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More "Decline" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... desire for the Presidency that shortened his life, not the mere disappointment. When President Fillmore offered him the post of Secretary of State, in 1850, it appears to have been his preference, much as he loved office, to decline it. He longed for his beautiful Marshfield, on the shore of the ocean, his herds of noble cattle, his broad, productive fields, his yachts, his fishing, his rambles in the forests planted by his own hand, his homely chats with neighbors and beloved dependents. ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... hungry, and it is well-known that hungry men are not sociable. At all events they maintained a profound silence while they cut down a small decayed tree, made a good fire, and prepared dinner, or—as the sun was beginning to decline at the time—I may ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... Smith the significant detail that Madame's role had changed from the benefited to the benefactor. And, as if this were not enough for one morning's developments, it revealed also that Gabriella's fictitious value as a saleswoman was beginning to decline; for Madame was disposed to scorn the sort of sensational advertisement which the newspapers had devoted of late to the unfortunate Fowlers. At one moment there had been grave doubt in Madame's mind as to whether or not she should employ young Mrs. Fowler in her respectable ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... gentle beating of the dynamos of memory. The present he should distrust; the future shun. From beneath thick shade he should watch the sunlight creeping at his toes. If there be sun of summer, let him not go out into it, mistaking it for the Indian-summer sun! Thus peradventure he shall decline softly, slowly, imperceptibly, until impatient Nature clutches his wind-pipe and he gasps away to death some early morning before the world is aired, and they put on his tombstone: 'In the fulness of years!' yea! If he preserve his principles in perfect order, a Forsyte may live on long after ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to me, and I said to the girls that I thought I loved it just as a mother loves her daughters. There is no sacrifice I wouldn't make to keep up the team's good work, and that is the reason why I am going to make a sacrifice, now, and decline to resign. If I had been a poor captain, you would have had a right to ask for my resignation But I haven't. I have been a good, hard-working, conscientious captain, and I have made a success of the team. None of you can deny it. If you took a new captain at this stage ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... a commonplace of criticism to observe and regret the decline of power and interest after the opening acts of "The Jew of Malta." This decline is undeniable, though even the latter part of the play is not wanting in rough energy and a coarse kind of interest; but the first two acts would be sufficient ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... reservation they ran into a great pow-wow of chiefs from far and near, to which old Crowfoot invited the representatives of the Great White Mother with impressive cordiality, an invitation, however, which the Inspector, such was his strenuous hunt for stolen horses, was forced regretfully to decline. ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... the great mass of the people became slaves to their more warlike conquerors. It was in this way the gold of Mexico and Peru enriched the treasury of Spain; but every ingot had the curse of blood upon it, and from that time the Spanish power, then at its height, began to decline in Europe, till it sunk in the scale of nations among the least important. The colonies revolted from the mother country, and became independent states; but the curse that followed the infamous appropriation of the ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... glanced at him again during the first soprano solo, and saw him in the same position, his eyes fixed on the singer. Rehearsal over, he coolly walked up to her to proffer his escort. I verily believe she was too startled to decline it. She accepted his arm with a look of blank amazement, and the two set off together through the April slosh, followed by the inevitable juvenile guard. Judging from the bespattered condition of Timothy's overcoat that night, the younglings danced about him like frisky satyrs all the way; but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... did as in their subtle reactions to the civilization about them. In Gloria had been born something that she had hitherto never needed—the skeleton, incomplete but nevertheless unmistakable, of her ancient abhorrence, a conscience. This admission to herself was coincidental with the slow decline of ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... young lady had long been declining, and she took this opportunity of forbidding him her presence for the future. He felt this abandonment bitterly, but could not surrender the all-absorbing passion which was destroying him. He fell into a decline, and at last died "without a struggle, just after writing ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... to the violence with which he endeavoured his escape, he declared it was not his design to fly from justice, or decline a trial, but to avoid the expences and severities of a prison, and that he intended to appear at the bar, without compulsion. This defence which took up more than an hour, was heard by the multitude that thronged the court, with the most attentive ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... dramas of Aeschylus we have one of many examples that, in art as well as in nature, gigantic productions precede those that evince regularity of proportion, which again in their turn decline gradually into littleness and insignificance, and that poetry in her earliest appearance attaches itself closely to the sanctities of religion, whatever may be the form which the latter assumes among the various ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... fall of the Spanish Empire does not challenge the imagination like the decline and fall of that other Empire with which alone it can be compared, possibly because no Gibbon has chronicled its greatness. Yet its dissolution affected profoundly the history of three continents. While the Floridas were slipping from the grasp of Spain, the provinces to the south ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... decline of the Egyptian power, which sets in after the death of the second Rameses, a change takes place. External pressure being removed, ambitions begin to develop themselves. In the north Aradus (Arvad), in the south Sidon, proceed to exercise a sort of hegemony over several ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... resolved to leave you, and return to Europe. You know my reasons. I am not a companion, but only a drag upon you; besides, my mother is left unprotected. You will excuse me if I decline to enter into a discussion on this point. I have not strength for it, and ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... discreet young lady should think of incurring the responsibilities, etc., etc. Long before Iris had reached that age, she was the wife of a young Maryland engineer, directing some of the vast constructions of his native State,—where he was growing rich fast enough to be able to decline that famous Russian offer which would have made him a kind of nabob in a few years. Iris does not write verse often, nowadays, but she sometimes draws. The last sketch of hers I have seen in my Southern visits was of two ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Cheronean Sage, is thine. '(Why should this praise to thee alone belong!) 'All else from Nature's moral path decline, 'Lured by the toys that captivate the throng; 'To herd in cabinets and camps, among 'Spoil, carnage, and the cruel pomp of pride; 'Or chaunt of heraldry the drowsy song, 'How tyrant blood, o'er many a region wide, 'Rolls to a ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... territorial possessions; during the 14th and 15th centuries were constantly at war with the heathen Wends and Lithuanians, but the conversion of these to Christianity and several defeats destroyed both the prestige and usefulness of the knights, and the order thenceforth began to decline. As a secularised, land-owning order the knighthood lasted till 1809, when it was entirely suppressed in Germany by Napoleon; but branches still exist in the Netherlands and in Austria, where care for the wounded in war has ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... constitution lead me to enter into the affairs of my clients with feeling and sincerity, but I fear I am sometimes misunderstood. Not long ago I issued an order to my junior partners to exercise more compassion for those unfortunate men with whom we decline business, and not to tumble them down the front steps so roughly. Let six of the porters attend with trestles, I said, and carry them out carefully, and dump them with discretion in some quiet corner, where, as soon as they recover their faculties, they ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to be overawed against his conscience by a secular power, could not any longer be recognised; but no thing or things contained in the act should be afterwards "interpreted or expounded, that his Grace (the king), his nobles and subjects, intended by the same to decline or vary from the congregation of Christ's church in anything concerning the articles of the Catholic faith of Christendom, or in any other things declared by the Holy Scripture and the Word of God necessary ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... which excite and sustain them, is (1) to make man the most emotional of animals, and (2) to render possible the debasement of his character. For that which is a condition of his progress is also a condition of his decline,—the acquired power of ideas over emotions, and the subsequent power of each indefinitely to sustain the other. Hence the existence of the emotions constitutes a serious danger for him though not for the animals, and the balance which is lost when the emotions are no longer exclusively ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... this visit to the Castle was only marred by the illness of Mrs. O'Neill, who was thought to be in a decline. Arthur, though so far removed from his simple life by the patronage of the great, had always been a good and dutiful son, while Philip had ever evinced a remarkable fondness for the warm-hearted foster-mother, whose sad blue ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... the United States in order that they might not be obeyed, and political regulations are obeyed by the public for, at most, seven weeks. Of course, the United States is no exception; it seems as if the respect for law is declining everywhere, and if this decline occurs in one field no other is likely to be free from it. A certain subjective or egoistic attitude is potent in this regard, for people in the main conceive the law to be made only for others; they themselves are exceptions. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... of you," the girl answered, "and I hope you will not think me ungrateful if I decline. I am not used to gayeties of this kind, and"—with a smile—"I have no ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... the early times — "Their sole object, according to the commercial principles of the time, was to obtain, through arrangements with the native prince, the staple products of the country at prices below their natural cost, and to sell them above it... . The result of these (arrangements) was the decline of the trade of Banjermasin; its staple product, pepper, which had at one time been considerable, having become nearly extinct" (DICTIONARY OF THE INDIAN ISLANDS, Lond., ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... as if he expected to hear me decline; but I had made up my mind to go, and he looked quite pleased when he heard me ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... to our machines here. For one, I decline to stay out of the rescuing party. Besides, perhaps I may get a chance to snap off a lovely picture of the ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... and Acestes first of all, and instructs them of Jove's command and his beloved father's precepts, and what is now his fixed mind and purpose. They linger not in counsel, nor does Acestes decline his bidden duty: they enrol the matrons in their town, and plant a people there, souls that will have none of glory. The rest repair the thwarts and replace the ships' timbers that the flames had gnawed upon, and fit up oars and rigging, little in number, but alive and valiant for war. ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... saw that they were at the commencement of a decline measuring four or five hundred yards in length, and so steep that, even had it offered a good foothold, human beings could scarcely have stood upon it. As yet the tongue of ice was fifty paces or more in width, but it narrowed ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... were no evidence at all to support our faith in human goodness, our faith, however vigorous at first, would soon decline, and hope and courage might utterly desert us. If men on nearer acquaintance turned out to be, as some pessimists have represented them to be, hard egotists, ingrates, slanderers, backbiters, envious, incapable of generous admirations, sodden in sensuality, knaves devoid ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... couriers—thirty-five thousand of them, imagine! Pray, picture the situation to yourself! "Ivan Aleksandrovich, do come and take the directorship of the department." I admit I was a little embarrassed. I came out in my dressing-gown. I wanted to decline, but I thought it might reach the Czar's ears, and, besides, my official record—"Very well, gentlemen," I said, "I'll accept the position, I'll accept. So be it. But mind," I said, "na-na-na, LOOK SHARP is the ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... are at present made by the Spanish Gypsies. Gypsyism is certainly on the decline in both countries. In England, a superabundant population, and, of late, a very vigilant police, have done much to modify Gypsy life; whilst in Spain, causes widely different have produced a still greater change, as ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... If you decline, well and good. If you accept, five hundred pounds will be assigned you as salary, and at the end of each year of the voyage your pay ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... sector specializing in construction equipment, tractors, agricultural machinery, and some defense items. The breakup of the USSR and the collapse of demand for Kazakhstan's traditional heavy industry products have resulted in a sharp contraction of the economy since 1991, with the steepest annual decline occurring in 1994. In 1995-97 the pace of the government program of economic reform and privatization quickened, resulting in a substantial shifting of assets into the private sector. The December 1996 signing of the Caspian ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... followed Lisardo and his bibliographical treasures into the chaise; and instantly set off, at a sharp trot, for the quiet and comfort of green fields and running streams. As we rolled over Westminster-bridge, we bade farewell, like the historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... events Exasperate me, but the funest conclusions I draw from these events; the sure decline Of art, and all the meaning of that word: All that embellishes and sweetens life, And lifts it from the level of low cares Into the purer atmosphere of beauty; The faith in the Ideal; the inspiration That made the canons of the church of Seville Say, "Let ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... from childhood she has been taught that toadstools are poison. Some are, of course, boy, so are some wild fruits, but it would be rather a deprivation for us if we were to decline to eat every ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... for my own part, I felt a bit puzzled; I did not quite know what to make of the weather indications. It might be that nothing worse than a violent thunderstorm was brewing; but against this theory there was to be set the sudden and ominous decline of the barometric pressure. We had fulfilled our task, and were preparing to get under way, when Takebe, who was in command of the torpedo flotilla, came aboard to consult with our skipper as to the advisability of going to sea, in the face of such ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... Some large teeth sell for a hundred dollars, or even a hundred and fifty. The sale of such a gigantic tusk, as may well be supposed, is considered an affair of almost national importance, and the bargain can only be adjusted through the medium of a "big palaver." The trade in ivory is now on the decline; the demand in England and France not being so great as formerly, and America never having presented a ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... melancholy, tired, discouraged, nothing helps me against moral or physical troubles like a book of Dumas." Again, M. About says that M. Sarcey was in the same class at school with a little Spanish boy. The child was homesick; he could not eat, he could not sleep; he was almost in a decline. ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... he cried, seeing that the lassie was about to decline, "not even me. I shall tell no one. ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... was almost at the end of his strength and a victim of the very malady against which he was railing. The constant wear and tear of country practice, year in and year out, had depleted him of a magnificent stock of energy and endurance. Perhaps, too, she had had her share of responsibility in his decline, for she had been severe with him; had defied him when she might have comforted him. She forgot his insolence, his meanness, his conscienceless hectoring, as she saw how his temples seemed fallen in and how his gray hair straggled ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... the Sweet Grass down to the Yellowstone; and until we reached it, whenever there were creeks to ford or extra pulls on hills, half a dozen of us would drop back and lend a hand from our saddle pommels. The gradual decline of the country to the river was in our favor at present, and we should reach the ford in two days at the farthest, where we hoped to find a wheelwright. In case we did not, our foreman thought he could ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... is represented at Manchester out of all proportion to its worth, in comparison with the earlier and greater schools of Italy. It is essentially the school of decline, and, after the time of Francia, very few pictures proceeded from it dignified by noble thought, or exhibiting either purity or power of imagination. Its very method condemned it to inferiority. But debased as it is, it has been during the last two centuries the object of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... literature do not, I think, decline with age; last 1st of January was my eighty-second birthday, and I think that I had as much enjoyment from books as I ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... "unbending" a scholar like Eames was perfectly familiar—he would switch the conversation into realms of military science, and begin to expatiate upon the wonderful advance which has been made since those days in the arts of defensive and offensive warfare—the decline of the phalanx, the rise of artillery, the changed system of fortifications, those modern inventions in the department of land defences, sea defences and, above all, aerial defences, parachutes, hydroplanes. . ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... he quotes with a certain pleasure the result obtained by a grave calculator, who found that in the first line of Satan's army there were a thousand times a hundred thousand million devils, and more in the other two. He gives a kind of arithmetical measure of the decline of the devil's power by pointing out that 'he who was once equal to the angel who killed eighty thousand men in one night, is not able now, without a new commission, to take away the life of one Job.' He is filled with curiosity as to the proceedings of the first parliament (p————t ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... mansion void; To ruin-heaps may soon its walls decline. O heavens, that one poor fire's but employ'd, One poor fire only ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... Irish, when he might easily prevent it without the least loss to himself or his men, assuring him that if he should join General Hurry with what forces he had then under his command, Montrose would go away with his Irish and decline to fight them. Seaforth, believing his visitors, and thinking, as they said, that Montrose with so small a number would not venture to fight, his opponents being twice the number, and many of them trained soldiers. Hurry told him that he was to march immediately against Montrose and ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... banquet in New York, that was long remembered for its brilliancy, was followed by the tender of the same tribute in other cities, an honor which his unconquerable shrinking from this kind of publicity compelled him to decline. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... doubtless the cause of his decline in the royal favor, which he never, in after days, regained; for, after Essex was dead by her award and deed, Elizabeth, in her furious and lion-like remorse, visited his death upon the heads of all those who had been his enemies in life, or counseled ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... two reasons for which a physician can decline the title of Doctor of Medicine, because he supposes himself disgraced by the doctorship, or supposes the doctorship disgraced by himself. To be disgraced by a title which he shares in common with every illustrious name of his profession, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... adolescence, and for the propagation of the species during the procreative period. Unless other factors intervene, this reduction in speed is progressive until senescent death. The diminished size of the thyroid of the aged bears testimony to the part the activating organs bear in the general decline. ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... dormitories are full; the scholastic year is very far advanced; we have even been obliged to decline receiving new pupils until the next term. You would be compelled to wait until then, madame; and ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... and into whose cold sentences your masterly hand has infused the fervent spirit of Tennessean journalism, will wake up another nest of hornets. All that mob of editors will come—and they will come hungry, too, and want somebody for breakfast. I shall have to bid you adieu. I decline to be present at these festivities. I came South for my health; I will go back on the same errand, and suddenly. Tennessean journalism is too stirring ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain
... at this period is not so easily drawn. The decline of the family fortunes seemed to have had as little effect upon her as upon her father, although their characters differed sharply. Something of that spontaneity, of that love of life and joy in it she had possessed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of these were the true solution of the difficulty or not, Kearney's popularity was on the decline at the moment when this unfortunate narrative of the attack on his castle aroused the whole county and excited their feelings against him. Mr. McGloin took every step of his proceeding with due measure and caution: and having secured a certain number of promises of attendance ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... brain development of women point to the same conclusion. The growth of the brain is relatively more rapid in women than in men before the twentieth year. Between 15 and 20 it has reached its maximum, and from that time there is a gradual decline in weight until about the fiftieth year, when there is an acceleration of growth, followed by a renewed diminution after the sixtieth year. The maximum of brain weight is almost reached by men at 20 years, but there is a slow increase until 30 or 35 years. There ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... statements, it appears that the fur trade must henceforward decline. The advanced state of geographical science shows that no new countries remain to be explored. In North America the animals are slowly decreasing, from the persevering efforts and the indiscriminate slaughter practiced by the hunters, and by the appropriation to the ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... a superior man helps the distressed, but does not add to the wealth of the rich.' 3. Yuan Sze being made governor of his town by the Master, he gave him nine hundred measures of grain, but Sze declined them. 4. The Master said, 'Do not decline them. May you not give them away in the neighborhoods, hamlets, towns, and villages?' CHAP. IV. The Master, speaking of Chung-kung, said, 'If the calf of a brindled cow be red and horned, although men may not wish to use it, would the spirits ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... that, Mr. Carlis," Blaine returned quietly. "As far as the financial argument goes, I think you discovered long ago that its appeal to me is based upon a different point of view than your own. You forget that I am not a servant of the public, but a private citizen, free to accept or decline such offers as are made to me in my line of business, as I choose. This affair is not a public charge, but a business proposition, which I decline. As to my reputation depending upon it, I differ with you. My reputation will stand, I think, ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... one weakness, the love of gambling, which was one of the besetting sins of the monarchs of the day. Sakuni was an expert at false dice, and challenged Yudhishthir, and Yudhishthir held it a point of honour not to decline such a challenge. ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... Theign could tell him. "Because it was a tissue of expressions that may pass current—over counters and in awful newspapers—in his extraordinary world or country, but that I decline to take time ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... getting hold of good things, as every thing has two handles, by the wrong one. It was a misconception of the meaning and principles of poets and painters which gave countenance to the modern system of gardening, which is now, I hope, on the decline; in other words, we are submitting to the rule which you at present are guided by, that of having our houses belong to the country, which will of course lead us back to the simplicity of Nature. And leaving your own individual sentiments and present work out of the question, what good ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... specimens of your Faubourg," said Frederic; "they would decline my acquaintance because my grandfather kept a shop, and they ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that curious symbol which appears over the letter n in the word "canon." A rise, a fall, a rise. Here is the whole story of the American poetry-lover. His enthusiasm first reached a high point about the middle of the nineteenth century. A generation later it fell into a swift decline. But three or four years ago it began to revive so rapidly that a poetry-lover's renaissance is now a reality. This renaissance has not yet been explained, although the majority of readers and writers feel able to tell why poetry ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... the dark blue line Of western distance that sublime descendest, And, gleaming lovelier as thy beams decline, Thy million hues to every vapour lendest, And, over cobweb lawn and grove and stream 5 Sheddest the liquid magic of thy light, Till calm Earth, with the parting splendour bright, Shows like the vision of a beauteous dream; What gazer now with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... white to the lips. It had come at last, and the "Silver Shoe" was within her reach, but the gift was incomplete. She must decline it, and take her chances for ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... rough and in general it is true; and the reason is the reason I have given you, that when decay begins, whether of a man or of a State, there comes with it an appalling and a torturing loneliness in which our energies decline into a strong affection for whatever is constantly our companion and for whatever is certainly present upon earth. For we have ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... 5) Girls, decline consecutive dances with the same boy. Do it graciously, explaining that you would like to accept, but must not be selfish. If he is the right sort, he will understand at once, or come to his senses later. If he is offended, don't worry about it; ...
— Manners And Conduct In School And Out • Anonymous
... affair: the long and mutual animosity between her and Sir John will make her interference merely productive of debates and ill-will. Neither would I have Evelina appear till summoned. And as to myself, I must wholly decline acting; though I will, with unwearied zeal, devote all my thoughts to giving counsel: but, in truth, I have neither inclination nor spirits adequate to engaging personally ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... the preceding Christmas there had been, temporarily, strong signs of decline in the Union strength of the Perth district. A great many miners had quietly seceded; one of the periodical waves of suspicion as to funds and management to which all trade unions are liable had swept over the neighbourhood; and wholesale desertion from the Union standard seemed likely. In hot ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... boots, also, for most of the townsmen wore shoes, thus marking the decline of the military spirit. I never again owned a pair of those man-killing top-boots—which were not only hard to get on and off but pinched my toes, and interrupted the flow of my trouser-legs. Thus one great era fades into another. The Jack-boot period was over, the shoe, commonplace and comfortable, ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... having read them, fly in terror and in pain At the cult of vivisection of La belle Americaine? HOWELLS puffs up DUDLEY WARNER, who declares his HOWELLS fine. Do the spectres hate "log-rolling," and to haunt the place decline? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... even in summer time, on account of great bogs, rocks, and precipices which environed it. The popular tradition concerning it is as ridiculous as is to be found in any legend of the Romish Martyrology. After continuing in great credit many years, it began to decline; and in the 13th of Henry the Seventh was demolished with great solemnity, on St Patrick's Day, by the Pope's express order. It, however, afterwards came into reputation again, insomuch that, by ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... laid upon this inference, as the history of what befel this country after the decline of the Roman empire is so intimately blended with that of Suabia, the Tyrolese, and the lower parts of the Grisons, which are known to have fallen to the share of the rising power of the Franks, that nothing positive ...
— Account of the Romansh Language - In a Letter to Sir John Pringle, Bart. P. R. S. • Joseph Planta, Esq. F. R. S.
... departments of State affairs; he favoured, by protectionist measures—free trade not yet being heard of—French industry and commerce; was to the French marine what Louvois was to the army, and encouraged both arts and letters; from 1671 his influence began to decline; he was held responsible for increased taxation due to Louis XIV.'s wars, while the jealousy of Louvois weakened his credit at Court; he became so unpopular that on his death his body was buried at night, but a grateful posterity has recognised his services, and done homage to his memory ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... own part Isaac dated his decline from the hour of his son's defection. He had not been brought to this pass by any rashness in speculation, or by any flaw whatever in his original scheme. But his original scheme had taken for granted ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... of my wife and myself, with three children, the eldest about nine years old, she and the next in age being girls; and the youngest, between six and seven, a boy. To these were added six servants, whom, although for certain reasons I decline giving their real names, I shall indicate, for the sake of clearness, by arbitrary ones. There was a nurse, Mrs. Southerland; a nursery-maid, Ellen Page; the cook, Mrs. Greenwood; and the housemaid, Ellen Faith; a butler, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... again here, dear master, and not very happy; my mother worries me. Her decline increases from day to day, and almost from hour to hour. She wanted me to come home although the painters have not finished their work, and we are very inconveniently housed. At the end of next week, she will have a companion who will relieve me in ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... what does it all mean? What is the secret of your elation? I decline to rejoice with you in this abridged fashion; I must have details. ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... master, whom of course he obeyed under protest. When the sheep was brought forward, and its head was put between the lion's jaws, it was almost in a swooning condition, and excited general pity. He had to get a new sheep every month, the daily fear causing them soon to decline ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... owned the churches, for all purposes practical to himself; he owned the ministers—if not, then this was another mistake that he had made. So long as it was true that they could not live without him, he was content with his title. He patronized the church, and the church was too weak to decline his ostentatious courtesy. He humiliated every man who came into his presence, seeking a subscription for a religious or charitable purpose, but his subscription was always sought, and as regularly obtained. Humbly to seek his assistance for any high purpose was a ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... masses, I enjoyed a superb view to north, west, and east, over a wilderness of rugged hills, with huge masses of grey rock rising out of a feathery forest, while to the north the undulating line, faintly blue in the far distance, marked the point where the plateau of central Matabililand begins to decline toward the valley of the Zambesi. It was a beautiful prospect both in the wild variety of the foreground and in the delicate hues of ridge after ridge melting away towards the horizon, and it was all waste and silent, as it has been ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... received notion that the energies of living matter have a tendency to decline and finally disappear, and that the death of the body as a whole is a necessary correlate of its life. That all living beings sooner or later perish needs no demonstration, but it would be difficult to find satisfactory grounds for the belief that they needs ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but influential—have been as meekly acquiescent as clerks or curates. Men who own half a county have smiled on an Act which will destroy territorial domination. What is the explanation? Was their silence due to patriotism or to fear? Did they laudably decline the responsibility of opposing a Government which is conducting a great war? Or did they, less laudably, shrink from the prospect of appearing as the inveterate enemies of a social and economic revolution which they saw to be inevitable? Let us charitably ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... others. It may be well to note here, however, a fact which is often overlooked, namely, that the written records of France are not only very complete and exhaustive, but, with respect to Paris itself, to cite an example, the documentary history, consecutive and exact, from the time of the decline of Roman power is preserved intact,—a record which is perhaps not so true of any other large ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... right to visit any lodge within his jurisdiction at such times as he pleases, and when there to preside; and it is the duty of the Master to offer him the chair and his gavel, which the Grand Master may decline or accept at his pleasure. This prerogative admits of no question, as it is distinctly declared in the first of the Thirty-nine Regulations, adopted in ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... The great moral decline of the clergy was confined chiefly to the Lutheran church. The Reformed was earnest, pious, and aggressive. At this very time it was endeavoring to spread the leaven of the Gospel through other lands. It was, during the whole period, the conservative power of Protestantism. As might be expected, ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Palmerston was requested by Prince Castelcicala to forward the reply of the Neapolitan Government to the different European courts to which Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet had been sent. His lordship, with his wonted courage and independent spirit, replied that he 'must decline being accessory to the circulation of a pamphlet which, in my opinion, does no credit to its writer, or the Government which he defends, or to the political party of which he professes to be the champion.' ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... men are common in and around Assam among non-Aryan races. The institution is here seen in various stages of decline or transition. In the case of 'head-hunters' the young men's barracks are invariably guardhouses, at the entrance to the village, and those on guard at night keep tally of the men who leave and return." — Op. cit., vol. ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... upon a series of prophecies developing fully the successive steps in the decline of the Western Roman empire, by which it finally tottered to its fall. It was necessary that this persecuting, tyrannical government should be subverted in order to give opportunity for the establishment of apostate Christianity in the form of the Papacy, as it constituted the ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... matter of surprise if the population in that part should have declined in forty years from six thousand to less than four hundred; which are, once more on the authority of M. Aussel, the estimated figures. And the rate of decline must have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Affecting to believe that they were of General Jackson's selection, he pointed now to the portrait of some famous race-horse, and now to the print of some celebrated rat-terrier, as queer revelations of his private tastes, indicating a great decline in his moral character, which would be a grief and disappointment to the pious old ladies of the South. Jackson, with a quiet smile, replied that perhaps he had had more to do with race-horses than his friends suspected. It was ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... you, Miss Woodley," said the attorney, "that this gentleman would decline the brief, especially with ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... honour it. In the foregoing illustration A is not obliged either to pay or to accept the draft. It is not binding upon him any more than a letter would be. He can refuse payment just as easily and as readily as he could decline to pay a collector who calls for payment of a bill. Of course, if a man habitually refuses to honour legitimate drafts it may injure his credit with banks ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... Jason hoarsely, without lifting his eyes from his plate. He could scarcely eat another mouthful, and Minty found it unexpectedly easy to obey Aunt Kittredge's injunction to decline snow pudding lest there should not be "enough to ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... wasteful people, and in the wake of our wastefulness have followed a dismal train of disasters, cold, hunger, and many another form of distress. Deplore and repent of our prodigality as we may, the effects abide to remind us of our decline from the high plane of industry, frugality, and conservation of leisure. Nor can we hope to avert a repetition of this crisis unless education comes in to guide our minds and ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... we turn to the crustaceans we have to deal with two distinct assemblages, one purely marine, trilobitic, the other mainly lacustrine or lagoonal with a eurypteridian facies. The trilobites had already begun to decline in importance, and as happens not infrequently with degenerating races of beasts and men, they began to develop strange eccentricities of ornamentation in some of their genera. A number of Silurian genera lived on into ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... Decay.—I have often observed that the more proudly a mansion has been tenanted in the day of its prosperity, the humbler are its inhabitants in the day of its decline, and that the palace of the king, commonly ends in being the nestling place ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... and he offered me the place. I told him I had once offered my services, and they were declined; that I had made business engagements in St. Louis, which I could not throw off at pleasure; that I had long deliberated on my course of action, and must decline his offer, however tempting and complimentary. He reasoned with me, but I persisted. He told me, in that event, he should appoint Lyon, and he ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... say all that I ought to say, would be to be very voluminous. But I may venture to say, in general terms, that no man hath written in our language so much, and so various matter, and in so various manners so well. Another thing I may say very peculiar to him, which is, that his parts did not decline with his years, but that he was an improving writer to his last, even to near seventy years of age, improving even in fire and imagination, as well as in judgment; witness his Ode on St Cecilia's Day, and his Fables, his ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... (February 13, 1788): "From the impudent conduct of Mr. Dallas in misrepresenting the proceedings and speeches in the Pennsylvania Convention, as well as from his deficiency of matter, the Columbian Magazine, of which he is editor, is in the decline." ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... athrob with thought and feeling. A great tidal wave of unrest swept the land. It was an epoch of growth, second only in history to the Italian Renaissance. The two Wesleys were attacking the Church, and calling upon men to methodize their lives and eliminate folly; Gibbon was writing his "Decline and Fall"; Burke, in the House of Commons, was polishing his brogue; Boswell was busy blithering about a book concerning a man; Captain Cook was sailing the seas finding continents; the two Pitts and Charles Fox were giving the king unpalatable advice; ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... like,—spend five or six weeks in the woods, they two alone, a hundred miles or more from any town,—roaming about, and sleeping on the ground where night overtakes them,—depending chiefly on the provisions they carry with them, though they do not decline what game they come across,—and then in the fall they return and make report to their employers, determining the number of teams that will be required the following winter. Experienced men get three or four dollars a day for this work. It is a solitary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... GENTLEMAN. I absolutely decline to do anything of the sort [he rises and walks away ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... this friend spoke to me as follows, in a voice scarcely audible: "All illusion is at an end; from this moment I will no more flatter myself with the hope of ever again seeing my native country. I feel my strength gradually decline. This night, yes, this night, my friend, (for surely you deserve that name, after what you have done for me), you will find nothing here, but a corpse cold and dead. Fly, my dear Brisson, fly this hated abode. Try every ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... girl again. "Don't bank on me. Merton isn't in my class, and if you're her chum, I'll have to decline ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... alone had attracted my attention. He was a tall, pale man, in the decline of life, dressed in a sort of half-uniform; he walked with a stooping gait, and seemed to me (perhaps it was a mere fancy) as much weighed down by care as years. Several times I had seen him going in or coming out of the court that opened two ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... rapidly furnished in whispers, and interrupted, brief as it was, by many false alarms of Mr Pecksniff's return; which Martin received of his grandfather's decline, and of that good gentleman's ascendancy. He heard of Tom Pinch too, and Jonas too, with not a little about himself into the bargain; for though lovers are remarkable for leaving a great deal unsaid on ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... all hands, he was so carefull that he tried all orders of men, in placing them in roomes of iustice. And lastlie, trusting to find among the cleargie such as would not be corrupted with bribes, nor for respect of feare or freendship decline from right iudgement, [Sidenote: Bishops chosen principall iustices.] he chose foorth the bishops of Winchester, Elie and Norwich to be principall iustices of the relme, so as they might end and determine all matters, except in certeine cases reserued to the ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) - Henrie the Second • Raphael Holinshed
... your own renown. She herself was going in search for you to secure the boon for which she hoped; no one else would have taken her place, had she not been detained by an illness which compels her to keep her bed. Now tell me, please, whether you will dare to come, or whether you will decline." "No," he says; "no man can win praise in a life of ease; and I will not hold back, but will follow you gladly, my sweet friend, whithersoever it may please you. And if she for whose sake you have sought me out stands in some great need of me, have ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... saw the sun decline, "When you rise again," she thought, "when you peep bright to-morrow morning into this little room to call me up, I shall not be here to open my eyes upon a hateful day—I shall no more regret that you have waked me!—I shall be sound asleep, never to wake again ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... the General Development of Penal Law; Development and Disuse of Torture in Procedure and in Penalty; Progress of International Law; Origin and Decline of Slavery; etc. Given before the senior class of Cornell University, 1878. (Published ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... a great deal regarding the decline of our shipping interests, and so far as our shipping in the foreign trade is concerned it is unfortunately true," says The Boston Commercial Bulletin. "But few people realize the immensity of our coastwise commerce. The Custom House figures on the shipping of the port of New York for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... see any very serious inconvenience likely to arise from it, sir," said the doctor: "only I maintain that the cure is not so complete as it might have been, and, on this subject, I decline ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Yet a new king had but to appear to change everything. George III. ascended the throne with the determination not to be the slave of any minister, himself the slave of Parliament; and from the day that he became king to the day that the decline of his faculties enforced his retirement, his personal power was everywhere felt, and his personal character everywhere impressed itself on the British world, and to no ordinary extent on other countries. George III. was not a great man, and it has been argued that his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... do it in the car," said Harley suddenly. "I have been asked to look into this case myself, and before I definitely decline I should like to hear your version ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... understand, Madame Richard," I said, "that you decline to give me the address of those who stand behind you in the ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that declines war may be refusing to inflict that just punishment which alone can set the wrong-doers on the better course. It is not the faith of that Society to which I belong to decline correction lest ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... several years at school this same uncle examined me and discovered that the net result of my schooling was that I had forgotten what he had taught me, and had learnt nothing else. To this day, though I can still decline a Latin noun and repeat some of the old paradigms in the old meaningless way, because their rhythm sticks to me, I have never yet seen a Latin inscription on a tomb that I could translate throughout. Of Greek I can decipher ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... empire. "However extended these labours," he says,{1} "my complete blindness could not have prevented my going through them; I was resigned as much as a courageous man can be: I had made a friendship with darkness. But other trials came: acute sufferings and the decline of my health announced a nervous disease of the most serious kind. I was obliged to confess myself conquered, and to save, if it was still time, the last remains ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... cases is the dependency of partial fluctuation on the season and on the weather. Flowers decline when the season comes to an end, become smaller and less brightly colored. The number of ray-florets in the flower-heads is seen to decrease towards the fall. Extremes become rarer, and often the deviations from the average seem nearly to disappear. Double flowers ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... Adelphi Theatre, Lord Tenterden in the chair, it was stated that Mr. Dodd evinced, through his solicitor, a disposition to fence round his gift with legal restrictions and stipulations, which apprised the committee of coming difficulty; and the meeting unanimously agreed to decline Mr. Dodd's offer of land. Previously and subsequently to this, Mr. Dodd was most discourteously commented on and attacked in the newspapers, the editors of which, however, sided with him. I was told that the stipulation for a presentation was the great offence; but I should think ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... But after the decline of Ur's ascendancy, and long before Babylon's great monarch came to the throne, the centre of power in Sumeria was shifted to Isin, where sixteen kings flourished for two and a quarter centuries. Among the royal ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... Into my husband's hands. This trusty servant Shall pass between us; ere long you are like to hear, If you dare venture in your own behalf, A mistress's command. [Giving a favour.] Wear this; spare speech; Decline your head: this kiss, if it durst speak, Would stretch thy spirits up into the air:— Conceive, ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... says that when the owl would boast he boasts of catching mice at the edge of a hole. Shakespeare would have understood this. Milton would have made him talk like an eagle. His influence is not to be left out of account as partially contributing to that decline toward poetic diction which was already beginning ere he died. If it would not be fair to say that he is the most artistic, he may be called in the highest sense the most scientific of our poets. If to Spenser younger poets have gone to be sung-to, they have sat at the feet of ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... himself and all the world. He had lost Graciella already; any possibility that might have remained of regaining her affection, was destroyed by his having made her name the excuse for a barroom broil. His uncle was not well, and with the decline of his health, his monomania grew more acute and more absorbing, and he spent most of his time in the search for the treasure and in expostulations with Viney to reveal its whereabouts. The supervision of the plantation work ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... they give them, and are blame-worthy, if they fail in the least. But proposing this but as a History, or if you will have it so, but as a Fable; wherein amongst other examples, which may be imitated, we may perhaps find divers others which we may have reason to decline: I hope it will be profitable to some, without being hurtfull to any; and that the liberty I take will be ...
— A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason - and the Discovery of Truth in the Sciences • Rene Descartes
... Gossips," a poem, by Shipman, in 1666, there is the following mention of the custom of presenting apostle-spoons at christenings, which it appears was then on the decline:— ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... Parliament. He at length repeated, in an emphatic tone, 'As many as are of opinion that THIS BILL do pass, say ay! The affirmative was languid, but indisputable. Another momentary pause ensued. Again his lips seemed to decline their office. At length, with an eye averted from the object he hated, he proclaimed, with a subdued voice, 'The, AYES have it.' The fatal sentence was now pronounced. For an instant he stood statue-like; then indignantly, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... ago by the Council of the British Association to give an evening lecture to the working men of Dundee, my experience of the working men of London naturally rose to my mind; and, though heavily weighted with other duties, I could not bring myself to decline the request of the Council. Hitherto, the evening discourses of the Association have been delivered before its members and associates alone. But after the meeting at Nottingham, last year, where the working men, at their ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... wooing are also possessed with jealousie, if you see that another obtains access to your Mistriss; or who, perhaps as wel as you, doth but once kiss the knocker of the dore, or cause an Aubade to be plaied under her Chamber Window: Look sharply about you, and behold how these Aubades decline, or whether it be worth your while to give your Rival the Challenge; or to stab, poison, or drown'd your self, to shew, by such an untimely death, the love you had for her; and on your Grave, bear this Epitaph, that through damn'd jealousie you murthered your self. These married Couple, used to ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... governors. The message is to the effect that if those silly girls who have allied themselves to that most ridiculous society, the Wild Irish Girls, will give the name of their leader, they shall be forgiven. Do you accept, foundationers, or do you decline?" ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... he drawled; "after that for a little ride down to th' Pecos or over in Chihuahua somewhere a couple hundred miles. I decline with enthusiasm to fall in love on th' spur of th' moment for ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... judges, all set before us a state of society which changed but little down to the Persian era. Behind it lie centuries of slow development and progress in the arts of life. The age of Amraphel, indeed, is in certain respects an age of decline. The heyday of Babylonian art lay nearly two thousand years before it, in the epoch of Sargon and his son Naram-Sin. It was then that the Babylonian empire was established throughout western Asia as far as the Mediterranean, that ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... intelligence; for he knew that my client here was acquainted with a gentleman of the name of Rochester. Mr. Mason, astonished and distressed, as you may suppose, revealed the real state of matters. Your uncle, I am sorry to say, is now on a sick-bed; from which, considering the nature of his disease—decline—and the stage it has reached, it is unlikely he will ever rise. He could not then hasten to England himself, to extricate you from the snare into which you had fallen, but he implored Mr. Mason to lose no time in taking steps to prevent ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... tractors, agricultural machinery, and some defense items. The breakup of the USSR and the collapse of demand for Kazakhstan's traditional heavy industry products have resulted in a sharp contraction of the economy since 1991, with the steepest annual decline occurring in 1994. In 1995-97 the pace of the government program of economic reform and privatization quickened, resulting in a substantial shifting of assets into the private sector. The December 1996 ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... their assistance, but despise the instrument. He will now be fierce against his benefactor (who, though a bad king, was tender to his friends), and bitterer against his faith than if he had never been either a courtier or a bigot. I receive his congratulations, Sir Walter Ouseley, but I decline an interview for ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... of useful but not exciting measures. Meanwhile the more active Members of the Liberal Party, among whom I presumed to reckon myself, began to agitate for more substantial reforms. We had entered on the fourth Session of the Parliament. A noble majority was beginning to decline, and we felt that there was no time to lose if we were to secure the ends which we desired. Knowing that I felt keenly on these subjects, Mr. T. H. S. Escott, then Editor of the Fortnightly, asked me to write an article for his Review, and in that article ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... the accompanying blocks resting on the south-eastern declivity of the Jura are traced from their culminating point G in opposite directions, whether westward towards Geneva or eastwards towards Soleure, they are found to decline in height from the middle of the arc G towards the two extremities I and K, both of which are at a lower level than G, by about 1500 feet. In other words the ice of the extinct glacier, having mounted up on the sloping flanks of the Jura in the line of greatest ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... national ambitions and dynastic enterprise, rather than a creative work of installing any institutional furniture suitable to its own ends. It has in effect gone no farther than what would be called an incipient correction of abuses. The highest rise, as well as the decline, of this movement lie within ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... with you, Captain Gary," he replied, "there was nothing said about my serving as a gunner. I must respectfully decline to fire on an American ship. I am too much ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... Circensian games, than the regular drama of the Chinese will admit of being measured by the softer, but more refined and rational amusements of a similar kind in Europe. It is true the scenic representations in the decline of the Roman empire, as they are described to us, appear to have been as rude and barbarous as those of the Chinese. They began by exhibiting in their vast amphitheatre the rare and wonderful productions of nature. Forests enlivened with innumerable birds; caverns pouring forth lions, and ...
— 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
... which I cannot explain, because I do not understand them; these might have been omitted very often with little inconvenience, but I would not so far indulge my vanity as to decline this confession: for when Tully owns himself ignorant whether lessus, in the twelve tables, means a funeral song, or mourning garment; and Aristotle doubts whether [word in Greek] in the Iliad, signifies a mule, or muleteer, I may surely, without shame, leave some obscurities ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... the insurance offices can seldom be persuaded to accept of risks even in first-class vessels, when their crews are Spaniards, on the same favourable terms at which risks are freely taken on good British ships. They almost invariably demand an increased premium, and occasionally decline ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... little while ago that I was getting sadly belated in the matter of novel-reading. I had come to decline on a few old favourites and was breaking no new ground. That is a provincial frame of mind, just as when a man begins to discard dressing for dinner, and can endure nothing but an old coat and slippers. It is easy to think of it as unworldly, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was usually twelve feet high, and defended by a ditch twelve feet in depth, as well as in breadth. This important labour was performed by the legionaries themselves, to whom the use of the spade and the pick-axe was no less familiar than the sword and the pilum" ("Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," vol. i., p. 27.) This gives a faithful description of the Roman encampment (Castra Stativa) at Boulogne, which is described by St. Patrick as Bonaven Tabernise, or Bononia, where the Roman encampment ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... child is about eleven or twelve years of age, some of these characteristics decline and others equally pronounced take their place. "Nominies" disappear and games of simple chase (tag games) decline in interest. Races and other competitive forms of running become more strenuous, indicating a laudable instinct to increase thereby ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... Smithfield in 1830, who, however, said, when he had read it, 'were I to print it I should be ruined.' That fate followed the book to the end, and Borrow was premature when he said in his Preface to The Sleeping Bard that such folly is on the decline, because he found 'Albemarle Street in '60 willing to publish a harmless but plain-speaking book which Smithfield shrank from in '30.' At the last moment John Murray refused to publish, but seems to have agreed to give his imprint to the title-page. Borrow published the book at his ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... good-hearted old fellow, he never did. And after abusing everybody else, he sent for George, complimented him upon his gallantry publicly on the quarterdeck of the Tremendous, offered to obtain a commission for him (an offer which our hero was foolish enough to decline), and gave his hearty consent to the proposed borrowing of ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... grieved, but not surprised, when they learned that Miss Amelia was fast following her sister into a decline. It was what they had expected of the Heath twins, they said, and they reminded one another of the story of the strained eyes and the glasses. Then came the day when the little dressmaker's rooms were littered from end to end ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... nation gives itself up to war, trade languishes, the population loses the habit of steady industry, government and administration become corrupt, abuses escape punishment, and the real sources of a people's strength and expansion dwindle. What has caused the relative failure and decline of Spanish, Portuguese, and French expansion in Asia and the New World, and the relative success of English expansion therein? Was it the mere hazards of war which gave to Great Britain the domination of India and half of the New World? That is surely ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... Censorii. A disturbing element in this enumeration is the uncertainty of numerals in ancient manuscripts. But the fact of the progressive decline is beyond all question. No accidental errors of transcription could have produced this result in the text ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... of a lawyer's right to clear a known criminal (with the several questions involved) is not answered affirmatively by showing that the law forbids him to decline a case for reasons personal to himself—not even if we admit the statute's moral authority. Preservation of conscience and character is a civic duty, as well as a personal; one's fellow-men have a distinct interest in it. That, I admit, is an argument rather in the manner ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... President Woodruff's life there had been a slow decline of the feeling that it was necessary for self-protection that the hierarchy should preserve a political control over the people. I cannot say that the feeling had wholly passed. It had continued to show itself, here and there, whenever a candidate was so ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... of course," said Sam. "When they do decline. Not till then, of course. I wouldn't dream of it. But, once they do decline, count on me! And I should like to say for my part," he went on handsomely, "what an honour I think it, to become the son-in-law of a ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... hopes decrease, Dick," he said. "Remember that at least twenty per cent of the decline is due to the darkness and inaction. In the morning, when the light comes once more, and we're up and doing again, you'll get back all the twenty ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... cause of his decline in the royal favor, which he never, in after days, regained; for, after Essex was dead by her award and deed, Elizabeth, in her furious and lion-like remorse, visited his death upon the heads of all those who had been his enemies in life, or counseled her against him, even when he ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... described in the preceding tale the rise of Christianity in Japan, and the remarkable rapidity of its development in that remote land. We have now to describe its equally rapid decline and fall, and the exclusion of Europeans from Japanese soil. It must be said here that this was in no sense due to the precepts of Christianity, but wholly to the hostility between its advocates of different sects, their jealousy and abuse of one another, and to the quarrels ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... prospect, which included the boundaries of three sovereign states, with various rivers, valleys and fertile fields. On such a spot, where Nature reigned and developed herself in quiet beauty, whether in the voluptuous budding of the spring, or in the year's gorgeous decline, Charity had taken the hint and erected an asylum for the insane. Happy invocation of Nature, most kind and gentle saviour of the sick, who meeting her in her quiet haunts may touch her beautiful garments and be whole! In the exhilarating sunshine, in the fields ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... In like fashion, the German military chiefs of 1914 hoped to conquer France and Russia before England was ready. It was the old story as told by Shakespeare. "Our legions are brim full, our cause is ripe. The enemy increaseth every day. We, at the height, are ready to decline." ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... mode, see his Evidences, part iii, chapter iii. For the more scholastic expressions from Irenaeus and others, see Gore, Bampton Lectures, 1891, especially note on p. 267. For a striking passage on the general subject see B. W. Bacon, Genesis of Genesis, p. 33, ending with the words, "We must decline to stake the authority of Jesus Christ on a question of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... second resolution, and wrote to his uncle a calm and lofty letter, free from all token of offence, expressing every wish for the happiness of Guy and Amabel, and thanking his uncle for the invitation, which, however, he thought it best to decline, much as he regretted losing the opportunity of seeing Hollywell and its inhabitants again. His regiment would sail for Corfu either in May or June; but he intended, himself, to travel on foot through Germany and Italy, and would write again before ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... convincing to the one who offers it. Most people say that they are being brought in for the siege of Antwerp, which is about to begin. The siege of Antwerp has begun so often and never materialized that I decline to get excited about it at this stage of the game. Another explanation is that the German retreat in France is so precipitate that some of the troops and supply trains are already pouring through here on their way home. I cannot get up much enthusiasm ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... very field on which you were about to oppose him, like Maurepas; and making a truce, for a short interval, when you are almost destitute of ammunition, and the enemy so exhausted with the heats as to decline coming into the field; while, at the same time, fresh troops are pouring in upon the coast, in such numbers as to prevent your regaining your independence by remaining in arms. If every man of the negroes has not wit enough to understand this for himself, who is better able than ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... that lay on the Barrett household was the curse of considering ill-health the natural condition of a human being. The truth was that Edward Barrett was living emotionally and aesthetically, like some detestable decadent poet, upon his daughter's decline. He did not know this, but it was so. Scenes, explanations, prayers, fury, and forgiveness had become bread and meat for which he hungered; and when the cloud was upon his spirit, he would lash out at ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... and fair lost faces stray, To make us weary at our wakening; And of that long lost path to the Divine We dream, as some Greek shepherd erst might sing, Half credulous, of easy Proserpine, And of the lands that lie 'beneath the day's decline.' ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... pence table too; and could do sums in multiplication without a mistake, when he took pains; but sometimes, when he was careless, or in a hurry, the sums were wrong: however, I am happy to say that did not happen very often. Besides all these things, Charles learned grammar, and geography, and could decline many Latin nouns; which was very well for a little boy not quite seven years old. But of all his lessons he liked geography best, he liked to find out places in the maps, and to know whereabouts the different countries were that he heard people talk of; and then his papa was often kind to tell ...
— More Seeds of Knowledge; Or, Another Peep at Charles. • Julia Corner
... no proper subcastes in the Central Provinces, but the Kudas and Kisans, having a distinctive name and occupation, sometimes regard themselves as separate bodies and decline intermarriage with other Oraons. In Bengal Sir H. Risley gives five divisions, Barga, Dhanka, Kharia, Khendro and Munda; of these Kharia and Munda are the names of other tribes, and Dhanka may be a variant ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... giver of the tournament, Bayard was, in a sense, the host of those who accepted the challenge; and it was very like his extreme courteousness to decline to carry off the prize from them, however much he may have wished in his heart to possess ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... as I do the reasons why it would be best for you not to go to Grayleigh Manor at present," he said. "You can easily write to give an excuse. Remember, we were both asked, and the fact that I cannot leave town is sufficient reason for you to decline." ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... cleared, particularly when it is remembered that the highest portions of the range are thickly wooded. But allowing this supposition to be correct, it is no proof, that the total population has been on the decline, for we must take into account, the wandering nature of all hill tribes. In forming an opinion of a hill population, which in all times and places has, in this country at least, been found scanty, we must take care ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... labouring man. I decline, because I spend my time daily tracing out little crooked lines on paper with a pen, because I have wrought day and night to make little patterns of ink and little stretches of words reach men together round a world, because I have sweat blood to believe, because in weariness and sorrow ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... the decline of evangelical faith is found in the presence of many false doctrines among the leaders of so-called orthodox Christianity in that period of which I now write. Paul not only taught that at a later time some should "depart ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... been as dark as any nigger's, I should have been just as happy and as useful, and as much respected by those whose respect I value; and as to his offer of bleaching me, I should, even if it were practicable, decline it without any thanks. As to the society which the process might gain me admission into, all I can say is, that, judging from the specimens I have met with here and elsewhere, I don't think that I shall lose much by being excluded from it. So, gentlemen, ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... former with some interest, while he mixed a small powder in the family medicine-glass, and when he advanced with it to Master Jim, her large eyes dilated so that the amount of white formed an absolutely appalling contrast with her ebony visage. But when she saw Master Jim decline the draught with his wonted decision of character, thereby rendering it necessary for the nautical man to put powerful restraint on his struggling limbs, and to hold his nose while the surgeon forced open his mouth and poured the contents ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... midnight, gone back to the hotel. It was now past two o'clock. There was no lessening in the vigor of the dancing, the laughter, or in the stream of laden trays; no trace of fatigue in Mrs. Grove. She had the determined resilience of a woman approaching, perhaps, the decline, but not yet in it; of one who had danced into innumerable sun-rises from the night before, destroying many dozens ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... in just when the severer manifestations of Puritanism were beginning to decline, and they have since become as much a part of English fairy lore as the old English folk and fairy tales themselves. These latter, thanks to Mr. Joseph Jacob, Mr. Andrew Lang, Mr. E.S. Hartland, and others, have been unearthed and revived, ...
— The Tales of Mother Goose - As First Collected by Charles Perrault in 1696 • Charles Perrault
... still," I answered; "it might be nothing at all, and I should still decline. I cannot afford to be impatient now and to borrow knowledge of the future. I shall know all in ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... luncheons. In fact, to break bread, or, more correctly speaking, to crack a bottle with the master of the house, is as essential an element of a morning call as the making a bow or shaking hands, and to refuse to take off your glass would be as great an incivility as to decline taking off your hat. From earliest times, as the grand old ballad of the King of Thule tells us, a beaker was considered the fittest token a lady could ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... Arden, of whom I spoke last evening. He leaves her at Albany to-day, and asks me to join her to-morrow. They were on their way to Niagara; but unexpected business—he is a lawyer—requires him to return home; and I am to be the young lady's escort. So they have arranged the matter, and I cannot decline, of course." ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... begins to decline, in whatever form, there is always an accompanying decline physiologically, a decadence. The divinity of this decadence, shorn of its masculine virtues and passions, is converted perforce into a god of the physiologically degraded, of the weak. Of course, they do not call themselves ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... question of neighborhood, which is important. Beware of a place too near a small factory settlement. The latter is apt to grow and destroy the peace you have come so far to get. Besides, your property value will decline in direct ratio. We once knew a charming place set high on a hill with neat hedges, shrubs, and arbors reminiscent of England, birthplace of the man who built and developed it. The family that bought the property forgot to look down at the foot of the hill. ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... out of hand; and now I wait a formal answer, nothing more. Guido dare not decline. No, by the saints, He'd send Ravenna's virgins here in droves, To buy a ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... with the addition, Senior Sophister. How curiously do the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin proclaim themselves the universal languages, thus blending with the uncouth Mohican word! Caleb's constitution proved unable to endure College discipline and learning, and he died of decline soon after taking his degree. Consumption was very frequent among the Indians, as it so often is among savages suddenly brought to habits of civilization, and it seems to have mown down especially ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... time, colleges stand in peculiar need of gifts for general purposes of administration. Funds are frequently given for a special object, as the foundation of a professorship. But the amount may be inadequate. It is not expedient to decline the gift. Properly to endow the new chair, therefore, revenue must be drawn from the general funds, which thus suffer diminution. Donations are of the greatest advantage to a college, which are free from conditions relative ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... to which glands are concerned in the production of this phenomenon, which is homologous to the urethrorrhaea ex libidine of the male. In woman, as in man, the curve of voluptuousness exhibits four phases: an ascending limb, the equable voluptuous sensation, the acme, and the rapid decline. There are, however, in this respect, certain differences between man and woman, to which von Krafft-Ebing drew attention, and whose existence was confirmed by Otto Alder.[9] Whereas in the male the curve of voluptuousness both rises and falls with extreme abruptness, in the female both the onset ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... against him at the head of the princes of Rajast'han. A terrible battle ensued, which long inclined in favour of the Rajputs, until, through the treachery of a Tuar chief, they were defeated, and the star of Mewar began to decline, although so severe had been the struggle that Baber dared ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... went on, Arthur continued gradually to decline. Philip was with him always. The sufferer took a strange liking to this long-dreaded relation, this man of iron frame and thews. In Philip there was so much of life, that Arthur almost felt as if in his presence itself there was an antagonism to death. And Camilla saw thus her cousin, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... synonymous. To-day both are suffering a rapid decline, and a head is seldom taken in the valley of the Abra. In the mountain district old feuds are still maintained, and sometimes lead to a killing, and here too the ancient funerary rites are still carried out in their entirety on rare occasions. However, this peaceful ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... deliberately set out to be humorous, but have nearly always allowed the humor to drop in or stay out, according to its fancy. Although I have many times been asked to write something humorous for an editor or a publisher I have had wisdom enough to decline; a person could hardly be humorous with the other man watching him like that. I have never tried to write a humorous lecture; I have only tried to write serious ones—it is the only ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... knew what to think of all this—of Miss Tita's sudden conversion to sociability and of the strange circumstance that the more the old lady appeared to decline toward her end the less she should desire to be looked after. The story did not hang together, and I even asked myself whether it were not a trap laid for me, the result of a design to make me show my hand. I could not have told why my companions (as they could only ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... from the beginning of my stay with him, for my mother's letters stigmatising his conduct had begun very early. For some time he had been uncertain how to proceed. Then he had invented the excuse (which seemed to me at the time, if you remember, to be quite inadequate) about the slight weekly decline in the practice in order to get me out of it. His next move was to persuade me to start for myself; and as this would be impossible without money, he had encouraged me to it by the promise of a small weekly loan. I remembered how he had told me not ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... acres, but they were still in debt. Indeed, the gaunt father who toiled night and day would scarcely be happy out of debt, being so used to it. Some day he must stop, for his massive frame is showing decline. The mother wore shoes, but the lionlike physique of other days was broken. The children had grown up. Rob, the image of his father, was loud and rough with laughter. Birdie, my school baby of six, had grown to a picture of maiden beauty, tall and ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... even more than his usual insight when he called 'Cyrano de Bergerac' a comedy, despite the fact that, strictly speaking, it ends with disappointment and death. The essence of tragedy is a spiritual breakdown or decline, and in the great French play the spiritual sentiment mounts unceasingly until the last line. It is not the facts themselves, but our feeling about them, that makes tragedy and comedy, and death is more joyful in Rostand than life in Maeterlinck. The same apparent contradiction holds good in ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... was raging inwardly, and it was in his mind to decline abruptly such a service, but second thought told him a refusal might make a bad matter worse. He would have given much, too, to see the face of Mr. Sefton—his fancy painted ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... simple period of Grecian life; and still more elect to pass a few years wandering among the villages of Palestine with an inspired conductor. For some of our quaintly vicious contemporaries, we have the decline of the Roman Empire and the reign of Henry III. of France. But there are others not quite so vicious, who yet cannot look upon the world with perfect gravity, who have never taken the categorical imperative to wife, and have more taste for what is comfortable than for what is magnanimous and high; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... again obliged to decline her invitation; and by changing the subject, put a stop to her entreaties. She thought it probable that as they lived in the same county, Mrs. Palmer might be able to give some more particular account of Willoughby's general character, than could be gathered from the Middletons' ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... subsidies, ye Sea-Powers!" But the Sea-Powers stand obtuse, arms not open at all, hands buttoning their pockets: "Sorry we cannot, your Imperial Majesty. Fleury engages not to touch the Netherlands, the Barrier Treaty; Polish Elections are not our concern!" and callously decline. The Kaiser's astonishment is extreme; his big heart swelling even with a martyr-feeling; and he passionately appeals: "Ungrateful, blind Sea-Powers! No money to fight France, say you? Are the Laws ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of prices in 1913, as shown by the retail food price index numbers of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics.[5] August, 1919, prices of food were the highest ever recorded by the Bureau and there has been a decline of ...
— The Cost of Living Among Wage-Earners - Fall River, Massachusetts, October, 1919, Research Report - Number 22, November, 1919 • National Industrial Conference Board
... to a bold invective against literary piracy, and concluded by a generous compromise in favour of the cotton-bales, if I would pardon the warm expressions with which he found himself compelled to decline my extraordinary commission. You should have seen him, Godfrey! If he ever takes that seat in Parliament which he threatens to make the sequel of matrimony, I predict wo to the whole race of Humes, Brights, and Cobdens, should they ever start him ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... deterioration of Turkish rulers set in soon after the time of Suleyman with a corresponding decline in the character and efficiency of the army. And the growth of Russia and the reassertion of Hungary, Poland, and Austria were fatal to the maintenance of an alien and detested empire founded on military domination alone. By the end ...
— The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 - Third Edition • Jacob Gould Schurman
... appropriate purpose. Not to be intellectual in a direct shape, but to be intellectual through sociality, is the legitimate object of a social meeting. It may be right, medically speaking, that a man should be shampooed; but it cannot be right that, having asked him to dine, you should decline dinner and substitute a shampooing. This a man would be apt to call by the shorter name of ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... immediately set to work in this new direction; but almost at the same moment she became aware of a subtle change of tone in the Princess and her mother, a change reflected in the corresponding decline of Madame de Trezac's cordiality. Undine, since her arrival in Paris, had necessarily been less in the Princess's company, but when they met she had found her as friendly as ever. It was manifestly not a failing of the Princess's to ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... Take the fifty crowns in the first instance, and write the memoirs. When you have finished them, you will decline to publish them in your aunt's name, imbecile! Madame de Montbauron, with her hooped petticoat, her rank and beauty, rouge and slippers, and her death upon the scaffold, is worth a great deal more than six hundred francs. And then, if the trade will not give your aunt ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... lamented that the taste for poetry is on the decline—that it is no longer relished—that the public will never again purchase it as a luxury. But it must be some consolation to our modern poets to know (as no doubt they do, for it is by this time notorious) that their productions really do a vast deal of service—that they are of a value for which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... him in command of the department, and he offered me the place. I told him I had once offered my services, and they were declined; that I had made business engagements in St. Louis, which I could not throw off at pleasure; that I had long deliberated on my course of action, and must decline his offer, however tempting and complimentary. He reasoned with me, but I persisted. He told me, in that event, he should appoint ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... faculties, certainly possess choice minds and hearts; but the mere difference of age opens an abyss between us. As to the young men and the men of my own age whom I meet here, they all march with more or less eager step in Madame de Palme's wake. It is enough that I should decline to follow them in that path, to cause them to manifest toward me a coolness akin to antipathy. My pride does not attempt to break that ice, though two or three among them appear well gifted, and reveal instincts superior to the life ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... something new to promote their perfection, and, in their seasons of barrenness, an anxiety to rid themselves of it. They are subject to great variation: sometimes they do wonders, at other times they languish and decline. They have no evenness of conduct, because, as the greater part of their religion is in these natural sensibilities, whenever it happens that their sensibilities are dry, either from want of work on their part, or from a lack of correspondence on the part of God, they fall ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... a bent for research, a passion for following the history of my country and city to its fountain heads. I devoured old books, journals, and the precious documents to which my father had ready access, that passed from the attic treasure chests of the old houses in decline to the keeping of the Historical Society. As a lad I besought every gray head at my father's table to tell me a story, so what more natural, under the circumstances, than that my father should make me free of his library, and say: 'I do not expect or desire you to earn your living; ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... arranged, he said, "to have a good time of it in Paris"; and he proposed that Amelius should be his companion. The suggestion produced not the slightest effect; Amelius talked as if he was a confirmed recluse, in the decline of life. "Thank you," he said, with the most amazing gravity; "I prefer the company of my books, and the seclusion of my study." This declaration was followed by more selling-out of money in the Funds, and by a visit to a bookseller, which left a handsome pecuniary result ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... the action as well as the demands of the Austro-Hungarian government can be viewed only as justifiable. Nevertheless, the attitude assumed by public opinion as well as by the government in Servia does not preclude the fear that the Servian government will decline to meet these demands and that it will allow itself to be carried away into a provocative attitude toward Austria-Hungary. Nothing would remain for the Austro-Hungarian government, unless it renounced definitely its position as a great ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... who tell you that you are just right now; don't lose another pound! And other friends who tell you cheerful tales of people they have known who reduced, and who went into a decline, ...
— Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters
... pleugh lad," and who do so very little harm when all is said. Jenny plays the part of a leal and brave lass in the siege of Tillietudlem, hunger and terror do not subdue her spirit; she is true, in spite of many temptations, to her Cuddie, and we decline to believe that she was untrue to his master and friend. Ikuse, no doubt, is a caricature, though Wodrow makes us acquainted with at least one Mause, Jean Biggart, who "all the winter over was exceedingly straitened in wrestling and prayer as to the Parliament, and said that still ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... an insult to myself: I am as thankful as Count Damoreau can desire me to be; but I decline ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Fisher,'you'd better! Richard is going into a decline, madam, I suppose you know. And the major is drowning careand himself with it. And Lancaster's pining for war and a stray bullet;and Stuart Nightingale Then in town here there's a list of killed, wounded and missing as long as my arm. O I must tell you the best joke. There was a parcel ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... where he stayed for three months, and thence proceeding to Switzerland and Italy. There it was that, musing amid the ruins of the Capitol at Rome on October 15, 1764, he formed the plan of writing the history of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He returned to England in 1765, and in 1770 his f. d., leaving him the embarrassed estate of Buriton, which had been his usual home when in England. With a view to recovering his affairs, he left his estate and lived in London where, in 1772, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... and an antiquary, the grandfather of the late celebrated John Clerk of Eldin, had the honour to be amongst the first to decline acting as a commissioner on the trial of a witch, to which he was appointed so early as 1678,[81] alleging, drily, that he did not feel himself warlock (that is, conjurer) sufficient to be a judge upon such an inquisition. Allan Ramsay, his friend, and who ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... And, certainly, no class of men were ever better fitted for an occupation, than were those for "peddling." The majority of them were young men, too; for the "Yankee" who lives beyond middle age, without providing snug quarters for the decline of life, is usually not even fit for a peddler. But, though often not advanced in years, they often exhibited qualities, which one would have expected to find only in men of age and experience. They could "calculate," with the most absolute certainty, what precise stage ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... disease or decline of health, are found more or less numerous in everything we eat and drink. The germs or spores of many kinds, known as termo, lineola, tenue, spirillum, vibriones, etc, exist in almost infinite numbers; some of the smallest are too small to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... that he was recently discharged from a felon's cell, that he had been convicted of horse-stealing, for instance, and wanted employment with you on the farm, how many of you, my readers, would give him work? You would be afraid of him. You would decline his services, and who could blame you? But the convict must live, and it is easily seen, how, that after applying to several for work and being refused each time on account of his past trouble, he would, ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... 1852, he commenced business as a provision dealer and packer of pork and beef. For a time it was up-hill work, but his native perseverance overcame all difficulties, and in the season of 1862-3, his business had grown to seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. From that time there was a steady decline in the amount of packing done in Cleveland, the supply of cattle and hogs decreasing until but a very small quantity, in proportion to the facilities for packing, could be depended on. The slaughter-houses of Chicago arrested the great stream of live stock, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... the hour for my supper," he said. "I shall esteem it an honor if you will break bread with me." Derby was about to decline, thinking it better to return later, but the manner of the old man left no doubt as to the genuineness of his invitation, and Derby accepted. In the adjoining room a small table was set with very few utensils. Two plates, two forks, two spoons, a cup, and a wine glass apiece—that was all. After ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... With the decline of chivalry and the disappearance of Court life as a thing apart the Volkslied began once more to flower. From the fourteenth century to the sixteenth song was universal, and it is from this time that the ballads of our collections are ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... any plausible scoundrel; but where her heart is not concerned her instincts are true. When I see children and dogs stick to a man I am convinced that he is all right, though I may not personally have taken to him. When I see a dog put his tail between his legs and decline to accept the advances of a man, and when I see children slip away from him as soon as they can, I distrust him at once, however pleasant a fellow he may be. As the Rajah, from all I heard, certainly ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... famous Garden of Hesperides, seventy miles down the coast from here. The garden, with its golden apples (oranges), is gone now—no vestige of it remains. Antiquarians concede that such a personage as Hercules did exist in ancient times and agree that he was an enterprising and energetic man, but decline to believe him a good, bona-fide god, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the doctrine as a protest against materialism, but purposely retain it in the vaguest possible shape. They say that this life is not all; if it were all, they argue, we should be rightly ruled by our stomachs; but they scrupulously decline to give form and substance to their anticipations. We must, they think, have avowedly a heavenly background to the world, but our gaze should be restricted habitually within the visible horizon. The future life is to tinge the general ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... her crimes, reacting, wrought Their curse upon herself, to her, supine And helpless, the barbarian spoiler brought, With fire and sword, new life to her decline. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... brow.] Of course, there is this to be said, Ma. [Rallying at the idea.] It may be wise of dear Lil to decline Farncombe at first. It— it— it— it doesn't do for a girl, does it, to appear to throw herself at any man, let alone a young fellow of the position— ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... game hunting, desert sands, hurricanes and typhoons, to go every Sunday hat shooting and for the rest of the time dispense justice at Costecalde the gunsmith's was... well... hardly satisfying. It was enough indeed to send one into a decline. ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... 1636, and Captain Richard Crane succeeded him. And then began the decline of a factory which should have lived to save us deep regret. This second Crane could not carry on the work, and besought the king to relieve him by taking over the factory, which was thenceforth known as ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... soothing, the silence that had felt like an enchantment, on the other Broad, in the day's vigorous prime, was a solitude that saddened here—a silence that struck cold, in the stillness and melancholy of the day's decline. ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... favoured by the transmission of the following singular correspondence by the new Mayor of Dublin's private secretary. We hasten to lay the interesting documents before our readers, though we must decline incurring the extreme responsibility of advising which offer it would be most advantageous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... the young queen to pay her a visit. For some time past suffering most acutely, and losing both her youth and beauty with that rapidity which signalizes the decline of women for whom life has been a long contest, Anne of Austria had, in addition to her physical sufferings, to experience the bitterness of being no longer held in any esteem, except as a living remembrance of the past, amid the youthful beauties, wits, and influences of her court. Her ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... the difficulty readily enough (as indeed it settles most others if they show signs of awkwardness) by the simple process of ignoring it: we decline, and very properly, to go into the question of where personality begins and ends, but assume it to be known by every one, and throw the onus of not knowing it upon the over- curious, who had better think as their neighbours do, right ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... up in an iron box—now, can I? If I am killed I can die but once. To live in constant dread of it is to die over and over again. I decline to die until the time comes—away with your extra guards! I've got too many now. They ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... something to say to you—something very earnest. You shall be at no trouble to entertain me; but you must not refuse a poor, sad fellow a word of counsel and cheer. I shall think hard of you if you decline to let me drive you a little way. Besides, the freshness of the morning is all lost on you there. Now, set Marion a good example, and she will, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... in the form of a few Armenian numerals. If his Autobiography is to be credited, Isopel loved him, and he was aware of it; but the knowledge did not hinder him from torturing the poor girl by insisting that she should decline the verb "to love" ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... removed from the stage before its excitement became necessary to me. That reminds me that, within the last two days, Pasta has returned to England: they say she is to sing at Drury Lane, Grisi having possession of the Opera House. Now, will it not be a pity that she should come in the decline of her fine powers, and subject herself to comparisons with this young woman, whose voice and beauty and popularity are all in their full flower? If I knew Pasta, I think I would go on my knees to beg her ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... The decline of the poet-scholars is due in great part to their own corruption: their type is continually arising again; Goethe and Leopardi, for example, belong to it. Behind them plod the philologist-savants. This type has its origin in the ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... "I must decline answering your impertinent questions." said Fitzgerald, desperately. He began to entertain, for the first time, the horrible suspicion that the pedler's story might be true—that he might after all be his cousin. But he resolved that he never would admit it—NEVER! Where would be his ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... church, there is a panel by his hand, and in the Murate there is a picture of S. Sigismund, the King. For Girolamo Federighi, in that part of S. Pancrazio where he was afterwards buried, he painted a Trinity in fresco, with portraits of him and of his wife on their knees; and here he began to decline into pettiness of manner. He also made two figures in distemper for the Monks of Cestello, a S. Rocco and a S. Ignazio, which are in the Chapel of S. Sebastiano. And in a little chapel on the abutment of the Ponte Rubaconte, on the side towards the Mills, he painted a Madonna, a S. ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... days her voice was noticeably lacking in quality and volume, and "There is a Happy Land," which was her favorite hymn during that period, was rendered so subduedly that Wade was worried, and had to have the Doctor's assurance that Zephania was not going into a decline. ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... understand your principle,' said Theodora, but without asperity. 'Why do you decline an acquaintance to which you do ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for two moments although it was plain from his appearance that his health was declining, and he was growing thinner from day to day. The brothers pitied him very much. At length Mochuda questioned him—putting him under obedience to tell the truth—as to the cause of his decline. The monk thereupon showed him his sides which were torn by a twig tied fast around them. Mochuda asked him who had done that barbarous and intolerable thing to him. The monk answered:—"One day while we ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... then the theories and processes by which he is derived from a ghost of a dead man are invalid, and remote from the point. As to the origin of a belief in a kind of germinal Supreme Being (say the Australian Baiame), I do not, in this book, offer any opinion. I again and again decline to offer an opinion. Critics, none the less, have said that I attribute the belief to revelation! I shall therefore here indicate what I think probable in ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... then by which men went up into the temple are, and ought to be, opposed to those which men take to their lusts and empty glories. Hence such steps are said not only to decline from God, but to take hold of the path to death and hell (Psa 44:18; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... kindles to unconsuming fires and quenches into living ashes. No incidents save of his causing, no delight save of his giving: from the sunrise, when the larks, not for pairing, but for play, sing the only virginal song of the year—a heart younger than Spring's in the season of decline—even to the sunset, when the herons scream together in the shallows. And the sun dominates by his absence, compelling the low country to sadness in the ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... out one morning to make faggots, this friend spoke to me as follows, in a voice scarcely audible: "All illusion is at an end; from this moment I will no more flatter myself with the hope of ever again seeing my native country. I feel my strength gradually decline. This night, yes, this night, my friend, (for surely you deserve that name, after what you have done for me), you will find nothing here, but a corpse cold and dead. Fly, my dear Brisson, fly this hated abode. Try every scheme you can devise to escape ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... enlarged—and there was much discharge into the mouth from an ulcer on the jaw. Every means which regular aid could suggest were tried in vain, and the part was opened, but as no visible improvement took place, and finding my health began to decline very rapidly, I resolved to try the effect of your Medicines. In a very short time I got better, my health improved, and by proper perseverance in the use of the Medicines, the ulcers in my neck healed, the swelling dispersed, ...
— Observations on the Causes, Symptoms, and Nature of Scrofula or King's Evil, Scurvy, and Cancer • John Kent
... lion grows too old to hunt game, he frequently retires to spend the decline of life in the suburbs of a native village, where he is well content to live by killing goats. A woman or a child happening to go out at night sometimes falls a prey also. Being unable, of course, to alter this style of life, when once he is ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... come to her wedding, she had been better pleased that he should be absent. She had not many regrets herself but it pleased her to think that he should have them. So Mary and Fanny Clavering were asked to attend her at the altar. Mary and Fanny would both have preferred to decline, but their mother had told them that they could not do so. "It would make ill-feeling," said Mrs. Clavering; "and that is what your papa particularly ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... reason to bless Providence that Milton did not act upon his hasty peradventure. But some will attempt to prove its truth, by saying that the field of poetry is limited—that the first cultivators will probably exhaust it, and that, in fact, a decline in poetry has been observed—the first poets being uniformly the best. But we deny that the field of poetry is limited. That is nature and the deep heart of man; or, more correctly, the field of poetry is human nature, and the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... the dance; and while I continued to express my resolve to correct the errors of my education, the Englishman came up and asked the senhora to be his partner. This put the very keystone upon my annoyance, and I half turned angrily away from the spot, when I heard her decline his invitation, and avow her ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... eyes I see the faces of my kind friends, who shake hands cordially, delighted that I should have had some rest. My mind is then tranquil, and I am ready to listen to all the beautiful ideas proposed to me, or to decline the absurdities submitted ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... any influence not in agreement with its spirit. Yet, if it succeeds in suppressing all rival influences, and moulding every thing after its own model, improvement, in that country, is at an end, and decline commences. Human improvement is a product of many factors, and no power ever yet constituted among mankind includes them all: even the most beneficent power only contains in itself some of the requisites of good, and the remainder, if progress is to continue, ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... water-level had risen four feet. The formation of the trough is that of the Ancobra, and the bed bristles with rocks. In a distance of seven miles and a half by course there were four small breaks, and one serious rapid about a hundred yards long, where the decline exceeded five feet. Here the men had to get overboard and to ease the canoe down the swirling waters, which dashed heavily on the rocks. The snags were even thicker than on the upper Ancobra, and were far ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... its rose-windows, shattered its necklaces of arabesques and quaint figures, tore down its statues—sometimes because of their crown; lastly, changing fashion, even more grotesque and absurd, from the anarchic and splendid deviations of the Renaissance down to the necessary decline ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... General in recognition thereof, the House of Representatives was clearly right in recommending his retirement with the higher grade. General Smith, who had not in any way asked for this recognition, was strongly inclined to decline it, but on the solicitation of his friends he finally ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... said the Count to him in German, "that thou hast been very negligent for some time? Thy mind fails, thy sight is feeble. Thou art growing old, my poor friend. Thou art like an old bloodhound in his decline, without teeth and without scent, who knows neither how to hunt the prey nor how to catch it. Thou must be on the retired list. I have already thought of the office I shall give thee in exchange. . . . Oh! do not deceive thyself. It is in vain to shrug thy shoulders, my son; thou art wrong ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... however, said, when he had read it, 'were I to print it I should be ruined.' That fate followed the book to the end, and Borrow was premature when he said in his Preface to The Sleeping Bard that such folly is on the decline, because he found 'Albemarle Street in '60 willing to publish a harmless but plain-speaking book which Smithfield shrank from in '30.' At the last moment John Murray refused to publish, but seems to have agreed to ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... Russia, thus ravaged by interminable wars, desolated by famine and by flame, was rapidly on the decline, and was fast lapsing into barbarism. Davidovitch had hardly ascended the throne ere he was driven from it by Rostislaf, whom Georges had dethroned. But the remote province of Souzdal, of which Moscow was the capital, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... our purpose to give an original solution to this problem and to those which follow it. We must decline to attempt a philosophical inquiry into fundamental principles and their origin. Ours is the humbler task of explaining and applying principles already worked out by others; that is, to give the results of Herbartian pedagogy ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... had incurred, and to rave at the extortion of doctors and nurses; declaring the necessity of making every possible retrenchment, in order to replace the money so lost. Elinor did not live long enough to endure these fresh privations. She sunk into a lingering decline, and before her little boy could lisp her name, the friendly turf had closed over his ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... governess of the King of Rome, and whose husband had replaced the Prince de Talleyrand as Grand Chamberlain of the Emperor. Very intimate with the Count and Countess, the Duke of Doudeauville had some trouble in avoiding the favors of Napoleon, who held him in high esteem. He found a way to decline them without wounding the susceptibilities of ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... of my imprisonment at Magdeburg was nearly ten years, and with the term of my imprisonment at Glatz, the time is eleven years. Thus was I robbed of time, my body weakened, my health impaired, so that in my decline of life, a second time, I suffer the gloom and chains ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... man to deal with. If you wish to serve our cause, or, to be plain with you, wish to turn the documents you speak of to the best advantage, make your proposal in writing, as you ought to do, otherwise I must decline any further negotiation on ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... cut-off end may be converted into fringed napkins, on which to lay croquettes, fried potatoes, etc., doilies for bread and cake plates, children's napkins, or tray covers. Old table linen passes through several stages of decline before it becomes absolutely useless; when too much worn for table purposes it enwraps our bread and cake and strains our jellies, and when at last it has won the well-earned rest of age, it still waits in neat rolls to bandage our ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... The weather was glorious when we left Port Louis, and for two days afterward, with moderate breezes from the south-east; toward sunset, on our third day out, however, we began to notice signs of a change. The barometer had started to decline shortly after noon; and as the afternoon advanced the breeze weakened, so that from a speed of fourteen knots we dropped down to a bare five, although we were under royals, had all our staysails set, and were showing our whole flight of starboard studding sails as ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... with which he endeavoured his escape, he declared it was not his design to fly from justice, or decline a trial, but to avoid the expences and severities of a prison, and that he intended to appear at the bar, without compulsion. This defence which took up more than an hour, was heard by the multitude that thronged the court, with the most attentive and respectful ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... strangely alike in appearance, nearly the same age, the age where gray hairs finally outnumber black, or baldness takes over. The age when the expanding waistline has begun to sag tiredly, when robust middle age begins the slow accelerating decline ...
— Homesick • Lyn Venable
... Abenaki from seeing that it was a good canoe, a fine shell of Iroquois make, and canoes were valuable. He had not been able to secure any scalp, which was a sad disappointment, and now Manitou had sent this stray craft to him as a consolation prize. He was not one to decline the gifts of the gods, and he ran along the edge of the cliff until he came to a low point well ahead of the canoe. Then he put his rifle on the ground, dropped lightly into the stream, and swam with swift sure ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... without knowing what he did, rode straight on to the big town, not daring well to return and see what he had seen for three several times; and certain he would see it again when the shades of evening were deepening, he deemed it proper and prudent to decline the pursuit of ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... for your daughter: you have refused. I ask you now on the ground of a commercial transaction, just as Miss Langdon insisted upon viewing it, and with all personal considerations put aside. If you again decline my request, I give you warning that I shall make a call upon you within an hour, for the loan I have advanced. I have that right, under the terms of the agreement, and I shall take advantage of it. That is all I have to say. It is ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... "this is a very painful exhibition; and until I see you reasonably master of yourself, I decline to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... centuries before, the succeeding infamies of 1864, and the forgery of the Ems dispatch, the whole proclaimed tradition of contempt for the sanctities of Christendom, proceeding from Frederick the Great, had indeed accustomed men to successive stages in the decline of international morals; but nothing of the wholly crude character which this violation of Belgium bore was to be discovered in the past, even of Prussia, and posterity will mark it as a curious term and possibly a turning-point in the gradual loss of our common religion, and of the ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... Bulldog in a stern voice, "I'm willing to manage Nestie's estate, big or small, and I'll give an account of all intromissions to the Court, but I must decline to look out ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... such injustice rage, where you should have the rule solely. What should the cause be? do you wilfully give way to their ill manners? or has your government been such as has procured ill will towards you from your people? or do you mistrust your kinsfolk and friends in such sort, as without trial to decline their aid? a man's kindred are they that he might trust to when extremities ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Caribou Sam, "but it don't win over me. Ontil I sees this person Rainey, I shall shorely decline all bottles which is presented in his name. I've had a close call about a bronco I stole to-day, an' when the jury makes a verdict that they're sorry to say the evidence ain't enough to convict, the ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... in a long speech full of flowery language, the tenor of which was that I must become his wife. I answered, with as much composure as I could command, that such a thing was impossible, and that I must beg to decline the honour he intended me. I avoided, as I thought, saying a word to annoy him; but I suppose I exhibited the indignation I felt. Suddenly seizing the bridle of my horse, and ordering his braves to ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... devoted of husbands, and a family life as beautiful as any of the ideal ones he has depicted would have resulted. It is probable that he did not know Mary Hogarth until after his marriage, when she came to live in his house, and when his youthful fancy for his wife had begun to decline. Miss Hogarth died instantly of heart-disease, without even a ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... for its wealth and size, while, as stated above, few remains of the actual buildings of that period survive, we still have abundant records describing their character, their size and their position. With the last century of the caliphates began a more rapid decline. From the records of that period it seems that the present city is identical in the position of its walls and the space occupied by the town proper with Bagdad at the close of the 12th century, the period when this ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... 2. Ferrero (Greatness and Decline of Rome) has the merit of having discerned the signs of the regeneration of Italian agriculture at this time, but he is apt to push his conclusions further than the evidence warrants. See the translation of his work by A.E. Zimmern, i. p. 124; ii. p. 131 foll. The statement of Pliny quoted ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... be in the right," the boy said, after a lengthy interval, "although I decline—and ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... been said that the two principal causes of natural decline in any school, are over-luxuriance and over-refinement. The corrupt Gothic of Venice furnishes us with a curious instance of the one, and the corrupt Byzantine of the other. We ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... quite possible," they said in their joint report, "that some or all of the men are on one of the German plantations in Samoa or Tonga, and that you will yet discover them. But the German Consuls will give us no assistance, and absolutely decline to permit us to send any one to visit the plantations, unless the managers or owners are agreeable. And, as you can imagine, the owners and managers are not agreeable, and have declined in terms of great rudeness to even supply us with the names ...
— The Flemmings And "Flash Harry" Of Savait - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... belt of Scotch fir plantation, with a stiffish fence on each side, tries their mettle and the stoutness of their hats: crash they get through it, the noise they make among the thorns and rotten branches resembling the outburst of a fire. Several gentlemen here decline under ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... you told them that you would decline to pay them afterwards, would they not do so?-They knew we could not do that. I remember once making the remark to the shipping master that the law should be imperative upon the men as well as upon the master or agent; and unless that is done I believe ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... easier to decline working in families where the order of things bears too heavily upon her, than to attempt any change. I have been obliged to do this in one ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... generation. But as to criticising his literary or theological productions, my dear fellow, that would be conduct eminently unbecoming in a simple curate, and savouring of insubordination even in the person of an elderly archdeacon. I decline, therefore, to discuss the subject, especially with a layman on whose orthodoxy I have painful doubts.—Where's Oswald? Is he ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... must decline the position," said Mehul, gravely, "and nothing will alter my resolution. I am a member of the Institute—Cherubini is not; I do not wish it to be said that I have misused the good-will with which you honor me for the sake of confiscating to my profit every ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... astonishingly. Her beauty shone as a sun above that of all other women; every one admired her, and all coveted the honor of dancing with her. As for me, I could only dance one Polonaise; I was attacked by so severe a pain in my foot that I could not leave my seat, and I was forced to decline the invitations of the prince royal and of several noblemen. Thank heaven, the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... Portcullis, Ludgate, Temple Bar, and other places of public resort, according to the then bloody-minded custom, and the statute in that case made and provided. But after Colonel Guido Faux, Back, Thumbscrews, boots, and wedges, and Scavenger's daughters fell into a decline, from which, thank God, they have never, in this fair realm of England, recovered. I question even if the Jesuit Garnett and his fellows, albeit most barbarously executed, were tortured in prison; ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... afraid of being disillusioned. She wished to believe that everything for sale in Vanity Fair was worth the advertised price. When she ceased to believe in these delights, she told herself, her pulling power would decline and she would go to pieces. In some way the chill of her disillusionment would quiver through the long, black line which reached from the box-office down to Seventh Avenue on nights when she sang. They shivered there in the rain and cold, all those people, because they loved ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... me no more messages from Miss Charteris," she replied. "I do not like her—she would only come to triumph over me; I decline to see her. I have no ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... see a literary bough project beyond the trim level of its day but they must lop it with a crooked criticism, who kept indomitably planting in the defile of fame the "established canons" that had been spiked by poet after poet. But we decline to believe that a singer of Shelley's calibre could be seriously grieved by want of vogue. Not that we suppose him to have found consolation in that senseless superstition, "the applause of posterity." Posterity! posterity ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... gamester—a heartless seducer—a shame, a blot, a stigma upon the aristocracy of Florence;—and now that you are acquainted with his real character, you will recognize the prudence of the step which I shall take to-morrow—that is, to inform him that henceforth the Count and Countess of Arestino must decline to receive him again at their villa. What ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... in Plutarch's parallel between Aristophanes and Menander.], an idea which many, from the unbridled licentiousness of the old comic writers, have been led to entertain. On the contrary the former is the genuine poetic species; but the New Comedy, as I shall show in due course, is its decline into prose ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... on my honor and integrity and as proposing an infringement on my privileges and rights as a Senator and citizen. I have, therefore declined to see the persons sent here under that resolution, and shall continue to decline to see them until my physicians inform me that I can with safety return ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... new trees under homes that glow As if gems were the frontage of every bough; O'er our white walls we will train the vine, And sit in its shadow at day's decline, And watch our herds as they range at will Through the green ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... Claret deemed himself constitutionally bound to decline all presents from his subordinates, the sense of gratitude would not have operated to the prejudice of justice. And, as some of the subordinates of a man-of-war captain are apt to invoke his good wishes and mollify his conscience by making him friendly ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... altered by the depressing influence of his long imprisonment that, had I not known it was he who spoke, I should scarcely have recognised it, so sad was it, and so unlike to the merry, cheerful voice we had been accustomed to hear. I pondered this much, and thought of the terrible decline of happiness that may come on human beings in so short a time; how bright the sunshine in the sky at one time, and in a short space bow dark the overshadowing cloud! I had no doubt that the Bible would have given me much light and comfort on this subject if I ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... after the "scene" (in which she too, apparently, played a stormy part) had angrily consented to give Barrie her own way, but only on the girl's threat to decline making the trip with us, if thwarted. Something in Barrie's eyes had warned the lady not to go too far, and on her promise to return directly Mrs. James had gone, Mrs. Bal ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... could possibly understand that a prima donna just on the edge of decline could possibly wish to advertise a rising light. It ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... for the minute; and, giving a last hop on to the top step, she stood on her two feet before her sister and retorted, 'What do you mean by your insinuations, pray? Do you imagine I have been listening through the keyhole? because, if so, I decline to parley with you further. And as for my age, why shouldn't I do gymnastics? When I go to an English school I shall have to do far sillier things than that. And, oh Stella! do you think I shall go to that City school? I don't think I should ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... watercourses have been searched without ceasing, no attempt appears to have been made to explore the rocks themselves, in the debris of which the gems have been brought down by the rivers. Dr. Gygax says: "I found at Hima Pohura, on the south-eastern decline of the Pettigalle-Kanda, about the middle of the descent, a stratum of grey granite containing, with iron pyrites and molybdena, innumerable rubies from one-tenth to a fourth of an inch in diameter, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... he ordered a cask of water, some beef and biscuits, and a few little luxuries, to be put into the boat. We were not in a position to decline the gift; and, to do the Yankee full justice, he would receive no remuneration. We thanked him sincerely; and assured him that we regretted deeply our opinions on the nature of negroes did not coincide; at which he shrugged his shoulders, ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... in this remarkable trilogy of novels relating to Southern Reconstruction. It is a thrilling story of love, adventure, treason, and the United States Secret Service dealing with the decline and fall of the Ku ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... M. Mornay had foreseen the timidity and sensitiveness of Jean Jacques, had anticipated his mistaken chivalry—for how could a man decline to take advantage of the Bankruptcy Court unless he was another Don Quixote! He had therefore arranged with all the creditors for them to take responsibility with 'himself, though he provided the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his introductory observations referred, might lead to the production of fresh evidence from other and better-informed quarters. The manuscript had been found among the papers of Monsieur Foulon, Mr. Monkton's second, who had died at Paris of a rapid decline shortly after returning to his home in that city from the scene of the duel. The document was unfinished, having been left incomplete at the very place where the reader would most wish to find it continued. No reason ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... of export earnings. About 35% of GDP comes from the private sector. Roughly 4 million foreign workers play an important role in the Saudi economy, for example, in the oil and service sectors. The Saudi economy was severely hit by the large decline in world oil prices in 1998. GDP fell by nearly 11%; the budget deficit rose to $12.3 billion; and the current account recorded a $13 billion deficit—the first in three years. The government announced plans to implement large spending cuts in 1999 because of weak ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... regarding the decline of our shipping interests, and so far as our shipping in the foreign trade is concerned it is unfortunately true," says The Boston Commercial Bulletin. "But few people realize the immensity of our coastwise commerce. The Custom House figures on the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... that day, he declared that Venice, which had been in a decline ever since the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope and the rise of Triest and Ancona, could with difficulty survive the blows just given her. "This miserable, cowardly people, unfit for liberty, and without land or water—it seems natural to me that ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... accompany you to the town," replied the detective, coming back from the window; "but I fear I must decline your hospitality for to-day; another ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Footelights wants to have the opinion of a man who's really a judge of what a good weed is. I refused, because my taste has been rather out of order lately; and Billy Blades is in training for Henley, so he's obliged to decline; so I told him of you, Giglamps, and said, that if there was a man in Brazenface that could tell him what his Magnifico Pomposo was worth, that man was Verdant Green. Don't blush, old feller! you can't help having a fine judgment, you know; so don't be ashamed of it. Now, you must wine with me ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... people. Under him there were exercising authority throughout the land about 150 feudal lords. Feudalism of one kind or another prevailed in Japan until 1868. Towards the end of the sixteenth century the feudal principle was apparently on the decline. In the year 1600, however, Tokagawa Iyoyasu, with an army composed of the clans of the east and north defeated the combined forces of those of the west and south at the battle of Sakigahara and proclaimed himself Shogun. The feudal lords of the ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... can say from my own knowledge that Mr. Hope-Scott's support of a chaplain is to be numbered among his charitable and fruitful deeds. The arrangement was made with all his usual thoughtfulness; it enabled a most excellent priest, who was in a slow decline, but could still hear confessions and do much good, to spend a few winters in a warm climate. The Rev. Edward Dunne acted also as confessor to the little English colony at Hyeres, as well as to the ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... Horace Walpole, and is still, it is said, to be seen in a local park. The dosing pages treat of Bath—musical, artistic, scientific—of its gradual transformation as a health resort—of its eventual and foredoomed decline and fall as the one fashionable watering-place, supreme and single, ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... taste of the public into a new channel by producing pure transcripts and faithful studies from nature, instead of conventionalities and feeble reminiscences from the Old Masters; an entire seeking after originality in a more humble manner than has been practised since the decline of Italian Art in the Middle Ages. This has been most strongly shown by the landscape painters, among whom there are many who have raised an entirely new school of natural painting, and whose productions undoubtedly surpass all others in the simple attention ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... must needs have one involving much responsibility, failure in which would involve not only himself but those who had employed him. The cry of treachery was sure to follow, and prudent officers of Southern birth found it advisable to decline employments where they foresaw that delays were unavoidable, because they felt that what might be explained in the case of a Northern man would in them be stamped by public opinion as the result of disaffection. In Hastings and its neighborhood the most grotesque suspicions were spread concerning ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... Brooklyn, where his chief fame was won. The church, one of the largest in the country, soon became inadequate to hold the crowds which flocked to hear his brilliant preaching. As a lecturer and platform orator he soon came to be in such demand that he was at last compelled to decline all such engagements. He took an active part in politics, holding that Christianity was not a series of dogmas, but a rule of everyday life, and did not hesitate to attack the abuses of the day from the pulpit. He was as facile with ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... subsided, in the light of some sudden proof of Madame Merle's remarkable intelligence; but it stood for a high-water-mark in the ebb and flow of confidence. Madame Merle had once declared her belief that when a friendship ceases to grow it immediately begins to decline—there being no point of equilibrium between liking more and liking less. A stationary affection, in other words, was impossible—it must move one way or the other. However that might be, the girl had in these days a thousand uses for ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... all, as I admit I have never been to a seance. This is all very well, but there are a good many things to which I have never been, but I have not the smallest intention of leaving off talking about them. I refuse (for instance) to leave off talking about the Siege of Troy. I decline to be mute in the matter of the French Revolution. I will not be silenced on the late indefensible assassination of Julius Caesar. If nobody has any right to judge of Spiritualism except a man who has been to a seance, the ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... Junius, and to forget the name of the author; and that, at the period of the publication, offers were made to him of legal evidence on which to convict the author of a libel; but that, as he had then treated the man with contempt, he should decline to disturb him after so great a lapse of time." From this communication it would seem, that the Duke believed that he knew the author, and also that ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... as fast as it had risen but the decline was somewhat checked when a well known Southern California medium wrote to "her old friend" J. Edgar Hoover about the situation. Hoover, the story goes, shot back an answer—lie detectors ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... (An excellent work for students. It begins with a sketch of history of the earliest times; the decline of the ancient empires, the rise of the French monarchy, and traces the causes which made the Revolution inevitable. The philosophic conclusion is unsurpassed, and the position taken, laying a foundation for the philosophy of freedom, is bound to attract the attention ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... pretty estate, uncle, if it were not the estate of matrimony. I am sorry, very sorry, to disappoint you; but I must decline taking a lease of it ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... her the last houses of Batignolles followed, with Fleur-de-Marie, a grassy footpath. The day was calm and beautiful, the sky toward the west half concealed by red and purple clouds; the sun, beginning to decline, cast his oblique rays on the heights of Colombe, on the other side of the Seine. As Fleur-de-Marie drew near the banks of the river, her pale cheeks became slightly colored; she inhaled with delight the sharp, pure air of the country, and cried, in a ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... gives to the challenged party the right to choose his weapon. As M. Merton's friends will abide by his decision, your own seconds must, I fancy, accept what is or would be usual with us. They have no choice except to decline and allow their refusal to be made public, as it will be, or to choose one of the three weapons so ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... market economy - thanks in large part to its initial economic reforms during the Communist era. The private sector now accounts for about 55% of GDP. Nonetheless, the transformation is proving difficult, and many citizens say life was better under the old system. On the bright side, the four-year decline in output finally ended in 1994, as real GDP increased an estimated 3%. This growth helped reduce unemployment to just over 10% by yearend, down from a peak of 13%. However, no progress was made against inflation, which remained stuck at about 20%, and the already-large current ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... beautiful rooms, is filled with statuary. The entrance hall is a very splendid apartment, brightly frescoed, and paved with ancient mosaics, representing the combats with beasts and gladiators in the Coliseum, curious, though very rudely and awkwardly designed, apparently after the arts had begun to decline. Many of the specimens of sculpture displayed in these rooms are fine, but none of them, I think, possess the highest merit. An Apollo is beautiful; a group of a fighting Amazon, and her enemies trampled under her horse's feet, is very impressive; a Faun, copied from that of Praxiteles, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the tenth instance a Brahmin's passion may be checked by fear of contamination with a Pariah, or a King Cophetua's pride may prevent his wedding a beggar-maid, or the titled owner of an entailed estate may decline to illegitimatise his offspring by espousing his deceased wife's sister, or betrothed lovers may be parted by some such mysterious barrier as sprang up between Talbot Bulstrode and Aurora Floyd, or an Adam Bede, in spite of the example set by George Eliot's ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... dignity of character, and never condescend to trifle. In your conversation, however, upon general subjects, you may exercise the same sociability and freedom which you would with ladies; not seeming to be sensible of any difference of sex. Indignantly repel any improper liberties; but never decline attentions which are considered as belonging to the rules of common politeness, unless there should be something in the character of the individual which would justify you in wishing wholly to avoid his society. Some men are so disagreeable ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... course, called upon for the second part, and, whether we consider the merits of the original or of the translation, the world has but little to regret in the loss. Aristaenetus is one of those weak, florid sophists, who flourished in the decline and degradation of ancient literature, and strewed their gaudy flowers of rhetoric over the dead muse of Greece. He is evidently of a much later period than Alciphron, to whom he is also very inferior in purity of diction, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... commences, Penang had acquired the monopoly of the trade of the Malayan Peninsula and Sumatra. It also had a large traffic with China, Siam, Borneo, the Celebes, and other places in the Eastern Archipelago; but after the establishment later on of Singapore it had begun to decline, and the settlement then became second only in commercial importance. But within the last quarter of a century the trade has considerably revived, owing largely to the planting of tobacco in Sumatra by European planters, and the annexation of the native states of the Malayan Peninsula, both of which ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... favoured, by protectionist measures—free trade not yet being heard of—French industry and commerce; was to the French marine what Louvois was to the army, and encouraged both arts and letters; from 1671 his influence began to decline; he was held responsible for increased taxation due to Louis XIV.'s wars, while the jealousy of Louvois weakened his credit at Court; he became so unpopular that on his death his body was buried at night, but ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... state of education which I have previously described as placing the peasantry entirely at the mercy of agitators, the total absence of any class of persons, or any organisation of authority that could counteract this mischievous influence, and the serious decline in the district of Montreal of the influence of the clergy, concur in rendering it absolutely impossible for the Government to produce any better state of feeling among the French population. It is even impossible ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... course of my travels I am ofttimes asked if I desire my meals sent to my room, presupposing, as would be naturally inferred, the possibility of great awkwardness in my manner of eating; hence I invariably decline this offer of privacy, as there need be nothing in our manner of eating ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... scattered do not grow for him. He that giveth up an afflicted creature seeking protection unto its foe, hath to see his offspring die in childhood. The ancestor of such a person can never dwell in heaven; indeed, the very gods decline to accept the libations of clarified butter poured by him into the fire. He that giveth up an affrighted creature seeking protection, unto its foe, is struck with the thunder-bolt by the gods with Indra at their head. The food that he eateth is unsanctified, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... should think so," said Sylvia, pushing the folds aside and looking down the western decline of the hill, where a wide reach of Casco Bay came in view. Small snowy sails were flying out to sea, like a flock ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... the application is without precedent, and I must decline it; but this I beg to do as courteously, as the ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... she'll be such a long while getting over it. I've had a letter from her this morning, and she says the Hastings doctor declares she must stay there a year in the warm and not come home at all, or she'll be going off in a decline. I know Lucy gets nervous about herself, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bent his steps, in obedience to the direction of Madoc, to that secret path, which had never before been discovered by any mortal unassisted by the goblins of the abyss. Before he reached it the golden sun had begun to decline from his meridian height. He passed along the winding way beneath the impending precipices, which formed a dark and sullen vault over his head. Ever and anon large pieces of stone, broken from their ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... devoid of strength than blind ignorance? Or do they know what they should embrace, but passion driveth them headlong the contrary way? So also intemperance makes them frail, since they cannot strive against vice. Or do they wittingly and willingly forsake goodness, and decline to vices? But in this sort they leave not only to be powerful, but even to be at all. For they which leave the common end of all things which are, leave also being. Which may perhaps seem strange to some, that we should say that evil men are not at all, who are the greatest part of men: but ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... young and old alike. Youthful Rough-and-Ready and the Saints had climbed to their meridian together, and it seemed fit that they should together decline. The first shadow fell with the immigration to Rough-and-Ready of a second aged pair. The landlady of the Independence Hotel had not abated her malevolence towards the Saints, and had imported at considerable expense her grand-aunt ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... resources, and imports far exceed exports. Under the terms of the Compact of Free Association, the US has provided more than $1 billion in aid since 1986. Negotiations have continued for an extended agreement. Government downsizing, drought, a drop in construction, the decline in tourism and foreign investment due to the Asian financial difficulties, and less income from the renewal of fishing vessel licenses have held GDP growth to an average of 1% over ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... want of bread. I have numerous offers of their services made by parents who are in great distress. I make it a point to discourage all who come to me from entering the business, and am only conquered when I feel sure that, if I decline, they will be driven to other studios. I prefer only professional models, already thoroughly committed to the calling, as I shrink from the responsibility of leading any into so perilous a vocation. They are usually ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... naturally noble and frank intelligence in his bold eye and prominent features, while the bare arms and naked legs exhibited a muscle and proportion which proved that nature was rather at a stand than in the decline. He had been many moments dangling his cap, in habitual but unembarrassed respect, before his presence ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of the blessed Hope, the preaching of His imminent Coming, we have a return to other great truths, such as the teaching concerning the church. Just as the giving up of the blessed Hope affected the other great doctrines of the Bible and became in part responsible for the fearful decline, confusion and departure from the faith once and for all delivered unto the saints, so the recovery of the blessed Hope, the imminent Coming of the Lord, results in the recovery of these same blessed doctrines ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... The morning was fair, but afterwards became cloudy. Mr. Laroche the trader from the northwest company paid us a visit, in hopes of being able to accompany us on our journey westward, but this proposal we thought it best to decline. ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... indifferently for his own defence. I believe, without going beyond the page I have now before me, he is very sensible, that I have sufficient matter of further, and, if possible, of heavier charge against his friends, upon his own principle. But it is because the advantage is too great, that I decline making use of it. I wish the author had not thought that all methods are lawful in party. Above all he ought to have taken care not to wound his enemies through the sides of his country. This he has done, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the early prayer service we considered Eph. 4, the unity of the Spirit, and the means of preserving the bond of peace. In the song service many points of doctrine were discussed with the English clergyman, also the decline and loss ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... middle of September, and the woods, instead of presenting one uniform mass of green, glowed with an infinite variety of lovely tints. And yet, despite the beauty of the scene, there was something melancholy in witnessing the decline of the year, as marked by those old woods, and by the paths that led through them, so thickly strewn with leaves. Wolsey was greatly affected. "These noble trees will ere long bereft of all their glories," he thought, "and so, most likely, will it be with me, and perhaps ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... sat down to table, I looked forth from an upstairs window. The day was beginning to decline; the links were utterly deserted; the despatch-box still lay untouched where we ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on discovering that there was no immediate danger, "if that—that bloodthirsty young ruffian there would allow me to do so. I am going about in bodily fear of him, Dr. Grimstone. I want him bound over to keep the peace. I decline to be left alone ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... Gregory of Tours notes the prosperity of Catholic kingdoms and the decline of Arian in the ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... I can do for you, if you decline to supplement it with a dose of hot brandy and water at the Dolphin," said he: "and I'll see you take it, if you please. I'm bound to ease a Rendon patient out of the world. Medicine's one of their superstitions, which they cling ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Decline a bribe or interfere with the private sale of places Famous fowl in every pot Fellow worms had been writhing for half a century in the dust For his humanity towards the conquered garrisons (censured) Historical scepticism may shut its eyes to evidence Imagining that they ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... duty to decline the proposed conference with the committee, and it being uncertain when it may be convenient to explain to the committee, and through them to the Senate, the grounds of my so doing, I think it proper to address ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... we were, entwined, then riven, Ever to new embracements driven, Shifting gulf-weed of the main! And how if one here shift no more, Lodged by the flinging surge ashore? Nor less, as now, in eve's decline, Your shadowy fellowship is mine. Ye float around me, form and feature:— Tattooings, ear-rings, love-locks curled; Barbarians of man's simpler nature, Unworldly servers of the world. Yea, present all, and dear to me, Though shades, or scouring ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... moreover, in defining these limits I emphatically disclaim any intention of thereby attempting to establish a single standard of value for books of travel. Darwin's "Voyage of the Beagle" is to me the best book of the kind ever written; it is one of those classics which decline to go into artificial categories, and which stand by themselves; and yet Darwin, with his usual modesty, spoke of it as in effect a yachting voyage. Humboldt's work had a profound effect on the thought of the civilized world; his trip was one of adventure and danger; and yet it can hardly be called ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... Andrew, "I have grown used to my regiment, am fond of the officers, and I fancy the men also like me. I should be sorry to leave the regiment. If I decline the honor of ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... implanted dogma. Nature and the child's pugnacity at times revolted. A cad from the Potterrow once struck him in the mouth; he struck back, the pair fought it out in the back stable lane towards the Meadows, and Archie returned with a considerable decline in the number of his front teeth, and unregenerately boasting of the losses of the foe. It was a sore day for Mrs. Weir; she wept and prayed over the infant backslider until my lord was due from Court, and she must resume that air of tremulous composure with which she always greeted him. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of her,' said one of the oldest of the good ladies; 'Phillis comes of a family as is not long-lived. Her mother's sister, Lydia Green, her own aunt as was, died of a decline just when she was about ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of rest to be observed by the whole nation. This all came about gradually as the church came into power. This early influence of the Christian religion on the legislation of the Roman government presaged a time when, in the decline of the empire, the church would exercise the greatest power of any organization, political or ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... roughly includes the seventh century, and is followed by a long decline, marked by the great iconoclastic controversy which lasted almost until the middle of the ninth century. To this period belongs S. Irene (740 A.D.). In plan it is a double-domed cross church. In the ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... Palmer—A native of New Jersey—An earnest worker, visiting and aiding soldiers' families and dispensing the charities of the Society among them and the destitute families of refugees—Her labors were greater than her strength—Her death occasioned by a decline, the result of over exertion in her ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... the ardor of his poetic and religious instincts, was a Legitimist. As the representative of the old Bourbon regime, he sought an audience with the duke, hoping to induce him to decline the crown, and to act in the interests of the expelled dynasty. In his "Memoires d'Outre Tombe," this illustrious man has given a minute account of the conversation which took place. Chateaubriand was received by the Duchess of Orleans, who very cordially invited him to take a seat near her. Rather ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... it appears to me that there are but two courses left for any agent of our government to pursue: either to take official rank as his only guide, or to decline presenting any one. It is not his duty to act as a master of ceremonies; every court has a regular officer for this purpose, and any one who has been presented himself, is permitted on proper representations to present others. The trifling disadvantage will ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... her own historians, not needing to go abroad for either history or historian. George Bancroft, with a private library larger by almost half than the ten thousand-volume library Edward Gibbon used in writing "The Decline and Fall of the Roman empire;" George Bancroft, whose literary life was dedicated to one task, and that the writing the life of his country prior to the Constitution; George Bancroft, publicist as well as student ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... with Christianity nor common justice; and, we have good reason to believe, draws down the displeasure of Heaven; it being a melancholy but true reflection, that, where slave-keeping prevails, pure religion and sobriety decline, as it evidently tends to harden the heart, and render the soul less susceptible of that holy spirit of love, meekness and charity, which is the peculiar characteristic of ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... physiologist, who speaks of him with some respect as a physician, comparing him with Theophrastus Paracelsus, reckons him among the scholastici vagantes, or fahrende Schueler, an order of men already considerably in the decline, and grown disreputable at that period. As early as the thirteenth century, we find the custom in Germany, of young clergymen who did not belong to any monkish order travelling through the land to get a living,—here by instructing in schools for a certain period,—there by temporarily ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... the adoption of the Articles of Confederation. His high ability and acknowledged statesmanship won for him in that body the distinguished honor of being elected to the office of President of Congress. But the critical situation in Edenton, and his anxiety concerning his family, decided him to decline the office and return home to share the fortunes of his townsmen and to render what aid he could to his ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... sweetness for me. Had ever a lover such misfortune? But am I a lover? No! Have I ceased to love passionately? No! Am I then a lover? Yes, if my lady would suffer my love." Guiraut's [55] moral sirventes are reprobations of the decadence of his age. He saw a gradual decline of the true spirit of chivalry. The great lords were fonder of war and pillage than of poetry and courtly state. He had himself suffered from the change, if his biographer is to be believed; the Viscount of Limoges had plundered and burnt his house. He compares the ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... cannoneers to fire. His influence was limited to inducing them to accompany him, and he turned his steps to the Hotel de Ville. The refusal of the cannoneers decided the fate of the day. From that moment the commune, which had been on the point of triumphing, saw its affairs decline. Having failed in a surprise by main force, it was reduced to the slow measures of the insurrection; the point of attack was changed, and soon it was no longer the commune which besieged the Tuileries, but ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... plain the sufferer would have preferred to decline help. It would soon pass. It was nothing. He had had such attacks before. He spoke brokenly, adding, "I thank you," in a tone ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... brief day knew no decline— 'Twas cloudless joy; Sunrise and night alone were thine, Beloved boy! This morn beheld thee blithe and gay; That found thee prostrate in decay; And ere a third shone, clay ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... actual breach was due to a woman. The Crown Prince of Titia had come a wooing of the Princess Royal of Valeria, and had been twice refused by her. King Frederick had left the question entirely in her hands. Her choice was her own, to marry or to decline. As a matter of state policy the match was greatly desired by him and his Ministers. They were becoming very weary of Murdol and the turmoil it maintained on the border, and the great force of troops required there to preserve order. Then, too, Titia had grown ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... Hellas; and Plato with prophetic insight may have seen, from afar, the great literary waste or dead level, or interminable marsh, in which Greek literature was soon to disappear. A similar vision of the decline of the Greek drama and of the contrast of the old literature and the new was present to the mind of Aristophanes after the death of the three great tragedians (Frogs). After about a hundred, or at most two hundred years if we exclude Homer, the genius of Hellas had ceased to flower ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... that she absolutely ended by assuring her it was her duty, as a deceased rector's daughter, to buy a new cap and go to the party at Mrs Jamieson's. So "we were most happy to accept," instead of "regretting that we were obliged to decline." ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... may be asked indeed to explain how, on this theory of mistaken identity which I here put forward, the work reviewed by the critics came to be displaced by the work before me, so that no traces of the original remain. But this I altogether decline to do, and I plead authority for refusing. 'The merely negative evidence that our actual [Supernatural Religion] is not the work described by [the Reviewers] is sufficient for ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... myself here with noting a fact, which I shall deal with more fully in another essay at the end of this book: it is the decline of musical taste in France—and, I rather think, in all Europe—since 1835 or 1840. Berlioz says in his Memoires: "Since the first performance of Romeo et Juliette the indifference of the French public for all that concerns art and literature has grown incredibly" (Memoires, ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... wish for, just as men who fail of Self-Control: I mean, they choose things which, though hurtful, are pleasurable, in preference to those which in their own minds they believe to be good: others again, from cowardice and indolence, decline to do what still they are convinced is best for them: while they who from their depravity have actually done many dreadful actions hate and avoid life, and accordingly kill themselves: and the wicked seek others in whose company to spend their time, ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... lectures in this country. It will not convince the average student of nature that people can live forever, for in nature there is constant change. The order of life is birth, development, reproduction, decline and death. It is not likely that ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... necessary to follow for a time the fortune of the Virginia colony after the departure of Captain Smith. Of its disasters and speedy decline there is no more doubt than there is of the opinion of Smith that these were owing to his absence. The savages, we read in his narration, no sooner knew he was gone than they all revolted and spoiled and murdered ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... observed to be inconstant to his plans, or perhaps to carry on his affairs without any plan at all, is marked at once, by all prudent people, as a speedy victim to his own unsteadiness and folly. His more friendly neighbors may pity him, but all will decline to connect their fortunes with his; and not a few will seize the opportunity of making their fortunes out of his. One nation is to another what one individual is to another; with this melancholy distinction perhaps, that the former, with fewer of ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... predominant in the best period of Greece; the conviction under which her institutions were formed and flourished, and whose overthrow by the philosophy of a critical age was coincident with, if it was not the cause of, her decline. ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... declined. The name of itself was sufficient to make him decline; besides Worcester and I ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... determin'd to engage in those Kinds of Poetry and those Subjects in Criticism, which the Ancients have left us most imperfect. Here, if you fail, you may be still some help to him who shall Attempt it next; and if all decline it, apprehensive of no fair success, how should it ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... thousand pounds—on no better security than a verbal understanding that the money to pay the bills should be forwarded before they fell due. Competition, it is needless to say, was at the bottom of this insanely reckless system of trading. The native firms laid it down as a rule that they would decline to transact business with any house in the trade which refused to grant them their privilege. In the ease of Turlington's house, the foreign merchants had drawn their bills on him for sums large in the aggregate, if not large in themselves; had long since turned those bills into cash ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... her!—Her memory is the shrine Of pleasant thoughts, soft as the scent of flowers. Calm as on windless eve the sun's decline, Sweet as the song of birds among the bowers, Rich as a rainbow with its hues of light, Pure as the moonshine of an autumn night: ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... this was the fate of the Romans themselves, when, in the decline of the empire, they were obliged to pay tribute to the surrounding barbarians, is shown in lively colors by Salvian:—"We call that a gift which is a purchase, and a purchase of a condition the most hard and miserable. For all captives, when they are ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... not keep pace with one-twentieth part of the demands upon me, and because you saw no internal evidence in her application to induce you to single it out for any especial notice. That the tone of this letter renders you exceedingly glad you did so; and that you decline, from me, holding any correspondence with her. Something to that effect, after what flourish your ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... the history of my country and city to its fountain heads. I devoured old books, journals, and the precious documents to which my father had ready access, that passed from the attic treasure chests of the old houses in decline to the keeping of the Historical Society. As a lad I besought every gray head at my father's table to tell me a story, so what more natural, under the circumstances, than that my father should make ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... made by Mrs. Headley to her own riper years, one might have been induced to consider her rather in the decline of life; but such was not the case. Her splendid and matronly figure might indeed have impressed the superficial observer with the belief that she had numbered more than forty summers, but the unchained ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... friend and contemporary, Mehul, to whom he dedicated Medee, and who dedicated to him the beautiful Ossianic one-act opera Uthal. The direct results of his teaching at the conservatoire were the steady, though not as yet unhealthy, decline of French opera into a lighter style, under the amiable and modest Boieldieu and the irresponsible and witty Auber; for, as we have seen, Cherubini was quite incapable of making his ideals intelligible ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... in the deal and the shares began to decline in value. He put up more margins and still more, but it continued to decline. Finally under the spur of another "tip," the last of his own savings having gone to the insatiate brokers, he sent, to bolster his account and to save him from utter ruin, some bonds belonging ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Freeth, of Northlands in the County of Berkshire, Esquire, Gent, have one failing, and I freely confess it. I cannot keep a key. Were I as other men are—which, thank Heaven, I am not—I might wear a pound or so of hideous ironmongery chained to my person. This I decline to do, with the result that, as I say, I cannot keep a key. Of all the household stowaway places under my control (and Barbara limits their number) only one is locked; and that drawer containing I know not what treasures or rubbish is likely to continue so forever and ever—for the key ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... Upon the organization of this body, 15th November, 1820, John Adams was elected its President; an office which the infirmities of age compelled him to decline. For the interesting proceedings of the Convention on this occasion, the address of Chief Justice Parker, and the reply of Mr. Adams, see Journal of Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of Delegates chosen to revise the Constitution of Massachusetts, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... "I decline to meet those gentlemen," said the Captain, with rather a disturbed air. "If it be as you say, I have been athrociously deceived by some one, and on that person I'll ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... The Pope and the Order of Jesus opposed to each other The Order of Jesus Father Petre The King's Temper and Opinions The King encouraged in his Errors by Sunderland Perfidy of Jeffreys Godolphin; the Queen; Amours of the King Catharine Sedley Intrigues of Rochester in favour of Catharine Sedley Decline of Rochester's Influence Castelmaine sent to Rome; the Huguenots illtreated by James The Dispensing Power Dismission of Refractory Judges Case of Sir Edward Hales Roman Catholics authorised to hold Ecclesiastical Benefices; Sclater; Walker The Deanery ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Complete Contents of the Five Volumes • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "who divides his party on matters of detail, beyond the range of practical politics, is an enemy of popular progress. What I should desire to know is, whether Mr. Quarrier will go in heartily for Church Disestablishment? If not—well, I for my humble self must Decline to consider him a Radical ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity. It is in their lasting witness against men, in their quiet contrast with the transitional character of all things, in the strength which, through the lapse of seasons and times, and the decline and birth of dynasties, and the changing of the face of the earth, and of the limits of the sea, maintains its sculptured shapeliness for a time insuperable, connects forgotten and following ages with each other, and half constitutes the identity, as it concentrates ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... required me justly to be both to her; and consequently the more melancholy and thoughtful; and the less fit for others, who want only in a companion or a friend to be amused or entertained. My constitution too has had its share of decay as well as my spirits, and I am as much in the decline at forty as you at sixty. I believe we should be fit to live together could I get a little more health, which might make me not quite insupportable. Your deafness would agree with my dulness; you would not want ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... once happy island. Moreover, I saw that my presence was becoming a source of serious inconvenience to my host and to his family. They were attached to me, that I could not doubt; but neither could I doubt that it was unpleasant to them to have old acquaintances decline any further intercourse with them because they had allowed a Batrachian to sit at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... relative to himself became unfortunately verified; for his constitution, after this, began to decline, till at length his mortal destiny, in the eyes of his medical attendants, was sealed. But even then, when removed by pain and sickness from the discussion of political subjects, he never forgot this cause. In his own sufferings he was not unmindful of those ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... accessories, that, by their influence, gave a solemn beauty to its very desolation. It reminded one somewhat of the light which coming death throws upon the cheek of youth when he treacherously treads in the soft and noiseless steps of decline—or rather of that still purer light, which, when the aged Christian arrives at the close of a well spent life, accompanied by peace, and hope, and calmness, falls like a glory on his bed of death. The ruin was but small, a remnant ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the cause uv the decline uv the Dimocrisy. I seed it yisterday. I wuz a wanderin on the neighborin hills, a musin onto the cussednis uv humanity ez exemplified in the person uv the grocery keeper at the Corners, who unanimusly refoozed to give me further credit ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... thus satisfied that the debtor has been faithful, does not answer the end of the act of Parliament, if he declines to assent to the debtor's certificate; nor can any creditor decline it, but on principles which no man cares to own—namely, that of malice, and the highest resentment, which are things a Christian tradesman will not ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... adapt itself to this notice, as it has done to the decline of gold from 285 to 130 in less than a year. But it is urged that we have a thousand millions of debt to fund within three years, and therefore cannot resume. Did we not fund nearly a thousand millions at par in 1865, and most of this after ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... more extraordinary than the dream is Mr. C.'s inability to remember anything whatever "outside of his business". Another witness appears to decline to be called, "as it would be embarrassing to him in his business". This it is to ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... Yeoman Prose, That such may spell as are not Readers grown, To whom He that writes Wit, shews he hath none. Brave Shakespeare flow'd, yet had his Ebbings too, Often above Himselfe, sometimes below; Thou Alwayes Best; if ought seem'd to decline, 'Twas the unjudging Rout's mistake, not Thine: Thus thy faire SHEPHEARDESSE, which the bold Heape (False to Themselves and Thee) did prize so cheap, Was found (when understood) fit to be Crown'd, At wont 'twas worth two hundred thousand ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... to be exhilarated alone," said Fergus gallantly; "and you always have the effect of champagne on me anyway. I decline to say good-bye. I can't even believe it is 'au revoir' between us. We had such delightful days ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of Trajan the Roman Empire REACHED THE SUMMIT OF ITS POWER; but the first signs of decay were beginning to be seen in the financial distress of all Italy, and the decline of the free peasantry, until in the next century they were reduced to a condition ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... my girl," says he, "there's no good keeping this up for my benefit. I'm not going into a decline, you know. I know as well as you do that she couldn't lose ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... didn't seriously bother our defenses of two-inch relux. Now tell me: what will blow up four-foot relux?" asked Arcot, looking at the fragments. "It seems to me those fellows don't need any help from us; they may decline ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... necessary when the concrete case arose to repudiate the principle to which we had thus committed ourselves. But it was a shameful thing to have put ourselves in such a position that it had to be repudiated, and it was inexcusable of us to decline to follow the principle in the case of the Lusitania without at the same time making frank confession of our error and misconduct by notifying all the powers with whom we had already made the treaties that they were withdrawn, because in practice we ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... flourished during the latter half of the fifteenth century, mentions no less than twenty-four Norfolk men who were recognised as prominent scholars, controversialists, historians, or students of science." {1} Coincident with the decline of monastic learning in Europe were the revival of secular learning and the invention of printing, which gave a great impetus to the collection of books, especially on the continent. The sixteenth century was a dark age in the history ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... that the minister is often overburdened with secular matters, is forced to leave the word and serve tables and loses much spirituality. When a minister's success depends largely and primarily upon amount of dollars raised by him his spiritual decline is rapid. Worldliness follows when desire for position or recognition in the church overcomes the desire to save men, and when the ordinary tricks of politics are resorted to in order to gain church distinctions. It is a reversal of Christ's order, ...
— The Defects of the Negro Church - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 10 • Orishatukeh Faduma
... fortress it is, when one or other of the gross mishaps of circumstance may subject them to a shock: and this happening in the presence of gentlemen, they are sustained by the within and the without to keep a smooth countenance, however severe their affliction. Men of heroic nerve decline similarly to let explosions shake them, though earth be shaken. Dragged into the monstrous grotesque of the scene at the Gardens, Livia and Henrietta went through the ordeal, masking any signs that they were stripped for a flagellation. Only, the fair cousins were unable to perceive a comic element ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Chelsea. He lived, so far as the world was concerned, in the complete starch of rectitude. He was a pillar of Society, and whatever age he had been born in, he would have accepted its orthodoxy. He was as grave a man as Holy Willie. Stevenson has commented on the gradual decline of his primness in the later years of the Diary. "His favourite ejaculation, 'Lord!' occurs," he declares, "but once that I have observed in 1660, never in '61, twice in '62, and at least five times in '63; after which the 'Lords' may be said to pullulate ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... for a moment on the landing, calculating whether it would be well for her to have the interview, or well to decline it. Her objects were two,—or, rather, her object was in its nature twofold. She was, naturally, anxious to drive John Eames to desperation; and anxious also, by some slight added artifice, to make sure of Cradell if Eames's desperation did not have a very speedy ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... persons by judicious management to live for many years, after it was thought they were in a deep decline, by avoiding weakening medicines, taking exercise on horse-back and on foot, and never ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... body than by the restoration of the moral life. It is natural, then, that the sects which showed this special proof of God's presence and power would grow faster than their spiritual competitors, but that they would decline more rapidly and surely than those which espoused more ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... Milesian gentleman showed us through them. It is the correct thing to have a ruin on your place; it is a kind of patent of gentility. If a banshee could be thrown in along with a ruin, a new man would give a great price for an old place. But banshees are getting scarce and decline to be caught. This ruin has been patched over, clumsily but earnestly, so that hardly a speck of the original ruin is left. It was delightful to listen to our Milesian guide. My companion was bound to get some information out of him. He was cautious, not knowing who we were or what design we might ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... existed after all in the minds of the people. His own house and premises were now so strongly secured, and his apprehension of nocturnal attacks so strongly justified by the threats he had already received, and the disorganized state of the country around him, that he was forced to decline receiving the tithe at unseasonable hours; it being impossible for him to know whether the offer of payment might not have been a plan of the people to get into his dwelling, and wreak their vengeance upon him and his sons. Under these circumstances, ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Edward Clarke, who mentioned incidentally that he lectured at the college forty years ago, said that there was a rise from the {229} beginning of that reign to the period 1850-60, and that from the latter date there had been a very strange and lamentable decline to the end of the reign, would he thought, be amply demonstrated. A glorious galaxy of talent adorned the years 1850-60. There were two great poets, two great novelists, and two great historians. The two great poets were Alfred ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... news had arrived from them—they had acceded to all his terms, and would enter upon East Lynne as soon as it was convenient. Miss Carlyle was full of congratulations; it was off their hands, she said; but the fist letter Mr. Carlyle wrote was—to decline them. He did not tell this to Miss Carlyle. The final touches to the house were given, preparatory to the reception of its inhabitants, and three maids and two men servants hired and sent there, upon board wages, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... family, pedigree, and his present residence, he began to betray some interest. The colonel told him all the news, and would no doubt have even expatiated on his ghostly visitant, had he not prudently concluded that his guest might decline to remain in a haunted inn. The stranger had spoken of staying a week; he had some private mining speculations to watch at Wynyard's Gulch,—the next settlement, but he did not care to appear openly at the "Gulch Hotel." He was ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... knighthood was offered to Adams when Queen Victoria visited Cambridge in 1847; but then, as on a subsequent occasion, his modesty led him to decline it. The Royal Society awarded him its Copley medal in 1848. In the same year the members of St John's College commemorated his success by founding in the university an Adams prize, to be given biennially for the best treatise ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 1834, Coleridge's health began to decline. Charles had written to him (in reply) on the 14th April, at which time his friend had been evidently unwell; for Lamb says that he is glad to see that he could write so long a letter. He was indeed very ill; and no further personal ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... the dreary void of the dark ages, the "ready to die;" Philadelphia, the rise of Protestantism, "an open door, a little strength;" and Laodicea, (the riches of civilization choking the plant of Christianity,) its decline, and, but for the Founder's second coming, its fall; if, indeed, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... law or custom. So far as I can ascertain, your complaints are chiefly against the action and attitude of the missionaries of the Roman Catholic faith; and, as these are under the exclusive protection and control of the Government of France, I might with great propriety decline to discuss a matter with which the Government of the United States has no direct interest or concern, for the reason that none of its citizens are charged with violating treaty or local law, ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... certain death, and I wound one arm round her waist, and held her forcibly down in her seat, while with the other I endeavoured to assist her in the hopeless task of stopping the runaway ponies. Everything was against us: the ground was slightly on the decline; the thaw had not yet reached the sheltered road we were travelling, and the wheels rung against its frozen surface as they spun round with a velocity that seemed to add to the excitement of our flying steeds. Ever and anon we bounded and bumped over some rut ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... been much in society as yet. I have many visitations, but, until I clear off the accumulated rubbish of three years which lies upon my table, I must decline seeing much of my friends. I have seen twice your sisters the Misses Delancy, and was prevented from being at their house last Friday evening by the severest snow-storm we have had this season. Our friends the Jays I have ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... Their labor has been long and their anxiety great, but their constancy and patience have equaled the emergency. The result of their life's work may even disappoint them if they judge it by the anticipation of their more sanguine years. Yet, in their decline of life, they see some of the fruits they prayed for, and they will not complain when they remember that the measure of their ...
— Speeches of His Majesty Kamehameha IV. To the Hawaiian Legislature • Kamehameha IV
... confusion arises when people decline to classify themselves as we have classified them. Prophecy would be so much easier if only they would stay where we put them. But, as a matter of fact, a phrase like the working class will cover only some of the truth for a part of the time. When you take all the ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... hear that," said the Absolute Fool; "for it makes it necessary for me to decline the kind offer of your daughter in marriage. If I marry a princess at all, she must be one who can trace back her lineage through a long line of royal ancestors." And as he spoke, his breast swelled ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... from the young girl in the same way. On his return, however, he grew more bold, and soon became openly engaged to her. The romance is a sadly beautiful one; for this fair girl who was his inspiration during the years of his hardest struggles, finally fell into a decline and died just as he was beginning to earn the money that would have made them ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... men he had patronised shut their doors upon him in the day of his poverty. As for his relations, he had turned his back upon them long ago, when first he followed in the shining wake of that gorgeous vessel, the Royal George. In this hour of his penniless decline there was none to help him. To have outlived every affection and every pleasure is the chief bitterness of old age; and this bitterness Horatio Paget suffered in all its fulness, though his years were ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... reputation is a something too mean," said Lady Esmondet indignantly; "in Mrs. Clayton's last letter to me she asks me to 'decline to receive him, unless he publicly acknowledges his hidden wife;' she says, though 'the women still will pet him, their husbands are down upon him;' she further says, 'Clayton says he has no right to run loose with ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... was made to engage. The British ships bore down on the enemy. It seemed no longer possible that he would decline to fight. On board the Terrible all stood ready at their guns, eyeing the foe. Sam Smatch had been despatched with his little charge into the hold, and ordered, unless he would incur the most dreadful pains and penalties, not to return ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... by those who have read this history thus far that the record of the Church generally was far more honourable in this struggle than in many which preceded it: the reason is not difficult to find; the decline of theology enured to the advantage of religion, and religion ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... food can be swallowed through a lumen 5 millimeters in diameter. The inability to maintain the nutrition is evidenced by loss of weight and the rapid development of cachexia. When the stenosis becomes so severe that the fluid intake is limited, rapid decline occurs from water starvation. Pain is usually a late symptom of the disease. It may be of an aching character and referred to the vertebral region or to the neck; or it may only accompany the act of swallowing. Blood-streaked, ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... you hadn't," said the girl doggedly; "it would have been so easy to decline the trust and remain independent. It's awful to think we've nothing to live on but what we get out ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... contents. Nor did the Governor, though refusing to join in the idle custom of drinking healths, which, by his influence, had been pretty generally banished from the tables of the principal inhabitants, decline a draught, therein bearing in mind the advice of Paul to Timothy, and considering it an allowable solace and strengthener to enable him the better to bear the cares of state. Upon the conclusion of the interview, the knight courteously took leave, after thanking the Governor for his promise ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... Art.—In the 6th century B.C. the Greeks, already on the decline, were conquered by the Romans, a nation hardier and more powerful, though ruder and less civilized than themselves. The conquerors recognized this, and immediately set to work to copy or steal from their vanquished foes everything that might enhance the beauty and splendor ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... ago, the etiquette of hospitality was violated if wine, or cordial, or brandy were not tendered. Nearly every sideboard had its display of decanters, well filled, and it was almost as much an offense for the guest to decline as for the host to omit the proffered glass. Even boys and girls were included in the custom; and tastes were acquired which led to drunkenness in after life. All this ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... (formerly president of the Bank of the Republic, New York), writes that he and others are organizing an Exporting and Importing Company, and desires the government to take an interest in it. So far the heads of bureaus decline, and of course the Secretary will do nothing. But the Secretary has already engaged with Mr. Crenshaw in a similar enterprise, and so informed ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... natural; it really isn't. You ought to have been born three centuries ago, when the old monks lived here. You would have made a first-class abbot, and might have been canonised by now. Am I to understand, then, that you absolutely decline to marry?" ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... emphatically disclaim any intention of thereby attempting to establish a single standard of value for books of travel. Darwin's "Voyage of the Beagle" is to me the best book of the kind ever written; it is one of those classics which decline to go into artificial categories, and which stand by themselves; and yet Darwin, with his usual modesty, spoke of it as in effect a yachting voyage. Humboldt's work had a profound effect on the thought of the civilized world; his trip was one of adventure ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... so far restored me, that I had no difficulty. My soul was like wax before the sun, while Jesus shone upon it.—My mind has been reproved for reproving. Lord, I thank Thee for Thy secret admonitions; forgive, and take all my powers under Thy control. I called to see Mr. Spence; his natural powers decline, but heaven beams on his countenance. He said, while he was putting on his neckcloth, in the morning, he had been struck with the meagre and ghastly appearance he presented in the glass; but the sweet serenity of his soul compelled him to exclaim, ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... as the odes do in terseness, melody, and exquisite finish. These two works are Horace's great achievement. The remainder of his writings demand but brief notice. They are the "Carmen Seculare;" a fourth book of odes, with all the perfection of style of the others, but showing a slight decline in freshness; and three more epistles, one, that addressed to Flores, the most charming in its lively and grateful ease of all Horace's familiar writings; the other two, somewhat fragmentary essays in literary criticism. One of them, generally known as the "Ars Poetica," ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... father's decline was even more noticeable. Truesdale commented briefly on his appearance, suggested as briefly a little trip into the country, and after these few passes at filial duty he concentrated his attention ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... young jackanapes!" he said, half angry, and half amused, "you decline to come, when I send for you, without a magistrate's warrant, forsooth! It looks bad to begin with, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... was an exhibition at the Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, and my husband was asked to send something if possible; but being almost overwhelmed with work, he was obliged to decline the invitation. Mr. R. Walker, the secretary of the Institute, wrote to say how sorry he was not to have his name in the catalogue, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... had always had a difficult temper. This had grown on him and been responsible largely for his decline in life. It had been no part of his plan to "go bad." There had been a time when he had been headed for success in the community. He had held men's respect, even though they had not liked him. Then, somehow, ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... invitation, which was couched in the most courteous terms, a simple visiting card, with the following refusal: "The Comte and the Comtesse Desvanneaux, not being in the habit of accepting invitations during Lent, feel constrained to decline ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... something which excited my curiosity, and made me anxious to know something more. I have had no deeper feeling than curiosity; and if you think that my search will make me an enemy of your father, I hereby give up the search, and decline to pursue it any farther. In fact, I'll fall back upon my old name and rank, ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... announce their ultimatum, and his signing the Magna Carta was partly due to the influence of the then Master of the Temple. Henry III. at one time intended to be buried in the Temple Church. His subsequent change of mind perhaps marks some decline in the popularity of the Templars. But their downfall in England (1308) was mainly owing to Papal pressure. Edward II. resisted as long as he could, and the more serious charges against them, which were based on confessions extracted by torture, are now generally regarded by historians ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... dress seems to intimate that she is a widow. Well then might Solomon say, that "a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother;" for we here behold her who had often rejoiced in the prospect of her child being a prop to her in the decline of life, lamenting his depravity, and anticipating with horror the termination of his evil course. One would naturally imagine, from the common course of things, that this scene would have awakened his reflection, and been the means of softening the ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... mists and die in the full glory of a reverberating sunset. And I have also remarked that this same Richard the Actor touched his apogee fifteen years ago and more. Already signs are not wanting which show that Wagner and Wagnerism is on the decline. As Swinburne said of Walt Whitman: "A reformer—but not founder." This holds good of Wagner, who closed a period and did not begin a new one. In a word, Wagner was a theater musician, one cursed by a craze for public applause—and shekels—and knowing ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... farmer came (Bassanio Tyler was his name) Who had no end of treasure: He said, "My noble gal, be mine!" The noble gal did not decline, But ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... last which prevents us from seeing a way out of the present ignoble situation. We need light more than heat; intellectual alertness, faith in the reasoning faculty, accessibility to new ideas. To refuse to use the intellect patiently and with system, to decline to seek scientific truth, to prefer effusive indulgence of emotion to the laborious and disciplined and candid exploration of new ideas, is not this, too, a torpid unveracity? And has not Mr. Carlyle, by ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... hour before dinner, and then for three hours in the evening, and produced a very legible copy of half a chapter of the 'Decline and Fall.' ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... sister to the king, and wife of a brawny lord named Osuin. Though not yet five and twenty years old, Athalfrida had borne seven children, of whom five died in babyhood. A creature of magnificent form, and in earlier life of superb vigour, her paling cheek told of decline that had begun; nevertheless her spirits were undaunted; and her voice, in gay talk, in song or in laughter, sounded constantly about the halls and wild gardens. Merry by choice, she had in her a vein of tenderness which now and then ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... about himself. A year ago last winter he had gone up to the city and taken all his things with him. He had never stayed away so long before. In the spring the Ledoux had gone to Europe; Claire seemed to be falling into a decline; her sight seemed to be failing, and her father said she must see a famous doctor and have a ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... speak not yet! Soon shall I gaze myself to stone, Soon shall I all but thee forget, And perish to be thine alone. Ages on ages shall decline, But ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... navigation on the glorious estuary of the Shannon, with steamboat navigation through the heart of this populous kingdom for sixty or eighty miles above it, shows scarcely a recent building except the Railroad Depot and the Union Poor-House, while its general aspect is that of stagnation, decline and decay. The smaller towns between it and Dublin have a like gloomy appearance—Kildare, with with its deserted "Curragh" and its towering ruins, looking most dreary of all. Happy is the Irishman who, in a new land and ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... part Isaac dated his decline from the hour of his son's defection. He had not been brought to this pass by any rashness in speculation, or by any flaw whatever in his original scheme. But his original scheme had taken for granted ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... I wish to meet you coldly. I would gladly fling away the weapons of strife. The warfare in which I am engaged, and which I dare not decline, is literally embittering my existence, and pressing upon me very severely. I am not aware that I have in any way personally attacked you, or ever by name, since the commencement of my editorial career. I should hail ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... impairment, inquination|, injury, damage, loss, detriment, delaceration|, outrage, havoc, inroad, ravage, scath[obs3]; perversion, prostitution, vitiation, discoloration, oxidation, pollution, defoedation|, poisoning, venenation|, leaven, contamination, canker, corruption, adulteration, alloy. decline, declension, declination; decadence, decadency[obs3]; falling off &c. v.; caducity[obs3], decrepitude. decay, dilapidation, ravages of time, wear and tear; corrosion, erosion; moldiness, rottenness; moth and rust, dry rot, blight, marasmus[obs3], atrophy, collapse; disorganization; delabrement ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... long while getting over it. I've had a letter from her this morning, and she says the Hastings doctor declares she must stay there a year in the warm and not come home at all, or she'll be going off in a decline. I know Lucy gets nervous about herself, but it do ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... said. "I hope she may, for Bessie's sake. She could be of use to her in the future; but, if you please, do not tell her she is to meet me, or she may decline your invitation." ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... box with this gentleman, and directly opposite, sat another, whose health was apparently on the decline, who finding that the ingenious physician had occasionally dropped into this coffee-house, had placed himself vis-a-vis the doctor, and made many indirect efforts to withdraw his attention from the newspaper to examine the index of his (the invalid's) constitution. He at last ventured ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... out on her folded arms till the flare of sunset blazed on the westward windows, then sank through a burning decline into grayness and the night. The fiery windows grew blank and chains of lamps marked the lines of the streets. Then she turned back to the room, dark behind her, yawning like a cavern. She lighted the lights and sat in a stiff-backed rocking-chair, ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... ends of the universe; and your reward will be to thwart it for a season. I decline to make one in a conspiracy against the design of our creator: ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... us your sentiments upon this latter subject. We have almost the whole day before us:—the sun has hardly begun to decline from his highest point. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... gout, and that Vichy did you no good. I am inclined to speak well of Wiesbaden, for the glorious weather I had there (94 deg. in the shade always) made the waters effective, and somehow I felt younger; but that pleasant sensation is now rather on the decline. ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... of Boston, on issuing the usual warrants for an election of Representatives, requested General Mackay to order the troops out of town on the day (May 8, 1769) of the town-meeting; but though he felt obliged to decline to do this, yet, in the spirit in which he acted during his entire residence here, he kept the troops, on this day, confined to their barracks. The town, after choosing Otis, Cushing, Adams, and Hancock as Representatives, adopted a noble letter of instructions, not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... of criticism to observe and regret the decline of power and interest after the opening acts of "The Jew of Malta." This decline is undeniable, though even the latter part of the play is not wanting in rough energy and a coarse kind of interest; but the first two acts would be sufficient ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... faithful stewardship. He never completely recovered his health. The pressure under which he had lain during those three terrible hours had left him with some slight curvature of the spine. It increased, and ended in a constriction of the lungs, bringing on a slow decline. In 1767 he again retired to Bath, where next year he died, aged fifty-one years. His epitaph on the wall of the Abbey nave runs ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of a famous shrine—has been restored, and purists in architecture will pass it by as an achievement of Gothic art in the period of its decline, but it is extremely beautiful nevertheless. On the way from Chlons-sur-Marne to Nancy we catch glimpses of other noble churches that stand out from the flat landscape as imposingly as Ely Cathedral. These are Notre Dame of Vitry le Franois ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... party. Minnie chose to give me to understand that she'd prefer to go out with Dottie this afternoon. I just turned away and came straight home. I think she called out after me, but I wouldn't turn my head an inch. I shall decline to ever speak to her again until the time comes when she apologizes. There!" and Helen stamped her little foot ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... by heavens! Forgive me, Bishop; but you are asking too much. I ran away from the Boers because I was a snob. I run away from the Beadle for the same reason. I absolutely decline the mission. ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... elaborate work on the History of Civilization in France, has a few curious pages, on the causes of the decline of civil society in Roman Gaul, and its consequent weakness and ruin. He tells you how the Senators or Clarissimi did not constitute a true aristocracy, able to lead and protect the people, being at the mercy ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... assert. And he cried, "My good sword have I girt, In Roncesvalles to dye it red. Let Roland but in my pathway tread, Trust ye to me that I strike him dead, His Durindana beat down with mine. The Franks shall perish and France decline." Thus were mustered King Marsil's peers, With a hundred thousand heathen spears. In haste to press to the battle on, In a pine-tree ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... There are more instructions to come. You have got your directions for to-day, and you have got your directions for to-morrow. Now for the day after. The day after is the seventh day since we sent the letter to Zurich. On the seventh day decline to go out walking as before, from dread of the annoyance of meeting me again. Grumble about the smallness of the place; complain of your health; wish you had never come to Aldborough, and never made acquaintances with the Bygraves; and when you have well worried ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... to heare [of] the enormity of outcryes of those different nations. The Iroquoits sung like devils, & often made salleys to make us decline. They gott nothing by that but some arrows that did incommodat them to some purpose. We foresee that such a batail could not hold out long for want of powder, of shott & arrows; so by the consent of my brother & the rest, made a speech in the Iroquoit language, inducing meselfe with armours that ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... could not be done without the help and consent of others, I was by no means discharging the duty that lay upon me—I put all those thoughts aside, and (in pursuance of my old determination) betook myself wholly to this work. Nor am I discouraged from it because I see signs in the times of the decline and overthrow of that knowledge and erudition which is now in use. Not that I apprehend any more barbarian invasions (unless possibly the Spanish empire should recover its strength, and having crushed other nations by arms should itself sink under ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... the college met with more ridicule than success. Very few men seemed to care what happened to us, and nearly everybody pretended that our eight would rise again, and our footer teams cease to be laughed at, though no one tried to make them any better. Dennison wrote a skit called "The Decline and Fall of St. Cuthbert's"; and some artist, who thought that my nose was as big as my arm, made a drawing of me in which I was trying to carry the college on my back, and was so overburdened by ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... Carlis," Blaine returned quietly. "As far as the financial argument goes, I think you discovered long ago that its appeal to me is based upon a different point of view than your own. You forget that I am not a servant of the public, but a private citizen, free to accept or decline such offers as are made to me in my line of business, as I choose. This affair is not a public charge, but a business proposition, which I decline. As to my reputation depending upon it, I differ with you. My reputation will stand, ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... as it is, would apply equally to many of the Parables of the New Testament. It might be said, for instance, that as a woman who should decline taking the trouble of searching for her lost "piece of silver," or a merchant who should neglect making an advantageous purchase of a "goodly pearl," would be guilty of no moral wrong, it must follow that there is nothing morally wrong in neglecting to ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... dear sir—or madam aforesaid—if upon further consideration we are obliged to decline the otherwise invaluable offer of your friendship. We do ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Well, then; in the heyday of youth, under the pressure of penury, what have you done? You are not in the front rank, and you have not a thousand francs of your own. That is the sum-total of the situation. Can you, in the decline of your powers, support a family by your pen, when your wife, if she is an honest woman, will not have at her command the resources of the woman of the streets, who can extract her thousand-franc note from the depths where milord keeps it safe? You are rushing into the lowest depths ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... die called Vrisha. And appearing before the warlike Nala, that slayer of hostile heroes, Pushkara, repeatedly said, 'Let us play together with dice.' Thus challenged in the presence of Damayanti, the lofty-minded king could not long decline it. And he accordingly fixed the time for the play. And possessed by Kali, Nala began to lose, in the game, his stakes in gold, and silver, and cars with the teams thereof, and robes. And maddened at dice, no one amongst ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... I cannot explain, because I do not understand them; these might have been omitted very often with little inconvenience, but I would not so far indulge my vanity as to decline this confession: for when Tully owns himself ignorant whether lessus, in the twelve tables, means a funeral song, or mourning garment; and Aristotle doubts whether [Greek: ourous] in the Iliad signifies a mule, or muleteer, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... it is in our opinion necessary to a full appreciation of his idiosyncrasy. It is customary to regard the Odes as the pinnacle of his achievement and to trace a poetical progression to that point and a subsequent decline: we are shown the evidence of this decline in the revised Induction to 'Hyperion.' As far as an absolute poetical perfection is concerned there can be no serious objection to the view. But the case of Keats ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... censer full of perfumes around the chamber. At length the duke requested Count Frill to give them a song. The Bird of Paradise would never sing for pleasure, only for fame and a slight check. The count begged to decline, and at the same time asked for a guitar. The signora sent for hers; and his Excellency, preluding with a beautiful simper, gave them some slight thing to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of Dauphin-Island, are at present on the decline, the inhabitants having removed to settle at Mobile and Biloxi, or at New-Orleans, where the lands are much better; for at the first the soil is chiefly sand, mixed with little earth. The land, however, is covered ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... wisdom. By the professional writer many sad vicissitudes have to be undergone. At first he cannot write at all. The heart, it appears, is unequal to the pressure of business, and the brain, left without nourishment, goes into a mild decline. Next, some power of work returns to him, accompanied by jumping headaches. Last, the spring is opened, and there pours at once from his pen a world of blatant, hustling polysyllables, and talk so high as, in the old joke, to be positively offensive in hot weather. ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of General Jackson's selection, he pointed now to the portrait of some famous race-horse, and now to the print of some celebrated rat-terrier, as queer revelations of his private tastes, indicating a great decline in his moral character, which would be a grief and disappointment to the pious old ladies of the South. Jackson, with a quiet smile, replied that perhaps he had had more to do with race-horses than his ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... Hickses, an' Chowns, an' Coomstocks all a-stickin' up theer tails an' a-purrin' an' a-rubbin' theerselves against the door-posts of the plaace like cats what smells feesh. I won't have none of it. I'll dwell along wi' she an' play a husband's part, an' comfort the decline of her like a man, I ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... farm-house tea, and to Philip very quaint and charming in that Jacobean house. Athelny for some fantastic reason took it into his head to discourse upon Byzantine history; he had been reading the later volumes of the Decline and Fall; and, his forefinger dramatically extended, he poured into the astonished ears of the suitor scandalous stories about Theodora and Irene. He addressed himself directly to his guest with a torrent of rhodomontade; and the young man, reduced to helpless silence and shy, nodded ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... that the journals have begged the people not to vote; the elections were only announced yesterday, and the electors have had no time to reconsider the choice they have to make, and yet they insist on voting. Those who decline to obey the suggestions of the Central Committee, will re-elect the late mayors or choose among the deputies, but vote they will. The present attitude of the regular Government has done much towards furthering the revolution. The mistakes of the Assembly have diminished ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... the Major took out his pocket-book to see on what days he was disengaged, and which of these many hospitable calls he could afford to accept or decline. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of Fate—John's popularity with friends caused him more anxiety than unpopularity with enemies. Towards the end of the term, Desmond spoke of applying to Warde for a certain room to be shared by himself and John. John had to decline an arrangement desired passionately, because he had indiscreetly promised not to chuck the Duffer. Caesar dropped the subject. After this, John noticed a slight coldness. He wondered whether Caesar were jealous, jealousy being John's own besetting sin. Finally, he ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... assist the enterprise, and convert my personal infelicity into a common blessing to the Volscians; as, indeed, I am likely to be more serviceable in fighting for than against you, with the advantage, which I now possess, of knowing all the secrets of the enemy that I am attacking. But if you decline to make any further attempts, I am neither desirous to live myself, nor will it be well in you to preserve a person who has been your rival and adversary of old, and now, when he offers you his service, appears unprofitable and useless ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... they were cold, and drawing the shawl closer around the wasted form. I know she loved the little girl, and perhaps she wished now that she had shown that love more tenderly. She talked freely, in the very presence of the child, of her rapid decline and the probability that she would not "last long." Lib said nothing concerning her own condition, and showed no sign of having heard her aunt's comments. But one day, when Miss York, after speaking very freely and plainly of the child's approaching end, had gone indoors, Lib announced, in ...
— Story-Tell Lib • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... build a new church, and these were the only mitigating circumstances in his regretted change of residence; but he had been only a few days at his new home, when he gave up his purpose with regard to the church; it was beyond his power, as he saw. San Juan Capistrano had been too long on the decline, and the neophytes were too indifferent, to undertake ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... blind ignorance? Or do they know what they should embrace, but passion driveth them headlong the contrary way? So also intemperance makes them frail, since they cannot strive against vice. Or do they wittingly and willingly forsake goodness, and decline to vices? But in this sort they leave not only to be powerful, but even to be at all. For they which leave the common end of all things which are, leave also being. Which may perhaps seem strange to some, that we should say that evil ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... object of his affections was not only a penniless woman, but the natural guardian of an equally penniless sister, was startling, to say the least of it. He was a true man, and it did not occur to him to decline the responsibility altogether; on the contrary, he was perhaps more eager than he would have been otherwise, seeing that his elderly love had far more need of his devotion than he had ever expected her to have; but, notwithstanding, ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... to decline the offer; but Bajee, upon Purseram taking the most solemn oath known to the Hindoos, in proof of his sincerity, accepted the offer and, with his brother Chimnajee, rode with Purseram to Poona; Amrud being left behind in the fort, as Purseram considered ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... day to the king for this indulgence; live well and look jolly; and can afford to sell their goods and labour much cheaper than other dealers and tradesmen. At night, however, they are obliged to lie aboard. Notwithstanding the great face of business at Marseilles, their trade is greatly on the decline; and their merchants are failing every day. This decay of commerce is in a great measure owing to the English, who, at the peace, poured in such a quantity of European merchandize into Martinique and Guadalupe, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... the pygmies Mr. Howson became such an adept with the long blow-pipe that they offered him the headship of the tribe; but, as this involved the adoption of anthropophagous habits, he was reluctantly obliged to decline the honour. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various
... Khrisna in the Gita) has said, "Oh, descendant of Bharata, whenever there be a decline of righteousness and the rise of unrighteousness, then I shall become incarnate again. I shall be born in every Yuga [era] to rescue the good, to destroy the ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... every hour he remained in the cottage. His little brother asked him to tell him tales about the sailing ships, and he wanted to go down to the canal with Ulick, but their mother said he was to bide here with her. The day had begun to decline, his brother was crying, and he had to tell him a sea-story to stop his crying. "But mother hates to hear my voice," he said to himself, and he went out into the garden when the story was done. It would be better ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... you, I am willing to supply you with a regular annuity—in quarterly payments—so long as you fulfil a promise to remain at a distance from this neighborhood. It is in your power to choose. If you insist on remaining here, even for a short time, you will get nothing from me. I shall decline to ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... mortality situation in a country, accurately indicates the current mortality impact on population growth. This indicator is significantly affected by age distribution, and most countries will eventually show a rise in the overall death rate, in spite of continued decline in mortality at all ages, as declining fertility results ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Pennsylvania muscle seemed to strike my husband as infinitely amusing, for he burst out laughing, and informed the "gentleman" that he did not follow the profession of whipping women, and must decline his offer. But I wanted to be back on free soil, out of an atmosphere which killed all manhood, and furnished women-whippers as a ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... abused England?' exclaimed the margravine. 'Nay, then, it was because England is shockingly unjust to the most amusing, the most reviving, charming of men. There is he fresh as a green bubbling well, and those English decline to do honour to his source. Now tell me, you!' She addressed me imperiously. 'Are you prosecuting his claims? Are you besieging your Government? What! you are in the season of generosity, an affectionate son, wealthy as a Magyar prince of flocks, herds, mines, and men, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Puritan party to destruction; nor would he, by accepting a place for which he was not legally qualified, recognize the validity of the dispensing power. One of the last acts of his virtuous life was to decline an interview to which he was invited by an agent Of the government. T. B. ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... prose writing from 1745 onward. This century saw the beginnings of the modern novel, in Fielding's Tom Jones, Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe, Sterne's Tristram Shandy, and Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. Gibbon wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Hume his History of England, and Adam ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... Pearson?" quoth Father. "'I wis not, Master,' saith the witness. 'Ay, but will you swear?' saith he. 'Why,' quoth the witness, 'how can I swear when I wis not?' 'Nay, but you must swear one way or an other,' saith he. Under thy leave, Joyce, I do decline to swear either way, ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... hands of Mrs. Bingle, however, nor did he attempt to account for the bitter howls that began to issue from behind the closed library doors almost simultaneously with his return to Seawood. These howls, it may be added, had a great deal to do with the decline of enthusiasm among the other boys. Wilberforce's adventure in the library was the one that made the ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... is immense. He produces with astonishing rapidity, and he has yet another characteristic of the great painters: that of having put his hand to every kind of subject. His recent studies of the Thames are, at the decline of his energetic maturity, as beautiful and as spontaneous as the Hay-ricks of seventeen years back. They are thrillingly truthful visions of fairy mists, where showers of silver and gold sparkle through rosy vapours; and at the same time Monet combines in this series the dream-landscapes ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... true that since then England has made surprisingly sweeping concessions; concessions so large as to increase the amazement that the refusal should have been so long. But unfortunately the combination of the two rather clinches the conception of our decline. If the concession had come before the terror, it would have looked like an attempt to emancipate, and would probably have succeeded. Coming so abruptly after the terror, it looked only like an attempt to tyrannise, and ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... he, "by the Count of Foix; and he releases you for a certain sum. It would be very unreasonable to expect him to waive his claim. I should not do so; nor would my father, the king, in similar circumstances: therefore, I must beg to decline interfering." The Count of Armagnac was much mortified at this straight-forward answer, and began to devise what could be done. He bethought him of the power of beauty; and applied ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... attitude of mind that enabled the Shah of Persia calmly to decline the invitation of the Prince of Wales to attend the Derby, on the ground that "he knew one horse could run faster than another," is foreign to that of Western civilization. The Battle of Waterloo is a flyspeck in importance contrasted ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... while he waited for the officer's reply. He was afraid he would decline the invitation—Jack knew he would have done so if he had been in the midshipman's place, and that nothing short of an overpowering force would have taken him from the deck so long as he was prize-master ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... his day and is now on the decline. One often hears the older people say, as they shake their heads, that he is not the wonderful man he was in the days of old. The young people, through their growing enlightenment, are also losing confidence in the man and his claims. Of those who were confirmed by the Bishop ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... is written (Prov. 18:5): "It is not good to accept the person in judgment [*Vulg.: 'It is not good to accept the person of the wicked, to decline from the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Suvorin! So I have already received from your firm 400 100 400. Altogether I shall get for "The Duel" as I calculated, about fourteen hundred, so five hundred will go towards my debt. Well, and for that thank God! By the spring I must pay off all my debt or I shall go into a decline, for in the spring I want another advance from all my editors. I shall take ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... well—a wonderful woman! None of her daughters will ever equal her, though Betty is twice the girl she used to be, and Mademoiselle Jill makes havoc among the young fellows. My dear wife looks after me so carefully that my gout is steadily on the decline, and I grow younger year by year. Get the right woman for your wife, young fellow! I waited twenty years for mine, and she's cheap at the price.—Your friend, ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... and Mr. Thomas Baring had urged me to undertake a mission to Canada on the business of the Grand Trunk Railway, which mission I had been compelled to decline; and when, in 1860-1, the affairs of that undertaking became dreadfully entangled, the Committee of Shareholders, who reported upon its affairs, invited me to accept the post of "Superintending Commissioner," with full powers. They desired ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... case, it was impossible to decline this request. I wrote to say that time should be made, and the notes were forwarded to me at Robin Hood's Bay. I began by reading carefully and twice over, so as to get a grip of the story and the novelist's intention, the part that had already appeared, and the proofs so far as the author ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... even sincerely; for being unable to foresee, at that period, all that was to befall her in the issue, she probably entertained the hope of attaching herself for good to this excellent princess. In losing her, she foresaw, or feared, if not adversity, at least a decline. ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... the adjoining parish, and, having sold every head of his stock, he went away to Port- Bredy, at the other end of the county, living there in solitary lodgings till his death two years later of a painless decline. It was then found that he had bequeathed the whole of his not inconsiderable property to a reformatory for boys, subject to the payment of a small annuity to Rhoda Brook, if she could be found ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... rumour, also, that the National Library at Paris contains an old print of Cartier, who appears therein as a bearded man passing from the prime of life to its decline. The head is slightly bowed with the weight of years, and the face is wanting in that suggestion of unconquerable will which is the dominating feature of the portrait of St Malo. This is the picture that appears in the form of a medallion, ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... persecution as any system of similar age, beginning to succumb to the influences of peace and prosperity? Is it the old story of Capua and Cannae over again? Perhaps it is not quite correct to say that it is now beginning to decline; nor, as a fact, is this Conference the first inquiry which the body itself has made into its own incipient decay. It is even said that symptoms of such an issue showed themselves as early as the beginning of the eighteenth century; and prize ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... one of the most distinguished of that republic. My father has filled several public situations with honour and reputation. He passed his younger days perpetually occupied by the affairs of his country, and it was not until the decline of life that he became a husband and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... evidently puzzled. Private conversations with Under-Secretaries of State are not, as a rule, public property, and his momentary intention to decline further conversation with this good-looking and fascinating stranger was checked by ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... declaring war. It is not against our will that we have thrown ourselves into this gigantic adventure. The war has not been imposed upon us by others and by surprise. We have willed the war. It was our duty to will it. We decline to appear before the tribunal of united Europe. We reject its jurisdiction. One principle alone counts and no other—one principle which contains and sums ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... his health was declining, and he was growing thinner from day to day. The brothers pitied him very much. At length Mochuda questioned him—putting him under obedience to tell the truth—as to the cause of his decline. The monk thereupon showed him his sides which were torn by a twig tied fast around them. Mochuda asked him who had done that barbarous and intolerable thing to him. The monk answered:—"One day while we were ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous
... you decline to haul our logs, after the expiration of our present contract, and in view of the fact that we are not financially able to build our own logging railroad, that the wisest course my father and I could pursue would be to sell our ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... mistress. It is hard to realize that Peru, to-day relatively weak among the American countries, was once the heart of a vast Inca empire and later the colony whose governors ruled the territories of Argentina and Chile to the south, and of Ecuador and Colombia to the north. With the decline of wealth and political influence there has come to Peru a decadence in letters. Lima is still a center of cultivation, a city in which the Castilian language and Spanish customs have been preserved with remarkable fidelity; but its importance is completely eclipsed by such growing commercial ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... to doing so," Mr. Sabin answered, "but until you can sit up and compose yourself like an ordinary individual, I decline to enter into any conversation with you ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and others of a similar kind on Mr. Prince's flour-mill at Longhope. His lawless career, however, brought him to the gallows at Gloucester for horse-stealing, at the age of forty, on the 16th August, 1800, as appears by the records of that gaol. The decline of the market in Mitcheldean is said to date from the above disturbances, which naturally deterred the neighbouring farmers from sending their grain thither for ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... principle of inequality in government has been thoroughly tried, and every nation based on that idea that has not already perished, clearly shows the seeds of death in its dissensions and decline. Though it has never been tried, we know an experiment on the basis of equality would be safe; for the laws in the world of morals are as immutable as in the world of matter. As the Astronomer Leverrier discovered the planet that bears his name by a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the day in its heat and light, would gradually decline; and again the golden water would be dancing ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... cocoanut mat. The dulled windows were draped with a strip of gauze. The "narse furnicher" wasn't there. There was a chest of drawers whose previous owner had apparently been in the habit of tumbling into bed by candle-light and leaving it to splutter its decline and shed its pale blood where it would. The ceiling was picked out with fly-spots. It smelt—how shall I give it to you? The outgoing tenant had obviously used the hearth as a spittoon. He had obviously supped nightly ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... WOOLER,—I have delayed answering your letter in the faint hope that I might be able to reply favourably to your inquiries after my sister's health. This, however, is not permitted me to do. Her decline is gradual and fluctuating, but its nature is not doubtful. The symptoms of cough, pain in the side and chest, wasting of flesh, strength, and appetite, after the sad experience we have had, cannot but be ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... without terrible loss from the war and was becoming the determining force in the allied camp, because its resources were still unexhausted and its armies only just coming into the field, while German numbers were approaching a positive decline. If Germany could reach Suez, conquer Egypt, using Turkish armies and German genius and munitions, she would deal a heavy blow to the British Empire, and she might compel the British to listen to proposals for peace, which were now ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... ready for crops, to go to parties. Some people are pretty disgusted, I can tell you, Mr. Green. Some people talk about ingratitude and wonder why the colony doesn't hang together better. Some people even wonder why it is that folks are interested mainly in their own affairs, and decline to attend watch meetings and—receptions. So I'm afraid very few, except your nearest neighbors, will be present, after all might I ask when you expect ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... room in her own house—Lisbeth suspected the halter of domestic servitude; several times the Baron had found a solution of the difficult problem of her marriage; but though tempted in the first instance, she would presently decline, fearing lest she should be scorned for her want of education, her general ignorance, and her poverty; finally, when the Baroness suggested that she should live with their uncle Johann, and keep house for him, instead of the upper servant, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... as it had risen but the decline was somewhat checked when a well known Southern California medium wrote to "her old friend" J. Edgar Hoover about the situation. Hoover, the story goes, shot back an answer—lie detectors ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... 2, understands the aggregate of all lands, houses, movable property, money, etc. which belong to them, but, that the chief element of wealth, and the condition precedent of all others, is men themselves. Hence, the process of the impoverishment of a people in their decline, takes the following course: money first emigrates, next, population diminishes, afterwards, the houses fall in ruin, finally, the land itself becomes a waste. According to Broggia, wealth is un avanzo osia valore di tutto cio che avanza ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... the ammonium nitrate facility owner with respect to such a purchase or transfer or attempted purchase or transfer, including— (i) exercising the right of the owner of the ammonium nitrate facility to decline sale of ammonium nitrate; and (ii) notifying appropriate law enforcement entities; and (C) additional subjects determined appropriate to prevent the misappropriation or use of ammonium nitrate in an act of terrorism. (2) ...
— Homeland Security Act of 2002 - Updated Through October 14, 2008 • Committee on Homeland Security, U.S. House of Representatives
... attacked, would the others fly to its succor, and spend their blood and money in its defense? Would there be no danger of their being flattered into neutrality by its specious promises, or seduced by a too great fondness for peace to decline hazarding their tranquillity and present safety for the sake of neighbors, of whom perhaps they have been jealous, and whose importance they are content to see diminished? Although such conduct would not be wise, it would, nevertheless, ...
— The Federalist Papers
... pays Her cordial tribute in these local lays; 'Tis the prime privilege of souls like thine, To feast on heavenly thoughts in life's decline. Faith to thy veteran bard exults to bring Her living water from the Christian spring; Hence the sweet vision, soft as evening's ray, Shedding enchantment o'er the close of day: Hence the persuasion, which all time endears, That our true friendship, firm thro' changeful years, In scenes ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... they wish for, just as men who fail of Self-Control: I mean, they choose things which, though hurtful, are pleasurable, in preference to those which in their own minds they believe to be good: others again, from cowardice and indolence, decline to do what still they are convinced is best for them: while they who from their depravity have actually done many dreadful actions hate and avoid life, and accordingly kill themselves: and the wicked seek others in whose company to spend their time, but fly from themselves because they have many ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... who accompanied me down to that point, which I reached about eight o'clock in the evening. The town was illuminated, and the citizens tendered me a polite invitation to land and take supper; but of course I was obliged to decline, accepting in lieu a drink and a sandwich. Of the sandwich I ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... of land will let for 4 pounds a year. The industrious cottar, with two, three, or four acres, would be exceedingly glad to have his time to himself, and have such an annual addition of land as he was able to manage, paying a fair rent for it; none would decline it but the idle ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... presence was becoming a source of serious inconvenience to my host and to his family. They were attached to me, that I could not doubt; but neither could I doubt that it was unpleasant to them to have old acquaintances decline any further intercourse with them because they had allowed a Batrachian to sit ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... cause uv the decline uv the Dimocrisy. I seed it yisterday. I wuz a wanderin on the neighborin hills, a musin onto the cussednis uv humanity ez exemplified in the person uv the grocery keeper at the Corners, who unanimusly refoozed to give me further credit for corn whisky, wich ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... resumed his attacks on Judaism. In 1816 he published an article under the title "Concerning the Causes of the Obnoxiousness of the Jews," in which he asserted that the Jews were responsible for Poland's decline. They multiplied with incredible rapidity, forming now no less than an eighth of the population. Should this process continue, the Kingdom of Poland would be turned into a "Jewish country" and become "the laughing-stock of the ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... medicine-man, whether the national custom of saluting the rising sun need be observed on cloudy mornings, and whether the medicine-man is entitled to the pick of the yams on any day but Sunday. People of different opinions on these points decline to eat together or to enter into social intercourse with one another; and their children are forbidden to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... speech, it presented not fewer, but more decided signs of colonial independence. Yet the statesman who accused the Whigs and Liberals of planning the disruption of the Empire, never attempted, when in office, to stay the decline of imperial unity by any practical scheme of federation, and must be counted either singularly indifferent to the interests of the empire, or sceptical as to its future. A few years later, when the Imperial Titles Bill was under discussion, Disraeli again revealed a ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... more and just occasions taken to speak of his books, which none ever did or can commend too much; but I decline them, and hasten to an account of his Christian behaviour and death at Bourne; in which place he continued his customary rules of mortification and self-denial; was much in fasting, frequent in meditation and prayers, enjoying those blessed returns, which only men of ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... beauty. Plutarch tells us that she was much older than her competitor, who consulted her judgment in his earlier odes. Now, granting their first competition to have been when Pindar was twenty years old, and that the others were in the years succeeding, her beauty must have been somewhat on the decline; for in Greece there are few women who retain the graces, none who retain the bloom of youth, beyond the twenty-third year. Her countenance, I doubt not, was expressive: but expression, although it gives beauty to men, makes women pay dearly for its stamp, and pay soon. ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... thought I, as the door closed, leaving me alone in the "salon." In circumstances of such moment, I had never felt so nonplussed as now, how to decline Kilkee's invitation, without discovering my intimacy with the Binghams—and yet I could not, by any possibility, desert them thus abruptly. Such was the dilemma. "I see but one thing for it," said I, gloomily, as I strode through the coffee-room, with my head sunk and my hands behind ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... go very fast to decline, and last night had a small fever, wh. I hoped might put a quicker period to this tedious illness, but unluckily it has in a great measure gone off. I cannot submit to your coming over here on my account, as it is possible for me ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... did move or not; and this very Comet seemed to him to have by design appeared for that end, if it had had more Latitude, and that consequently we might have seen it before Day break. He wishes also, that, if possible, it may be accurately observed, whether it will not a little decline from its great Circle towards the South; Judging, that some important truth may be thence deduced, as well as if its motion retarded more, than the place of its Perigee (which will be more exactly known when ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... Beyond taking a few soldiers out of the country such quarrels are productive of no good. There must be some strong excitement in which every one can take a part and feel a personal interest, and then Nihilism will decline." ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... corruptions, banishments, and dissensions. Rome, republican Rome, whose eagles glanced in the rising and setting sun,—where and what is she? The eternal city yet remains, proud even in her desolation, noble in her decline, venerable in the majesty of religion, and calm as in the composure of death. The malaria has travelled in the paths worn by her destroyers. More than eighteen centuries have mourned over the loss of her empire. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Tennessee's guilt, and left only a suspicion of his general sanity. Sandy Bar made a point of calling on him, and proffering various uncouth but well-meant kindnesses. But from that day his rude health and great strength seemed visibly to decline; and when the rainy season fairly set in, and the tiny grass- blades were beginning to peep from the rocky mound above Tennessee's grave, he ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... answered. "Yes, I saw his article, and in his own interests I decline the Marguerites. Yes, sir, in six months' time I shall have paid you more money for the articles that I shall ask you to write than for your poetry ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... shining resplendent over Connecticut, each bright star had its own particular twinkle. Trumbull had his "Progress of Dulness," in three cantos,—an imitation, in manner, of Goldsmith's "Double Transformation." The title is happy. The decline of Miss Harriet Simper from bellehood to an autumnal marriage, in Canto III., is more tiresome than the progress of Tom Brainless from the plough-tail to the pulpit, in Canto I. The Reverend Mr. Brainless, when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... His health began to decline, and his physician advised that he move to the country. And so we find him taking a course of solitude as a cure for love. He moved to Vaucluse, a hamlet fifteen miles from the city. Some of the old-time biographies tried to show that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... moment the abuse of the pulpit is the parent of more public mischief in Great Britain and America than the stage ever produced in its most prolific days of vice; and it is deplorable to reflect that the former is rapidly increasing, while the vitiation of the latter has been for a century on the decline. The licentiousness of the stage in the reign of Charles II was enormous: but it was a licentiousness which the theatre in common with the whole nation derived from the court, and from a most flagitious monarch whose ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... thing of themselves, without the help of a workman. When the atoms, says he, descend in infinite space (very ingeniously spoken, to make high and low in infinity), they do not fall plumb down, but decline a little from the perpendicular, either obliquely or in a curve; and this declination, says he, from the direct line is the cause of our liberty of will. But, I say, this declination of atoms in their descent was itself either necessary or voluntary. If it was necessary, how then could that ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... production, Ellison," he said, "and I should be sorry to write anything likely to do it harm. I think it would be better if I went away now. I cannot be blamed if I decline to give an opinion on anything which ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... name of Hanz Toodleburg. Hanz was held in high esteem by his neighbors, many of whom persisted in pronouncing his name Toodlebug, and also electing him hog-reef every year, an honor he would invariably decline. He did this, he said, out of respect to the rights of the man last married in the neighborhood. It mattered not to Hanz how his name was pronounced; nor did it ever occur to him that some of his more ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... distinction between the powers of sense and those of imagination, as two different faculties of the human mind."— Id.; also Dr. Blair cor. "HE—(from the Anglo-Saxon HE—) is a personal pronoun, of the third person, singular number, masculine gender, and nominative case. Decline HE."—Fowler cor. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of the decline of Whist? Why is it that every year we find fewer players, and less proficiency in those who play? It is a far graver question than it may seem at first blush, and demands an amount of investigation much deeper than I am able to give ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... course, it is obvious what conclusion I must come to," said Lord Stamfordham. "That it is not that you cannot give any explanation, but that you decline to give it." ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... mother accomplished what she did is the more to be admired when account is taken of the feeble condition of her health and of her many serious illnesses. She inherited weakness of the chest from her mother, who died of decline in early life. When on the point of first going out into society, she was fearfully burned, and lay for six months wrapped in cotton-wool, unable to feed herself. In the early years of our married life we were frequently driven away in the winter ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
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