"Thinned" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the invading army met with a similar fate. Lefebvre himself, who reproached the Saxons for their defeat, was not able to advance as far as they, and was quickly driven from the mountains with greatly thinned ranks. He was forced to disguise himself as a common soldier and hide among the cavalry to escape the balls of the sharp-shooters, who owed him no love. The rear-guard was attacked with clubs by the Capuchin ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... the air of change and departure. The cuckoo, of course, had long been silent; but many another feathered friend, for months a part of the familiar landscape and its small society, was missing too, and it seemed that the ranks thinned steadily day by day. Rat, ever observant of all winged movement, saw that it was taking daily a southing tendency; and even as he lay in bed at night he thought he could make out, passing in the darkness overhead, the beat and quiver of impatient ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... 'peared more at home—she laughed with some of the redskin gals and even jined in their play. You see," he said, turning to Cameron, "she'd been captured longer and children's spirits soon rise again. Arter a while they went back to the wigwam." When the fires burned down and the crowd thinned, and there was only a few left sitting in groups round the embers, the Seneca started. For a long time I saw nothing of him, but once or twice I thought I saw a figure moving among the wigwams. Presently the fires ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... take from the Illustrated London News. Hunting the giraffe has long been a favorite sport among the more adventurous of British sportsmen, its natural range being all the wooded parts of eastern, central, and southern Africa, though of late years it has been greatly thinned out before the settlements advancing from the Cape ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... the platform had thinned, she saw a lady in a nurse's cloak and bonnet, waiting by her trunks, the belabelled condition of which advertised the fact that the owner ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... better than to force them to it; for church-time was the season of their harvest. Then the hens' nests were searched, a stray duck was clapped under the smockfrock, the tools which might have been left by chance in a farm-yard were picked up, and all the neighboring pigeon-houses were thinned; so that Giles used to boast to tawny Rachel, his wife, that Sunday was to them the most profitable ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... over an under-painting to modify its tone or to add to its effect. It is not always transparent color, but usually it is. Sometimes opaque or semi-opaque color may be used, and it is a glaze by virtue of the fact that it is thinned with a vehicle either oil or varnish, and flowed on. A scumble is rubbed on, and is never ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... on this eastern side are fighting with Rosas. The general, however, like Lord Chesterfield, thinking that his friends may in a future day become his enemies, always places them in the front ranks, so that their numbers may be thinned. Since leaving South America we have heard that this ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... that, b'gad!" bellows the Captain, radiant of face. "Thinned 'em out a bit, ye know, Beverley. Six of 'em—down and out of it b'gad! Carnaby's behind, too,—foot short at the water. Told you it would be—a good race, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... or two of bright mild weather followed, and the troops got themselves fairly well sheltered again. The cutting of trees for huts and for firewood thinned out the forest, and the elevation of the camp above the surrounding country exposed us to the wind, as we soon learned to our cost. Whilst the fair days lasted, we had a favorable example of an East Tennessee winter, as is shown ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... assemble their friends and allies from the interior, who mustering in prodigious force, set upon the Grecians, while they negligently revelled and feasted, and slew many of them, and recovered the spoil. They, dispirited and thinned in their numbers, with difficulty made their retreat good to the ships. Thence they set sail, sad at heart, yet something cheered that with such fearful odds against them they had not all been utterly destroyed. A dreadful tempest ensued, which for two nights and two ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the sounds of the Maillard ceased and the pall of dust thinned and dissolved itself in the air. The motor cycle ran swiftly on until the car, now at a standstill, became visible; then the Italian got down, took out a pair of field-glasses and swept ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... the plough immediately after the grain is cut; which, in the middle provinces, is ready for the sickle early in June, about the same time that the young rice fields stand at the height of eight or ten inches. These being now thinned, the young plants are transplanted into the prepared wheat lands, which are then immediately flooded. Upon such a crop they reckon from fifteen to twenty for one. Instead of rice one of the millets is sometimes sown as an after-crop, this ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... evidently bent on doing his best with the blackberry bushes. So must Diana; at least she must seem to do it. There was a lull with the coffee cups; lunch was getting done; here and there parties were handling their baskets and throwing their sun-bonnets on. The column of smoke had thinned now to a filmy veil of grey vapour, slowly ascending, through which Diana could look over to the round hill-tops, with their green leaves glittering in the sun; and farther still, to the blue, clear vault of ether, where there was neither ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... know. Other men were coming up and going over the top. The German machine-gun fire was not quite so deadly now, but our men suffered badly from shell-fire. On several occasions I noticed men run and take temporary cover in the shell-holes, but their ranks were being terribly thinned. ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... assemblies they usurped the attributes of secular rulers, and discussed questions of peace and war. They entered into formidable conspiracies, and fomented the troubles and embarrassments of the government The abjuration of Henry IV. had thinned their ranks and deprived them of court influence. No great leaders remained, since they had been seduced by fashion. The Huguenots were a disappointed and embittered party, hard to please, and hard to be governed; full of fierce resentments, and soured by old recollections. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... hunger fierce and bold, Ravaged the plains, and thinned the fold: Deep in the wood secure he lay, The thefts of night regaled the day. In vain the shepherd's wakeful care Had spread the toils, and watched the snare: In vain the dog pursued his pace, The fleeter robber mocked the chase. As Lightfoot ranged the forest round, By chance his foe's retreat ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... requisite military stamina he over-fed and starved them by turns, wrapped them in sheepskin overcoats for long route-marches in July, exercised them in sham fights with live grapeshot and unblunted stilettos and otherwise thinned their ranks of undesirables, and hardened their physique, by forcing them to escalade horrible precipices at midnight on horseback. He was a martinet; he knew it; he gloried on the distinction. "All the world loves a disciplinarian," he was wont ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... of it, both the Australian crop and the Tasmanian; and buying it for an American house in New York. The prices were not high, as there was no competition, but the year's aggregate of skins would cost him L30,000. I had had the idea that the kangaroo was about extinct in Tasmania and well thinned out on the continent. In America the skins are tanned and made into shoes. After the tanning, the leather takes a new name—which I have forgotten—I only remember that the new name does not indicate that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 1883, after the rails had come below, the last of the hides were stripped from the last of the innumerable herds of buffalo that Lewis and Clark saw here, at the great fork of the road into the Rockies; and soon the last pelt was baled from the beaver. If you go to the Blackfeet now you find them a thinned and broken people, and the highest ambition of their best men is to dress up in modern beef-hide finery and play circus Indian around ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... the company this evening. Robin spoke of his ride, of things which he had seen upon it, of a wood that should be thinned next year; and Anthony made a quip or two such as he was accustomed to make; but the master sat silent for the most part, speaking to the lads once or twice for civility's sake, but no more. And presently silences began to fall, that were very ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... opened by one of its fronts, as well as a principal convent of the city, was the resort of many turbulent spirits. Most of these were young men, and amongst them many students of the university: for the war, which had thinned or totally dispersed some of the greatest universities in Germany, under the particular circumstances of its situation, had greatly increased that of Klosterheim. Judging by the tone which prevailed, and the random expressions which fell upon the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... later they were abreast of the Silas P. Young. Then they shot into a deep gully and were lost among a thick forest of spruce-trees. For two miles horse and man evaded low-hanging branches and treacherous footfalls, until the timber thinned and the straggling Yukon came again to view. Away up-stream was the steamboat, crawling down by the near bank. There was no time to be lost if Angela's escape was to be frustrated. He tethered his foam-flecked mount to a tree and crept down the steep bank. ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... rockets were very near, now. They still emitted monstrous jettings of thick white vapor. They climbed up with incredible speed. One went by Joe at a distance of little more than a mile, and its fumes eddied out to half that before they thinned to nothingness. They went on and on ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... to find the country of gold, Coronado's gallant little army, frequently thinned by death and desertion, for three years beat up and down the southwestern wilderness: now thirsting in the deserts, now penned up in gloomy canons, now crawling over pathless mountains, suffering the horrors of starvation and of despair, but following ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... with which he had carried the country through the Crimean struggle, had won him widespread popularity, and the Peace party were generally routed, the prominent members all losing their seats. The Peelite ranks were also thinned, but Lord John Russell, contrary to general expectation, held his seat in the City. There were one hundred and eighty-nine new members returned, and the Ministry found themselves in command of ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... things were acting in this part of the field, and towards the close of the action, which did not last long—for though much was done, it was done quickly—when the enemy was somewhat thinned and considerably scattered, and our men were scattered amongst them, Clark, one of the men mentioned above, suddenly called out to his comrade, David King, to 'take care of the Indian that was near to him.' The warrior turned upon Clark; ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... breeze—twenty-eight an hour by my gauge. Already it was very cold, though my altimeter only marked nine thousand. The engines were working beautifully, and we went droning steadily upwards. The cloud- bank was thicker than I had expected, but at last it thinned out into a golden mist before me, and then in an instant I had shot out from it, and there was an unclouded sky and a brilliant sun above my head—all blue and gold above, all shining silver below, one vast glimmering plain as ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and the long rows of white tables stood vacant. By daylight the trees in a summer garden wear a homesick look, but to-night the festooned incandescent lamps spread a soft yellow light through the foliage, already thinned, though the night was warm, by the touch of September; while high up on their white poles the big arcs threw down a weird blue glare, casting a confusion of half-opaque shadows upon the gravelled earth. Far to the front was the stage with its half dome; the double-bass was tuning his ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... his regiment thinned out by disease, famine, fighting, and the midnight knife, Seti came on to Dongola, to Berber, to Khartoum; and he grinned with satisfaction when he heard that they would make even for Kordofan. He had outlived all the officers who left Manfaloot with the regiment save the bimbashi, and the bimbashi ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... officer in the service, not even one who is ten years older. I have expressed myself fully in my report. I believe his gallant exploit in the late action with the Tallahatchie saved the lives of at least one-fourth of my ship's company; and it thinned out the ranks of the enemy in about the same proportion. Captain Rombold insists that he should have captured the Bellevite if the tide had not been thus turned against him; but I do not ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... the deer of the Holt are much thinned and reduced by the night hunters, who perpetually harass them in spite of the efforts of numerous keepers, and the severe penalties that have been put in force against them as often as they have been detected, and rendered liable to the lash of ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... thinned with wear, That hides the poor, starved shoulder; bare The bruise shows, like a printed paw. Haste, draw the dumb, frayed sheet again, And think you cover so the stain Upon our hearts; for—have the ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... were, at once, upon them. Again they gave way, but strewed the path of their stubborn retreat with many a corpse in gray as well as in blue. At half past seven the first lines began to give signs of exhaustion, and its march over the rough ground while struggling with the enemy, had thinned and impaired it. It was time for Bragg's corps to come to the relief, and that superb line now moved up in serried strength. The first sign of slackening upon the part of the Confederates seemed to add vigor to the enemy's resistance. But bravely as they ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... and responsibilities of married life. It is easy to be cynical or evasive or unduly sentimental in writing of our youthful love affairs, when the frosts of sixty years have whitened our heads, after years of toil and care have dimmed our eyes and thinned our blood, but I shall permit neither of these unworthy moods to color my report of this day's emotion. I shall not deny the alternating moments of hope and doubt, of bitterness and content, which made that afternoon ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... produced in the usual way from the two sets of plants of the third generation, were sown on opposite sides of two pots (1 and 2); but the seedlings were not thinned enough and did not grow well. Many of the self-fertilised plants, especially in one of the pots, consisted of the new and tall variety above referred to, which bore large and almost white flowers marked with crimson blotches. ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... his covert regards, looked at him in return, and in spite of his bowed and shrunken form and thinned and whitened hair, recognized the old friend of his boyhood, and exclaimed, as he offered ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... guide in other cases. According to this, two hundred large apples would be allowed to a tree whose extent is fifteen feet by twelve. If any person think this thinning excessive, let him try two similar trees, and thin one as directed and leave the other unthinned. It will be found that the thinned tree will produce an equal weight, and ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the sun showed the desert stretching away around them with nothing moving upon its monstrous face except themselves. With dull eyes and heavy hearts they stared round at that huge and empty expanse. Their hopes thinned away like the light morning mist upon ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Glendora and order cars for the first shipment. Vesta wouldn't be able to get all of them off for many weeks. It would mean several trips to Chicago for him, with a crew of men to take care of the cattle along the road. It might be well along into the early fall before he had them thinned down to calves and cows ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... enough at the time of transplanting; anyhow, those borders are going to be sown to-morrow with more poppies for next year; for poppies I will have, whether they like it or not, and they shall not be touched, only thinned out. ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... every day That all my bloom has pas past away. "Behold," the pretty wantons cry, "Behold this mirror with a sigh; The locks upon thy brow are few, And like the rest, they're withering too!" Whether decline has thinned my hair, I'm sure I neither know nor care; But this I know, and this I feel As onward to the tomb I steal, That still as death approaches nearer, The joys of life are sweeter, dearer; And had I but an hour to live, That little ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... fine country, but after all there is nothing like Windsor and the Park. Twenty very fine places might easily be made out of the latter. Lord Melbourne as he drove to Bagshot was very glad to see the plantations at and about Cumberland Lodge and onwards so well and judiciously thinned. He had a very prosperous journey here. It is a lovely place, with the greatest beauty that a place can have, a very swift, clear, natural stream, running and winding in front of the house. The whole ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... a view to kill the ram. the Misquetors was So noumerous that I could not keep them off my gun long enough to take Sight and by thair means missed. at 10 a.m. the wind rose with a gentle breeze from the N. W. which in Some measure thinned the Misquetors. I landed on a Sand bar from the South Point intending to form a Camp at this place and Continue untill Capt Lewis Should arive. and killed two Buck Elks and a Deer the best of their flesh & fat I had Saved. had all the dryed meat & fat ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... Therefore, he, the British General, must always try! must never listen to the rule-of-thumb advisers who seek to chain down adventure to precedent. But our wounds make us weaker and weaker. Oh that we could fill up the gaps in the thinned ranks of those ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... the dying pony-soldiers, but now the cold, blue snow looked on a naked man running before bullets, with his medicine somewhere in the black smoke which began to hang like a pall over the happy winter camp of the bravest Indians. The ebb and flow of time had fattened and thinned the circumstances of the Fire Eater's life many times, but it had never taken his all before. It had left him nothing but his boy and a nearly empty gun. It had placed him between the fire of the soldiers' rifles and the cruel mountain winds which ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... slopes of Elandslaagte, though not so well directed. Several saddles, however, were emptied, bringing our losses in this affair up to five killed and seventeen wounded. Of these considerably more than half were 18th Hussars, whose ranks have been seriously thinned since they marched to Dundee less ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... sound of its voice. The building was located at a cross-roads about equally distant from two little hamlets, (the nearest nine miles off,) neither of which was populous enough to singly support a church and a preacher. The trees in the vicinity had been thinned out, so that carriages could drive into the woods, and find under the branches shelter from the rain and the sun, and at the time of my visit, about twenty vehicles of all sorts and descriptions, from the Colonel's magnificent ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... dark, for the wind, having lulled, no longer thinned the veil of clouds above, nor dissipated a steaming mist that appeared to rise from the sodden plain. Yet he moved easily through the darkness, seeming to be upheld by it as something tangible, upon ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... TWENTY-FIRST.—Have been taking my tonic regularly but apparently without deriving beneficial results. Its especial purpose is for the thinning of the blood. Assuredly though, if my blood has been appreciably thinned my mental attitude remains unchanged. Perversely I continue to be the subject of contradictory and conflicting moods impossible to understand and difficult to describe. Certainly I have never been in this state before. Query: Can it be I am upon the verge ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... one has larger areas of ink to compare with less surface of strongly contrasted white paper. Then, again, an ink without noticeable bluish tinge to the naked eye may appear quite blue under the glass where the films of ink are broadened and thinned and their characters ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... the shattered trees thinned out and the still rising ground showed an irregular ridge against the skyline, a sound which they all knew only too well fell upon ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... hundred yards apart when the enemy made his assault, the artillery fire was fearful in its effect on the ranks of both contestants, the enemy's heavy masses staggering under the torrent of shell and canister from our batteries, while our lines were thinned by his ricochetting projectiles, that rebounded again and again over the thinly covered limestone formation and sped on to the rear of Negley. But all his efforts to dislodge or destroy us were futile, and for the first ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... field when freedom come on. I helped pile brush to be burned before freedom. I farmed when I was a boy; pulled fodder and bundled it. I shucked corn, slopped pigs, milked, plowed a mule over them rocks, thinned out corn. I worked twenty days in East Tennessee on the section. I cut and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... activity. Every exertion is encouraging, because to present amusement it joins the promise of some future good. The intervals of leisure are filled by the society of real friends, whose affections are not thinned to cobweb, by being spread over a thousand objects. This is the picture, in the light it is presented to my mind; now let me have it in yours. If we do not concur this year, we shall the next; or if not then, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... told, and a whole lot of people, singly and in groups, were continually passing up and down the marble steps and along the two galleries. Partaking of the feelings of the one whose odd impulses I am endeavoring to describe, I was very uneasy and very restless until these crowds had thinned and most of the guests vanished from the building. The hands of the clock were stealing toward twelve—the hour of greatest quiet and fewest visitors. As it reached the quarter mark, I saw what I was looking for, the man X reaching for one of those arrows hanging in the ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... crimson stains that shift and merge so that the contents of the windows are seen as through wavering sea-water. Beyond the shops are the houses asleep beneath great trees, their warm red bricks showing where the ivy has thinned. Their stacked chimneys send out faint blue spirals of smoke, to let you know that the fires are on the hearths and about the hearths the children ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... could not prevent the rage of his foes[1], He did not let fall his own fame. The oaks and the buckthorns were (gradually) thinned, And roads for travellers were opened. The hordes of the Khwan disappeared, ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... the rim of a saucer. The town—most of it—is on this side. On the south the land lifts in a moderately stiff bluff, perhaps seventy feet high, with wooded edges, and extending off and away in a plateau, where trees stand in well-thinned groves, and sunken roads meander between fields of hops and grain and patches of cabbages and sugar beets. As for the town, it has perhaps twenty-five hundred people— Walloons and Flemish folk—living in tall, bleak, ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... chains to view the body of the vessel, and noticed with satisfaction that the constant pouring of the sea had thinned down the frozen snow to the depth of at least a foot. This encouraged me to hope that the restless tides would sap to her keel at least, and put her into a posture to be easily launched by the blow of ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... known; the torrent of licentiousness will break at once upon it, and a sudden freedom from restraint will produce a wanton enjoyment of privileges which had never been thought so valuable, had they never been taken away. Thus, while the crowds of the capital are every day thinned by the licensed distributors of poison, the country, which is to be considered as the nursery in which the human species is chiefly propagated, will be made barren; and that race of men will be intercepted, which is to defend the liberty of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... ripe for the sickle. While the latter is being harvested, the cotton may be left to itself, but not for very long. The buds appear in much larger numbers than the soil could support if they were allowed to grow. They have accordingly to be carefully thinned out, so that not more than five or six plants are left in each foot of length. The next process is the sprinkling of a manure composed of one part night soil and three parts water, and again, subsequent ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... to the firing in the town, which swayed hither and thither. The smoke in the room thinned somewhat, and the daylight broadened and deepened. As a desperate resort they resumed fire from the windows, but three more of their number were slain, and, bitter with chagrin, they crouched once more on the floor out of range. Wyatt ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... divers and pigeons, a regular correspondence was maintained with the besieged; and, as often as the sea was left open, the exhausted garrison was withdrawn, and a fresh supply was poured into the place. The Latin camp was thinned by famine, the sword and the climate; but the tents of the dead were replenished with new pilgrims, who exaggerated the strength and speed of their approaching countrymen. The vulgar was astonished ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... five miles through the same terrible grasses, and crossing swamp after swamp, we were at last rewarded by a striking view. The jungles had thinned; we found ourselves unexpectedly standing on the edge of a plateau, on the west of which, for distance interminable, lay apparently a low flat country of grass, yellowed by the sun, with a few trees or shrubs only ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... The German woman got up and labored down the aisle with her burden and got off, but some one quickly moved into the vacant seat. Still he could see better now, and the better he saw the stronger grew the conviction in his heart. Gradually the car thinned out, and he might have gone nearer, but something held him back. He kept his position by the conductor, until he rang his bell and called out the name of a landing from which the excursion boats went out daily. Then the woman rose, lifting her baby with gentle carefulness, and came down ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... over the whole thing, as you did at first, which will show the old work through, and you can then correct your drawing and proceed to paint the lights and shadows as before. And if only a part of it is wrong, when it is quite dry rub a little, poppy oil thinned with turpentine over the work, as little as will serve to cover the surface. If it is found difficult to get it to cover, breathe on the canvas, the slightest moisture will help it to bite. When this is done, wipe it off with the palm of your hand or an old piece of clean linen. Now ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... thinned out, and at one o'clock only a few inveterate poker-players and one or two young fellows who were still "bucking" the roulette wheel remained and, calling one of his men to take charge, Haney nodded to Williams and they went out on ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... enamelled saucepan. As it becomes warm, it should be stirred from time to time, and when it begins to boil it should be continually stirred for about five minutes. It should then form a thick paste that can be thinned with warm water. Of course any quantity can be made if the ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... murmuring, occasionally broken by the crack of a whip. Yet these sounds did not seem to disturb him. He trotted along, crossing the tracks, and when on the opposite side set out straight down the avenue. The avenue was broad, and in this widening area the congestion rapidly thinned, and soon the colt was quite alone in the open. But he continued forward, seeming not to miss his mother, until there suddenly loomed up beside him a very fat and very matronly appearing horse. Then he hesitated, turning apprehensive eyes upon her. But not for long. ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... purchasers thinned out. The Vitalizing Mixture had exhausted its market. But only part of the crowd had contributed to the levy. Mainly it was the men, whom the "spiel" had lured. Now for the women. The voice, the ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the soil; but the tomahawk of the Comanche and the spear of the Apache have thinned off the descendants of the Conquistadores, until country houses stand at wide distances apart, with more than an equal number of ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... the leaves from the great oaks in the park, whose dark branches now stood up against a gray sky, like branches of funereal candelabra. A light fog seemed to indicate rain; through the melancholy boughs of the thinned wood the heavy carriages of the court were seen slowly passing on, filled with women, uniformly dressed in black, and obliged to await the result of a chase which they did not witness. The distant hounds gave tongue, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... between the steep high banks of a coulee. The trees gradually thinned out, and a wide swath of the starry sky showed overhead. ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... fierce and bold, Ravaged the plains, and thinned the fold; Deep in the wood secure he lay, The thefts of night regaled the day. In vain the shepherd's wakeful care Had spread the toils, and watched the snare; In vain the Dog pursued his pace, The ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... them. He could not match Thorvald's inches, just as he must have a third less bulk than the officer, but standing, he could sight something of what now lay beyond the rising banks of the cut. That grass which had been so thick in the meadowlands around the camp had thinned into separate clumps, pale lavender in color. And the scrawniness of stem and blade suggested dehydration and poor soil. The earth showing between those clumps was not of the usual blue, but pallid, too, bleached to gray, while the bushes along the stream's ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... hour they climbed almost steadily, winding in and out. Now, high above the bed of the gorge, the darkness had thinned about them; more than once the girl saw the clear-cut silhouette of man and beast in front of her or swerving off to right or left. When, after a long time, he spoke again he was waiting for her to come up with him. He had dismounted, ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... came an Old Soldier to my door, Asked a crust, and asked no more; The wars had thinned him very bare, Fighting and marching everywhere, With a Fol rol ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... his arrival. For one thing it was bleak and cold: the north wind, hailing direct from Baffin's Bay, had teeth, and it bit so cruelly that he was glad when he found shelter in the building which housed the offices of the Carter Importing Company. The tropics had thinned O'Reilly's blood, for the Cuban winds bear a kiss instead of a sting; therefore he paused in the lower hallway, jostled by the morning crowds, and tried to warm himself. The truth is O'Reilly was not only cold, ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... It is not planted as corn is, that is, dropped so far apart, but is planted in a continuous stream. After the cotton comes up out of the ground, when it is about three inches high, it is hoed by ordinary labor with a hoe, and is cut out or, rather, thinned. This is called "chopping out" and is for the purpose of removing the inferior or weak plants until only one strong plant is left. The distance between the plants depends on the nature of the plant, frequently about twelve inches being left ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... Spaniards, who were deprived of a convenient market for the produce of the soil by the monopolies imposed by the mother country. Accordingly English, Dutch and French vessels were welcomed and their cargoes readily bought. The island, thinned of its former inhabitants, had become the home of immense herds of wild cattle; and it became the habit of smugglers to provision at Santo Domingo. The natives still left were skilled in preserving flesh at their little establishments called ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... the disposition of their forces, and how that they were expecting a strong army to join them quickly, headed by Sir John Fastolffe, a notable knight, whose name we well knew, and had trembled before ere this. They admitted that their ranks were somewhat thinned by disease and death, and that they had scarce sufficient force both to maintain all the bastilles erected on the north side of the river and also to hold the great forts of Les Tourelles and Les Augustins on the south; but that when the reinforcements ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... therefore urged those who were holding back to make their bids now. At this the contest livened until the sum of two million three hundred thousand francs had been offered, and now I knew the necklace would be sold. Nearing the three million mark the competition thinned down to a few dealers from Hamburg and the Marquis of Warlingham, from England, when a voice that had not yet been heard in the auction room was lifted in a tone ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... it seemed long in coming. Such a delay always aggravated the slow fire within him. He had nothing of Ladd's patience. He wanted action. The gray shadow below thinned out, and the patch of mesquite made a blot upon the pale ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... Court allows and approves thereof." The inventory of Captain Corwin, before cited, indicates the stylish uniform he wore as captain of the troopers. Each of the officers was a wealthy man; and it cannot be doubted that a parade of the company was a dashing affair. The lapse of time having thinned their ranks and removed their officers, a vigorous and successful attempt was made in October, 1678, to revive the company. Thirty-six men, belonging, as they say, "to the reserve of Salem old troop," and very desirous "of being serviceable to God and ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... did not reckon sufficiently upon the superiority of shooting of the London lads, and, indeed, I know not that I ought not in fairness to order some of the defenders off the walls, seeing, that in warfare, their numbers would be rapidly thinned. See, the assailants are moving up to the two towers under shelter of ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... consciousness of the smiling fortitude with which I bore my gown's disaster; secondly, a lovely nosegay, which was presented to me; and lastly, at about twelve o'clock, when the rooms were a little thinned, a dance for an hour which sent me home perfectly satisfied with my fate. By the bye, I asked Campbell if he knew any method to preserve my flowers from fading, to which he replied, "Give them to me, and I will immortalize them." I did so, and am expecting ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... spirit—no unity of interests. A few, who were mischievously inclined, marched off to the College of Surgeons in a pretentious file; but even before they reached their destination the feeble inspiration had died out in many, and their numbers were sadly thinned. Some followed strange gods in the direction of Drummond Street, and others slunk back to meek good-boyism at the feet of the Professors. The same is visible in better things. As you send a man to ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... February, 1550, Ivan IV., then but twenty two years of age, placed himself at the head of a large army to descend the Volga and punish the horde. The monarch was young and totally inexperienced in war. A series of terrible disasters from storms and floods thinned his ranks, and the monarch in great dejection returned to Moscow to replenish his forces. Again, early in December, he hastened to meet his army which had been rendezvoused at Nigni Novgorod, on the Volga, about three hundred miles west of Moscow. ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... on the side of the kopje they were in clear air, above which shone the red lights of morning, but under them lay billows of dense, pearl-hued mist. By degrees this thinned beneath the rays of the risen sun, and through it, looking gigantic in that light, Benita saw a savage wrapped in a kaross, who was walking up and down and yawning, a great spear ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... headquarters for some months; but during the remainder of the year 1854 their successes were few and unimportant. They were vigilantly watched by the imperial troops, which had expelled them from the whole of the province of Shantung before March, 1855. Their numbers were thinned by disease as well as loss in battle, and of the two armies sent to capture Pekin only a small fragment ever regained Nankin. While these events were in progress in the region north of Nankin, the Taepings had been carrying their arms up the Yangtsekiang as far ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... colleges in the early years of the war, and the state universities, though thinned by the enlistment of their boys, established themselves. The creation of new universities, the endowment of older foundations, and the beginning of an education that should fit not only for law, medicine, ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... taking the pipe from his mouth, attempted, like Walter Scott's Lady Heron, one or two pretty excuses; these being drowned by a universal shout, the handsome purloiner gave the following song, to the tune of "Time has not thinned my flowing hair." ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... seldom succeed well if transplanted); therefore, in order to have them intermixed among other annual flowers in the borders of the Flower Garden, the seeds should be sown in patches at proper distances: and when the plants come up, they must be thinned where they grow too close, leaving but three or four of them in each patch, observing also to keep them clear from weeds, which is all the culture they require. In July they will produce their flowers, and their seeds ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. I - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... spoken above a whisper, though we knew that the splash of our oars in the water would soon betray our approach to the sharpened ears of the smugglers, even before they could see us. We redoubled, therefore, our efforts to get alongside, when a light air coming off the land much thinned the intervening mist, showing us the Polly, with her largest canvas spread to catch the breeze, and now, as she loomed through the fog, appearing twice her real size, while her people clearly made us out. In a moment her sails were trimmed, her long sweeps ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... numerous within it. For a while, the disease was checked by Fleet Ditch; it then leaped this narrow boundary, and ascending the opposite hill, carried fearful devastation into Saint James's, Clerkenwell. At the same time, it attacked Saint Bride's; thinned the ranks of the thievish horde haunting Whitefriars, and proceeding in a westerly course, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... destructive in its effects than the first, for the two columns were, when it fell, bunched close together, and it seemed to have dropped where the men were thickest; and ere the now demoralised troops could recover from the panic into which they had been thrown, their ranks were yet more disastrously thinned, a rattling crash of Maxim fire from Carlos' position indicating the direction from which this new punishment had come. But by this time General Echague had begun to recover his presence of mind. He saw that to attempt to advance farther in close formation in the ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... haloed by an ethereal blue ring. His hair, parted in the middle, begins as silver and changes to streaks of silvery-gold and silvery-black, ending in ringlets at his shoulders. His beard and moustache are scant or thinned out, yet seem to enhance his features and, like his character, are deep and light at ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... from foreign growth discovered an intention, of straightness, the most casual observer could not but see that skewiness had usurped its place. I repaired to my friend the gardener. He said they must be thinned out and transplanted. It went to my heart to pull up the dear things, but I did it, and set them down again tenderly in the vacant spots. It was evening. The next morning I went to them. Flatness has a new meaning to me since ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... roll than usual, glanced out over the bulwarks at the racing, foam-capped surges that reared themselves alongside; and at that moment, as if in direct response to the skipper's forcibly expressed wish, the haze thinned away somewhat to starboard, revealing, square abeam, and apparently about a mile away, a dim, misty, grey shape faintly showing up through the thickness ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... those archers whose prowess and vigour contributed so eminently to the glorious result. Part of the wood still remains; though, if I remember rightly, at the time of our visit, the corner into which the bowmen were thrown had been materially thinned, if, indeed, the original timber had not been entirely cut down, and its place been scantily supplied by brush or underwood. Some of the trees, however, in the wood of Tramecour were ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... on toward the shank of the afternoon. The sun, rayless, round, blue-white, lagged away toward the west, seeming to sway in high heaven as Nissr took her long dips with the grace and swiftness of a flying falcon. Some time later the cloud-masses thinned and broke away, leaving the world of waters spread below ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... place. The spoils were 101 cannon and 32 ships, with cargoes worth about half a million sterling (4th June 1794). This brilliant success cost the assailants very few lives; but the heats of the summer and probably also the intemperance of the troops soon thinned their ranks. The French, too, having received succours which slipped out from Rochefort, recovered Guadeloupe in the month of September.[377] And from this point of vantage they sought, often with success, to stir up the slaves in ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... approach nearer to its perfection than wheat and grass do under similar circumstances. Seen from a little distance, the color and effect is good; but the trees themselves have shallow roots, and grow up tall, narrow, and shapeless. It necessarily is so with all timber that is not thinned in its growth. When fine forest trees are found, and are left standing alone by any cultivator who may have taste enough to wish for such adornment, they almost invariably die. They are robbed of the sickly ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... one-half miles from Jackson, North Carolina. I was born a slave. I was put to work at six years old. They started me to cleaning off new ground. I thinned corn on my knees with my hands. We planted six or seven acres of cotton and got four or five cents a pound. Balance we planted was something to live on. My master was Jason and Betsy Williams. He had a small plantation; the smaller the plantation the better they ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... courage, hardihood, and military talents. Such discords, and particularly those betwixt Richard and Philip of France, created disputes and obstacles which impeded every active measure proposed by the heroic though impetuous Richard, while the ranks of the Crusaders were daily thinned, not only by the desertion of individuals, but of entire bands, headed by their respective feudal leaders, who withdrew from a contest in which they had ceased ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... after it the cloud of gun smoke shrouded the turret, but as that thinned away the eager crew saw the 12-inch shell strike into the hull of the Infanta Maria Teresa. Instantly it exploded with tremendous effect. Flame and smoke belched from the hole the shell had made, and puffed ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... was very still—a night of soft showers, broken by intervals of starlight. Gradually as the darkness thinned toward dawn, the figures, stoled and winged and crowned, of the painted windows, came dimly forth, and long rays of pale light crept over the marble steps and floor, upon the flowers on the altar and the crucifix above it. The dawn flowed in silently and coldly; the birds stirred faintly; ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... holds out to them the brightest prospect, and is most like their own home. They may however rest satisfied that the voyage to Australia is as safe as that to New York, that it is far more pleasant as regards the weather, and that little or no sickness has ever thinned the number of those who have embarked for the Australian colonies. The expense of the voyage is certainly greater than that of a passage to the Canadas, or to the United States, but it is to be hoped that the means of transport will soon ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... they were huddled together both by the ships and the stream; but Onund and his men set on fiercely, whereas Vigbiod was, but Thrand set on Vestmar, and won little thereby; so, when the folk were thinned on Vigbiod's ship, Onund's men and Onund himself got ready to board her: that Vigbiod saw, and cheered on his men without stint: then he turned to meet Onund, and the more part fled before him; but Onund bade his men mark how it went between them; ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... That's what sticks in my crop. He can't be just right in his head. If I had any chance of owning you I'd never let you out of my sight. I wouldn't take a chance. I don't understand these city fellows. I reckon their blood is thinned with ice-water. If I had you I'd be scared every minute for fear of losing you. I'd be as dangerous to touch as a silver-tip. If I had any place to take you ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... friend that evening, the hero had already arrived, and, stepping into a recess, she waited to catch a glimpse of him. Maud was called away, and she was alone when the crowd about the inner room thinned and permitted young Talbot to be seen. Well for Lillian that no one observed her at that moment, for she grew pale and sank into a chair, exclaiming below her breath, "It is ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... mob thinned, and Dolores entered the cool glade, something in the situation which she had failed to realize before now struck her with force; she started at the thought, then uttered a low, rippling laugh of satisfaction. For Pascherette, in her cunning scheme of double-dealing, ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... nurseryman follows this plan with his trees, and with evident success, both in saving time, and room, and labour. When he sows his acorns, one square yard will contain more plants than will ultimately occupy an acre. It is only as they increase in growth, that they are thinned out and transplanted; and such should be the case in communicating knowledge to children. To attempt to teach the whole history at once, is like sowing the whole acre with acorns, and thinning them out during a quarter of a century. The loss of seed in this case is the least of the evils; for the ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... into Europe, there was a continued succession of individual intellects;—the golden chain was never wholly broken, though the connecting links were often of baser metal. A dark cloud, like another sky, covered the entire cope of heaven,—but in this place it thinned away, and white stains of light showed a half eclipsed star behind it,—in that place it was rent asunder, and a star passed across the opening in all its brightness, and then vanished. Such stars exhibited themselves only; surrounding objects did not partake of their light. There ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... lowered vitality, a certain area becomes congested and effusion takes place into the tissues. This effusion coagulates and a hard, brawny mass is formed which softens towards the centre. If nothing is done the softened area increases in size, the skin over it becomes thinned, loses its vitality (mortifies) and a small "slough'' is formed. When the slough gives way the pus escapes and, tension being relieved, pain ceases. A local necrosis or death of tissue takes place at that part of the inflammatory swelling farthest from ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... during the night did the moon show her face, though about two o'clock in the morning the clouds thinned, the landscape showing with more distinctness. The girls, when they walked down to the shore, saw a sheet of water covering several acres. Leading down to the water was a pier that extended far out into the little lake or pond, ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... and rider riding from Williamsburgh, heard only the rapid hoofbeats. All there was of her was one dumb prayer for the rider's safety. Her memory told her that it was no great distance to the road, but her heart cried out that it was so far away,—so far away! When the wood thinned, and they saw before them the dusty strip, pallid and lonely beneath the storm clouds, her heart leaped within her; then grew sick for fear that he had gone by. When they stood, ankle-deep in the dust, she looked first toward the north, ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... the almond as is practiced on the peach, it is not usual to cut back almond trees after they have reached three years of age and have assumed good form. Of course, if cutting back is done, the shoots coming from near the amputation must be thinned out to prevent the brushiness your ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... valleys that had been unseen cross the path, and the clustered trees are found to be deep woods as they are neared. Then the man who knows the country has the advantage, and it is as well to follow him. But I was well mounted, and the pace was good where the gale had thinned the snow, and it came about that before I had time to think what Howel and Eric and the Danes who were on horseback were doing I rode down one side of a little cover, past which the deer had gone with the hounds close ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... zinc will slowly wear off, keeping the whole surface clean, while there will be left enough coating of the lead to preserve the iron from rust. The oil I would urge for these pigments is linseed—as little boiled as possible, to be thinned with spirits of turpentine. There seems to have been a mania for mixtures of tar and resins, their spirits and oils; my experience fails to show me any advantage for them on an iron bottom. They have neither elasticity ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... seen a spectacle which will long be remembered with a throb of the heart by many. The thinned ranks of the Virginians are advancing, unmoved, into the very jaws of death. They go forward—and are annihilated. At every step death meets them. The furious fire of the enemy, on both flanks and in their front, hurls ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... the past crack players are beginning to get thinned by the common enemy of mankind. When I think of the busy feet, blithe and happy faces, and merry voices that joined in the game twenty years ago, a sense of sadness comes over me which it is difficult to dispel. "The first International, sir;" yes. Five of the gallant ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... had thinned the jam, Garthwaite, still grasping my arm, led a rush of survivors into the wide entrance of an office building. Here, at the rear, against the doors, we were pressed by a panting, gasping mass of creatures. For some ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... and being comforted, Sanjaya addressed king Dhritarashtra in the midst of that concourse of Kurus in that hall, saying, 'Indeed, O king of kings, I saw those great warriors, the sons of Kunti, thinned in body, in consequence of the restraint in which they had lived in the place of the king of the Matsyas. Hear, O King, with whom the Pandavas will contend against you. With that hero Dhrishtadyumna as their ally, they will fight against you. With that personage of virtuous soul, who never forsaketh ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Innumerably confirm their songs, And grasshoppers make summer rhyme And solemn bees in the wild thyme Clash cymbals and beat gongs, The shepherd's words once more are faint, The shepherd's song once more is thinned Upon the long course of the wind, He sings, he ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... plantation; and, moreover, it would be seriously injurious to my reputation as a planter.' My grandfather, who was of an impetuous and decided character, but always just, instantly replied, 'Do as I desire you, and I will take care of your reputation.' The plantation was accordingly thinned according to the instructions of the Duke, who caused a board to be fixed in the plantation, facing the wood, on which was inscribed, 'This plantation has been thinned by John, Duke of Bedford, contrary to the advice and opinion ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the pirate would not yield her up, The King impaled him for his piracy; Then made her Queen: but those isle-nurtured eyes Waged such unwilling though successful war On all the youth, they sickened; councils thinned, And armies waned, for magnet-like she drew The rustiest iron of old fighters' hearts; And beasts themselves would worship; camels knelt Unbidden, and the brutes of mountain back That carry kings in castles, bowed black knees Of homage, ringing with their serpent hands, To make ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... find That calls the semblance of my race to mind. His name?—my own; and that which goes before The same that once the loved disciple bore. Young, brave, discreet, the father of a line Whose voiceless lives have found a voice in mine; Thinned by unnumbered currents though they be, Thanks for the ruddy ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a changing in the steps that passed and repassed, that separated and came together, before that lodge across the sleeping mob,—a change, a little silence, and then the steps again that presently thinned to ONE,—one step that paced evenly, with a measured tread, a moccasined step like that of an Indian, yet somehow alien in its ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... to see the guest of the evening, as the hostess rose to meet him. He was a young man on the right side of thirty, with dark, closely brushed hair that thinned slightly at the temples. He was clean-shaven, and his light-brown eyes lay in a smiling setting of quizzical good-humour. He was of rather more than medium height, with well-poised shoulders; and though a firmness of lips and jaw gave a suggestion of ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... sweeping the distorter back and forth until all that remained was a large pool of slime which thinned, then oozed into the humus. At last, he tucked the rod back under his ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole
... time Peterkin had thinned down his spear, and tied an iron point very cleverly to the end of it; I had formed a sling, the lines of which were composed of thin strips of the cocoa-nut cloth, plaited; and Jack had made a stout bow, nearly five feet long, with two arrows, feathered with two or three large plumes which ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... thinned away and he became more conspicuous to the prowling eyes which seemed to challenge him, he took a path across the Public Gardens, and so reached the broader sweep of the avenue where the comfortable stone houses snuggle ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett |
