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More "Dwindle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... joy! Who can deny that I am fortunate? Who will doubt that I shall remain happy? Fortune would have a hard time if she undertook to shatter my happiness. Take this or that one from my treasured children; but when would the number of them dwindle to the sickly two of Latona? Away with your sacrifices! Take the laurel out of your hair. Go back to your homes and let me never see ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... good Lord of Douglas," answered the Prince; "I did but smile to think how your princely retinue would dwindle if every thief were dealt with as the ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... with the morning far advanced and the hour of his departure near. It was necessary to eke out his wardrobe with a purchase or two against the journey with the governor, and between his shopping and his breakfast, the deliberate talk he had meant to have with Mrs. Hilliard bade fair to dwindle to a handshake. As the morning brought no grounds for optimism, he was not altogether sorry that the interview must be short; indeed, by daylight his own necessity seemed the more pressing; but he faced his obligations, and prepared himself for the role of Sturdy Oak to Mrs. Hilliard's ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... should he accomplish it? How small and insignificant he felt, and how utterly worthless! How he seemed to dwindle into nothing beside the great work that he was called to do! And yet how anxious he was to do it well! How he longed to be like his father David, a true shepherd to his people! How his heart yearned over his subjects; and how greatly he desired to govern them aright, and to be the ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... prone to seek another livelihood, and the average age of the men who do the farming grows higher all the time. Tiring, many sell out, and thus the family farms that make up the greater part of the Potomac's much-loved rural landscape dwindle in number and change in use. It is not necessary to be mawkish to see this as a loss. In part it is inevitable, but in part too it may be rooted in policies that can be altered and adjusted to keep the ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... the garden nearly the whole morning long, and by night the ghosts of the former nuns haunt it; and in very bright moonlight I myself do a bit of Madame de la Peltrie there, and teach little Indian boys, who dwindle like those in the song, as the moon goes down. It is an enchanted place, and I wish we had it in the back yard at Eriecreek, though I don't think the neighbors would approve of the architecture. I have adopted two nuns for my own: one is tall and slender and pallid, and you can see at ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... fatty substances, such as beef suet, lard and butter, do not undergo any appreciable change. Moreover, the worms soon dwindle away, incapable of growing. This sort of food does not suit them. Why? Apparently because it cannot be liquefied by the reagent disgorged by the worms. In the same way, ordinary pepsin does not attack fatty substances; it takes pancreatin to reduce them to an emulsion. This curious analogy of properties, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... mind talk much together. And both of them often gain by the interchange. Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up. That which was a weed in one intelligence becomes a flower in the other. A flower, on the other hand, may dwindle down to a mere weed by the same change. Healthy growths may become poisonous by falling upon the wrong mental soil, and what seemed a night-shade in one mind unfold as a morning-glory in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... he, adorable Delilah; and fear not, even though incited by the foe, by clipping my locks, to dwindle my strength. Give me your sword, man," turning to an officer:—"Ah! I'm fettered. ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... gentleman by that time, and the glories of Georgetown's maritime trade were beginning to be a thing of the past. In fact, with the coming of the railroads, the huge business of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal was injured, and from then on the commercial importance of the town began to dwindle. ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... 13 Behold the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes. It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief. ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... pound ten," said Grannie. "I looked at the purse this morning. One pound ten, and sevenpence ha'penny in coppers; that's all. That wouldn't be a bad sum if there was anythink more coming in; but seeing as ther' aint, it is uncommon likely to dwindle, look at it from what p'int ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... Burr. "The prisoner frequently, in conversation with me, mentioned the subject of speculations in western lands, opening a canal and building a bridge. Colonel Burr also said to me that the government was weak, and that he wished me to get the navy of the United States out of my head; that it would dwindle to nothing; and that he had something to propose to me that was both honourable and profitable; but I considered this nothing more than an interest in his ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... fighting its way toward the source of heat. In an improperly constructed or improperly run brooder the chicks go through a varying process of chilling, sweating and struggling when they should be sleeping, and the result is puny chicks that dwindle and die. ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... formulas abound in the loftiest nights of poetic imagery. This is especially true of the prayers used to win the love of a woman or to destroy the life of an enemy, in which we find such expressions as—"Now your soul fades away—your spirit shall grow less and dwindle away, never to reappear;" "Let her be completely veiled in loneliness—O Black Spider, may you hold her soul in your web, so that it may never get through the meshes;" and the final declaration of the lover, "Your soul has come into the ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... opportunity to see some of their comrades dropping with moans and shrieks. A few lay under foot, still or wailing. And now for an instant the men stood, their rifles slack in their hands, and watched the regiment dwindle. They appeared dazed and stupid. This spectacle seemed to paralyze them, overcome them with a fatal fascination. They stared woodenly at the sights, and, lowering their eyes, looked from face to face. It was a strange pause, and ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... Literature continue to be the haven of expatriated spiritualisms, and have its Johnsons, Goethes and true Archbishops of the World, to show for itself as heretofore, there may be hope in Literature. If Literature dwindle, as is probable, into mere merry-andrewism, windy twaddle, and feats of spiritual legerdemain, analogous to rope-dancing, opera-dancing, and street-fiddling with a hat carried round for halfpence, or for guineas, there will be no ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... of a man who had forgotten how to cry and must learn again. There were times after this when he observed incuriously a parade of mind pictures, part memory, part pure hallucination and containing nothing of reason; other times when he thought not at all. The sun appeared to dwindle, retreating and fading far away into a remote place where there were no stars at all. It became a feeble candle, guttered unsteadily a moment and suddenly winked out. Abruptly Johnny ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... power and prosperity beyond our reckoning. Frugality and Industry are the most fruitful of parents, especially where they are respected. When luxury and the cost of living have increased, people have become more cautious about marriage and populations have begun to dwindle.' ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... In doing this her figure seemed to dilate, and her countenance underwent a marked and fearful change. All her beauty vanished, her eyes blazed, and terror sat on her wrinkled brow. The hag, on the contrary, crouched lower down, and seemed to dwindle less than her ordinary size. Writhing as from heavy blows, and with a mixture of malice and fear in her countenance, she cried, "Were I to speak, you would not ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... terrible to me, is at all times particular distasteful. My house-deaths have generally been periodical, recurring after seven years, but this last is premature by half that time. Cut off in the flower of Colebrook. The Middletonian stream and all its echoes mourn. Even minnows dwindle. A parvis fiunt MINIMI. I fear to invite Mrs. Hood to our new mansion, lest she envy it and rote us. But when we are fairly in, I hope she will come and try it. I heard she and you were made uncomfortable by some unworthy to be cared for attacks, and ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... to have no obligation upon me to converse with wits that I don't like because they are your acquaintances; or to be intimate with fools because they may be your relatives.... These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into a wife." ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... be rare under the sun. Where we have been privileged to look in behind the veil of the family circle, we are more convinced than ever that fraternal affection an all the boasted nobility of sisterly love dwindle down to a series of petty quarrels and jealousies as painful as they are unchristian and unbecoming. The reserve, or rather the hypocrisy of politeness, put on before strangers, is no criterion of the inward domestic life. Some one has said of ladies, "A point yielded or a pardon ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... not justified by events! Mrs Connor crawled about the house for another week, looking every day smaller and more fragile; and then a morning came when she could not rise from bed, and all other anxieties seemed to dwindle in significance when the illness took a serious turn, and her precious life itself seemed ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... "Though the Mussulmans dwindle into insignificance, we have nothing to apprehend from the Hindus. Many have urged the necessity of upholding the influence of Moghuls to counterbalance the power of Hindus; but this should seem bad policy, as we would causelessly become obnoxious, ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... tragedies of her husband! Arnauld, though so intimately connected with Racine for many years, had not read his compositions. When at length he was persuaded to read Phaedra, he declared himself to be delighted, but complained that the poet had set a dangerous example, in making the manly Hippolytus dwindle to an effeminate lover. As a critic, Arnauld was right; but Racine had his nation to please. Such persons entertain notions of poetry similar to that of an ancient father, who calls poetry the wine of Satan; or to that of the religious and austere Nicole, who was so ably answered by ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... own—my glorious home!—the very wave, Rolling in strength and beauty, leaps on high, As if rejoicing on thy beach to die! My loved—my father-land! thy faults to me Are as the specks which men at noontide see Upon the blinding sun, and dwindle pale Beneath thy virtue's and thy glory's veil. Land of my birth! where'er thy sons may roam, Their pride—their ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... are experiments of the senses or of the intellect, which he knows can bring no profit to the heart: "Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant." He will undoubtedly—let this be frankly acknowledged—grow in a certain kind of knowledge, and as certainly he will dwindle in the higher knowledge that comes through love. The poem is neither enigmatical nor cynical, but in entire accord with Browning's own ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... by neglect. Women domesticate themselves to death already. What they want is cultivation. They need to be stimulated to develop a large, comprehensive, catholic life, in which their domestic duties shall have an appropriate niche, and not dwindle down to a narrow and servile one, over which those duties shall spread ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... live," he wrote Samuel J. May, "and the more I see the desirableness of living; yet certainly not in this frail body, but just as it shall please the dear Father of us all." One by one he saw the little band of which he was leader dwindle as now one and now another dropped by the way. And it was he or Mr. Phillips, or both, who spoke the last loving words over their coffins. As the little band passed on to the unseen country, a new joy awoke in the soul of the leader left behind, the joy of ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... exemplified the matter thus: "If during long periods a nation gives itself up to war, trade languishes, the population loses the habit of steady industry, government and administration become corrupt, abuses escape punishment, and the real sources of a people's strength and expansion dwindle. What has caused the relative failure and decline of Spanish, Portuguese, and French expansion in Asia and the New World, and the relative success of English expansion therein? Was it the mere hazards of war which gave to Great Britain the domination ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... generation of to-day the light of a new ambition must appear in Fiji or the race shall dwindle to its death. No real progress has been made by the Fijians; they have received much from their teachers, but have given nothing in return. They are in the position of a youth whose schooling has just been finished, life and action lie before him; will he ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... little as if my experience of the previous night were a dream. But as I thought over all that had occurred, what may be called the romantic features seemed to dwindle in distinctness and importance, and I dwelt chiefly on the mental profit I had derived from these new associations. Once more I deplored the existence of the vain and coquettish notions that had led me to construe as devotion the enthusiasm of the clever men who ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... more probably, as an ordinary Christian gentleman like you or me, who had opened a mine and worked it for a while with better and worse fortune. So, through a defective window-pane, you may see the passer-by shoot up into a hunchbacked giant or dwindle into a ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ground in sober recognition of my error. "Forgive me the heat of my zeal," I protested. "I diminish, I dwindle, I wither. Unless your pity forgives me, I ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... neat and enticing everywhere. There is the sitting room where Mr. Rayne spent his long, thoughtful night under the gaslight with Robert Edgeworth's letter lying between his numbed fingers. The fire burns there cheerfully now—there is no other light than that cast by the fitful flames which leap and dwindle in shadows through the twilight that lingers still, huge fanciful phantoms skipping over the walls and the ceiling and floor, a little flickering subdued light that trembles on the great arm chairs. "Flo" is curled up, with both ends saluting one another, on the velvet rug ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... is tardy in that icy clime, For Death is there the awful nurse of Life: Death rocks the cot. Why meet we there no wolf Save those huge-limbed? Because weak wolf-cubs die. 'Tis thus with man; 'tis thus with all things strong:— Rise higher on thy northern hills, my Pine! That Southern Palm shall dwindle. House stone-walled— Ye shall not have it! Temples cedar-roofed— Ye shall not build them! Where the Temple stands The City gathers. Cities ye shall spurn: Live in the woods; live singly, winning each, Hunter or fisher by blue ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... terrible form could be discerned apparently moving with the torrent, but in reality remaining stationary. Now he would raise himself half out of the water, and ascend like a mist half as high as the near mountain, and then he would dwindle down to the size of a man. His laugh accorded with his savage visage, and his long hair stood on end, and a mist always ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... and helpless group of men in authority who surrounded her. She stood firm; she was a rock in the angry ocean; with her alone was safety, comfort, life. And so it was that hope dawned at Scutari. The reign of chaos and old night began to dwindle; order came upon the scene, and common sense, and forethought, and decision, radiating out from the little room off the great gallery in the Barrack Hospital where, day and night, the Lady Superintendent was at her task. Progress might be slow, ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... fleets of them one day, Du Mesne," replied John Law. "'Tis a roadway fit for a nation. Ah, Du Mesne! our St. Lawrence, our New France—they dwindle when compared ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... Maurier went on to the Antwerp Academy, where the masters were De Keyser and Van Lerins. It was in the latter's studio that the disaster of his life occurred. He was drawing from a model, when suddenly the girl's head seemed to him to dwindle to the size of a walnut. He clapped his hand over his left eye, and wondered if he had been mistaken. He could see as well as ever. But when in its turn he covered his right eye he learned what had happened. His left eye had failed him. It might ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... This advice, though often before given will bear frequent repetition—for the desire for "something new" is as prevalent with us now as it was with the Athenians in St. Paul's time. We have seen Big Bobs, Great Americans, and other monstrosities dwindle to pigmies in the hands of ordinary cultivators, and the demand for Sharpless become less sharp through its sensitiveness to the influence of Jack Frost; and hosts of other sorts, really good and valuable somewhere, and under peculiarly favorable conditions to be comparatively valueless ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... informed of everything that was being said or done in the enemy's camp. She had an intense respect for Lord Bacon's maxim: Knowledge is power. It was a kind of power secondary to the power of wealth, perhaps; but wealth unprotected by wisdom would soon dwindle ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... to die, it would be frightening in more ways than one. But I see what you mean. There might be a sense of peace, but the minds and bodies which had been vibrating with the stir of power would feel that the soul had gone out of things, and they would dwindle too." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... business friends to advise her, for the few acquaintances she made at Rosebury knew nothing whatever of the value of money. Like many another woman who has been brought up in affluence, neither had Mrs. Mainwaring the faintest idea of how fast a small sum like L1,000 can dwindle. She felt comfortable during the latter years of her life at the knowledge that she had a good balance in the bank. It never occurred to her as a possibility that she who was still fairly young could die suddenly and without warning. This event, however, ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... time that all these stirring events were taking place and just before Magruder, with McLaw's and Walker's divisions, was either quietly lying in front of Richmond watching the army of McClellan dwindle away, leaving by transports down the James and up the Potomac, or was marching at a killing gait to overtake their comrades under Lee to share with them their trials, their battles and their victories in Maryland. Lee could not leave the Capital with all his force so long as there was a ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... The policy of 1768, he contended eleven years later, had already succeeded in great measure. The assimilation of government had been effected; an assimilation of manners would follow. The excessive military spirit of the inhabitants had begun to dwindle, as England's interest required. The back settlements of New York and Canada were fast being joined. Two or three thousand men of British stock, many of them men of substance, had gone to the new colony; warehouses and foundries were being built; and ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... from a shop door festooned in boots, his leather apron in front, and his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, as befitted an important man, saw young Gourlay pass the Cross with his bag in his hand, and dwindle up the road ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... My self-invented theory about the human race was that Adam and Eve were very tall people, taller than the tallest trees in the Garden of Eden, before they were sent out of it; but that they then began to dwindle; that their children had ever since been getting smaller and smaller, and that by and by the inhabitants of the world would be no bigger than babies. I was afraid I should stop growing while I was a child, and I used to stand on ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... of Malofskaya the country becomes much wilder, and forests dwindle away as we near the timber line. Occasionally not a tree would be visible from sled to horizon, only a level plain of snow, which under the influence of wind, sunshine and passing clouds would present as many moods and aspects as the sea. On one day it would appear as smooth and unbroken ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... your vegetarians are shock-headed, ample-bearded men, and I have heard the Ancestor was vegetarian. Or it may be, I sometimes fancy, a kind of inherent disposition on the part of your human animal to dwindle. That came back in my memory vividly as I looked at the long rows of Sceptics, typical Advanced people, and marked their glistening crania. I recalled other losses. Here is Humanity, thought I, growing hairless, growing bald, growing toothless, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... and now they dwindle, Whirling with the whirling spindle. Twist ye, twine ye! even so Mingle human bliss ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... met with; and, since the tides flow to a considerable distance up all the rivers, the water of these is in many parts of the district brackish and unfit for use; besides which, in the summer-time, the smaller streams become dry, or dwindle down into mere chains of ponds, barely sufficient to supply the ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... how she looked; or, as Fly would say, you must make believe. Touch her hair with gold. There, see how it shines! Take off those spectacles; smooth out the wrinkles; make her face as soft as a rose-leaf, as soft as your face, Fly; dwindle her figure down, down, till she looks about ten years old. Now do you see her? Isn't she pretty? How the sparkles come and go in her eyes! Wouldn't you like to have a romp with her in the new-mown hay? For she hasn't any more rheumatism in her back than a butterfly. Her feet are ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May
... be a long time before he would dare smoke a cigar again, and his supply of cigarettes was destined to dwindle down to nothing before that day. But he did ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... Scarr and Jopp soon explained the mistake fallen into by Hodgkinson as to the identity of Landsborough's Herbert and his own Mulligan. It will be remembered that in the central districts, the watersheds are so low and the size of the rivers so uncertain, that to find a watercourse dwindle away into nothing in one mile, and expand into a river the next is not at all surprising, so that to leave the head of a river and come on to another running in the same direction, it would appear quite feasible that it was the ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... idea had survived, had borne the test of time; but he had given his hearer no hint of the extent to which it had been enlarged and modified, of the fresh implications it now unfolded. In a brief flash of retrospection Bernald saw the earlier books dwindle and fall into their place as mere precursors of this fuller revelation; then, with a leap of helpless rage, he pictured Howland Wade's pink hands on the new treasure, and his prophetic feet upon ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... took a passing glimpse of the famous crater-mountains, called by our astronomers Copernicus and Theophilus, the former situated in the eastern and the latter in the western hemisphere of the Moon. The largest openings of our Earth dwindle into insignificance compared with such ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... the poet must stop: thus far the natural mind, richly endowed with human powers, can go and trace a God of power, wisdom, and beneficence: O that thou hadst had eyes to see, and discern what flesh and blood could never reach; that all these glories dwindle into tapers, when compared with Jehovah manifested in the face of Jesus Christ. Every star, every tree, all vegetating, bursting, blooming life, answer the end of their creation, manifesting his glory as thou sayest; but can they tell thee how ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... equal ingenuity, was required; or I was left helpless; the ferret must run down his prey, the great oaks fall, the Raphaels be scattered, the house let to some stockbroker suddenly made rich, and the name which now filled the mouths of five or six parishes dwindle to a memory. Strange that such great matters, so old a mansion, a family so ancient and so dull, should come to depend for perpetuity upon the intelligence, the discretion, and the cunning of a Latin-Quarter ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that our friendship is going to be subjected to the heaviest strain it has ever borne, and I wish to minimize any risks to it, in which, however, I don't believe. I am determined that it shall not dwindle into a form or pretence of friendship of which the substance has departed. It will be a great change if I do not feel that I can go to your house or to your room as freely as ever. At the same time confidence from one in the inner circle of the Cabinet to one wholly outside the Government is ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... conflagration, and the roofs went thundering down! Oh, the prayers, the prayers and curses, that together winged their flight From the maddened hearts of many, through that long and woful night!— Till the fires began to dwindle, and the shots grew faint and few, And we heard the foeman's challenge only in a far halloo: Till the silence once more settled o'er the gorges of the glen, Broken only by the Cona plunging through its naked den. Slowly from the mountain summit was the drifting veil withdrawn, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... affairs. The modest assurance, the happy boldness, the extemporaneous logic, all that 'led but to the grave,' exist, like the images of departed actors, only in the recollection of those who witnessed them, till memory shall fade into tradition, and tradition dwindle down to a name." (Supplement to Vacation Rambles, p. 115.) The eagerness with which the talents of Sir William Follett were sought, forcibly illustrates the truth of a remark, made to me in the course of some friendly advice, by ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... you. History will place your dogma in its class, above or below a hundred competing dogmas, exactly as the naturalist classifies his species. From being a conviction, it will sink to a curiosity; from being the guide to millions of human lives, it will dwindle down to a chapter in a book. As History explains your dogma, so Science will dry it up; the conception of law will silently make the conception of the daily miracle of your altars seem impossible; the mental climate will gradually deprive your symbols of their nourishment, and men will turn ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... in the matter began to dwindle. The fine fire which had sustained him during the story's composition had died out. He was satisfied with his work. He had written a good story, and that was the end of it. No doubt he would send it East—to the Centennial Company—to-morrow or the day ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... immolations of an Indian Juggernauth dwindle into insignificance before it! We again repeat, nothing but slavery is worthy to be compared for its horrors with this monstrous system of iniquity. As we write, we are amazed at the enormity of its unprincipledness, and the large extent of its destructiveness. Its very enormity ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... before them, and had better be about it without any more delay, since there could be no telling at what time the absent men might show up. Once they returned to the camp, of course, the chances of the scouts accomplishing much began to dwindle enormously. ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... dumfounded. He had pictured to himself a different scene—a more immediate protest, and his hope began to dwindle on the spot. ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... father of Sindbad was taken to Almighty Allah, much wealth came to the possession of his son; but soon did it dwindle in boon companionship, for the city of Baghdad is sweet to the youthful. Then did Sindbad bethink him how he might restore his fortune, saying to himself: "Three things are better than other three; the day ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... of its claims to any high antiquity. Certain portions of the Veda even, which, as far as our knowledge goes at present, we are perfectly justified in referring to the tenth or twelfth century before our era, may some day or other dwindle down from their high estate, and those who have believed in their extreme antiquity will then be held up to blame or ridicule, like Sir W. Jones or Colonel Wilford. This cannot be avoided, for science is progressive, and does not acknowledge, even in the most distinguished scholars, any ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... volumes for every one that Greece could boast; Rome's temples should be galleries of rare paintings, ten for each that Athens had. Rome should be so great, so rich, so gorgeous, that Greece should be as nothing beside her; Egypt should dwindle to littleness, and the memory of Babylon should be forgotten. Greece had her Homer, her Sophocles, her Anacreon; Rome should ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Cholme, "can no longer afford to pass by one of her most brilliant sons. In the light of his magnificent achievement, the daring of a Peary, the nerve of a Shackleton, the indomitable persistence of a Marconi, dwindle and fade. We do not hesitate to say that since the capture of Gibraltar, the Empire has secured no such chance for consolidating her paramountcy in Europe. The present is no time for hesitation or delay. Mr. Carville is master of the situation. ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... quarters that they know, I' th' ship-man's card.— I will drain him dry as hay, Sleep shall neither night nor day, Hang upon his pent-house lid; He shall live a man (c) forbid; Weary sev'n nights, nine times nine, Shall he dwindle, peak and pine; Tho' his bark cannot be lost, Yet it shall be tempest-tost. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... the band but received his just meed, Who acted a part in that damnable deed; To dwindle away the whole band was not slow: Thy murder, Brown William, ...
— Brown William - The Power of the Harp and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... to the grade above fashion. People of rank tastes did not often go there. The little Kentuckian, with her emphatic, sham-hating face, and Grey, whose simple, calm outlook on the world made her last year's bonnet and cloak dwindle into such irrelevant trifles, did not misbecome the place. Others might go there to fever out ennui, or with fouler fancies. Grey did not know. The play was a simple little thing; its meaning was pure as a child's song; there was a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was the cause of it, the Territorial divisions after they took the field seemed to be treated as veritable Cinderellas for a long time. They generally set out short of establishment, and they were apt to dwindle away painfully for want of reserves after they had spent a few weeks on the war-path. The Returns show this to have been the case. More than one of the divisional Generals concerned spoke to me, or wrote to me, on the subject in the later ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... the altar kindle, And at their margins sacred grass is piled; Beneath their sacrificial odours dwindle Misfortunes. May the ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... combs in the hive become one putrid mass, with an exception, perhaps, of one in ten, twenty or a hundred, that may perfect a bee. Thus the increase of bees is not enough to replace the old ones that are continually dying off. It is plain, therefore, that this stock must soon dwindle down to a very small family. Now let a scarcity of honey occur in the fields, this poor stock cannot be properly guarded, and is easily plundered of its contents by the others. Honey is taken that is in close proximity ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... in her furs, and for once unconscious of her own beauty, so dissatisfied was she with the part she had played in the great tragedy. Somehow her parts seemed always to dwindle this way ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... the adoption of the commissioner system in the West, and South, in which sections it attained its highest development. It was soon found that a commission after the Massachusetts model, when composed of men less competent or less disposed to do their duty, was liable to dwindle into a statistical board or even become a pliant tool in the hands of the railroads. Furthermore, the conditions in Massachusetts, where railroad owners and railroad patrons lived side by side and ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... fell did the hymns cease and the crowd dwindle away. The air grew colder, and he began to feel pain again, the water cutting against his legs like a blade. Little groups were now hurrying off in the darkness, and the last Saint he had baptised was standing for the moment, chill and dripping, on ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... sensibility exceeds their strength of mind. In Schiller, its worst effects were resisted by the only availing antidote, a strenuous determination to neglect them. His spirit was too vigorous and ardent to yield even in this emergency: he disdained to dwindle into a pining valetudinarian; in the midst of his infirmities, he persevered with unabated zeal in the great business of his life. As he partially recovered, he returned as strenuously as ever to his intellectual occupations; and often, in the glow of poetical conception, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... short laugh pregnant with scorn. "Abe Rose, dew yew know what ails yew?" he demanded fixing his eyes fiercely upon the invalid. "Dew yew know what'll happen tew yew ef yew don't git out o' this bed an' this here house? Either yer beard'll fall out an' yew'll dwindle deown ter the size o' a baby or yew'll turn into a downright old woman—Aunt Abraham!—won't that sound nice? Or yew'll die or yew'll go crazy. ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... the poetry of the ceremonies with so little respect, good Peterchen, that the goddess and her train dwindle into little more than vine-dressers and milk-maids ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... If you wish to amuse yourself with reading the lives I wrote in the last number of the Biography,[10] they are Archbishop Hamilton, Sir William Hamilton, Dr Robert Henry, Edward Henryson, J. Bonaventura Hepburn, Roger Hog, John Holybush, and Henry Home of Kames.... The gooseberries appear to dwindle as they ripen. I am afraid few will remain for you, but you will find a sufficient number where you are. I intend to walk to Dunkeld, and to take two days. Al. Smith may come a bit with us.... All my little stock of news is exhausted. ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... deposited on what are now the Haggerstone Moors of Poole, vast beds of grit? What was the climate on its banks when it washed down the delicate leaves of broad-leaved trees, akin to our modern English ones, which are found in the fine mud-sand strata of Bournemouth? When, finally, did it dwindle down to the brook which now runs through Wareham town? Was its bed, sea or dry land, or under an ice sheet, during the long ages of the glacial epoch? And if you say—Who is sufficient for these things?—Who can answer these questions? I answer—Who ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... be said to have ended with the surrender of the army under Lord Cornwallis, at Yorktown, on October 19, 1781, and little attempt at recruiting was made subsequently; consequently the regiments continued to dwindle until, at the evacuation of New-York, two years later, they were not more than one-third of their original strength. The New Jersey Volunteers, a year after their arrival in New-Brunswick, were mustered by Thomas Knox, under the supervision of Col. Edward Winslow. The return is dated at Fort Howe, ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... surprised to see me as I had expected. I remarked this in Peggotty, too, when she came down; and I have seen it since; and I think, in the expectation of that dread surprise, all other changes and surprises dwindle into nothing. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... big fellow who helped Mrs. Bal out of the blue car (also big, in proportion to the size of the owner and his fortune) was Morgan P. Bennett of New York, the Tin Trust millionaire. Somerled's puny horde of millions dwindle into humble insignificance beside Morgan Bennett's pile. If Somerled has made two millions out of his mines and successful speculations, and a few extra thousands out of his pictures, M. P. Bennett has made twenty millions out of tin—and unlimited cheek. ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... all that comes storming against thee of disease, disappointment, loss, and misery. Set on the one side all possible as well as all actual weaknesses, burdens, pains, and set on the other these two words—'My grace,' and all these dwindle into nothingness and disappear. If troubled Christian men would learn what they have, and would use what they already possess, they would less often beseech Him with vain petitions to take away their blessings which are in the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... knowledge of every thing; to collect power towards removing whatever is pernicious. The knowledge of three things will subdue and destroy evil: knowledge of its cause, its nature, and its operation. Three things continually dwindle away: the Dark, the False, the Dead. Three things continually increase: ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... days after the capture of Malolos, General Otis issued a proclamation to the Filipinos, in the hope that by drawing off public sympathy from the insurgent cause it would dwindle away. The terms of this ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... escape; wherefore the President, his two counselors, the twelve apostles and others at the head of Mormon affairs, insist upon it as a best, if not an only, Church protection. Without polygamy the Mormon membership would dwindle until Mormonism had utterly died out. The Mormon heads think so, and preserve polygamy as a ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... religion, the thin security of self-satisfied morality, can now no more tease us with their sleek impertinence. In the presence of a venture of this high distinction, of a faith of this tragic intensity, such shabby counterfeits of the race's hope dwindle and ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... vassals and its tributaries, that we see at once that it must be the seat of a powerful and permanently established government. Nor does it seem possible, even in the event of Bombay taking the ascendance as the capital of British India, that the proud City of Palaces shall upon that account dwindle and sink into decay. Stranger things, and even more melancholy destinies, have befallen the mighty Babylons of the earth; but with all its faults of situation and of climate, I should at least, for ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... Ostia as the chief victualling port of Rome. And of the two celebrated cities which adorned the shores of this Bay in classical times, Puteoli was the seat of commerce, and Baiae the resort of pleasure and luxury; yet both were doomed to dwindle and almost perish in the disastrous years that followed the break-up of the Empire. The invading hordes of Germany, the raids of Saracen pirates, and the constant presence of malaria on this deserted coast were sufficient causes in ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... that has made so many musicians recede from us and dwindle, has brought Berlioz the closer to us and shown him great. The age in which he lived, the decades that followed his death, found him unsubstantial enough. They recognized in him only the projector of gigantic edifices, not the builder. His music seemed scaffolding ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... were it once granted that astronomy were something to be ruled by authority, new Popes would imprison new Galileos; the knowledge already acquired would be strangled in the cords which were intended to keep it safe from harm, and deprived of the free air on which its life depends it would dwindle and die. ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... dwindle and decrease, Such fates the ruthless years unfold; And yet we shall not wholly cease, We shall not perish unconsoled; Nay, still shall Freedom keep her hold Within the sea's inviolate fosse, And boast her sons of English mould, Ye ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... Dutch church thus dwindling, and seemingly content to dwindle, to one of the least of the tribes, is not a cheerful one, nor one easy to understand. But out of this little and dilapidated Bethlehem was to come forth a leader. Domine Frelinghuysen, arriving in America in 1720, was to begin a work ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... even now on the way—a surprise so stupendous and unexpected that, beside it, the lobster-surprise would dwindle away into insignificance and be quite forgotten for the rest of the day. And oddly enough, it was to be Blossom ...
— Judith Lynn - A Story of the Sea • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... the Navy— Have both been reconstructed and remodeled Upon so irresistible a basis That all the neighboring nations have disarmed— And War's impossible! Your County Councillor Has passed such drastic Sanitary laws That all doctors dwindle, starve, and die! The laws, remodeled by Sir Bailey Barre, Have quite extinguished crime and litigation: The lawyers starve, and all the jails are let As model lodgings for the working-classes! In short—Utopia, swamped by dull Prosperity, Demands ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... this sentence: "Our own sorrows, like the Princes of Hell in Milton's Pandemonium, sit enthroned 'bulky and vast;' while the miseries of our fellow-creatures dwindle into pigmy forms, and are crowded in an innumerable multitude into some dark corner of the heart." Both in character of imagery and in form of structure we have here the germ of such passages as this which one might confidently defy the most ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... so? It seems to me that human greatness resides in the good opinion of others; and that, if this opinion changes, the greatest can quickly dwindle ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... descendants they found schools which are the only repositories of learning; but the time must inevitably come when this order is transformed into the deadliest enemy of the civilization which it has brought into being. The power of the spiritual oligarchy rests upon superstitious terrors which dwindle before advancing enlightenment; hence the clergy have become reactionary, have sought to stifle the spirit of free inquiry, and have used the schools which they have builded as instruments to keep alive unreasoning prejudice, or to serve their ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... A large party there is—and it will, if properly protected, become much larger—who will join the Union for the sake of preserving their property. But this party will not be increased a single man by our neglecting to punish those who have been active rebels, while on the other hand it will dwindle to nothing if left exposed to temptation and enmity. We must proceed with the utmost energy, and our only hope is in a complete reoerganization of the South, by infusing into it Northern blood, life, ideas, education, and industry. And the only effective means of doing this will be to settle ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... that Neshevna and Lenyard stood. The young man, weary with vigils, his face furrowed by curiosity, regarded the city below them as it lay swimming in the waves of a sinking sun. He saw the crosses of La Trinite as molten copper, then dusk and dwindle in the shadows. The twilight seemed to prefigure the fading of the human race. Neshevna walked with this dreamer to the rear of the theatre—the theatre of the Tarnhelm, that was to darken all civilization. He asked for Illowski, ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... wave, she approaches the "land of darkness whither I am bound. When I reflect on the degradation and misery of the inhabitants, follow them into the eternal world, and forward to the great day of retribution, all my petty sufferings dwindle to a point." ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... what I think. A Union such as ours has been formed amid so much suffering and hardship, courage and danger, that it is not to be broken in a day. We may come back soon from Montgomery, Julie, but I see war, a great and terrible war, a war, by the side of which those we have had, will dwindle to mere skirmishes. I shut my eyes, but it makes no difference. I see it close at hand, ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... had been watching the figures make their appearance from the stile, re-form groups and dwindle slowly down to the corn, and their heads and shoulders bob along above it—all with a kind of resentment. These people had found their life; he was still looking for his. He was watching, too, the strangely unreal appearance of the sunlit fields, the long shadows, the ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... specially seasons of reward, than maturer and later life; but it is also equally true, that every stage of life, not excepting its very evening, is little more than a preparation for a still higher state, where reward will predominate in a degree which will make all previous preparation seem to dwindle almost to nothing. ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... you ever see a large Camellia plant in full blossom? If you have not, I will risk my reputation by saying that all other flowers within my knowledge, barring the rose, dwindle into insignificance when compared with it. It excels the finest rose in doubleness and form of its flowers, and puts the virgin lily to shame for spotless purity and whiteness; if it only possessed fragrance, ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... may as well here explain, though somewhat out of order, a peculiarity in reference to the roots of this species: it dies down in early autumn, and the crown seems to retire within the ball of its roots, which are a matted mass of fibres, and not only does it seem to retire, but also to dwindle, so that anyone, with a suspicion, who might be seeking for the vital part, might easily be misled by such appearances, which are further added to by the fact that the species does not start into growth until a late date compared with others of the genus. So peculiar are the roots and crown ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... effect was all that Mr. Bayard foretold. Prices began to melt and dwindle like ice in August. Panic prevailed; three brokerage firms fell, a dozen more were ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... lightened her heart and gave her a glad confidence to look on that straight, martial figure, the hand so familiarly resting on the hilt of the sword that seemed a part of him, and the eyes so calm; whilst when he spoke of perils, they seemed to dwindle 'neath the disdain of them ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... began to go down; the Government scowled at it, and at last passed a law preventing the Protestant boys dressing up the figure on the first of July, and walking round it. That was the death-blow of the Orange party, your hanner; they never recovered it, but began to despond and dwindle, and I with them, for there was scarcely any demand for Orange tunes. Then Dan O'Connell arose with his emancipation and repale cries, and then instead of Orange processions and walkings, there were Papist processions ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... carried from a water-hole cut far out on the ice, up a steep grade, and then quite a little distance back to the dwelling—for we do not build directly upon these eroding banks. The water-hole is continually freezing up and has to be continually hewed free of ice, and as the streams dwindle with the progress of winter, new holes must be cut farther and farther out. On the trail, where snow must usually be melted for water, it is obvious that bathing is out of the question; even the water for hands and face is sparingly doled by the cook, and ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... birds sing thankfully towards Heaven, while he With a sad heart walks through this jubilee, Beholding how beyond this happy land, Stretches a thirsty desert of gray sand, Where all the air is one thick, leaden blight, Where all things dwarf and dwindle,—so walk I, Through my rich, present life, to what ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... taking all the parcels, and the crowd, having jumped to the conclusion that he was the young woman's husband began to dwindle away, one of the jokers remarking 'It's all over!' in a loud voice as he took ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... which sometimes remind us that he was writing in an age which had rediscovered Sir Thomas Browne. The following sentence proves how accurately he could catch the rhythm of the seventeenth century. "That we should wear out by slow stages, and dwindle at last into nothing, is not wonderful, when even in our prime our strongest impressions leave little trace but for the moment, and we are the creatures of petty circumstance."[104] Other passages in the same essay echo this ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... a man is wrenched away because he steadily contemplates the fact of being wrenched away altogether from everything before long, it is something that he had better be wrenched from. And if there be any occupations which dwindle into nothingness, and into which a man cannot for the life of him fling himself with any thoroughgoing enthusiasm or interest, if once the thought of death stirs in him, depend upon it they are occupations which are in themselves contemptible and unworthy. All good aims will gain ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... because these events can be particularized and described that they assume proportions beyond their real importance, but when compared with the colossal advances made by the state during the period covering them, they dwindle into mere points of educational experience, to be guarded against in the future, while the many blessings showered upon the state, consisting of the health and wealth imparting sunshine, the refreshing and fructifying rains and dews of heaven, which, like ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... lowest capacities; there is not a groom in the land less capable of taking life than the finest gentleman. The issue of all this has been—if the horse were not killed at once—to shorten his days, to lessen his intelligence, to injure his form, and to degrade and dwindle his race, from ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... heart-touching, the most soul-subduing manifestation of the divine nature; and stars and worlds, and angels and mighty creatures, and things in the heights and things in the depths, to each of which have been entrusted some broken syllables of the divine character to make known to the world, dwindle and fade before the brightness, the lambent, gentle brightness that beams out from the Cross of Christ, which proclaims—God is love, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... hand; the beautiful St. Lawrence sparkling and flashing in the sunlight; and the tiny ships below the rock from which you gaze, whose distant rigging looks like spiders' webs against the light, while casks and barrels on their decks dwindle into toys, and busy mariners become so many puppets; all this, framed by a sunken window in the fortress and looked at from the shadowed room within, forms one of the brightest and most enchanting pictures that the ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... down with reverence before the book of all books, the Bible. The Roman sword, the Grecian palette and chisel, have indeed rendered noble service to the cause of civilization, yet even their proudest claims dwindle into insignificance when compared with the benefits which the Bible has wrought. It has penetrated into realms where the names of Greece and Rome have never resounded. It has illumined empires and ennobled ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... the hunter moved forward.... Dazedly Every watched the two pass at a walk into the gloomy corridor and dwindle slowly to a mere blur of blue and grey under the shadow of the towering walls. At last distance and dusk swallowed them, and he could see ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... afraid that if as frank caution were uttered in regard to other memorable places, the objects of interest in Italy would dwindle sadly in number, and the valets de place, whether they know how to read and write or not, would be starved to death. Even the learning of Italy is poetic; and an Italian would rather enjoy a fiction than know a fact—in which preference I am not ready to pronounce him unwise. ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... and tear of service, instead of being filled up at the bottom, and the vacancies among the officers filled from the best noncommissioned officers and men, the habit was to raise new regiments, with new colonels, captains, and men, leaving the old and experienced battalions to dwindle away into mere skeleton organizations. I believe with the volunteers this matter was left to the States exclusively, and I remember that Wisconsin kept her regiments filled with recruits, whereas other States generally filled their quotas by new regiments, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... of the red man appears to be nearly decided. What between their wars with each other, the use of spirituous liquors, and the diseases imported by the whites, they dwindle away every day. The most fatal disease to them is the small-pox. The following account, which I have extracted from one of the American papers, was confirmed to me by ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... mask which covers many a weakness. As a rule we have neither the time nor the desire to look beneath it, and so it is that commonly we accept people on their own valuation. Here the outward show is nothing, it is the inward purpose that counts. So the 'gods' dwindle and the humble supplant them. ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... indignant satires the Iambes, lover of Italian art and nature in Il Pianto; Auguste Brizeux, the idyllist, in his Marie, of Breton wilds and provincial works and ways; Gerard de Nerval, Hegesippe Moreau, Madame Desbordes-Valmore, and paler, lessening lights. These and others dwindle for the eye into a ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... her child all the passionate love that had been so miserably thwarted in her own marriage. It had been more than bitterness to her to note that whilst her love for her girl increased, the girl's love for her seemed to dwindle. It was the bitterest blow that Vigee Le Brun had ever known; and she had been struck more than once. It turned the wanderer's eyes homewards to her wrecked Paris. Russia was no longer a delight to her. She became restless. The wander-fever came upon ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... capital before the French, with eyes turned ever to the land he loved, chanting, as he leaned from his galley's stern, that melancholy psalm—'Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain'—and seeing Naples dwindle to a white ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Manchester and Cromwell must return to the associated counties, who would not suffer them to stay, for fear the king should attempt them. That he could subsist well enough, having York city and river at his back; but the Scots would eat up the country, make themselves odious, and dwindle away to nothing, if he would but hold them at bay a little. Other general officers were of the same mind; but all I could say, or they either, to a man deaf to anything but his own courage, signified nothing. He would draw out and fight; there was no persuading him to the contrary, ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... preserved for us by an annalist whose pages glow with the new outburst of patriotic feeling. Matthew Paris is the greatest, as he in reality is the last, of our monastic historians. The school of St. Alban's survived indeed till a far later time, but its writers dwindle into mere annalists whose view is bounded by the abbey precincts and whose work is as colourless as it is jejune. In Matthew the breadth and precision of the narrative, the copiousness of his information ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... least a while, on the face of the earth? By subtle art, with far-fetched spices, let the body survive its day and be (even though hidden beneath the earth) for ever. Nay more, since death cause it straightway to dwindle somewhat from the true semblance of life, let cunning artificers fashion it anew—fashion it as it was. Thus, in the earliest days of England, the kings, as they died, were embalmed, and their bodies were borne aloft upon their biers, to a sepulture long delayed after death. In later days, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... are flashes struck from midnights, there are fire-flames noon-days kindle, Whereby piled-up honors perish, whereby swollen ambitions dwindle, While just this or that poor impulse, which for once had play unstifled, Seems the sole work of a life-time that ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... devoted to the cultivation of corn crops, instead of expanding, diminished in a marked degree. British farmers of long experience look back to 1874 as the last of the really good years, and consider that the palmy days of British agriculture began to dwindle at about that time. The shadow of the approaching depression had already fallen upon the land before the year 1875 had run its course, and the outlook became ominous as the decade of the 'seventies neared its close. One memorable feature was associated with 1877 in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... I feel, and shall do to the last. I cannot quench a glorious life at once, Nor dwindle to the thing I now must be,[dm] And take men's lives by stealth, without some pause: Yet doubt me not; it is this very feeling, And knowing what has wrung me to be thus, 110 Which is your best security. There's not A roused mechanic in your busy plot[dn] So wronged as I, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... reference to the maintenance of the same numeric proportions in all times, that, while a Class is represented by few types, those types are wonderfully rich and varied, but in proportion as other expressions of the same structure are introduced, the first dwindle, and, if they do not entirely disappear, become at least much less ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... hundreds of soldiers and police to arrest and keep in custody nearly twenty thousand men. If an attempt was made to take us all to gaol, digger-hunting would have to be suspended, the revenue would dwindle to nothing, and Government would be starved out. It was, in fact, no Government at all; it was a mere assemblage of armed men sent to rob us, not to protect us; each digger had to do ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... green has changed to a less vivid hue; they are taking bluish tones here and there; but their outlines are still sharp, and along their high soft slopes there are white specklings, which are villages and towns. These white specks diminish swiftly,— dwindle to the dimensions of salt-grains,—finally vanish. Then the island grows uniformly bluish; it becomes cloudy, vague as a dream of mountains;—it turns at last gray as smoke, and then melts into the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... with Greenwich and Chelsea elves, Men who had lost a limb themselves, Its interest did not dwindle— But Bill, and Ben, and Jack, and Tom Could hardly have spun more yarns therefrom, If the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... successors would find a most improved world to start upon! For Cant does lie piled on us, high as the zenith; an Augean Stable with the poisonous confusion piled so high: which, simply if there once could be nothing said, would mostly dwindle like summer snow gradually about its business, and leave us free to use our eyes again! When I see painful Professors of Greek, poring in their sumptuous Oxfords over dead Greek for a thousand years or more, and leaving live English all the while to develop itself under charge ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 'Twas plain Manchester and Cromwell must return to the associated counties, who would not suffer them to stay, for fear the king should attempt them. That he could subsist well enough, having York city and river at his back; but the Scots would eat up the country, make themselves odious, and dwindle away to nothing, if he would but hold them at bay a little. Other general officers were of the same mind; but all I could say, or they either, to a man deaf to anything but his own courage, signified nothing. He would draw out and fight; there was no persuading ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... had seen the thing first—a pinpoint of cherry red that moved upward in a perfect arc against the brilliant white constellations of the east. As it rose, it grew perceptibly larger, to dwindle again as it arced ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... and forlorn. There were many rooms, but none more than scantily furnished, and a number of them were stripped bare. Betty found herself wondering how long a time it had taken the belongings of the big place to dwindle and melt ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Edwin and Angelina, you expect too much from love. You think there is enough of your little hearts to feed this fierce, devouring passion for all your long lives. Ah, young folk! don't rely too much upon that unsteady flicker. It will dwindle and dwindle as the months roll on, and there is no replenishing the fuel. You will watch it die out in anger and disappointment. To each it will seem that it is the other who is growing colder. Edwin sees with bitterness that ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... Sindbad was taken to Almighty Allah, much wealth came to the possession of his son; but soon did it dwindle in boon companionship, for the city of Baghdad is sweet to the youthful. Then did Sindbad bethink him how he might restore his fortune, saying to himself: "Three things are better than other three; the day of death is better than the day of birth, a live dog is better than ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... to think about it," said Thorndyke. "I never reject a case off-hand unless it is obviously fishy. It is surprising how difficulties, and even impossibilities, dwindle if you look at them attentively. My experience has taught me that the most unlikely case is, at least, worth ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... of the broad glassy pools that seemed to lie right and left. Once the faint track I was following headed straight towards one of these apparent sheets of water, and I was even meditating a bathe, but, lo! when I was a hundred yards or so off, it began to dwindle and disappear, and I found nothing but the same endless stretch of grass, burnt up by ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... to the very confines of the eighteenth century. Why, we have to ask, even granting that William Hogarth's "monster Caricatura" is thus omnivorous and omnipresent, does he tower aloft in some countries and under some conditions to the majesty of a new art, and in others dwindle down ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... bar of carriage-windows brush in vibration across their faces. The ground and the air rocked. Then Siegmund turned his head to watch the red and the green lights in the rear of the train swiftly dwindle on the darkness. Still watching the distance where the train ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... to suppose that relations must of course love each other because they are relations. Love must be cultivated, and can be increased by judicious culture, as wild fruits may double their bearing under the hand of a gardener; and love can dwindle and die out by neglect, as choice flower-seeds planted in poor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... better. And how many other young ladies are like her?—and how many love-marriages carry on well to the last?—and how sentimental firms do not finish in bankruptcy?—and how many heroic passions don't dwindle down into despicable indifference, or ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his index finger. There was an explosive jolt. Rockets flamed terribly in emptiness. The space tug rushed toward the west. The Platform seemed to dwindle with startling suddenness. It seemed to rush away and become lost in the myriads of stars. The space tug accelerated at four gravities in the direction opposed to ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... in squeek, squeak, squeal, squall, brawl, wraul, yaul, spaul, screek, shriek, shrill, sharp, shrivel, wrinkle, crack, crash, clash, gnash, plash, crush, hush, hisse, fisse, whist, soft, jar, hurl, curl, whirl, buz, bustle, spindle, dwindle, twine, twist, and in many more, we may observe the agreement of such sort of sounds with the things signified; and this so frequently happens, that scarce any language which I know can be compared with ours. ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... of old Merlin's enchantments still lingered there, for as Nan stood silently absorbing the mysterious glamour of the place, the petty annoyances of the day, the fret of Lady Gertrude's unwelcoming reception of her, seemed to dwindle into insignificance. They were only external things, after all. They could not mar the loveliness of this mystic, legend-haunted ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... this or that medium. This man was different. For all his outer grotesquery, the noble simplicity of the verse matched some veiled and hitherto but half-expressed quality within him, and dignified him. Miss Brewster suffered the strange but not wholly unpleasant sensation of feeling herself dwindle. ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... to keep it harmless. The other remaining half of the original party began to dwindle almost immediately, until it became only a group. With one exception, all those whom the police and the government regarded as inclined to violence left the group. There remained, with this one exception, a nucleus of earnest, thoughtful people whose creed ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... gentleman from the Rocky Mountains," or "the gentleman from the Pacific," or "the gentleman from Patagonia," but "the gentleman from the North Pole," and also "the gentleman from the South Pole;" and the poor original thirteen states would dwindle into comparative insignificance as parts of this ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... going on; since this was a part of a scout's duty; though no mean advantage was ever taken of the rival camps—he would not stand for that. In a quiet way he had learned how their meetings became more frequent, and the desire to excel, that had threatened to dwindle away for lack ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... contracted now in span Raised as a screen or fluttered as a fan; The gleaming helm a hollow thimble proves, And weighty gauntlets dwindle into gloves. The plumes that winged the arrow through the sky, Waft to and fro the shuttlecock on high; Two trusty swords are into scissors cross'd, And dinted breastplates are in corsets lost; While dungeon chains to gentler use consigned, Now ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone
... best sea ally. The territory and the military power of France were increased, but the springs of commerce and of a peaceful shipping had been exhausted in the process; and although the military navy was for some years kept up with splendor and efficiency, it soon began to dwindle, and by the end of the reign had practically disappeared. The same false policy, as regards the sea, marked the rest of this reign of fifty-four years. Louis steadily turned his back upon the sea interests of France, except the fighting-ships, and either ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... Rome should have state libraries holding a score of volumes for every one that Greece could boast; Rome's temples should be galleries of rare paintings, ten for each that Athens had. Rome should be so great, so rich, so gorgeous, that Greece should be as nothing beside her; Egypt should dwindle to littleness, and the memory of Babylon should be forgotten. Greece had her Homer, her Sophocles, her Anacreon; Rome should ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... lead to the total defeat of the few that are left, and the best endeavours of a dwindling remnant may be wholly nugatory. There is needed a sense of community and solidarity, without which the assurance necessary to the work is bound to falter and dwindle out; and there is also needed a degree of popular countenance, not to be had by isolated individuals engaged in an unconventional pursuit of things that are neither to be classed as spendthrift decorum nor ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... long time before he would dare smoke a cigar again, and his supply of cigarettes was destined to dwindle down to nothing before that day. But he did not seem ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... died with the former. It was scarcely credible that a man should be so regardless of his own family, but the echo of the mystic, sublime discourses of the Greek porches, the faint but sacred trace of the march of vast armies, and the fall of nations, caused Leslie to dwindle into a mere speck in the creation. Of course she would be provided for somehow: marry, or make her own livelihood. Socrates did not plague himself much about the fate of Xantippe: Seneca wrote from his exile to console his mother, but the epistles were for the benefit of the world at ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... off, and, turning with a parting blast of their whistles, headed back to the City. Only the larger, heavier steamers and the sea-going tugs still kept on their way. On either shore of the bay the houses began to dwindle, giving place to open fields, brown and sear under the scudding sea-fog, for now a wind was building up from out the east, and the surface of the bay ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... ten," said Grannie. "I looked at the purse this morning. One pound ten, and sevenpence ha'penny in coppers; that's all. That wouldn't be a bad sum if there was anythink more coming in; but seeing as ther' aint, it is uncommon likely to dwindle, look at it ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... nightingale) is dim, And the loud shriek of sage Minerva's fowl Rattles around me her discordant hymn: Old portraits from old walls upon me scowl— I wish to heaven they would not look so grim; The dying embers dwindle in the grate— I think too that I have sate ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... we and part; no further can we go; And better death than we from high to low Should dwindle, or decline ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... fortunes; how many acknowledge the stern and heavy responsibility of their opportunities; how many refuse to dream their lives away in a Sybarite luxury; how many are smitten with the lofty ambition of achieving an enduring name by works of a permanent value; how many do not dwindle into dainty dilettanti, and dilute their manhood with factitious sentimentality instead of a hearty human sympathy; how many are not satisfied with having the fastest horses and the "crackest" carriages, and an unlimited wardrobe, and a weak affectation ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... with what monstrous lies and senseless shams Have we been cullied all along at Sam's! Who could have e'er believed, unless in spite Lewis le Grand would turn rank Williamite? Thou that hast look'd so fierce and talk'd so big, In thine old age to dwindle to a Whig! Of Kings distress'd thou art a fine securer. Thou mak'st me swear, that am a known nonjuror. Were Job alive, and banter'd by such shufflers, He'd outrail Oates, and curse both thee and Boufflers For thee I've lost, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the fruit. Even in the most favorable seasons, hard, shallow soils give but a brief period of strawberries, the fruit ripens all at once, and although the first berries may be of good size, the later ones dwindle until they are scarcely larger than peas. Be sure to have a deep, ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... clergy found their congregations dwindle away daily; and Penn being young, handsome, and of a graceful stature, the court as well as the city ladies flocked very devoutly to his meeting. The patriarch, George Fox, hearing of his great reputation, came to London (though the journey was very long) purely ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... grit? What was the climate on its banks when it washed down the delicate leaves of broad-leaved trees, akin to our modern English ones, which are found in the fine mud-sand strata of Bournemouth? When, finally, did it dwindle down to the brook which now runs through Wareham town? Was its bed, sea or dry land, or under an ice sheet, during the long ages of the glacial epoch? And if you say—Who is sufficient for these things?—Who can answer these questions? I answer—Who ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... of the ancient Dutch church thus dwindling, and seemingly content to dwindle, to one of the least of the tribes, is not a cheerful one, nor one easy to understand. But out of this little and dilapidated Bethlehem was to come forth a leader. Domine Frelinghuysen, arriving in America in 1720, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... private citizen, who employs the most immoral practices to acquire power, can only act in a manner indirectly prejudicial to the public prosperity. But if the representative of the executive descends into the combat, the cares of government dwindle into second-rate importance, and the success of his election is his first concern. All laws and all the negotiations he undertakes are to him nothing more than electioneering schemes; places become the reward of services rendered, not to the nation, but ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... struck from midnights, there are fire-flames noon-days kindle, Whereby piled-up honors perish, whereby swollen ambitions dwindle, While just this or that poor impulse, which for once had play unstifled, Seems the sole work of a life-time that away ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... cruel as that of being bounded by a hard small nature. Not to be penetrable at all points to the shifting lights, the wandering music of the world—she could imagine no physical disability as cramping as that. How the little parched soul, in solitary confinement for life, must pine and dwindle in its ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... status was satisfactory, at the moment, but he mustn't let Mirabelle get the bit in her teeth, and run away with him. As soon as ever she got him on record as favouring the sort of legislation which she herself wanted, Mr. Mix's power was going to dwindle. And Mr. Mix adored his power, and he hated to think of losing ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... courts of arbitration. The two hundred and fifty disputes successfully arbitrated in the past century challenge with trumpet-tongued eloquence the support of all men for reason's peaceful rule. To-day no discussion is needed to show that if war is to be abolished, if navies are to dwindle and armies diminish, if there is to be a federation of the world, it must come through treaties of arbitration. In this way alone lies peace; yet in this way lies the present great barrier to further progress—the conception ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... physically decaying multitude continually thrown off in the waste-weir of our great commercial and manufacturing cities and towns, whose population, without the infusion—and that continually—of the strong, substantial, and vigorous life blood of the country, would soon dwindle into insignificance and decrepitude. Why then should not this first, primitive, health-enjoying and life-sustaining class of our people be equally accommodated in all that gives to social and substantial life, its due development? It is absurd to deny them by others, ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... time. I may as well here explain, though somewhat out of order, a peculiarity in reference to the roots of this species: it dies down in early autumn, and the crown seems to retire within the ball of its roots, which are a matted mass of fibres, and not only does it seem to retire, but also to dwindle, so that anyone, with a suspicion, who might be seeking for the vital part, might easily be misled by such appearances, which are further added to by the fact that the species does not start into growth until a late date compared with others of the genus. So peculiar are the roots ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... ancient of its claims to any high antiquity. Certain portions of the Veda even, which, as far as our knowledge goes at present, we are perfectly justified in referring to the tenth or twelfth century before our era, may some day or other dwindle down from their high estate, and those who have believed in their extreme antiquity will then be held up to blame or ridicule, like Sir W. Jones or Colonel Wilford. This cannot be avoided, for science is progressive, and does not acknowledge, even in the most distinguished ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... pass through the Brandenburger Thor down the broad road to Charlottenburg. Their tramp never stops. I can see them from my window tramping, tramping away down the great straight road; and crowds that don't seem to change or dwindle watch them and shout. Where do the soldiers all come from? I never dreamed there could be so many in the world, let alone in Berlin; and Germany isn't even at war! But it's no use asking questions, or trying to talk about it. I've found the word "Why?" in this ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... must inevitably come when this order is transformed into the deadliest enemy of the civilization which it has brought into being. The power of the spiritual oligarchy rests upon superstitious terrors which dwindle before advancing enlightenment; hence the clergy have become reactionary, have sought to stifle the spirit of free inquiry, and have used the schools which they have builded as instruments to keep alive unreasoning prejudice, or to serve their selfish ends. This, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... because the five hundred pounds must be preserved intact for eventual use. That was the great point. With the entire five hundred one felt a substance at one's back; but it seemed to him that should he let it dwindle to four-fifty or even four-eighty, all the efficiency would be gone out of the money, as though there were some magic power in the round figure. ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... as she read of the extravagances of the world and saw her own vanishing revenues; but the funds continued to dwindle until Sarah Smith asked herself: "What will become of this school when I die?" With trembling fingers she had sat down to figure how many teachers must be dropped next year, when her brother's letter came, and she slipped to her ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the cause of it, the Territorial divisions after they took the field seemed to be treated as veritable Cinderellas for a long time. They generally set out short of establishment, and they were apt to dwindle away painfully for want of reserves after they had spent a few weeks on the war-path. The Returns show this to have been the case. More than one of the divisional Generals concerned spoke to me, or wrote to me, on the subject in the later ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... they did the same; if I was astonish'd at their Make, and at what other things I had observ'd, I was more so, when I saw one of the tallest, dwindle in the Twinkling of an Eye, to a Pigmy, fly into the Air without Wings, and carry off a Giant in each Hand by the Hair of ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... quick to follow. She discovered that her husband was a hopeless gambler and spendthrift, spending long hours daily at the card-tables, watching with pale face and trembling lips his pile of gold dwindle (as it usually did) to its last coin; and often losing at a single sitting a month's revenue from the Civil List. Her own dowry of five million roubles, she knew, was safe from his clutches. Her father had taken care to make that secure, but Milan's private fortune, large as it ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... the Courts, that were manifold, dwindle To divers Divisions of One, And no fire from your face may rekindle The light of old learning undone, We have suitors and briefs for our payment, While, so long as a Court shall hold pleas, We talk moonshine with wigs for our ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... secured the adoption of the commissioner system in the West, and South, in which sections it attained its highest development. It was soon found that a commission after the Massachusetts model, when composed of men less competent or less disposed to do their duty, was liable to dwindle into a statistical board or even become a pliant tool in the hands of the railroads. Furthermore, the conditions in Massachusetts, where railroad owners and railroad patrons lived side by side and were in many instances even identical, ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... said he, "was a good-natured, peaceable, sociable man while here (in New York), but altogether unfit for a governor of Massachusetts. He will lose all the character he has acquired as a man, a gentleman, and a general, and dwindle down into a mere scribbling governor—a mere ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... becoming stagnant, or restrict its natural progress without inviting its decay. It was so in all human affairs; it was so even in ordinary business. Every man of business knew that if his enterprise ceased to grow bigger, it soon began to dwindle down; and so a country must grow greater or else must slide away to weakness, until at last it would be despised. Now the Government proposed to spend 50,000l. at Quebec; 50,000l., he repeated, was really nothing ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... fate of the red man appears to be nearly decided. What between their wars with each other, the use of spirituous liquors, and the diseases imported by the whites, they dwindle away every day. The most fatal disease to them is the small-pox. The following account, which I have extracted from one of the American papers, was confirmed to me by ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... light. From above the blue light looked down like a watchful eye. The darkness of the water, like streaming ebony, took the felucca and the fateful voices. And the tide gave its help to the oarsmen. The lights began to dwindle when Isaacson ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... his predecessor's merits, and reap the fruits of his labours; but if he live to a great age, or if he be followed by another who is wanting in the qualities of the first, that then the kingdom must necessarily dwindle. Conversely, when two consecutive princes are of rare excellence, we commonly find them achieving results which win for them enduring renown. David, for example, not only surpassed in learning and judgment, but was so valiant in arms that, after conquering and ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... wear. I'd love to appear in a red and yeller suit, Samantha, or a green and purple, or a blue and maroon, with a pink sash made of thin glitterin' silk, but I spoze that you will break that up in a minute. So, I spoze that I shall have to dwindle down onto a silk scarf, or some plumes in my hat, mebby—you never are willin' for me to soar out and spread myself, but you probable wouldn't ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... divine To what would one day dwindle that which made Thee more than mortal? and that so supine By aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid? She who was named eternal, and arrayed Her warriors but to conquer—she who veiled Earth with her haughty shadow, and ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... a passing glimpse of the famous crater-mountains, called by our astronomers Copernicus and Theophilus, the former situated in the eastern and the latter in the western hemisphere of the Moon. The largest openings of our Earth dwindle into insignificance compared with such ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... Ibrahim maintained his guard; and beside Trench there lay in the House of Stone, in the town beyond the world, a man who one night had sailed out of Dublin Bay, past the riding lanterns of the yachts, and had seen Bray, that fairyland of lights, dwindle to a golden blot. To think of the sea and the salt wind, the sparkle of light as the water split at the ship's bows, the illuminated deck, perhaps the sound of a bell telling the hour, and the cool dim night about and above, so wrought upon Trench that, practical unimaginative ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... fear of being too successful. Their situation had become desperate: if any event in the chapter of human accidents should fall out to give them a reprieve, the only consequences would be, that as they had dwindled, dwindled before, they would dwindle, dwindle again. There was no stock of good luck which such conduct would not run out. It was clear what was coming: the Tories must return to power. How long they would stay there was another question; but their return was a phasis, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... sandstone country, beyond that line they are rarely met with; and, since the tides flow to a considerable distance up all the rivers, the water of these is in many parts of the district brackish and unfit for use; besides which, in the summer-time, the smaller streams become dry, or dwindle down into mere chains of ponds, barely sufficient to supply ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... Spanish lake, sacred to the ships of the king's subjects alone. With such a simple code of navigation coming in aid of the other causes which impoverished the land, it may be believed that the maritime traffic of the country would dwindle into the same exiguous proportions which characterised ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... indifferent which chance happens, and which possible contingency of fortune or misfortune, and persuades daily and hourly his delicious pay. What balks or breaks others is fuel for his burning progress to contact and amorous joy. Other proportions of the reception of pleasure dwindle to nothing to his proportions. All expected from heaven or from the highest he is rapport with in the sight of the daybreak, or a scene of the winter woods, or the presence of children playing, or with his arm round the neck of a man or woman. His love, above ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... for his labour. The possibilities that have existed, and that do still in a dwindling degree exist, for resolute statesmen to make English the common language of communication for all Asia south and east of the Himalayas, will have to develop of their own force or dwindle and pass away. They may quite probably pass away. There is no sign that either the English or the Americans have a sufficient sense of the importance of linguistic predominance in the future of their race to interfere with natural processes ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... "Great Shippe" had really gone, when the people had seen the last of Captain Lamberton standing on her deck giving orders, and had watched her white sails dwindle and disappear, they walked back over the ice to their homes on the shore remembering sadly that it would be a long time before they could expect to have any news from her. It might be two or three months before she reached London ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... solemnity of his reveries which sometimes remind us that he was writing in an age which had rediscovered Sir Thomas Browne. The following sentence proves how accurately he could catch the rhythm of the seventeenth century. "That we should wear out by slow stages, and dwindle at last into nothing, is not wonderful, when even in our prime our strongest impressions leave little trace but for the moment, and we are the creatures of petty circumstance."[104] Other passages in the same essay echo ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... rushing stream his terrible form could be discerned apparently moving with the torrent, but in reality remaining stationary. Now he would raise himself half out of the water, and ascend like a mist half as high as the near mountain, and then he would dwindle down to the size of a man. His laugh accorded with his savage visage, and his long hair stood on end, and a ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... arms were already congealed. Horror-stricken as I was at the approach of such a hopeless, ghastly death, my sensations were accompanied by a languor and lassitude indescribable but far from unpleasant. To some extent thought or wonderment was still alive. Should I dwindle painlessly away, preferring rest and peace to effort, or should I make a last struggle to save myself? The ice seemed to close in more and more every moment. I ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... from battlefield to battlefield, from one scene of carnage to another. They see their regiments dwindle to nothing, their officers decimated, three-fourths of their comrades dead or wounded, and yet each night they gather about their bivouacs apparently undisturbed by it all. One sees them on the road the day after ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... from one thing to another I cannot say; but gradually my ideas seemed to dwindle away into nothingness, and it is easy to imagine that I slept. I do ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... money invested in an armaments business? That he derives nearly all his income from it? That he is the son-in-law of the head of the business, and has in it vast sums which increase at every rumour of war and which would dwindle away if any extensive disarmament scheme should ever really be seriously contemplated by the nations? That his father-in-law, this munitions prince, is even now in Geneva, privately visiting his daughter and son-in-law and ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... bears son, or the sons of men kindle fire, or ships sweep on, or shields glitter, or the sun shines, or the snow falls, or a Finn sweeps on skates, or a fir-tree waxes, or a falcon flies the spring-long day with a fair wind under either wing, or the Heavens dwindle far away, or the world is built, or the wind turns waters seaward, or carles sow corn. Let him shun churches, and Christian folk, and heathen men, houses and caves, and every home but the home of Hell. Now shall we ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... throughout Imperial times it ranked after Ostia as the chief victualling port of Rome. And of the two celebrated cities which adorned the shores of this Bay in classical times, Puteoli was the seat of commerce, and Baiae the resort of pleasure and luxury; yet both were doomed to dwindle and almost perish in the disastrous years that followed the break-up of the Empire. The invading hordes of Germany, the raids of Saracen pirates, and the constant presence of malaria on this deserted coast were sufficient causes in themselves to reduce ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Garcia, with a sneering laugh. "Give thyself wings as a bird, and still stone walls will encircle thee; dwindle into thin air, and gain the outer world, and tell thy tale, and charge Don Luis Garcia with the deed, and who will believe thee? Thinkest thou I would have boasted of my triumphant vengeance to aught who could betray me? Why my very tool, the willing minister of my vengeance—who ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... down With a Bedouin, lean and brown, Plotting gain of merchandise, Or perchance of robber prize; Clumsy camel load upheaving, Woman deftly carpet-weaving, Meal of dates and bread and salt, While in azure heavenly vault Throbbing stars begin to dwindle. ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... Monasteries and pious Seminaries, resorted to from all civilized Parts of Europe, our Metropolitical and Diocesan Cathedrals; on such impartial Review, surely, the foregoing Tribe of Sneerers and Flouters must dwindle ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... Lord Cholme, "can no longer afford to pass by one of her most brilliant sons. In the light of his magnificent achievement, the daring of a Peary, the nerve of a Shackleton, the indomitable persistence of a Marconi, dwindle and fade. We do not hesitate to say that since the capture of Gibraltar, the Empire has secured no such chance for consolidating her paramountcy in Europe. The present is no time for hesitation or delay. Mr. Carville is master of the situation. By his message from the air, three ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... London. The child of the European, although born in India, must be sent home in early life to the climate of his ancestors, or to one closely resembling it, in order to escape incurable disease, if not premature death. Again, the offspring of Asiatics born in this country pine and dwindle into one or other of the twin cachexiae—scrofula and consumption; and, if the individual survives, lives in a state of passive existence, stunted in growth, and incapable of enduring fatigue. If such extreme changes of climate prove obnoxious ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... State. They make their student-years but a pretext for a life of rough debauchery, from which they issue with a bought diploma; and, in many cases, satiated and disgusted with their own lives, they dwindle down into the timeserving reactionaries, the worst enemies of free development, because they themselves have abused in youth the little liberty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... getting ready for the fulfilment of his hopes, he ordered tanks and printer for the final work of getting his stuff ready for the market. He had at best a crudely primitive outfit, though he saw his bank balance dwindle and dwindle to a most despairingly small sum. And still it did not snow nor show any ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... heavens. In like manner, the majestic orbs of the political firmament undergo a cruel lessening of diameter as they approach the Federal City. The greatest of men ceases to be great in the presence of hundreds of his peers, and the multitude of the illustrious dwindle into individual littleness by reason of their superabundance. And when it comes to occupations, it will hardly be denied that the stranger who beholds a Senator "coppering on the ace," or a Congressman standing in a bar-room with a lump of mouldy cheese in one hand and a glass of "pony whiskey" in ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... the Taithu, shrouded with protecting mists of light in Moon Pool Chamber, and heard their words. Yet, being crafty, he thought of the power that would be his if he heeded and how quickly the strength of the sun king would dwindle. So he and his made a pact ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... little, of no worth? Are we to despise the lessons which are taught us in this nook of creation, in this narrow round of human experience, because an infinite universe stretches around us, which we have no means of exploring, and in which the earth, and sun, and planets dwindle to a point? We should remember that the known, however little it may be, is in harmony with the boundless unknown, and a step towards it. We should remember, too, that the gravest truths may be gathered from a very narrow compass of information. God is revealed in his ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... consideration to which, in its full usefulness and vigour, it had not presumed to aspire. Therefore Dominic Iglesias held calmly on his way, seeing the circle of his occupations, pleasures, and activities dwindle and decrease, yet maintaining not only his serenity of mind, but his accustomed self-respecting outward refinement of bearing and habit. To meet death with a gracious stoicism, well-dressed and standing upright, is, rightly considered, a very fine art, reflecting ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... whose aggregate of perfections is expressible, we will say, by 20. Now, if they would always keep at that point, there might be some reason for your remaining unaltered, namely, your not being able to help it. But suppose that they dwindle down to 19-1/2, the person, that is, the whole sum of the qualities admired, no longer exists, and you, of course, are absolved from your engagement. But mind, I do not say that you are justified in changing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... tail. For the unassisted eye, and still more for the microscope, what spectacle can be more marvelous than the gradual process of change by which this tiny fish becomes a reptile? Legs bud; the fish-like gills dwindle by a vital process of absorption; the fish-like air-bladder becomes transmuted, as by a miracle, into the celled structure of lungs; the tail grows daily shorter, not broken off, but absorbed; the heart adds to its cells; the fish becomes a reptile as the tadpole changes to a frog. The ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... OF DESIRES.—And it may actively repress other desires or cause them to dwindle and disappear. A man possessed by a devouring ambition may resolutely scorn delights to which he would otherwise be keenly susceptible, or he may simply ignore them without effort. The attention, fixed upon some chosen end, and busied with the means to its attainment, ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... granite. By insulating this mountain, and studying it by itself, one feels its mild sublimity; but still, as a whole, I give the preference greatly to the other view. From this point the lake is too distant, the shores of Savoy dwindle in the presence of their mightier neighbour, and the mysterious-looking Valais, which in its peculiar beauty has scarcely a rival on earth, is entirely hid from sight. Then the lights and shades are nearly ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... flashing drift was blown, Crimsoned with the conflagration, and the roofs went thundering down! Oh, the prayers, the prayers and curses, that together winged their flight From the maddened hearts of many, through that long and woful night!— Till the fires began to dwindle, and the shots grew faint and few, And we heard the foeman's challenge only in a far halloo: Till the silence once more settled o'er the gorges of the glen, Broken only by the Cona plunging through its naked den. Slowly from the mountain summit was the drifting veil withdrawn, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... less marked. The mountains are half-wooded at first, and then wholly so; they dwindle down; the widening valleys are covered with harvest; the fresh and green verdure of the herbage which supplies forage begins to clothe the hollows and the slopes. We enter Inverness, and we are surprised to find at almost ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... somewhat in the semblance of life, and, for at least a while, on the face of the earth? By subtle art, with far-fetched spices, let the body survive its day and be (even though hidden beneath the earth) for ever. Nay more, since death cause it straightway to dwindle somewhat from the true semblance of life, let cunning artificers fashion it anew—fashion it as it was. Thus, in the earliest days of England, the kings, as they died, were embalmed, and their bodies were borne ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... charioteer who would drive her up the mountain road to the Inn that nestled in a valley nine thousand feet up the mountain. It was a drive Fanny never forgot. Fenger, Ted, Haynes-Cooper, her work, her plans, her ambitions, seemed to dwindle to puny insignificance beside the vast grandeur that unfolded before her at every fresh turn in the road. Up they went, and up, and up, and the air was cold, but without a sting in it. It was dark when the lights of the Inn twinkled out at them. The door was ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... about it without any more delay, since there could be no telling at what time the absent men might show up. Once they returned to the camp, of course, the chances of the scouts accomplishing much began to dwindle enormously. ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Miss Martha; also I was secretly satisfied that my father had found the merchant's conversation attractive. It seemed to give me some excuse for my breach of Miss Peckham's golden rule. Moreover, little troubles and offences which seemed mountains at Bellevue Cottage were apt to dwindle into very surmountable molehills with my larger-minded parents. I was comparatively at ease again. My father had evidently seen nothing unusual in my conduct, so I hoped that it had not been conspicuous. Possibly I might never meet Mr. ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... whom he had played many a game of chess. Best, said the architect, take off one good-sized shop, rather than halve the premises. James would be left a little cramped, a little tight, with only one-third of his present space. But as we age we dwindle. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... like the gipsy carol in dear Mr. Kenyon's volume, because it is, and was in MS., a great favorite of mine. There are excellent things otherwise, as must be when he says them: one of the most radiant of benevolences with one of the most refined of intellects! How the paper seems to dwindle as I would fain talk on more. I have performed a great exploit, ridden on a donkey five miles deep into the mountains to an almost inaccessible volcanic ground not far from the stars. Robert on horseback, and Wilson and the nurse (with baby) on other donkeys; guides, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... the thin security of self-satisfied morality, can now no more tease us with their sleek impertinence. In the presence of a venture of this high distinction, of a faith of this tragic intensity, such shabby counterfeits of the race's hope dwindle and pale ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... not wrathful, my good Lord of Douglas," answered the Prince; "I did but smile to think how your princely retinue would dwindle if every thief were dealt with as the poor Highlanders ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... went from bad to worse. In the good old times Mr. Cumming's sugar produce had spread itself annually over some three hundred acres; but by degrees this dwindle down to half that extent of land. And then in those old golden days they had always taken a full hogshead from the acre;—very often more. The estate had sometimes given four hundred hogsheads in the year. But in the days ...
— Miss Sarah Jack, of Spanish Town, Jamaica • Anthony Trollope
... appear as big as the sun now does, just as the sun would dwindle away to the size of a star, were it to be removed to ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... deer-stealer; the next was with Typhonus, a giant of forty feet four inches. Indeed it was unhappily recorded, that meeting at last with a sailor's wife, she made his staff of prowess serve her own use, and dwindle away to a distaff: she clapped him on an old tar jacket of her husband's; so that this great hero drooped like a scabbed sheep. Him his contemporary Theseus succeeded in the Bear Garden, which honour he held for many years: this grand duellist ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... from the diseased activity of some particular Prince on whom the authority may happen to devolve. This, if it takes a regular hereditary course: but,—if the succession be interrupted, and the supreme power frequently usurped or given by election,—worse evils follow. Science and Art must dwindle, whether the power be hereditary or not: and the virtues of a Trajan or an Antonine are a hollow support for the feeling of contentment and happiness in the hearts of their subjects: such virtues are even a painful mockery;—something that is, and may vanish in a moment, and leave the monstrous ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Anthony Frederick Samuel Anna Maria, Duke of Brittany, and son of Louis XVI. The unhappy Prince, when a prisoner with his unfortunate parents in the Temple, was enabled to escape from that place of confinement, hidden (for the treatment of the ruffians who guarded him had caused the young Prince to dwindle down astonishingly) in the cocked-hat of the Representative, Roederer. It is well known that, in the troublous revolutionary times, cocked-hats were ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... nevertheless pledged not to interfere with its continuance in the States where it already existed. Of course, when new regions were forever closed against it, from its very nature it must have begun to shrink and to dwindle; and probably gradual and compensated emancipation, which appealed very strongly to the new President's sense of justice and expediency, would, in the progress of time, by a reversion to the ideas of the founders of the ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... strong imagination turn The great wheel backward, until Troy unburn, And then unbuild, and seven Troys below Rise out of death, and dwindle, and outflow, Till all have passed, and none has yet been there: Back, ever back. Our birds still crossed the air; Beyond our myriad changing generations Still built, unchanged, their known inhabitations. A million years before Atlantis was Our lark sprang from ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... Thy lips enkindle With their love the breath between them; And thy smiles before they dwindle Make the cold air fire; then screen them In those locks, where whoso gazes Faints, entangled ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... the eyes. This is a very important detail of correct makeup, and is indispensable on every well-lighted stage, where even the most soulful orbs with long, thick lashes will dwindle to half their size and have a faded, dull appearance if not properly made up. It is essential that the two eyes match in every detail, and to secure this result will require the taking of considerable pains and close study of your ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... while we had enough of our own particular electrical food to last us for a million of your years, and enough power to guide Xlarbti to other universes, we had exhausted all the remaining energy of our entire universe. And when we finally left it to dwindle behind us in the black abysses of space, we left it, a dead cinder, devoid of life, vitiated of activity, and utterly lacking in cosmic forces, ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... appreciative ones by neglect. Women domesticate themselves to death already. What they want is cultivation. They need to be stimulated to develop a large, comprehensive, catholic life, in which their domestic duties shall have an appropriate niche, and not dwindle down to a narrow and servile one, over which those duties shall spread and ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... fellow who helped Mrs. Bal out of the blue car (also big, in proportion to the size of the owner and his fortune) was Morgan P. Bennett of New York, the Tin Trust millionaire. Somerled's puny horde of millions dwindle into humble insignificance beside Morgan Bennett's pile. If Somerled has made two millions out of his mines and successful speculations, and a few extra thousands out of his pictures, M. P. Bennett has made twenty millions out of tin—and unlimited cheek. He is so big that his pet name in Wall Street ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... round the shepherds on the pastures of Bethlehem, and enwrapped Him and the three disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration. It came not to lift Him on its soft folds to the heavens, but in order that, first, He might be plainly seen till the moment that He ceased to be seen, and might not dwindle into a speck by reason of distance; and secondly, that it might teach the truth, that, as His body was received into the cloud, so He entered into the glory which He 'had with the Father before the world was.' Such was ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... hunter moved forward.... Dazedly Every watched the two pass at a walk into the gloomy corridor and dwindle slowly to a mere blur of blue and grey under the shadow of the towering walls. At last distance and dusk swallowed them, and he could see ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... And both of them often gain by the interchange. Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up. That which was a weed in one intelligence becomes a flower in the other. A flower, on the other hand, may dwindle down to a mere weed by the same change. Healthy growths may become poisonous by falling upon the wrong mental soil, and what seemed a night-shade in one mind unfold as a ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... back. Their shining green has changed to a less vivid hue; they are taking bluish tones here and there; but their outlines are still sharp, and along their high soft slopes there are white specklings, which are villages and towns. These white specks diminish swiftly,— dwindle to the dimensions of salt-grains,—finally vanish. Then the island grows uniformly bluish; it becomes cloudy, vague as a dream of mountains;—it turns at last gray as smoke, and then melts into ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... Webster's blue-black spelling-book. I loved my school, and the fine faith the children had in the wisdom of their teacher was truly marvellous. We read and spelled together, wrote a little, picked flowers, sang, and listened to stories of the world beyond the hill. At times the school would dwindle away, and I would start out. I would visit Mun Eddings, who lived in two very dirty rooms, and ask why little Lugene, whose flaming face seemed ever ablaze with the dark-red hair uncombed, was absent all last week, ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... meaning of the task of implanting Western ideals in the Eastern mind rose before me when I thought of Armour's doing it—how they would dwindle in the process, and how he must go on handling them and looking at them withered and shrunken for twenty-odd years. I understood—there was enough left in me to understand—Armour's terrified escape. I was happy in the thought of him, sailing down the Bay. The possibilities of marriage, ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... and gases that are on the surface and above the surface recede more and more into the surface and then into the interior, until they wholly disappear. Cold takes the throne of nature. Universal aridity supervenes, and all forms of vegetable and animate existence go away to return no more. They dwindle and expire. The conditions that have come are ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... recruits who took its place were mostly undisciplined and unreliable. When the exigencies became pressing, a new method was resorted to, and then the usual erosion of life in the field, the losses by casualties and sickness, caused the numbers to dwindle. Long ago the paymaster had ceased to pretend to pay off the men regularly so that there was now a large amount of back pay due them. Largely through Washington's patriotic exhortations had they kept fighting to the end; and, with peace upon them, they did not dare to disband because ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... learn again. There were times after this when he observed incuriously a parade of mind pictures, part memory, part pure hallucination and containing nothing of reason; other times when he thought not at all. The sun appeared to dwindle, retreating and fading far away into a remote place where there were no stars at all. It became a feeble candle, guttered unsteadily a moment and suddenly winked out. Abruptly Johnny ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... situations to be had without very much effort on the part of the seeker. Mrs. Sikes, whose work had chiefly been dressmaking and plain sewing, found the new field of labor quite irksome. The money realized from the sale of her property she must not let dwindle away too swiftly; her husband was helpless, and she must work, and the children must work. She found the North a place where a day's work meant a day's work in full; there was no let up; the pound of flesh was exacted. So she often tugged home ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... creature! Just the seventh part of my mother joy! Who can deny that I am fortunate? Who will doubt that I shall remain happy? Fortune would have a hard time if she undertook to shatter my happiness. Take this or that one from my treasured children; but when would the number of them dwindle to the sickly two of Latona? Away with your sacrifices! Take the laurel out of your hair. Go back to your homes and let me ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... the universe but what does and ought equally to bear these two opposite characters: on the one side, the seal or stamp of the artificer upon his work, and, on the other, the mark of its original nothing, into which it may relapse and dwindle every moment. It is an incomprehensible mixture of low and great; of frailty in the matter, and of art in the maker? The hand of God is conspicuous in everything, even in a worm that crawls on earth. Nothingness, on the other ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... the necessary wear and tear of service, instead of being filled up at the bottom, and the vacancies among the officers filled from the best noncommissioned officers and men, the habit was to raise new regiments, with new colonels, captains, and men, leaving the old and experienced battalions to dwindle away into mere skeleton organizations. I believe with the volunteers this matter was left to the States exclusively, and I remember that Wisconsin kept her regiments filled with recruits, whereas other States ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... methods whose reliability is among the remarkable achievements of medicine. It is the sound opinion of conservative men that if the knowledge now in the hands of the medical profession could be put to wide-spread use, syphilis would dwindle in two generations from the unenviable position of the third great plague to the insignificance of malaria and yellow fever on the Isthmus of Panama. The influences that stand between humanity and this achievement are the lack of general public enlightenment ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... earth, in the midst of comfort and plenty; and, in spite of all the efforts of missionaries, even their children and grand-children, after giving up the horrid crime, and becoming Christians, seem to have no power of living and increasing, but dwindle away, and perish off the earth. Yes, God's laws work in strange and subtle ways; so darkly, so slowly, that the ungodly and sinners often believe that there are no laws of God, and say—"Tush, ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... any case necessarily indicate their existence ... It is unnecessary to add that, in proportion as we remove from Apostolic times without positive evidence of the existence and authenticity of our Gospels, so does the value of their testimony dwindle away. Indeed, requiring, as we do, clear, direct and irrefragable evidence of the integrity, authenticity, and historical character of these Gospels, doubt or obscurity on these points must inevitably be ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... the second time she was seeing the snow wreaths dwindle, and the drops shine forth in moisture again, while the mountain paths were set free by the might of the springtide sun, she spoke almost for the first time with authority, as she desired Heinz to saddle her mule, and escort her to join in the Easter mass at ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hilly town immediately at hand; the beautiful St. Lawrence sparkling and flashing in the sunlight; and the tiny ships below the rock from which you gaze, whose distant rigging looks like spiders' webs against the light, while casks and barrels on their decks dwindle into toys, and busy mariners become so many puppets; all this, framed by a sunken window in the fortress and looked at from the shadowed room within, forms one of the brightest and most enchanting pictures that the eye ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... Matthew on the street, and been gratified with his deferential bow. His bulk, to which, as a rotund lady, she had taken an antipathy, seemed to dwindle down as it was looked at. Matthew, whose ideal was a delicate woman with observable shoulder blades, had also, by repeated sights of Mrs. Frump, become reconciled to her ample proportions. Meantime, they had heard much, incidentally, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... done more than kill persons, he has caused men's minds to dwindle, he has withered the heart of the citizen. One must belong to the race of the invincible and the indomitable, to persevere now in the rugged path of renunciation and of duty. An indescribable gangrene of material prosperity threatens to cause public honesty ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... with free and genuine appreciation of even the later novels?" asks or echoes a lady, Miss Grace Toplis, writing on Jefferies. "In brief, he was an essayist and not a novelist at all," says Mr. Henry Salt. "It is therefore certain that his importance for posterity will dwindle, if it has not already dwindled, to that given by a bundle of descriptive selections. But these will occupy a foremost place on their particular shelf, the shelf at the head of which stands Gilbert White and Gray," says Mr. George Saintsbury. "He was a reporter of genius, and ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... by her loveliness, her charms, the fine, exquisite tact with which she managed at all times the sentiments of the company, and with which she knew how to guide the conversation so that it would never dwindle into political debates or ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... as domestic fighting among disparate ethnic groups, rebel groups, warlords, and youth gangs in Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone gradually abate, the number of refugees in border areas has begun to slowly dwindle; UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) has maintained over 4,000 peacekeepers in Sierra Leone since 1999; Sierra Leone considers excessive Guinea's definition of the flood plain limits to define the left bank boundary of the Makona and Moa rivers and protests Guinea's continued occupation ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... was in sight, and the caravan quickened its pace. After half an hour the town appeared no nearer, but seemed, on the contrary, to grow more distant, to dwindle in size, and to sink out of sight. After another half hour, it had disappeared, and the ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... every denomination, will have much the advantage of all supplies from the Bay of Fundy and westward. What the consequence will be time only will reveal.' Many persons at Halifax, wrote Pynchon, prophesied that the new settlement would dwindle, and recommended the shore of the Bay of Fundy or the banks of the river St John in preference to Port Roseway; but Pynchon attributed their fears to jealousy. A few years' experience must have convinced him that ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... that the wise from their bright minds would kindle Such lamps within the dome of this dim world, That the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and dwindle Into the hell from which it first was hurled, A scoff of impious pride from fiends impure; 230 Till human thoughts might kneel alone, Each before the judgement-throne Of its own aweless soul, or of the Power unknown! Oh, that the words which make the thoughts ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... this war, confident of victories. It is still being fed with dwindling hopes of victory, no longer unstinted hopes, but still hopes—by a sort of political bread-card system. The hopes outlast the bread-and-butter, but they dwindle and dwindle. How is this parvenu people going to stand the cessation of hope, the realisation of the failure and fruitlessness of such efforts as no people on earth have ever made before? How are they ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... addition to the number with which I had advanced to this point. Mr. Kennedy had brought me a dispatch from Commissioner Mitchell, accompanied by some newspapers, in which I read such passages as the following:—"Australia Felix and the discoveries of Sir Thomas Mitchell now dwindle into comparative insignificance." "We understand the intrepid Dr. Leichardt is about to start another expedition to the Gulf, keeping to the westward of the coast ranges," etc., etc. Not very encouraging to us, certainly; but we work for the future. Thermometer, at ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... habitability of Venus while asserting his knowledge of the existence of hydrogen in the atmosphere of Sirius. To cite one example out of a hundred, every philologist knows that s may become r, and that the broad a-sound may dwindle into the closer o-sound; but when you adduce some plausible etymology based on the assumption that r has changed into s, or o into a, apart from the demonstrable influence of some adjacent letter, the philologist will ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... confides to his Diary in December; and adds naively that he was just on the point of winning a reputation and a competence "when this execrable project was set on foot for my ruin as well as that of my country." Men who saw their incomes dwindle were easily disposed to think that the cessation of business was an admission of the legitimacy of the law, a kind of betrayal of the cause. And it was to counteract the influence of lukewarm conservatives, men who were content ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... the public peace, to the public safety, to the public order, to the public prosperity. In its preventive police it ought to be sparing of its efforts, and to employ means, rather few, unfrequent, and strong, than many and frequent, and, of course, as they multiply their puny politic race, and dwindle, small and feeble. Statesmen who know themselves will, with the dignity which belongs to wisdom, proceed only in this the superior orb and first mover of their duty steadily, vigilantly, severely, courageously: whatever remains will, in a manner, provide ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... gratifying to a father's feelings. Still, as time passed on, forebodings came upon me that this great expedition, starting with so much display from Melbourne, with a steady, declared, and scientific object, would dwindle down into a flying light corps, making a sudden dash across the continent and back again with no permanent results. Discharges and resignations had taken place, and no efforts were made by the committee to fill up the vacancies. No assistant surveyor ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... law preventing the Protestant boys dressing up the figure on the first of July, and walking round it. That was the death-blow of the Orange party, your hanner; they never recovered it, but began to despond and dwindle, and I with them, for there was scarcely any demand for Orange tunes. Then Dan O'Connell arose with his emancipation and repale cries, and then instead of Orange processions and walkings, there were ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness, and cold. For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, The black minute's at end, And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, Shall dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, Then a light, then thy breast, O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, And with God ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... an eye on the University for the selection of orators for the House of Commons. There were audacious young free-thinkers, who adored nobody or nothing, except perhaps Robespierre and the Koran, and panted for the day when the pale name of priest should shrink and dwindle away before the indignation ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... coffee pot in her hand, her cheeks the ruddier from the glow of the cook stove, her face all lit up with expectancy as to what her young husband would think of his first meal prepared by his wife. All the operas I have heard since, and all the cities I have seen, dwindle into insignificance compared with that pure, ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... the effect was all that Mr. Bayard foretold. Prices began to melt and dwindle like ice in August. Panic prevailed; three brokerage firms fell, a dozen more were rocking on ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the Earth swept out all round them and grew larger, and larger still, and then began to dwindle. They saw then that they were launched upon some astounding journey. Does my reader wonder they saw when they had no eyes? They saw as they had never seen before, with sight beyond what they had ever thought to be possible. Our eyes gather in light, and with the ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... most within the reach of observation, but all attempts to calculate the distance of that luminary have proved futile. Of its inconceivable remoteness some notion may be formed by the fact, that the diameter of the earth's annual orbit, if viewed from it, would dwindle into an invisible point. This is what is meant by the stars not having, like the planets, a parallax; that is, the earths' orbit, as seen from them, does not subtend a measurable angle. With two other stars, ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... have to have the power of transferring territory from one state to another, when it is persuaded that adequate grounds exist for such a transference. Friends of peace will make a mistake if they unduly glorify the status quo. Some nations grow, while others dwindle; the population of an area may change its character by emigration and immigration. There is no good reason why states should resent changes in their boundaries under such conditions, and if no international authority has power to make changes ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... and twenty-five miles from San Francisco, with mines on both sides, and numerous flumes which tell of busy times. Halloa! what's this? Dutch Flat. Shades of Bret Harte, true child of genius, what a pity you ever forsook these scenes to dwindle in the foreign air of the Atlantic coast! A whispering pine of the Sierras transplanted to Fifth Avenue! How could it grow? Although it shows some faint signs of life, how sickly are the leaves! As for fruit, there is none. America had in Bret Harte its most distinctively national poet. His ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... conversation with me, mentioned the subject of speculations in western lands, opening a canal and building a bridge. Colonel Burr also said to me that the government was weak, and that he wished me to get the navy of the United States out of my head; that it would dwindle to nothing; and that he had something to propose to me that was both honourable and profitable; but I considered this nothing more than an interest in ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... light without the blemish of circumstance—not his, but circumstance, in whose evil shade he must seem smirched. What could she do with her faulty vision, but send him away? Was that not less dishonourable than to bid him remain and dwindle as she looked at him? What a kink in her affairs, when she must be cruel to her love, not because she loved him less, but rather that she ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... to me, is at all times particular distasteful. My house-deaths have generally been periodical, recurring after seven years, but this last is premature by half that time. Cut off in the flower of Colebrook. The Middletonian stream and all its echoes mourn. Even minnows dwindle. A parvis fiunt MINIMI. I fear to invite Mrs. Hood to our new mansion, lest she envy it and rote us. But when we are fairly in, I hope she will come and try it. I heard she and you were made uncomfortable by some unworthy to be cared for attacks, ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... caste that showed they belonged to the grade above fashion. People of rank tastes did not often go there. The little Kentuckian, with her emphatic, sham-hating face, and Grey, whose simple, calm outlook on the world made her last year's bonnet and cloak dwindle into such irrelevant trifles, did not misbecome the place. Others might go there to fever out ennui, or with fouler fancies. Grey did not know. The play was a simple little thing; its meaning was pure as a child's song; there was a good deal of fun in it. Grey ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of the first quarter of the year began to dwindle, and in those days I thought often with regret of my ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... seemed to grow larger to Breant's eyes, and his objections to dwindle proportionately. "A ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... a hundred million people and a power and prosperity beyond our reckoning. Frugality and Industry are the most fruitful of parents, especially where they are respected. When luxury and the cost of living have increased, people have become more cautious about marriage and populations have begun to dwindle.' ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... paddled a few miles up river from the fur trading-post, and then had landed in order to lighten the canoe for the ascent against the current. At that point the forest has already begun to dwindle towards the Land of Little Sticks, so that often miles and miles of open muskegs will intervene between groups of the stunted trees. Jim and I found ourselves a little over waist deep in luxuriant and ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... bubbs, towing massive loads, were accelerating slowest, with the ex-gridiron twins riding the rigging. But their rings would dwindle to star ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... as to the identity of Landsborough's Herbert and his own Mulligan. It will be remembered that in the central districts, the watersheds are so low and the size of the rivers so uncertain, that to find a watercourse dwindle away into nothing in one mile, and expand into a river the next is not at all surprising, so that to leave the head of a river and come on to another running in the same direction, it would appear quite feasible that it was ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... other: And the very ports they blow, All the quarters that they know I' the shipman's card. I will drain him dry as hay: Sleep shall neither night nor day Hang upon his pent-house lid; He shall live a man forbid: Weary seven-nights nine times nine Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine: Though his bark cannot be lost, Yet it shall be tempest-tost.— Look what ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... like manner, in squeek, squeak, squeal, squall, brawl, wraul, yaul, spaul, screek, shriek, shrill, sharp, shrivel, wrinkle, crack, crash, clash, gnash, plash, crush, hush, hisse, fisse, whist, soft, jar, hurl, curl, whirl, buz, bustle, spindle, dwindle, twine, twist, and in many more, we may observe the agreement of such sort of sounds with the things signified; and this so frequently happens, that scarce any language which I know can be compared with ours. So that one monosyllable word, of which kind are almost all ours, emphatically ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... imagination turn The great wheel backward, until Troy unburn, And then unbuild, and seven Troys below Rise out of death, and dwindle, and outflow, Till all have passed, and none has yet been there: Back, ever back. Our birds still crossed the air; Beyond our myriad changing generations Still built, unchanged, their known inhabitations. A million years before Atlantis was Our lark sprang ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... its place were mostly undisciplined and unreliable. When the exigencies became pressing, a new method was resorted to, and then the usual erosion of life in the field, the losses by casualties and sickness, caused the numbers to dwindle. Long ago the paymaster had ceased to pretend to pay off the men regularly so that there was now a large amount of back pay due them. Largely through Washington's patriotic exhortations had they kept fighting to the end; and, with peace upon them, they did not ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... explanation did not satisfy her thrifty aunt. She was no authority on goats, but she had enough sense to know that the supply of milk does not dwindle to one-half the usual quantity over night. Still she did not voice ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent
... Trench there lay in the House of Stone, in the town beyond the world, a man who one night had sailed out of Dublin Bay, past the riding lanterns of the yachts, and had seen Bray, that fairyland of lights, dwindle to a golden blot. To think of the sea and the salt wind, the sparkle of light as the water split at the ship's bows, the illuminated deck, perhaps the sound of a bell telling the hour, and the cool dim night about and above, so wrought upon Trench ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... long time he stood still, watching the crazy stallion dwindle in size, watching the line of unexpectedly timid bandits. Then, when it became apparent that the horsemen were going to stay put either until he came out, or showed that he never was coming out, he shrugged, and swung on his heel so that he faced up ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... kindle And burn with love's sweet anguish As tapers blaze and dwindle. Love, our lady! lend thine ear! Would'st thou but spoil our pleasure? Ah, leave us not to languish! Who vows to thee his treasure, Haughty ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... by holding the breath we produce the same result as by tying up the windpipe—that is to say, we keep the lungs in a state of expansion; and by releasing the breath we are, as it were, untying the windpipe, leaving the lungs to dwindle down gradually to their ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... man knew to be rare under the sun. Where we have been privileged to look in behind the veil of the family circle, we are more convinced than ever that fraternal affection an all the boasted nobility of sisterly love dwindle down to a series of petty quarrels and jealousies as painful as they are unchristian and unbecoming. The reserve, or rather the hypocrisy of politeness, put on before strangers, is no criterion of the inward ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... poetry of the ceremonies with so little respect, good Peterchen, that the goddess and her train dwindle into little more than vine-dressers and ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... mother. But even if she could speak with her, she thought that she would shrink from doing so. She thought of what Ulick had said regarding the gain and loss of soul, how we can allow our soul to dwindle, and how we can increase it until communion with the invisible world is possible. She felt that it were a presumption to limit life to what we see, and Owen's argument that ignorance was the cause of belief in ghosts and spirits seemed to her poor indeed. Man would not have ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... the red man appears to be nearly decided. What between their wars with each other, the use of spirituous liquors, and the diseases imported by the whites, they dwindle away every day. The most fatal disease to them is the small-pox. The following account, which I have extracted from one of the American papers, was confirmed to me by ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... these stirring events were taking place and just before Magruder, with McLaw's and Walker's divisions, was either quietly lying in front of Richmond watching the army of McClellan dwindle away, leaving by transports down the James and up the Potomac, or was marching at a killing gait to overtake their comrades under Lee to share with them their trials, their battles and their victories in Maryland. Lee could not leave the Capital ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... like manner, the majestic orbs of the political firmament undergo a cruel lessening of diameter as they approach the Federal City. The greatest of men ceases to be great in the presence of hundreds of his peers, and the multitude of the illustrious dwindle into individual littleness by reason of their superabundance. And when it comes to occupations, it will hardly be denied that the stranger who beholds a Senator "coppering on the ace," or a Congressman standing in a bar-room with a lump of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... would find no happiness in the union. She had poured out upon her child all the passionate love that had been so miserably thwarted in her own marriage. It had been more than bitterness to her to note that whilst her love for her girl increased, the girl's love for her seemed to dwindle. It was the bitterest blow that Vigee Le Brun had ever known; and she had been struck more than once. It turned the wanderer's eyes homewards to her wrecked Paris. Russia was no longer a delight to her. She became restless. The wander-fever came upon her; she got roaming; she went to Moscow ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... features, and even the Grant book itself, seemed likely to dwindle in importance by the side of The Life of Pope Leo XIII., who in his old and enfeebled age had consented to the preparation of a memoir, to be published with his sanction and blessing.—[By Bernard O'Reilly, D.D., LL.D. "Written with the Encouragement, Approbation, and Blessings of His Holiness ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... will dwindle into a store for selling rice, and while his velvets, silks, hats and muslins moulder he will get very sick of a hundred million women who don't spend ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... stop-watches in their hands. The little craft seemed alive under their feet and quivered with eagerness to be off. The passenger boats going in the same direction were passed in a twinkling, and the tugs and sailing vessels seemed to dwindle as houses and trees seem to shrink when viewed from the rear platform of a ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... with all that," Freddy said. "He inherited a magnificent kingdom; he let it dwindle almost to ruin. If you could read some of the letters of Horemheb, the commander-in-chief of his army, begging him to send reinforcements to Syria, imploring him to realize the danger that menaced Asia, you would feel as impatient as I do with ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... in dietary. I have noticed that most of your vegetarians are shock-headed, ample-bearded men, and I have heard the Ancestor was vegetarian. Or it may be, I sometimes fancy, a kind of inherent disposition on the part of your human animal to dwindle. That came back in my memory vividly as I looked at the long rows of Sceptics, typical Advanced people, and marked their glistening crania. I recalled other losses. Here is Humanity, thought I, growing hairless, growing bald, growing toothless, unemotional, irreligious, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... another of superior valour, may reign on by virtue of his predecessor's merits, and reap the fruits of his labours; but if he live to a great age, or if he be followed by another who is wanting in the qualities of the first, that then the kingdom must necessarily dwindle. Conversely, when two consecutive princes are of rare excellence, we commonly find them achieving results which win for them enduring renown. David, for example, not only surpassed in learning and judgment, but was so valiant in arms that, after conquering ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... stage of that degeneration would be represented by total incapacity to help ourselves;—then we should begin to lose the use of our higher sense-organs;—later on, the brain would shrink to a vanishing pin-point of matter;—still later we should dwindle into mere amorphous sacs, mere blind stomachs. Such would be the physical consequence of that kind of divine love which we so lazily wish for. The longing for perpetual bliss in perpetual peace might well seem a malevolent inspiration from the Lords of Death and Darkness. ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... aught of their grace. All his possessions have been cunningly, patiently, and valorously extorted from the powers that be, even as Prometheus filched the fire from heaven. In that realm of mythology, whereto all religions will eventually be consigned, Jesus will dwindle beneath Prometheus. One is feminine, and typifies resigned submission to a supernatural will; the other is masculine, and typifies that insurgent audacity of heart and head, which has wrested a kingdom of science from the vast empire of nescience, and strewed the world with ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... Providence, and even the first step in the resurrection of the nation and in the establishment of its power within as well as without. That the object of emigration is not yet fully attained may be inferred from the fact that it still continues on so large a scale; that it must ultimately dwindle to much smaller proportions, if not cease utterly, is pretty certain. This is our wish and hope: for the home population of the island must be large enough to invest it with deserved importance in the eyes of foreigners. Our title-page sets ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Sunken, forgotten, crumbled to imperceptible atoms; the ashes of generations-the dust of empires-heaped over us! And when we compare those wide estimates to that divine eternity that evolves and limits all things, how does our individual existence on the earth dwindle and vanish!—a heart-throb in the pulses of the universal life,—a quivering leaf in the forest of being,—"a ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... chibouk enkindle,— In a tent I'm quick set down With a Bedouin, lean and brown, Plotting gain of merchandise, Or perchance of robber prize; Clumsy camel load upheaving, Woman deftly carpet-weaving, Meal of dates and bread and salt, While in azure heavenly vault Throbbing stars begin to dwindle. ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... therefore no one thinks it worth while to do justice and mercy to others. And thus they live in continual fear and quarrelling, feeding like wild animals on game or roots, often, when they have bad luck in their hunting, on offal which our dogs would refuse, and dwindle away and become fewer and wretcheder year by year; in this way do the savages in New South Wales live to this ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... London quivered a little and grew more indistinct, the sound of the traffic began to dwindle away, voices seemed farther off, ceased altogether, and all was quiet once more where the mirage shimmered and faded, and a bull rhinoceros coming down through the stillness snorted, and watered at the ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... been drilled. It could mean only one thing: that the bet had been played and lost, that the vein had been one of those freak affairs that start out with much promise, seem to give hope of eternal riches, and then gradually dwindle to nothing. Harry ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... the arguments of Adrian, uttered with enthusiasm and unanswerable rapidity. Something more was in his heart, to which he dared not give words. He felt that the end of time was come; he knew that one by one we should dwindle into nothingness. It was not adviseable to wait this sad consummation in our native country; but travelling would give us our object for each day, that would distract our thoughts from the swift-approaching end of things. If we went to Italy, to sacred and ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... near the Drakensberg range is intersected by high continuations or spurs, but north and westwards those plateaux assume more the real aspect of continuous high plains. There is a gradual descent to the west; from occasional hilly ranges those dwindle to kopjes, and to still less elevated "randjes" occurring in clusters more and more apart, until yet further westwards one gets to the merely undulating sterile approaches of the Karoo and the plains around ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... present hour of failure and impediment, an interest and consideration to which, in its full usefulness and vigour, it had not presumed to aspire. Therefore Dominic Iglesias held calmly on his way, seeing the circle of his occupations, pleasures, and activities dwindle and decrease, yet maintaining not only his serenity of mind, but his accustomed self-respecting outward refinement of bearing and habit. To meet death with a gracious stoicism, well-dressed and standing ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... the matter began to dwindle. The fine fire which had sustained him during the story's composition had died out. He was satisfied with his work. He had written a good story, and that was the end of it. No doubt he would send it East—to the Centennial Company—to-morrow ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... successful. Their situation had become desperate: if any event in the chapter of human accidents should fall out to give them a reprieve, the only consequences would be, that as they had dwindled, dwindled before, they would dwindle, dwindle again. There was no stock of good luck which such conduct would not run out. It was clear what was coming: the Tories must return to power. How long they would stay there was another question; but their return was a phasis, a phenomenon which ministers had rendered ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... is considered as very ancient of its claims to any high antiquity. Certain portions of the Veda even, which, as far as our knowledge goes at present, we are perfectly justified in referring to the tenth or twelfth century before our era, may some day or other dwindle down from their high estate, and those who have believed in their extreme antiquity will then be held up to blame or ridicule, like Sir W. Jones or Colonel Wilford. This cannot be avoided, for science is progressive, and does not acknowledge, even in the most distinguished scholars, any claims ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... one state to another, when it is persuaded that adequate grounds exist for such a transference. Friends of peace will make a mistake if they unduly glorify the status quo. Some nations grow, while others dwindle; the population of an area may change its character by emigration and immigration. There is no good reason why states should resent changes in their boundaries under such conditions, and if no international authority has power to make changes of this kind, the temptations ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... just breaking when the black Jaguar reached the vicinity of the blaze. The fire, replenished throughout the hours of darkness, had guided him unerringly on his way; but with the coming of dawn it had been allowed to dwindle down until nothing remained but a bed of embers and even these died when the sun ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... one day, Du Mesne," replied John Law. "'Tis a roadway fit for a nation. Ah, Du Mesne! our St. Lawrence, our New France—they dwindle when compared ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... looked upon the Taithu, shrouded with protecting mists of light in Moon Pool Chamber, and heard their words. Yet, being crafty, he thought of the power that would be his if he heeded and how quickly the strength of the sun king would dwindle. So he and his made a pact with the ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... born," having shown their superiority in the superlative excellencies of murder, usurpation and robbery (and I maintain they have gone further in the execution of these infamies than was true of the Negro-Carpet-bag bacchanalia); having made majorities dwindle into iotas and vaulted themselves into power at the point of the shot gun and dagger (regular bandit style); having made laws which discriminate odiously against one class while giving the utmost immunity to the other; having, after doing these things, modeled ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... Life: Death rocks the cot. Why meet we there no wolf Save those huge-limbed? Because weak wolf-cubs die. 'Tis thus with man; 'tis thus with all things strong:— Rise higher on thy northern hills, my Pine! That Southern Palm shall dwindle. House stone-walled— Ye shall not have it! Temples cedar-roofed— Ye shall not build them! Where the Temple stands The City gathers. Cities ye shall spurn: Live in the woods; live singly, winning each, Hunter or fisher by blue lakes, his prey: Abhor the gilded shrine: the God Unknown In such ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... few miles up river from the fur trading-post, and then had landed in order to lighten the canoe for the ascent against the current. At that point the forest has already begun to dwindle towards the Land of Little Sticks, so that often miles and miles of open muskegs will intervene between groups of the stunted trees. Jim and I found ourselves a little over waist deep in luxuriant and tangled grasses that impeded and clogged our every footstep. Never shall I forget ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... with reading the lives I wrote in the last number of the Biography,[10] they are Archbishop Hamilton, Sir William Hamilton, Dr Robert Henry, Edward Henryson, J. Bonaventura Hepburn, Roger Hog, John Holybush, and Henry Home of Kames.... The gooseberries appear to dwindle as they ripen. I am afraid few will remain for you, but you will find a sufficient number where you are. I intend to walk to Dunkeld, and to take two days. Al. Smith may come a bit with us.... All my little stock of news is exhausted. Pray remember me to my grand-aunt, Mrs Brown, and my aunts; ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... hands have come floating From no one sees where; 410 Place a bucket of vodka, A large pile of bread On the magic white napkin, And dwindle away. ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... cut out of them altogether,—their fortunate successors would find a most improved world to start upon! For Cant does lie piled on us, high as the zenith; an Augean Stable with the poisonous confusion piled so high: which, simply if there once could be nothing said, would mostly dwindle like summer snow gradually about its business, and leave us free to use our eyes again! When I see painful Professors of Greek, poring in their sumptuous Oxfords over dead Greek for a thousand years or more, and leaving live English ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Bob is going to be away more than usual, and I'm dreading it awfully; but never mind, Aunt Mary, I don't want to make you blue, because honestly I don't think I'm going into a decline, even if the doctor does. And, after all, if I did sort of dwindle away it wouldn't matter much, for I'm not worth anything, and no one knows that as well as myself—except you, Aunt Mary. I must stop because it's nine o'clock and time I was in bed. I've got some socks to wash out ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... of the several sessions, when the rules were established by the House, he always moved to strike out this one. Year after year his motion was voted down, but year after year he renewed it with invincible perseverance. The majorities against him began to dwindle till they became almost imperceptible; in 1842 it was a majority of four; in 1843, of three; in 1844 the struggle was protracted for weeks, and Mr. Adams all but carried the day. It was evident that victory ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... the broad river-bed. The stones of it glared like the sands of Africa; Fornovo baked under the sun all white and black; between us was this broad plain of parched shingle and rocks that could, in a night, become one enormous river, or dwindle to a chain of stagnant ponds. To-day some seven narrow streams wandered in the expanse, and again they seemed so easy to cross that again I wondered at ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... be happy. At the same time, you are not without a certain exultation: you cheat yourself from day to day with the thought that there are better things to come. Quite the contrary turns out to be the case. Your prospects, like the proverbial sacrifice of Mandrobulus, dwindle and contract from day to day. Gradually you get some faint glimmerings of the truth. It begins to dawn upon you at last, that those golden hopes were neither more nor less than gilded bubbles: the vexations, on the other hand, are realities; solid, ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... was all that Mr. Bayard foretold. Prices began to melt and dwindle like ice in August. Panic prevailed; three brokerage firms fell, a dozen more were rocking on ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... beautiful as the princess in the marble palace, they are both daughters of Eve, and can not be distinguished one from the other in Paradise! Follow your Angelo! I am your good angel, the angel of your life! A time will come when you are old, when the body will dwindle and some beautiful sunshiny day, when everything laughs and rejoices, you will lie like a withered straw! I do not believe what the priests say, that there is a life beyond the grave! It is a pretty fancy, a fairy tale for children, delightful to think upon. I do not live in imagination, but ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... began to dwindle, and presently riding out of a little valley or long trench on to a ridge nearly bare of trees, they saw below them a fair green plain, and in the midst of it a great heap of grey rocks rising out of it like a reef out of the sea, ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... hours of the dead night, Dying in state and by such slow degrees, I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook, And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point, And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop Into great laps and folds of sculptor's-work: 90 And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts Grow, with a certain humming in my ears, About the life before I lived this life, And this life too, popes, cardinals and priests, Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount, Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes, And new-found agate urns as ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... together at the Hotel de Ville. The Jacobins declared for Robespierre. The party made determined {221} efforts through the evening to raise insurrection. But only small bodies of national guards could be kept together at the Hotel de Ville, and these began to dwindle away rapidly late in the evening ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... were to die, it would be frightening in more ways than one. But I see what you mean. There might be a sense of peace, but the minds and bodies which had been vibrating with the stir of power would feel that the soul had gone out of things, and they would dwindle too." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... at one of the broad glassy pools that seemed to lie right and left. Once the faint track I was following headed straight towards one of these apparent sheets of water, and I was even meditating a bathe, but, lo! when I was a hundred yards or so off, it began to dwindle and disappear, and I found nothing but the same endless stretch of grass, burnt ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... vacancies among the officers filled from the best noncommissioned officers and men, the habit was to raise new regiments, with new colonels, captains, and men, leaving the old and experienced battalions to dwindle away into mere skeleton organizations. I believe with the volunteers this matter was left to the States exclusively, and I remember that Wisconsin kept her regiments filled with recruits, whereas other States generally filled their quotas by new regiments, and the result was that we estimated ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... the point o' leavin' for the hame o' a' hames—the dwellin' o' a' the loves, withoot the dim memory or foresicht o' which—I'm thinkin' they maun be aboot the same thing—we could never hae lo'ed this auld place as we du, an' whaur, ance I'm in, a'thing doon here maun dwindle ootworthied by reason o' the glory that excelleth—I dinna mean the glory o' pearls an' gowd, or even o' licht, but the glory o' love an' trowth. But gien I've ever had onything to ca' an ambition, Cosmo, it has ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... be penetrable at all points to the shifting lights, the wandering music of the world—she could imagine no physical disability as cramping as that. How the little parched soul, in solitary confinement for life, must pine and dwindle in its blind cranny ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... of Life! thy lips enkindle With their love the breath between them; And thy smiles before they dwindle Make the cold air fire; then screen them In those looks, where whoso gazes Faints, entangled ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... mystical ceremony, Loosely robed in flying raiment, sang the terrible prophetesses. "Fear not, isle of blowing woodland, isle of silvery parapets! Tho' the Roman eagle shadow thee, tho' the gathering enemy narrow thee, Thou shalt wax and he shall dwindle, thou shalt be the mighty one yet! Thine the liberty, thine the glory, thine the deeds to be celebrated, Thine the myriad-rolling ocean, light and shadow illimitable, Thine the lands of lasting summer, many-blossoming Paradises, Thine the North and thine the ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... is a source of loquacity only with yourselves: when it is started by men, young ladies dwindle into mere listeners. Simpering listeners, I confess; but it is only with one another that ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... you are in a basement, foretells that you will see prosperous opportunities abating, and with them, pleasure will dwindle into trouble and care. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... considerable pain can be endured. It does not appear impossible to secure both in alternation. The principal defect in persons of fortunate lot is to care for nobody but themselves; this curtails the excitements of life, and makes everything dwindle as the end approaches. Another circumstance rendering life unsatisfactory is the want of mental cultivation, by which men are deprived of the inexhaustible pleasures of knowledge, not merely in the shape of science, but as practice and fine art. It is not at all difficult ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... waved her hands twice or thrice over the old woman. In doing this her figure seemed to dilate, and her countenance underwent a marked and fearful change. All her beauty vanished, her eyes blazed, and terror sat on her wrinkled brow. The hag, on the contrary, crouched lower down, and seemed to dwindle less than her ordinary size. Writhing as from heavy blows, and with a mixture of malice and fear in her countenance, she cried, "Were I to speak, you would not thank me. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the others are doing? Together and in order we might succeed, broken we should be useless. If this huge army cannot break their line, what could two hundred men do?" At last, as the storm of javelins began to dwindle, a mighty shout rose from the Romans, and shoulder to shoulder with levelled spears they advanced, while the flanks giving way, the cavalry burst out on both sides and fell upon the Britons. For those in ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... currency department the larger part facing Dalhousie Square. It then retired to the back part of the premises looking on to Mission Row, which became the entrance to the bank. As time went on the bank seemed in some way or another to dwindle in standing and importance, and it did not tend to increase either its reputation or popularity when it issued a notice to the effect that in future no exchange brokers need trouble to call as it had appointed its own individual broker (Mr. ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... must straiten The ways they wait in, Whose spirits greaten And hearts aspire. The world may dwindle, And summer brindle, So love but kindle The ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... He had pictured to himself a different scene—a more immediate protest, and his hope began to dwindle on the spot. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... intolerable precipices, the Moon outrivals the Earth. I took a passing glimpse of the famous crater-mountains, called by our astronomers Copernicus and Theophilus, the former situated in the eastern and the latter in the western hemisphere of the Moon. The largest openings of our Earth dwindle into insignificance compared with such ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... "If during long periods a nation gives itself up to war, trade languishes, the population loses the habit of steady industry, government and administration become corrupt, abuses escape punishment, and the real sources of a people's strength and expansion dwindle. What has caused the relative failure and decline of Spanish, Portuguese, and French expansion in Asia and the New World, and the relative success of English expansion therein? Was it the mere hazards of war which gave to Great Britain the ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... bridesmaids. Mrs. Tipping had chosen them, and it did not take the hapless skipper long to arrive at the conclusion that she was far fonder of bridesmaids than he was. His stock of money was beginning to dwindle, and the purchase of a second wedding suit within a month was beginning to tell ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... branches over the surface of the soil, spreading life and fertility on all sides. As the land rises towards the south, this web contracts and is less confused, while black mould and cultivation alike dwindle, and the fawn-coloured line of the desert comes into sight. The Libyan and Arabian hills appear above the plain, draw nearer to each other, and gradually shut in the horizon until it seems as though they would unite. And there the Delta ends, and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... had frequently met Matthew on the street, and been gratified with his deferential bow. His bulk, to which, as a rotund lady, she had taken an antipathy, seemed to dwindle down as it was looked at. Matthew, whose ideal was a delicate woman with observable shoulder blades, had also, by repeated sights of Mrs. Frump, become reconciled to her ample proportions. Meantime, they had heard much, incidentally, of each other through Marcus Wilkeson. Matthew had come ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... I saw the commerce dwindle, High-bosomed, sturdy vessels take the main And leave us, with the morning in their faces, Never to come to any port again. Slowly an ominous and pregnant silence Grew deep upon the ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... circumstance, however, that rather tended to damp Leslie's hopes, was the fact that the barometer persistently refused to rise, although the wind was subsiding so rapidly that it threatened to dwindle to a calm, and as the evening faded into night the stars grew dim and finally disappeared. Still, there was nothing that could be called actually alarming in the aspect of the weather; and as Leslie had been almost continuously on deck during the ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... head, a hot sun, costive diet, want of books, and a just contempt of learning,—but for these events, I say, and some others too long to recite (especially a prudent neglect of taking brimstone inwardly), I doubt the number of authors and of writings would dwindle away to a degree most woeful to behold. To confirm this opinion, hear the words of the famous troglodyte philosopher. "It is certain," said he, "some grains of folly are of course annexed as part in the composition of human nature; only the choice is left us ...
— English Satires • Various
... adorable Delilah; and fear not, even though incited by the foe, by clipping my locks, to dwindle my strength. Give me your sword, man," turning to an officer:—"Ah! I'm fettered. Clip it ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... a distance of thirty or forty yards. At this point the path seemed to dwindle down to little ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... most immoral practices to acquire power, can only act in a manner indirectly prejudicial to the public prosperity. But if the representative of the executive descends into the lists, the cares of government dwindle into second-rate importance, and the success of his election is his first concern. All laws and negotiations are then to him nothing more than electioneering schemes; places become the reward of services rendered, ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... space he filled in human affairs. The modest assurance, the happy boldness, the extemporaneous logic, all that 'led but to the grave,' exist, like the images of departed actors, only in the recollection of those who witnessed them, till memory shall fade into tradition, and tradition dwindle down to a name." (Supplement to Vacation Rambles, p. 115.) The eagerness with which the talents of Sir William Follett were sought, forcibly illustrates the truth of a remark, made to me in the course of some friendly ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... to the ground in sober recognition of my error. "Forgive me the heat of my zeal," I protested. "I diminish, I dwindle, I wither. Unless your pity forgives me, I shall evaporate ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the agonized sounds of a man who had forgotten how to cry and must learn again. There were times after this when he observed incuriously a parade of mind pictures, part memory, part pure hallucination and containing nothing of reason; other times when he thought not at all. The sun appeared to dwindle, retreating and fading far away into a remote place where there were no stars at all. It became a feeble candle, guttered unsteadily a moment and suddenly winked out. ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... march-music to fields of peril and valour and glory, without diminishing the vividness of the picture by simultaneously supposing himself some quite other person. The gleam in young Felix M'Guinness's eyes, as he watched the red files dwindle and twinkle out of sight, was to the brightening up beneath his grandfather's shaggy brows as the forked flash is to the shimmering sheet-lightnings, that are but a harmless reflection from far-off storms. And there, indeed, pleasure paid a ruinous duty. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... that extension work is optional, and may be carried to any desired stage of completion. The many enter upon the work because it is popular and interesting; and as soon as it assumes the character of study, the class will often dwindle down to a small portion of the audience. The requirements for an examination will weed this remainder until there is found but a handful that will submit to the test. These workers are usually mature, and often ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... the hollow night and the larger stars. Presently the small procession issued from the Palace, crossed the parade, and began to thread the glittering alley: the swinging couch with its four porters, the much-pondering Chancellor behind. She watched them dwindle with strange thoughts: her eyes fixed upon the scene, her mind still glancing right and left on the overthrow of her life and hopes. There was no one left in whom she might confide; none whose hand was friendly, or on whom she dared to reckon for the barest ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... look very much smaller than they would if they stood two blocks away in the open air. I "averaged" a man as he passed me and watched him as he drifted far down by the baldacchino and beyond—watched him dwindle to an insignificant school-boy, and then, in the midst of the silent throng of human pigmies gliding about him, I lost him. The church had lately been decorated, on the occasion of a great ceremony in honor of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to suppose that there are stars everywhere, may there not be a great space beyond the region of the stars? And this immense space, surrounding all this region, ... may be replete with happiness and glory. ... What now becomes of the consideration of our Earth and of its denizens? Does it not dwindle to something incomparably less than a physical point, since our Earth is but a point compared with the distance of the fixed stars. Thus the part of the Universe which we know, being almost lost in nothingness compared with ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... actually smaller than ever this year," she remarked every season; and every season the headgear of fashionable London did indeed seem to shrink and dwindle, "fine by degrees, and beautifully less." The coalscuttle-shaped headdress of our grandmothers had not yet resolved itself into a string of beads and a rosebud in these days, but was obviously ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... different line of conduct. The enemy must be kept in a state of constant ferment. If the Indians act as they did under Tecumseh, who probably might be induced to return to Amherstburg, that army will very soon dwindle to nothing. Your artillery must be more numerous and effective than any the enemy can bring, and your store of ammunition will enable you to harass him continually, without ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... between. To the right hangs the great stretch of the Brooklyn Suspension Bridge, its slight curve very purely outlined with light; over it luminous trams, like shuttles of fire, are thrown across and across, continually weaving the stuff of human existence. From further off all these lights dwindle to a radiant semicircle that gazes out over the expanse with a quiet, mysterious expectancy. Far away seaward you may see the low golden glare of ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... the friend of liberty and the Union of the States, no longer shut his eyes to the great danger, the master-evil before which all others dwindle into insignificance. Our Union is tottering to its foundation, and slavery is the cause. Remove the evil. Dry up at their source the bitter waters. In vain you enact and abrogate your tariffs; in vain is individual sacrifice, or sectional concession. The accursed thing is with ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... countenance of the housekeeper also slowly altered. The flames that a moment before had burned so whitely there flickered faintly and were gone; the glory faded; the splendor withdrew. She even seemed to dwindle in size.... She resumed her normal ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... be about it without any more delay, since there could be no telling at what time the absent men might show up. Once they returned to the camp, of course, the chances of the scouts accomplishing much began to dwindle enormously. ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... of Tantah is, for Egypt, a very modern place, on flat ground of course, containing the usual bazaars, mosques, barracks and pasha's residence or konak, with some substantial private buildings near the centre, from which the houses soon dwindle to the ordinary mud residence of the Fellah. The place was said to contain some fifty or sixty thousand people, while more than double that number was just now drawn to it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... not exactly an illness. But he seemed to dwindle and pine, somehow, and Cyril and I got dreadfully anxious about him. I don't think Richmond suited him, and I could not give him the comforts he needed; and he fretted so about his want of education. He seemed to get better directly we went to Headingly ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... with the conflagration, and the roofs went thundering down! Oh, the prayers, the prayers and curses, that together winged their flight From the maddened hearts of many, through that long and woful night!— Till the fires began to dwindle, and the shots grew faint and few, And we heard the foeman's challenge only in a far halloo: Till the silence once more settled o'er the gorges of the glen, Broken only by the Cona plunging through its ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... same evening. It was very comfortable, although crowded, as everything seems to be in China. Ichang stands at the extreme eastern edge of the tangle of mountains that stretch across Szechuan to the Tibetan plateau, and just below this point the scenery changes, the hills dwindle, and the valley opens into the wide flat plains of the lower Yangtse. It is a merciful arrangement, allowing the eyes and brain a chance to recover their tone after the strain of trying to take in the wonders of the gorges, and ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... pay and their own affairs demanded their attention, their military service did not extend beyond a few weeks. The Protestant leaders had no sooner taken possession of Edinburgh than their following began to dwindle. During the first week their numbers amounted to over seven thousand men; by the third week they had diminished to one thousand five hundred. In these circumstances the Regent had only to bide her time, and her opportunity must come. On July 23d her troops, led by D'Oysel and Chatelherault, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... centered in the sublime truth: "The love of Christ constraineth us." As the stars are dimmed and lost sight of in the brilliancy of the rising sun, so earthly pleasures, riches and honors fade and dwindle in the glory of the Cross. As God was pleased to use the writer as an instrument in getting brother Penn into this work, so it seemed proper that a few incidents and facts which led to it, as remembered in our ...
— There is No Harm in Dancing • W. E. Penn
... principal value of these foods, used as we must use them, in very small quantities, is in the warmth and comfort they give. Also, these weights (except the bread) are of uncooked food. Eight ounces of meat would, if boiled or roasted, dwindle to five or six, while the ten ounces of lentils or beans would swell to twice the capacity of any ordinary stomach. So, ten pounds of potatoes are required to give you the actual benefit contained in the few ounces of meat; and only the ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... one they all dwindle away at the word of command, Olga, true to her word, making such a clatter as she passes Miss Fitzgerald's door as might readily be classed with those noises popularly supposed to be able to wake the silent dead. Whether it wakes Miss Fitzgerald is unknown to all ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... know more economics than you, and I say that but for the railways the small towns would have gone to pieces. There never yet was a civilisation growing richer and improving its high roads in which the small towns did not dwindle. The village supplied the local market with bodily necessaries; the intellectual life, the civic necessities had to go into the large towns. It happened in the second and third centuries in Italy; it happened in France between Henri IV and the Revolution; ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... defeat of the few that are left, and the best endeavours of a dwindling remnant may be wholly nugatory. There is needed a sense of community and solidarity, without which the assurance necessary to the work is bound to falter and dwindle out; and there is also needed a degree of popular countenance, not to be had by isolated individuals engaged in an unconventional pursuit of things that are neither to be classed as spendthrift decorum nor as merchantable goods. In this connection an isolated one does not count for one, and ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness and cold. For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, The black minute's at end, And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, Shall dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become first ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... faith. For, after all, these trees are guinea pigs—pioneering. They break some traditional rules. The land they stand on is grazed. They are not set the traditional 80 feet apart. Their nut crops may dwindle away. One never sees walnut trees growing in pure stands—always with other species which scatter their seeds and push in. They are ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... that grimness that appears in the face of persecutors, Satan can tell how to lessen, and make to dwindle in our apprehensions, those truths unto which our hearts have joined themselves afore, and to which Christ our Lord has commanded us to stand. So that they shall now appear but little, small, inconsiderable things; things not worth engaging for; things not worth ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Lloyd George—I hope I may be pardoned by the importance and interest of the subject for pointing it out—is curiously formed. His head is unusually large, and his broad shoulders and deep chest admirably match his quite noble head; but below the waist he appears to dwindle away, his legs seeming to bend under the weight of his body, so that he waddles rather than walks, moving with a rolling gait which is rather like a seaman's. He is, indeed, a giant mounted ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... of it, the Territorial divisions after they took the field seemed to be treated as veritable Cinderellas for a long time. They generally set out short of establishment, and they were apt to dwindle away painfully for want of reserves after they had spent a few weeks on the war-path. The Returns show this to have been the case. More than one of the divisional Generals concerned spoke to me, or wrote to me, on the subject in the later months of 1915. This discouraging ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... because during the spring and summer the snow-caps upon Mars not only melt more rapidly, but melt to a much greater extent than our polar caps do. In 1894 the southern polar snow-cap of Mars was observed almost continuously during the melting period, and it was actually observed to dwindle and dwindle until it had entirely disappeared. It is rather strange to think that we know more about the snow-caps of that far-distant world than we do about those on our ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... refused to do what I was doing. And all the time I was in a state of fierce revolt. I had moments when my life's ambitions, when New York itself, the Mecca of my dreams, and that marvellous theatre, with its marble and silk, seemed suddenly to dwindle to a miserable, contemptible little doll's house. And then again I played, and I felt my soul as I played, and the old dreams swept over me, and I said that it wasn't anything to do with personal vanity that made me crave for the big gifts of success; that it was my art, and that I must find myself ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... descent, and along an underground passage to a tower he had lately built, consisting of a stair and a room at the top of it. The door of this room had a tremendous lock, which he undid with the smallest key I ever saw. I had scarcely crossed the threshold after him, when, to my eyes, he began to dwindle, and grew less and less. All at once my vision seemed to come right, and I saw that he was moving swiftly away from me. In a minute more he was the merest speck in the distance, with the tops of blue mountains beyond him, clear against a sky ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... their foliage by degrees, So fade expressions which in season please; And we and ours, alas! are due to fate, And works and words but dwindle to a date. Though, as a monarch nods and commerce calls, Impetuous rivers stagnate in canals; Though swamps subdued, and marshes drain'd sustain The heavy ploughshare and the yellow grain; And rising ports along the busy shore Protect the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... with the rest, I saw the commerce dwindle, High-bosomed, sturdy vessels take the main And leave us, with the morning in their faces, Never to come to any port again. Slowly an ominous and pregnant silence Grew deep upon the wharves where ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... or disproved my faith. For, after all, these trees are guinea pigs—pioneering. They break some traditional rules. The land they stand on is grazed. They are not set the traditional 80 feet apart. Their nut crops may dwindle away. One never sees walnut trees growing in pure stands—always with other species which scatter their seeds and push in. They are not ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... December; and adds naively that he was just on the point of winning a reputation and a competence "when this execrable project was set on foot for my ruin as well as that of my country." Men who saw their incomes dwindle were easily disposed to think that the cessation of business was an admission of the legitimacy of the law, a kind of betrayal of the cause. And it was to counteract the influence of lukewarm conservatives, men who were content ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... still float back. Their shining green has changed to a less vivid hue; they are taking bluish tones here and there; but their outlines are still sharp, and along their high soft slopes there are white specklings, which are villages and towns. These white specks diminish swiftly,— dwindle to the dimensions of salt-grains,—finally vanish. Then the island grows uniformly bluish; it becomes cloudy, vague as a dream of mountains;—it turns at last gray as smoke, and then melts into the horizon-light like ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... WISE from their bright minds would kindle Such lamps within the dome of this wide world, That the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and dwindle Into the HELL from ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... unparalleled destruction! The immolations of an Indian Juggernauth dwindle into insignificance before it! We again repeat, nothing but slavery is worthy to be compared for its horrors with this monstrous system of iniquity. As we write, we are amazed at the enormity of its unprincipledness, and the ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... time and space quickly dwindle to their absolute minimum. If a body of troops is attacked in flank and rear by the enemy, it soon gets to a point where retreat no longer remains; such a position is very close to an absolute impossibility of continuing ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... couple. Estrangement grew thereafter between them, and, in a measure, as it grew so did Darnley's kingship, hardly established as yet—for the Queen had still to redeem her pre-nuptial promise to confer upon him the crown matrimonial—begin to dwindle. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... devolve. This, if it takes a regular hereditary course: but,—if the succession be interrupted, and the supreme power frequently usurped or given by election,—worse evils follow. Science and Art must dwindle, whether the power be hereditary or not: and the virtues of a Trajan or an Antonine are a hollow support for the feeling of contentment and happiness in the hearts of their subjects: such virtues are even a painful mockery;—something that is, and may vanish in a moment, and leave the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... calculate the distance of that luminary have proved futile. Of its inconceivable remoteness some notion may be formed by the fact, that the diameter of the earth's annual orbit, if viewed from it, would dwindle into an invisible point. This is what is meant by the stars not having, like the planets, a parallax; that is, the earths' orbit, as seen from them, does not subtend a measurable angle. With two other stars, however, astronomers have unexpectedly and recently been more fortunate ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... your dogma in its class, above or below a hundred competing dogmas, exactly as the naturalist classifies his species. From being a conviction, it will sink to a curiosity; from being the guide to millions of human lives, it will dwindle down to a chapter in a book. As History explains your dogma, so Science will dry it up; the conception of law will silently make the conception of the daily miracle of your altars seem impossible; the mental climate will gradually ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... was even now on the way—a surprise so stupendous and unexpected that, beside it, the lobster-surprise would dwindle away into insignificance and be quite forgotten for the rest of the day. And oddly enough, it was to be Blossom who should ...
— Judith Lynn - A Story of the Sea • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... shown to us in Pliny's Letters as diffused all over Italy remained strangely silent. Of all the streams of tradition which descended on this age, the schools of law and grammar alone kept their course; the rest dwindle away and disappear. Sixty years pass without a single poet or historian, even of the second rate; one or two eminent jurists share the field with one or two inconsiderable extract-makers and epitomators, who barely rise out of the common herd of undistinguished ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... up to war, trade languishes, the population loses the habit of steady industry, government and administration become corrupt, abuses escape punishment, and the real sources of a people's strength and expansion dwindle. What has caused the relative failure and decline of Spanish, Portuguese, and French expansion in Asia and the New World, and the relative success of English expansion therein? Was it the mere hazards of war which gave to Great Britain the domination of ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... England clergy found their congregations dwindle away daily; and Penn being young, handsome, and of a graceful stature, the court as well as the city ladies flocked very devoutly to his meeting. The patriarch, George Fox, hearing of his great reputation, came to London (though the journey was very long) purely to see and converse ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... body of a squaw, and the jaguars are out to kill... with a blue-black night coming on and a painted cloud stalking the first star— I shall go alone into the Silence... the coiled Silence... where a cry can run only a little way and waver and dwindle and be lost. ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... one be struck,—yet these people have not a second, or so gross a body at all, to be so pierced; but as air which when divided unites again; or if they feel pain by a blow, they are better physicians than we, and quickly cure. They are not subject to sore sicknesses, but dwindle and decay at a certain period, all about an age. Some say their continual sadness is because of their pendulous state (like those men, Luke xiii. 2-6), as uncertain what at the last revolution will become of them, when they are locked up into an unchangeable condition; and ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... the midst of the rushing stream his terrible form could be discerned apparently moving with the torrent, but in reality remaining stationary. Now he would raise himself half out of the water, and ascend like a mist half as high as the near mountain, and then he would dwindle down to the size of a man. His laugh accorded with his savage visage, and his long hair stood on end, and a mist always ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... my good Lord of Douglas," answered the Prince; "I did but smile to think how your princely retinue would dwindle if every thief were dealt with as the ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... who clung so tenaciously to that square mile of crags and cliffs. The great spirit of cheery optimism, the light-hearted, careless good fellowship, and the muscle and grit of the invaders looked lightly at all this. Regiments might dwindle sadly from dysentery and shrapnel, the water-supply might be short and brackish, the flies might be getting more persistent; but reinforcements would come some day soon, the British at Cape Helles would get Achi Baba, and soon all would ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... Senor." They moved. The erratic Arizona breezes twisted the dust of their going. Senor Johnson watched them dwindle. With them seemed to go the joy in the old life. No longer did the long trail possess for him its ancient fascination. He had ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... reason, and even in that, the highest of them come very little short of the lowest of the human species. If they have not reason, they possess an instinct which nearly approaches it. These qualities dwindle down gradually thro the various orders and varieties of animated nature, to the lowest grade of animalculae, a multitude of which may inhabit a single drop of water; or to the zoophytes and lythophytes, which form the connecting link between the animal and vegetable ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... question on that subject," said Tom, "for how would the high ideas he entertained of the ingenuity of the age in which he had lived, dwindle into nothing! Nay, should he appear in the country first, what would he think of the various implements of husbandry, for ploughing, and preparing the land; the different machines for sowing the corn, for threshing, grinding, and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... agree with our Gospels cannot in any case necessarily indicate their existence ... It is unnecessary to add that, in proportion as we remove from Apostolic times without positive evidence of the existence and authenticity of our Gospels, so does the value of their testimony dwindle away. Indeed, requiring, as we do, clear, direct and irrefragable evidence of the integrity, authenticity, and historical character of these Gospels, doubt or obscurity on these points must inevitably be fatal ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... less frost-bitten, but merely the little nippings of nose, cheeks, and wrists that one soon gets accustomed to in this country. As Lieutenant Schwatka says, it is like almost all other dangers that you hear and read about, they seem to dwindle when you meet them boldly face to face. A battle always seems more terrible to those in the rear than to those in ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... thicket began to dwindle, and presently riding out of a little valley or long trench on to a ridge nearly bare of trees, they saw below them a fair green plain, and in the midst of it a great heap of grey rocks rising out of it like a reef out of the sea, and on the said ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... it? How small and insignificant he felt, and how utterly worthless! How he seemed to dwindle into nothing beside the great work that he was called to do! And yet how anxious he was to do it well! How he longed to be like his father David, a true shepherd to his people! How his heart yearned over his subjects; and how greatly he desired to govern them aright, and to be the channel through ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... 10 And these are the words: Behold, I perceive that this very people, the Nephites, according to the spirit of revelation which is in me, in four hundred years from the time that Jesus Christ shall manifest himself unto them, shall dwindle in unbelief. ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... perfections is expressible, we will say, by 20. Now, if they would always keep at that point, there might be some reason for your remaining unaltered, namely, your not being able to help it. But suppose that they dwindle down to 19-1/2, the person, that is, the whole sum of the qualities admired, no longer exists, and you, of course, are absolved from your engagement. But mind, I do not say that you are justified in changing only in case of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... who with mystic terror grinds Men into slaves—But he who thinks is free, And fineless as the unresting winds of heaven, Now rushing with wild joy around the belt Of whirling Saturn, then away through space Till he and all his radiant brotherhood Dwindle to fire-flies round the brow of Night. Thought is the great creator under God, Begotten of his breathing, that can raise Shapes from the dust and give them Beauty's soul; And though my empire be a continent, Squared down ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... across the grave that was yawning for their doomed bodies! Tremble, ye cruel, God hates ye! Men speak of a murder—and sometimes, by way of distinction, they say 'a cruel murder.' See, now, what a crime cruelty must be, since it can aggravate murder, the crime before which all other sins dwindle into nothing." ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... glowering abroad from a shop door festooned in boots, his leather apron in front, and his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, as befitted an important man, saw young Gourlay pass the Cross with his bag in his hand, and dwindle up the ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... as wet and sad as any other, when Stewart and Fanny, seated in the back of an ambulance, their feet overhanging the edge, watched the black hut dwindle upon the road, and wondered how any one had ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... tea-table, which you must never presume to approach without first asking leave. And lastly, wherever I am, you shall always knock at the door before you come in. These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into a wife. ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... life inasmuch as all the pleasures belong to the fore part of it and we must see them dwindle till we are left, it may be, with the miseries of a ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... treatment has created the impression that they are unworthy to be ranked among the perennials. From seed, the plants are extremely robust. C. persicifolia grandiflora resents division, which frequently results in weakened growth and a tendency, especially in poor or badly drained soil, to dwindle away. The only satisfactory method of growing Campanulas is to raise plants annually from good strains of seed. If sown in gentle heat early in the year—February is the usual month—many of the varieties ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... past. No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers The heroes of old, Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness and cold. For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, The black minute's at end, And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, Shall dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become first a ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... hesitation; reserve and a desire to liberate his soul, the one fighting against the other. And at moments the whole man seemed to be wrapped in weakness like a garment, the soul and the body of him. Then, as a light may dwindle till it seems certain to go out, all that was Marcus Harding seemed to Malling to dwindle. The large body, the powerful head and face, meant little, almost nothing, because the spirit was surely fading. But these moments passed. ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the damage our estate sustained by this traffic. He looked upon it as a mere misfortune that no person could avoid; but I, besides that, thought it was a judgment upon me, to punish me in the loss of all my ill-got gain. But when I found that his own fortune began to dwindle as well as mine, I was almost ready to think it was possible his lordship might have been as wicked a liver as I had, and the same vengeance as had been poured upon me for my repeated crimes might also ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... the "father" of this DEBUTANTE, whose interest I should have considered better if I had arranged her first appearance in some piece by Verdi or Donizetti, or indeed anything but LOHENGRIN. But enough of such stuff, although I am grieved to see Herr A., the tenor of the future (if well prepared), dwindle into thin air also. May heaven grant that Caspari will keep on, or that a decent tenor may come to you ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... said to have ended with the surrender of the army under Lord Cornwallis, at Yorktown, on October 19, 1781, and little attempt at recruiting was made subsequently; consequently the regiments continued to dwindle until, at the evacuation of New-York, two years later, they were not more than one-third of their original strength. The New Jersey Volunteers, a year after their arrival in New-Brunswick, were mustered by Thomas Knox, under the supervision of Col. Edward Winslow. The return is dated ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... resurrection of the nation and in the establishment of its power within as well as without. That the object of emigration is not yet fully attained may be inferred from the fact that it still continues on so large a scale; that it must ultimately dwindle to much smaller proportions, if not cease utterly, is pretty certain. This is our wish and hope: for the home population of the island must be large enough to invest it with deserved importance in the eyes of foreigners. Our title-page ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... nature. Not to be penetrable at all points to the shifting lights, the wandering music of the world—she could imagine no physical disability as cramping as that. How the little parched soul, in solitary confinement for life, must pine and dwindle in ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... the mythical element of the Siegfried saga has almost entirely evaporated and the historical saga of the Burgundian kings and Attila has undergone a complete transformation. That the originally mythical and heathen Siegfried saga should dwindle away with the progress of civilization and under the influence of Christianity was but natural. The character of the valkyrie Brynhild who avenges upon Sigurd his infidelity to her, yet voluntarily unites herself with him in ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... pools that seemed to lie right and left. Once the faint track I was following headed straight towards one of these apparent sheets of water, and I was even meditating a bathe, but, lo! when I was a hundred yards or so off, it began to dwindle and disappear, and I found nothing but the same endless stretch of grass, burnt up ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... morning a little as if my experience of the previous night were a dream. But as I thought over all that had occurred, what may be called the romantic features seemed to dwindle in distinctness and importance, and I dwelt chiefly on the mental profit I had derived from these new associations. Once more I deplored the existence of the vain and coquettish notions that had led me to construe as devotion the enthusiasm of the ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... and heavy responsibility of their opportunities; how many refuse to dream their lives away in a Sybarite luxury; how many are smitten with the lofty ambition of achieving an enduring name by works of a permanent value; how many do not dwindle into dainty dilettanti, and dilute their manhood with factitious sentimentality instead of a hearty human sympathy; how many are not satisfied with having the fastest horses and the "crackest" carriages, and an unlimited wardrobe, ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... did the same; if I was astonish'd at their Make, and at what other things I had observ'd, I was more so, when I saw one of the tallest, dwindle in the Twinkling of an Eye, to a Pigmy, fly into the Air without Wings, and carry off a Giant in each Hand by the Hair ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... and angels and mighty creatures, and things in the heights and things in the depths, to each of which have been entrusted some broken syllables of the divine character to make known to the world, dwindle and fade before the brightness, the lambent, gentle brightness that beams out from the Cross of Christ, which proclaims—God is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... impossible for the few hundreds of soldiers and police to arrest and keep in custody nearly twenty thousand men. If an attempt was made to take us all to gaol, digger-hunting would have to be suspended, the revenue would dwindle to nothing, and Government would be starved out. It was, in fact, no Government at all; it was a mere assemblage of armed men sent to rob us, not to protect us; each digger had to do that ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... the ship and disappeared, but the noise of its engines did not dwindle more than a little. The blast of the siren seemed to summon it back again. Once more it came in sight, and this time it dived steeply, flashed across the forecastle deck amid a hideous uproar, desperately, horribly close to the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... did you ever see a large Camellia plant in full blossom? If you have not, I will risk my reputation by saying that all other flowers within my knowledge, barring the rose, dwindle into insignificance when compared with it. It excels the finest rose in doubleness and form of its flowers, and puts the virgin lily to shame for spotless purity and whiteness; if it only possessed fragrance, it would be unquestionably the Queen of the floral world. What ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... and Chelsea elves, Men who had lost a limb themselves, Its interest did not dwindle— But Bill, and Ben, and Jack, and Tom Could hardly have spun more yarns therefrom, If the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... imagery. This is especially true of the prayers used to win the love of a woman or to destroy the life of an enemy, in which we find such expressions as—"Now your soul fades away—your spirit shall grow less and dwindle away, never to reappear;" "Let her be completely veiled in loneliness—O Black Spider, may you hold her soul in your web, so that it may never get through the meshes;" and the final declaration of the ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... is, for Egypt, a very modern place, on flat ground of course, containing the usual bazaars, mosques, barracks and pasha's residence or konak, with some substantial private buildings near the centre, from which the houses soon dwindle to the ordinary mud residence of the Fellah. The place was said to contain some fifty or sixty thousand people, while more than double that number was just now drawn to it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... And 'twill as easily be done: Love's power's too great to be withstood By feeble human flesh and blood. 350 'Twas he that brought upon his knees The hect'ring, kill-cow HERCULES; Transform'd his leager-lion's skin T' a petticoat, and made him spin; Seiz'd on his club, and made it dwindle 355 T' a feeble distaff, and a spindle. 'Twas he that made emperors gallants To their own sisters and their aunts; Set popes and cardinals agog, To play with pages at leap-frog. 360 'Twas he that gave our Senate purges, And flux'd the House of many a burgess; Made those that represent the ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... charge this smoothed-faced miscreant; and, d'ye hear me? see that his allowance be no more than one small ounce of mouldy bread and half a pint of standing water, for each day's support, till his now blooming skin be withered, his flesh be wasted from his bones, and he dwindle to a meagre skeleton.' So saying he left them, as he hoped, to bewail each other's sad condition. But the unhappy Fidus, bereft of his Amata, was not to be appalled by any of the most horrid threats; for now his only comfort was the hopes of a speedy end ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... about it," said Thorndyke. "I never reject a case off-hand unless it is obviously fishy. It is surprising how difficulties, and even impossibilities, dwindle if you look at them attentively. My experience has taught me that the most unlikely case is, at least, ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... poetry translucent, symmetrical, enduring. The immediate practical outcome was disappointing, and the external history of the agitation is a record of failed experiments, spurious sciences, Utopian philosophies, and sects founded only to dwindle away or be reabsorbed into some form of {439} orthodoxy. In the eyes of the conservative, or the worldly-minded, or of the plain people who could not understand the enigmatic utterances of the reformers, the dangerous or ludicrous sides of transcendentalism were naturally uppermost. ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Condy's enthusiasm in the matter began to dwindle. The fine fire which had sustained him during the story's composition had died out. He was satisfied with his work. He had written a good story, and that was the end of it. No doubt he would send it East—to the Centennial ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... the ground in sober recognition of my error. "Forgive me the heat of my zeal," I protested. "I diminish, I dwindle, I wither. Unless your pity forgives me, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... prisoner frequently, in conversation with me, mentioned the subject of speculations in western lands, opening a canal and building a bridge. Colonel Burr also said to me that the government was weak, and that he wished me to get the navy of the United States out of my head; that it would dwindle to nothing; and that he had something to propose to me that was both honourable and profitable; but I considered this nothing more than an interest in his ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... flashes struck from midnights, there are fire-flames noon-days kindle, Whereby piled-up honors perish, whereby swollen ambitions dwindle, While just this or that poor impulse, which for once had play unstifled, Seems the sole work of a life-time that away the rest ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... he shouted to them, "more than the others are doing? Together and in order we might succeed, broken we should be useless. If this huge army cannot break their line, what could two hundred men do?" At last, as the storm of javelins began to dwindle, a mighty shout rose from the Romans, and shoulder to shoulder with levelled spears they advanced, while the flanks giving way, the cavalry burst out on both sides and fell upon the Britons. For those in front, ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... loads, were accelerating slowest, with the ex-gridiron twins riding the rigging. But their rings would dwindle to star specks before ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... shrinking for many years, but the heart of the chief never shrank. His dwelling dwindled from a castle to a house, from a house to a cottage; but the hospitality did not dwindle. As the money vanished, the show diminished; the place of entertainment from a hall became a kitchen, from a kitchen changed to a barn; but the heart of the chief was the same; the entertainment was but ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... aspect of potential beauty and comfort, utterly uncared for and forlorn. There were many rooms, but none more than scantily furnished, and a number of them were stripped bare. Betty found herself wondering how long a time it had taken the belongings of the big place to dwindle and ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... courage and danger, that it is not to be broken in a day. We may come back soon from Montgomery, Julie, but I see war, a great and terrible war, a war, by the side of which those we have had, will dwindle to mere skirmishes. I shut my eyes, but it makes no difference. I see it close at hand, ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... done. In came the architect, with whom he had played many a game of chess. Best, said the architect, take off one good-sized shop, rather than halve the premises. James would be left a little cramped, a little tight, with only one-third of his present space. But as we age we dwindle. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... wax, and now they dwindle, Whirling with the whirling spindle. Twist ye, twine ye! even so Mingle ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... all these stirring events were taking place and just before Magruder, with McLaw's and Walker's divisions, was either quietly lying in front of Richmond watching the army of McClellan dwindle away, leaving by transports down the James and up the Potomac, or was marching at a killing gait to overtake their comrades under Lee to share with them their trials, their battles and their victories in Maryland. Lee could not leave the Capital ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... about an hour later that, preceded by a slight chilling of the air, the first faint pallor of dawn came filtering through the velvet darkness ahead, stealing imperceptibly higher and higher into the eastern sky, and causing the stars thereaway to dwindle and grow dim until, one after another, they vanished in the cold, colourless light that now stretched along the horizon beneath our jibboom-end, spreading right and left, even as one stood and watched it. Then a ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... enkindle,— In a tent I'm quick set down With a Bedouin, lean and brown, Plotting gain of merchandise, Or perchance of robber prize; Clumsy camel load upheaving, Woman deftly carpet-weaving, Meal of dates and bread and salt, While in azure heavenly vault Throbbing stars begin to dwindle. ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... for union with the Irish Nationalists who formed the branch of the confederacy regenerated under Colonel Roberts; and Kelly, who, for various reasons, was unwilling to accept the new regime, saw his adherents dwindle away, until at length he found himself all but discarded by the Fenian circles in Dublin. Then he crossed over to Manchester, where he arrived but a few weeks previous to the date of his accidental arrest ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... the roofs went thundering down! Oh, the prayers, the prayers and curses, that together winged their flight From the maddened hearts of many, through that long and woful night!— Till the fires began to dwindle, and the shots grew faint and few, And we heard the foeman's challenge only in a far halloo: Till the silence once more settled o'er the gorges of the glen, Broken only by the Cona plunging through its naked den. Slowly from the mountain summit was the drifting ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... to be ruled by authority, new popes would imprison new Galileos; the knowledge already acquired would be strangled in the cords which were intended to keep it safe from harm, and, deprived of the free air on which its life depends, it would dwindle and die. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... in his composition. All the rest was weakness—sheer weakness; and it is the unhappy lot of thoroughly weak men, that their very sympathies, affections, confidences—all the qualities which in better constituted minds are virtues—dwindle into foibles, or turn into ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... is very complicated in the present case. It cannot be said, for instance, that you ran away from physical fear, after giving proof of such astonishing physical superiority. Your deeds this evening make the labours of Hercules dwindle to the proportions of mere ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... clime, For Death is there the awful nurse of Life: Death rocks the cot. Why meet we there no wolf Save those huge-limbed? Because weak wolf-cubs die. 'Tis thus with man; 'tis thus with all things strong:— Rise higher on thy northern hills, my Pine! That Southern Palm shall dwindle. House stone-walled— Ye shall not have it! Temples cedar-roofed— Ye shall not build them! Where the Temple stands The City gathers. Cities ye shall spurn: Live in the woods; live singly, winning each, Hunter or fisher by blue lakes, his prey: Abhor the gilded shrine: the God Unknown In such ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... their manifold sophisticated life—must either be fibred, vitalized, by regular contact with out-door light and air and growths, farm-scenes, animals, fields, trees, birds, sun-warmth and free skies, or it will certainly dwindle and pale. We cannot have grand races of mechanics, work people, and commonalty, (the only specific purpose of America,) on any less terms. I conceive of no flourishing and heroic elements of Democracy in the United States, or of Democracy maintaining ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... spices, salt, seasoning, herbs, etc., dwindle down so low that some day, in the midst of preparing a large dinner, you find yourself minus a very important ingredient, thereby causing much confusion ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... the first quarter of the year began to dwindle, and in those days I thought often with regret of ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... waterless bed or a mere line of green and perhaps unsavoury pools. The streams that run south and east from the mountains to the coast are short and rapid torrents after a storm, but at other times dwindle to feeble trickles of mud. In the interior there are, to be sure, rivers which, like the Orange River or the Limpopo, have courses hundreds of miles in length. But they contain so little water during three-fourths of ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... Francisco, with mines on both sides, and numerous flumes which tell of busy times. Halloa! what's this? Dutch Flat. Shades of Bret Harte, true child of genius, what a pity you ever forsook these scenes to dwindle in the foreign air of the Atlantic coast! A whispering pine of the Sierras transplanted to Fifth Avenue! How could it grow? Although it shows some faint signs of life, how sickly are the leaves! As for fruit, there is none. America had in Bret ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... failure and impediment, an interest and consideration to which, in its full usefulness and vigour, it had not presumed to aspire. Therefore Dominic Iglesias held calmly on his way, seeing the circle of his occupations, pleasures, and activities dwindle and decrease, yet maintaining not only his serenity of mind, but his accustomed self-respecting outward refinement of bearing and habit. To meet death with a gracious stoicism, well-dressed and standing upright, is, rightly considered, a very fine art, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... gradually shorter, as the days of late October dwindle into golden noons. During the few hours when he was at his best he was wonderfully active, driving to his publisher's or to make an occasional visit, besides a daily walk. If to those who saw him continually ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... on the part of the seeker. Mrs. Sikes, whose work had chiefly been dressmaking and plain sewing, found the new field of labor quite irksome. The money realized from the sale of her property she must not let dwindle away too swiftly; her husband was helpless, and she must work, and the children must work. She found the North a place where a day's work meant a day's work in full; there was no let up; the pound of flesh was exacted. ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... wound appreciative ones by neglect. Women domesticate themselves to death already. What they want is cultivation. They need to be stimulated to develop a large, comprehensive, catholic life, in which their domestic duties shall have an appropriate niche, and not dwindle down to a narrow and servile one, over which those duties shall spread and occupy the ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... character, fully resolved to carry out his dishonest purpose, and not likely to shrink from violence, to which he was probably only too well accustomed. From the old man he was not likely to obtain assistance, for already Paul's courage had begun to dwindle, and he regarded his nephew ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... prosperity. In its preventive police it ought to be sparing of its efforts, and to employ means, rather few, unfrequent, and strong, than many and frequent, and, of course, as they multiply their puny politic race, and dwindle, small and feeble. Statesmen who know themselves will, with the dignity which belongs to wisdom, proceed only in this the superior orb and first mover of their duty steadily, vigilantly, severely, courageously: whatever remains will, in a manner, provide ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... to delineate the feelings of one of the last of the Greek religious philosophers, one of the family of Orpheus and Musaeus, having survived his fellows, living on into a time when the habits of Greek thought and feeling had begun fast to change, character to dwindle, the influence of the Sophists[3] to prevail. Into the feelings of a man so situated there are entered much that we are accustomed to consider as exclusively modern; how much, the fragments of Empedocles himself which remain to us are sufficient ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Brittany, and son of Louis XVI. The unhappy Prince, when a prisoner with his unfortunate parents in the Temple, was enabled to escape from that place of confinement, hidden (for the treatment of the ruffians who guarded him had caused the young Prince to dwindle down astonishingly) in the cocked-hat of the Representative, Roederer. It is well known that, in the troublous revolutionary times, cocked-hats were worn ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... majestic orbs of the political firmament undergo a cruel lessening of diameter as they approach the Federal City. The greatest of men ceases to be great in the presence of hundreds of his peers, and the multitude of the illustrious dwindle into individual littleness by reason of their superabundance. And when it comes to occupations, it will hardly be denied that the stranger who beholds a Senator "coppering on the ace," or a Congressman standing in a bar-room with a lump of mouldy cheese in one ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... her heart. Her life, she reflected, had held, until recently, but little of happiness. The long, weary days of poverty, when her husband, incapacitated by a paralytic stroke, had seen his savings slowly dwindle away; the death of her son, and then that of Mr. Morton himself passed before her mental vision. Only Ruth had been left to her, and in the girl's happiness and success lay Mrs. Morton's whole life and being. Now, that things had at last taken a turn, and the future ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... lies and senseless shams Have we been cullied all along at Sam's! Who could have e'er believed, unless in spite Lewis le Grand would turn rank Williamite? Thou that hast look'd so fierce and talk'd so big, In thine old age to dwindle to a Whig! Of Kings distress'd thou art a fine securer. Thou mak'st me swear, that am a known nonjuror. Were Job alive, and banter'd by such shufflers, He'd outrail Oates, and curse both thee and Boufflers For thee I've lost, if I can rightly ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the ordinary plan of management, they would be absolutely worthless, even if it were possible to form them with the common hives. If they were not fed, they would be unable to collect the means of building new comb, and would gradually dwindle away, just as third or fourth swarms which issue late in the season; nor could they be saved even by the most generous feeding, as they would only use their supplies to fill up the little comb they had; so that when the queen was ready to lay, there would be ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... but whose sensibility exceeds their strength of mind. In Schiller, its worst effects were resisted by the only availing antidote, a strenuous determination to neglect them. His spirit was too vigorous and ardent to yield even in this emergency: he disdained to dwindle into a pining valetudinarian; in the midst of his infirmities, he persevered with unabated zeal in the great business of his life. As he partially recovered, he returned as strenuously as ever to his intellectual occupations; and often, in the glow of poetical conception, he almost forgot ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... saw the remaining number dwindle, who should be paired with himself. Strict rules of precedence he knew would govern it. At length, to his astonishment, ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... powerful and permanently established government. Nor does it seem possible, even in the event of Bombay taking the ascendance as the capital of British India, that the proud City of Palaces shall upon that account dwindle and sink into decay. Stranger things, and even more melancholy destinies, have befallen the mighty Babylons of the earth; but with all its faults of situation and of climate, I should at least, for one, regret the fate that would render the glories of a ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... coming up, bent to whisper a word in his ear, and the communication caused a sudden change in Mr. Lavington's expression. His face was naturally so colourless that it seemed not so much to pale as to fade, to dwindle and recede into something blurred and blotted-out. He half rose, sat down again and sent a rigid ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... be thought of, and the uncertain recruits who took its place were mostly undisciplined and unreliable. When the exigencies became pressing, a new method was resorted to, and then the usual erosion of life in the field, the losses by casualties and sickness, caused the numbers to dwindle. Long ago the paymaster had ceased to pretend to pay off the men regularly so that there was now a large amount of back pay due them. Largely through Washington's patriotic exhortations had they kept fighting to the end; and, ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... tell you that thrift of time will repay you in after life with a usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and that waste of it will make you dwindle alike in intellectual and moral stature beyond your ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... interest of the subject for pointing it out—is curiously formed. His head is unusually large, and his broad shoulders and deep chest admirably match his quite noble head; but below the waist he appears to dwindle away, his legs seeming to bend under the weight of his body, so that he waddles rather than walks, moving with a rolling gait which is rather like a seaman's. He is, indeed, a giant mounted on a ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... because as the fulcrum of the lever it receives more pressure. Some organs (like the heart, which is always at work) would become inconveniently or unnecessarily large. Other absolutely indispensable organs, which are comparatively passive or are very seldom used, would dwindle until their weakness caused the ruin of the individual or the extinction of the species. In eliminating various evil results of use-inheritance, natural selection would be eliminating use-inheritance itself. The displacement of Lamarck's theory by Darwin's shows that the effects ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... the homes of the crowds. Here the vague faces of the streets, the hurrying, enigmatic figures pumping in and out of offices and stores gather to sleep and breed. In the evening the crowds drift into boxes. The multiple destinations dwindle suddenly into a monotone. The confusions of the city's traffic; the winding and unwinding herds that made a picture for the eyes of Erik Dorn, individualize into little human solitudes. The stone houses stand ticking away the years, and within ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... condensation, compression, compactness; compendium &c 596; squeezing &c v.; strangulation; corrugation; astringency; astringents, sclerotics; contractility, compressibility; coarctation^. inferiority in size. V. become small, become smaller; lessen, decrease &c 36; grow less, dwindle, shrink, contract, narrow, shrivel, collapse, wither, lose flesh, wizen, fall away, waste, wane, ebb; decay &c (deteriorate) 659. be smaller than, fall short of; not come up to &c (be inferior) 34. render smaller, lessen, diminish, contract, draw in, narrow, coarctate^; boil down; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... newly discovered countries and the fear of piratical invasions had by 1591 decreased the total population of the colony to 15,000. This number remained almost stationary until about 1663 when it began to dwindle further until the low water mark was reached, about 1737, and the entire population of the Spanish portion of the island was estimated at but 6,000. Timely tariff concessions revived trade and encouraged immigration and new importations of slaves the number of inhabitants ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... husband! Arnauld, though so intimately connected with Racine for many years, had not read his compositions. When at length he was persuaded to read Phaedra, he declared himself to be delighted, but complained that the poet had set a dangerous example, in making the manly Hippolytus dwindle to an effeminate lover. As a critic, Arnauld was right; but Racine had his nation to please. Such persons entertain notions of poetry similar to that of an ancient father, who calls poetry the wine ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... ossicles lodged in the auditory passage, and, raising them in fish to the greatest possible dimensions, forms from them these broad opercula...." (p. 85). Or you may take it the other way about, and start from the organisation of fishes; opercular bones are of no use to air-breathing animals, so they dwindle away, and are pressed into the service of the ear, although they are of little use in ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... vast firmament sprinkled with silver—silver dust scattered by the arrogant moon. The great silver disk, which, Mary murmured, looked like the tomb of dead gods, seemed to challenge mortals as well as planets to deny that he was lord of all, and that even human emotions must dwindle under his splendor. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
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