"Lessening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... A'ariz, three called majzuah, because each line is shortened by a Juz or foot, one called mashturah (halved), because the number of feet is reduced from four to two, and we may here notice that the former kind of lessening the number of feet is frequent with the hexametrical circles (B. C. D.), while the latter kind can naturally only occur in those circles whose couplet forms an octameter (A. E.). Besides being majzuah, the second 'Aruz is sahihah (perfect) consisting of the normal foot Mustaf'ilun. It has ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... each minute's need with the utmost of her strength she found the next minute's need less terrible. By allowing no one to suffer a shade more, or an instant longer, than she could help, she perceived a lessening of the strain all round. With the lessening of the strain it was easier to calm passions and disarm antipathies. If she could say nothing else for her substitute for love, she was obliged to admit that ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... water; so he put off his helm and drank of the stream and washed his face and his hands therein, and then did on his helm again and turned back again toward the wood, feeling very strong and merry; and he looked out seaward and saw the Ship of the Isle of Ransom lessening fast; for a little land wind had arisen and they had spread their sails to it; and he laid down on the grass till the four folk of the country came out of the wood again, after they had been gone somewhat less than an hour, but the Sea- eagle was not with them: and Hallblithe ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... accompanied them to the mortuary conducted the three straight back to his chief's office—the chief, noticing the effect of the visit on Celia, hastened to give her a chair at the side of his desk, and looked at her with a lessening of his official manner. He signed to the other two to sit down, and motioned the detective to remain. ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... left stationary. During the sinking of a continent and the probable generally accompanying changes of climate the effect would be little, except on the numerical proportions and in the extinction (from the lessening of rivers, the drying of marshes and the conversion of high-lands into low &c.) of some or of many of the species. As soon however as the continent became divided into many isolated portions or islands, preventing free immigration from one part to another, the effect of climatic ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... him pleasantly no one asked him to dine. Doubtless they were all engaged, these men who could afford to pay for their dinners, who did not have to hunt for invitations as a beggar rummages for a crust in an ash-barrel! But no—as Hollingsworth left the lessening circle about the table an admiring youth ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... drawing toward the region of doldrums, and the force of the trade-winds was lessening. I could see by the ripples that a counter-current had set in. This I estimated to be about sixteen miles a day. In the heart of the counter-stream the rate was more than that ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... wrote the letter which we give, to relieve Mr. Collins's mind as to his work. Happily he recovered sufficiently to make an end to his own story without any help; but the true friendship and kindness which suggested the offer were none the less appreciated, and may, very likely, by lessening his anxiety, have helped to restore his health. At the end of October in this year, Charles Dickens, accompanied by his daughter and sister-in-law, went to reside for a couple of months in Paris, taking an apartment ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... plainly indicates the propriety and necessity of lessening the quantity of food as the warm season approaches. Were this practised, the tone of the stomach and the vigor of the system would continue unimpaired, the "season complaints" would be avoided, and the "strengthening bitters" would not be ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... had fallen, and the lessening shouts of the pursuers, told them that they had won, ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... an architecture with which he was unacquainted, offered to his entranced vision its gorgeous ruins and deserted splendour; long streets of palaces, with their rich line of lessening pillars, here and there broken by some fallen shaft, vast courts surrounded by ornate and solemn temples, and luxurious baths adorned with rare mosaics, and yet bright with antique gilding; now ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... short flutter of each wing Half-spread, and stooping crown, She calls me; and with one glad spring I nestle in the down. Plunges the bark, then bounds aloft, With lessening dip and rise. Round curves her neck with motion soft— Sure those ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... frightened horse. He was struck on the forehead but fortunately the peak of his cap saved him. Still the effect was stunning, stupefying. A whistling in the air and another shell burst, throwing up a cloud of mud and dirt round him, thus lessening the danger ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... changes made in the Senate were, therefore, mainly in the direction of lessening the reductions made by the House. After the bill had passed the Senate, it was put into the hands of a conference committee, where further changes were made. At this stage of the proceedings, Wilson read to ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... sailed out of port, freighted with mother love and religious blessings. To anxious eyes that watched their departure, their white sails, lessening in the distance, wafted back messages of hope and assurance. At the dawn of another day the last speck had disappeared, and the blue waves of the Mediterranean rolled tranquilly, as if jealously guarding the ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... former time is the substitution of machines for the hands of man. It may indeed be questioned whether the increased strength over matter thus given to man compensates for the ill effects of forcing people to work in crowds; of destroying small and pampering large capitalists, of lessening the distribution of wealth even by the very ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... is Gopal himself. Scarcely any other figure in the compound impresses me in the same way as his. It is altogether Eastern in its simple dignity, and symbolically it is eloquent. The buffalo represents absolute milk and the lessening pyramid of brass lotas, from the great two-gallon vessel at the base to the 0.25-seer measure at the top, stand for successive degrees of dilution with that pure element which runs in the roadside ditches after rain. Thus his insignia interpret themselves to me. Gopal does not acknowledge my ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... the occult triad, Chance, Fate, and Destiny ruled; they only modified his orbit. But from the centre of things Something that ruled them was pulling him toward it, slowly, steadily, inexorably drawing him nearer, lessening the circumference of his path, attenuating it, circumscribing, limiting, controlling. And long since he had learned to name this thing, undismayed—this one thing remaining in the world in which his father's son might ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... before the enveloping progression of the invaders. Some were expecting another Sedan. Desnoyers was following the advance of the Germans, going daily to the Gare du Nord. Every twenty-four hours was lessening the radius of travel. Bulletins announcing that tickets would not be sold for the Northern districts served to indicate how these places were falling, one after the other, into the power of the invader. The shrinkage of national territory ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... rise on Their phantasmal mysteries. They grow to an horizon Where earth and heaven meet; And like a wing that dies on The vague twilight-verges, Many a sinking dream doth fleet Lessening down their secrecies. And, as dusk with day converges, Their orbs are troublously Over-gloomed and over-glowed with hope and fear of things ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... The policemen turn on their immense heels. The driver and conductor race towards the motor-bus. The bell rings, the motor-bus, quite empty, disappears snorting round the corner into Walham Green. The crowd is now lessening. But it separates with reluctance, many of its members continuing to stare with intense absorption at the place where the puppy lay or the place where the policemen stood. An appreciable interval elapses before the "street accident" has entirely ceased ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... 238; Tomes, pp. 284, 685). One observer says that the reaction near the lower incisors is "never acid." Hence (I conclude) the remarkable immunity of the lower incisors and canines from decay, an immunity which extends backwards in a lessening degree to the first and second bicuspids. The close packing of the lower incisors may assist by preventing the retention of decaying fragments of food. Sexual selection may promote caries by favouring white teeth, which are more prone to decay than yellow ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... of endurance and speed had not been misjudged, for they responded nobly when called upon for a further spurt. Now, he was greatly lessening the distance separating him from Whipple; who, in turn, seemed able to ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... testimony against alcohol, and also the one on "The Growth and Power of Appetite." They will see that it is impossible for a man to use alcoholic drinks regularly without laying the foundation for both physical and mental diseases, and, at the same time, lessening his power to make the best of himself in his life-work; while beyond this lies the awful risk of acquiring an appetite which may enslave, degrade and ruin him, body and soul, as it is degrading and ruining its tens ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... and Jude were back in the awful, quiet house. It was more awful now that Jude was there. For after the burial, and before the evening meal, he had been lessening his tension with some boon companions, down at the Black Cat, and Joyce had had the ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... virtuous where the many are vicious is to place goodness at a disadvantage. To teach the people patience and innocence in the midst of craft and cruelty, is to furnish the red-mouthed wolves with woolly, bleating lambs. Hence the grip of the churches on humanity has been steadily lessening during the past two hundred years. Men permanently love only those things that are beneficial to them. The churches must come to the rescue of the people or retire from the field. A babe in the claws of a tiger is not more helpless than a small virtuous ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... and the question is sometimes asked, May not adherence to this principle of helpfulness and service become mere sentimentalism? or still more, may it not be the means of lessening another's sense of self-dependence, and thus may it not at times do more harm than good? In reply let it be said: If the love which impels it be a selfish love, or a weak sentimental ism, or an effort at show, or devoid of ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... is such incidents as the above which knock all romance out of the smuggling incidents. An encounter with fisticuffs, a few hard blows, and an arrest after a smart chase or a daring artifice, whilst not lessening the guilt of smuggling, cannot take away our interest. Our sympathies all the time are with the Revenue men, because they have on their side right, and in the long-run right must eventually conquer might. But, as against this, the poorer ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... robs childbirth of its dangers to both mother and child, by preparing the system for delivery, thereby shortening labor, lessening pain and abbreviating the period of confinement. The Favorite Prescription also promotes the secretion of an abundance of nourishment for the child, if taken after confinement, besides building up the mother's strength and making her ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... human being, but it must be remembered that the education of his people is different from our own. The taking of Indian scalps for a long time has been authorized by the Mexican Government, as a means of lessening their savage enemies, and handsome premiums have been offered as an inducement to obtain them. In the case of this Mexican, there were extenuating circumstances which, if they did not warrant such a cruel act, yet they rendered him somewhat excusable. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... Yea, Yea: and on the other, No, No. And this sword is in the Royal Armoury at Madrid. That good sword Tizona is in length three quarters and a half, some little more, and three full fingers wide by the hilt, lessening down to the point; and in the hollow of the sword, by the hilt, is this writing in Roman letters, Ave Maria gratia plena, Dominus, and on the other side, in the same letters, I am Tizona, which was made in the era 1040, that is to say, in the year 1002. This good sword is an heir-loom ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... breathing hard, trying to get his breath back. The hail was still pelting down, showing no signs of lessening. About five feet away, one of the dark gaps in the cliff showed wide and menacing, but at least, Bart thought, the hail couldn't come in there. He stooped and got hold of Ringg again. A pain like fire went through the ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... answered Barbicane. "If I succeed in lessening the density of the atmosphere which the moon's light traverses, shall I not render ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... Mr. Vaughan's premature death has robbed us of a man who might have done brave work, by lessening, through his own learning, the intellectual gulf which now exists between English Churchmen and Dissenters. Dis aliter visum. But Mr. Vaughan's death does not, I think, render it necessary for me to alter any of the opinions expressed here; and least of all that in the last sentence, fulfilled ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... over and over the prospectus of the "Wedge of Gold" Mining Company. It was the lamp and he was the moth that was circling around it with constantly lessening circles. His father, to whom he had applied for information, told him that he believed the shares were going at one pound, but that they threatened to be higher within a week, and Jenvie, taking up the conversation, explained that, with a mill ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... grave!' said the sexton. 'What else! And which of our old folks, knowing all this, thought, as the spring subsided, of their own failing strength, and lessening life? ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... voices now rose into excited cries, and the watchman stationed atop the big culverin called out, "Sail ho!" With one accord we turned our faces downstream. There was the ship, undoubtedly. Moreover, a strong breeze had sprung up, blowing from the sea, filling her white sails, and rapidly lessening the distance between us. As yet we could only tell that she was indeed a large ship with ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... morning two of the Indians went out hunting, and on their return with a small deer, shared the flesh with their prisoners. After this they travelled on as before, and continued moving to the northward for two more days. Every mile they went they felt that their chance of escape was lessening, still, like brave lads, they did not give way to despair. They tried to learn from the Indians what had become of their party; they understood that they were on a war-path, but would ere long ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... though confused in his reckoning, Paul put up the helm, and the boat fell off nearly dead before the wind. Her motion being now comparatively rapid, a few minutes produced an obvious change in the direction of the different groups of clamorous Arabs, though they also brought a material lessening in the force of ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... the right hand without inconvenience. The pipette is first held in a vertical position long enough to allow any moisture outside the tube to run down, and then the liquid is allowed to run out to the level of the upper mark; this is easily effected by lessening the pressure. If the finger is wet, the flow will be jerky, and good work impossible. The pipette is next held over the vessel into which the 100 c.c. are to be put, and the liquid allowed to run out. When the bulb is nearly empty, the flow should be checked ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... say, however, even my most protesting friends, that I am not living in a perfectly proper neighborhood. The front of my house faces, beyond the discouraged little park, a strata of streets which unfold from lessening degrees of dreariness and dinginess to ever-increasing expensiveness and unashamed architectural extravaganzas, to the summit of residential striving, called, for impressiveness, the Avenue, but behind it is a section of the city of which I am as ignorant as if it were in the depths ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... numerous. A few men and women; the latter with white caps and large baskets, who had evidently been over to St. Malo for household purposes, and were returning with the resigned air—it is very pathetic—that country women are so fond of wearing when they have been spending money and lessening the weight of the stocking ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... along the glen. He kept aloof as well as he might (yet ever thinking her for song and charm the most interesting girl he knew), and the days passed; the springs would be but a breath of rich brown mould and birch, the summers but a flash of golden days growing briefer every year, the winters a lessening interlude of ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... movement of recent years has resulted in greater immediate benefit to the people of the country districts. Rural free delivery, taken in connection with the telephone, the bicycle, and the trolley, accomplishes much toward lessening the isolation of farm life and making it brighter and more attractive. In the immediate past the lack of just such facilities as these has driven many of the more active and restless young men and women from the farms to the cities; for they rebelled at loneliness and lack of mental ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the air of a social laborer who was worthy of his hire. As soon as he was seated he reached for Dixie's fan and began waving it to and fro with the conscientious regularity of a pendulum, thereby increasing his warmth and not lessening Dixie's. ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... impatient or negligent. Why should one lose patience with this boy's inability to learn, more than at the inanimate obstacle in one's pathway? How can one be unfaithful in one's effort, when it may be the means of lessening the number of times that that poor soul must pass through ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... will not, cannot detain you. Do you think I could suffer a connexion in which there is the smallest room for repentance? Do you think I would take the mean advantage of a transient passion, to load you with confusion? Do you think I could ever relish that happiness which was acquired by lessening yours? ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... indeed! The "few savings" alluded to amounted to some thousands, Jane Tillman knew. Had she not better burn her ships behind her, take the risks, and have faith in her own powers? She was getting along in ears, and her charms of person were lessening with every day that passed over her head. If the Deacon's queer ways grew too queer, she thought an appeal to the doctor and the minister might provide a way of escape and a neat little income to boot; so, on the whole, the marriage, though much against her natural inclinations, seemed ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... on, the distance between them lessening gradually. Masten could feel his pony failing. It tried bravely, but the times when it spurted grew less frequent; it made increasingly harder work of pulling its hoofs out of the deep sand; it staggered and lurched on ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... more talk, we bade the old couple good day, and went to peep at the cellar where they had crept stealthily away, for the sake of keeping their expenses close to their lessening income. The place was empty, and the door was open. It was a damp and cheerless little hole, down in the corner of a dirty court. We went next into Pole Street, and tried the door of a cottage where a widow woman lived with her children less than a week before. ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... coming out of the woods instead of going in. "Coming out" always made him a little unhappy, whether his expedition had been successful or not. He did not like the thought that it was all over; and he had the very bad habit, at such times, of looking ahead and computing the slowly lessening number of chances that were ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... DEFINITIONS.-l. A-bat'ing, lessening. List'less-ly, not paying attention, heedlessly. 3. Fal'low, a new clearing usually covered with brush heaps. 8. Con-cen-tra'tion, bringing into a small space, the essence. 9. Can'o-py, a covering or curtain. 10. Ef-fect', to bring to pass. 11. Suc-ceed'ed, followed. Ap-pall'ing, terrifying. ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... by its own mud wall. Mylapore was thus in effect the Black Town of San Thome; but in later days the two towns were combined. When the English came to Fort St. George, the power of the Portuguese was already waning; and the development of the influence of the English at Madras meant a further lessening of the influence of the Portuguese at San Thome; and it was a natural consequence that San Thome, including Mylapore, became a prey to successive assailants. Its first captor was the lord of the soil, the Mohammedan King of Golconda. Next, the French took it from ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... attempt to escape? He called to her in his misery, as if she could hear him out of the fathomless depths: "Aimata! Aimata!" The roar of the distant eruption answered him. The mounting fires lit the solitary sea far and near over the sinking island. The boat turned slowly and more slowly in the lessening vortex. Never again would those gentle eyes look at him with unutterable love! Never again would those fresh lips touch his lips with their fervent kiss! Alone, amid the savage forces of Nature in conflict, the miserable mortal lifted ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... is a human and a moral as well as an economic problem; that a fall in wages, an increase in hours, a deterioration of labor conditions mean wholesale moral as well as economic degeneration, and the needless sacrifice of human lives and human happiness, while a rise of wages, a lessening of hours, a bettering of conditions, mean an intellectual, moral and social uplift of millions of American men and women. There are employers to-day who, like the great coal operators, speak as though they were lords of these countless armies of Americans, who toil in factory, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... thing. It mortified her for any one to see her looking so shabby. Still she uttered no word of complaint, for fear of lessening the little amount in the pocketbook that her mother had said stood between them and ...
— The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows Johnston
... to be the outcome, Philip?" said Mr. Strawn. "I know that things are not as they should be, but how can there be a more even distribution of wealth without lessening the efficiency of the strong, able and energetic men and without making mendicants of the indolent and improvident? If we had pure socialism, we could never get the highest endeavor out of anyone, for it would seem not worth while to do more than the average. The race would ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... time, happened to meet with a book which in some degree counteracted the inflammatory effects of Random's conversation, and which had a happy tendency to sober his enthusiasm, without lessening his propensity to useful exertions: this book was the Life ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... to a subordinate near him, ''Ad he got a dog with him, or what? Funny thing: I could 'a' swore 'e wasn't alone. Well, whatever it was, they'll 'ave to see to it aboard. She's off now. Another week and we shall be gettin' the 'oliday customers.' In five minutes more there was nothing but the lessening lights of the boat, the long line of the Dover lamps, the night breeze, and ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... turn to the matter of lessening the burden of taxes. The amount of taxation now levied may be taken in round numbers at L17,000,000, nine millions of which are appropriated to the payment of interest on the national debt, and eight millions to the current expenses ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... gradual decrease of that middle order of men, who dread republicanism as much on the one hand, as they do despotism on the other. That middle order of men, who have hitherto preserved to this country all that is dear in life, I am sorry to say, is daily lessening; but while my feeble voice continues, it shall not be totally extinct; there shall be at least one who will, in this ferment of extremes, preserve the centre point." In adverting to the affairs of France, Fox said that he ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... would in time, if not in the very near future, supplant the use of animals as a motive power. The fact seems to be, however, that they merely augment man's resources and increase his opportunities without lessening his need for ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... blurred, unreal, heartshaking as evil visions of fever, the Master was remembering. Then came other happenings: a long drift with resistless currents, the strange phenomenon of the lessening stream that dwindled as thirsty sands absorbed it, and the ceasing ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... loud. With wishful eyes receding, They watch from their swift boat the lessening isle. The yards are squared. Again the good ship speeding Sees the chafed waves ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... all the tendencies of my mind and character, to that strong and serious school of artists of another age who, finding that art is long and life is short—ars longa et vita brevis—did not commit the mistake of wasting their time and lessening their powers of creation ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... back, dragging Ruth with him. Slowly the dust was settling, the darkness lessening. A faint, luminous glow overhead revealed the sun. Kay was aware that Cliff had swung the top, so that the psenium rays were being brought to bear upon the second mass of the monsters on ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... Revolution some very good ships have not been built at this town, and particularly the Melford or Milford galley, a ship of forty guns; as the Greyhound frigate, a man-of-war of thirty-six to forty guns, was at John's Ness. But what is this towards lessening the town of Ipswich, any more than it would be to say, they do not build men-of-war, or East India ships, or ships of five hundred ton burden at St. Catherines, or at Battle Bridge in the Thames? when we know ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... girl became conscious of the clatter of knives and forks on plates in the room beneath her, and of an accompaniment of cheerful voices and laughter. Far from lessening her woe, they only served to intensify it, till finally she rose in a kind of desperation, wishing only to escape from the merry sounds. "I'll go and see Clarion and Joggles and Jumper," she thought. "They love me, and—and they don't punish me when ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... herself no nervous haste of movement or touch that should hurt the feelings of the poorest, most friendless creature, who ever lay a victim to disease. There was no rough getting over of all the disagreeable and painful work of her employment. When it was a lessening of pain to have the touch careful and delicate, and the ministration performed with gradual skill, Ruth thought of her charge, and not of herself. As she had foretold, she found a use for all her ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... suit-case, as presenting the most difficult item in the problem of transportation, and this time the shriek was not an idle formality. The train slowed down; the uneasy sleepers behind the green-striped curtains stirred restlessly with the lessening motion of their uncouth cradle. The porter came to help her, with the chastened mien of one whose hopes of largess are small, the lady with the barnacles called after her redundant farewells, and a moment later Miss Carmichael was standing on the station platform looking helplessly after ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... PAUPERISM.—Many of the agencies for lessening pauperism are afraid of tracing back its growth to the frequency of births under wretched conditions. One begins to question whether after all sweet charity or dignified philanthropy has not acted with an unwise reticence. Among the problems ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... a lessening windmill in the West, shadows eastward, the wide water, and the air now full salt, convinced me we two had slept through an entire day, and were passing rapidly out of hail of our ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... motors dead and way lessening, glided up alongside the head of that T-shaped landing stage and was made fast, the wireless operator popped up from below, saluted the commander, and delivered a ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... all Intentions of a second Marriage, directs his Thoughts to the Care of his Children, their Defects not lessening his Inclination, but stirring up his Endeavours in supplying the Defaults of Nature by the Industry of Art; he accordingly makes the greatest Provision for their Breeding and Education, which prov'd so effectual in a little Time, that their ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... woods, and interspersed with statuary and vases gleaming everywhere through the rich masses of verdure, while here and there fountains of rare and exquisite design, rising from broad marble basins, relieve without lessening the immense length—and you may have some faint idea of this peerless structure. 'No material is used in it,' says Fergusson, 'which is not the best for its purpose, no constructive expedient employed which was not absolutely necessary, and it depends wholly ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... the favouring hour, and fled; Fled from those shores where guilt and famine reign, And cried, 'Ah! hapless they who still remain— Who still remain to hear the ocean roar; Whose greedy waves devour the lessening shore; Till some fierce tide, with more imperious sway, Sweeps the low hut and all it holds away; When the sad tenant weeps from door to door, And begs a poor protection ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... through negation, through a serene surrender of the unattainable. As the Epicureans counseled, they increase their happiness by lessening their desires. The content which middle-aged people exhibit is not so frequently to be traced to the dazzling character of their achievement as to their resignation to their station. Young people are moody and unhappy not infrequently ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... case with inorganic acids usually employed for this purpose; on the other hand, the method of brushing the sulphonic acid on the leather only introduces small amounts of sulphonic acid in the leather, thus lessening the harmful effects of acids upon leather. Furthermore, the common methods of using alkalies as tannin-solubilising agents with the consequent running off and waste of alkaline tan liquors are here substituted by a method ...
— Synthetic Tannins • Georg Grasser
... benefit, but is hardly practicable with the cauliflower. Wide planting is practiced on Long Island in order to diminish the tendency to the disease. It undoubtedly has this effect to some extent, by permitting a more free circulation of the air, thus drying up the moisture on the plants and thereby lessening the opportunity for the germination of the spores. The increased distance may also diminish the chance of the spread of the spores from plant to plant. When this disease appears upon the early crop in hot-beds or cold frames it may be kept somewhat in check by giving as much air as possible, ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... political organization. Its tendency is to weaken the central government by minute division of the power necessary for its maintainance. Without power to make its authority respected, no government can live. The doctrine of State Sovereignty detracts from this authority by lessening the power which upholds it. Thirty-four-States, each claiming exclusive authority to act independently on any given subject, have only one thirty-fourth part of the strength that they would have, were they all ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... transitional economy recovered from the 1998 Russian financial crisis, largely due to the government's budget stringency and a gradual reorientation of exports toward EU countries, lessening Latvia's trade dependency on Russia. The majority of companies, banks, and real estate have been privatized, although the state still holds sizable stakes in a few large enterprises. Latvia officially joined the World Trade Organization ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the law of habit operate in all fields of mental activity, but the characteristics which mark its operation are the same. Two of these are important. In the first place, habit formation results in a lessening of attention to the process. Any process that is habitual can be taken care of by a minimum of attention. In other words, it need no longer be in the focal point, but can be relegated to the fringe. ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... repeated. "You are simply shamming this delirium, and you are lessening your chances for life every minute you persist in it. I'm sorry to be hard on you, but I'm going to give you an ultimatum right now. Either you will release Mrs. Graham from her promise at once and quit this nonsense, or I shall call an officer, report the truth of this occurrence, ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... personally?" said Theydon, racking his wits for some means of lessening the girl's foreboding without tickling the ears of the other people in the compartment by suggesting that she might have been brought from her home by some cruel ruse of ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... prostitutes over a wide territory and to transfer the sale of liquor carried on heretofore in houses to the near-by saloon-keepers, and to flats and residential sections, but it is an open question whether it has resulted in the lessening of either of the two evils of prostitution and drink."[214] That is a mild statement of the results. It may be noted that there are over seven thousand drinking saloons in Chicago, so that the transfer is not difficult, ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... there was noticed a lessening in the power of all three blazes. The fourth one, assigned to the unfortunate Weedsport department, was going fiercely. But, with a shout, the members of that department, having righted their engine, which was only slightly damaged, rushed it up, and were soon playing ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... annual interest charge would be thirty thousand dollars. Naturally he would be expected to repay the loan gradually—say at the rate of fifty thousand dollars a year. By running ten thousand head of cattle on the Palomar he knew he could meet his payments of interest and principal without lessening his working capital, but he could not do it by attempting to raise scrub beef cattle. He would gradually produce a herd of pure-bred Herefords, but in the meantime he would have to buy "feeders," grow them out on the Palomar range and sell them at a profit. ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... to be levelled." The struggles of England against Napoleon enabled the American government to choose its own time. On the 14th April, congress laid an embargo on all ships and vessels of the United States during the space of ninety days, with the view of lessening the number that would be at the mercy of England when war was finally declared, and also of manning efficiently their ships of war and privateers. By the end of May their fastest merchant vessels were converted into cruisers, ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... visible in the convulsions of the meteoric cloud was again dark. Pale outlines were fused in vague mist, and the gloom of infinite space closed about the vessel. The wall of night—that circular occlusion, that interior of a cylinder the diameter of which was lessening minute by minute—enveloped the Matutina, and, with the sinister deliberation of an encroaching iceberg, was drawing in dangerously. In the zenith nothing—a lid of fog closing down. It was as if the hooker were at the bottom of the well of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... opinion of the majority of engineers seems to be in favor of making the banks act not merely as buttresses to the puddle wall, and throwing the whole onus, as it may be termed, of stanchness upon that, but also sharing the responsibility and lessening the chances of rupture thereby. But to insure this, the material must be of the very best description for the purpose. Stones, if allowed at all—and in the author's opinion they should not be—should ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... hurt from them, and for two days fared well; but finding the ships did not come for us, as they expected would soon have been the case, when likewise they looked to have had a large quantity of goods distributed among them in reward for their hospitality, they soon became weary of us; and after lessening our allowance from day to day, they at length left us to shift for ourselves. In this forlorn state, we had to range about the woods in search of fruits and roots, which last we had to dig from the ground with our fingers for want of any instruments. Hunger ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... be of more importance than those which in their own nature are cardinal. Duties of the highest magnitude will perhaps only be brought into requisition upon extraordinary occasions; but the opportunities we have of lessening the inconveniences of our neighbour, or of adding to his accommodations and the amount of his agreeable feelings, are innumerable. An acceptable and welcome member of society therefore will not talk, only when ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... life, and a new stimulus and purpose might be brought to being from such a combination of race and environment. It is apparent already to the observer that the Spanish-American race, which largely inhabits tropical America, has developed a strong tendency towards the lessening of its quota of manual labour, and an augmentation of its cultivating of the theoretical and intellectual side of life. In Mexico, Peru, or elsewhere, the white race forms an upper class, lovers of leisure and of work of an intellectual character. There is no white ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... friends, before whom this may come, may think strange that we speak as highly of this place as we do, and as we know to be true, and yet complain of want and poverty, seek relief, assistance, redress, lessening of charges, population and the like, and show that the country is in a poor and ruinous condition; yea, so much so, as that without special aid and assistance it will utterly fall off and pass under foreign rule. It will therefore be necessary to point out the true ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... moving world. The vessel ploughs through the billowy waters in onward progress, and the soul is left in silent harmony to enjoy the change. The passage of the Highlands is most delightful. Figure to yourself, my Julia, the rushing waters, lessening from their expanded width to the degeneracy of the stagnant pool—rocks rise on rocks in overhanging mountains, until the weary eye, refusing its natural office, yields to the fancy what its feeble ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... to take leave of. I never intend to see it again. I would look upon your lordship as one of those friends; but you seem still displeased with me. You accepted not my offered hand before; once more I tender it. A man of spirit cannot be offended at a man of spirit, without lessening himself. I call ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... click of the needle and the snapping of the corn alone breaking the quiet. When another popper was ready to be turned out, the biggest brother went into the adjoining shed with a wooden bucket and shoveled it full of coal from the ever-lessening pile that had been purchased, like the seed for the coming planting, on the promise of the next ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... carcer. Cambridge Platform, use discovered for. Canaan in quarterly instalments. Canary Islands. Candidate, presidential, letter from, smells a rat, against a bank, takes a revolving position, opinion of pledges, is a periwig, fronts south by north, qualifications of, lessening, wooden leg (and head) useful to. Cape Cod clergyman, what, Sabbath-breakers, perhaps, reproved by. Captains, choice of, important. Carolina, foolish act of. Caroline, case of. Carpini, Father John de Piano, among the Tartars. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... And between points 5 and 6 this light will be reflected by the cone to the eye in its greatest intensity, since at these points the angles of incidence equal the angles of reflection. The other parts of the shadow will receive a certain amount of reflected light, lessening in amount on either side of these points. We have now rays of light coming to the eye from the cone between the extreme points 7 and 8. From 7 to 3 we have the light, including the half tones. Between 1 and 2 the high light. Between 3 and 8 the ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... the speaker in amazement that any one should dare in such fashion to suggest the possibility of his turning traitor. Seguis, however, endured his angry scrutiny without any lessening of the tranquillity that had characterized him throughout the interview. So, since silent rebuke failed completely, the Hudson Bay official was driven to ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... jealousy, and consuming fear that can assail a young and undisciplined lover, he nevertheless watched for the incoming train with a rapture undimmed by disturbing reflections. The mere fact that every moment the distance was lessening between him and Eleanor, that within the hour he should see her, hear her, feel the clasp of her hand, was sufficient to send his spirits soaring into sunny spaces of confidence far above the clouds ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... Elizabeth could have slipped quickly behind the binder and passed outside the ring the charging animals were making, but as it was, she simply ran blindly back once more to another and more dangerous point inside their lessening orbit. One more such run and both mother ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... do regard what you say; but you would not have me be false. Had you doubled the property instead of lessening it, I could not regard what ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... my reply as I point with my whip towards the lessening pack, now a whole field ahead of us. "Forward!" If we hadn't been going such a pace I could ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... to do." That love of home, and friends, and circle, which is so powerful a factor in life, and enters so constantly into all the arrangements and details of our conduct, influencing so largely all real plans for doing God's work—"Lord, I will deny it, when it is in danger of lessening my labours for Thee and Thy Kingdom." The pleasant hour, the quiet evening, the restful book, "I will lay them at Thy feet, for Thy sake, when they hinder me doing Thy will. It is between me and Thee alone; it is the ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... cost of some concessions to the German military party. In these circumstances the negotiations, in which Trotski now took part as spokesman for the Russians, led only to altogether fruitless theoretical discussions and the right of self-determination, which could not bring about any lessening of the distance between the two firmly maintained points of view. In order to get the proceedings out of this deadlock further endeavours were made on the part of Austria to arrive at a compromise between the German and Russian standpoints, the more so as it was generally, ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... the rock of offence prompted the thought that the salmon had been under its protection before, and I put on extra strain and kept him this side of it. By this time the fish was getting exhausted, but the distance from the broken water was so lessening that I determined to either mend or end the business by a gift of ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... financial structure, a business politics which shaded into open corruption, and a closer touch with the outside world. The general substitution of steam for sail on the Atlantic during this period aided further in lessening the isolation of what had been backwoods provinces and in bringing them into closer relation with the ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton |
