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More "Softening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... splashing of the oxen keeps the feet of the rider constantly wet, and my men complain of the perpetual moisture of the paths by which we have traveled in Londa as softening their horny soles. The only information we can glean is from Intemese, who points out the different localities as we pass along, and among the rest "Mokala a Mama", his "mamma's home". It was interesting to hear this tall gray-headed man recall the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... resentment tinged with disgust. But Ann Holland could feel no resentment or disgust. If it had been in her power she would have watched over her and cared for her night and day with unwearied tenderness. As far as she could she sought to keep alive within her all kinds of softening and pleasant influences. She went often to see Charlie at school, sometimes persuading Sophy to go with her, though more often the unhappy mother shrank from meeting her little son's innocent greetings and caresses. The terrible fits of depression ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... her gaze—the gaze of eyes softening, becoming violet. Etta's eyes dropped and the color flooded into her fair skin. "He was an old man—forty or maybe fifty," she explained nervously. "He gave me two dollars. I nearly didn't get him. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... be full of my metal," returned Dr. Syx, almost fiercely, "but so long as I alone possess the knowledge how to extract it, is it of any more worth than common dirt? But come," he added, after a pause and softening his manner, "I have other schemes. Will you, as representatives of the leading nations, undertake the introduction of artemisium as a substitute for gold, or ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... with material, Poliziano selects a classic story: and this story might pass for an allegory of Italy, whose intellectual development the scholar-poet ruled. Orpheus is the power of poetry and art, softening stubborn nature, civilising men, and prevailing over Hades for a season. He is the right hero of humanism, the genius of the Renaissance, the tutelary god of Italy, who thought she could resist the laws of fate by verse and elegant accomplishments. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... by Poe, "I have resided there all my life until within the last few years," suggests but slight cause for his love of Richmond, the home of his childhood, the darkening clouds of which, viewed through the softening lens of years, may have shaded off to brighter tints, as the roughness of a landscape disappears and melts into mystic, dreamy beauty as we ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... reached one at the extremity of the wing, from the window of which a view was obtained for a considerable distance down the valley. The prospect that presented itself to them on pausing before this window, was so enchantingly beautiful, that it seemed to produce an effect, and to exercise a softening influence, even upon the depraved and vicious nature of Don Baltasar. At any rate, a full minute elapsed during which he stood in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... could take care of myself, and wouldn't stand in the way of their duty," said the young girl, anticipating him with quick professional pride that seemed to fit her aquiline nose and tall figure. "And if they knew that," she added, softening with a mischievous smile, "they also knew, of course, that I was protected by a gallant stranger vouched for by Mr. Foster! No!" she added, with a certain blind, devoted confidence, which Boyle noticed with a slight wince that she had never shown before, "it's all right! and 'by orders,' Mr. ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Chubb?" said Uncle Paul, beginning indignantly, and then softening down as he caught sight of ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... first grief, the discovery that if he had lived he could never have claimed her, had some power in softening this, the second. On Marty's part there was the same consideration; never would she have been his. As no anticipation of gratified affection had been in existence while he was with them, there was none to be disappointed now ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... perhaps he didn't recognise it. So many people—so many, many people whom he did not know, whom he had never before laid eyes on—high-bred faces hard as diamonds; young, gay, laughing faces; brilliant eyes encountering his without a softening of recognition; clean-cut, attractive men in swarms, all animated, all amused, all at home among themselves and among the silken visions of loveliness passing and repassing, with here an extended gloved arm and the cordial greeting of camaraderie, there a quick smile, a swift turn ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... the unknown past almost tenderly towards the mother who had died long ago, to whom perhaps Bice had been what little Tom was now to herself. But when the further statement reached her ears all that softening which seemed to have swept over her disappeared in a moment. A horrible bewilderment had seized her. Was he two men, with two wives, two lives, two ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... dangerous condition. Glibly the quack discourses on the consequences of neglecting the terrible symptoms, and the great difficulty of combating them. He is told that he will be liable to spinal disease, softening of the brain, or insanity. Sometimes a collection of plates, containing hideous representations of dreadful eruption, and sores covering all parts of the body, are submitted to the patient's horrified inspection. ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... came, and a young woman whom Jane Porter had not seen before came with several others to her dungeon. Here some sort of ceremony was performed—that it was of a religious nature the girl was sure, and so she took new heart, and rejoiced that she had fallen among people upon whom the refining and softening influences of religion evidently had fallen. They would treat her humanely—of that ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sent to request the ladies to visit her; she wished to avoid a parade of grief—her sorrows were her own, and appeared to her not to admit of increase or softening. She was right; the sight of them did not affect her, or turn the stream of her sullen sorrow; the black wave rolled along in the same course, it was equal to her where she cast her eyes; ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... shine with joy when repeating some of the salient, consoling, and sustaining verses. And how common are the records among those simple Boers of happy and triumphant death-bed scenes of old and young, softening the grief of the bereaved believers. Frivolous education and advanced surroundings are accountable for a certain waning of the original habits of serious piety; this is to some extent more the case among the Cape Colonial and Orange Free State Boers, the declension appearing greatest with those ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... of the bell soothed her, softening the thought of the danger to Michel. She moved with it towards the sea, the tones of her grief chiming with it. Presently, as she went, a priest in cassock and robes and stole crossed the path in front of her, an acolyte before him swinging a censer, his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... The two stood there, side by side, looking out across the great city that glittered and swam in the soft haze of the late November afternoon. There are lovelier sights than New York seen at night, from a window eyrie with a mauve haze softening all, as a beautiful but experienced woman is softened by an artfully draped scarf of chiffon. There are cities of roses, cities of mountains, cities of palm-trees and sparkling lakes; but no sight, be it of mountains, or roses, or lakes, or waving palm- trees, is more likely to cause that ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... said, his full-blooded face lightening and softening at the same time, as though a load were off his mind, "it's no pleasure to me to deprive any man of his billet, but you never were a nurse, and you know that as ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... welcomed her with affectionate words. The baronet she addressed as "Willy," but with such a dignity of kindness in the familiar name that it was like bestowal of an honour. Towards the peer her bearing was marked with grave courtesy, softening to intimate notes as their conversation progressed. Scarce a touch of senility sounded in her speech; she heard perfectly, indulged in no characteristic brusquerie of phrase, fulfilled every ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... curious to notice how, in almost every instance, the first adapting dramatists transformed Balzac's tragedies into comedies, softening the stern facts of life and its injustices, and meting out the juster rewards and punishments which ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... political liberty is not the same as spiritual and mental freedom, and does not always favour it. It may be partially true, as he says, that "Virgil and Tibullus show that Roman harshness and cruelty were softening down"; that "equality and the rights of men were preached by the Stoics"; that "woman was more her own mistress, and slaves were better treated than in the days of Cato"; that "very humane and just laws were enacted under the very ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... already told you, he is now an old man; he cannot, in the course of nature, expect to live much longer. If he looks back to the period when he and his brother were first at variance, he must look back through thirty years. Surely, these are softening influences which must affect any man? Surely, his own knowledge of the shocking circumstances under which he has become possessed of this money will plead with him, if nothing ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... therefore with some human exaltation that he looked around the sleeping settlement which had sprung up under the magic wand of their good fortune. The full moon had idealized their youthful designs with something of their own youthful coloring, graciously softening the garish freshness of paint and plaster, hiding with discreet obscurity the disrupted banks and broken woods at the beginning and end of their broad avenues, paving the rough river terrace with tessellated shadows, and even touching the rapid ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... contented with. . . . It had power to reconcile him to those whom he had most offended and provoked, and continued to his age with that rare felicity, that his company was acceptable where his spirit was odious, and he was at least pitied where he was most detested." Much of this, with some softening, might, we fear, be applied to Bacon. The influence of Waller's talents, manners, and accomplishments, died with him; and the world has pronounced an unbiassed sentence on his character. A few flowing lines are not bribe sufficient to pervert the judgment ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bravely as she could, trying not to alarm or distress them unduly, but there could be no disguising or softening one terrible fact. Jack, strong, sinewy, broad-shouldered Jack, whose strength had been his pride, lay as helpless as a baby, and all the hope the physicians could give was that in a few months he might be able to go about in a wheeled chair. ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... regained his former composure. Although dreading the effect of the communication, Herrera felt it absolutely necessary to impart at once the news brought by Paco. He proceeded accordingly in the task, and as cautiously as possible, softening the more painful parts, suggesting hopes which he himself could not feel, and speaking cheeringly of the probability of an early rescue. The Count bore the communication as one who could better sustain certain ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... artist, the king having handled the pencil and composed a poem, yet he never suffered his private dispositions to prevail over his more majestic duties. We do not discover in history that Charles the First was a painter and a poet. Accident and secret history only reveal this softening feature in his grave and king-like character. Charles sought no glory from, but only indulged his love for, art and the artists. There are three manuscripts on his art, by Leonardo da Vinci, in the Ambrosian library, which bear an inscription that a King of England, in 1639, offered one thousand ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... possible to describe a glorious summer sunset, with all the softening splendor that it sheds around; but to describe the setting of my dumb boy's sun of mortal life is impossible. He declined like the orb of day, gently, silently, gradually, yet swiftly, and gathered new beauties as he approached the horizon. His sufferings were ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... leaving the land of my birth, to which, in all probability, I might never again return. Great as was the sacrifice, even at that moment, strange as was my situation, I felt no painful regret or fearful misgiving depress my mind. A holy and tranquil peace came down upon me, soothing and softening my spirits into a calmness that seemed as unruffled as was the bosom of the water that lay stretched out ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... prettier," said young Lavender with a quite genuine enthusiasm in his face, not altogether begotten of the letter y; "and indeed I don't think you can possibly tell how singularly pleasant and quaint it is to an English ear to hear just that little softening of the vowels that the people have here. I suppose you don't notice that they say ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... will be of greater consequence than the sacrifices," returned the lady, softening as she saw her husband yielding; "the loss will soon be made up to you through an increase of friends. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... wonderingly, his hitherto inflexible face softening a trifle. "Oh, say it again—does Violet really believe that I am dead?" and the eager, quivering tones rang sharply through ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... beaming state of moderate company that had taken no more than was wholesome for them, and had served to develop their best qualities. Sprinkling dewy drops about them on the ground, they seemed profuse of innocent and sparkling mirth, that did good where it lighted, softening neglected corners which the steady rain could seldom ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... 'being acquainted with old Mr Harmon, one would have thought it might have been polite in you, too, to give him a call. And you're naturally of a polite disposition, you are.' This last clause as a softening ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... had enough of cricket for that day, and went in to make his confession to his uncle. Allan's piteous face did more towards softening his father than Tom's regrets, and he said very little about the matter, though possibly ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... little compass hung at my neck; and ignorant that the Platte at this point diverged considerably from its easterly course, I thought that by keeping to the northward I should certainly reach it. So I turned and rode about two hours in that direction. The prairie changed as I advanced, softening away into easier undulations, but nothing like the Platte appeared, nor any sign of a human being; the same wild endless expanse lay around me still; and to all appearance I was as far from my object as ever. I began now to consider myself in danger of being lost; and therefore, reining in my horse, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the sleeping chamber and the interior of the palace, several officers and national guards wandering about in the tumult. He had the queen's children brought to her, in order that their presence and appearance, by softening the mob, might serve as a buckler to their mother. He himself opened the doors. He placed the queen and her ladies in the depth of the window. They wheeled in front of this the massive council-table, in order to interpose a barrier ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... was so much fighting to be done; I had come on purpose to make them well, and they might make up their minds to it. My own courage had revived, and I must revive theirs; I could surely keep them alive until help should come. By softening the torturing bandages on his face, I made him more comfortable; and in an adjoining room found another man with a thigh stump, who had been served by field-surgeons, as the thieves served the man going from ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... traders did not overlook such a source of power. Alcoholic liquor became their implement of almost magical work in controlling the lives, labors, and resources of the Indians. The priests with their captivating story of the Cross had a large influence in softening savage natures and averting many an awful danger; but when everything else failed, rum always came to the rescue of ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Weakly mere words convey The ivory white of snowflakes, Decking the hills that day; And the softening yellow tone That fell from the ...
— The Last West and Paolo's Virginia • G. B. Warren
... me in speechless dismay; his color coming and going like the color of a young girl. Anybody who understands women will understand that this behavior on his part, far from softening me towards him, only encouraged me to ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... alike upon her strict rule and her learning, her refinement of manners and conversation and her distinguished appearance. She was tall and stately and in her decorous garb of black silk that could have "stood alone," and an elegant cap of "real" lace with lavender ribbons softening the precise waves of her iron-grey hair, she made a most impressive figure—one that would have inspired with profound respect any male creature living saving that incorrigible non-respecter of persons ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... the blunder which "the classes" had committed in their estimate of Lincoln had an even greater effect in softening the asperities which the war left behind it than had the exposure of the egregious miscalculations of English statesmen as to the comparative military strength of North and South. One must not blame Englishmen too severely, however, for their lack ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... asleep. He always regarded this religious experience as the most important part of his education; it had the effect, not only of enlarging his mind, but also of restraining his impatience, and softening a disposition that was growing hard and bitter with brooding over the disadvantages suffered by himself and his race. He greatly needed something that would help him to look beyond his bondage and encourage him ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... hand, has its virtues: the softening and refining of life, gradual development of sympathy, achievement of comfort and beauty; but peace has its vices. In times of peace and prosperity there seems to be no great cause at stake. Of course, ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... strictest force against those who should be found to be offenders. Benvolio, who had been eye-witness to the fray, was commanded by the prince to relate the origin of it; which he did, keeping as near the truth as he could without injury to Romeo, softening and excusing the part which his friends took in it. Lady Capulet, whose extreme grief for the loss of her kinsman Tybalt made her keep no bounds in her revenge, exhorted the prince to do strict justice upon his murderer, and to,pay no attention to Benvolio's representation, who, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... and very wise, as she said this; but over Molly's face there came a great softening change. The wrinkles seemed to disappear; she gazed at Daisy steadily, as if trying to find out what it all meant: and when the eyes presently were cast down, Daisy almost thought there was a little moisture about them. She had no further interruption in her work. ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... softening of the brain, that you don't realise what I am? Did you really think I wanted to catch that train? Twenty Paris trains might go by ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... of the Proprietor of Maitland Park is fulfilled. The softening and refining presence of woman diffuses a new charm over its social life, and while his Mary is to his tenantry what he himself predicted, an angel of consolation, she is to him a faithful co-worker in all that may advance the reign of peace and righteousness, ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... of Margaret Cooper, and from the goadings of his cousin. Naturally one of the gentlest of creatures, the young man was not deficient in spirit. What seemed to his more rude and elastic relative a token of imbecility, was nothing more than the softening influence of his reflective and mental over his physical powers. These, under the excitement of his blood were necessarily made subject to his animal impulses, and when he left the house that morning, with his Blackstone under his arm, on his way to the peaceful cottage of old Calvert, where ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... weapon the officer touched a trigger; there was a double report, ear-shattering in that narrowly confined space; and the pirate's body literally flew into mist as a half-kilogram shell tore through his armor and exploded. Costigan shut off his beam, and, with not the slightest softening of one hard lineament, stared around the air-room; making sure that no serious damage had been done to the vital machinery of the air-purifier—the very lungs of ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... really stood was conceivable; we knew he was like that, heaps of people were, and you didn't think a bit the worse of them; you could present a quite respectable "Life" of them with "Letters" by simply suppressing a few salient details and softening the egoism all round. But what Burton supposed he was going to do with Wrackham, short of destroying him! You couldn't soften him, you couldn't tone him down; he wore thin in the process and vanished ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... was, and am very sorry for it. The story is this, Mrs. Lee; and it is well-known to every man, woman, and child in the State of Illinois, so that I have no reason for softening it. In the worst days of the war there was almost a certainty that my State would be carried by the peace party, by fraud, as we thought, although, fraud or not, we were bound to save it. Had Illinois ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... cannot hide it; I still am dear! Each look, each feature speaks it, Speaks to a softening heart—Oh! hear its pleading, And bid me stay! I'll only stay to love thee! Look on me! mark my altered form! observe The strong convulsions of my gasping bosom! See my wan cheeks, eyes swoln, lips trembling! feel How scalding are the tears with which I dew This dear, dear hand! ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... concession line for a mile, and then through the woods by the bridle-path to Peter McGregor's clearing. The green grass ran everywhere—along the roadside, round the great stump roots, over the rough pasture-fields, softening and smoothing wherever it went. The woods were flushing purple, with just a tinge of green from the bursting buds. The balsams and spruces still stood dark in the swamps, but the tamaracks were shyly ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... interest in it. That, I admit, is an argument rather in the manner of an attorney; clearly enough the intent of this statute is to compel an attorney to cheat and lie for any rascal that wants him to. In that sense it may be regarded as a law softening the rigor of all laws; it does not mitigate punishments, but mitigates the chance of incurring them. The infamy of it lies in forbidding an attorney to be a gentleman. Like all laws it falls something short of its intent: many attorneys, even some who defend that law, are as honorable as is ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... universally kept in all countries to the exclusion of hundreds of species nearly allied and apparently as suitable. When a want could be supplied by obtaining from another country an animal bred to live with man and serve him, the long and difficult task of softening down the wild instincts of a beast taken from the forests or the hills and acclimatising its constitution to a domestic life was not ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... Missioner's recumbent form, he reached to the pocket of his coat which he had flung on the bunk and drew out the picture of the Girl. He looked at it a long time, his heart growing warm, and the tense lines softening in ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... care about my eyes being red, tho' I don't want to wake the poor baby," sobbed the little girl, slightly softening her wrath: "but the cat has unravelled all the stocking I have been knitting at for so many days, and I had nearly just finished it, and now it's all spoilt;" and she roared with vexation. "Miss Hermione, if you ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... frontier life came intellectual traits of profound importance. The works of travelers along each frontier from colonial days onward describe certain common traits, and these traits have, while softening down, still persisted as survivals in the place of their origin, even when a higher social organization succeeded. The result is that to the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... boy, his voice softening. "Holy Virgin, save him! For weeks, we've been in the hands of Aguinaldo's men. He's been so ill, all the time; ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... doubt that the painter had drugged him, he did not wish to pain her by imparting this conviction. But Lilith was afraid of a reaction of rage and hatred in her father after the terror was removed; and Karl saw that he might thus be deprived of all further intercourse with Lilith, and all chance of softening the old man's heart towards him; while Lilith would not hear of forsaking him who had banished all the human race but herself. They managed at length to agree upon a ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... already said that the Taylors' home was one of the most softening and culturing influences of my early life. Would that I could give an impression of the dear host at the head of his dinner-table, dressed in black silk knee-breeches and velvet cutaway coat—a survival of a politer time, not an affectation of it—beaming ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... the mountain, brother prophet," said Sir George, waving his hand towards the seated patroon. He came, lightly as a panther, his dark, well-cut features softening a trifle; and I thought him handsome in his uniform, wearing his own dark hair unpowdered, tied in a short queue; but when he turned full face to greet Sir George Covert, I was astonished to see the cruelty in his almost perfect features, ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... he said, his proud face softening as he spoke and his eyes gazing on her with a sort of rapture. "Are you pleased ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... was not the best method of treating it. More than once she had spoken of the matter to Mortimer Fenley; but he merely said that he had tried every known means to cure his wife, short of immuring her in an asylum, and had failed. "She is happy in a sort of a way," he would add, with a certain softening of voice and manner. "Let her continue so." Thus a minor tragedy was drifting to its close when Fenley himself was so rudely robbed ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... background at the eastward two of the loftiest, glacier-crowned mountains on the continent, bold and beautiful in outline, tranquil and immovable in their grandeur. The steady glow of the warm sunlight gilded cross and pinnacle, as we gazed on this picture through the softening haze of approaching twilight,—a view which we have ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... were to be cultivated, the sympathies awakened, and all that is pure and kind and elevated in the nature of man drawn forth. And where is the influence which so gently moulds the character, refining, softening, and elevating it, as the affectionate, intelligent sister? As a man advances in life, the continual influence and association of virtuous and accomplished women is felt in all the relations he ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... not always do to tell our minds.... I am one of those who try to serve God and Mammon. Now, for instance, if I wish to say anything I think right to anyone, I seldom go straight to the point, but mostly by some softening, round-about way, which, I fear, is very much from wishing to please man ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... by this communication. She refused to be comforted, and, indeed, the position was beyond Uncle Chirgwin's power to brighten. The letter had come at a bad moment, and that calm and repose which almost appeared to be softening Joan's sorrows now spread speedy wings and departed, leaving her wholly forlorn. Curtains were falling behind her, but curtains were also rising in front. She had looked forward vaguely, and now the position was suddenly ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... wholly secretive, he had accustomed himself to regard romantic ideality, and susceptibility to sentimentality as a species of intellectual anaemia; holding himself always thoroughly in hand, when subjected to the softening influences that now and then invaded professional existence, and melted the conventional selfish crust over the hearts of his colleagues, as the warm lips and balmy breath of equatorial currents kiss away the jagged ledges of drifting icebergs. In his laborious life, that which is ordinarily ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Almost a softening flicker of light was imminent in his withered face as he beheld the others proudly lift their hats and ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... lady would see neither doctor nor parson; nor would she hear of sending for her daughter. The only sign of softening that she gave was that once she folded her granddaughter in her arms and wept long and bitterly. Perhaps the thought of her dying child came back upon her, along with the reflection that the only friend she had was ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... of the first hours was softening; each day brought additional tranquillity and calm; life resumed its course with weary languidness, and with the monotonous intellectual insensibility which follows great shocks. At the commencement, ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... light From a lone chamber struck upon his sight. Towards it he moved; a scarcely closing door 1570 Revealed the ray within, but nothing more. With hasty step a figure outward passed, Then paused, and turned—and paused—'tis She at last! No poniard in that hand, nor sign of ill— "Thanks to that softening heart—she could not kill!" Again he looked, the wildness of her eye Starts from the day abrupt and fearfully. She stopped—threw back her dark far-floating hair, That nearly veiled her face and bosom fair, As if she late had bent her leaning head 1580 Above some object of her doubt or dread. They ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... her countenance visibly softening however; "kisses, however sweet they be, don't ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... thought that the government of the Recollect fathers was milder, and hence they sighed for it. Those fathers tolerated their barbarous customs among a people so ferocious, and succeeded by their patience in softening and reducing them. Not so with the Dominican fathers, who learned the Zambals' tenacity at their own cost. In the village of Balacbac was an Indian chief named Dalinen; although he lived in that village, he kept his valuables in the mountains under charge of a nephew. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... daintiest of handkerchiefs from her pocket, began to cry. The countess must have been a poor diplomatist, or she might have thought of this; or she may have remembered her own appearance on the rare occasions when she herself, a big, raw-boned girl, had attempted the softening influence of tears, and have attached little importance to the possibility. But when these soft, dimpled women cry, and cry quietly, it is another matter. Their eyes grow brighter, and the tears, few and far between, lie like ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... sun still rode above the great peaks that outlined the western horizon. Already the shadows were beginning to creep up the eastern slope of the hills that clambered till they reached the bases of the great mountains. A purple haze hung over mountain, hill and rolling plain, softening the sharp outlines that ordinarily defined the features ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... influence is slowly spreading among men. We see it in the enlarging spirit of love among Christians, in the increase of philanthropy, in the growing sentiment that war must cease among Christian nations, all disputes to be settled by arbitration, and in the feeling of universal brotherhood which is softening all true men's hearts ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... much obliged to be continually mentioning her father, that, though the loss was still very recent, she was habituated to speak of him with firmness; and it was an extreme satisfaction to tell all her sorrows, and all the little softening incidents, to Louis. Mr. Ponsonby had shown much affection and gratitude to her during the few closing days of his illness, and had manifested some tokens of repentance for his past life; but there had been so much pain and torpor, that there had been little space for reflection, and the ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... charms, so has old age, and to us the great abbey church of Westminster has become doubly beloved by long generations of affection, and doubly beautiful by the softening handiwork of time and ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... terrible shock to Sydney. For a time his remorse for his own conduct was very great, and it bore good fruit in a perceptible softening of his over-confident manner and a more distinct show of consideration for his mother and sister. Little by little he drew from Lettice the story of her past anxieties, of his father's efforts and privations, of his mother's suffering ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... with partially clearing weather, and the icy covering of the trees yielded to the softening influences of a southern wind. The family went to the landing to see me off, and the kind ladies stowed many delicacies, made with their own hands, in the bow of the boat. After rowing a half-mile, I took a lingering look ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... hell as original and idiosyncratic as his soul and its contents. As the ingredients of evil experience are not mixed alike in any, hell cannot be one monotonous fixture for all, but must be a process altering with the different elements and degrees afforded, and softening or ending its wretchedness in proportion as the heavenly elements and degrees of freedom, pleasure, clearness, self approval, beauty, faith and love, furnish the conditions of blessedness. Hell ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... her poor mother, who was proud of the beauty of her child, and brought her up more tenderly than a village girl ought to be; and ever since she has been left an orphan, the good ladies at the Hall have completed the softening and ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... himself had considerable talent for the art, and not only played the lute, and sang melodiously with his seemingly weak but penetrating voice, but was able even to compose. He valued music particularly as the means of driving away the devil and his temptations, as well as for its softening and refining influence. 'The heart,' he said, 'grows satisfied, refreshed, and strengthened by music.' He noticed, as a wonder wrought by God, how the air was able to give forth, by a slight movement of the tongue and throat, guided by the mind, such sweet and ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... commander of a Special Patrol ship, history has never recorded that any commander has ever hesitated. That is why our uniform of blue and silver commands the respect that it does even in this day and age of softening and decadence, when men—but again an old man digresses. And perhaps it is not for me ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... at Mrs Nesbitt's," said Effie, congratulating herself on her aunt's softening tone, but not seeming ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... the method of softening skins by beating and treading upon them illustrates the common use of rhythm and song as a means of holding the attention to what otherwise would be ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... room sat a pauper who had once been an actress of considerable repute, but was compelled to give up her profession by a softening of the brain. The disease seemed to have stolen the continuity out of her life, and disturbed all healthy relationship between the thoughts within her and the world without. On our first entrance, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... I want to listen to him for?" Johnny's eyes looked down at her with no softening of his anger. "Good golly! Do you think your dad's got the only brain in the world? How do men run their affairs, and get rich, that never heard of him, do you suppose? I don't want to mock your dad—he's all right in his own field, and a smart man and all that. But he ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... the Pacific, and the red savage of North America, are much alike; and identically the same change is wrought in all when the light of truth is brought among them, and the Christian's faith sheds its softening influence over their hearts. Many such ideas as those I have alluded to passed through my mind as I sat, unable to move, watching the proceedings of the savages, and I felt with a pang of intense remorse how utterly I had neglected doing anything towards sending the gospel of salvation ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... superior sex solely employed. The payment is trifling; but I was told that the hand of woman is the softest, most pliable, and most accommodating tool which has yet been discovered for conferring the finest polish on the refractory substance of steel. Can we wonder at its effect in softening the ruggedness of the other sex, and how hard must be the heart of that man which does not yield to an influence which subdues even ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various
... things" I can really say nothing—except that I feel their truth, and am grateful for them. But may I not applaud (even the Pope is "applauded," you know) such a perfect touch as—for instance—in Chapter XVI—"the final softening of that sweet austerity which hid Lucy's heart of gold"; and again "Italy without the forestieri" "like surprising a bird on its nest"; and the scene beheld of Eleanor—Lucy pressing the terra-cotta to ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ancestors, either in arts, civility, knowledge, humanity, justice, or obedience to the laws. Even Christianity, though it opened the way to connections between them and the more polished states of Europe, had not hitherto been very effectual in banishing their ignorance or softening their barbarous manners. As they received that doctrine through the corrupted channels of Rome, it carried along with it a great mixture of credulity and superstition, equally destructive to the understanding and to morals. The reverence toward ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... wine to her lips, her stern face softening. Like many a high-spirited woman doomed to perpetual inaction, her dominion over her servants had grown to represent the larger share ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... bloody scenes were passing in Italy, Louis IX was following up the establishment of public peace and his darling object, the crusade, at the same time. The holy monarch did not forget that the surest manner of softening the evils of war, as well as of his absence, was to make good laws; he therefore issued several ordinances, and each of these ordinances was a monument of his justice. The most celebrated of all is the Pragmatic ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... did you say?" said Mrs Morgan, upon whose female soul the Perpetual Curate's good looks and good manners had not been without a certain softening effect. "I am so sorry. I don't wonder you are vexed; but don't you think there must be some mistake, William? Mr Wentworth is so gentlemanly and nice—and of very good family, too. I don't think he would choose to set himself in opposition ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... or any country, has furnished more splendid examples of every virtue, domestic and public. I do not enter into the councils of Providence: but, humanly speaking, many of these nobles and men of property, from whose disastrous fate we are, it seems, to learn a general softening of character, and a revision of our social situations and duties, appear to me full as little deserving of that fate, as the author, whoever he is, can be. Many of them, I am sure, were such, as I should be proud indeed to be able to compare myself ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... the afflicted, are duties that fall in our way almost every day of our lives. A man has frequent opportunities of mitigating the fierceness of a party; of doing justice to the character of a deserving man; of softening the envious, quieting the angry, and rectifying the prejudiced; which are all of them employments suited to a reasonable nature, and bring great satisfaction to the person who can busy ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... distinction. In France, the native deformity of this taste appears in its real light, without the colouring of any such adventitious circumstances as conceal it in this country. It does not appear there under the softening veil of ancient manners; its avenues do not conduct to the decaying abode of hereditary greatness—its gardens do not mark the scenes of former festivity—its fountains are not covered with the moss which has grown for centuries. It appears as the model of present taste; it is ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... sophisms which for so many years misled the most generous part of French intelligence. We may regret perhaps that in demolishing the vision of perfect social equality, Turgot did not show a more lively sense of the need for lessening and softening unavoidable inequalities of condition. However capable these inequalities may be of scientific defence, they are none the less on that account in need of incessant and strenuous practical modification; and it is one of the most serious misfortunes of society, and is unhappily ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... have been in Beth-Dagon," the man said, his face softening yet more. "What wanderers we of Judah are! I have been away from the ridge—old Ephrath, as our father Jacob called it—for many years. When the proclamation went abroad requiring all Hebrews to be numbered at the cities of their birth— That is my ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Pope, it has been accepted as a thing rather to be disguised than accentuated. There is something a little barbarous in rhyme itself, with its mnemonic click of emphasis, and the skill of the most skilful English poets has always been shown in the softening of that click, in reducing it to the inarticulate answer of an echo. Meredith hammers out his rhymes on the anvil on which he has forged his clanging and rigid-jointed words. His verse moves in plate-armour, 'terrible as ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... girl of fifteen, who was a perfect catastrophe. She read things and had begun to talk about her "right to be a woman." Emily Heppel-Bevill was only thirty-seven—three years from forty. Feather had reached the stage of softening in her disdain of the women in their thirties. She had found herself admitting that—in these days—there were women of forty who had not wholly passed beyond the pale into that outer darkness where there was ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... gone. She gazed long at the door through which he had left the room, and her expression changed more than once, softening and hardening again as the thoughts chased each other through her tired brain. At last she closed her eyes, and presently fell ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... which today furnishes Salt Lake City part of her water supply—plows were put to work; but the hard-baked soil, never before disturbed by the efforts of man to till, refused to yield to the share. A dam was thrown across the stream and the softening liquid was spread upon the flat that had been chosen for the first fields. The planting season had already well nigh passed, and not a day could be lost. Potatoes and other seed were put in, and the land was again flooded. Such was the beginning of the irrigation ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... its moss-grown head stones, could have had little to remind him of home, though it has antiquity and a proper quaintness. But not for him, not for them of his clime and faith, is the pathos of those simple memorial slates with their winged skulls, changing upon many later stones, as if by the softening of creeds and customs, to cherub's heads,—not for him is the pang I feel because of those who died, in our country's youth exiles or exiles' children, heirs of the wilderness and toil and hardship. Could ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... of the brain and nervous system: indicated by such names as apoplexy, epilepsy, paralysis, vertigo, softening of the brain, delirium tremens, loss of memory and that general failure of the mental power called dementia. (b) Diseases of the lungs: one form of consumption, congestion and subsequent bronchitis. (c) Diseases of the heart: irregular beat, feebleness of the muscular walls, dilation, disease of ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... certain proportion of them,—bad lands, bad horses, and bad men. And it is a degree of badness that the East has no conception of,—land that looks as raw and unnatural as if time had never laid its shaping and softening hand upon it; horses that, when mounted, put their heads to the ground and their heels in the air, and, squealing defiantly, resort to the most diabolically ingenious tricks to shake off or to kill their riders; and men who amuse themselves in bar-rooms by ...
— Camping with President Roosevelt • John Burroughs
... globe attached to it is now held at the mouth of a glowing furnace: and by turning the rod the globe is made to revolve slowly, so as to be uniformly exposed to the heat: the first effect of this softening is to make the glass contract upon itself and to enlarge the opening of the neck. As the softening proceeds, the globe is turned more quickly on its axis, and when very soft and almost incandescent, it is removed from the fire, ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... instincts have never been awakened, to whom the needs of childhood and the precautions required for adolescence were unknown, had neither the indulgence nor the compassionate intelligence of a mother; such sufferings as those of Pierrette, instead of softening her heart only made it ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Down the long valley of the Merrimac, Midway between me and the river's mouth, I see thy home, set like an eagle's nest Among Deer Island's immemorial pines, Crowning the crag on which the sunset breaks Its last red arrow. Many a tale and song, Which thou bast told or sung, I call to mind, Softening with silvery mist the woods and hills, The out-thrust headlands and inreaching bays Of our northeastern coast-line, trending where The Gulf, midsummer, feels the chill blockade Of icebergs stranded ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... genius to perceive them, and the industry to make them apparent. This was the cause of Rembrandt's captivating excellence; neither a combination of Coreggio and Titian, nor of Murillo and Velasquez, but as if all the great principles of chiaro-scuro and colour were steeped and harmonized in the softening shades of twilight; and this we perceive in nature, producing the most soothing and bewitching results. These digressions may, however, come more properly into notice when Rembrandt's principles of ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... filling, but there are two objections to it: First, it imparts to the cervical border the color and appearance of decay, so that in three cases where an instrument passed readily into the tin I have removed the fillings, without any necessity for it, not even finding any softening of the margins. Second, its use requires the same conditions of dryness, shape of cavity, delicate manipulation, inconvenience to patient, and strain upon the operator as when gold is used alone." (Dr. ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler
... of Buchan, and to which the name of Lord John had been already appended; it was the lingering echoes of that deep, yet gentle voice, blessing her compliance to his wishes, which thrilled again and again to her heart, softening her grief, even when that beloved voice was hushed forever, and she had no thought, no wish to recall that promise, nay, even looked to its consummation with joy, as a release from the companionship, nay, as at times she felt, the wardance of ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... with a sweet and trustful smile which would have satisfied a harder adversary than Reckage. He was not so hard, however, as he was egoistic, and it was not a question of softening his heart. Sara had the far more difficult task of soothing his ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... Mrs. Jasher, visibly softening, "there is something to be said there. After all, one can never find a man who is perfection. And a very amiable man is usually a fool. One can't expect a rose to be without thorns. But really, my dear," she surveyed Lucy with mild surprise, "you appear to be very anxious that I should ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... but he could see the twenty years I showed him with both eyes. Say, he mussed all over the place, and went and fainted like a girl. And then the old woman came across with an offer of fifteen thousand for the plate, and corrupted me." Malone's cunning, vicious face, now that the softening effects of the gray hair and mustache were gone, seemed accentuated diabolically by the grin broadening into ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... texture, and attracts and retains the superfluities of the black-bile, expelled from the liver for its own cleansing. Hence it is a servile and insensitive organ, and accordingly suffers different diseases, such as obstruction, tumors, hardening, softening, abscess, and sometimes flatulence or repletion. The symptoms and treatment of each of these morbid conditions, arising from either heat or cold, are discussed with exasperating thoroughness, and the chapter concludes with ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... let bygones be bygones. I was very harsh, very disagreeable then. I wonder you have ever forgiven me; I have never forgiven myself. I know not how it is, but it seems to me that a softening change has come over me. I feel more tenderly towards the young beings committed to my care, more indulgence for the weaknesses and errors of my kind. I did not mind, then, trampling on a flower, if it sprung up in my path; now I would stoop down and ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... interests; always considering herself as the good and protecting fairy, whose duty it was to baffle the malignant giant, Mr. Hale. Master Frederick had been her favorite and pride; and it was with a little softening of her dignified look and manner, that she went in weekly to arrange the chamber as carefully as if he might be coming home that very evening. Margaret could not help believing that there had been some late intelligence of Frederick, unknown to her mother, ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... fixed for some time at the house, she thought it proper and decent to attempt softening Lady Margaret in her favour. She exerted all her powers to please and to oblige her; but the exertion was necessarily vain, not only from the disposition, but the situation of her ladyship, since every effort made ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... purity and innocence that people have been known in their enthusiasm to proclaim that they felt inclined to repent of all their favorite sins and to exist thenceforth in total virtue. They produce on nearly every one a softening effect; indeed they almost make you better. The vale of Luz is certainly the most winning of these retreats. Its soothing calm, its welcoming tenderness, its look of friendship and of wise counsel, wind themselves around you; and the beauty of its grassy shades, of its ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... piling a sort of terror upon the ache and yearning. He had lost her. It was true—no denying it, no softening it. But a new idea had seared his sky—what of Bloeckman! What would happen now? There was a wealthy man, middle-aged enough to be tolerant with a beautiful wife, to baby her whims and indulge her unreason, to wear her as she perhaps wished to be worn—a bright flower in his ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... for girls. In most of these outpourings of the Spirit, as now, the villages were more or less favored. The effects of these revivals were by no means limited to the souls converted. An enlightening, softening, elevating influence affected the masses. The young men from the seminary were generally of good abilities, having been selected from a large number of candidates, and many of them were distinguished for piety; and quite as much might be said of ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... of it seemed in tune with Esther's own sense of loneliness; but it touched her heart with the softening touch of sadness. She sank down on a big boulder beside her, and, stretching out her arms on its rough, lichen-covered breast, buried her face in them ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... photograph shows, beneath the most tactful of trees, and it has no details of beauty; and yet, like its companions, the Judgment of Solomon and the Sin of Ham, it has a curious charm—due not a little perhaps to the softening effect of the winds and the rains. High above our first parents ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... into the tall suppleness of a lovely young birch, and she was a sweetly glowing thing. A baby had been a different matter; the baby had not been so difficult to manage; but when he found himself day by day confronting the sweetness of child-womanhood in the eyes that were gold-brown pools, and the softening grace of the fair young body, he began to be conscious of something like alarm. He was not at all sure what he ought to do at this crisis, and whether life confining its experiences entirely to Talbot's Cross-roads was all that ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... From infancy those habits have been forming, and they impel you almost unconsciously to subdue even the very tones of your voice, while strangers are present. Have you not sometimes in the middle of an irritable observation caught yourself changing and softening the harsh uncontrolled tones of your voice, or the roughness of your manner, when you have discovered the unexpected presence of a stranger in the family circle? You have still enough of self-respect to feel deep shame when such things have happened; and the very moment when you are suffering ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... the boy has not a long time to live, for he is suffering at once from consumption and softening of the brain, and the latter disease will soon reduce him to an idiot, and render him incapable of ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... as a mantle. From comparatively trivial wickedness I passed, with the stride of a giant, into more than the enormities of an Elah-Gabalus. What chance—what one event brought this evil thing to pass, bear with me while I relate. Death approaches; and the shadow which foreruns him has thrown a softening influence over my spirit. I long, in passing through the dim valley, for the sympathy—I had nearly said for the pity—of my fellow men. I would fain have them believe that I have been, in some measure, the slave of circumstances beyond human control. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Achmed Hariri for a moment without stirring or speaking; his lips relaxed, his eyes softening ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to use his own expression, were 'dead nuts on him,' that his love-making, under whatever circumstances, always took the form of genial banter de haut en bas. 'Don't be a bloomin' fool!' was the phrase he deemed of most efficacy in softening the female heart; and the result seemed to justify him, for after some half-hour's wrangling, Clem abandoned her hostile attitude, and eyed him with a ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... good too. Her hair a rich dark brown, of a shade one hardly does justice to at the first careless glance; her complexion healthily pale, with a tinge of sun-burning, perhaps a few freckles; her eyes clear, strong, hazel eyes, with long softening lashes. The whole was spoilt by a want of light—of the sunshine one loves to see in a young face—the expression was too grave and impassive; there was the suggestion of future hardness, unless time should mellow instead of stiffening and accentuating ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... Cora, struggling with herself to speak with steady calmness. "Is it to lead us prisoners to the woods, or do you contemplate even some greater evil? Is there no reward, no means of palliating the injury, and of softening your heart? At least, release my gentle sister, and pour out all your malice on me. Purchase wealth by her safety and satisfy your revenge with a single victim. The loss of both his daughters might bring the aged man to his grave, and where ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... the impatience with which he would surround her—the scenes in which Lucy's reserve mingling with her beauty would but evoke on the man's side all the ingenuity, all the delicacy of which he was capable—and the final softening of that sweet austerity which hid ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... seem to us as undesirable as the lives of toads or serpents; yet these men breathe in tolerable content and satisfaction. If a man could hear all that his fellows say of him—that he is stupid, that he is henpecked, that he will be in the Gazette in a week, that his brain is softening, that he has said all his best things—and if he could believe that these pleasant things are true, he would be in his grave before the month was out. Happily no man does hear these things; and if he did, they would only provoke inextinguishable wrath or inextinguishable laughter. ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... Burmah. From Hyderabad in the Deccan is a parcel-gilt vase, an example of pierced-work, the opus interassile of the Romans. The chased parcel-gilt ware of Kashmir occupies three cases: it is graven through the gold to the dead-white silver below, softening the lustre of the gold to a pearly radiance. Somewhat similar in method is the Mordarabad ware, in which tin soldered upon brass is cut through to the lower metal, which gives a glow to the white surface. Sometimes the engraving is filled with lac, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... want to know Mrs. Eliott, he didn't think that he would like her. But he was soothed, flattered, insanely pleased with Anne's assumption that he would. It was as if in her thoughts she were drawing him towards her. He felt that she was softening, yielding. His approaches were a delicious wooing of an ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... atmospheric shade which is really only extinguished light), Saint Francis in Ecstasy, The Angel Kitchen (Miracle of San Diego) running through several scales of tones in a marvellous chord and softening all the outlines "dulcemente ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... little to remind him of home, though it has antiquity and a proper quaintness. But not for him, not for them of his clime and faith, is the pathos of those simple memorial slates with their winged skulls, changing upon many later stones, as if by the softening of creeds and customs, to cherub's heads,—not for him is the pang I feel because of those who died, in our country's youth exiles or exiles' children, heirs of the wilderness and toil and hardship. Could they rise from their restful beds, ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... spake, and related the wondrous adventure From beginning to end, minutely, just as it happened; How he had seen Priscilla, and how he had sped in his courtship, 405 Only smoothing a little, and softening down her refusal. But when he came at length to the words Priscilla had spoken, Words so tender and cruel, "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" Up leaped the Captain of Plymouth, and stamped on the floor, till ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... glanced at him with a touch of wondering pity, softening her pride; she who had rejected the gift of those ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... love of God. Some of you have done so—some of you have done so all your lives. Some of you, perhaps at this moment, are trying to do so, and consciously endeavouring to steel your hearts against some softening that may have been creeping over them whilst I have been speaking. Are you yielding to His seeking love, or wandering further and further from Him? He has come to find you. Let Him not seek in vain, but let the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the bird—the saliva which is formed in the mucous glands of the mouth. Of course the first and natural function of this fluid is to soften the food before it passes into the crop; but in those birds which make their nests by weaving together pieces of twig, it must be of great assistance in softening the wood and thus enabling the bird readily to bend the twigs into any required position. Thus the catbird ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... and slow, with strong emotion deepening and softening his voice, the lover at her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... prevent," replied Milady, softening her smile so as to give it an angelic expression, "my being ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... it is very beautiful here," said Miss Frances, softening, as he laid aside his strained manner, and spoke more quietly. "It is the kind of place a happy woman might be very happy in; but ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... bulblets of some varieties sprout early and at a low temperature, and an active effort should be made to get them into the ground before this comes to pass. The soil may be too cold to start the majority into growth, but the shells will still be softening and getting ready to grow as soon as there ...
— The Gladiolus - A Practical Treatise on the Culture of the Gladiolus (2nd Edition) • Matthew Crawford
... range of ice stood in a kind of gold atmosphere which gave an extraordinary richness to the shadowings of its rocks and peaks, and a particular fullness of mellow whiteness to its lustrous parts, softening the dazzle into an airy tenderness of brightness, so that the whole mass shone out with the blandness visible in a glorious star. But its main beauty lay in those features by which I knew it to be ice—I ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... masquerade; and almost distracted to find he still persisted in denying he was there, or had ever made any tender professions to that lady, she proceeded to such extravagancies as he, who knew himself innocent, could not forbear replying to in terms which were far from being softening:—in fine, they quarrelled to a very high degree, and some company happening to come in at the same time, hindered either of them from saying any thing which might palliate ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... Louis XIV, we find many trophies of war and mythological subjects used in the decorative schemes. The second style of this period was a softening and refining of the earlier one, becoming more and more delicate until it merged into the time of the Regency. It was during the reign of Louis XIV that the craze for Chinese decoration first appeared. La Chinoiserie it was called, and it has daintiness and a curious fascination ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... could witness Irene's patient resignation to misfortune without admiring her character and being touched by her bravery and gentleness, and association with this crippled girl was softening Alora's hard and defiant nature wonderfully. Had the association continued it might have redeemed the prospective heiress from many of the faults she had acquired through years of neglect and rebellion against fate, but the close triumvirate of ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... and Lakshman gave assent, Won by her gentle argument. So Tara's pleading, just and mild, His softening heart had reconciled. His altered mood Sugriva saw, And cast aside the fear and awe Like raiment heavy with the rain Which on his troubled soul had lain. Then quickly to the ground he threw His flowery garland, bright of ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... it seemed in tune with Esther's own sense of loneliness; but it touched her heart with the softening touch of sadness. She sank down on a big boulder beside her, and, stretching out her arms on its rough, lichen-covered breast, buried her face in them and burst ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... grief, the discovery that if he had lived he could never have claimed her, had some power in softening this, the second. On Marty's part there was the same consideration; never would she have been his. As no anticipation of gratified affection had been in existence while he was with them, there was none to be disappointed now that he ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... see you look so sad. I'm going to cheer you up. I shan't allow you to be miserable. And anyway," she added, with a sudden softening, "you've got some one who loves you, and that's worth everything else in ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... on the sixes!" "Three!" "Four!" "Ah, roll the bones! Roll the bones!" "Get off! Get off! Come on now, Spikes—cough up! You've got the money now. Pay back. No more loans if you don't." "Once on the fours—the fives—the aces!" "Roll the bones! Roll the bones! Come on!" Or, if he saw me, softening and saying, "Gee, Dreiser, I'm ahead twenty-eight so far!" or "I've lost thirty all told. I'll stick this out, though, to win or lose five more, and then I'll quit. I give notice, you fellows, five more, one way or the other, and then I'm through. ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... son from such perils, and I only ask you to let me save him. I am convinced that he has a good and a noble nature, and he is worth saving." And as he thus said he took her hand. She resigned it to him and returned the pressure, all her pride softening as she began ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... harden into caricature which the representation of feeling in sculpture must always have. What time and accident, its centuries of darkness under the furrows of the "little Melian farm," have done with singular felicity of touch for the Venus of Melos, fraying its surface and softening its lines, so that some spirit in the thing seems always on the point of breaking out, as though in it classical sculpture had advanced already one step into the mystical Christian age, its expression being in the whole range of ancient ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... face. Then he reached up and drew the slim, tremulous hand from his forehead and snuggled it against his stubbly cheek, and still he could not speak. Janet slowly backed away into the darkness of the dining room. The situation had softening tendencies and Janet's nature revolted at sentiment. It was Graham's voice that again ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... The kindness I showed to M. Hue and his companions in misfortune was prompted by humanity, and not by mean speculation. As well might it be said that hernadotte, who, like myself, neglected no opportunity of softening the rigour of the orders he was deputed to execute, was by this means working his way ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... late uncle Sir Thomas had, in the closing years of his life, shown unmistakable signs of brain-softening, and that a symptom of his complaint had been his addiction to making a number of wills—"two-thirds of 'em incoherent. Every two or three days he'd compose a new one and send for Huskisson, his lawyer; and Huskisson, ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... from getting a difficult foul, all considerations of good sportsmanship should be discarded. As a matter of fact, it is doubtful if good sportsmanship should ever be allowed to interfere with the fan's participation in a contest. The game must be kept free from all softening influences. ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... the other hand, has its virtues: the softening and refining of life, gradual development of sympathy, achievement of comfort and beauty; but peace has its vices. In times of peace and prosperity there seems to be no great cause at stake. Of course, always it is there, but we do not see it. We become increasingly absorbed in selfish interests, ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... of softening skins by beating and treading upon them illustrates the common use of rhythm and song as a means of holding the attention to what otherwise would be ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... replied, with a sudden softening of my heart toward her. "I was only going to suggest that, if you love Foedric, Antonia may not like ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... had been perfect—the weather, the dinner, the company, the woodland—even the amber light in the sky softening the glow as the afternoon slipped down toward twilight ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... 'blue borage flowers' that flavor the claret-cup. I know where grows another kind of bore-age that embitters the goblet of life. I can spare you some of this herb, if you have room for it in your garden or your garret. It is warranted to destroy all peace of mind, and finally to produce softening of the ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... for Barbara; and the attorney, softening his voice, said that "Susan was a great deal too good to her; as you are, indeed," added he, "to everybody. I forgive her for your sake." Susan curtsied, in great surprise; but her lamb could not be forgotten, and she left the attorney's house as soon as she ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... has fallen," she said to Mr. Burton, "we three women shall visit the commanding officer and there make our plea—without you, as it will be necessary to use all the softening feminine influence possible. One of two things will then occur: Either he will rescue my nephew ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... three men, or it may be advisable to employ as many as can work without interfering with each other. In most cases,—especially where there is much water to contend with,—the latter course will be the most economical, as the ditches will not be so liable to be injured by the softening of their bottoms, and the caving in of ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... brooding, his head lowered, his gaze fixed. This machine forged forty millimetre rivets with the calm ease of a giant. Nothing could be simpler. The stoker took the iron shank from the furnace; the striker put it into the socket, where a continuous stream of water cooled it to prevent softening of the steel. The press descended and the bolt flew out onto the ground, its head as round as though cast in a mold. Every twelve hours this machine made hundreds ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... among them had observed Derrick's interest in her. They concluded, of course, that Joan's handsome face had won her a sweetheart. They could not accuse her of encouraging him; but they could profess to believe that she was softening, and they could use the insinuation as a sharp weapon against her, when such a ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a lot of his old childish dread remains when he has grown up. Why, I felt then—Ugh! I'm ashamed to think of it all. Poor old Stratton! he doesn't know what he's about half his time. I believe he has got what the doctors call softening of the brain. Strikes me, after to-night's work," he added thoughtfully, "that I must ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... who began to forget the Irish beggar in the gentle girl whose care, under God, had saved his wife's life; and so, as is usually the case, affliction had not come from the ground, but had fallen like a softening dew upon the irritated feelings of the afflicted, and bound heart ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... tell her all that is in his heart. If the world stands thousands of years there will never be such a golden opportunity again. She breaks off a bit of yarrow and sticks it in her belt. How beautifully the lashes droop over her eyes, deepening and softening the tint, until it looks like a glint ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... ground the line. Even so simple an apparatus as this operates with considerable accuracy. All currents below a certain critical amount may flow through the heating coil indefinitely, the heat being radiated rapidly enough to keep the wax from softening and the string from parting. All currents above this critical amount will operate the arrester; the larger the current, the shorter the time of operating. It will be remembered that the law of these heating effects is that the heat generated C^{2}Rt, so that if ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... all the masses," said the one-eyed man, softening his accent a little. "If you want it for to-morrow.... Is it ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... passage through the world, he only is able, and he ever liveth, to make intercession for their transgressions. Thus he becomes a complete Saviour, and will crown, with an eternal weight of glory, all those that put their trust in him. Beautiful, and soul-softening, and heart-warming thoughts abound in this little work, which cannot fail to make a lasting impression upon the reader. Bunyan disclaims 'the beggarly art of complimenting' in things of such solemnity. He describes ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and sloth, lack of breadth and depth in thought and planning; the softening of our fibre through easy prosperity and luxury; unwise or hampering laws, inadequacy of vision and of purposeful, determined effort, individual and national, are what we ...
— The New York Stock Exchange and Public Opinion • Otto Hermann Kahn
... the Taylors' home was one of the most softening and culturing influences of my early life. Would that I could give an impression of the dear host at the head of his dinner-table, dressed in black silk knee-breeches and velvet cutaway coat—a survival of a politer time, not an affectation ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... he said, his full-blooded face lightening and softening at the same time, as though a load were off his mind, "it's no pleasure to me to deprive any man of his billet, but you never were a nurse, and you know that as well as ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... supplied the mediaeval playwright with material, Poliziano selects a classic story: and this story might pass for an allegory of Italy, whose intellectual development the scholar-poet ruled. Orpheus is the power of poetry and art, softening stubborn nature, civilising men, and prevailing over Hades for a season. He is the right hero of humanism, the genius of the Renaissance, the tutelary god of Italy, who thought she could resist the laws of fate by verse and elegant accomplishments. To press this kind of allegory ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... the grey-headed preacher, stepping forward and thrusting a book into my father's hands. "We had best begin with a hymn, I think. I have some experience of the softening power of ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... days when Miss Prime's discipline would have turned all within him to hardness and bitterness Eliphalet Hodges stood between him and despair, so now in this crucial time Elizabeth was a softening ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... dark and mysterious against the sky, scarcely less sombre with only the light of the stars to illumine it, his fancy was filled with the image he had carried in his mind for so many months. The weariness of an arduous day added its softening influence, and he drifted out upon the sea of dreams and thence into a deep slumber, while yet his pipe ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... the strong sunlight as if it had been sprinkled with diamond dust. A black speck against this tremendous field of white, the giant struggled on, and they could see by the glass that he sunk to the knee in the softening snow. ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... accession of ferocity since the settlement of Mr. Falkland in his neighbourhood. He now frequently forgot the gentleness with which he had been accustomed to treat his good-natured cousin. Her little playful arts were not always successful in softening his rage; and he would sometimes turn upon her blandishments with an impatient sternness that made her tremble. The careless ease of her disposition, however, soon effaced these impressions, and she fell without variation ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... the farmhouse, I saw proofs of a loving conspiracy. The addition of a broad veranda and a big bay window, with the softening effect of the young trees that had grown up all around the place, made it look much more homelike than the bare box that had sheltered my childhood. A new hammock swung between two ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... "But whatever," said Hugh softening his spirit, "I got ten soferens in hand. Next quarter less you need and more you have. Less gass and electric. You don't gobble food so ravishingly in warm ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... the surrounding air in warm and humid vapors. The exhalations arising from a much increased amount of animal life, together with the burning of so many combustibles, are not altogether without their influence in softening the severity of ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... servant approached him, and at once their thoughts changed to a larger toleration. Caswall looked indeed a savage—but a cultured savage. In him were traces of the softening civilisation of ages—of some of the higher instincts and education of man, no matter how rudimentary these might be. But the face of Oolanga, as his master called him, was unreformed, unsoftened savage, and inherent in it were all the hideous possibilities of a lost, devil-ridden child of the ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... diligently, but it failed to act as a sedative to her fears. She did not know what she feared; but that made her anxiety the more pervasive. Her husband had not reverted to the subject of his Saturday talks. He was unusually kind and considerate, with a softening of his quick manner, a touch of shyness in his consideration, that sickened her with new fears. She told herself that it was because she looked badly—because he knew about the doctor and the nerve tonic—that he showed this deference ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... face around toward the light, not roughly, yet with an unconscious strength which she felt irresistible, and looked at her searchingly, his own eyes perceptibly softening. ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... Owen saw the softening of her eyes and saw the blush, and misinterpreted them. Thinking that she was relenting, by instinct, rather than from any teaching of experience, he attempted to take her hand. With a turn of the arm, so quick that even Elizabeth ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... 'But,' said I, softening my tone, for I now found that they were officers of the police, 'but if you insist upon separating me from my wife, to whom I have been lawfully married, give me time to consult the men of the law. Every son of Islam has the blessed Koran as his refuge, and ye would not be such infidels as to deprive ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... confinement, it may be the old superstition of a plank between one and eternity, or it may be some occult influence of ship and ocean; but certain it is that there is no such place in all the world as a deck of a transatlantic liner for softening young hearts, until they lose all semblance of shape, and for melting them into each other so that out of twain there comes but one. I think Polly was pleased to watch this melting process, as it ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... humorous satire, which is the chief beauty of his compositions, will admit; for, as satire requires strong ideas, the language will sometimes be less polished. But the delicacy so much demanded, by softening the colours weakens the drawing. Mr. Brown has been charged with inequality in his writings: ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... said I to myself, "I'm getting superstitious or have softening of the brain," and I reached over to open the front door, so that the breeze could cool me off. In doing so my hand touched the water pipe to the injector—it was hot. The closed overflow injector was new to merit had "broke," and was blowing steam back to the tank ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... practised more naturally and happily than in his Reisebilder. In 1847 his health, which till then had always been perfectly good, gave way. He had a kind of paralytic stroke. His malady proved to be a softening of the spinal marrow: it was incurable; it made rapid progress. In May 1848, not a year after his first attack, he went out of doors for the last time; but his disease took more than eight years to kill him. For nearly ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... eternal. Thought and inquiry will satisfy themselves very readily with an answer as far as regards spiritual things: their whole vigour will be devoted to the things of this world, to science or to business, or to public matters, all alike hardening rather than softening to the mind, if its thoughts do not go to something higher and deeper still. And as years pass on, we may think on these our favourite or professional subjects more and more earnestly; our views on them may be clearer and sounder, but ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... to listen to him for?" Johnny's eyes looked down at her with no softening of his anger. "Good golly! Do you think your dad's got the only brain in the world? How do men run their affairs, and get rich, that never heard of him, do you suppose? I don't want to mock your dad—he's all right in his own ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... though not aiming at the almost antique simplicity of the Mare au Diable, is the story of Francois le Champi, the foundling, saved from the demoralization to which lack of the softening influences of home and parental affection predestine such unhappy children, through the tenderness his forlorn condition inspires in a single heart—that of Madeline Blanchet, the childless wife, whose own wrongs, patiently borne, have ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... sails to-night. So, refusing a horse or carriage, I walk down, not unwilling to be a little early, that I may pace up and down the beach, looking off to the islands and the points, and watching the roaring, tumbling billows. How softening is the effect of time! It touches us through the affections. I almost feel as if I were lamenting the passing away of something loved and dear,— the boats, the Kanakas, the hides, my old shipmates! ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... in that state-dungeon, where his lady was delivered of her burden of love. This odd fancy of building a "Bastile-House" at Greenwich, a fortified prison! suggested to his first life-writer the fine romance; which must now be thrown aside among those literary fictions the French distinguish by the softening and yet impudent term of "Anecdotes hasardees!" with which formerly Varillas and his imitators furnished their pages; lies which looked ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... cried, as he went out of the room—a cry that was almost a sob, and might have called him back again—but he was gone, and the moment had passed by. With it passed the slight quivering and softening which had been visible in her face, and she sunk again into the impassive calm which made Christian Grey so totally different, ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... was immediately followed by the reflection that a higher official, even when "fired out" (this was the precise image), has still the time as he flies through the door to launch a nasty kick at the shin-bones of a subordinate. Without softening very much the basilisk nature of his stare, ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... resolution been permanently affected by either the girl's threat to make away with herself or by his momentary softening when she had fainted. The affair was thereby complicated, but that was all. In the sincerity of the threat he recognized his own iron nature, and was perhaps a little pleased at its manifestation. He knew she intended ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... He would either have been acquitted or condemned; if the former, he would find public sympathy all in his favour; it always is for the unjustly accused. And if he turns out to be guilty, my dear Ellinor, it will be far better for you to have all the softening which distance can give to such a dreadful termination to the life of a poor man whom you have ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... quota to the story or the guess. In the deportment of his lordship now there was none of the vexatious hesitancy that helped him to a part so poor as he played in his frowning tower at home among the soothing and softening effects of his family's domestic affairs. He was true Diarmaid the bold, with a calm eye and steadfast, a worthy general for us his children, who sat round in the light of the cheerful fire. So sat his forebears and ours on the close of many ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... therefore, very naturally gloomy and dejected, and hurled the lightnings of his wrath on all those who enjoyed the melancholy prerogative of being in his presence. His pains, instead of softening his disposition, seemed only to heighten still more his natural ferocity; and often might be heard through the palace of Whitehall the king's angry growl, and his loud, thundering invectives, which no longer spared any one, nor showed respect ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... seemed ominous. One finds such transparent kindness in clever people generally at parting, when one would be remembered for one's self and not for a phrase. Then Crocker for an instant glimpsed the wilder hope that the softening was for him and not for an occasion. Emma had never seemed more desirable than to-day. A white strand or two in her yellow hair, the tiny wrinkles at the corners of her steady grey eyes, and the untimely thinness ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... into her averted face. He touched her hand, soft and cool to his fingers—she turned at once to look at him. Her eyes were perhaps a little brighter than usual, the firelight played about her hair, there seemed to him to be a sudden softening of the straight firm mouth. ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... you kindly, lady," replied she, softening her harsh voice as much as she could to a tone of sympathy, "and I come to help you out of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... encouraged by a softening in her tone and manner, I told Miss Rayner all, asking her at the end if she did not think ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... his side, assisted in this important and happy work; you it was who showed to the tyrant in the fields of Juchi, Aztcapozalco and others, that the sword of the Mexicans once unsheathed for liberty and justice, fights without softening or breaking; and knows how to triumph over its enemies, even when superior forces oppose it; you it was, in short, who with intrepid valour co-operated in re-establishing a liberty which, torn from the ancient children of the soil, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... noble's glance seemed bent on vacancy, it was himself as well as others he was studying; weighing the memorable events of the evening; recalling to mind every word with the princess; reviewing her features, the softening of her cold disdain; now, mentally distrustful, because she was a woman; again, confident he already dominated the citadel of ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the hills of Connemara. A pair of twinkling eyes and a mouth that was always on the point of breaking into a smile when it was not actually smiling tempered the peasant shrewdness of a face that got further softening, and a touch of superiority, from ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... I sat, of an afternoon, in that front room on the fourth floor of the clubhouse in Gramercy Park, watching the winter or summer twilight gradually softening and blurring the sharp outline of the skull until it vanished uncannily into the gloom! Edwin Booth had forgotten, if ever he knew, the name of the man; but I had no need of it in order to establish acquaintance with poor Yorick. In this association I was conscious of a deep tinge of sentiment on ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Gryffyth's eye followed her, softening gradually as her form receded, till lost to his sight. And then that peculiar household love, which in uncultivated breasts often survives trust and esteem, rushed back on his rough heart, and weakened it, as woman only can weaken the strong to whom ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the centre with the point of the pin; with the head of the latter cup the broad part of the petal. Turn the edges inward towards the point, and colour each petal upon both sides with the crimson powder, softening off the same, and leaving a margin of the yellow free from colour. The stamina are prepared (according to pattern), from double yellow wax, and painted with rich brown (cake sepia and crimson), from the broad part to the point. To a large wire affix a piece of double ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey
... "Have you all got softening of the brain, that you don't realise what I am? Did you really think I wanted to catch that train? Twenty Paris trains might go by for ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... a sudden change had come over the fierce purposes of Peter. For some time, the nature, artlessness, truth, feminine playfulness and kindness, not to say personal beauty of Margery, had been gradually softening the heart of this stern savage, as it respected the girl herself. Nothing of a weak nature was blended with this feeling, which was purely the growth of that divine principle that is implanted in us all. The quiet, earnest manner in which the girl had, that day, protested her desire ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... nature, the sight of even an enemy asleep, awakes softening emotions, while the sight of a loved being in the unconsciousness of slumber stirs the fountain of affection to ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... purpose there, the reason of Judge Spaulding's presence, and that we were there in no way as representatives of Mr. Chase. Mr. Lincoln was visibly affected. The tones of confidence, sympathy, personal regard, were strangers to him at that time. Softening, almost melting, he came round to us, shook our hands again and again, returned to his place, and standing there, took up and opened out, from their remote origin, the whole web of matters connected with ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... to pain her by imparting this conviction. But Lilith was afraid of a reaction of rage and hatred in her father after the terror was removed; and Karl saw that he might thus be deprived of all further intercourse with Lilith, and all chance of softening the old man's heart towards him; while Lilith would not hear of forsaking him who had banished all the human race but herself. They managed at length to agree ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... do, sir," interrupted he; "the public don't like it. Otherwise," continued this hypercritic, softening a little, "some of the chapters are amusing, and, on the whole, it may be said to ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... a great softening in Anderson's feeling towards his father. All those inner compunctions that haunt a just and scrupulous nature came freely into play. And his evangelical religion—for he was a devout though liberal-minded Presbyterian—also entered in. Was it possible that he might be the agent of his father's ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sovereign order he decreed, All good and lovely—to blaspheme the bands Of tenderness innate and social love, 250 Holiest of things! by which the general orb Of being, as by adamantine links, Was drawn to perfect union, and sustain'd From everlasting? Hast thou felt the pangs Of softening sorrow, of indignant zeal, So grievous to the soul, as thence to wish The ties of Nature broken from thy frame, That so thy selfish, unrelenting heart Might cease to mourn its lot, no longer then ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... department of meat cookery, to wit, the slow and gradual application of heat for the softening and dissolution of its fibre and the extraction of its juices, common cooks are equally untrained. Where is the so-called cook who understands how to prepare soups and stews? These are precisely the articles in which a French kitchen ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... were yet sparkling in the glorious blaze, which was gradually deepening into gorgeous crimson, while the large pillars of the cathedral, then building on the highest part of the ridge, stood out like brazen monuments, softening even as we looked into a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... as she spoke, and her very yawn was graceful. Gwynplaine listened to the unfamiliar voice—the voice of a charmer, its accents exquisitely haughty, its caressing intonation softening its native arrogance. Then rising on her knees—there is an antique statue kneeling thus in the midst of a thousand transparent folds—she drew the dressing-gown towards her, and springing from the couch stood upright. In the twinkling of an eye the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... he thinks you did it," answered Dock, softening his tones, so as not to commit himself ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... almost useless his sacrifice had been, since the dollar would go but a small way toward the relief of their necessities. Oh no, she let him feel happy in the thought that he "had helped dear mamma," and the thought went far toward softening the grief of parting with ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... persons; seven hundred and five of these were adults, and ninety-two children. At first, the men encountered great difficulty in putting away their many wives; but finally the divine Majesty made the outcome propitious, softening the hearts of those pagans, and they brought their ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... slightly offensive manner, thereupon related the circumstances of the encounter at the station-yard and of the subsequent drive to the town, merely softening the detail of their preliminary altercation. Henshaw listened alertly intent, it seemed, to seize upon any point which did not ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... grasshoppers are a real scourge in alfalfa fields. Because of the shade provided by the ground and the influence which this exerts in softening it, they are encouraged to deposit their eggs and remain so as to prove a source of trouble the following year. It has been found that through disking of the land both ways after sharp frosts have come is greatly effective in destroying the grasshopper eggs deposited in the soil. They ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... other than by the corn sheller are in use. Some involve merely stepping on the nuts with a forward movement of the foot, just as the hulls are softening. This is not particularly satisfactory as the nuts must still be picked out of the mashed hulls by hand. Besides leaving a very persistent stain on the hands this method is unsatisfactory for two reasons; it is not at all ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... light was the Tower. It was suffused with the loveliest glow of gold, ivory, and delicate green, all blending. The lights revealed and interpreted the architecture softening the colors and adding the subtle charm of mystery. A hundred beautiful hues were reflected in the waters of the fountains. The floral effects made by submerged lights in the basin were exquisite, and the witchery of ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... prominent egotist in turn, pondering on his chances, in the event of the extinction of the house of Valois with the three sons of Catherine de Medici, born unsound, and doomed by astrological prediction. The old manors, which had exchanged their towers for summer-houses under the softening influence of Renaissance fashions, found themselves once more medievally insecure amid a vagrant warfare of foreign mercenaries and armed peasants. It was a curiously refined people who now took down ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... hatreds, meannesses, uncharities, and Carlyleisms, as a garment, and, in a beautiful spirit of no objections to anybody, proceed to think what can be done for the poor in the way of sincerely wishing them well. The princely merchant, in his counting-room, involuntarily experiences the softening, humanizing influence of the hour, and, in tones tremulous with unwonted emotion, privately directs his Chief-Clerk to tell all the other clerks, that, on this night of all the round year, they may, before ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... or chance for any maidenly hesitation or softening aureole of words. Aunt and Mrs. Saxby had almost reached the point where they invariably turned. I had barely time to spell out a plain, blunt "yes" ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the same age and the same height that I must have been in the days when I was here last. My first feeling is one of almost anger, to see him playing on the gravel where I had played before, as if he had usurped something of my identity; but next moment I feel a softening and a sort of rising and qualm of the throat, accompanied by a pricking heat in the eye balls. I hastily join conversation with the child, and inwardly felicitate myself that the gardener is opportunely gone for the key of the house. But the child is a sort ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... any day," replied her father, softening into affection as he contemplated her; "and indeed, Sally, I think you're her match every way except—except—no ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... the globe attached to it is now held at the mouth of a glowing furnace: and by turning the rod the globe is made to revolve slowly, so as to be uniformly exposed to the heat: the first effect of this softening is to make the glass contract upon itself and to enlarge the opening of the neck. As the softening proceeds, the globe is turned more quickly on its axis, and when very soft and almost incandescent, it is removed from the fire, and the velocity of rotation being still continually ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... creating artist, the king having handled the pencil and composed a poem, yet he never suffered his private dispositions to prevail over his more majestic duties. We do not discover in history that Charles the First was a painter and a poet. Accident and secret history only reveal this softening feature in his grave and king-like character. Charles sought no glory from, but only indulged his love for, art and the artists. There are three manuscripts on his art, by Leonardo da Vinci, in the Ambrosian library, which bear an inscription that a King of England, in 1639, offered one ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... did not. Now I do, I own I admire some of his sonnets more than several-yes, even of Petrarch; for Lorenzo's are frequently more clear, less alembiquis, and not inharmonious as Petrarch's often are from being too crowded with words, for which room is made by numerous elisions, which prevent the softening alternacy of vowels and consonants. That thicket of words was occasioned by the embarrassing nature of the sonnet: a form of composition I do not love, and which is almost intolerable in any language but ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... time, in which the pressure of the atmosphere can be exactly regulated. This form of treatment has been found of much value in the treatment of emphysema, early pulmonary tuberculosis (not in the presence of persistent high temperature, haemorrhage, softening or suppuration), delayed absorption of pleural effusions, heart disease, anaemia and chlorosis. But compressed air is contra-indicated in advanced tubercle, fever, and in diseases of kidneys, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... being treated for worms and cerebral symptoms. After death the contents of the stomach were found in the abdominal cavity, and the esophagus was completely separated from the stomach. Flint believed the separation was postmortem, and was possibly due to the softening of the stomach by the action of the gastric acids. In this connection may be mentioned the case reported by Hanford of a man of twenty-three who had an attack of hematemesis and melanema two years before death. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... stood before the horse of Iyeyasu in his earlier trials of battles, trials in which the veteran commander would pound with his fist the pommel of the saddle until it was red with the blood from his bruised knuckles. Their tales of actual war, the sly jeers at the softening manners, spurred on younger members to find ways by which to simulate practical experience of campaigning. The result was curious. One of the organizations was the Undameshi Kwai, or Fortune Testing Society. Loaded firelocks were stacked ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... could not have more completely adopted and exemplified the marble motto: "Despair is a free man; Hope is a slave." For her the rosy mist that usually hovers over futurity had been swept rudely aside, the softening glow of the To-Come had been precipitated into a dull, pitiless leaden ever present, at which she never raved nor railed, but inflexibly fought on, expecting neither sunshine nor succour, unappalled and patient as some stony figure of Fate, which chiselled when ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... directed by Cyrus Harding, was a complete success. The wool, previously impregnated with a solution of soap, intended on the one hand to facilitate the interlacing, the compression, and the softening of the wool, and on the other to prevent its diminution by the beating, issued from the mill in the shape of thick felt cloth. The roughnesses with which the staple of wool is naturally filled were ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... elected by the people, is just as much their representative and is just as certain to carry out their ideas as is a legislature, a body of men elected by the people. They provided a government which accentuated, instead of softening, the defects in their own social system. They were in no danger of suffering from tyranny; they were in no danger of losing the liberty which they so jealously guarded. The perils that threatened them were lawlessness, lack of order, and lack of capacity to concentrate their ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... discussions, some ending well, others ill. But I never yet witnessed one in which such arrangements were (as in this case) presented crudely, to be accepted or refused, without any previous discussion as to the mode of shaping them, or any facility offered, or even intimated, for softening down such difficulties as such proposals are always more or ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... children were lifted up to look upon what was left of him who would ever be the greatest one of earth to them. And through the coffin-lid, that calm, still face seemed hourly to grow more holy and more radiant; the light of battle faded out from its softening lines and the seal of the God of Peace rested in plain ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... at Streatham are full and spirited, and exhibit Johnson in moods and situations in which he was seldom seen by Boswell. The adroitness with which he divided his attentions amongst the ladies, blending approval with instruction, and softening contradiction or reproof by gallantry, gives plausibility to his otherwise paradoxical claim to be considered a polite man.[1] He obviously knew how to set about it, and (theoretically at least) was no mean proficient in that art of ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... of greater consequence than the sacrifices," returned the lady, softening as she saw her husband yielding; "the loss will soon be made up to you through an increase of friends. Party-giving ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... in silent ecstasy. In their excitement they had unconsciously seized each other by the hand, and stood like two little children in the presence of a marvel, Challenger's cheeks bunched up into a seraphic smile, and Summerlee's sardonic face softening for the moment into ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Away from the softening influence of society and the wholesome fear of restraint, for a time at least the voice of his better angel is silenced. Perhaps also the necessarily solitary position of a commander of a man-of-war, his long, lonely hours, the utter change from the jovial life he led previous to ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... which "the classes" had committed in their estimate of Lincoln had an even greater effect in softening the asperities which the war left behind it than had the exposure of the egregious miscalculations of English statesmen as to the comparative military strength of North and South. One must not blame Englishmen too severely, however, for ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... and wholly secretive, he had accustomed himself to regard romantic ideality, and susceptibility to sentimentality as a species of intellectual anaemia; holding himself always thoroughly in hand, when subjected to the softening influences that now and then invaded professional existence, and melted the conventional selfish crust over the hearts of his colleagues, as the warm lips and balmy breath of equatorial currents kiss away the jagged ledges of drifting icebergs. In his laborious life, that which is ordinarily ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... display the brightness of their talent in the midst of darkness. Others employ themselves on soft and delicate things conceiving that these should be more pleasing to the eye of the beholder; so that they pleasantly attract the greater number of men. Others again paint smoothly, softening the colours and confining the lights and shades of the figures to their places, for which they merit the highest praise, displaying their intention with wonderful skill. This smooth style is always apparent in the works of Tommaso di Stefano, called Giottino, who was born in the year ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... where has it gone? Come with me, Bee, and look for it," said Rosy, rather softening down,—"though I'm sure ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... person whose nature had, as it were, so little surface—offered so limited a face to the accretions of human contact. Nothing tender, nothing sympathetic, had ever had a chance to fasten upon it—no wind-sown blossom, no familiar softening moss. Her offered, her passive extent, in other words, was about that of a knife-edge. Isabel had reason to believe none the less that as she advanced in life she made more of those concessions to the sense of something obscurely distinct from convenience—more of them than she independently ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... bitterly cruel and unjust to say such things to me!" she cried; and then, to my utter consternation, she burst into a perfect passion of weeping, and again I felt my heart insidiously softening and warming toward her, she looked so utterly woebegone, so terribly helpless and friendless. But the moment that I became conscious of the feeling I brought my will power to bear and determinedly repressed ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... hesitate to speak of his "imperious temper and that savage manner which was too haughty for a republic." "Indeed," he adds, "there is no other advantage to be had from a liberal education equal to that of polishing and softening our nature by reason and discipline." He also tells us that Coriolanus indulged his "irascible passions on a supposition that they have something great and exalted in them," and that he wanted "a due mixture of gravity and mildness, which are the chief political virtues and the fruits ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... differently what you probably have in mind while using these harsh epithets. But is it not the old house, and that alone, in which the martyrs shed their blood for Christianity? Where did it fulfil its lofty task of saturating the heart of mankind with love, softening the customs of rude pagans, clearing away forests, transforming barren wastes into cultivated fields, planting the cross on chapels and churches, summoning men with the consecrated voice of the bell ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... endeavored to point out is peculiarly great as respects music and singing, owing to the power over the natural sensibilities, which sweet sounds possess; and it is easy to mistake the emotions thus produced for the tenderness of mind and the softening influence of "the ...
— On Singing and Music • Society of Friends
... preach. The Chinese did not take any Spaniards with them; however, they begged for some of our people, later, thinking that the latter would take something to give them or which they could seize. During their stay here I treated them very well, but there is no way of softening their hearts, except by means of gifts—although, to my way of thinking, weapons ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... wouldn't," contradicted Radley, softening again. "You'd expect them to be intolerant of you as old fashioned. You'd withdraw behind your cigar-smoke and your old-fashioned ideas, and leave them to put the world to rights. After all, it's ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... famous, too, for the pillory, a wise old institution, that inflicted a punishment of which no one could foresee the extent; also, for the whipping-post, another dear old institution, very humanising and softening to behold in action; also, for extensive transactions in blood-money, another fragment of ancestral wisdom, systematically leading to the most frightful mercenary crimes that could be committed under Heaven. Altogether, the Old ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... then," he went on cheerfully, "believe me when I say that the shadow which depresses you all the time now will pass. I say this confidently," he added, his voice softening, "because I hope to be allowed to help. Haven't you guessed that I am very glad indeed ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... himself had had to bend his head to get into the room. Alfred liked the looks of him the first moment, and by way of salutation put up one of his weary, white, blue-veined hands to pull his damp forelock; but Mr. Cope, nodding in answer to Ellen's curtsey, took hold of his hand at once, and softening the cheery voice that was so pleasant to hear, said, 'Well, my boy, I hope we shall be good friends. ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and seemed to bend even protectingly toward them. She smiled at them, and the softening of ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... wish. You have, of course, your money, but if you care to stay with us until you have found some work you must now obey our rules. While you remain with us you must not go out unless my sister or I accompany you." Then her voice changed, softening a little. She suddenly raised her hands in a gesture of appeal: "Oh, Maggie, Maggie, turn to God. You have rebelled against Him. You have refused to listen to His voice. The end of that can be only misery. He loves, but He also judges. Even now, within a day, a week, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... pastures beside the pacing brooks, soft banks and knolls of lowly hills, thymy slopes of down overlooked by the blue line of lifted sea; crisp lawns all dim with early dew, or smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine, dinted by happy feet, softening in their fall the sound ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... as proof of holy writ," of his dangerous condition. Glibly the quack discourses on the consequences of neglecting the terrible symptoms, and the great difficulty of combating them. He is told that he will be liable to spinal disease, softening of the brain, or insanity. Sometimes a collection of plates, containing hideous representations of dreadful eruption, and sores covering all parts of the body, are submitted to the patient's horrified inspection. Frightened by the hideous pictures before ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... grown unbidden and unconsciously in Madge's heart could not be content with the meagre reward of a little admiration. Such an affection was softening and ennobling in its character, and the mere desire to compel Graydon to glance at her as she had seen him look at Miss Wildmere grew into the higher ambition to become such a woman as would approach in some degree his ideal. She knew his tastes, and as she ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... all that, mother; I know all that," said Nora. She did not add, "But for me he would never have done it. It was I who inserted the thin edge of the wedge." Her tone was gentle; her mother looked at her with a softening of ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... agreed with him, and directed him to go to Secretary Stanton and have the prisoner released. But the inflexible official, on whom the general glee had no softening, refused, and the man had but two days to live. When the intermediary hurried back to the Executive Mansion, the President was dressed to go to Ford's Theater, with his wife, his son, and a ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... the wood-lined river. Somehow he could not face the gambler's stern eyes. Had he seen the sudden softening in them the moment the other was sure he was unobserved, he might have been less troubled. But the gambler had no soft side when men's ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... their labors. This final disposal of one of the most painful topics of collision between the United States and Great Britain not only affords an occasion of gratulation to ourselves, but has had the happiest effect in promoting a friendly disposition and in softening asperities upon other objects of discussion; nor ought it to pass without the tribute of a frank and cordial acknowledgment of the magnanimity with which an honorable nation, by the reparation of their own wrongs, achieves a triumph more glorious ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... new {47} brotherhood of St. Francis, named after their founder, devoted themselves to all manner of blasphemy, to all manner of offence. In a spot whose beauty might well be expected to have only a softening influence, whose memories might at least be found exalting, a handful of disreputable men gathered together to degrade the place, and, as far as that was possible, themselves, with the beastly pleasures and beastly humors ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... was a hollow in the earth, a scar from some long-forgotten skirmish. Over the years, rain and wind had worked on it, softening its once harsh outlines. Grass had grown in, to further mask the crater, till now it was a mere smooth depression in the ground. From the edge of this depression, rose the slender rod of a speaker, a small, directional loud-speaker blossoming ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole
... with a shake of his head, ''tis hoping against hope. Time will add to my wrinkles without softening her aversion. I utterly despair. While there remained one spark of hope I should never ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... no answer. Ralston looked at him keenly, wondering with a queer amusement whether he had not blunted the keen edge of that tool which he was keeping at his side because he foresaw the need of it. But there was no sign of any softening upon Linforth's face. He could be hard, but on the other hand, when he gave his faith he gave it without reserve. Almost every word which Ralston had spoken had seemed to him an aspersion upon Violet Oliver. ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... fiery as his native Desert, and an intellect as luminous as his native sky, he wanted, like that land, those softening dews without which the soil is barren, and the sunbeam as often a messenger of pestilence as ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... possible, I decided to give a few discourses on the evidences of the existence of a God as seen from the light of nature. Those of the skeptical class as well as others manifested no little interest in the subject. Soon evidences began to appear of a material softening among them in their opposition to Bible truths. One young man said to the warden, "When the chaplain commenced those discourses, I felt sure of being impregnably fixed in my ideas. After hearing one, I would retire to my cell and sit down ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... surface so that it catches the light itself and blends it with the lustrous whiteness of the high lights, and how by an opposite process, by flattening the surface of the paint, and leaving no trace of the passage of the brush, I have succeeded in softening the contours of my figures and enveloping them in half-tints until the very idea of drawing, of the means by which the effect is produced, fades away, and the picture has the roundness and relief of ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... warmth to the cheerful room, and looked at the cold white world without—a ghost of a world, it seemed to Amy. The moon, nearly full, had risen in the gap of the Highlands, and had now climbed well above the mountains, softening and etherealizing them until every harsh, rugged outline was lost. The river at their feet looked pallid and ghostly also. When not enchained by frost, lights twinkled here and there all over its broad surface, and the intervals were brief when ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... difficulties that surrounded her, Marionetta could not debar herself from the pleasure of tormenting her lover, whom she kept in a continual fever, sometimes meeting him with unqualified affection, sometimes with chilling indifference, softening him to love by eloquent tenderness, or inflaming him to jealousy by coquetting with the Hon. Mr. Listless. Scythrop's schemes for regenerating the world and detecting his seven golden candlesticks went on ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... eaten nothing for sixty hours." Her face, which had been so white, flushed to the hair, her dark eyes softening. ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... and perplexity came over Erica's face that Raeburn for the first time realizing what was passing in the room, drew her toward him, his face softening, and the cold, angry light in ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... that he never touched stimulants; he had an instinct against all things that were softening and enervating, all things that tempted and enslaved. For him was the morning-air, and the shock of cold water, and the hardness of the wild things of the open. Other people did not feel this way; other people ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... "he'll be chaffed about that at the Club in the delicate manner those brutes of men affect, and the Hawley Boy will tell me all about it—softening the details for fear of shocking me. That boy is too good to live, Polly. I've serious thoughts of recommending him to throw up his Commission and go into the Church. In his present frame of mind he would ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... scene within. The playwright had taken refuge among the brass andirons of the big empty fireplace. The matinee heroes were under chairs, and Holloway behind the mahogany buffet. From the direction of the stairway came shrill cries from the speeding merchant, softening in intensity as he ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... ... by the versification, mechanically considered; and by the successful evolution of pure beauty from all that roughness and rudeness of the sin of the boar-pinner—successfully evolved, without softening one hoarse accent of his voice. But there is to be a pause now—you will not write any more—no, nor come here on Wednesday, if coming into the roar of this London should make the pain worse, as I cannot help thinking it must—and ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... "What have I done, uncle, to be treated in this severe manner?" "I have my reasons," answered the magician; "I am your uncle, I supply the place of your father, and you ought to make no reply. But, child," added he, softening, "do not be afraid; for I shall not ask anything of you, but that you obey me punctually, if you would reap the advantages which I intend you." These fair promises calmed Aladdin's fears and resentment; and when the magician saw that he was appeased, ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... was, left no room to regret the full verdure and radiant sunlight of high summer. The indescribable loveliness of the haze and hush, the winning tender colouring that was through the air and wrapped round everything, softening, mellowing, harmonizing somehow even the most unsightly; hiding where it could not beautify, and beautifying where it could not hide, like Christian charity; gave a most exquisite lesson to the world, of how much more mighty is spirit than matter. Diana did not see it, as she had ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... call recollection is uniformly a process of softening the reality. When we appear to ourselves to realize events of the remote past, it is plain that our representation in a general way falls below the reality: the vividness, the intensity of our impressions disappears. More particularly, so far as our experiences are emotional, ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... were made for women's kisses, their necks for women's arms. They were lovable, as men are lovable. They were capable of love. A woman's touch redeems and softens, and they needed such redemption and softening instead of each day growing harsh and harsher. And I wondered where these women were, and heard a "harlot's ginny laugh." Leman Street, Waterloo Road, Piccadilly, The Strand, answered me, and ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... of those men who cannot live without a woman's image to worship. Irene Derwent being now veiled from him, he turned to another beautiful face, in whose eyes the familiar light of friendship seemed to be changing, softening. Ambition had misled him; not his to triumph on the heights of glorious passion; for him a humbler happiness a calmer love. Yet he would not have been Piers Otway had this mood contented him. On the second day of his dreaming about Olga, she began ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... pretending the money to be his own, lends it to that master and takes bonds for it to himself, we consider guilty of a breach of trust; and the person who commits such crimes we call a cheat, a swindler, and a forger of bonds. All these offences, without the least softening, under all these names, we charge upon this man. We have so charged in our record, we have so charged in our speeches; and we are sorry that our language does not furnish terms of sufficient force and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... recreations, after a hard day's work at the candle-making), or idled away in the streets, amongst the unprofitable and unhealthy amusements provided for the people. Amongst other good results, Mr Wilson notices that of 'softening to the boys one of the greatest evils now existing in the factory—the night-work, for which the men and boys come in at six in the evening, to leave at six in the morning.' These workers do not go to bed, it seems, so soon as they leave ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... which was not the case. It was an ascent through all its circumstances executed in dreams, which, under advanced stages in the development of opium, repeat with marvellous accuracy the longest succession of phenomena derived either from reading or from actual experience. That softening and spiritualizing haze which belongs at any rate to the action of dreams, and to the transfigurings worked upon troubled remembrances by retrospects so vast as those of fifty years, was in this instance greatly ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... replied. There was a curious softening in his harsh voice, which brought the girl's eyes swiftly back ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... time she remained in the church. But she could not think clearly, reason calmly, or even pray passionately. For a vagueness had come into her mind like the vagueness of twilight that filled the space beneath the starry roof, softening the crudeness of the ornaments, the garish colours of the plaster saints. It seemed to her that her thoughts and feelings lost their outlines, that she watched them fading like the shrouded forms of Arabs fading in the tunnels of ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... and nail on his grandfather. I have lightened the blows as much as I could. I rather like this grandfather, because he displayed magnificence, and has left some fine monuments. I had great trouble about softening down the terms in which the grandson reproaches his ancestor for his vanity in having got himself made a king; it is a vanity from which his descendants derive pretty solid advantages, and the title ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... music, he felt, was progressing now that, undisturbed, he lived all day long in the rhythm of it; his mind and his fingers were growing supple. The hard moulds that had grown up about his spirit were softening. As he walked back and forth in front of the church waiting for Jeanne, he took an inventory of his state of mind; ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... to be present at a birth of beech leaves, up along Paxton Creek. It was late in the afternoon, and our reluctant feet were turning homeward, after the camera had seen the windings of the creek against the softening light, when the beeches over-arching the little stream showed us this spring marvel. The little but perfectly formed leaves had just opened, in pairs, with a wonderful covering of silvery green, as they ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... the afternoon had been but a blue haze, softening the hard outlines of the street, had now settled down in earnest, choking up the doorways, wiping out the tops of the buildings, their facades starred here and there with gas-jets, and making a smudged drawing of the columns of the ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Mr Romer, shaking hands with him. Mr Romer had not been equally cautious as Nearthewinde, and had already drunk sundry glasses of ale at the Brown Bear, in the hope of softening the stern Bear-warden. "How is it to be to-day? Which is to ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... take the slightest interest in what it represented. His composure was really disappointing! After greeting me with grave dignity, he turned to Faye and grasped his hand firmly and cordially, the whole expression of his face softening just a little. I have always thought that he was deeply moved by once again seeing the Federal Blue under such friendly circumstances, and that old memories came surging back, bringing with them ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... the brain and nervous system: indicated by such names as apoplexy, epilepsy, paralysis, vertigo, softening of the brain, delirium tremens, loss of memory and that general failure of the mental power called dementia. (b) Diseases of the lungs: one form of consumption, congestion and subsequent bronchitis. ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... the fibers themselves are of different texture from those in the raw meat. In preparing meat for the table it is usual to stop short of the point of disintegration, but while the long process of cooking is going on the connective tissue is gradually softening and the fibers are gradually changing in texture. The former is the thing to be especially desired, but the latter is not. For this reason it is necessary to keep the temperature below the boiling point and as low as is consistent with thorough cooking, ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... nothing about Aunt Kate Sherwood suggesting a softening of her hard lines. Her plain, ugly print dress was cut low at the throat, and had no collar or ruff to hide the scar. Nan's gaze was fastened on that blemish before she was half way to the door, and she could ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... evil, we began to appreciate and enjoy the picturesque grandeur of the scenery through which we were moving. The rugged sternness of the Appalachian mountain range, in whose rock-ribbed heart we had fought our losing fight, was now softening into less strong, but more graceful outlines as we approached the pine-clad, sandy plains of the seaboard, upon which Richmond is built. We were skirting along the eastern base of the great Blue Ridge, about whose distant and lofty summits hung a perpetual veil of deep, dark, but translucent ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... discover some negligence on the part of the mulatto girl, who was engaged in nursing the child, which was at this time suffering from a dangerous illness. Now the one tender trait of this violent woman was intense love for her offspring; but it was a love that, far from softening her manner toward others, partook, on the contrary, of the fierceness of her general character, and became, like that of a wild animal for its young, a source of constant apprehension to those whose duty compelled them to approach its object. So ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... pity. Her mind had thrown itself back into the unknown past almost tenderly towards the mother who had died long ago, to whom perhaps Bice had been what little Tom was now to herself. But when the further statement reached her ears all that softening which seemed to have swept over her disappeared in a moment. A horrible bewilderment had seized her. Was he two men, with two wives, two lives, two children ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... we were not quite satisfied with it; and at last our worthy friend volunteered to ride forward himself to prepare the way, suggesting that his rank, and his acquaintance with a large number of people, might have some little influence in softening matters. We in the meantime remained at the passangerang awaiting his return. Two hours passed away and he did not appear, and the widow began to be anxious; a third had elapsed, and no Lieutenant Jeekel was ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... man," said she, softening down, and a little shifting the subject, "when you think of that old kinsman of yours, you KNOW there must be a ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... rugged features softening to frank amusement, stared a moment in silence at Sloane's thin face, at the deeply lined forehead topped by ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... he "had smote the balls of his own eyes," and the wise baffler of the sphinx, Oedipus, the haughty, the insolent, the illustrious, is a forlorn and despairing outcast. But amid all the horror of the concluding scene, a beautiful and softening light breaks forth. Blind, powerless, excommunicated, Creon, whom Oedipus accused of murder, has now become his judge and his master. The great spirit, crushed beneath its intolerable woes, is humbled to the dust; and the "wisest of mankind" implores but two favours—to be thrust from the land ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... even a smile was findable anywhere. Halliday carried a cigar-box around on a tripod, playing that it was a camera, and halted all passers and aimed the thing and said "Ready!—now look pleasant, please," but not even this capital joke could surprise the dreary faces into any softening. ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... extensive tracts of country: the cultivated soil imbibes the heat, and returns it to the surrounding air in warm and humid vapors. The exhalations arising from a much increased amount of animal life, together with the burning of so many combustibles, are not altogether without their influence in softening the ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... almost as a surprise in these compositions. Overbeck's figures are manifestly more or less studied from the life, only, according to his habitual practice, he has taken pains to eliminate from his models any individual accidents which marred the generic form, softening down angularity and ruggedness into pervading grace and beauty. Here and there are traces of affectation, together with a feebleness incident to the painter's weak physique which stands in utmost contrast with the force of Cornelius. ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... harmony and brotherly love. His followers eagerly adopt this belief. But yesterday Mr. Gladstone believed (or said he believed) "That the influence of Great Britain in every Irish difficulty is not a domineering and tyrannising, but a softening and mitigating influence, and that were Ireland left to her own unaided agencies, it might be that the strife of parties would then burst forth in a form calculated to strike horror through the land." His followers believed that too, and they would believe it ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... [401] This softening was made in the later copies of the first edition. A second change seems to have been made. In the text, as given in Murphy's edition (1796, viii. 137), the last line of the passage stands:—'If he was sometimes wrong, he was often right.' Horace ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... learned from lightning and the friction of trees, and cooking from the softening and ripening of things by the sun. Then men of genius invented improved methods of life, the building of cities and private property in lands and cattle. But gold gave power to the wealthy and destroyed ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... side of his writing table, looking at his tired face with a wonderful softening in ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... over, the birds would come again,—new birds, singing the old songs,—the sap would mount in the trees, the buds swell on the blueberry bushes, and the young ivory leaves push their ruddy tips through the softening ground. The plains were fatherland and mother-country, home and kindred, to Tom. He loved the earth that nourished him, and he saw through all the seeming death in nature the eternal miracle of the resurrection. ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... remarks to the singer, from cold and polite, became dry and cutting, in spite of the obvious pains she was taking to satisfy him, and the way she ogled him by way of winning his favor. The impresario prudently stopped the rehearsal just when it seemed to be hopeless. By way of softening the bad effect of Christophe's remarks, he bustled up to the singer and paid her heavy compliments. Christophe, who was standing by, made no attempt to conceal his impatience, called the ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... Thuvia of Ptarth step forward with outstretched hand. He was surprised at this sudden softening toward him, and it was with a full heart that he let his fingers close upon hers, as together they turned away from forgotten Lothar, into the woods, and bent their steps ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... rose a violent rebellion in Betty's heart. All her love for Mrs. Haddo, with its softening influence, vanished; it melted slowly out of sight, although, of course, it was still there. Her pleasant time at the Mileses' farm, the delightful affection of the furious dogs, the excellent dinner, ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... we may discern the slowly softening influences of years that bring the philosophic mind, of a calmer and easier time, and perhaps also of a different class of readers. Thackeray has now discovered that, as he says in his preface, 'to describe a real rascal you must make him too hideous ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... dying," said the boy, his voice softening. "Holy Virgin, save him! For weeks, we've been in the hands of Aguinaldo's men. He's been so ill, all the ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... she had never pardoned him for the insult which he had put upon her in the Imperial Cinema de Luxe; and that, indeed, she could never pardon him for simply being Thomas Batchgrew. Nevertheless, there was that evening in her heart a little softening towards him. The fact was that the councillor had been flattering her. She would have denied warmly that she was susceptible to flattery; even if authoritatively informed that no human being whatever is unsusceptible to flattery, she ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... change in my life. After this morning's duel, I am obliged to shut up my house for some time; for there will be people who will side with the Chandours against us. In our position, and in a small town, absence is the only way of softening down bad feeling. But I shall either succeed, and never see Angouleme again, or I shall not succeed, and then I mean to wait in Paris until the time comes when I can spend my summers at the Escarbas and the winters in Paris. It is the only life for a woman of quality, ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... guns, but the night passed off tranquilly; the Cavaliers had no stomach for such an enterprise. Morning broke at last. The castle walls, wearing a battered appearance, rose above the calm water shining in the rays of the rising sun; the air was soft and balmy, a thin haze softening the more rugged features ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... stamp on them for centuries his subtilest and divinest thoughts. May I not urge that to such spaces must be given the best that is in you? for once placed so shall they remain unchanged through generations, time being powerless to add any mellow garment of tone or softening ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... was he the Pilgrim of the Deep, Following the Nereid? Had they ceased to weep For ever? or, received in coral caves, Wrung life and pity from the softening waves? Did they with Ocean's hidden sovereigns dwell, And sound with Mermen the fantastic shell? 100 Did Neuha with the mermaids comb her hair Flowing o'er ocean as it streamed in air? Or had they perished, and in silence slept Beneath the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... magistrates of Angers would not move. He could do nothing. And men and women and children—men and women and children whose blood will otherwise cry for vengeance, perhaps for vengeance on us who might have saved them—will live! Will live!" he repeated, with a softening eye. And with an all- embracing gesture he seemed to call to witness the open heavens, the sunshine and the summer breeze which wrapped them ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... pretty lass," said the mayor, his grim face softening into a smile as he looked at the beautiful girl, "you shall draw for him, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... distance into gorgeous shades of turquoise and deep maroon. They are very far away, these mountains, even though their outlines are so distinct that they appear close at hand. The desert atmosphere has cast a kindly spell upon them, softening their hellish perspective into lines of beauty in certain lights. It is well that this is so, for it helps to dispel an illusion of the imaginative and impressionable when first they visit San Pasqual—the illusion that they are ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... part of her life having been passed among them, she knew nearly all that there was to know about them, and judged them with the contemptuous lucidity of nearly twenty years of dependence. But at the present moment her animosity was diminished not only by the softening effect of love but by the fact that she had got out of those very people more—yes, ever so much more—than she and Nick, in their hours of most reckless planning, had ever dared ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... mastication of the food, the salivary glands are actively pouring out the saliva, which mingles with the food, and by softening it, aids in its division and prepares it for the action of the other digestive fluids. It also acts upon the starch, converting a portion of it ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... none, that is, but the mechanical punishment spoken of just now, which in the majority of cases only embitters the heart; and not the real punishment, the only effectual one, the only deterrent and softening one, which lies in the ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... ant, provident in amassing store, but restful in fruition of it when amassed; reproves ill-natured judgement of one's neighbours almost in the words of Prior, bidding us be to their faults a little blind and to their virtues very kind, softening their moral blemishes as lovers and mothers euphemize a dear one's physical defects. (Sat. I, iii) "You will not listen to me?" he stops now and then to say; "I shall continue to cry on all the same until I rouse you, as the audience in the theatre did the other day" (Sat. ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... treat her with hardness and indifference: she almost cringed to me on every occasion; she consulted my countenance incessantly, and beset me with innumerable little officious attentions. Servility creates despotism. This slavish homage, instead of softening my heart, only pampered whatever was stern and exacting in its mood. The very circumstance of her hovering round me like a fascinated bird, seemed to transform me into a rigid pillar of stone; her flatteries irritated my scorn, her blandishments confirmed my reserve. At times ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... answered. "But I'd wager it's for some better reason than people give him credit for. Or it may be merely a preference for his own society. Anyway, it is no business of ours." Then, swiftly softening the suggestion of reproof contained in his last sentence, he added: "Don't encourage me to gossip, Sara. When a man's tied by the leg, as I am, it's all he can do to curb a tendency towards tattling village scandal ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... materials; or rather it is made of materials whose strength is in that winged levity with which they brush us and pass. It is all that is in us but a brief tenderness, that is there made eternal; all that means no more than a momentary softening that is in some strange fashion become a strengthening and a repose; it is the broken speech and the lost word that are made positive and suspended unbroken; as the strange kings fade into a far country and the mountains resound no ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... up with sour cream and softening lotions that will not hurt the skin. There, child, go with Patty, who will get thee into something proper. But she is like her mother in this respect, common ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... readily, and are good reducing agents. On account of this tendency, commercial sulphites are often contaminated with sulphates. A great deal of sodium sulphite is used in the bleaching industry, and as a reagent for softening paper pulp. ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... and makes him more obstinate. Like some perverse ox in the yoke, he stiffens his neck, and stands the very picture of brute obduracy. There is an awful alternative involved in our hearing of God's message, which never returns to Him void, but ever does something to the hearer, either softening or hardening, either scaling the eyes or adding another film on them, either being the 'savour of life unto life or of death unto death.' The mission of the prophets changed forgetfulness of God's 'statutes' into 'rejection' of them, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... kill you quicker than a train. Chew a cheesy midnight "rabbit" And a grave you'll soon inhabit— Ah, to eat at all is such a foolish game. Eating huckleberry pie Is a pleasing way to die, While sauerkraut brings on softening of the brain. When you eat banana fritters Every undertaker titters, And the casket makers ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... tell me?" he asked, softening his voice to a kinder tone as he remembered that God did not make all men Englishmen, and turning just in time to cause Crothers ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... pus may cease and the wound heal without complications. Saliva may issue from the orifice and result in the formation of a salivary fistula. This requires operative treatment by a qualified veterinarian. When poulticing fails to reduce the swelling or produce softening, the inflamed area may be rubbed once daily with camphorated oil, compound iodin ointment, or painted twice daily with Lugol's solution of iodin. The diet should be as recommended under Pharyngitis ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... not say how much of it I sent you; as he designed it all for you, he might not like it if he knew I kept half. How is your father? The last time I was home I really thought he was threatened with softening of the brain, he seemed so sleepy and stupid and forgetful. Give him my love, and believe me always ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... hills extended towards the setting sun, their various projecting outlines exhibiting the several gradations of distance, and the opposite bases closing at the horizon. On the nearest eminence, the objects were clearly defined by their dark shadows; the yellow rays blended their softening hues with brilliant green on the next, and beyond it all distinction melted into gray and purple. In the long valley between, the smooth and colourless Clear Water River wound its spiral course, broken and shattered ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... smile. Were there not evident signs of softening? But Ingram, who knew the girl better, was not deceived by these appearances. He could see that Sheila merely wished that her husband should not suffer pain on her account: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... letters. While reading with her fingers her upturned face would shine with joy when repeating some of the salient, consoling, and sustaining verses. And how common are the records among those simple Boers of happy and triumphant death-bed scenes of old and young, softening the grief of the bereaved believers. Frivolous education and advanced surroundings are accountable for a certain waning of the original habits of serious piety; this is to some extent more the case among the Cape Colonial and Orange Free State Boers, the declension appearing ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... in a broken voice. "No, it is true it would not be fair to make you a beggar. I should be a cad to ask you. We must think of some way of softening my ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... godson,—he must have got into mischief. Have you come about him, my worthy magistrate?" she said, softening ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... their story; but as, unfortunately, their future career was not a happy one, we will beg the reader to advance with us at once over many years; and then, as he looks back upon La Vendee, through the softening vista of time, the melancholy termination of its glorious history ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... the appearance of flame, but rather of highly luminous mist, brilliant at the core, and softening off and becoming more dim as the circumference of the globe was reached; and it emitted a feeble and unearthly light ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... she said, smiling gently into his strange, watchful yellow eyes, that looked fixedly into hers, the dark pupil opening round and softening. She smiled into his softening round eyes, the eyes of some animal which stares in one of its silent, gentler moments. And suddenly she kissed his hand, kissed it twice, quickly, on the fingers and the back. He wore a silver ring. Even as she kissed his fingers with her lips, the ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... face. Lord Winsleigh thought so;—he was spending the winter in Rome with his wife and son,—and there among the shadows of the Caesars, his long, social martyrdom ended, and he regained what he had once believed lost for ever—his wife's affection. Clara gentle, wistful, with the softening shadow of a great sorrow and a great repentance in her once too-brilliant eyes, was a very different Clara to the dashing "beauty" who had figured so conspicuously in London society. She clung to her husband with an ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... believe in retiring from business, either to have a good time or because you were old and bughouse. "Use your faculties and you will keep them," he used to repeat again and again. He agreed with Herbert Spencer that men have softening of the brain because they have failed to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... you say?" said Mrs Morgan, upon whose female soul the Perpetual Curate's good looks and good manners had not been without a certain softening effect. "I am so sorry. I don't wonder you are vexed; but don't you think there must be some mistake, William? Mr Wentworth is so gentlemanly and nice—and of very good family, too. I don't think he would choose to set himself in opposition to the Rector. I think ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... as soon as the door was shut on him and the little flicker of gas, Bernard fell into an anguish of sobs and tears, the work of her persevering love, softening and lessening the obstinate pride so far that the next visitors met with a much better reception than they might have done. The first came stumbling up with a weary step, and pushed open the door, saying, 'Here, Bear, don't ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and related the wondrous adventure, From beginning to end, minutely, just as it happened; How he had seen Priscilla, and how he had sped in his courtship, Only smoothing a little and softening down her refusal. But when he came at length to the words Priscilla had spoken, Words so tender and cruel: "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" Up leaped the Captain of Plymouth, and stamped on the floor, till his armor Clanged on the wall, where ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... reader, a dazed look on his rugged face. Then he reached up and drew the slim, tremulous hand from his forehead and snuggled it against his stubbly cheek, and still he could not speak. Janet slowly backed away into the darkness of the dining room. The situation had softening tendencies and Janet's nature revolted at sentiment. It was Graham's voice ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... rather he understood that I, with the exquisite intuition of genius, understood him. For right off, on that, he said that he would like to live in Vermont, and own maple-trees himself; that native sugar was a sweet business, and must have a softening tendency upon those ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... impregnated with as much salt as it will dissolve. A plaster may also be made of sal ammoniac and some galbanum, which well kneaded together and applied, seldom fails of destroying them. The general and principal cause of corns is, shoes too hard and stiff, or else too small. The cure consists in softening the corns by repeated washing, and soaking the feet in warm or hot water; then cutting the corn very carefully when softened, with a sharp penknife without wounding the quick, and afterwards applying a leaf ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... Pippitt's distaste for the manner in which the Bishop dealt with his subject, and his numerous allusions to saints in heaven and their probable guardianship of their friends on earth, the sermon was a deeply impressive one and lingered long in the memories of those who had heard it, softening their hearts, inspiring their for the news of her coming. It is the one cloud in an ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
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