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More "Withering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cigars and pipes are duly lighted, subjects are deliberately proposed in half-a-dozen quarters, until quite a number may be before the Staff. They are fought all round the Table, and, unless obviously and strikingly good, are probably rejected or attacked with the good-humoured ridicule and withering scorn distinctive of true friendship and cordial intimacy. Then is each fully and formally debated, every tussle advancing it a stage, and none finally accepted until all the others have fallen in the battledore-and-shuttlecock process to which ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... sad havoc among, play the mischief among, play the deuce among, play the very devil among; decimate. Adj. unimproved &c. (improve &c. 658); deteriorated &c. v.; altered, altered for the worse; injured &c. v.; sprung; withering, spoiling &c. v.; on the wane, on the decline; tabid[obs3]; degenerate; marescent[obs3]; worse; the worse for, all the worse for; out of repair, out of tune; imperfect &c. 651; the worse for wear; battered; weathered, weather-beaten; stale, passe, shaken, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... he (the "Tea-Pot") will take an opportunity in tomorrow morning's paper, of convincing him (the "Gazette") that he (the "Tea-Pot") both can and will be his own master, as regards style; he (the "Tea-Pot") intending to show him (the "Gazette") the supreme, and indeed the withering contempt with which the criticism of him (the "Gazette") inspires the independent bosom of him (the "TeaPot") by composing for the especial gratification (?) of him (the "Gazette") a leading article, of some extent, in which the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... bemoaning her fate. The robin perched upon her shoulder, and almost before she knew he was there he put the berry between her lips, and the taste was so delicious that Rosaleen ate it at once, and that very moment the witch's withering spell passed away from her, and she became as lovely as the flower of beauty. Just then the warriors on the snow-white steeds came up, and the chief with the mantle of yellow silk and the golden helmet leaped from his horse, and bending his knee ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... up his face into a very grave and confidential twist, when Mrs. Paget's equerry, the young gentleman before mentioned, offered his arm, and, giving Frank a withering look, warned the ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... younger Africanus says: "Although to the wise the consciousness of noble deeds is a most ample reward of virtue, yet this divine virtue craves, not indeed statues that need lead to hold them to their pedestals, nor yet triumphs graced by withering laurels, but rewards of firmer structure and more enduring green." "What are these?" says Laelius. Scipio replies by telling his dream. The time of the vision was near the beginning of the Third Punic War, when Scipio, no longer in his early youth, was just entering ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... breath, a breath Blown thro' the rosy gates of birth, A morning freshness not of the earth But cool and strange and lovely as death In Paradise, in Paradise, When, all to suffer the old sweet pain Closing his immortal eyes Wonder-wild an angel lies With wings of rainbow-tinctured grain Withering till—ah, wonder-wild, Here on the dawning earth again He wakes, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... out like gleaming lights from beneath their overhanging brows. "No; you ought not to have attempted it," he answered, withering her with a glance. "You might have let the thing fall on the patient and killed him. As it is, can't you see you have agitated him with the flurry? Don't stand there holding your breath, woman: repair your mischief. Get a cloth and wipe it up, and ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... significantly as they pulled from the shore, which was now crowded with a dense mass of savages, amounting probably to five or six hundred. We had not rowed off above a couple of hundred yards when a loud roar thundered over the sea, and the big brass gun sent a withering shower of grape point-blank into the midst of the living mass, through which a wide lane was cut; while a yell, the like of which I could not have imagined, burst from the miserable survivors as they fled to the woods. Amongst the heaps of dead that lay on the sand just where they had fallen, ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... he is about to marry a very handsome woman," Edith interjected, heedless of the withering glance ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... phenomenon, a continual metamorphosis of the one into the other. In the physical world we see, for instance, how a plant fades away, but in the imaginative world there emerges, in proportion as the plant fades, another form, not physically discernible, into which the withering plant is gradually transformed. When once the plant has faded away completely, this form will have become fully developed in its place. Birth and death are conceptions which lose their value in the imaginative world, making way for a comprehension of the transmutation ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... child under any circumstances, making the poor, distressed, mistaken mother feel that it was a Christian duty to let her feel that her act had made her an outcast from her parents' love and home. Therefore, although she saw the poor girl occasionally, she always heaped on her devoted head the most withering reproaches, telling her she had disgraced her father's name, and must expect to reap the fruits of her disobedience. And when the sad little bride sent to her, begging for some of her clothes, of which she was sadly in need, for she ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... be highly erratic. Howard had attempted to make composts of single vegetable materials like cotton residues, cane trash, weeds, fresh green sweet clover, or the waste of field peas. These experiments were always unsatisfactory. So Howard wisely mixed his vegetation, first withering and drying green materials by spreading them thinly in the sun to prevent their premature decomposition, and then taking great care to preserve a uniform mixture of vegetation types when charging his compost pits. This strategy can be duplicated by ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... pain. Then he saw those who by a higher merit were enjoying heaven; a thirst for love ever consuming them, their merit ended with the end of life, the five signs warning them of death. Just as the blossom that decays, withering away, is robbed of all its shining tints; not all their associates, living still, though grieving, can avail to save the rest. The palaces and joyous precincts empty now, the Devis all alone and desolate, sitting or asleep upon the dusty earth, weep bitterly in recollection ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... play the mischief among, play the deuce among, play the very devil among; decimate. Adj. unimproved &c (improve) &c 658; deteriorated &c v.; altered, altered for the worse; injured &c v.; sprung; withering, spoiling &c v.; on the wane, on the decline; tabid^; degenerate; marescent^; worse; the worse for, all the worse for; out of repair, out of tune; imperfect &c 651; the worse for wear; battered; weathered, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... bloodshed of the spectacle and the gallantry of her neighbours, passed an evening of delirious happiness. In those days I had an aesthetic soul above the 'Eventreurs de Paris,' and I made fun of it to Paragot, whose thoughts were far away. When I perceived this, I kept my withering sarcasm to myself, and realised that a flattened man cannot be blown like a bladder into permanent rotundity even by the faith and affection of a little art-student. But I marvelled all the more at his gaiety during the intervals, when we all went outside into the thronged boulevard ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... speech swept like a hurricane over a garden in June—withering, blasting, uprooting. He began by denying, absolutely, that the great victory of 1813 which expelled for Prussia the French invaders was based on so low a consideration as the promise of a paper Constitution. Not at all! It was ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... he does. She's far too indulgent to him—a posing, affected prig, always talking about the wonderful things he's going to write! He had the impudence to tell me I didn't know the most elementary laws of the sonnet this morning! Withering repartee seems to have no effect whatever on him, I wish I had some of PODBURY's faculty for flippant chaff! I wonder if he and the PRENDERGASTS really are at Milan. I certainly thought I recognised ——. If they are, it's very bad taste of them, after the pointed way in which they left Bellagio. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... moments sat the wretched mother, gazing upon the still quivering remains. At intervals, she stooped down and kissed the pale, withering lips. She did not weep. I have said she was an Indian. They do not act as whites do; but, anyhow, her anguish was too keen to allow her tears to flow. She did not scream or call for help. It could be of no use now. It was ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... Adams's garden, situated at the rear and southward of the house known as the Squire Adams house, die through any neglect of hers. Due allowance was to be made for the dispensations of Providence: for hail and withering frost and long-continued drought, and for times wherein the said Evelina Leonard might, by reason of being confined to the house by sickness, be prevented from attending to the needs of the growing ...
— Evelina's Garden • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... found the garden—except, perhaps, for the big yellow pumpkins that lay about unprotected by their withering vines—and I felt very little interest in it when I got there. I wanted to walk straight on through the red grass and over the edge of the world, which could not be very far away. The light air about me told me that the world ended here: only the ground and sun and sky were left, and if one went ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... is a well of inexhaustible comfort, making experience a green oasis where it overflows. The denial of it as a proven falsehood is a withering blast of dust blowing on the friendly caravan of sojourners in the desert of life. If existence is the enjoyment of a largess of social love, and death is to have a solitary hand snatch it all away forever, how dismal is the prospect to ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... accordance with hospitable etiquette, the new-comer was summoned canorously to the reading of the Law—'Shall stand Simeon, the son of Nehemiah'—and he arose and solemnly mounted the central platform, his familiarity with the due obeisances and osculations and benedictions seemed a withering reply to the libel. When he descended, and the Parnass proffered his presidential hand in pious congratulation upon the holy privilege, all the congregants who found themselves upon his line of return shot forth their arms with remorseful ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... son never so little, his left hand lifted to point his utterance, and opened upon Boyle the most withering stream of blasphemous profanity that Slavens had ever heard. If there ever was a man who cursed by note, as they used to say, Hun Shanklin was that one. He laid it to Boyle in a ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... but only replied to it by one of those withering looks with which he was accustomed to intimate his mortal resentment. He spoke, however, ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... contented with them. The other day one of the gentlemen from Georgia [Mr. Iverson], an eloquent man, and a man of learning, so far as I can judge, not being learned myself, came down upon us astonishingly. He spoke in what the 'Baltimore American' calls the "scathing and withering style." At the end of his second severe flash I was struck blind, and found myself feeling with my fingers for an assurance of my continued existence. A little of the bone was left, and I gradually revived. He eulogized Mr. Clay in high and beautiful terms, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... side, lifted her into the heavenly peace of dewy palms, and held to parched lips the sparkling draught a glimpse of which electrified her. Would starvation entitle her to drink? Over the head of pleading love stretched the arm of stony-eyed duty, striking into the dust the crystal drops, withering the palms; and following her stern beckon, the thirsty pilgrim re-trod the sands of surrender, more intolerable than before, because the oasis was still in sight. Duty! Rugged incorruptible Spartan dame, whose inflexible mandate is ever: "With your ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... with spies, to pack the corrupt jury, to bribe the hangman, and to erect the infamous gallows, would hesitate to inflict so horrible a doom: not, I am well aware, from virtue, not from philanthropy, but with the fear before it of the withering scorn of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not above the middle height. He is a fairly developed man, but looks thin and worn, and his shoulders have the stoop of age, which scholars mostly anticipate. His face is much corrugated, but it bears the traces of vivacious thought and emotion, not the withering print of passion. Of his eyes I have already spoken; they are wise, kind, and full of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... Fear, I know thee by my throbbing heart: Thy withering power inspired each mournful line: Though gentle Pity claim her mingled part, Yet all the thunders of the scene are ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... she might start a dance if she had a mind to, either in the kitchen or parlor, it did not matter where, and "Ephraim would not care an atom," a remark which brought from Mrs. Deacon Bannister a most withering look of reproach, and slightly endangered Aunt Betsy's standing in the church. Perhaps Bell Cameron suspected as much, for she replied that they were having a splendid time as it was, and as Dr. Grant did not dance, ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... fifteen millions a year, and then inquire by whom it might be supported. Would any single one of the editors who are now so earnest in their appeals for further grants of privilege venture so to do? Would not the most earnest of them be among the first to visit on such a proposition the most withering denunciations? Judging from what, in the last two years, we have read in various editorial columns, we should say that they would be so. Would, however, any member of either house of Congress venture to commit himself before the world by ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... consciences—your sort?" cried de Loubersac, casting a glance of withering contempt at the supposed ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... steady trot, and the guide's statement that the races there were always held on Sunday was received with a silence that evidently disappointed him. It was plain that he had a withering rejoinder ready for sabbatarians, and he waited anxiously, balanced on one foot, for an expression of shocked opinion. It was after we had passed Mont Valerien, frowning on the horizon, that the man in the pink cotton shirt began to grow restive under so much instruction. ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the old spot! So it ever is, whether thus typified or no, that an evil deed invests itself with the character of doom. Hester next gathered up the heavy tresses of her hair and confined them beneath her cap. As if there were a withering spell in the sad letter, her beauty, the warmth and richness of her womanhood, departed like fading sunshine, and a gray shadow seemed to fall ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... portions of the European Continent, hemp attains a much greater height, rivalling that of India in the length of its stalk and fibre. It was noticed that nearly one half of the plants, although growing side by side, and mingled with the others, were much riper, and, in fact, fast withering to decay. The botanist explained this to his companions, by saying that these were the male plants, and the growing ones the females; for hemp is what is termed by botanists "dioecious"— that, is, having male flowers on one plant, and female ones upon another. Karl farther observed that ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... men had fallen into a trap did not balk the sheriff; his rage rose to white heat and calling for an axe he advanced to the attack. The moment was freighted with peril. If the Yorkers attacked the house a withering fire would spring from the guns in the bushes and on the ridge and blood would flow in plenty in that heretofore peaceful vale ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... yokes and dragged the plow point through the bosom of the earth, been half so genuine and deep. It was good to be alive, to sleep, to eat, to toil! Cities had lost their charm. David's sin was no longer a withering and blasting, but a chastening and restraining memory. His clearing was a kingdom, his cabin a palace, and he was soon to have a queen! He had reserved his sowing for the last day of his self-imposed seclusion, which ended ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... was satisfied with his condition, the case was otherwise with Mrs. Grizzle, who, finding her importance in the family greatly diminished, her attractions neglected by all the male sex in the neighbourhood, and the withering hand of time hang threatening over her head, began to feel the horror of eternal virginity, and, in a sort of desperation, resolved at any rate to rescue herself from that ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... uneasily away from the little things that lay squirming and making such grimaces, as only very young babies can make, in the face of Mrs. Pimble. The alleged father stood there, chuckling over the smartness of his progeny. Mrs. Pimble darted one withering glance upon him, and walked away without another word. She roused old Dr. Potipher, and took him home with her. Well she did so, for Garrison was much worse than when she left him, and the doctor pronounced it a case of brain fever, which would require the ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... and that exists spontaneously and, as it were, for its own sake, in certain warm-hearted people—an indiscriminate love of giving to the poor, the overflow of a heart so full of kindness that it would be kind to a withering flower or a half-dead tree, rather than not expend itself at all. And so, seeing the great things that were done by Veronica in Muro, and secretly giving of his very little where she gave very much, Don Teodoro grew daily to be more and more happy in ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... there is nothing genial or lovely, and in its death one could almost believe that soul as well as body perishes. Simplicity improves in mind as it grows old in body. There are no wrinkles on the brow of its sunny spirit; there is no withering of its intellect. Its life, in time, is a perpetual advance in all that is gracious and intelligent,—a steady ripening for eternity,—and its death is but a birth into a fuller and more ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... O angel, are there, The myrrhic rapture of young hair, The lips of lust; And all the stenches of dust, Even the palm and the fingers of a hand burnt bare With a curling sweet-smelling crust, And the bitter staleness of old hair, Powder on a withering bust ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... mean to suggest," demanded Lark with withering scorn, "that it is your intention to shut yourself up alone with this—this creature, excluding ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... I said. "She has probably been 'waiting and watching.' Don't you see already one of the results of my sinning? Good night," I said, extending my hand to the fisherman, who had fixed on that innocent and unconscious nightcap a darkly withering gaze. ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... figure was at length manifest. The man came hurrying and a little breathless, with his salver, at once apologetic and triumphant. My ice was half liquid. Had I not the right to reproach him, in the withering, contemptuous tone which correct diners have learned to adopt toward the alien serfs who attend them? I had not. I had neither the right nor the courage nor the wish. This man was as Anglo-Saxon as myself. He had, with all his deference, the mien of the race. When he dreamed of paradise, ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... chariots of the angels who would defend him, and the dark array of spiritual foes who throng around his bed. Point a pitying finger to the yawning abyss of shame, ruin, and despair that even now perhaps is being cleft under his feet. Show him the garlands of the present and the past, withering at the touch of the Erinnys in the future. In pity, in pity show him the canker which he is introducing into the sap of the tree of life, which shall cause its root to be hereafter as bitterness, and its blossom ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... only the first reason. "What do you mean, young lady, about slammin'; that's what I want to know." His tone was belligerent. Mrs. Reynolds threw him a withering look. "Here, Suzanna," she said; "give me the bag, and you sit down. Take your hat off, my brave little lass. 'Twas but you and you alone could think ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... You have the power, if you had the will. Are not private talents a public trust? You used to berate the hogs of Epicurus' sty. It seems to me you've fallen back on mere self-indulgence. Your life here is a huge egoism. Cut loose from these withering notions: there is a better side to things than the one you see. Come back to the world, and be ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... the moon had an atmosphere, we should, no doubt, see a greater display; but, having no rotating vortex to protect her from the radial stream, her atmosphere must have been long since stripped off, leaving her exposed to the withering winter blast of the great stream of the solar vortex. In this connection, we may also allude to the appearance of the moon when totally eclipsed. Instead of disappearing at these times, she sometimes shines bright enough to reveal her smallest spots. This has been generally ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... were sitting down in some safe place, instead of travelling on horseback over this withering tract, and that I had the map before me to make you understand ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the curb. I caught Miss Morley's eye for an instant; there was withering contempt in ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... worthlessness, so to make for himself a double identity as to imagine and to personify a being who should really possess fine and manly aspirations with regard to a woman, and to look upon himself,—his second self,—as that being; and to perceive with how withering a contempt such a being would contemplate such another man as was in truth the real George Hotspur, whose actual sorrows and troubles ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... memories of all this folk, flown guests and masters of the still-abiding palace-chambers, haunt us as we hurry through. They are but filmy shadows. We cannot grasp them, localise them, people surrounding emptiness with more than withering cobweb forms. ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... as the rebels quaked before the withering storm of shot belched forth by the guns of the battery. "They shake! ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... Once she had spoken his father's name with a ringing joy, and he had answered roughly and had seen her shrink back into herself. Her little hands trembled, fumbling apologetically with the shabby bag she always carried. She was like a girl who, in one withering tragic moment, had become old. But his aching love found no outlet, no word of regret or tenderness. It recoiled back on himself in ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... too humiliating! It was more than Nan could bear. She sprang to her feet and without a word—with nothing but a glance of withering scorn at Delia—swept out of the room and ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... steamer, was munching Limberger cheese with evident satisfaction when it occurred to him that he ought to offer some to his neighbor, who very coolly declined. "You think it unhealthful to eat that?" inquired the German in polite astonishment. "Unhealthful?" exclaimed the Hidalgo, with a withering look and a gasp for a more adequate word; "No, sir: I think it an ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... you look outdoors at the garden. Everything is withering. The moisture does not move through the earth to where the roots of the plants can reach it. Before everything withers completely, you rush to the switchboard and turn on ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... sums. But Amy had not forgotten Miss Snow's cutting remarks about 'some persons whose noses were not too flat to smell other people's limes, and stuck-up people who were not too proud to ask for them', and she instantly crushed 'that Snow girl's' hopes by the withering telegram, "You needn't be so polite all of a sudden, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... and promised to repair to the rendezvous at Saint-Castin's station of Pentegoet. [Footnote: Villebon, Journal de ce qui s'est passe a l'Acadie, 1691, 1692.] A grand war-party was afoot; and a new and withering blow was to be struck against the English border. The guests set out for Pentegoet, followed by Portneuf, Desiles, La Brognerie, several other officers, and twenty Canadians. A few days after, a large band of Micmacs ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... patronage. When we want a type of genuine manhood, let us leave the lighted hall, where gilded folly revels, let us leave the solemn chamber of science and of art, men have chilled it with the foul and withering breath of infidelity and materialism, let us leave the busy arena of commerce, men are gloating over gain and gold in their hidden corners; let us rest with that sturdy, active, middle-class, where ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... earlier prospects, and he gained it. He holds it still, for he has no vices, and his domestic life has kept up a sweetening current of motive around and within him. Nevertheless, the bitter flavour mingling itself with all topics, the premature weariness and withering, are irrevocably there. It is as if he had gone through a disease which alters what we call the constitution. He has long ceased to talk eagerly of the ideas which possess him, or to attempt making ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... equivocal generation, assuming the name of Federalist,—a name that describes no character of principle good or bad, and may equally be applied to either,—has since started up with the rapidity of a mushroom, and like a mushroom is withering on its rootless stalk. Are those men federalized to support the liberties of their country or to overturn them? To add to its fair fame or riot on its spoils? The name contains no defined idea. It is like John Adams's ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... answered, with withering scorn. 'But, then, I thought you were trying to catch him. He tells me now you won't have him, and you won't tell him where you are going. I call it sheer insolence. Where do you hail from, girl, that you should refuse my nephew? A man that any woman in England ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... a wonderful and very sickening exhibition, Verisschenzko thought. He remained as a statue of ice. Then when she had exhausted herself a little, he spoke with withering calm. ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... power for evil is extremely limited. The very opposite is the ordinary estimate. When we mark the career of a conqueror like Napoleon, or the withering effects of an organization like that of Rome, and compare these with the feeble results of a preacher like Savonarola, whose body the fire reduced to ashes, and whose disciples persecution speedily ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... was as withering as her gentle eyes could make it; then she turned her back upon him and began to glide ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... this indifferent or hostile scrutiny, he thought how much easier it would be to face a rain of bullets than this withering glare of criticism. A sudden longing to escape, to be done with it all, came over him with sickening force. His nerves ached with the physical strain of holding himself upright on his horse, of preserving the statuesque erectness proper to the occasion. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... There is not much fun in it when there are only three playing, especially when two of the three have very short legs, but Cricket seemed to find a certain amount of amusement in it, as she did in everything. The other girls made remarks of withering scorn to her, as she flew by, but Cricket only laughed and tossed back her curly ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... tall and riding an iron-grey. Stafford recognized the commander-in-chief. Jackson sat very still, beneath a honey locust. The night before, in a wood hard by, the 17th Mississippi had run into a Federal brigade. The latter had fired, at point blank, a withering volley. Many a tall Mississippian had fallen. Now in the early light their fellow soldiers had gone seeking them in the wood, drawn them forth, and laid them in a row in the wet sedge beside the road. Nearly ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... chasing each other, putting out the stars for a moment as they scurried playfully along. It was a joy to be alive and fit and careless. Summer was lying in wait for spring, and autumn would lay a withering hand upon summer, and winter with its crooked limbs and lack-luster eyes was waiting its ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... years restore, Or on the withering limbs fresh beauty shed, Or soothe the sad inevitable hour, Or cheer the dark, dark mansions of ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... the crowd, from the first sight of the axe, and stamped upon his mind a look which he has stamped on mine as though I had stood beside him in the concourse. The guilty palace of the Cenci: blighting a whole quarter of the town, as it stands withering away by grains: had that face, to my fancy, in its dismal porch, and at its black, blind windows, and flitting up and down its dreary stairs, and growing out of the darkness of the ghostly galleries. The History is written in the Painting; written, in the dying girl's face, by Nature's ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... to pass by the indignity, for a hundred and twenty-seven provinces were represented at his court, and the news of his sullied honor would reach every dwelling in his realm, and curl the lip of the serf with scorn. The nobles fanned the flame of his indignation. Unless a withering rebuke were administered, their authority as husbands would be gone, and the caprice of woman make every family a ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... perfect quagmire, into which we sank above our knees at every step, the tenacious clay holding our feet almost as though they had been in a vice—when, without the slightest warning of any kind, a withering volley of musketry was poured in upon the devoted band from the bushes on both sides of the road, and while the smoke still enveloped us out dashed some thirty or forty Corsicans, armed, some only with their clubbed muskets, others ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... maritime coast, replied that a fortune which depended on ropes was not very desirable. Can there be any doubt that whatever may be lost cannot be properly classed in the number of those things which complete a happy life? for of all that constitutes a happy life, nothing will admit of withering, or growing old, or wearing out, or decaying; for whoever is apprehensive of any loss of these things cannot be happy: the happy man should be safe, well fenced, well fortified, out of the reach of all annoyance, not like a man under trifling apprehensions, but free from all such. As he is not ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... don't they?" With that he put his huge face down, so as to gaze more intently at them, when the little dog, who had been teased a good deal and had got snappish, gave a growl and snapped at his nose. The secret was out; with a withering glance at Tommy and the camels, he silently walked ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... he might hear and apprehend what they said, unseen of them, and heard one say to the other, "Listen, O my brother, to what my sire told me yesternight of the calamity which hath betided him in the withering of his crops before their time, by reason of the rarity of rain and the sore sorrow that is fallen on this city." Quoth the other, "Wottest thou not the cause of this affliction?"; and quoth the first, "No! and, if thou ken it pray tell it me." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... came, his head well thrown back, and bearing a huge silver tray. On it were a decanter, two little queer-shaped glasses, and a plate of very thin seed cakes. He deposited this on a spindle-legged table, which he drew up in front of his mistress, and, with another glance, which he intended to be very withering, cast upon Rachel, but which she didn't see at ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... you are that flower! You are beautiful, and pure, and strong! You think that you are strong enough to live in the lowlands, but you are not! No love of mine, changeless and whole as it must ever be, could keep your soul from withering in the nether land of sin! For it would be sin! In these days when you are young, when the fires of your enthusiasm are newly kindled, and the wings of your imagination have not been shorn, you may say to yourself that it is not sin! You may say that love is ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... exceptional brilliance; for acute and original thought this town can hardly be surpassed by any other of its size on earth. Were statistics available, I have not the slightest doubt that fever could be shown to be largely responsible for the withering ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... he met Miss Fleming on the day succeeding, and if withering glances ever really withered anything, he would have been as a dry leaf. But he did not wither. He went East, and is now connected with the Pennsylvania Broad Gauge. Miss Fleming married Mr. Muggles, and I understand the ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... subjunctive. Youths cannot get at the Aeneid, the spirit and majesty of it, I mean, owing to the pestilential numbers of grammatical reminiscences recalled by almost every line. When once you begin to set examination papers on a subject, the romance seems to evaporate. There is something withering about test-questions. This modern disease of grammatical annotation, engendered largely by prosaic examiners, who have published grammars, is spreading to the English Classics, and we may soon expect Burns to furnish a text for exceptional scansion, bob-wheel ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... heed these things! for—light as is the task to traders in death's dark trappings; painful and soul-subduing are those withering details to the grieving ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... me by his brother, Deacon Wm. P. Caton, of Plainfield, Illinois. It is said that the Judge had some interesting evergreens which appeared to be affected by an unhealthy influence, causing a suspension of growth and withering of branches here and there, until such branches died. So the process went on, terminating after a little time in the death of the trees. In this way he had lost some valuable specimens. At length a very fine and favorite evergreen was similarly attacked. He felt, of course, annoyed by the destructive ...
— A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication • Daniel Clark
... which contracts into the murk is the road to China, though that is, perhaps, the last place you would guess to be at the end of it. The train runs over a wilderness of tiles, a grey plateau of bare slate and rock, its expanse cracked and scored as though by a withering heat. Nothing grows there; nothing could live there. Smoke still pours from it, as though it were volcanic, from numberless vents. The region is without sap. Above its expanse project superior fumaroles, their drifting vapours dissolving great areas. When the ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... painted wooden altar. He knelt down and endeavored to collect his thoughts, but the rude surroundings of this rustic sanctuary did not tend to comfort his troubled spirit, and he became conscious of a sudden withering of all religious fervor. He turned and left the place, taking a path that led through the forest. It did not interest him more than the village; the woods spoke no language which his heart could understand; he could not distinguish an ash from an oak, and all the different ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... on a tree stung in a single day; and in South Jersey the curculio has proved victorious in the struggle with man. Every year we see these trees white with blossoms, and as regularly every specimen of the fruit bearing the plague-spot—a tiny crescent-shaped wound in the cuticle—withering, fading and falling. We painfully gather up this fallen fruit by the bushel, burn it to destroy the grub of the curculio, and, hoping against hope, witness the same disaster ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... Panpan, time rolled on, and little Louis was born. This might have been a blessing, but while family cares and expenses were growing upon them, Panpan's strength and energies were withering away. He suffered little pain, but what there was seemed to spring from the old wound; and there were whole days when he lay a mere wreck, without the power or will to move; and when his feeble breath seemed passing away for ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... some only in ten. Most of them are types of a class, a profession or a business, yet there is always a touch or two which isolates each of them so that they do not only represent a class but a personal character. He hated, like Morris, the withering of the individual, nor did he believe, nor any man who knows and feels mankind, that by that the world grew more and more. The poem is full of such individualities. It were well, as one example, to read the whole account of the people who come to see ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... about them,' returned the old man, shaking his head, 'but I say otherwise. "It's a pretty custom you have in this part of the country," they say to me sometimes, "to plant the graves, but it's melancholy to see these things all withering or dead." I crave their pardon and tell them that, as I take it, 'tis a good sign for the happiness of the living. And ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... heavily on De Guerre's shoulder, that his frame quailed beneath its weight, while the point of his sword rested on the peaceful grass. Burrell attempted, at the same instant, to steal the weapon from his hand: the Cavalier grasped it firmly; while Major Wellmore, darting on the false knight a withering look, emphatically observed, and with a total change ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Doubtless the All-wise did not afflict him without a cause. Who knows but within that unhappy frame lurked vicious seeds which the sunbeams of joy and prosperity might have called into life and vigour? Perhaps the withering blasts of misery nipped that which otherwise might have terminated in fruit noxious and lamentable. But peace to the unhappy one, he is gone to his rest; the deathlike face is no longer occasionally seen timidly and mournfully ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... scenes, for life's endearments fled, Shall drop a tear and dwell upon the dead! Poor wretched Outcast! I will weep for thee, And sorrow for forlorn humanity. Yes I will weep, but not that thou art come To the stern Sabbath of the silent tomb: For squalid Want, and the black scorpion Care, Heart-withering fiends! shall never enter there. I sorrow for the ills thy life has known As thro' the world's long pilgrimage, alone, Haunted by Poverty and woe-begone, Unloved, unfriended, thou didst journey on: Thy youth in ignorance and labour past, And thine old age all barrenness and blast! ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... run along the line. Moments are ages now. Seconds are years. How fast men live when everything is at stake! Ah! but how fast they die down in that ravine! Up, down, across, through, over it, drive the withering blasts, cutting, tearing, sweeping through the column, which shakes, wavers, totters, ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... blasted the whole earth. And the misery was the more miserable and awful because it had all been foretold, and in it God was but doing 'as He had said' and sworn. It is a dreadful picture of the all-withering effect of God's anger,—a picture which is repeated in inmost verity in many an ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... irresistible energy of argument, and such power of elocution as struck his hearers with astonishment and admiration. It flashed like the lightning of heaven against the ministers and sons of corruption, blasting where it smote, and withering the nerves of opposition; but his more substantial praise was founded upon his disinterested integrity his incorruptible heart, his unconquerable spirit of independence, and his invariable attachment to the interest and liberty ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... as the warm weather closed in, in the summer of 1604, the malaria in the Tower began to affect Raleigh's health. As he tells Cecil, now Lord Cranborne, in a most dolorous letter, he was withering in body and mind. The plague had come close to him, his son having lain a fortnight with only a paper wall between him and a woman whose child was dying of that terrible complaint. Lady Raleigh, at last, had been able to bear the terror of infection ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... the day Mr. Bangs rode over, and made excuses for Matilda, who thought it wrong to go into society so soon after her husband's death. Finally, the constable appeared in full regimentals, with the stalwart Mrs. Rigby on his arm. That lady bestowed on the faithless Ben a glance of withering contempt, but the constable shook hands with him, as if he had been his greatest ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... and twining shrubs, but to trees, that gripe the rock with their naked roots, and seem to struggle hard for footing and for soil enough to live upon. These are fir-trees; but oaks hang their heavy branches from above, and throw down acorns on the beach, and shed their withering foliage upon the waves. At this autumnal season, the precipice is decked with variegated splendor; trailing wreaths of scarlet flaunt from the summit downward; tufts of yellow-flowering shrubs, and rose-bushes, with their reddened ...
— Footprints on The Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... foul steam to pollute the common light; there are kennels of uncleanness, running with the waste of human lives, sweeping along with the death-gurgle of human souls; there is a dry-rot of impurity infecting the town-air, withering the dearest sanctities of society and of home—and over this kind of evil we cannot be facetious. Think how much is risked here, and how much is lost! Domestic happiness, reputation, honor, health, order, the prospects of the young, the peace ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... her the lesson admirably," said the Baroness with withering scorn. "She told me the same ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... of their character is assisted by a contrast with the English clergy of the same day, and which reveals shameful deformities on the part of the latter—avarice, indolence, and gluttony. Of such, Milton spake in Lycidas, with withering contempt, as ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... issues now upon the horizon, between the gross, luxurious, unthinking, unaspiring, uncreating life of today, and everything that has, in happier ages, given us the heritage of the soul—the issues between increasing comforts and withering ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... carnage!" he cried, as he saw his former friends and comrades fall before the withering blast. Seeing several of his men aiming their pieces at the only officer remaining unhurt, he darted forward and struck up their muskets, exclaiming: "For God's sake, lads, don't fire at that man! I love him as I do my brother." It was Major Small, ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... who does not shudder on hearing M. Leroux exclaim, "There is neither a paradise nor a hell; the wicked will not be punished, nor the good rewarded. Mortals! cease to hope and fear; you revolve in a circle of appearances; humanity is an immortal tree, whose branches, withering one after another, feed with their debris the root which is always young!" Where is the man who, on hearing this desolate confession of faith, does not demand with terror, "Is it then true that I am only an aggregate of elements organized by an unknown force, an ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... on, still on our column kept, Through walls of flame its withering way; Where fell the dead, the living stept, Still charging on the guns which swept ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... rectitude as he saw it. And he made painful and unremitting effort to see it and see it correctly. He was approachable, but repelled familiarity, and whoever attempted this was met with a perfectly withering look. He rarely laughed, and he was without humor, though he wrote and conversed well. He had the integrity of Aristides. His account with Congress while general shows scrupulousness to the uttermost farthing. To subordinate, to foe, even to malicious plotters against him, he was almost guiltily ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... measures; and he discussed this proposal with Priestley and Magellan. While Watt was examining the constituent parts of water, he had opportunities of familiar intercourse not only with Priestley, but with Withering, Keir, Edgeworth, Galton, Darwin, and his own partner, Boulton—all men above the average for their common interest in scientific inquiries. Dr. Parr frequently attended their meetings, and they kept up a correspondence ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... this he was mistaken; for, no sooner had he made her thoroughly cognizant of the fact that he was not an innocent, but a willing, instrument in the abduction of poor Kate, than she sprang to her feet, and with a glance the most withering, and full of unconquerable hate and aversion, without a single other word, left the apartment and ascended ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... be regarded, would make us all as beautiful in outward seeming as we strive to be, no doubt, in spirit. Ever so pure and lovely a soul in an unhealthy body is like a bird trying to thrive and sing in an ill-kept cage, or a flower blooming with a blight set deep within its withering petals. You or I can serve neither heaven nor mankind worthily if we disregard the laws of health, and bear about with us a frail and poorly nurtured body. There are "shut in" spirits, to be sure, captives ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... sparkling in the morning beam; And to the turf its helpless hands were frozen: For she, the woeful mother, had gone mad, And laid it down, regardless of its fate And of her own. Yet had she many days Of sorrow in the world, but never wept. She lived on alms; and carried in her hand Some withering stalks, she gathered in the spring; When they asked the cause, she smiled, and said, They were her sisters, and would come and watch Her grave when she was dead. She never spoke Of her deceiver, father, mother, home, Or child, or heaven, or ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... more, you petty spirits of region low, Offend our hearing; hush! How dare you ghosts Accuse the thunderer, whose bolt, you know, Sky-planted batters all rebelling coasts? Poor shadows of Elysium, hence, and rest Upon your never-withering banks of flowers. Be not with mortal accidents opprest: No care of yours it is; you know 'tis ours. Whom best I love I cross; to make my gift, The more delay'd, delighted. Be content; Your low-laid son our godhead will uplift. His comforts ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... at his comrade was withering in the extreme. So great was his faith in Ned's ability that he would not have hesitated at anything, no matter ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... know thee by my throbbing heart: Thy withering power inspired each mournful line: Though gentle Pity claim her mingled part, Yet all the thunders of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... moment a withering volley was poured upon the boat, and a savage yell of agony followed, while the rowers—who remained unhurt—paused for an instant as if paralysed. Next instant they recovered, and another stroke would have brought them almost alongside, when Captain Ellice pointed the little carronade and fired. ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... finally shame and anger. For, feeling my eyes upon her, she looked up and met what she must have thought the impudent stare of an appraiser. Her face, which had been without color, pale and clear like the sky about the evening star, went crimson in a moment. She bit her lip and shot at me one withering glance, then dropped her eyelids and hid the lightning. When I looked at her again, covertly, and from under my hand raised as though to push back my hair, she was pale once more, and her dark eyes were fixed upon the water and the green trees ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... enters into the spirit of the true American character, so remarkable for its mildness and disposition to mercy, in carrying out the powers of government, to permit such a struggle as would be likely to produce long-continued, or very withering local distress. Compromises in some form or other would be resorted to, to restore the course of the commerce of the country; and although it might be, and probably would be, that this could only be accomplished in the midst of the triumph of disorder, irresponsibility, ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... time when she was young, and as the weeks went by his sorrow took on a wistful, vague longing for the past. Through the gate of memory he reentered the world of his youth and walked once more with William and David and Luke. The mists which filled his eyes had nothing hot or withering in their touch—they comforted him. Whether he hoped to meet his love in some other world or not I do not know—but ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... be taken away back and set down with a jar in about two seconds if you are seized with another of those spells," promised Tom Gray, turning a withering ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... tell me thy heart's desire. Be good to me Kate, I love thee so; I must tell thee, it cuts me to the quick to have thee so set against me. Thou wilt espouse me some day, sweet one?" Katherine stood up and shot a withering glance full ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... not been in that place; hence he was struck by neglect in it, and poverty. The brick wall was falling, in the garden the trees were withering, in the yard a lean goat moved around and a few hens ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... sad, wicked, or strange, will very soon do. Had it not been for the silent, shut-up castle, standing summer and winter on the loch-side, with its flower-gardens blossoming for none to gather, and its woods— the pride of the whole country—budding and withering, with scarcely a foot to cross, or an eye to notice their wonderful beauty, people would ere long have forgotten the very existence of the ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... goes on, my aunt will have an administration as important as that of a European state. Oh! you are happy here, you people; you are busy. I amuse myself! And if you knew how it wearies me! I am withering, consuming myself, I ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... sharply, then, with a withering look that encompassed both the man and his jug, she struck the horses with her whip ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... slave himself; the suspicion that a Nat. Turner might be in every family—that the same bloody deed might be acted over at any time, and in any place—that the materials for it were spread through the land, and were always ready for a like explosion. Nothing but the force of this withering apprehension, nothing but the paralyzing and deadening weight with which it falls upon and prostrates the heart of every man who has helpless dependants to protect, nothing but this could have thrown a brave people into consternation, or could ...
— An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, • Joshua Coffin
... "your father came one day to talk about your portrait, and I showed him the place which I dignify with the name of terrace. It is but a small square of zinc, on which a few sickly plants are withering. It was not worthy to ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... temptation to seize the phlegmatic page by the collar, and give him such another shaking as he would not get over for a week to come; but suddenly recollecting he was Leoline's brother, and by the same token a marquis or thereabouts, he merely paused to cast a withering look upon him, ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... ambition, and would have gone to the house of her brother and have expended herself in nursing her nephews and nieces. But luckily for her—or unluckily, as it may be—this money had come to her before her time for withering had arrived. In heart, and energy, and desire, there was still much of strength left to her. Indeed it may be said of her, that she had come so late in life to whatever of ripeness was to be vouchsafed to her, that perhaps the period of her thraldom had not terminated itself a day ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... and periwinkle were thought to inspire love; while the agnus castus and the Saraca Indica (one of the sacred plants of India), a species of the willow, were supposed to drive away all feelings of love. Similarly in Voigtland, the common basil was regarded as a test of chastity, withering in the hands of the impure. The mandrake, which is still worn in France as a love-charm, was employed by witches in the composition of their philtres; and in Bohemia, it is said that if a maiden can secretly put a sprig ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... "Oh, Chesnel, no one but you would think of such a thing!" she added, with a withering look; before such a look from a woman's eyes no mortal can stand. "There is but one crime that a noble can commit—the crime of high treason; and when he is beheaded, the block is covered with a black cloth, ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... the same door almost as hastily, but she was a stately and rather handsome woman of forty, who gave the intruder such a withering look from her serene blue eyes that the unrefined member of the Seven Arts slunk out and could be heard ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... with a lurid glare spread far and wide over the cloudless sky, rises above the arid plains, drawing up every particle of moisture, and withering with the intense heat of his rays every blade of grass and green leaf, till it seems as if the whole region were doomed to eternal desolation. At length, however, a wonderful change takes place over the hitherto arid waste. A thick ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... advantage over us, for they were always ready, had cover, and always knew the ground to their immediate front; whereas we, their assailants, had to grope our way over unknown ground, and generally found a cleared field or prepared entanglements that held us for a time under a close and withering fire. Rarely did the opposing lines in compact order come into actual contact, but when, as at Peach-Tree Creek and Atlanta, the lines did become commingled, the men fought individually in every possible ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... of men often dies with the shout that proclaims it. Another idol appears and the feverish worship is transferred to him. The world's garland begins to fade as soon as it is laid upon the brow. The morning after the coronation I possess a handful of withering leaves. But the garland of God's praise acquires new grace and beauty with the years. It is never so fresh and flourishing as just when everything else is fading away. It is glorious in the hour of death! The soul goes, wearing ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... and reaction; working continually forward, phasis after phasis, by unalterable laws, towards prescribed issues? How often must we say, and yet not rightly lay to heart: The seed that is sown, it will spring! Given the summer's blossoming, then there is also given the autumnal withering: so is it ordered not with seedfields only, but with transactions, arrangements, philosophies, societies, French Revolutions, whatsoever man works with in this lower world. The Beginning holds in it the End, and all that leads thereto; as the acorn does the oak and its fortunes. Solemn enough, did ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... they should be absorbed in their husbands and children—but single women often like each other much, and derive great solace from their mutual regard. Friendship, however, is a plant which cannot be forced. True friendship is no gourd, springing in a night and withering in a day. When I first saw Ellen I did not care for her; we were school-fellows. In course of time we learnt each other's faults and good points. We were contrasts—still, we suited. Affection was first a germ, then a sapling, then a strong tree—now, no new friend, however ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... abides, And never withering flowers; Death, like a narrow sea, divides This heavenly ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... A deadly, withering attack on Christian Science enfilading its every position. Mr. Wyckoff's searching analysis of the pretensions, errors, follies, and non-sense of so-called Christian Science should prove as convincing as ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... British front extended some distance west of the railroad. Here a rising ground, parallel to the river course, concealed the troops in their advance until its summit was reached, but there the same withering fire checked them. About 2 in the afternoon, however, two companies of light infantry succeeded by a rush in carrying the farm-house in front of the Boer lines, and almost at the same moment another detachment dislodged the enemy from the advanced kopjes on his extreme ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... worldly honors; than place or power? And is he not serenest and happiest whose life rests on these as a house upon its foundations? You cannot shake such a man. You cannot throw him down. Wealth may go, and friends drop away like withering autumn leaves, but he stands fast, with the light of heaven upon his brow. He has faith in virtue—he has trust in God—he knows that all will come out right in the end, and that he will be a wiser and better man for the trial that tested his principles—for the ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... a withering havoc among his followers; and under the sheds and hovels that shielded them from the sun lay a score of wretches slowly wasting away with the diseases contracted at St. Domingo. Of the soldiers enlisted for the expedition by La Salle's agents, many are affirmed ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... in on a charge as fearless and reckless as any the Confederates had delivered in the past. With the sharpness of one of their own sabers, they slashed out a trotting arc of men, cutting at Armstrong's veterans in the earthworks to be curled back under a withering fire, losing a general, senior officers, and men. But the ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... rose distilled, Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn, Grows, lives, and dies in ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... as if it would have perished in his bosom; for the company he had seen the lads with, and the talk they had held, and above all their recklessness of principle, came upon him like a withering flash of fire. He, however, replied soberly, that he had seen them both the night before, and that they were well in health ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... family; a parricide consequent on passionate love, differing religions, and the Montague-and-Capulet-school of hating feudal fathers—Theodore Clopton having been a Catholic, Alice Beauvoir a Protestant; an introductory recountal of old Beauvoir's withering curse on the Clopton family for Theodore's abduction of his daughter, followed by the tragic event of the father and son, Cloptons', mutual hatred, and the former found in his own park with the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... unveiled beyond the walls of the harem; in America a sentiment no less arbitrary presumes to mark out for her the precise boundaries of womanly propriety; and she who ventures to step beyond them, must do it at the peril of encountering low sneers, coarse allusions, and the withering imputation of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... was not hatred's tiger-glare, Nor the wild anguish of despair; It was not either misery Which quickens friendship's sympathy; No—lightning all unearthly shone Deep in that dark eye's circling zone, Such withering lightning as we deem None but a spirit's look may beam; And glad were all when he turned away And wrapt him in his mantle grey, And hid his head upon his arm, And veiled from view ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... the Sioux sprang from their ambush and rushed forward, hoping to surprise enemies who had grown careless. But they were met by a withering fire that drove them headlong to cover again. Nevertheless they kept up the siege throughout all the following day and night, firing incessantly from ambush, and at times giving forth whoops full of taunt ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... removing his hat, "pray accept my apologies. You are free to return to your seats whenever you choose. This gentleman was evidently mistaken," he added, speaking with withering sarcasm and turning sharply toward his coadjutor. "You oughtn't to come to these places in your present condition, sir. Take my advice and ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... got consciences—your sort?" cried de Loubersac, casting a glance of withering contempt at the supposed ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... climatesto mingle in political intrigue, or to retire to the stern seclusion of the anchorites of our religion;all these are thoughts which have alternately passed through my mind, but each required an energy, which was mine no longer, after the withering stroke I had received. I vegetated on as I could in the same spotfancy, feeling, judgment, and health, gradually decaying, like a tree whose bark has been destroyed,when first the blossoms fade, then the boughs, until its state resembles ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... cried Mr Stormcock, jumping up in the launch as the Opossum dropped down towards us on the ebb tide, away from the withering fire. "Can't we do something to ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... But on a private loss, and sweetened with so many circumstances as yours, to be impatient, to be uncomfortable would be to dispute with God. Though an only son be inestimable, yet it is like Jonah's sin, to be angry at God for the withering of his shadow. Zipporah, though the delay had almost cost her husband his life, yet, when he did but circumcise her son, in a womanish peevishness reproached Moses as a bloody husband. But if God take the son himself, but spare the father, shall we say that He is a bloody God? He that gave His ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... remember, sir? And now, sir, you would abandon her also. And you are angry, you storm and rave when a respectable person wants to save the unfortunate child from having her innocence corrupted, save her from withering away profitlessly in the claws of a pack of gross, rowdy, street-lounging, rake-hell young profligates, from living a life of wretchedness and shame, from dying abandoned and accursed, to say nothing of the fire ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... Her morning dawned after a restless, sleepless night. Phantoms of terror haunted her couch. The agonies of anticipated remorse had cast a withering shadow on her thoughts. She could not believe her own depravity in entertaining for a moment such ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... tragic meaning packed in a syllable, a gesture, a dumb silence. Miss Gale riddles the tedious affectations of the Deacon household almost without a word of comment; none the less she exhibits them under a withering light. The daughter, she says, "was as primitive as pollen"—and biology rushes in to explain Di's blind philanderings. "In the conversations of Dwight and Ina," it is said of the husband and wife, "you saw the historical ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... through his grief, The early grief that lined his withering brow, As one by one her stars were quenched. And now He that so mourned can play, though ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... Alameda, mowed a path between them—a Spartan business, for it reaped Imperialists among Republicans. However, a second and third blast were better gauged, and these carpeted the new alley-way with Republican bodies. Also, the Imperialists were re-forming, and under a withering fire the little band of victors had to draw ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... indifferent or hostile scrutiny, he thought how much easier it would be to face a rain of bullets than this withering glare of criticism. A sudden longing to escape, to be done with it all, came over him with sickening force. His nerves ached with the physical strain of holding himself upright on his horse, of preserving the statuesque erectness proper to the occasion. He felt like one of ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... deadly cup, And led her down from love and light, From all that made her pathway bright, And chained her there 'mid want and strife, That lowly thing,—a drunkard's wife! And stamped on childhood's brow so mild, That withering blight, a drunkard's child! ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... the records she has carved on the rocks, reconstruct, however imperfectly, the landscapes of the past, we also learn that as these we now behold have succeeded those of the pre-glacial age, so they in turn are withering and vanishing to be succeeded by others ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... of that distasteful life—the slow withering away of youth and hope and ambition into a gray waste of ineffectual submissive labor—not only of her life, but of thousands upon thousands like her—it all rose up like a flood in ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... do you answer me this Question; which is the most pleasant Sight, a Rose fresh and fair upon the Tree, or one gathered and withering in ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... of years, I thought, withering away under the disconsolation of an ill-spent life, old without peace, and gray without wisdom, flattering himself that he is religious because he prays, and making a merit of offering to God that which Satan had rejected; thinking, too, that he has withdrawn from sin, because the ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... lifted her into the heavenly peace of dewy palms, and held to parched lips the sparkling draught a glimpse of which electrified her. Would starvation entitle her to drink? Over the head of pleading love stretched the arm of stony-eyed duty, striking into the dust the crystal drops, withering the palms; and following her stern beckon, the thirsty pilgrim re-trod the sands of surrender, more intolerable than before, because the oasis was still in sight. Duty! Rugged incorruptible Spartan dame, whose inflexible mandate is ever: "With your ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... not stop here. Death rarely lays his withering hand upon one household flower without touching another, and causing it to droop, wither, and fall to the ground. So it was in this case. William, the manly, intelligent, promising boy, upon whom the father had ever looked with love and pride so evenly balanced, ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... with us as he does. She's far too indulgent to him—a posing, affected prig, always talking about the wonderful things he's going to write! He had the impudence to tell me I didn't know the most elementary laws of the sonnet this morning! Withering repartee seems to have no effect whatever on him, I wish I had some of PODBURY's faculty for flippant chaff! I wonder if he and the PRENDERGASTS really are at Milan. I certainly thought I recognised ——. If they ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... cashier without an exchange of badinage and open compliment. Many of them went to greater lengths and dropped promissory hints of theatre tickets and chocolates. The older men spoke plainly of orange blossoms, generally withering the tentative petals by after-allusions to Harlem flats. One broker, who had been squeezed by copper proposed to Miss Merriam more ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... composts of single vegetable materials like cotton residues, cane trash, weeds, fresh green sweet clover, or the waste of field peas. These experiments were always unsatisfactory. So Howard wisely mixed his vegetation, first withering and drying green materials by spreading them thinly in the sun to prevent their premature decomposition, and then taking great care to preserve a uniform mixture of vegetation types when charging his compost pits. This strategy ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... she and Rodney's wife started a little drama of incompetency, which should end as the hotel-keeping ended. Wastefulness, cheap luxury, tawdry living, took the place of the old, frugal, simple life. But the mother went about with that unchanging sweetness of face, and a body withering about a fretted soul. She had no bitterness, only a miserable distress. But every slight that was put upon her, every change, every new-fangled idea, from the white sugar to the scented soap and the yellow buggy, rankled in the old man's heart. He had resentment both for the old wife ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... crept over the eastern horizon, and the cold chill of the shadows gave place to the burning glare of the September sun. Hot and withering it beat down upon us and upon the unburied dead that lay all about us. The braves that had fallen in the strife strewed the island's edges. Their blood lay dark on the sandy shoals of the stream and stained to duller brown the trampled grasses. ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... She flounced her full skirts, cast a withering glance at young Bell, and once more looked out of the ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... of the New England Society, leaped to his feet and denounced the platform in withering tones. He fairly ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... roused. "Never did that before," gurgled out of his net, just as we were dropping off once more; but a withering request from the Dandy to "gather experience somewhere else," silenced him till dawn, when he had the wisdom to rise ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... the belt on the engine was slipping and squealing. Bergmann maintained that he must be mistaken. The landlord kept going among his tenants and finally discovered the dynamo. 'Oh! Mr. Bergmann, now I know where my power goes to,' pointing to the dynamo. Bergmann gave him a withering look of scorn, and said, 'Come here and I will show you.' Throwing off the belt and disconnecting the wires, he spun the armature around by hand. 'There,' said Bergmann, 'you see it's not here that you must look for your loss.' This satisfied the landlord, and he started ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the latter were wont in the month of February to parade the streets in a state of utter nudity. When a bachelor wished to marry a widow he was first united to a swallow-wort plant, and this was immediately dug up and transplanted, and withering away left him at liberty to marry the widow. If a lady survived the sorrow caused by the death of two or three husbands she could not again enter the holy state unless she consented to be married with a fowl under her armpit; the unfortunate bird being ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... her a withering glance and squirmed up into the saddle with the help of both horn and cantle and by the grace of good luck. Miss Allen gasped ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... sacred rites have been disturbed By demons, or some evil has befallen The innocent herds, their favourites, that graze Within the precincts of the hermitage, Or haply, through my sins, some withering blight Has nipped the creeping plants that spread their arms Around the hallowed grove. Such troubled thoughts Crowd through my mind, ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... especially above the door, where the sunlight streamed through the gaping wound from a cannon shot. The door and window shutters were of heavy oak, swinging inward and fastening with bars; yet now they were open, and through them could be seen a dreary stretch of river bottom, withering beneath the rays ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... talk about money!" retorted Allison, with withering scorn; "but for me, who makes every penny I earns, he may think hisself well off to get the five shillin's I gives him every year for those blessed schools. I'll stick to that five, neither more nor less, unless the squire gets his way; and then I won't ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... our men to stop firing. Then, in awe-inspiring tones, he sobs forth a tale of dark and dismal war, how our soldiers respected the white flag and rested on their arms, only to be mowed down by a withering rifle fire from the canaille who represent the enemy in the field. Having got so far, he does not feel justified in stopping until he has thrown in some flowery language concerning a Boer cannonade upon British ambulance waggons, full of wounded; from that he drifts by easy and natural ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... bright mounds Of flowers, with juniper and aniseed; While sage, all newly cut for this great need, Covers the Persian carpet that is spread Beneath the table, and so helps to shed Around a perfume of the balmy spring. Beyond is desolation withering. One hears within the hollow dreary space Across the grove, made fresh by summer's grace, The wind that ever is with mystic might A spirit ripple of the Infinite. The glass restored to frames to creak is made ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... Brett. Were you just going out? I'm glad I did not disturb you. Shall I hold it open for you?" She stepped to one side and waited gravely without moving a muscle till Lucine after a withering stare had stalked angrily back to her window. The corner of Berta's mouth gave a quick, queer little twitch before settling ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... change of color in the leaves at a time when they should be perfectly green indicates that the tree is not growing under normal conditions, possibly because of an insufficiency of moisture or light or an overdose of foreign gases or salts. Withering of the leaves is another sign of irregularity in water supply. Dead tops point to some difficulty in the soil conditions or to some disease of the roots or branches. Spotted leaves and mushroom-like growths or brackets protruding from the bark as in Fig. ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... among the delightful phenomena which are observable at the commencement of the rainy season, (immediately following that of the withering hot winds,) the joy displayed by the peacocks is one of the most pleasing. These birds assemble in groups upon some retired spot of verdant grass; jump about in the most animated manner, and make the air re-echo with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... a fairly developed man, but looks thin and worn, and his shoulders have the stoop of age, which scholars mostly anticipate. His face is much corrugated, but it bears the traces of vivacious thought and emotion, not the withering print of passion. Of his eyes I have already spoken; they are wise, kind, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... share in the fame of Lee as an inheritance rightfully belonging to us, and endowed with which we shall piously cherish, though all calamities should rain upon us, true poverty—the poverty indeed that abases and starves the spirit can never approach us with its noisome breath and withering look. ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... find that whenever the occasion demands it his style rises to supreme force and beauty. The metamorphosis of the serpent, the entry of Lamia and Lycius into Corinth, the building by Lamia of the Fairy Hall, and her final withering under the eye of Apollonius—these are the most important points in the story, and the passages in which they are described are also the most striking ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... with a withering look; "it's virgin gold, that ring is. And where d'ye s'pose I found ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Roger opened fire again, sending violent shock charges into the beast's hide. Caught in the withering cross fire, it turned blindly on the boys and charged at them. The two cadets fired coolly, rapidly, unable to miss the great bulk. The air became acrid with the sharp odor of ionized air. Maddened now beyond the limits of its endurance, hit ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... funeral: he, the injured husband, lies in his coffin with a gentle smile on his lips, and she, pale, tortured by remorse, follows the coffin like a Niobe, not knowing where to hide herself to escape from the withering, contemptuous looks cast upon ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... A lady with taste must at one time at least have presided in it—but then withering does so much for beauty—and that not of stuffs and THINGS only! The furniture of it was very modern compared with the house, but not much of it was younger than the last James, or Queen Anne, and it had all a stately old-maidish look. Such ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... through some twelve months of his ex-royal exile! The memories of all this folk, flown guests and masters of the still-abiding palace-chambers, haunt us as we hurry through. They are but filmy shadows. We cannot grasp them, localise them, people surrounding emptiness with more than withering cobweb forms. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... blackening in time to his pulling at it, smoked on alone in the dusk. In the nibbling, iterative way of the old, he started a kind of reflection; but it was as if a harmattan had blown along the usual courses of his thought, drying up his little brooklet of recollection and withering the old aquatic star-flowers that grew along its banks. His mind, in its meandering among old images, groped, paused, fell pensive. His head sank lower between his shoulders, and the shoulders eased back against the wall behind his bench. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... first speech swept like a hurricane over a garden in June—withering, blasting, uprooting. He began by denying, absolutely, that the great victory of 1813 which expelled for Prussia the French invaders was based on so low a consideration as the promise of a paper Constitution. ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... make much of herself yet. It was one of those Spring evenings which you could not tell from an Autumn one except for a certain something in the air appealing to an undefined sense—rather that of smell than any other. There were green buds and not withering leaves in it—life and not death; and the voices of the gathering guests were of the season, and pleasant to the soul. Of course Nature did not then affect me so definitely as to make me give forms of thought to her influences. It is now first that I ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... Mrs. Pryor was withering in her disapproval, and this time Mrs. Corbin touched Miss Matoaca's foot. "I suppose you allude to the streets of Yorkburg, the schools, and library—and some other things. All these Western and Northern ideas which Mary Cary has brought back are very distasteful to the Virginians of ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... swear, and don't ever get frightened because I am out of sight." Then she cast one withering glance at Rhodes, adding,—"and if you engage range bosses like this one no one on Granados will ever get ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... spent for the good of the Nation. In more recent times, one of the great statesmen and soldiers of the United States, Henry L. Stimson, has added his witness to the value of this force in all enterprise: "I know the withering effect of limited commitments and I know the regenerative effect of full action." Though he was speaking particularly of the larger affairs of war and nation policy, his words apply with full weight ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... the shadeless prairies with the intensity of a living flame. But it seemed as nothing to the heat of his own passion—his own fiery rebellion against the decree of destiny—altogether powerless against the withering despair that had choked all the aspirations and ambitions which, his whole life long, he had cultivated and nourished in the soil of ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... pause here to say that Cooper, though not a manufacturer of verse, was in the highest sense of the word a poet; his imagination wrought nobly and grandly, and imposed its creations on the mind of the reader for realities. With him there was no withering, or decline, or disuse of the poetic faculty; as he stepped downwards from the zenith of life, no shadow or chill came over it; it was like the year of some genial climates, a perpetual season of verdure, bloom, and fruitfulness. As these works came out, I was rejoiced to see that he ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... YOUR FATHER has remained long in exile. I have seen the fields of Europe where your laurels are now withering, and I have communed with the dead who repose beneath them. They ask where are our children? Where is France? Europe no longer glitters with the shine of its triumphant bayonets—echoes no more with the shouts of its victorious ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hills farther within the country; their sides all spotted with woods and savannahs. But these on the mountains' sides appeared of a rusty colour, not so pleasant and flourishing as those that we saw on the south side of the island; for the trees seemed to be small and withering; and the grass in the savannahs also looked dry, as if it wanted moisture. But in the valleys, and by the sea side, the trees looked here also more green. Yet we saw no good anchoring-place, or opening, that gave us any encouragement to put in; till the 30th ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... far advanced when we were in New Orleans, the roses and magnolia blossoms were falling; but here in St. Paul it was the snow, In New Orleans we had caught an occasional withering breath from over a crater, apparently; here in St. Paul we caught a frequent benumbing one from over a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... which involve a change of substance and those in which the substance remains the same and the change is one of quality or quantity. An example of the former is the change of Moses's rod into a serpent and of the water of Egypt into blood; of the latter, Moses's hand becoming leprous, and the withering of the hand of Jeroboam. We may further divide the miracles into those in which the prophet was told in advance, as Moses was of the ten plagues, and those in which he was not, as for example the reviving of the dead by Elijah and many other ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... havoc among, play the mischief among, play the deuce among, play the very devil among; decimate. Adj. unimproved &c (improve) &c 658; deteriorated &c v.; altered, altered for the worse; injured &c v.; sprung; withering, spoiling &c v.; on the wane, on the decline; tabid^; degenerate; marescent^; worse; the worse for, all the worse for; out of repair, out of tune; imperfect &c 651; the worse for wear; battered; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... um with a hook, couldn't you?' asked the old man, in a tone that was meant to convey withering contempt of a machine that could only do one thing, and must perforce lie idle ten ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... per cent. of the soldiers get a fortnight's leave of absence and a free pass; and there is joy in peasant homes over peasant charcoal pans. The dusky shades of evening are stealing over olive grove and withering vineyard, and every house lights up its tiny oil lamp, and every image of the Virgin is illuminated with a taper. In Eija, near Cordova, an image or portrait of the Virgin and the Babe new-born, hangs in well-nigh ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... Hooker offered no further reply than a withering rebuke of the waiter, a genteel abstraction, and a lofty change of subject. He pressed upon them two tickets for the performance, of which he seemed to have a number neatly clasped in an india-rubber band, and advised ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... to which is the captain now," whispered Condy so soon as the other had removed from him a glance of withering scorn. ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... a huge silver tray. On it were a decanter, two little queer-shaped glasses, and a plate of very thin seed cakes. He deposited this on a spindle-legged table, which he drew up in front of his mistress, and, with another glance, which he intended to be very withering, cast upon Rachel, but which she didn't see at ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... withering. She was not angry. She was pale, and her gentle face was troubled—dear God! how sorely troubled! To me it almost seemed that ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... feeling springing up everywhere against the tyranny of examinations, against the cramping and withering influence which they are supposed to exercise on the youth of England. I cannot join in that outcry. I well remember that the first letters which I ventured to address to the Times, in very imperfect English, were in favor of examinations. They ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... who, wishing to disembarrass herself of her husband, demanded of a venerable priest, as the most natural thing in the world, that he should say a mass for her to St. Secaire; she was convinced that, this saint, unknown to martyrology, had the power of withering up (secher) and killing troublesome individuals, to accommodate ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... Oh, the pretty, withering human flower! How closely the little girl had grown into her heart, how impossible it seemed to give her up! With tearful eyes, she pressed her forehead on her clasped hands, which rested on the head-board of the little bed, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the younger ones were beginning to feel tired, she suggested to Bell that she might start a dance if she had a mind to, either in the kitchen or parlor, it did not matter where, and "Ephraim would not care an atom," a remark which brought from Mrs. Deacon Bannister a most withering look of reproach, and slightly endangered Aunt Betsy's standing in the church. Perhaps Bell Cameron suspected as much, for she replied that they were having a splendid time as it was, and as Dr. Grant did ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... purpose, pride, and energy animate them. They have contrasted the free and noble with the mean and servile. Its magic has entered their natures and quickened their souls. In all there is a lofty scorn for the little and mean. The same withering contempt for the cringing and cowardly is met in every one of them. Their impulses are generous, and their aspirations noble, with hearts as soft and tender as love, pity, and compassion can form. Yet in them there is, too, the fire of chivalry, the scorn of ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... by day, does the fever-fire trace Its incessant course down her fast-withering cheek, Till the smile that made light in the glow of her face, But the faint, fading glimpses of vigour bespeak, And her reason will fitfully pass into night— Into night even deeper than that of the blind, As the shade of the gibbet-tree looms in her ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... the muteness of it—was a rapture sacred to themselves alone; not to be pried upon or set down. Such moments—come they but once in a lifetime, to one among a hundred—are God's reiterate answers to the problem of creation. The man or woman who has passed that way will never ask the soul's most withering question: To what end was I born? 'The rest may reason and welcome.' They are of the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... Philip Perry, and held an opinion, not altogether unfounded in human experience, that in course of time, when quite deserted by Patty Baxter, his heart might possibly be caught on the rebound. It was only a chance, but Lucy would almost have preferred remaining unmarried, even to the withering age of twenty-five, rather than not be at liberty to accept Philip Perry in case she should ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Nikita's mother from Zouevo, my dearie. Good afternoon to you. He's withering, withering away, poor dear—your brother, I mean. He came out himself. "Send for my sister," he said, "because," said he.... Dear me, why, ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... between summer and winter. In spring of course the solitary date-palm here and there threw out its spathe of young green leaves, to add to the number of those which, grey or brown, hung drooping down the stem, withering but not decaying for many a year in that dry atmosphere; or perhaps the accacia bushes looked somewhat gayer for a few weeks, and the Retama broom, from which as well as from the palm leaves he plaited his baskets, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... emphatic step, Wildeve's eye passing over his form in withering derision, as if he were no more than a heath-cropper. When the reddleman's figure could no longer be seen, Wildeve himself descended and plunged into the rayless ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... withering, from the withering of the yam vine and other plants, which become coloured "like ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... showed an almost imperceptible withering of the texture of the delicate skin. She raised her sleeves and showed Camille the same slight withering of the wrists, where the transparent tissue suffered the blue network of swollen veins to be visible, and three deep lines made ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... lodging in the sand bags protecting the steam-drum. Groping on by the flash of the guns and the light of the burning rafts, the Brooklyn, just clearing a thirteen-foot shoal, found herself close under St. Philip, from whose exposed barbette guns the gunners fled at her withering fire, as they had from that ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... hang about her "like a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief." In this year (Port Folio, page 463) is heard the first note of alarm. New England is gaining; "with such rivalry Philadelphia must yield the proud title which she has borne, or rouse from the withering lethargy in which she slumbers." New York jealousy is increasing. In 1820 Salmagundi says that "one of the editors of the Port Folio was discharged—for writing common-sense." These trifles indicate a shifting of the balance of power. Three ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... had so exquisite a pleasure in the mere sense of living that old age, as it comes near, terrifies me by its dull eyes and gray hairs. I have lived the life of a butterfly. Summer is over, and I see my flowers withering; and my wings are chilled by the first airs of winter. Yes, I envy Trevanion; for in public life no man is ever young, and while he can ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with the dew and the sunlight. Down in the hollow a farmyard is half hidden behind the yellowing elms; a boy is driving a flock of white geese along the twisting road; the hedges are red with the withering briers. Up here, along the hillsides, the woods of scrub-oak are glowing with every imaginable hue of gold, crimson and bronze, except where a few dark firs appear, or where a tuft of broom, pure and bright ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... syllable. Slowly she moved her face, so that their eyes encountered in one long mournful look. Ten years of continued suffering could not have exacted a heavier tribute from Grace Huntley's beauty. No language can express the withering effects of the few hours' ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... they not, in their light, great critics, too? Don't they know when to laugh, when to blubber, and when to applaud, and don't they know when to hiss, though! What a fiat is their withering hiss! What poor actor dare brave it? It has gone deep, deep into many a poor player's ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... no more of it. Whom have I to fear here? All fall on their knees before me. Before thee they would stand on their heads even! Go to the garden; it is as beautiful as paradise. Look out at the field, see the wheat harvest; sit down in the carved boat the owner of which is withering from anxiety to see thee and take ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... to the house, and hesitated. It had occurred to her that she might add another perfectly withering verse to that poem. It could start: "While sailing in my airplane boat, I'll ask Venus to ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... its unreachable superiority—in its completeness as a whole—that is not to be disturbed. Her delivery of 'Casta Diva' is a transcendent effort of vocalization. In the scene where she discovers the treachery of Pollio, and discharges upon his guilty head a torrent of withering and indignant reproof, she exhibits a power, bordering on the sublime, which belongs exclusively to her, giving to the character of the insulted priestess a dramatic importance which would be remarkable even if entirely separated from the vocal preeminence with which it is allied. But, in all ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... brought into action by the impulse of private malice. They occasioned mortality of greater or less extent in man and beast. They blighted the opening prospect of a plentiful harvest. They covered the heavens with clouds, and sent abroad withering and malignant blasts. They undermined the health of those who were so unfortunate as to incur their animosity, and caused them to waste away gradually with incurable disease. They were notorious two or three centuries ago ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... Have you neglected to obtain information on that point? Of course it is of no consequence," he added, with a withering smile. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... said his friend, glancing at him. "If he had been a countryman of mine there would have been less marvel. But here is none of the sadness of decay none of the withering if the tokens of old age are seen at all it is in the majestic honours that crown a glorious life the graces of a matured and ripened character. This has nothing in common, Rossitur, with those dull moralists who are always ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Turning a withering and glassy eye in our direction, my brother-in-law explained the position and desired permission to enter and write a ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... resemblance to the passion of the same name, which has risen up with the general intercourse of the sexes, and chivalrous manners of modern Europe. It is represented rather as a fever, as a fit of insanity, than any thing else; and is usually held forth as the withering blast inflicted by an offended deity, or the mania bequeathed as an inheritance on an accursed race. The refined and ennobling passion, so well-known and exquisitely described by the great masters of the human heart in modern ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... magistrates who act for this town, some of whom attend at the public office, in Moor-street, every Monday and Thursday, are the Rev. Dr. Spencer, of Aston; William Villers, Esq. of Moseley; George Simcox and Theodore Price, Esqrs. of Harborne; Wm. Withering, Esq. of the Larches; William Bedford, Esq. of Birch's Green; William Hamper, Esq. Deritend House; Edmund Outram, D.D. St. Philip's Parsonage; and Isaac Spooner, Esq. ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... comes within the sphere of man, there will remain still some chrysanthemums about which something could be written, two stanzas on the 'shadow of the chrysanthemums,' and the 'dream about chrysanthemums' must be tagged on as numbers ten and eleven. While the last section should be 'the withering of the chrysanthemums' so as to bring to a close the sentiments expressed in the foregoing subjects. In this wise the fine scenery and fine doings of the third part of autumn, will both alike be included ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Ammar was as busy and as lively as if it was pitched in the heart of France. The followers had built up little cabins out of the branches of trees, with their leaves on, interwoven together, all in straight lines, forming streets, very commodious, and perfectly impervious to the withering sun. There were restaurants, cafes, debis de vin et d'eau-de-vie, sausage-sellers, butchers, grocers—in fact, there was every trade almost, and everything you required; not very cheap certainly, but you must recollect, that this little town had sprung up, ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... being inevitably overtaken, she ran at once to the river and galloped madly down the shallow margin. Before the flames were actually upon her, she was beyond the zone of their fury. But she felt the withering blast of them, and their appalling roar was in her ears. With starting eyes and wide, palpitating nostrils, she ran on and on, and stopped only when she sank exhausted in a rude cove. There she lay with panting sides ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... rode on at full trot to charge the Highlanders. With the steadiness of old soldiers, the clans came on in their ranks, till within ten yards of the enemy. Then Lord George gave the signal by presenting his own piece, and at once a withering volley broke the ranks of the dragoons. About 400 fell under this deadly fire and the rest fled, fled as wildly and ingloriously as their fellows had done at Coltbridge or Prestonpans. A wild storm of rain dashing straight in their faces during the attack added ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... from us, considerably passed the line of demarcation. Lady de Brantefield, with all the pride of all the De Brantefields since the Norman Conquest concentrated in her countenance, threw an excommunicating, withering look upon the arm—but the elbow felt it not—it never stirred. The lady seemed not to be made of penetrable stuff. In happy ignorance she sat fanning herself for a few seconds; then suddenly starting and stretching ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... came to Billy Byrne the withering, numbing knowledge that his love must forever be a hopeless one—that this girl of the aristocracy could never be for ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Autumn, and incessant Piped the quails from shocks and sheaves, And, like living coals, the apples Burned among the withering leaves. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... you do not know what you are talking about," he finally blustered with withering contempt. "You are an Argentinian and do not understand the affairs ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... shallow cleverness and conventional good-temper is more withering to the soul of the artist than the blindest bigotry which has the recklessness of genuine ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... suspicion and scorn of the sorcerer. "Yes, take it," said he, with uncalled-for vehemence, "but you can't stop it; there's water below here, and you can't help its bending, if you break your back trying to hold it." So he gave me the twig, and awaited, with a smile which was meant to express withering sarcasm, the discomfiture of the supposed scoffer. But when I proceeded to walk four or five times across the mysterious place, the rod pointing steadfastly toward the zenith all the while, our friend became ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... between her and this cruel mockery and temptation? "Mother, mother, how could you be false to your trust? Were you, too, cheated and bereft of your due? left a cold, shrinking woman, withering, not suddenly, but ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... visions prophetical burst on my sight, As he carried me forth in the power of his might. Around me I saw in a desolate heap The relics of those who had slept their death-sleep, In the midst of the valley, all reckless and bare, Like the hope of my country, lie withering there,— ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... Vasselot that such frankness is imprudent; he may regret it," put in the notary with a solemn face. And Denise gave him a glance of withering pity. The poor man, it seemed, was ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... unacceptable if offered by the hand of true regard such visions have for ever fled and all is cancelled but being aware that tender relations are in contemplation beg to state that I heartily wish well to both and find no fault with either not the least, it may be withering to know that ere the hand of Time had made me much less slim than formerly and dreadfully red on the slightest exertion particularly after eating I well know when it takes the form of a rash, it might have been and was not through the interruption of parents and mental torpor ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... tumultuous notes threw a light upon that of very fine ladies in the seventeenth century. She made no effort to be exact, and much of her correspondence was made obscure by initials, which she expected her friends to interpret by divination. From a withering denunciation of the Government she expressly excepts Mr. John Burns and "that much-abused Mr. Birhell, whom I like." From about 1899 to 1903, I think that Lord Wolseley was the friend who occupied most of her thoughts. In her letters of those ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... looked this faltering faint-heart all over from head to heel with withering scorn, and demanded: "Ain't you got sportin' blood enough to know the difference between a high-station game-cock and that old bow-legged Mormon down there scratchin' ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... Captain Polkington hoed; at least he did for a little while, then he gradually ceased and stood leaning upon his hoe, lost in unhappy thought. At last he moved, and, gathering the withering weeds that lay beside the path, carried them to an old basket which he had left beside the garden wall. With the weeds he picked up the torn fragments of card which Julia had dropped beside the doorstep; he let them fall into the basket ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... rebels quaked before the withering storm of shot belched forth by the guns of the battery. "They shake! Give ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... person's shallow cleverness and conventional good-temper is more withering to the soul of the artist than the blindest bigotry which has the recklessness ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... and as I passed out with a fascinating bow I thought I detected a light in the woman's eye that was gently ironical; and when I looked back from the street, and she was laughing all to herself about something or other, I said to myself with withering sarcasm, "Oh, certainly; you know how to put on kid gloves, don't you? A self-complacent ass, ready to be flattered out of your senses by every petticoat that chooses to take ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... highest sense whose receptivity is not equal to its power to contribute to the world with which its destiny is bound up. It is only at its best when it is a part of the vital current of movement, of sympathy, of hope, of enthusiasm of the world at large. There is no doctrine so belittling, so withering to our national life, as that which conceives our destiny to be a life of exclusion of the affairs and interests of the whole globe, hemmed in to the selfish development of our material wealth and strength, surrounded by a Chinese wall built of strata of prejudice on the outside and of ignorance ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... sight of the axe, and stamped upon his mind a look which he has stamped on mine as though I had stood beside him in the concourse. The guilty palace of the Cenci: blighting a whole quarter of the town, as it stands withering away by grains: had that face, to my fancy, in its dismal porch, and at its black, blind windows, and flitting up and down its dreary stairs, and growing out of the darkness of the ghostly galleries. The ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... with the parts still spread about the floor. Elihu Titus told Sharon the boy was only playing with them. Sharon said he was glad they could furnish amusement, and mentally composed the beginning of what would be a letter of withering ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... Abram, with withering scorn, his white, quivering old face terrible to see. "Young man, I got a couple o' things to say to you. You'r' shaped like a man, an' you'r' dressed like a man, an' yet the smartest person livin' would never take you for anything but an egg-suckin' dog, this minute. All the time God ever spent ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... afternoon when he reached it, and the wine shop was deserted. Outside, the California August lay withering and suffocating over all the land. The far hills were burnt to dry, hay-like grass and brittle clods. The eucalyptus trees in front of the wine shop (the first trees Felipe had seen all that day) were coated with ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... fancy, and reflects on the fierce cruelties that are done in his name. It was a withering satire on Russian imperialism, and it stirred a wide response. This encouraged Clemens to something even more pretentious and effective in the same line. He wrote "King Leopold's Soliloquy," the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... moral complaints and demands? What is it that has united all of us against the Prussian, as against a mad dog? It is the presence of a certain spirit, as unmistakable as a pungent smell, which we feel is capable of withering all the good things in this world. The burglary of Belgium, the bribe to betray France, these are not excuses; they are facts. But they are only the facts by which we came to know of the presence of the spirit. They do not suffice ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... with the law that binds him thus! Unworthy freemen, let it find No refuge from the withering curse Of God and human-kind Open the prison's living tomb, And usher from its brooding gloom The victims of your savage code To the free sun and air of God; No longer dare as crime to brand The chastening of the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... tray. On it were a decanter, two little queer-shaped glasses, and a plate of very thin seed cakes. He deposited this on a spindle-legged table, which he drew up in front of his mistress, and, with another glance, which he intended to be very withering, cast upon Rachel, but which she didn't see at all, ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... wealth, or worldly honors; than place or power? And is he not serenest and happiest whose life rests on these as a house upon its foundations? You cannot shake such a man. You cannot throw him down. Wealth may go, and friends drop away like withering autumn leaves, but he stands fast, with the light of heaven upon his brow. He has faith in virtue—he has trust in God—he knows that all will come out right in the end, and that he will be a wiser and better man for the trial that tested his principles—for the storms ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... harmonizing with them. On this occasion he appeared in a blue coat, a buff vest, black pants and white cravat; a costume strikingly in keeping with his face and expression. The human face never wore an expression of more withering, relentless scorn than when the orator replied to Hayne's allusion to the "Murdered Coalition"—a piece of stale political trumpery well understood ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... men, struck the palisade with his sword before he gave the order to fire. Then desperately the British strove to knock down the palisade and attack their enemy with the bayonet, but the structure was too strong, and the gallant force melted away under the withering fire kept up by the great force of French infantry which occupied ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... but measured movements when he was thus engaged became irregular and nervous; and he frequently cast glances towards the entrance, as if expecting the arrival of some one; and twice in the midst of withering cross-examinations, stopped short at the sight of individuals elbowing their way through the crowd; gazing upon them enquiringly and with an air of expectation, until, passing, they became embedded in the serried mass of spectators; when, with a look ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... but ripens slowly To the full goldenness of fruitful prime, Enduring with a firmness that defies 50 All shallow tricks of circumstance and time, By a sure insight knowing where to cling, And where it clingeth never withering;— These are Irene's dowry, which no fate Can shake from their ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... were no more to him than that there was no hope left in her life. For Keith might ply from port to port, seeing in her only one girl for his amusement; but he had spoilt her for another man. No other man could escape the withering comparison with Keith. To Jenny he was a king among men, incomparable; and if he did not love her, then the proud Jenny Blanchard, who unhesitatingly saw life and character with an immovable reserve, was the merest trivial legend of Kennington Park. She was like every other ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... in the world not so much by doing services as receiving them. You take a withering twig and put it in the ground, and then you water it because you ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... opening year, fresh with the dew of heaven and the blush of innocence, coming up in this wild garden of a world, what would the gardener do without you? Where would all beauty and sweetness be found among the thorny bushes and the withering old shrubs and the rotting weeds, were it not for you? Maidens with clean hands and pure hearts, in whose touch there is something that heals the ills and soothes the pains of mortality, roses whose petals are yet unspotted by dust and rain, and whose divine perfume the hot south wind has ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... been fully portrayed. No pencil is black enough to paint the picture and do it full justice. No tongue is eloquent enough to tell the sad, sad story in all its details. It has so spread itself as to compel us to style it a wide and verily a withering curse. It is the parent of many physical disorders, that begin with bleared eyes, a blistered tongue, general derangement of the stomach, paralysis of the nerves, and hardening of the liver; and to so great an extent it poisons the blood as to cause coagulation of the brain. All of which, ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... the pleasant month of June, sometime, maybe six or eight days, after the birth-day of our good old King George the Third—for I recollect the withering branches of lily-oak and flowers still sticking up behind the signs, and over the lampposts,—that my respected acquaintance and customer, Peter Farrel the baker, to whom I have made many a good suit of pepper-and-salt ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... of Arbaces ran over the writing; the Neapolitan did not dare to gaze upon him: she did not see the deadly paleness that came over his countenance—she marked not his withering frown, nor the quivering of his lip, nor the convulsions that heaved his breast. He read it to the end, and then, as the letter fell from his hand, he said, in a voice of ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... time rolled on, and little Louis was born. This might have been a blessing, but while family cares and expenses were growing upon them, Panpan's strength and energies were withering away. He suffered little pain, but what there was seemed to spring from the old wound; and there were whole days when he lay a mere wreck, without the power or will to move; and when his feeble breath seemed passing away for ever. Happily, these relapses occurred ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... fellow who first said that. Maybe I wouldn't enlighten him, and tell him what a hypocrite he was. Whoever said it, it is a decided untruth, and I know I wish to goodness I was grown up, because then," with withering emphasis, "I should not ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... completely hide the actual feelings of the men engaged that the inexperienced may be pardoned the thought, that, having donned the insignia of a soldier, a man instantly becomes filled with martial ardor, and eager to face the most withering fire of musketry or artillery. But the reality is far different; very few men are so constituted, or are so reckless of their lives, that they can listen to the unearthly screech of the shell or the crash of solid shot, mingled ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... about him with a withering smile; and, holding out his right hand at arm's length (as the manner of all Slackbridges is), to still the thundering sea, waited until there ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... rose distilled Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn, Grows, lives, and dies, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... in the inadvertence of my bewildered mind, to address you once more by the title of husband; but that holy name must hereafter perish on my lips, and be banished like a withering curse from my heart. Yet it was that alone which, holding a sacred charter over my bosom, bound me to the cheerful endurance of many a bitter hour, ere I knew that through him who bore it, a descendant of the house of Percy would be banded as an adulteress; and her child as the nameless ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... one moment came under a particularly withering fire. For a moment—not more—it wavered. Its most gallant commanding officer, Lieut. Col. Burchill, carrying, after an old fashion, a light cane, coolly and cheerfully rallied his men and, at the very moment when his example ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... a general laugh. The boatswain's tone was well-known. It was wonderful what withering contempt he could throw into it. The men dreaded it more than they did even his rattan, and that, in his hand, was a somewhat formidable weapon. I remembered his promise when Spellman was quizzing me, on our return from capturing the Chevrette, and I found that he had ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... you. Alas! poor girl—she cannot hear the words which fall from my lips! neither shall you communicate their import to her by writing, nor by the language of the fingers. And remember that while I bestow upon you my blessing—my dying blessing—may that blessing become a withering curse—the curse of hell upon you—if in any way you violate one tittle of the injunctions which I have ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... suppose he'll go peaching to his big brother. Never mind, we'll pay you out, see if we don't! Go and kiss your mammy, and tell your big brother what they did to little duckie Steevie, did they then? they shouldn't! Give him a suck of his bottle! oh, my!" and he finished up with a most withering laugh. Then, suddenly remembering his errand, he walked up to the table, and said, "I ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... began to read it with the very same expression of indignant scorn, which, upon the majestic features of Pott, had paralysed his energies an hour before. The man observed too, that, whereas Mr. Pott's scorn had been roused by a newspaper headed the Eatanswill INDEPENDENT, this gentleman's withering contempt was awakened by a ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... you'd laugh," exclaimed Mrs. Beaseley, in withering scorn, inside the vehicle, "when I've smashed my best bonnet, and shook that bird to death—like enough he'll die—and tromped all up the front breadth to my dress." But as there was no one to hear her, and Mr. Tisbett still laughed on, seeming unable to stop himself, the stage-coach ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... a reason for her husband's departure occurred to her appalled mind, and a loss of health became quickly apparent. She dwindled thin in the face, and the veins in her temples could all be distinctly traced. An inner fire seemed to be withering her away. Her rings fell off her fingers, and her arms hung like the flails of the threshers, though they had till lately been so round and so elastic. She wrote to her husband repeatedly, begging him to return to her; but he, being in extreme and wretched doubt, moreover, knowing nothing ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... as well take a phonograph with you as Nellie," he said, casting a look of withering scorn on that delinquent. "She talked the whole time, and didn't give me a ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... holding up Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton as dangerous examples of freedom for women. The Rev. A. D. Mayo, Unitarian clergyman of Albany, heretofore Susan's loyal champion, now made a point of reproving her. "You are not married," he declared with withering scorn. "You have no business to be discussing marriage." To this she retorted, "Well, Mr. Mayo, you are not a slave. Suppose you quit lecturing ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... in yer whole bones while ye hev got 'em," Tad returned, with withering sarcasm. "When dad kems home, some of 'em 'll git bruk, sure. Warn't ye tole not ter leave him fur nuthin', ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... desirable. Can there be any doubt that whatever may be lost, cannot be properly classed in the number of those things which complete a happy life? for of all that constitutes a happy life, nothing will admit of withering, or growing old, or wearing out, or decaying; for whoever is apprehensive of any loss of these things cannot be happy; the happy man should be safe, well fenced, well fortified, out of the reach of all annoyance, not like a man under trifling apprehensions, but free from all such. As ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... get as much as your father. When do you expect to pay the rest, I'd like to know? I s'pose you expect me to go on trustin', and mebbe six months from now you'll pay me another eight dollars," said the storekeeper, with withering sarcasm. ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... that he knew; sometimes it looks, as it looked to-night, interminable, a way leading right into the heart of the red sundown; sometimes, again, it shrinks together, as if for warmth, on one of the withering, clear east-windy days, until it seems to lie ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... syllable of that fervent prayer, reef, and come home to her? Then I need not have written this history, and all would have been well in Dreamland. But he didn't. He heard nothing but the sibilant waters as they rushed under his keel: he thought of nothing but the rose that was withering in the secret locker of his cabin, and of the wound in his heart that was gaping and as fresh as ever. So the night-winds hurried him onward, and the darkness absorbed the outlines ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... take a boat to St. Cloud or go to the station and catch a train for Versailles. As she loafed along, an ogling old man joined her and with voluble protestations assured her of his admiration of her beauty. Judy gave him a withering glance and, quickening her pace, soon ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... was suddenly discovered to be a time-server, a spy, a concealed aristocrat. Such paltry talent as I had, I had prostituted for the sake of fame. I had deserted The People's Cause for filthy lucre—an allurement which Mr. O'Flynn had always treated with withering scorn—in print. Nay, more, I would write, and notoriously did write, in any paper, Whig, Tory, or Radical, where I could earn a shilling by an enormous gooseberry, or a scrap of private slander. And the working men were solemnly ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... grew paler and thinner continually, that the brown eyes greatened in the dark sockets, and that the fragile limbs weakened and sharpened themselves more and more, as though some terrible blight, like the curse of an old enchantment or of an evil eye, hung over the sweet girl, withering and poisoning all the life and the youth in her veins. She lay on a sofa one afternoon, leaning her golden head upon one of her pale wan hands, and gazing dreamily through the open casement into the depths of the broad April sky, over whose clear ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... The withering look of scorn that Perez bent upon him caused him to hesitate and stop. Captain Perez ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... respecting them. Some, among whom are Dr. Priestly and Mr. Jessop, upon practical and scientific observations, attributed them to lightning, but their experiments did not prove altogether satisfactory. Drs. Wollaston, Withering, and others, who had duly examined these spots, ascribed them to the growth of fungi, which opinion seems undoubtedly the best.—The rings vary in size and shape, some having seven yards of bare, with a patch of green grass a foot broad ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... fondly indulging a tender passion which preyed upon his peace, and deeply disturbed his repose. He looked anxiously to the hour when Melissa was to make her decision. He wished, yet dreaded the event. In that he foresaw, or thought he foresaw, a withering blight to his budding hopes, and a final consummation to his foreboding fears. He had pressed Melissa, perhaps too urgently, to a declaration.—Had her predilection been in his favour, would she have hesitated to avow it? Her parents had advised her to relinquish, and had permitted her to retain ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... their surly hymn. But, oh, the little land of peace and love That those night-loving wings had poised above,— Where was it gone? Lost, lost forevermore! Only a cottage, dull and gray, In the cold light of dawn, With iron bars across the door: Only a garden where the withering heads Of flowers, presaging decay, Hung over barren beds: Only a desolate field that lay Untilled beneath the desolate day,— Where Eden seemed to bloom I found but these! So, wondering, I passed along my way, With anger in my heart, too deep for words, Against that grove ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... These, he remembered, could lie hundreds of feet deep in water, and still retain sufficient heat to drive the water away in vapor; and as a result of this thought the haunted room was heated by steam to a withering degree, and the heir for six months attended daily the Turkish baths, so that when Christmas Eve came he could himself withstand the awful ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... the pale purple tint of his sullen, morose, and bloated features. The cardinal took no notice of the clamour around him, but now and then, when an expression of dislike was uttered against him, for he had already begun to be unpopular with the people, he would raise his eyes and direct a withering glance at the hardy speaker. But these expressions were few, for, though tottering, Wolsey was yet too formidable to be insulted with impunity. On either side of him were two mounted attend ants, each caring a gilt poleaxe, who, if he had given the word, ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... all the time he could honestly spare from his ordinary work to soothe and enlighten the suffering youth. But it became clearer every week that nothing would avail to entice the torn roots of his being to clasp again the soil of the world: he was withering away out of it. Ere long symptoms appeared which no one could well mistake, and Lingard himself knew that he was dying. Wingfold had dreaded that his discovery of the fact might reveal that he had imagined some ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... armistice, although the French Government had given him no authority to take so much power into his own hands. He then drove back the Austrians and defeated them in the battle of Lodi, where he carried a standard with his own hands and rallied his troops in the face of a withering fire. ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... met too many of her kind—in Rome, in Florence, in Dresden—to feel any wish for a more intimate relationship. She was fond of Miss Robinson, but she prayed that fate did not reserve for her a withering to the like brisk, colourless spinsterhood. This hope, the necessity for such hope, was the final depth of her gloomy mood, and she found herself looking at something very dark as she stood holding Miss Robinson's expensive roses. ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... as if the knowledge that an enemy was in Russia, aroused the Russians from a torpor. Pamphlets and other publications denouncing the government in withering terms, seemed to spring up from the pavement. "Arise, Oh Russia!" says one unknown writer, "Devoured (p. 216) by enemies, ruined by slavery, shamefully oppressed by the stupidity of tchinovnik and spies, awaken from ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... lawns and dreary wastes 200 Retiring Autumn flings her howling blasts, Bends in tumultuous waves the struggling woods, And showers their leafy honours on the floods, In withering heaps collects the flowery spoil, And each chill insect sinks beneath the soil; 205 Quick flies fair TULIPA the loud alarms, And folds her infant closer in her arms; In some lone cave, secure pavilion, lies, And waits the courtship ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... for else this same vilest of travesties, Mr. Nahum's Lear, would consecrate his name to everlasting scorn. For himself, he belonged to the age of Dryden rather than of Pope: he "flourished," if we can use such a phrase of one who was always withering, about the era of the Revolution; and his Lear, we believe, was arranged in the year 1682. But the family to which he belongs is abundantly recorded in the Dunciad, and his own name will be found amongst its ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... in black array Veiling her Rizpah-misery, to the gate Comes, and with gold and moving speech sedate Buys down the thing aloft, and bears away Snatch'd from the withering wind and ravens' prey: And as a mother's eyes, joy-soften'd, shed Tears o'er her young child's head, Golden and sweet, from evil saved; so she O'er this, sad-smilingly, Mangled and gray, unwarm'd by human breath, Clasping death's relic ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... self-loathing. She trusted him. She looked to him for protection. She leaned upon his strength. She needed him. He could not—it almost seemed as if in common chivalry he could not—reveal to her the contemptible weakness which lay like a withering blight upon his whole nature. To own himself the slave of a married woman, and that woman her closest friend, would be to throw her utterly upon her own resources at a time when she most needed the support and guidance of a helping hand. Moreover, the episode was over; so at least both ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... for buttons and patches on my tattered uniform, for steering me clear of the camp followers; but more than all for the cheery words of solace for those 'gone West,' for the blessed face of a woman from the homeland in the midst of withering blight and desolation—for these I am ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... the sentence. I can imagine that there is something rich and voluptuous and sating about amber, its color, and its lustre, and its scent; but for others, not for me. Yea, you have beauty, after all," turning suddenly, and withering me with his eye,—"beauty, after all, as you didn't say just now.—Mr. Willoughby is in the garden. I must go before he comes in, or he'll make me stay. There are some to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... of the majestic empire of the Romans. There can be no question that civilization achieved most splendid triumphs, even under the influence of pagan institutions. But it was not paganism which achieved these victories; it was the will and the reason of a noble race, in spite of its withering effects. It was the proud reason of man which soared to such lofty heights, and attempted to secure happiness and prosperity. These great ends were measurably attained, and a self-sufficient philosopher might have pointed to these victories ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... relatives and the goodness of neighbours as kind as ever breathed, our furniture was our own again, but what were we to do for a living? Our crops were withering in the fields for want of rain, and we had but five cows—not an over-bright outlook. As I was getting to bed one night my mother came into my room and said seriously, "Sybylla, I want to ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... If he could only go far enough out there, he felt as if his eyesight would be purged and clarified, as if his hearing would grow more delicate, and his very breath would come and go with luxury. He was transplanted and withering where he was; he lay in a strange country and was sick for home. Bit by bit, he pieced together broken notions of the world below: of the river, ever moving and growing until it sailed forth into the majestic ocean; of the cities, full of brisk and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Look a here, Mary, what ails you, anyway? You're getting so lately you turn them tears on every night. Be a good fellow, and don't make a lot of gents think we're running a morgue. You've blowed half your make-up as it is." Mary, alias Alice, gave the head waiter one withering look, and left the place. We started to move on, but found it was impossible to bring old K. C. back. We pounded him and yelled at him for ten minutes, but there wasn't a leaf stirring, except once, when he came to long enough to remark that he ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... something was wrong, now looked at her more closely, after which, with a withering frown, ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... her in withering scorn. "Need or not," said she, "the one that owns this back breadth is going to have it. I rather think she ain't going to be laid away without a back breadth ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... has no quarrel with knowledge or speculation: perhaps it excludes materialists, because they have no common ground with religion, but it tolerates even the Sankhya philosophy which has nothing to say about God or worship. It is truly dynamic and in the past whenever it has seemed in danger of withering it has never failed to bud with new life and ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... they used to be; still, they are not much concerned about it. They are resting very easy. Such satisfaction is a curse. What such folks need is a good case of dissatisfaction; for that is the only thing that will keep them from drying up and withering away. I know of people who once had a glorious experience but who for years have been so satisfied with themselves that they have not progressed an inch. Instead, they have gone backwards, with the result that today they are cold and formal. They are ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... Such moments—come they but once in a lifetime, to one among a hundred—are God's reiterate answers to the problem of creation. The man or woman who has passed that way will never ask the soul's most withering question: To what end was I born? 'The rest may reason and welcome.' They are of the few ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... under this indifferent or hostile scrutiny, he thought how much easier it would be to face a rain of bullets than this withering glare of criticism. A sudden longing to escape, to be done with it all, came over him with sickening force. His nerves ached with the physical strain of holding himself upright on his horse, of preserving the statuesque erectness proper to the occasion. He felt ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... one answer to a supreme shock, there is a sudden end of the plant's power to give any response. This supreme shock is the shock of death. Even in this crisis, there is no immediate change in the placid appearance of the plant. Drooping and withering are events that occur long after death itself. How does the plant then, give this last answer? In man, at the critical moment, a spasm passes through the whole body, and similarly in the plant, I find ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... then?' he asked lightly. 'It ruins a complexion no less than before. Or does a complexion cease to count? Look!' He leaned forward. A pink carnation was in a glass in front of him, already withering from the heat. He touched the faded tips of the petals. 'That is the ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... Hamilton!" while a suspicion of the truth flashed like lightning upon her. The next moment he stood before them, Uncle Nat, his glittering black eyes fixed upon Eugenia, who quailed beneath that withering glance. ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... but our vanishing helped. The tree, where there had been no tree before—that helped. The insane and uncanny variety of fruits—the sudden withering—all these things are helps. Let him think as he may, reason as he may, one thing is certain, he will water the tree. But between this and night he will begin his changed career with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Families meet as in England. Two per cent. of the soldiers get a fortnight's leave of absence and a free pass; and there is joy in peasant homes over peasant charcoal pans. The dusky shades of evening are stealing over olive grove and withering vineyard, and every house lights up its tiny oil lamp, and every image of the Virgin is illuminated with a taper. In Eija, near Cordova, an image or portrait of the Virgin and the Babe new-born, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... on the floor of the United States Senate, in the course of which he paid the following just compliment to Mr. Fillmore's integrity, and to his efficiency in "pacifying the country," while he was President. We quote from the Congressional Globe, and hold it up as a withering rebuke to those "lesser lights" of Democracy, who are now defaming this pure and ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... the flash of the guns and the light of the burning rafts, the Brooklyn, just clearing a thirteen-foot shoal, found herself close under St. Philip, from whose exposed barbette guns the gunners fled at her withering fire, as they had ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... not have been more astonished. Not one, but twenty copies of the Athenaeum in a house where never a book was read. I looked at the dates—three-and-thirty years ago. At that moment she was gathering some withering apples from the floor. ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... other English stories, written in a more amiable mood, he applied it in a more amiable manner; but he could apply it to an American too, when he was writing in that mood and manner. We can see it in the witty and withering criticism delivered by the Yankee traveller in the musty refreshment room of Mugby Junction; a genuine example of a genuinely American fun and freedom satirising a genuinely British stuffiness and snobbery. ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... Nikta's mother from Zoevo, my dearie. Good afternoon to you. He's withering, withering away, poor dear—your brother, I mean. He came out himself. "Send for my sister," he said, "because," said he ... Dear me, why, I do ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... rampart; others leapt the horses into it, and standing up in their saddles, cut at the spearmen with their swords, and fired their pistols among them. Many, again, tried to leap their horses over ditch and rampart, but the pikemen stood firm, while at short intervals withering volleys tore into ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... time!" the Hare answered with withering scorn. "What sort of a time would you have had if some one had shot you all over the back and you must creep away to die of pain and starvation? How would you have enjoyed it if, from day to day, you had been forced to live in terror of cunning monsters, ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... vehemence, "but you can't stop it; there's water below here, and you can't help its bending, if you break your back trying to hold it." So he gave me the twig, and awaited, with a smile which was meant to express withering sarcasm, the discomfiture of the supposed scoffer. But when I proceeded to walk four or five times across the mysterious place, the rod pointing steadfastly toward the zenith all the while, our friend became grave and began to philosophize. ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... extravagant accelerator of waste the world has ever endured. His withering blight has fallen upon every living thing within his reach, himself not excepted; and his besom of destruction in the uncontrolled hands of a generation has swept into the sea soil fertility which only centuries of life could accumulate, and yet this fertility is the substratum of all that ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... nothing about dynamite. Dynamic was the word I used," replied Professor Zepplin, casting a withering glance at ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... and pressed it to his lips, without articulating a single syllable. Slowly she moved her face, so that their eyes encountered in one long mournful look. Ten years of continued suffering could not have exacted a heavier tribute from Grace Huntley's beauty. No language can express the withering effects of the few hours' agony. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... overshadowed with care. We need scarcely say, that there was a great deal of contrast in the gaze she received from Phil and our friend Solomon. That of Phil was the gross, impudent stare of a libertine and fool—a stare, which, in the eye of a virtuous woman, soon receives its own withering rebuke of scorn and indignation. That of Solomon, on the other hand, was a look in which there lurked a vast deal of cunning, regulated and sharpened by experience, and disguised by hypocrisy into something that absolutely resembled the open, ardent admiration of a child, or of some ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the lady, casting upon her brother a withering glance, "I never mean to marry a widower—an uncle—who brings with him nephews so like himself." Miss Dorothy swept from the room, leaving her brother ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... with the glossy occupant of the hearth-rug. George Eliot, as a true artist, sees what is faulty in the catastrophe, but she will not unsex her creation. Another of her characters, Rosamond, she pursues with a minute, withering, one would say vindictive, contempt. It is the beautiful, distinguished young creature who marries Lydgate on account of his high connections, and who trains him to do up her plaits of hair for her, and allows him to talk the "little language" of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... consequent hilarity and loud and long applause, perhaps, that the Professor was relieved from the explanation of this rather astounding phenomenon of the idealistic workings of a purely practical brain—or, as my impious friend scoffed the incongruity later, in a particularly withering allusion, as the "blank- blanked fallacy, don't you know, of staying the hunger of a howling mob by feeding 'em ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... attack upon the electrical ships stationed round the building. But fortunately they had none of their larger engines at hand, and with their hand arms alone they had not been able to stand up against the disintegrators. They were blown away before the withering fire of the ships by the hundreds until, fleeing from destruction, they rushed madly, driving their unarmed companions before them into the seething waters of ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... quite still. Perhaps at that moment of detachment he realized more keenly than ever the withering nature of this battle through which he had passed. Indeed, he felt older. Those days at Enton lay very far back, yet the girl by his side made him feel as though they had been but yesterday. He glanced at her covertly. Gracious, fresh, and as beautiful as the spring ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... old influences, it is true, still survive, and even appear to be supreme. We have had ample evidence to-night of their apparent vitality. But underneath them is growing up the sturdy plant of science. Already it has dislodged their roots; and though they still seem to bear flower, the flower is withering before our eyes. In its place, before long, will appear the new and splendid blossom whose appearance ends and begins an epoch of evolution. That is a consummation nothing can delay. We need not fret or hurry. We have only to work on silently at the foundations. ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... charge at the last minute by the cuirassiers of the Emperor Francis' guard almost completed the annihilation of the first battalion of the regiment. The survivors sought to form a square, under a withering gun fire, to meet the uplifted sabers of the heavy cavalry. There were not enough of them left. They were ridden down. Two hundred and fifty of the four hundred who went into that fight lay dead on that field. Of the survivors scarce a handful got across the river. Some ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... yet how we waste our short opportunities for enjoyment! Soon youth will have slipped away, and we shall be too old for love. Roses fade fastest, Arthur, when the sun is bright; in the evening when they have fallen, and the ground is red with withering petals, do you not think we shall wish that we ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... been a joyous household. I looked for my old sweetheart's home. It was there, but strangers lived in it. A servant I spoke to on her way to the post told me they had been moved to Chislehurst some time. The last ditch! In a way I felt it, this crumbling and withering of the old order, the order of which my parents had vainly tried to become companions. For it was typical of England. I felt it most when I walked out on the Great North Road through Barnet and saw the huge notice-boards up ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... everlasting spring abides, And never withering flowers: Death like a narrow sea divides This heavenly land ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... have chosen. And yet it is not too late. Repent and cast these men in prison and it may not be too late. The gods have never wept. And yet when they think upon damnation and the dooms that are withering a myriad bones, then almost, were they not divine, they could weep. Be quick. Repent of ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... break in a long series of delightfully cool, transparent days, characteristic of Labrador during the month of September, when Nature pauses to take breath and assemble her forces preparatory to casting upon the land the smothering snows and withering ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... herself away on a poor man, it was surely no one else's business to say a dissenting word. Percival might go home and lecture his own wife if he liked. 'It is a pity you and Gage are so worldly,' she said, in what was meant to be a withering tone. Audrey had never been so near ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... with so many circumstances as yours, to be impatient, to be uncomfortable would be to dispute with God. Though an only son be inestimable, yet it is like Jonah's sin, to be angry at God for the withering of his shadow. Zipporah, though the delay had almost cost her husband his life, yet, when he did but circumcise her son, in a womanish peevishness reproached Moses as a bloody husband. But if God take the ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... long the gale had blown he could not tell, Only the world had changed, his life had died. A moment now was everlasting hell. Nature an onslaught from the weather side, A withering rush of death, a frost that cried, Shrieked, till he withered at the heart; a hail Plastered his oilskins with ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... path between them—a Spartan business, for it reaped Imperialists among Republicans. However, a second and third blast were better gauged, and these carpeted the new alley-way with Republican bodies. Also, the Imperialists were re-forming, and under a withering fire the little band of victors had to ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... poor-houses, at our county jails, or at the state penitentiary. These debasing and corrupting appendages of civilization spent not all their influence upon the white man; and this is what gave pungency to the withering satire of the chief. They were at once working the ruin of the red man and of his ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... of colours, perfumes, velvety feeling of the corolla, and the number of leaflets in it are next discovered and described by the pupils. Lastly, in a withering flower they discover the seed cases and ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... withstood the fiercest attacks of power, the most valuable truths, the most generous sentiments, the noblest and most graceful images, the purest reputations, the most august institutions, began to look mean and loathsome as soon as that withering smile was turned upon them. To every opponent, however strong in his cause and his talents, in his station and his character, who ventured to encounter the great scoffer, might be addressed the caution which was given of old to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in her heart forgiving him for all he had made her suffer. At such times, John would resolve never again to treat her unkindly, but alas! his resolutions were too easily broken. Had he married Nellie, a more faithful, affectionate husband there could not have been. But now it was different. A withering blight had fallen upon his earthly prospects, and forgetting that he alone was to blame, he unjustly laid the fault upon his innocent wife, who, as far as she was able, loved him as deeply as Nellie ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... achievements of immortal fame He purposes, and he shall answer—None. His warfare is within. There unfatigued His fervent spirit labours. There he fights, And there obtains fresh triumphs o'er himself, And never-withering wreaths, compared with which The laurels that a Caesar reaps are weeds. Perhaps the self-approving haughty world, That, as she sweeps him with her whistling silks, Scarce deigns to notice him, or if she see, Deems him a cipher in the works ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... of the green taxi, saw that. And he was so fearful lest the driver of the red omnibus should lose one withering participle of the apostrophe he had provoked, that he could not be bothered with the exigencies of traffic and the Rule ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... day the sun, with a lurid glare spread far and wide over the cloudless sky, rises above the arid plains, drawing up every particle of moisture, and withering with the intense heat of his rays every blade of grass and green leaf, till it seems as if the whole region were doomed to eternal desolation. At length, however, a wonderful change takes place over the hitherto arid waste. A ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... before it, and being inevitably overtaken, she ran at once to the river and galloped madly down the shallow margin. Before the flames were actually upon her, she was beyond the zone of their fury. But she felt the withering blast of them, and their appalling roar was in her ears. With starting eyes and wide, palpitating nostrils, she ran on and on, and stopped only when she sank exhausted in a rude cove. There she lay with panting sides and watched far behind her the wide red arc of ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... lawyer Desroches also considered asking the hand of Malvina, but he too gave up the idea. The young girl was counseled by Eugene de Rastignac, who took it upon himself to see that she got married. Nevertheless, she ended by being an old maid, withering day by day, giving piano lessons, living rather meagrely with her mother in a modest flat on the third floor, in the rue du Mont-Thabor. [The ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... wish that we were sitting down in some safe place, instead of travelling on horseback over this withering tract, and that I had the map before me to ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... longer a child," said Lilian, "Her father writes that he hardly dares call her the same name, she is so changed. While I have been withering up in the North, two equatorial years down here have wrought upon her as they do upon the flowers. He says no Spanish woman rivals her. Well, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... her little bow of blue ribbon. She had hardly dared to hope for success, as Catherine had been rather withering over her Catechism, and had warned her that she would probably be disqualified. It was pleasant to meet with encouragement, and especially to be commended before the whole school. She had never dreamt ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... said Iff with a withering glance. "The door to Miss Landis' suite opens directly opposite the head of the main companionway, which is in constant use—people going up and down all the time. Can you see anybody, however expert, picking a lock with ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... beginning to feel tired, she suggested to Bell that she might start a dance if she had a mind to, either in the kitchen or parlor, it did not matter where, and "Ephraim would not care an atom," a remark which brought from Mrs. Deacon Bannister a most withering look of reproach, and slightly endangered Aunt Betsy's standing in the church. Perhaps Bell Cameron suspected as much, for she replied that they were having a splendid time as it was, and as Dr. Grant did not dance, they might as well dispense with it altogether. And so it happened ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... stand the withering fire that was poured in on them and they wheeled their plunging horses in the swirling stream and made for the opposite shore ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... portion of the army, and had not actively participated in the conflict. He therefore brought fresh troops to the assault. McClernand was also ordered to reform his shattered ranks and advance. The combined forces charged with splendid valor up the rocky steeps, in the blaze of a withering fire poured down upon them from the fort. They did not falter for a single instant, but reaching the summit, swept over and into the Confederate works with ringing cheers. On the next morning a white flag was seen flying from ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... lesson admirably," said the Baroness with withering scorn. "She told me the same story almost ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the tide of battle, though brief, transferred the brunt of conflict to another quarter. A withering rain of spears struck the enemy on the flank and rear, and down from the opposite hilltop rushed the mob that had formed the other boulder squad at the beginning of the fight, but who had done nothing after the first charge of the Oolooz men up the hill. They threw themselves ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... pulling at it, smoked on alone in the dusk. In the nibbling, iterative way of the old, he started a kind of reflection; but it was as if a harmattan had blown along the usual courses of his thought, drying up his little brooklet of recollection and withering the old aquatic star-flowers that grew along its banks. His mind, in its meandering among old images, groped, paused, fell pensive. His head sank lower between his shoulders, and the shoulders eased back against the wall ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... even more insupportable. There was a certain moisture and softness about the high temperature at Colombo, which we had experienced a month before; while here there was a dry, burning directness of the sun's power which was absolutely withering. As we passed over the road, swayed hither and thither upon the backs of the huge animals, it was amusing to watch the gambols of the wild monkeys in the trees, and to observe the flocks of wild peacocks in the open fields, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... on their returnless flight since that night of withering sorrow. Kenneth Gordon still lived, a sad and broken-spirited man; but time, that great tamer of the human heart, which dulls the arrows of affliction, and softens the bright tints of joy down to a sober hue, had shed its healing influence even over his wounded heart. Mary Gordon ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... too evident to us that his body was withering, but not so his spirit—that was expanding more and more, ripening for heaven. It seemed to burn with a deep and unextinguishable love for the conversion of all the islanders among whom he had so ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... offered no further reply than a withering rebuke of the waiter, a genteel abstraction, and a lofty change of subject. He pressed upon them two tickets for the performance, of which he seemed to have a number neatly clasped in an india-rubber band, ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... conceived of malignant blandishment. It was the appalling beauty of the King of Hell. The frightful discord vibrated through my whole frame, and I turned for relief to the figure below.... But I had turned from the first, only to witness in the second object, its withering fascination. I beheld the mortal conflict between the conscience and the will—the visible struggle of a soul ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... suggested, that he had small expectation of finding fruit, and that even before he reached the tree with its early leaves he felt a likeness between it and the nation of hypocrites whose fate was so clear in his mind. The withering of the fig-tree set his disciples thinking; and Jesus showed that it was an object lesson, promising that the disciples, by the exercise of but a little faith, could do more, even remove mountains,—such mountains ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... that the teachings of the bible have no other foundations to stand upon. Well the multitude would not believe him then as you and others will not now. See what confusion and shame they suffered and bore in withering silence from his simple direction about enforcing the old law for the violation of the seventh commandment. Here she is master, "Now Moses in the law, (not God's code of laws,) commanded that such should be stoned. But what sayest thou?" "Let him that is without ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates
... indeed!" she muttered angrily as she hobbled away, not in the least heeding my last remark, which I believed to be withering. ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... its yellow sheaves; For thee alike the circling seasons flow Till the first blossoms heave the latest snow. In the stiff clod below the whirling drifts, In the loose soil the springing herbage lifts, In the hot dust beneath the parching weeds, Life's withering flower shall drop its shrivelled seeds; Its germ entranced in thy unbreathing sleep Till what thou ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... one important miracle, that of cursing and withering the fig tree. Some consider that a miraculous power was also used in the cleansing of the temple. The teachings may be grouped as follows: (a) The question about Christ's authority and his reply by question and the three parables of warning; (b) Three questions ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... high ideal of what is beautiful and noble in art, in life. I believe that you will never let despair get the upper hand of you. If it does you may as well die; yes, you may as well. And I entreat you not to lose your entire faith in humanity. There is nothing like that for withering up the very core of the heart. I tell you, humanity and nature have so much in common with each other that if you lose part of your pleasure in the latter; you will see less beauty in the trees, the flowers, ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... giddy height on a burning and tottering house, and is cheered enthusiastically by the crowd, that his courage is most severely tried. It is when he has to creep on hands and knees through dense smoke, and hold the branch in the face of withering heat, while beams are cracking over his head, and burning rubbish is dropping around, and threatening to overwhelm him—it is in such circumstances, when the public know nothing of what is going on, and when no eye sees him ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... on they ran, in their withering indictment. There could be no doubt that it was Alethia's cousin and prospective host to whom they were referring; the allusion to a Parliamentary candidature settled that. What could Robert Bludward have done, what manner of man could ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... pure heart there was an unclean cast and a withering effect prevalent throughout all the departments of this hall, and my heart burned as I continued observing how the agents of Satan plied their subtle influences so as to popularize this cosmopolitan resort. So effectually has Satan entrenched his views that some of the strong ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... retorted Byrd, favoring his questioner with a withering stare, "I am a Bohemian, and damnably sorry that I ever have to see ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... foes. Still they continued to assail us with their missiles, both from fire-arms and bows; and with remarkable courage they again rushed on to the assault. We let them approach until they were close up to the stockade, when we once more opened so withering a fire that few made the attempt to climb up, and those who did quickly dropped down, either with cloven heads or hands well-nigh chopped off. The whole force, apparently seeing that they had no chance of getting into the fort, ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... kind of summer we had in Naples in 1884. The newspapers of all lands teemed with the story of its horrors. The cholera walked abroad like a destroying demon; under its withering touch scores of people, young and old, dropped down in the streets to die. The fell disease, born of dirt and criminal neglect of sanitary precautions, gained on the city with awful rapidity, and worse even than the plague was the unreasoning but universal panic. The never-to-be-forgotten ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... gate's rusty latch. The grass was crushed enough to form a path to the front door, which stood open. She led the way into a large, low room off the little hall. The floor was bare. There was a large table in the centre, heaped with books, and some withering flowers stood in a glass. A couple of common chairs, a mattress, on which was thrown an antique curtain of faded blue as a drapery; on the white-washed wall, a tiny and coquetish slipper of yellowish silk, nailed through the sole. This was ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... been women who have crucified their very souls and the lineal ancestors of the present-day "antis" with withering scorn and criticism opposed every step. Yet some of those modern anti-suffragists possess a college degree, an opportunity which other women won for them in the face of universal ridicule; they own ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... the Sharpsburg road curves around the hill held by us so that for a little way it was parallel to our position. As the enemy came down the hill forming the other side of the gap, across the road and up again to our line, they were met by so withering a fire that they were checked quickly, and even drifted more to the right where their descent was continuous. Here Willcox's line volleyed into them a destructive fire, followed by a charge that swept them in confusion ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... peace and joyful love! And may the countenance of Heaven's King Beam on us when we leave behind Our bodies blind and withering. ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... without regard to abilities or fitness. There was not indeed the tyranny of Spain or Naples or Austria; but everything indicated a movement toward it. Those six years which comprised the reign of Charles X. were a period of reaction,—a return to the Middle Ages in both State and Church, a withering blast on all noble aspirations. Even the prime minister Villele, a legitimatist and an ultra-royalist, was too liberal for the king; and he was dismissed to make room for Martignac, and he again for Polignac, who had neither foresight nor prudence nor ability. The ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... there was a stone wall about five feet in height; beyond this was a broad, rolling field, and farther on, a barb-wire fence and a boggy stream which oozed its way down toward the Potomac. Far away across the valley the wooded hills were drying and withering and thinning, with splashes of yellow and red. A flock of birds speckled the fleecy October clouds, and a mild breeze ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... there is nothing more than negative difficulty to be feared, have you ever tried in thought to change places with such a girl? Have you ever considered how impossible it is for such a one to grow? The simple grace of continuance is in danger of withering when all help of every sort is absolutely cut off, and the soul is, to begin with, not deeply rooted in God. Plants, even when they have life, need water and sunshine and ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... summer wore away, and September came to produce a new aspect of beauty in the landscape, by tinging the fading flowers and withering leaves with various shades of brown and crimson, purple and orange. One day, early in the month, when Tom came with the carriage, she told him to drive to Magnolia Lawn. She had long been wishing to revisit the scene where she ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... some more fully than others in perhaps a hundred lines, some only in ten. Most of them are types of a class, a profession or a business, yet there is always a touch or two which isolates each of them so that they do not only represent a class but a personal character. He hated, like Morris, the withering of the individual, nor did he believe, nor any man who knows and feels mankind, that by that the world grew more and more. The poem is full of such individualities. It were well, as one example, to read the whole account ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
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