"Declining" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... close of 1861, Miss Barton returned to Massachusetts to watch over the declining health of her father, now in his eighty-eighth year, and failing fast. In the following March she placed his remains in the little cemetery at Oxford, and then returned to Washington and to her former labors. But, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... possible, the effects which result from it are highly important; and I add that, if there ever was a time at which such an attempt ought to be made, that time is our own. It is clear that the influence of religious belief is shaken, and that the notion of divine rights is declining; it is evident that public morality is vitiated, and the notion of moral rights is also disappearing: these are general symptoms of the substitution of argument for faith, and of calculation for the impulses of sentiment. ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Hancocks declining a seat in the Council Board is very satisfactory to the Friends of Liberty among his constituents. This Gentleman has stood five years successively and as often Negativ'd. Whatever may have been the Motive of his being approbated at last his own Determination now shows that he had rather ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... prisoners understood that he wished to be a stranger to them; and submitted. The priest fancied that he saw a smile on the man's lips as he saw their preparations for his visit, but it was at once repressed. He heard mass, said his prayer, and then disappeared, declining, with a few polite words, Mademoiselle de Langeais' invitation to partake of the little ...
— An Episode Under the Terror • Honore de Balzac
... mourning for his predecessor six months, dressing in black, using writing paper with a broad black border, declining all invitations to theatrical performances, and giving no state entertainments at the White House. At first he endeavored to bring about a millennium of political forces, but the "stalwart" lions refused to lie down with the "half-breed" lambs, and his ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... virgins: O declining eld: O pale misfortune's slaves: O ye who dwell Unknown with humble quiet; ye who wait In courts, or fill the golden seat of kings: O sons of sport and pleasure: O thou wretch That weep'st for jealous love, or the sore wounds ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... returned in his boat, and met me with outstretched hand. His welcome was, I thought, unnecessarily effusive, and, declining his pressing invitation to remain for the night, I left, after remaining an hour or so longer. I noticed that immediately Krause arrived the girl Niabon disappeared, and ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... was needed to bring Madison to a seat on a wooden bench beside Fitzjocelyn, answering his anxious inquiries. The first tidings were a shock—Mr. Ponsonby was dead. He had long been declining, and the last thing Tom had heard from Lima was, that he was dead; but of the daughter there was no intelligence; Tom had been too much occupied with his own affairs to know anything of her. Robson had returned from Guayaquil some weeks previously, and in the settlement of accounts consequent ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dying, not like a Christian, but like the pagan patriot who has failed: only the shades awaited him when he fled from the darkness of earthly shame. They sat together one March afternoon facing the window and the declining sun. To the right another window gave them a good view of the beautiful cathedral, whose twin spires, many turrets, and noble walls shone blue and golden ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... in the legs. The lady by my side, and who had called my attention to the group, asked if I could tell what country this odd-looking gentleman was from? Not wishing to run the risk of a mistake, I was about declining to venture an opinion, when the reflection of the sun against a mirror, on the opposite side, threw a brilliant light upon the group, and especially on the face of the gentleman in the white coat, and I immediately recognized under the ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... the old minister, for which he could not forgive him. I knew something of this intrigue at the time; it has since been fully explained to me by Madame la Marechale de Beauvau. M. Necker saw that his credit at Court was declining, and fearing lest that circumstance should injure his financial operations, he requested the King to grant him some favour which might show the public that he had not lost the confidence of his sovereign. He concluded his letter by pointing out five requests—such an office, or ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... waterways—action which will result in giving us not only navigable but navigated rivers. We have spent hundreds of millions of dollars upon these waterways, yet the traffic on nearly all of them is steadily declining. This condition is the direct result of the absence of any comprehensive and far-seeing plan of waterway improvement, Obviously we can not continue thus to expend the revenues of the Government without return. It is poor business ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... same pine trees tar and pitch are also made, but by a different mode of operation. "For extracting tar they prepare a circular floor of clay, declining a little towards the centre, from which there is laid a pipe of wood, extending almost horizontally two feet without the circumference, and so let into the ground, that its upper side may be level with the floor: at the outer end of this pipe ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... exchanged for human stock breeding; and he keenly felt the degradation. The forest was returning over the fine old estates, and the wild creatures which had not been seen for generations were reappearing; numbers and wealth were declining, and education and manners were degenerating. It would not have surprised him to be told that on that soil would the main battles be fought when the critical day should come which ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... The setting sun, declining beyond the vast Campagna, shed its rich yellow beams on the woody summits of the Abruzzi. Several mountains crowned with snow shone brilliantly in the distance, contrasting their brightness with others, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... non-attendance at church, for, as we shall see from his letter to DeLuc, July, 1788, he had never attended the "meeting-house" (dissenting church) in Birmingham altho he claimed to be still a member of the Presbyterian body in declining the sheriffalty. ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... season are now dead, but in rispect to it's form &c. it is simple, crenate, & oblong, reather more obtuse at it's apex than at the base or insertion; it's margin armed with prickles while it's disks are hairy, it's insertion decurrent and position declining. the flower is also dry and mutilad. the pericarp seems much like that of the common thistle. it rises to the hight of from 3 ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... not be at Stoneborough after Christmas. His father's declining health made him be required at home, and since Richard was so often absent, it became matter of doubt whether the Misses May ought to be allowed to persevere, unassisted by older heads, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... has the great additional advantage of appealing to a much larger variety of tastes. My eldest brother—great at drawing and painting when he was a lad, always interested in artists and their works in after life—has resumed, in his declining years, the holiday occupation of his schoolboy days. As an amateur landscape-painter, he works with more satisfaction to himself, uses more color, wears out more brushes, and makes a greater smell of paint in his ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... was roused by the circumstance that his guardian did not again refer to his money, nor did he manifest any disappointment at his ward's declining ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... me of breakfasting with a foreign sojourner in America, who upon being offered the contents of an egg broken into a glass, was not satisfied with declining it, but felt impelled also to express his extreme disgust at this method of serving it, fortunately to the amusement, rather than to the ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... and her house attractive, with going to lunches and teas and dinners and concerts and theatres and art exhibitions, and charity meetings and receptions, and with writing a thousand and one notes about them, and accepting and declining, and giving lunches and dinners, and making calls and receiving them, and I don't know what all. It's the most hideous slavery!" Her voice rose into something like a shriek; one could see that her nerves were going at the mere thought ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... were again in the kitchen, Mr. Montague, after suggesting, "Something in the nature of an after-dinner cordial," quaffed one for himself and followed it with the one he had poured out for a declining guest who still treasured the flavour of his ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... fluid and teeming pages into forms of art never came. It does not occur to Mr. Gosse to inquire whether or not something like this may not have been the poet's intention. Perhaps this is the secret of the vitality of his work, which, as Mr. Gosse says, now, after forty years, shows no sign of declining. Perhaps it was a large, fresh supply of poetic yeast that the poet really sought to bring us. Undoubtedly Whitman aimed to give his work just this fluid, generative quality, to put into it the very basic elements of life itself. He feared ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... of James had been during some years declining and he had at length, on Good Friday, 1701, suffered a shock from which he had never recovered. While he was listening in his chapel to the solemn service of the day, he fell down in a fit, and remained ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... by Charles to his monastic retreat at Yuste, and appropriated after his death by Philip. If the picture styled La Dolorosa, and now No. 468 in the gallery of the Prado, is indeed the one painted for the great monarch who was so sick in body and spirit, so fast declining to his end, the suspicion is aroused that the courtly Venetian must have acted with something less than fairness towards his great patron, since the Addolorata cannot be acknowledged as his own work. Still less can we accept as his ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... Devonport; while at the same time the sanctuary of Pytho with its administrators expanded into the town of Delphi, and came to claim an independent existence of its own. The original relations between Crissa, Cirrha, and Delphi, were in this manner at length subverted, the first declining and the two latter rising. The Crissaeans found themselves dispossessed of the management of the temple, which passed to the Delphians; as well as of the profits arising from the visitors, whose disbursements went to enrich the inhabitants of Cirrha. Crissa was a primitive city of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... by no means underestimate the fineness of the traditions of British commerce or the number of men still living who hold to those traditions. On the other hand, better judges than I believe that the standard of morality in English business circles is declining. In America it is ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... party on questions connected with the reconstruction of the Southern States; supported a resolution declaring the sacredness of the public debt and denouncing repudiation, and also one commending President Johnson for declining to accept presents and condemning the practice; opposed a resolution favoring an increase of pay of members of Congress; introduced in a Republican caucus resolutions declaring that the only mode of obtaining from the States lately in rebellion irreversible ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... celebrated modern beauty, "that she might not survive her nine-and-twentieth birth-day." I have often heard this wish quoted for its extravagance; but I always admired it for its good sense. The lady foresaw the inevitable doom of her declining years. Her apprehensions for the future embittered even her enjoyment of the present; and she had resolution enough to offer to take "a bond of fate," to sacrifice one-half of her life, to secure the pleasure of ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... never recovered the loss of his son, or his visit to the West Indies, was now very evidently declining in health. He could no longer follow the hounds, or ride out as before. He took little or no interest in public affairs. Even his neighbours he declined seeing when they called, though he seemed always glad to have a visit from Mr Jamieson ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... 1592, Raleigh, weary of his Irish exile, and anxious by some splendid exploit to revive the declining favor of the queen, projected a formidable attack on the Spanish power in America, and engaged without difficulty in the enterprise a large number of volunteers. But unavoidable obstacles arose, by ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Experiment with very slender hopes of success indeed, since Recourse to the Law is at best a desperate effort. I have now laid open my affairs to you without Disguise and Stated the Facts as they appear, declining all Comments, or the use of any Sophistry to palliate my application, or urge my request. All I desire is a speedy ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... loaded and manoeuvred from within it, were to be five 15-inch smooth-bores and two 10-inch rifled guns clad with armor. The actual horse-power of this ship being above 8,000, her speed would be much higher than that of any other war-vessel. Congress, declining to make an appropriation to complete this vessel, made it over to Mr. Stevens, who had already borne a considerable portion of its cost, and who intends to finish it at his own expense, and is now experimenting to still further perfect his designs. The Achilles (English) ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... breath, a touch like this has shaken! And ruder words will soon rush in To spread the breach that words begin; And eyes forget the gentle ray They wore in courtship's smiling day; And voices lose the tone that shed A tenderness round all they said; Till fast declining, one by one, The sweetnesses of love are gone, And hearts, so lately mingled, seem Like broken clouds,—or like the stream, That smiling left the mountain's brow, As though its waters ne'er could sever, Yet, ere it reach the plain below, Breaks into ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... of the old silver dollar in a speech in the Senate made on the 8th of June, 1876, two years before the appearance of the "Bland bill," or the "Allison bill." Silver bullion was then declining in market value. The resumption act provided for the gradual replacement of fractional currency by silver coins of the character and form provided for by the coinage act of 1853. When that act passed the old silver dollar was not coined or in circulation. It was more valuable in ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... continued all the same day." These pageantries were of frequent occurrence, and the pages of the picturesque old chronicler above-cited abound with descriptions of them. Yet, in spite of the efforts of Elizabeth to maintain its splendour undiminished, the star of chivalry was rapidly declining, to disappear for ever in the reign ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... art ever desiring trials, and, on the other hand, declining them. I order things according to what I know thy will is, and not according to thy sensuality and weakness. Be strong, for thou seest how I help thee; I have wished thee to gain this crown. Thou ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... short, general conversation. Then Major Walters, declining the offer of whisky and soda in the dining-room, took his leave. Paragot accompanied him to the front door. When he returned, Mrs. Rushworth retired, as she always did after her game, and Joanna instead of remaining with us for an hour, as usual, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... the men of Shakespeare's day. I fear he would certainly not have excepted the noble work of his precursor from his general condemnation or impreachment of "their bloody bawdries"—a misjudgment gross enough for Hallam—or Voltaire when declining to the level of a Hallam. Landor was as headlong as these were hidebound, as fitful as they were futile; but not even the dispraise or the disrelish of a finer if not of a greater dramatic poet could affect the credit ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Maurice of Nassau to the stadholdership of Holland. This was done against great opposition and amid fierce debate. Soon afterwards Barneveld was vehemently urged by the nobles and regents of the cities of Holland to accept the post of Advocate of that province. After repeatedly declining the arduous and most responsible office, he was at last induced to accept it. He did it under the remarkable condition that in case any negotiation should be undertaken for the purpose of bringing back the Province of Holland under the dominion of the King of Spain, he should ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was a trial to me also to sit with the clerks. We had never set ourselves up as grand people at Stockwell, but I had all my life been accustomed to delicate food properly cooked, and now that my appetite was declining with my years, I would almost at any time have gone without a meal rather than eat anything that was coarse or dirtily served. My colleagues ridiculed my 'Stockwell manners,' as they called them, and were ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... mistake," he said. "I am not of the declining sort, though I'll admit it was something like telling a man that you would like a bath and in consequence being instantly knocked overboard to sink or swim with your clothes on. However, I didn't feel as if I were in deep water ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... see on the afternoon Dick Stanmore sculled by his cottage windows—studying the effect of a declining sun on the opposite elms, not entirely averting his looks from that graceful girl, who ran into the house to the oarsman's discomfiture, and missing her more than might have been expected when she vanished up-stairs. Was not the sun still shining bright ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... to pay Pythagoras—that is, put him on the payroll as a public teacher—but he declined to accept money for his services. In this, Iamblichus says, he was very wise, since by declining a fixed fee, ten times as much was laid upon the altar of the Temple of the Muses, and not knowing to whom to return it, Pythagoras was obliged to keep it ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... two, kept her eye fixed on her mistress, who looked so unusually pale, that she seemed about to faint; but the Lady instantly recovered herself, and declining the assistance which her attendant offered her, walked ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... he would say, in your declining age, When no more heat was left but what you forced, When all the sap was needful for the trunk, When it went down, then you constrained the course, And robbed from nature, to supply desire; In you (I would not use so harsh a word) ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... him; him to know them. I proposed it to him when I got home. He was too languid after the day's fatigue, to be willing to make the little exertion of going amongst strangers; and disappointed me by almost declining to accept the invitation I brought. The next morning it was different; he apologized for his ungraciousness of the night before; and told me that he would get all things in train, so as to be ready to go out with me to Hope Farm ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... kindness he did me, that I saved his grandchild, and would have saved her mother had I possessed the means of carrying her off. Though I shall grieve to lose the maiden, yet willingly will I send her to him to cheer his declining years. Bring her to me; she need not fear that I will detain her; but I will gaze at her once again before you take her away with you to your distant home. For her sake you and your companions may rest assured that Oncagua will remain, as he has ever ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... &c. undergoing no change while the currency is depreciating in value and for ought I know may in a little time be totally sunk." Indeed, in 1781 he complained "that I have totally neglected all my private concerns, which are declining every day, and may, possibly, end in capital losses, if not absolute ruin, before I am at liberty ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... regard to these forts and other public property—provided that no reenforcements should be sent, and the military status should be permitted to remain unchanged. The South Carolinians understood Mr. Buchanan as approving of this suggestion, although declining to make any ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... a happy husband to his "perfect wife, my Leonor". He looks forward to what he will do when the long, dark autumn evenings come—the evenings of declining age, when the pleasant hue of his soul shall have dimmed, and the music of all its spring and summer voices shall be dumb in life's November. In his "waking dreams" he will "live o'er again" the happy life he has spent with his loved ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... bless'd Hermann, Both with significant looks, and also with grateful expressions, And one secretly whispered into the ear of another "If the master should turn to a bridegroom, her home is provided." Hermann then presently took her hand, and address'd her as follows "Let us be going; the day is declining, and far off the village." Then the women, with lively expressions, embraced Dorothea; Hermann drew her away; they still continued to greet her. Next the children, with screams and terrible crying attack'd her, Pulling her clothes, their ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... yong men of the towne, And leave your wonted labors for this day: This day is holy; doe ye write it downe, That ye for ever it remember may. This day the sunne is in his chiefest hight, With Barnaby the bright, From whence declining daily by degrees, He somewhat loseth of his heat and light, When once the Crab behind his back he sees. But for this time it ill ordained was, To chose the longest day in all the yeare, And shortest night, when longest fitter weare: Yet never day so long, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... saw her descend from God out of heaven, he may refer to her glory, which at her declining departed from her, and ascended to God, as the sap returns into the root at the fall of the leaf; which glory doth again at her return descend, or come into the church, and branches of the same, as the sap doth arise at the spring of the year, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... have raised the troubles, and given cause for the solemn gathering of a synod (whether by their heresy, or schism, or tyranny, or any other fault of others), use to place the great strength and safeguard of their cause in declining and fleeing the trial and sentence of a free synod as being formidable to them, who seeth not that they cannot be drawn to a public and judicial trial, nor other disobedient persons be compelled to obedience, without the magistrate's public mandate ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... 1505 had, as a youth of brilliant promise, painted the upper fresco, anticipating therein the composition of his great Disputa del Sacramento within the Vatican. Since then he had gone on from strength to strength, and now, in his declining years, his old master was called on to complete his pupil's work. The six saints whom he painted there, beneath Rafaelle's fresco, grouped on either side of terra-cotta figures of the Virgin and Child—SS. Jerome, John, Gregory, and Boniface, with SS. Scolastica and Martha—possess, ...
— Perugino • Selwyn Brinton
... as for courtesie, Wherever might sensible heads be found, Or ears to listen, or eyes to see. Nor merely skin-deep was she fair: She had a spirit both true and leal, As all about the Castle of Weir Were many to know, and many to tell. Right well she knew what it was to feel Grim poverty in declining day, With a purse to ope, and a hand to deal, And tears to bless what she gave away; Yet she was blithe and she was gay. And now she has gone to the hunting green, All on this bright and sunshiny day, To fly her favourite peregrine, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... forehead, that he disapproved of cruelty. Neither Pompey nor his friends came to help. What was Cicero to do? Resist by force? The young knights rallied about him eager for a fight, if he would but give the word. Sometimes as he looked back in after-years he blamed himself for declining their services, sometimes he took credit to himself for refusing to be the occasion ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... which they lived, with a nobler mansion which would be more fitting for his heirs to inherit. His daughter had a very high opinion indeed of her ancestry, and her father, growing exquisitely calm and good-natured in his serene declining years, humoured his child's peculiarities and interests in an easy bantering way. Truth to tell, there were few families in England with nobler connections than the Esmonds. The Virginians, Madame Rachel Warrington's sons, ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... unexpected and startling guise. Billie and her friends had just returned and tea and refreshments of a light volatile nature were being passed for the fourth time, by order of Miss Campbell. The visitors were elaborately declining all further nourishment when Nancy saw an arm raised from behind a thick clump of shrubbery near the summer-house. It was clothed in nondescript brown and long fingers clutched a stone. The arm gave a swift ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... Violent as it was, an editorial note witnesses that it was modified. It must have covered Pawkins with shame and confusion of face. It left no loophole; it was murderous in argument, and utterly contemptuous in tone; an awful thing for the declining years of a ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... I had brought about the closing of that house, but of the huge sums of money fraudulently obtained from victims, I could find no trace in the accounts of Madame Jean. She defied me with silence, simply declining to give any account of herself beyond admitting that she conducted an hotel at which opium might be smoked if desired. Blagueur! Sen, the Chinaman, who professed to speak nothing but Chinese—ah! cochon!—was equally a difficult case, Nom d'un nom! I was ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... his companion, his eyes dreamily intent, taking note of the restless depression of the man before him, and of the disagreeable facts which emerged from his talk—declining reputation, money difficulties, and—last and most serious—a new doubt of himself and his powers, which Watson never remembered to have noticed in ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... enjoyment. To this motive must be added the contempt which attaches to physical weakness among a nation of warriors, and the wrongs and insults which await those who are no longer able to protect themselves. When therefore a man finds his strength declining with the advance of age, and feels that he will soon be unequal to discharge the duties of this life, and to partake in the pleasures of that which is to come, he calls together his relations, and tells them that he is now worn out and useless, that he sees they are all ashamed of him, and ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... down for a time at the Hall, cheering his mother's declining years, repaying good for ill to his invalid brother, and winning golden opinions from all his neighbors high and low. He eagerly watched the further career of his old hero, now Lord Clive; learned to admire him as statesman as well as soldier; sympathized with him through all the ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... was pretty well used up, and looked as if it had gone through a very dark place, and been beat with a soot-bag. But, anyhow, I know that I did not appreciate my furlough half as much as I thought I would. I felt like returning it to the gentlemen with my compliments, declining their kind favors. I felt that it was unwillingly given, and, as like begets like, it was very unwillingly received. Honestly, I felt as if I had made a bad bargain, and was keen to rue the trade. I did not know what to do with it; ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... of Brissot and the Philosophers is declining fast—the clubs are unpropitious, and no party long survives this formidable omen; so that, like Macbeth, they will have waded from one crime to another, only to obtain a short-lived dominion, at the expence of eternal infamy, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... was not well calculated for making terms or rejecting proposals. The Chinese were not unacquainted with the declining finances of the Dutch; they knew very well that the embassy had originated in Canton, and that it was accredited only from their superiors in Batavia. In their journey they were harassed beyond measure; sometimes they were lodged in wretched hovels, without ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... hated him for having thrust himself into her life, for having caused her brother's death and covered her father's declining years with sorrow. And, above all, she hated him—indeed, indeed it was hate!—for being the cause of this most hideous action of her life: an action to which she had been driven against her will, one ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the steps triumphantly. In his pocket was a paper which the butler had written out and persuaded the Squire to sign, stating that Mrs. Green was on no account to be turned out of her cottage without Mr. Harold's express orders. He found the tramp waiting for him, and told his story joyfully, declining to accept the proffered shilling ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... Muttra. It was a great Buddhist and Jain centre, as the statues and viharas found there attest. Ptolemy calls it the city of the gods. Fa-Hsien (400 A.D.) describes it as Buddhist, but that faith was declining at the time of Hsuean Chuang's visit (c. 630 A.D.). The sculptural remains also indicate the presence of Graeco-Bactrian influence. We need not therefore feel surprise if we find in the religious thought of Muttra elements traceable to Greece, Persia or Central Asia. Some claim that Christianity ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... who for five years has been an invalid, and whose strength of late has been fast declining. One can hardly say how she would have looked in health, for disease is a fearful ravager. Still, Harriet (she is named for Mr. Meeker's mother) probably resembled her own mother more than any one else in personal appearance, but beyond that there was no ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... the British and French, a pedlar is despised, and his employment is considered as a very, mean shift for getting a living: But it is quite otherwise here, where the quick return of money is a sufficient excuse for the manner in which it is gained; and there are many gentlemen in old Spain, in declining circumstances, who send their sons to what they call the Indies, to retrieve their fortunes ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... a rich man, but he was now conspicuously poor, and in need of the friends who had power or interest which he believed they could exert on his behalf. Their omitting or declining to give this help could not seem to him so clearly as to them an inevitable consequence of his having become impracticable, or at least of his passing for a man whose views were not likely to be safe ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... Antiochus, who had demolished the temple and suspended the sacrifices. So Daniel's refusal to partake of the king's food was well calculated to encourage men who had been put to the torture for declining to eat swine's flesh. ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... recognised by men of science. Even anyone with the slightest knowledge of biology, Professor Bateson remarked in a British Association Presidential address in 1914, is aware that a population need not be declining because it is not increasing; "in normal stable conditions population is stationary." Major Leonard Darwin, the thoughtful and cautious President of the Eugenics Education Society, has lately stated his considered belief ("Population ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... an afternoon of that magnificent latter autumn known as the Indian summer, and the sun, golden and glorious, as it is only to be seen in that country and at that season, was declining behind the summits of the trees which fringe the western shore of the Natchez. Its beams already assumed that rich variety of tint, so beautiful to behold, varying from bright green to golden, from purple to orange, as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... today, they are the torrent swirling a thousand straws along, as it rushes towards the abyss. Fleeting though they be, let us make the most of them. At nightfall, the woodcutter hastens to bind his last fagots. Even so, in my declining days, I, a humble woodcutter in the forest of science, make haste to put my bundle of sticks in order. 'What will remain of my researches on the subject of instinct? Not much, apparently; at most, one or two windows opened on a world that has not yet been explored with all the ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... cried Lanigan Beam, advancing with outstretched hands. "How do you do? Old Sultan is at his tricks again, is he, declining to back? But you got the better of him that time, and did it ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... with bubble investments; and the history of many of the most promising of these speculations may be read in the following brief and not altogether mythical biography, of an interesting specimen which suddenly fell into a declining way, and is supposed to have lately departed ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... fifty-pound weight as I painfully climbed the steps leading to the waiting-room of the grimy, noisy, train station. I was a million miles from being a "distinguished man of letters" at that moment, and with a sense of my poverty and declining health, took a seat in the crowded day coach and rode all day in gloomy silence. At noon I dined on a sandwich. Dollars looked as large as dinner plates that day. "Your only way to earn money is to save ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the Peace of Utrecht, Holland is on the decline. It is all over with Holland; on to the rubbish-heap with it! I hold on to England, since France is also declining." ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... council, that no attempt be made to add Queenie to the list of exhibits, her brothers warmly declining to act as ambassadors in that cause. They were certain Queenie would not like the idea, they said, and Herman picturesquely described her activity on occasions when she had been annoyed by too much attention to her appearance. However, ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... difficult it is for an individual mother to regulate social custom in her community even for her own daughter without causing the girl unhappiness and possibly destroying her delight in her home. No girl enjoys leaving the party at ten when "the other girls" stay until twelve. Nor does she enjoy declining invitations when the other girls all go. But what the individual mother finds difficult, community sentiment can easily accomplish. The woman's club or the mothers' club or the parent-teacher association, or better yet all three, may profitably discuss the question, and may ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... History of English Poetry, he thus sums up the matter: "All the evidence cited in this chapter shows that, so far from the ballad being a spontaneous product of popular imagination, it was a type of poem adapted by the professors of the declining art of minstrelsy, from the romances once in favour with the educated classes. Everything in the ballad—matter, form, composition—is the work of the minstrel; all that the people do is to remember and repeat what the minstrel has put together." This statement represents a position ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... from those of sectarian radicalism (preeminently sectarian). Both these trends are abundantly represented in the columns of the leading newspapers; the adherents of both are attached to the outworn political and social forms of the bourgeois regime which is declining from one end of Europe to ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... declining, as the guest-master had said. The great nave beyond the screen looked desolate in the summer-mornings, as the sunlight lay in coloured patches on the wide empty pavement between the few faithful gathered in ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... part of her suffering in Paris," he said, "though I knew far more about Prince Michael's conduct than he guessed. We must make it our business, Joan, to bring some brightness into her declining years. I have been planning our future all day in the train. Shall I become the fortune teller ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... fantastically abnormal conditions produced by the denial of self-government. There lay Ireland, an island with a rich soil and a clever population, yet terribly backward, far behind England, far behind all the progressive nations of Europe in agriculture and industry, her population declining, her land passing out of cultivation,[49] her strongest sons and daughters hurrying away to enrich with their wits and sinews distant lands. There, in short, lay a country groaning for intelligent development by the concentrated energies of her ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... nearer to its end; And I shall share your love the less The longer you your hand repress: The sooner you the boon insure, The more the tenure must endure; And if I quick possession take, The greater profit must I make, While yet declining age subsists, A room for friendly aid exists. Anon with tasteless years grown weak, In vain benevolence will seek To do me good—when Death at hand Shall come and urge his last demand. 'Tis folly, you'll ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... to be inexorable upon these three points, was courteous but peremptory in his statements. He recommended that the rebels should take into consideration their own declining strength, the inexhaustible resources of the King, the impossibility of obtaining succour from France, and the perplexing dilatoriness of England, rather than waste their time in idle expectations of a change in the Spanish ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... passed slowly away, with the heat increasing till the afternoon, and then slowly declining again towards evening. The greatest care was taken of the sepoy prisoners, and the men had the most stringent orders not to go anywhere near the edge of the wood, lest they should be seen by any of the natives ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... after daylight, declining Gerrard's pressing invitation to stay for breakfast on the ground of wishing to "do a good twenty miles before the cursed sun got too hot," and somehow the master of Ocho Rios was not sorry to say good-bye to him, for his manner seemed to have undergone a very great, ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... out of bread—out of bread means famine and horror. The mechanic of to-day has but little independence. His prosperity often depends upon the good will of one man. He is liable to be discharged for a look, for a word. He lays by but little for his declining years. He is, at the best, the ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... Tonsilitis) or covered with a whitish or gray membrane suggesting diphtheria, which occasionally complicates scarlet fever. The fever usually is high (103 deg. to 107 deg. F), and the pulse ranges from 120 to 150; both declining after the rash is fully developed, generally by the fourth day. The urine is scanty and dark. There is, however, great variation in the symptoms as to their presence or absence, intensity, and time of ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... generous impulses of his impetuous nature, had so completely gained possession of him, that he was no longer a reasonable creature—we therefore walked in silence to my rooms, where we parted; I declining his offer to remain with me till I should learn the decision of Lawless and his friends, on the plea of wishing to be alone (which was, indeed, a true one), although my chief reason for so doing was to prevent the ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... slaves whom he had captured in the war were his servants and gave him every attention. Brant is said to have subjected these negroes to a rigid discipline and to have been more or less of a taskmaster in his treatment of them. In his declining years he was wont to gaze over the waters of Lake Ontario, remembering the country stretching from the southern shore where once he had struggled, and the valley of the Mohawk, where had been the lodges of ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... down our backs as on our faces, yet we were consoled by the thought that too much was better than not enough, as had been the case in Turkey and Persia. Then we would settle down before the steaming samovar to meditate in solitude and quiet, while the rays of the declining sun shone on the gilded eikon in the corner of the room, and on the chromo-covered walls. When darkness fell, and the simmering music of the samovar had gradually died away; when the flitting swallows in ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... at daybreak. Joe had seen to this. He had put them off with an invention of his fertile imagination which satisfied them. Then, having hurried through his own immediate morning duties, he waited, with that philosophic patience which he applied now in his declining years to all the greater issues of his life, for ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... essays, however, were as yet strangers to his pen. His ambition was to be a poet, and while still under twenty-two, he produced and printed some complimentary verses to Dryden, then declining in years, and fallen into comparative neglect. The old poet was pleased with the homage of the young aspirant, which was as graceful in expression as it was generous in purpose. For instance, alluding to Dryden's projected translation of "Ovid," he ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... improvement, she still was not entirely satisfied. She could not help noting also, that her daughter had become pale and thin, and though she uttered no complaint, Mrs. Bloundel began to fear her health was declining. Leonard Holt looked on in wonder and admiration, and if possible his love increased, though his hopes diminished; for though Amabel was kinder to him than before, her kindness seemed the result rather of a sense of duty ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Rome had fallen before Alaric, the Goth. The empire was now in the last stages of decreptitude. Yet by fortunate chance it had an able soldier at the head of its armies, AEtius, the noblest son of declining Rome. "The graceful figure of AEtius," says a contemporary historian, "was not above the middle stature; but his manly limbs were admirably formed for strength, beauty, and agility; and he excelled in the martial exercises of managing ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... acquainted from boyhood with Chaucer's story—either in Chaucerian form or possibly in the shape of a chap-book—and that he constructed a first draft of The Two Noble Kinsmen quite early in his career as a playwright, subsequently laying it aside as unsatisfactory, and, in his declining years, collaborating with another or others to produce the ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... has elapsed since the production of Dryden's translation, you will recollect with a sigh, as I do, his own expression: "What Virgil wrote in the vigor of age, in plenty and at ease, I have undertaken to translate," says Dryden, "in my declining years, struggling with want, oppressed with sickness, curbed in my genius, liable to be misunderstood in all I write.—What I now offer is the wretched remainder of a sickly age, worn out by study and ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... simple fashion that the poet might pursue his high vocation, and not be put into the treadmill of any steady work. In after years, through bequests from friends and a pension from Government, they were made more prosperous, and their declining years were cheered by an assured abundance. Rydal Mount has been described so often that it is familiar to most readers. The house stands looking southward, on the rocky side of Nab Scar above Rydal Lake. The garden is terraced, and was full of flowering alleys in the poet's ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... sobering maturer years she had passed from one set of hands to another, until finally, in her declining days, she found asylum in the affectionate ownership of Judge Priest, with Jeff to curry her fat sides and no more arduous labor to perform than occasionally to draw the Judge about from place to place in his ancient ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... the window, my eyes alighted on the portrait. It had fallen dead, like a candle after sunrise; it followed me with eyes of paint. I knew it to be like, and marvelled at the tenacity of type in that declining race; but the likeness was swallowed up in difference. I remembered how it had seemed to me a thing unapproachable in the life, a creature rather of the painter's craft than of the modesty of nature, and I marvelled at the thought, and exulted in the image of Olalla. Beauty I had seen ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... telegraph a brief message, the first of a political character that ever passed over the wire, advising him of his nomination, and requesting his acceptance. Two hours later he read to the convention a message from Senator Wright, then in Washington, peremptorily declining the nomination. ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... went by, and the sun was declining fast as they neared at length a spot which had attracted them for some time past. It was either a little promontory or an isthmus, where the ground was strong enough for fir-trees to flourish, and this promised dry ground, wood, and a good site for a little ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... partially-created Baron—a Baron who had passed his military "little go"—is now, under the modification of Baronet, applicable to any one favoured by wealth or interest or party feeling. Knighthood has so far ceased to be an honour, that men now honour themselves by declining it. The military dignity Escuyer has, in the modern Esquire, become a wholly unmilitary affix. Not only do titles, and phrases, and salutes cease to fulfil their original functions, but the whole apparatus of social forms tends to ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... Helpmate; but to Michael's heart This son of his old age was yet more dear— Less from instinctive tenderness, [20] the same Fond spirit that blindly works in the blood of all—[21] 145 Than [22] that a child, more than all other gifts That earth can offer to declining man, [23] Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts, And stirrings of inquietude, when they By tendency of nature needs must fail. 150 [24] Exceeding was the love he bare to him, His heart and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... into a flood of tears, protesting that the lama was his father and his mother, that he was the prop of the lama's declining years, and that the lama would die without his care. All the carriage bade the guard be merciful—the banker was specially eloquent here—but the guard hauled Kim on to the platform. The lama blinked—he could not overtake the situation and Kim lifted ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... says, "a la Nordau." No sooner had "The Scapegoat" been published, than the chief rabbi wrote to him to ask him to go to Russia, to write about the persecutions of the Jews in that country, and in 1892 he started on this mission, which he fulfilled entirely at his own expense, declining all the offers of subsidies made to him by the Jewish Committee. He carried with him for protection against the Russian authorities, a letter from Lord Salisbury to H. M.'s Minister at St. Petersburg, to be delivered only in case ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... refuse so flattering an offer, and was at once installed as a member of Wallenstein's household, declining however the use of the apartment which the steward offered him, saying that he had a sick brother lodging with him in the town. Mingling with the soldiers in the evenings Malcolm learned that there were rumours that negotiations for peace ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... Sir, you are very polite! (Aside.) It seems the thing in society to make known your exact financial position! I will return the compliment. (Aloud.) Sir, I am the fifteenth child of a score of pledges Heaven sent to bless my parents' declining years—my early ...
— Three Hats - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Alfred Debrun
... Dag Daughtry was getting his twenty dollars a night for two twenty-minute turns, and was declining more beer than a dozen men with thirsts equal to his could have accommodated. Never had he been so prosperous; nor can it be denied that Michael enjoyed it. Enjoy it he did, but principally for Steward's sake. He was serving Steward, and so to serve ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... 1876 he ran for the Indiana Governership, but was defeated by a small margin. In 1880 he was chairman of the Indiana delegation to the Republican National Convention. In 1881 he was elected United States Senator, declining an offer of a seat in Garfield's Cabinet. From 1880, when Indiana presented his name to the Republican National Convention, General Harrison was, in the West, constantly thought of as a presidential possibility. Eclipsed by Blaine in 1884, he ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... are stingy with me," returned Finot, "now cutting off a box, and now declining to take fifty subscriptions. I have sent in my ultimatum; I mean to have a hundred subscriptions out of them and a box four times a month. If they take my terms, I shall have eight hundred readers and a thousand paying subscribers, so we shall have twelve hundred ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... sees himself evidently running out, and declining, and has only a shift here and a shift there, to lay hold on, as sinking men generally do; and knows, that unless something extraordinary happen, which, perhaps, also is not probable, he must fall, for such a man to go on, and trade in the ordinary way, notwithstanding losses, and hazards—in ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... whence the forest had been pushed back considerably. Orchards of young trees bloomed about them; the sawmill was noisily eating its way through planks on the edge of the stream; groups of 'sugar-bush' maples stood about; over all the declining sun, hastening to immerse itself in the measureless woods westward. 'Pleasant places,' said Mr. Wynn to himself, quoting old words; 'my lot has fallen in ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... receiving the ten thousand pounds, was thus rendered doubtful in the extreme; and Madame Fosco resented her brother's treatment of her as unjustly as usual in such cases, by refusing to see her niece, and declining to believe that Miss Fairlie's intercession had ever been exerted to restore her ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... worse case than he," returned the clergyman gently, declining to be drawn into discussion. "But although the use of his limbs was denied him, he took a keener delight than any man I have ever known in the compensations that his mind, through books, and his senses, through contact ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... from industrial socialism. It may be objected that the removal of economic pressure would bring an undue increase in population and the evils that Malthus feared. But the tendency of advancing civilization seems to be so strikingly toward a declining birth-rate-a phenomenon unrecognized in this country because of the tide of immigration, but apparent in western Europe-that the net outcome may be attained of a stationary population. Moreover, the scheme ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... called this appearance Hermes, even in this guise Odysseus met him in the oak wood of Circe's Isle. But Augustine was not yet in his mother's faith; he still taught and studied rhetoric, contending for its prizes, but declining to be aided by a certain wizard of his acquaintance. He had entered as a competitor for a "Tragicall poeme," but was too sportsmanlike to seek victory by art necromantic. Yet he followed after Astrologers, because ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... 1% to 4% typically; developing countries 5% to 60% typically; national inflation rates vary widely in individual cases, from declining prices in Japan to hyperinflation ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... reign of King Kwamina. His reign was brief, however. He was deposed for attempting to introduce the Mohammedan religion into the kingdom. Osai Apoko was crowned as his successor in 1797. The Gaman and Kongo armies attached themselves to the declining fortunes of the deposed king, and gave battle for his lost crown. It was a lost cause. The new king could wield his sword as well as wear a crown. He died of a painful sickness, and was succeeded by his son, Osai ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... us, O Lord?" My soul! art thou conscious of thy declining state? Is thy walk less with God, thy frame less heavenly? Hast thou less conscious nearness to the mercy-seat,—diminished communion with thy Saviour? Is prayer less a privilege than it has been?—the ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... It was evening. The declining sun shot its last few rays over the brow of the opposite mountains, and bathed him in mellow light, as he sat apparently contemplating the scene before him. The man's costume bespoke him a native of the savage region ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... put it into my cupboard. I brought it from thence, and gave it him. If anyone got to it, and treated it in the manner he describes, I am sorry for it; but it cannot be imputed to my fault. My reason for declining taking part of it is well known to my sister, whom I had promised to take a walk with in the evening. She is now in court, and I apprehend her word will not be doubted. As for the sneering words ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... after the humiliation he suffered, remains with him. It was the sentiment of his ripening youth; it was the opinion of his opening manhood; and it still attends him, when he is already fast yielding to the incroachments and irresistible assaults of declining years. ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... home and saying, "Well father, you know that despatch I sent you, about Lafflin's wanting money?" and telling him about Miss Anderson. Then he fancied her acquainted with his sisters and visiting them, and his father more and more fond of her, and perhaps in declining health, and eager to see his son settled in life; and he pictured himself telling her that he had done with love for ever, but if she could accept respect, fidelity, gratitude, he was ready to devote his life to her. She refused him, but they always remained good friends and comrades; she married ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... had darted with the speed of lightning through the artist's mind, and still lingered there as, respectfully declining to take the palette, he replied "I beseech you, Sire, keep the brush and colors, and correct what ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... received a letter from Banks, on the Red River, asking reinforcements. Porter had gone to his assistance with a part of his fleet on the 3d, and I now wrote to him describing my position and declining to send any troops. I looked upon side movements as long as the enemy held Port Hudson and Vicksburg as a waste ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... sun is declining, and warns me to cut short a tale which would keep us here till dawn if I were to detail it as I should like to do in my own memories. The progress of this affair interested me deeply; for, like all persons whose perceptions are ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... home after her day's milking at the outlying dairy, and was washing cabbage at the doorway in the declining light. 'Hold up the net a moment,' she said, without preface, as ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... despoiled of the remainder of their summer ornament; the state of the air which induced the decay of vegetation, was hostile to cheerfulness or hope. Raymond had been exalted by the determination he had made; but with the declining day his spirits declined. First he was to visit Evadne, and then to hasten to the palace of the Protectorate. As he walked through the wretched streets in the neighbourhood of the luckless Greek's abode, his heart smote him for the whole course of his conduct towards her. First, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... the marshal himself was lame. Returning from his purification, Kalelealuaka alighted just to the rear of the party, who had not noticed his absence, and becoming impatient at the tedious slowness of the journey,—for the day was waning, and the declining sun was already standing over a peak of the Waianae Mountains called Puukuua,—this marvellous fellow caught up the lame marshal in one hand and his two comrades in the other, and, flying with them, ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... time he might haue engaged himselfe further, then with any honour he could come out of againe, by attempting a towne fortified, wherein were more men armed against vs, then we had to oppugne them withall, our artillery and munition being fifteene miles from vs, and our men then declining; for there was the first shew of any great sickenesse amongst them. Whereby it seemeth, that either his prelacy did much abuse him in perswading him to hopes, whereof after two or three dayes he saw no semblance: or he ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... In thus declining all active care for an election, to his prospects so important, Audley Egerton was considered to have excuse, not only in the state of his health, but in his sense of dignity. A statesman so eminent, of opinions ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... (which means about one hour); or a longer distance, by saying that if you started at the usual time from one of the places you would reach the other when the sun is as high as the hawk (which means a journey from sunrise to about 10 A.M.), or when the sun is overhead (I.E. noon), or when it is declining (about 3 P.M.), or when the sun is put out (sunset), or when it ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... human loves were impious, Unto what end did God the world ordain? For loving thee what license is more plain Than that I praise thereby the glorious Source of all joys divine, that comfort us In thee, and with chaste fires our soul sustain? False hope belongs unto that love alone Which with declining beauty wanes and dies, And, like the face it worships, fades away. That hope is true which the pure heart hath known, Which alters not with time or death's decay, Yielding on ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... Buxley, whose ear had likewise taken in the notes, though not on the same night, as the pair publicly proved by dates. Both declared that the voice belonged to an opera-singer or a spirit. The ladies of Brookfield, declining the alternative, perceived that this was a surprise furnished for their amusement by the latest celebrity of their circle, Mr. Pericles, their father's business ally and fellow-speculator; Mr. Pericles, the Greek, the man who held millions of money as dust compared to a human voice. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his wan and worried wife in mind, I shocked him by declining for my part to undertake such a big contract as resolutions for a year, a month or a week. If I live to a good old age, I shall owe the blessing in a great measure to the discovery, years ago, that I am hired not by the job, but by the day. If you, dear friend, ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... And then added, as an after-thought, "I never gave the subject any attention in my life. I am, perhaps, not entirely convinced now, only I see as Flossy does, that I shall certainly do no harm by declining; whereas it seems I may possibly do some by accepting; therefore, of course, the way ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... curtain that did not leave interest or emotion subdued or declining. He wanted the full sweep of rage, terror, pity, suspense, or anger alive with the ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... marines were equally successful along the line of the railway embankment. The enemy made a bold stand at the point where the canal and railway approach each other, and, strong reinforcements coming to their assistance, the British fell back in good order, the Egyptians declining ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... ears were taking the impression. On my memory plate of that moment in my interview with Roebuck, I find details so significant that my failing to note them at the time shows how unfit I then was to guard my interests. For instance, I find that just before he spoke those words declining my assistance and implying that he had already increased his holdings, he opened and closed his hands several times, finally closed and clinched them—a sure sign of energetic nervous action, and in that particular instance a sign of deception, because there was no ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... It is evident also from the dispatch that Sir Douglas was quite aware, not only of the military, but of the political risk. "The political effects of an unsuccessful attack upon a position so well known as the Hindenburg line would be large, and would go far to revive the declining morale, not only of the German Army, but of the German people." This aspect of the matter must, of course, have been terribly present to the mind of the British ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... pardon, Mr. Stirling, for declining to recognize any one whom you are good enough to wish to introduce to me, but that man I must decline to recognize. He is not ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... those banded vales Of shadow and of shining, Through which, my hostess at my side, I drove in day's declining. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... there to speak for himself; and the contingency of his declining to accept the burden was too pressing not to be provided against. Wherefore another was designated, one whose name is forever shrined in the deep love and reverence of this Diocese, and held in grateful remembrance in this Church, the Rev. Dr. ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... family circle, his friends, and numerous dependents; his courteous and cordial hospitality to his guests, many of them strangers from far distant lands; these charities, all of which sprang from the heart, were the ornament of his declining years and granted the most sublime scene in nature, when human greatness ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... charge of negligence or cowardice was brought against those who occasioned the miscarriage of a well-concerted and well-appointed expedition? The people, they said, were not to be quieted with the resolutions of a council of war, composed of men whose inactivity might frame excuses for declining to expose themselves to danger. It was publicly mentioned, that such backwardness appeared among the general officers before the fleet reached the isle of Oleron, as occasioned the admiral to declare, with warmth, that he would comply with his orders, and go into Basque-road, whatever might be ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett |
