"Lightening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... employed in it on one side or the other. I should therefore be glad to know, Mr. Yorke, do you see, whether this be the case." Playfully denying that he possessed any celebrity as a writer on legal matters, Yorke, with an assumption of candor, admitted that he had some thoughts of lightening the labors of law-students by turning Coke upon Littleton into verse. Indeed, he confessed that he had already begun the work of versification. Not seeing the nature of the reply, Sir Lyttleton Powys ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... discovery of the age, and so simple in application that the marvel is that it has escaped us so long. The lightening power of magnetism has been known for years, the greatest saving power to overcome gravity, but it seems it had to wait for ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... joined her again, she had driven away her own. The sky was changing mysteriously. The purple depth was lightening, ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... spurred on at a gallop, finding some relief in the pounding action of the saddle and in the rush of air past his ears. The moon was late, but when it came it seemed to help him, lightening his mood as it lightened the trail. The big ledges and lowering, lesser peaks lifted into the dark sky weirdly translucent, and their upper edges seemed smooth and graceful as the rims of bubbles. Solid rock seemed melted and transfused with light and air. It was ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... swirls of the current, the blur of trees on either bank, were signs to the bowman. He rose in his place. A thrust of the steel-shod pole at a rock in mid-stream—the rock raced past; a throb of the keel to the live waters below—the bowman crouches back, lightening the prow just as a rider "lifts" his horse to the leap; a sudden splash—the thing has happened—the canoe has run the ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... piece of wild-fowl on its passage to his mouth, and, after a moment's consideration, replied that in his opinion lightening the load of the canoe was the best thing to ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... house-linens, things that must undergo daily wear and wash; its rather unobtrusive character too makes it the more suitable for this purpose. The work is used in conjunction with other kinds of embroidery, perhaps making a neat finish to an edge, or lightening what would otherwise be ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... opportunity of imparting to my wife the scheme which had occurred, relative to our guest; with which, as I expected, she readily concurred. In the morning, I mentioned it to Mervyn. I dwelt upon the benefits that adhered to the medical profession, the power which it confers of lightening the distresses of our neighbours, the dignity which popular opinion annexes to it, the avenue which it opens to the acquisition of competence, the freedom from servile cares which attends it, and the means of intellectual gratification with ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... worst of it boiled; the few pounds of dried apples have been spread in the sun, and reshrunken to their normal bulk; the sugar has all melted, and gone on its way down the river; but we have a large sack of coffee. The lightening of the boats has this advantage: they will ride the waves better, and we shall have but little to carry when we make ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... for her, had been induced to take in a prim little spinster, the daughter of a small grocer just deceased; and the father of the deficient girl, for whom Miss Dempsey had made herself responsible, received Winnington with a lightening of his tired eyes, and taking him out of earshot of Delia, told him how Bessie "had got through her trouble," and was now earning money at some simple hand-work ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Mr. Horace Bleackley and Mr. A.M. Broadley for their kindness in affording him access to their collections of Blandyana, including rarities (to quote an old title-page) "nowhere to be found but in the Closets of the Curious," greatly to the lightening of his labours and the enrichment ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... more sorry than you can guess. Of course, I think pictures and I talk pictures; I admit I make them in my sleep. And the boys are interested. Those that are going back with me and those that are not are always sicking me at the subject. I admit that I sick easy," he added with a whimsical lightening of the eyes. "And the Kid and I are pals. I like him, Mrs. Bennett. He's got the stuff in him to make a real man—and I wouldn't call him spoiled, exactly. He's always been with grown-ups, and his mind has developed away ahead of the calendar; you see what I ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... the close. She sank rapidly: the delirium left her; but, as she whispered, she was "clean silly;" it was the lightening before the final darkness. After having for some time lain still, her eyes shut, she said, "James!" He came close to her, and, lifting up her calm, clear, beautiful eyes, she gave him a long look, turned to me kindly but shortly, looked for Rab but could not ...
— Rab and His Friends • John Brown, M. D.
... dear purchase was generally consigned to the fire a few minutes after it was bought. However varied his freaks might be in detail, in spirit they were ever essentially the same; they ever consisted in making some worthless piece of lumber an excuse for lightening his purse of a ruble ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... toward the camp of his friends. He was too wise, too unselfish, to bring a horde down upon them, and he curved away in a course that would take him to the south of them. He glanced up and saw that the heavens were lightening yet more. A thin gray color like a mist was appearing in the east. It was the herald of day, and now the Indians would be able to find his trail. But Henry was not afraid. His anger over the loss of time quickly passed, and he ran swiftly on, the fall ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... help, and a great lightening of ill. Thereof I come to speak, a stranger still To all this tale, a stranger to the deed: (Else, save that I were clueless, little need Had I to cast my net so wide and far:) Howbeit, I, being now ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... that calamities many and great have fallen on it?" Mencius answered, "With so great an extent of territory as thine prosperity ought to be within easy reach; but in order to procure it your majesty must govern thy subjects justly and kindly, moderating penalties, lightening taxes, promoting thus and otherwise their industries, increasing their comforts as well as lessening their burdens, deepening the faithfulness of the people to one another and to the throne. Then will thy people be loyal to thee and formidable towards thy foes. Thou ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... old English and the modern Norwegian dramatist is that each has felt the solid stuff of the drama to require lightening, and has attempted to provide this by means, in Ben Jonson's case, of solemn "choruses," in Ibsen's of lyrics. In the latter instance the tragedy ends in rolling and rhymed verse, little suited to ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... does the Spaniard not seek for improvements, he utterly despises and rejects them. The poorer classes especially, who would find an enormous advantage in increased production, lightening their hard lot by a greater plenty of the means of life, regard every introduction of improved machinery as a blow at the rights of labor. When many years ago a Dutch vintner went to Valdepenas and so greatly improved ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... success of the farm, creates a family bond which does not ordinarily exist where the business or employment of the father and of other members of the family is dissociated from the home. Although the burden of the farm business on the home is often decried and there is obvious need of lightening the mother's work for the farm as much as possible, yet under the best of conditions there is on the farm a constant and intimate contact between the father and mother and children which is rarely found ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... ingenious fists into the pockets of their foolish neighbours. Dear pickpockets, have a little modesty. Fight those next to you if you like; do not plunder them. You will vex them less by blackening an eye, than by lightening their purses of a penny. Break their noses if you like. The shopkeeper thinks more of his money than of his beauty. Barring this, accept my sympathies, for I am not pedantic enough to blame thieves. Evil exists. Every one endures it, every one inflicts it. No one is exempt ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... house of her own, who, hearing of their plight from Mrs. Sands, undertook to send each day a supply of strong, perfectly made beef tea, from her own kitchen, for Amy's use. It was an inexpressible relief, and the lightening of this one particular care made all the rest seem ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... Thus, lightening the journey, they arrived at the last lake, said how-d'ye-do to the Richards, and tramped home. "How are you feeling now, Mr. Errol?" asked his comrade. "Man, it's just as I tellt ye, I'm ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... through the lightening fog, they reached the place and discovered that Andy, though unconscious, was not dead. They found, upon examination of his hurt, that the bullet had ploughed along the side of his head above his ear; but just how serious it might ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... ships. On board one of the ships the supply of yeast ran out and breadless days stared the soldiers in the face till a resourceful army cook cudgelled up recollections of seeing his mother use drainings from the potato kettle in making her bread. Then he put the lightening once more into the dough. And the boys will remember also the frigid breezes of the Arctic that made them wish for their overcoats which by order had been packed in their barrack bags, stowed deep down in the hold of the ships. And ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... shallow trench. Such a walk from the barn to the kitchen will always be clean, and there will be less to disturb the temper of the women folks of the household, to say nothing of the good effect upon the men folks who take pleasure in lightening the labor required to keep everything neat and tidy ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... after the land was seen before the ship struck. It was ascertained that it was on the extreme point of a reef, and the first mate hoped that by lightening the ship she might beat over it. The captain acquiesced, and every article that could be got at was, as soon as ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... men had been as furtive as possible about their proposed journey. They had not met since the night Varney had dangled the hope of jail and disgrace into Peter's lightening face, and so, or otherwise, cajoled him into going along. Both of them had kept carefully away from the Cypriani. Now they proceeded to her by different routes, and reached her at different times, Peter first. Their luggage had gone aboard before them, and there was no longer ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... ascertain their position, and to learn the extent of the evil. The lugger had been lifted into a crevice between two of the rocks, by a ground-swell heavier than common; and though there was deep water all around her, it would be impossible to get her afloat again without lightening. So long as the wind did not blow, and the sea did not rise, she was safe enough; but a swell that should force the hull to rise and fall would inevitably cause her to bilge. These facts were learned in five minutes after the yawl was ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... many schemes that were planned and carried out for lightening the long hours of confinement to their wooden home in the Arctic regions, was the newspaper started by Fred Ellice, and named, as we have already mentioned, ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... sometimes went with him, but they made me sad so he suggested other charities that I could be of help about when we came home. I visited infant schools, working women's homes, orphan asylums, and places of that sort. You don't know how much good it did me and how glad I am that I have the means of lightening a little some of ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... several miles the day after the battle, and found that the enemy had dropped much, if not all, of their provisions, some ammunition and the extra wheels of their caissons, lightening their loads to enable them to get off their guns. About five miles out we found their field hospital abandoned. An immediate pursuit must have resulted in the capture of a considerable number of prisoners and probably ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... orthopaedics that had just come; but no one would have thought that he took delight in anything except Society meetings. He went from group to group, as if he were the son of the house, cheering the forlorn, lightening the heavy, smoothing down the prickly,—a medical Father O'Flynn. But it was the elderly and the middle-aged that he sought out; the matrons whose children he had tended, the spinsters whose neuralgia he had relieved. The few younger members of the Society bridled and simpered ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... looked down upon him. Instead of sympathy, there was a positive lightening in the elder man's face—a gleam ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wrong. This was sufficiently acute, and was aggravated by the belief that his offence was incapable of expiation. No one could contemplate the agonies which he seemed to suffer without the deepest compassion. Time, instead of lightening the burthen, appeared to add to it. At length he hinted to his wife, that his end was near. His imagination did not prefigure the mode or the time of his decease, but was fraught with an incurable persuasion that his death was at hand. He was likewise haunted by the belief that ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... his, facing the world, with all its contingencies, bravely and with constant buoyant cheerfulness. He walked through life with eyes and heart wide open to the joy of the world, brightening and lightening it for others as he went. He was always ready to stretch out a helping hand to the weak and falling ones who came across his path. Never merely an optimist, he yet lived and died in ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... miles; how much over I did not know. I should have slept at Lugano, but my lightening purse forbade me. I thought, 'I will push on and on; after all, I have already slept, and so broken the back of the day. I will push on till I am at the end of my tether, then I will find a wood and sleep.' Within four miles my strength abandoned me. I was not even so far down ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... near woke him at last, and he slowly sat up and stared about. He looked out of the window and saw that the sun was lightening the hills across the river. He rose and brushed his hair as well as he could, folded his blankets up, and went out to find his companions. They stood gazing silently at the river and at ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... and very conveniently situated close to the edge of the mine. He very kindly gave me a portion of it to use, thus lightening my labors considerably. But a catastrophe happened. One Sunday morning a shock was felt; this was followed by a rumbling roar. There was talk of earthquakes. Soon, however, we found out what had happened, the whole of the northern portion of No. 10 Road had collapsed into the ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... Lightening the way with such pleasantry as this, they arrived at the tailor's house in no time; and here they made quite a little party, there being present besides Mr Lillyvick and Mrs Lillyvick, not only Miss Snevellicci's mama, but her papa also. And an uncommonly fine man Miss Snevellicci's ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... him a moment, her face suddenly lightening at the tenor of his words—so bravely spoken, with so little conviction behind them. But they had helped her, and for that he ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... There is no reason why you should grow up in utter ignorance of your father. And I prefer you to come when you have arrived at something like a reasonable age, rather than when you were quite a child. As you are at a reasonable age, Lesley," with a lightening of his tones, "I suppose you have some tastes, some inclinations, of your own? ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... fact; I could do no good at all, so I hurried forward again. But even here I could do nothing; the men had their task to do of lightening the first boat, and they were working as hard as if they had been lying down in the shade all day, and just as coolly, though every now and then the rough slugs the pirates fired from their clumsy matchlocks went spattering through ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... I have not made horses with cocks' heads like you, nor goats with deer's horns, as you may see 'em on Persian tapestries; but, when I received tragedy from your hands, it was quite bloated with enormous, ponderous words, and I began by lightening it of its heavy baggage and treated it with little verses, with subtle arguments, with the sap of white beet and decoctions of philosophical folly, the whole being well filtered together;[476] then I fed it with monologues, mixing ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... to the Front has to be tracked and multiplied in its carrying capacity. These difficulties on land and water are being rapidly overcome: by adding to the means of transportation; by increasing the efficiency of the transport facilities already existing; by lightening the tonnage to be shipped from the States by buying everything that is procurable in Europe. In the early months much of the available Atlantic tonnage was occupied with carrying the materials of construction: rails, engines, concrete, lumber, and all the thousand and one things ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... twinkle from the houses, to flare from the streets, to dance from the boats. The sky of ultramarine became indigo with a green and mauve lightening to the west. Over Vesuvius was a column of white smoke that now turned rosy, now coppery from the fires beneath. Little boat loads of chattering people who seemed ghosts kept tumbling up the accommodation ladder out of the grey water; they seemed to come soundlessly as though they ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... authoritative tone had made Mavis accept the thing not only easily but without a doubt or question, and he thought remorsefully that, except for his sneaking, cowardly delay, all this might have occurred a month ago. He felt a distinct lightening of the trouble as he went back into his own room, and then the weight of it fell upon him again. He had succeeded so far as Mavis was concerned; but how ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... pole. There were other domes and towers and spires, and here and there the distinct shape of an edifice; but the general picture was of a contiguity of red earthen roofs, filling a not very broad or extensive valley, among dry and ridgy hills, with a river-gleam lightening up the landscape a little. U—— took out her pencil and tablets, and began to sketch the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio; in doing which, she immediately became an object of curiosity to some little boys and larger people, who failed not, under such pretences as taking a grasshopper off her ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to convince even prejudice and obstinacy, that if France and England are not in the same condition (as the author affirms they are not) the difference is infinitely to the disadvantage of France. This depreciation of their funds has not much the air of a nation lightening ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... from lower interest and inflation rates. The current government has enacted numerous short-term reforms aimed at improving competitiveness and long-term growth. Italy has moved slowly, however, on implementing needed structural reforms, such as lightening the high tax burden and overhauling Italy's rigid labor market and over-generous pension system, because of the current economic slowdown and opposition from ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... was so expeditiously effected, that we overtook them within two miles of their towns, and probably might have obtained a great victory, had not two of their number met us about two hundred poles before we come up. These returned quick as lightening to their camp with the alarming news of a mighty army in view. The savages fled in the utmost disorder, evacuated their towns, and reluctantly left their territory to our mercy. We immediately took possession of Old Chelicothe ...
— The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone • John Filson
... greater encouragement to the importation of females than of males, by means of a bounty on the former till their numbers should be found equal. Rewards also might be given to those slaves who should raise a certain number of children; and to those who should devise means of lightening negro-labour. If the plan of his honourable friend should comprehend these regulations, he would heartily concur in it. He wished to see the Slave-trade abolished. Indeed it did not deserve the name of a trade. It was not a trade, and ought not to be allowed. He was satisfied, that in a few ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... Twenty odd, dishevelled, half-clothed men of three worlds. The changing, lightening gravity on the incline caught them. Dr. Frank bounded up to the rail under the impetus of his step: caught and held himself, drew himself back. The line swayed. In the dim, blue-lit glare it seemed unreal, crazy. A grotesque dream of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... putting down hay for the cow, and other out-of-door exercises that had made him the demon of strength he once was. The little boy was not only glad to perform these acts for his own sake, but for the sake of lightening the labours of his hero, who wrenched his back anew nearly every time he tried to do anything, and was always having to take a medicine for it which he called "peach-and-honey." The little boy thought the name ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... like a black chasm, the one they were to fill up with stones from the jagged shelves upon which they crouched nearly a hundred feet higher, while higher still, right up for another three hundred feet or more, to where the saw-like edge was marked clearly against the ever-lightening sky, wherever the boy's eyes rested there were masses of stone which looked as if a touch would set them in motion and start others to come thundering down, sweeping all before them into a vast heap which ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... amounted to anything, the kind words and manner of the storekeeper gave him courage to hope that he would meet with equal kindness from others. Kind words cost nothing, but they have a marvelous power in lightening the burdens of the ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... Mr. Lavender was so very hungry that evening when he sat down to supper that he was unable to leave the lobster which Mrs. Petty had provided until it was reduced to mere integument. Since his principles prevented his lightening it with anything but ginger-beer he went to bed in some discomfort, and, tired out with the emotions of the day, soon fell into a heavy slumber, which at dawn became troubled by a dream of an extremely vivid character. He fancied himself, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... kind, showed that the spiritual struggle was a very palpable one to her; but it ended in a great calm. For two hours she lay in a peace that passeth understanding, and you would have said that she was dead but for a vague look of expectancy in the happy, restful face. Then suddenly there was a lightening of the whole countenance; she stretched out her arms to meet the messenger of the King, and entered heaven with this prayer ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... sometimes the ship standeth there almost by the space of many dayes, sometimes she goeth, but in such order that it were almost as good to stand still. And the greatest part of this coast not cleare, but thicke and cloudy, full of thunder and lightening, and raine so vnholesome, that if the water stand a little while, all is full of wormes, and falling on the meat which is hanged vp, it maketh it straight full of wormes. Along all that coast we often times saw a thing swimming vpon the water like a cocks combe (which they call a ship of Guinea) ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... only slightly hurt seemed to have been caught at less disadvantage. He was a warrior of wonderful activity and strength, and used his hunting knife with good effect upon his first and second assailants with lightening-like quickness. Then as they began to crowd in upon him faster than he could provide against he circled his weapon around his head several times, so as to clear a brief open space, when, with a yell of defiance, he bounded high in the air, and vanished in ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... with a cry of defiance; and, as our cavalry, flushed and elated with victory, rode round their bristling ranks, no quailing look, no craven spirit was there. The Emperor himself endeavored to repair the disaster; he rode with lightening speed hither and thither, commanding, ordering, nay imploring too; but already the night was falling, the confusion became each moment more inextricable, and the effort was a fruitless one. A regiment of the Guards, and two batteries were in reserve ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... who lay stretched upon the ground, like so many corpses, sound asleep. At length Saat sat up, and after rubbing his eyes for about ten minutes, he made a fire, and began to boil the coffee; meanwhile I was hard at work lightening the ship. I threw away about 100 lbs. of salt; divided the heavy ammunition more equally among the animals; rejected a quantity of odds and ends that, although most useful, could be forsaken; and by the time the men woke, a little before sunrise, I had completed the ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... first, Dorothy had timed her waking hours with those of Seaton—waiting upon him, preparing his meals, and lightening the long hours of his vigils at the board—Margaret took it upon herself to do the same thing for Crane. But often they assembled in the engine-room, and there was much fun and laughter, as well as serious talk, among the four. Margaret was quickly accepted as a friend, ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... that things might not be we cannot realize that things are. Until we see the background of darkness we cannot admire the light as a single and created thing. As soon as we have seen that darkness, all light is lightening, sudden, blinding, and divine. Until we picture nonentity we underrate the victory of God, and can realize none of the trophies of His ancient war. It is one of the million wild jests of truth that we know nothing until ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... straight and remorselessly; and before those two strong Promachi, townsman and navvy, peeler and special, went down like blades of corn. Close at their shoulder I distinguished Lovell, his clear blue eyes lightening savagely; and stout Tom Lynton, a deeper flush on his honest face, hewing away with all the unscientific ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... Henderson liked a gay house, brightness, dinners, entertainment, and that his wife should be seen and admired. Proof of his love she found in all this, and she entered into it with spirit, and an enjoyment increased by the thought that she was lightening the burden of his business, which she could see pressed more and more. Not that Henderson made any account of his growing occupations, or that any preoccupation was visible except to the eye of love, which is quick to see all moods. These were indeed ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... rate of about a knot and a half in the hour that we were able to detect the fact of our own forward movement at all. We had been on deck just an hour—for two bells had barely been struck— when the first faint suggestion of dawn appeared ahead in the shape of a scarcely-perceptible lightening of the sky along a narrow strip of the eastern horizon, in the midst of which the morning star beamed resplendently, while the air, although still warm, assumed a freshness that, compared with the close, muggy heat of the past night, seemed almost cold, so that involuntarily I drew the lapels of ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... stood there on the pier, staring out, as all those about him and behind him were doing, at the expanse of dark blue sun-flecked sea, there came over Jacques de Wissant a great lightening of the spirit.... ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... have I seen her send the water aft, into the quarter-deck scuppers, and, as for diving, no loon was quicker than she. Now, that she was deep and was rolling her deck-load to the water, it was time to think of lightening her. The cotton was thrown overboard as fast as we could, and what the men could not start the seas did. After a while we eased the ship sensibly, and it was well we did; the wheat choking the pumps so often, that we had little opportunity for ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... flowers—and white clouds—was there, and the sun god was also there, and the curve of the moon with the germ of life in its heart. The morning star was there—and also the symbol of the messengers from the gods. Circling all these sacred things was the blue zig-zag of the sky lightening by which Those Above send their decrees to earth children who know the signs, and at each corner the symbols of the ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... I knew to be true, that the penalties of London life fell heavier upon her than me. I was not insensible to the instantaneous lightening of spirits that happened with her when she was able to forsake the abominable purlieus of the cellar-kitchen where her life was spent; and although I knew not half her toils, nor half her dejections and anxieties, which ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... great and fatal influences on the public trade of the nation, that Parliament found it necessary to enter upon that great work of a recoinage[5] and in order to prevent all future inconveniences of a like nature, they at the same time enacted that not only counterfeiting, chipping, scaling, lightening, or otherwise debasing the current specie of this realm, should be deemed and punished as high treason, but they included also under the same charge and punishment the having any press, engine, tool, or implement ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... enthusiasm, I took no trivial interest in the individual. Still, to set him at liberty was palpably impossible; and my only resource was, to give him such aid in this extremity of his career as could be given by lightening the severities of his prison, and providing him with the means of securing able counsel. I had now an opportunity of seeing, for the first time, the genius of this singular people displayed under a new and brilliant form—the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... after a restless night, the ship had settled so much, despite the lightening process, that she rode soggily along at not more than fifty feet above the level of the sea. The situation was indeed a ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... of Mahadeva's speech, loud roars were heard in the firmament. Thunders bellowed, with flashes of lightening. The welkin was enveloped with blue and thick clouds. The deity of the clouds then poured pure water like to what he does in the season of rains. A thick darkness set in. The points of the compass could no longer be distinguished. Then on that delightful, sacred, and eternal breast ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... do not wish to go over the entire field of the programme stop here, and are now capable of earning their living and of lightening the load that oppresses ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... had drawn up the bucket empty for the third time, he stood considering; and at last he fastened to it the firestone ring, the Sweetener, and lowered it once more. Then he laughed to himself as he drew up, and felt the bucket lightening at every turn till it touched the surface ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... was no home, no help for the erring; even those who pitied were constrained to hardness. But ought she to complain? Ought she to shrink in this way from the long penance of life, which was all the possibility she had of lightening the load to some other sufferers, and so changing that passionate error into a new force of unselfish human love? All the next day she sat in her lonely room, with a window darkened by the cloud and the driving rain, thinking of that future, and wrestling for patience; for ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... smiled pensively at the water-lilies; nor was his happiness entirely and solely the essence of his material ease. This was his third morning out of doors, and on each of the two mornings that were gone Hortensia had borne him company, coming with the charitable intent of lightening his tedium by reading to him, ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... face showed no lightening of its gloom as he spoke, but there was a firing-up of the black eyes, and the woman with the knitting felt that—for whatever reason—he was ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... stirring common-sense which is New England's strong point. Here is hinted, also, that philosophic humor which is the one ray lightening her intense realism. ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... joining in social converse. Lycidas resolutely shut his eyes to the fact that, to his hostess at least, his presence was unwelcome. He deceived himself into the belief that he was rather repaying the kindness which he had received, by lightening the dulness of the secluded lives led by the Hebrew ladies. The young Athenian drew forth for their amusement all the rich stores of his cultivated mind. Now he recited wondrous tales of other lands; now gave vivid descriptions of adventures of his own; poetry flowed spontaneously from ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... realise how little help one can give, and what a fraud money is when it comes to the test. I used to imagine that I could do pretty nearly everything I wanted because I was rich, but look at Evie! I would give my life to help her, but beyond a few trumpery presents, and a little lightening of pain, what can I do? She would not accept more, and one dare not offer it, though if she would allow it we would be thankful to pension her off for life. Money ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... that you are so anxious to get married again?" asked Ralph, to whom these conversations with the Cuif were a means of lightening his mind of his ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... thoughtfully back to the theatre, pausing a moment by the way, while Tinker bought a white carnation for his buttonhole. There was a good deal, he remarked absent-mindedly, in what Mr. Potter had said about lightening up a rehearsal. ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... had known hard times in their southern home, when Dorette and Leon were little, and his appointment to the Naval school had been the first lightening of their fortunes, Dorette's marriage to an honest young fellow in a ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... bravely and with more spirit than would be expected. It was an old and once splendidly organized and equipped army, and its discipline had been good. Pendleton and others of Lee's generals (not including Longstreet) secretly, on the 7th, held a council, and with a view of lightening Lee's responsibilities, decided to inform him that they thought the time had come to surrender his army. The next day Longstreet was requested to bear the report of this council to Lee. He declined, and Pendleton made to report to Lee himself. ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... in the Christian faith. The abstruse doctrines of the church formed no part of his creed. His faith was in the Christ the Saviour of mankind; a faith which illumined his pathway in life, lightening his burdens, exalting his nature, and which sustained him without fear when he met the last enemy of the race as he walked through "the valley of the shadow of death." It was the ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... jewels that belonged to the three ancient Grand Masters, Solomon, Hiram and Hiram Abiff. The candidates then return to the vault and let down another of their number. Here, let it be remarked, some Chapters, for the purpose of lightening the labor of the candidates, call in the aid of machinery. A pulley is suspended over the vault, and the candidate is EXALTED from the bottom at the tail of a snatch block; the one last let down find at the ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... infection from him and nearly died, and the child he was then had never been able to escape a shuddering belief that he might have been guilty of his father's death. That had made him turn the more passionately to the task of lightening his mother's burden in the wild anxiety he had caused her. Poor little boy, he thought, poor little fool! Making his life a business of compensating somebody for something, and never, until these later years, even seeing the visible path his own feet should have taken. He forgot Amelia and showed ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... yelling at Squad Nine, our opposite neighbors, and there is the greatest joy and confusion. Knudsen having finished his job, is jeering at Pickle, who had promised to be first. And now he has taken Pickle in hand, and is showing him his mistakes. It is thundering and lightening. "I don't see," says David with slow wonderment, "how it can rain much harder." Now Knudsen, at the door, imitates the first sergeant's whistle and alarms our neighbors, who peer anxiously out. "Corporals, ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... slight retraction (drawing back) of the navel. After the third month, when the womb begins to ascend out of the pelvis, a progressive enlargement of the abdomen begins and continues until near the end of pregnancy, when the womb again sinks and the so-called lightening occurs. The protrusion of the abdomen is more marked usually on the right side. There is often an increased deposit of fat in the lower portion of the abdomen, as well as on the hips and thighs. The navel may protrude after ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... trouble of rummaging among business papers, and of collecting and collating facts from amidst tedious and commonplace details, was spared me by my nephew, Pierre M. Irving, who acted as my pioneer, and to whom I am greatly indebted for smoothing my path and lightening ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... explain such a phenomenon as those old crusades? Were they undertaken for any purpose, commercial or other? Certainly not for lightening an overburdened population. Nay, is not the history of your own Mormons, and their exodus into the far West, one of the most startling instances which the world has seen for several centuries, of the unexpected ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... many names of Japan is that of the Country Ruled by a Slender Sword, in allusion to the clumsy weapons employed by the Chinese and Koreans. See, for the shortening and lightening of the modern Japanese sword (katana) as compared with the long and heavy (ken) of the "Divine" (kami) or uncivilized age, "The Sword of Japan; Its History and Traditions," T.A.S.J., Vol. ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... to be explaining to Monsieur Fontenette apologetically that this newly opened world was not at all separate from my old one, but shone everywhere in it, like our winged guests in our garden, and followed and surrounded me far beyond the Baron's company, terminology, and magnifying-glass, lightening the burdens and stress of the very counting-room and exchange. Whereat he seemed ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... but the wind still held from the northeast, and though moderated in force since the evening it was strong enough to take them slowly down toward the Good Intent. The sky was lightening, but a slight mist hung over the river. Desmond kept a close lookout ahead, and after about half an hour he caught sight of the hull of the Good Intent, looming before him out of the mist. Allowing the second boat to come alongside, he turned and ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... development of industrial efficiency and financial strength, assured by a maintenance of absolute order. Though disposed to do justice in individual cases, he would tolerate no class movements of any kind. Labor unions, strikes, and other efforts at lightening the burden of the workers he regarded as seditious and deserving of severe punishment. In order to attract capital from abroad as the best means of exploiting the vast resources of the country, he was willing ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... us, and the waiter, being an accomplished linguist, like most of his singularly gifted and enterprising kind, had heard and understood the last sentence. Bursting with gruesome information, he could not resist lightening himself of the burden, for our benefit and his own. "You can see the dead man lying on the snow, far up on the mountain," said he eagerly, "if you go into the town and look through one of the telescopes. I have seen him already; he is like a small, ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... me around something scandalous. I 'ain't got the freedom of a peon." Blaze sighed and shook his shaggy head. "You know me, Dave; I never used to be scared of nobody. Well, it's different now. She rides me with a Spanish bit, and my soul ain't my own." With a sudden lightening of his gloom, he added: "Say, you're going to stay right here with us as long as you're in town; I want you to see how I cringe." In spite of Blaze's plaintive tone it was patent that he was inordinately proud of Paloma and ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... in which they had the advantage over us, and that was in lightening their labors in the boats by their songs. The Americans are a time and money saving people, but have not yet, as a nation, learned that music may be "turned to account." We pulled the long distances ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... undertaking; but what a pity you did not think of it ten years ago, so as to have accumulated references on all sorts of subjects. Depend upon it, you will have started a new era in the floras of various countries. I can well believe that Mrs. Hooker will be of the greatest possible use to you in lightening your ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Margaret, her eyes lightening. "Not his daughters, but his nieces. Do you know Uncle ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... of the crowd without came to my ears; but mingled with and heightened by some confusion in my thoughts. I struggled feebly with this, seeing a rush of colour to Croisette's face, a lightening in his eyes as if a veil had been raised from before them. Some confusion—for I thought I grasped the Vidame's meaning; yet there he was still glowering on his victim with the same grim visage, still ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... and the answer which a true man means when he asks, 'Take away the burden,' need not be the external removal of the pressure of the sorrow, but the infusing of power to sustain it. There are two ways of lightening a burden, one is diminishing its actual weight, the other is increasing the strength of the shoulder that bears it. And the latter is God's way, is Christ's way, of dealing ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... piteous dejection of our family seems to have lasted for ages, but on comparison of dates it is plain that the first lightening of the burthen came in ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... humiliating contrasts are eternal and inevitable, is the last word of the dominant philosophy of society; and one of the reasons why Turgot's life is worth studying, is that he felt in so pre-eminent a degree the urgency of lightening the destiny of that livid, wild, hardly articulate, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... an instant lightening of the tension for Morris. For Pitman it quenched the last ray of hope and daylight. Uncle Joseph, whom he had left an hour ago in Norfolk Street, pasting newspaper cuttings?—it?—the dead body?—then who was he, Pitman? and was this ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was deceived less by the completeness of Knight's disguise than by the persuasive power which lay in the fact that Knight had never before deceived him in anything. So this supposition that his companion had ceased to love Elfride was an enormous lightening of the weight which had turned ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... entertaining conversation, arrangements were always made that I should enjoy it, at least as a listener. The affection of these kind people never wearied in lightening the burden which had been laid upon me. So, during this whole sad period I was rarely utterly wretched, often joyous and happy, though sometimes the victim to the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the Fellows in Hall, or in Common Room, surprised me not a little. The old plate, the old furniture, and the whole style of living, impressed me deeply, particularly the after-dinner railway, an ingenious invention for lightening the trouble of the guests who took wine in Common Room. There was a small railway fixed before the fireplace, and on it a wagon containing the bottles went backwards and forwards, halting before every guest till he had helped himself. That ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller |
