"Lightening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not ours," he remarked, in a calm, firm voice; "we shall get a fair reward if we succeed in saving it. I hope, if we stay by the ship, that we may get her off, at the top of the next flood, by lightening her a little. What say you? Will you stay by my lads and me, and do ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston
... capable of taking on board; and that she might be made as light as possible for that purpose, he desired I would land eight or ten of her guns and carriages, with any other articles which I judged the ship could spare, for the time she might be absent, and which might answer the purpose of lightening the ship and ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... although the Government did not need the accumulating revenue and was actually embarrassed by its excess. The President had already made himself the spokesman of the popular demand for a substantial reduction of taxes. Such a combination of forces in favor of lightening the popular burden might seem to be constitutionally irresistible, but by adroit maneuvering the congressional supporters of protection managed to have the war rates generally maintained and, in some cases, even increased. The case is a typical example of the way ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... Broadley for their kindness in affording him access to their collections of Blandyana, including rarities (to quote an old title-page) "nowhere to be found but in the Closets of the Curious," greatly to the lightening of his labours and ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... scheme of reforms proposed by Sir George Clarke. To the most important features of the scheme, which were the provision of a course of practical science for all first-year students, a systematic bifurcation of courses, the lightening of the number of subjects in order to secure somewhat more thoroughness, and compulsory teaching of Indian history and polity, no serious objection could be raised, but the politicians on the ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... to get further from the idea of immediate emancipation, looking upon it as a very serious problem. He tended, as the following extracts will show, to advocate lightening the burden of the slave, hoping that in the West Indies, where he thought the Negro would eventually rule absolutely, the blacks might establish governments to which freedmen gradually emancipated in the United States might be sent to shape ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... pleased with 'em myself, you know," said Beevor; "that roof ought to look well, eh? Good idea of mine lightening the slate with that ornamental tile-work along the top. You saw I put in one of your windows with just a trifling addition. I was almost inclined to keep both gables alike, as you suggested, but it struck me a little variety—one red brick and the ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... down upon him. Instead of sympathy, there was a positive lightening in the elder man's face—a gleam ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... equally attended to, as the following entries in his diary show: "visited my Plantations and found two negroes sick ... ordered them to be blooded;" "found that lightening had struck my quarters and near 10 Negroes in it, some very bad but with letting blood they recover'd;" "ordered Lucy down to the House to be Physikd," and "found the new negro Cupid, ill of a pleurisy ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... told than in the language of a lady whose name it would be an honor to mention, who, giving up all other cares and duties, accompanied her dying friend to Bristol, and devoted herself, with a tenderness rarely equalled even among women, to the soothing and lightening of her last painful moments. From the letters written by this lady at the time, some extracts have lately been given by Miss Lefanu [Footnote: The talents of this young lady are another proof of the sort of garet kind ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... name. Yet the comedies of that time, when they allude to him, either in jest or earnest, always appear to think that this name was given him because of his manner of speaking, as they speak of him as "thundering and lightening," and "rolling fateful thunders from his tongue." A saying of Thucydides, the son of Melesias, has been preserved, which jestingly testifies to the power of Perikles's eloquence. Thucydides was the leader of the conservative party, and for a long time struggled to hold ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... heading for Vallanza, a white steamer, clearly, from its size and lines, a yacht—a very bright and gay object to look upon, as it gleamed in the sun and crisped the blue waters. And all at once, his eye automatically following it, Anthony experienced a perfectly inexplicable lightening of the heart,—as if, indeed, the white yacht were bringing something good to him. It was absurd, but he could not help it. Somehow, his depression left him, and a feeling almost ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... Yonder, lightening other loads, The seasons range the country roads, But here in London streets I ken No such helpmates, only men; And these are not in plight to bear, If they would, another's care. They have enough as 'tis: I see ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... Duke of Berry, and his nobles banded together in apparent unity, hedged in by their pompous and self-righteous assertions that all their thoughts were for the poor oppressed people whose burdens needed lightening. Of all the great vassals, Gaston de Foix was the single one ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... aground on a shallow flat on the opposite side of the Firth, known as the Inches; and as the flood of a stream tide was at its height at the time, and straightway began to fall off, it was found, after lightening her of her guns and the greater part of her stores, that she still stuck fast. My father, whose sloop had been pressed into the service, and was loaded to the gunwale with the ordnance, had betrayed an unexpected knowledge of the points of a large war-vessel; and the commander, entering into conversation ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... the son of Zeus Won from the roaring river and labouring sea When the wild god shrank in his horn and fled And foamed and lessened through his wrathful fords, Leaving clear lands that steamed with sudden sun, These virgins with the lightening of the day Bring thee fresh wreaths and their own sweeter hair, Luxurious locks and flower-like mixed with flowers, Clean offering, and chaste hymns; but me the time Divides from these things; whom do thou not less Help and give honour, ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of the earth. She remembered, with a start of cold horror, Zoe's dim tradition of a fall far off in the river. She had never seen one, but Zoe had stamped its terrors deeply. Still down in the gloom itself she could see nothing but the slowly lightening sky overhead, the drowning stars, the rosy flush upon the dark old tips feathering against a dewy grayness that was like powdered light. But gradually she heard what conquered all necessity of seeing,—heard a continuous murmurous sound that filled all the air and grew to be a sullen ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... as if by way of lightening his oppression, almost as if she put it to him that if Gwenda was restless (by which Rowcliffe might understand, if he liked, capricious) she couldn't help it. There was no reason why he should be so horribly hurt. ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... were conveyed to places other than the States, it will be seen that circumstances amongst them and in their favour came into play, modifying and lightening their unhappy condition. First, attention must be paid to the patriotic solidarity existing [241] amongst the bondsmen, a solidarity which, in the case of those who had been deported in the same ship, had all the sanctity of blood-relationship. Those who ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... either side, and another steamer from Buffalo would have come through in a day or two and picked us up. The only thing possible to fear was that we might ground in the shallow water, an emergency from which we could only be relieved, as there are no tides in the lakes, by the tedious process of lightening the cargo. It was a perfectly clear evening after a most beautiful day. But on either side of us, far as the eye could reach, stretched an apparently unbroken forest. Through the narrow vista cleared for our silvery pathway a slow and stately twilight came solemnly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... long carpeted passage, catching glimpses on the way of snug writing rooms, cosy libraries, and other devices for lightening senatorial labours, we arrived at a door over which was painted the legend "To the Ladies' Gallery." This opened on to a flight of steps at the top of which was another long corridor, and we found ourselves at last at the door of the Ladies' Gallery, where we were ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... family to Torquay —Nice—Madeira—if the doctors had given the slightest encouragement. It could be of little ultimate avail; but the wine and soup did give support and refreshment bodily, and produced much gratitude and thankfulness mentally, besides lightening some of ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Ascott, pompous as ever, but with a certain kindly good-humor lightening up his heavy face, looking condescendingly around him, and occasionally rubbing his hands slowly together, as if he were exceedingly well pleased with himself. There stood Ascott Leaf, looking bright and handsome, in spite of his shabbiness, and quite at his ease—which small peculiarity ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... this great soul shone brightest in disaster. He insisted that it was his wife who refused to compromise his debts for forty cents on the dollar—that it was she who declared it must be dollar for dollar; and when a fund was raised by his admirers to assist in lightening his burden, that it was his wife who refused to accept it, though he was willing enough to accept ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... unseen vessel, now standing out to sea, he whispered again, "So, this is what thou didst hear, even then." And so during the night he marked, more or less audibly to the half-conscious woman at his side, the low whisper of the waves, the murmur of the far-off breakers, the lightening and thickening of the fog, the phantoms of moving shapes, and the slow coming of the dawn. And when the morning sun had rent the veil over land and sea, Antonio and Jose found him, haggard but erect, beside the trembling ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... up, but the wind still held from the northeast, and though moderated in force since the evening it was strong enough to take them slowly down toward the Good Intent. The sky was lightening, but a slight mist hung over the river. Desmond kept a close lookout ahead, and after about half an hour he caught sight of the hull of the Good Intent, looming before him out of the mist. Allowing the second boat to come alongside, ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... on. "It is the only way I can see, Mr. Blake, of properly introducing to you what I have to say next. Now you know exactly what my position was, at the time of Mr. Candy's illness, you will the more readily understand the sore need I had of lightening the burden on my mind by giving it, at intervals, some sort of relief. I have had the presumption to occupy my leisure, for some years past, in writing a book, addressed to the members of my profession—a book on ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... apologetically that this newly opened world was not at all separate from my old one, but shone everywhere in it, like our winged guests in our garden, and followed and surrounded me far beyond the Baron's company, terminology, and magnifying-glass, lightening the burdens and stress of the very counting-room and exchange. Whereat ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... Trade is not most of all important as a means of producing and distributing wealth, (though in that it be the most efficient) but rather as a portion of that movement of humanity which, receiving its greatest impulse eighteen centuries ago, has been steadily ever since removing prejudices, lightening burdens, doing away with abuses, and bringing together into one, different classes and peoples and races. Living under the influence of this great humane impulse, we do not enough remember what effects it has already accomplished, what slow but permanent victories it has won, ...
— International Copyright - Considered in some of its Relations to Ethics and Political Economy • George Haven Putnam
... it did so the soldier who had acted as charioteer reeled, his face bathed in blood, the death-rattle in his throat. Back he fell, pierced in face and breast, and tumbled from the car; and, as if answering to this lightening of their burden, the hoofs of the hard-pressed horses bit on the pavement, and ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... everything except the essential thing—herself. Henderson liked a gay house, brightness, dinners, entertainment, and that his wife should be seen and admired. Proof of his love she found in all this, and she entered into it with spirit, and an enjoyment increased by the thought that she was lightening the burden of his business, which she could see pressed more and more. Not that Henderson made any account of his growing occupations, or that any preoccupation was visible except to the eye of love, which is quick to see all moods. These were indeed ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Polly, do you suppose it's lightening and thundering now?"—as the two girls cuddled up closer together on the roomy old sofa, the cushion crowded up over ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... Samaritan turned up in the shape of an American lady with a house of her own, who, hearing of their plight from Mrs. Sands, undertook to send each day a supply of strong, perfectly made beef tea, from her own kitchen, for Amy's use. It was an inexpressible relief, and the lightening of this one particular care made all the rest ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... to be anything serious after all. Their spirits revived when suddenly the wind ceased and the atmosphere became as clear as usual. Two or three of them had, however, again to go out; and on their return they reported that the sky was once more overcast, and that it was lightening in all quarters. Presently the rain came down in true tropical fashion, again to stop and again to go on with greater energy than before. Sometimes it was perfectly calm, but the lightning continued ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... the truth, for with a few more mutterings the thunder died away in the distance; and though the promised coolness did not come, both Owen and Toni were relieved by the lightening atmosphere—Toni because she was an arrant coward where thunderstorms were concerned; Owen because he felt that the clash of the elements would render the neuralgic pains in his head ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... frame of mind than she had exhibited when entering the house. As they strolled down the walk she was further cheered by the sight of a single, half-opened rose, flaunting its crimson but lonely glory from a late-blooming bush. Elfreda, who was bent on lightening Grace's mood, soberly assured her that it was merely another lucky sign. Carefully plucking the fragrant token of good fortune, Grace breathed a prayer that this ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... of steam. Good steam-reds were easily obtained by using receipts originally designed for extracts of madder (mixtures of alizarin and purpurin). On the other hand, the first attempts at dyeing red grounds and red pieces were not successful. The custom of dyeing up to a brown with fleur and then lightening the shade by a succession of soapings and cleanings had much to do with this failure. Goods, mordanted with alumina and dyed with alizarin for reds up to saturation, never reach the brown tone given by fleur ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... and Ducky up in the wagon to ride, the other five walked the two miles and more to the Four-Mile Corner, because the Holderness Valley track was so soft from the rain. Even with this lightening of the load it was an anxious progress in places, and when they got stuck in a hollow they had to put their shoulders to the wheel and assist strength of collar by strength ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... over," said Helen, in her gentle voice, "and I do really feel that it is a pity to lose this chance of helping father and lightening his cares. You see, Polly, it depends on us. Father would do it if he could trust us, you ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... fully. A secret, an horrible secret weighs heavy upon my soul: No rest can be mine till I have revealed it to the world, and satisfied that innocent blood which calls from the Grave for vengeance. Much have I dared to gain this opportunity of lightening my conscience. Had I failed in my attempt to reveal the crime, had the Domina but suspected that the mystery was none to me, my ruin was inevitable. Angels who watch unceasingly over those who deserve their favour, ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... every hour of their lives. It is not this I mean. It is something deeper, higher, grander than that. As you look along the lines of history from the far-off time when we begin to trace it until to-day, and see the magnificent march of advance, an orderly universe lightening and glorifying as it advances, becoming ever finer and higher and better; as you observe the order and truth and beauty and good dominant, and ever coming to be more and more dominant as the years advance, believe in this and trust this, trust to all possibilities of something ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... great bereavement spread, the neighbors crowded in, offering their sympathy and aid. It was very kind of them, but, alas! could do nothing towards lightening its weight. The story of how my dear father came to his untimely end was at length related to us. He had gone out upon the river in a boat from which a seine was being cast, and by accident, no one could tell exactly how, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... beside Bo, and for a long time they climbed steadily in silence. Helen knew when that dark hour before dawn had passed, and she welcomed an almost imperceptible lightening in the east. Then the stars paled. Gradually a grayness absorbed all but the larger stars. The great white morning star, wonderful as Helen had never seen it, lost its brilliance and life and seemed to retreat into the ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... Crown); (3) treason; (4) parricide, fratricide, etc.; (5) offences against humanity; (6) lese majeste; (7) unfilial conduct, and (8) crimes against society. But there were also six mitigations (roku-gi), all enacted with the object of lightening punishments according to the rank, official position, or public services of an offender. As for slaves, being merely a part of their proprietor's property like any other goods and chattels, the law took no ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... chasm, the one they were to fill up with stones from the jagged shelves upon which they crouched nearly a hundred feet higher, while higher still, right up for another three hundred feet or more, to where the saw-like edge was marked clearly against the ever-lightening sky, wherever the boy's eyes rested there were masses of stone which looked as if a touch would set them in motion and start others to come thundering down, sweeping all before them into a vast heap which would ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... Blanchard hurried away to dispose of his turkeys, taking the boys with him; Mrs. Blanchard heated the brick oven preparatory to a morning's baking, and Debby flew about as busily as the bee she represented, washing dishes, making beds, peeling vegetables, and tending the baby, lightening her labor with the thought of the money her father might possibly ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... Phillips to return to England without delay as soon as the children were seized with the fever. Jane also wrote to Dr. Phillips, and Vivian hurried to London, and stayed with his brother's family until his return, which was a great lightening of the load of responsibility which the sisters felt rested on them. In spite of every care and all that either doctor or nurses could do, little Eva fell a victim to the disease; and, after her death, Mrs. Phillips ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... of the "black stain" of conscription came the question of lightening the "yoke of slavery," that heavy burden of rightlessness which pressed so grievously upon the outcasts of the Jewish Pale. Already in March, 1856, Count Kiselev, a semi-liberal official and formerly the president of the "Jewish Committee" which had been appointed in 1840 [1] and ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... sank rapidly: the delirium left her; but as, she whispered, she was "clean silly;" it was the lightening before the final darkness. After having for some time lain still—her eyes shut, she said "James!" He came close to her, and lifting up her calm, clear, beautiful eyes, she gave him a long look, turned to me kindly but shortly, looked for Rab but could ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... of the crowd without came to my ears; but mingled with and heightened by some confusion in my thoughts. I struggled feebly with this, seeing a rush of colour to Croisette's face, a lightening in his eyes as if a veil had been raised from before them. Some confusion—for I thought I grasped the Vidame's meaning; yet there he was still glowering on his victim with the same grim visage, still speaking in the same ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... Yorke, do you see, whether this be the case." Playfully denying that he possessed any celebrity as a writer on legal matters, Yorke, with an assumption of candor, admitted that he had some thoughts of lightening the labors of law-students by turning Coke upon Littleton into verse. Indeed, he confessed that he had already begun the work of versification. Not seeing the nature of the reply, Sir Lyttleton ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... some hundreds of leagues from Martinique, when a violent tempest arose, apparently the last of a fearful hurricane which had raged through the Antilles. It was found that the ship had sprung a leak; the pumps were not sufficient: they were in imminent danger, and the necessity of lightening the vessel was so urgent that they were forced to throw overboard almost all the merchandise, a part of the ballast, and even several barrels of water. This last sacrifice was an appalling one: it was with a solemn feeling they ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... muskrats had become our fast friends. They insisted upon lightening our loads over the brambly league. This was kindly. Cancut's elongated head-piece, the birch, was his share of the burden; and a bag of bread, a firkin of various grub, damp blankets for three, and multitudinous traps, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... wood, splitting kindling, putting down hay for the cow, and other out-of-door exercises that had made him the demon of strength he once was. The little boy was not only glad to perform these acts for his own sake, but for the sake of lightening the labours of his hero, who wrenched his back anew nearly every time he tried to do anything, and was always having to take a medicine for it which he called "peach-and-honey." The little boy thought the name attractive, though his heart bled for the sufferer each time ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... find my sceptre shaken by enchantments Charactered in this parchment, which to unloose, I'll practice only counter-charms of fire, And blow the spells of lightening ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... necessary to use the southern reservoir for storing weight for six months, or until the south pole, which is now at its maximum declination from the sun, is turned towards it and begins to move away; then, by increasing the amount of matter there, and at the same time lightening the north pole, and reversing the process every six months, we decrease the speed at which the departing pole leaves the sun and at which the approaching pole advances. The north pole, we see, will be a somewhat more powerful lever than the south for working the globe to a straight position, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... not do so," he replied, "only that as I go on I keep lightening it"; and as he passed each of the widows, he threw gold to her, and stooping down, hid pieces of it in the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... eucalyptus logs burning, and pine trees and invisible orange groves. On the platform, osier baskets packed full of flowers sent out wafts of perfume; and as Mary stood gazing over the heads of the crowd at the lightening sky, she thought the dawn rushed up the east like a torchbearer, bringing good news. Just for a moment she forgot everybody, and could have sung for joy of life—a feeling new to her, though something deep down in herself ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... deafe to the sound: in prison, laments not the want of libertie: among the Cimmerians in perpetuall night, wisheth not for day: on the top of the Alpes, thinks not straunge of the mistes, the tempests, the snowes, and the stormes. Yet free doubtles they are not wh[en] the lightening often blasteth a flowre of their crownes, or breakes their scepter in their handes: when a drift of snowe ouerwhelmes them; when a miste of heauines, and griefe continually blindeth their wit, and vnderstanding. Crowned they are in deede, but with a crowne of thornes. They ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... a girlish giggle lightening the atmosphere. "Thank you!" she said earnestly. "Thank you ever so much. I knew ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... lamentably altered. Brodrick was no longer the enthusiastic editor, gathering around him the brilliant circle of the talents; he was the absorbed, depressed and ponderous man of business. It was as if some spirit that had breathed on him, sustaining him, lightening his incipient heaviness, had been removed. Jinny sat opposite him, a pale Mater Dolorosa. Her face, even when she talked to you, had an intent, remote expression, as if through it all she were listening for her child's cry. She was silent for the most part, passive ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... large and very conveniently situated close to the edge of the mine. He very kindly gave me a portion of it to use, thus lightening my labors considerably. But a catastrophe happened. One Sunday morning a shock was felt; this was followed by a rumbling roar. There was talk of earthquakes. Soon, however, we found out what had happened, the whole of the northern ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... fatal influences on the public trade of the nation, that Parliament found it necessary to enter upon that great work of a recoinage[5] and in order to prevent all future inconveniences of a like nature, they at the same time enacted that not only counterfeiting, chipping, scaling, lightening, or otherwise debasing the current specie of this realm, should be deemed and punished as high treason, but they included also under the same charge and punishment the having any press, engine, tool, or implement proper ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... pleasant company he finds himself in, of course," said the visitor, easily. "Ah, I see Miss Carew," he added, his eye immediately lightening, "and must congratulate her on her performance. Cursed dusty hole, isn't it?" Brushing himself with his handkerchief as ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... of our own forward movement at all. We had been on deck just an hour—for two bells had barely been struck— when the first faint suggestion of dawn appeared ahead in the shape of a scarcely-perceptible lightening of the sky along a narrow strip of the eastern horizon, in the midst of which the morning star beamed resplendently, while the air, although still warm, assumed a freshness that, compared with the close, muggy heat of the past night, seemed almost cold, so ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... out of such things and the common brutalising joys of the workman. And you could not have art without artists. In this again he was only talking the commonplaces of his day. But to her they were not commonplaces at all. She looked at him from time to time, her great eyes lightening and deepening as it seemed with ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... book to muse over a strange sentence that his wandering eye was caught beyond the window by the flash of a falling star of unusual brilliance. It was so bright, indeed, that he crossed the room to look out at the sky, stepping very softly, for he had grown accustomed to lightening his footfall, and now unconsciously the murmuring voices of the talkers made him move stealthily—not to steal upon them, but to keep from breaking in on their talk. But when he came to the door opening on the veranda the words ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... lying as I did flat upon my back, my eyes gazed across the narrow valley, to the summit of the cliff on the farther side. There, solitary, a carven statue full in the glow of the westering sun, turning her garments golden, and lightening her rich profusion of hair into radiant beauty, stood a young woman of white face and slender, stately figure. It was no time to note dress, yet I could not fail to observe the flowing white robe, draped from shoulders to feet, gracefully ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... and hostile as I was to the effects of his enthusiasm, I took no trivial interest in the individual. Still, to set him at liberty was palpably impossible; and my only resource was, to give him such aid in this extremity of his career as could be given by lightening the severities of his prison, and providing him with the means of securing able counsel. I had now an opportunity of seeing, for the first time, the genius of this singular people displayed under a new and brilliant form—the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... seeing what is in my thought cannot be spoken to you by any man for many a long day to come. And yet to envy him is natural; and when you ask what I envy, I will be honest and tell you. Fate has given him the privilege of lightening the cruel burden placed upon your shoulders. His sympathy and intuition you admit have succeeded in so doing. You will say that no Englishman could have done that exactly in the way he did—perhaps you are right; but one Englishman regrets from the bottom ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... them. The kiss Ben Fordyce had pressed upon her lips had brought this revelation. But of this she was not yet aware; she was only conscious of a growing dread of the future. Her duties as his nurse were lightening. Lucius, indeed, now took many of her tasks upon himself, and she no longer helped him with his shoes or coat, and, what was still more significant, she could not calmly think of going back to ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... propulsive force of the propellers acts upon the diving rudders and causes the sinking to become a gliding. After the required depth has been reached—something which may easily be read from the manometer that records the depth—all further sinking may be stopped by simply lightening the hull, which is done by forcing out some of the water in the submarine's tanks. The furious growling of the pump is always a sure sign that the required depth is being approached. The noise ceased, only the electric motors continued to ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... grumble about. All of which, though it charmed Katherine, appeased her anxiety but moderately. The young man worked too hard. His opportunities of amusement were too scant. Katherine cast about in thought, and in prayer, for some lightening of his daily life, even if such lightening should lessen the completeness of his dependence upon herself. And it was just at this juncture that Miss St. Quentin wrote proposing to come to Brockhurst for a week. She had not been there since the Whitsuntide ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Andrew to say that he shrank from the future. Rather he accepted everything that lay before him wholeheartedly, and, with the laying aside of his scruples, there was an instant lightening of the heart, a fierce keenness of mind, a contempt for society, a disregard for life beginning with his own. One could have noted it in the recklessness with which he sent Sally up the slope away from the ranch ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... bottom between the outer and inner skin plating is 21/2 ft. The watertight compartments were divided into stations by means of vertical lightening plates pierced by three holes, and in order to make them, as far as was practicable, resemble the bracket frames of a modern armorclad, the center of the plates was cut away so as to leave a single oval hole ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... carpenter of the ship, who was with the party, said that the timber resembled that of the pitch-pine, which is lightened by tapping. If it should appear, that some such method would be successful in lightening these trees, they would then furnish masts superior to those of any country in Europe. As the wood was swampy, the gentlemen could not range far; but they found many stout trees of other kinds, with which they were totally unacquainted, and specimens ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... thus thrust into the light cast from the halo of his regenerate nephew, stirred uneasily. He was contemplating the expediency of his youthful kinsman in making the lack of a dress-suit serve as a means of lightening his coming examinations ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... an accurate copy of their blocks. They were dated correctly, both bore Fox's name as driver, and both showed consignments of liquor, identical except for the additional four kegs of brandy on the second. There was, furthermore, no sign that this had been added after the remainder. The slight lightening in the color towards the bottom of the sheet, due to the use of blotting paper, was so progressive as almost to prove the whole had been written at the ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... to have to pretend when each knew the other was pretending; and as they pretended to the world in general, what a relief and blessed lightening of tension it would have been to have said merely an honest: "We don't care about Mrs. Gorgeous Girl or any one else. We are quite content with each other. True, this is still platonic friendship—with one of us—but all tropical twilight is of short duration. It won't be platonic ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... to acquiesce, but to avow their opinion that Dunkirk offered no advantages equivalent to its cost, which was reckoned at not less than a hundred and twenty thousand a year. Southampton told the Chancellor of his difficulties, and propounded to him the scheme for lightening them; but found Clarendon so averse to a proposal for parting with any naval stronghold, that even the entire confidence bred of their old friendship did not tempt the Treasurer to reopen a subject so distasteful ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... and in the baggage room rechecked his trunk to follow him, lightening his traveling bag at the same time until it carried only necessities. A luncheon, then the street car. Three quarters of an hour later, he began the five-mile trudge up the broad, smooth, carefully groomed automobile ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... the next day, after a restless night, the ship had settled so much, despite the lightening process, that she rode soggily along at not more than fifty feet above the level of the sea. The situation ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... prepared to do her bidding. Then it seemed to him that another presence than Edith's was around him, another voice than hers was whispering words of courage, Nina, who went before, guiding his footsteps, and lightening his load, screening him from the scorching heat and buoying him up, while he walked the blackened beam, which shook and bent at every tread, and at last fell with a crash, but not until the ladder was reached, and a dozen friendly arms were outstretched ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... yard-arms seeing to the earring being clear and ready for passing, with the hands facing to leeward, so as to lighten the sail and assist the weather earring being hauled out, as they held the reef-line, and again facing to windward and lightening the sail there in the same fashion, so as to haul out the lee-earring before the signal was given by those out at the end of the yard-arms to ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... shower had just passed down the level landscape, and was followed by a rolling mist from the warm saturated soil like the smoke of the discharge. Through it she could see a faint lightening of the hidden sun, again darkening through a sudden onset of rain, and changing as with her conflicting doubts and resolutions. Thus gazing, she was vaguely conscious of an addition to the landscape in the shape of a man who was passing down the road with a pack on his back like the tramping ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... men of genius of the past, chroniclers of the loss of empires, grave men who taught the vanity of life, and funny men who taught the same lesson in a different way, Marcus felt his pack of sorrows considerably lightening. His first, last, only disappointment in love had subsided into a gentle and not disagreeable melancholy. His trial, and the dreadful notoriety which his name had acquired, had imparted to his mild nature a gentle tinge of cynicism, which ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... strong nature his, facing the world, with all its contingencies, bravely and with constant buoyant cheerfulness. He walked through life with eyes and heart wide open to the joy of the world, brightening and lightening it for others as he went. He was always ready to stretch out a helping hand to the weak and falling ones who came across his path. Never merely an optimist, he yet lived and died in the ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... stars. The stars are only stones, but the sun and moon are lights. At times Kadaklan enters the body of a favored medium, and talks directly with the people; but more frequently he takes other means of communication. Oftentimes he sends his dog Kimat, the lightening, to bite a tree or strike a field or house, and in this way makes known his wish that the owner celebrate the Padiam ceremony (cf. p. 401). All other beings are in a measure subservient to him, and his wishes are frequently made known through them. Thunder is his drum with which he ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... suggests a way to clothe women both healthfully and handsomely, and that is a great point. It begins at the foundations, as you will see if you will look at these pictures, and I should think women would rejoice at this lightening of ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... morning 1st book Samuel, 30th chapter, latter part of the 6th verse. The weather was very variable, with much thunder and lightening; which was awful and impressive. On the 12th the thermometer was below freezing point, and the rigging of the ship was covered with large icicles. Intense fogs often prevailed, but of very inconsiderable height. They would sometimes obscure the hull of the ship, when the mast head was seen, ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... I were unworthy of the name of a Briton and a man, could I pass the highway without relieving the distress or lightening the burden of a fellow-creature. And," continued the stranger, after a momentary pause, colouring while he spoke, and concluding in the high-flown gallantry of the day, "methinks it were sufficient reward, had I saved the whole church instead of one of its most valuable members, to receive ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in a desert and alone; and, added to that, with an unappeased longing for her departed mother, and silent, quiet, wearing grief for the loss of her. Even now, her features often settled into the dulness which had so struck Dallas; but gradually there was a lightening and lifting of the cloud: when studying she was wholly intent on her business, and when talking or reciting or examining flowers there was a play of life and thought and feeling in her face which was a constant study to her young teacher, as well as pleasure, for the change ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... that there were enough gunmen in the Sleepy Cat crowd for defensive purposes and that there was no end of available ammunition. A way was found to meet Laramie's objection on every point and it only remained to hatch up a scheme for lightening the cattlemen's pockets. ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... nothing more than an interesting tribe of Indians who, through long intermingling with the white race, have undergone considerable lightening of their ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... to ascertain their position, and to learn the extent of the evil. The lugger had been lifted into a crevice between two of the rocks, by a ground-swell heavier than common; and though there was deep water all around her, it would be impossible to get her afloat again without lightening. So long as the wind did not blow, and the sea did not rise, she was safe enough; but a swell that should force the hull to rise and fall would inevitably cause her to bilge. These facts were learned in five minutes after the yawl was in the water, and much did Raoul ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... various house-linens, things that must undergo daily wear and wash; its rather unobtrusive character too makes it the more suitable for this purpose. The work is used in conjunction with other kinds of embroidery, perhaps making a neat finish to an edge, or lightening what would otherwise be ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... kind-hearted family in Edmeston had taken the lad in rather than see him become a public charge. With them he had lived and been cared for ever since. Of late years, however, he had been able to do considerable toward lightening the burden for them by the money he managed ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... itself—one never knows exactly when it begins—until the air is lively with the cries of the cheerful Kaffir. Darkness still on the ground and cold starlight in the upper air; but eastwards a very sharp eye might notice a kind of lightening of the gloom. And cold, bitterly cold, one gratefully withdraws beneath blankets the hand that was experimentally stretched out. In one's own little camp the stir is also beginning; fires being kindled, shadowy figures ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... Mavis accept the thing not only easily but without a doubt or question, and he thought remorsefully that, except for his sneaking, cowardly delay, all this might have occurred a month ago. He felt a distinct lightening of the trouble as he went back into his own room, and then the weight of it fell upon him again. He had succeeded so far as Mavis was concerned; ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... said, his full-blooded face lightening and softening at the same time, as though a load were off his mind, "it's no pleasure to me to deprive any man of his billet, but you never were a nurse, and you know that as well ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... unspeakably, sickeningly weary! There was no home, no help for the erring; even those who pitied were constrained to hardness. But ought she to complain? Ought she to shrink in this way from the long penance of life, which was all the possibility she had of lightening the load to some other sufferers, and so changing that passionate error into a new force of unselfish human love? All the next day she sat in her lonely room, with a window darkened by the cloud and the driving rain, thinking of that future, and wrestling for patience; for what ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... shall we explain such a phenomenon as those old crusades? Were they undertaken for any purpose, commercial or other? Certainly not for lightening an overburdened population. Nay, is not the history of your own Mormons, and their exodus into the far West, one of the most startling instances which the world has seen for several centuries, of the unexpected and incalculable forces which lie hid in man? Believe ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... surely the shrieking of the elements diminished; the seas were palpably falling. Great, dark shapes could now be seen rushing across the lightening firmament, and once the girl, stretching her arm upward, exclaimed, as through a rift overhead she caught a glimpse of ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... ground that night, and next morning, under Captain Selover's directions, we commenced the task of lightening the ship. He detailed the Nigger and Perdosa ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... France and England is sufficient to convince even prejudice and obstinacy, that if France and England are not in the same condition (as the author affirms they are not) the difference is infinitely to the disadvantage of France. This depreciation of their funds has not much the air of a nation lightening burdens and discharging debts. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to him a moment, her face suddenly lightening at the tenor of his words—so bravely spoken, with so little conviction behind them. But they had helped her, and ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... elsewhere there is snow, but here the snow is turned to the dingy color of the place. It is very quiet outside, being early morning yet; a cold mist hides the dawn, and the water falls with a winter hiss; the paths are indistinct, for the sky is only just enough lightening ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... lightening which had been making itself felt behind the eastern line of mountains now came plainly in view, late moon, melancholy and significant, as the waning moon always is. By its dim illumination Creed saw Judith Barrier standing at the door of ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... sets them to work to help her in her endless task of piling up the stones on the shore of the stream. Jizo helps these poor children, and every one who throws a pebble at the foot of this shrine also takes a share in lightening the labour of some little one ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... the triumph of Philippa over the flesh and blood of her race. She had nothing in her of the dead. That was the wonder of her. The passion of the dead had built up her body to the semblance and the promise of their own delight; their desire, long forgotten, rose again, lightening and darkening in her amazing eyes; the imperishable instinct that impelled them to clothe her in their flesh and blood survived in her, transfigured in strange impulses and intuitions, but she herself left unfulfilled their promise and ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... on, without any lightening of the tempest, till noon, when the wind suddenly fell to a calm. Until that time, the sea, although heavy, was not vicious or irregular, and we had not shipped any heavy water at all. But when the force of the wind ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... with his absurd jokes, although the young ladies seemed brimful of fun, especially Miss Florry, who the skipper said might make a good match for mischievousness with Master Negus—whereat a grim smile was seen to steal across the face of "the Major," lightening up her sallow countenance and making her "come out ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... secretary of the committee, Miss Ruth White, who has worked indefatigably in the office since June, 1916, has had charge of the records of members of Congress and of correspondence with our State chairmen, besides lightening in numberless other ways the burdens of your chairman. To a member of the committee, who is a long-time resident of Washington, Mrs. Gardener, the association is profoundly indebted for constant advice and help, as well as for the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... countenance of the messenger told her what it was she had to communicate, without the use of words. She hurried to the bed-side, and found Miss Melville expiring. The appearances that had at first been so encouraging were of short duration. The calm of the morning proved to be only a sort of lightening before death. In a few hours the patient grew worse. The bloom of her countenance faded; she drew her breath with difficulty; and her eyes became fixed. Doctor Wilson came in at this period, and immediately perceived ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... eight. They were not shouting like the rest, but hitting out straight and remorselessly; and before those two strong Promachi, townsman and navvy, peeler and special, went down like blades of corn. Close at their shoulder I distinguished Lovell, his clear blue eyes lightening savagely; and stout Tom Lynton, a deeper flush on his honest face, hewing away with all the unscientific ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... that had skirted the sky during the day broke at last, and the rain fell in torrents, as Jerome and Clotelle retired for the night, in the little town of Ferney, on the borders of Lake Leman. The peals of thunder, and flashes of vivid lightening, which seemed to leap from mountain to mountain and from crag to crag, reverberating among the surrounding hills, foretold ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... application should be is obviously determined by the diameter of the piece. The next operation is to lighten or draw the part, line or streak thus dark colored, causing it to get paler and paler as it approaches the axial line of the piece or cylinder. This lightening is accomplished as follows: The dark streak is applied along such a length of the piece that it will not dry before there has been time to draw it out or lighten it on the side towards the axis. A separate brush may then ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... so—I certainly do not want it to die in." A quiet smile trembled for an instant on his lips, momentarily lightening an expression ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... end of the 16th century, the fashions and manners of the time, piquant descriptions, and amusing gossip, such as only a witty woman—as Marguerite certainly was—could inject into such subjects. The letters, indeed, abound in sprightly anecdote and small-talk, which yet have their value in lightening up the ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... was re-formed. Mabane, and Arthur with his hands deep in his pockets and an angry frown upon his forehead, walked on ahead. Behind came Isobel and I—Isobel with her hands clasped behind her, her head a little thrown back, a faint, wistful smile lightening the unusual gravity of her face. I looked ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... when they were pressing on again after a short while of resting, Hallblithe cried out that the cave was lightening: so they hastened onward, and the light grew till they could dimly see each other, and dimly they beheld the cave that it was both wide and high. Yet a little further, and their faces showed white to one another, ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... hour had passed after the land was seen before the ship struck. It was ascertained that it was on the extreme point of a reef, and the first mate hoped that by lightening the ship she might beat over it. The captain acquiesced, and every article that could be got at was, as soon as possible, ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... friend of the white captives among the Shawnees and succeeded in lightening many of their burdens. At length, while on a journey with her adopted mother and youngest brother, she heard of the terrible tragedy even then being enacted in a Shawnee village only a few miles from where they were encamped. Fired with horror and pity, she impulsively sprang ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... half-past seven o'clock of a June morning. The sun was lightening the landscape, yet it was by no means clear. The day had, in fact, come in foggy, and the mist was slow in burning off from the hills. Often, at intervals, it hung over the water like a thin curtain. But the mystery of an unknown stream, hidden by the banks along ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... few. Narration in dramatick poetry is naturally tedious, as it is unanimated and inactive, and obstructs the progress of the action; it should therefore always be rapid, and enlivened by frequent interruption. Shakespeare found it an encumberance, and instead of lightening it by brevity, endeavoured to recommend it by dignity ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... it, then, that you are so anxious to get married again?" asked Ralph, to whom these conversations with the Cuif were a means of lightening his mind ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... Heavenly Father, in such circumstances that I can afford this small testimonial to their former fraternal kindness, and I know no better occasion to manifest the long pent-up feelings of my heart towards them than by lightening, under the embarrassments of the times, the pecuniary burden of our united testimonial to the best of fathers ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... in the Christian faith. The abstruse doctrines of the church formed no part of his creed. His faith was in the Christ the Saviour of mankind; a faith which illumined his pathway in life, lightening his burdens, exalting his nature, and which sustained him without fear when he met the last enemy of the race as he walked through "the valley of the shadow of death." It was the ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... office and factory, but the wife and mother still plods along in an ill-fitted kitchen and laundry. And yet our greatest modern inventor has said that the cares of the home could be reduced to a minimum and the servant problem solved if the perfectly practicable devices, for lightening household labor were adopted ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... see you more? Mutteringly she put that question to herself. But strange are the caprices of ebb and flow in the deep fountains of human sensibilities. At this very moment, when the utter incapacitation of despair was gathering fast at Kate's heart, a sudden lightening shot far into her spirit, a reflux almost supernatural, from the earliest effects of her prayer. A thought had struck her all at once, and this thought prompted her immediately to turn round. Perhaps it was in some blind yearning after the only memorials of life in this frightful region, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... what has since been called Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform. He was the first great English finance minister; perhaps we may say he was the first English minister who ever sincerely regarded the development of national prosperity, the just and equal distribution of taxation, and the lightening of the load of financial burdens, as the most important business of a statesman. The whole political and social conditions of the country were changing under his wise and beneficent system of administration. Population was steadily increasing; some of the ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... the most part, of the lowest order. In many parishes considerable pains have, of late, been taken in order to improve the psalmody, but no corresponding effect has been produced. In the agricultural districts of the south of England, no songs are heard lightening the daily toil of the labourer, and the very plough-boys can hardly raise a whistle. It is impossible to account for this; but the fact will be acknowledged by all who have had the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... Dick's arm-pits, and though he said that his own arms were about dead he hoisted the boy in almost without an effort, and then left him to help himself, while he resumed baling with his hands, scooping out the water pretty fast, and each moment lightening the little craft. ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... instant lightening of the tension for Morris. For Pitman it quenched the last ray of hope and daylight. Uncle Joseph, whom he had left an hour ago in Norfolk Street, pasting newspaper cuttings?—it?—the dead body?—then who was he, Pitman? and was this Waterloo ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... infection from him and nearly died, and the child he was then had never been able to escape a shuddering belief that he might have been guilty of his father's death. That had made him turn the more passionately to the task of lightening his mother's burden in the wild anxiety he had caused her. Poor little boy, he thought, poor little fool! Making his life a business of compensating somebody for something, and never, until these ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... right to make him thus stand and deliver. He shot his hands into the air with the lightening vivacity that was in him a sort of wit. "Not ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... or starboard beam, when the sloop put about and ran off toward the west. Daylight showed the 74 still astern and to leeward, but having gained so much as to be within gunshot, and shortly afterward she opened fire, her shot passing over the Hornet. The latter had recourse anew to the lightening process. She had already hove overboard the sheet-anchor, several heavy spare spars, and a large quantity of shot and ballast; the remaining anchors and cables, more shot, six guns, and the launch now followed suit, and, thus relieved, the Hornet passed temporarily out of ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... when, through the lightening fog, they reached the place and discovered that Andy, though unconscious, was not dead. They found, upon examination of his hurt, that the bullet had ploughed along the side of his head above his ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... which? The farthest from the point of attack would be the best, as there would be less vigilance there. That meant the Delhi gate, and meant also a long round; yet he must be quick, for already there was a faint lightening of the eastern sky. But the moon had set and the shadows, always darker in the hour before dawn, lay upon ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... ever giving another thought to any two-seater but the Runaway. When he turned out of the establishment that winter afternoon, on his way to an hotel to dress for his early and lonely dinner somewhere or other, he was pleased. Brisk business did a little towards lightening his trouble, just as less innocuous ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... is a rapid one men have thus to give place to young successors at an earlier age than the one at which men give place in other employments. The effect of some machinery is to improve the chances of old men, while that of other machinery is to reduce them. A lightening of toil and a shortening of the working day preserve men's powers and enable them ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... we're poo'd deawn as nee to th' greawnd as ony body can be. My daughter's husband went off a-seekin' work just afore that child was born,—an' we haven't heard from him yet." My friend took care that his visit should result in lightening the weight of the old woman's ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... did their own work, both out doors and in. If there were a black man or black woman or bound girl, they were emphatically only the helps, following humbly the steps of master and mistress, and used by them as instruments of lightening certain portions of their toil. The master and mistress with their ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... gate. But thoughts of Owen began to loom up, and in spite of her efforts to repress them, they grew more and more distinct. The clock struck four, and soon after it seemed to her that the darkness was lightening. For a long while she did not dare to open her eyes. At last she had to open them, and the grey-blue light was indescribably mournful. Again her life seemed small, black and evil. She jumped out of bed, passed her arms into a tea-gown, and paced the room. She must see ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... old English and the modern Norwegian dramatist is that each has felt the solid stuff of the drama to require lightening, and has attempted to provide this by means, in Ben Jonson's case, of solemn "choruses," in Ibsen's of lyrics. In the latter instance the tragedy ends in rolling and rhymed verse, little suited to ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... the golden lightening Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are brightening, Thou dost float and run; Like an unbodied joy ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... commissioner at the time of the Chickamauga raid which was followed by Shelby's counter-stroke.] with eight companions, one of them a negro. He followed Boon's trace,—Wilderness Road,—through Cumberland Gap, and across the Cumberland River. Then he struck off southwest through the wilderness, lightening his labor by taking the broad, well-beaten buffalo trails whenever they led in his direction; they were very distinct near the pools and springs, and especially going to and from the licks. The adventurers reached the bend of the Cumberland ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... stronger and better. Money is good alms when money is really needed, but in comparison with the divine gifts of hope, friendship, courage, sympathy, and love, it is paltry and poor. Usually the help people need is not so much the lightening of their burden, as fresh strength to enable them to bear their burden, and stand up under it. The best thing we can do for another, some one has said, is not to make some things easy for him, but to make something ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... think you will see; I think these chapters will do for the volume without much change. Those that I did in the Janet Nicoll, under the most ungodly circumstances, I fear will want a lot of suppling and lightening, but I hope to have your remarks in a month or two upon that point. It seems a long while since I have heard from you. I do hope you are well. I am wonderful, but tired from so much work; 'tis really ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the savages, which was so expeditiously effected, that we overtook them within two miles of their towns, and probably might have obtained a great victory, had not two of their number met us about two hundred poles before we come up. These returned quick as lightening to their camp with the alarming news of a mighty army in view. The savages fled in the utmost disorder, evacuated their towns, and reluctantly left their territory to our mercy. We immediately took possession ...
— The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone • John Filson
... torrents, rebounding from the shining pavement and the no less shining umbrellas of passing pedestrians, with vicious little pops and hisses that sounded more like a storm of tiny daggers than of raindrops. As time went on, instead of lightening, the sky had grown murkier and murkier and darker and darker, until, in many parts of the hotel, people had been forced to turn on the lights. Over and about everything hung that moist, indefinably depressing atmosphere that makes one rail at fate ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... and lightening in Royat, it goes on for hours. The surrounding mountains play an interminable game of which the thunderbolt is the football. They make an infernal noise about it, and the denser the deluge the more ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... part! O faithless, cruel thought! Death ne'er shall part souls joined by holy love, Who through life's trials, joys and cares Have to each other clung, faithful till death, Tender and true in sickness and in health, Bearing each other's burdens, sharing griefs, Lightening each care and heightening every joy. Such life is but a transient honeymoon, A feeble foretaste of eternal joys. But princes when they love, though all approve, Must wait on councils, embassies and forms. But how ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... venerate the Quaker principles. It does me good for the rest of the day when I meet any of their people in my path. When I am ruled or disturbed by any occurrence, the sight or quiet voice of a Quaker acts upon me as a ventilator, lightening the air, and taking off a load from the bosom; but I cannot like the Quakers, as Desdemona would say, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... the satchel with a firmer hand. The headlight of the train was now lightening the shadows about the station. The roar was increasing, and folks were stirring about at ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry |
