"Dwindling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with his notorious character and antecedents, to Grosville Park—one of the dwindling number of country-houses in England where the old Puritan restrictions still held? It was said he was on the look-out for a post—Ashe, indeed, happened to know it officially; and Lord Grosville had a good deal of influence. Moreover, ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... being old, my children eye askance My slowly dwindling store, And crave my mite; till, worn with tarriance, I care for life ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... world, and liable to cease when it fails. They belong to the permanent, invisible order of things. Suppose one loses his body. Then there is no force whereby earth can hold its child any longer to its breast. It flies on at terrific speed, dwindling to a speck in unknown distances, and leaving the man amid infinitudes alone. But there are other attractions. There was One uplifted on a cross to draw all men unto him. Love has finer attraction for souls than gravitation has ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... thy sensual fleece, O turn aside,—and take, I pray, That he below may rest in peace, Thy ever-dwindling soul, away! [5] ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... 1781, that Lord North got this news, taking it "as he would have taken a ball in his breast." He recognized at once that "all was over," yet for a short time longer he retained the management of affairs. But his majority in Parliament was steadily dwindling, and evidently with him also "all was over." In his despair he caught with almost pathetic eagerness at what for a moment seemed a chance to save his ministry by treating with the States secretly and apart from France. He was a man not ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... of Douwie. Scarcely as tall as himself; the big, rounded, mouselike ears, and the flat, cloven pads that could carry her so swiftly over the sandy Martian flatlands. One of the last dwindling herds of native Martian douwies, burden-carriers of a vanished race, she had been Tommy's particular pride and joy for the last ...
— Native Son • T. D. Hamm
... they went on, but the creek had become a mere rill and they were now high up in a more level stretch of country that was more or less swampy. As they followed the main course of the dwindling stream, looking ever for signs of fur-bearers, they crossed and recrossed the water. At length Quonab stopped, stared, and pointed at the rill, no longer clear but clouded with mud. His eyes shone as he jerked his head up stream and ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... forefathers, and a great deal wiser! "Such a craze, however, is too widely diffused, and falls in with too obstinate a preconception [17] in the human race, which has in every age hypochondriacally regarded itself as under some fatal necessity of dwindling, much to have challenged public attention. As real paradoxes (spite of the idle meaning attached usually to the word paradox) have often no falsehood in them, so here, on the contrary, was a falsehood which had ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... miracles are reported long antecedently to the first promulgation of Christianity, and continued to be performed for centuries after it. A stream of miraculous pretension, in fact, has flowed through all human history, deep and broad as it has passed through the darker ages, but dwindling down to a thread as it has entered days of enlightenment. The evidence was too hackneyed and commonplace to make any impression upon those before whom the Christian miracles are said to have been performed, and it altogether ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... subsist In ceaseless opposition, be the guard Of his own breast, fetter'd to what he guards, That the world win no mastery over him; Who has no friend, no fellow left, not one; Who has no minute's breathing space allow'd To nurse his dwindling faculty of joy:— Joy and the outward world must die to him As they ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... millions, as much their superiors in wealth and intelligence as in numbers, except by their own consent. If the growing millions are to be driven with cartwhips along the pathway of their history by the dwindling thousands, they have none to blame for it but themselves. If they like to have their laws framed and expounded, their presidents appointed, their foreign policy dictated, their domestic interests tampered with, their war and peace made for them, their national fame and personal honor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... a heavy attack the evening before—which was heavily repulsed—the morning of the 17th saw one of the bloodiest and most desperate fights in all the horrid records of that war. Hurling his immense masses against the rapidly dwindling Confederate line; only to see them reel back shattered and broken—McClellan strove to crush his adversary by sheer strength. No sooner would one attacking column waver, break, retreat—leaving a writhing and ghastly wake behind it—than a fresh host would hurl ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... reaches the larkspur level, and holds south along the front of Oppapago, having the high ranges to the right and the foothills and the great Bitter Lake below it on the left. The mesa holds very level here, cut across at intervals by the deep washes of dwindling streams, and its treeless ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... had now become rare birds. The dwindling of his visitors had at first scarcely attracted his notice; it had been so gradual, like the rest. But at last Dutton found himself alone. The old solitude of his youth had re-knitted its shell around him. Now that he ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... in which the opaque water strewn with leaves looked like a slab of gold-flecked agate. The path, growing narrower, wound on circuitously through the woods, between slender serried trunks twined with ivy. Patches of blue appeared above them through the dwindling leaves, and presently the trees drew back and showed the open fields along ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... whom would the Son of Man turn for a corner in which to lay his head, or for a bite or a sup of wine. John and James would give their boats to Judas belike, and he'd bring home about as much fish as would—— But I'm thinking of your father. What will he be saying to all this, and his business dwindling all the while, and we beggars?—the words with which my wife roused me this morning. Of course, says she, if the stone that never was cut out of the mountain with hands is going to be slung and send the Romans toppling, I've naught to say against sharing, but the Kingdom had better come quickly, ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... colours can we trace, Lost in the mazy distance of the race Till at Salara's far-off bridge descried, Like coursing butterflies, they seem to glide; Then, dwindling farther, in the lengthening course, Mere floating specks supplant both man and horse; Till, having crossed the Columbarium gray, They swerve, and back retrace their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... sleeps above an hour without waking: and he who at dinner always forgot his own anxieties, and was more gay and thoughtless than all the company, now sits without speaking and with his eyes fixed for an hour together." The end was in fact near; and in the opening of 1742 the dwindling of his majority to ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... Almost to the end, he could say (as he does again to Wordsworth, not long before his death), 'London streets and faces cheer me inexpressibly, though of the latter not one known one were remaining.' He traces the changes in streets, their distress or disappearance, as he traces the dwindling of his friends, 'the very streets, he says,' writes Mary, 'altering every day.' London was to him the new, better Eden. 'A garden was the primitive prison till man with Promethean felicity and boldness sinned himself out of it. Thence followed Babylon, Nineveh, Venice, London, haberdashers, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... that she was leaving familiar and beloved things, but could not seem to realise it—childhood, girlhood, father and mother, Brookhollow, the mill, Gayfield, her friends, all were vanishing in the flying dust behind her, dwindling, dissolving ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... itself was a world as large as your entire solar system, with a diameter roughly of four billion miles. Our ancestors knew that Kygpton was dying, that the store of our most precious element Sthalreh was dwindling. But already our ancestors had mastered the forces of our universe, had made inventions that are beyond your understanding, had explored the limits of our universe in space-cars that were propelled by the free energies in space and by ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... became suddenly and overpoweringly aware of a dwindling of her strength. She said no word, but her face must have betrayed her, for the next thing she knew was Saltash's arm like a coiled spring about her, impelling her towards the ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... course, was in the old days before the war. Since August, 1914, most things have changed. Professor Jocelyn, indeed, still lectures on psychology, half-heartedly now, to a rapidly dwindling class of young women. But Ned Jocelyn's name is painted in black letters on a brown wooden cross at the head of a grave—one of a long row of graves—in a French cemetery. Tom is trying to learn to walk without crutches ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... what a pleasant biographer the boy is! He does not drag his hero down through the vale of life, amidst declining fortune, breaking health, dwindling away of friends, and the usual dreariness of the last few stages. Neither does the biography end with the death of his hero; and by the way, it is not very pleasant to have one's children contemplating one's death, even for the sake of writing one's life; but ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... Steam guns in the towers, thermit projectiles from the cannon far away: now this.... And the concealing cloud of Death Mist was rising still, headed straight up toward the zenith. It looked like a tiny, dwindling pearl. ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... easiest booty in the world, and the Artful Dodger might grow rich without the exercise of the smallest skill. But wipes dwindled, with dwindling sensibility; and once more the pickpocket was ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... tribes from the north. The complexion of this race was also a red-brown, but they were redder or more copper-coloured than the Tlavatli. They also were a tall race, averaging about eight feet during the period of their ascendency, but of course dwindling, as all races did, to the dimensions that are common to-day. The type was an improvement on the two previous sub-races, the features being straight and well marked, not unlike the ancient Greek. The approximate birthplace of this race may ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... our guests in the park, all thoughts of festivity had faded. As summer-flies are scattered by rain, so did this congregation, late noisy and happy, in sadness and melancholy murmurs break up, dwindling away apace. With the set sun and the deepening twilight the park became nearly empty. Adrian and Ryland were still in earnest discussion. We had prepared a banquet for our guests in the lower hall of the castle; and thither Idris ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... his head again restlessly from side to side. The agony was beginning to master him. His powers of endurance were dwindling. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... animated picture of the little settlement wherein we figured but a moment before gradually faded into distance. The wild-looking assembly was blotted from the shore. But still above the rapidly dwindling buildings waved the flag of the oldest chartered trading association in the ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... went off walking with great strides; and as often as Keola sank in the trough he could see him no longer; but as often as he was heaved upon the crest, there he was striding and dwindling, and he held the lamp high over his head, and the waves broke white ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was the last of a long line of estancieros once rich in land and cattle, but for generations the Canada Seca estate had been dwindling as land was sold, and now there was little left, and the cattle and horses were few, and only a small flock of sheep kept just to provide the house with mutton. His poor relations living scattered about the district knew ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... draught. Moreover, if I had not watered them myself, I suspect that no one else would; for water last year was nearly as precious hereabout as wine. Our land-springs were dried up; our wells were exhausted; our deep ponds were dwindling into mud; and geese, and ducks, and pigs, and laundresses, used to look with a jealous and suspicious eye on the few and scanty half-buckets of that impure element, which my trusty lacquey was fain to filch for my poor geraniums and campanulas and tuberoses. We were forced to smuggle them ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... those bereft." He pursues this theme in a large number of his most serious and affecting lyrics, most gravely perhaps in "The To-be-Forgotten" and in "The Superseded." This sense of the forlorn condition of the dead, surviving only in the dwindling memory of the living, inspires what has some claims to be considered the loveliest of all Mr. Hardy's poems, "Friends Beyond," which in its tenderness, its humour, and its pathos contains in a few pages every ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... late.... I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably poor tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good Surveyor of the Customs. That was all. But, nevertheless, it is anything but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that one's intellect is dwindling away, or exhaling, without your consciousness, like ether out of phial; so that at every glance you find a smaller and less ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... parent branch it dropped from. How can you call him husband who forcibly snatched you from Jivaji to whom you had been sacredly affianced? I shall never forget that night! In the wedding hall we sat anxiously expecting the bridegroom, for the auspicious hour was dwindling away. Then in the distance appeared the glare of torches, and bridal strains came floating up the air. We shouted for joy: women blew their conch-shells. A procession of palanquins entered the courtyard: but while ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... aggregate, in 1790 19.26 per cent., or one-fifth, fell in 1860 to 14.12, or one-seventh, and in 1870 to 12.65, or an eighth. The next census will beyond doubt point more strongly in the same direction. If, whilst dwindling in magnitude, the dusky shape perplex us by assuming suddenly a novel form, we may yet be assured that it is the same in substance and in manageability. Its hue is whitening with the fleece of five millions of cotton bales. The cloud has a silver lining—a golden one in fact—for ours is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... of this monstrous demand, civil war was to be inaugurated! A power which had been relatively dwindling and diminishing from the beginning—which, in the very nature of things, could not maintain its equality in numbers and in constitutional weight—this minority demanded the control of the Government, in its growth, and in all its policy, and, in the event of refusal, threatened to rend and ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... her," he emphatically declared, as he stirred up the dwindling fire, and added a couple of sticks. "I expected to be with her before this, but here I am, lodged like a ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... the buccaneers at length aroused the colonial voluptuaries of Spain to a sense of their danger. It was perceived that while the colonists were dwindling away, the outlaws were becoming so formidable in their numbers that they soon might be enabled to contest for the mastery of the island of Hispaniola itself. They therefore commenced a war upon them, and not being able to prosecute it with sufficient vigor themselves, they ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... are Indians; What a gulf their stares proclaim! They are mounting; we are dying; All our heritage they claim. We are dying, dwindling, dying, Strait and smaller grows our bound; They are mounting up to heaven ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... good-will, however, the urchin retired as I advanced, all the time consuming his apple with a nervous energy, which suggested at once a conviction that I had my eye upon his fruit and a determination to confound my strategy. The apple was dwindling fast, and, redoubling my protests, I quickened my pace. For a second the boy hesitated. Then he took two last devastating bites, flung the core in my face, and took to ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... at this dwindling figure, which stood as a mere grey blot touched with a white flame against the great green wall of the steep down behind him. And as he stared over the top of the down behind the innkeeper, there appeared an army of black-clad ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... They were very small and seemed to be far away. I blinked. Horror surged over me. Their figures were dwindling as they stood there. Polter was saying something to the man at the microscope. Other men were nearby, watching. All were normal, save Polter and Babs. A moment passed. Polter was standing by the chair ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... fragment of the city had been lost, all industry had come to a practical standstill. Workers did not care to leave homes which might be grassbound by nightfall; employers could not manufacture without backlog of materials, for a dwindling market, and without transportation for their products. Services were so crippled as to be barely existent and with the failure of the watersupply, epidemics, mild at first, broke out and the diseases were carried ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... comparison such men of the world. My own initiations were rapid, as became an old sailor, and so it seemed were Miss Mavis's, for when I mounted to the deck at the end of half an hour I found her there alone, in the stern of the ship, looking back at the dwindling continent. It dwindled very fast for so big a place. I accosted her, having had no conversation with her amid the crowd of leave-takers and the muddle of farewells before we put off; we talked a little about the boat, our fellow-passengers and our prospects, ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... never a word. He was too disgusted with himself to speak. He clenched his fists, and put his teeth together, and held his breath. In the silence he could hear the dwindling sound of Rocco's ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... Of course he should really have become a soldier; but soldiering in those days was an expensive calling. As a baronet—even as an Irish baronet—a good deal would have been expected of him, far more than the dwindling means of Roscarna could possibly supply, and since every career seemed closed to him but one of provincial dissipation he is scarcely to be blamed ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... hypothesis allows for no petty tact in the process of evolution. Starling Tucker was unfit to survive into the new age. Unable to adapt himself, he would see the Mansion's stable become a noisome garage, while he performed humble and gradually dwindling service to a ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... magnifies differences rather than similarities in the community life. Sectarianism is very largely maintained by churches in small places. Where church competition is severe, and especially when church support is dwindling, the Church advertises its distinctiveness and enters upon a life-and-death grapple with its neighbor institutions. Of course this develops sectarianism and forbids the wide outlook in its teaching that is required of a ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... passed into an offended silence, and the professor, also silent, looked with a gradually dwindling indignation at ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... through it all? There was an unspeakable dread mingled with his grief—his remorse. It had been there for months. In her eyes would not only pain but sin divide them? Could he possibly prevent her whole relation to him from altering and dwindling? ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... minority in northern Italy seeks the return of parts of southwestern Slovenia Climate: predominantly Mediterranean; Alpine in far north; hot, dry in south Terrain: mostly rugged and mountainous; some plains, coastal lowlands Natural resources: mercury, potash, marble, sulfur, dwindling natural gas and crude oil reserves, fish, coal Land use: arable land: 32% permanent crops: 10% meadows and pastures: 17% forest and woodland: 22% other: 19% Irrigated land: 31,000 km2 (1989 est.) Environment: regional risks include landslides, ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... for the dam' fool," said Mr. Blithers to the chauffeur. A moment later the pedestrian leaped nimbly aside and the car shot past, the dying wail of the siren dwindling away in the whirr of the wheels. "Look where you're going!" shouted Mr. Blithers from the tonneau, as if the walker had come near to running him down instead of the other way around. "Whoa! Stop 'er, Jackson!" he called to the driver. ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... civilian leaders had already suggested the last expedients of despair,—the enrolling of boys of fourteen years and old men of sixty-five, nay, even the enlistment of slaves. But there was no cure for the mortal dwindling. The Confederacy was dying ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... the exultation of the glory of Bar-Wul-Yann was gone, yet still the pink cliffs glowed, the fairest marvel that the eye beheld-and this in a land of wonders. And soon the twilight gave place to the coming out of stars, and the colours of Bar-Wul-Yann went dwindling away. And the sight of those cliffs was to me as some chord of music that a master's hand had launched from the violin, and which carries to Heaven of Faery the ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... at every dizzy, dwindling second—death knotted up and racketing, so imminent that he wouldn't have time to straighten himself out or let go of his toboggan before he would be tossed ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... there is left for the monkeys has already been sent to the men's mess hall." He didn't add that the lab animals would be the next to go. Quick-frozen, they might help eke out the dwindling food supply, but it would be better not to let the men know what they were eating for a while. When they got ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett
... more than they are able to perform in marriage," said my lady, with a sigh. "I fear he has lost large sums; and our property, always small, is dwindling away under this reckless dissipation. I heard of him in London with very wild company. Since his return, letters and lawyers are constantly coming and going: he seems to me to have a constant anxiety, though he hides it under boisterousness and laughter. ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... back and looked east. The dust-cloud was dwindling every minute. And without hope, she cast another glance towards the corrals. Evidently, the men agreed that it was unnecessary for two of them to stay in the heat of the sun to prevent her from getting ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... London, and entrenches itself as a fortress against the poverty and squalor that are creeping up the hill towards it. Around the square there are still gardens and crescents and roads of consideration, but ever dwindling in social status as one goes down the hill, till the consideration vanishes in the degradation of cheap boarding-houses and the homes of Jews of ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... now assistant. Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal dated back to the Georges, and was a firm bound up with the history—occasionally shady—of aristocratic England. True, in these later years its glory was dwindling. Old Mr. Stillwood, its sole surviving representative, declined to be troubled with new partners, explaining frankly, in answer to all applications, that the business was a dying one, and that attempting to ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... the tender dam 90 Has formed them with her tongue, with pleasure view The marks of their renowned progenitors, Sure pledge of triumphs yet to come. All these Select with joy; but to the merciless flood Expose the dwindling refuse, nor o'erload The indulgent mother. If thy heart relent, Unwilling to destroy, a nurse provide, And to the foster-parent give the care Of thy superfluous brood; she'll cherish kind The alien offspring; pleased thou shalt behold 100 Her tenderness, and hospitable love. If frolic now, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... silent and long drawn out. I easily reached town and the platform before it had finished watering at the tank. It moved up, made a short halt, I saw my trunk come out of it, and then it moved away silently as it had come, smoking and dwindling into ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... in the dress Dwindling the clothes to nothingness Saving, for due decorum placed, A huckaback about the waist, Or wanton towel-et, whose touch Haply may spare to chafe o'ermuch: A languid frame, from head to feet Prankt in the arduous prickle-heat: An erring fly, ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... complexity, one begins to understand how impossible it would have been for that structure to have come into existence de novo, however urgently the world had need of it. But it happened that the coal needed to replace the dwindling forests of this small and exceptionally rain-saturated country occurs in low hollow basins overlying clay, and not, as in China and the Alleghanies for example, on high-lying outcrops, that can be worked as chalk is worked in England. From this fact it followed that some ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... would-be friend, the enemy, is a factor in the German subduing process the world outside must appreciate. But the Belgians are paying the price. Their resources are diminishing day by day. The world's benevolence is dwindling and they are facing an immediate future wherein life's necessities will have to be defined in terms of the irreducible minimum. The whole nation, we are told, is growing so thin on the small ration that can be provided, that wasting diseases, due to under-nutrition, ...
— No. 4, Intersession: A Sermon Preached by the Rev. B. N. Michelson, - B.A. • B. N. Michelson
... those wars that were soon coming to Spain, hooded in mist and invisible. In the centre of the window swam as profound a blue, dwindling to paler splendour at the edge, the wandering lights were as lovely, as in the other window just to the left; but in the view from the right-hand window how sombre a difference. A bare yard separated the two. Through the window to the left was colour, ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... he sat over the dwindling embers. His mind, no longer diverted by the events of the day, recurred with melancholy persistence to a theme which even they, although fraught with novelty and presage of danger, had not altogether crowded out. And as the sense of peril dulled, the craft of sophistry ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... people, weakened the Imperial government and put himself in a position to pay liberally for the commissariat of his army. Thus the difficulties of the Imperial treasury increased. Justinian became more and more unwilling to loosen his purse-strings for the sake of a province which showed an ever-dwindling return. The pay of the soldiers got more and more hopelessly into arrear. They deserted in increasing numbers to the standard of the brave and generous young king of the Goths. Hence, it came to pass, that in the spring of 544, when Totila had been only for two and a half ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... presence or otherwise of sheep scab, were conferred upon the Board of Agriculture. An inspector of the board or of the local authority was by the same act authorized to enter premises and examine sheep. Each year the disorder runs a similar course, the outbreaks dwindling to a minimum in the summer months, June to August, and attaining a maximum in the winter months, December to February. It is chiefly in the "flying'' flocks and not in the breeding flocks that the disease is rife, and it is so easily communicable that a drove of scab-infested sheep passing along ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... individual ownership of small amounts of land by the Indians instead of tribal ownership in large reservations. By this means a considerable amount of good land was made available for settlement by whites. The dwindling supply of western land also called attention to certain delinquencies on the part of the railway companies. Many of them had been granted enormous amounts of land on certain conditions, such as that specified parts of the roads be constructed within a given time. This ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... open. The coldest blast of air Mr. Magee had even encountered swept out from the dark interior. He shuddered, and wrapped his coat closer. He seemed to see the white trail from Dawson City, the sled dogs straggling on with the dwindling provisions, the fat Eskimo guide begging ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... not praise me, Gaultier, at the ball, Ripe lips, trim boddice, and a waist so small, With clipsome lightness, dwindling ever less, Beneath the robe of pea-y greeniness? Dost thou remember, when, with stately prance, Our heads went crosswise in the country-dance; How soft, warm fingers, tipped like buds of balm, Trembled within the squeezing of thy palm; And how a cheek grew ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... new town-hall, with which she could find no fault; the Baptist and Methodist churches were the same as of old; the Unitarian church seemed to have shrunk as if the architecture had sympathised with its dwindling body of worshippers; just beyond it was the village green, with the soldiers' monument, and the tall white-painted flag-pole, and the four small brass cannon threatening the points of the compass at ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... ages of twenty and fifty-five, or, including lads between fourteen and twenty and old men still able-bodied between fifty-five and seventy, say two thousand seven hundred capable of some sort of martial service. To these might be added something under two thousand women, since among this dwindling folk, oddly enough, from causes that I never ascertained, the males out-numbered the females, which accounted for their marriage customs that were, by comparison with those of most African peoples, monogamous. At any rate only the rich among them had more than one wife, while the poor or otherwise ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... will be remembered, was the first to discover the possibilities of proving (by figures) the dwindling reserves of hostile man-power. His estimates, based upon pure reason, personal experience and some two tons of figures, have been carefully revised and brought to date, more especially for the benefit ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... of the Najack Indians, which was waving with corn. A noise of pounding drew them to a place where a very aged Indian woman was beating beans out of the pods with a stick, which she did with amazing dexterity. Near by was the little cluster of houses of the dwindling tribe. The village consisted of seven or eight huts, occupied by between twenty and thirty ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... moon wanes; also stuff your feather-bed then, and so kill the newly plucked feathers completely, and bring them to rest. Wash your linen, too, by the waning moon, that the dirt may disappear with the dwindling light. [394] According to one old notion it was deemed unlucky to assume a new dress when the moon was in her decline. So says the Earl of Northampton: "They forbidde us when the moone is in a fixed signe, to put on a newe garment. Why so? Because it is ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... fact is presented in the comparison of these two aspects of the theological change that has come to pass,—the growing importance of the ethical, and the dwindling importance of the miraculous in the religious thought of to-day. This may reassure those who fear whereto such change may grow. The inner significance of such a change is most auspicious. It portends the displacement of a false by the ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... ago coal and oil and oxygen had been the main power sources, but with the dwindling of the supply of coal and oil, man had sought another way. He had turned back to the old dream of snatching power direct from the Sun. In the year 2048 Patterson had perfected the photo-cell. Then the Alexanderson accumulators made it possible to pump ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... the Fatherland by reason of its dwindling birth rate. The cradles of Germany are empty to-day; it is your duty to see that they are filled. You bachelors, when your leave comes, marry at once the girl of your choice. Make her your wife without delay. The Fatherland needs healthy ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... invisible, hidden by the deep pit and the heap of sand that the fall of the cylinder had made. Anyone coming along the road from Chobham or Woking would have been amazed at the sight—a dwindling multitude of perhaps a hundred people or more standing in a great irregular circle, in ditches, behind bushes, behind gates and hedges, saying little to one another and that in short, excited shouts, and staring, staring hard at a few heaps of sand. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... been better to have built winter quarters on the north of Darwin and settle there until the return of summer. And at other times I heard them counting the distance to the Pole—a hundred geographical miles, making twenty days' march at this season, with the heavy weights we had to carry, and the dwindling of our dogs and ponies, for we had killed a ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... shipping, and disappears with it, except in the case of a nation which has aggressive tendencies, and keeps up a navy merely as a branch of the military establishment. As the United States has at present no aggressive purposes, and as its merchant service has disappeared, the dwindling of the armed fleet and general lack of interest in it are strictly logical consequences. When for any reason sea trade is again found to pay, a large enough shipping interest will reappear to compel the revival of the war fleet. It is possible that when a canal route ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... winter mid-day. Heavy dew fell and drenched the moor like rain; and this refreshed me for a while. When we stopped to breathe, and I had time to see all about me, the clearness and sweetness of the night, the shapes of the hills like things asleep, and the fire dwindling away behind us, like a bright spot in the midst of the moor, anger would come upon me in a clap that I must still drag myself in agony and eat the dust ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... service car thundered by the little house asleep. But the police did not glance that way—nor did the big, white-capped man glance that way. His eyes were fixed on the racer ahead—dwindling to a speck in its cloud of dust. He pushed up his visor and laughed aloud. "Give it up!" he said genially, "give it up!—you can't catch that car!—I know my own car, I guess!" He laughed again. "We shall find it somewhere along the road—when he ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... this era, when the Adams Administration was about to close, Jefferson, in spite of his known liberal, democratic views, was one of the most popular of political leaders, save with the Federalists, now dwindling in numbers and influence. He it was who was put forward on the Republican side for the Presidency, while Adams, still favored by the Federalists and himself desiring a second term of office, became the Federalist candidate. Associated with the latter in the contest was Charles C. Pinckney, ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... Bronson—the two other surgeons—died of their wounds, served to increase the reputation in which this rebel-convict stood in Bridgetown. It may have been no more than the fortune of war. But the townsfolk did not choose so to regard it. It led to a further dwindling of the practices of his free colleagues and a further increase of his own labours and his owner's profit. Whacker and Bronson laid their heads together to devise a scheme by which this intolerable ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... hound, slept a sleep past waking—"while I, roamed and roam yet in a solitary watch beyond all sleeping. Wherefore, sir, I only of the most hospitable house in these lands am awake to bid you welcome. But as for that, a few dwindling and harsh fruits in my orchards, and the cold river water that my dogs lap with me, are all that is left to offer you. For I who never sleep am never hungry, and they who never wake—I presume—never thirst. Would, sir, it were ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... going to try almost immediately, for there is no time to be lost. 'The sands,' to quote Mr. Chamberlain on another subject, 'are running down in the glass.' Ladysmith has stood two months' siege and bombardment. Food and ammunition stores are dwindling. Disease is daily increasing. The strain on the garrison has been, in spite of their pluck and stamina, a severe one. How long can they hold out? It is difficult to say precisely, because after the ordinary rations are exhausted determined men will eat horses and ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... apportioned as we now see it almost in inverse proportion to labour, the largest portions to those who have never worked at all, the next largest to those whose work is almost nominal, and so in descending scale, the remuneration dwindling as the work grows harder and more disagreeable until the most fatiguing and exhausting bodily labour cannot count with certainty on being able to earn even the necessities of life; if this or Communism were the alternative, all the difficulties, great or small, of Communism would ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... back past his shoulder. The rocket flashed away, its trail dwindling as it sped toward the great bulk above. It reached brennschluss and there was darkness. Rip held his breath for long seconds, then he gave ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... military aspect of the Thames Valley in English history dwindles with the dwindling of military energy in our civilisation, and passes with the passing of a governing class that was ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... its due deserts by letting it die and disappear. So, you plant or you animal, are you among the strong, the successful, the multiplying, the colonising? Or are you among the weak, the failing, the dwindling, the doomed? ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... principle of a labor-saving machine. But, honestly, your modern disciples are no more like their Master than one of the pale, slim, white-kidded gentlemen who will be here to-night is like Richard Coeur de Lion as he led a charge against the Moslems. Your cross is dwindling to a mere pretty ornament—an emblem of a past that is fast fading from men's memories. It will never have the power to inspire the heart ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... (purchased by the yard) to sleds and shot? Perhaps that fantastic stock of hers was her curious expression of the Eternal Motherly. After she died, every year on the 30th of May the "Vet'rans," as they marched two by two in annually dwindling lines about the cemetery, placed a fresh print flag and a basket of geraniums on her grave, because she had sent a substitute to the War. To us youngsters this substitute used to explain why she kept shot for sale; she was by nature a bellicose person, and, we were ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... letters it is clear our dear scribe was not the author or secretary) from his headquarters at Montmorenci Falls on 2nd day of September; and on the 14th of October following, the Rodney cutter arrived with the sad news in England. The attack had failed, the chief was sick, the army dwindling, the menaced city so strong that assault was almost impossible; "the only chance was to fight the Marquis of Montcalm upon terms of less disadvantage than attacking his entrenchments, and, if possible, to draw him from his present position." Would the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... on that morning tide When they flee away from the dwindling lands Will feel the clutch of mother hands And the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... fire I burned with it, Now that its flame is quenched and doth not show, What wonder if I waste within and glow, Dwindling away to ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... and addressed him some half-joking reproof. This fired my boy's wicked little heart with furious resentment; he gathered up his books after school, and took them home; a good many other boys had done it, and the school was dwindling. He was sent back with his books the next morning, and many other parents behaved as wisely as his. One of the leading men in the town, whose mere presence in the schoolroom sent a thrill of awe through the fellows, brought his son in after such an escapade, and told the teacher that he had just ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... sighted a dark, distant ridge, thirty miles away, and the course was corrected by its bearing. Our extravagant hopes of finding a permanently calm region had been dwindling for the last few miles, as a hard bottom, a few inches under the surface, had become evident. They were finally dispelled by a south-west wind springing up during ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... every hundred yards the growths of the plain became more luxuriant in the rich humus filling the fissures, and, contrary to the general rule, the plants, especially the sorrel (Rumex) and the dandelion (Taraxacum), instead of dwindling, gained in stature. The strong-smelling Ferula looked like a bush, and the Sarh grew into a tree: the Ar'ar,[EN23] a homely hawthorn (hawthorn-leaved Rhus), whose appearance was a surprise, equalled the Cratgus ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... faithful, and kind, till the birth of a child lent its reconciling power to the efforts of duty. Some time afterwards John Carr died—an event which carried in its train the subsequent death of his wife. There was left to the son-in-law a dwindling business, and a very small sum of money, for the father had met with misfortunes in his declining years, which impaired health prevented him from resisting. Time wore on, and showed that the power of the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... much. Johnnie jerked the letter out of her hand. He caught up Letitia by one dwindling arm and cast her headforemost into Cis's room. And there is no telling what else might not have happened if, at that moment, the janitress had not begun to call again, though this time it was Cis she wanted. And what she had for Cis was a heavy ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... composer Giuseppe Verdi) to think it a mere nothing to mount to the top of those sugared pinnacles which he will not believe are many miles distant in reality. After dinner we trudge on, the scenery constantly improving, the snow drawing down to us, and the Romanche dwindling hourly; we reach the top of the Col du Lautaret, which Murray must describe; I can only say that it is first-class scenery. The flowers are splendid, acres and acres of wild narcissus, the Alpine cowslip, gentians, large purple and yellow anemones, soldanellas, and the whole kith and ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... Sandjack of Novi-Bazar was threatened with the fate which seemed to have already overtaken Bosnia and Herzegovina; when gallant little Montenegro was already shut out from the sea by the octopus-like grip of Dalmatia crouching along her western shore; when Turkey was dwindling down to almost ineptitude; when Greece was almost a byword, and when Albania as a nation—though still nominally subject—was of such unimpaired virility that there were great possibilities of her future, it was imperative that something must happen if the Balkan race was ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... baby, richer in each generation by a new and improved father. He is born and cherished, however, by the same kind of mother, bringing to her tremendous task no new tool worthy of the time, but merely the same old dwindling, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... watched them go: the doctor walking across the cliffs with resolute stride, the detective making for the path over the moors with bent head and slower step, as though his feet were clogged by the weight of his thoughts. Thalassa watched their dwindling forms until they disappeared, and then stood still, in a listening attitude. The sound of the lawyer stirring in the study overhead seemed to rouse him from his immobility. He closed the door, and stood looking up the staircase with the shadow of ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... the bison and the wild pigeon, the pearl-bearing molluscs may be greatly diminished in numbers or even exterminated by the greed of man and his fearfully destructive methods of harvesting nature's productions. In fact, the fisheries have been dwindling in yield for some time, and most of the fine pearls that are marketed are old pearls, already drilled, from the treasuries of Eastern potentates, who have been forced by necessity to accept the high prices offered by the West for part of their treasures. ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... is just verging above the crimson horizon of his pulpit.—"Awake, thou that sleepest!" Why, the text is quite opposed to DOZINESS! But what of this, if the preacher be addicted to drawling, the weather unobligingly sultry, and you yourself have gradually been dwindling from an uncongenial state of wakefulness into a sleepy calm? 'Tis too much ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... Violante gone! Only his saint to guard him—that was why she chose the new one; he would not be tired of guarding namesakes. . . . After all, she hopes her boy will come to disbelieve her history, as herself almost does. It is dwindling fast ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... wave of bitterest disappointment passed over Wilbur as he saw his $30,000 dwindling to nothing. Then the instincts of habit reasserted themselves. The taxpayer in him was stronger than the freebooter, after all. He felt that it was his duty to see to it that the girl had her rights. Kitchell must be made aware of the situation—must be told ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... and no mean one. It was intended to swallow every vestige of dwindling attractiveness out of her, and there was a bit of scandal springing of it in the background that satisfactorily settled her business, and left her 'enshrined in memory, a divine recollection to him,' as his popular romances would say, and have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the square of the great Temple of Tycho, were strewn with myriads and myriads of bones, and there were myriads more scattered round what had once been the shores of the dwindling lake. Here, as elsewhere, there was not a sign or a record of any kind—carving or sculpture. If there were any such on the surface of the moon they had not discovered them. The buildings which they had seen evidently ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... rejoicings, however, could not make me forget that my position was still very awkward. My stock of money was dwindling, and I could not expect to live in the Admiral's house for ever; while, as long as we remained at Rochelle, Henry of Beam's generous promise was ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... in size from pinheads to the bulk of large pumpkins. The branches of the vegetation were formed from strings of the globules set edge to edge and tapering in size like graduated beads strung upon wire, dwindling in bulk until the tips of the branches were as fragile as the fronds of maidenhair fern. The bulk of the shrubbery was head-high, and so dense that Powell could see for only a couple of yards into the ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells
... trying for its brevity and which, he now saw, had been made inevitably dramatic. It was a perfect autumn morning, as he climbed into the car, with a scented mist rising before his eyes, under the mild warmth of a November sun; Lashmar Woods flaunted their last dwindling recklessness of colour, from ivy-green through fading red to russet and lemon-yellow. He had a rare feeling of peace, as he surrendered to the voiceless magic of the still countryside and to whimsical memories of his own childhood. Life was so much simpler then! Life would again be ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... had been so rainy, I had lived a long day, and now, if ever, could appreciate the singing of this characteristic northern songster, himself such a lover of mountains as never to be heard, here in New England, at least, and in summer-time, except amid the dwindling spruce forests of the upper slopes. I have never before seen him so familiar. On the Mount Washington range and on Mount Lafayette it is easy enough to hear his music, but one rarely gets more than a flying glimpse of the bird. Here, as I say, he was ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... of joy or the spirit of sorrow has the power to multiply its potentialities amazingly. Both these spirits walked by Evander's side during his second day at Harby. The one that went in sable reminded him that his horizon was dwindling almost to his feet; the other, in rose and gold, hinted that it is better to be emperor for a day than beggar for a century. And truly through all that day Evander esteemed himself happier than an emperor. ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Alone at Neuilly, where she had to seek shelter both for economy and safety, with no means of returning to England, and unable to go to Switzerland through her inability to procure a passport, her money dwindling, still she managed to continue her literary work; and as well as some letters on the subject of the Revolution, she wrote at Neuilly all that was ever finished of her Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution. Her only servant at this time ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... siege had lasted had been terrible ones for the garrison. Never daring to expose themselves unnecessarily during the day, yet ever on the alert to repel an attack; labouring at night at the defences, with their numbers daily dwindling, and the prospect of an assault becoming more and more imminent, the work of the little garrison was terrible; and it is to the defences of Lucknow and Cawnpore, a hundred years later, that we must look to find a parallel, ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... kept the house at that time, and she had three medical students and one engineer as lodgers. I occupied the top room, which was the cheapest, but cheap as it was it was more than I could afford. My small resources were dwindling away, and every week it became more necessary that I should find something to do. Yet I was very unwilling to go into general practice, for my tastes were all in the direction of science, and especially of zoology, towards which I had always a strong leaning. I had almost given the fight up and ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... jumps up for a relic. We stood upon the road where Buonaparte (defended by high banks) sent on, but didn't lead, 6,000 of his old Imperial Guard. They charged along the road up to La Haye Sainte, dwindling as they went by the incessant fire of 80 pieces of Artillery, many of them within a few yards, till their number did not exceed 300. Then Napoleon turned round to Bertrand, lifted his hand, cried out, "C'est ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... had made good use of the respite to strengthen its works. Every effort to gain a lodgement in its neighborhood had signally failed. The end of December came, and with it cold and discouragement. Anjou's army was dwindling away. The King of Spain and the Pope recalled their troops, as if the battle of the third of October had ended the war, and Santa Fiore, the pontifical general, sent to Rome twenty-six standards, taken by the Italians at Moncontour—a present from Charles the Ninth, which Pius accepted ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... course of that first decade. Then we had the whole of the superseded steam-railway system to scrap and get rid of, stations, signals, fences, rolling stock; a plant of ill-planned, smoke-distributing nuisance apparatus, that would, under former conditions, have maintained an offensive dwindling obstructive life for perhaps half a century. Then also there was a great harvest of fences, notice boards, hoardings, ugly sheds, all the corrugated iron in the world, and everything that was smeared with tar, all our gas works and petroleum stores, all our horse vehicles and ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... of them reflect (very vaguely and thinly) a tradition of conjugal difficulties between Arthur and his queen. But unfortunately these last are not confined to Arthurian experience; and, as we have seen, Arthur's fights with the Saxons, except the last when they joined Mordred, are of ever-dwindling importance for ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... dyke. He shook his head, and said he did not know. I asked him if he had heard of the Griffin, but he said no. I broke away from him and went for miles along the bank eastward, seeing the rare trees of the marshes dwindling in the distance, and up against the horizon a distant spire, which I thought might be the Spire of March. For March and the Griffin were not twenty miles away. And still the great ditch stood between ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... incidents thinly disguised are equally founded on fact and will be recognized by the dear but fast dwindling fraternity of good old-timers. The mother of the boy still lives her steadfast beautiful creed on the Upper Missouri; and the old frontiersman still lives on the Saskatchewan, one of the most picturesque and heroic figures in the West to-day. I may say that both missionaries ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... illustrious visitors includes the names of St Francis of Assisi, Pope Urban IV., the holy St Bridget of Sweden, and the notorious Queen Joanna II. of Naples. Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, afterwards Pope Pius II., however, seems to have thought Amalfi, ever dwindling in size and importance, too mean a place to own so great a treasure, and he accordingly transported the head of the Saint to Rome, where it is now accounted amongst the four chief relics of St Peter's. Perhaps it was to counterbalance the loss of ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... called, again in the gripe with which I once held him fast as ever hound held hare, never again should HE at least come on errand disgraceful to the honour of Christian king or noble and virtuous maiden. But I—my hours are fast dwindling into minutes—yet, while I have life and breath, something must be ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... now, And in it a long perspective I could trace Of my begetters, dwindling backward each past each All with the kindred look, Whose names had since been inked down in their place On the recorder's book, Generation and generation of my ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... grows better, its improvement will finally transform the opposition into reconciliation, the evil disappearing in good. Therefore, every being must at length be saved from misery, if not by redemptive atonement then by absolvent annihilation, and one absolute heaven finally absorb the dwindling hells. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Albert, so named by Captain Stokes during his marine survey of the north coast. A.C. Gregory rectified the error in after years, and gave the river the name of the lost explorer for whom he was then searching. With fast-dwindling supplies, lagging footsteps, and depressed spirits, the expedition travelled slowly on to the south-west corner of the Gulf where, in crossing a large river, the Roper, four of the horses were drowned in consequence of the boggy banks. This misfortune so limited their means of carriage that Leichhardt ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... back I saw those bent and dwindling figures still standing in the mud. The woman continued to pluck at her dress; the man gazed at the horizon with the same dull vacancy. They had the weary humility of the figures in Millet's "Angelus," without their inspiration, and in their eyes was ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... of the nineteenth century, to 20.6, during the first ten years of the twentieth century. In America, amongst the descendants of the New England Puritans a decay of religion and morals has also been accompanied by a dwindling birth-rate. The decline of the original New England stock in America has been masked to some extent by the high birth-rate amongst the immigrant population; but nevertheless it is apparent in the Census Returns for 1890, when a population of 65,000,000 was expected and only 62,500,000 ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... startling extent insufficient. The financial loss in that disastrous harvest, in the reckoning of experts, amounted to between fifteen and sixteen millions sterling. Fever and dysentery made fatal inroads on the dwindling strength of the gaunt and famished peasantry, and in one district alone, out of a population of 62,000 inhabitants, no less than 5,000 persons died, directly or indirectly, of starvation in the course of three months. 'All our thoughts,' wrote ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... surprise the generation which witnessed it. The romantic conception of Alexander, as a little David who dared a huge Goliath, ignores the facts of previous history, and would have occurred to no contemporary who had read the signs of the times. The Eastern colossus had been dwindling so fast for nearly a century that a Macedonian king, who had already subdued the Balkan peninsula, loomed at least as large in the world's eye, when he crossed the Hellespont, as the titular Emperor of ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... followed, always with fewer toes, while they gained slender fleet legs, together with an increase in size and in gracefulness. First one as large as a sheep (Mesohippus) had only three toes and a splint. Then the splint again disappeared, and one large and two dwindling toes only remained, till finally these two became mere splints, leaving one large toe or hoof with almost imperceptible splints, which may be seen on the fetlock ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... birth to scores of trickling rills. Vegetation sprang up in that moist, needle-mulched soil as luxuriant as any in the tropics. From the time the furry anemone lifted its lavender-blue petals above the dwindling snow patch, until the apples formed on the wild rose bushes and the kinnikinic berries turned red, it was a continuous nosegay. Indian paintbrush, marigolds, blue and white columbines as big as my hand and nearly as high as my head, fragile orchids, hiding ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... candle stood on the counter, its flame solemnly wagging in a draught; and by that inconsiderable movement, the whole room was filled with noiseless bustle and kept heaving like a sea: the tall shadows nodding, the gross blots of darkness swelling and dwindling as with respiration, the faces of the portraits and the china gods changing and wavering like images in water. The inner door stood ajar, and peered into that leaguer of shadows with a long slit of ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... trained by long stormy nights of watching, was following in its dwindling, mysterious course that misty vision in which he thought to ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... in horrified amazement: its size was that of a rickety baby under three, while its wizened face was that of a spell-struck creature of no assignable age, or the wax image of some dwindling life wasting away before the witch-kindled fire of a diabolical hatred. The tiny hands and arms were pitiably thin, and showed under the yellow skin sharp little bones no larger than a chicken's; and at her wrists and temples the blue tracery of her veins looked like a delicate map of the blood, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... years glided on in silent grief; The third her bosom own'd the kind relief: Absence had cool'd her love—the impoverish'd flame Was dwindling fast, when lo! the tempter came; He offered wealth, and all the joys of life, And the weak maid became another's wife! Six guilty months had mark'd the false one's crime, When Bateman hail'd once more his native clime. Sure of her constancy, elate he came, The lovely partner of his soul to claim; ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... involved me in heavy expense, this case has, Mr. Tescheron. If I had it to do over again, I could not possibly quote such favorable terms for our facilities—I could not possibly. No, sir, I could not possibly think of doing so." Mr. Smith's emphasis took the form of dwindling repetition so common to men of business, who have hold of the best end of the bargain, and have decided to ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... observed that the river had overflowed its banks, and was running between the trees and thick underwood. In the widest part, it did not seem more than a mile and a half across, in fact, its width, contrary to the usual course of rivers, when approaching the sea, was sensibly diminishing, and was dwindling away into an ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... grandfather's old friend, but the ache and tedium of life did not return upon her. Her sense of duty and natural affection were very strong. She told herself that if it were her lot to watch for many years beside this dwindling flame, it was a lot of God's giving, not of her own seeking, and therefore good. The letters that came to her from Beechhurst and Caen breathed nothing but encouragement to love and patience, and Harry Musgrave's letters were a perpetual fount of refreshment. What delightful letters ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... literature Praeneste is mentioned as the typical country town. Her inhabitants are laughed at because of their bad pronunciation, despised and pitied because of their characteristic combination of pride and rusticity. Yet despite the dwindling fortunes of the town she was able to keep a treaty with Rome on nearly equal terms until 90 B.C., the year in which the Julian law was passed.[166] Praeneste scornfully refused Roman citizenship in 216 B.C., when it was offered.[167] This ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin
... but no other light unless his path chanced to lie through Herzogstrasse. In that street a couple of windows on the first floor showed bright and unabashed, and the curious passer-by could detect upon the blind the shadows of men growing to monstrous giants and dwindling to pigmies according as they approached or retired from the lamp in ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... day of adversity and giving no hint, he recognized, yet refused to admit, the dawn of defeat when defeat was far past its dawning. Upon the world of allied assailants that pressed him back—back—ever back on dwindling millions and then shrinking hundreds of thousands he turned a fierce and unsurrendering face. To himself he said even now that his ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... And it came to pass after my father had spoken these words he spake unto my brethren concerning the gospel which should be preached among the Jews, and also concerning the dwindling of the Jews in unbelief. And after they had slain the Messiah, who should come, and after he had been slain he should rise from the dead, and should make himself manifest, by the Holy Ghost, unto ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... Plough Works were dry and dwindling when Stanley's father, seeking an opening for his son, put him and money into them. From that moment they had never looked back, and now brought Stanley, the sole proprietor, an income of full fifteen thousand pounds ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... river only a dwindling sight of lonely sails was to be seen, heading toward Chesapeake Bay and then to sea. But anyone with eyesight good enough might have seen a solitary sea ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... in a moment to show us the apparition several feet below the floor level. It seemed to strike its solidity of ground. I saw it fall the last little distance with a rush; land, and pick itself up. And with a last sardonic grin upward at us, the dim white figure ran. Dwindling smaller, dimmer, until in a moment it was gone into ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... dim and distant hunt Diminished in a trice: The steeds, like Cinderella's team, Seemed dwindling ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... hurrying up about us men and women, sunburned, lean, ragged, abandoning their wagons and crowding to hear the news from Oregon. I recall the picture well enough to-day—the sun-blistered sands all about, the short and scraggly sage-brush, the long line of white-topped wagons dwindling in the distance, the thin-faced figures which ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... of what may happen in advanced life, even where the prepuce has never before been a source of the least disturbance or annoyance. Persons who, with the increase of years, are also liable to an increase of adipose tissue, are more subject to this dwindling down of the penis and consequent elongation of the prepuce, with all the attendant annoyances, than thin or ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino |
