"By inches" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man. That's what makes me sick. Right on top of all his bad luck he comes here and sees that everybody is getting a big roll. He thinks of that white-faced wife of his dragging herself round among the kids and dying by inches for lack of what money can buy her. I tell you I don't blame him. It's the fellows putting the temptation up to him that ought ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... tell you," he said, after a moment. "I'm afraid to die this way, by inches, and hours. I'm scared to death." It seemed impossible that the sick man's cheeks could further blanch, but they became fairly livid, while a beading of moisture appeared upon his upper lip. "God! You've no idea how it gets on a fellow's nerves to see himself slipping— slipping. ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... Belton's gone in for stores, and to report. We've shifted camp where the flies, and bugs, and things'll let you folks forget the darn river, and the nightmare I guess you dreamt on it. You're all beating the game, some of you by yards, and others by inches. But you're beating it. And I'm still guessing at those things you all know like you were born to 'em. When are you going to hand me the yarn, Steve? When are you going to feel like thinking about the things that two weeks ago looked like ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... is all we can do to crawl to our places in the choir? Not I—I am young and strong still—nor you, perhaps, for you are strong still, though you are not young. But many of the sisters—yes, they are the best ones, I know—they are killing themselves by inches before our eyes. You know it—I know it—they know it themselves. Why should they not find some shorter way of death for God's glory? Or if not, why should they not live happily, since many of them could? Why should God, who made us, wish us to destroy ourselves—or ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... was added to my desire to hasten from such scenes; and I had soon left the town for the Ohio. I will not weary you with further details, as my breath is failing fast. Suffice it to say I arrived in Mexico, and, here I am, perishing by inches upon ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... the speed at which St. Justin was passed. I was beyond caring. We missed a figure by inches and a cart by a foot. Then the cottages faded, and the long snarl of the engine sank to the stormy mutter she kept for the ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... help. "What with fighting and hardship, our troops and militia are wasting away." "The enemy is upon us by sea and land." "Send us a thousand men next spring, if you want the colony to be saved." "We are perishing by inches; the people are in the depths of poverty; the war has doubled prices so that nobody can live." "Many families are without bread. The inhabitants desert the country, and crowd into the towns." [Footnote: Lettres de Frontenac et de Champigny, 1691, 1692.] A new enemy appeared ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... perspiration covered my trembling limbs, as I watched those coffins with the most painful and serious apprehension. Every moment I expected the fearful catastrophe, and even wondered which part they would devour first—whether one would come alone and thus kill me by inches, or whether they would all rise at once, and quickly make an end of me. I even imagined I could see the coffins move—that I heard the dead groan and sigh and even the sound of my own chattering teeth, I fancied to be a movement among the dry bones that lay at my feet. In the ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... gentle eyes would fill with sympathy. "Poor Mrs. Pendleton," she would often say to Elsie after one of these distressing allusions. "How terrible it must have been. Think of seeing some one you love dying that way, by inches before your eyes. She must have been very fond of him, too. She always speaks of him with ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... to think of, Miss Cynthy; and there's that poor woman dyin' by inches, and Miss Bathsheby settin' with her day and night, she has n't got a bit of her father in her, it's all her mother,—and that man, instead of bein' with her to comfort her as any man ought to be with his wife, in sickness and in health, that's what ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to Arthur. "This is November, baby's five months old. Send your wife away. Put her out! Something's killing her by inches, and I believe it's just care o' the nest. We must drive her off it, as I drove Leonard Byington off,—which, you remember, you, quietly, were the first to suggest to me to do.... Coming back, you say,—Byington? Yes, but only for a day or ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... George, one evening, turning to me with the troubled look I had seen so often on his face of late, "what be wrong wi' you, my chap? You be growing paler everyday. Oh, Peter! you be like a man as is dyin' by inches—if 'tis ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... the referee could see the ball. There was a moment of tense expectancy and then the official waved his arm in a direction that brought forth a vast yell of joy from the Ridgley stands. Jefferson had been held; that leather oval had failed by inches to cross the last thin ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... "I'm a-goin'. I've been a long time about it. I've been dying by inches, but I guess I'll finish the job pretty slick this time. Well, boys, I'm in possession of all my faculties. I want you to know that. I was crazy when I started off, but that's passed away. My mind's clear. Now, pardners, I've ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... happy, joyous, and innocent they were, just as God intended his children to be. Two days before, this lovely family had been in the depths of despair, day by day watching a beloved wife and mother dying by inches of a painful, lingering, loathsome disease. Not a sound of music had been heard in the house for many days. The violin, guitar, and dulcimer had lain utterly neglected and unstrung. Now a change has occurred ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... wretches! had soil'd and marr'd Whatever to womanly nature belongs; For the marriage tie they had no regard, Nay, sped their mates to the sexton's yard, (Like Madame Laffarge, who with poisonous pinches Kept cutting off her L by inches)— And as for drinking, they drank so hard That they drank their ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... worst murderers. If my son wants to murder me, I would rather have him kill me outright than to take five years to do it. A young man who goes home late night after night, and when his mother remonstrates, curses her gray hairs, and kills her by inches, is the worst sort of ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... have to say, is it? You—a man of God, so-called—killing your wife by inches and not caring a damn what suffering you cause! I tell you, she has been at death's door all day, thanks to your infernal behaviour. She may die yet, and you will be directly responsible. You've crushed her systematically, body and soul. As to the children, ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... in the whole realm where the operatives are all working half-time, and thanking the Capitalists for keeping the mills going, and only starving them by inches?" said Devilsdust in a ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... the shadow of the figure a lesson for our instant application. The disciplined Romans scorned the long blades of the barbarians, whose valor so often impetuous was also impotent against discipline. The Romans measured their blades by inches, not by feet. For ages the Japanese sword has been famed for its temper more than its weight.[7] The Christian entering upon his Master's campaigns with as little impediments of sectarian dogma as possible, should select a weapon that is short, sure ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... prophecy proved fairly correct. Chambers had shot her bolt. Brimfield secured the ball by inches on a fourth down near the middle of the field and her first desperate attack, a skin-tackle play with St. Clair carrying the pigskin, piled through for nearly ten yards, proving that Chambers was no longer invulnerable. Carmine, still in control, called for more speed ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Fairfax says. It's the jumping-off place. So I'm leaving in a day or two with Rachel. My husband says he can't leave his business, but I'm not such a fool as he thinks. I won't say anything more about him, except that he hasn't the courage to watch me go down by inches. ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... was sagacious; he had been fed on that sort of chaff too long. Picton and I were obliged to humor his prejudices, and dismount in the mud, and after one or two feeble attempts at a ride, gave it up, walked down hill and up, lifted the wagon by inches over Sebastopol, and finally arrived at McGibbet's, wet, tired, and hungry. That Sabbath-broker received us with a grim smile of satisfaction, put on the half-extinguished fire the smallest bit of wood he could find in the pile beside the hearth, and then went ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... to kill it was then. I wanted to get my own fingers on that scoundrel's throat as he had dared touch hers; and in my heart I swore by all the gods, by all the stars and moons and other things in the heavens and under the sea, that I would strangle out his miserable life by inches, or leave my bones to bleach on the shore of her unknown island. Wherever it was, I would find it; wherever she was, I would find her!—and God help him when he came my way! It was a classy oath, and I felt a ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... veins the blood danced with the excitement that stirred his forefathers to battle. Not a line of the tragedy that was being enacted before his eyes escaped this native son of the wilderness. It was a magnificent fight! He knew that the old bull would die by inches in the one-sided duel, and that when it was over there would be more than one carcass for the survivors to gorge themselves upon. Quietly he reached up and touched ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... you—I'll explain in words of one syllable. Mind you, I don't undertake to settle the question—Heaven forbid! It may be all right for Marietta Mortimer to kill herself body and soul by inches to keep what bores her to death to have—a social position in Endbury's two-for-a-cent society, but, for the Lord's sake, why do they make such a howling and yelling just at the time when Lydia's got the tragically important ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... dad!" he answered, with a sort of sob in his excited voice. "She's murdering him by inches, that's what she's doing, and I want you to help me bring it home to her. God knows what it is she's using or how she uses it; but you know what demons they are for secret poisons, those Javanese, what means they have of killing people without a trace. And she ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... were in a good humor they were all the time at her heels, and she could not find a leisure moment even to iron a cap, so constant were the demands they made upon her. They wanted her to do this and do that, to cook little dishes for them and wait upon them by inches. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... all," argued Joan. "Why shouldn't 'ee? 'Tis the same, so far as you'm concerned, whether he's killed to wance or dies by inches." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... an end of it," he returned irritably, chewing hard on a chip he had picked up from the ground; "and what's more, I shan't go till I see the use. It's killing me by inches. I tell you I'm not strong enough to stand a life like this. Drudge, drudge, drudge; there's nothing else except the little spirit I get ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... the toss and elected to break with spot, which appeared to be a rounder ball than its fellow. Taking a careful and protracted aim at the red, he only missed the object-ball by inches, his own travelling twice round the table before finally coming to rest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... with brains, Nick," he observed, with sardonic humour. "But look here! Your friend Mrs. Musgrave is not to be meddled with in this matter. You leave her alone and Hunt-Goring too! He's killing himself by inches with opium, so he won't interfere with anyone for long. And she will prove a useful friend to Noel if allowed ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... sent to the common jail; but it was evident that he was dying by inches of mental disorder, and his pardon was procured by the influence of Mr. Watson. He went back to his home. The ten thousand dollars which Dock had borrowed of him was recovered, in process of law, of the person with whom the swindler had deposited it. The ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... want to kill the men, and I know the rascals deserve it, do it at once. Hanging is the best way. But don't keep them there to die by inches, for it will disgrace us all ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... the leak; but our 6-pound quick-firers peppered them so severely that, after struggling manfully for two or three minutes, they were obliged to let the mat go, and lost it. Then they launched a torpedo at us, which missed us by inches only, whereupon I ordered our men to cease fire, and hailed the Russian to ask if she would surrender. But, not a bit of it; their reply, as translated to me by Hiraoka, who was an excellent Russian linguist, was, that they knew ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... half the neighbourhood looking on, and anyhow not worse than this Saturday-to-Tuesday business of dying by inches; and then I should go on into something else. If I had been a moderately good otter I suppose I should get back into human shape of some sort; probably something rather primitive—a little brown, unclothed Nubian boy, I ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... their Father, holding his hands, and all three the picture of despair. Mother Meraut stood before them, her eyes flashing, her cheeks burning a deep red, and this is what she said: "I will not live like this another day. Life in Rheims is no longer possible. I will not stay here to be killed by inches. I have made arrangements to get a little row-boat, and to-morrow morning we will take such things as we can carry and leave this place. Whatever may happen to us elsewhere, it cannot be worse than what is happening here, and ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... than to go in that way," remonstrated Snap. "Wet your face and then go in head first—-it's the only right way. If you go in by inches you'll gasp fit to turn ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... met with such a warm and obstinate reception, that it was not without the most surprising efforts of courage and perseverance that they at length obliged them to give ground; and even then they lost it by inches. St. Ruth, seeing them in danger of being overpowered, immediately detached succours to them from his centre and left wing. Mackay no sooner perceived them weakened by these detachments, then he ordered ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... poems, and had "pooled in" a handsome sum to send him to a blind asylum, it would have been a sensible proceeding? Do you think Milton would have written less sublimely, if he had been more prosperous? Do you think Otway choking, or Hudibras Butler dying by inches of slow starvation, pleasant to look upon? Are we to keep any terms with the thin-visaged jade, Poverty, after she has broken down a great soul like John Dryden's? That is a very foolish notion which has so long and so universally prevailed, that a poet must, by the necessity of the case, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... Sir, if you'ld saue your life, flye to your House, The Plebeians haue got your Fellow Tribune, And hale him vp and downe; all swearing, if The Romane Ladies bring not comfort home They'l giue him death by Inches. Enter another Messenger. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... a stake in that region's future, and would share its prosperity, and, had it been otherwise, they were human still. Toiling long with stubborn patience, often in imminent peril of life and limb; winning ground as it were by inches, and sometimes barely holding what they had won; fulfilling their race's destiny to subdue and people the waste places of the earth with the faith which, when aided by modern science, is greater than the mountains' ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... of man who, as a boy, was accustomed to thoroughly enjoy the pastime of pulling wings from living flies and drowning a helpless kitten by inches. ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... here, to see if I can't fix up a deal with you to straighten things out. I am in your hands, boy, at your mercy. I have the reputation of being hard as shingle nails. I'm soft as putty where the girl is concerned. It kills me by inches to have ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... timbers, which were not well secured, slid forward and pushed me off my seat, so that I fell right under the mules just as they stepped on the ferry. The frightened mules trampled and kicked fearfully. I lay still, thinking that if I moved they would step on me, as their hoofs missed my head by inches only. I thought of my mother and how sorry she would be if she could see me now, but I was thinking, ever thinking and lay very still. Then my guardian angel, in the person of a Mexican, crawled under the wagon from the rear end and pulled me by my heels, ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... hit not a dozen feet above him, but had sprayed its fountain from him, instead of toward him. He had some trouble lighting his cigarette and was irritated for a second at his inconvenience. But so far as we could see, the fact that death had reached for him and missed him by inches had left no impression upon his mind. Three years in war had wrought some deep change in him. Was it entirely in his nerves or was it deeper than nerves, a certain calmness of soul—or was it merely a dramatic expression of a soldierly attitude? ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... is suffering death by inches, from the most painful of all complaints, a cancer. His eldest son, who seems about twelve years old, was with him. He was going, he said, to place him ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... idea! A Florida cow run at you? If you had said a pig, there might be some sense in it, for the pigs here do have some life about them; but a cow! Why, the creatures have not strength enough to stand up: they are all starving by inches." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... forty miles,—forty miles westward, down the valley to the sea; forty miles eastward, into the San Fernando Mountains; and good forty miles more or less along the coast. The boundaries were not very strictly defined; there was no occasion, in those happy days, to reckon land by inches. It might be asked, perhaps, just how General Moreno owned all this land, and the question might not be easy to answer. It was not and could not be answered to the satisfaction of the United States Land Commission, which, ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... then we both would get muddled and we might lose ourselves completely. I remembered what old Jerry the prospector once had said: "When you're on a trail, and you've been told that it goes somewhere, keep it till you get there. Nobody can describe a trail by inches." ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... though; "never say die;" and, setting his teeth, he went on with the duty the doctor had inaugurated, and visited man after man, praying, exhorting, and bullying them into partaking of food instead of lying there, dying, as it were, by inches. ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... next resulted, and Russell missed it by inches. The batter had still another chance. But it availed him little, for Joe fooled him ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... Madame Mignon after a long pause, "that if I am dying by inches through Bettina's wrong-doing, your father would not survive yours, no, not for a moment. I know him; he would put a pistol to his head,—there could be no life, no ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... caught the scent, and he saw the shadowy figure coming through the starlight. He tried to drag himself back, but he could move only by inches. The man came rapidly nearer. Kazan caught the glisten of the rifle in his hand. He heard his hollow cough, and the tread of his feet in the snow. Gray Wolf crouched shoulder to shoulder with him, trembling and showing her teeth. When ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... other. The spurs dug; the blood spurted. The crowd burst into a howl of delight as their favourite responded. Startled by the sound, Vitriolo's rider darted a glance over his shoulder, and saw El Rayo bearing down upon him like a thunder-bolt, regaining the ground that he had lost, not by inches, but by feet. Two hundred paces from the finish he was at the black's flanks; one hundred and fifty, he was at his girth; one hundred, and the horses were neck and neck; and still the quirto whirred down on El Rayo's heaving flanks, the spurs dug ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... he had heard the shot, and come up just in time to see Richard fly from the house, his shoes covered with blood. He has never been heard of since; but there is a judgment of murder out against him; and the fear and shame is killing his mother by inches." ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... look at it Here you are in hell! Caged up with two old crows picking the life out of you. They'll kill you-I can see it; you're being killed by inches. You can't go anywhere, you can't have anything. Life is just torture ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... needs a pessimist and an optimist, with ample opportunities to quarrel. Johnson is a jackass, but honest. He is a pessimist and has a pea-green liver. Listen to him and the business will die painlessly, by inches. Applerod is also a jackass, and I presume him to be honest; but I never tested it. He suffers from too much health, and the surplus goes into optimism. Listen to him and the business will die in horrible agony, quickly. But keep both of them. Let them fight things out ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... seashore know well those familiar ripples that mark the sands when the tide is out. On the Goodwins those ripples are gigantic banks, to be measured by feet, not by inches. I can speak from personal experience, having once visited the Goodwins and walked among the sand-banks at low water. From one to another of these banks this splendid boat was thrown. Each roaring surf caught it by the bow or stern, and, whirling ...
— Battles with the Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... had two herbs here I could prolong my days for a long time, I most thoroughly believe, but they can never touch my disease the way they go on here—I am dying by inches." ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... here," he began with an effort at restraint, "is killing me by inches. Let them make shorter work of it. I can't sleep. No man can live without sleep. My jailers know this. I am never alone a moment—always the eye of a guard staring at me day and night. If I doze a feverish moment the ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... rattled viciously. They had seen us. An instant later, the bullets were spattering around us, and we dropped flat. One man slumped heavily and lay quite still. By inches we crawled forward, nearer and nearer to the blazing monster. Another machine gun snarled at us, and we slid into a shell-hole for protection. Then, after a moment's breathing space, we popped out and tried to rush again. Another man stopped ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... my dear, but that you do not know what has happened, even since you were born. Any white will tell you what the negroes did, so late as the year ninety-one—how they killed their masters by inches—how they murdered infants—how they carried ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... and go and roam about the world at pleasure, when that gallant coachmaker had vowed but the night before that Miss Varden held him bound in adamantine chains; and had positively stated in so many words that she was killing him by inches, and that in a fortnight more or thereabouts he expected to make a decent end and leave the ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... tell me not of stormy graves— Though winds be high, there let them roar; I 'd rather perish on the waves Than pine by inches on the shore. I ask no willow where I lie, My mourner let the mermaid be, My only knell the sea-bird's cry, My winding-sheet the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... mounted on a horse of the plains, Maqueda? Oh! what need is there for me to ask? You go to see that accursed Gentile whom I would I had killed by inches, as I would that I could ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... door of the shanty creaked. They must be opening it by inches. When it was wide they would run for the stable. He wished now that he had warned Kate to walk, for a slow moving object catches the eye more seldom than one which travels fast. If Lee Haines was watching at that moment his attention must be held to Buck for ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... it, lads,' said the mate, 'it is better to be killed outright by the blacks, than die by inches from hunger and thirst. I am ready to step on shore first, and you may shove off, and wait till you see ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... at Gangley's Mills the pace grew even greater. From the west prong of the road fork at the bottom a taxicab shot into view. There was a shout of warning, a rattle and creak as the taxi swerved, safe by inches. ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... If at times I may have conceived the wish to be a senator, it is because I fancy that this function will, within some not distant interval, afford fine opportunities of being knocked on the head or shot—forms of death which are very preferable to a long illness, which kills you by inches and demolishes you bit by bit. God's will be done! I have little chance of adding much to my store of knowledge; I have a pretty accurate idea of the amount of truth which the human mind can, in the present stage of its development, discern. I should be very grieved to ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... the latter's sanguinary boast that he had redeemed as many as thirty Huguenots from the hands of the populace, only that he might induce them to abjure their religion, under promise of life, and afterward enjoy the satisfaction of murdering them by inches under his dagger.[1376] ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... them helped me to lie still. Then I caught another pregnant sound, a mumbling of male voices in the adjoining front room. I waited a bit, hearkening laboriously, and then ever so gradually I slid from the bed, put on everything except my boots, and moved by inches to the door between the two rooms. It was very thin; "a good sounding-board," thought I as I listened for life or death and hoped my ear was ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... to stay in like this week after week, and month after month. He—he said you were killing yourself by inches, Monsieur Maurice." ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... the bear still lives. Talk to me about that, will you, if he didn't shoot its stub of a tail off that time! What next, I wonder? Why not execute the poor beast scientifically, and not murder him by inches?" ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... through the hideous morass that lies like a filthy moat defending Pal-ul-don from the creatures of the outer world. Now waist deep in the sucking ooze, now menaced by loathsome reptiles, the man advanced only by virtue of Herculean efforts gaining laboriously by inches along the devious way that he was forced to choose in selecting the least precarious footing. Near the center of the morass was open water—slimy, green-hued water. He reached it at last after more than ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... tells us, that a boy of ten or eleven years of age was bitten by a vampire, and a poor ass, belonging to the young gentleman's father, was dying by inches from the bites of the larger kinds, while most of his fowls were killed by ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... from the vernacular. Kim watched, listened, and approved. This was not insipid, single-word talk of drummer-boys. It dealt with a life he knew and in part understood. The atmosphere suited him, and he throve by inches. They gave him a white drill suit as the weather warmed, and he rejoiced in the new-found bodily comforts as he rejoiced to use his sharpened mind over the tasks they set him. His quickness would have delighted an English master; but at St Xavier's they know the first rush of minds developed ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... under one thousand, who, though the enemy were two thousand and three hundred strong, disputed the ground very handsomely, two hours, during which time the enemy gained only one mile, and that by inches. Our troops were then ordered to retire over a bridge, which they did in perfectly good order. Our loss was between sixty and seventy, killed, wounded, and taken. The enemy's is unknown, but it must be equal to ours; for their own honor ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... blacksmith in the company fitted round his ankles, knees, and arms, pinioning the latter to his body, so that, excepting his head, which was 'left free to enjoy the prospect,' he could not move a muscle. In this condition he hung for days beside his stiffened companion; dying by inches of famine and cold, which had moderated so as, without ending, to aggravate his misery. Before he died, he had gnawed his shoulder from very hunger. On the fifth night, as it approached twelve o'clock, having been motionless ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... There roasting by inches, dry, fevered, and faint, Having drunk all the cream you so civilly laid, off, He dies of as charming a liver complaint As ever sleek person could wish ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... does not, because he cannot, say it—without showing what a big fool he is. However he has begun again to say it. If it had not been for human respect he would not have said it last Sunday; he was too feeble. God is killing him by slow fire, by inches. He dies ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... less than L115 sterling for the tenant-right sold by him of ground, the head rent of which is L1, 2s. 6d. a year. The worst enemy of Father M'Fadden will hardly suspect him, I hope, of taking such a sum as this from a tenant farmer for the right to starve to death by inches.[13] ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... know. I can't tell you, for I don't know myself. I don't think anything has been killed. I think something is dead that's been dying by inches for years. Don't press me any more. Accept the truth. It's all over. I don't want you ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... average about sixteen hours a day, while Mr. Pierpont struck out boldly for a far-off perilous and rocky shore, with a lighthouse, in the shape of a pulpit, before him, and achieved the "Airs of Palestine" while undergoing the process of regeneration, and starving by inches upon what there were left of his wife's teaspoons, which were sold one by one to pay the rent of a cheap room in Howard Street. So poor indeed were we at one time, that we could hardly muster enough between us ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... "But, oh! to think upon the bride he robbed me of—the young—the beautiful!—whom I loved to madness; whose memory is a barbed shaft, yet rankling keen as ever at my heart. God of Justice! how is it that I have thus long survived? But some men die by inches. My dying lips shall name him once again, and then 'twill be but to blend his name ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to the city seemed to Gallegher to drag itself by inches. It stopped and backed at purposeless intervals, waited for an express to precede it, and dallied at stations, and when, at last, it reached the terminus, Gallegher was out before it had stopped and was in the cab and off on his way to the home of ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... head. It missed by inches. But from behind came a sound as of rending cloth. The glassy dome above the cage of the machine ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... with emotion the groom explained to her what was occurring—how young Mrs. Gardiner stood guard over her husband, refusing to allow the doctor to perform an operation which might save their young master, who was dying by inches with each passing moment of time—how she had caught up a thin, sharp-bladed knife which the doctor had just taken from his surgical case, and, brandishing it before her with the fury of a fiend incarnate, defied ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... calmly. "After all one may as well be drowned as die by inches. I don't owe you any ill will, but I should be almost glad if I did, for then I should dash your brains out against the wall, and fight till they had to bring soldiers down to ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... over that bottle of whisky. Something happens between them. Something inside the man says, 'now,' and the message runs along the reins to the horse's brain. It flies down into his legs. There is a rush. The head of the horse has just worked its way out in front by inches—not too soon, nothing wasted. Ha, ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... reader is informed that I was owing the Doctor for a month's board, and saw no way of paying it, and that my one suit was distressingly threadbare. There are other and more interesting ways of getting famous but alas! I rose only by inches and incredible effort. My reader must ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... strong and resolute. I never had a moment in which to doubt myself. Then, when he died, the agony I suffered was something too dreadful to contemplate. As he lay on the little bed with his life slowly ebbing, and I watched him dying by inches, I was filled with such horror and despair that I thought surely I should go mad. Then it dawned on me that he had been murdered, and my anguish turned to a dreadful feeling of rage and longing to avenge him. Never in my life did I experience such terrible passion as at that moment. ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... had had a conversation with Cojuelo, and that the brigand had told me he meant to kill him by inches and make him die a hundred deaths for having attempted to murder him," resumed Don Carlos at length. "I told him I could ransom him and get him away scot free, but only if he agreed to hand you over to Cojuelo ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... butchered, or taken prisoners for a fate worse than butchery—to be torn apart in the market-place of Vera Cruz, baited in the streets to the yells of on-lookers, hung by the arms to out-of-doors scaffolding to die by inches, or be torn by vultures. The two ships at sea were in terrible plight. North, west, south was the Spanish foe. Food there was none. The crews ate the dogs, monkeys, parrots on board. Then they set traps for the rats of the hold. The ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... whose height I can mete by inches here, Is a thousand fathoms quite. I must journey to your foot, Grow on you as on my root; Feed upon your silent speech, Awful air, and wind, and thunder, Shades, and solitudes, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... door he stepped back with it, escaping by inches the sweep of an axe blade that caught the light from the lamp and shimmered brightly in a half-circle as it was swung with the malignant ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... of doing anything else," replied Jack. "It only takes a smart rap with a club on the head to end their sufferings. I'd hate to think of even a fish dying by inches, and flapping all over the boat or the ground, as it gasps its life away. That's one of the things scouts are taught—to be humane sportsmen, giving the game a chance, whether fish, flesh or fowl, and ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... clearing, and the S.E. wind is the lower stratum now. It is the dry season well begun. Seventy-three inches is a higher rainfall than has been observed anywhere else, even in northern Manyuema; it was lower by inches than here far south on the watershed. In fact, this is the very heaviest rainfall known in these latitudes; between fifty and ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... narrowing, though the man and the girl were working slowly and deliberately, really covering the ground by inches, so thorough was their search for clues of the supposed night visitors. No spot of the size of a hand escaped the keen scrutiny of one or the other of them. They could not have answered had they been asked what particular thing they had hoped ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... it seemed by inches. But fortunately they did not run across any more "guns." When they came across an embankment it was of solid earth and marked ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... and the middle and the end of my misfortunes," she said. "What did I do that gradually lost me my friends?—and I had such good friends, even after my best friend my sister died. What did I do that ruined me by inches? In Australia I have heard of evil men taken red-handed being left in the bush with food and water by them, bound to a fallen tree which has been set on fire at one end. And the fire smoulders and smoulders, and travels ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... in the hope of catching a fish or two to save them from the pangs of hunger. 'Stranger,' said she, 'it seems to me that you like starving in this way—at any rate it does not greatly trouble you, for you stick here day after day, without even trying to get away though your men are dying by inches.' ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... am sick," was the reply—"homesick and sick at heart. I have been in the army nearly two years and a half, and I don't see how I can live to serve out the rest of my time. I am dying by inches." ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... batteries. Day in and day out they labored, officer and men. Sawing off stumps under the water, knocking poisonous snakes by scores from the branches, while the river rose and rose and rose, and the rain crept by inches under their tent flies, and the enemy walked the parapet of Vicksburg and laughed. Two gunboats accomplished the feat of running the batteries, that their smiles ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the most diminutive but pretty little objects imaginable. I delayed here an additional day on the poor creature's account, but all our efforts to raise her proved unsuccessful. I could not leave the poor dumb brute on the ground to die by inches slowly, by famine, and alone, so I in mercy shot her just before we left the place, and left her dead alongside the progeny that she had brought to life in such a wilderness, only at the expense of her own. She had been Mr. ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... flickering spirit into steady flame, such pain it is, the blood forcing its way along the dry channels, and the heavily-ticking nerves, and the sullen heart—the struggle of life and death in him—grim death relaxing his gripe; such pain it is, he cries out no thanks to them that pull him by inches from the depths of the dead river. And he who has thought a love extinct, and is surprised by the old fires, and the old tyranny, he rebels, and strives to fight clear of the cloud of forgotten sensations that settle on him; such pain it is, the old ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of fashion, too, he made his tour, Learn'd vive la bagatelle, et vive l'amour: So travell'd monkeys their grimace improve, Polish their grin, nay, sigh for ladies' love. Much specious lore, but little understood; Veneering oft outshines the solid wood: His solid sense—by inches you must tell. But mete his cunning by the old Scots ell; His meddling vanity, a busy fiend, Still making work his selfish ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... house, which is borrowed, and to which the ghost has adjourned, is wretchedly small and miserable; when we opened the chamber, in which were fifty people, with no light but one tallow candle at the end, we tumbled over the bed of the child to whom the ghost comes, and whom they are murdering by inches in such insufferable heat and stench. At the top of the room are ropes to dry clothes. I asked, if we were to have rope-dancing between the acts? We had nothing; they told us, as they would at a puppet-show, that it would not come ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... this business, Mr. Holmes," said he, as he sank, like a wearied man, into an arm-chair. "It's bad enough to feel that you are surrounded by unseen, unknown folk, who have some kind of design upon you; but when, in addition to that, you know that it is just killing your wife by inches, then it becomes as much as flesh and blood can endure. She's wearing away under it—just ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... artifice! The notes were genuine. The tale of their forgery was false and meant only to wrest them from you. Execrable and perverse idiot! Your deed has sealed my perdition. It has sealed your own. You shall pay for it with your blood. I will slay you by inches. I will stretch you, as you have stretched me, on ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... accursed, though indeed it was not half so gloomy then as it is now. The sun shone into it then, sometimes, and the birds sang. You would n't think it from the looks of things now, would you? As the dead man rotted in his grave, and the living man died by inches above him, they say the wood grew darker, and darker, and darker. How dark it's getting now, ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... I advanced, not by steps, but by inches. I felt more poised and pinnacled in the void than when I had stood on the spike of rock, for I had a substantial hold neither for foot nor hand. It seemed weeks before I made any progress away from the lip of the waterhole. I dared not look down, but kept my eyes on the slope ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... the whip! to see them torn from him, with a knowledge, that they are going to be compelled to submit to the lust of an overseer! and no redress. "How long," says he, "is this frightful system, which tears my body in pieces and excruciates my soul, which kills me by inches, and which involves my family in unspeakable misery and unmerited disgrace, to continue?"—"For ever," replies a voice Suddenly: "for ever, as relates to your own life, and the life of your wife and ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... the greatest generator of Scribes and Pharisees the world has ever known, and they have even proved the very bulwark of it to this day. Look, again, at Luther. There was the Catholic Church dying by inches, gently, even exquisitely. And here came that gigantic peasant, with his too exuberant energy, battered the dying Church into acute sensibility, kicked it into emotion, galvanised it into life, prolonged its existence for a thousand ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... encouragement unless you mean to free him. As for my part, take my life and spare John's. Kill me by torture, burn me at the stake, stretch me upon the rack till my joints are severed and my flesh is torn asunder. Let me die by inches, my queen; but spare him, oh, spare him, and do with me as you will. Ask from me what you wish. Gladly will I do all that you may demand; gladly will I welcome death and call it sweet, if I can thereby save him. The faint hope your Majesty's words hold out makes me strong again. Come, come, take ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... may be feeble-minded or idiots. They may live at home for years, always ailing, always sick. They may develop epilepsy, St. Vitus' dance, skin disease, or mental vagaries, and they may have to be put into institutions for the feeble-minded, or they may die by inches at home. ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... Sometimes for months you can't work in the garden, nor plough, nor sow, nor do anything useful to keep the devil out of your heart. Only sit at home and do nothing, or else go out and watch the grass witherin' and the water dryin' up, and the stock dyin' by inches before your eyes. And no change, maybe, for months. The ground like iron and the sky like brass, as the parson said, and very true, too, ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... a lion, forcing his way through the furious crowd, attacked in the most brutal way on every side, yet ever struggling on if only by inches. Never once did his steadfastness waver, never for a single instant did his spirit sink. His unfailing presence of mind enabled him to get through what would have been impossible to most men, his great height ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... alcohol, because its grip is more speedy and more deadly. It is more deadly than arsenic, because by arsenic the suicide dies at once, while the opium victim suffers untold agonies and horrors and dies by inches. It is all very well for the men who know nothing about the effect of opium to do all the talking about the harmlessness of this pernicious drug; but they should come through this once fair land of Yuen-nan and see everywhere—not ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... Yes, lady; for you love him, too. I've said it! Fling me to the carrion crows, Kill me by inches, boil me in the pot Count Guido promised me,—but, O, beware! Back, while you may. Make me ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... up against a friendly but unskilful farmer at the 'Cow and Cornflower'. 'Better look out,' he said, as his opponent effected a somewhat rustic stroke, 'you'll be cutting the cloth in a second.' The farmer grunted, missed by inches, and retired, leaving the red ball in the jaws of the pocket, and Farnie with three ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... and savage a snarl as all his life had been nasty and savage. Most small creatures were afraid of that snarl, but it had no deterrent effect on Jerry, who continued his steady stalking. When the wild-dog sprang for the hole under the boxes, Jerry sprang after, missing his enemy by inches. Tossing overboard bits of wood, bottles and empty tins, Captain Van Horn ordered the eight eager boat's crew with rifles to turn loose. Jerry was excited and delighted with the fusillade, and added his puppy ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... shading off; within the bounds &c (limit) 233. Adv. by degrees, gradually, inasmuch, pro tanto [It]; however, howsoever; step by step, bit by bit, little by little, inch by inch, drop by drop; a little at a time, by inches, by slow degrees, by degrees, by little and little; in some degree, in some measure; to some extent; di grado ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the chances are them bloody sneaks will soon try to work the same deviltry which we had to look at idly last night, for it stands to reason that all who deserted from this fort fell into their clutches. The next time they start in to kill a man by inches, believin' they're out of range, we'll plump a ball into the middle of the gang that'll ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... to show myself and be seen. It is not, as you may suppose, at Clos Jallanges, in my tweed suit and leggings, that I could get on with my candidature. I cannot but see that the time is near. Loisillon is sinking visibly, dying by inches; and I am using the time to make friendships among the Academicians, which may mean votes hereafter. Astier has already introduced me to several of them. I often go to fetch him after the meetings. It is charming to see them come out of the Institute, ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... that spouted death. But Thorn had done the hundred yards in eleven seconds, years before. He bettered his record now. The first of the little green flashes came when he was no more than ten yards from the boulder which sheltered Sylva. The tiny pellet had missed him by inches. Three more, and ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... yuh by inches, if I hear any remarks out of yuh that ain't respectful," Andy promised, thawing to his normal tone, which was pleasant to the ear. "I didn't find out much about 'em. The fellow I licked told me that Whittaker and Oleson owned the sheep. He ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... nest up a tree, and how, regardless of its fluttering and piteous cries, they had carried it off, and its nest also. Then he told with much laughter how they had unearthed a mole, and how they had tied it to a stick and made it a target to fling stones at, till it had died by inches; no doubt, as Caroline supposed, having suffered great torture. Losing all command of herself, she cried out, "O Herbert, how could you, could you be so cruel! It is quite true what mamma says, you are nothing but a coward, to hunt a dumb ...
— Carry's Rose - or, the Magic of Kindness. A Tale for the Young • Mrs. George Cupples
... after him. It missed by inches, and went pitching into the gulf. In his haste he caught his foot on the interlaced thongs, stumbled and almost fell—which saved his life, for another spear streaked through the very spot he had been a second before. Then he was across, and his sword was flashing ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... could have better news of you. As to dying by inches, that is what we are all doing, my dear old fellow; the only thing is to establish a proper ratio between inch and time. Eight years ago I had good reason to say the same thing of myself, but my inch has lengthened ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... of her own volition, and with a cry that shot up through the room, rending it like a gash, Mrs. Horowitz, who moved by inches, sprang to her supreme height, her arms, the crooks forced ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... enough poison to kill a cat; if it was fixed right, I mean." He passed a thin, shaking hand over his face, and went on: "Do you want to fool with such things?—Not if you are wise. You see, the cigarette habit will kill you sometime, by inches, if not right away, or else drive you crazy; and no sane person wants to kill himself or spoil his health. That is what I am doing, though," he admitted, with a bitter smile and a sad shake of his head. "But I cannot stop it now. I have gone ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... sat, testing the stirrups. They were too short by inches but he refused to have them lengthened. He poised his quirt and tugged his ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... dream was never realised, for the piranhas which had tasted the blood, I suppose, came in large numbers and set upon the unfortunate hog. In a minute the water seemed to be boiling, so great was the activity of the little demons as they tore away pieces of the flesh until it was vanishing by inches. When we reached the other shore there was not enough left of the hog to furnish ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange |
