cried, "I'll clap a bullet in your measly carcase." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reason I did not jump off of a pier was the providential intervention of several stiff cocktails. (I am theoretically a prohibitionist, but grateful to the enemy for having saved my life.) The black cloud that shut out all sunlight was our measly total for December—$18.07. ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... yaller snakes? Must be nigh onto fifteen thousand people there now. The hills is plumb measly with prospect holes, and you can't look at a rock f'r less'n a thousand dollars. It shore is the craziest ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... "A measly little cur," he declared softly. "Crooked just because he ain't got the guts to go straight. Them's the worst kind. They get scared stiff and shoot you when you come in late, thinking you're a second-story artist, and then they're sorry. Chances are he's repenting right now and wishing ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... triumph, I led Zulime to Vantine's and there purchased for her a carved gold ring set with three rose diamonds, the handsomest present I had ever dared to buy for her. "This is to make amends for the measly little engagement ring you were forced to accept," I remarked by way ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... old man won't give it up," cheered "Stump," under his voice. "That's the stuff. Now, if only that measly fog lifts and we get a trifle nearer, we'll do something ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... the silence that had fallen upon the two as they stared at the empty trap. "Well, we won't move!" he cried. "There's no measly carcajo going to run me out of here! We'll get busy, and in two or three days from now we'll have that scoundrel's hide hanging up on the cache ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... began Hazen the moment the kitchen door was shut behind them. "Use some sense, can't you? I gave you the wink, and you wouldn't catch on. So I had to make the grandstand play. I'm no more stuck on having a measly she-dog around here than you are. And we're not going to have ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... never anything to do evenin's but to walk in the Common, or go to the movies, if we had the dime to blow in, or just stay in our room. Well, our room wasn't very pleasant. It was hot in summer, and cold in winter, and the gas-jet was so measly and so flickery that we couldn't sew or read, even if we hadn't been too fagged out to do either—which we 'most generally was. Besides, over our heads was a squeaky board that some one was always rockin' on, and under us was a feller that was learnin' to play the cornet. Did you ever hear ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... heard of the real and the alleged salaries of moving-picture stars, and he assumed that Kedzie must be as well paid as she was well advertised. He did not know of the measly little hundred dollars a week she was bound down to by her contract. If he had known he would have rejoiced, because one hundred dollars a week was about four times more than ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... mischief-making upper classmen, the sudden collapsing of their fistic champion shocked them even more. Scrapper Bert was rather noted for his prowess. No one cared to put on the gloves with him, nor to gain his displeasure. To see the new boy, a "measly freshman," not as tall, as heavy nor as old as Bert, catch the assailant's hard-driven fist in the palm of an instantly extended hand and then let drive with his own right a neat, short-arm uppercut that got Bert just where he had meant to get Gus, was a needed lesson ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... d'you think? Is I goin' to be a dam' fool? D'you think I ain' goin' when I gets a good livin' offa Hulda? [He pulls out a dirty card-case.] Not so much as a measly pawn ticket has I got. Tell me what you want an' ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... agoin' to bring a pack o' boys along up to the Eagles; p'raps it kim in a letter he hed from somebody, I don't know jest how thet mout be; but he seemed to know it, all right, Jim. Sez he to me, 'Hen, ef ye happens to run acrost thet thar measly little skunk what sails by the name o' Jim Hasty, jest you tell him fur me thet if he dares to put his foot up hyar in my deestrick, I'm bound to pin his ears to a tree, and leave 'em thar to give him a lesson.' An' Jim, ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... stared at the chimney, but Uncle Jim's eye followed the wall around to the bunks. There were many discolorations on the canvas, and a picture of the Goddess of Liberty from an illustrated paper had broken out in a kind of damp, measly eruption. "I'll stick that funny handbill of the 'Washin' Soda' I got at the grocery store the other day right over the Liberty gal. It's a mighty perty woman washin' with short sleeves," said Uncle Billy. "That's the comfort of them picters, you kin always get somethin' new, ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... Jack slowly, "HADN'T A SINGLE PAIR IN HIS HAND. It was the stoniest, deadest, neatest BLUFF I ever saw. And when he'd frightened off the last man who held out and laid that measly hand of his face down on that pile of kings, queens, and aces, and looked around the table as he raked in the pile, there was a smile of humble self-righteousness on his face that was worth ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... "Well, doggone your measly hide, Blake, I've told you fifty times I ain't!" The Old Man sat forward in his chair and shook his fist unabashed at his guest. "Them boys cooked that all up amongst themselves, and went and filed on that land ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... double hooks, than which you cannot get better. Down to the weir and back again to the same old tune—nothing. An angler from below came up for a chat and told you that he had taken a grilse, and you envied him the possession of that measly little kipper. ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... 'Comment, Madame,' they used to say, 'pourquoi pleurez vous? Tout va si bien! Quelle clientele, et pas chiche'—I suppose you understand French? However about this trip to the country, look on it as settled. I'll pack up now and away we go in the afternoon. And not to any of your measly Hotels or village inns. Why I've got me own country place and me own auto. Villa de Beau-sejour, a mile or so beyond the lovely beech woods of Tervueren. Ain't so far from Louvain, so's I can send you on there one ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... pinto up beside us an' calls out: "Oh, daddy, this is lovely, this is mag-ni-fi-cent"—the little scamp used to pick up big words from the Easterners, an' when she had one to fit she never wasted time on a measly little ranch word—"oh, I'm never goin' to ride ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... voice, "shore I reckon you're hollerin' too soon. Frank's measly trick puttin' him on Spot showed me. He rode out on Spot, an' he rode in on Spot. Shore ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... Government patronage into three-deckers and ships of the line; which did good service under Pellew, Parker, Nelson, Hood; which exfoliated and ramified into huge dockyards at Plymouth, Portsmouth, and Sheerness, and bore, as its buds and flowers, countless barrels of measly pork and maggoty biscuit. The sole aim of the coarse, pushing and hard-headed son of Dick Devine was to make money. He had cringed and crawled and fluttered and blustered, had licked the dust off great men's shoes, and danced ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... the world that aren't afraid of their lives, or where would you be—you and this old thing here with her plates like brown paper—brown paper, s'elp me? It's all very fine for you—you get a power of pieces out of her one way and another; but what about me—what do I get? A measly hundred and fifty dollars a month and find yourself. I wish to ask you respectfully—respectfully, mind—who wouldn't chuck a dratted job like this? 'Tain't safe, s'elp me, it ain't! Only I am one of them fearless fellows ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... fear of 'tater bugs, Or cultivation's errors, The measly scale from San Jose, And Green bug bring ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... "a roughish smile" loud cries of indignation arose. Molly first cried and then had hysterics and screamed vigorously; Bill swore vengeance on the Millville Tribune and all connected with it, while the guests gravely asserted it was "a low-down, measly trick" which the Sizers ought to resent. They all began drinking again, to calm their feelings, and after the midday dinner Bill Sizer grabbed a huge cowhide whip and started to Millville to "lick the editor to a standstill." A wagonload of his guests ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... This was the measly director in whose company Nance figured for a time, and for whom she must have had a profound if discreetly-concealed contempt. Cibber, who seems to have keenly gauged the man, has left us an account of how ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... Iredell. "Puts money in the hands of the owners, you mean. They get the feast and we get the crumbs. What's our measly salary compared with what they get? I was just reading in the paper that the Giants cleaned up two hundred thousand dollars this year, net profit, and yet it's the players that bring this money ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... some of these cast-off dogs around town, so why shouldn't I do the same for a poor devil of a husband? I'll make you comfortable until you get into Davis', but don't you ever let on to these damned women that you're a failure, or that you're strapped, or that that measly little wife of yours gave you the sack. No, sir! Remember who you are. You are my nephew. I won't say as I'm proud of you, but, by thunder! I don't want anybody in Blakeville to know that I'm ashamed of you. If I feel that way about you, it's my own secret and it's nobody's business. ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... explained. "You know, them—them other poems didn't sell much—there was only one went, an' the man wouldn't take that till he'd made me promise he could print my letter, too, that I'd wrote with it—jest as if that was worth anything!—but he only paid a measly dollar anyhow. "Susan's voice faltered a little, though her chin was at a brave tilt. "An' I guess now I know the reason. Them kind of poems ain't stylish no longer. Rhymes has gone out. Everything's 'free verse' now. I've been readin' ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... be prepared, and I didn't know but what the cold you used to have might be come back," she said. "But I'm glad if it ain't—if that cough of yours is only one of the measly little hacks people get in the ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... introduced into this country by the Tories and Indians caused General Sullivan to go out against the measly enemy, whip him near Elmira, and destroy the fields of corn and villages in the Genesee country, where the Indian women were engaged in farming while their men-folks attended to ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... himself, when he has anything to cook. He has a little garden, but it doesn't amount to much. He has no apple trees except an old one that is nearly dead and never has but a few little, measly, knerly apples on it; that's why ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... and Virginia are one commonwealth; that eighteen months before every Presidential election, a cause of quarrel is made with England by both the principal political parties, for the purpose of securing the Irish rote; that measly pork is caused by too hasty insertion in brine after killing, and consequent rapid fermentation; that the people of the United States, unless they have travelled in Europe, are quite unable to appreciate wit. [Mr. Mackay's wit? If so, certainly.] These are but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... was sobbing and struggling for breath. "Measly skunk!" he panted; "a-campin' on my trail an' lettin' me do the work, an' then ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... that! It's out of the question!" cried Mr. Manley. "I'm getting so to loathe the brute that I shall soon be quite unable to stand him. As it is, I sometimes have a violent desire to wring his neck. Now that I know that he played this measly trick on you, it will be more violent than ever. Besides, we must have a flat in town. It's really necessary to my work! I can do my actual writing down here fairly well. But what I really need is to get in touch with the right people, with the people ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... let me git at him, cap'n!" came from Bahama Bill, who was being held back by Fred and Songbird. "I'll show him wot I think o' sech a measly scoundrel!" And he shook his brawny fist at ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... the father sat chuckling and grinning and grunting, "Boys—boys," and at intervals, "Measly little milk-eyed kids," and again "Boys—boys," while the family nibbled at ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... eat and wear a measly little house, can you? That's what I'm askin' the town right now. Sure you can't! The thing to do is to sell that place for what it'll fetch, sock the money in bank for you, and it'll be there—with interest—when you've grown up ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... is what comes from pinning your faith to a woman and not appreciating the weakness of the sex. She faced the danger of being burned alive and never turned a hair; but when she saw a measly little mouse crawl under the platform she ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... convalescent, I found that my hair, which had been splendidly thick and long, was coming out alarmingly, and it was advised that my head be shaved, with a promise that the hair would surely be curly and just as good as before the illness. I felt pretty measly and "meachin" and submitted. The effect was indescribably awful. I saw my bald pate once, and almost fainted. I was provided with a fearsome wig, of coarse, dark red hair, held in place by a black tape. ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... comparative orderliness of the short, narrow Street of the Merchants, itself flanked by the drunken bedlam of the Street of the Sailors. It can be understood why these men who flew, who needed a whole solar system for elbow room, disdained setting to order the measly few acres of dirt they stopped at, but it is a mystery why, when used to living through vast leagues of space, they endured such narrow streets and cluttered houses. Probably, tired from their long cramped cruises, impatient for their ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... bridesmaid, and must needs have a becoming dress but where was it to come from? Her perfidious uncle had vanished (she knew not yet who that uncle really was), and her "tips" of late had been—in Polly's language—measly. In the course of friendly chat she mentioned to Mr. Parish that the wedding was for that day week, and added, with head aside, that she couldn't imagine what she ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... yuh why—and it ain't for killing Texas and Rawhide—two as measly, ornery cusses as there was in town—it ain't for that. It's for daring to say, last night in my place, that the Committee is rotten to the core, and that they murdered Sandy McTavish in cold blood when they took him out and hung him for ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... halfway decent through love. I was a gambler and a pleasure seeker through passion, I've gone to work at a mean little job and stuck to it and lived on what I've earned—through love. Do you think it's easy to give up gambling? Try it! Do you think it's easy to live in a measly little room up six flights of black, smelly stairs, with no fire in winter? Anyhow, it wasn't easy for me, but I did it—through love, ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... her playfully. "Two measly weeks out, two weeks to astrogate her back home. And once I've got my feet wet at it, it'll be like shooting ...
— Next Door, Next World • Robert Donald Locke
... almost out of breath from his violent exertions, "he's only struck a mud turtle, or something like that, and wants us to come and see. It's a burning shame to give us all such a scare over a measly turtle." ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... election an' havin' a good time of it? Did you ever see a Chink go swimmin' out through the breakers at Carmel?—or boxin', wrestlin', runnin' an' jumpin' for the sport of it? Did you ever see a Chink take a shotgun on his arm, tramp six miles, an' come back happy with one measly rabbit? What does a Chink do? Work his damned head off. That's all he's good for. To hell with work, if that's the whole of the game—an' I've done my share of work, an' I can work alongside of any of 'em. But what's the good? If they's one thing I've learned ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... to something at last, Mort," said Slump. "Farrington went back on us in a measly way. Why, after all we did for him he took up with Jim Evans and others, and even refused me a few dollars when we were in hiding and trouble after that silk robbery. Here's our revenge. He's been up to some deep game for ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... amount to much,—a measly, sandy-haired, cheap thing. I come of respectable folks, who had a farm outer Gales City, and never worked out 'fore this happened. But now I can't settle down to nothin'; it's always that Frenchman before my ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... contrast, and, striving with courage to belie his agitation, murmured: "Look at Erasmus. Did you ever see such a measly lot? If we can't beat that crew, Ray, my boy, we must be duffers," to emphasise which remark he tickled me under both armpits, so that, nearly jumping out of my skin, I fell forward on to Johnson, who fell forward on to White, who, having ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... does! Must have cost all of ten dollars apiece to deliver them letters," chuckled the carrier. "And the people that mailed 'em stuck on a measly red two-cent stamp. I git fifty dollars for bringin' 'em ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... this always fresh problem, I had come to a side street leading to the market from which two or three small groceries draw their supplies, and stopped for a moment to look at the flabby, half-decayed vegetables, the coarse beef and measly-looking pork from which comes the sickly, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... a former Christmas at Carter Hall still fresh in mind, and knowing the dear lady's generosity, and having seen the biggest bundle of feathers and the longest pair of legs he had ever laid his eyes on hanging head down on the measly wall of the shabby yard as he entered, screwed up his eyes, cudgelled his brain by tapping his forehead with his forefinger, ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... head, and can be seen by the naked eye. The strong brine of the packer does not kill them, and I have known them to be taken alive from a boiled ham. The great heat of frying alone renders them harmless. When partially-cooked, measly pork is eaten by man, the gastric juice of the stomach dissolves the membranous sac which contains the living larva, and the animal soon passes into the intestines, where, clinging by its hooks, it holds on with wonderful tenacity, rapidly sending out joint after joint, until the perfect tapeworm ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... growled. "Didn't see you. Say, I'm so mad my skin cracks. Just now some measly little shrimp called me up from a public booth. What ye suppose he wanted, now? Oh, nothin'! Just told me in so many words for me to pack up my little trunk and sail for Europe and never come back! That's all! He give me until Sunday, too." McCarthy barked out a short laugh, and reached ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... got near the Helephant and Castle, Timothy Odgkinson, of Brixton Hill, a low, underselling grocer, got his measly errand cart, with his name and address in great staring white letters, just in advance of the leaders, and kept dodging across the road to get the sound ground, for the whole line was werry "woolley" as you calls it. "Come, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... remember the drinks and the cigars all right, and saying to some one that this luck was too good to last. And here we are turned out in the cold world again, our fun all over, and now must go back to those measly cattle. But it's ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... had great reason for keeping intimate with the captain, he immediately consented. Going forward, he met me, and I told him the secret. "That will do," replied he; "it all tends to what we wish." The doctor returned to the captain, and said, "that there was no doubt but that the pig was measly, which was a complaint very frequent on board ships, particularly in hot climates, where all pork became measly—one great reason for its there proving so unwholesome." The captain sent for the first lieutenant, and, with a deep sigh, ordered him to throw the pig overboard; ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... laughing at me. So would Jack. And both would say it is unworthy. That's just it. It is the measly little unworthies that nag one to desperation. Besides, Mate, I shrink from any more trouble, any more heart-aches as I would from names. The terror of the by-gone years creeps over me and covers the ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... cases the measles went through their common course with milder symptoms than usual, and in the other the measly contagion seemed just sufficient to stop the progress of variolous contagion, but without itself throwing the constitution into any disorder. At the same time both the measles and small-pox seem to have been rendered milder. Does not this give an idea, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... of a small river poured down over many ledges of sandstone. In this sandstone were worn many pot-holes, some of them perfect, and of all sizes. In one about the size of a butter tub was a sucker, a measly fish about a foot long. Nothing else to do, Father pulled off his coat and rolled up his sleeves, and getting down on his knees he began to chase this sucker about the pot-hole to catch him. The sucker went around and around very deliberately until just the right moment arrived when, with a sudden ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... steaming odors of greasy, lukewarm water. The one blot upon her existence is perhaps the Chinese cook, with whom she has perforce to associate. She dislikes him for no other reason than that he is a "yaller-faced doper that ought to been set to herd with a menagerie of measly skunks." But even this annoyance cannot seriously damp her buoyancy, and, with wonderful feminine philosophy, she puts him out of her mind as ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... it all; I'm busted wide open, except for a measly dollar, an' I shore hopes you don't want that," he laughed. "You play a whole lot better than you did the last time I was here. I've got to move along. I'm going east an' see Wallace an' from there I've got to meet Red an' ride home with him. But you come an' see us when you can—it's ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... glass-settin' tools, and go to work settin' some glass in one of the meetin'-house winders. Some o' them little small panes got broke somehow—yes'm, I did, but I never meant to, honest I didn't. I was jest tryin' my new catapult, and I never thought they'd have such measly glass as all that. Well, so I see—saw him get to work, and I says to Squashnose Weight—we was goin' home from school together—I says, 'Let's go up in the gallery!' Old Booby had left the door open, and 'twas right under the gallery that he was to work. So we went up; and I ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... the General Sales Company, that handled the export end of the trust's affairs. So, right in the height of his season, he's had to scratch his Horse Show entries, drop polo practice, and move into a measly six-room suite in one of them new Fifth-ave. hotels, with three hours of soul-wearin' officework ahead of him five days out of seven. He'd been at the grind a month now, and Mother had worried so about his health that Joshua ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford |
