"Smallness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rose up to meet the blow. Fortunately, however, the horse has powerful hoofs, and one of these is inflicting infinite mischief. Other noticeable peculiarities of the sovereign's rendering are the smallness of the horse's head and the length of St. George's leg. The total effect, in spite of blemishes, is more spirited than that of No. 344260, but both would equally fill a Renaissance Florentine medallist ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... take that promise to Abraham—'Lift up your eyes and behold the stars. So shall thy seed be as numberless as the stars. Go to the seashore and look at the sand, and behold the smallness of the particles thereof'—I am giving you the gist of the Lord's words, you understand—'and then realise that your seed shall be as numberless as those sands.' Now think for a minute how many particles there are, say in a cubit foot of sand—about ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... capacities of foreigners: in this we are reminded of Jesus' parable of the good Samaritan. The foreign sailors cry, in their perplexity, to their gods, and end by acknowledging the God of Israel; the people of Nineveh repent at the prophet's preaching. All this forms a splendid foil to the smallness and obstinacy of Jonah. With his mean views of God, he would not only exclude the heathen from the divine mercy, but rejoice in their destruction. In this the prophet is typical of later Judaism, with its longing for the annihilation of the ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... these owe whatever they have of simple beauty to the peculiar nature of the group of rocks of which we are speaking; a group which, though occasionally found in mountain masses of magnificent form and size, is on the whole characterized by a comparative smallness of scale, and a tendency to display itself less in true mountains than in elevated downs or plains, through which winding valleys, more or less deep, are cut by ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... anything but pleasant. Behind him always stalked the grim spectre of detection and arrest; and, even should a lucky windfall help to pay his debts, he could not save the money either to buy a practice in Sydney or to maintain himself while he was building one up. He thought of the pitiful smallness of his chances at Tarrong, and then of Ellen Harriott. What should he do about her? Well, sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof. He would play for his own hand throughout. With which reflection he drove ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... Latimers have given the impetus, for Mrs. Latimer is one of those women who are always quoted, without having any special desire to achieve a society reputation. The cottage frequently has some visitors of note: its smallness ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... childish sense of her own smallness and inadequacy, a fatal sense of worthlessness. She could not do anything, she was not enough. She could not be important to him. This knowledge deadened her from ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... The smallness of their boat and the fact that it lay so low in the water made for the safety of the five. The glare of the fires threw the bigger vessels into relief, but it was not likely that many of the warriors would notice their own ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... or smallness of schools is not in their preference of inactivity to action, nor of action to inactivity. It is in their preference of worthy things to unworthy, in rest; and of kind action to unkind, ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... the whites. This may be true, in the main, for a white man is known to have died at no great distance from Ravensnest, within the last five-and-twenty years, who numbered more than his six score of years; but aged negroes and aged Indians are nevertheless so common, when the smallness of their whole numbers is remembered, as to render the fact apparent to most of those who have seen much ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... the gratification of their physical desires, and no fears save those engendered by ghosts, witchcraft, the worship of ancestors, and other forms of superstition common among peoples of low development. They displayed the virtues of barbarism. They were brave and honest. The smallness of their intelligence excused the degradation of their habits. Their ignorance secured their innocence. Yet their eulogy must be short, for though their customs, language, and appearance vary with the districts they inhabit and the subdivisions to which ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... air. Then, as the tide rose steadily, the pressure of the water drove the air out of the cavern through this little hole, continually making an intermittent blowing sound. The great cleft in the rock acted like the horn of an immense megaphone. This gave rise to a roar, high-pitched—owing to the smallness of the hole—like a wolf's howl. Night and day, but more especially when the tide was coming in, the howl of the Wolf Rock sounded over the sea to warn mariners of ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... intended to be seen from below, the horizon is placed high up in the canvas instead of low down; the consequence is that compositions so treated not only lose in grandeur and truth, but appear to be toppling over, or give the impression of smallness rather than bigness. Indeed, they look like small pictures enlarged, which is a very different thing from a large design. So that, in order to see them properly, we should mount a ladder to get upon a level with their horizon line (see Fig. ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey
... held that the motive of Judas was totally different from the one hitherto supposed: it was not filthy lucre. The smallness of the price for which he sold his Master—it was less than four pounds of our money, though the value of this sum was much greater then—proves that there must have been another motive. The traditional conception is inconsistent with Christ's choice of him to be a disciple; ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... Through it all, behind it all, was man, governing and controlling, expressing himself, as of old, by his mastery over matter. It was colossal, stunning. White Fang was awed. Fear sat upon him. As in his cubhood he had been made to feel his smallness and puniness on the day he first came in from the Wild to the village of Grey Beaver, so now, in his full-grown stature and pride of strength, he was made to feel small and puny. And there were so many gods! He was made dizzy by the swarming of them. ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... and must accordingly be looked upon as a class of a separate and distinct character from the rest of the community. According to police estimates this class consists of between 50,000 and 60,000 persons in England and Wales. Notwithstanding the smallness of its numbers, this criminal population contributes a proportion amounting to fully 12 per cent. to the local and convict prisons of England. As this percentage of the prison population is recruited from wholly criminal ground, it is important to place it ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... he styled the pleasure of having conducted us. We next visited the castle of Tarascon, now used as the public prison, and in which 1500 English were confined during the war. The enormous height and massiveness of its walls, which overtop the weather-cock of the cathedral, and the smallness of its few windows, qualify it well for this purpose; and a greater appearance of strength and solidity is given by the solid rock in which its foundations are embedded, and which in some places is shaped into wall and moat. We crossed ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... diminutives are fast disappearing from the language. If we desire to express smallness, we prefer to do it by an auxiliary word; thus a little fist, and not a 'fistock' (Golding), a little lad, and not a 'ladkin', a little worm, rather than a 'wormling' (Sylvester). It is true that of diminutives very many still ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... elements even seeming to lament our departure. The bad weather has lasted more or less ever since, just one gleam of sunshine brightening us up on leaving the wharf, but we saw nothing of the Mersey or the surroundings. The only thing that struck us most forcibly was the smallness of our ship, though it was 6,000 tons. It has just been re-docked and overhauled, and still smells horribly of paint and full of workmen, whom, however, we drop here, in exchange for 1,200 emigrants. These, with about sixty first-class passengers and a hold full of ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... leaving a substitute in his place, he made a tour in the United States and Canada. He was presented to Jefferson, and felt impressed by his republican simplicity. Such a quality, however, was not in Moore's line; and nothing perhaps shows the essential smallness of his nature more clearly than the fact that his visit to the United States, in their giant infancy, produced in him no glow of admiration or aspiration, but only a recrudescence of the commonest prejudices—the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Having demonstrated the smallness of these periodic oscillations, Laplace next succeeded in determining the absolute dimensions of the orbits. What is the distance of the sun from the earth? No scientific question has occupied the attention of mankind in a greater degree. Mathematically speaking, nothing is more simple: it suffices, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... maximum, and the one-one-hundred-millionth of a centimetre for the minimum. Such figures convey no particular meaning to our blunt senses, but Lord Kelvin has given a tangible illustration that aids the imagination to at least a vague comprehension of the unthinkable smallness of the molecule. He estimates that if a ball, say of water or glass, about "as large as a football, were to be magnified up to the size of the earth, each constituent molecule being magnified in the same proportion, the magnified structure would be ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... infantry, my father himself was my godfather's natural half-brother; and therefore these relatives may, though without reason, being a suit against a young girl who would be defenceless. You see, monsieur, that the smallness of my fortune is not my greatest misfortune. I have many things to make me humble. It is for your sake, and not for my own, that I lay before you these facts, which to loving and devoted hearts are sometimes of little weight. But I beg you to consider, monsieur, ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... said authoritatively; "you are to keep that on," and he wrapped it about her with a decision that brought home to her her youth and smallness. ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... many, I reckon," drawled the wounded man, reflectively, "and I ain't sayin' I settled six on 'em hand to hand—I ain't sayin' that." He spoke with conscious modesty, as if the smallness of his assertion was equalled only by the greatness of his achievements. "I ain't sayin' I settled more'n three ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... by him was the comparative smallness of the area over which the sound was heard. He estimates it at little more than 3,300 square miles, or about one-twelfth of that over which the shock was felt. It extends north and south from Melfi to Lagonegro, and east and west from Monte Peloso to Duchessa and Senerchia. The sound was thus confined ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... well says of him "His slender and pliant intellect was well fitted to crawl up to the heights of power through all the crooked mazes and dirty by-paths of intrigue; but having once attained the pinnacle, its smallness and meanness were exposed to all the world." Even his private life had not the virtues which one who reads some of the exalted panegyrics paid to him by contemporary poets and others would be apt to imagine. He was fond of drink and fond of pleasure in a small ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... humble position, involving plain living and plain ways altogether. There was a glebe or church-farm attached to the manse or clergyman's house, and my father rented a small farm besides, for he needed all he could make by farming to supplement the smallness of the living. My mother was an invalid as far back as I can remember. We were four boys, and had no sister. But I must begin at the beginning, that is, as far back as it is possible for me ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... the specimens from Padre Island were commented upon by Nelson (op. cit.:149) who found smallness of bullae to characterize many of the specimens from the eastern part of the geographic range of L. c. merriami. In the northeastern part of the geographic range of L. c. merriami, as Nelson pointed out, the small size of the tympanic bullae ...
— Mammals Obtained by Dr. Curt von Wedel from the Barrier Beach of Tamaulipas, Mexico • E. Raymond Hall
... humiliating ease and humiliating smallness of pay. The steamer's name was the 'Fulvia'. It was one of the largest belonging to the Occidental Company. It carried no emigrants and had a passenger list of fashionable folk. On the voyage out to Australia the weather was pleasant, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... understanding their cause. The old man, so cheerful in his deafness, became taciturn; he could not help thinking that his house would one day be a refuge for the Baroness and her daughter; and it was for them that he kept the first floor. The smallness of his fortune was so well known at headquarters, that the War Minister, the Prince de Wissembourg, begged his old comrade to accept a sum of money for his household expenses. This sum the Marshal spent in furnishing ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... than one ounce, which is two tablespoonfuls; and at two months it will not hold more than three tablespoonfuls; and at six months, six or seven tablespoonfuls. Read these quantities once again carefully and try to realize the significance of the smallness of them. A baby is just like a little pig; it will go on feeding as long as it is allowed. The baby does not reason; it has no judgment; it depends upon its mother's judgment. If the mother is false to the trust the baby overloads its stomach. A swollen, distended, overloaded stomach ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... seeming to hover over his prostrate body, and I could have screamed again for very fright, but I had no voice left. The thing vanished suddenly, and it seemed to my disturbed senses that it made its exit through the open port, though how that was possible, considering the smallness of the aperture, is more than any one can tell. I lay a long time upon the floor, and the captain lay beside me. At last I partially recovered my senses and moved, and I instantly knew that my arm was broken—the small bone of the left ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... spirit, are not numerous. Hilo has no carriage roads and no carriages: every one must ride or travel in a litter. People are very kind to each other. Horses, dresses, patterns, books, and articles of domestic use, are lent and borrowed continually. The smallness of the society and the close proximity are too much like a ship. People know everything about the details of each other's daily life, income, and expenditure, and the day's doings of each member of the little circle are matters for conversation. Indeed, were it not ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... above the level of the face, and in proportion as they incline to gross brutality the development falls behind the face; and there is no exception to this law, either in quadrupeds, birds, or reptiles. Indeed, notwithstanding the smallness of the brains of fishes, their portraits show that this law applies also to them—as if nature had determined to warn mankind of the character of every animal. Alas for the dulness of human observers! Our naturalists and anatomists have said not one word of the most conspicuous fact that ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... the smallness of the sum. A hundred dollars would be next to nothing, even in Mexico. Bandrist, he felt sure, possessed money in plenty. If there was not enough for two, there would be plenty ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... The smallness of the part which foreign trade played in industry signifies that in the earlier part of the eighteenth century the industrial organism as a whole must be regarded as a number of tolerably self-sufficing and therefore homogeneous ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... long for, yearn for, struggle for, and hold persistently in the mind, we tend to become just in exact proportion to the intensity and persistence of the thought. We think ourselves into smallness, into inferiority by thinking downward. We ought to think upward, then we would reach the heights where superiority dwells. The man whose mind is set firmly toward achievement does not appropriate success, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... of long envelopes are coming back, bringing their tales behind them, but one day I shall hear a jubilant note in the klip-klup of Lizzie's hoofs and Uncle Robert will hand me an envelope of bewitching smallness, with a tiny typed letter inside.... "It is ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... Signoria, one is apt to think of it as too small for the buildings which it holds, as wanting in a certain spaciousness such as the Piazza of St. Peter at Rome certainly possesses, or in the light of the meadow of Pisa; and yet this very smallness, only smallness when we consider the great buildings set there so precisely, gives it an element of beauty lacking in the great Piazza of Rome and in Pisa too—a certain delicate colour and shadow and a sense of nearness, of homeliness almost; for the shadow of the dome falls ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... The smallness of such a family circle may act in two ways: it may either send the members of it in different directions, or it may draw them together in an intense concentration of interests and sympathy. This latter was happily ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... officers of the Golden Hind were unwilling to return, but consented on Sir Humphrey's promise that they should come back in the spring; they sailed for England on the 31st of August. All wished him to return in the Golden Hind as a much larger and safer vessel; the Squirrel, besides its smallness, being encumbered on the deck with guns, ammunition, and nettings, making it unseaworthy. But when he was begged to remove into the larger vessel, he said, "I will not forsake my little company going homeward with whom I have passed so many storms and perils." ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... something in the look it wore that seemed to her in some fashion superb. He was different from other men. That quiet kingliness of his was so natural to him, so sublimely free from arrogance. He was immeasurably greater than his fellows by reason of the very smallness of his self-esteem. ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... In spite of the smallness of the opening at the other end, I was amazed to find that I could see nearly the whole room on the ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... her life upon some great, strong heart, then virtue, tenderness, voluptuousness, and duty blending, she would never have fallen from so high a happiness. But that happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire. She now knew the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated. So, striving to divert her thoughts, Emma determined now to see in this reproduction of her sorrows only a plastic fantasy, well enough to please the eye, and she even smiled internally with disdainful pity when at the back of the stage under the velvet ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... Manisty!—shaken with a supreme longing and fear which seemed to have driven out for the moment all the other elements in his character—those baser, vainer, weaker elements that she knew so well. The change in him was a measure of the smallness of her own past influence upon him; of the infinitude of her own self-deception. Her sharp intelligence drew the inference at once, and bade ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... country, to have their nails of great length; more especially their thumb nails, which are sometimes of sufficient length to be wrapped round the hand. The beauty, and even the rank of their women is supposed to consist in the smallness of their feet; for which reason, mothers bind up the feet of their daughters when young, to prevent them from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... proposed lamp and reflectors over open fires of coal secured his appointment; and no sooner had he set his hand to the task than the interest of that employment mastered him. The vacant stage on which he was to act, and where all had yet to be created—the greatness of the difficulties, the smallness of the means intrusted him—would rouse a man of his disposition like a call to battle. The lad introduced by marriage under his roof was of a character to sympathise; the public usefulness of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... only a few men he had noticed just what the difference was between the two armies, so that if he should fight his battles with them with a force which was in strength proportionate to theirs,[137] the multitudes of the enemy could inflict no injury upon the Romans by reason of the smallness of their numbers. And the difference was this, that practically all the Romans and their allies, the Huns, are good mounted bowmen, but not a man among the Goths has had practice in this branch, for their horsemen are accustomed to ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... the Langobards is the smallness of their number, for that they, who are surrounded with very many and very powerful nations, derive their security from no obsequiousness or plying; but from the dint of battle and adventurous deeds. There follow in order the Reudignians, ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... of the smallness of the herd on the shoulders of Professor Jordan, and declare that it is due to ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 49, October 14, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... another form of speaking of Distance. And in this connection let us not forget that just as one may think of Space being infinite in the direction of largeness, so may we think of it as being infinite in the sense of smallness. No matter how small may be an object thought of, we are still able to think of it as being capable of subdivision, and so on infinitely. There is no limit in this direction either. As Jakob has said: "The conception of the infinitely minute is ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... quiet elsewhere. A library eight by ten feet, with shelves all the way around and up and down, and two comfortable chairs, and one or two windows, will be a most satisfactory library. If the room is to be used for reading smallness doesn't matter, you see. ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... not rest in this indifference. He says: "The smallness of my charge left me more leisure than most of my clerical brethren, and the opportunities I had enjoyed on my travels of at once collecting information and strengthening my faith imposed a more urgent obligation ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... All the health and buoyancy of her was in her mouth, as well as in her eyes. She rarely exposed her teeth in smiling, for which purpose she seemed chiefly to employ her eyes; but when she laughed she showed strong white teeth, even, not babyish in their smallness, but just the firm, sensible, normal size one would expect in a woman as ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... made up of the tiniest things known to man—things so small that nobody really can think of their smallness. These little pieces of electricity are called electrons, and for all their smallness, scientists have been able to find out a good deal about them. They have managed to get one electron all by itself on a droplet of oil and they have seen how it made the oil behave. Of course ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... figure represent yellow stain. No other staining in the apron. 42 6 3/4 Background of design unstained, but back fold end of apron and fringe stained yellow. 43 6 3/4 No background staining in the apron. The smallness of the amount of decoration and the substitution of two tails for a fringe are, ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... feast, so sat they there. And Matholwch and Bendigeid Vran began to discourse; and behold it seemed to Bendigeid Vran, while they talked, that Matholwch was not so cheerful as he had been before. And he thought that the chieftain might be sad, because of the smallness of the atonement which he had, for the wrong that had been done him. "Oh, man," said Bendigeid Vran, "thou dost not discourse to-night so cheerfully as thou wast wont. And if it be because of the smallness of the atonement, thou shalt add thereunto whatsoever thou mayest ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... less perfectly dried mica, did not get so good a result as to smallness of residual charge as the ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... in the quantity of cotton imported is notoriously the consequence of the smallness of last year's crops in the United States. . . . . It is remarkable that the additional supply which has made up partly for the shortness of the American crop comes from the Brazils, Egypt, and other parts. From British India the supply is relatively shorter ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... nereids.[40] Hence also "sweet puck."[41] The names of the four attendant fairies, Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustard-seed, are Shakespeare's invention, chosen perhaps to typify grace, lightness, speed, and smallness. ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... openly in the day-time to occupy it, the enemy would doubtless anticipate him by a shorter way, the Numidians having been sent privately in the night, took possession of it. These, occupying this position, the Romans, the next day, despising the smallness of their numbers, dislodge, and transfer their camp thither themselves. There was now, therefore, but a very small space between rampart and rampart, and that the Roman line had almost entirely filled; at the same time the cavalry, ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... upon them. In an instant all was wild confusion. Taken completely by surprise, and entirely ignorant of the strength of the enemy, the natives, after a wild fire in the direction of the advancing foe, fled precipitately. Their officers tried to rally them, and as the smallness of the force attacking them became visible, the Sepoys with their old habit of discipline began to draw together. But at this moment the guns, loaded with grape, poured into their rear, and with a cheer the Punjaub cavalry burst into ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... hesitation struck down a quiet street to the right. But he saw no shops of the sort he was looking for, and he had thoughts of going back and braving the big store again. He turned again and again, pleased by the orderly rows of red-brick-with-white-trim houses, homey-looking places in spite of their smallness and close setting. At last, right in the middle of a row of these, he saw a large window set in place of the two usual smaller ones, a window filled with unmistakable feminine stuff, and the sign, small, neatly gilt lettered: Miss Tolman's Ladies' ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... they had been strewed on purpose; yet an hundred times as many are to be seen hovering all around. Some of these are black and white, as large as jays, and having beaks like crows, which lie always on the sea, as they cannot fly to any height on account of the smallness of their wings, which are not larger than the half of ones hand; yet they fly with wonderful swiftness close to the water. We named these birds Aporath, and found them very fat. In less than half an hour we filled ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... heard that the smallness of the column was being freely commented on and discussed; indeed, people in Kuram did not care to disguise their belief that we were hastening to our destruction. Even the women taunted us. When they saw the little Gurkhas for the first time, they exclaimed: 'Is it possible that these beardless ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... was one vote polled for the first Abolitionist presidential ticket. The man who gave it did not try to hide his responsibility—in fact, he seemed rather proud of his aloneness—but he was mercilessly guyed on account of the smallness of his party. His rejoinder was that he thought that he and God, who was, he believed, with him, made a pretty good-sized ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... new purpose, that she should ask, or even accept, such a favor as this from Ned Ferry; a favor which, within an hour, the whole command would know he had granted? Was this a trifle, which only the Gholson-like smallness of my soul made spectral? The first time I had ever seen Ferry with any of his followers about him, was he not on Charlotte's gray, now, unluckily, beyond reach, at Wiggins? Ah, yes; but Beauty lending a horse to speed Valor was one thing; Valor unhorsing ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... effects of the atrophy are noted in the smallness of the organ, in its becoming whiter in colour than normal, ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... domesticated, and refrained from firing. The loggerhead is a large and heavy bird for a duck: one which I shot weighed eighteen pounds, and it has been recorded as sometimes weighing as much as twenty-nine pounds. From the disproportionate smallness of its wings it is incapable of flight, but employs these members as paddles in hurrying along the surface of the water when alarmed, using its feet at the same time with much splashing and apparent awkwardness, leaving a broad ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... want to give up his shoes, and even offered to fight for them, till he felt the horseshoer's strength in Ernest's hands. Carlson afterward reported several blisters and much grievous loss of skin due to the smallness of the shoes, but he succeeded in doing gallant work with them. Back from the lip of the hole, where ended the young man's obliterated trial, Carlson put on the shoes and walked away to the left. He walked ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... his estate was a cottage which had once belonged to Manius Curius, who three times received the honour of a triumph. Cato used frequently to walk over and look at this cottage, and, as he observed the smallness of the plot of ground attached to it, and the simplicity of the dwelling itself, he would reflect upon how Curius, after having made himself the first man in Rome, after conquering the most warlike nations, and driving King Pyrrhus out of Italy, used to dig this little ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... delegates, eight States had already acted favorably and adoption was regarded as a certainty. This was sufficient to put a stop to any further waiting, and New Hampshire added its name to the list on the 21st of June; but the division of opinion was fairly well represented by the smallness of the majority, the vote ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... of opinion seemed so trivial. Their views so immature and amateurish. He watched them with curious, brooding attention. They were so nobly tender in their outward forms. He appreciated the grace of their gestures, the fine-boned smallness of their bodies, the delicacy of their molding, the tendril thinness of their fingers, the sagacity of their tiny aristocratic heads, the seduction of their soft red mouths, the poetry of the fringe of golden lashes in which the pathos of their eyes hung enmeshed—their intrusive, penetrating ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... beauty. It may be that average lives are so planless, so haphazard and without order that an achievement of such magnitude representing years of labour and concentrated thought in steadily following out a preconceived plan cannot fail to be a tremendous contrast to the smallness and pettiness of the majority—a contrast so great that it is mentally and spiritually a glimpse of the world of new possibilities attainable when once the feverish clinging to the ideals of the totem post is abandoned. ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... over again with unspeakable delight and wonder. Some years after, when I met with this work again, I found I had lost nearly my whole relish for it (except some few parts) and was, I remember, very much mortified with the change in my taste, which I sought to attribute to the smallness and gilt edges of the edition I had bought, and its being perfumed with rose-leaves. Nothing could exceed the gravity, the solemnity with which I carried home and read the Dedication to the Social Contract, with some other pieces of the same author, which I had ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... completely Norman building than St Etienne, but its simple, semi-circular arches and round-headed windows contrast strangely with the huge pontifical canopy of draped velvet that is suspended above the altar, and very effectually blocks the view of the Norman apse beyond. The smallness of the windows throughout the building subdues the light within, and thus gives St Trinite a somewhat different character to St Etienne. The capitals of the piers of the arcade are carved with strange-looking monkeys and other designs, and there are chevron ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... a morbid condition of the penis, in which the glans penis cannot be uncovered, either on account of a congenital smallness of the orifice of the foreskin, or it may be due to the acute stage of gonorrhoea, or caused by the presence of ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... lie in tents, there being only two clapboard houses built, and three sawed houses framed. Our crane, our battery of cannon, and magazine are finished. This is all that we have been able to do, by reason of the smallness of our number, of which many have been sick, and others unused to labor; though, I thank God, they are now pretty well, and we have not lost one since ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... until she had become thoroughly reconciled to her fate, the impatience of the boy-king was restrained and he was forced to consent to a temporary separation. To quote from Coxe's description: "Marie Louise had scarcely entered her fourteenth year, and appeared still more youthful from the smallness of her stature; but her spirit and understanding partook of the early maturity of her native climate, and to exquisite beauty of person and countenance she united the most captivating manners and graceful deportment." Even after her attendants ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... inventor claimed that the return bends and small openings against the tubes were for the purpose of "restricting the circulation" and no doubt they performed well that office; but excepting for the smallness of the openings they were not as efficient for that purpose as the arrangement shown ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... the universe, the two at the window were silent, not with the silence of embarrassment, but with that of two friends in the presence of something beyond the reach of words. As they stared out into the infinity each felt as never before the pitiful smallness of even our whole solar system and the utter insignificance of human beings and their works. Silently their minds reached out to each ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... life, here and there a few fleeing antelopes; here and there, but at incredible intervals, a creek running in a canon. The plains have a grandeur of their own; but here there is nothing but a contorted smallness. Except for the air, which was light and stimulating, there was not one good circumstance in that ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sheriff, and looked uneasily about. Now that his eyes were turned away, Vic could study him at leisure, and he wondered at the smallness of the man. Suppose one were able to lay hands on him it would be ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... be fully as severe as ours," said Cortlandt, "on account of their length, the planet's distance from the sun, and the twenty-seven and a half degrees inclination of its axis, we can account for the smallness of its ice-caps only by the fact that its oceans cover but one fourth of its surface instead of three quarters, as on the earth, and there is consequently a smaller ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... put off to them with fruit; and as, from what the interpreter had told them of the smallness of the population, there was clearly no chance of any attack being made on the brig, they were allowed to come alongside. The supply of fruit was very welcome, and the interpreter learned something from the natives as to the state of things on ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... do nothing, for those to whom Christianity brings no revelation, for those who see no eternity in time, no infinity in life, for those to whom opportunity is but the handmaid of selfishness, to whom smallness is informed by no greatness, for whom the lowly is never lifted up by indwelling love to the heights of divine performance,—for them, indeed, each hurrying year may well be a King of Terrors. To pass out from the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... men in spite of her smallness and leanness and incisiveness of manner. She was called mighty smart and dry, which was the shop synonym for witty, and her favors, possibly because she never granted them, were accounted valuable. Abby Atkins had more admirers than many a girl who was prettier ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... table under the blue-green leaves of an old apple tree; the glass doors that opened upon orderly, white-wainscoted rooms full of shining dark surfaces and flowered chintzes and gleaming glass bowls of real flowers; the smallness and completeness and prettiness of everything filled them both with ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... To know the smallness of the human atom, the limit of desire, the existence of other lives as precious as their own, is not the philosophy which makes great kings. Philosophy engenders pity; and one who possesses that can not ride roughshod over men, and that is the ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... exhibited in perfection by our actinic clouds, the only condition necessary to its production being the smallness of the particles. In all cases, and with all substances, the cloud formed at the commencement, when the precipitated particles are sufficiently fine, is blue. In all cases, moreover, this fine blue cloud polarizes perfectly the beam which ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... this direction and that at an enormous speed, but do not appear to us on the earth to alter their positions in regard to each other. I know of nothing that gives one a more overwhelming sense of the mightiness of the universe and the smallness of ourselves than this fact. From age to age men look on changeless heavens, yet this apparently stable universe is fuller of flux and reflux than is the restless ocean itself, and the very wavelets on the sea are not more numerous ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... got that feeling, you KNOW what I mean. All of a sudden, when I am trying to take in all them millions and millions of bottles, it rushed onto me, that feeling, strong. Thinking of them bottles had somehow brung it on. The bigness of the hull creation, and the smallness of me, and the gait at which everything was racing and rushing ahead, made me want to grab hold of something ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... and gaining to the northward more than to the west. Many times they were chased by the Malay proas which infested the islands, but the swiftness of their little peroqua was their security; indeed, the chase was, generally speaking, abandoned as soon as the smallness of the vessel was made out by the pirates, who expected that little or no booty was to ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... nearly as possible after that of my father, and had failed to teach to me even that thrift which is a part of the dot of every French girl from the Faubourg St. Germaine to the Boulevard St. Michel. But even in my ignorance the information of Nannette as to the smallness of our fortune gave to ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... them. The figure of Mirah, with her beauty set off by the quiet, careful dress of an English lady, made a strange pendant to this shabby, foreign-looking, eager, and gesticulating man, who withal had an ineffaceable jauntiness of air, perhaps due to the bushy curls of his grizzled hair, the smallness of his hands and feet, and his ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... steamers outside, one of which managed to get in again; but the other was captured, and with her a Confederate commissary, who was making arrangements for crossing a large number of cattle from the West at various points. Red River was effectually closed, but the smallness of his force made it necessary to keep them all together, in case of attack, and though intercourse across the Mississippi was seriously impaired, it was not wholly checked. On the 15th the admiral again returned to the bend above Port Hudson, ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... Scaichi to make the one "sensation" of the season—Gounod's "Faust," which had six regular performances, and two extra. Of the women singers the greatest popularity was won by Miss Eames, whose youthfulness, freshness of voice, and statuesque beauty, compelled general admiration. The smallness of her repertory, however, prevented her from helping the season to the triumphant close which it might have had if the company had been enlisted to carry out the policy adopted when the season was half over. Miss Eames's dbut was ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... to incur Atahuallpa's contempt. No alternative remained but to march straight across the sierra to his quarters "Let every one of you," said the bold cavalier, "take heart and go forward like a good soldier, nothing daunted by the smallness of your numbers. For in the greatest extremity God ever fights for his own; and doubt not he will humble the pride of the heathen, and bring him to the knowledge of the true faith, the great end and object of ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... the course of a long conference he enumerated many other grounds of dissatisfaction, the principal of which were our want of attention to him as chief, the weakness of the rum formerly sent to him, the smallness of the present now offered, and the want of the chief's clothing, which he had been accustomed to receive at Fort Providence every spring. He concluded by refusing to receive the goods now ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... it be said that (the passage does) not (refer to Brahman) on account of the smallness of the abode, and on account of the denotation of that (viz. minuteness of the being meditated on); we say no, because (Brahman) has thus to be meditated upon, and because (in the same passage) it is ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... lashes had a penetrating and peculiar expression—a mixture of audacity and weakness; his thin and somewhat pale lips were apt to curl in an ironical smile; his hands were of perfect beauty, his feet of dainty smallness, and he showed with an affectation of complaisance a well-turned leg above his ample boots, the turned down tops of which, garnished with lace, fell in irregular folds aver his ankles in the latest fashion. He did not appear to be more than eighteen ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... and picking up some Genoese corn-ships—pursued his way, passing Malta at a respectful distance, and coasting the Morea, till he dropped anchor in the Bay of Salonica.[25] By his route, which touched Santa Maura and Navarino, he appears to have been looking for Doria, in spite of the smallness of his own force (which had, however, been increased by prizes); but, fortunately, perhaps, for the Corsair, the Genoese admiral had returned to Sicily, and the two had missed each other on ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... the reader sneer as he will at my predicament, there was something sublime in the scene around me. The smallness of the craft magnified the greatness of the waves. I literally enjoyed the interesting situation which naval writers, who are not nautical, of "seas running mountains high," so rejoice to describe. One wave on either ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Ireland, among the Orangemen of Ulster and the Loyalists of Dublin; Lord Randolph Churchill was at Liverpool making silly and violent speeches; Mr. Chamberlain was colloguing—to use an excellent Irish phrase—with the publicans of the Midlands. The Irish were especially conspicuous by the smallness of their attendance. They had been months away from business, wives, children, and naturally they were anxious to take advantage of the brief breathing space which was left to them before that time came when they could not leave Westminster for a moment in the weeks during ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... sheep, and my governess and the head gardener goats, so that the results could not fail to be in every way satisfactory. But looking up at the slope and remembering my visions, I laughed at the smallness of the field I had supposed would ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... central-fire cartridge to seven millimetres is called the 300, which is .3 of an inch. Seven millimetres is .276 of an inch. The point to which I want to draw your attention is the extreme slightness and smallness of the revolver with which Mrs. Heredith was killed. As Captain Nepcote told Merrington yesterday, it is ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... hardiness in growing at low temperatures, its depth of root penetration, the availability of the seed, the smallness of the seed so that the weight required for the acre is not large, is to be favored for a cover crop. The objections are two: The fact that it does not seem to grow well under some conditions; second, that when a growth is made it is coarse and rangey, and the ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... an almost insane brilliancy; as, for instance, in the case of a noted theologian, who occupied the last minutes of his ebbing life with a very subtile mathematical discourse concerning the exceeding, the excruciating smallness of nothing divided into infinitesimal parts. And strange as it may seem, I once heard this identical instance cited as a triumphant vindication of the most sublime article of either Pagan or Christian faith. Nay, from the lips of a theological professor, the fragmentary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... removed, but it is thick with fine matter. Nine-tenths of the light scattered by these suspended particles is perfectly polarised in a direction at right angles to the beam, and this release of the particles from the ordinary law of polarisation is a demonstration of their smallness. I should say by far the greater number of the particles concerned in this scattering are wholly beyond the range of the microscope, and no ordinary filter can intercept such particles. It is next to impossible, by artificial means, to produce a pure water. Mr. Hartley, for example, some ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... remains of an undecreasing girth, almost equal to that of the brain. Under all these circumstances, would it be unreasonable to survey and map out the whale's spine phrenologically? For, viewed in this light, the wonderful comparative smallness of his brain proper is more than compensated by the wonderful comparative magnitude of his spinal cord. But leaving this hint to operate as it may with the phrenologists, I would merely assume the spinal theory for a moment, in reference to the sperm whale's hump. This august ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... luggage. The Yorkshireman having an eye to a bed, speedily had Mr. Jorrocks's luggage and his own on the back of a porter on its way to the "Rutland Arms," while that worthy citizen followed in a sort of sleepy astonishment at the smallness of the place, inquiring if they were sure they had not stopped at some village by mistake. Two beds had been ordered for two gentlemen who could not get two seats by the mail, which fell to the lot of those who did, and into these our ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... was the smallness of his studio. If he had only had the old garret of the Quai de Bourbon, or even the huge dining-room of Bennecourt! But what could he do in that oblong strip of space, that kind of passage, which the landlord of the house impudently let to painters for four hundred francs a year, after ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... suited his fiery impatience. He accepted the offer of some two or three ships, which William put at his disposal, under pretence to reconnoitre the Northumbrian coasts, and there attempt a rising in his own favour. But his discontent was increased by the smallness of the aid afforded him; for William, ever suspicious, distrusted both his faith and his power. Tostig, with all his vices, was a poor dissimulator, and his sullen spirit betrayed itself when he took leave ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... many times in daily kindergarten practice. Is it not true that the laying of beans and lentils one inch apart on the tables, for instance, is an occupation which requires very delicate handling on account of the smallness of the object, its easy mobility, and the exactness required to place it precisely at the crossing-point of vertical and horizontal lines? Is it not true that such work requires considerable effort from the kindergartner to make it interesting to the child? Is it ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... his journey through life well have been less eagerly designated or apostrophised. If there are persons as to whom the "Mr." never comes up at all, so there are those as to whom it never subsides; but some of them all keep it by the greatness and others, oddly enough, by the smallness of their importance. The subject of my present reference, as I think of him, nevertheless—by which I mean in spite of his place in the latter group—greatly helps my documentation; he must have been of so excellent and consistent ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... stars has not yet been ascertained by sufficient observation; Dr. Blagden thinks their situation is lower down in the atmosphere than that of fireballs, which he conjectures from their swift apparent motion, and ascribes their smallness to the more minute division of the electric matter of which they are supposed to consist, owing to the greater resistance of the denser medium through which they pass, than that in which the fire-balls exist. Mr. Brydone ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... our view of children lies in the fact that we feel them and their ways to be supernatural while, for some mysterious reason, we do not feel ourselves or our own ways to be supernatural. The very smallness of children makes it possible to regard them as marvels; we seem to be dealing with a new race, only to be seen through a microscope. I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination can see the hand of a child and not be ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... this, the dwarfish and diminutive, ought to be considered. Littleness, merely as such, has nothing contrary to the idea of beauty. The humming-bird, both in shape and coloring, yields to none of the winged species, of which it is the least; and perhaps his beauty is enhanced by his smallness. But there are animals, which, when they are extremely small, are rarely (if ever) beautiful. There is a dwarfish size of men and women, which is almost constantly so gross and massive in comparison of their height, that they present us with a very disagreeable ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... either to cross the Balkans or to push forward operations against the uncaptured fortresses. Shumla and Silistria remained in the hands of their defenders, and the Russians, after suffering enormous losses in proportion to the smallness of their numbers, withdrew to Varna and the Danube, to resume the campaign in the spring of the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... As grandma said, with few exceptions, the only horses in the district were draughts and ponies. Every effect has a cause, and the reason of this was that these big horses were the only ones properly adapted to agriculture, and the smallness of the holdings did not admit of hacks being kept for mere pleasure, so the cheapest knockabout horse to maintain was a pony, as not only did it take less fodder and serve for the little saddle use ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... keen black eyes, and her hair was intensely black. Her face, but for the slight inward curve of the nose, was regular, and the smallness of her nose and of her mouth did not weaken her face, but gave it a curious effect of fierceness, of challenge. She had a large black fan in her hand, which she waved in talking, with a slow, watchful nervousness. Her sister was blonde, and had a profile like her brother's; but her chin was not so ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... for winter losses are: Queenlessness, smallness of number of bees in colonies, insufficient food, improper food, dampness, bad air, the breaking of the clusters, ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... feast, so sat they there. And Matholwch and Bendigeid Vran began to discourse; and behold it seemed to Bendigeid Vran, while they talked, that Matholwch was not so cheerful as he had been before. And he thought that the chieftain might be sad because of the smallness of the atonement which he had, for the wrong that had been done him. "Oh man," said Bendigeid Vran, "thou dost not discourse to-night so cheerfully as thou wert wont. And if it be because of the smallness of the ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... streaked with white. The trees are nearly always composed of clusters of their proper leaves relieved on a black or dark ground, thus (fig. 20).[31] And observe carefully, with respect to the complete drawing of the leaves on this tree, and the smallness of their number, the real distinction between noble conventionalism and false conventionalism. You will often hear modern architects defending their monstrous ornamentation on the ground that it is "conventional," and that architectural ornament ought to be conventionalized. Remember, when you ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... according to the evidence as it has come down to us, is as unjust and absurd as the smallness of the amount, and the long delay before it was ordered, are discreditable to the province. One of the larger sums was allowed to William Good, while he clearly deserved nothing, as he was an adverse witness in the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... all manner of precious stones' (Rev 21:19). True, these there are called 'The foundations of the wall of the city,' but it has respect to the matter in hand; for that which is before called a temple, for its comparative smallness, is here called a city, for or because of its great increase: and both the foundations of the wall of the city, as well as of the temple, are 'the twelve apostles of the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... separate vessel. I was really frightened for fear she would do as she proposed, as I knew her fondness for pleasantries of this sort, and also, that so far from being taken as a joke, it would bring down upon us a storm of wrath. We were surprised at the smallness of the saucers containing the fruit. Certainly the contents of as many as four or five could have been put into a pint. Then the sugar was supplied in meagre quantity, though at that time cheaper than ever before known. There were common tin spoons, so valueless as to make ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... The smallness of the population and the great distances between the settlements offer serious obstacles to the establishment of the usual Territorial form of government. Perhaps the organization of several sub-districts with a small municipal council of limited powers for each would ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... or from the continental colonies. Intercourse with foreign states was prohibited, and that with foreign colonies allowed only under rare and disabling conditions. But although the West Indies thus maintained a large part of the mother country's export trade, the smallness of their population, and the simple necessities of the slaves, who formed the great majority of the inhabitants, rendered them as British customers much inferior to the continental colonies; and this disparity was continually increasing, for the continent was ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... factory of the firm's on the river, because it was self-evident he had not got anything like enough stuff to pay off my men with, and my agreement was to pay off on the Rembwe, hence my horror at the smallness of the firm's N'dorko store. "Besides," I said, "Mr. Glass (I knew the head Rembwe agent of Hatton and Cookson was a Mr. Glass), you have only got cloth and tobacco, and I have promised the Fans to pay off in whatever they choose, and I know for sure they want powder." "I am not Mr. Glass," said ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... royal treasury will give your Majesty a detailed account of the condition of your treasury in these islands—which beyond all doubt is very pitiable, because of the smallness of the relief that has come these last few years from Nueva Espana, and the little profit that the islands themselves have produced, because of the great decrease in commerce. That obliges me to see what measures will be advisable to increase the revenues and decrease the expenses ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... surface the freshwaters form a very small fraction, about a hundredth, but they make up for their smallness by their variety. We think of deep lake and shallow pond, of the great river and the purling brook, of lagoon and swamp, and more besides. There is a striking resemblance in the animal population of widely separated freshwater basins: ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... were emboldened by this, and they were troubled by no qualms of conscience on the subject of shedding the white men's blood. They rose from their seats on the ground, and began to taunt the captain with his want of eloquence, and also with the smallness of his stature, which was despicable in their eyes. Then, growing still bolder as they became excited, they drew their knives, and whetted them before the eyes of their hosts: flourishing them round their heads, and boasting ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... grows like a very porpoise," remarked a young captain, who prided himself much on the excessive smallness of his waist. "Methinks that, like the ground hogs that abound on his Island, he must fatten on hickory nuts. Only see how the man melts in the noon-day sun. But as you say, Villiers, what can bring him ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... noonday sun blazed intolerably. At the far end, in the shadow, the tall figure of Attwater was to be seen leaning on a tree; towards him, with his hands over his head, and his steps smothered in the sand, the clerk painfully waded. The surrounding glare threw out and exaggerated the man's smallness; it seemed no less perilous an enterprise, this that he was gone upon, than for a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of years older than you. And yet," he continued musingly, "I envy you. Knowledge is, of course, relative, and I can know so little! Time and space have yielded not an iota of their mystery to our most penetrant minds. And whether we delve baffled into the unknown smallness of the small, or whether we peer, blind and helpless, into the unknown largeness of the large, it is the same—infinity is comprehensible only to the Infinite One: the all-shaping Force directing and controlling ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... painter's life and works. They have recently placed in a tiny oratory, scooped by Guidobaldo II. from the thickness of the wall, a cast of Raphael's skull, which will be studied with interest and veneration. It has the fineness of modelling combined with shapeliness of form and smallness of scale which is said to have characterised ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... challenge to my self some part of the Burthen; and as a Parent of your Child. I present her with Twelve hundred and fifty Crowns towards these Expences; which Sum had been much larger, had I not feared the Smallness of it would be the greatest Inducement with you to accept ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... to see established sixteen convents of nuns, all obeying her reformed rule, and most of them founded by her amid great difficulties and opposition. When she founded the Carmelite Convent of Toledo she had only four ducats to begin with. Some one objected to the smallness of the sum, when she replied, "Theresa and this money are indeed nothing; but God and Theresa and four ducats can accomplish anything." It was amid the fatigues incident to the founding a convent in Burgos that she ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... body of our population. In every country, persons are to be found varying in their color, origin and character, from the native mass. But this anomaly creates no inquietude or apprehension, because the exotics, from the smallness of their number, are known to be utterly incapable of disturbing the general tranquillity. Here, on the contrary, the African part of our population bears so large a proportion to the residue of European ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... The smallness of the bag, by the way, was one reason why Sam, who did not like heavy bundles, wanted to carry it. He felt that it was time to practise on the ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... asks George Eliot, in 'Middlemarch,' 'ever pinched into its pilulous smallness the cobweb of pre-matrimonial acquaintance?' And, to press the metaphor, the cobweb, as far as Mark and Mabel were concerned, brilliantly as it shone in all its silken iridescence, would have rolled up into a particularly small pill. Mark was anxious that his engagement should be as short as possible, ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... the new. The little parish church is of the very far past, having lost its Cathedral rank over six hundred years ago to Sainte-Marie in Grasse, a town scarcely younger than its own. It is the type of the church of this coast, with its unpretentious smallness, its strength, and its disfiguring restorations; and it is, especially in comparison with Vence and Grasse, of small architectural interest. The facade, and the double archway which connects the church and the tower, are of the ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... ordnance is introduced, with its thinner and sharper style of expression. Waterloo appears to have been heard farther than Sedan or Metz, although its pieces were but popguns compared with those that spoke the requiem of the Third Napoleon. And perhaps, if we allow for smallness in number and calibre, those employed by Robert the Bruce at the battle of Werewater in 1327—said to be the first recorded occasion in Europe—were more vociferous than their successors of to-day. Few and cumbrous they must indeed have been, since Edward III. could ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... diffuseness of the matter of those elder planets, Saturn being not more dense or heavy than the substance cork. It may be that a sufficiency of heat still remains in those planets to make up for their distance from the sun, and the consequent smallness of the heat which they derive from his rays. And it may equally be, since Mercury is twice the density of the earth, that its matter exists under a degree of cold for which that planet's large enjoyment of the sun's rays is no more than a compensation. ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... built by Sebastian Gabota; and reported many other surprizing and wonderful things which they had seen in that country. In the course of their proceedings, Francisco de Mendoza was assassinated by Pedro Heredia, owing to which violent disputes had taken place among them, by which and the smallness of their force they had been rendered unable to proceed in conquering the country, so that at length they had come to the resolution of returning into Peru, that his majesty or the viceroy of that kingdom might nominate a new commander. They were likewise persuaded, when the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... To feel one's smallness and realize it, one need only go and stand beside the marble cherubs that support the holy-water basins against the first pillar. They look small, if not graceful; but they are of heroic size, and the bowls are as big as baths. Everything ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... standing against Fate for having equipped him so poorly. Measured by the German standard, however, his modest patrimony suggested princely opulence; and its possessor became conscious of a certain agreeable expansion, peculiar to capitalists. Smile as he might at the smallness of the social conditions which allowed him to play the role of a Croesus in the fancy of love-sick maids, he could not deny that he found it a pleasant thing to be the object of such tender rivalry. It seemed to add a cubit to his height and two to his self-esteem. He revelled in ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... and those who charmed it, those who shot off fireworks and those who prepared them, those who had made a symphony of conversation and those who made of it a monologue and had no flashes of silence. They did not follow fashion there—they rather made it; in art and literature as in toilets, smallness follows the fashion, pretension exaggerates it, taste makes a ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... great victory. Then the wretch sent for Mr. Holwell. We bade him farewell; sure we thought we should never see him more. But he returned to us presently, and told us the Nawab was vastly enraged at the smallness of the treasure he had found; the stories of the French had led him to expect untold wealth. Omichand and Krishna Das had been took out of prison, and treated with great affability, and presented by the Nawab with siropas—robes of honor, a precious token of his favor. But the Nawab. Mr. ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... the west and north General French, during this same period and the ensuing month of January, was carrying on continuous active operations, which will remain an instructive lesson for the military student, but which, from the smallness of the scale and the technical character of their merits, cannot well be related in a narrative of this character. For it he has received, if not popular appreciation, at least public reward in the high commendation ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... will, Mistress Carver," replied Howland heartily, for his relationship toward the governor and his beautiful wife was rather that of a younger brother than of a retainer; and although the smallness of his fortune had induced him to accept the patronage of the older and wealthier man, it was much as a lad of noble lineage was content a few years before this to become first the page and then the squire of ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... general whose character and ability were already established, and of the justice of whose judgment and action regarding his subordinates there could be no reason for doubt in my mind. My command was to be mostly of veteran troops, and not too large for my experience. Its comparative smallness was a source of satisfaction to me at that time, rather than anything like jealousy of my senior brother commanders of ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... foods; but the chief condition in the production of milk rich in butter is simply that the animals which yield it must be fed with abundance of nutritious food. Nor must it be supposed that the richness of milk is due to the smallness of the yield, for whenever the quality of the secretion is inferior, it is almost certain to be deficient in quantity. Those cows which give the richest milk, ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... quite miraculous. When Hilary sat waiting in the jeweler's shop, she watched a little episode of high life—two wealthy people choosing their marriage plate; the bride, so careless and haughty; the bridegroom, so unutterably mean to look at, stamped with that innate smallness and coarseness of soul which his fine clothes only made more apparent. And she thought—oh, how fondly she thought!—of that honest, manly mein; of that true, untainted heart, which she felt sure, had never loved any woman but herself; of the warm, firm hand, carving its way thro' ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock) |
