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More "Diminutive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stood in such singular contrast that no stranger would have ever taken them for brothers,—Mark being, as we have before described him, a good-sized, and, in the main, a good-looking man; while the other, whom we have introduced as Arthur Elwood, was of a diminutive size, with commonplace features, and a severe, forbidding countenance, made so, perhaps, by intense application to business, together with the unfavorable effect caused by ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... that he was in debt to the extent of some 10 or 11 shillings; but as he felt that by refusing to pay the sum he would be striking a blow for the liberty of the subject, he manfully held out against what he considered an unjust punishment for such diminutive frivolities as he had indulged in." . . . At times incidents of a disturbing and playful nature have roused the wrath of the Chairman and Secretary to a pitch awful to behold. At one time Mr. H. (a member who soon resigned) spent a considerable part of a meeting under the table, till ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... rock-rabbit, but the savour of what the rock-rabbit had stored under the stone that had attracted Thor. And this booty still remained—a half-pint of ground-nuts piled carefully in a little hollow lined with moss. They were not really nuts. They were more like diminutive potatoes, about the size of cherries, and very much like potatoes in appearance. They were starchy and sweet, and fattening. Thor enjoyed them immensely, rumbling in that curious satisfied way deep down in his chest as he feasted. And then ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... time Maurice was ready to put his theories and studies into practice on an extensive scale. Compared with modern armaments, the warlike machinery to be used for liberating the republic from its foreign oppressors would seem almost diminutive. But the science and skill of a commander are to be judged by the results he can work out with the materials within reach. His progress is to be measured by a comparison with the progress of his contemporaries—coheirs with him of what Time ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... comfortable,—with pipe in mouth, and in full unbuttoned ease, his bushy cauliflower wig laid aside, by reason of the heat, reposed Dr. Small. Small, indeed, was somewhat of a misnomer, as applied to the worthy doctor, who, besides being no diminutive specimen of his kind, entertained no insignificant opinion of himself. His height was certainly not remarkable; but his width of shoulder—his sesquipedality of stomach—and obesity of calf—these were unique! Of his origin we know nothing; but presume he must, in some way ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Emily was used during the last century as a diminutive for Amelia. There is really no etymological connection ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... springless wagon. Naturally, the women and children were relegated to the wagons, and were there huddled together like so much live stock destined for the market. The men scrambled and even fought for the diminutive donkeys that were to bear them over the mountain pass. A circus knows no comedy like ours on that occasion. It is true we had but twelve miles to traverse, and some of these were level; but by and ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... house-top, where the family would assemble with their dogs and cats, as on a pastoral lawn; there were no windows, and in my grandfather's expression, 'there was really no demonstration of a house unless it were the diminutive door.' He once landed on Ronaldsay with two friends. The inhabitants crowded and pressed so much upon the strangers that the bailiff, or resident factor of the island, blew with his ox-horn, calling out to the natives ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... or ring by way of handle, but close to the edge, and about half-way between top and bottom, I distinguished a diminutive keyhole, outlined with shining metal. I let the curtain drop again, though lingeringly. It could be only a cupboard, or a particularly secure wine cellar, perhaps, behind this dwarfish door, yet had I discovered it ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... diminutive stature and deformed from his birth. His physical infirmity, susceptible temperament, and incessant study rendered his life one long disease. He was, as his friend Lord Chesterfield said, "the most irritable of all the genus irritabile vatum, offended with trifles and never forgetting or ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... was very large for the size of the town. The diminutive town hall, which in reality was nothing but a watch-house, seemed to be a mere incident on its irregular expanse, to which the two-storey shops and dwellings made a low border. Behind this crimson, blue-slated border rose the loftier forms of a church ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... boy wants a drop of cognac! Get him some father!" The reluctant farmer procured a big bottle and a very diminutive glass known as the "petit verre," which held about a thimbleful. Paul would congratulate the good dame on her keen perception. At this period ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... in the crowd made a remark about the diminutive size of the speaker, and the ludicrous figure he would cut as a general, at which ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... after my arrival, I was again visited by the Gypsy of the withered arm, who I found was generally termed Paco, which is the diminutive of Francisco; he was accompanied by his wife, a rather good-looking young woman with sharp intelligent features, and who appeared in every respect to be what her husband had represented her on the former ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... by man, who loves, obeys, and enjoys. Nothing is gained by attributing to nature vicegerent forces. Is it not preferable to say that she responds to intelligent, loving Omnipotence? Our finiteness is illustrated by our initiation into organized being. Emerging from a rayless atom, too diminutive for the sight, we gradually develop and advance to the maturity of those conscious powers, the exercise of which furnishes indubitable evidence of our immortality. We are pervaded with invisible influences, which, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... leader of the second squadron of Arabs which joined the Egyptian armament against the crusaders. Tasso says of the Arabs, "Their accents were female and their stature diminutive" (xvii.).—Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered (1575). ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... tiny figure are wrought out is the more admirable. The attitude is that of a man flinging himself forth in the abandon of a violent leap, with legs and arms extended. His straining muscles are indicated with perfect faithfulness, and even the veins in the diminutive hand and the nails of the tiny fingers are clearly marked. The hair had been formed by curling strands of thin gold wire inserted in the skull. There can be no doubt that these figures formed part of a scene like that of the toreador fresco, for the violent ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... sealing-wax. The cans were acting with outrageous perversity, for they were second-hand and the covers ill-fitting. Her blood was almost up to fainting heat, and she was worried all over. She had to do all her preserving in a pint cup, as she expressed it in her contempt for the diminutive proportions of the saucepan which she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... here our magnifiers blessed our panting hopes with specimens of conscious existence. In the shade of the woods we beheld brown quadrupeds having all the external characteristics of the bison, but more diminutive than any species of the bos genus in our natural history.' Then herds of agile creatures like antelopes are described, 'abounding on the acclivitous glades of the woods.' In the contemplation of these sprightly animals the narrator ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... he was a small gas-bag of diminutive size, beneath which was suspended a little car, the most ridiculous little travesty of an airship I have ever seen. He was nosing along at about 800 feet and making ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... said the emperor, stopping her diminutive elephants. "Do help him, please. There, now, Zenobia and her daughter are almost out of sight. Put your eggs and things in the cart, Will,—I mean in the chariot. Now let's start. Billy, you can walk in front ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... the educated village of Stockbridge nothing can be imagined more charming than the panorama that the course presents on a busy day. Across the soft, green stretches, diminutive caddies may be seen scampering with long buckling-nets, while from the river-banks numerous recklessly exposed legs wave in the air as the more socially presentable portions hang frantically over the swirling current. Occasionally an enthusiastic golfer, driving from the eighth or ninth tees, may ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... a question of some uncertainty. Is its cause something of absolute and substantive existence without me, or is it not? Is its cause something of the very same nature, as the thing that gave me a similar sensation in a matter of comparatively a pigmy and diminutive extension? ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... comes from the Greek words biblos (Matt. 1:1) and biblion (diminutive form) (Luke 4:17), which mean "book." Ancient books were written upon the biblus or papyrus reed, and from this custom came the Greek name biblos, which finally came to be applied to the sacred books. See Mark 12:26; Luke ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... round the garden, where they discovered a statue by Mahoudeau, very badly placed in a corner near the eastern vestibule. It was the bathing girl at last, standing erect, but of diminutive proportions, being scarcely as tall as a girl ten years old, but charmingly delicate—with slim hips and a tiny bosom, displaying all the exquisite hesitancy of a sprouting bud. The figure seemed to exhale a perfume, that grace which nothing can ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... matter of fact, the property was considerable; but Durant noticed that its owner applied the endearing diminutive to every object that appealed specially to his egotism. It was a peculiarity of the Colonel that he was ready to melt with affection over the things that belonged to himself, and was roused almost to ferocity by whatever interested ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... this stove sits, at least in wealthy houses, a black slave, whose name is generally a diminutive in token of familiarity or affection; in the present case it was Soweylim, the diminutive of Salim. His occupation is to make and pour out the coffee; where there is no slave in the family, the master of the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Tenerife that any traveller has ever written of any place. He confesses to having kept a meagre diary, not intending to publish a mere book of travels, and drew his picture probably from recollection and diminutive note-books. ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... wall, leaving the Esplanade wholly unencumbered except by the soldiers. Down between the two ranks, which were formed facing each other, came the Sultan on a white steed—a beautiful Arabian—and having at his side his son, a boy about ten or twelve years old, who was riding a pony, a diminutive copy of his father's mount, the two attended by a numerous body-guard, dressed in gorgeous Oriental uniforms. As the procession passed our carriage, I, as pre-arranged, stood up and took off my hat, His Serene Highness promptly acknowledging the salute by raising ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... The locus is the mountains of Tirol. Laurin, the diminutive dwarf-king, has a rose-garden the trespasser upon which must lose a hand and foot. The arrogant Witege, Dietrich's man, wantonly tramples down the roses; whereupon Laurin assails him, in knightly fashion, on horseback. 2: The 'pommel' of ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... are here and there some huge white slabs of rough-hewn limestone, in consequence of which even carts drive round it instead of through it. In the very middle of an astoundingly dirty square rises a diminutive yellowish edifice with black holes in it, and in these holes sit men in big caps making a pretence of buying and selling. In this place there is an extraordinarily high striped post sticking up into the air, and near the post, in the interests ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... cook-room or kitchen of merchantmen on deck; a diminutive substitute for the galley of a man-of-war. It is generally furnished with ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... we found ourselves opposite a beach bordered by a broad line of surf, which indicated that the water here was very shallow for some distance from the shore. Both the surf and the beach seemed to be alive with black children, so diminutive were the forms who disported themselves in the breakers, or ran up and down upon the sand with the eagerness and agility generally displayed by boys at the seaside. As to the real ages of these people, however, we were ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... from three to four hundred yards wide below the cascade but in many places very shallow. The banks, bottom, and adjacent hills are formed of a mixture of sand and clay. The ground was overspread with small willows and the dwarf birch, both too diminutive for fuel, and the stream brought down no driftwood. We were mortified to find the nets only procured one salmon and five white-fish, and that we had to make another inroad upon ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... the second, if not the first place for fashion and life. Beyond this Ch'ang Men was a street called Shih-li-chieh (Ten Li street); in this street a lane, the Jen Ch'ing lane (Humanity and Purity); and in this lane stood an old temple, which on account of its diminutive dimensions, was called, by general consent, the Gourd temple. Next door to this temple lived the family of a district official, Chen by surname, Fei by name, and Shih-yin by style. His wife, nee Feng, possessed a worthy and virtuous disposition, and had a clear perception ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... much higher estimate of the negro character. It is impossible to see a negro and not feel kindly towards him; such cheerful, open, honest expressions and such fine muscular bodies. I never saw any of the diminutive Portuguese, with their murderous countenances, without almost wishing for Brazil to follow the example of Hayti; and, considering the enormous healthy-looking black population, it will be wonderful if, at some future day, it does not take place. There is at Rio a ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... this plebeian perennial, meekly content with waste places, is rapidly inheriting the earth. Its beautiful spikes of butter-colored cornucopias, apparently holding the yolk of a diminutive egg, emit a cheesy odor, suggesting a close dairy. Perhaps half the charm of the plant—and its charms increase greatly when it is grown in a garden—consists in the pale bluish-green grass-like leaves with a ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... Clatsops, Chinnooks, Cathlahmahs and Wac-ki-a-cums resemble each other as well in their persons and dress as in their habits and manners.- their complexion is not remarkable, being the usual copper brown of most of the tribes of North America. they are low in statue reather diminutive, and illy shapen; possessing thick broad flat feet, thick ankles, crooked legs wide mouths thick lips, nose moderately large, fleshey, wide at the extremity with large nostrils, black eyes and black ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... most women will understand, began to fashion scraps of embroidery and odds and ends of lace and insertion into tiny yokes and bands. After many a long day's work she sat by the shaded lamp finishing the diminutive garments with stitches worthy of ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... drawers, sent to me by Nickola, and also the Rev. Mr. Brooks' "Family Prayer Book." This gave me great satisfaction. Soon after, he returned with his captain, who had one arm slung up, yet with as many implements of war, as his diminutive wicked self could conveniently carry; he told me (through an interpreter who was his prisoner.) "that on his cruize he had fallen in with two Spanish privateers, and beat them off; but had three of his men killed, and himself wounded in the arm"—Bolidar turned to me and said, "it is a d—n ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... the conditions are very dissimilar. In the first place the machine owing to its diminutive size as compared with the airship, offers a small and inconspicuous target. Then there is its high independent speed, which is far beyond that of the airship. Furthermore its mobility is greater. It can wheel, turn sharply to the right or to the left, and pursue an irregular undulating ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... and interesting interview to-day with a gaudily dressed and rather diminutive lieutenant, who applied for a passport to the Mississippi River, via Chattanooga, and insisted upon my giving him transportation also. This demand led to interrogatories, and it appeared that he was not going under special orders of the adjutant-general. It was unusual for ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... be more and more planted by them in the waste sand: intrusive chaos, and Triglaph held at bay by them," till at last in 1240, seventy years after the great Bear's death, they fortify a new Burg, a "little rampart," Wehrlin, diminutive of Wehr (or vallum), gradually smoothing itself, with a little echo of the Bear in it too, into Ber-lin, the oily river Spree flowing by, "in which you catch various fish;" while trade over the flats and by the dull streams, is widely possible. Of the Ascanien race, the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... broken hills until they reached a summit. From that point on, now and again the road elbowed into view of a wide plain, and in the center of the plain there was a diminutive ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... broad avenue, through the final arch of which, as through a huge Gothic window, I saw the hall in the distance. Everything about me looked strange, rich, and lovely. Accustomed to the scanty flowers and diminutive wood of my own country, what I now saw gave me a feeling of majestic plenty, which I can recall at will, but which I have never experienced again. Behind the trees which formed the avenue, I saw a shrubbery, composed ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... but varying shape and colour—diminutive bodies ovate and round—brown, grey, glossy black with brown edgings, pink with grey quarterings and grey fringe, whence radiate five sprawling slender "legs," a foot or so long. Though doubtful in appearance, more in consonance with the creepy imagery of a nightmare ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... resembling, as he comes back to me, the General Winfield Scott who lived so much in our eyes then. The oddity may well even at that hour have been present to me of its taking so towering a person to produce such small "drawing-cards"; it was as if some mighty bird had laid diminutive eggs. Mr. Coe, of a truth, laid his all over the place, and though they were not of more than handy size—very small boys could set them up in state on very small desks—they had doubtless a great range of number and effect. They were scattered far abroad ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... There in the doorway stood Major Cowan, and by his side was a neatly uniformed, diminutive member of the Royal Flying Corps. The men scrambled hastily to their feet. Yancey upset his chair with a clatter as he unwound his long, thin legs ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... our Lord's action. But it is also to be considered in the light of the woman's quick-witted retort, which drew out of it an inference which we cannot suppose that Christ did not intend. He uses a diminutive for 'dogs,' which shows that He is not thinking of the fierce, unclean animals, masterless and starving, that still haunt Eastern cities, and deserve their bad character, but of domestic pets, who live with the household, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... publishers so manage that he is identified with me. By strange coincidence, they hit upon a cover for his book which is almost a facsimile of the cover of my pamphlet novel, "An Original Belle," previously issued. The R in the name of this unfortunate man has been furnished with such a diminutive tail that it passes for a P, and even my friends supposed that the book, offered everywhere for sale, was mine. In many instances I have asked at news stands, "Whose book is that?" The prompt and invariable answer has been, "E. P. Roe's." I have seen book notices in ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... represented a condemned delinquent, suffering on, and still interminably on, in hell, thus complaining of the unfairness of his probation: "Oh, had it been possible for me to conceive even the most diminutive part of the weight and horror of this doom, I should have shrunk from every temptation to sin, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... had grown six inches out at sea, and though still short, was not diminutive; he was a small Apollo, a model of symmetry, and had an engaging, girlish beauty, redeemed from downright effeminacy by a golden mustache like silk, and a tanned cheek that ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... her to marry him, and she accepted him joyously, undismayed by the diminutive proportions ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... Reno I meet a lone Washoe Indian; he is riding a diminutive, scraggy-looking mustang. One of his legs is muffled up in a red blanket, and in one hand he carries a rudely-invented crutch. "How will you trade horses?" I banteringly ask as we meet in the road; and I dismount ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... 'onher! Shure, it's only the sixth time these three weeks. Doesn't meself like to see yer smiling face, onyhow!" Here Mrs. Donahue commences complimenting the Judge in one breath, and laying no end of charges at the door of the very diminutive and harmless Mister ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... and ran out of the room. At dinner Sipiagin ordered champagne, and before drinking his son's health made a speech. He spoke of the significance of "serving the land," and indicated the road he wished his Nikolai to follow (he did not use the diminutive of the boy's name), of the duty he owed, first to his family; secondly to his class, to society; thirdly to the people—"Yes, my dear ladies and gentlemen, to the people; and fourthly, to the government!" By degrees Sipiagin became quite eloquent, with his ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... The diminutive Echo of those days (October 13 and 14, '85) followed suit of the Pall Mall Gazette and caught lightly the sounds as they fell from the non-melliferous lips of the charmer who failed to charm wisely. The precious article begins ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Inschriften, vol. i. xxxi. 1. 1, where the dwarfs and pigmies who came to the court of the king, in the period of the Ptolemies, to serve in his household, are mentioned. Various races of diminutive stature, which have since been driven down to the upper basin of the Congo, formerly extended further northward, and dwelt between Darfur and the marshes of Bahr-el-Ghazal. As to the Danga, cf. what has been said on p. 226 of the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the mantel-piece, of which I knew by heart the pearls about the high and powdered "heads;" the velvets circling the white throats; the swell of the full muslin kerchiefs: the pattern of the lace sleeve-ruffles. Upon the mantel- shelf there were two china vases, some relics of a diminutive tea- service, as smooth as enamel and as thin as egg-shell, and a white centre ornament, a classic group in alabaster, preserved under glass. Of all these things I could have told the peculiarities, numbered the flaws or cracks, like any clairvoyante. Above all, there was a pair ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Flossie's features were so very correct. She had a correct little nose, neither straight nor aquiline, but a distracting mixture of both, and a correct little mouth, so correct and so small that you wondered how it managed to display so many white teeth in one diminutive smile. Flossie's eyes were not as her mouth; they were large, full-lidded, long-lashed, and blacker than her hair. No wonder if the poor clerk who passed her on her way to and fro in the City rejoiced as they looked up at him. She might be ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... no need of names, your highness." Georges Desmarets was diminutive, black-haired and corpulent. He was of dapper appearance, point-device in everything, and he reminded you ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... shrug. Ruan is a small town that faces Troy across the diminutive harbour, or perhaps I should say that Troy looks down upon it at this slight distance. When a Trojan speaks of it he says, "Across the water," with as much implied contempt as though he meant Botany Bay. There is no ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... hinder part of the skull. Altogether this man appeared so different from the rest, that for some time he was supposed to belong to a different class of people, but I afterwards often observed the same configuration of head combined with dark coloured skin and diminutive stature.) ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... Emmet is a very old variation of Emma, and sometimes spelt Emmot; Sens is a corruption of Sancha, naturalised among us in the thirteenth century; and Collet or Colette, the diminutive of Nichola, a common and favourite name in the ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... kingdom kept in awe for above a year in daily dread of utter destruction, not by a powerful invader at the head of twenty thousand men, not by a plague or a famine, not by a tyrannical prince (for we never had one more gracious) or a corrupt administration, but by one single, diminutive, insignificant, mechanic. ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... short grave wrapped in fogs near Fort St. John; of fair curls and sweet childish limbs, and a mouth shouting to send echoes through the river gorge; of scamperings on the flags of the hall; and of the erect and princely carriage of that diminutive presence the men had called "my ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the machine no one yet really knows, but we had to be ignominiously towed, to the great amusement of the natives, at the end of a long rope by the power of a diminutive donkey which finally came along. The beast did not look as though he could draw a perambulator, but he buckled down to it with a will, and brought us safely through the half-kilometre or so of crooked streets which led to the centre ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... metal is always considered the property of the Captain-General, but his scribe avails himself of a lingering farewell at the door, to hint an immediate and pressing need for "a very small darkey!" Next day, the diminutive African does not appear; but, as it is believed that Spanish officials prefer gold even to mortal flesh, his algebraic equivalent is unquestionably furnished in ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... were strung out round the course, each with a "shepherd" standing to attention near its bridle, watch in hand. They could see Jim's great form standing sentinel over a tiny animal, whose diminutive rider was far too afraid of the huge Major to try to snatch even a yard of ground; nearer, Wally kept a wary eye on the experienced jockey on the blacksmith's racing mare, who was afraid of nothing, but nevertheless had a certain wholesome ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... Leonora had evolved in solitude from their respective individualities was dissipated instantly. The parlour became nothing but the parlour, with its glass partition, its antimacassars, its Meshach by the hob, and its diminutive Hannah uttering fatuous, ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... to enter this Castle, but besides being hung a little above the ground there seemed to be neither doors nor windows. She had no doubt (though really I cannot think why) that the moment had come in which to use the nut which had been given her. She opened it, and out came a diminutive hall porter at whose belt hung a tiny chain, at the end of which was a golden key half as long as the ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... concerned your honour: no, Sir; I would be as delicate in such, as you yourself: more delicate, I will venture to say, because more uniformly so. How vain, how contemptible, is that pride, which shows itself in standing upon diminutive observances; and gives up, and makes a jest of, the most ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... light their lamps; and so by the jetties where foreign crews rest with elbows on bulwarks and stare down upon us idly through the dusk. She is after all but a little cutter of six tons, and we might well apologise, like the Athenian, for so diminutive a corpse. But she is our own; and they never saw her with jackyarder spread, or spinnaker or jib-topsail delicate as samite—those heavenly wings!—nor felt her gallant spirit straining to beat her own record before a tense northerly breeze. Yet even to them her form, in pure white with ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and my residence, but now I must introduce my grandmother; my dear, excellent, grandmother, whom I loved so much when she was living, and whose memory I shall ever revere. In person she was rather diminutive, but, although sixty years of age, she still retained her figure, which was remarkably pretty, and she was as straight as an arrow. Never had age pressed more lightly upon the human frame; for, strange to say, her hair was ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... scarcely possible to imagine any place more completely wretched. It was a swamp, containing a small space of firm ground at one end, and almost wholly unadorned with trees of any sort or description. There were, indeed, a few stinted [sic] firs upon the very edge of the water, but these were so diminutive in size as hardly to deserve a higher classification than among the meanest of shrubs. The interior was the resort of wild ducks and other water-fowl; and the pools and creeks with which it was ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... smoothly, in places, as to appear artificially levelled with the chisel; large tracts of it are covered with the Indian fig (cactus). In the shade of these grotesque growths lives a dainty flora: trembling grasses of many kinds, rue, asphodel, thyme, the wild asparagus, a diminutive blue iris, as well as patches of saxifrage that deck the stone with a brilliant enamel of red and yellow. This wild beauty makes one think how much better the graceful wrought-iron balconies of the town would look if enlivened with blossoms, with pendent carnations or pelargonium; ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... varieties of the Peruvian sheep, the llama, the one most familiarly known, is the least valuable on account of its wool. It is chiefly employed as a beast of burden, for which, although it is somewhat larger than any of the other varieties, its diminutive size and strength would seem to disqualify it. It carries a load of little more than a hundred pounds, and cannot travel above three or four leagues in a day. But all this is compensated by the little ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... of a sucking-pig, linked together like a chain in its belly. Apart from this it is boneless. Had Aristotle known this, Aristotle who records as a most remarkable phenomenon the fact that the fish known as the small sea-ass alone of all fishes has its diminutive heart placed in its stomach, he would ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... "Voyage to Lilliput" the follies and vanities of individuals and of parties are ridiculed by the representation of their practice among diminutive beings. Sir Robert Walpole suffered in the person of Flimnap the Lilliputian Premier, Tories and Whigs in the High-Heels and Low-Heels, Catholics and Protestants in the Big-endians and Small-endians. In the "Voyage to Brobdingnag," where Gulliver finds himself ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... leg, took his boot in his hands and gave a slight twist to the heel. There was a little click, and a sort of double drawer shot out of the front of the sole. It contained two sheafs of bank notes and a number of diminutive articles, such as a gimlet, a ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... race, not only on account of its undoubted antiquity, and, compared with other families, its well authenticated lineage, but also because of its many branches and subdivisions, ranging in size from the majestic and massive Clumbers to the diminutive toys which we are accustomed to associate with fair ladies' laps and gaily-decked pens ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... reign of Zeno[A] in Byzantium the power in the West was held by Augustus, whom the Romans used to call by the diminutive name Augustulus because he took over the empire while still a lad,[B] his father Orestes, a man of the greatest discretion, administering it as regent for him. Now it happened that the Romans a short ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... which might well belong to a woman between sixty and seventy, so faded it was and reticulated with wrinkles; and into a pair of eyes that wavered between ingenuousness and a childish cunning; and from them down to her slim ankles and a pair of dancing-shoes, so fairy-like and diminutive that they seemed scarcely to press ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... was speaking we had turned from the terrace and were nearing the Mazet—which diminutive of the Provencal word mas, meaning farm-house, is applied to the farm establishment at Vielmur partly in friendliness and partly in indication of its dependence upon the great house, the Chateau. At the arched entrance we found the farm family awaiting us: Old Jan, the steward of the ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... on his spectacles and looked at the little hirelings more critically. Their youth and diminutive size had been a shock to him. He had expected bouncing children with rosy faces, long auburn hair, and a good deal of well-developed leg showing beneath a short frock. These, measured against his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... before the most remarkable specimen of the industry of an animal. It was a hut or bower close to a small meadow enameled with flowers. The whole was on a diminutive scale, and I immediately recognized the famous nests described by the hunters of Bruiju. After well observing the whole I gave strict orders to my hunters not to destroy the little building. That, however, was an unnecessary ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... ground in front of his assembled visitors. After this ceremony had been also repeated by the familiar, Chongi then took the gourd and twig, and sprinkled the contents all over us; retired to the Uganga, or magic house—a very diminutive hut—sprinkled pombe over it; and, finally, spreading a cow-skin under a tree, bade us sit, and gave us a jorum of pombe, making many apologies that he could not show us more hospitality, as famine had reduced his stores. What politeness in the midst of such barbarism!!! ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... indignant French, and grew angrier every moment as she found herself still loftily ignored. A warm fracas was in prospect, when a passing American fortunately cleared up the complication; the woman would have called in a gendarme unhesitatingly, to enforce her diminutive claim. ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... carroty-haired little fellow, with a snub nose and eyes so diminutive and deeply sunken, that but for the sparks of light they emitted, they would have been undiscernible. The expression of his face was like that of a wiry terrier, being derived partly from his occupation, which, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... the parents the child was never addressed as "Bob" or "Bobby," or by any other diminutive. In their practical opinion a child's name was his name, and ought not to be mauled or dismembered on the pretext of fondness. Similarly, the child had not been baptized after his father, or after any male member of either the Machin or the Cotterill ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... it may, time soon matured this instrument of recreation into an engine of destruction; and the intended palliative of care and labour has proved the fostering nurse of innumerable evils. This diminutive cube has usurped a tyranny over mankind for more than two thousand years, and continues at this day to rule the world with despotic sway—levelling all distinctions of fortune in an instant by the fiat of its ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... pocket a diminutive vial, the smallest I had ever seen, in which were a number of little white granules, about the size of the head of a pin. A printed label was wound around the vial, and it bore the word "Arsenicum." It passed from hand to hand, and ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... furnished, and altogether a luxurious place. It had a fireplace with an immense arch, the antique breadth of which extended almost from wall to wall of the room, though now fitted up in such a way that the modern coal-grate looked very diminutive in the midst. Gazing into this pleasant interior, it seemed to me, that, among these venerable surroundings, availing himself of whatever was good in former things, and eking out their imperfection with the results of modern ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... to Mrs. Williams's room, where we found Mr. Allen the printer, who was the landlord of his house in Bolt-court, a worthy, obliging man, and his very old acquaintance; and what was exceedingly amusing, though he was of a very diminutive size, he used, even in Johnson's presence, to imitate the stately periods and slow and solemn utterance of the great man.—I this evening boasted, that although I did not write what is called stenography, or short-hand, in ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... crooked withal, his height being little more than that of the tall bird[A] which loves to strut along the sandy shore, picking up the fish as they flutter joyously along in the beams of the warm and cheering sun. But if he was diminutive in body he was great in his soul—what others lacked in wisdom he supplied. His name was Ohguesse, which signifies a Partridge. His brothers gave him this name because of his preferring peace to war—of his liking better to hunt ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... his circumstances that he was even then negotiating (so it was rumoured) with a travelling company of clowns and acrobats, who had had the misfortune to lose their performing dwarf, for the sale of his diminutive daughter Filomena. Sir Hercules arrived in time to save her from this untoward fate, for he was so much charmed by Filomena's grace and beauty, that at the end of three days' courtship he made her a formal offer of marriage, which was accepted ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... death (unhappily demolished fifty years back), shows the humble character of his daily life. It was a small cottage, such as labourers now occupy, with three small rooms on the ground floor, and a garret with a diminutive dormer window under the high-pitched tiled roof. Behind stood an outbuilding which served as his workshop. We have a passing glimpse of this cottage home in the diary of Thomas Hearne, the Oxford antiquary. One Mr. Bagford, otherwise unknown to us, had once "walked into the country" on purpose to ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... declares his voice was as unmusical as the sound of a broken tin whistle. Of him Lecky writes:—"Richard Lalor Shiel forms one of the many examples history presents of splendid oratorical powers clogged by insuperable natural defects. His person was diminutive and wholly devoid of dignity. His voice shrill, harsh, and often rising to a positive shriek. His action, when most natural, violent, without gracefulness, and ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... has not attained to the same exceptionally fine development as the flora. At Rawak the phalanger and the sheepdog in a wild state were the only quadrupeds met with. In Waigiou, the boar called barberossa, and a diminutive of the same race were found. But as to the feathered tribe, they were not so numerous as one might have supposed; the plants yielding grain necessary for the sustenance of birds not being able to thrive ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... psychology there was a strange mingling of the pitiful and comic—among a division (the 35th) known as the Bantams. They were all volunteers, having been rejected by the ordinary recruiting-officer on account of their diminutive stature, which was on an average five feet high, descending to four feet six. Most of them came from Lancashire, Cheshire, Durham, and Glasgow, being the dwarfed children of industrial England and its mid-Victorian cruelties. Others were from London, banded together ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... saying, "Nosis," that is, my grandchild. When he awoke, he actually heard the word repeated, and looking around, he saw a tiny little animal hardly big enough to be seen on the plain. While doubting whether the voice could come from such a diminutive source, the little animal said to him, "My grandson, you will call me Bosh-kwa-dosh. Why are you so desolate? Listen to me, and you shall find friends and be happy. You must take me up and bind me to your body, and never put me aside, and success in life shall attend you." ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... the ward came Michael, a diminutive Russian exile with valvular heart trouble and a most atrocious vocabulary. The one seemed as incurable as the other. Margaret MacLean had wrestled with the vocabulary on memorable occasions—to no avail; ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... presented on the walls of ancient temples of Libya and the Thebaid, moved about in leather-girdled blue linen tunics and hide sandals, keeping account of the laden panniers, roped upon the backs of diminutive asses and carried to the winepresses as fast ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... strata of the middle class—the small trades-people, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants—all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which modern industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... little book is this diminutive ancestor of the modern English Dictionary, to describe which adequately would take far more time than the limits of this lecture afford. It is divided into three parts: Part I contains the hard words with their ...
— The evolution of English lexicography • James Augustus Henry Murray
... of water widens and very slowly we move from the quay, being dragged ignominiously backward across the great basin in which we lie by a diminutive steamer called a tug. We are not out in the river yet and our own engines have not begun to work. You can understand that it would be very difficult to load a ship if she stood always in the river, where there are rising and falling tides, so, to make this ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... summer-house. The brilliant contrast between its vermilion pilasters and its pale yellow wall, the delicate moulding of its slender bricks and the elaborate elegance of its decoration, not to omit its pleasing, though diminutive proportions, arising from the wild green turf of this melancholy region, can scarcely fail of affecting with at least a spark of fancy, the flattest spirit of this work-day world. For my own part, I should be much less disposed to pronounce it a temple than a tomb; and, in fact, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... Arabic architecture in the Assembly Room, which seems to me to have been built upon a design of Palladio, and might be converted into an elegant place of worship; but it is indifferently contrived for that sort of idolatry which is performed in it at present: the grandeur of the fane gives a diminutive effect to the little painted divinities that are adorned in it, and the company, on a ball-night, must look like an assembly of fantastic fairies, revelling by moonlight among the columns of a ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... and broken hinges. Rhoda Gray's eyes traveled sharply around her in all directions. It was still light enough to see fairly well, and she might at some future time find the bearings she took now to be of inestimable worth. Not that there was much to remark! They crossed a diminutive and disgustingly dirty backyard, whose sole reason for existence seemed to be that of a receptacle for old tin cans, and were confronted by the rear of what appeared to be a four-story tenement. There was a back door here, and, on the right of the door, fronting the yard, a single window ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... at the boxes and I must confess that, as my eye traveled along the rows of impassive faces and noted the perfect though diminutive features, the tiny ears, the bristling hair, the frowning eyebrows—so discordant with the placid expression and peacefully closed eyes—a chill of horror crept over me. The whole thing was so unreal, so unnatural, so suggestive ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... back from his forehead, and rather suspended than poised. He stood before a table on which old newspapers were scattered, one of which he had taken up and, with his eye-glass on his nose, was holding out at arm's-length. It was that honourable but extremely diminutive sheet, the Journal de Geneve, a newspaper of about the size of a pocket-handkerchief. As I drew near, looking for my Galignani, the tall gentleman gave me, over the top of his eye-glass, a somewhat solemn stare. Presently, however, before I had time ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... stage made its appearance, with its four spirited horses, and the baggage was put on. Trunks, which were diminutive in size compared with those now used, were put on the rack behind, securely strapped; valises and packages were consigned to the depths of a receptacle beneath the driver's seat, and bandboxes were put on the top. The back seat was generally given to ladies and elderly gentlemen, while young men ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... given in the report, but more correctly Creacan or Criocan. It is used to express anything diminutive, when applied to potatoes, it means they are small ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... what is the history of the name,' said Albinia; 'it sounds like nothing but the diminutive of ewer. I hope she will not be the ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him—a fear which deepened into speechless shaking horror when he stormed out at her in one of his black rages. Some women would have taken to drink, others to religion. Mrs. Thalassa sought consolation in two packs of diminutive and dog-eared cards. Her shattered spirit found something inexpressibly soothing in the intricacies of patience: in the patchwork of colour, the array of sequences, the sudden discovery of an overlooked move, the dear ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... since there are no hopes for thee of her returning favour—since some praise may lie for thy ingenuousness, having neither offered [as more diminutive-minded libertines would have done] to palliate thy crimes, by aspersing the lady, or her sex—since she may be made easier by it—since thou must fare better from thine own pen than from her's—and, finally, since thy actions have manifested that thy ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... instigation of their riders, and jostling and knocking against one another in a way that would have disgusted any other pony in the world. Conspicuous among the crowd of riders, was the thirty-rupee Prime Minister, who on a most diminutive little animal, charged about in a way he never could have condescended to do, had he had the misfortune to have still remained a Rajah. Each time that the ball was sent into the goal, the striker, picking it up dexterously, without dismounting, came again at full ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... echoing, dreary house to which "Ecky" had returned with the hand of death already on his shoulder; a vision, too, of the long, rough country lad, perhaps a serious courtier of the lasses in the hawthorn den, perhaps a rustic dancer on the green, who had first earned and answered to that harsh diminutive. And I asked myself if, on the whole, poor Ecky had succeeded in life; if the last state of that man were not on the whole worse than the first; and the house in Randolph Crescent a less admirable dwelling than the hamlet where he saw the day and grew to manhood. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the anaemias is made still more complicated in that the diminutive cells do not preserve their normal shape, but assume the well-known irregular forms: pear-, balloon-, saucer-, canoe-shapes. Nevertheless in good dry preparations the smallest forms usually still shew the central depression. ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... of a whistle answered, then the crunch and grind and scream of biting brake-shoes—and the big mountain racer, the 1012, pulling the second section of the Limited that night, stopped with its pilot nosing a diminutive figure in a torn and silver-buttoned uniform, whose hair was clotted red, and whose face was ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... asked Danny Griswold, who had been prancing the deck like a diminutive admiral, stopping now and blowing a cloud of ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... in placing the last cigar, assuming that they each will play in the best possible manner? The size of the table top and the size of the cigar are not given, but in order to exclude the ridiculous answer that the table might be so diminutive as only to take one cigar, we will say that the table must not be less than 2 feet square and the cigar not more than 41/2 inches long. With those restrictions you may take any dimensions you like. Of course we assume that all the cigars are exactly alike in every respect. ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... but "Madam" walks the streets clad in sealskin and silk, a "Gainsborough" crowning her false "bang." I always think of Max O'Rell's clever saying, when I see her: "The sweat of the American husband crystallizes into diamond ear-rings for the American woman." My janitress sports a diminutive pair of those jewels and has hopes of larger ones! Instead of "doing" the bachelor's rooms in the building as her husband's helpmeet, she "does" her spouse, and a char- woman works for her. She is one of the drops in the tide that ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... only.' The force of the word when placed at the end is peculiar. Then it often has a diminutive or disparaging signification. 'He lived for their sakes,' and not for any more worthy reason. 'He gave sixpence only,' is an insinuation that ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... virtues and simple manners of humble life with which they may be contemplated. A man must be very insensible who would not be touched with pleasure at the sight of the chapel of Buttermere, so strikingly expressing, by its diminutive size, how small must be the congregation there assembled, as it were, like one family; and proclaiming at the same time to the passenger, in connection with the surrounding mountains, the depth of that seclusion in which ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... evidently was, had a meagre, wan, countenance; and a diminutive form. The servant ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... myself in the saddle," continued Huldbrand. "and seized the reins firmly, when a wonderful little man stood at my side, diminutive, and ugly beyond conception. His complexion was of a yellowish brown, and his nose not much smaller than the rest of his entire person. At the same time he kept grinning with stupid courtesy, exhibiting his huge mouth, and making a thousand ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... turned puritan, ill-husbandry in masquerade; whither people come, after toping all day, to purchase, at the expense of their last penny, the repute of sober companions: a rota-room, that, like Noah's ark, receives animals of every sort, from the precise diminutive band, to the hectoring cravat and cuffs in folio; a nursery for training up the smaller fry of virtuosi in confident tattling, or a cabal of kittling critics that have only learned to spit and mew; a mint of intelligence, ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... that he had something on his hook, and with immense pride he flourished in the air a diminutive blackfish—so small that the Hermit proposed to use it for bait, a suggestion promptly declined by the captor, who hid his catch securely in the fork of two branches, before re-baiting his hook. Then Harry pulled out a fine perch, ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... century stone screen-work round the choir side of the ambulatory, particularly at the back of the reredos and the north-east portion adjacent to it, is very interesting work. The lower part is panelled with tracery in low relief, with the arches springing from diminutive heads. All the shafting is ornamented with a small ball-like enrichment. Above the panelling is some open tracery of beautiful design. By reference to the plan it will be seen that much of this original screen-work has been ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... spaniel named Gyp that is particularly friendly with the cats. There are plenty of hens on the farm, and one spring a couple of bantams were added to the stock. The cats immediately took a great fancy to these diminutive bipeds, and watched them with the greatest interest. Finally the little hen had a flock of chickens. As the weather was still cold, the farmer put them upstairs in one of the barns, and every day Gyp would take seven or ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... to their every-day plodding life with vacant brains and unexpanded souls, while Archibald Mackie, in his non-suggestive hovel, gathered big thoughts and exalted ideas, and grew majestic in intellect, even as he was diminutive in his outward frame. Not a stone upon the waste before him but could tell him its thrilling tale of weary heads pillowed thereon, when all other resting-places failed; of scanty meals spread out upon them for ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... form of nouns is derived from these two classes, called diminutive nouns. These are formed by the termination "ens" or ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... statement, it is impossible not to credit rather the explanation given by Nathaniel Hawthorne, who, moreover, affords the practically definite proof that the boy was at first, as a term of endearment, called "Pennini," which was later abbreviated to "Pen." The cognomen, Hawthorne states, was a diminutive of "Apennino," which was bestowed upon the boy in babyhood because he was very small, there being a statue in Florence of colossal ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... happened. Instead of running away, the boy took a step forward, and the man paused, scarcely believing his eyes. Another step forward, and yet another, came the diminutive figure, until almost within the aggressor's reach; then suddenly, quick as a cat, it veered, dropped upon all fours to the floor, and head first, scrambling like a rabbit, disappeared into the ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... up, the hoofs gilded and tied together over the right shoulder, to leave the right arm disengaged to strike, its head clothing the human head within, as Alexander, on some of his coins, looks out from the elephant's scalp, and Hercules out of the jaws of a lion, on the coins of Camarina. Those diminutive golden horns attached to the forehead, represent not fecundity merely, nor merely the crisp tossing of the waves of streams, but horns of offence. And our fingers must beware of the thyrsus, tossed about so wantonly by himself and his chorus. The pine-cone at its top ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... what is he, that hath hitherto been able to hide such an encircling, all-mastering Spirit, "he possesses every Quality that Art could have charm'd by: yet hath lent it to and concealed it in Nature. The Comprehensiveness of his Imagination must be truly prodigious! It has stretched out this diminutive mere Grain of Mustard-seed (a poor Girl's little, &c.) into a Resemblance of that Heaven, which the best of good Books has compared ...
— An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews • Conny Keyber
... facts a strong presumptive case having been made out, Mr. Watkins was thenceforth known not as Ezekiel or Emanuel, or whatever his original first name had been, but as Liver-Eating, or among friends by the affectionate diminutive of Liv for short. ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... an excellent pasture plant for stock, they do not relish it so highly as some other pasture plants; when forming seed, it is least valuable for horses, owing to the extent to which it salivates them. Its diminutive habit of growth unfits it for making meadows, unless in conjunction with other hay plants. In nutritive properties, it is placed ahead of medium red clover. Some growers have spoken highly of it as a pasture plant ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... article in No. 16., "on Pet Names," had not been Scottish, I should have been less surprised at the author's passing over the name of Jock, universally used in Scotland for John. The termination ick or ck is often employed, as marking a diminutive object, or object of endearment. May not the English term Jack, if not directly borrowed from the Scottish Jock, have been ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... common reading is, in tympanidis rogum inlatus est. This passage has been the occasion of as many different opinions concerning both the reading and the sense as any passage in the whole treatise. Tympanum is used for a timbrel or drum, tympanidia a diminutive of it. Lambinus says tympana "were sticks with which the tyrant used to beat the condemned." P. Victorius ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... in size, from the diminutive, fancy doily, for ornament rather than use, through all gradations, up to the largest sized dinner napkin. In using these do not spread over the entire lap, nor fasten under the chin bib-fashion, nor in the buttonhole, and, if a man, do not tuck in the vest pockets. All these are fashions ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... nouns is derived from these two classes, called diminutive nouns. These are formed by the termination "ens" or "na" placed ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... loved one another very tenderly, Wattie and Mattie; and, as the years rolled by, and never a harsh word was heard between them, and peace and unity reigned in their diminutive household—which could not always have been said of their parents' and grandparents' firesides—why, then the neighbours began to remark that they were a good little couple; and the Fairy of the land declared that ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... room within, with a bare yellow-washed floor and ragged curtains at the little window. In a corner was a diminutive altar draped with threadbare lace. The red glow of the taper lighted a cheap print of St. Joseph and a brazen crucifix. The human element in the room was furnished by a little, wizened yellow woman, who, black-robed, turbaned, ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... cricket. Ronnie had big soldiers which could not be knocked down by cannon balls, and which couldn't make history because they were few in number, and nearly all English. Mine were of every European power, and many Asiatic ones. They were diminutive and numerous, could take shelter in a forest of pine cones and were admirably suited to be mown down at the cannon's mouth. The King of England was a person with a fine figure. He had one leg and one arm, and the plume of his dragoon's helmet was shorn off; but his slight, ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... extinguished. Time passed. I strode up and down in the semi-darkness, trying to keep warm and determined, whatever happened, not to carry those wretched bags myself, when suddenly a figure rose out of the gloom—a military figure of youthful aspect and diminutive size, armed ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... the little officer, standing beside, or rather below, Mr. Love, and looking so diminutive by the contras that you might have fancied that the Priest of Hymen had only to breathe ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... "a-e-ugh." Everybody shouts it, mule-driver, "coachee," or cattle-driver; and even I, a passenger, fancied I could do it to disagreeable perfection after a time. Out of this throng in the streets I like to select the meek, patient, diminutive little donkeys, with enormous panniers that almost hide them. One would have a woman seated on top, with a child in one pannier and cabbages in the other; another, with an immense stock of market-greens on his back, or big baskets of oranges, or with a row of wine-casks and a man ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... those imaginations. Besides, I now considered myself as bound, by the laws of hospitality, to a people who had treated me with so much expense and magnificence. However, in my thoughts I could not sufficiently wonder at the intrepidity of these diminutive mortals, who durst venture to mount and walk upon my body, while one of my hands was at liberty, without trembling at the very sight of so prodigious a creature, as ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... hard life and the characters of their parents, cause it. This child, who is now staring in at the window upon a print of Sir Robert Peel, and flattening his nose against the glass, has a forehead "villainous low," with dark eyes, and short dark hair, and his diminutive face, both in features and expression, is uncommonly like one end of a cocoa-nut. What a sad lot for these children to be left thus—perhaps even turned adrift by their parents, to wander about the streets, and pick up, here and there, a precarious crumb! ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... whereas, Lilliput and Brobdignag being, in my creed, solid parts of the earth's surface, I doubted not that I might one day, by taking a long voyage, see with my own eyes the little fields, houses, and trees, the diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep, and birds of the one realm; and the corn-fields forest-high, the mighty mastiffs, the monster cats, the tower-like men and women, of the other. Yet, when this cherished volume was now placed in ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... now revealed the interior of the house—a straight, square room, with a few wooden seats disposed about, and at the top end an oblong table covered with a snow-white cloth. An aperture in the wall appeared to lead to an inner chamber, which must indeed have been of diminutive size, for the central room seemed to occupy almost the whole of the interior of the house. Suspended by an iron chain from the ceiling above there hung a small lamp in which flickered a tiny flame fed by some sweet-smelling oil. It threw but little light around and left deep and ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... right. A distinguished writer has represented a condemned delinquent, suffering on, and still interminably on, in hell, thus complaining of the unfairness of his probation: "Oh, had it been possible for me to conceive even the most diminutive part of the weight and horror of this doom, I should have shrunk from every temptation to sin, with the most ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... archaic Eng. pullen, poultry; but his early examples, le pulein, polayn, etc., are of course Fr. Poulain, i.e. Colt. Under Fallows, explained as "fallow lands," he quotes three examples of de la faleyse, i.e. Fr. Falaise, corresponding to our Cliff, Cleeve, etc; Pochin, explained as the diminutive of some personal name, is the Norman form of the famous name Poussin, i.e. Chick. Or, coming to native instances, le wenchel, a medieval prototype of Winkle, is explained as for "periwinkle," whereas it is a common Middle-English word, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... number of forty-shilling freeholders was small. With the concentration of land in fewer hands, incident to the agrarian revolution of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it bore an increasingly diminutive ratio to the aggregate county population, and by 1832 the county electors comprised, as a rule, only a handful of large landed proprietors. Within the boroughs the franchise arrangements existing at the date mentioned were complicated and diverse beyond the possibility of general characterization. ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... observed that Foote must have meant a diminutive, or POCKET edition.] I mentioned my doubts to Dr Johnson, who said, he would go two miles out of his way to see Lord Monboddo. I therefore sent Joseph forward, with the ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... in this country; and they gave it the name of Vinland, from the quantity of small grapes which they found growing. A colony was soon afterwards formed, who traded with the natives; these are represented as of diminutive stature, of the same race as the inhabitants of the west part of Greenland, and as using leathern canoes. The merchandize they brought consisted chiefly of furs, sables, the skins of white rats, &c.; and they principally and most eagerly requested, in exchange, hatchets and ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... the list of his oddities. Many of the parishioners to this day, no doubt, will call to mind the quaint way in which, if he thought any one was misbehaving himself in church, he would rise slowly from his seat with such majesty as his diminutive stature could command, and shading his spectacles with his hand, gaze sternly in the offending quarter; how on a certain Communion Sunday he forgot the wine to be used in the sacred office, and when my father directed his attention ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... The confidence, which this sense of success will give the pupil, will probably, in his own opinion, be thought well worthy the price. Neither his reason nor his will was in fault; all he wanted, was strength to break the diminutive chains of habit; chains which, it seems, have power to enfeeble their captives exactly in proportion to the length of time they ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... quite, a pound. This small treasure is intended for the owner's "little" finger. It is the work of Mr. Melon, jeweller and goldsmith, on Camp-street, and is adorned with small carved figures, standing out in bold relief, and of very diminutive size, yet distinct and expressive. The right outer surface represents the flight of Joseph, the Virgin, and the infant Jesus into Egypt. Joseph, bearing a palm-branch, leads the way, the Virgin follows, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... canoe was so diminutive, Perk's logic was unanswerable, so he agreed to the division ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... 'Psychology of Touch,' that the time factor cannot enter into an explanation of this illusion; but the experiments of which I have just spoken seem to point plainly to a very intimate relation between this illusion and the illusions in our judgments of time. We have here presented on a diminutive scale the illusions which we see in our daily experience in comparing past with present stretches of time. It is a well-known psychological experience that a filled time appears short in passing, but long in retrospect, ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... may be supposed to promise. Those that are curious after diminutive history, who watch the revolutions of families, and the rise and fall of characters either male or female, will hope to be gratified by this paper; for the Idler is always inquisitive and seldom retentive. He that delights in obloquy and satire, and wishes to see clouds gathering over ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... sprawled across them! There she was, measuring herself back to back with the Statue of Liberty; scudding through the firmament on a comet, whilst a crowd of tiny men in evening-dress stared up at her from the terrestrial globe; peering through a microscope held by Cupid over a diminutive Uncle Sam; teaching the American Eagle to stand on its head; and doing a hundred-and-one other things—whatever suggested itself to the fancy of native art. And through all this iridescent maze of symbolism ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... This distinguished bibliographer, rather than bookseller, lives hard by—in the Rue Git-Le-Coeur. He lives with his father, who superintends the business of the shop. The Rue Git-Le-Coeur is a sorry street—very diminutive, and a sort of cropt copy—to what it should have been, or what it might have been. However, there lives JACQ. CH. BRUNET, FILS: a writer, who will be known to the latest times in the bibliographical world. He will be also thanked as well as known; for his Manuel du Libraire ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... half a dozen ladies and gentlemen he scarcely recognized his sister as the centre of attraction, or knew that Miss Cicely's effusive greeting of Maggie was her first one. "I knew he was dying to see you after all you had BOTH passed through, and I brought him straight here," said the diminutive Machiavelli, meeting the astonished gaze of her father and the curious eyes of her sister with perfect calmness, while Maggie, full of gratitude and admiration of her handsome brother, forgot his momentary obliviousness, ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... friend or foe. He was a tall man, with an immense head, on which were stuck, like afterthoughts, very tiny features—a nose easily overlooked, a thin slit of a mouth, and small inset eyes. All the upper part of him was overhanging and alarming, till you chanced on those diminutive features. It was as if his growth had been terminated before it reached the expressive parts. He had an elaborate manner—a reticence, a drawl, and a chronic irony. Across half of his chest there streaked a rainbow of color; gay little ribbons of decoration, ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... gypsy anon in her Ethiop hand Took the infant's diminutive palm, O, 'twas fearful to see how the features she scanned Of the babe in his slumbers so calm! Well she noted each mark and each furrow that crossed O'er the tracings of destiny's line: "WHENCE CAME YE?" she cried, in astonishment lost, "FOR THIS ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... coil of rope; Billy and the others threw themselves after him; while half a dozen men working around the small eddy in the lee of the diminutive island caught up the oars and made a dash ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to the charge, of course, in indignant French, and grew angrier every moment as she found herself still loftily ignored. A warm fracas was in prospect, when a passing American fortunately cleared up the complication; the woman would have called in a gendarme unhesitatingly, to enforce her diminutive claim. ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... how. There is the race or family of the russets and of the Fameuse. So are there several races very small in stature, remaining perhaps no larger than bushes. If we were to propagate any of the ordinary apples on such diminutive stocks, we ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... three days after my arrival, I was again visited by the Gypsy of the withered arm, who I found was generally termed Paco, which is the diminutive of Francisco; he was accompanied by his wife, a rather good-looking young woman with sharp intelligent features, and who appeared in every respect to be what her husband had represented her on the former ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... a police officer was ejecting a diminutive youth who tried to bite his hands and clung to the tables, against which, as he was dragged along, he struck with ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... satisfaction we put the poker in the fire and made it red hot, then bored a hole with it through the head, and tightened the shaft with wedges until the club was complete. With this primitive driver we could get what was for our diminutive limbs a really long ball, or a long taw as one should say. In these later days a patent has been taken out for drivers with the shaft let into the head, which are to all intents and purposes the same in principle as those which we ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... next to nothing; hardly anything; just enough to swear by; the shadow of a shade. finiteness, finite quantity. V. be small &c adj.; lie in a nutshell. diminish &c (decrease) 36; (contract) 195. Adj. small, little; diminutive &c (small in size) 193; minute; fine; inconsiderable, paltry &c (unimportant) 643; faint &c (weak) 160; slender, light, slight, scanty, scant, limited; meager &c (insufficient) 640; sparing; few &c 103; low, so-so, middling, tolerable, no great shakes; below par, under par, below ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and others from which the tracery has been hacked. This was the chapel of the castle which has been so completely robbed of its sanctity that it is now cut up into small lodgings, and in one of its diminutive shops, picture post-cards of the town ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... by the window in very high spirits, sewing away most diligently, and presently up the street came a country woman, crying, "Good jams for sale! Good jams for sale!" This cry sounded nice in the Tailor's ears, and, poking his diminutive head out of the window, he called, "Here, my good woman, just bring your jams in here!" The woman mounted the three steps up to the Tailor's house with her large basket, and began to open all the pots together before him. He looked ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... existence of these diminutive creatures, is the egg, or embryo state; this the anxious parent attaches firmly to some leaf or bough, capable of affording sufficient sustenance to the future grub, who, in due course, eats his way through the vegetable kingdom ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... on the Big Sur River, one of the little boys called to his mother that there was a funny sort of a "big dog" out in the pasture. His mother paid no attention to it, but a diminutive pet black and tan started an assault on the animal in question. The lion and the dog disappeared in the brush. Presently the canine barking ceased and the small boy wondered what had become of his valiant companion. ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... hot summer, and although they do not rank high as table Lettuces in this country, were we to experience a succession of roasting summers they would rise in repute and be in great demand. Cabbage Lettuces bear drought fairly well, more especially the diminutive section; but where water is available Lettuces have as good a claim to a share of it in a dry, hot season, as any crop in ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... of my otherwise gentle rat when it saw me petting a mouse, and it would watch for an opportunity to spring upon its diminutive rival and put a speedy ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... to recall and keep in mind the fact that when a given plant is indigenous in a southern climate, the corresponding species or variety that may be found in more northerly latitudes is generally of a comparatively diminutive size. I have seen a mahogany-plant cultivated in a flower-pot, the best representative that could be obtained here of those forest patriarchs in tropical America which constitute the mahogany of commerce. The diminutive proportions ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... preserved. Hence by a strange resuscitation of fame he has become the patron saint, one might almost say the divinity, of the Ionian Islands. Twice a year in solemn procession he is carried round the streets of Corfu. Hundreds of Corfutes bear his name, now abridged into the familiar diminutive of "Spiro." The superstitious veneration entertained for the old saint is a constant source of quarrel between the English residents and the native Ionians. But the historian may be pardoned for gazing with a momentary interest on the dead hands, now black and withered, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... or memory of so every-day a circumstance as this, by which alone he is known to the world. It is possible that he had not even heard the mere name of Paul, and that, if he ever thought of him at all, it was only as a miserable, ragged, fanatical Jew, of dim eyes and diminutive stature, who had once wished to inflict upon him a harangue, and who had once come for a few moments "betwixt the wind and his nobility." He would indeed have been unutterably amazed if anyone had whispered to him ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... the MSS. of Mr. Syme, writer to the signet. Those, who are desirous of more information, may consult Craig de Feudis, Lib. II. dig. 9. sec. 24. It is hoped the reader will excuse this digression, though somewhat professional; especially as there can be little doubt, that this diminutive republic must soon share the fate of mightier states; for, in consequence of the increase of commerce, lands possessed under this singular tenure, being now often brought to sale, and purchased by the neighbouring proprietors, will, in process of time, be included in their investitures, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... Jack and Murray not been prisoners, with the possibility of the pirates changing their minds and cutting their throats, they would have been excessively amused at watching the proceedings of the crew, and rather enjoyed their cruise on board the pirate. On deck there was an erection like a diminutive caboose, but which was a temple or joss-house. The sailors were constantly making offerings before it, apparently as the caprice seized them, by burning gilt paper, or ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... this shop I now saw that on the same board was sitting a person in whom Winifred had taken still stronger interest. This was a diminutive imitation of the deceased, in the person of his hump-backed son, a little man of about twenty-four, who might, as far as appearance went, have been any age from twenty to eighty, with a pale anxious face like his mother's. He was stitching at ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... game of durachki, the player who remains the last is called the durachok or durachka, diminutive of durak, a fool. The game somewhat resembles our own "Old ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... bald head, his diminutive stature, his ample pot-belly, and ampler nose, was a man of fine feelings. Nature was outraged when he became a barber. He most assuredly was never destined by her to shave beards, and manufacture perukes for heads more brainless, many of them, than his own blocks. He ought to have ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... the perjuries I suppose at which Jove laughs!' said Cicely getting up, and hastily rearranging her short curls with the help of various combs, before the only diminutive looking-glass the farm sitting-room provided. 'However, we shall see what happens. I have no doubt Miss Daisy has arranged the proposal scene for this very afternoon. We shall be in for the ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... should he not like the nickname which his mother had given him affectionately, when he was a mere child, and so delicate and weak, with such a fair complexion, a poor little diminutive lad, that he was not as tall as many girls of the same age? It was in pure love that, in his earlier years, his mother whispered that tender Mademoiselle to him, while his old grandmother ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... had, yet nothing saw aright; Ears, and yet heard not; but like forms in dreams, For ages lived a life confused, nor bricks Nor woodwork had to build them sunny homes, But dwelt beneath the ground, as do the tribes Diminutive of ants, in sunless caves. Nor had they signs to mark the season's change, Coming of winter or of flowery spring Or of boon summer; but at random wrought In all things, till I taught them to discern The risings and the settings of the stars; The use of numbers, ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... sits a man, who, to show his credulity, is remarkable for his prodigious ears, similar to those of Midas. He extends his hand to greet Calumny, who is approaching him. The two diminutive females around him are Ignorance and Suspicion. Opposite to them, Calumny advances, betraying in her countenance and gesture the savage rage and anger working in her tempestuous breast: her left hand holds a flaming torch; while with her right she drags by the ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... any, do you go straight into the nursery and build a block house for the baby, or upstairs and help your mother baste for the machine, or into the dining-room to help Bridget set the table, or into the corner where some diminutive brother is crying over his sums which a very few words from you would straighten, or into the parlor where your father sits shading his eyes from the lamplight, with no one to read him the paper; and before you know it, you will be as happy as a ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... give her confidence and to make her believe that our present misfortunes were but momentary. This was no easy task, as she would constantly compare the diminutive aspect of the town of Zurich with the more noble majesty of Dresden, and seemed to feel bitterly humiliated. The friends whom I introduced to her found no favour in her eyes. She looked upon the Cantonal Secretary, Sulzer, as a 'mere town ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... is very highly spoken of in all dissertations that have hitherto been written on the merits of our grasses; but its value must be confined to alpine situations, for its diminutive size added to its slow growth renders it in my opinion very inferior to the duriuscula. In fact, I am of opinion that these are often confounded together, and the merits of the former applied to this, although they are different in many respects. Those who wish to obtain more of ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... should be called the "Red Pope," for how limitless were the powers of that man of conquest and domination, whose hands stretched from one to the other end of the earth. Allowing that the Cardinal Secretary held Europe, that diminutive portion of the globe, did not he, the Prefect, hold all the rest—the infinity of space, the distant countries as yet almost unknown? Besides, statistics showed that Rome's uncontested dominion was limited to 200 ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... relinquish the habit of universal hospitality. As if discontented with the narrow proportions of her own family, Mrs. Cartwright was never thoroughly at ease unless she had three or four friends to occupy every available square foot of floor in her diminutive sitting-room, and to squeeze around the table when meals were served. In vain did acquaintances hold apart from a sense of consideration, or time their visits when eating and drinking could scarcely be in question; ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... monarchy, were thus strangely united in the last of their successors. [126] The son of Orestes assumed and disgraced the names of Romulus Augustus; but the first was corrupted into Momyllus, by the Greeks, and the second has been changed by the Latins into the contemptible diminutive Augustulus. The life of this inoffensive youth was spared by the generous clemency of Odoacer; who dismissed him, with his whole family, from the Imperial palace, fixed his annual allowance at six thousand pieces of gold, and assigned the castle of Lucullus, in Campania, for the place ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... smaller than he, like a diminutive, sturdy steam-tug; and yet if she could have carried him, she would ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... making the most of a hint. Not a murmur of shame, Or buzz of blame, Not a flying report that flew at a name, Not a plausible gloss, or significant note, Not a word in the scandalous circles afloat, Of a beam in the eye, or diminutive mote, But vortex-like that tube of tin Sucked the censorious particle in; And, truth to tell, for as willing an organ As ever listened to serpent's hiss, Nor took the viperous sound amiss, On the snaky head of an ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... reliques de Napoleon" to Poland, and of General Niessel, and of M. de Panalieu, France's Minister Plenipotentiary in Poland. The street crowds stopped the cars and lifted the Frenchman on to their shoulders and carried them to plaudits and joy-shrieks and brass bands. It was amusing to see a diminutive French officer with grey head and beard, sprawling thus on a moving couch of Polish hands whilst he waved his hat and was pelted from all hands with cowslips and lilac. "Vive la France! Vive la France!" ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... as well have tried to seize and hold a couple of diminutive volcanoes, as to lay hands on the men whose supply of fire ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... we're going to find out; son," was the foreman's grim answer. "You there, Babe?" he called to his fat assistant, who rejoiced in the diminutive nickname. ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... enter this Castle, but besides being hung a little above the ground there seemed to be neither doors nor windows. She had no doubt (though really I cannot think why) that the moment had come in which to use the nut which had been given her. She opened it, and out came a diminutive hall porter at whose belt hung a tiny chain, at the end of which was a golden key half as long as the ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... time grown to mortal height. Whether fairies be the decayed poor relations of more successful deities, gods whose cult has been forgotten and neglected (as the Irish Sidhe, or fairy-folk), or diminutive animistic spirits, originating in the belief that every object, small or great, possessed a personality, it is noticeable that Celtic fairies are of human height, while those of the Teutonic peoples are usually dwarfish. Titania may come originally from the loins of Titans or she may be Diana ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... atmosphere of moral and intellectual beauty, through which your otherwise plain faces will look forth like those of angels. Beautiful to Ledyard, stiffening in the cold of a northern winter, seemed the diminutive, smokestained women of Lapland, who wrapped him in their furs and ministered to his necessities with kindness and gentle words of compassion. Lovely to the homesick heart of Park seemed the dark maids of Sego, as they sung their low and simple song of welcome ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... blotting pad; Dyke, the engineer, big-boned. Powerful, deep-voiced, good-natured, with his fine blonde beard and massive arms, rehearsing the praises of his little daughter Sidney, guided only by the one ambition that she should be educated at a seminary, slipping a dime into the toe of her diminutive slipper, then, later, overwhelmed with shame, slinking into S. Behrman's office to mortgage his homestead to the heeler of the corporation that had discharged him. By suggestion, Annixter saw S. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... may have got mis- laid; but a mystic connection with his wonder-working relics may be perceived in a strange little sanctuary on the left of the street, which opens in front of the Tour Charlemagne, - the rugged base of which, by the way, inhabited like a cave, with a diminutive doorway, in which, as I passed, an old woman stood cleaning a pot, and a little dark window decorated with homely flowers, would be appreciated by a painter in search of "bits." The present shrine of Saint Martin is enclosed (provisionally, I suppose) in a very modem structure of ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... biscuits to plain. Indeed, it is with regret that he watches us depart. His long mobile ears shoot out from the stable door as he endeavours to follow us into the box of his neighbour, a dainty Shetland pony, some three feet six inches high, which is usually known as "The Skewbald." This diminutive little lady welcomes us in the most charming manner, and is as frolicsome as a kitten, romping about and playing all sorts of tricks. Her mission in life, besides being everyone's pet, is to draw a small ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... floor led me to select as my own sleeping quarters a little room with a diminutive balcony over the verandah roof. The room was very small, but the bed was large, and had the best mattress of them all. It was situated directly over the sitting-room where I should live and do my "reading," and the miniature ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... order, while it reminds us at the same time of the Buffalo, the genus Acronatus among the large Antelopes, and numerous other representations of the same form. The fourth type is our Bos Pusio: here we find the horns, when present, remarkably small, but in many cases absent; and the size is diminutive to an extreme. These also are distinguishing marks of the groups it is to represent: the Tenuirostres among birds, and the Glires, or mice, among quadrupeds, are the smallest of their respective classes; and both are typically distinguished by wanting ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... effectually that it has to be broken open again by mechanical means, and he writes learnedly on the infallible signs of witchcraft. By mixing horse-dung with human semen he believed he was able to produce a medium from which, by chemical treatment in a retort, a diminutive human being, or homunculus, as he called it, could be produced. The spirits of the elements, the sylphs of the air, the gnomes of the earth, the salamanders of the fire, and the undines of the water, were to him real ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... must naturally be, when one universal mantle of snow makes earth and water alike, such a tame region as this was, if possible, more so; and walking along the weary terraces, which in endless succession swept far into the interior, and then only rose in diminutive heights of maybe 500 feet, I recalled to memory the like melancholy aspect of the Arctic shores of Asia as ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... also experienced insidious delights in touching this diminutive book whose cover of Japan vellum, as white as curdled milk, were held together by two silk bands, one of Chinese rose, the other ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... progress of luxury, even there, that down to about 1815 such a thing was not known, the drinking-vessels at dinner being capacious pewter mugs, each table being furnished with two. We were at one time a good deal incommoded by the diminutive size of the milk-pitchers, which were all the while empty and gone for more. A waiter mentioned, for our patience, that, when these were used up, a larger size would be provided. 'O, if that's the case, the remedy is easy.' Accordingly the hint was passed ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... oldest—the man—is not much above five feet in height, the other two short in proportion. All three, however, are stout-bodied, broad-shouldered, and with heads of goodly size, the short slender legs alone giving them a squat diminutive look. Their complexion is that of old mahogany; hair straight as needles, coarse as bristles, and crow-black; eyes of jet, obliqued to the line of the nose, this thin at the bridge, and depressed, while widely dilated at the nostrils; low foreheads and retreating chins—such ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... your own ship. Now as I am in a way a practical person, which is, I take it, a diminutive state of hard-headedness, any detraction against hard-headedness must appear as leveled against myself. Gimlet in hand, deep down amidships, it would look as if I were squatted and set ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... The little biologist was pale as the nearer moon that glowed outside; one arm was bandaged in thermo-skin and his clothes hung in veritable rags. But it was his eyes that struck Harrison most strangely; to one who lived these many weary days with the diminutive Frenchman, there was something queer about them. They were frightened, plainly enough, and that was odd, since Leroy was no coward or he'd never have been one of the four chosen by the Academy for the first Martian expedition. But the fear in his eyes ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... preaches every Sunday out of a very shabby pulpit. It lies in Castle Lane, which is a narrow by-way, and the great crowd of church-goers ebbs and flows within a hundred yards of it, but none know of its existence, for it has never risen to the dignity of a spire, and the bell is so very diminutive that the average muffin man produces quite as much noise. Hence, with the exception of some few families who have chanced to find their way there, and have been so pleased with their spiritual welcome that they have returned, there ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a diminutive red-faced woman, with hair and eyes very much like his own, and a face that wore a ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... stories ran through my brain, touching a sense of frightened laughter that was only held in check by the sight of this earnest, hurrying figure before me. For John Silence at work inspired me with a kind of awe. He looked so diminutive among these giant twisted trees, while yet I knew that his purpose and his knowledge were so great, and even in hurry he was dignified. The fancy that we were playing some queer, exaggerated game together ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... were entirely naked, but were covered with beads and brass ornaments, even the women having only a few fibres hanging like tails before and behind. Their hair was dressed in the most fantastic fashion. They also carried diminutive stools, on which they ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... of these was so long an habitue of Wall street, Front street, and Coenties Slip, that even now, when wandering along those thoroughfares, we almost momently expect to meet him. We can not but think that at the next turn we shall see that shrunken and diminutive form, that meagre, hungry-looking countenance, and that timid, nervous eye, which indicated the fear of loss or the dread approach of charity. His office was held for years in the second story of a warehouse in Front ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... with his head closely shaved—he never had too much hair—and a long pigtail banging down behind. He is married, I hear; and I hope he and she that was Miss Wang Wang are very happy together, sitting cross-legged over their diminutive cups of tea in a skyblue tower hung with bells. It is so I think of him; to me he is henceforth a jewelled mandarin, talking nothing but broken China. Whitcomb is a judge, sedate and wise, with spectacles ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... truly concerned your honour: no, Sir; I would be as delicate in such, as you yourself: more delicate, I will venture to say, because more uniformly so. How vain, how contemptible, is that pride, which shows itself in standing upon diminutive observances; and gives up, and makes a jest ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... typical gamin, so diminutive in stature that I had to stoop to interrogate him, which ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... who was signal midshipman and was looking at the stranger with a diminutive telescope screwed-up to his starboard eye. "She's hoisted the answering pen'ant under ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Ned Palmer, the most diminutive and wiry of hill shepherds, with a tongue which seemed never tired, and a good humoured smile for every one. Ned used to try my gravity sorely by stepping up to me half a dozen times during the service, to find his place ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... was encroaching on their domain. Yet it was sometimes ludicrous to see one of the party momentarily stamping and roaring with pain, as he cried out to a companion to hasten and assist him in getting rid of an enemy at once so diminutive and so troublesome. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... from the wide doorways in the walls, an immovable and silent crowd of figures in stone, with features and garments made more striking by the employment of paint, surrounded, as with a perpetual worship, the mystic cone. Stone lamps, shaped like diminutive temples, illumined in the corners the grinning ex-votos which hung upon the walls, and the curious pictures with which they were accompanied. Grotesque bas-reliefs adorned the circuit of the edifice, where the slanting light was reflected from the white and ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... calculations of the Observatory of Cambridge, the tube of the new reflector would require to be 280 feet in length, and the object-glass sixteen feet in diameter. Colossal as these dimensions may appear, they were diminutive in comparison with the 10,000 foot telescope proposed by the astronomer Hooke ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... balance the lofty tapering point, while the sheet is secured to the lower after-corner of the sail. Though many of the smaller dhows have only one mast, that big fellow has two, with a sail of the same shape as the first, but more diminutive. The larger sail is of preposterous proportions, and it seems wonderful that she can carry it without being capsized. It appears to be formed of a strong soft cotton canvas, of extreme whiteness. Those vessels ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... His descriptive powers were remarkable, and he could blend pathos with argument in a manner unusual. He was a warm friend of Mr. Lincoln, and one of the most characteristic stories ever told of Mr. Lincoln is in connection with Governor Stephens' diminutive appearance and great care for his shattered health. On one occasion before the war he took off three overcoats, one after the other, in the presence of Mr. Lincoln, who rose, and walking around him, said, "I was ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... of great size, growing in large clumps, is the English Agaricus comans, Fr., and I found it here at 12,500 feet, as also the beautiful genus Crucibulum, which is familiar to us in England, growing on rotten sticks, and resembling a diminutive bird's nest with eggs in it.] grew ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... admired for their own sweet sake, but who thinks less of an apple or cherry blossom because it bears in its beauty the promise of delicious fruit? Put a red Astrachan beside a sorry crab, a Bartlett pear next a tough, diminutive wild pear such as it is descended from, an ear of milky corn in contrast with an ear one-fourth its size, each grain of which, small and dry, is wrapped in a sheath by itself; and rejoice that fruits and grains as well as flowers can learn new lessons and remember ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... coffee, milk, and claret wine. He has another inmate, in the person of a queer little Frenchman, who has his breakfast, tea, and lodging here, and finds his dinner elsewhere. Monsieur S—— does not appear to be more than twenty-one years old,—a diminutive figure, with eyes askew, and otherwise of an ungainly physiognomy; he is ill-dressed also, in a coarse blue coat, thin cotton pantaloons, and unbrushed boots; altogether with as little of French coxcombry as can well be imagined, though with something of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... this time that she heard the purl and whisper of running water, a sound dear to the hearts of all travelers. She veered to the left and found the little grove of trees with a thick shrubbery growing between, fed by the water of that diminutive brook. She dismounted and ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... filled with a sense of cosy comfort which gained all the more piquancy because flavored with an infinitely delicate bitterness that I could not understand. In a revery I strolled along through the streets which, because the diminutive houses cast so little shadow, became hotter every minute, and passed ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... "wee folk" are not so diminutive as the fairies of England—at least that type of fairy, beloved of the poet, which hovers bee-like over flowers and feeds on honey-dew. Power they had to shrink in stature and to render themselves invisible, but they are invariably "little people," from three ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... illumined by a single flickering lamp of the most primitive design, by the light of which the archbishop had evidently been reading. As soon as Derby entered, the venerable prelate arose. In his long sottana of violet he looked strangely diminutive and feminine; his pale skin and mild eyes, and the soft white hair like a fringe beneath his velvet cap—all gave an impression of great gentleness, an impression heightened by contrast with the bare, white-washed walls and rigorously ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... little, diminutive form, and the king's throne was so large and broad, that it altogether concealed ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... the mountains and hillsides was in Mr. Fortune's time distinguished as "Hill tea," while both large and diminutive plantations on the lowlands or the plains were all called "tea gardens," a term which is now applied by the English to the extensive plantations ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... Greece, was like that of the Persian Siamek, the Bithynian Hylas, and the Egyptian Maneros, Son of Menes or the Eternal. The elegy called Maneros was sung at Egyptian banquets, and an effigy enclosed within a diminutive Sarcophagus was handed round to remind the guests of their brief tenure of existence. The beautiful Memnon, also, perished in his prime; and Enoch, whose early death was lamented at Iconium, lived 365 years, the number of days of the solar year; a brief space when compared ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... natures. This practical business act of the diminutive beauty before him—albeit he was just ten dollars out of pocket by it—struck the official into helpless ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... so wayward and capricious was he, that reserve gave way, and Flavian told the story of his father—a freedman, presented late in life, and almost against his will, with the liberty so fondly desired in youth, but on condition of the sacrifice of part of his peculium—the slave's diminutive hoard—amassed by many a self-denial, in an existence necessarily hard. The rich man, interested in the promise of the fair child born on his estate, had sent him to school. The meanness and dejection, nevertheless, of that unoccupied old age defined the ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... euhemerise them, and bring them into line with the science of his day. Hence the "Philological Essay" with which this book is concerned. There are no pigmy races, he says; "the most diligent enquiries of late into all the parts of the inhabited world could never discover any such puny diminutive race of mankind." But there are tales about them, "fables and wonderful and merry relations, that are transmitted down to us concerning them," which surely require explanation. That explanation he found in his theory that all ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... Sikkim rhododendron, I shall give here the description of a still more diminutive specimen, met with by Dr Hooker during his journey, and which he has figured and described in his beautiful work, The Rhododendron of Sikkim-Himalaya. It is called R. nivale, or snow-rhododendron. 'The hard, woody ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... the edge of a low escarpment. Below him the narrowing valley showed bare, black ribs of rock, long, winding gray lines leading down to a central floor where mesquite and cactus dotted the barren landscape. Moving objects, diminutive in size, gray and white in color, arrested Gale's roving sight. They bobbed away for a while, then stopped. They were antelope, and they had seen his horse. When he rode on they started once more, keeping to the lowest level. These wary animals were often desert watchdogs for the ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... away, but had scarcely proceeded half a dozen yards before he felt a tug at his coat. Looking down he saw the diminutive Johnny. "They'll be comin' home thith way," he said, reaching up in a hoarse ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... course, and was nearly or quite two hundred feet higher than the one on which he stood. The latter, like those to which reference has been made, was of the nature of a ridge, while the one on which his eyes were fixed was a diminutive Teneriffe as to ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... plaintive whines. The next instant I swung out of my saddle, and, bending down, raised the unfortunate creature in my arms, when I saw, to my amazement, that she was evidently a full-grown woman, but of very diminutive stature, being only about four feet six inches in height. Moreover she was in a most shockingly emaciated condition, and on her back was a close network of scarcely healed scars, which looked as though they ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... are to be found in Ireland, and refers to a letter from a correspondent of Lord Roden's, which states that the peasantry of the island of Inniskea, off the coast of Mayo, hold in reverence a stone idol called Neevougi. This word I cannot find in my Irish dictionary, but it is evidently a diminutive, formed from the word Eevan (Io[.m]ai[.g]), image, or idol: and it is remarkable that the scriptural Hebrew term for idol is identical with the Irish, or nearly so—'WN (Eevan), derived from a root signifying negation, ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... brings together, but we may also try an indefinite number of new combinations. This we can seldom do in ethical, and scarcely ever in political science. We cannot try forms of government and systems of national policy on a diminutive scale in our laboratories, shaping our experiments as we think they may most conduce to the advancement of knowledge. We therefore study nature under circumstances of great disadvantage in these sciences; being confined to the ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... recollection of what made me take to writing verse myself. It was the old story. "I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." My first lisp—the first poem I ever wrote—of all the odd things in the world was a diminutive satire in the style of Pope. Throughout my boyhood I was an intense romanticist, and full of Elizabethan fancies, imaginings. and even melancholies—I use the word, of course, in the sense of Burton, or of Shakespeare. Yet all the time ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... subterraneous dwellings of the Tongouses, and the Samoides: the want of horses and oxen is imperfectly supplied by the use of reindeer, and of large dogs; and the conquerors of the earth insensibly degenerate into a race of deformed and diminutive savages, who tremble at the sound ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... being more than three inches thick. He adds, "It discovers in the masonry a combination of science and art which can only be referred to a higher stage of civilization and refinement than is discoverable in the work of Mexicans or Pueblos of the present day. Indeed, so beautifully diminutive and true are the details of the structure as to cause it at a little distance to have all the appearance of a magnificent ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... the uneasiness which we could not help showing in our own faces as the dear child's head recorded its passage with a bump on every stair—Richard afterwards said he counted seven, besides one for the landing—received us with perfect equanimity. She was a pretty, very diminutive, plump woman of from forty to fifty, with handsome eyes, though they had a curious habit of seeming to look a long way off. As if—I am quoting Richard again—they could see nothing ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... she was sitting in their diminutive parlour,— Hogarth at a table inscribing the association's names received by post that evening; and at last, bending low over her sewing, she said: "Richard, is it true you have been ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... also at work. By means of the well-known fire-drill he was attempting to perforate a diminutive shell disk and thus transform it into the shell bead so essential to the Indian. So intent was he upon this arduous task that he failed to notice the coming of Topanashka; and the latter stood beside him for a little while, an impassive observer. At last Hoshkanyi Tihua looked ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... gather, all the cherries which they produced in the early summer. The trees between the walks were all cherry-trees—old standard trees of a variety of sorts; but they all bore fruit of some description or another, some sweet and some bitter; some large, some small, and some perfectly diminutive; some black, some red, and some white. Every species of known cherry was in that garden in abundance; but even the gardener himself did not know the extent of the produce. Birds of all kinds flocked there in enormous numbers, and banqueted gloriously ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... miles of territory or 85 to the square mile. The Shetlands tell the same story—29 out of 100 islands inhabited, some of the holms or smaller islets serving as pastures for the sturdy ponies and diminutive cattle, and Mainland, the largest of the group, showing 58 inhabitants to the square mile. This is a density far greater than is reached in the nearby regions of Scotland, where the county of Sutherland can boast only 13 to the square mile, and Invernesshire ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... hundred years ago, of a noble family in Touraine, Rene Descartes grew up into a sickly and diminutive child, whose keen wit soon gained him that title of "the Philosopher," which, in the mouths of his noble kinsmen, was more than, half a reproach. The best schoolmasters of the day, the Jesuits, educated him as well as a French boy of the seventeenth ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... links to connect the warlike past with the pacific present. In the centre of the room was a large leather-covered writing-table, on which lay a perfect chaos of printed matter and manuscript; while bottles of ink, red, black, and blue, might be seen emerging from the confusion like diminutive forts set there to guard the papers from unlearned and intrusive fingers. Order was clearly not the doctor's "first law;" and certainly it must have required no common powers of memory to enable him, when seated in front ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... laugh, in which she was sure to join with an apparent belief that, whatever the joke might be, it was uncommonly good. She did not speak much. Her looks and smiles rendered speech almost unnecessary. Her figure was unusually diminutive. ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... writing. The fact is worthy of some notice in the puzzling history of the various forms of the apostolic names Jacobus and Johannes and their diminutives. Jacques and Jack must surely be the same; how then came Jack to be the diminutive of John? Anyhow this Norman fortress bears the name of the Saint of Compostela in a form chiefly familiar in Britain and Aragon, though it is not without a cognate in the Italian Giacomo. The English forms of apostolic names are sometimes borne even now by Romance-speaking ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... the dog had awakened a bowed old Mother Hubbard lady. She opened the door of her diminutive castle and peered across ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... peaked above their red tarbooshes. Then a psalm by a company of Jewish boys in their black skull-caps—a brave old song of Zion sung by silvery young voices in an alien land. Finally, little black Ali, led out by his teacher, with his diminutive Moorish harp in his hands, showing no fear at all, but only a negro boy's shy looks of pleasure—his head aside, his eyes gleaming, his white teeth glinting, and ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... resembling those of the sensitive plant. The flowers, growing in clusters, are exquisite, of a rich golden tint veined with red; while the fruit hangs pendent, like bean-pods strung all over the branches of the mammoth tree. The diminutive leaves, blossoms and fruit are so singularly opposed to the stately growth as to appear almost ludicrous, yet the tout ensemble is "a thing of beauty" never ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... house in the parish of St. Cuthbert's which was his home from his release to his death (unhappily demolished fifty years back), shows the humble character of his daily life. It was a small cottage, such as labourers now occupy, with three small rooms on the ground floor, and a garret with a diminutive dormer window under the high-pitched tiled roof. Behind stood an outbuilding which served as his workshop. We have a passing glimpse of this cottage home in the diary of Thomas Hearne, the Oxford antiquary. ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... humour vanished, for she looked so valiantly adorable in her love for the man. She was very small and slenderly made, with dark hair, luminous eyes, and ivory-white complexion, a sensitive nose and mouth, a wisp of nerves and passion. She carried her head high and, for so diminutive ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... remains of the old ruin. We enter St. Bridget's cell—it still stands unchanged. It is low, small and narrow: four diminutive frames form the whole window, but one can look from it out over the whole garden, and far away over the Vettern. We see the same beautiful landscape that the fair Saint saw as a frame around her God, whilst she read her morning and evening prayers. ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... the diminutive 'Mariechen'. To this Dr. Ebers appends this note. "An ignorant critic took exception to the use of the diminutive form of names (as for instance 'Irenchen', little Irene) in 'The Sisters,' as an anachronism. It is nevertheless a fact that the Greeks settled in Egypt were so fond of using the diminutive ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... accordingly is forgetting himself in the service of others, who is making his life a part of a hundred or a thousand or a million lives, thus illimitably intensifying or multiplying his own, instead of living as you in what otherwise would be his own little, diminutive self, will find himself ascending higher and higher until he stands as one among the few, and will find a peace, a happiness, a satisfaction so rich and so beautiful, compared to which yours will be but ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... heard—Hers among them—and the clear tinkling of a little bell; then the door opens and a very diminutive toy terrier enters, alone. She's black and tan, seems in love with herself, and comes ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... does not seem altogether without foundation in fact; for the people of the neighbouring townships used to assemble and perform what was called the Hekalesian sacrifice to Zeus Hekalus, and they also used to honour Hekale, calling her by the affectionate diminutive Hekaline, because she also, when feasting Theseus, who was very young, embraced him in a motherly way, and used such like endearing diminutives. She also made a vow on Theseus's behalf, when he was going forth to battle, that if he returned ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... theatres, and they so huge, that it was difficult to see or hear in either. Their monopolies, no longer redeemed by the stately genius of the Kembles, the pathos of Miss O'Neill, or the fiery passion of Kean, were already menaced, and were soon about to fall; but the crowd of diminutive but sparkling substitutes, which have since taken their place, had not yet appeared, and half-price at Drury Lane or Covent Garden was a dreary distraction after a morning of desk work. There were no Alhambras then, and no Cremornes, no palaces of crystal in terraced gardens, no casinos, ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... with a pair of field-glasses, and now he carefully scrutinized all the roads which led to the downs. A motor-car, absurdly diminutive from the distance, came spinning along the winding white road two miles away. He watched it as it mounted the one hill and descended the other, and kept his glasses on it until it vanished in a cloud ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... contrasted with the smallness of his bride. He looked like a great rough bear and she like a silver fairy. There was something intensely pathetic in the curve of his broad shoulders as he bent over the little hand to place in its proud position the diminutive golden circlet which was to ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... expression, though the prevalent expression was sad; and the nose, slightly curved, and delicately carved at the nostril, with the lower outline of the face delicately oval, completed a head which was finely placed upon the shoulders, and gave importance and even dignity to a diminutive and shadowy stem. Who shall describe his countenance, catch its quivering sweetness, and fix it forever in words? There are none, alas! to answer the vain desire of friendship. Deep thought, striving with humor; the lines of suffering wreathed into cordial mirth, and a smile of painful ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... to Harry, who was now on his knees. "You know Min, don't you?" Min was the nickname of one of the boys, because of his diminutive size. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... and a plate of cake stood on the table, the remnants of the early tea she and Lucy had taken a little while before. Presently a light step sounded in the lobby, and Lucy came in dressed for walking. Five years make a great change; for she had grown from a slight, diminutive girl, to a tall, lithe, graceful young lady, just on the verge ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... private-looking road or close, where nothing goes in but the carts of the tradesmen who supply the bishop and the chapter, and where there are little shaven grass-plots, fenced in by neat rails, before old-fashioned groups of somewhat diminutive and excessively trim houses, with little oriel and bay windows jutting out here and there, and deep wooden cornices and eaves painted cream colour and white, and small porches to their doors in the shape ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... (see his account of the excavations in Part II. of the 19th Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution of Washington). Among them is a pottery figure of a wani or makara in the form of an alligator, equipped with diminutive deer's horns (like the dragon of Eastern Asia); and its skin is studded with circular elevations, presumably meant to represent the spots upon the star-spangled "Celestial Stag" of the Aryans (p. 130). As in the Japanese pictures mentioned ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... couvre-pieds for her chaise-longue. Now I am telling you of the couvre pieds because I know all women love exquisite things, and surely nothing could be more delicious than my couvre-pieds. Literally, it is a "cover for the feet," a sort of glorified and diminutive coverlet, made of the palest of pink silk, lined with the soft long-haired white fur known as mountain tibet, and interlined with down. The coverlet is bordered with a puffing of French lace, and the top of it is encrusted with little flowers made of tiny French picot ribbons, and quillings ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... distance down this turbulent river of nearly six hundred miles, with a descent toward sea-level of 2645 feet, without a serious accident, we were all in a happy frame of mind, notwithstanding the exceedingly diminutive food supply that remained. We felt that we could overcome almost anything in the line of rapids the world might afford, and Steward declared our party was so efficient he would be willing to "run the Gates of Hell" with them! Barring an absence of heat Cataract ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... From the diminutive to the enormous leads us easily in the direction of that tremendous combination of high spirits and massive corporeality, Miss Alice Fischer. This actress, who has been before the public for a good many years, may be looked upon as one of those curious ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... dogs, in their joy at seeing him, gave expression to it in their own peculiar way. A big Muskymote knocked down a little Corbeau and straightway began to worry it, while a Chocolat did the same with a diminutive tete-noire. ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... I am at home, here I am back again," thought Lavretsky, as he walked into the diminutive passage, while one after another the shutters were being opened with much creaking and knocking, and the light of day poured into ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... like, Lowland Scots is very rich in homely terms and in humorous and tender expressions. For love, or for celebrating the effects of whisky, English is immeasurably inferior. The free use of the diminutive termination in ie or y—a termination capable of expressing endearment, familiarity, ridicule, and contempt as well as mere smallness—not only has considerable effect in emotional shading, but contributes to the liquidness of the verse by lessening ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... seven philosophers were teaching in that school, the shades of the ancient seven sages of Greece—a striking play of history, like the name of the last West-Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus, or, in contemptuous diminutive, Augustulus, combining the names of the founder of the city and the founder of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Brahmana then adhereth to the duties of his order. And the Kshatriyas and the Vaisyas also, O monarch, follow practices contrary to those that are proper for their own orders. And men become short-lived, weak in strength, energy, and prowess; and endued with small might and diminutive bodies, they become scarcely truthful in speech. And the human population dwindles away over large tracts of country, and the regions of the earth, North and South, and East and West, become crowded with animals and beasts of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... and—Kate gave a slight happy shudder as she thought of it—it was like a secret memory of the Venn, of that desolate spot over which they had triumphed, and to which they made only this slight concession. And did not "Woelfchen"—if they made that the diminutive ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... the sweat still streamed from his bound body. An uncontrollable shudder took him as he saw what the diminutive claws of the midgets held. While the Dome was still an unfinished framework one of the Terrestrian artisans had somehow been isolated from his fellows. Thomas had been of the party that found what was left of him, and the memory ...
— The Great Dome on Mercury • Arthur Leo Zagat
... a very gentle and sensitive boy, began to cry; and his father, who had the pluck of a bull-terrier, wanted to interfere, in spite of his diminutive stature. I was also beside myself with indignation, and pulling off my coat and hat, which I gave to Lintot, made my way to the drayman, who was offering to fight any three men in the crowd, an offer that met with ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... of difficulties. Etymology must govern orthography. But what etymology? our own, or that which is foreign? If we say, both, they disagree; and the mere English scholar cannot know when, or how far, to be guided by the latter. If a Latin diminutive, as papilla from papula or papa, pupillus from pupus, or tranquillus from trans and quietus, happen to double an l, must we forever cling to the reduplication, and that, in spite of our own rules to the contrary? Why is it more objectionable ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... rough stone. The little hut was built against a huge boulder, which towered above the chimney itself, and looked as though it had stood there since the foundation of the earth. There was a rustic veranda along the front of this diminutive dwelling, which stood on a slight eminence; and, as Sir Bryan stepped upon the veranda, he drew a long breath of amazement and delight. Looking down over the broad, oak-clad slope of the mountain, he beheld the vast sea of the prairie, stretching for leagues upon leagues away to the low ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... strange vision fronting him, his face quickly reddening from embarrassment, his eyes irresolute and puzzled. Scarcely ten feet away, a woman, rather brightly attired and apparently very much at her ease, sat upon a rather diminutive pony, her red lips curved in lines of laughter, evidently no little amused at thus startling him. Brown realized that she was young and pretty, with jet black, curling hair, and eyes of the same color, her skin peculiarly white and clear, while ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... story of how that smart chap Done me up w'en I thought I had sich a soft snap, Done me up on a race with remarkable ease, An' lowered my pride a good many degrees. Did I give him the hoss? W'y o' course I did, boss, An' I tell you it warn't no diminutive loss. He writ me a letter from back in the East, An' said he presented the neat little beast To a feller named Pope, who stands at the head O' the ranch where the cussed wheel hosses ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... during the lessons, and when they left school to return home, the little Napoleon never missed, with complete gravity of countenance, to offer his arm to his favorite of five years of age and to accompany her to her home. But the sight of this gallant, with his diminutive, compact, and broad figure, over which the large head, with its earnestness of expression, seemed so incongruous, and which moved on with so much gravity, while the socks fell from the naked calves over the heels—all this excited the merriment of the other children; and when, arm-in-arm ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... which were at first so tame as to suffer themselves to be taken by hand. Of plants that afford vegetables for the table, the chief are cabbage palm, the wild plantain, the fern tree, a kind of wild spinage, and a tree which produces a diminutive fruit, bearing some resemblance to a currant. This, it is hoped, by transplanting and care, will be much improved ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... and, walking one afternoon to the Downs, selected a bright and secluded spot for a comfortable snooze. I revel in snatching naps in the open sunshine, and this was a place that struck me as being perfectly ideal for that purpose. It was on the brow of a diminutive hillock covered with fresh, lovely grass of a particularly vivid green. In the rear and on either side of it, the ground rose and fell in pleasing alternation for an almost interminable distance, whilst in front of it there was a gentle declivity (up which I had clambered) terminating ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... midst of this dead period of graying days, Constance Elliot burst one morning—a God from the Machine—tearing down the lane in her diminutive car with the great figure of Gunther, like some Norse divinity, beside her. She fell out of her auto, and into an explanation, in one breath, embracing Mary ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... place where I passed so many weary hours, waiting for Frederick, with a fever on me, or coming on. Gros is in the next room bargaining for rubies and sapphires; but I do not feel disposed to indulge in such extravagances.... The steamer in which we are to proceed to-morrow looks very small, with diminutive portholes. We shall be a large party, and, I fear, ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... another crumple to the tart, and left it without a pang. But when the old man urged him, for the third time, to take that pernicious draught with his cheese, he angrily demanded a glass of beer. The old man toddled out of the room, and on his return he proffered to him a diminutive glass of white spirit, which he called usquebaugh. Phineas, happy to get a little whisky, said nothing more about the beer, and ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... Gothic windows and others from which the tracery has been hacked. This was the chapel of the castle which has been so completely robbed of its sanctity that it is now cut up into small lodgings, and in one of its diminutive shops, picture post-cards of ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... allowed myself made to descend from two old Roman consuls, S. Geganius Macerinus 1st, Macerinus 2d, and Proculus Macerinus 3d, of whom the Chronicle of Haolander speaks. From Macerinus to Mazarin the proximity was tempting. Macerinus, a diminutive, means leanish, poorish, out of case. Oh! reverend father! Mazarini may now be carried to the augmentative Maigre, thin as Lazarus. Look!" and he showed his ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in the "History of our Lord, as illustrated in the fine arts;" at present I confine myself to the female figure which takes this conspicuous place, while other female figures are prostrate, or of a diminutive size, to express their humility or inferiority; and I have no doubt that thus situated it is intended to represent the woman who was highly honoured as well as highly blessed—the Mother of ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... possible that we have reached here so quick? It is not half so far as I thought it was. And yet, on looking back, there is a wide waste lying between us and the cove from which we started. How diminutive the house on the high ground back of the landing-place looks; like a mole-hill, and the trees around it like shrubs! Well sped, little bark! A swift and an easy-paced courser are you; steadily now, through this narrow strait; steadily and gently, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... enemy —vodka. The feeling of the Russian peasant toward the rough corn-brandy of his own country is characteristic. The Russian language is full of diminutives expressive of affection. The peasant addresses his superior as Batushka, the affectionate diminutive of the word which means father; he addresses the mistress of the house as Matushka, which is the affectionate diminutive of the Russian word for mother. To his favorite drink, brandy, he has given the name which is the affectionate diminutive of the word voda, water—namely, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... growing almost a woman now, but she was called "little Olive" still. She retained her diminutive stature, together with her girlish dress, but her face wore, as ever, its look of premature age. And as she sat between her father and mother, now helping the one in her delicate fancy-work, now arranging the lamp for the other's reading, continually in request by both, or when left quiet for ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... of the colony, the diminutive market space, facing the front of Notre Dame Church, Lower Town, as well as the Upper Town Market, was used for the infliction of corporal punishment, or the pillory, or the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... the truth, the little man—I mean Mr. Tubbs—at first rather enjoyed his new magnitude. He had experienced mortification so long on account of his diminutive stature, that he felt a little exhilarated at the idea of being able to look down on those to whom he had hitherto felt compelled to look up. It was rather awkward to have people afraid of him. As he turned to leave the square, for the exhibitor of the show had run off in the general ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... street below. So Nelly Lebrun went down in her riding costume, the corduroy swishing at each step, and tapping her shining boots with the riding crop. Her own horse she found at the hitching rack, and beside it Donnegan was on his chestnut horse. It was a tall horse, and he looked more diminutive than ever before, pitched so ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... bridegroom as contrasted with the smallness of his bride. He looked like a great rough bear and she like a silver fairy. There was something intensely pathetic in the curve of his broad shoulders as he bent over the little hand to place in its proud position the diminutive golden circlet which was to ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... Soudanese and Arabs mingle with the cosmopolitan forms in the streets; Nubians black as ebony, their skins seemingly polished, and their bare legs thin almost as beanpoles, slouch lazily along, or perhaps they are bestriding a diminutive donkey, their long, bony feet dangling idly to the ground. All the donkeys of Alexandria are not diminutive, however. Some of the finest donkeys in the world are here, large, sleek-coated, well-fed-looking animals, that appear quite as intelligent as their ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... A.M.; leaving the road to Tal on the left, I followed the track at a medium elevation of 6250 feet, arriving at Shadgora (6350 feet) just in time to witness the blessing of a calf by a Brahmin. Inside a diminutive shrine—into the door of which I was curious enough to peep—I discovered two skinny, repulsive old women, with sunken, discoloured eyes, untidy locks of scanty hair, long unwashed, bony arms and legs, and finger and toe nails of abnormal length. They were clad in a few dirty rags, and were ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... outcry: a police officer was ejecting a diminutive youth who tried to bite his hands and clung to the tables, against which, as he was dragged along, he struck with a ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... sweat. Latakia tobacco, however, is not adapted to the taste of American smokers, most of whom prefer tobacco of home growth to even the finest of Turkish leaf. Latakia tobacco can be raised with less labor than most varieties. Its diminutive size and its unpopularity, however, prevent its general ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... is only my nephew here, and he won't be sorry to hear you talk, I'm sure." There was a shuffling and cleaning of shoes, and then my uncle ushered in as odd a looking old man as I ever saw. He was of diminutive figure, very wizened and wiry, with long grizzly hair and small bright eyes, with a wonderfully roguish expression ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... largest Orkney has 17,000 inhabitants on its 207 square miles of territory or 85 to the square mile. The Shetlands tell the same story—29 out of 100 islands inhabited, some of the holms or smaller islets serving as pastures for the sturdy ponies and diminutive cattle, and Mainland, the largest of the group, showing 58 inhabitants to the square mile. This is a density far greater than is reached in the nearby regions of Scotland, where the county of Sutherland can boast only 13 to the square mile, and Invernesshire ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... voice; with a round English accent, Which the scared German echoes resentfully back sent; The complaint of a much disappointed cab-driver Mingled with it, demanding some ultimate stiver; Then, the heavy and hurried approach of a boot Which reveal'd by its sound no diminutive foot: And the door was flung suddenly open, and on The threshold Lord Alfred by bachelor John Was seized in that sort of affectionate rage or Frenzy of hugs which some stout Ursa Major On some lean ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... ten hours a day expressed no discontent; it kept them off the streets; and the operators, in the kindness of their hearts, had actually had the looms made especially to accommodate conveniently the diminutive size of the little workers. Some people might, with great profit to themselves, read Plato's superb allegory of ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... them—and the clear tinkling of a little bell; then the door opens and a very diminutive toy terrier enters, alone. She's black and tan, seems in love with herself, and comes forward with ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... Amine was a little meagre personage, dressed in the garb of the Dutch seaman of the time, with a cap made of badger-skin hanging over his brow. His features were sharp and diminutive, his face of a deadly white, his lips pale, and his hair of a mixture between red and white. He had very little show of beard— indeed, it was most difficult to say what his age might be. He might have been a sickly youth early sinking into decrepitude, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... to a cessation of hostilities, which might have been followed by a definitive treaty of peace, but the daemon of discord again made its appearance in the tangible shape of a diminutive personage, who, hitherto silently occupying a snug out-of-the-way corner by ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... improved: he had grown six inches out at sea, and though still short, was not diminutive; he was a small Apollo, a model of symmetry, and had an engaging, girlish beauty, redeemed from downright effeminacy by a golden mustache like silk, and a tanned cheek that became ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Meantime diminutive Louis Quillan had led her to the window-seat beneath the corridor, and sat holding one plump trifle of a hand, the, while her speech fluttered bird-like from this topic to that; and be regarded Nelchen Thorn with an abysmal content. The fates, he considered, had ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... kick his shins till sometimes we managed to fall together on the cabin-floor and tumble about there,—pull he, pull I, and a kick together!—till the Watch would look down the skylight upon us, grinning, and chuckle hoarsely that old Belzey, as they called their commander (being a diminutive for Beelzebub), and his young Imp were having a tussle. Thus it came about that among these unthinking Seamen I grew to be called Pug (who, I have heard, is the Lesser Fiend), or Little Brimstone, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... These diminutive observations seem to take away something from the dignity of writing, and therefore are never communicated but with hesitation, and a little fear of abasement and contempt. But it must be remembered, that life consists not of a series of illustrious actions, or elegant enjoyments; the greater ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... at her again and yet again, and their looks crossed. The lip was lifted from her little teeth. He saw the red blood work vividly under her tawny skin. Her eye, which was great as a stag's, struck and held his gaze. He knew who she must be - Kirstie, she of the harsh diminutive, his housekeeper's niece, the sister of the rustic prophet, Gib - and he found in her the answer to ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... some wag in the crowd made a remark about the diminutive size of the speaker, and the ludicrous figure he would cut as a general, at which he ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... which the windows all opened on the piazza. I was at first a little overcome, at thus finding myself, and unrecognized, under the paternal roof, and in a dwelling that was my own, after so many years of absence. Shall I confess it! Everything appeared diminutive and mean, after the buildings to which I had been accustomed in the old world. I am not now drawing comparisons with the palaces of princes, and the abodes of the great, as the American is apt to fancy, whenever anything is named that is superior to ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... detective was in fact the first person we beheld upon the pier platform; raw-boned, stiff-jointed, and more than middle-aged, he must nevertheless have jumped out once again before the train stopped, and that almost on top of a diminutive telegraph boy, who was waiting while the old hound read his telegram with one eye and watched emerging passengers with both. Whether we should have passed him unobserved I cannot say. We could but have tried; but Raffles preferred to grasp ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... below, barring the dining-room which was cut off by the low piazza. The stairway went up from Mrs. Jackson's little bedroom into a duplicate guest-chamber above. Two others, as diminutive, one above and below, were tucked onto these. And this, with the big room, was the Hermitage. A very unpretentious cabin was the first Hermitage; the humble and honored roof of Rachel and Andrew Jackson, the couple standing under the waxen ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... the time enveloped in chilling fogs. Here the properly tropical productions cease to thrive, and melancholy caricatures of northern vegetables and fruits take their place. You see in the Kingston market diminutive and watery potatoes and apples, that have come down from the clouds, and on St. Catherine's Peak I once picked a few strawberries, which had about as much savor as so many chips. The noble forest trees of the lower mountains, as you go up, give way to an exuberant but ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... manner enters and announces two visitors. "Show them in at once," says Florence, quickly, as if to forestall any possible objection from her father. The negro withdraws, and presently, with a rapid swish of skirts, in marches a very spick and span young lady, her diminutive but exceedingly trim figure dressed like an animated fashion-plate. She is Miss Edna Hill, and she comes brisk and dashing, with cheeks afire from the cold, bringing into the dull, dreamy room the life and freshness of the wintry day without. Behind her appears ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... second, if not the first place for fashion and life. Beyond this Ch'ang Men was a street called Shih-li-chieh (Ten Li street); in this street a lane, the Jen Ch'ing lane (Humanity and Purity); and in this lane stood an old temple, which on account of its diminutive dimensions, was called, by general consent, the Gourd temple. Next door to this temple lived the family of a district official, Chen by surname, Fei by name, and Shih-yin by style. His wife, nee Feng, possessed a worthy and virtuous disposition, and had a clear ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... print, Is famous for making the most of a hint. Not a murmur of shame, Or buzz of blame, Not a flying report that flew at a name, Not a plausible gloss, or significant note, Not a word in the scandalous circles afloat, Of a beam in the eye, or diminutive mote, But vortex-like that tube of tin Suck'd the censorious particle in; And, truth to tell, for as willing an organ As ever listen'd to serpent's hiss, Nor took the viperous sound amiss, On the snaky head of ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... is derived from these two classes, called diminutive nouns. These are formed by the termination "ens" or "na" ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... negro was he could not conceive of a white lady's riding without an escort, and failing to see said escort, he fancied it must be some diminutive child perched upon the horse, and was looking to find him, feeling naturally curious to know how the negroes of Yankee land differed from those of Florida. All this Edith understood afterward, ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... lies about ten miles distant from Caen, in a north-easterly direction, in a valley washed by the diminutive stream, the Meu, a little to the north of the road which leads to Bayeux. Of its "short and simple annals," few have come to the knowledge of the writer of this article; and for those few, he is wholly indebted to the ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... mother's going had left in his heart. He had sympathized with her microscopic cut fingers, he had smiled into her glowing, damp little face when she stuttered to him long tales of bad doggies and big 'ticks; he had brought her "jacks" and paper-dolls and hair ribbons; he loved the diminutive femininity of the creature; she was all a woman, even at three. Alix he proudly called his "boy"; Alix used hair ribbons to tie up her dogs, and demanded hip boots and an air rifle and got them, too, and used them, but when he took ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... Lincoln. As usual, the Executive had a swarm of visitors, but he directed the distinguished caller to be admitted at once. As the tall, sad-faced man rose from his chair he towered fully two feet above the diminutive form of the naval officer in his blue swallow-tail, who took the proffered hand, and, after a few conventional words, looked up and ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... proceedings of the parliament, if this diminutive assembly deserve that honorable name, retain not the least appearance of law, equity, or freedom. They instantly reversed the former vote, and declared the king's concessions unsatisfactory. They determined that no member absent at this last vote should be ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... derives this word, or rather its Scotch diminutive, "cadie," from the French, cadet. I have heard it fancifully traced to the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various
... was now under the close-reefed fore-top sail, a diminutive try sail on the mizzen, and the jib. The hum had increased to a roar, but still not a breath of wind ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... dearer to the heart of the adventurous than anything driven by steam. Here, mayhap, will an untravelled traveller make his first acquaintance with the birch-bark canoe, and learn to call it by the affectionate diminutive, "Birch." Earlier in life there was no love lost between him and whatever bore that name. Even now, if the untravelled one's first acquaintance be not distinguished by an unlovely ducking, so much the worse. The ducking must ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... towards the cloister—the remains of the old ruin. We enter St. Bridget's cell—it still stands unchanged. It is low, small and narrow: four diminutive frames form the whole window, but one can look from it out over the whole garden, and far away over the Vettern. We see the same beautiful landscape that the fair Saint saw as a frame around her God, whilst she read her morning and ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... above the transept crossing is a work of the sixteenth century, and is perhaps more remarkable than its rather diminutive appearance, in contrast with the huge bulk of ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... from one common source. When we consider the change that climate and breeding effect in the same species of dog, and contrast the rough Irish or Highland greyhound with the smoother one of the southern parts of Britain, or the more delicate one of Greece, or the diminutive but beautifully formed one of Italy, or the hairless one of Africa or Brazil—or the small Blenheim spaniel with the magnificent Newfoundland; if also we observe many of them varied by accident, and that accidental variety diligently cultivated into a new ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... even more complicated. A small, tapering brass tank, holding about two quarts of water, with a faucet which dripped into a diminutive cup with an unstoppered waste-pipe, was screwed to the wall in our little corridor. We asked for a washstand, and this arrangement was introduced to our notice, the chambermaid being evidently surprised at the ignorance of barbarians who had never seen a washstand before. ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... and chocolate and white, peaked above their red tarbooshes. Then a psalm by a company of Jewish boys in their black skull-caps—a brave old song of Zion sung by silvery young voices in an alien land. Finally, little black Ali, led out by his teacher, with his diminutive Moorish harp in his hands, showing no fear at all, but only a negro boy's shy looks of pleasure—his head aside, his eyes gleaming, his white teeth glinting, ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... and gratulation of Chanticleer and all his family, including the wizened chicken, who appeared to understand the matter quite as well as did his sire, his mother, or his aunt. That afternoon Phoebe found a diminutive egg,—not in the regular nest, it was far too precious to be trusted there,—but cunningly hidden under the currant-bushes, on some dry stalks of last year's grass. Hepzibah, on learning the fact, took possession of the egg and appropriated it to Clifford's ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of sandy, hummocky bench land where the pink of fragile nopal petals brightens the graves in Spring and the mesquite showers them with its golden pods in Summer; where the sweet scent of the juajilla loads the air, and the sun ever shines down out of a bright and cloudless sky; where a diminutive forest of crosses of wood and stone symbolize the faith he in life refused to accept—now, perhaps, Pat Garrett has learned how widely he ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... his companion and then was instantly among the litter of the closet floor. He emerged strapping a belt about him, the holster tugging far down, so that the muzzle of the gun was almost at his knee. Bull appreciated the diminutive size of the man for the first time, seeing him in conjunction with the big ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... found that he was in debt to the extent of some 10 or 11 shillings; but as he felt that by refusing to pay the sum he would be striking a blow for the liberty of the subject, he manfully held out against what he considered an unjust punishment for such diminutive frivolities as he had indulged in." . . . At times incidents of a disturbing and playful nature have roused the wrath of the Chairman and Secretary to a pitch awful to behold. At one time Mr. H. (a ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... they to be furnished with such a luxury? Why, this season the Doctor had hired more than the usual number of pickers. The outbuilding given them to sleep in was thus too small to accommodate all, so two were taken into the house, and a diminutive closet, generally used by the family as a bath-room, was turned into a bed-room for the lucky couple. Now for a description of the bed. Over the bath was placed an ironing-board, and upon this a mattress quite as narrow, almost as hard, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... thickness. In these deposits vast numbers of tropical animals were entombed, and here the oldest equine remains occur, four species of which have been described. These belong to the genus Orohippus (Marsh), and are all of a diminutive size, hardly bigger than a fox. The skeletons of these animals resemble that of the horse in many respects, much more indeed than any other existing species, but, instead of the single toe on each foot, so characteristic of all modern equines, the various species of Orohippus ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... meadow lay open to the sunshine; and there were large flocks of fieldfares, flying round and round, to exercise the newly-fledged young. There were a few habitations scattered along the margin of the fiord; and two or three boats might be seen far off, with diminutive figures of men ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... character of the smile which passed over your lips. You thought of the poor cobbler's immolation. So far, you had been stooping in your gait; but now I saw you draw yourself up to your full height. I was then sure that you reflected upon the diminutive figure of Chantilly. At this point I interrupted your meditations to remark that as, in fact, he was a very little fellow—that Chantilly—he would do better at ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Abbe Galiani, as alert of brain as he was diminutive of stature, attacked the physiocratic doctrines in his Dialogues sur le Commerce des Bles, which Plato and Moliere—so Voltaire pronounced—had combined to write. The refutation of the Dialogues by Morellet was the result of no such brilliant ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... scattered about the whole of this luxuriant area; and here our magnifiers blessed our panting hopes with specimens of conscious existence. In the shade of the woods we beheld brown quadrupeds having all the external characteristics of the bison, but more diminutive than any species of the bos genus in our natural history.' Then herds of agile creatures like antelopes are described, 'abounding on the acclivitous glades of the woods.' In the contemplation of these sprightly animals the ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... delighted in telling the soldiers that the Yankees were a diminutive race, of feeble constitution, timid as hares, with no enthusiasm, and that they would perish in short order under the glow of our southern sun. Any one who has seen a regiment from Ohio or Maine knows ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... creatures of forbidding but varying shape and colour—diminutive bodies ovate and round—brown, grey, glossy black with brown edgings, pink with grey quarterings and grey fringe, whence radiate five sprawling slender "legs," a foot or so long. Though doubtful in appearance, more in consonance with the creepy imagery of a nightmare than a reality ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... reefs—was glimpsed in every part of the plantation always on the move under the white parasol. And once he climbed the headland and appeared suddenly to those below, a white speck elevated in the blue, with a diminutive ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... jealous for Maggie, "she's a small thing, not much of a figure. But fine feathers make fine birds. I see nothing to admire so much in those diminutive women; they look silly by the side o' the men,—out o' proportion. When I chose my wife, I chose her the right size,—neither ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... Vaisyas also, O monarch, follow practices contrary to those that are proper for their own orders. And men become short-lived, weak in strength, energy, and prowess; and endued with small might and diminutive bodies, they become scarcely truthful in speech. And the human population dwindles away over large tracts of country, and the regions of the earth, North and South, and East and West, become crowded with animals and beasts of prey. And during this period, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... writing that had been sent in, for which, when done, he was to receive about twenty-five dollars. Here was Mr. Holland's resource. He began his work about seven o'clock on Sunday evening. He wrote till late. Becoming weary, and his eyelids being heavy, he lighted a spirit-lamp; and with a very diminutive French coffee-pot he prepared, and soon was sipping, a cup of coffee that no doubt would have pleased the Arabian prophet, had he been present to partake. Refreshed by this, he continued his labors until the darkness grew to gray dawn, and the dawn to full light of day. At seven ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... is corroborated, that the Hel Shual have a tail half a cubit long; that they inhabit a district in the Desert at an immense distance south-east of Marocco; that the Hel El Killeb[148] 200 are in a similar direction; that the latter are diminutive, being about two or three cubits[149] in height; that they exclaim bak, bak, bak, and that they have a few articulate sounds, which they mutually understand among themselves; that they are extremely swift of foot, and run as fast as horses. ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... broad basin, the land retiring on each side of us. The estuary to the northward is called Southampton Water, the town of that name being seated on its margin. The opening in the Isle of Wight is little more than a very wide mouth to a very diminutive river or creek, and Cowes, divided into East and West, lines its shores. The anchorage in the arm of the sea off this little haven was well filled with vessels, chiefly the yachts of amateur seamen, and the port itself contained little more than pilot-boats and crafts of a smaller size. ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... often they are garnished with a sheaf of wooden crosses, like children's swords; or, in their default, some hollow old tree with a saint roosting in it, is similarly decorated, or a pole with a very diminutive saint enshrined aloft in a sort of sacred pigeon-house. Not that we are deficient in such decoration in the town here, for, over at the church yonder, outside the building, is a scenic representation of the Crucifixion, built up with old bricks and stones, and made out with painted ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... in a diminutive bower of Oriental luxury. Her decorative tastes were decidedly Eastern and lavishly extravagant. She knew how to arrange a room with the object of stealing away a man's reserve. There is something about the atmosphere of well chosen surroundings which intoxicates ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... long absence from civilisation the diminutive engine and carriages of the narrow-gauge railway looked quite imposing, and it seemed to the girl strange to be out of the jungle when the toy train slid from the forest into open country, through the rice-fields and by the trim palm-thatched villages ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... the word hillock there is the simple expression of comparative smallness in size. In the word doggie for dog, lassie for lass, the addition of the -ie makes the word not so much a diminutive as a term of tenderness or endearment. The idea of smallness, accompanied, perhaps, with that of neatness, generally carries with it the idea of approbation; hence, the word clean in English, means, in German, little kleine. The feeling ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... stood before the most remarkable specimen of the industry of an animal. It was a hut or bower close to a small meadow enameled with flowers. The whole was on a diminutive scale, and I immediately recognized the famous nests described by the hunters of Bruiju. After well observing the whole I gave strict orders to my hunters not to destroy the little building. That, however, was an unnecessary caution, since the ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... with whom he was better acquainted than were his friends. He had had several scrimmages with them on his trips through the mountains, and held them in such wholesome fear that he contrived to avoid a direct conflict. The diminutive miner overflowed with pluck, but in a hand to hand encounter, must be only a child in the grasp of the aboriginal giant. The ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... the way of making the Percys revel in such epithets because he could not remember the girl's name; but this delicious use of the diminutive, as addressed to full-grown ladies, went to Tommy's head. His solemn face kept his secret, but he had some narrow escapes; as once, when saying good-night to Elspeth, he kissed her on mouth, eyes, nose, and ears, and said: "Shall I tuck you in, ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... June of the year marking the opening of the completed Western Extension for through Pacific Coast traffic that a one-car train, drawn by the smartest of passenger engines in charge of a diminutive, red-headed Irishman, stormed bravely up the glistening steel on the eastern approach to Plug Pass. The car was the rebuilt Nadia; and in obedience to a shrill blast of the cab air-whistle, Gallagher brought it to a stand on the ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... our independence from Great Britain, the stream of "long rifles" and hunting shirt men of Virginia and Pennsylvania, who followed the valleys of the Allegheny and the Blue Ridge from north to south, suddenly broke through the western mountain barriers and flowed in diminutive rivulets into the basins of the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Cumberland; afterwards forming, as Theodore Roosevelt most strikingly says, "a shield of sinewy men thrust in between the people of the seaboard and the red warriors of the wilderness." In 1774, James Harrod ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... was laid with fine taste. A diminutive pine-tree, in a pot hung round with wintergreen, stood in the centre of ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... their masters, the electors. Hence, amid dangers daily growing greater in magnitude, the defence of the Empire on land (the garrisoning of one-fifth part of the land-area of the globe) was left to the diminutive professional force established merely for Imperial police purposes—a force smaller than that which Serbia felt necessary to guard her independence, or ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... of the horse at present known is the diminutive Eohippus from the Lower Eocene. Several species have been found, all about the size of a fox. Like most of the early mammals, these ungulates had forty-four teeth, the molars with short crowns and quite distinct in form from the premolars. The ulna and fibula were entire and distinct, ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... beck the dwarf pressed forward with a smile, alternately stretching up to make the most of his diminutive proportions, and then bowing low to crave the good will of the spectators. His appearance brought him instant commendation; and more particularly did the praetorian captain break forth ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... French if the "diligence had passed?" Being answered in the negative he walked into the room where I was, and speedily by his appearance, removed any apprehensions I had felt as to my safety. Nothing could less resemble the tall port and sturdy bearing of a gendarme, than the diminutive and dwarfish individual before me. His height could scarcely have reached five feet, of which the head formed fully a fourth part; and even this was rendered in appearance still greater by a mass of loosely floating black hair that fell upon his neck and ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... and I might have thought myself still in bed, had it not been that my left arm felt a trifle cramped from being squeezed against a board. The men had been right. I was pretty comfortable inside on account of my diminutive stature. ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... practically on the sea beach where it is visible from the express—the visitor to Japan may never see sugar cane until Shikoku is reached. The value of the crop in the whole island is about 800,000 yen. The tall cane is conspicuous alongside the more diminutive rice. In this prefecture an experiment is ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... cooly talked over the affairs of the Tuan Ingris (English gentleman) to a crowd of natives. Suddenly I heard the word kuda. Fortunately kuda (horse) was one of the words I knew: and I at once ordered the kuda to be brought. Half a dozen natives set off to find it. It turned out to be a very diminutive pony, but I ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... he had heard with creditable disinterestedness, and admirable repression of anything beneath the dignity of a philosopher. When one has attained that felicitous point of wisdom from which one sees all mankind to be fools, the diminutive objects may make what new moves they please, one does not marvel at them: their sedateness is as comical as their frolic, and their frenzies more comical still. On this intellectual eminence the wise youth had built his castle, and he had lived in it from an early period. Astonishment never ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Nov'el (Lat. adj. novel'lus, diminutive of no'vus); adj. something new, out of the usual course; n., literally, a story new and out of the usual course; nov'elist; nov'elty; nov'ice, a beginner; novi'tiate, time of ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... season was well begun, and Jimmy delicious in his diminutive furs, Doctor Gregory and his wife had a serious talk, late on a snowy afternoon, and Rachael realized then that her husband had been carrying a slight sense of grievance over ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... the contrary, we were concerned to discover the best method of continuing the war. We knew, I need scarcely say, that humanly speaking ultimate victory for us was out of the question—that had been clear from the very beginning. For how could our diminutive army hope to stand against the overwhelming numbers at the enemy's command? Yet we had always felt that no one is worthy of the name of man who is not ready to vindicate the right, be the odds what they may. We knew also, that the Afrikanders, although devoid of all ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... enough to strike a woman, would allow himself to be beaten by a woman, were she to make at him in self-defence, even if, instead of possessing the stately height and athletic proportions of the aforesaid Isopel, she were as diminutive in stature, and had a hand as delicate, and a foot as small, as a certain royal lady, who was some time ago assaulted by a fellow upwards of six feet high, whom the writer has no doubt she could have beaten had she thought proper to go at him. Such is the deliberate ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... of exquisite feeling and power in other directions. The porches of Bourges, Amiens, Notre Dame of Paris, and Notre Dame of Dijon, may be noted as conspicuous in error: small models of feudal towers with diminutive windows and battlements, of cathedral spires with scaly pinnacles, mixed with temple pediments and nondescript edifices of every kind, are crowded together over the recess of the niche into a confused fool's cap for the saint below. Italian Gothic is almost entirely free ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... in Regie's money-box, and the other two immediately lost in the mat in the pony-carriage. However, Hester found them, and slipped them inside their white gloves, and the expedition started, accompanied by Boulou, a diminutive yellow-and-white dog of French extraction. Boulou was a well-meaning, kind little soul. There was a certain hurried arrogance about his hind-legs, but it was only manner. He was not in reality more conceited than most small dogs who wear ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... name her Dulcinea, as you are her knight, and call her Dulce for short. That is a sweet diminutive, I'm sure," laughed Rose, much ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... and Wac-ki-a-cums resemble each other as well in their persons and dress as in their habits and manners.- their complexion is not remarkable, being the usual copper brown of most of the tribes of North America. they are low in statue reather diminutive, and illy shapen; possessing thick broad flat feet, thick ankles, crooked legs wide mouths thick lips, nose moderately large, fleshey, wide at the extremity with large nostrils, black eyes and black coarse hair. their eyes are ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... position, were of the most arbitrary character. He attended the camp at certain hours and he adhered to his time-table in the most rigorous manner. If you were not there to time, no matter the nature of your injury, you received no attention. Similarly, if the number of patients lined up outside the diminutive hospital were in excess of those to whom he could give attention during the hours he had set forth, he would turn the surplus away with the intimation that they could present themselves the next day at the ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... swing, and within a couple of months of the nuptial knot being tied. She was christened Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna, but was at first called by the second of these names. This, however, being a bit of a mouthful for a small child, she herself soon clipped it to the diminutive Lola. The name ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... help showing in our own faces as the dear child's head recorded its passage with a bump on every stair—Richard afterwards said he counted seven, besides one for the landing—received us with perfect equanimity. She was a pretty, very diminutive, plump woman of from forty to fifty, with handsome eyes, though they had a curious habit of seeming to look a long way off. As if—I am quoting Richard again—they could see nothing nearer ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... little tiger, and by the fierceness of her gestures and the volubility of her German jargon actually compelled him to retreat step by step until she had him outside the door, which she barred with her diminutive person. No one could help laughing at the discomfited giant and the mite of a child facing him so bravely, while she scolded at ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... Catholic. He alone was both their architect and their builder, working at them with inexhaustible industry and labour, for generally the thickest walls had to be broken into and large stones excavated, requiring stronger arms than were attached to a body so diminutive as to give him the nickname of 'Little John,' and by this his skill many priests were preserved from the prey of persecutors. Nor is it easy to find anyone who had not often been indebted for his life ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... re-centre them on Him. With the mind turned in this way, steadily towards God, we are in that state known to science as polarisation: we are in that condition in which common iron becomes a magnet. It is so that God transforms us into a diminutive ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... the bolt of a crossbow, an arrow having a square, or four-edged head (from Middle Latin quadrellus, diminutive ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... wooden bedstead in one corner, a huge sofa covered in black horsehair in another. A large table stood in the centre of the room, and there were at least four capacious armchairs round it. There were wardrobes and cabinets, a diminutive washstand and a huge pier-glass, there were innumerable boxes and packing-cases, cane-bottomed chairs and what-nots every-where. The place looked like a ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... borrowed—simply means the "product of the womb" (compare Gothic kilthei, "womb"). The Lowland-Scotch dialect still preserves an old word for "child" in bairn, cognate with Anglo-Saxon bearn, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish, and Gothic barn (the Gothic had a diminutive barnilo, "baby"), Sanskrit bharna, which signifies "the borne one," "that which is born," from the primitive Indo-European root bhr, "to bear, to carry in the womb," whence our "to bear" and the German "ge-baren." Son, which finds its cognates in all the principal Aryan dialects, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... the crowd made a remark about the diminutive size of the speaker, and the ludicrous figure he would cut as a general, at which he became enraged ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... also, even as the waters of a high flood, into the nooks and crannies of the distant blue walls of the Sierras. Father first, in a pointed straw hat, then the mother with the bigger children, generally also a diminutive donkey, all under burdens, except the leader himself, or perhaps some grown girl, the pride of the family, stepping barefooted and straight as an arrow, with braids of raven hair, a thick, haughty profile, and no load ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... who were among the pioneer hunters of Kentucky.[52] Previous to trying to move their families out to the new country, they made a cache of clothing, implements, and provisions, which in their absence was broken into and plundered. They caught the thief, "a little diminutive, red-headed white man," a runaway convict servant from one of the tide-water counties of Virginia. In the first impulse of anger at finding that he was the criminal, one of the McAfees rushed at him ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... neat and cleanly creature, everlastingly brushing her clothes, and bathing regularly in a bath of snow provided for her in the cabin. This last operation was her great delight. She would throw up the white flakes with her diminutive nose, rolling about and burying herself in them, wipe her face with her soft paws, and then mount to the side of the tub, looking round her knowingly, and barking the prettiest bark that ever was heard. This was her way of enforcing admiration; and being now satisfied with her performance, she ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... was tired and would rather stay by the tent, so Nugget and Clay prepared their rods and went down the creek a short distance to a jutting point of rock. With a diminutive hook they caught a couple of minnows, which they ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... there outspread! But lo! there appears a diminutive wight, A dwarf 'tis, yet graceful, and bearing a light, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... rooms save the one with the Murillos, and the great gallery, and to dine at the Diners de Paris. If he asks leave to wash his hands before dining there, he will observe a little astonishment among the waiters at the barbarian cleanliness of the English, and be shown into a little room, where a diminutive bowl will be proffered to him, of which more anon; let him first (as we did) wash or rather sprinkle his face as best he can, and then we will tell him after dinner what we generally do with the bowls in question. I forget how many things they gave us, but I am sure many more ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... with a woman's skirt flipping at her side! We begged for delay, for reflection, for at least time to change the saddle—but with no avail! Consuelo was determined, indignant, distressingly reproachful! Ah, well! if Don Pancho (an ingenious diminutive of my Christian name) valued his horse so highly—if he were jealous of the evident devotion of the animal to herself, he would—but here I succumbed! And then I had the felicity of holding that little foot for one brief moment in the hollow of my hand, of readjusting the ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... came back, she was attended by Juliana carrying a tray of lemonade glasses. Juliana proved to be a diminutive lass of about fourteen whose cheerful, freckled face wore an expansive grin of pleasure. Evidently Juliana was as fond of "company" as her mistress was. Afterwards, the girls overheard a subdued colloquy between Miss Sally and Juliana out in ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Being answered in the negative he walked into the room where I was, and speedily by his appearance, removed any apprehensions I had felt as to my safety. Nothing could less resemble the tall port and sturdy bearing of a gendarme, than the diminutive and dwarfish individual before me. His height could scarcely have reached five feet, of which the head formed fully a fourth part; and even this was rendered in appearance still greater by a mass of loosely floating black ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... by the negligence of his dress and mien, whereas no man was more wary and cultivated in his behaviour and discourse; how Chillingworth argued for the pleasure of arguing and thereby irritated his friends and at last grew confident of nothing; how Hales, great in scholarship but diminutive in stature, liked to be by himself but had a very open and pleasant conversation in congenial company; how Waller nursed his reputation for ready wit by seeming to speak on the sudden what he had thoroughly considered. ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... were slowly mouching from the corrals as he neared the sheds. A diminutive herder was urging them along with shrill, piping shrieks—vicious but ineffective. Far more to the purpose were the efforts to a well-trained, bob-tailed sheep dog who was awaking echoes on the brisk morning air with the full-toned note of ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... render himself thoroughly independent, or, more likely still, to surround his diminutive individuality with an air of mystery—had abandoned his birth-place, and established himself about two miles away from it, near a singularly-formed sandstone rock, situated in a small but exceedingly pretty fir-wood, and commonly known by the name of the Bear's church. Here he spent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... the other gods of the pantheon take on some of his character. Whenever and wherever possible, those phases of the god's nature are emphasized which point to the possession of power over enemies. The gods of the Assyrian pantheon impress one as diminutive Ashurs by the side of the big one, and in proportion as they approach nearer to the character of Ashur himself, is their hold ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... door stood hospitably open, as it had always had a trick of doing, and in the wide old hall were two children, one of whom sat on the stairs, with a sober, thoughtful face, while the other, in diminutive petticoats, was trying to stand on his head against the stout bannister-post. One failure followed another, in discouraging succession, but the little fellow kept determinedly at it, in spite of bumps and thumps, and ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... longer stay, we might soon have been upon good terms with this ape-like nation. For, in general, they are the most ugly, ill-proportioned people I ever saw, and in every respect different from any we had met with in this sea. They are a very dark- coloured and rather diminutive race; with long heads, flat faces, and monkey countenances. Their hair mostly black or brown, is short and curly; but not quite so soft and woolly as that of a negroe. Their beards are very strong, crisp, and bushy, and generally black and short. But what most adds to their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... old man wrapped up in a thick great-coat, though it was a warm day in June—a clear-eyed, small-featured, diminutive old man, who had sat the whole time, taking no apparent interest in the proceedings. All eyes were turned upon him in a moment, and he quietly repeated the awful monosyllable—"eight!" Mr Gillingham Howard looked at the old gentleman with detestation in every feature, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... any one wanting to pass through the room, without pushing or knocking against those who were sleeping there, would have to crawl on hands and knees. The old seaman wondered who the persons could be that were able to pass in this crowded place. He soon discovered that they were two diminutive acolytes, in surplice and cassock, each bearing ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... adieu to the Pacific Ocean, for a voyage on it is one of the most monotonous things that can be imagined. The appearance of another ship is a rare occurrence; and the water is so calm that it resembles a stream. Very frequently I used to start up from my desk, thinking that I was in some diminutive room ashore; and my mistake was the more natural, as we had three horses, a dog, several pigs, hens, geese, and a canary bird on board, all respectively neighing, barking, grunting, cackling, and singing, as if they ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... with flames emanating from his body and hence he was called Bhrigu. From the rays of the sacrificial fire sprang another called Marichi. From Marichi (afterwards) sprang Kasyapa. It has been already said that from the (burning) charcoals sprang Angiras. The (diminutive) Rishis called Valakhilyas sprang from the blades of Kusa grass spread out in that sacrifice. From the same blades of Kula grass, O thou of great puissance, sprang Atri. From the ashes of the fire sprang all those that are numbered ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... happened to be a sturdy little Goorkha, one of the Kumaon battalion. On the approach of the Afghan he immediately came to the charge, and warned him that none but European officers were allowed on the top of the tower. The Afghan laughed, and then, looking with contempt at the diminutive sentry, a dwarf in comparison with himself, he attempted to push aside the bayonet. Losing all patience, the Goorkha at this threw down his musket, and drawing his kukri, the favourite weapon of his race, he rushed at the Afghan with up-lifted blade. This was too ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... like stars. The hands of Fayaway were as soft and delicate as those of any countess; for an entire exemption from rude labour marks the girlhood and even prime of a Typee woman's life. Her feet, though wholly exposed, were as diminutive and fairly shaped as those which peep from beneath the skirts of a Lima lady's dress. The skin of this young creature, from continual ablutions and the use of mollifying ointments, was ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... confidence, which this sense of success will give the pupil, will probably, in his own opinion, be thought well worthy the price. Neither his reason nor his will was in fault; all he wanted, was strength to break the diminutive chains of habit; chains which, it seems, have power to enfeeble their captives exactly in proportion to the length ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... be of the nature of calcareous sea-weeds (Algoe) have been detected in the White Chalk; and the flints of the same formation commonly contain the spore-cases of the microscopic Desmids (the so-called Xanthidia), along with the siliceous cases of the equally diminutive Diatoms. ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... silence and prevent the certain depreciation of the goods which they already possessed. I should have dealt with them, not greedily or rapaciously, but on honest principles of fair barter. "Gentlemen," I should have said, or rather, "Gents"—which affectionate diminutive is, I am given to understand, at present much in use among commercial persons—"Gents, my researches, my genius, or my good fortune, have brought me to the valuable discovery about which you are come to treat. Will you purchase it outright, or will you give the discoverer an honest ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dimensions, notwithstanding some loose assertions to the contrary, seem to be much the same as they were in the time of the Saracens. European critics, however, condemn its most elaborate beauties as "heavy and barbarous." Its celebrated portals are pronounced "diminutive, and in very bad taste." Its throng of pillars gives it the air of "a park rather than a temple," and the whole is made still more incongruous by the unequal length of their shafts, being grotesquely compensated by a proportionate variation of size in their bases and capitals, ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... at the time I speak of, close upon seventy years of age, scarcely five feet in height, and even that diminutive stature lessened by a stoop. His face was thin, pointed, and russet-colored; his nose so aquiline as nearly to meet his projecting chin, and his small gray eyes, red and bleary, peered beneath his well-worn cap with a glance of mingled ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... which Ariel is introduced thus trifling is, that he and his companions are evidently of the fairy kind, an order of beings to which tradition has always ascribed a sort of diminutive agency, powerful but ludicrous, a humorous and frolick controlment of nature, well expressed by the songs ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... bugaboo, in its entirety! Can you conceive of a man's getting himself into a sweat over so diminutive a provocation? I am sure I can't. What the devil can those friends of mine have been thinking about, to spread these 3 or 4 harmless things out into two months of daily sneers and affronts? The whole offense, boiled down, amounts to just this: one uncourteous remark ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... few other packages not to be undone by anybody but her, because their contents were meant to, and did, cause peals of laughter to the audience and much embarrassment to Katie. On the lines hung first an array of baby clothes, all diminutive size, marked, "For little Charlie." Such are the traditions. Also hung seven kitchen pans, a pail, an egg-beater and gem pans; a percolator, a double boiler and goodness knows what not. On the table stood six cake tins, more pots and pans, salt and ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... of British Honduras (see his account of the excavations in Part II. of the 19th Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution of Washington). Among them is a pottery figure of a wani or makara in the form of an alligator, equipped with diminutive deer's horns (like the dragon of Eastern Asia); and its skin is studded with circular elevations, presumably meant to represent the spots upon the star-spangled "Celestial Stag" of the Aryans (p. 130). As in the Japanese pictures mentioned by Aston, ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... the son of Francesco Sarpi and Isabella Morelli, Venetians of the humbler middle class. He was born in 1552, christened Pietro, and nicknamed Pierino because of his diminutive stature. On entering the Order of the Servites he adopted the religious name of Paolo, which he subsequently rendered famous throughout Europe. Since he died in 1623, Sarpi's life coincided with a period of supreme interest and manifold vicissitudes in the decline of Venice. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Mr. Watkin's pintos and one liver of his own, was now shy all three. By these facts a strong presumptive case having been made out, Mr. Watkins was thenceforth known not as Ezekiel or Emanuel, or whatever his original first name had been, but as Liver-Eating, or among friends by the affectionate diminutive of Liv for short. ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... far as one can judge, been allowed to sink into the earth, nor, as is too often the case, to heel over, to be then broken up, carted away, or put to pave the church and churchyard. There is quite a collection of primitive and diminutive headstones, carefully ranged against the south wall of Hatfield Church, dating from 1687 to 1700; and the specimens of carving in the older parts of the churchyard are of great number and many designs. The one which appears in the ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... singular Mercury is in many of the particulars of planetary existence, but first of all let us endeavor to obtain a clear idea of the actual size and mass of this strange little planet. Compared with the earth it is so diminutive that it looks as if it had been cut out on the pattern of a satellite rather than that of an independent planet. Its diameter, 3,000 miles, only exceeds the moon's by less than one half, while both Jupiter and Saturn, among their remarkable collections of moons, have each at least one that is ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... exhibited his usual activity and earnestness. "He disputed in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him." [102:2] The Christian preacher, doubtless, soon became an object of no little curiosity. He was of diminutive stature; [102:3] he seems to have laboured under the disadvantages of imperfect vision; [102:4] and his Palestinian Greek must have sounded harshly in the ears of those who were accustomed to speak their mother tongue in its Attic purity. But, though his "bodily presence was weak," [102:5] he ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... friends and favourites, Kate Hubbard, a younger sister of Miss Patsey's—one who from childhood had always been welcome among them. William Cassius Clapp had curly hair, bright black eyes, and pink cheeks—and, consequently, was generally thought an Adonis: his wife was a diminutive little creature, quite pretty, and very amiable; a sort of mixture of Miss Patsey and Charlie, without the more striking qualities of either. Some of her friends had thought her thrown away upon Clapp; but she seemed perfectly satisfied after five years' experience, ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... of most painful bites that he was encroaching on their domain. Yet it was sometimes ludicrous to see one of the party momentarily stamping and roaring with pain, as he cried out to a companion to hasten and assist him in getting rid of an enemy at once so diminutive and so troublesome. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... has the diminutive 'Mariechen'. To this Dr. Ebers appends this note. "An ignorant critic took exception to the use of the diminutive form of names (as for instance 'Irenchen', little Irene) in 'The Sisters,' as an anachronism. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... first sin, father; for I have allowed myself made to descend from two old Roman consuls, S. Geganius Macerinus 1st, Macerinus 2d, and Proculus Macerinus 3d, of whom the Chronicle of Haolander speaks. From Macerinus to Mazarin the proximity was tempting. Macerinus, a diminutive, means leanish, poorish, out of case. Oh! reverend father! Mazarini may now be carried to the augmentative Maigre, thin as Lazarus. Look!" and he showed his ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the four was John Clemens, whose nickname, "String," indicated what his physique was. He was six feet three inches in height, although his weight was not much more than that of the more diminutive Fred. "The long and the short of it" the two boys sometimes were called ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... are sized, as it is called, the tallest being placed at the after-end, and so on down to the most diminutive, who is fixed at the extremity. But this arrangement, being more of a military than of a naval cast, is rarely adopted now-a-days. It will seldom happen, indeed, that the biggest and burliest fellows in a ship's company are the leading ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... as ornament and to express emotions, as a fan to any flirtatious Spanish senora. One always thinks of these dainty feathered creatures as females. It would seem quite natural to call the wagtail "lady-bird," if that name had not been registered by a diminutive podgy tortoise-shaped black and ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... "Your gift would match the piece I already have and which—dolt that I was!—I overlooked to include in my chain of reasoning." And thrusting his hand into his ragged doublet, after some search he extracted a diminutive disk upon which he gazed not without ardor. "Thus are we forced to start the chain of reasoning anew," he remarked, "with Horace and this bit of metal on one side of the scales and Nanette on the other. Now unless the devil ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... friend of hers and mine, my dear and excellent William Harness, said that seeing me was exactly like looking at Mrs. Siddons through the diminishing end of an opera glass. My personal likeness to her, in spite of my diminutive size and irregular features, was striking, and of course suggested, to those who remembered her, associations which were fatal to my satisfactory performance of the part. I disliked the play and the character of Belvidera, and ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... English commonly travel. As I looked on the passers by, I was again struck with what I had observed almost immediately on entering the town—the portly figures and florid complexions of some, and the very diminutive stature and sallow countenances of others. Among the crowds about the coach, was a ruddy round-faced man in a box-coat and a huge woollen cravat, walking about and occasionally giving a look at the porters, whom we took to be the coachman, ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... retains. Even this idea of the seat of magnetic influence, together with the construction of the compass-box, the division of the card into eight principal points, and each of these again subdivided into three, the manner of suspending the needle, and its diminutive size, seldom exceeding in length three quarters of an inch, are all of them strong presumptions of its being an original, and ...
— 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
... was readily granted. He was a stout, hearty, good-natured fellow, possessed of a rich Irish accent, and in the best of humor commenced to prepare his supper. Just about this time there came into camp another lone man, leading a diminutive donkey, not much larger than a good-sized sheep. The donkey, on halting, gave us a salute that simply silenced the ordinary mule. The two men got acquainted immediately, and by the time their supper was over they had struck a bargain to put their effects together by way of hitching the donkey ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... us depart. His long mobile ears shoot out from the stable door as he endeavours to follow us into the box of his neighbour, a dainty Shetland pony, some three feet six inches high, which is usually known as "The Skewbald." This diminutive little lady welcomes us in the most charming manner, and is as frolicsome as a kitten, romping about and playing all sorts of tricks. Her mission in life, besides being everyone's pet, is to draw a small two-wheeled cart for Her ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Joe, trusted nobody. But since he had no intention of arresting Pee-wee and since the diminutive captive seemed rather angered than frightened, he released his hold. By a series of wriggles and contortions, Pee-wee adjusted his clothing and settled his neck in his stretched neckband. "Why don't—why—why don't you take a—a—a feller your size?" he half ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... rambling frame house dozing on a wide flower-bordered lot. There was nothing sleepy about the diminutive woman who opened the door to Jim's knock. Snapping black eyes peered at him from a maze of wrinkles. A veined hand moved swiftly to smooth down the white hair ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Wesley Barefoot
... and cheese, without taking out their purses. Payment was made only for the ale, porter, or sherry which was drunk. This seemed "very American" to Passepartout. The hotel refreshment-rooms were comfortable, and Mr. Fogg and Aouda, installing themselves at a table, were abundantly served on diminutive plates by ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... ceremonies pour parler a madame? On parle bien a Perrette" (Marianne, 2e partie). Perrette, from the well-known fable of La Fontaine, Perrette et le pot at lait, has come down to us as the personification of the dreamer, the builder of air-castles. Margot, a diminutive of Marguerite, is a common ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... he could hear the smooth, even hum of the sweetly functioning generator, but it only reminded him of the vastly greater energies he had seen controlled that night. The thudding relays in the power room, as Wade maneuvered the ship, seemed some diminutive mockery of the giant relays he had seen in the power room of ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... stood alternately nuzzling her and looking up to us with plaintive whines. The next instant I swung out of my saddle, and, bending down, raised the unfortunate creature in my arms, when I saw, to my amazement, that she was evidently a full-grown woman, but of very diminutive stature, being only about four feet six inches in height. Moreover she was in a most shockingly emaciated condition, and on her back was a close network of scarcely healed scars, which looked as though they might have resulted from a most merciless scourging; and she was in a deep ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... finery. Fine gowns of inconvenient length, expanded over large crinolines—silk mantles richly trimmed,—often conceal the coarsest, scantiest, and most ragged underclothing. We have seen the most diminutive bonnets, not bigger than saucers, ornamented with beads and flowers and lace, and backed up by ready-made "chignons," on the heads of girls who are only one degree removed from the poor-house. Servant-girls who can scarcely read, much less write,—who do not know how to spell ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... stars, and rescues him from the murky grave. A copious gale elevates the Dircean swan, O Antonius, as often as he soars into the lofty regions of the clouds: but I, after the custom and manner of the Macinian bee, that laboriously gathers the grateful thyme, I, a diminutive creature, compose elaborate verses about the grove and the banks of the watery Tiber. You, a poet of sublimer style, shall sing of Caesar, whenever, graceful in his well-earned laurel, he shall drag the fierce Sygambri along the sacred hill; ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... reply, and blushed far into his brick-colored hair. He was of an age when a babyish diminutive becomes a thorn unspeakable. Mrs. Weatherwax glanced tranquilly past his ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... letter, he became so much depressed in spirits that many of his friends thought it advisable to use other means to bring about the happy union. "Strange," said he, "that the contents of this diminutive letter should cause me to have such depressed feelings; but there is a nobler theme than this. I know not why my MILITARY TITLE is not as great as that of SQUIRE VALEER. For my life I cannot see that my ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sat on her verandah in a fluffy white tea gown, and then it was that little Annie Eustace came across the street, and sat with her. Annie was not little. Although slender, she was, in fact, quite tall and wide shouldered and there was something about her which seemed to justify the use of the diminutive adjective. Possibly it was her face, which was really small and very pretty, with perfect cameo-like features and an odd, deprecating, almost painfully humble expression. It was the face of a creature ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... minute type, which are scattered here and there without any apparent law or ascertained principle of arrangement. Seeing how imperfect is our acquaintance with even the larger objects of this class, it is rash to insist on the antiquity or permanence of such diminutive objects, or to dogmatise about the cessation of lunar activity in connection with features where the volcanic history of our globe, if it is of any value as an analogue, teaches us it is most likely ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... of nature?" there ensued the discovery that of the said product of nature there remained little beyond the tail, while Sobakevitch, with an air as though at least HE had not eaten it, was engaged in plunging his fork into a much more diminutive piece of fish which happened to be resting on an adjacent platter. After his divorce from the sturgeon, Sobakevitch ate and drank no more, but sat frowning ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... from Petrograd I remember only three. The family name of one was Ivanoff, but he was always known to the Otriad as Goga, a pet diminutive of George. He was perhaps the youngest person whom I have ever known. He must have been eighteen years of age; he looked about eleven, with a round red face and wide-open eyes that expressed eternal astonishment. Like Mr. Toots', his mind was continually occupied with his tailor and ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... fancier had two diminutive "Norwegian truffle 'unters" which he was anxious to part with, but we couldn't wait to talk to him. Nor had we time to ask him whether truffle growing was an industry in Norway, or whether the substituting of dogs for pigs in hunting truffles ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... of wealth to the people of Scandinavia. They are diminutive in size, dun-colored, docile in habits, and excellent milk producers. It is said when they are well-fed they average from six to nine hundred gallons of milk a year. The mountain saeters, or dairies as we would call them, are the ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... from Hadebusch's was a little cafe known as The Paradise. Everything in it was diminutive, the proprietor, the waitress, the tables, the chairs and the portions. There the brethren from the Vale of Tears assembled to drag the gods down into the dust and destroy ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... notions are found. There are at this day countries where the Lifeguardsman Shaw would be considered as a much greater warrior than the Duke of Wellington. Bonaparte loved to describe the astonishment with which the Mamelukes looked at his diminutive figure. Mourad Bey, distinguished above all his fellows by his bodily strength, and by the skill with which he managed his horse and his sabre, could not believe that a man who was scarcely five feet high, and rode like a butcher, could be ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Epicurus, the soul is regarded as corporeal or material, like the body; they form, together, one nature or substance. The soul is composed of atoms exceedingly diminutive, smooth, and round, and connected with or diffused through the veins, viscera, and nerves. The substance of the soul is not to be regarded as simple and uncompounded; its constituent parts are aura, heat, and air. These are not sufficient, however, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the article in No. 16., "on Pet Names," had not been Scottish, I should have been less surprised at the author's passing over the name of Jock, universally used in Scotland for John. The termination ick or ck is often employed, as marking a diminutive object, or object of endearment. May not the English term Jack, if not directly borrowed from the Scottish Jock, have been formed through the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... head, or, rather, half off it—pushed back from his forehead, and rather suspended than poised. He stood before a table on which old newspapers were scattered, one of which he had taken up and, with his eye-glass on his nose, was holding out at arm's-length. It was that honourable but extremely diminutive sheet, the Journal de Geneve, a newspaper of about the size of a pocket-handkerchief. As I drew near, looking for my Galignani, the tall gentleman gave me, over the top of his eye-glass, a somewhat solemn ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... not startled you," returned Hugh, courteously, with one of his pleasant smiles. What a diminutive creature she was; no wonder he had taken her at first sight for a child; her stature was hardly more than that a well-grown child of eleven or twelve, and the little white frock and broad-brimmed hat might have belonged to ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... stretching its shimmering length like a bimetallic serpent to the north and south, he suddenly became conscious of a pair of very sharp eyes resting upon him, which a closer inspection showed belonged to a laborer of seemingly diminutive stature, who was engaged in carrying earth in a wheelbarrow from one dirt-pile to another. As Thaddeus caught his eye the laborer assumed towering proportions. He rose up quite two feet higher in the air ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... a broad basin, the land retiring on each side of us. The estuary to the northward is called Southampton Water, the town of that name being seated on its margin. The opening in the Isle of Wight is little more than a very wide mouth to a very diminutive river or creek, and Cowes, divided into East and West, lines its shores. The anchorage in the arm of the sea off this little haven was well filled with vessels, chiefly the yachts of amateur seamen, and the port itself contained little ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... is now quite universally taken slightly faster than andante, in spite of the fact that if andante means "going," and if "ino" is the diminutive ending, then andantino means "going less," ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... to more than a mile in vertical thickness. In these deposits vast numbers of tropical animals were entombed, and here the oldest equine remains occur, four species of which have been described. These belong to the genus Orohippus (Marsh), and are all of a diminutive size, hardly bigger than a fox. The skeletons of these animals resemble that of the horse in many respects, much more indeed than any other existing species, but, instead of the single toe on each foot, so characteristic ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the Pacific. But fortunately one of a small group of coral islands lay quite in its line, and, nothing daunted, the brave scientific men set their faces toward this friendly cluster, in cheerful faith that they could locate there. Directed to take up their abode somewhere on a diminutive island about which nothing could be ascertained beforehand, save the bare fact of its existence at a known spot in mid-ocean, the American observers were absent from the United States more than three months, most of which time was spent in travelling, ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... men delighted in telling the soldiers that the Yankees were a diminutive race, of feeble constitution, timid as hares, with no enthusiasm, and that they would perish in short order under the glow of our southern sun. Any one who has seen a regiment from Ohio or Maine knows how true these statements were. And besides, the newspapers did ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... little newspaper; and the other day there came a letter of a bulk, volume, pith, judgment, and knowledge, worthy to have been the product of a giant. You may laugh as much and as wickedly as you please; but the fact is, there is a quiet constancy about this, my diminutive and red-haired friend, which adds a foot to his stature, turns his sandy locks dark, and altogether dignifies him a good deal in my estimation. However, I am not bothered by much vehement ardour—there is the nicest distance and ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... years ago when first approaching the Alps; and I began to consider, that as the extreme clearness of the atmosphere gave them the appearance of proximity in the far distance, so it would also partly account for the diminutive aspect they persisted in presenting. I dismounted, and scrambled up the bold ledge of rock, and found myself already a hundred feet above the level of the Nile. Here my Arab guide produced cold fowl, bread, wine, and Nile water in plenty at the foot of this mountain of stone, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... waiting for the zephyr, which might soon be expected. The gallant frigate, seen from the impending rocks, looked like a light merchantman, in all but her symmetry and warlike guise; nature being moulded on so grand a scale all along that coast, as to render objects of human art unusually diminutive to the eye. On the other hand, the country-houses, churches, hermitages, convents, and villages, clustered all along the mountain-sides, presented equally delusive forms, though they gave an affluence to the views that left the spectator in a strange doubt which ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... discarded but ready rifle. A moment he stared, incredulous, at the strange vision fronting him, his face quickly reddening from embarrassment, his eyes irresolute and puzzled. Scarcely ten feet away, a woman, rather brightly attired and apparently very much at her ease, sat upon a rather diminutive pony, her red lips curved in lines of laughter, evidently no little amused at thus startling him. Brown realized that she was young and pretty, with jet black, curling hair, and eyes of the same color, ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... who seemed to be a thin diminutive-looking fellow of any age, whose perfectly smooth face looked peculiarly yellow, planted his hands one on either side of the cask, sank down, and then sprang up again, cleverly passed his legs over the side and ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... harps and violins. It reminded him that there was to be dancing. The tent had in the meantime half filled with a new set of young people who had come expressly for that pastime. Behind the girls gathered numbers of newly arrived young men with low shoulders and diminutive moustaches, who were evidently prepared for once to ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... from the warrior's shoulder, was stuck a large eagle feather, the insignia of a chief. At his feet, where he had crumpled down under the enemy's bullets, lay the Indian lad in a huddled heap. It did not need the tiny eagle feather in the diminutive turban to convince Charley's observant eye that it was a case of father and son, a chief and son of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... exhausted his powers in vain over the details of another period, seeking unsuccessfully for any documents which might allude to the present conspiracy, to enable him to perceive its true meaning, and all that had been attempted against him, when a diminutive man, of an olive complexion, who stooped much, entered the cabinet with a measured step. This was a Secretary of State ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... day and most of the night the rue Vaugirard is busy. During the morning, push-carts loaded with red gooseberries, green peas, fresh sardines, and mackerel, their sides shining like silver, line the curb in front of the small shops. Diminutive donkeys, harnessed to picturesque two-wheeled carts piled high with vegetables, twitch their long ears and doze in the shady corners of the street. The gutters, flushed with clear water, flash in the sunlight. ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... nests of Foreign birds, that of the Taylor Bird deserves especial mention; the bird itself is a diminutive one, being little more than three inches long; it is an inhabitant of India. The nest is sometimes constructed of two leaves, one of them dead; the latter is fixed to the living one as it hangs upon the tree, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... observe the self-importance of the skipper of any of these diminutive vessels. He would give himself all the airs of an admiral on a three-decker's poop; and no doubt, thought quite as much of himself. And why not? What could Caesar want more? Though his craft was none of ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... crimson carpet, in which my feet seemed to me buried, as in woodland moss, I used to be brought for recompense of having been "very good," and there I used to find a lovely-looking lady, who was to me the fitting divinity of this shrine of pleasant awfulness. She bore a sweet Italian diminutive for her Christian name, added to one of the noblest old ducal names of Venice, which was that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... things at this terrible height, it takes our breath away. What a panorama of dark earth and glistening river and ocean must be spread out beneath them! How the big moon must glow in that rarefied air! How diminutive and puerile must seem the houses and ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... State Horticultural Society, I find the following interesting paper from the pen of Mr. C. W. Idell, a commission merchant, whose intelligent interest in fruits extends beyond their current price. He gives so graphic a picture of the diminutive beginning of small fruit growing and marketing, that I am ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... shook his head genially. The little man's drift was obvious. He turned toward the one attractive cottage in the settlement, and saw a woman's figure standing at the doorway talking to a diminutive boy. ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... authorising the people to choose electors naturally excited a long and bitter debate, in which Azariah C. Flagg represented the Regency. Flagg was a printer by trade, the publisher of a Republican paper at Plattsburg, and a veteran of the War of 1812. He was not prepossessing in appearance; his diminutive stature, surmounted by a big, round head gave him the appearance of Atlas with the world upon his shoulders. His voice, too, was shrill and unattractive; but he suddenly evinced shrewdness and address in legislative tactics that greatly worried ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... from his enemies and but little defense from his friends. One of his most formidable critics, writing long years after the war, describes him as "hungry for regard, influence, and honor, but too diminutive in intellect and character to feel the glow of true ambition—a man made, so to speak, to be neither loved nor hated, esteemed nor despised, slighted nor admired; intended to play an influential part ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... Greenland in the spring; his brother Thorvald succeeded him, and remained two winters in Vinland exploring much of the coast and country.[19] In the course of the third summer the natives, now called Esquimaux, were first seen; on account of their diminutive stature the adventurers gave them the name of Skraelingar.[20] These poor savages, irritated by an act of barbarous cruelty, attacked the Northmen with darts and arrows, and Thorvald fell a victim to their vengeance. A wealthy Icelander, named Thorfinn, established a regular colony ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... safety—for there the soil was not encumbered with decayed vegetation—and they spurred their animals to the top of their speed. It was a noble sight to see the majestic white steed flying toward the mound with the velocity of the wind, while the diminutive pony miraculously followed in the wake like an inseparable shadow. The careering flames were not far behind, and, when the horses gained the summit and Glenn looked back, the fire had ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... chase and by plunder. This portion were termed boshmen, or bushmen, and have still retained that appellation: living in extreme destitution, sleeping in caves, constantly in a state of starvation, they soon dwindled down to a very diminutive race, and have ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... tiny garden-gate of Redman's Farm, looking about him with a supercilious benevolence, like a man conscious of bestowing a distinction. He was inwardly sensible of a sort of condescension in entering so diminutive and homely a place—a kind of half amusing disproportion between Jos. Larkin, Esq., of the Lodge, worth, already, L27,000, and on the high road to greatness, and the trumpery little place in which ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... pier one passes up the narrow white street, no broader than a Cologne lane, but clean and bright as is no other street in Europe, past the cafes with low balconies, and the little shops—into some there are three or four steps to descend, into others there is an ascent of a diminutive ladder—till the small square or garden is reached in front of the Conversation House, a spacious building with a good ball-room and reading-room, where a kiosque, always in summer full of the fragrant ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... fall we had a very refreshing shower bath under a thundering cascade of water tumbling over the edge of a gorge. Near at hand, and conveniently so, too, for the priesthood, is a small shrine sacred to the Hindoo god Brahin, a diminutive edition of whom stands on a little pedestal, amidst braziers, lamps, figures with elephants' heads and human bodies, and other monstrosities. You may be certain there was a mendicant priest ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... to educate and train the diminutive prodigy, devoting many hours to the task by day and by night, and he was very successful, for the boy was an apt pupil, with a great deal of native talent, and a keen sense of the ludicrous. Barnum afterward re-engaged him for one year, at seven dollars a week with a gratuity ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... house the ceilings of the upper floors have fallen in. Chairs, tables, and bedsteads hang precariously into the room below. Here and there a picture still adheres to the wall. From one of the bedposts flutters a tattered and diminutive garment of blue and white check—some little girl's frock. Where is that little girl now, we wonder; and has she ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... expedition, seems to be not altogether void of truth; for the townships round about, meeting upon a certain day, used to offer a sacrifice, which they called Hecalesia, to Jupiter Hecaleius, and to pay honor to Hecale, whom, by a diminutive name, they called Hecalene, because she, while entertaining Theseus, who was quite a youth, addressed him, as old people do, with similar endearing diminutives; and having made a vow to Jupiter that he was going to the fight, that, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... (unhappily demolished fifty years back), shows the humble character of his daily life. It was a small cottage, such as labourers now occupy, with three small rooms on the ground floor, and a garret with a diminutive dormer window under the high-pitched tiled roof. Behind stood an outbuilding which served as his workshop. We have a passing glimpse of this cottage home in the diary of Thomas Hearne, the Oxford antiquary. One Mr. Bagford, otherwise unknown to us, had once "walked into the country" ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... luck! Exactly where Edward Billings Henry wished to go! And here was a rapid-transit vehicle, with room enough for ten such diminutive persons as he! Without loss of time, he limped up on his aching stone toe and jogged ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... scant; whereas, Lilliput and Brobdignag being, in my creed, solid parts of the earth's surface, I doubted not that I might one day, by taking a long voyage, see with my own eyes the little fields, houses, and trees, the diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep, and birds of the one realm; and the corn-fields forest-high, the mighty mastiffs, the monster cats, the tower-like men and women, of the other. Yet, when this cherished volume was now placed in my hand—when I ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... while his attention was drawn to a very smart-looking trap, half dog and half training cart, which for the past fifteen minutes had been driven up and down by the most diminutive of grooms. Slowly he took in every detail, the high-actioned hackney, the handsome harness, the livery of the groom, even the wicker basket under the seat with its padlock hanging on the hasp. Lazily he attempted to decipher the monogram on the cart's shining sides, but ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... is not a commanding figure in history, but she is an isolated and a well-defined one. She is what one of the precursors of Shakespeare calls "a diminutive excelsitude." She was entirely out of sympathy with her age, and her talent was hampered and suppressed by her conditions. She was the solitary writer of actively developed romantic tastes between Marvell and Gray, and she was not strong enough to create an atmosphere for herself within the ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... Mahanadi, and it may be noted that a separate caste of Sonjharas is also in existence in this locality besides the Binjhwar group. The Birjhias are those who practised bewar or shifting cultivation in the forests, the name being derived from bewarjia, one living by bewar-sowing. Binjhia is simply a diminutive form of Binjhwar, but in Bilaspur it is sometimes regarded as a separate caste. The zamindar of Bhatgaon belongs to this group. The tribe have also exogamous divisions, the names of which are of a diverse character, and on being scrutinised show ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... friendship with another of his diminutive height and large waistband in the Middlesex, and the two were frequently hobnobbing together in each ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... of Soudanese and Arabs mingle with the cosmopolitan forms in the streets; Nubians black as ebony, their skins seemingly polished, and their bare legs thin almost as beanpoles, slouch lazily along, or perhaps they are bestriding a diminutive donkey, their long, bony feet dangling idly to the ground. All the donkeys of Alexandria are not diminutive, however. Some of the finest donkeys in the world are here, large, sleek-coated, well-fed-looking animals, that appear quite as intelligent as their riders, or ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... genus Acronatus among the large Antelopes, and numerous other representations of the same form. The fourth type is our Bos Pusio: here we find the horns, when present, remarkably small, but in many cases absent; and the size is diminutive to an extreme. These also are distinguishing marks of the groups it is to represent: the Tenuirostres among birds, and the Glires, or mice, among quadrupeds, are the smallest of their respective ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... Grusha (another form for the diminutive of Agrippina, in Russian Agrafenya). The play ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... mosquitoes, should be well drained, and open to an abundance of sunshine. Mosquitoes breed only in water, but a very little water is sufficient if it is dirty and stagnant. Two inches of water standing in an old tin can will breed an innumerable horde. These "diminutive musicians" are not only a nuisance, but dangerous, as malaria and typhoid spreaders by their ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... crossing is a work of the sixteenth century, and is perhaps more remarkable than its rather diminutive appearance, in contrast with the huge bulk ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... morning, seated in a diminutive wicker cart behind a discontented pony, they searched out Chicken John's cabin on the mesa behind the ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... ago one of the most inveterate frequenters of book-auctions was a certain Dr. G., of diminutive stature, on account of an awkward deviation of the spine. At that time the appearance of a private purchaser at a sale was a very rare event, and one which, when it occurred, invariably met with a more or less hostile reception ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... mountainous districts they are untied, otherwise one camel slipping or falling, would draw another after it, and, so the whole line would be thrown in confusion. In the palms noticed two small birds, white bodies, head and wings black. With the exception of the diminutive singing sparrow, and a few crows, these are all the birds I have seen in the oasis. Saw several Aheer Touaricks just arrived, and found them tall, well-made, comparatively fair, and fine-featured; nothing of the Negro character about them. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... promises to go with me to that iridescent music-hall up the street. Chubby's appearance is deceptive. She is diminutive, with a Kenwigs tail of plaited hair down her straight little back. But she is almost twenty; she is amazingly swift behind the bar, and no man has yet bilked her of a penny. There is a Spartan courage about the small maiden, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... and foot, but with his whole body, arms, and legs and shoulders—all agitated with the ecstacy of mirth, as—singing "coony up the holler," and executing it with grand effect moreover—the merry minstrel went upon his way. Various diminutive individuals of a similar description, were observed in the road behind, executing an impromptu "break down," to the inspiring melody; and so the great piled-up wagon came on in the moonlight, creaking in unison with the music, ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... September 3 anchored at Gravosa, the port of debarcation for Ragusa. Taking leave of my friends on board, I landed at about 5 A.M., and, having committed my luggage, a small bullock trunk, saddle-bags, and a saddle, to the shoulders of a sturdy facchino, and myself to a very rickety and diminutive cart, I proceeded on my way to Ragusa. The drive, about a mile and a half in distance, abounds with pretty views, while the town of Ragusa itself is as picturesque in its interior detail as it is interesting from its early history. ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... in a moment with water enough to soak the diminutive handkerchief, with which he gently bathed away some of the blood, so that he could see the wound. It was a bad cut, but it was not now bleeding so much. The little surgeon pressed the sides gently together, which made Pamela give ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... importers get it, and commerce hums." Here the doctor was for a moment diverted by some objective impression; and without a word of excuse to the little man, he swung himself into his buggy, which stood waiting, and drove rapidly away; whilst the diminutive man, after a moment of weak indecision, shuffled off down the street. I later learned that these talks of Doctor Castleton's were, as regards the element of verity, thrown off as writers of fiction throw off fancies. Sometimes he defended opinions that were in fierce conflict with the ideas of ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... spacious room, for it does not deserve the diminutive name of "Cabin," decorated with hangings of green cloth and gold border, on board a most commodious barge. Behold us on a lovely evening starting from the Quay with full sail and 3 horses, a man mounted on one and cracking ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... a quantity of nut-brown hair, the very sweetest mouth, the lips rather full, and just showing a line of pearl, and lastly, what looked rather odd on such an infantile countenance, a firm, square, and very determined, if very diminutive chin. For the rest, it was difficult to say which was the most perfect, her figure or ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... shallow basket. Not used here as the diminutive of flask. Hales says it is the name given by the fishermen of Cornwall to the vessel in which the fish are transferred from ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... irretrievably buried in Regie's money-box, and the other two immediately lost in the mat in the pony-carriage. However, Hester found them, and slipped them inside their white gloves, and the expedition started, accompanied by Boulou, a diminutive yellow-and-white dog of French extraction. Boulou was a well-meaning, kind little soul. There was a certain hurried arrogance about his hind-legs, but it was only manner. He was not in reality more conceited than most small dogs who ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... downy growth dyed black, and gummed (the cheek at the same time having been faintly tinged with rouge, the locks parted, perfumed, and curled, the waist duly compressed, a slight addition, if necessary, made to the breadth of the hips, and the feet confined by the most taper and diminutive chausserie imaginable), will just serve to give to the tout ensemble that one touch of the masculine character which, perhaps, it may be well ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the passage of the Dawes severalty act, in 1887. Before that date his status was variously defined as that of a member of an independent foreign nation, of a "domestic dependent nation," as a ward of the Government, or, as some one has wittily said, a "perpetual inhabitant with diminutive rights." The Dawes act conferred upon those who accepted allotments of land in severalty the protection of the courts and all the rights of citizenship, including the suffrage. It also provided that the land thus patented to the individual Indian could ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... birth, A diminutive I was born on earth: And then I came from a dark abode, Into a gay and ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... to fasten some inflated bladders in each end, so as to make the canoe a diminutive lifeboat, in case of an upset or of a hole ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... the edge of the forest into one of the valleys beyond which extended the range of verdant hills. Upon the special one that they had marked down they had a clear view of the busy soldiery passing to and fro and looking diminutive in the extreme, before the track led farther into the woody valley and the hills ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... start at the bottom?" she had protested. "You have never been quite fair to him, Clay." His boyish diminutive had stuck to him. "You expect him to know as much about the mill now as you do, after all ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the side of the fireplace, which her father had reserved for her, and while he and I were talking, she sat with her head leaning a little sideways on the back of the chair. I could just discern that her feet, which rested on the stool, were very diminutive, like her hands. ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... A thin, undersized man in worn black clothes, and with a somber hat of soft black felt still upon his head, came into the room. His dark hair was tinged with gray, he walked with a pronounced stoop. In his shabby clothes, fitting loosely upon his diminutive body, he should have been an insignificant figure, but somehow or other he was nothing of the sort. His thin lips curved into a discontented droop. His cheeks were hollow and his eyes shone with the brightness of the fanatic. ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was less pleased; he had expected the traces of resentment, and he was actually disappointed at not finding them. But here was the little house of which his companion had spoken, and it seemed, indeed, a rather bad one. That is, it was one of those diminutive structures which are known at French watering-places as "chalets," and, with an exiguity of furniture, are let for the season to families that pride themselves upon their powers of contraction. This one was a very humble specimen of its class, though it was doubtless a not inadequate abode for ...
— Confidence • Henry James
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