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As he turned away, his eyes fell upon the scanty handful of small coins which the waiter had removed from his pocket and for a moment he stared at them reflectively, then he scooped them into his palm and, with a smile, announced to his image: "It would seem that it is time for us to introduce ourselves to the management." He was humming a tune as he strode out of his richly furnished quarters.
The first of these is, as it were, the father of the hills in the neighbourhood, the source of an hundred streams, and by far the largest of the ridge, still holding in his dark bosom, and in the ravines with which his sides are ploughed, considerable remnants of those ancient forests with which all the high grounds of that quarter were once covered, and particularly the hills, in which the rivers both those which run to the east, and those which seek the west to discharge themselves into the Solway -hide, like so many hermits, their original and scanty sources.
Infanticide, the former curse of this country, and the cause of its scanty population, a crime every way calculated to make men bloody-minded and ferocious, and to stifle every benevolent and tender feeling, has totally disappeared wherever an intercourse has taken place between the natives and the crews of European vessels.
The scanty contents of the store and china cupboards were spread out before the lady of the house, who infused activity into the most sluggish by smart strokes from her stick. The epithets of beast, rascal, and the like, were dealt out with such freedom and readiness, as to make the European part of her audience sensible of the richness and variety of the Arabian language.
The voyage had been a profitable one and Balboa had made money out of it. He had lost all his money, however, and had eked out a scanty living on a farm at Hispaniola, which he had been unable to leave because he was in debt to everybody. The authorities were very strict in searching every vessel that cleared from Santo Domingo, for absconders.
Here, on the 26th and 27th, they endured so great a storm, that the seamen began to murmur again, as having been a whole fortnight without procuring any muscles, having nothing to subsist upon in all that time but a scanty allowance of biscuit and oil.
"Gad," said the Major, between his teeth, as he surveyed her when she was called forward as usual, and swept her curtsies to the scanty audience, "the young rascal has not made a bad choice." The Doctor applauded her loudly and loyally. "Upon my word," said he, "She is a very clever actress; and I must say, Major, she is endowed with very considerable personal attractions."
Bjoernson was too near to his own country folk to commit such faults as these; he was himself of peasant stock, and all his boyhood life had been spent in close association with men who wrested a scanty living from an ungrateful soil. Although a poet by instinct, he was not afraid of realism, and did not shrink from giving the brutal aspects of peasant life a place upon his canvas.
They sowed their barley, planted their cabbage, and, now that their trade was gone, worked in the rich villagers' fields to make out a scanty living. So the seasons came and passed; spring, summer, harvest, and winter followed each other as they have done from the beginning.
For two years past I have devoted all my time and scanty means, living on a mere pittance, denying myself all pleasures and even necessary food, that I might have a sum to put my Telegraph into such a position before Congress as to insure success to the common enterprise. One more year has gone for want of these means.
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