"Slowness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and the two vehicles moved up into Broadway. They travelled with painful slowness; the horses had to be held in to keep them behind the cart, for the oxen could be only guided by the whip, and not by word of mouth. The old man moaned a little at the pace, and quivered when he heard ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... acid on metallic zinc affords an instance of what was once called disposing affinity. Zinc decomposes pure water at common temperatures with extreme slowness; but as soon as sulphuric acid is added, decomposition of the water takes place rapidly, though the acid merely unites with oxide of zinc. The former explanation was, that the affinity of the acid for oxide of zinc disposed the metal to unite with oxygen, ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... not be inferred from the foregoing that there is not a wide range of mental difference among Quaker Hill men and women. In the matter of quickness and slowness of action this variation appears even among the members of any one group. In the same family are two brothers, both farmers, both tenants. One is able to farm a thousand acres more successfully than the other can cultivate two hundred. ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... Bloomington somewhat scarified and nervous under the Reverend's firing, like the good Samaritan, I tried to pour oil and wine on their wounded spirits, by exalting intuition, and with a pitiful and patronizing tone deploring the slowness, the obtuseness, the materialism of most of the sons of Adam. It had its effect. They soon dried their tears, and with returning self-respect, told me of all the wonderful things women were doing in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... even, if any of their offspring happen to be badly formed, are not the less careful in nourishing and cherishing them. But Lucius Manlius aggravated the misfortune of his son by severity, and further clogged the slowness of his intellects; and if there were in him even the least spark of natural ability he extinguished it by a rustic life and a clownish education, and keeping him ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... by inch, almost imperceptibly. The conquest was by no means bloodless. Towns were sacked and men were slain; here was an explosion, there an outbreak of lawlessness; but for the most part the change was wrought with deadly slowness and a ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... gone into the back-yard, and was sitting there in the rain by the side of the water-butt. She was soaked, and her best clothes were spoiled. I must confess that I did not take very kindly to her. I was irritated at her slowness in learning; it was, in fact, painful to be obliged to teach her. I thought that perhaps she might have some undeveloped taste for music, but she showed none, and our attempts to get her to sing ordinary ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... back to the house for Aunt Ellen and Chrystie, and found they were gone. But they might have left a letter, some written message to tell her where they were. With those words her anxieties came to life again, her step lost its lingering slowness, her face ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... families; to acquire the bearing of freemen; to abandon their imitation of the whites among whom they had lived; and thus, by degrees, to consolidate a social and political system which may expand into independent and lasting nationality. Instead, therefore, of lamenting the slowness with which the colonies have reached their vigorous promise, we should consider it a blessing that the vicious did not rush forth in turbulent crowds with the worthy, and impede the movements of better folks, who were still unused to ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... to structure, what is the fundamental foot? Name each line. What irregularities may exist and for what purpose? Is the movement slow or rapid? Explain the source of slowness or rapidity. What is the order of rhymes? Are they perfect or defective? Are there double, triple, middle, or sectional rhymes? Point out the alliteration. What is the effect? Name the stanza. Is it blank ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... The slowness of Mrs. Plinth's mental processes was always allowed for by the Club; but this instance of it was too much for Mrs. ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... in the carriage, drawing always nearer to the struggle with her mistress, the warmth, the slowness, the jolting over stones, the steaming from the horses, the cries of men and animals and birds, and the new life all round about were simply maddening. "Baby! if you don't lie still, I think I kill you. I can't stand it ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... honour, to be the means of taking away all slowness from the execution of our orders. Who knows not what a quantity of ships you can muster at the least hint from us! Scarcely is the ink dry on the evectio [permission to use the public post] prepared by ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... man that gets excited and irritable should be looked upon as an undesirable person. The person of good breeding now speaks with slowness and deliberation. He is cultivating more and more of a reposeful attitude. He is consciously attentive and holds his mind to one thing at a time. He shuts out everything else. When you are talking to anyone give him your sole and undivided attention. Do not let your attention wander ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... slowly; so a fire may blaze or smoulder. Thus it is with Karma, the works that fill out the life-span. By an insight into the mental forms and forces which make up Karma, there comes a knowledge of the rapidity or slowness of their development, and of the time when the debt ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... his fortunate return, removed more than a part of the uneasiness which weighed upon the four friends. The days of expectation are long, and d'Artagnan, in particular, would have wagered that the days were forty-four hours. He forgot the necessary slowness of navigation; he exaggerated to himself the power of Milady. He credited this woman, who appeared to him the equal of a demon, with agents as supernatural as herself; at the least noise, he imagined himself about to be arrested, and ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... officers were loud in condemning Austrian slowness; the inaptitude they exhibited to profit by a success, and the over-caution which made them, even in victory, so careful of their own safety. From what I overheard, it seemed plain that Genoa was untenable by any troops but French, or opposed to any ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... at Eastbourne has been several times referred to. As usually happens, the move was considerably delayed by the slowness of the workmen; it did not actually take place till the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... it then. A pilotless snapper-boat! That's why its actions were a little uneven. Only one thing could explain its deliberate slowness. It was bait. The Scorpius had sent piloted snapper-boats over the asteroid at high speed, criss-crossing in order to cover the thorium world completely, expecting to have the unknown rocketeer fire at them. Then a fire bomb had been dropped as a further means of getting the ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... Mansfelt and Duke of Brunswik, the pretended obstacles of the treatie, are now with all their forces removed.' Sept. 3, 1622. Cabala 201. How difficult this was for him we see from a letter of Nethersole to Carlisle, Oct. 18, 1622. 'The slowness of resolution of this side may move H. Mai. [the King of Bohemia] to precipitate his before the time, which will be then to lose the fruits ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... greedy desire to devour a story at one sitting filled him with impatience at his own slowness. He found, to his chagrin, that he could not read the "Waverley Novels" with the swiftness the course of events demanded. He tried having them read aloud by his father, but though Jake was always willing, he stumbled and spelled ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... singular in the manner in which the Quakers deliver themselves when they preach. In the beginning of their discourses, they generally utter their words with slowness; indeed, with a slowness, which sometimes renders their meaning almost unintelligible to persons unaccustomed to such a mode of delivery; for seconds sometimes elapse between the sounding of short sentences ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... With incredible slowness the laggard moments passed; the second dog-watch came to an end; and then, still more slowly, as it seemed to my impatience, first one, then two, three, four, and so on up to eight bells of the first watch were tolled out, and still there were no signs of the enemy. ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... principles of all things, whereof one is the father and the other the mother; the former, Light, and the latter, Darkness. Pythagoras thought that the Dependencies on Light were warmth, dryness, lightness, swiftness; and those of Darkness, cold, wet, weight, and slowness; and that the world derived its existence from these two principles, as from the male and the female. According to Porphyry, he conceived two opposing powers, one good, which he termed Unity, the Light, Right, the Equal, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... and shortly afterward the firing began, the assailants very properly directing their main effort upon the English rear ships, which, as happens with most long columns, had opened out, a tendency increased in this case by the slowness of the fourth ship from the rear, the "Prudent." The French flag-ship, "Ville de Paris," of one hundred and twenty guns, bearing De Grasse's flag, pushed for the gap thus made, but was foiled by the "Canada," seventy-four, whose captain, Cornwallis, the brother of Lord Cornwallis, ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... a terra incognita to railways. It is on the extremest verge of Europe towards the Atlantic; and European civilisation finds entrance there with remarkable slowness. In 1845, the government tried to invite offers from capitalists to construct railways; in 1849, the invitations were renewed; but the moneyed men were coy, and would not be wooed. In 1851, the government appointed a commission to investigate the whole subject. The commission consisted of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... in May, 1634[208], and was received with the greatest politeness by the High Chancellor, who did not however explain his intentions: Grotius wrote to his brother, July 13, 1634, that the Chancellor proceeded with great slowness in his affair; but that every body assured him he was a man of his word: "If so, he adds, all will go well." He wrote for his wife, and she arrived at Franckfort, with his daughters and son Cornelius, in the beginning of August. The Chancellor continued ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... which each muscle changes from one associated tribe to another, and that either backwards or forwards, is well observable in the muscles of the arm in moving the windlass of an air-pump; and the slowness of those muscular movements, that have not been associated by habit, may be experienced by any one, who shall attempt to saw the air quick perpendicularly with one hand, and horizontally with the other ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... blow to The Pilot, who had set his heart upon a church, and neither Mrs. Muir's "hoots" at her husband's slowness nor her promises that she "wad mak him hear it" could bring comfort ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... whenever the brain is subject to any remarkable influence, increasing or diminishing the activity and size of particular organs, the external form fails to indicate the internal condition, because it can change but slightly, and with slowness, after the skull is fully developed and ossified. Were the skull composed of more pliable materials, cranioscopy would be more accurate in its facts, but while it preserves a uniform exterior, the interior ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... ride together on horseback, the married have ever been warned, one must ride behind. And when two people are speaking slowly one must needs be the slowest. Comparative success implies the comparative failure. But where this actor or that actress fails, the great cause of slowness profits, obviously. The record is advanced. Pshaw! the word "advanced" comes unadvised to the pen. It is difficult to remember in what a fatuous theatrical Royal Presence one is doing this criticism, and how one's words should go ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... cattle, but in reality to get him out of the way. He was not a bad man; on the contrary, he was in most ways a gentleman and a man of some reading—but he lacked initiative, even in his villainy. Blondell at once called him "a lazy hound"—provoked thereto by Lester's slowness of toilet of a morning, and had it not been for Fan—backed by the fifty dollars a month which Lester was paying for "instruction"—he would have been "booted ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... action, its ease or difficulty, its advance or retrocession, its home coming or its wandering, its hesitation or its surety, its conflicts and its contrasts, its force or its weakness, its swiftness or slowness, its abruptness or smoothness, its excitement or repose, its success or failure, its seriousness or play. Then, in addition, as we shall see, all modes of emotion that are congruous with this abstract form may by association be poured into its mold, so that the content ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... impossible, others only possible on terms that she trembled even to think of. Perhaps it was worst of all to reflect that she was in some measure responsible for his change of religion; she fancied that it was through her slowness to respond to light, her delaying to confide in him, that he had been driven through impatience to take this step. And so week after week went by and she dared not answer ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... difference, however, in the actual impression, between passing through the details of existence in daily and hourly engagements, which, from their variety, produce an illusion of slowness and a vague idea of almost interminable continuance, and looking at expended years after their termination, or at successive lives in the perspective of history. In the latter case, events appear crowded together, the intervening spaces are riot distinctly perceptible, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... have been if sin had been followed by immediate catastrophe? While the foot of Christ is fleet as that of a roebuck when He comes to save, it does seem as if he were hoppled with great languors and infinite lethargies when He comes to punish. Oh, I celebrate God's slowness, God's retardation, God's putting off the retribution! Do you not think, my brother, it would be a great deal better for us to exchange our impatient hypercriticism of Providence because this man, by watering of stock, makes a million ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... on to meet Olmar, who because of the slowness of his multitude preferred awaiting the enemy to attacking it; for the vessels of the Ruthenians seemed disorganized, and, owing to their size, not so well able to row. But not even did the force of his multitudes avail him. For the extraordinary ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the beginning of this scale are especially fitted to express uncontrollable joy and delight, gayety, triviality, rapid movement, brightness, delicacy, and physical littleness; the sounds at the end are peculiarly adapted to express horror, solemnity, awe, deep grief, slowness of motion, darkness, and extreme or oppressive greatness of size. The scale runs, then, from the little to the large, from the bright to the dark, from ecstatic delight to horror, and from the trivial to the ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... shoulder of an artist-boy, who, seated at his easel, was copying one of the Gorgon-heads that stood out on the faded tapestry. She had dismissed us wholly from her thoughts, and, giving play to her native fun and coquetry, was taunting the youth with the slowness of his labors and the little progress he had made since she last inspected his work. No wonder that she laughed at the taste of the boy or his employer. Graver heads than hers might question the motive which had set the painter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... him the other one. She tried to laugh. The cough came again, and she took her hands away. He reached for them, but she put them behind her. "No, not until I have told you," she said, and he saw her lip tremble. "He was afraid to come in here to see you," she went on, speaking with timid slowness. "He is so weak and sick that he can't stand to be scolded, so I have come to—" She hesitated. He shoved himself back and looked hard at her, and his eyebrows ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... of speed have been set. In some cases these goals are being reached ahead of time; in some cases we are on schedule; in other cases there are slight but not serious delays; and in some cases—and I am sorry to say very important cases—we are all concerned by the slowness of the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... and Joan,' in a sweet contralto, but with a doleful slowness which hung heavily upon the spirits of the company, and a duly dismal effect having been produced, the young ladies were cordially thanked ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... surroundings. Fortunately for themselves, the people of Great Britain possess qualities which have made them masters of a vast and still expanding Empire. But these qualities have their defects as well as their merits, and one of the defects is a certain insularity of thought, or narrow-mindedness—a slowness to recognize that institutions which are perfectly suitable and right for us may be quite unsuited, if not injurious, to other races, and that what may not be right for us to do is not necessarily wrong for people of a different belief, and with absolutely ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... itself with a navy in an emergency. Not one battle-ship was available for purchase, and only four cruisers, of doubtful quality. And while this work of preparation was going hurriedly on the country was drifting into war with what seemed at the time inexplicable slowness, but to the calmer backward glance of history will appear dangerously swift in the face of our great lack of preparation. What might be termed the milestones on the march to ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... and the dawn came with provoking slowness, a grey mist veiling the ground until the sun gained power and the sky showed pale-blue flecked with fleecy clouds. Men blew on their fingers, for ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... Ridgley School on this eve of the great struggle was filled with a feeling of restlessness; it seemed that the minutes were dragging with indescribable slowness, that the night would never pass and that the hour would never come when the referee would blow his whistle to start the contest upon which the Ridgley ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... would be long hours of languor when he could scarcely bear to change his position or lift a pen. He would commence a letter with the words 'Dear Sir,' forming the letter 'D' with painful, accurate slowness, elaborating and thickening the up and down strokes, and being troubled when he had to leave that letter for the next one; he built the next letter by hair strokes and would start on the third with hatred. The end of a word seemed to that man like the ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... expecting to be diverted. M. de Noyon, saluting everybody with a satisfaction he did riot dissimulate, made his speech with his usual confidence, and in his usual style. The Abbe replied with a modest air, and with a gravity and slowness that gave great effect to his ridiculous discourse. The surprise and pleasure were general, and each person strove to intoxicate M. de Noyon more and more, making him believe that the speech of the Abbe was relished solely because it had so worthily praised him. The prelate was delighted ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... how the Indians derided the slowness, and dullness of the English army, in its setting out. For after the desolations at Lancaster and Medfield, as I went along with them, they asked me when I thought the English army would come after them? I told them I could not tell. "It may be they ...
— Captivity and Restoration • Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
... own inclinations pointed to the army; but Captain Borrow had apparently seen too much of the army in war time, and the slowness of promotion, to think of it as offering a career suitable to his son, now that there was every prospect of a prolonged peace. He thought of the church as an alternative; but here again that fatal facility the boy had shown in learning Erse seemed to stand out as a barrier. "I have observed ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... disposition by prevarication, Buckingham showed his by an impatience that soon led to anger and insolence. The wearisome slowness of the negotiations ill suited his hasty and arbitrary temper, he quarrelled with members of the State Council, and, in an interview between the prince and the friars, he grew so incensed at the demands made that, in disregard ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... among you, or any endowed with knowledge" and that word, "glory not," strikes at the root of all the forementioned and aftermentioned evils. From whence I say doth that promptitude and bensal(435) to speak, that slowness and difficulty to hear, that readiness and inclination to pride, (reproved, James i. 19, 20) proceed? Is it not from an overweening conceit of our own wisdom, that we are so swift to speak, and so slow to hear, and that we would teach others and yet be taught of none? ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... cradle of eternity. As the man is to the animal in the slowness of his evolution, so is the spiritual man to the natural man. Foundations which have to bear the weight of an eternal life must be surely laid. Character is to wear forever; who will wonder or grudge that it cannot be developed in a day? ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... curious slowness and lack of emphasis in his speech, with a pause after each word, that gave a singular impressiveness to ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... very slow in coming to birth, very embarrassed, and which never arise until after the event. "One would say that my heart and my intelligence do not belong to the same individual.... I feel all, and see nothing; I am carried away, but I am stupid.... This slowness of thinking, united with such vivacity of feeling, possesses me not only in conversation, but when I am alone and working. My ideas arrange themselves in my head with incredible difficulty; they circulate there in a dull way and ferment until they agitate me, fill me with heat, and give me palpitations; ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... the influence of French classicism was in the ascendant, this study is not concerned. In the period which has just been surveyed three points are noteworthy: the character of the English critics, the slowness with which the classical theories penetrated English thought, and the modifications which they underwent in the process. Gregory Smith calls attention to the influence of Sidney and Daniel in establishing "the claim of English criticism ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... seen that the three vessels ahead were commencing to come back, but with terrible slowness. Code, lashed in the weather-rigging, studied them for more than an hour through his glasses. Then he leaped ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... This slowness of development, or prolonged infancy as it is called, is of vast significance to the child. It marks at once the chief distinction between the human infant and the young of all other animals. It makes possible a long period of adjustment and training ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... if he [Warren] had not been there; and that, when he did move, it was not with sufficient confidence or ability on his part to manoeuvre his troops." It is very doubtful whether Warren ever put his opinion in so strong a way as thus quoted by Hooker from memory. His report does speak of Gibbon's slowness in coming up, and of his thus losing the chance of crossing the canals and taking the breastworks before the Confederates filed into them. But beyond a word to the effect that giving the advance to Brooks's division, ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... o'clock that afternoon the train broke corral, and for the first time I realized the slowness of our progress, and the long trip before us. Under the most favorable circumstances we could not make over ten miles a day and more often at the beginning three, five ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... dared not look up until Idris crossed to them and bade them go about their work. What work they did in the factory that day neither knew. They were only aware that the hours passed with an extraordinary slowness, but the ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... alluded to the length of time it had taken the Land League agitation to make itself felt in Kerry, and to the swiftness with which, when once ignited, the far south-west of Ireland blazed into open disaffection. The causes of this slowness to light up, immediately followed by a fierce and sudden flame, are by no means obscure. Kerry has always been the last place to follow a popular movement, and the last ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... five miles from their starting-point, and setting out at daybreak on the following day, they pushed on with pain and difficulty, harassed at every step by the galling attacks of the Syracusan troops. [Footnote: Thucydides, with characteristic brevity, leaves this to be inferred from the slowness of their progress.] A march of two miles and a half brought them to a village, situated on a level plain, and here they halted, wishing to supply themselves with food, and replenish their water-vessels; for the country which they had now to traverse was a desert, many miles in extent. Directly ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... blazes and burns, exhaling emotions and thoughts as a planet exhales light and heat. Wondrous the power of the loom newly invented, that with marvelous swiftness weaves in silk figures of flowers and trees and birds. But the uttermost speed of those flying shuttles is slowness itself compared to the swiftness of the mental loom, that without noise or clangor weaves fabrics eternal out of the warp and woof of affection and thought, of passion and purpose. Consider that every man is not simply two men, but a score of men. All the climatic disturbances in ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Seymour learned these facts, he thwarted Lord Elgin as much as he could in the naval operations, especially in the Peiho. This Lord Elgin and Mr. Oliphant declared; and the admiral admitted that his slowness to cany out the plenipotentiary's requisitions arose partly from disapproval of the policy that functionary was sent out to enforce. In fact, Sir Michael knew that he would be backed by a tory admiralty, at the head of which was such a thorough-going party man as Sir ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... nothing incompatible in this view with the evidence at hand, we can safely assume it correct for the time being at least. When farther south, you remember, we found no trace of ice action, notwithstanding the comparative slowness with which we decided that the ridges in the crust had been upheaved on account of the resisting power of gravity, and, as I see now, also on account of Jupiter's great mass, which must prevent its losing ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... the operations undertaken on a larger scale by Princess Metternich to secure me some compensation dragged along with mysterious slowness, and it was to a merchant named Sturmer, whom I had previously known in Zurich, that I owed my deliverance from my present troubles. He had constantly interested himself in my welfare while in Paris, and now by his help I was enabled, first to ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... extreme slowness, as is at once illustrated by the fact that its shining scales may frequently be met with entirely unchanged in the soil. Its persistence is dependent on the small quantity of alkaline constituents which it contains; and for this reason it is observed that ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... to outdo you and the squaw, you wood creatures you!" Then she bent above the flowers and whispered: "Tuck this in the toe of your slipper! Three times to-night it was in his eyes, and on his tongue, but his slowness let the moment pass. I can 'bide a wee' for my Scotsman, I can bide forever, if I must; for it's he ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... work. Professor Rolleston, who has opened several of these early heathen tombs of our Teutonic ancestors, finds in them everywhere abundant evidence of "their great aptness at destroying, and their great slowness in elaborating, material civilisation." Until the Anglo-Saxon received from the Continent the Christian religion and the Roman culture, he was a mere average Aryan barbarian, with a strong taste for war and plunder, but with small love for any of the arts of peace. Wherever else, in Gaul, Spain, ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... not being able to classify the people with whom she was dealing, but of continuing to regard them as a multitude of individualized souls as distinct and considerable as herself. That makes no doubt for slowness and "inefficiency" and complexity in organization, but it does make for understandings. And now, through a little talk with Susan Burnet about her sister's attitude upon the dispute, she was able to take the whole ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... find yourself becoming bound to the dismal thought of your test and its terrors, free yourself from it every time, by concentrating upon the weight of your body, or the slowness of the slowest breaths you can draw. Keep yourself truly free, and these feelings of discouragement and all other mental distortions will steadily lose power, until for you they are no more. If they last longer than you think ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... custom, or too far gone in corruption, to admit of the influence of religion, it can only prevail by ultimately destroying the political system. This helps us to understand the almost imperceptible progress of Christianity against Mahometanism, and the slowness of its increase in China, where its growth must eventually undermine the whole fabric of government. On the other hand, we know with what ease comparatively savage tribes—as the natives of California and Paraguay—were converted to a religion which first ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... distant end of the table, watched her a little; he saw that she behaved just as usual; she did not shun anybody, though her mother shunned her. A glove covered her right hand, yet Daisy persisted in using that hand rather than attract notice, though from the slowness of her movements it was plain it cost her some trouble. Gary McFarlane asked why she had a glove on, and Mr. Randolph heard Daisy's perfectly quiet and true answer, that "her hand was wounded, and had to wear a glove," given without any confusion or evasion. He called his little daughter to ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... contemporary productions.[120] They bewilder us by heaping ages upon ages, and in order to explain nature they substitute the idea of time for the ideas of power and intelligence. They seem to suppose that what is produced little by little is sufficiently explained by the slowness of its formation. ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... white smoke went up into the black heavens. There one could thoroughly realise what an awful thing a wave really is. I talk like other people about the rushing swiftness of a wave. But the horrible thing about a wave is its hideous slowness. It lifts its load of water laboriously: in that style at once slow and slippery in which a Titan might lift a load of rock and then let it slip at last to be shattered into shock of dust. In front of me that night the waves ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... out from the blizzard of alkali. A blinded horse, with head bent low, bearing on its back a motionless man, and led by a stumbling, blinded girl, against whose shoulder the helpless rider leaned, came with ghostlike slowness ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... with her he would have given her the manuscript of his speech, and occupied himself by saying it to her as a lesson which he had learnt. As he could not do this he recapitulated to her all his engagements, as though excusing his own slowness as to matrimony, and declared that what with the property and what with Parliament, he never knew whether he was standing on his head or his heels. But when he paused he had done nothing towards naming a certain day, so that Lady ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... Slaughter there was, no doubt, on the battle-field or in towns like Anderida whose long resistance woke wrath in their besiegers. But for the most part the Britons were not slaughtered; they were defeated and drew back. Such a withdrawal was only made possible by the slowness of the conquest. For it is not only the stoutness of its defence which distinguishes the conquest of Britain from that of the other provinces of the Empire, but the weakness of attack. As the resistance of the Britons ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... states of Italy. Spain also contributed a number of naval adventurers, and squadrons were fitted out by his vassals on the sea coasts of Normandy, Brittany, and Picardy. King Edward had crossed over into Belgium, and after vast delays in consequence of the slowness of the German allies, at last prepared to enter France at the end of September, 1339. Such, my lad, is the story, as far as I know, of the beginning of that war with France which is now raging, and whose events you know as well as I do, seeing that they are all of late occurrence. ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... and having hitherto seen them hanging lazily by their claws to boughs, I was surprised at the rapidity of their movements. I have often heard people assert that the sloth spends his torpid existence in a perpetual state of pain, from the peculiar sighing noise he makes, and the slowness of his movements when placed on the ground. In the first place, I cannot believe that God has created any animal to pass an existence of pain. The fact is, that the sloth is formed to live in trees, ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... are distinguished from one another in respect of motion and rest, quickness and slowness, and not in ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... afterward, when the volunteers, unimpeded by regulars, quickly put down a much more formidable rising in the Northwest. But in the present case they were hampered by their dependence on the British troops, whose commander moved them with all the ponderous slowness of real war, and approached O'Neill as if he had been approaching Napoleon. He thus managed to get in a day after the fair on every occasion, being too late for the fight at Ridgeway, and too late to capture ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... gradually accumulated on the floors of the caverns, slowly filling them up. And that, in some cases at least, this cave residence ended a very long time ago, we are assured, for since then a great thickness of stalagmite, which is deposited with extreme slowness, has spread over the lower cave deposits and ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... question with his scrupulous decorum at the helm. Once or twice I have got the better of him, and touched him off into a kind of compromised explosion, like that of damp fireworks, that splutter and simmer a little, and then go out with painful slowness and occasional relapses. But his fuse is always of the unwillingest, and you must blow your match, and touch him off again and again with the same joke. Or rather, you must magnetize him many times ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... the horse, nerved by Brant's apparent slowness to respond, and loosened the rein from the scrub oak. "Then I will myself go to him, even if they ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... typewriter to say "How do you spell comparatively?" saw his face in its momentary bitterness as he frowned, pen in hand, out of the window. He was waiting to sign the letters before he went out to a committee meeting, and she thought she was annoying him by her slowness. She spelt comparatively anyhow, and with the wholehearted wrongness to which she and the typewriter, both bad spellers, often attained in conjunction, hastily finished and laid the letters before him. Called back to work and actuality, Barry was again cheerful and ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... poetic numbers, than to identify it with them. It is their proportion or modulation, rather than the numbers themselves. According to Dr. Webster, "RHYTHM, or RHYTHMUS, in music [is] variety in the movement as to quickness or slowness, or length and shortness of the notes; or rather the proportion which the parts of the motion have to each other."—American Dict. The "last analysis" of rhythm can be nothing else than the reduction of it to its least ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... (conductor) flash to seize any situation in which I am concerned. But I don't need to tell you that! You, too, have married a Britisher, and know just how much that dear old American joke about English slowness of comprehension amounts to—unless the creature is ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... company of his wife and daughters—a correct, but possibly a depressing, way of spending a vacation which must have been intended to furnish some social variety in a man's life; and we were all very idle, and all very much inclined to grumble at the heat, and length, and general slowness of the days, when one morning, as I was going out in order to send a parcel off to Mrs. Craven, who should I meet coming panting up the stairs ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... Minister, declared: "We have been actively engaged for a long period in producing this weapon (which is recognised as important) in adequate numbers." It seems to be true that efforts were then being made, but not true that these efforts were of long standing. "Altogether 'slowness' was the keynote throughout of the German attitude towards the tank idea." He neither appreciated their true use nor the best means of fighting them; and even when we presented him with derelict tanks, as was soon the case on the Ancre in 1916, ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... delight is perceptible only by 'a mind at ease,' a mind at once calm and clear; but that a mind gloomy and impetuous like that of Johnson, cannot be fixed for any length of time in minute attention, and must be so frequently irritated by unavoidable slowness and errour in the advances of scholars, as to perform the duty, with little pleasure to the teacher, and no great advantage to the pupils[295]. Good temper is a most essential requisite in a Preceptor. Horace paints the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... With painful slowness Elim made his preparations to descend; his fingers could hardly buckle the stiff strap of his revolver sling, but finally he made his way downstairs through a deep narrow hall. He turned from a blank wall to a darkened reception room, with polished mahogany, somber books and engravings on ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... politely, and then, with a more kindly bow and smile to Miss O'Flynn, she went through the draperies, through the front salesroom, and out at the front door. The milliner and her forewoman followed her with a dignified slowness, but reached the window in time to see Patty get into an elaborately-appointed motor-car which rolled ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... it seems to move so slowly that the shadows scarcely change their position. In winter, when the branches are bare, a light that is nearly vertical over a tree can cast but little shadow, and that falls immediately around the trunk. So that the smallness of the shadow itself and the slowness of its motion together tend ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... the slowness of time, at the interminable minutes, began to gnaw him with its intolerable fever. What should he do until he could go to the club for dinner, since he could not work at home? The thought of the streets tired ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... patient and kindly of leaders. He would have been the first to admit how he wounded tender hearts, and, perhaps, even repulsed some who could have been of greater helpfulness to him had he been able to endure more patiently their slowness and timidity. ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... "And the slowness and procrastination, the parts of our character that are most assailed by their criticism, need not make you blush. If we undertake the war without preparation, we should by hastening its commencement only ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... off the brim of a cap, bang against a water-bottle, bury itself in the mass of a knapsack. It seemed as though no one could live in such a hail of lead. But no one had fallen down on the task of the day. Each battalion was advancing, with slowness and awful ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... or slowness with which bones are decomposed and disappear in different soils, is sometimes a question of importance to the antiquary. We all know that they preserve for many long centuries in dry soils and dry positions. ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... detained them at Etoges: and the king would get out, and walk up the hills, and they had to wait for him: so that though they gave double money to the drivers to get on fast, they had gone only sixty-nine miles by ten at night. This slowness ruined everything. ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... the present break off my arduous work of educating the Press. We shall resume our studies later on; but just now I am tired of playing the preceptor; and the eager thirst of my pupils for improvement does not console me for the slowness of their progress. Besides, I must reserve space to gratify my own vanity and do justice to the six artists who acted my play, by placing on record the hitherto unchronicled success of the first representation. It is not often that an author, after a couple of hours of ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... stellar pairs have been computed, but only with partial success. Some stars have shown themselves to be totally regardless of theory and computation, and have shot ahead far beyond the limits ascribed to them, whilst others, by the slowness of their motions, have upset the calculations of astronomers as much in the opposite direction. So that out of this number the orbits of not more than half a ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... June 15th, the loud report of a cannon told the inhabitants of Boulogne that he intended to start. At seven o'clock he and Romain stepped into the gallery and the balloon was released. With majestic slowness they rose into the air and sailed out over the sea; but a moment later the wind, that had so long been his enemy, drove them back. The crowd watched with great anxiety. Twenty-seven minutes after starting, the balloon, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... conquering march of the Russians to Adrianople had awakened that people to a passing thrill of national consciousness. Other travellers,—for instance, Cyprien Robert in the "thirties,"—noted their sturdy patience in toil, their slowness to act, but their great perseverance and will-power, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... the Austrians were founded on the slowness which had hitherto characterised Napoleon's movements. Hess thought that two days might be safely allowed for the Austrian advance, and that the enemy would remain passive on the west bank of the river Chiese, waiting to be attacked on the 25th. ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... passed, and, as she did not return, Martha went in search of her. The album, she knew, was in their boudoir, which was situated at the end of the long and rather gloomy corridor of the upper storey. Highly incensed at her sister's slowness, she was hastening along the corridor, when, to her supreme astonishment, she suddenly saw the figure of a man in kilts, with a bagpipe under his arm, emerge through the half-open door of the boudoir, and with a peculiar gliding ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... with the distance of the Swedish regency from the scene of action, and with the slowness which necessarily accompanies all ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... the same to the occupant of the little room. They passed with equal slowness and impartial darkness. Five days that he could account for crawled by before anything unusual happened to break the strain of his solitary, inexplicable confinement. He could tell when it was morning by the visit of a bewhiskered chambermaid with a deep bass voice, who carried a lighted candle ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... school-room, "Gracie, Gracie, are you not done with lessons yet? Do come out and play." And how dreary "Noel and Chapsal" used to grow all of a sudden when that invitation came, and with what relentless slowness the hands of the old clock dragged through the lesson-hour ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... these which bore the heat of the battle, and repulsed the enemy. The Spaniard, as often as he had done before, so now with great earnestness sent to the duke of Parma, to send forty fly-boats, without which they could not fight with the English, because of the greatness and slowness of their ships, and the agility of the English, entreating him by all means now to come to sea with his army, which army was now to be protected as it were, under the wings of the Spanish Armada, until they should land ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... truth hidden beneath. Well, a sense of humour blows away that froth in time, and then—as for example after the Suffragette antics—the real argument behind the capers and the words becomes known. Thus in England all revolutions are gradual, and in their very slowness lies their incalculable ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... find that the moon was nearer and nearer to the earth the further back our view extends; in fact, concentrating our attention solely on essential features, we may say that the path of the moon is a sort of spiral which winds round and round the earth, gradually getting larger, though with extreme slowness. Looking back we see this spiral gradually coiling in and in, until in a retrospect of millions of years, instead of its distance from the earth being 240,000 miles, it must have been much less. There was a time when the ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... Steadily, and with a slowness that only increased its threatening aspect, the cloud to the northward joined the vast overhanging canopy that had been seen earlier in the day. By half-past six in the evening it was black as the densest night, the murk only being ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... his hand frankly, and he had not noticed the moment's slowness or, if he did, took it for the passing ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... man noticed nothing in his impatience, and only chid her for her slowness. "Where have you ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... has not forgiven that blow I dealt him a month ago, when I flattened in his helmet with my blunted axe and stretched him senseless on the ground; in faith, I meant not to hit so hard, but he had been taunting me with my slowness, and seeing an opening for a blow at his head I could not resist it, and struck, as he was always telling ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... of the evening's chores, stalling the cow and throwing into her manger the scanty supply of night fodder that could be afforded. Then she sat down to milk, and accomplished that operation so slowly that Whitey turned her head as far as the stanchions would permit to see what this slowness meant. ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... largest peach of all, began to pare it with his own pocket-knife, making a plate and napkin of his newspaper. With careful slowness he pared and stoned and quartered it, then handed her the segments on a bit of the paper torn from ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... fighting-machine in the squadron, but her speed was only five knots an hour through the water, and her engines so little commensurate with her weight that Flag-Officer Foote hesitated long to receive her. The slowness was forgiven for her fitness for battle, and she went by the name ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... and, like. AEneas, he may be hidden in a cloud amidst his associates. The celebrated FABIUS MAXIMUS in his boyhood was called in derision "the little sheep," from the meekness and gravity of his disposition. His sedateness and taciturnity, his indifference to juvenile amusements, his slowness and difficulty in learning, and his ready submission to his equals, induced them to consider him as one irrecoverably stupid. The greatness of mind, unalterable courage, and invincible character, which Fabius afterwards displayed, they then imagined had lain ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... sagging end of a squeaky old gate, and scrape it across gulleys, to get the automobile into the narrow, deeply-rutted road, and with a mind fearful of tires the chauffeur wheeled down through the grove quite slowly, a slowness for which Sam was duly grateful, since it allowed him to take a careful appraisement of the walnut trees, interspersed with occasional oaks, which bordered both sides of their path. They were tall, thick, straight-trunked trees, from amongst which the underbrush had ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... interest even for the most important events and accidents, when by means of meditation they have passed into thoughts. The sanity of the mind is between superstition with fanaticism on the one hand, and enthusiasm with indifference and a diseased slowness to action on the other. For the conceptions of the mind may be so vivid and adequate, as to preclude that impulse to the realizing of them, which is strongest and most restless in those, who possess more than mere ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... outside his door. At first, he used to lie and hold his breath, while he waited for her to open the door of his room. By degrees, however, he ceased to expect her. And, as the expectation died away, he chafed increasingly at the slowness of his recovery. Anything to get out of that house! She treated him as he would have scorned to treat an invalid dog who had ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... horses, for instance, only reach their full development between the seventh and eighth years; it would, therefore, be a mistake to attempt to force them up to the full demands made on a Cavalry horse before that age. This slowness of growth must always be considered, and the animals be saved as much as possible; but there is still room to unite with this necessary concession increased demands on the ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... d'un Condamne," I read aloud with careful slowness. "Ah, indeed! You do well to read that. It is a ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... telling his stories, and sometimes invented new ones for her. George Vyell was much more appreciative. Sir Harry had heard of the lessons, and wrote to beg that his son might join the class. So George rode over three times a week to learn Latin, which he did with uncommon slowness. But he thought Taffy's stories stunning, and admired him without a shade of envy. The two boys liked each other; and when they were alone Taffy stood an inch or two higher in self-conceit than when Honoria happened to be by. But he took more pains with his stories ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and we have seen that in the later editions of the "Origin of Species" he found himself constrained to lay greater stress on these than he had originally done. Substantially, Mr. Chambers held much the same opinion as to the suddenness or slowness of modification as Mr. Darwin did, nor can it be doubted that Mr. Darwin knew ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... problems my recovery involved than to continue in this monotonous and meaningless existence. So I convalesced by degrees and got about the hospital, and was permitted to wait on myself. But I cultivated a slowness and brevity ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... only sufficient to sustain life, not to suffice it until it was grown to manhood or womanhood, and when the bottle was half-emptied the mother returned it to me. How much time all this occupied I do not know, but the child took the milk with extreme slowness. I may say that it took the milk drop by drop. A great deal ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler
... and still the puffing of the Vampire came from the same direction. It was plain enough to him that the old tub was not a racer. But she showed herself beyond the bend in about a quarter of an hour, indicating that her rate of speed, or rather of slowness, was not more than four statute miles an hour. But this was simply confirmation of what the steward had said on the subject. Yet she was coming, though it was too dark on the river to see her in detail. Though he strained his eyes to ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... were engaged cutting the ice in order to clear the water. It was already spring tide, and the ice-cakes were drifting toward the sea, but with unbelievable slowness. After all, that's the work for you, he told himself as he turned away. He was conscious of that which lay beneath the surface, but he would not ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... away. The mountains ascend; the valleys descend into the place thou hast founded for them." Here is a whole volume of geology in a paragraph. The thunder of continental convulsions is God's voice; the mountains rise by God's power; the waters haste away unto the place God prepared for them. Our slowness of geological discovery is perfectly accounted for by Peter. "For of this they are willingly ignorant, that by the word of God there were heavens of old, and land framed out of water, and by means of water, whereby the world that then was, being overflowed by ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... felt an equally strong desire to write his name on the marvellous little creature, and each in turn sat down before it and moved his awkward hands with nearly equal slowness over the keys, picking ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... mind's eye as to wonder how our predecessors failed to comprehend his image. But what does this tragedy demand of an actor? Proverbially, that he himself shall fill it, and hold the stage from its commencement to its end. The play of "Hamlet" is the part of Hamlet. The slowness of its action, and the import of its dialogue and soliloquies, make all depend upon the central figure. Next, he is to depict the most accomplished gentleman ever drawn; not gallant, gay Mercutio, nor courtly Benedict, but the prince and darling of a realm; one who cannot "lack preferment," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... excavation, the line which divides economy and wastefulness is extremely narrow and the most constant vigilance, together with the best judgment and foresight, are needed to avoid unnecessary cost. In the laying and covering of the tile, on the other hand, it is best to disregard a little slowness and unnecessary care on the part of the workmen, for the sake of the most ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... Patrocleas, "The slowness and delay of the deity in punishing the wicked used to seem[807] to me a very dreadful thing, but now in consequence of his speech I come as it were new and fresh to the notion. Yet long ago I was vexed when I heard that line ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... resumed the labours by which they proposed to render the place tenable, when the watchman, who was placed in a high turret, called the Warder's Tower, gave the signal that a horseman was approaching. As he came nearer, his dress indicated an officer of the Life-Guards; and the slowness of his horse's pace, as well as the manner in which the rider stooped on the saddle-bow, plainly showed that he was sick or wounded. The wicket was instantly opened to receive him, and Lord Evandale rode into the court-yard, so reduced by loss of blood, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... inn door for my lady's coming She watched the minute hand of the little Dutch clock, wondering at the slowness of its progress. It was only ten minutes past two when Lady Audley came down-stairs, with her bonnet on and her hair still wet, ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... was as if one soldier looked into the eyes of his compeer on the battle field, as well could be the case with this man older and of more regular experience than himself. The answer came with the measured slowness of an earnest thanks and appreciation—"The offer comes from a kind heart, shown on previous occasions.... There are women held here." He hesitated. "Deign the last cup of cold water at their hands." The officer did not refuse. ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... what remains for me to tell you? I believe I have read more Hebrew than Greek lately; yet the dear Greek is not less dear than ever. Who reads Greek to you? Who holds my office? Some one, I hope, with an articulation of more congenial slowness. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... With excruciating slowness, like a crawling glacier, tender as a nerve of the touching leaves, I moved, I stole, obliquely toward her through the wall of bush, the knife behind my back. Once only there was a restraint, a check: I felt myself held back: I had to stop: for ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... a state of increasing restlessness. The month of waiting which Dr. Hilton had laid down for him seemed to wear away with extraordinary slowness; this was increased by the lack of companionship, and further by the cutting off of even the little episodes usual to daily life. His patience, great as it was naturally and trained as it had been by the years of self-repression, ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... when they spoke of him; he had come a great deal nearer to them in departing than he had ever known how to come, or they to approach him, before. Something young in his nature that had been hidden by gray hairs and slowness of years, sprang to join itself to their youth on which he had laid his bequest of the Lord's work. They ran lightly up and down where he had walked with measured gravity; they chatted and laughed, for they knew he ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... speak of unhappy days at this school: the richer girls made sport of the dress of the drawing-master's daughter, and of her independent, awkward ways. Her progress in drawing, too, was counterbalanced by her slowness in her other studies; in fact her new accomplishment was such a delight to her, that in her devotion to it she became less and less interested in her books; and as for dress—that it should be clean and suited both to her means and to the work she was doing, was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... at other times more favourable to mankind than to think them blind to the beauties of his works, and imputed the slowness of their sale to other causes; either they were published at a time when the town was empty, or when the attention of the publick was engrossed by some struggle in the parliament, or some other object of general concern; or they ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... work, during which I raged about the deck like a man with a strong toothache. The transition from the wild sea to the comparative immobility of the lagoon had wrought strange distress among my nerves: I could not hold still whether in hand or foot; the slowness of the men, tired as dogs after our rough experience outside, irritated me like something personal; and the irrational screaming of the seabirds saddened me like a dirge. It was a relief when, with Nares, and a couple of hands, I might drop into the boat and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pace. You quite understand that to throw one's self into the water, for instance, with a friend, at the same headlong rate as he himself would do it, would be the act either of a fool or a madman. I therefore allowed De Guiche to get in advance, and I proceeded on my way with a commendable slowness of pace, feeling quite sure that my unfortunate friend would not be received, or, if he had been, that he would ride off again at the very first cross, disagreeable answer; and that I should see him returning much faster than he went, without having, myself, gone much ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... change seems to have fallen on him with some suddenness on his return to America; for some years, ever since the hard winter of "The Scarlet Letter" at Salem, he had complained of fatigue in writing and of lassitude and slowness of mind; after the winter in Rome he felt this with new weariness, as he says when he practically ended his notebooks in Switzerland, not having the vital impulse to continue them, and in the intervening time he had ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... them masters of their own time, and was perhaps in their case, the best that could be adopted; for slowness of progress, which is its greatest objection, was rather desirable in George's then state ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman |
