"Lessening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slow and billowing bursts, and for perhaps the next five minutes, these stupendous waves of uncontrollable excitement, now rising into the deepest and fiercest shouts, and then sinking, like the ground swell of the ocean, into hoarse and lessening murmurs, rolled through the multitude. Every now and then it would seem as though the physical power of the assembly was exhausted, when all at once a new hurricane would break out, more prolonged and terrific than anything before. ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... contributed to foster the evil and aggravate it: the constantly lessening encouragement that labor has met with in the Philippines. Fearing to have the Filipinos deal frequently with other individuals of their own race, who were free and independent, as the Borneans, the Siamese, the Cambodians, and ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... meaning which your quotation gives it, throws overboard everything that civilization and the humanitarian progress of centuries has accomplished towards lessening the cruelty, the hatred and the suffering engendered by war, and towards protecting non-combatants, as far as possible, from its terrors. It is tantamount to the doctrine of the fanatical Jesuit: "The end justifies ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... comparative value of his thoughts, and by rendering him more and more incapable of that urbanity of mind which could be gained only by commerce with men more nearly on his own level, and which gives tone without lessening individuality. Wordsworth never quite saw the distinction between the eccentric and the original. For what we call originality seems not so much anything peculiar, much less anything odd, but that quality ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... foregoing law it will be seen that there are two ways of lessening the resistance upon telegraphic conductors,—one by reducing the length, and the other by increasing the area of the section of the conducting-wire. Now, as already remarked, the copper conducting-wire in the old cable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... and drank wine more freely, never had a return of the disorder." It is therefore evident, that a moderate use of wine tends to promote health, and keeps off the numerous train of disorders, to which the constitution of man is subject, thereby lessening the evils incidental to human nature. We can then exclaim with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... the great out-of-doors abetting—not insulated for or against currents. Throw these two alone in a primitive world where their tent is the sky, and a spark must eventually jump across the gradually lessening distance. It is thus that wild things mate—and their ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... and a long string of Pullmans. Then all is dark again and only the noise of its slackening wheels comes to him through the night. It has stopped at the station. A minute longer and it has started again, and the quickly lessening rumble of its departure is all that remains of this vision of man's activity and ceaseless expectancy. When it is quite gone and all is quiet, a sigh falls from the man's lips and he moves on, but this time, for some unexplainable reason, ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... had, to all seeming, recovered fully. It regarded Zeke intently from its red eyes. But it did not growl. It was plain that the bull-terrier was thinking deeply, and that Zeke was the center around which thought revolved. But, if the dog did not growl, its mistress showed no lessening of hostility. She explained succinctly to ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... of many beneficent forms of mechanical power would in time, if not in the very near future, supplant the use of animals as a motive power. The fact seems to be, however, that they merely augment man's resources and increase his opportunities without lessening his ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... not interfere in the disposal of the chairs and tables. But not on that account did Gertrude conceive herself entitled to make any use on her own behalf of such money as might come into her hands. The bills should be paid, and then every farthing that could be collected should be given towards lessening the deficiency. Six thousand pounds had already been made up by the joint efforts of Norman and Captain Cuttwater. Undy Scott's acknowledgement for the other four thousand had been offered, but the new trustees declined to ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... readjusting. It was now possible to see that Elsie had made fast to a fallen tree; its branches were locked among the gnarled roots of the lowermost growth above high-water mark. Already there was a distinct lessening in the pace of the current, and Gray fancied that the distant rumble was softer. It would not be many minutes before the neighboring rocks were covered; high tide, he knew, was at 3.15 A.M. He forebore to look at his ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... he held it as a maxim, that it was safer and better for an established church to silence than to confute; and a book of Calvinistic discipline having issued from the Cambridge press, he procured a Star-chamber decree for lessening and limiting the number of presses; for restraining any man from exercising the trade of a printer without a special license; and for subjecting all works to the censorship, of the archbishop or the bishop of London. At the same time he vehemently ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... consider her one of their possessions. So it was a great shock to learn of her intentions, and particularly was this true with Tabitha whose grief at the impending loss was too deep for words. She could only stare and stare at the beloved face as the days slipped by lessening the teacher's stay with them, until Miss Brooks was so haunted by those pathetically appealing black eyes that she could scarcely sleep and began to wonder why it was that she should feel so much like a criminal every time ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... to defile, but—with the double meaning of the Greek word, which we cannot render into English—to destroy; to weaken his brain-power, which he wants for his work in life, to weaken his nervous system, lessening his strength thereby and rendering him less able to excel in athletics, and often, if carried to excess, in after-life bringing results which are the very embodiment of the terrible words, "Him will God destroy." The full ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... with his twain Camelot, a city of shadowy palaces And stately, rich in emblem and the work Of ancient kings who did their days in stone; Which Merlin's hand, the Mage at Arthur's court, Knowing all arts, had touched, and everywhere At Arthur's ordinance, tipt with lessening peak And pinnacle, and had made it spire to heaven. And ever and anon a knight would pass Outward, or inward to the hall: his arms Clashed; and the sound was good to Gareth's ear. And out of bower ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... skipper; and—"Luff it is!" echoed the man at the wheel mechanically as he put the helm up; and a moment afterwards the ship glided by the derelict hull, her speed lessening as she came up to the wind and her canvas quivering, like a bird suspending its flight in the air with ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... fortunately, about this time, happened to meet with a book which in some degree counteracted the inflammatory effects of Random's conversation, and which had a happy tendency to sober his enthusiasm, without lessening his propensity to useful exertions: this book was the Life of ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... affliction and persecution, the devil's design is to impair Christ's kingdom; wherefore, no marvel that God designs in our deliverance the impairing and lessening the kingdom of sin and Satan. Wherefore, O thou church of God, which art now upon the waves of affliction and temptation, when thou comest out of the furnace, if thou come out at the bidding of God, ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... the majesty and dignity of the divine character to suppose that his happiness can be at all affected by the conduct of his sinful, erring creatures. Secondly, it seems to me that such views of God would have an effect on our own minds in lessening that reverence and fear which is one of the greatest motives to us for action. For, although to a generous mind the thought of the love of God would be a sufficient incentive to action, there are times of coldness when that love is ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... been my penance, Roy. It has seemed to me that in sailing with him, in lessening even a little bit the misery he causes those poor men, I have been atoning, in a little measure, for my lack of faith in you. Oh, it was my fault in the beginning, dearest. If only I had had faith in the beginning, if only I had trusted my heart ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... perseverance in sin heaps on the breast of the reckless offender. What was the most grievous of all, his power to shake off this dead weight was diminished in precisely the same proportion as the burthen was increased, the moral force of every man lessening in a very just ratio to the magnitude of his delinquencies. Bitterly did this deep offender struggle with his conscience, and little did his half-unsexed wife know how to console or aid him. Jack had been superficially instructed in the dogmas of her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... heard business men speak of it so: "Winter was always Russia's best friend. Perhaps now it will rid us of Revolution." On the freezing front miserable armies continued to starve and die, without enthusiasm. The railways were breaking down, food lessening, factories closing. The desperate masses cried out that the bourgeoisie was sabotaging the life of the people, causing defeat on the Front. Riga had been surrendered just after General Kornilov said publicly, ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... after year will pass away and seem To me, in mine eternal agony, But as the shadows of dark summer clouds, Which I have watched so often darkening o'er The vast Sarmatian plain, league-wide at first, But, with still swiftness lessening on and on, Till cloud and shadow meet and mingle where The gray horizon fades into the sky, Far, far to northward. Yes, for ages yet Must I lie here upon my altar huge, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... arrived at its crisis, but Sikh treachery averted from the city the impending blow. On the morn-, ing of the 14th, Shere Singh, with the whole of the Lahore troops, five thousand in number, went over to the enemy. This event, at once lessening the army of the besiegers, and increasing that of the besieged, made their relative numbers so disproportionate, that the siege was raised, the army withdrawing to a position a few miles distant, where they intrenched. Soon after the British took up this position, Shere ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the judgment of Ulster, would degrade the status of Ulster citizenship by impairing its relationship to Imperial Parliament. This would be effected both by lessening or extinguishing the representation of Ulster in that Parliament, and by removing the control of Ulster rights and liberties from Imperial Parliament and entrusting it to a hostile Parliament in Dublin. Ulstermen would thus stand on a dangerously lower plane of civil privilege than their fellow-citizens ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... with waving hand, he stood; The crowded shore sinks, lessening, from his view, As gradual glides the bark along the flood; His ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... climbers dragged their sledge, and down the steep incline they performed their perilous descent many a time. I became tired of watching the board shoot swiftly over the white streak; and I strolled round the shoulder of the hill, to see if there was any appearance of the snow-fall lessening ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... and a new parley is commenced. But everything ends. The policemen turn on their immense heels. The driver and conductor race towards the motor-bus. The bell rings, the motor-bus, quite empty, disappears snorting round the corner into Walham Green. The crowd is now lessening. But it separates with reluctance, many of its members continuing to stare with intense absorption at the place where the puppy lay or the place where the policemen stood. An appreciable interval elapses before the "street accident" has ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... after year will pass away and seem To me, in mine eternal agony, But as the shadows of dumb summer clouds, Which I have watched so often darkening o'er 335 The vast Sarmatian plain, league-wide at first, But, with still swiftness, lessening on and on Till cloud and shadow meet and mingle where The gray horizon fades into the sky, Far, far to northward. Yes, for ages yet 340 Must I lie here upon my altar huge, A sacrifice for man. Sorrow will be, As it hath been, his portion; endless doom, While the immortal with the mortal linked ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... to facilitate the rising of the cream is excellent, as it not only secures a more speedy rising, but serves to destroy the germs found in the milk, thus lessening its tendency to sour. The best way to do this is to heat the milk in a double boiler, or a dish set inside another containing hot water, to a temperature of 150 deg. to 165 deg.F. as indicated by wrinkles upon its surface. The milk must not, however, be allowed ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... resound my mournful strain! Of perjured Doris, dying I complain: Here where the mountains, lessening as they rise, Lose the low vales, and steal into the skies: 60 While labouring oxen, spent with toil and heat, In their loose traces from the field retreat: While curling smokes from village-tops are seen, And the fleet shades ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... that after all there was nothing like fly fishing for the speckled beauties. Fishing for salmon was a change but they all felt that if they were to fish for a summer they would much prefer the smaller fish. There seemed to be no lessening of the supply. On Wednesday they all went into Escoumains. They went by the trail, carrying their canoes through the first two lakes so that they had only about six or seven miles of walking. They did this because they made ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... small detachments, each of which should be commanded by a commissioned officer, and the various details of officers for necessary service away from their commands occasion a scarcity in the number required for company duties. With a view to lessening this drain to some extent, it is recommended that the law authorizing the detail of officers from the active list as professors of tactics and military science at certain colleges and universities be so amended as to provide that ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... occurrence took place, the subject of the following ballad. It is in all likelihood one of those wild and monkish legends that may be fitted or applied to any situation, according to the whim of the narrator. Many such legends, though the number is lessening daily, are still preserved, and an amusing volume might be made of these unappropriated wanderers that possess neither a local habitation nor ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... the McCullochs, Donald was drawing up plans for new barns—barns with cement floors, and far better ventilated and equipped than the old ones had been. Almost every day brought to the Eastern office pages and pages of sketches for sheep-folds and modern contrivances for lessening the labor of wool-growing. Every line of these letters bubbled with enthusiasm. There could be no possible question that Donald's heart was ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... with a lessening of the tornadoes, a new and fascinating game came into Panhandle's life. It was to sit at the one little window and watch the cowboys ride by. How he came to worship them! They were on their way to the spring roundups. His father ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... another night when, with the usual unreason, the swift and luxurious glide, lessening through easy gradations, ceased. I saw some lights in the rain outside. How should I know it was New York? We had even changed climates since we started. The passengers of my early days in the train had passed away. There was nothing to show. More, I felt no exultation—which ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... minutes more, and the youth and his canoe were lessening down the rapid stream in the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Their High Mightinesses and some other friends, before whom this may come, may think strange that we speak as highly of this place as we do, and as we know to be true, and yet complain of want and poverty, seek relief, assistance, redress, lessening of charges, population and the like, and show that the country is in a poor and ruinous condition; yea, so much so, as that without special aid and assistance it will utterly fall off and pass under foreign rule. It will therefore be necessary to point out the true reasons and ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... judgment in criminal cases, is plainly this:—because the court, having the sentence in its own hands, will give judgment 'on the part which is indictable'—and the failure of part of the charge will go only to lessening the punishment. These reasons, however, have plainly no application to writs of error; because a court of error CANNOT, of course, confine the judgment to those parts which are indictable, or lessen it, as the different ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... "few savings" alluded to amounted to some thousands, Jane Tillman knew. Had she not better burn her ships behind her, take the risks, and have faith in her own powers? She was getting along in ears, and her charms of person were lessening with every day that passed over her head. If the Deacon's queer ways grew too queer, she thought an appeal to the doctor and the minister might provide a way of escape and a neat little income to boot; so, on the whole, the marriage, though much against her natural inclinations, ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... till about three o'clock, when we bade them all good-bye and rode on down the valley, the snow continually lessening in depth, till, when we reached the much lower altitude of Panguitch at sunset, twenty-six miles from our night's camp, there were only three or four inches and the temperature was not nearly so low, though still very cold. According to custom we ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... atmosphere of the stage the true sentiment of life vanished at once. He still loved the wife, but detested the singer. She realized it, and as one nurses an invalid, watched the sad mania. At first she thought of lessening her success, of making a sparing use and not giving the full power of her voice and talent; but her resolutions like those of her husband could not withstand the glare of the footlights. Her talent, almost unconsciously, overstepped her will. Then she humbled herself before ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... it's likely you looked in your almanacs, or judged by the shape of the lessening moon, That your Godmother's Dowager Messengers are due to ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... breeze, far from lessening its force, blew as if to bend the mast, which, however, the metallic lashings held firmly. These lashings, like the chords of a stringed instrument, resounded as if vibrated by a violin bow. The sledge slid along in the midst of a plaintively ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... and only they, had been what you and Konig attacked. Them I sacrifice, with a great deal of willingness, to persons who think of increasing their own reputation by lessening that of others. I have not the folly nor vanity of certain Authors. The cabals of literary people seem to me the disgrace of Literature. I do not the less esteem honorable cultivators of Literature; it is only ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... receive your note yesterday till after Charlotte had left Deane, or I would have sent my answer by her, instead of being the means, as I now must be, of lessening the elegance of your new dress for the Hurstbourne ball by the value of 3d. You are very good in wishing to see me at Ibthorp so soon, and I am equally good in wishing to come to you. I believe our merit in that respect is much upon ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... to him in the most fascinating manner: she embraced him before the whole court; the king appeared no less delighted; but the Cardinal, whether with the view of lessening the merit of an action which deserved a handsome reward, or whether it was from a return of that insolence which always accompanied him in prosperity, appeared at first not to pay any attention to what he said, and being afterwards informed that the lines ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Drummond looked wistfully over her shoulder at the cat-boat's lessening sail, and wished that she too were going to spend a night ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... of Vaucouleurs was far different in 1429 to what it had been when Joan first saw de Baudricourt at Vaucouleurs in the previous year. The most important stronghold held by the French in their ever-lessening territory was in utmost danger of falling into the grasp of the English; while de Baudricourt was anxiously waiting to hear whether his protector, the Duc de Bar, whom Bedford had summoned to enter into a treaty ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... wild rush lasted I have no means of judging. It may have been an hour, a day, or many days, for I was throughout in a state of suspended animation, but presently my senses began to return and with them a sensation of lessening speed, a grateful relief to a heavy pressure which had held my life crushed in its grasp, without destroying it completely. It was just that sort of sensation though more keen which, drowsy in his bunk, a traveller feels when he is aware, without special perception, harbour is reached and a voyage ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... be interested in these pamphlets by Sir Max Waechter, who has opened an office here and is spending much money to "federate" Europe, and to bring a lessening of armaments. I enclose also an article about him from the Daily Telegraph, which tells how he has interviewed most of the Old World monarchs. Get also, immediately, the new two-volume life of Lord Lyons, Minister to the United States during the Civil War, and subsequently Ambassador ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... lessening of power. As Sir Charles had perceived, Disraeli was his own Foreign Secretary, and a Foreign Minister's influence gained by being exercised in the House of Lords. Meanwhile, in Gladstone's absence the Liberal party seemed broken and divided beyond hope of recovery. In the country, though ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... stared into the lessening gloom, then said, "It's Orvil Harris. Anyway, it looks ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... walks along the glen. He kept aloof as well as he might (yet ever thinking her for song and charm the most interesting girl he knew), and the days passed; the springs would be but a breath of rich brown mould and birch, the summers but a flash of golden days growing briefer every year, the winters a lessening interlude of ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... delight and of memory, of growth, and yet of foreknowledge and an increasing reverence that should be increasingly upstanding, and high hatred as well as high love justified; for surely this Peace is not a lessening into which we sink, but an enlargement which we merit and into which we rise and enter—"and this," I ended, "I am determined to obtain before I get to ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... entitled to a Congressional Fugitive Slave law. Having said that, I have had nothing to say in regard to the existing Fugitive Slave law, further than that I think it should have been framed so as to be free from some of the objections that pertain to it, without lessening its efficiency. And inasmuch as we are not now in an agitation in regard to an alteration or modification of that law, I would not be the man to introduce it as a new subject of agitation upon the general question ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... time is the substitution of machines for the hands of man. It may indeed be questioned whether the increased strength over matter thus given to man compensates for the ill effects of forcing people to work in crowds; of destroying small and pampering large capitalists, of lessening the distribution of wealth even by the very ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... of the cypress was lessening on the lake. The moon was climbing high. As Richard rowed the boat, Lucy, sang to him softly. She sang first a fresh little French song, reminding him of a day when she had been asked to sing to him before, and he did not care to hear. "Did I live?" he thinks. Then she sang to him a bit of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... their fathers, that they would neither suffer any Roman citizen to be assigned to a creditor on account of debt, nor a levy to be held; until, the debts being examined, and some method adopted for lessening them, each man should know what was his own, and what another's; whether his person was still free to him, or that also was due to the stocks." The price held out for sedition soon raised it: for both several were made over to creditors, and on account of the rumour ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... Finlayson, as at last they headed for Williamstown through the now lessening storm, with a bundle in tarpaulin beside them, "it do seem as if the Powers above take a pleasure in tripping us up when we ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... Artevelde speaks truly and well, you remember how Mr. Taylor, in that noble play, works out to our view the sad sight of the deterioration of character, the growing coarseness and harshness, the lessening tenderness and kindliness, which are apt to come with advancing years. Great trials, we know, passing over us, may influence us either for the worse or the better; and unless our nature is a very obdurate and poor one, though ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... Europe acted thus, she would be not less ready for war than she is now, and would have all her vigorous men turned into producers instead of consumers, to the immense advantage of the States' coffers, to the great comfort of the women and children, to the lessening of crime and poverty, and to the general well-being ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... Eagle with her strange purpose. At length Jimmie's hand was outstretched to grasp the loop of line Dave had so cunningly fashioned. He started on a run in the same direction the airship was going, for the purpose of lessening the shock of being picked up from a standstill by the airship that was still moving at a good speed. He felt the rope within his hand, and then he ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... we obey the choices of instinct; our social wisdom is only another phase of our refinement, which, in impelling us to a love of the beautiful, does not the less impel us to love. Our social wisdom educates our taste without lessening our taste for the thing. "Love a beautiful person nobly, but be sure you love her," says our social wisdom with interesting tautology. Besides, you are a heretic to your own breed, Herbert. It is you who would forsake our present social wisdom, ruling modern ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... seasons according to the revolution of the sun, and not of the stars, and they observe yearly by how much time the one precedes the other. They hold that the sun approaches nearer and nearer, and therefore by ever-lessening circles reaches the tropics and the equator every year a little sooner. They measure months by the course of the moon, years by that of the sun. They praise Ptolemy, admire Copernicus, but place Aristarchus and Philolaus before ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... in whom the springs of life are clear and abundant: it was a development rather than a diminution. The old purity of outline remained; and deep below the surface, but still visible sometimes to his lessening insight, the old girlish spirit, radiant, tender and impetuous, stirred for a moment ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... like the contortions of a wounded snake; and by the time that our preparations were complete, the entire sky was overspread, with the exception of a low strip away on the western horizon, which was rapidly lessening, even as ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... hopefully pious, and silently tolerating many ecclesiastical and social reforms, and an abandonment of the liturgical service; in short, so long as we could see, under the preached gospel, the hold on the old superstitions steadily lessening, and the masses being leavened with evangelical truth, we were more than content to labor on without a separate ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... sinking for the night. The moon was down in the western sky. Around and around the cave and the glen and the night the inner ear heard, as it were, a long, faint, wordless cry for help. Alexander brooded, brooded, his eyes upon the lessening flame. At last, with a sudden movement, he rose. "I smell the morning ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... bears hard upon the average pulse, Even with satisfactory results; But when effects are scarce, the heavy strain Falls dead and solid on the heart and brain. And when we're bothered, it will oft occur We seek blame-timber; and I lit on her; And looked at her with daily lessening favor, For what I knew she couldn't help, to save her. And Discord, when he once had called and seen us, Came round quite often, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... comparatively slowly except in the case of young persons, in whom its progress is apt to be rapid. The complications of the disease are many and serious. It may cause impaired vision by weakening the muscles of accommodation, or by lessening the sensitiveness of the retina to light. Also cataract is very common. Skin affections of all kinds may occur and prove very intractable. Boils, carbuncles, cellulitis and gangrene are all apt to occur as life advances, though gangrene is much more frequent in men than in women. Diabetics ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... no sense of horror in looking round at the beast. This peculiar state is probably produced in all animals killed by the carnivora, and, if so, is a merciful provision by our benevolent Creator for lessening ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... one another again, we have had our disputes, but were firm in support of any member of our party who was flouted by any one who was not one of WE. "Section 3, right or wrong" was and is our motto. And the section dwindles, the bullet and shell has been busy in lessening our strength, for that is the way ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... of the reign of Charlemigne in the beginning of the ninth century on yellow-brown Esparto (a Spanish rush) paper, is still preserved. Specimens of "pomegranate" ink, to which lampblack and other pigments had been added of varying degrees of blackness, on MSS., but lessening in number as late as the fourteenth century, are still extant in the British Museum and ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... advice of Miles, who thought her the most sensible woman in the world, except his Nan. Whether this constant occupation, furnishing, repairing, planning, beautifying her model cottages, her school chapel, and all the rest, were lessening the heartache, no one knew, but the sharp black eyes looked as dry and hard, the lines round the mouth as weary as ever; and Rosamond sometimes thought if Sirenwood were not full of ghosts to her, she was much like a ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on the great emigrant encampment was a thing which had been preparing for years. The increasing number of the white men, the lessening numbers of the buffalo, meant inevitable combat with all the ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... hark! with lessening cadence now they fall, And now, along the white and level tide They fling their melancholy music wide! Bidding me many a tender thought recall Of happy hours departed, and those years When, from an antique tower, ere life's fair prime, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... saddest things in the record of Christian leadership is just this, clear vision with a gradually lessening obedience, then a gradually dimming vision, and that decrease of both increasing, as the slant down increases. The old-time motions in public ministering continue, more or less mechanically, but the power has long since passed away. And ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... head—only to get his neck up again presently, and swim as well as before. But alas! it was in the direction of the Daur, which would soon, his master did not doubt, sweep his carcase into the North Sea. With troubled heart he strained his sight after him as long as he could distinguish his lessening head, but it got amongst some wreck, and unable to tell any more whether he saw it or not, he returned to his men with ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... nothing; all that had been made visible in the convulsions of the meteoric cloud was again dark. Pale outlines were fused in vague mist, and the gloom of infinite space closed about the vessel. The wall of night—that circular occlusion, that interior of a cylinder the diameter of which was lessening minute by minute—enveloped the Matutina, and, with the sinister deliberation of an encroaching iceberg, was drawing in dangerously. In the zenith nothing—a lid of fog closing down. It was as if the hooker were at the bottom of the well of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... was discovered how powerful the effect of suggestion upon the readers of advertisements could be, especially over such an audience as our modern great towns provide (a chaos, I repeat, of isolated minds with a lessening personal experience and with a lessening community of tradition), the value of advertising space rapidly rose. It became a more and more tempting venture to "start a newspaper," but at the same time, ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... over his shoulders, shouted to Lavrushka to follow with the things, and—now slipping in the mud, now splashing right through it—set off with Ilyin in the lessening rain and the darkness that was occasionally rent ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... goes mostly to Chile, a comparatively small quantity being exported to the United States. The bean is small to medium in size, pea-green in color, and not desirable in the cup. The coffee is about equal to low-grade Brazil, and is used principally as a filler. Peru produces an ever-lessening quantity of coffee, the bulk of the exports in pre-war years going to Germany, Chile, and the United Kingdom. It is a low-altitude growth, and is considered poor grade. The bean ranges from medium to bold ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... propagated; a few crowns or rosettes with short pieces of stem are not sure to root, and if more careful division is not carried out, perhaps but two or three growing bits from a large specimen may be the result, so lessening instead of increasing the stock. Before cutting let the roots be washed clear of soil, trace the long roots, and so cut up the plant that each division will have a share of them. Sometimes a rather large specimen will have but few of such roots, in which case ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... is the only evil, Pleasure is the only good. Virtue is no end in itself, to be sought: Vice is no end in itself, to be avoided. The motive for cultivating Virtue and banishing Vice arises from the consequences of each, as the means of multiplying pleasures and averting or lessening pains. But to the attainment of this purpose, the complete supremacy of Reason is indispensable; in order that we may take a right comparative measure of the varieties of pleasure and pain, and pursue the course that promises the least ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... with some deadly fiend, And that he was no longer kin to them. Just past the outskirts of the town, he stopped, To strengthen will and courage to proceed. The storm had broken o'er the sultry streets, But now the lessening clouds were flying east, And though the gentle shower still wet his face, The west was cloudless while the sun went down, And the bright seven-colored arch stood forth, Against the opposite dull gray. There was A beauty in the mingled storm and peace, Beyond clear sunshine, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... Jamestown Island after considerable had been accomplished in the way of lessening the number of its historic sites. For a long while, almost every important event in its story had occurred at so many different places that it was scarcely possible for the pilgrim to do ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... four more A'ariz, three called majzuah, because each line is shortened by a Juz or foot, one called mashturah (halved), because the number of feet is reduced from four to two, and we may here notice that the former kind of lessening the number of feet is frequent with the hexametrical circles (B. C. D.), while the latter kind can naturally only occur in those circles whose couplet forms an octameter (A. E.). Besides being majzuah, the second 'Aruz is sahihah (perfect) consisting ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... be lessening the joy of the world and taking from generations yet unborn the capacity for wonder, the power to take a large unselfish interest in the spectacle of things, and putting them forever at the mercy of ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... provisional government had already begun a policy of lessening the privileges of the Church, when the conservative elements, with a cry that religion was being attacked, rose up in arms again. This movement repressed, a Congress proceeded in 1857 to issue a liberal constitution which was destined to last for sixty ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... bright track; I hear your lessening voices as they go; Have ye no sign, no solace to fling back ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... make use of a handy plough that was amongst them, when I learned the advantages that might arise from it. At first, I yoked myself to the plough, and Mrs Reichardt held it: this proved such hard and awkward work that I kept projecting all sorts of plans for lessening the labour—the best was that of yoking our calves, and making them pull instead of myself. This was more easily thought of than done. The animals did not prove very apt pupils, but in course of time, with a good deal of patience, and some manoeuvring, I succeeded in making them perform the work ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... the rock, into which Peabody had dived as into water, hung a curtain of vines. Everett tore it apart. Concealed by the vines was the narrow mouth to a tunnel; and from it they heard, rapidly lessening in the distance, the patter ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... greater changes. Of the old set of summer patients only a few remained to keep Polly company. Elsie and Brida, Corinne and Isabel, with Moses and Cornelius, had received their discharge and had returned to their homes. Leonora stayed for more of the treatment that was slowly lessening her lameness and pain. David had so far recovered as to have been appointed office boy for Dr. Dudley, a position which was, according to David's version, "all pay and no work." But somebody was needed to answer ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... that blood flowing, when I saw life and youth converted into an inanimate mass of clay, when you left me alone on this inanimate theatre of death, my feelings underwent a sudden revolution; this moment seemed to age me a half a century, and without lessening my hatred, only left me a confused perception of it, with a vague memory full ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... and up, the pace of both ever slackening. One hundred yards only separated them now, and, with almost every stride, the distance was lessening. The summit was in sight. The pony was blowing hard. Effie urged him, and the vicious Mexican spurs found his flanks. There was no thought of sparing in the girl's mind. If the broncho failed her, then she must finish the chase ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... day, that she loses two hours, or even one, this will form a proportional deduction from her supposed gain. It is she only, who, while she sleeps all which her nature really demands, and takes care not to exceed the demand, succeeds also in lessening the demand itself, ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... each day lessening the number of the inhabitants of the town. Fever and famine were making terrible ravages, and the survivors moved about the streets like living skeletons, so feeble and weak, now, that they could scarce bear ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... Ilbert of name well known, and (long ago to me well known) General Richard Strachy, eager for bi-metallism. He began, but alas! could not finish his elucidation to me, how it would relieve Indian finance, without anyone losing anything, or any lessening of payment, or dismissing officers, or the English Government paying anything, nor any unlucky last holder of coin or paper losing. The miracle (as to me it seemed) was to be wrought, not by a double standard—that was an ignorant mistake—but by a single standard metal, composed of gold and silver ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... be accomplished in the way of lessening all these ills by continuous, properly directed effort on the part of the individual. Every inroad upon one faulty habit strengthens the attack upon all, and each gain means a step toward the acquisition of a mental poise that shall give its possessor comparative ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... and slow, yet he did sink, lower and lower; till at length Alec leaned back with a stronger pull on the oars, and the boat crept away up the stream, lessening as it crept, and, turning a curve in the river, was lost. Still she sat on, with one hand lying listlessly in her lap, and the other plucking blades of grass and making a little heap of them beside her, till she had ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... subordinate near him, ''Ad he got a dog with him, or what? Funny thing: I could 'a' swore 'e wasn't alone. Well, whatever it was, they'll 'ave to see to it aboard. She's off now. Another week and we shall be gettin' the 'oliday customers.' In five minutes more there was nothing but the lessening lights of the boat, the long line of the Dover lamps, the night breeze, and ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James |
