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They can scarcely believe that the paltry quirks which are faintly heard through a storm of coughing, and which do not impose on the plainest country gentleman, can proceed from the same sharp and vigorous intellect which had excited their admiration under the same roof, and on the same day. Johnson decided literary questions like a lawyer, not like a legislator.
He stipulated that the associates should secure to him the sum of one thousand pesos de oro in requital of his good-will, and they eagerly closed with his proposal, rather than be encumbered with his pretensions. For so paltry a consideration did he resign his portion of the rich spoil of the Incas! 2 But the governor was not gifted with the eye of a prophet.
From behind Clara's handkerchief Clara's tears were in close relation to Clara's sense of the fitness of things Katie made out that life seemed driving her to this, but that it hurt her to think so tragic a thing should be associated with so paltry a sum. "It's my limit," said Katie shortly. "Take it or leave it."
His voice jarred upon her heart, now too full, and she ran into the house to hide her feelings, and left him. Even the thought of him now, in her morbid state, began to pierce her like a sword. "She thinks more of her paltry strawberry-bed than of me," muttered Arden, and he stalked angrily homeward. "What is the matter with Miss Allen?" he asked his mother abruptly. "I don't understand her."
When he had finished, there was a profound silence until Milton said: "That's the only thing I have heard said in the Canyon that didn't sound paltry." "If any of the rest of us had repeated it, though, it might have sounded so." Harden's tone was dry. "Shakespeare couldn't sound paltry anywhere!" exclaimed Enoch. "Hum!" sniffed Agnew. "Depends on what and when you're quoting.
When I reflect upon this rhodomontade," disdainfully adds Mr. Drummond, "I cannot help comparing, in my memory, the paltry procession of the Venetian marriage with a very august occurrence of which I was eyewitness in Sweden," and which being the reception of their Swedish Majesties by the British fleet, I am sure the reader will not ask me to quote.
"Nice! call it excellent! Stockfish and parsnips. Oh, I am very fond of stockfish; I should have been born a Newfoundland fisherman." This worthy lad, on the contrary, was but poorly refreshed, after a hard day's toil, with this paltry stew, a little burnt as it had been, too, during his story; but he knew he pleased his mother by observing the fast without complaining.
What would it matter to him then, if he had starved with them, or ruled over them? People talked of benevolence. What would it matter to him then, the misery or happiness of those yet working in this paltry life of ours?
The fee-system poisoned the morality of the law-courts. From the highest judge to the lowest usher, every person connected with a court of justice was educated to receive small sums of money for trifling services, to be always looking out for paltry dues or gratuities, to multiply occasions for demanding, and reasons for pocketing petty coins, to invent devices for legitimate peculation.
Silas cooked and ate, and sometimes read under the maples beside the stone walls: usually he slept in the cart in the midst of the assortment of goods that proclaimed him, to the astute, an expert in applied psychology. At first you might have thought Silos merely a peddler, but if you knew your Thoreau you would presently begin to perceive that peddling was the paltry price he paid for liberty.
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